Back to Life (2 page)

“How can you be anal-retentive about chowing down a tub of frosting? You’re after me for wanting to clean?”

“It’s a gift.” Haley motions toward the window. “Like the gift you have for organizing things and wanting to clean is different from having your shoes thrown on your closet floor. We’re all dichotomies.”

“That’s all I’ve done for the last year is organize things. Organize the funeral, organize the bank statements, organize Ron’s closet, organize charities to pick up his things. I’m sick of organizing.”

“That’s a start. Quit organizing things.”

“Spoken by the woman who is having
me
organize her groom’s gift and wedding favors.”

“Well, but that’s fun organizing.”

“All organizing is fun organizing.”

Her lighthearted tone changes. “So if you had one wish, Lindsay. One dream. What would it be?”

I think about the monumental moments of my life and I’m filled with regret. A Christian shouldn’t be filled with regrets, but focused on the heavenly realms and what lies ahead. Which is why I feel so horribly guilty over my answer. “I wish I could start over. I wish I could take everything I’ve done wrong back and have a do-over.”

“So do it. Erase your history and start again. Jesus gives you a do-over in heaven. Why not start here?”

I feel hope well up inside me for the first time in years. A do-over. That’s exactly what I need. “Where would I start?”

“Maybe something as simple as changing the routines you’ve become stuck in.”

“What’s wrong with my routines?” I cross my arms, thinking about scrubbing down the showers on Monday. How does one simply change that to Tuesday without a domino effect? When would I vacuum the living room if not on Tuesday?

Haley shakes her head. “You can’t change anything if you keep the same routines.”

She’s got a point. “I scrub the showers on Monday.”

“Showers? Lindsay, you’re one person. Why do you need to scrub all the showers on Monday?”

“It’s what my mother always did.”

“It’s a good start. Scrub your shower only on Monday. Let the other ones go.”

“One day, you’re not scrubbing the shower; the next day, the short-sleeved shirts are hanging with the long-sleeved ones and it’s absolute chaos!” I’m only half-kidding.

Haley opens her mouth. “No, I’m not even going to respond to that. The very fact that you said that scares me. So let’s shop now—otherwise you’ll be polishing the silver before we go.”

Haley peeks out the window. “They’re fascinated by you, you know. Your neighbors and their cats. That clean aroma coming from
here probably makes them uncomfortable. Like garlic.” She giggles. “Maybe if you wore little spray cans of Lysol around your neck, they’d want to move. WAALAAH! Instant turnover.”

“Would you cut it out? It’s
voilà!
It’s French.”

“Whatever. I’m Haley, have we met? I’m American, and I shop at Old Navy and watch bad television. My French is a little rusty.”

I sigh. Haley is not as simple as she thinks. She was married to one of Hollywood’s richest producers and ran his soirées with little trouble—that is, until she turned of age (twenty-eight). Like a leased Mercedes, he turned her in for a new model. Haley only pretends to be simple when it suits her. She remembers the neighbors even if she plays innocent. “The women here are not that bad, you know. You just have to get to know them. Mrs. Davenport was just telling me last night that—”

“Mrs. Davenport? You talk to them? They would scurry in their places at the very sight of me when I lived here.”

I shrug. “Sometimes I talk to them. They’re my neighbors.”

“She was married? Which one is she? The one with the brunette wig that doesn’t fit?” Haley cups her eyes at the window and peers outside, but she quickly backs away. No doubt, she found someone peering back at her.

“See? I told you it was creepy.”

Haley closes the curtains and turns around. “You must live a more interesting life. They didn’t do that when I was here. Let’s get out of here already.”

I am not having this conversation. “Where are we going for dresses?”

Haley lowers her voice. “Remember, Linds—there’s a difference between organizing and controlling. I want you to help me find a dress. I don’t want you to bulldoze me. I am not spending a fortune on a gown.”

“I’m not controlling you! I just want you to get the best. You deserve the best.” I can understand though. Haley has an ex-husband who would make Cinderella think twice about marriage.

“I’m still buying off the rack,” she deadpans, as though she’s winning something for herself.

“Fine. Maybe we can find a flour sack at Whole Foods and add sequins.”

“You think?”

I grab my sweater out of the closet and reach for the doorknob when the bell rings. “Who could that be?” I ask.

“Maybe someone needs a cup of gizzards.”

Opening the door, there’s a middle-aged woman standing on my stoop. She’s pretty, but in that funky, Berkeley kind of way, with a multicolored tunic and flowing, crushed-cotton slacks. Definitely not from around here, because she looks her age, which I would guestimate as near fifty. She’s standing beside a very large suitcase and a cat carrier. I bend over and see there’s a cat inside. Just what this complex needs.

“Can I help you?”
The mother ship? Your cat people?

