Nolan was thoughtful. He had always dreamed of children but had never considered their education. Schooling was a given, but specifics were still fuzzy in his mind. The picture of a faceless wife quizzing a little girl in pigtails on addition facts before a romp in the fall leaves enchanted him. In a rare moment of spontaneity, Nolan made a decision.
“I think you’ve got something there. I hadn’t considered home schooling, but now that I think of it, I don’t want to miss the relationship that could develop within family dynamics like that. Imagine being there to watch your child’s fascination as they learn to read or hear the Declaration of Independence
and
understand it.”
Grace nodded but was silent. She didn’t like to dwell on future dreams too often. Brushing aside the longing for a family to fill her home, she began offering pointers on how to keep Paige from backing out of the driving arrangements for the following evening.
Verily watched them from his living room window and found the picture on Grace’s lawn to be an especially lovely one. Nolan listened earnestly as Grace chatted animatedly. Grace sat with her legs tucked behind her and leaning on one arm with the autumn breezes occasionally flicking her hair into her face. Verily sighed, remembering days past as Nolan pulled a leaf from Grace’s hair. Had he known that Grace was planning a date between her new neighbor and her best friend, Verily’s disappointment would have been keen.
~*~*~*~
Nolan nervously rubbed the back of his neck as he spoke into the phone. “Hello, Paige. This is Nolan Burke. Grace tells me that she has hoodwinked you into riding with me for the dinner tomorrow evening… Drat it, Nolan, that won’t work! She’ll run for sure. Keep it mellow. Grace insisted on mellow. Try it again…”
After several more tries, Nolan had his conversation rehearsed. It was perfect. Flawless. There was no way that she would back out. He hoped. “Hello?”
Paige’s voice became uncertain the moment she heard Nolan’s deep voice on the line. His carefully rehearsed speech dissolved into a pool of sludge, and he stammered something about the weather being fine and then asked how she liked her health.
Paige chuckled. Hearing his awkward tone gave her courage to speak up. “Um, Nolan? Are you trying to get out of Grace’s impossible matchmaking scheme?”
“No! Actually, I am trying to give you an out that you won’t take.” Nolan mentally kicked himself. How pathetic could he get?
He interrupted Paige before she could turn him down flat. “Paige, I wanted to ask you and didn’t know how you’d take it. I guess that I played the coward. If I didn’t know that you’d say yes, I wasn’t willing to risk it. Forgive me?”
Without waiting for an answer, Nolan continued with his request before he lost his nerve. “I would really love to take you. I’ve wanted to get to know you better, and this is a perfect opportunity, but I knew if you just went with me because you were tricked into it, we’d both be miserable.”
Paige stammered something about answering the door and fled the phone. Nolan took a moment to re-gather his dignity and prayed for the proper words. “Dumb jerk, Nolan, you should have prayed
before
you called her.”
Paige heard him and chuckled. “Well, to be honest…” Paige’s words were a little more relaxed. “To be honest, I would have loved to get out of it. I don’t do well with people I don’t know, but… we are supposed to ride in pairs or quartets, so if you really don’t mind…”
Nolan pumped his fist in the air. “I’ll be looking forward to tomorrow night. I appreciate you being willing to give it a chance. Then again, I hear the alternative wasn’t to your liking either…”
“Oh! Oh, my! Um… Nolan? Can you pick me up early? Or, maybe I’ll drive over to Grace’s.”
Nolan could almost see her chewing on her lip. “Chuck thinks he’s driving you?”
“After four noes you’d think he’d leave me alone. Why are men so determined to make a woman’s life miserable?”
Nolan was silent for a moment. “Paige, not all men are like Chuck. Honestly, most aren’t. And, if you don’t mind my being quite blunt, with a woman as beautiful as you are, men are apt to become somewhat goofy.”
Paige was stunned. She’d been told of her attractiveness in recent years, but had always assumed that the men were mocking her. “Well… I … I … I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night then. At Grace’s. Bye.”
Turning from the phone, Paige walked to the bathroom mirror. She habitually avoided the mirror at all costs. Quick brushes to the hair or occasional cosmetics to cover a pimple kept the need to a bare minimum. This time, Paige studied the reflection systematically. Trying to look through the eyes of a stranger, she picked apart each of her features.
