Pretty Woman Read online

  They’d hired two full-time workers the fourth year so they could spend more time traveling in their truck to other states to pick weeds. The fifth year they paid off the truck and bought a van. They also added two additional pages to the catalog. By the end of the eighth year, they netted four hundred thousand dollars. In year nine, they took a bad hit with the drought in the South, and their net profits plummeted to the hundred and fifty thousand mark. Year ten found them flush again. Year ten was when Kent Bliss entered her life.

  Rosie shivered when she realized she was now in her thirteenth year of business. Thirteen was such an unlucky number.

  The pile of orders filled the in basket. There had to be at least three hundred. She hadn’t checked her website to see how many orders were logged on there. She estimated it would be around seven hundred. Bottom line, she was backlogged. How in the world was she going to get all these orders out and still go to North Carolina with Luna Mae this weekend to pick cattails? Maybe if she didn’t sleep, she could pull it off.

  Luna Mae had offered to go to the Senior Citizen’s complex to post a notice for any seniors wanting part-time work. Over the years she’d found that the college kids she hired for the summer months liked to call in sick at the last minute and take off for the beach. They were not dependable. Her two full-time moms had demanding personal lives, and often had to take off if they couldn’t find a sitter or if their kids were sick. She was at the mercy of her employees. More often than not, she worked through the night, catching a nap here and there.

  Rosie could feel the stress building between her shoulder blades. It wasn’t just the business either. Her life, her future, were on the line. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. She needed to take an inventory of what she was going to do today. Along with all her other problems, she was running late.

  Normally, she was here in her workroom by seven-thirty, getting the weeds ready for spraying or painting. Her gaze swept the entire first section of the garage. She was running low on thistle, one of her best sellers. The cat’s ears, another of her best sellers, were down to a dozen or so. The creeping buttercup and Virginia creeper weren’t as plentiful as she’d thought. She made red check marks on her inventory list.

  As she moved down the wall, she noted that she had more than enough mustard leaves, nettle, plantain, milkweed, lady’s thumb, and horsetail. She looked over to the left to sift through a huge box of dandelion and crabgrass that had been thoroughly dried and was ready to be worked on.

  Rosie pulled on a canvas apron, the kind barbecue chefs wear, donned her goggles, and headed to the far end of the working garage, where she would spray a light polyurethane onto the weeds. Yesterday’s weeds were ready for the spray painting and glitter. She looked over at her worktable to see the Christmas centerpiece she’d made three days ago. It was going to be photographed for the cover of the catalog later that afternoon.

  Rosie touched one of the gilt leaves. She smiled. Perfect.

  Startled, Rosie turned around when she heard Luna Mae tromping through the garage. “You forgot to open the doors, Rosie. Do you want to pass out from the fumes? I brought you some coffee, and the paper. You left it on the front seat of the car. You might want to take a look at the front page. You go ahead and read the paper, and I’ll pack up the boxes for UPS.”

  Rosie removed the goggles, hitched her foot on a stool to drag it closer to the worktable before she flipped open the paper. She frowned. Why did Luna Mae want her to see a picture of a funeral cortege? She read the caption under the picture. Adeline Simmons’s funeral. There was a picture of Vickie dressed in black from head to toe with a wad of tissues in one hand and a white rose in the other hand.

  Vickie Winters was back in Savannah. Rosie felt light-headed at the knowledge.

  Was Adeline Simmons’s death an omen of some kind? She shook her head again to clear her thoughts.

  “Say something,” Luna Mae shouted from the far end of the garage.

  “Mrs. Simmons, patron of the arts, died peacefully in her sleep. I’m sorry that she had no immediate family to grieve for her. It’s sad when someone dies,” Rosie shouted to be heard.

  “Read the article, Rosie. It says Mrs. Simmons left that big old house in the historic district to Victoria Winters, her loyal companion. I’m thinking Vickie could probably use a good friend right about now.”

