Fast Women

  “I thought your stuff had flowers on it,” Suze said. “I’ve never seen this before.”

  “It was on the top shelf,” Nell said. “I never used it.”

  “Crocuses,” Margie said, frowning into space. “That’s what they were.” She looked at the three boxes marked “China” and said, “This can’t be all of it.”

  “This is my share,” Nell said. “Tim got the rest in the divorce.”

  “What?” Margie’s eyes grew wide. “He took your china?”

  “It’s just dishes,” Suze said.

  “It’s her china,” Margie said, and Suze remembered Margie’s ten zillion pieces of Franciscan Desert Rose and said, “Right. Her china.”

  “And he got more than half,” Margie said. “You had shelves of it.”

  Suze looked down at the teapot in her hand. “What is this stuff, anyway? I only remember the flowers.”

  “It’s all British Art Deco china,” Nell said.

  “Art Deco?” Margie said.

  “From the 20s and 30s,” Suze said, still fascinated by the teapot. “Very geometric, bright colors, stylized designs.” They looked at her as if she’d said something strange, and she said, “Art History 102. I know the introductory stuff about everything.”

  Nell nodded. “It’s from my mom’s family in England. That teapot is Clarice Cliff, my second favorite pattern of hers. It’s called Secrets.”

  “I don’t understand why Tim got so much more,” Margie said.

  “The stuff I loved best was the expensive stuff,” Nell said. “Like the Secrets tea set. It has thirty-four pieces and appraised at seven thousand dollars.”

  “Oh, my Lord,” Margie said, taking a closer look at the teapot Suze was clutching.

  Suze held it out to Nell. “Take this, please.”

  Nell took it and put it in her china hutch. “So did you get your mom’s china, Margie?” she asked, and Suze looked at her sharply. Nell had been the one to tell her fourteen years ago that questions about Margie’s mom were off limits.

  “No,” Margie said. “What’s this?” She held up the teapot she’d just unpacked, a round peach-colored pot with white crescents scratched in it.

  “Susie Cooper,” Nell said. “Not nearly as expensive. That’s part of her kestral line. She owned her own pottery works in the late 20s and was still designing in the 80s.”

  “She lasted.” Margie nodded down at the Cooper bowl in her hands.

  “Her pieces were the best designed,” Nell said. “She even had her own pottery works. But Clarice made beautiful things.” Nell unwrapped another bowl. “This is Stroud, my favorite pattern. Just the green band around the outside and the cartouche at the bottom.”

  The bowl was cream with a wide green band bisected in the lower left-hand corner by a little square with a landscape inside it—a fluffy cloud, an orange-roofed house, a puffy green tree, and two curved hills—a tiny perfect world.

  A tiny perfect world. That sounded like Nell, arranging everything in her life and then maintaining it. If Nell could, she’d make sure the clouds in the sky looked exactly like that. Neat and comfy. Suze looked back at the creamer. “And this one is called Secrets.”

  Nell sat back and nodded again. “That was my mom’s favorite.” She looked at Margie for a minute and then went on. “I think it’s autobiographical. According to gossip, Clarice was having an affair with her boss, the guy who owned the china works.”

  Margie sat up straighter, with a little gasp. “That’s terrible. She must have been an awful woman, stealing somebody else’s husband.”

  Suze tried not to flinch. Even after fourteen years, it was a sore point.

  “That’s the worst thing a woman can do,” Margie said, visibly upset. “That’s unforgivable.”

  “Margie,” Nell said. “Have a heart.”

  Margie looked up. “Oh, not you, Suze.” She frowned at Suze’s creamer, and Suze handed it to Nell. “But that Secrets woman, well, really. Just snagged her married boss.” She looked down at her Susie Cooper plate and said, “Tell me Susie wasn’t like that.”

  “Susie was loyal and practical to the end,” Nell said. “Married with a son.”

  “Good. A good wife.” Margie handed Nell the bowl and began to unpack more.

