CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
On the last Saturday in August, as she and Patrick prepared to open the store together, Skye asked him how the desk was working out.
“Amazing how one little piece of furniture can change not only the outlook of a room but also a person,” said Patrick. He chortled. “Even though that’s what we tell our customers every day, isn’t it.”
“What’s changed?” she asked.
“Well, I made up a proposal, for starters,” he said. “In fact, I pitched it to my uncle last week. I want to devote a portion of my workdays to consistent online social networking.”
“That’s great!” said Skye. “Do you think it will help?”
“It can’t hurt.”
Skye looked around at the empty store as if business hours had already started. “I hope it does. And speaking of social networking, I’m starting a new venture, and I wanted you to help me with that part of it. Set up Facebook and Twitter pages, Instagram, Pinterest, maybe even a website . . .”
“Sure!” he said. “I’d love to. What’s the venture?”
“I’m starting a feng shui business.”
“Fun what?”
She laughed. “Feng shui. The ancient art of object placement.”
“Didn’t someone come here a couple of months ago with a pamphlet about that?”
“Yep. I took the course.”
“Cool,” he said.
There was a time when Skye would have braced herself for criticism. Would have waited for him to say something like, Why are you wasting your time on something like that? Trusting the support of her friends felt so good, a worry let loose. And it finally clicked what Flora had told her that night about attaining freedom—getting it had nothing to do with dollars and cents. Skye had always put the cart before the horse. Like with her weight—she’d always believed she would love and appreciate herself, and others would love and appreciate her, when she shed the pounds and rocked a pair of skinny jeans. Now she knew that as long as she loved and appreciated herself, others would too, regardless of her body size. That was true freedom.
“So what do you want to do?” Patrick asked.
“I want to try to get some clients and start my own business, including organizing closets and stuff like that.” She spoke with authority; saying it out loud felt empowering.
“How about this,” started Patrick. “How about in exchange for my social media services, you do some feng shui on a room in my house. Then we can refer each other. Deal?”
“Deal,” said Skye.
In addition to bringing her laptop to Patrick’s house, Skye brought her feng shui tool kit, which consisted of a jar of sea salt; a “smudge stick” made up of dried sage; a compass; paint swatches; laminated cards of the ba-gua map, like the ones Flora had handed out that night at the bookstore; and a notepad for her personal use. She hadn’t yet made business cards.
Patrick lived in a yellow house on Clark Street in what was known as Central Billings, near downtown. The first time Skye had been through this neighborhood with Harvey, she thought the houses were small, clearly built in the earlier part of the previous century. Some had been maintained or upgraded, while others showed signs of dilapidation via chipping paint or broken shutters or hail-damaged roofs. Harvey had explained that the exterior appearances were deceiving and that most houses were rather spacious on the inside, with full basements and multiple bedrooms. This was later confirmed when they had a painting job in one of those houses in which the basement was being renovated.
Skye had always dreamed of living somewhere more modern, like the home of the authors in the Heights, or a historical-but-affluent home like those in Bristol, Rhode Island. She didn’t like what were known as “McMansions,” but her sister had a home in Wakefield, Rhode Island, that Skye downright salivated over every time she entered it—cathedral ceilings and skylights; an open-concept kitchen-living-dining area, the kitchen complete with six-burner stove, two-door oven, monstrous island, and quartz countertops; endless bedrooms and full baths; and a recreation room with a viewing screen and movie-theater sound system, pool and ping-pong tables, and a full bar. Given the low retail salaries, she’d previously doubted she would ever own a house, much less a reasonable condo like Harvey’s, but at the beginning of her feng shui course she’d created a vision board on which she pasted pictures of houses she’d like to live in.
Only problem was she didn’t know where they were. East Coast? West Coast? The beach? The mountains? Billings? Bristol?
She had no idea. But for the first time, she liked that the possibilities were as vast as the Montana sky.
Patrick opened the door of the screened-in porch as she approached. She liked screened-in porches. A soccer ball sat on one of the wicker chairs. “Come on in,” he said with a smile. “Welcome to Casa Brody.”
“Thanks,” she said. Patrick opened the second door, and the moment she stepped in, she smelled fresh-brewed coffee. She surveyed the living room—hardwood floors, cream-colored walls, and one of Devlin’s leather living room packages complete with sofa, loveseat, and chair crammed in with a dark cherry coffee table, end tables, and floor lamps.