  “If that’s what you’re thinking, perhaps you should stop by and offer your condolences. I really don’t want to talk about this, Luna Mae.”

  The skinny housekeeper tugged at her braids, twirling the ends this way and that. “See, that’s part of your problem. You never want to deal with a situation. You walk around it, you look at it, you sniff at it like a dog, then you turn away because you don’t want to deal with it. Your husband is a case in point. Vickie was a case in point. You better shape up, Missy, or I’m moving on. I need to live in harmony.”

  Rosie hated it when Luna Mae turned belligerent. She’d never even come close to winning any kind of verbal fight with the housekeeper. She didn’t even try anymore. It was simpler to let Luna Mae talk until she was talked out.

  “You aren’t going to start thatfeng shui stuff again, are you?” Rosie asked.

  “There are people who would benefit from the Chinese art of harmonic placement. You are not one of them. First you have to be cosmically enlightened like I am.” Luna Mae sniffed and tossed her head to make her point.

  Rosie adjusted her goggles with her left hand. Her right hand was busy shaking an aerosol can of lacquer. “You don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you, Luna Mae?” The words came out strangled, like she was choking back a sob. Luna Mae finished packing up the cardboard box she was working with before she ran to her employer.

  “Baby, I have avery high regard for you. I don’t like some of the things you do, but that’s okay. You don’t like some of the things I do. However,” the housekeeper said as she wagged a finger under Rosie’s nose, “I never delude myself, nor do I lie to myself. I like who I am. I didn’t like being Henrietta Bertha Hennessy so I became Luna Mae Luna. You and your mother helped me get my act together, and for that I will be eternally grateful. I’m trying to do the same thing for you so you don’t waste any more of your life. Life is too precious to spend it being miserable. Pride, Rosie, is a terrible sin.” Luna Mae shook her head.

  “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go to that mansion and welcome Vickie back to Savannah. It will give me great pleasure to tell her we were both right and how miserable you are.”

  Rosie stopped spraying the Virginia creeper that was laid out on a rough board in front of her. She pulled off her goggles. “Don’t you dare! I forbid you to do that! If you do, I’ll fire you!”

  Luna Mae worked her facial muscles into something that passed for a smile. “Like I said, pride is the deadliest sin of all. You just made my point for me.” She turned and marched back to her end of the garage. She called over her shoulder, “If you fire me, then I’ll go to work for Vickie. I bet she’d love to have me help her in that big old house she just inherited.”

  Rosie clamped her hands over her ears. She could feel her world starting to crumble around her. She wanted to stomp her feet and cry the way she had when she was a child. She knew she wouldn’t do either of those things because she was no longer a child, and her world, such as it was, was of her own making. What she had to do was make sense out of her life, deal with it, then get on with that life. If she faltered or screwed up, she’d just have to deal with the consequences.

  What a fool she’d been!

  2

  Mrs. Kent Bliss—that’s how she thought of herself—looked in the long pier glass. She took the hit full on and didn’t flinch, wince, or cringe in any way. A fat lady glared back at her. It didn’t matter that the fat lady was dressed in designer wear, that her hair was swirled into a fashionable do, or that her makeup was flawless. She was a fat lady, pure and simple. No denials here. Those days were long gone.

 
Everything was wrong. It had gone downhill from the minute she opened her eyes that morning. What exactly had triggered the hatred she was feeling for herself and those around her? Her anniversary, which her husband didn’t acknowledge? The look of revulsion she’d seen on his face? Vickie’s coming back to town? Was it the pity she saw in Luna Mae’s eyes? Or was it her naked reflection she’d seen in the vanity mirror this morning?

  All of the above.

  Rosie turned away from the pier glass. She was wearing high heels that made her trundle as she moved forward. Like a lumbering walrus. She kicked them off. Now she could justplop her way along, her weight coming down solidly on her feet. She slipped into a pair of straw sandals. In the great scheme of things, it really didn’t matter if they matched her burnt orange linen dress. Her grandmother’s pearls adorned her neck. She wore no other jewelry except her wedding ring.

