She Who Shops

by Joanne Skerrett

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Weslee Dunster is one sister who has always been about the practical side, earning her way to Boston University through good, old-fashioned hard work. Who needs Prada when you've got brains, right? Wrong! With her GAP khakis and humble background, Weslee's no match for the wealthy New Englanders who seem to look at her like she's stepped out of a Sears catalog. The women in Wes's new sphere treat shopping like a contact sport, and they never met a friend they didn't want to trash as soon as her back was turned. And the brothers will snub you for having skin that's a shade past café au lait or an accent that's one generation from Jamaica. Now, caught up in a hectic lifestyle filled with designer clothes, expensive highlights, finger-aching bling, air kissing, fine-looking players, lies, betrayals, and other things her once-sensible life didn't demand, Wes is in for the ride of her life--one that could have her crashing and burning. . .unless she can figure out the rules of the game and how to break them. . . "Charming."--Kayla Perrin "Entertaining."--Nina Foxx "Engaging."--Karen V. Siplin Joanne Skerrett is an editor at The Boston Globe. She Who Shops is her first novel, and she's currently working on her second, soon to be published by Strapless.

Release date: July 11, 2012

Publisher: Strapless

Print pages: 320

Sample

The plane hit the ground hard, and Weslee feared she would lose her Cheez-Its and pretzel snack mix, her only meal of the day.

The woman seated next to her was obviously shaken, but elected to appear as nonchalant as possible as the aircraft roared up the runway. The woman had used the satellite phone nonstop throughout the flight, talking to a daughter whom she would be meeting for dinner.

“Well, honey, what in the world do you want me to do?” she had said, agitation in her voice. “You chose to move to Boston. No one forced you!” The woman had even yelled at one point, causing other people to turn in her direction.

Now the elegant-looking woman did her best to look composed, smoothing out her white linen pantsuit as the plane taxied to the gate.

Weslee didn’t fully calm down until the engine stopped.

She absolutely hated flying.

She looked at her watch as the seat belt light darkened. Two hours and eleven minutes from Chicago to Boston. She was glad she had parted with those frequent-flier miles to get the first-class upgrade. No waiting a half hour to deplane while everyone in front of her wrested their luggage from the overhead bins. Plus, she had had the pleasure of listening to the well-dressed, perfectly made-up middle-aged woman talk to her daughter.

Weslee stepped gingerly from the plane onto the jetway leading to the terminal, careful to thank the pilot and the stewardesses.

Good job, but make it smoother next time, she wanted to tell the very young-looking pilot.

She adjusted her overnight bag on her shoulder. The movers were bringing the furniture and most of her clothes to her new apartment tonight, so thankfully there would be no waiting in baggage claim. She started to look for signs leading to a taxi stand.

Relief swept through her. She was finally on the ground and on the way to a new chapter in her life.

Strangers stole glances at Weslee Dunster as she walked through Terminal C at Logan International Airport. Maybe they had seen her before. Maybe. They were looking at the former power forward for the Northwestern women’s basketball team, and that would explain those legs. Weslee never thought of that much these days—of herself as a star athlete . . . or as a leggy goddess, for that matter. After all, she did spend most of those three years on the bench. And goddess was something she associated with other, more glamorous people—not people like her, who wore Gap jeans and button-down shirts with tan loafers.

If she ever caught people looking at her, she always assumed that it was because of her height.

And maybe it was. At 5 feet 11 and 131 pounds, she cut quite a striking figure. And, in her opinion, for a tall, skinny black woman, that wasn’t always necessarily all good. Her sister, Terry, who had the same willowy build but a better sense of humor, always said people either thought that Weslee was a crackhead or a supermodel the first time they looked at her.

Thanks to her parents, both string beans themselves, there was nothing she could eat too much of that would change her physique. And, her sister’s comments notwithstanding, to most observers she appeared to belong more in the supermodel camp than with the emaciated junkies, thanks to the strong cheekbones and high, naturally sculpted eyebrows she had inherited from her West Indian–born father, Milton.

She was no great beauty, but she managed to turn heads. Maybe it was her natural athletic grace, those legs finely tuned from her passion for running. Who knew? She certainly didn’t. If you asked Weslee, she’d say she wanted to be shorter, prettier, with a tiny nose and smaller feet.

She walked down the escalator, following the signs to Ground Transportation and ignoring the tempting aroma of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.

And people still looked. Why did she have that half smile on her face? men wondered.