“One of the discontinued floor models,” he explained.
“Nice,” said Skye, although her vibe kicked in and noticed immediately that something was off. This room wants to be more feminine.
“The furniture is a little big for the room,” he remarked, stating the obvious, “but I didn’t want to break up the set.”
“I understand.”
He continued the tour, taking her through the small kitchen (“Upgraded appliances,” Patrick said—she was beginning to feel like a prospective buyer) before showing her the three bedrooms and full bath on the main floor, followed by the den, office, and second full bath in the basement.
Cream walls everywhere except in the bedrooms, where the kids’ walls were what Skye now knew to be “Superman blue,” thanks to Harvey, and cranberry for the master. The rooms were neat, but dusty. She felt like something was missing—not an object or piece of furniture, but an energy, like that of a person.
“It’s nice,” said Skye when they retreated to the dining room and sat at the table, each with a mug of coffee in hand and a plate of store-bought cookies between them.
“It’s OK,” he said. “Good starter house.”
“I almost forgot that you’re originally from Bozeman. Which city do you like better, Billings or Bozeman? Just curious.” Ever since Summer had asked if Skye had seen more of Montana, she’d had a desire to visit more cities. Bozeman was on the short list, partly because it was only about two hours away from Billings (a doable drive), and partly because it would be nice to see where her friend grew up.
“Hard to say. They both have their pluses and minuses. Bozeman has so many great cultural outlets and just about everything else you need in terms of shopping and stuff, but sometimes it feels way more crowded than Billings. Billings is a little grittier. But it’s also got some really good things happening downtown, like the new bookstore and all the restaurants and brew pubs. It’s got culture, but you have to actively look for it. And once you find it, you wonder how you missed it. I think Bozeman is a little more cliquey, whereas Billings will try anything once.”
“I’ve never been to Bozeman,” said Skye. “In fact, I haven’t been anywhere outside of Billings yet, as far as the rest of Montana goes.”
Patrick’s eyes widened. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
Skye laughed. “A reason to go, I guess. And someone to go with.” Maybe she should ask Harvey to take a day trip with her. Or one of her new friends from the feng shui class. Jack, the interior designer, once mentioned a client and some stores in Bozeman to pick up good accessory pieces for around the house.
“It’s Montana,” said Patrick. “That should be reason enough. Seriously, Skye, you’ve got to see this state. It’s incredible. There’s just so much beauty and quiet, so much history and wildlife. There’s no other place like it.”
Vance had advertised Montana pretty much the same way, beckoning her to give him the chance to show it to her, to add her to its beauty. She’d found the notion romantic. But since she’d arrived in Billings, she’d had no desire to leave the city limits, to go exploring, to experience the wonders of Montana. Her Devlin’s coworker Barbara had grown up in the southeastern part of the country and settled in Billings. She said, “I didn’t choose Montana. Montana chose me.” Skye wished she could have that connection to a place. She’d always taken Rhode Island for granted; it wasn’t until she left it that she developed an appreciation for all it had to offer. So far, Montana hadn’t seeped into her soul the way it did for others, and she wondered if that made her defective, or revealed her as the outsider she knew she was. She wondered if she’d ever be an insider.
“I’d really like to see it,” she said.
“Do it while the weather is still good,” said Patrick. “Maybe next time we have a corporate meeting in Bozeman.”
Skye’s muscles tightened. She was about to say, “Maybe you should check with your wife first,” when Patrick seemed to pick up on the tension and quickly segued back to their business. “So which do you want to do first, the social networking or the feng shui consultation?”
Skye sipped from a faded SpongeBob coffee mug. “Let’s do the social networking first.” She pulled her laptop from its case and powered it on. Her PC was fast becoming a dinosaur. Earlier in the year, she’d had plans to take advantage of Rhode Island’s tax-free weekend—happening as they spoke—and buy a MacBook Pro at the Apple Store in Providence Place Mall. One thing she’d learned about Billings—they had no sales tax at all. If only she could capitalize on it with a new Mac.
Patrick opened an orange folder and pulled out mock-ups of various social media and website pages, logos, and a calendar plan. Skye looked at the header: Skye Littleton: Home Consultant in smaller type underneath.
She loved it. It echoed professionalism. Importance. Someone with a career and a purpose.
