was probably a nice guy. Too nice. No tattoos or piercings, hair clipped short. He looked like the poster child for clean-cut American.
Exactly the sort of man her mother would have loved. Mom was big on clean-cut and polite—men, she said, who had integrity. “You can count on a man with integrity,” she’d always said.
Thanks to Mom, Lucy knew what it was like to date an Elvis impersonator, a one-eyed pizza delivery driver and a man who made his living as a sewage plant diver—all of whom were up to their nonpierced earlobes in integrity. She knew her mother’s heart was in the right place, but she’d always preferred guys who were a little more exciting than that. Guys who took risks. The kind her mother never approved of. Her motto was: Life Is Too Short to Date Dull Men.
She stared morosely at the ficus. Okay, so maybe it was a tad unwell. Still, she couldn’t bear to get rid of it. Her mother, in one of her many attempts to improve Lucy, had given her this tree.
Mom had also given her a bread maker she’d used once, a sewing machine that had never been out of the box and a complete set of the works of Beethoven. She couldn’t bear to get rid of any of them either. Now that Mom was gone, she cherished everything associated with her, from half-dead plants to impractical appliances.
Mostly what Mom had given her was advice. “Be patient and one day you’ll find the perfect career. One that takes advantage of your unique talents.”
“You mean there are jobs out there for women who can read e-mail and talk on the phone at the same time?” she’d asked.
“Your perfect job is out there somewhere,” Mom said, ignoring Lucy’s lame humor. “And the right man is waiting for you, too. All you have to do is open your eyes and look.”
“If I open my eyes any wider my eyeballs will fall out.” Could she help it if the dark and dangerous men who got her motor running weren’t exactly husband material?
Mom gave her that long-suffering look she’d perfected. “You’ll see I’m right one day. I have experience with these things.”
What experience? Her mom got married when she was twenty, had Lucy when she was twenty-five and worked part-time in the county tax office until she got too sick to do it anymore. Her life didn’t look anything like the one Lucy lived.
She carried another load of clothes and the battered ficus to the car. She liked to think if Mom had beaten the cancer, she’d have listened to her more. But in her more honest moments, she knew that wasn’t true. She wasn’t the kind of person who took advice, good or otherwise.
When she got back to the curb, the gardener had disappeared. It figured. A man who was truly interested wouldn’t have given up so easily. In his place, two women in polyester pedal pushers were pawing through her possessions. One of them held up a lamp she’d inherited from her Aunt Edna. “I’ll give you five dollars for this,” she said.
Five dollars for a lamp whose base was carved like a pineapple? “Sold!”
“How much for this box of Tupperware?” The second woman held up a carton of kitchen supplies.
She swallowed. “Uh…five dollars?”
Fifteen minutes later, she’d sold the sofa, two kitchen chairs, a toaster that didn’t work and a blender that did. She had over a hundred dollars in cash and people were still shoving money at her.
Beep! Beep! She looked up and felt sick to her stomach as a familiar blue pickup truck rolled toward her. Talk about bad timing…. The window glided down and her father leaned out. Dad had thick salt-and-pepper hair that he’d worn in a flattop since he was discharged from the Army in 1969. He dressed in bowling shirts and baggy khakis dating from the Nixon presidency, and shiny cowboy boots. Her friends who met him for the first time thought he was hip and fashionable. She didn’t have the heart to tell them he’d been dressing this way for forty years. “Honey, why didn’t you tell me you were having a yard sale?” he asked.
She stuffed the cash in the pocket of her jeans and reluctantly walked over to him. “Uh, it’s not exactly a sale, Dad.”
He stared as two men walked past him with her couch. “You’re selling your sofa?”
She pretended to adjust his side mirror. “Dad, what are you doing here?”
“I thought I might take you out for a decent meal.”
Since her mom had died a year ago, her dad dropped by a couple of times a week to take Lucy to dinner. He said he wanted to make sure she got a good meal every now and then, but she knew it was really because he was lonely.
A woman marched past carrying her old bedside table. “If you’re not having a yard sale, what are you doing?”
She stared at the ground. “I’ve been evicted.”
She braced herself for the storm she was sure was coming. The familiar “at your age you should be more responsible” lecture. But he didn’t say anything.
After a minute, she couldn’t stand it anymore and risked looking at him. He didn’t look angry at all, just tired. Old. An invisible hand squeezed her chest. “Is everything okay, Dad?”
He sighed. “I was going through some of your mother’s things today.”
The hand squeezed tighter. “Oh, Daddy.” She touched his arm, not knowing what to say. How did you comfort someone when they’d lost the person they’d lived with for over thirty years?
He gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “There’s a bunch of stuff in the potting shed—bulbs and plants and all kinds of books and stuff. I figure I ought to do something with it, but I don’t know what.”
Lucy’s mom had been an avid gardener. She’d won Yard of the Month so many times the Garden Society gave her a brass plaque and told her she couldn’t enter again. She’d tried to pass her green thumb along to her daughter, but Lucy was probably the only person in the world who once actually killed a pot of silk flowers.(She forgot and watered them. The stems rusted and they fell over.)
“I thought maybe you’d come over and help me,” Dad said.
“Sure. Sure I will.” She glanced back over her shoulder toward her dwindling pile of possessions. She needed to poll her girlfriends to find out who would let her crash for a few days until she could find a new apartment. And she’d probably have to break down and balance her checkbook to see what she could afford. “Uh, how about one day next week?”
Dad opened the truck door and climbed out. “Come on. I’ll help you get the rest of your stuff. You can move in with me.”
“I don’t know, Dad.” She followed him over to where two women were arguing over her DVD player. “I wouldn’t want to impose.” Besides, there was something so pathetic about a single, unemployed twenty-six-year-old having to move back in with her father, wasn’t there?
“You got somewhere else to go?” Dad elbowed the two women out of the way and picked up the DVD player.
Her shoulders sagged. “No.” She gathered up a box of CDs and followed him to the truck. Unemployed…evicted…back under Dad’s thumb. Yep. Trouble came in threes, all right.
GREG POLHEMUS hung the little brass