Why did she walk, not strut, women thought, as they would if they had a body like hers?

The hum and drum of the harried passengers did nothing to pierce her daydreaming.

She skipped past the more immediate task of starting business school to picture herself two years from now: a fabulous job at one of the major investment banks, an even more fabulous apartment in New York City, or perhaps here in Boston, and hopefully a fabulous new husband. She’d even settle for a fabulous boyfriend. One nothing like Michael, thank you very much.

There were plenty of cabs waiting as she exited the terminal.

Weslee knew it would not all be a bed of roses. She had done her research. The economy stunk, and everyone at her firm had told her the last thing she needed right now was an MBA. Everybody had an MBA these days, and everybody was still getting laid off. Well, it wasn’t just getting the MBA, she had argued in defense of her decision. It was the whole getting thing. Getting away. Getting something else than what she had now. Something better.

But, yes, Boston would be a challenge, no doubt about that.

Look at all this construction, she thought, surveying through the smudged taxi window the big wreck that the Big Dig had wrought on Boston’s infrastructure. This new highway was “almost done” the last time I was here five years ago, and it’s still “almost done.” She shook her head.

Despite her months and months of detailed research, it still felt new to be in the city now. In typical Weslee fashion, during her last six months in Chicago she had read almost every book, article, and newspaper story that had to do with Boston, Boston University, and her new neighborhood. She was a planner, always prepared. So she took inventory as the cab made its way through the city, making sure that everything was where the books had said it would be.

It satisfied her somehow that it was seventy-three degrees, though it was August. That was what she had expected: unpredictable weather.

The skyscrapers leaned against the grayness of the late summer day. Some of the buildings looked as if they were decaying, as if the life or lives inside of them were just not enough to keep them standing. And the colors of orange and construction yellow were omnipresent and threateningly permanent: cones blocking off lanes and heavy-duty highway building equipment. And detour signs everywhere. It was as if all the old roads now led to new, unknown destinations.

The taxi crawled through the snaking afternoon traffic. The driver turned up the talk radio station even louder as the radio host poked fun at the female former Massachusetts governor. The cab driver laughed, and Weslee unconsciously tapped her cell phone in her pocketbook, like she often did when she was uneasy.

She tuned out the sound of female-bashing and nervous laughter from the cab driver. She started to go down her mental checklist again to make sure that everything was in place. Account balances: savings, money market, 401(k), IRAs, mutual funds—a grand total of $376,935.50. A year’s tuition was already paid up. The only thing she would have to worry about was rent and other living expenses. She had budgeted everything down to the last penny. If she spent no more than $1,879.00 a month over the next two years, she would come out of this with barely a dent in her treasured savings. She smiled with satisfaction again. She had saved well over the years, thanks to her father, who had instilled the value of frugality in her since childhood.

The traffic barely moved. Two months ago, when she’d come here looking for a place to live, she’d been stuck in traffic on her way to and from the airport, too. And five years ago, when she had visited Harvard with Michael, they had been stuck in traffic as well. She remembered him almost losing his mind with worry about being late for his interview at Harvard Medical School.

That seemed so long ago now. When Michael was rejected from Harvard, he had “settled” for Northwestern. She had supported him through the disappointment but was secretly happy that he would stay in Chicago. She had never thought about Boston again until she decided to get away from Chicago—and Michael and his new live-in girlfriend.

Boston had won out over New York and Philadelphia. Actually, she couldn’t afford to live in Manhattan—at least not the way she wanted to live in Manhattan—even with an NYU fellowship. And the Wharton School had laughed in her face. Or at least that’s the way she liked to explain their rejection letter.

Those rejections had hurt her so much. They tore at her soul for weeks. She must have read each letter hundreds of times: “We’re sorry . . .” “The competition was so . . .” All that, plus Michael’s “It’s just not working out right now.”

It would be six months exactly in two weeks. One night Michael came home to their loft from work and said that he was moving out. His explanation was that he had to get his head together. He wanted to wait a few more years before settling down and getting married. At twenty-eight, he was just too young, he said. There was still so much of the world he wanted to see. That world turned out to be some internist at the hospital, a University of Chicago graduate, he had said, proudly. After five years with Weslee, he had found the perfect woman—not Weslee. She created the picture of Michael’s new love in her mind: most likely petite, light caramel skin, probably long, naturally straight hair, and light brown eyes. Maybe she did deserve Michael more than I did, Weslee had told herself then.