“And then, underneath, you can specify all your services. You can post videos and client testimonials as you accumulate them. You can even do some cross-promotion, like for a paint store or, say, furniture sales.” He nudged her with his elbow. She chuckled. “These days marketing is about content. You’re using video and audio and flyers and social media not just to get your name out there, but more important, to give customers an experience rather than making a sale.”
Content marketing. She should have known that. She should have kept up with the times and kept her finger on the pulse of the trends when she got her degree, like Summer had done. Skye had always been discouraged, but that didn’t mean she had to play the victim. She could have kept up with the trends the entire time she was at Top Drawer. She could have taken initiative that went beyond the confines of the store.
“I love it,” said Skye. “It’s perfect.”
Together they set up social networking accounts, although Skye wasn’t yet ready to upload any personal photos—Patrick recommended she have one professionally taken, and she agreed with him; it would have to wait until she had the budget for it, however. Ditto for a logo. In the meantime, she uploaded a generic yin-yang symbol as a profile photo. Next, they went to work on setting up her website domain name and construction. Skye was impressed with how much effort Patrick put into everything. Social media marketing, whether for Devlin’s Furniture, Skye Littleton, or any other business, was definitely his forte and his passion. Maybe she should recommend him to Harvey to promote his painting business. The more Patrick shared his ideas, the more they woke Skye’s long-dormant education and sparked her own ideas. When she’d gone to college, the Internet barely existed. Heck, maybe she could take some refresher courses at MSU-Billings.
Almost two hours later—two hours that had passed like ten minutes—Skye had posted her first tweet, shared the links to her new Facebook and Twitter pages on her personal Facebook page, and was in a position where she could continue to build the website on her own as she went along. Never had she felt so invigorated or empowered. I am a business owner, she said to herself. No capital, no office space, no clientele, but still. She had a certificate and a bachelor’s degree and a desire. Sometimes that was enough capital to start with.
When they finished, Patrick looked at his watch.
“Do you need to pick up your kids or something?” she asked.
“They’re with my wife,” he said in the same tone Harvey used when he mentioned his kids or ex-wife: sadness, regret. “It’s OK, we can start with your consulting.”
“Oh,” she said. “OK.” She shut down her laptop and put it away, and pulled her tool kit out of a knapsack along with a folder like the one Patrick used. “Did you do your homework?” she said in a mock teacher voice, as if speaking to a younger student, before losing out to a giggle.
Patrick chuckled. “I did. It’s here.” He pulled a sheet of paper from the same folder and slid it in front of her. Skye read it. “I hope you don’t mind, I just did a bullet-pointed list. That’s where I like to start rather than write everything out. But I did handwrite it, as you can see.”
Skye had asked him to write about any major life changes he wanted to make—career goals, relationships, home improvements, et cetera. Patrick nervously tapped his fingers on the table as her eyes scrolled down the list, seeing some of the more familiar points—redirect his career toward social media marketing, help keep the Billings store from closing. However, she involuntarily dropped her jaw and quietly gasped when she saw the last item: Reconcile with my wife. The tapping grew louder.
She looked up at him. His eyes were filled with shame and sadness.
“Patrick. I don’t know what to say. Why didn’t you tell me?”
That explained the missing energy she felt when he showed her the house earlier. She was missing. His wife. Their love.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t really told anyone outside of the family. I wanted to tell you because I look up to you—you seem so wise about these things. But . . .” He trailed off.
She was struck by his admission: he looked up to her. She’d never been told that before. She wanted him to finish his thought, though. Wanted to see where it went. “But what?”
He redirected. “We married young. Sandra was pregnant, and I loved her and wanted a family, but I don’t think either of us were ready for the responsibility. I mean, we just didn’t want it yet.” He dropped his gaze to the tabletop. “And I might dislike my job more than I let on.”
His story sounded a lot like Harvey’s. Skye remembered Patrick lamenting about how he wished they could be friends. She felt guilty for not realizing how badly he’d needed a friend the night he’d said it. Especially his saying he looked up to her . . . maybe that was why he’d invited her out that night. Maybe his other friends hadn’t been as supportive. Maybe they’d all been his wife’s friends. Or maybe he just needed a new lens through which to see.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I really am.” At that moment, she wanted to tell him all about what had brought her to Billings. She also knew that this was the kind of thing she was going to have to expect from her clients. Some of them were going to want big things—to overcome an addiction or a past trauma, reconcile with a parent or child or spouse or lover, get out of poverty, accept their cancer diagnosis. Was she in a position to say, Sure, just move your couch across the room and light a candle in that corner, as if that would solve everything?