She looks down at an envelope and then back up at me. She has bright, blue eyes and perfect cheekbones, although her face is lined from the sun and she definitely comes from a place with a serious lack of sunscreen. “Lindsay Brindle?”

“That’s me. Am I being served with something? Because I’ve never actually seen a lawsuit arrive with a kitty cat.” I try to keep my voice light, but her presence brings a foreboding that I can’t put my finger on—and I don’t believe the cat is a good omen.

She laughs. “Heavens, no. I’m…” She clutches the envelope and sucks in a deep breath. “I’m Jane Dawson.” She shoves the envelope into an oversized (read: cheap) canvas bag and reaches her hand out toward me. “Jane
Brindle
Dawson.”

I feel my head sway from side to side. And I’m dizzy.
It can’t be.
I hold my hand up to the doorjamb to steady myself and let my eyes take her in fully. Now that I know her identity, Jane appears more beautiful than she was five minutes ago, more worldly and intelligent. Capable and self-reliant. Jealously surges through me.

Suddenly, her appearance at my door is beginning to make sense. “You’re the unnamed executor of the will?”

She nods slowly. The one woman with the ability to unravel my life, and she’s here on my doorstep with a cat. It’s a sign, I tell you. At least now I have proof. There can be no question that this is divine penance. The cats are God’s vultures, circling and waiting for my time to come.

I married for security. Now, my husband is gone, and so is any hope I had in being secure—and to make matters worse, this message comes to me courtesy of yet another cat.

A do-over.
As if.

Jane

S
he’s barely more than a waif, and I ponder if there’s enough meat on her bones to allow her to float in a swimming pool, or would she sink like a lithe pebble. I never doubted that Ron would find someone easy to maneuver—someone he might rein in with a simple tug—but I did have faith he’d try to make more of an effort to withstand appearances. This girl is barely grown. She’s shaky and nervous and on those itty-bitty, lanky legs. She’s like a shivering Chihuahua, yapping at my heels with all her ineffective might. I’m certain she was everything Ron wanted her to be. Everything it wasn’t possible for me to be. Or
any
woman over thirty to be. Ron always did see women like a fine, grapevine—train them as they grow.

He purchased her allegiance, and it was money well-spent, as her adherence to his rules seems unflappable. He said she was tall, and she is that, but her length is lost in the fact that she’s so in
sanely skinny.
Muy flaco
, as we would say at home. In Mexico, the men like their women with a little meat on their bones. A little junk in the trunk, as my friends would say. This emaciated look is unknown, unless someone has a tapeworm, and it’s certainly not celebrated like here in Los Angeles. It’s funny how times change. A suntan used to be the sign of a field hand; now it’s a sign of leisure. The bony look was used to advertise feeding the hungry; today, it’s hard to tell the difference between a World Vision ad and a copy of
Vogue
.

The last time my thighs were as small as hers…scratch that, I don’t think my thighs were ever that small. The last time my
arms
were as slender as her thighs was back sometime near the era of John Travolta’s
Stayin’ Alive
.

I don’t know what Lindsay has to be upset about. She’s the one who looks like a million and probably inherited many more with Ron’s estate. So she had to wait a year for me to get here. No doubt she can postpone her spa treatments and shopping as we get this taken care of. I’m just the ex doing all the work so she won’t get her precious, manicured hands dirty and if she were more than a child, she could appreciate that fact. But I refuse to sink to her adolescent ways. It’s clear I’m going to have to be the adult here.

“I’m the resident artist in Campeche.” She looks at me questioningly. “Campeche, Mexico.”

“I don’t understand. They don’t have mail in Mexico?”

“I’ve been on sabbatical. I take tourists on hiking and painting excursions. Somehow, this information and I kept missing each other. You have a right to question my presence, but I can assure you, I barely understand it myself.”

“We had to hire an investigator to find you.” She thins her eyes warily. It’s like having Shirley Temple stare threateningly, and the desired effect is lost.

I can’t help myself as a snicker bubbles over. I never was good in decent society, and apparently that hasn’t changed. Being an artist, I’m loved for being quirky in Mexico. Here, it’s viewed as a transmittable disease.

“Like I said, I’d been on sabbatical.”

“From what? I thought you lived in the middle of nowhere. Is something funny?” Lindsay asks.

I flatten my lips and bite on them to keep another inappropriate grin from growing. “Nervous energy. Terribly sorry. It’s been a long trip and—”

Ron Brindle made half my life miserable by “rescuing” me, and now he’s determined to put a serious crimp in the second half. These are supposed to be my golden years—the self-indulgent, lacking-in-serious-responsibility age. Executor of a trust is a serious responsibility, especially when there’s a nipping, yappy widow at my heels. I rub my temples, not really having the energy to explain my presence in full to this blond child. I never understood Ron in life—why would death make him more reasonable to me?