Ugh. She frowned. I’m not even going to think about this anymore.

She reached for her cell phone to let her parents and sister know that she had made it to Boston in one piece.

“What did you say the address was?” The cabbie peered at her through the mirror again.

“Sixty-eight Commonwealth Avenue.”

“Coming right up,” the cabbie said as he turned onto Storrow Drive.

Weslee could see the university’s buildings in the distance. She couldn’t help but feel excited. She hadn’t been on a college campus in seven years. And she had never been on an urban college campus. This would be nothing like Northwestern. No idyllic settings, picturesque ponds, tranquil surroundings, and, of course, no loud, stomach-churning basketball games—and no Michael.

They had met at Northwestern. They both loved basketball. He played on the men’s team; she played on the women’s. She thought it was so cute the way he would always let her win when they played together. She knew she could beat him fair and square. She was a better shot.

The year they had lived together in the Chicago Loop had been a dress rehearsal for what was surely to come, she had thought. Weslee had never once thought that she would not marry Michael, not even when she found herself constantly walking on eggshells when he came home in a bad mood every other night. She had even learned to ignore the way he made her feel as though her career as a fund analyst at the top mutual fund rating firm in the country was basically as good as being a check-out girl at a grocery store. Those things didn’t become clear until the day he walked out of her life and she was really honest with herself about the lie she had been living.

But that was all in the past, she thought, as the taxi pulled to a stop in front of the five-story brick apartment building. She had risen out of that fog, and the road was clear in front of her now. She would finish her MBA, make new friends, visit Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, and go to Cheers.

Maybe I’ll even run the Boston Marathon, she thought as she rifled through her wallet to pay the cabbie.

Weslee tried to concentrate as the professor droned on about globalization. No matter what those protesters said, he was saying, it was what made the world the global village it was today. Multinationals employed people in impoverished countries, created roads and infrastructure in tiny countries most Americans had never heard of, blah, blah, blah.

She wondered if everyone else shared her boredom. She wondered if everyone else was thinking Tell me something I don’t already know. No. Some guy had his hand up and was asking a question: Why is it that multinationals ignored the African continent?

Her mind kept wandering back to the previous night at the meet-and-greet.

Weslee surveyed the classroom filled with her fellow students. She shifted in her seat and tapped on the keyboard of her laptop. Appear involved. Interested. Present.

Last night she had shifted her weight often, too. From one painful foot to the other, cursing her new pumps as she smiled at her new classmates. They were all dressed casually. Her calves had ached from the long run that morning. Her head also hurt because she had forced herself to drink a glass of white wine when all she wanted was a diet soda. But everyone else had wine and seemed to be enjoying it. What was she to do?

The professor’s answer to the Africa question was lame.

Last night had been OK. But she wondered about the impression she had made. What did people think of her?

She was one of three black faces, she had immediately noted upon walking into the faculty dining room. Yup. Just the three of us. There was a very attractive woman who was most probably biracial and seemed to be sucking up all the attention, and an older-looking man. Married, to judge by his ring. There were a few Chinese and Japanese and Indians among the group, but the two other black faces stood out—at least to Weslee.

The gathering was meant to give everyone a chance to network and get to know one another. She could tell that school was going to be competitive, but she had been warned. People seemed to have no problem asking her to recite her resume. So for the fifth time, here she was proving to some white guy that she belonged.

“Nice to meet you, Charles . . . uh, Chad,” she said, shaking his hand firmly after he corrected her on his name. He seemed nice enough.

“So, are you fresh out of undergrad?” he asked, beginning the inquisition. She took it all good-naturedly. Everybody did it. She told him about her short and unspectacular journey from Northwestern to fund analyst at Research Associates Inc. Of course, she left out the Michael angle when he asked her why she had decided to leave such a good company to return to school.

She recited her “elevator pitch” to several more students and professors. She couldn’t wait to meet the other black girl, but she seemed so busy chatting up a storm with everybody else. She seemed to already know some of the people. Weslee could hear her laughter all the way across the room.

She decided to go introduce herself to the lone black man in the room, who was off talking with an Indian guy she had already met. She racked her brain to remember his name. Too bad it was an Anglo name—that made it even harder to remember.

“Hi guys,” she said, smiling at the two men.

“Hello again,” the Indian guy said as she struggled to remember his name and not look at his nametag. She didn’t want to give herself away.

“It’s Weslee, right?” he said, peering at her nametag.