  Suze thought, She owned her own company, too, and began to dislike Susie intensely. She unpacked a Secrets sugar bowl, careful not to scratch the bubble tree or the quiet blue sea at the bottom. Poor Clarice. Loving a married man, working for him every day, knowing they couldn’t be together, probably rejected by all the good wives around her, never able to start her own company because she had to stay with the man she loved. “What happened to Clarice?” she said, staring at the two lonely houses with great sympathy.

  “When she was in her forties, her boss’s wife died and he married her and they lived happily ever after.”

  In her forties. If that had been her, she’d be waiting another ten years for Jack. Would she? Would she do it all over again today? What kind of person would she have turned out to be if she hadn’t gotten married? Don’t think about that. “Well, good for Clarice,” Suze said and handed Nell the sugar bowl.

  “Wait, I have figurines of them.” She began to take wrapped pieces from the box and put them on the floor until she found what she was looking for, handing them each a bubble-wrapped package.

  “Who’s this?” Suze said, stripping the wrap off hers first, and Nell peered at it and said, “Susie Cooper.”

  Susie sat on a piece of pottery with a flowered plate behind her, looking like a stylish Mary Poppins in a conservative mauve suit, her knees demurely together, holding a wide-brimmed hat on her head.

  “Pretty,” Margie said, unwrapping hers more slowly.

  Practical, Suze thought, with definite distaste.

  “Oh,” Margie said.

  Margie’s figurine sat on a piece of pottery with a landscaped plate behind her, her ankles crossed and her low V-necked green flapper dress pulled above her knees. She looked over her shoulder with her back arched and a glint in her eye.

  Suze smiled. “Clarice.”

  “I don’t want her. Let me see Susie,” Margie said to Suze, and Suze traded her, smiling down at saucy Clarice, the good-time girl with the impractical pottery and the married lover. Maybe I should have stayed a lover, she thought. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be the married Susie she’d ended up as, maybe she’d been born to be a good-time Clarice.

  Of course, it was too late now. She handed Clarice to Nell and watched her put the figure in the hutch.

  “They all did really well,” Nell said, straightening Clarice on the shelf. “They had work they loved and they excelled at it.”

  “Work,” Suze said and felt overwhelmingly envious of Susie and Clarice and their pottery, and Margie and her teashop, and even Nell and her secretary job. Maybe she could take a pottery class. Or go to chef school. Jack would like that.

  Except she was tired of school.

  She unpacked some more Secrets, trying not to think about what else she was tired of. She had a good life. Everything was fine.

  “What’s wrong?” Nell said, and Suze turned around to tell her she was fine and saw her looking at Margie.

  The plate in Margie’s hand had a pink rose painted in the middle of it. It was pretty, but Margie was staring at it as if it had skulls on it.

  “Margie?” Suze said.

  “My mom used to have china like this,” she said. “Not this pattern, but with roses.”

  Her mom. Suze looked at Nell, who was looking miserable. This is what you tried to do before, she thought, get Margie talking about her mom, and for the first time ever, she was angry with Nell.

  “Do you want the plate?” Nell said. “I don’t have a set of it or anything. It’s called Patricia Rose. It’s one of Susie’s.” She kept talking, her eyes on Margie’s face, but Margie’s expression didn’t change, and finally she said, “What’s wrong, Margie?”

  “She was breaking them,”
Margie said finally. “They were my Grandma Ogilvie’s china and really expensive, and she’d kept them for years and only used them on the holidays and then my dad told her she was boring and left, and there she was with all that china.”

  “Margie?” Suze said, putting out her hand.

  “And I came home one day to make sure she was all right because she’d been so quiet since Daddy had left. And when I got there, she was dressed in her best clothes, wearing her good jewelry, and breaking them with a hammer.”

  “I feel that way about the Dysart Spode,” Suze said, trying to defuse the tension. “I’d love to take a mallet to that stuff.”

  “I was scared, and Daddy called and I told him he had to come right over, and he argued with me that I should take Mom to the hospital, and while I was talking to him, she went out to the garage and shot herself,” Margie said, still staring at the plate.

  Suze went cold. “Oh, honey,” she said and put her arms around Margie, hugging her soft little body to her, and Nell gently took the plate from Margie’s hands and said, “I’m so sorry, Margie. I really am.”

