Window Dressing

“Did you explain to her that the floors are original to the house?” he asked as I served him slices of perfectly roasted pork loin from a platter we’d gotten for our wedding.

I nodded. “Yes, I did, Roger. But she still suggested wall to wall carpeting.”

Roger was offended at the notion, but not so much that he wasn’t able to cut into his meat and seize a hunk between his teeth.

“Mmm—you always could cook,” he said as he chewed.

I sat down across from him and handed him the basket of rolls.

He slathered butter on a warm roll and took a bite.

“You know, I was thinking—” I began. Then I went into my spiel about how Sondra the Hawk said the house probably wouldn’t sell until after the holidays if we didn’t get it on the market soon.

“So, it occurred to me that since the house will be empty anyway, maybe I could have just a tiny little extension before I have to get out.”

“Lauren—” he began warningly.

I plowed on. “It would really help you out, too, Roger. I could be here to supervise the work on the house, which would free you from having to deal with workmen. Besides, just think what it would mean to Gordy to have one last Christmas in his childhood home.”

He raised his brows and I wondered if he had started having them shaped. I could tell that he was definitely using some sort of skin products on his face. Probably frantic to keep up with the twenty-eight-year-old aerobics instructor, Tiffany.

“Are you sure you aren’t talking about yourself?” he asked while he cut into his third helping of the other white meat.

“Well, of course, I’d love it too, Roger. I mean, I know that soon Gordy may not even want to come home for the holidays—”

He raised his knife in triumph. “Didn’t I warn you not to make Gordon your whole life?”

I knew right away I was going to go for humble agreement, even though it made the grilled asparagus in my mouth hard to swallow.

“You were right, Roger,” I said, shaking my head like I was really too bewildered to fathom why I hadn’t listened to him in the first place. I was beginning to wish that Moira were under the table. I was giving the performance of my life and I had no audience.

“But putting all that aside,” I went on, “the main thing is, it would be a shame if the house just sat here empty all winter when your son could be having the stability of coming home—I mean really coming home—for the holidays.”

He gave in before he even tasted the apple crisp.

“But you’re on your own financially this time, Lauren,” he said. “I’ll give you a month to find a job and then the maintenance stops for good. I’ll agree to have the work done on the kitchen, but there’s nothing wrong with the rest of the house. If Preferred Properties doesn’t want to handle it, there are plenty of other companies out there who would jump at the listing. Meanwhile, it’ll be your responsibility to find someone to do the work. And stay away from those national companies. They charge a fortune. Better to find some local man. Just make sure he has references.”

“Of course,” I said, proud of hiding my panic at the idea of finding a job in a month.

“So,” he asked as I served him another helping of apple crisp, “how is our son doing?”

I filled him in on what I knew about Gordy’s new life, then pointed out that it was time for him to leave. “You’ve got to pick up Tiffany, remember?”

At the door he lingered, giving me that little smile of his that I used to find sexy and now just seemed arrogant.

“Come on,” he said, leaning in a little closer and cocking his head like he thought he was Robert Redford, “tell the truth. Even if you weren’t trying to get me back, you were kind of hoping this whole sexy Martha Stewart scene would at least get you a roll in the sack for old times’ sake, weren’t you?”

“No,” I said sweetly. “Were you?”

I saw by the look on his face that my mother had, indeed, been right about the dress.

An hour later the dishes were done and Moira and I were sitting in the breakfast nook, eating the rest of the apple crisp right from the baking dish while perusing the employment section of last Sunday’s newspaper. It was a warm enough evening to have the back door open. The faint neighborhood sounds drifted in and I felt safe again. But I had to keep reminding myself it was only temporary.

“Here’s one,” Moira said. “Dog grooming assistant. Says they’re willing to train anyone who can demonstrate a love for dogs.”

“I wonder what that means?” I asked suspiciously.

“It probably means you have to not mind getting your leg humped by a German Shepherd with performance anxiety.”

I laughed.

“Or getting pissed on by a poodle. Or lapped by a—”

Sometimes it didn’t do to encourage Moira. “Stop it,” I said nearly choking on my apple crisp. I tossed a pen at her. “Circle it.”

The circle looked pretty lonely on that big page, even though it was the miscellaneous employment section—the last hope of the unskilled.

I sighed. “Face it, I’m not qualified for much.”

“I still think this one about dancing at the Leopard Lounge is your best bet.”

“I’m not seeing me wearing an animal print thong and wrapping myself around a pole anytime soon. Not with my thighs.”

“It’d be the best thing for your thighs, sweetie. It’s become very chi-chi to use stripping moves as a workout, you know.”

Hoping Moira wasn’t going to tell me that she’d had a stripper pole installed in her bedroom, I picked up the page where we’d circled an ad for a day care aide. The pay was paltry and I could no longer see myself wiping noses and helping with snow boots.

“Wait!” Moira yelled as she circled an item in red ink. “I think I just found the solution to your employment problems!”

I grabbed the section of the paper out of Moira’s hand. “A temp agency?” I asked dubiously when I saw what she’d circled.

“Why not? Look,” she said, poking the newsprint with her finger, “it says they have a variety of jobs for inexperienced people and that they offer free refresher courses in computer and clerical skills.”

“I don’t have anything to refresh,” I muttered.

“You’ve done a lot of volunteer work. That shows you’ve got people and organizational skills. The rest,” she said with a flap of her hand like it was the easiest thing in the world, “you can fake.”

Temporary Solutions had a suite of offices downtown in a glassy building that had a shiny marble lobby and a wall of elevators. I was glad I’d borrowed one of Moira’s more conservative suits for the occasion. When I caught my reflection in the mirrored wall of the elevator I was convinced I looked like employee material.

Unfortunately, the first thing they did at Temporary Solutions was test my skills. As far as I could see, there was absolutely no way to fake it. Excel? QuickBooks? PowerPoint? Lotus Notes? The only lotus I knew was a yoga position—about as unobtainable by me as a position at Temporary Solutions was beginning to look.

“You never have worked in an office, have you?” Christy Sands asked.

Christy, who had the harsh hair of a woman who’d been bleaching it for most of the twenty-something years of her life and the slightly red tan of a tanning bed addict, was what Temporary Solutions called my personal career counselor. She was supposed to help me find the job with a perfect fit. What good would it do to lie?

“No,” I admitted. “I’ve never worked in an office. But I’m a fast learner and I really, really—”

“Please,” she said. “I’ve heard it all before. There’s nothing worse than a premenopausal woman begging for a job because her husband just dumped her for a younger woman.”