Beginning with her hair, Paige scrutinized her eyes, nose, skin, teeth, and even the shape of her face. When finished, she found her favorite catalogs and flipped through them page by page. Eventually, she found three or four women that she considered beautiful. Holding the catalog next to her face, she compared herself to them in the mirror. Except for hair color, Paige could have been each of the women’s sisters. Paige had chosen red heads, brunettes, or platinum blonds. Not one of the pictures showed a honey blond woman.
Thoughtfully, Paige closed the catalog and put it away. She wondered how she had gone from such an awkward, pimple faced, buck toothed girl, to looking nice enough that a man like Nolan Burke had called her beautiful. The idea seemed preposterous. The most eligible man at church considered Paige Matthews, the class freak at Brunswick High, attractive.
~*~*~*~
Melanie opened Grace’s door with a flourish. “Mr. Burke. How good to see you. Would you be interested in entering this fine abode?”
Grace tittered as she walked past her goofy sister-in-law. “We told her to stay out of the buttermilk, but you know how some people are…”
Nolan’s laugh died in his throat when he saw Grace. She wore a royal purple dress that reflected into her eyes and gave her color that he’d never noticed before. “Grace, that dress looks wonderful on you. You look very nice.”
Grace looked somewhat confused. Before she could respond, Nolan hastily added, “You too, Melanie… motherhood certainly agrees with you.”
Craig lay relaxed in the recliner with a sleeping Graceanna. Alarm shadowed his face upon hearing Nolan compliment Grace. It was obvious that his remark to Mel had been an afterthought. Melanie shook her head at the storm brewing in Craig’s eyes but was deliberately ignored.
Paige’s knock broke the awkward tension that had descended upon the group. Grace welcomed Paige and began bundling Graceanna into her car seat. Melanie took her child, car seat and all, from Grace and led the other two women to the waiting vehicles. At the door, she turned back to Craig and in a tone that pleaded for peace, said, “Honey, will you get the diaper bag?”
Melanie knew that Craig would say something, and she also knew that if he couldn’t get Nolan alone, he might lose all discretion and blurt out a biting comment or accusation in the middle of the dinner. Despite her dislike of confrontation, Melanie prayed that her husband’s over protectiveness toward his sister could be swiftly and painlessly resolved. This was effectively Paige Matthew’s first chance at a good date, and Melanie did
not
want that ruined.
With a stern face, Craig picked up the requested diaper bag and turned to Nolan. “I thought we were becoming good friends, Burke.”
Nolan’s face went blank. He hadn’t yet recovered from discovering that Grace was a woman. In a moment of detachment, it occurred to him that this was a perfect example of the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge. Shaking his head slightly to clear his thoughts, he turned back to Craig. “Pardon me? Did I miss something?”
Nolan’s hesitant laugh irritated Craig further. “Well, you’ve known me approximately as long as you have Grace and haven’t once told me that you liked my shirt or my tie.”
Still in the dark, Nolan shrugged. “Uh… Craig? You feel ok?” Craig’s stony silence prompted him to try another approach. “Honestly, Craig, the next time you wear purple, I promise, I’ll notice!”
Finally, exasperated with Craig’s refusal to be drawn out, Nolan quipped, “Well, if your face counts… then I’ll comment now. Your face is so purple that it could get lost in Grace’s dress!”
Craig fumed. “This is my
sister
that you are talking about! It’s apparent that you’ve discovered that she isn’t just ‘one of the guys.’”
“Well, you’re right there. I hadn’t thought of Grace as anything but a great person to know once I got over my wariness of her.”
“Wariness of
Grace
?” Craig’s face was comically offended.
“Craig, I have not had a female who happened to be a friend since elementary school. Girls just don’t make good friends. But when I met Grace, she was just a person who I clicked with. You know? I never thought of her as male, female, or otherwise.”
Craig’s doubtful “uh huh” showed that he was unconvinced. “So, you are saying she’s androgynous.”
“No! That’s exactly why it’s so weird. She’s ultra-feminine and womanly, but she doesn’t slap you in the face with it.”
Melanie stuck her head in the doorway. “Guys, Paige is looking ready to bolt. Are you done marking territory? Can we go?”
