A Changing Life
On the day of George’s funeral, the friends and neighbors Lila had known for twenty-five years were gathered together. They sat side by side in the pews of the Good Shepherd Church. One by one they came to her, hugged her, and promised to be there if she needed something.
“Anything at all,” they’d say, then move on to make way for the next person.
After Alice Watkins hugged Lila and promised to be there come what may, she took Meghan by her skinny little shoulders, held her close, and whispered how she had to be strong for her mama.
“I will,” Meghan replied tearfully. “I know it’s what Daddy would have wanted.”
At the cemetery, Tracy leaned heavily on her mama’s arm, but Meghan stood next to George’s sister, Phoebe, both of them with the same blonde hair and the same narrow Briggs nose. A gust of wind came by, and for a moment, Meghan fluttered like a leaf that was about to blow away.
That night the three women gathered at the kitchen table, sipping cold cups of coffee and absently toying with food that remained untouched. The question circling the table was, “What now?” George had been the backbone of the family, and without him they were like a ship without a rudder.
Lila’s first thought was to close down the Snip ’N’ Save and sell the house.
“The Snip ’N’ Save makes money,” she said, “but not that much. If we close it down and sell the house, we could manage to get along on our savings and the money from your daddy’s insurance.”
A look of astonishment swept over Meghan’s face. “Close the Snip ’N’ Save down? Completely?”
“Yes, completely.”
“I agree with Mama,” Tracy said. “It’s more work than it’s worth, and none of us want to take on the responsibility.”
“Daddy put his heart and soul into building the Snip ’N’ Save,” Meghan countered. “Closing it down makes it feel like he never existed.”
Lila gave a disheartened sigh. “It’s not what I want to do, but I don’t believe we have any other choice.”
Tracy nodded. “I’ve got my job at the bank, and Mama’s hopeless at the computer. She’s never even opened that design program.”
“There are still six weeks before I leave for college. I could teach you how to—”
Lila was already shaking her head. “I’ve got you girls to worry about. There’s no way I can take on that computer.”
“I absolutely am not going to quit my job at the bank. Mr. Pelosi likes me. He hinted that I’m in line for a promotion to head teller.”
Meghan sat there with her brows pinched into a knotted line. “I was thinking I could put InDesign on my laptop, do the layouts in my dorm, and send the finished magazine back for you and Mama to take it from there.”
Now Tracy and Lila were both shaking their heads.
“You’re the only one familiar with the business operation,” Tracy said, “and I don’t see any way you can handle the whole thing from Athens.”
“Maybe Aunt Phoebe could help.”
“Phoebe?” Lila gave an even more emphatic shake of her head. “Two years ago George asked if she’d like to go in on the business, and she said no. She told him she was retired and planned on staying retired.”
“Oh.” Meghan’s face fell.
The three of them sat there with no one saying anything for a long while, then Tracy offered a suggestion.
“How about instead of closing the Snip ’N’ Save, we sell it? That way Dad’s business would still be intact, and we wouldn’t have to worry about running it.”
Lila gave a broad smile and turned to Meghan. “That sounds good, don’t you think?”
Meghan gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “We’d still want to keep it operational until we found a buyer.”
She stayed quiet for a few minutes, thinking through everything. Finally, she came up with an answer.
“I’ll wait a year before starting at Grady,” she said grimly. “That way I can keep the Snip ’N’ Save up and rolling until we find a buyer.”
Lila hesitated a moment.
“I guess that would work,” she finally said. “You wouldn’t actually be giving up school, just postponing it for a year.”
Meghan didn’t say her heart was already there; it had been there for years. She’d filled seventy-six composition books with words. Now she yearned for the knowledge of how to rearrange them, of how to turn them from rambling thoughts into meaningful stories that people would read and then days later discover still lingering at the far edges of their brains.
But her heart was also with her daddy, and Meghan knew the truth. She was the only one who understood the business, knew how to work the design program, understood scheduling, and was familiar with the customers. No one told her to give up her dreams; the thought was her own.
“I could help out,” Lila offered. “Not on the computer but maybe typing letters or doing a bit of filing.”
Meghan didn’t have the heart to tell her mama everything was done electronically. There was no filing or letters to be typed. Rather than explain, she gave a smile of appreciation.
“Thanks, Mama. That would be really helpful.”
Tracy’s face lit up. “See, there was nothing to worry about after all. Everything will work out perfectly.”
Once it was decided, there was nothing more to be said.
The next morning, Meghan sent an e-mail to the director of admissions at the journalism school. She apologized for having to drop out of the upcoming semester and assured him that it was a temporary thing. A year, perhaps, but certainly no more.
That night she wrote about the decision in her journal. Although a single sentence could have told the story, she filled four pages, and every one of them was stained with droplets of tears. On the last page she wrote, “I believe this is what Daddy would want me to do,” and closed the book. Ignoring the blank pages in the back, she tied a slender ribbon around the notebook, then slid it into the storage box under her bed. It was the box that held all her other journals, but this was the only one left unfinished.
The following day Meghan moved her few belongings in the office from the small desk with the laptop to the larger one with the desktop computer and monitor you could read from across the room. George’s chair was bigger than hers—too big, actually—but she pushed a cushion behind her back and settled into it. She signed on with his password and scrolled through his e-mail.
Although you could see no physical change, she had in fact become her daddy.
Meghan procrastinated for almost two weeks before she could bring herself to type up a description of the business and offer it for sale on Craigslist. It seemed that letting go of the Snip ’N’ Save was almost like letting go of her daddy. Even when she finally did get around to listing it, she didn’t use any of the words she’d once used to describe the magazine. In place of exciting new venture and unique opportunity, phrases like long hours and complex scheduling somehow seemed more appropriate.
Not surprisingly, month after month went by, and there was not a single inquiry. No one even called to ask the price of such an offering. The few times “Unknown” did pop up on the caller ID, Meghan refused to answer the phone.
Although nothing was resolved, the problem of what to do with the Snip ’N’ Save seemed to disappear. Lila never asked questions, and Tracy seemed not to care one way or the other, so when the listing expired, Meghan didn’t bother renewing it.
As the weeks came and went, Meghan spent most of her time in the office. On occasion, and it was indeed an occasion, she would go into town and call on the customers who needed a slight nudge.
“I know you’ll want to be in the Founder’s Day issue,” she’d say, sounding exactly like George.
After a few months, the handful of customers who’d at first been skeptical of working with her came around and began placing ads. By then Meghan had comfortably settled into the job and no longer entertained any thoughts of selling the Snip ’N’ Save. It simply wasn’t the right time, she reasoned, knowing full well there would probably never be a right time.