She stood on Stonington Point, looking seaward to Long Island Sound.
A shore breeze lifted her hair. Eddies swirled, and Stephanie remembered. The man had blond curls and strong hands. He'd dressed in brown khaki pants and a blue T-shirt.
A ferry from Fisher's Island brought him.
They'd talked while Stephanie showed him about her antique shop inside the Velvet Mill Mall.
She felt herself flush when he looked at her. He said his name and offered a handshake. "Manny."
They could rendezvous outside the mall and go for a drink.
She sold him an antique pinwheel and brushed a finger across the top of his hand.
But he hadn't returned as promised, and after a two-hour wait, she drove home to Darlene Street.
*
The following morning, Stephanie wrote a check—this was a down payment for a duplex—sealed it in an envelope, tramped wet leaves along Darlene Street, and posted the envelope in the maildrop.
Her mother, Madge, had napped poorly that day.
"Who's there?" she asked as Stephanie slipped back inside. "Is that you, Steph?"
"It's me, Mama. I had a cigarette."
Stephanie hastened to the kitchen and snatched the cigarette pack to hide in her purse.
A moment later, Madge appeared in a stinky bathrobe, toe corns, and snoopy slippers. Her eyes shifted from the purse, lingering on her daughter's hands, then moved to Stephanie's face.
"Hmmph, there's no sleep for me since Walter passed. I thought I'd be provided for."
She limped across the kitchen and peered out a window, past a chain-link fence to the *****'s house. A flake of mucus whistled in her nose, then fell to the floor.
"I know, I know," said Stephanie.
*
In the evening, Stephanie drove Madge and Aunty Bunny to bingo night, a ten-minute trip from Darlene Street to the Christian Ladies Auxiliary in Westerly, Rhode Island.
Stephanie knew Madge and Aunty Bunny would take hours to cover their rounds, so she headed home. It was rather a long stretch of road to her new duplex in Mystic. She didn't mind; the farther from Darlene Street, the better.
Arriving home, she sat at a window, waiting for Madge and Aunty Bunny to finish their rounds.
Across the street, the textile mill's second shift lunch whistle blew.
She moved the curtain a little, watching the workers filing, mustering under a streetlamp with fluttering moths.
She leaned forward, but the man with blond curls and strong hands did not come, and he would not come again.
Other men were there, and women, too, sitting on the curb, cracking open Quonset hut lunch pails and steamy thermoses.
Stephanie went to the living room, reaching for the clothing she'd ordered online: brown khaki pants and a blue T-shirt.
She laid them out, then stuffed them with ticky-tack.
How wistful, she thought. She reached to adjust a button.
"I'd do anything for anybody if they'd only let me," she murmured.
The phone rang, and she slid the bar. Madge swearing profusely over Bunny's emphysemic wheezing.