She suddenly had major doubts about what she was doing, whether it was a bunch of nonsense or whether it could make a difference in someone’s life, however small. She doubted that one six-week course had fully prepared or even qualified her to do so.
But didn’t buying that desk make a difference in Patrick’s life? Didn’t it light a fire under him? Didn’t the new wall color and curtains make a difference in the room Skye now called her room, by opening her up, helping her to change her feelings not only about the room, but about being in Billings?
She took a breath and began. “So here’s the thing: feng shui isn’t some kind of magic trick, where if you do it, everything in your life suddenly goes right. Your home is a reflection of you and the life you’re living. So what you want to do is get a clear picture of what you want your life to be, and let your home reflect that. It’s really about tapping into the feelings you want, and then adjusting your home to attract that.”
“Well, that sounds doable,” said Patrick. “So where do we start?”
Skye looked around the dining room and the adjoining living room. “Do you like this furniture?” she asked. “I’m not asking that in a judgmental way. I’m asking why you bought it.”
“It’s OK,” he said. “It was the floor model, and we were clearing it out. I got it for a fraction of the retail price.” He stared at it as if seeing it for the first time. “It’s very . . . brown.”
She laughed. “It is,” she said.
“Sandra only liked the price.” He paused. “Come to think of it, the entire house is outfitted with showroom leftovers.”
“What are some of Sandra’s favorite colors?”
“Lemon and lime. She loves that combination. Both in color and flavor.”
Skye looked around. “I see so little of it.”
“We bought this house in a whirlwind. It was like, pregnant, married, house—boom, boom, boom. We had to save every penny for the baby, and then once the first one came, followed by the second . . . well, there just wasn’t any time for Sandra to decorate. Plus, she works too. She’s a receptionist and trying to get into nursing school.”
“Sounds like you’ve both had a lot on your plates for a long time.”
He nodded. “We just started growing apart. I was all wrapped up in the family business and not having the guts to tell the family I wasn’t happy, and she was frustrated because she couldn’t do the things she wanted. She’s taken on a lot of the child-rearing.”
“What made her leave?” asked Skye, quickly adding, “Assuming she left.”
Patrick’s eyes became glassy as yet another revelation came to him. “She said she couldn’t be in this house another minute. Obviously, there was more to it than that—it wasn’t literally about the house, although it certainly didn’t help. She needed time to think, to figure out what she wanted for herself. She moved into an apartment. The kids stay with me. It’s just easier with their school and stuff. But she’s with them every chance she gets.”
Skye became misty-eyed as well. She couldn’t fix his marriage; that wasn’t her job. Her job was to help make any living space—be it a room, apartment, or house—a reflection of one’s life, and vice versa.
“OK, Patrick. Here’s the deal. You tell me the picture of what you want this house, and every room in it, to be. For example, ‘I want the kitchen to be the place where everyone convenes. I want the bedroom to be a sanctuary. I want the house to be a magnet for productivity.’ And so on. But tack on ‘for Sandra’ at the end of every statement. Then I’ll help you bring that picture to life.”
Patrick wiped a tear from his eye and smiled. “That is very doable.”
“Also, let me know how much money, if any, you are willing or able to spend. Not for paying me, but for the rooms.” Flora had discussed how much to charge clients during one of their class sessions. Skye was going to have to determine what she was worth, although she liked bartering for services too. If only bartering could pay her bills . . .
“How much do you think I need?”
“Depends on what you want to do. Just repainting the walls in every room would make a world of difference. But if that’s not an option, we can get creative in other ways.”
His smile widened, his face brightened, and he looked even younger than usual. “This is going to be fun. Thank you, Skye.” He pulled her in for a hug. It was warm and tight and gratifying. Skye was beginning to realize just how important hugs were, and how many she’d taken for granted.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “And thank you too.”
“My pleasure.”
The two talked about the Devlin’s schedule as Skye gathered her things and they walked outside. He hugged her one more time, and she drove down Clark Street in the direction of the condo with the windows down. She felt as if she could coast the entire way. The sun shone on her face, and the wind blew her hair back. This is what freedom feels like.
She had a purpose in life now. A calling. The beginning of a career for which she was truly suited.