Tapestry of Fortunes A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,1

my mind. There is a wide peace here, even in sorrow; and it’s sitting beside Penny’s grave that I can best feel her.

“Going to Atlanta tomorrow,” I tell her.

Good gig?

“It is good. Early flight, though. You know I hate those early flights.”

Stop whining.

“Your sweet peas are blossoming,” I say. I planted some recently, at the base of her headstone.

I know. I see. Pink.

“Where are you?”

Silence.

“Penny?”

She’s gone.

She always leaves when I ask that question; I don’t know why I keep asking it. Well, yes I do. I keep asking it because I keep wanting to know where she is.

I sit for a while longer, appreciating the feel of the sun on my back, the sound of the mockingbird in the tree nearby imitating the whistle of a cardinal. A few rows away, I see an old man sitting on a fold-up chair, his hat in his hands, his head bowed. I can see his lips moving. It might be prayer. Or he might be like me: he might be having a conversation. Out here, there are a lot of people like me. We don’t often speak to each other, but I think it’s safe to say we gratefully acknowledge each other’s presence, that little mercy.

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I’M AT THE OSHAKA WOMEN’S CLUB IN Atlanta, where I’ve been hired to give a talk. I’m standing at the window in the speaker’s room and looking through the slanted blinds at the women gathered on the lawn, chatting amiably, laughing, leaning their heads together to share a certain confidence. They’re pretty; they look like so many butter mints, dressed in pastel greens and pinks and yellows and whites. It’s a warm spring day after a rainy night, and the women who are wearing high heels are having trouble with them sinking into the earth.

I sit down on the silk love seat to review my notes, but I don’t have to: I’ve delivered this speech called “You.2: Creating a Better Version of Yourself” so many times, in so many places, that I’ve pretty much memorized it. But looking at my notes gives me something to do besides stare at the flowered wallpaper, the Oriental rug, the gold-and-crystal sconce lighting, which I’ve already examined thoroughly. It also keeps me from what has become a persistent sadness; it’s taking me a while to get over Penny’s death. The last thing a motivational speaker needs is to appear low on energy, mired in despair.

This organization likes you to be there early, and they keep you in the speaker’s room until you go on; they feel it’s more exciting to their audience if they see you for the first time when you come onstage, smiling, waving, dressed in your power suit—in this case, a white St. John skirt and jacket, offset by a turquoise necklace and earrings.

A fifty-something woman wearing a yellow apron over a print dress comes into the room holding a little gold-rimmed plate full of food: tea sandwiches, cut-up melon, cookies. “I’m just helping out in the kitchen before your talk,” she says. “I have to tell you, I am really looking forward to hearing you speak. I hope you won’t mind my telling you this, but you said something in your last book that truly helped change my life: Getting lost is the only way to find what you didn’t know you were looking for. It is so true. It helped me to flat out leave a man who was just a son of a bitch, plain and simple. It took a real leap of faith to do what you said. I did have to get kind of lost—to abandon certain ways of thinking, of being, really—and it was scary. But doing that gave me the courage to walk away from someone I should have left a long time ago. And six months later, I found someone else who is much better for me. I’m so happy to thank you in person for helping me to do that.”

She looks at her watch, unties her apron. “Oh my, I didn’t mean to run on. I’d better get a seat.”

She goes out of the room and I check my makeup one more time, straighten my suit jacket, and here comes Darlene Simmons, the club’s president, to escort me onto the stage.

When we come out from behind the curtain, the room immediately quiets. I sit in one of the two wingback chairs onstage, and Darlene goes up to the lectern and does the introduction. Then I go