Page 73 of Love Lessons
“It’s bad, right?” I scrub my forehead. “This is how it always goes with me. I’m always behind on email. You’d think being an athlete would mean that I didn’t have a lot of paperwork. But it’s not true, and I’m salty about it.”
Vera rubs my thigh with a smooth hand. “Anything else I can help you with?”
I hesitate. “Maybe just the one from the PR guy? I’m supposed to choose from a list of charities, and then do some volunteer work. And if I don’t answer, he’ll think I’m trying to get out of it. You see one from Tommy?”
“Yep,” she says, tapping happily on the screen, as if this were actually fun. She takes a sip of wine and then sets it aside before reading. “Okay—here’s the list. We’ve got Boys and Girls Clubs of Brooklyn.”
“A solid choice. But a lot of guys do that one. What else is there?”
“There’s a dozen more. A Brooklyn women’s shelter. A children’s hospital. An organization for teaching sports to kids. Oh! And here’s Look Good, Feel Better. They’re great.”
I snort. “There’s a charity for looking good? How is that a thing?”
Vera gives me an arch look. “There you go again assuming that someone is shallow before you have all the information. I work with that charity, Ian. It might even be on the list because I mentioned it to Neil.”
Uh-oh. Stuck my foot in it again. “All right. Let’s hear it. Tell me again how I’m an ass.” I wrap an arm around her shoulders, hoping she won’t hold it against me. But Idoshoot my mouth off when I feel defensive. And, yeah, I could stand to stop.
“Let me tell you a story,” she says, her voice less frosty already. “I was raised by my Nonna after social services took me away from my mother.”
Oh geez. “I didn’t know that.”
She shrugs. “My nonna loved me. She was great. But she felt a lot like you do about fashion. She wanted me to become an accountant. Or a dental hygienist, like my cousin Maria. She was a very practical lady. But even when I was a very little girl, I was already deep into fashion. Other girls were checking out American Girl books at the library, but I checked out back issues of Vogue.”
I laugh, but I can totally picture it—a young Vera flipping pages in a magazine instead of doing her homework. “You know, I was the same way but with hockey. And knowing what you want out of life is handy.”
“Sure.” She smiles at me. “But Nonna and I fought about it all through high school. My college program was focused on the business of fashion. But Nonna kept trying to persuade me to drop the fashion part and just learn business finance.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty frustrating when your family disagrees with your choices.”
“Well…” Vera drains her wine. “When I was almost done with the program, she was diagnosed with cancer. It was bad, too. She had ignored some symptoms. She had metastatic melanoma.”
“Oh God, I’m sorry.”
Vera takes a slow breath in through her nose, and her eyes look a little red. “It was pretty awful. She got a lot of treatment, and for a little while things were looking up. But she died after a long battle.”
She looks so sad that I pull her into my lap and kiss her bare shoulder. “I’m so sorry, baby. How long ago was that?”
“More than a year now. It wasn’t sudden.” She takes another deep breath. “But anyway, she did a lot of surgeries. There were drugs, too, with serious side effects. Eventually they tried chemotherapy as a last resort. She lost a ton of weight, and she lost her hair. She got depressed and didn’t go out as much.
“She wasn’t playing bridge or seeing her friends. She didn’t look or feel like herself. And that’s when I called Look Good, Feel Better. They provided her with a very realistic wig. And they taught us some skincare tips for dealing with the side effects of her treatments. That’s what that charity does—they help people who are undergoing cancer treatment look good on theoutside, so that they feel more like themselves on the inside.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling like the world’s biggest ass. “I had no idea.”
“I know.” She gives me a tiny smile. “That’s the thing, Ian. She didn’t either. And after she got her wig, I made a reservation at the next church supper. And I bought her a dress in her favorite color—red. She said I shouldn’t have spent the money. I told her it was on sale, even though it wasn’t. We got all dolled up and went out together, just like in the old days. And this nice older man complimented her dressandher hairdo, which made us both laugh. He didn’t know it was a wig.”
Vera stops to press her fingertips against her tear ducts, and I hold her a little closer.
She takes one more deep breath. “Anyway, after we got home, she looked in the mirror and said, ‘Vera, I’m sorry I always gave you such a hard time about the things you love. I think I understand you now. And finding a job you love is something to celebrate. I’m sorry if I made you feel like I didn’t respect your choices.’” She swallows hard. “I didn’t realize how much I’d needed to hear that, but she finally gave that to me. Then she died. A month later.”
“Wow, honey. I’m so sorry.”
Vera presses her face against my chest, and I can feel tears leaking into my T-shirt. “At the end, when she gave her last wishes to my aunt, she’d chosen that red dress for her burial. The one I gave her.”
My heart breaks right in half. “You must miss her terribly.”
“I do,” she says through a sniffle. “I still have family—aunts and uncles and cousins. But she was really my only parent.”
I stroke her hair for another couple minutes until she composes herself. “Thank you for explaining to me what that charity does.”
