I've Got Sand In All the Wrong Places (9 page)

I don't have that many inhibitions to start with, and for me, liquor only makes things worse.

Or better.

I buy too much in the big-box store when I'm sober, but if I shop while I'm drinking, I'll shop until I drop.

Or until I drip.

Or both.

I might buy EVERYTHING.

Whether you think drinking-while-you-shop is a good thing depends on whether you're the massive corporation that owns the big-box stores or my retirement fund.

Either way, I'm in.

It certainly improves people's attitudes about running their errands on the weekends, if they can do them beer in hand.

It changes your Things To Do list into a Things to Drink list.

I'm wondering if the shopping carts will have cupholders in the shape of wineglasses or maybe tiny ones small enough to hold a shot glass.

Shot! Shot! Shot!

Shop! Shop! Shop!

But what happens when people start drinking while they're driving those scooters in the store?

I foresee major collisions.

It brings a whole new meaning to, “Pick up in aisle four.”

Employees will come with a broom.

And a Breathalyzer.

 

I Saw the Sign

Lisa

We're coming up on the anniversary of Mother Mary's passing.

But this isn't going to be sad.

Nobody hated sob stories more than Mother Mary.

You know her well enough to agree, if you've read the stories that Francesca and I have been writing about her for the past six years, in the newspaper and our books.

You may even have met her, if you came to one of our signings, where she was happy to monopolize the microphone.

I was delighted to have her at signings, because she did a hell of a job.

Also the price was right.

She told every family secret there was to tell, and when she ran out, she made them up.

In other words, it's in my DNA to write fiction.

She also dressed better than Francesca and me, standing out in her lab coat like a geriatric Doogie Howser.

She often brought her backscratcher to the signings and hit me with it, for effect. Otherwise she used it to scratch her back in front of the crowd.

We Scottolines don't always confine our personal grooming to the house.

I could go on and on, saying things I remember about her, and those of you who have lost family members could do the same, about your loved ones who are no longer with us, in a physical sense.

You don't need me to tell you that they are always with us, in spirit.

And in fact, what's great to remember about Mother Mary
is
her spirit.

I always loved the story about the time I made her fly north to avoid a major hurricane heading for Florida. When she got off the plane, she was approached by a reporter who was interviewing people about the hurricane. The reporter came up to her, asking, “Did you come north because you're afraid of the hurricane?”

Mother Mary replied, “I'm not afraid of a hurricane. I
am
a hurricane.”

This story is especially relevant because of something I've noticed in the time since she's been gone.

Because I think she sent me a sign.

Have you seen a sign?

I've talked to my friends who have lost family members, and many of them think that their family member has sent them a sign from beyond, or wherever we go when we're not hanging around the kitchen anymore, standing in front of the refrigerator looking for something to eat.

One of my friends says that when she sees a monarch butterfly, she knows it's a sign from her late mother, who loved monarch butterflies. Another friend of mine thinks that a double rainbow is a sign from her late father, who loved double rainbows.

Even famous people see signs.

I heard Paul McCartney give an interview, wherein he said that after he lost his beloved wife Linda, he sat on a hill at night and asked for a sign from her about whether he should remarry. An owl hooted, and Paul decided that it was the go-ahead, so he married Heather Mills.

Whom he later divorced at a cost of $48 million.

After the Paul McCartney story, I started to be skeptical about signs from the departed.

I mean, come on, Paul.

Owls hoot at night.

But here's the sign I think I got from Mother Mary, and you tell me if I'm crazy.

Because it's a sign that only she could send.

Let's go back for a moment, to the day of her memorial service, which was very sad. It was a small and tasteful ceremony, but everybody was predictably teary, and that day, it was raining.

In fact, it was raining very hard.

It was raining almost hurricane-hard.

And after the service, we came home to my house, and it had rained so hard that my entrance hall was flooded.

I'm not talking about one or two inches of water.

I'm talking about four inches of water, so much that wet rugs had to be removed and you had to wade through it to get to the front door.

The water had evidently come in under the front door of the entrance hall, but that had never happened before.

And dear reader, it never happened again.

In fact, it hasn't happened in the entire time, since the day of her funeral.

Recall that since, we've experienced very hard rains, very hard snows, and sometimes a little of both.

At the same time.

In other words, there's been major weather.

But my entrance hall never flooded again.

Not even a drop.

And so I think it's a sign.

Mother Mary wasn't the type to send butterflies, rainbows, or hoot owls.

Hurricane Mary sent a hurricane.

And so we wouldn't miss it, she put it in front of the front door.

That was Mother Mary.

She was a force of nature.

And she still is, eternally.

Now I'm a believer.

Love you, Mom.

You owe me a rug.

 

Incident Report

Francesca

This book is meant to be fun, but it's also about life's real moments, light and dark. This summer included one of the darkest experiences of my life, when I was assaulted and mugged. The events of that night and their repercussions were difficult to process. I've learned that trauma has to metabolize and be absorbed into your emotional system. My recovery has been full of contradictions, revealed in stages through time and self-reflection. So, I think the only accurate way for me to write about it is in pieces.

This piece is about what happened that night, the way I see it when my mind replays it, and it replays it often, with some moments in great sensory detail and other moments of infuriating blackness. If you are upset by violent crime, you may wish to skip this chapter.

After something bad happens, it's deceptively easy to retrace your decisions and wish you had made them differently. I wish I had left the party early with my friend who had a cold. I wish I had taken a cab home like I had intended. I wish I had asked one of the two guy friends I had ridden the subway with to walk me to my door instead of only accompanying me to my stop. I wish I had turned down any other street but that one.

