Window Dressing

“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. And he’s putting it up for sale.”

I told Sondra I’d get back to her and hung up the phone. I started to punch in the number for Weidermeir, Junket and Sloan Associates Engineering but thought better of it. This was something I had to do in person. I showered in record time, pulled on a white T-shirt and an ankle-length, army-green drawstring skirt that was only slightly wrinkled and ran a brush through my wet hair. My dark blond hair is chin length, parted in the middle and tends to be stick straight if I don’t blow dry it. But this was no time to worry about volume. My adrenaline was shooting into high gear. I needed to confront Roger while the anger was still pumping through my veins. I shoved my feet into some brown leather clogs, grabbed my purse, and headed for the garage.

Southeastern Wisconsin likes to keep you guessing about the weather. October had arrived and the leaves on the trees were gold and crimson but the day was as steamy as an August heat wave. I was practically to Roger’s office before the air conditioner in my aging car had any effect on the sweat factor under my T-shirt. I arrived downtown looking as haggard and bewildered as I felt.

The attendant at the underground parking facility wouldn’t let me in. No spaces reserved for ex-wives, apparently. I managed to snag a parking spot on the street five blocks away. Which meant, of course, that I was noticeably damp by the time I reached Roger’s building. The ride up in the elevator made me feel queasy and I wished I’d eaten something before leaving home.

The receptionist didn’t have a clue who I was and looked dubious when I told her my name. She was as crisp and unwrinkled in her tightly tailored taupe suit as I was sweaty and disheveled. I noticed her giving me the once over while she buzzed Roger’s office, making me wish I’d spent some time with a blow dryer and an iron, after all.

“He’s with clients,” the receptionist said as she hung up the phone. “If you’d care to wait—” She waved her hand toward the sumptuous waiting area. But I wasn’t interested in being awed by the Mies van der Rohe knock-off chairs or in paging through this month’s copy of Structural Engineering.

“I really don’t care to wait, thank you. I’ll just go on back.”

She was on her feet and out from behind her desk before I could open the door to the inner sanctum.

“Of course,” she said smoothly, like she was used to managing uncooperative people. “Please come with me.”

I followed her down the plushly carpeted hallway to a small room that wasn’t a conference room, nor was it an office. Perhaps it was the place they led all irate ex-wives to. The Ex Waiting Room. How modern. How sophisticated. How condescending.

“Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

Coffee? I was boiling inside and out. “No, thanks,” I muttered.

“As you wish,” she said, then left.

“As you wish,” I singsonged to myself as I flounced around the room. Her poise was pissing me off almost as much as that immaculate taupe suit she was wearing. I noticed the furniture in the Ex Waiting Room didn’t even bother to be knock-offs of anything. No doubt I’d have gotten my coffee in a plastic cup.

So not only was I getting my house sold from under me, I was now labeled second class at Weidermeir, Junket and Sloan.

Which, of course, was what I was. But having my nose rubbed in it didn’t make me happy. Not that I would ever want Roger back. In fact, every time I saw him I believed just a little bit more in divorce.

I was pacing and mentally counting up Roger’s deficits in the husband department when the door opened and he walked in.

He was still handsome and I suppose you could say he looked intimidating standing there in a suit that probably cost more than the contents of my entire closet and a shirt that was custom made. On the other hand, I knew he got gas from cucumbers and that he had the hair on his back professionally waxed. These things saved me from being intimidated by cashmere or thread counts.

“What is this about, Lauren?” he asked impatiently.

I crossed my arms. “What do you think it’s about, Roger?”

He sighed again. “I take it Sondra called you. She wasn’t supposed to do that. Not until I’d had a chance to warn you.”

“Warn me? About what?”

“Lauren,” he said with that blandly condescending way I’d come to hate when we were still married, “try to focus. I meant warn you about Sondra listing the house, of course. With winter coming, now is the best time to put it on the market. Plus, with interest rates—”

I only partly listened while Roger quoted a raft of statistics.