Two

The next day, I was home packing for the marathon wedding trip when Gretchen Kennedy called. Gretchen was one of the real estate agents I was counting on to keep me in big breakfasts and soup throughout the long Connecticut winter.

“I didn’t even know they were thinking of selling the company,” she said. I could hear the long, deep exhale of her cigarette smoke. “Two offices are merging, that’s the official story. I’ll still have my properties, but you know how it is. There’s a glut in the market right now. Sellers aren’t selling and buyers aren’t buying. People keep waiting for things to bottom out.”

Hadn’t they bottomed out yet? I tried hard to share her pain but wanted her to get to the point. How would it affect our arrangement? Would there be more work? Finally she blurted it out. “The curb appeal trick won’t work for the new listings I’ve inherited. These are distress sales-condos and townhouses without a Chia Pet, much less a garden. They’re less expensive and I’ve a better chance of moving them before the junior exec minimansions you’ve been helping me with. In this economy…” She took a long drag on her cigarette and babbled on, but I’d stopped listening. I was getting tired of hearing sentences starting with that phrase. And I was tired of delivering them, too. In this economy, landscaping was one of the first things cut when people economized. A lot of people thought they could handle it themselves-and they could do it themselves-if they lived in an apartment with two hanging plants and an air fern. Otherwise it was as lunatic as trying to cut your own hair. Suburban homeowners needed me or someone like me, but it wasn’t always easy to make the case. The women got it, but the men were harder to convince. They thought ten minutes with a flashy power mower was all any home needed until they tried it and gave up halfway through to watch the big game, even if the big game that day was a Norwegian curling competition.

“You’ve had two or three jobs a week for me for the last two months. Are you saying that’s dried up?” She didn’t have to say any more. It was as if a lover had told me he needed his space. I got the message: she’d call me if and when business picked up.

I stopped packing and went online to check my bank account. In the spring and summer, Anna Jurado looked after me. She kept the books, made sure I got paid, made sure I ate, and generally took over the role of older sister and mami from March until October, when she and Hugo went back to Mexico for the winter. It would be four months, maybe five with next to no money coming in, just a few upcoming jobs and outstanding invoices-and they wouldn’t cover one large heating oil delivery. Maybe I should have gone to Mexico and worked for them.

I wasn’t anyone’s idea of a spendthrift but I could economize. I’d turn down the thermostat and wear a sweater in the house, like Mr. Rogers. I’d get a dog to keep me warm at night, one that didn’t eat much. Or three, like the Eskimos. Wasn’t that how the band Three Dog Night got its name? Three dogs would keep you warm on a really cold night. (I’d have to ask Babe.) I’d run my car on waste vegetable oil from the diner…once I learned how to do that.

No I wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t get three dogs either. One, tops.

Grimly, I tallied up what the wedding trip was going to cost. Perhaps I could take home a very large doggie bag for my not yet acquired dog. Why didn’t people elope anymore? It was so colorful and romantic. And so much cheaper for one’s friends. I barely remembered this woman. How had I allowed myself to be roped into going to her wedding?

Caroline Sturgis’s business proposition was starting to sound better. I dialed her home number but the phone rang off the wall.

The next morning before I left I tried again. “At the request of the customer, this number has been temporarily disconnected.”

Three

The wedding was a gaudy, over-the-top affair that was desperate to be featured in the Vows section of the Sunday New York Times. It wasn’t. I was happy to escape early on Sunday before the last round of ostentatious celebrating, which over the course of the weekend had me alternating between feeling pathetically single, righteously indignant about all the waste, and shockingly poor. I hadn’t shared my financial concerns with Lucy, but that five-year-old black sleeveless sheath I wore told the tale.

I dropped Lucy at her apartment, not intending to stay, but she dragged me upstairs and forced three glossy shopping bags into my hands. Recent acquisitions or retail therapy gone awry, many of the items still had tags on them.

“It’s too late to return these, but they’ll look better on you than they do on me anyway.” I peeked in one of the bags-a sequined jumpsuit, a velvet miniskirt, and a huge red patent-leather handbag with so many grommets on it I’d be surprised if they’d let me through airport security with it. Not that I was going anywhere. What did she think my life was like these days? Could I weed in a sequined jumpsuit? The next bag was more promising-a few sweaters and a huge white fur hat, which would come in handy if I happened to get the lead in the local theater group’s production of Dr. Zhivago, but would otherwise just collect dust in my closet. I thanked her.

“Call me. I don’t want you trapped in the hinterlands all winter. You’ve got new clothes. You need places to wear them!” I tried to think of that quote about avoiding activities that required new clothes, but it escaped me. Lucy hugged me, then I hit the road.

If I was no longer the downtown, all-in-black girl or the uptown I-have-so-many-names-on-my-clothes-I-look-like-a-Nascar-driver gal, I wasn’t the Junior-League-let-me-take-my-kids-to-a-playdate woman. I was a hybrid. A false something, like the false lamiums I’d be planting in Babe’s garden. A city girl in the suburbs and a suburbanite in the city. That observation gave me a lot to think about. And I did, all the way back to Connecticut.

The sun was setting over the river, and the orange glow was reflected on the limestone buildings on Riverside Drive. Farther north, I passed the Cloisters, a four-acre shrine to the Middle Ages that the Rockefellers shipped from Europe piece by piece, and that small Pantheon-like structure where I always imagined it would be fun to dance or drink or just sit and watch the river.

What did I care if some woman I used to know just got married? Good for her. And her husband seemed like a nice guy, once you got over the fact all his relatives were named Weena or Bitsy-nicknames that after a few drinks sounded vaguely like dwarves or euphemisms for genitals. For goodness sake, they’d named their dog Patrick. Couldn’t they find human-sounding names for their children?

Once I crossed the bridge I felt the big city trappings slip away. And the snarkiness. The clothing from Lucy would probably make their way to Goodwill, except the hat-she’d ask about that and expect to see me in it. And one of the sweaters she’d most likely bought after seeing Michele Obama wear one just like it, even though I’m of the opinion that argyle is for socks or golfers or Japanese schoolgirls carrying Hello Kitty backpacks. And I was none of those. I thought about my new fall wardrobe until I hit the Merritt Parkway.

At that time of day and that time of year the odds of seeing wild turkeys or deer on the highway were pretty good. I had the gardener’s natural antipathy toward deer, but I got a huge kick out of seeing a rafter of turkeys. I had planned to stop at Babe’s for coffee and one of Pete’s desserts-what the hell, I’d passed on the wedding cake-but when I got there the diner was closed. Babe rarely kept regular hours, so I thought perhaps Neil had surprised her and come home sooner than expected. That made four people I knew who were getting lucky that night, including the newlyweds. Alas, I wasn’t one of them.