Lindsay knows a different Ron than I did, and I have to be careful how I frame this, so as not to harm his carefully constructed legacy. No sense in ruining her memories of a man she clearly adores and is now dead, but whoever said, “Dead men tell no tales,” didn’t know my ex-husband. Ron took a lot with him to the grave, and it’s up to me to keep it buried, I would guess. Otherwise, why leave me with the burden of his will?

“I shouldn’t be in California but maybe two weeks, Lindsay. That should give me time to clear everything up, and then you can move forward with life. It’s just my signature needed on a few things, I’m certain.” But as I think about the bulging envelope given to me by the lawyer’s office, I’m sure Ron probably made things more difficult than they needed to be. He had his motive, after all.

Saving his brother from life’s consequences probably seemed a good idea at the time, as did rescuing his current wife from doing the hard work. Neither rescue attempt worked—that’s the irony of it all.
Ron and his Superman complex.

Lindsay blinks those wide, blue eyes at me, giving me more power than I deserve. I’m telling you, I could kill him. It’s a good thing he’s already dead.

“Hamilton told you I was coming, I assume?” I ask her.

“Hamilton?” the other blonde perks up.

“Haley is marrying Hamilton,” Lindsay explains. “We were just on our way out to shop for her wedding dress. Another two minutes and you might have missed us.”

Interesting.
I’ve been gone for nearly two decades and not a thing changes. There’s an endless supply of new blondes and lots of tired, old men waiting to rescue them. Although I’ve never met Hamilton in person, maybe he’s an exception. I highly doubt that, though.

“In any event,” Lindsay says with a set chin, as if she’s channeling her mature self, “Hamilton didn’t tell me you were coming. He told me only that he’d made contact with the executor through the investigator, and now, here you are with a suitcase. And a
cat
.” She says the last word with an emphasis on the vowel. A long emphasis that makes no bones about her thoughts on felines. “I’ll just call him.” She whips out a cell phone and hands it to Haley, who punches in the number. Old moves from their cheerleading days obviously coming in handy.

“Hamilton? Hi, baby, it’s me. Lindsay has a question for you…I know, I love you, too, sweetie…Yes, we’re going shopping soon. I will. I’ll pick the most beautiful dress ever…”

Lindsay grabs the phone, and I think she’s more perturbed by the sickening conversation than I am. “Hamilton, there’s someone here saying they’re the executor of Ron’s will…yes…uh-huh…no…
all right, thanks.” She narrows her eyes again, not unlike a Gila monster back home. “He says you were expected, and his secretary gave you what you needed. He got busy on a case and forgot to call.” She looks down and then back up to meet my eyes. “Do what you have to do. Haley and I are going shopping.”

No doubt what they do best.

I feel the walls closing in on me. Being in America is hard enough. Being in L.A. is enough to drive anyone insane. “I take it you’re not a big fan?”

“Of you or the cat?” she asks, and I see a little of her claws. She probably held herself fairly well against Ron, but she’s got no beef with me. I wish I could make her understand that. I want out of here probably worse than she wants me out of here.

“I’ll just go straight to the hotel.”

“Just stay here. Honestly, what hotel in L.A. is going to take the cat, anyway?” Lindsay offers and I can tell there isn’t a sincere syllable in her invitation, but she’s obviously been taught her role of hostess and does as she is supposed to, without regards for her true feelings. I remember when I was just like her.

“Lindsay, that’s very sweet of you, but I’m perfectly comfortable in a hotel, and there are many that are animal-friendly these days.”

“They’re dog-friendly,” Lindsay says. “No one likes cats.”

“Perhaps you’ll let me peruse a phone book then, and I’ll find her a kitty hotel. Many vets have them on-site.”

She rolls her eyes and walks to the kitchen. Soon, she comes back with a telephone book the size of a Mayan temple. She slams it on the table, but as I reach for it, she picks it up again.

“No. I can’t let you stay in a hotel. Ron wouldn’t have appreciated that. The guest bedroom is down the hall, and the quicker this is over, the better.”

“I know my presence can’t be the best way to start your day and
I appreciate not having to schlep around for a hotel.” I smile at her. She’s too young and naïve to know the gift she’s been given—the second chance at life. I want to gift wrap her future, tie it with a nice, pretty bow, and push her out onto the doorstep:
Off with you now. Fly. Be free!
“My goal is to get out of your way as soon as possible and let you move on with your future. It’s open to you now.”

She plunks a fist where her hip should be. “I’m a thirty-five-year-old widow. I live with eighty-year-old women and four hundred cats. My future isn’t looking extremely bright at the moment. You’ll forgive me if I lack enthusiasm,” she snaps.

