She bought a tasteless but slimming couscous salad for lunch today, courtesy of Wholesome & Hearty, the school district’s new lunch program. But then someone left a plate of cookies in the teachers’ break room after lunch and one of her students brought in birthday cupcakes. Plus there’s still half an apple pie in the fridge at home, leftover from Thanksgiving dinner.
There was a time when Rowan could gobble anything she felt like eating and never gain an ounce. Those days, too, are long gone. According to her doctor, she needs to exercise nearly an hour a day at her age just to keep her weight the same. And the hair colorist who’s been hiding her gray for a few years now recently told her that her natural red shade was making her “mature” skin look sallow, and that the long hair she’d had all her life was too “weighty.”
“I think you should try a short, youthful cut and go a few shades lighter, maybe a biscuit blond with honey highlights and caramel lowlights. What do you think?”
“I think biscuits and honey and caramel sound like something I’d want to eat right now if I didn’t have to run ten miles to work off the extra calories,” Rowan said with a sigh of resignation.
She finally agreed to the new hairstyle right before Thanksgiving. It got mixed reviews at home. Jake and Katie liked it; Braden, who resents change of any sort, did not; Mick informed her that now her hair wouldn’t clash with the bright orange hoodie—-emblazoned with a black tiger, Mundy’s Landing High School mascot—-that she wore to all his home basketball games.
“I never minded clashing,” she said.
“I do. Can I dye my hair, too?”
“Nope. It’s what makes you you.”
“Isn’t it what made you you, too?”
Yes, and whenever she catches sight of her reflection, she feels as though she’s dwelling in a stranger’s body.
Back at work today, her colleagues complimented her, her students questioned her, and the janitor told her she looks hot—-which might be inappropriate, but as the forty--seven--year--old mother of three nearly grown kids, she’ll take it.
She gets out of the car, goes around to grab the mail out of the box, and finds that it’s full of catalogs. No surprise on this first Monday of the official holiday shopping season. Given the stack of bills that are also in the box, plus the two college tuition payments coming due for next semester, the catalogs will go straight into the recycling bin.
Money has been tight lately, and Jake is worried about his job as a regional sales manager amid rumors that his company might be bought out.
Lead us not into temptation, she thinks, tossing the heap of mail—-which also includes a red envelope addressed to the family in her older sister Noreen’s perfect handwriting, and a small package addressed to her—-onto the passenger’s seat.
As she pulls into the driveway and around back, she sees that there’s garbage strewn by the back steps. The latch on top of the can snapped off when they overfilled it on Thanksgiving. Jake tried to pick up a new one the next day, but the strip malls on Colonial Highway were so jammed with Black Friday shoppers that he couldn’t get near any of them.
As Rowan stoops to pick up a gnawed turkey carcass and wads of soggy paper towels discarded by woodland creatures, she tries to imagine Noreen doing the same.
Nope. It would never happen. Noreen, a busy Long Island attorney, runs her household—-her life—-without glitches.
As Rowan lets herself into the house and tosses the mail onto the cluttered counter in the butler’s pantry, she marvels that her sister manages to send Christmas cards at all, let alone ahead of the masses. Yet somehow, she even hand--addresses the envelopes, rather than use those typed labels you can so easily print out year after year.
Rowan knows without opening this year’s card that it’ll have a photo of the svelte and lovely Noreen, her handsome trauma surgeon husband, and their four gorgeous kids, all color--coordinated in khaki and red or navy and white. Inside, there will be a handwritten note and the signature of each family member scrawled in red or green Sharpie.
Noreen has always managed to do so much and make it look so easy . . .