“Yes”—she smiled back at him and quickly looked at his tag—“Brian.”

“We haven’t met,” she said to the black man. He looked to be either in his late thirties or early forties. He wasn’t terribly good-looking, but he was tall and carried himself very formally. He was the only man in the room wearing a tie. The other guys wore polo shirts and khakis.

“No, we haven’t,” he said in a clipped, tight voice. “I’m Harrell Sanders.” He extended his hand.

“Weslee Dunster,” she replied. She asked the requisite where are you from and why are you here, and somewhere in the conversation, Brian, the Indian guy, slipped away to hobnob elsewhere.

Harrell was from upstate New York and worked at Prudential Securities in Boston. He was taking a couple of years off from work, he said. He told her that his wife was a kindergarten teacher and that they had two toddler-age children. Boring, boring, boring.

“Hey, I’m Lana,” a high, perky voice said on her left. She turned, and there was the only other sister in the room, smiling at her.

“Hey,” she said brightly. “I’m Weslee Dunster. I’ve been meaning to come over and introduce myself, but you seemed to be always talking to someone else.”

Lana was a couple of inches shorter than Weslee, very pretty—in an unattainable, Vanessa Williams kind of way. That was a fierce little outfit she was wearing. Weslee was no fashion expert, but she recognized quality when she saw it, and she knew that this hadn’t come out of TJ Maxx.

“Yes, girl, I’ve been getting my networking on,” Lana said in a strange accent that struck Weslee as a hybrid of New England, Valley Girl, and Ebonics. Lana flashed a perfect white smile at Harrell Sanders and guided Weslee by the elbow in the other direction.

“Some of the people in here are so bullshit,” Lana said conspiratorially as she waved across the room to some guy who was smiling her way.

“Have you met them before?” Weslee asked.

“No, I’ve never seen any of them before,” Lana replied, her big grayish eyes casing the room.

“Oh, it just seemed that you—” But before Weslee could finish, a pair of women came up to them.

“Hey, you guys,” one of them said. Weslee had met her. Her name was Kwan; she was Japanese via Encino, California. The other woman was a local, white and attractive. They seemed to want to stick to Lana like glue.

As they made plans to meet later, Weslee began to feel better, more excited, less intimidated. She could see herself hanging out with this Lana girl. In no time at all she had gone from almost being the wallflower to near-center of attention. Yes, it was going to be all right.

“Where are you from?” Weslee asked Lana, trying to get to the bottom of her accent.

“New York. Rye. And Martha’s Vineyard.”

Weslee laughed. “Your accent is so different.”

“Oh, it’s not really an accent. It’s just the way I talk. I’ve been practicing for years.” Lana smiled widely and then laughed wildly at the confused look on Weslee’s face.

Weslee laughed, too. She thought she had gotten Lana’s joke. It didn’t matter. She thought she had made a friend. Sort of.

So, this morning before class, Weslee had worried. She had wanted to look good. She remembered the way Lana had sized her up the night before. She hadn’t liked the appraising look in Lana’s eyes. But Weslee, a traditionalist, had nothing but khakis, skirts, lots of navy and black—nothing cute. She had settled on a khaki linen dress and red sandals. Lana had swished into class wearing a knee-length white skirt, camel-colored stiletto sandals, and a tiny black tank top. Weslee had marveled as the male members of the class gawked or quickly looked away from Lana, maybe ashamed of what they were thinking. She so wished she could put clothes together that way.

Now Lana had her hand up. The professor beamed at her like one would at a precocious and adorable child.

Her comment was a very obvious rip-off of what the professor had just said. Yet he gushed, “That is a very interesting point!”

Someone groaned behind Weslee, but she didn’t look back. It was strange how she immediately felt defensive of her new friend.

Lana’s beautiful condominium in the Charles River Park building was perfect for entertaining: lots of space, sparsely but tastefully furnished, with a real bar. Weslee was impressed.

“How do you keep this thing stocked all the time?” she asked as she sipped ginger ale and Lana refilled a shot glass with something strong looking. Weslee had never been much of a drinker. Matter of fact, she never quite knew what to order when the wine list came or on the few occasions she had been out to bars with her co-workers back in Chicago. Ginger ale was her mainstay.

“Oh, my dad owns this place. His assistant takes care of all that stuff,” Lana chirped.

“Oh” was all Weslee could say as she mentally did the math. So in addition to a house in the New York suburbs, on the Vineyard, and in Manhattan, Lana’s father also owned this apartment. Must be nice, Weslee thought.

