Window Dressing. Nikki Rivers

a forty-one year old recluse. But I was quickly becoming sick of hearing about how lucky I was to be divorced with my only child two states away.

      “Why, you can do just about anything you want to do,” a friend from my college days exclaimed over her basil, tomato and fresh mozzarella salad. I’d taken the initiative of inviting her and a former roommate to lunch at the latest trendy sensation—an overpriced café in a building that had once been a garage for city buses. The huge door at the front was left open at the owner’s discretion, which was one of the big draws. The excitement! The suspense! It was rumored that he’d opened it during a March snowstorm last year and there was a big buzz going on about whether he’d leave it open for the first snowstorm this year. Personally, I couldn’t get past the fact that I was eating a fourteen-dollar sandwich in a place where someone once drained motor oil from a city bus.

      “Like what?” I asked after I’d swallowed a bite of my baby spinach and radish sprouts on asiago foccacia.

      “Well—anything. You’re footloose and fancy free,” pointed out the former roommate who was trying to overcome bulimia, so she was eating nothing at all.

      “Well, I have been considering finding a new kind of volunteer work—”

      My former roommate laughed. “That’s Lauren. Always the good girl.”

      These kinds of conversations did not make me feel better about my situation. Neither did spending the money on overpriced sandwiches since Gordy’s support had started going into a trust on the day he started college and the maintenance Roger had to pay me was in nineteen-ninety-six dollars. So I went back to wallowing and baking until Gordy called one afternoon. I was absurdly pleased to hear his voice when I picked up the phone.

      “Ma,” he said before I could tell him how happy I was that he called, “you gotta stop sending all the cookies. One of my roommates saw a roach last night.”

      “You’re not eating my cookies?” I asked with a modicum of mommy devastation.

      “Ma—come on. Who could keep up? We get a package like every three days.”

      Perhaps I’d gone a little overboard, I thought as I eyed the two batches of oatmeal cookies cooling on the kitchen counter. “Okay,” I vowed, “no more cookies. So, how are things going?”

      “Things are cool, Ma. Gotta go, though. Class. See ya.”

      “But—”

      But he was gone.

      I packed the cookies up and took them next door to Moira’s.

      “Listen, hon, I know you’ve got time on your hands,” she said as she chewed on her fifth cookie, “but you can’t bring stuff like this over here. I have to be able to get into my new red dress for that cocktail party next month. CPAs and their wives. Big Yawn. I plan on being the most exciting aspect of the event and these cookies aren’t helping.”

      That was the night I started watching the shopping channels on TV. Looking forward to finding out what the deal of the day was at midnight was about all the excitement I was getting. One night I found myself reaching for the phone while the on-air personality rhapsodized about a kitchen tool that would replace just about every other implement in the house—and all for $19.95. I snatched my hand back and vowed right then and there that there were going to be some changes made.

      With butterflies in my stomach, the next day I called the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee campus, ordered a catalogue of courses, and made an appointment to speak with a counselor in the department of continuing education.

      Two days later, my heart did one of those funny little stalls when I opened the mailbox to find the catalogue had arrived. Oddly, I was not comforted that the postal rules hadn’t changed since I was a twelve. Good things, like free makeup samples, took forever to arrive. Things that you’d just as soon not see, like report cards—and catalogues that were going to force you to start thinking about where your life was going—showed up in no time at all.

      I took the catalogue to the breakfast nook, poured myself a cup of coffee, and started to page through it. After a half-hour I was wishing I’d made decaf. I felt lost and nervous as a high school freshman trying to find her locker.

      I’d always intended to finish college someday. I’d even taken a college course here and there over the years. I’d sit in lectures thinking about the Halloween costume I could be sewing or the party I could be planning or the soccer game I was missing or the committee I could be chairing. Pretty soon I’d drop out, vowing to go back again when Gordy got older. Well, now Gordy was older and it was going to be different. It had to be. When Gordy graduated from college, maintenance from Roger would stop and I’d have to buy him out of the house if I wanted to stay on Seagull Lane. Which I did. I intended for my grandchildren to someday visit me in my little cottage.

      Before I’d dropped out of college to marry Roger, I’d planned to major in elementary education. The prospect of being a teacher no longer interested me, I knew that much. But I had no idea what else I wanted to do.

      Hoping to brainstorm, I called Moira but Stan said she’d gone shopping so I switched on the tube, found an old Bette Davis movie and lost myself in how Paul Henreid looked when he held two cigarettes in his mouth, lit them, and handed one to Bette. It wasn’t a bad way to spend an evening. Afterwards, I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on, horrors of horrors, soft white bread. Since I no longer had to set a good example for my son, cheap white bread had become my new guilty pleasure. I dug in the refrigerator and came out with a can of chocolate syrup. I poured some into a big glass of milk and stirred. Then I tucked the UW catalogue under my arm, picked up the sandwich and milk and took everything up to bed with me. Maybe if I slept with the catalogue under my pillow, I’d dream about what I wanted to be when I grew up.

      The phone woke me up the next morning. I sat up and grabbed it on the first ring. The college catalogue, still open in the vicinity of my lap, slid to the floor with a thump.

      “Hello?” I croaked as I squinted against the sun filtering through the semisheer curtains in my bedroom window.

      “Mrs. Campbell? This is Sondra Hawk from Priority Properties. I’d like to set up an appointment to check out the house. Today if possible. What time would be convenient?”

      “Check out the house?” I asked dumbly as I pushed hair out of my face and looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table. Ten a.m. I never slept this late. Ever. I swear. The shame of it made my body go hot all over. I sat up straighter in bed and tried for a more cheerful, wakeful tone. “You want to check out the house?”

      “Yes,” Sondra said then gave a little laugh. “You know, get acquainted with its idiosyncrasies.”

      “Why would you want to do that?” I asked as I got out of bed. That way if Sondra, whose voice sounded like she was one of those alarmingly well put together women who knew how to accessorize, asked me if I’d still been in bed I could honestly answer no.

      But, of course, she didn’t ask.

      “We here at Priority Properties,” she explained, “pride ourselves in getting to know a house before we list it. The first step—”

      I frowned. “Wait a minute—did you say list?”

      “Yes—list.”

      “Excuse me, but you seem to be under the false impression that I’m selling my house.”

      Sondra didn’t miss a beat. “I have the signed agreement right here in front of me.”

      I shook my head. “No—that’s not possible.”

      There was a slight pause before she said, “Mrs. Campbell, your husband signed the agreement.”

      “Nonsense,” I insisted, knowing this must be a mistake. “I don’t even have a husband. I have an ex-husband,” I conceded. “But he no longer lives here. I live here.”

      “But it’s his name on the deed, Mrs. Campbell. It’s his house.