  “I gave the china to my dad’s new wife,” Margie said, her voice muffled by Suze’s shoulder. “She really hated it, but she was stuck with it because my dad thought it was so nice of me, welcoming her to the family like that. I wanted to throw up every time I saw it.” She took a deep breath. “I just hope Olivia inherits it, that’s what I hope.”

  Suze tightened her arms around her.

  “Margie—” Nell began

  “I’ve been so scared for you,” Margie said to her from Suze’s arms. “She looked just like you did, like she couldn’t figure out what had happened. And then you wouldn’t unpack your china—”

  “It’s almost all unpacked,” Nell said soothingly. “I’ll do the rest of it, no, we’ll do the rest of it later. We’ll do it together and none of it will get smashed. I’m okay, Margie. I wasn’t, but I’m okay now. You wouldn’t believe all the food I’ve got in the refrigerator, and I’m eating it, God, I can’t stop eating, everything tastes so good.”

  Margie sniffed, and Suze said, “Well, stop because I cleaned out my closets and brought you all kinds of clothes I can’t get into anymore. You’re going to look great in bright blue.”

  Margie straightened a little. “Nell in bright blue?” she said doubtfully, but she left the china without a backward glance to go upstairs with Nell, and Suze took the Patricia Rose plate and hid it in the bottom corner of the hutch, as far away from Margie as she could get it.

  A little later, while Margie was frowning at herself in a pink sweater in Nell’s mirror, Suze followed Nell down to let in Jase and Lu with the second guest bed. “I put the plate in the bottom of the hutch,” Suze said. “That was too freaky. She just looked at that pink rose and went off.”

  “Freakier than you think,” Nell said. “Ever wonder why Margie has so much midpriced earthenware when she could afford real china?”

  “No,” Suze said. “I don’t think about dishes much.”

  “Think about it now,” Nell said. “Franciscan Desert Rose.”

  “Ten million pieces of it,” Suze said, horrified. “Oh, God. Should we say anything to Margie?”

  “No, we should not,” Nell said. “I’ve become a big fan of coping strategies in the past eighteen months. Leave her to her earthenware.”

  “I love this sweater,” Margie said, coming down the stairs in one of Suze’s pink sweaters after Jase and Lu had gone up with the bed frame. “Especially the color. What are you going to do with all these clothes? Your closets are small.”

  “I don’t know,” Nell said, clearly grateful for the change of subject. “Take the ones I want right now and put the rest in storage, I guess.”

  “In my basement,” Margie said. “Because I like trying on this stuff. In the suits, I’m you, and in the sweaters, I’m Suze.”

  She sounded wistful, so Suze said, “Take my extra stuff, too. Then we’ll have a slumber party at your place and be each other for a night.”

  “Good idea, now how about coffee?” Nell said, her voice perky as all hell. Feeling guilty, Suze thought and forgave her.

  Somebody knocked on the door, and Suze went to get it as Margie said, “Yes, please. Where’s my purse? My thermos is in there.”

  Soy milk, Suze thought. Personally, I could use a Scotch. Then she opened the door and saw Riley McKenna, bigger and blonder than she’d remembered him, gawking at her in disbelief, and thought, Make that a double.

  “You are kidding me,” he said. “How the hell did you get here?”

  “I drove,” Suze said. “What’s your problem?”

  “An old friend used to live here,” he said. “I stopped by to see if she was in.”

  “If your old friend is Nell, she’s unpacking.” Suze stepped back. “Come on in and say hi.”

  “Nell rented this place?” Riley shook his head as he came in. “Somebody else lived here two days ago.”

  “Well, people change,” Suze said, and shut the door, watching him navigate the boxes in the living room to get to Nell. From the back he looked like a blond Robert Mitchum. From the front, of course, he was Babyface Nelson, but he looked very noir from the back, broad and hulking and sort of menacing. Not somebody you’d want to meet in a dark alley. Maybe.

