Fast Women Read online

  “I thought your stuff had flowers on it,” Suze said. “I’ve never seen this before.”

  “It was on the top shelf,” Nell said. “I never used it.”

  “Crocuses,” Margie said, frowning into space. “That’s what they were.” She looked at the three boxes marked “China” and said, “This can’t be all of it.”

  “This is my share,” Nell said. “Tim got the rest in the divorce.”

  “What?” Margie’s eyes grew wide. “He took your china?”

  “It’s just dishes,” Suze said.

  “It’s her china,” Margie said, and Suze remembered Margie’s ten zillion pieces of Franciscan Desert Rose and said, “Right. Her china.”

  “And he got more than half,” Margie said. “You had shelves of it.”

  Suze looked down at the teapot in her hand. “What is this stuff, anyway? I only remember the flowers.”

  “It’s all British Art Deco china,” Nell said.

  “Art Deco?” Margie said.

  “From the 20s and 30s,” Suze said, still fascinated by the teapot. “Very geometric, bright colors, stylized designs.” They looked at her as if she’d said something strange, and she said, “Art History 102. I know the introductory stuff about everything.”

  Nell nodded. “It’s from my mom’s family in England. That teapot is Clarice Cliff, my second favorite pattern of hers. It’s called Secrets.”

  “I don’t understand why Tim got so much more,” Margie said.

  “The stuff I loved best was the expensive stuff,” Nell said. “Like the Secrets tea set. It has thirty-four pieces and appraised at seven thousand dollars.”

  “Oh, my Lord,” Margie said, taking a closer look at the teapot Suze was clutching.

  Suze held it out to Nell. “Take this, please.”

  Nell took it and put it in her china hutch. “So did you get your mom’s china, Margie?” she asked, and Suze looked at her sharply. Nell had been the one to tell her fourteen years ago that questions about Margie’s mom were off limits.

  “No,” Margie said. “What’s this?” She held up the teapot she’d just unpacked, a round peach-colored pot with white crescents scratched in it.

  “Susie Cooper,” Nell said. “Not nearly as expensive. That’s part of her kestral line. She owned her own pottery works in the late 20s and was still designing in the 80s.”

  “She lasted.” Margie nodded down at the Cooper bowl in her hands.

  “Her pieces were the best designed,” Nell said. “She even had her own pottery works. But Clarice made beautiful things.” Nell unwrapped another bowl. “This is Stroud, my favorite pattern. Just the green band around the outside and the cartouche at the bottom.”

  The bowl was cream with a wide green band bisected in the lower left-hand corner by a little square with a landscape inside it—a fluffy cloud, an orange-roofed house, a puffy green tree, and two curved hills—a tiny perfect world.

  A tiny perfect world. That sounded like Nell, arranging everything in her life and then maintaining it. If Nell could, she’d make sure the clouds in the sky looked exactly like that. Neat and comfy. Suze looked back at the creamer. “And this one is called Secrets.”

  Nell sat back and nodded again. “That was my mom’s favorite.” She looked at Margie for a minute and then went on. “I think it’s autobiographical. According to gossip, Clarice was having an affair with her boss, the guy who owned the china works.”

  Margie sat up straighter, with a little gasp. “That’s terrible. She must have been an awful woman, stealing somebody else’s husband.”

  Suze tried not to flinch. Even after fourteen years, it was a sore point.

  “That’s the worst thing a woman can do,” Margie said, visibly upset. “That’s unforgivable.”

  “Margie,” Nell said. “Have a heart.”

  Margie looked up. “Oh, not you, Suze.” She frowned at Suze’s creamer, and Suze handed it to Nell. “But that Secrets woman, well, really. Just snagged her married boss.” She looked down at her Susie Cooper plate and said, “Tell me Susie wasn’t like that.”

  “Susie was loyal and practical to the end,” Nell said. “Married with a son.”

  “Good. A good wife.” Margie handed Nell the bowl and began to unpack more.

  Suze thought, She owned her own company, too, and began to dislike Susie intensely. She unpacked a Secrets sugar bowl, careful not to scratch the bubble tree or the quiet blue sea at the bottom. Poor Clarice. Loving a married man, working for him every day, knowing they couldn’t be together, probably rejected by all the good wives around her, never able to start her own company because she had to stay with the man she loved. “What happened to Clarice?” she said, staring at the two lonely houses with great sympathy.

  “When she was in her forties, her boss’s wife died and he married her and they lived happily ever after.”

  In her forties. If that had been her, she’d be waiting another ten years for Jack. Would she? Would she do it all over again today? What kind of person would she have turned out to be if she hadn’t gotten married? Don’t think about that. “Well, good for Clarice,” Suze said and handed Nell the sugar bowl.

  “Wait, I have figurines of them.” She began to take wrapped pieces from the box and put them on the floor until she found what she was looking for, handing them each a bubble-wrapped package.

  “Who’s this?” Suze said, stripping the wrap off hers first, and Nell peered at it and said, “Susie Cooper.”

  Susie sat on a piece of pottery with a flowered plate behind her, looking like a stylish Mary Poppins in a conservative mauve suit, her knees demurely together, holding a wide-brimmed hat on her head.

  “Pretty,” Margie said, unwrapping hers more slowly.

  Practical, Suze thought, with definite distaste.

  “Oh,” Margie said.

  Margie’s figurine sat on a piece of pottery with a landscaped plate behind her, her ankles crossed and her low V-necked green flapper dress pulled above her knees. She looked over her shoulder with her back arched and a glint in her eye.

  Suze smiled. “Clarice.”

  “I don’t want her. Let me see Susie,” Margie said to Suze, and Suze traded her, smiling down at saucy Clarice, the good-time girl with the impractical pottery and the married lover. Maybe I should have stayed a lover, she thought. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be the married Susie she’d ended up as, maybe she’d been born to be a good-time Clarice.

  Of course, it was too late now. She handed Clarice to Nell and watched her put the figure in the hutch.

  “They all did really well,” Nell said, straightening Clarice on the shelf. “They had work they loved and they excelled at it.”

  “Work,” Suze said and felt overwhelmingly envious of Susie and Clarice and their pottery, and Margie and her teashop, and even Nell and her secretary job. Maybe she could take a pottery class. Or go to chef school. Jack would like that.

  Except she was tired of school.

  She unpacked some more Secrets, trying not to think about what else she was tired of. She had a good life. Everything was fine.

  “What’s wrong?” Nell said, and Suze turned around to tell her she was fine and saw her looking at Margie.

  The plate in Margie’s hand had a pink rose painted in the middle of it. It was pretty, but Margie was staring at it as if it had skulls on it.

  “Margie?” Suze said.

  “My mom used to have china like this,” she said. “Not this pattern, but with roses.”

  Her mom. Suze looked at Nell, who was looking miserable. This is what you tried to do before, she thought, get Margie talking about her mom, and for the first time ever, she was angry with Nell.

  “Do you want the plate?” Nell said. “I don’t have a set of it or anything. It’s called Patricia Rose. It’s one of Susie’s.” She kept talking, her eyes on Margie’s face, but Margie’s expression didn’t change, and finally she said, “What’s wrong, Margie?”

  “She was breaking them,”