The Shade of My Own Tree by Sheila Williams

Author:Sheila Williams [Williams, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307545688
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-03-09T11:00:00+00:00

The last two weeks of July weren’t a total depression drama, however. Gloria went after her dream job.

“I have an interview,” she blurted out one day. “The project manager position with the landscaping company I told you about? They want me to come in for an interview.”

“Is that right?” was all that I could think of to say at first. Then I added, “Gloria, that’s wonderful.”

She nodded and then, to my surprise, she asked for my help.

“I’ve thought about this for a long time,” she said as we sat on the porch one evening waiting for our favorite activity to begin: Dana Drew watching. “This job pays good money. More’n Butch and I earned together when he was working,” she added, referring to her still-recuperating husband. “If I get it, I can get a nice place for me and Troy and a car. I might have enough to put away for Troy to go to school.”

She pondered that statement for a minute. No one in her family had ever been to college. And Troy was a bright little boy. Bad, but bright. He was the kind of kid who was always putting formulas and ideas together in his head. He had a mind that could engineer things like neutron bombs or heat-seeking missiles.

Gloria looked at me through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

“I want that job,” she said firmly. “And maybe you’re right about the packaging thing. I need to look like they look so that they’ll listen when I tell them what I can do.”

I couldn’t have said it better.

“Marketing is only part of the game,” I told her, reaching for the phone. “The package needs to look good, but there has to be substance behind it. And you’ve got the substance. You can make anything grow.”

“Who are you calling?”

“Bette Smith. There’s nothing she likes better than a good makeover.”

Bette did the hair and makeup. I was responsible for wardrobe, interviewing strategy, and deportment. If I didn’t do anything else, I was determined to purge the phrase “I seen” from Gloria’s vocabulary.

At 8:20 on Thursday morning, Ms. Gloria Estepp stepped out onto the porch of the yellow house on Burning Church Road with a folder in her hand containing her résumé and a portfolio of the landscaping projects that she had planned and implemented, specifically the garden at my house.

She wore a navy suit (one of Bette’s; I’m way too tall to loan clothes to anyone but the Green Giant’s sister) with a pale pink sweater underneath and navy pumps. There were gold earrings clipped to her ears and a cameo pinned to her lapel that looked suspiciously like the one that my dad brought back from Italy after the war. I made a mental note to check my jewelry box and have a little chat with Troy once the festivities were over.

Bette has a knack for wielding a mascara wand and lipstick tube. What she did for Gloria was nothing short of miraculous. “Hon, I can cover spots on

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.