  He sat and talked and laughed with them, flirting with Nell and making Margie blush, and Suze felt almost sorry for Budge when he came to take Margie away. Budge was warm to Suze, polite to Riley, and chilly to Nell who had corrupted Margie by getting her the job at The Cup, but all the while his eyes went from Margie to Riley and back again, as if he knew that Riley had more than an extra five inches in height and ten fewer years on him. “We have to get you home,” he finally said to Margie, and they loaded the extra boxes of clothes in Budge’s station wagon. Then Margie left, looking wistfully back over her shoulder as Budge held the door open for her, like a footman instead of a lover. He’s Prufrock, Suze thought, afraid to force the moment and his future because he knew Margie would say, “That’s not what I want at all.”

  Later that evening, when Suze got home, she told a suspicious Jack about the unpacking, about the thorough cleaning that Nell was going to give the place before they met to unpack the rest of her stuff on Tuesday, about Margie and the plate, about Marlene on the chenille throw, about the marvelous stir-fry Nell made and then ate half of by herself, but she didn’t mention Riley.

  Jack just didn’t appreciate noir the way she did.

  * * *

  While Suze was giving Jack the abridged version of the evening, Marlene lounged at the foot of Suze’s second guest bed, nestled in Nell’s chenille throw, evidently recovered from the move.

  “Just look at all this room you have to run in,” Nell said, trying to distract herself from her guilt over Margie. Then she remembered that Marlene didn’t run. She sank back into her pillows and watched the dog stretch and wriggle deeper into the chenille. Nell had gotten used to thinking of her as a small, badly raised, manipulative child, but Marlene was an animal, tooth and claw down there in the chenille, and her ancestors had once roamed free. Maybe I should take her to the park, Nell thought, let her rediscover her wild side.

  Marlene caught Nell watching her and began to flutter her eyes.

  Nell shook her head. The only place any ancestor of Marlene’s had roamed free was Canyon Ranch.

  Marlene rolled her head back and moaned a little.

  “Biscuit?” Nell said flatly.

  Marlene moaned louder.

  Nell got up and went down to the kitchen, jumping a little when she heard a knock on the door. She stuck Marlene’s biscuit in her pajama pocket and went to look through the lace curtain Suze had rigged up over the window.

  Gabe was standing there, tall and dark in the night, and she felt a chill go down her spine just looking at him.

  As chills went, it was fairly warm.

  Don’t be stupid, Nell, she told herself and opened the door. “Hi. You l
ost?”

  “Housewarming gift,” he said, handing her a bottle of Glenlivet. “Riley said you’d taken over this place.”

  She stood back so he could come in, belatedly aware she was wearing ancient flannel pajamas covered with Eeyores that Jase had given her for Christmas when he was ten.

  “Cute pajamas,” he said. “Had them long?”

  “I suppose you want a drink of this,” Nell said and went to get glasses.

  “What I really want is you telling me Lynnie left a lot of stuff behind,” Gabe said, following her out to the kitchen. “Riley went through her trash on Friday night and there wasn’t a damn thing in it for us, and then today we find out she moved. I think God owes me something good on this case.”

  He stopped as she turned around with the glasses in her hands.

  “What?” she said, trying to fathom the look on his face.

  He shook his head and took one of the glasses, looking good in the middle of her kitchen, like he belonged there. Maybe it was because the duplex had a period look to it. The white cabinets were forties, and so were the black and white squares of linoleum, the same period as Gabe’s office with all that World War II furniture. He even looked a little like a forties movie star, she thought; he had that William Powell thing going for him, only taller and broader and edgier and without the mustache.

  “So you didn’t find anything here when you moved in?” Gabe said, and she brought herself back to 2000.

  “I’m not in all the way yet,” Nell said. “But there wasn’t anything in any of the drawers or cupboards we’ve opened so far.”

  Gabe lifted his glass to her. “Cheers.”

  He drank some of his Scotch and then leaned against the drainboard, smiling at her, and after a minute she said, “Knock it off, I’m not falling for that anymore.”

  “What?”

  “Those long silences you lay on people so they’ll fill them and incriminate themselves.”

  Gabe grinned at her. “Anything in particular you want to come clean about?”

  She thought, Margie, and felt like hell again.

  “Spill it,” he said.

  “I’m mad at you,” she said. “I asked Margie about her mom today, and it was awful. I won’t do that again.” She went back into the living room to sit down on the daybed and drink her Scotch.