Secrets in Summer(67)

“I’m fourteen. So I’ve seen it on DVD. I’m young, but I’m not, like, clueless.”

If you only knew, Darcy thought, thinking of Willow with Logan Smith.

“Still,” Susan persisted, “that movie’s older than you are!”

“But the topic is ageless,” Mimi cut in. “The twist the movie gave it was what Julia Roberts says at the end, something like ‘He rescued me—’ ”

“And I rescued him right back!” Willow spoke the words with Mimi.

Mimi and Willow smiled at each other.

“Besides,” Willow continued, “the whole ugly stepfamily is so over. Half my friends are part of blended families, and it’s all good. And look at me, Boyz is my stepfather, but he’s totally cool.”

“Still,” Mimi continued, “the message of being chosen because of your beauty is another age-old message that I’m wishing we could make so over, too.”

“That’s never going to change,” Susan said, pausing as their drinks arrived. “It’s built into our DNA. It’s out of our control. Women will always go for the strong, handsome man, and men will always go for the most beautiful woman. It’s Darwinian law, nature’s way of making certain the strongest survive.”

“Intelligence is part of the mix now,” Mimi argued. “We aren’t cavemen anymore. We’ve learned to make fire; we’ve invented the wheel; and during the past three decades, we’ve started to value the intelligent person, not just the pretty one.”

Susan said. “But men still think with their…”

“Pricks.” Willow whispered the word.

“I’ve got three sons,” Susan wailed. “How can I raise them to be good men if I’m already defeated by nature?”

Darcy sipped her drink and relaxed, watching the other three women talk. Their table was illuminated by a candle, and small lights had been hung around the patio. The soft light blurred the edges, erased the wrinkles, provided an almost antique cast to their faces. Willow, her skin flawless, her auburn hair abundant, her eyes bright. Susan, with signs of weariness cast over her pretty face, her blond hair drooping as if it were also tired. Mimi, white-haired, plump, with sparkling eyes. They could represent the three ages of women, Darcy thought: youth, maturity, age. She wanted to snap a photo of them just like this, to remember in the future. It was an unlikely gathering, and special.

And what age would Darcy represent? she wondered. She was past youth, but she didn’t feel completely mature….

“You’re awfully quiet,” Mimi observed, turning her attention on Darcy.

“I’m still considering Willow’s words about blended families. That has been a significant change in people’s lives. So much divorce and remarriage—”

Mimi cut in. “Darling, perhaps you’re correct about divorce, but there have always been blended families. For hundreds of years, women died giving birth or of some ghastly disease. They might have had two or three children, and someone had to take care of them, so the husband married again, and had more children with his new wife. Or a man was killed in some hideous war. The woman married again, partly for economic reasons. She needed a man to support her financially while she pounded the chaff from the wheat so she could bake bread.”

“But with all our modern technology, things have changed, haven’t they?” Susan asked, her forehead furrowed as she tried to reach a point.

“Absolutely,” Willow stated. “Women don’t need men anymore. We can support ourselves financially.”

“Some of us can’t,” Susan argued, warming to her topic. “Some of us have three children who need supervision and healthy food and love, and furthermore some of us—not you, obviously, Darcy, since you have a position as a librarian, and probably not you, Willow, because you are young and smart and free—but some of us can’t work.”

“Everyone can work,” Mimi said.

“I can’t!” Susan cried. “I can’t think of one single thing I could do to make money.”

The table fell quiet. They all realized Susan had brought them crashing in from the philosophical into the murky reality of daily life. Her daily life.

“What kind of work would you do if you could?” Willow asked.

Susan blinked, dumbfounded. She lifted her glass to her mouth and drank deeply, giving herself time to think.

Willow chattered away. “I mean, I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, but I know that’s not possible. I’m claustrophobic and not good with numbers. I babysit a lot now, and I’m a good babysitter, and it’s about the only way someone my age can make money. Unless I were a tech geek and invented something in my garage. I know when I grow up my stepfather will want me to sell real estate, that’s his business, and he makes tons of money, but I want to major in environmental biology. Maybe I’ll focus on clean water. I know that involves math, but we’ve got such cool technology to help us now, I won’t have to do fancy math.”