  The wedding ring drew her eyes like a magnet. It was an embarrassing piece of jewelry. It had been so hard to pretend to Kent that she liked it. It was platinum, or so he said, no bigger or thicker than the hoop that came with a cheap key chain. Kent said it was elegant and spoke volumes. She’d wanted a thick, gold band. Something that could be easily seen, something that said she was Mrs. Kent Bliss. All the ring on her finger said to her was that she was just another circle on a cheap key chain.

  Rosie was almost to the door when she walked back to her dressing table for her watch, a Swatch with big numbers. Kent made fun of it. She liked it because the numbers were big, and she could see the time at a glance without having to squint. She strapped it on her right wrist. Kent had something to say about that, too. He said she just wore her watch on her right wrist to annoy him and as an attention getter. When someone looks like you do, he’d gone on to say, the last thing you wanted to do is call attention to yourself. She hadn’t worn a watch after that. She liked wearing her watch on her right wrist because she was left-handed. Strapping the watch on her right wrist now was an act of defiance.

  Too much, too little, too late.

  Her head high, Rosie left the room and walked down the long hallway to the grand circular staircase. She moved slowly, glancing at her watch when she reached the bottom. It was a quarter to seven, and there was no sign of her husband.

  Luna Mae was standing at the bottom of the steps, her arms folded over her skinny chest. In honor of the occasion, she was attired in a zebra-striped jumpsuit, one of a hundred or so that hung in her closet and her favorite mode of dress.

  Luna Mae only got dressed up for weddings and funerals.

  “There were no calls while you were getting dressed, Rosie. Dinner is ready whenever you want me to serve it. Just leave everything, and I’ll clear it away when I get back.”

  Rosie looked around the massive foyer. It was big enough to house a whole suite of furniture. A round table with a huge bouquet of vibrant crepe myrtles from the gardens sat in the middle. The crepe myrtles always bloomed in June. She’d had many of them, the deep pinks, the vibrant purples, and, of course, the snow-white ones, at the church the day she got married. The color of the flowers brought out the deep pinks and greens in the paintings that hung on the foyer walls. Her mother always said a house was judged by the foyer because that was what people first saw when they entered.

  Her mother had liked clutter; Rosie didn’t. When she’d taken over the house, she’d stored most of the furnishings in the attic. All were priceless antiques. But as far as she was concerned, the table in the center, the colorful paintings, and the burnished floor, along with the circular staircase, made their own statement.

  Rosie missed her parents, who had died within months of one another. Luna Mae had consoled her at the time by saying her parents were a unit, a set. One couldn’t function without the other. Back then, she hadn’t believed the housekeeper, but the more she thought about it these days, the more she was inclined to agree with Luna Mae. It was hard to conjure up a memory of her mother that didn’t also include her father. It was true, they were joined at the hip. Her mother would start a sentence, and her father would finish it. Her father would mention something, and her mother would fill in the details. Side by side, holding hands, always touching, always smiling at one another, her parents never argued, never said cross words to each other. At least she had never heard any.

  As a child, she remembered being envious of the affection and love they felt for one another. Not that they ever neglected or ignored her. Still, there were times when she’d felt like an outsider. She remembered telling Vicki once that when she got married she didn’t want a marriage like her parents’ because there was no room for anything else in the marriage except the two of them.

  How foolish she’d been to think that. Her parents’ marriage was vastly superior to her own! She shrugged away her regrets. She needed to get on with her plans for the evening.

  “I’ll let you know, Luna Mae. I have a feeling you won’t be going anywhere tonight. Kent should be home by now. You can serve me my dinner promptly at seven.”

  “Baby, he might be running late. Give him a few minutes’ grace. You aren’t going to cry, are you?”

