“I’ve got three sons,” Susan wailed. “How can I raise them to be good men if I’m already defeated by nature?”
Darcy sipped her drink and relaxed, watching the other three women talk. Their table was illuminated by a candle, and small lights had been hung around the patio. The soft light blurred the edges, erased the wrinkles, provided an almost antique cast to their faces. Willow, her skin flawless, her auburn hair abundant, her eyes bright. Susan, with signs of weariness cast over her pretty face, her blond hair drooping as if it were also tired. Mimi, white-haired, plump, with sparkling eyes. They could represent the three ages of women, Darcy thought: youth, maturity, age. She wanted to snap a photo of them just like this, to remember in the future. It was an unlikely gathering, and special.
And what age would Darcy represent? she wondered. She was past youth, but she didn’t feel completely mature….
“You’re awfully quiet,” Mimi observed, turning her attention on Darcy.
“I’m still considering Willow’s words about blended families. That has been a significant change in people’s lives. So much divorce and remarriage—”
Mimi cut in. “Darling, perhaps you’re correct about divorce, but there have always been blended families. For hundreds of years, women died giving birth or of some ghastly disease. They might have had two or three children, and someone had to take care of them, so the husband married again, and had more children with his new wife. Or a man was killed in some hideous war. The woman married again, partly for economic reasons. She needed a man to support her financially while she pounded the chaff from the wheat so she could bake bread.”
“But with all our modern technology, things have changed, haven’t they?” Susan asked, her forehead furrowed as she tried to reach a point.
“Absolutely,” Willow stated. “Women don’t need men anymore. We can support ourselves financially.”
“Some of us can’t,” Susan argued, warming to her topic. “Some of us have three children who need supervision and healthy food and love, and furthermore some of us—not you, obviously, Darcy, since you have a position as a librarian, and probably not you, Willow, because you are young and smart and free—but some of us can’t work.”
“Everyone can work,” Mimi said.
“I can’t!” Susan cried. “I can’t think of one single thing I could do to make money.”
The table fell quiet. They all realized Susan had brought them crashing in from the philosophical into the murky reality of daily life. Her daily life.
“What kind of work would you do if you could?” Willow asked.
Susan blinked, dumbfounded. She lifted her glass to her mouth and drank deeply, giving herself time to think.
Willow chattered away. “I mean, I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, but I know that’s not possible. I’m claustrophobic and not good with numbers. I babysit a lot now, and I’m a good babysitter, and it’s about the only way someone my age can make money. Unless I were a tech geek and invented something in my garage. I know when I grow up my stepfather will want me to sell real estate, that’s his business, and he makes tons of money, but I want to major in environmental biology. Maybe I’ll focus on clean water. I know that involves math, but we’ve got such cool technology to help us now, I won’t have to do fancy math.”
Susan set her empty glass on the table with a definitive thump. “I would like to work in a yarn shop,” she announced defiantly.
Darcy waved the waitress over. “Another round of drinks, please.”
“Really? Why?” Mimi asked.
Susan ran her hands through her blond hair, changing the carefully tidy locks into a wild tangle. “I enjoy knitting. I always have. I made the sweetest sweaters for my boys when they were babies. You should see the yarns they have now, I mean you should feel them. They’re not all itchy like yarns used to be. They’re silky. And so many colors!”
“But why not have your own yarn shop?” Willow asked. “Why work for someone else?”
“I don’t want the responsibility. I am so tired of being responsible, for my children, for my husband’s meals, for balancing a household budget. It’s exhausting! I want to work for someone who has to keep the records and place the orders. I’ll unpack the yarns and work behind the counter, selling and helping women choose the right color and weight. If the shop isn’t busy, I’ll work on knitting something intricate and unusual that will inspire other knitters.” As she spoke, Susan’s face flushed, and her entire personality seemed to transform from shy and quiet to bold and beautiful.
Mimi laughed and patted Susan’s hand. “It seems you’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“Oh, well, I suppose, when I try to fall asleep at night…” Susan deflated a little.
“Three young boys are a lot to deal with,” Darcy remarked. “I don’t know if I could do it without going crazy.”
“If your husband helped, you could,” Mimi said, facing Darcy but floating the suggestion to Susan.
Susan shrugged and continued to shrink back into her old self. “Otto is far too busy to help with childcare. What he does is important. I’m fortunate that he agreed to come to the island with us. He couldn’t do it, if it weren’t for technology, the computer, the Internet.” Blushing, she added in a whisper, “Plus, he makes an enormous salary. That’s why we were able to come here.”
“Well, then, you needn’t worry about money,” Mimi concluded. “You could work part-time, for the pleasure of it—”
“And I could babysit!” Willow chimed in. Quickly she turned to the others. “I would still help with story hours, too. And read to you in the afternoons, Mimi.”
“Have you seen Flock yet?” Mimi asked. “The yarn store on Orange Street? You could walk there in five minutes.”
“It’s so late in the season,” Susan countered. “I’m sure they have all the help they need.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Darcy said. “Lots of people will leave the island in August—kids going back to college and so on.”
“You could at least stop in,” Mimi said.
Susan’s face glowed and she broke into the prettiest Mona Lisa smile.
“OMG,” Willow whispered, leaning in. “That guy over there is totally checking you out!”
“Who?” Susan asked.
“Well, not me,” Mimi joked. “And Darcy’s back is to him.”
“He’s cute,” Willow said. “Take a look.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” Susan shook her head and laughed. Then she looked. Then her neck and face flooded with a highly becoming blush. Then she jerkily moved her head and sat as if paralyzed.
Darcy glanced quickly over her shoulder. “He is cute.”
“Please,” Susan said, her lips scarcely moving, “stop it. I’m married.”
“But not dead,” Mimi told her. “For heaven’s sake, Susan, a little flirting is not going to turn you into a scarlet woman.”