“Lana, I just love this place!” a girl giggled as she sipped one of the apple martinis that the bartender—one of Lana’s friends, a handsome guy Weslee did not recognize—had been making over the past half hour.

Lana basked in all the praise and attention. She was the perfect hostess, flirting with the guys and complimenting the women on their hair, their dress, anything that did the trick. She listened to the women talk about their boyfriends or lack of, gave advice, told funny stories, and charmed them. She flitted around the room in her tight little black dress that showed off her perfect little body, balanced on impossibly high heels. “Jimmy Choos,” she had told one of the girls who marveled at them.

It had been this way for a while. Lana had anointed herself social director by scheduling dinners, drinks, or baseball game outings every other day or so. Weslee went along to all of them admiringly, half-enviously. From her point of view, it was either go along or stay home alone. Boston seemed so unfriendly. Besides school, she had yet to meet another soul. The nights that she chose not to attend one of Lana’s social outings, she studied or watched TV idly, distractedly, longing for Michael or just any form of companionship. It was a strange feeling, the loneliness. At least in Chicago she could have buried herself in work, staying late at the office writing reports weeks and weeks before they were due. Or she could have spent time with her parents or with Terry and her twin children, Weslee’s niece and nephew. But Weslee had no one in Boston. No one to call to say “Let’s go see a movie” or “Let’s grab dinner.” She was totally alone.

But here, among her classmates and Lana’s friends, she felt as if she belonged somewhere—that she was not just a random person in a random city doing random things. At least she was part of a group. People knew her name, knew that she was the quiet introvert who had a quick wit once she loosened up and was the only “girl” in the class who could hang with the guys when it came to statistics. Yes, she was a part of them.

Lana was becoming louder and more effusive and flirtier with the quiet Kenyan who she had said was her date—nothing serious, she had explained to Weslee—with each sip she took out of her seemingly bottomless glass.

Weslee stood back in typical fashion and took it all in: the scene, the apartment. She loved the doors that led out to the terrace. She imagined that if she lived here she would sit out there at sunset and read every single night. She was about to make her way out there when she stopped herself.

No, she wouldn’t play the wallflower tonight.

She walked off to join the group of female class members who were gathered around Lana.

She was telling them another story about her travels. Lana, it seemed, had been everywhere, from Cape Horn to Oslo. It made her even more interesting. The story of how she mistakenly brought a stash of pot into the United States from the Netherlands was eliciting howls of laughter.

“ ‘Oh my God,’ I told the guy at the airport. ‘I didn’t know I still had that!’ ”

Weslee laughed with the other women, all of them under Lana’s spell, Weslee the only one to notice it was being cast but falling under it anyway.

She stayed behind after everyone had left, thinking Lana needed help cleaning up. She insisted on helping although Lana protested that the maid would come in the morning.

“Weslee, where are you from again?” Lana asked after they had finished putting away glasses, half-empty bottles of champagne, strange-colored drinks, and such. “I mean where you’re really from. Not Chicago.”

“I was born in Barbados, but my parents emigrated here when I was six.”

“Oh, I knew it,” Lana exclaimed. “Your facial features are definitely West Indian. I love the Caribbean. I spent a month in Barbados right after I finished college. My father knows the prime minister well. They’re such great people.”

Weslee was impressed, but that was short lived.

“My mother used to have a Bajan maid in our house on the Vineyard. But she’s in medical school now. Can you believe that? She’s forty-five years old and studying to become a doctor. That’s what I love about Caribbean immigrants. They’re not afraid to work hard, and they’re not ashamed that they had to start from the bottom.”

Weslee almost opened her mouth to protest what she detected as a veiled insult, but she couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the insult was in that statement.

“Anyway,” Lana continued, “we need to hang out more. I think we should team up on the statistics project.”

Weslee nodded, although she had already agreed to team up with two other people. “Maybe you can join Koji and Haraam and me on our team,” she offered.

Lana made a face. “You know, it’s really not a good idea to team up with people who are still struggling with English. When you do your oral presentations at the end of the term, they’re going to make you look really bad.”

Weslee was shocked at Lana’s ignorance and petty snobbery. “Koji and Haraam are two of the smartest students in the class,” she said, laughing so as not to offend Lana.

Lana shrugged. “You want a drink?”

“Actually I think I’m going to head home,” Weslee. . .