~*~*~*~
After enjoying soup and salad at one home, Nolan and Paige drove the Hocking’s for the main course. Their first moments had been awkward. Nolan worked hard at not pushing his guest to open up, while Paige visibly struggled to overcome her intense shyness. The combination became socially horrific. The painful pauses slowly grew into comfortable, companionable silences, and the subsequent conversation was “real,” not stilted and forced. Nolan would have been having a very good time had he been able to get the conversation with Craig out of his mind.
Just as he started to try again, Paige asked, “Doesn’t Grace look wonderful in her new dress? I love that particular shade of violet on her. It’s her best color.”
Nolan started visibly. The last thing he expected Paige to mention was Grace’s attire, and after the dressing down he’d received for noticing it, Nolan wasn’t sure it was a topic he wanted to pursue. “I did notice the dress. It is lovely, as is yours. Sapphire blue is one of my favorite colors. The three of you looked like stones from a jewelry store. You know—the blue, green, and purple.” Nolan felt like a fool.
Gems from a jewelry store? How stupid can I get?
he thought to himself.
Paige eagerly pounced on Nolan’s “obvious” willingness to discuss Grace. “I don’t know how she does everything that she does. That dress would take me ages to finish, but Grace just seems to whip them out between any one of the other several dozen projects that she always juggles.”
“Grace made that dress?” Nolan mentally kicked himself. “I mean, did you mean to say that you sew as well or are you saying that you don’t care for sewing?”
“I can sew. I took Home Ec. from the same teacher that Grace did, but she was already an accomplished seamstress. Her mother taught her the summer that we were ten. After I ruined my third skirt, Mrs. Buscher suggested that I try again the next summer.”
“Do you enjoy it? Sewing that is?” Nolan didn’t know much about sewing, but it sounded like something that a creative person would enjoy.
“I am adequate. If a niece needs a costume for a play or something, I’ll do in a pinch. Grace, though, she sews costumes for half of the plays in this town! It’s good money for her too.
“How does she manage to keep afloat—financially, I mean? It’s glaringly obvious that she doesn’t live on much.”
“She is a financial genius. I don’t know how else to put it. She lives on a few hundred a month from the life insurance, plus whatever she earns. The house is paid for but there are taxes and things.”
Nolan was thoughtful. “So… utilities, taxes, food, clothes, gas and her own insurance. She must have to come up with thousands of dollars a month!”
“Not really. She’s a financial genius, like I said. She knows how to get the most for her money at the store. She shuts off the house in winter and lives in the three front rooms. Then, at night, reverses it and only turns on the heat to her room. She is just extremely frugal.”
“Must be hard. I’ve noticed that she’s very giving.”
Paige sighed. “That’s her downfall. Anytime her finances get extra tight, it’s because she’s spent more for a gift or to help someone by spending more than she could afford. We’ve all tried to ‘help’ her from time to time, but she can spot it a mile away.”
“Can’t Craig help? Does she not have any job skills, or what?” Nolan was becoming irritated at the idea of someone having to live so frugally.
“She has a degree in physics. She even went through grad school, but that’s not what she wanted to do.”
“And Craig and Melanie didn’t want her to live with them?” Something about the scenario felt strange to Nolan, and though he knew it wasn’t his business, he was curious.
“Oh, Craig lived there until Melanie got pregnant. Then Grace shooed them out. She said something about mama birds needing to build their own nests.”
A chuckle erupted, unbidden. “That sounds like Grace alright. And it’s too much for Craig to contribute, huh?”
“No. If she needed help… really needed it, he’d insist on her accepting it. She just really wants to try her ‘experiment.’” Paige looked thoughtfully at the Hocking home.
“What is her experiment?” Nolan started kicking himself again. When would he learn to control the subject better? This was a time for him to get to know Paige, not learn Grace’s personal history.
“When her father got sick a couple of years ago, he talked to Grace. He expected to live to see Grace married and taken care of, but you know how unpredictable life is. He told her that she would have to support herself or live with Craig until she married. She thought about it for a few weeks and decided against using her degree to support herself—to live her dream. So, right now, she’s still experimenting. She gave herself five years to make a success out of housekeeping for herself for a living, and she’s making it. Her mother would be proud.”