But none of these choices were mistakes or imprudent in their own right. They were just the choices I made before someone hurt me.

I remember the rain splashing on the top steps of the Christopher Street subway stop as I emerged a little after 1
A.M.
, and wishing I had insisted my friends share a cab because this rain would ruin my new leather moccasins.

I hurried down the sidewalk on the balls of my feet, jumping over puddles and the rivulets of rainwater flowing toward the gutters.

I remember seeing a rat but not startling, and thinking that was brave of me.

I am not a girl easily frightened.

I had no idea that was to be tested at the very next turn.

I took a left down the street that I live on, two short blocks from home. I had my umbrella open, a thin shield of pink blocking my peripheral vision. But maybe I wouldn't have seen him anyway.

I felt a body slam into mine and an arm pull across my neck. We collapsed together on the ground, my back flat on the sidewalk. Somehow my head didn't hit the concrete, I guess because he was choking me from behind.

There was no thought but the primal knowledge that I had to get off my back. I used all my adrenaline to somehow break from his grasp and hurl myself forward onto my hands and knees.

I started to crawl away, the sensation of freedom gave me hope, but he was back on me before I had crossed a sidewalk square. He swarmed me with his body, I felt his arms all over me like an octopus, and I knelt in the tightest ball to protect myself, all the while screaming as loud as I possibly could.

I surprised myself with my own volume. I told myself I only had to resist long enough before someone came to help. But as the seconds ticked by in my brain, I realized waiting was not a survival strategy.

He got hold of me and tried to pull me toward the street. Feeling my bare knees scraping even an inch shot panic through me—I could not let him move me anywhere, least of all toward a car.

I threw my arms out onto the sidewalk, straining at one point for the small fence around a tree but unable to reach it, instead digging my fingernails into the sidewalk. I believed my life depended on my ability to stay exactly where I was.

He stopped pulling me, and again, I experienced a split second of relief—another tiny victory my spirit clung to so that I would keep fighting—before he kicked me under my chin. The impact under my jaw came as a shock. The shock made me slow to interpret the next sensation: a chain pulling taut around my waist.

My purse.

My purse?

My purse!

True elation as I realized I had a bargaining chip, something my attacker wanted that I was actually willing to give.

But it was a cross-body bag, now somewhere near the ground, tangled around my limbs, not readily coming loose when he yanked on it. He must have thought I was resisting, or maybe he was driven mad with frustration, or anger, or fear. I can only speculate as to his emotion that made the violence escalate.

Because before I could do anything, he started hitting me, hard. I think with his fists, I'm not sure. But he hit me again and again and again. Pummeled is a better word. On my head and neck and shoulders, but the most on my head. My skull rattled with every blow, whipping my cervical spine, crushing my tongue between my teeth.

Another clear thought materialized in my battered brain:

You have to figure out a way to make this stop fast, or one of these blows will cave your head in.

I had been protecting my face with my hands as much as I could, but I realized that finding the bag was my only chance for getting rid of him. I lowered my hands to feel for the purse chain. This was when he got his best shots in.

He hit me square on my right brow. Light exploded behind my squeezed-shut eyes.

Keep feeling for it.

Again, under my right eye, snapping my head to the left.

I felt the cool metal, closed my fist around it, but now I had to lift it over my head.

Again, in the center of my forehead, hard enough to send my head ricocheting backwards on my neck, hopefully hard enough to hurt his hand.

But I'd done it. I got the chain over my head and shoved the bag in his direction.

He bolted one way and I scrambled to my feet and ran the other. I didn't dare look over my shoulder until I was halfway down the street. By the time I turned around, he had disappeared.

My glasses were long gone, and the world was a bleary mess of dark shadows and orange streetlight. The relief of the attack being over hadn't hit me yet. Instead, the fear that I'd suppressed in order to survive came crashing over me at once.

I screamed a final time and the sound echoed down the street, ringing in my ears as if it weren't coming from my own body.

She sounded terrified and fierce.

 

Laugh at My Pain

Francesca

They say that tragedy plus time equals comedy. But the night I was assaulted, I found, through virtue of shock, divine intervention, or head trauma, I was able to appreciate the humor in a terrible situation while it was happening.

Well, not when the assault itself was happening. That wasn't that funny. So let's skip that part:

[Intermission music while a bad thing happens.]

Fast-forward to my attacker running away with my bag and me screaming loud enough to make people living in thirteen-million-dollar town houses feel like they need more gentrification.

A group of about six young people heard me and came running to help. A blond woman led the pack. “We heard you, are you okay? What happened?”

“I'm fine, I'm fine,” I said.

In retrospect, a pretty inaccurate self-assessment. But when you think you might die, and then you end up not dead, anything short of a gunshot wound is “fine.”

I told them what happened, that I needed help finding my glasses, and I needed someone to call the police. They were incredibly helpful, somehow finding my glasses in the wet leaves. I put them on my face.

The world looked dirty, squashed, and very crooked, but that seemed appropriate.

“My friend is calling 911 now. Do you want to use my phone to call someone else, maybe your mom?”

“No way,” I answered. “I have to calm down first.”

While we waited, the blond girl introduced herself, which was so nice and normal, it actually did calm me down. Then she asked something very sweet: “Can I give you a hug?”

Boy, did I need one. The girl's name was Natalie. I only wish I had gotten her last name so I could find her and thank her.

In the next minute, the police car pulled up. The officer rolled down the window and shouted, “Get in the back, we're going to look for him!”

I hopped in like an obedient dog.

I had never been in the back of a police vehicle before. My first thought, for real?