MJ looked at Pandy in astonishment, and then, in a motherly gesture, clapped her hands on either side of Pandy’s cheeks and squeezed affectionately.
“Now that’s my kind of girl,” she said in a comforting baby voice. “Money,” MJ confirmed, nodding her turbaned head. “That’s what life is about. You know how they say that if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything? Well, I say that if you don’t have your money, you don’t have anything.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Pandy said. MJ, she decided, was a true feminist. It was shocking that Jonny had turned out to be the enemy of feminists everywhere—but perhaps this wasn’t MJ’s fault.
“Tell me the truth,” MJ said in a kindly tone of voice. “Why haven’t you been married?”
“Just haven’t met the right guy, I guess.” Pandy shrugged.
MJ peered at her closely, and then, like a soothsayer, said, “I’m a bit of a psychic. I sense things. And what I’m sensing is that this doesn’t have anything to do with a man. It has something to do with a woman. A woman you were very close to, but”—she sniffed the air, as if sensing an unpleasant odor—“there’s something sad there. You lost someone you were close to?”
“My mother,” Pandy gasped.
“Is she alive?”
Pandy shook her head. She usually tried to brush off the lingering sadness of the tragedy that had happened twenty years ago, but with MJ, she suddenly felt like she didn’t need to pretend.
“She and my father died in a car accident. When I was twenty and my sister was eighteen. For a while, when I was in my twenties and some of my friends started getting married, I thought maybe
I might get married, too. But every time I tried to imagine my wedding, I couldn’t. Can you imagine a woman who can’t even picture her own wedding? And then I realized it’s because weddings are about family. And tradition. You need your mother. How could I pick out the china pattern? Or the dress? Or remember the traditions? And on top of it, I didn’t even have my father to walk me down the aisle. Because he’s dead, too—”
Pandy sat back, stunned at this revelation. She couldn’t believe how quickly she’d revealed feelings to MJ that she wouldn’t even admit to herself. Feelings she’d never even known she’d had until MJ had drawn them out of her.
“This is good,” MJ said approvingly. “You’ve acknowledged your fears. Perhaps your parents’ deaths make you feel like you don’t deserve happiness in love.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Pandy said in wide-eyed wonder.
She smiled. And for some mysterious reason, she felt happy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PANDY WAS still unaccountably happy the next morning when she awoke.
Indeed, for the first time in a long time, the usual nagging voice in her head was quiet.
You should be doing more. You should be doing better. Look at you! You’re a loser! the voice would exhort, and she’d want to pull the covers over her head.
But on this particular day, the nasty voice appeared to have taken a vacation.
At first, all she noticed was the silence. But then she observed a heaviness to the silence; a blanket of white noise muffling the usual sounds of the day.
Snow!
She hopped out of bed, rushed to the window, and yanked up the blind like a pirate ratcheting up a black flag. Snowflakes the size of daisies were steadily falling. The street outside her window had yet to be plowed; there were tire indentations swerving from one side of the road to the other, ending in a snow-covered lump where it appeared someone had abandoned their car.
A snow day! she thought ecstatically.
She clicked on the television. There it was: Manhattan as snow globe, engulfed in a rare spring’easter. Everyone was totally freaking out.
She called Henry. “Hello?” he said briskly.
“Do you know about this?” she demanded. She glanced back at the TV. “This spring’easter?”
“Ah, yes. This recent snowstorm caused by global warming. A nor’easter that comes in April. Around Easter.”
“So what are you going to do today?” Pandy asked.
“I’m going to lounge around in my velvet smoking jacket reading manuscripts like an old-fashioned person,” Henry said with his usual sarcasm. “I could really use the time to catch up,” he added firmly.