Chapter 6
Lucy
TO DO:
Wash gown
Invite Donna for dinner
The dress is deliciously heavy in its big, glossy bag, with Donna’s purple evening purse and two of Jill’s blouses wrapped in tissue tucked in beside it – the ones that delectable Dirk liked best.
Jill actually smiled when she rang up my purchases, though it may have been from habit. I resolve to visit her frock shop again soon. Best to keep on her good side. She seems to know that wonderful man very well. Perhaps he’ll visit her again.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to offer to model for Jill. Surely she has fashion parades each season. Or I could make a lamp or two for her as gifts, then ask if she’d like to stock them. Better still, I could offer makeovers for her customers. I’ll never forget the skills of my first profession, at the network.
I swing the shiny bag as I leave Jill’s, and saunter down the hill, delighted with my morning. I’ve worked hard to pick myself up and start again. Sure, I have my down days. Who doesn’t? But I know how to smile, and I’m prepared to fake it till I make it. When I smile, others smile back, and before I know it, my own smile is genuine.
I find my door key and stand tall as I survey Brighton Court and my apartment, on the left, three floors up. I smile up at my kitchen window. The whole apartment might be small, but it has plenty of light and a great view of the street.
I stop to unlock the front door of the apartments. As I stoop to grab the silky ribbon handles of Jill’s classy bag once more, my diamonds sparkle in the sunshine, all six of them. Even counting them calms my mind. They remind me that love exists, as solid as my mother’s love for me and her mother’s love for her.
For a moment, I am seven years old again – back at my mother’s hospital bed. She’d twisted the loose rings around her frail fingers and promised me they’d be mine one day, when I turned twenty one.
And they were, her glittering promise that her love would never really leave me.
The memories are vivid – of her warm arm around me on the edge of the hospital bed, bony but fiercely strong as she hugged me. She’d pull out a coloring book and new pencils, full of glitter, and together, on the big tray on wheels, we’d color. Every page had a rainbow, and I sat and colored and colored – rainbows and butterflies and fairies and ladybugs and flowers.
I still hear her voice beside me, reverberating in my chest, as she told me how much joy I’d brought her, how much beauty there is in the world if only we care to notice it – rainbows in spiderwebs, brave plants taking root in ugly walls of concrete, a bright leaf on a wet gray pavement, a message from a friend, a smile from a stranger.
Back then, I didn’t understand that this was her way of saying goodbye, of passing on the things she’d loved most about the world – her attitude of gratitude, with a handful of sparkles.
Now, in the sunshine outside Brighton Court, I wiggle my fingers and flashes of light shoot out like stage lights. I smile and head upstairs, wondering if I’ve unpacked the stain remover. I’ll wash the dress immediately – gently – to remove the coffee. It’s a perfect day to lay it out on a towel beside an open window beneath the clearest of skies, to dry.
I phone Donna.
“Lucy!” she says. “Was that you who sent the flowers, or a secret admirer?”
“How else do I thank you for letting me live with you for so long?”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
