“I don’t know,” Pru said. “It’s so risky. I’d have to use everything Dad left me and get a loan. For something I’ve never done in my life. But the timing is lucky. Edie already ordered the fall inventory, and her current stock I could sell in my sleep. So, I don’t know. It’s tempting.”
To her surprise, Patsy said, “Well, I have money.”
“You do?”
“Of course. Dad loved me, too, you know.”
“But . . . is this what you’d want to do with it?”
“I’ve been looking for a good investment opportunity,” Patsy said.
“You have?” Since when did Patsy, who once spent four hundred dollars on a serpent-shaped wrist cuff, look for investment opportunities?
“Do you know how much a college education is going to cost in sixteen years?” Patsy said, sopping up the curry on her plate with a piece of garlic naan.
“No.”
“Forty thousand dollars.”
“So? That’s about what it cost us.”
“A year, my dear. For one year.”
“Jesus. Can’t she go to a public university?”
Patsy popped the naan into her mouth. “That is public. Private school is twice as much.”
“Can’t she go to secretarial school?”
“We can only hope.”
“What about Jimmy Roy? How much do nurse-midwives make?”
Patsy snorted and cast Pru a doleful look. “Please. You know this is not going to happen. He’s always talking about the things he’s going to do. I’ve never once known him to actually complete anything. I’m totally serious, by the way. If anyone could make this work, it’s you.”
Pru looked at her sister, feeling overcome with gratitude and affection. She was touched that Patsy would make such a commitment to her, to help with something that she cared about. She had never really regarded her sister as someone who could help her. It was always Pru—the older, wiser one—who helped Patsy. But that was before, when she thought that bad things happened to only certain types of good people. This was now, when practically everything she seemed to touch had fallen to pieces. Maybe she did need some help. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.
“So, okay,” Pru said. “Let’s do it.”
“Really? Wow, that was easy.”
“You got me in a weak moment,” Pru said. “But you know, I think I want to do this. I really think I want to.”
“I’m your backer,” Patsy said. “Your sugar daddy. This is going to be fun.”
Nineteen
Both John and Patsy accompanied Pru to the closing of the loan, for moral support. Pru took the pen the loan officer handed her, and with trembling hands, as Patsy whispered “Breathe!” in her ear, signed away her entire life in exchange for sixty thousand dollars, due with interest in seven years. Her hand wrote out her name, then was seized and pumped by the loan officer. John popped the cork on a bottle of champagne he’d brought along, and that was it.
The loan took up its place in Pru’s life. It was like another new housemate, sitting on the couch all day long, unchanging and unmoving, using up most of the air in the room and asserting its massive presence. It dwarfed the little student loans she’d struggled to pay off after college. It was dismaying to think she’d be going back to those days, eating cheap food at home, getting her shopping fixes at secondhand stores and flea markets.
John and Edie, true to their words, were with her every step of the way. They made sure she made the right decisions, gave her encouragement, and more advice—often conflicting—than she could handle. John had the names of painters, plumbers, and contractors, all of them dolefully taciturn and usurious. The amount of things she bought from Edie, and had yet to buy, was staggering, yet thrilling. The clothes, of course, and mannequins. Wooden hangers, mirrors, display racks. A glass jewelry case. A sound system. All manner of hooks and washers and screws and bolts and nuts. And incandescent lights, and floor lamps, and a bazillion lightbulbs—she absolutely refused to torment her customers with bad lighting. She also added some things that Edie didn’t have in her shop: pretty antique soap dishes and vanity trays, high-end hairbrushes and French milled soaps. Girly things. In the future, she wanted to add more accessories, and makeup, for when customers didn’t feel like trying on clothes. She wanted to have vintage items, too, and made up a little sign for the counter that read: NOW ACCEPTING CONSIGNMENTS. At night, she and Big Whoop sat together in her new, private bedroom, on a bed littered with paint chips, flooring chips, linoleum chips, and her ever-present Daytimer, stuffed to bursting with pages and pages of lists and plans.
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE SHOP’S GRAND OPENING, PRU jumped off a ladder, where she was hanging a display of purses, and sliced open her foot.
It happened during a fight with Patsy. They were still in the shop after midnight, trying to finish up the billion little things that weren’t yet done. Pru was in a rotten mood. It suddenly seemed like lunacy, the whole idea of the shop. She couldn’t imagine what she’d been thinking. They hadn’t even finished moving into the new apartment. Every morning, she pulled something to wear out of a cardboard box, sniffing it for wearability. For the past six weeks, it seemed that she’d done little else besides plan, fret, pack and unpack, and fret some more.
The day before the opening, she was in a panic. Patsy opted out of one of her temp assignments to come
