Life According to Lucy

“A date?” She grinned. “I think that’s sweet.”

Lucy led the way to her car. “Gloria! It’s only been a year.”

“But your mom was sick for a year before that. I mean, he must have been lonely. Besides, your dad’s kinda cute. If I didn’t have Dennis—”

Lucy clapped her hands over her ears. “You did not say that. I do not want to hear my best friend lusting after my dad.”

She opened the car and they both slid in. “Speaking of lust, is there a new man in your life?” Gloria asked as she fastened her seat belt.

“No. Why would you think that?”

“Your aura has a nice warm red tone today. Signifying sexual arousal.”

Lucy rolled her eyes. The things Gloria believed. “I do not have a new man in my life.” She pulled the car into traffic and headed downtown.

“Auras don’t lie. You haven’t met anyone new? Even casually?”

“No. Well, not unless you count the gardener I hired to try to salvage my mom’s rose garden.”

“Oh? Is this a male gardener?”

She thought of Greg Polhemus’s well-defined muscles and broad shoulders. “Uh, yeah.”

“Then he counts.” Gloria angled toward Lucy and assumed her therapist’s tone of voice. “Tell me about him.”

She shrugged. “What’s to tell? His dad always took care of my mom’s garden. I got his number out of her garden planner. But then the old man’s son showed up instead.”

“What happened to the old man?”

“He died. About the same time as my mom.”

“See, there’s something you have in common.”

“Gloria, I am not lusting after this guy. He’s a gardener and that’s it.”

“Is he good-looking?”

She squirmed and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “I suppose. If you like the clean-cut, straight-arrow type.”

“And, of course, you don’t.”

“Come on, Glor. Have I ever gone in for guys like that? You know I dig men who are more exciting. Dark and dangerous.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re still single.” She held up her hands in a defensive gesture. “I’m only saying auras don’t lie. You ought to think about this guy more.”

“All I’m thinking about is whether or not he’s going to save my mom’s roses. You should see them. They’re pathetic. Mom would cry.”

Gloria leaned across the seat and patted her hand. “It’ll work out. Things always do.”

Easy for someone to say who already had a job and a man she loved.

They snagged a parking place a couple blocks from the festival and followed the crowds toward the plaza that had been taken over by artists’ booths. Lucy could have found her way with her eyes closed by following the smell of corn dogs, funnel cakes and sunscreen that was the particular perfume of any outdoor festival.

In addition to food and artwork of every description, the booths featured an array of handmade items, from intricate beaded jewelry to crocheted doilies no extra roll of toilet paper should be without.

Halfway down the first aisle, she spotted a booth advertising homemade doggie treats. She grabbed Gloria’s arm. “Wait, I want to get some of these.”

“You don’t have a dog.” She followed her into the booth.

Lucy grabbed up a plastic bag and began filling it with bone-shaped cookies. “I do now. She showed up in the garden last night. An apricot poodle. I named her Millie.”

“How sweet. That’s a very good sign, you know, that she chose you for her new home. Animals have good instincts about people.”

“Glor, it’s a stray dog. She was in our yard. Where else was she supposed to go?”

Gloria spread her arms wide. “Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling you you’re about to begin a series of new relationships.”

I’d settle for one good relationship with a member of the opposite sex, she thought, but she didn’t dare tell Gloria that. She might start in on Greg Polhemus again.

They found Jean’s booth in the second aisle. Jean worked at the crisis center with Gloria when she wasn’t assembling art from trash. Lucy studied a piece displayed at the front of the booth. It featured a penny, a dime, a gum wrapper, a cough drop covered with fuzz and a ball of lint formed into something resembling a tornado, in which the aforementioned items whirled. Wash Day Blues was neatly inscribed in ink across the bottom.

“It’s a collection of all the items I found in my pockets while doing laundry,” Jean explained, coming up behind her. “Clever, huh?”

“Uh, yes.” But would anyone actually pay for it?

While Gloria and Jean discussed the significance of garbage as a cultural indicator, Lucy wandered across the aisle to a booth displaying beaded jewelry. Now this was art she could relate to. She picked out a black-and-purple choker and carried it over to the mirror to try it on. She’d about decided she had to have it when a movement in the mirror caught her eye. A woman in a tight leather miniskirt, fringed tank top and hot-pink cowboy boots was waving a peacock feather fan around like she was Gypsy Rose Lee while a gray-haired man in starched jeans and ostrich boots looked on.

Her stomach took a dive toward her ankles as her numb brain finally registered that the guy was her dad and the woman was someone she’d never seen before in her life.

She dropped the choker and whirled around, gasping for air. Gloria ran over to her. “Lucy, what’s wrong? Your face is so pale. And your aura…” She stepped back and furrowed her brow. “Honey, your aura looks really bad.”

Who gives a flying fig what my aura looks like? She felt like shouting, but some invisible hand had a hold of her throat and all she could do was point in the direction her dad and his “date” had headed.

When she could talk again, she told Gloria she’d seen her dad with a strange woman. “Come on, we have to follow them.” She took off after them, past a booth full of pottery, a caricature artist and a display of batik clothing. She finally spotted them at the funnel cake booth. Little Miss Leather was breaking off bits of fried dough and feeding them to her dad, who obediently opened his mouth like a toddler playing the airplane game.

She grabbed on to the corner post of the sausage-on-a-stick hut, feeling sick to her stomach.

“C’mon, Loo. What’s the big deal? He’s just having a little fun.”

“Gloria, that woman is my age.”

She tilted her head to one side, considering this. “Oh, I think she’s a little older than that. Thirty, at least.”

“That’s still twenty-five years younger than my dad. And look at the way she’s dressed.”

“That leather looks awfully warm for this time of year. But the boots, very retro. I wouldn’t mind a pair for myself.”

Lucy glared at her. “Whose side are you on anyway?”