  “I don’t have any tears left, Luna Mae. If he isn’t here by ten minutes past seven, I want you to serve me my dinner, then I want you to go upstairs and pack up his belongings in trash bags. Tomorrow morning, call a locksmith and have the locks changed. Put all his stuff at the top of the steps or kick them to the bottom. It really doesn’t matter to me. Just don’t pick them up.”

  “Isn’t that kind of drastic, Rosie?”

  Rosie’s temper flared. “You’ve been haranguing me for four years about getting rid of Kent. Now that I’m doing it, you’re questioning my decision? Make up your damn mind, Luna Mae. Whatever I do is for me, not for you, or Vickie, or Kent. You kept after me the whole year of our engagement, then you never let up for these last three years.”

  Luna Mae turned away. “I just want you to be sure you know what you’re doing before you do something you might possibly regret. Think this all through and don’t act in haste is all that I’m saying.”

  Rosie made her way to the dining room and sat down at the head of the table. Kent’s seat. What did it matter where she sat? In her gut she knew he wouldn’t be joining her for dinner. Despite the thought, she got up, pushed the chair back into place, then sat down on a chair to the right. She sat primly, her hands folded. She had a clear view of her watch and the moving hands.

  When the minute hand on the Swatch crawled past the twelve, Rosie knew with deep certainty that her husband hadn’t taken her invitation seriously. He did what he wanted when he wanted, and answered to no one. It was all about Kent. Never about her. Never.

  Somewhere deep inside her, the last thread of hope that somehow, some way, she could salvage her marriage disappeared. Her marriage, which had begun three years ago to the day, was now over.

  Rosie was about to call out to Luna Mae when she appeared at her side, dinner plate in hand. She set the food in front of Rosie, poured wine into the wineglass, then stepped back.

  “Thanks, Luna Mae. This looks good. You can…pack Kent’s things now.”

  “Rosie, are you sure you want me to do that?”

  Rosie eyed the fish on her plate. She’d never felt less like eating in her life. She dug the fork into the meaty side of the filet. “I’m sure, Luna Mae.”

  Somehow, Rosie managed to eat everything on her plate, even the skin on the baked potato. She was on her second glass of wine when Luna Mae appeared with coffee and the sorbet. It was eight o’clock.

  “How’s the packing going?”

  “I’m almost done. Are you okay, Rosie? Do you want me to sit here with you?”

  “No. I need to sit here so I can punish myself for being so stupid. I need to feel my humiliation and what I allowed that man to do to me. I need to wallow. Just let me do what I have to do. Finish the packing and don’t worry about me.”

  Rosie dutifully took a bite of the sorbet. She thought it too tart, so s
he pushed it away. She reached for the black coffee, sipping at it. She longed for a cigarette. A habit she’d given up for Kent because he didn’t like the smell. She reached behind her to pull at the door of the buffet. A full carton of cigarettes was inside. In case she ever had a nicotine fit. Well, she was having a nicotine fit that very minute.

  The hands on the Swatch moved slowly, around and around, until the numbers told her it was twenty-five minutes past ten. The dining room was full of smoke, the candles burned to the ends, the flowers wilted.

  A bottle of Budweiser in her hand, Luna Mae sat down in Kent’s chair. “How long you gonna sit here, kiddo?”

  “Until he comes home. Like I said, I need to get my face rubbed in it one more time. Think of me as a masochist. When he does come home, Luna Mae, I want you to go outside and take the distributor cap off his Porsche. I know you know how to do that. Put the boat keys someplace safe. I called the bank this afternoon and had them transfer all my money to a new account. I left twenty-five dollars in it for Kent’s use. I canceled all our joint credit cards before I got dressed this evening. He’s going out of here this evening, or whenever he gets here, the same way he arrived, with nothing. Don’t look at me like that. I knew he was going to be a no-show. Consider it a preemptive strike.”

  “Baby, you are on a roll. If you’re serious about all of this, I was thinking earlier, maybe you should hire yourself a personal trainer. That way you won’t make excuses when you don’t feel like exercising or if you think you’re too tired. What do you think?”