“No, of course it isn’t.” I offer gently, but inwardly, I think,
Great, a drama queen
. Just what I need to make things easy. Is it really possible for a man’s first wife to say something that the second wife will be happy with? Women are odd creatures. I imagine that’s why I spent most of my life around men. She’s determined to get into some competitive battle with me, and there’s no making her see I’m not even in the race. I pull in my suitcase and the cat into the foyer. “This is Kulkucan.” The both stare at me open-eyed, obviously unfamiliar with Mexican history. “He’s named after the Mayan god.” Again with the empty stares.
This city has absolutely no culture beyond what
Entertainment Tonight
features
. “Quetzalcoatl?” I ask, hoping to see something register.

Lindsay shakes her head. “Whatever. It’s a cat. It can stay in the laundry room down the hall. Your room is that way, too, though I haven’t made the beds. I wasn’t expecting houseguests.”

“That’s fine. Before you go, I just need a few things from Ron’s desk. If you’ll just point me in the right direction.” I pull out the folder. “It says here in the attic storage above his office.”

“His office was at the other house, but the desk isn’t there.”

“Ron said in his letter he has something to leave to Ron Jr. in his desk. If you’ll just tell me where that is, I’ll be out of here when I
have all the paperwork in one place.” I hold up the key that Hamilton’s office sent with the letter.

“Ron Jr.?” Lindsay sputters.

Uh-oh. Open mouth, insert foot.
“It’s not what you think.” Both of them start to walk toward me, and I feel the hair on the back of my neck bristle.

She blanches as easily as white asparagus. “It sounds like Ron had a son I never knew about. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“No, that’s not what I’m telling you. It’s a complicated story, but it’s not what you think.” I say nothing more. I could kill Ron for his stupid suggestion, and why I didn’t change my son’s name in Mexico is beyond me. I suppose because he’s not a cat—once his name was set, I could hardly go calling him Barney now, could I? Hindsight is, in fact, twenty-twenty. Ron did have a powerful way of getting exactly what he wanted, and—here’s the beauty part—he made you believe it was your idea all along. He wore charm like a silk shirt.

Lindsay’s face contorts, and it’s clear her loyalty to Ron is more tentative than she lets on. “Then who is Ron Jr.?” She doesn’t even try to hide the animosity from me. There is so much venom, I fear she might snap at me like a provoked, eyelash pit viper. Incidentally, they don’t need much provocation.

“He’s my son,” I repeat. “Just let it lie.”

“Your son alone? How is that possible, exactly, that another man lets you name his son after someone else?”

“Ron protected my son and me. You haven’t heard this story?”

She shakes her head.

I let my eyes wither shut at the admission. How could I just blurt that out? I’ve spent thirty years hiding this secret with absolutely no issues. I come in here, and it’s as though I’m in a Catholic confessional, looking for absolution. “I’d appreciate it, Lindsay, if we could
respect each other’s privacy. You don’t have to know everything. This isn’t about you. I’m sure you have secrets of your own that you’d just as soon keep to yourself.”

Haley walks toward me, giving me her best, tough-blond look—which is more comical than Lindsay’s. “Listen, this is hard on Lindsay, and I don’t want her hurt anymore. Where is your son?”

Their blue-eyed gazes would bore a hole in me if I stayed put, so I start to pace. “He’s my son.” I look up to see a well of tears in Lindsay’s eyes. “
Only
my son. I’ve given you more explanation than anyone else in my life has ever asked for, including my mother! He lives here in L.A. and he’s comfortable with the notion that his father isn’t in his life.” They both want more, but what am I supposed to say?
Oh, back in the day…it was after the sixties, what can I say? Free love—and then, the harsh realization that there ain’t no such thing.
“Ron Jr. just assumes his father and I did what was best for him. Which I did, so if you ever meet Ron Jr., I would appreciate it if you allowed him to—”

“You want me to lie for you?” Lindsay asks.

Already, I am stone-cold tired of how much work a conversation in this forsaken place is. No one takes you at your word; no one thinks anything about barging into your personal business. This is a town raised on tabloids, and it shows!

“No, let’s forget we had this conversation. You two run along and go about your business. I’ve probably upset your whole day. If you direct me to the desk, I’ll be out of your way.” She’s right, of course. Pixie thing that she is. She knows it’s wrong to lie for a stranger. She’s not stupid, but then I guess she thinks I have some kind of power over her, and she’s going to do her best to exert what she’s got. But asking a complete stranger to lie for me in the first five minutes I’ve met her—it’s just not like me, and I add one more reason I can’t stand the States. I am someone else here. Someone
I don’t like at all. But there’s one thing I did right in my life and that’s Ron Jr. and he is worth every continuous battle. I’ll just have to make certain that Lindsay and Ron, Jr. never meet.