Lila Blue (36 page)

Molly laughed at me. "I bet
Dante put that there," she said, offering an answer for the first W.

"But why?" I asked.

"Because he likes you, too,
silly. Come on." She pulled me away from the picture of me sweeping glass
and swept me out of the studio, across a lawn, into the big family house, and
up the stairs to Reba's room, where she was unpacking.

Reba looked like a smaller version
of her brother, including the brown freckles and short brown hair. She seemed
more serious than her brother at first glance, but she was probably tired from her
trip. Her violin case was in the middle of her bed surrounded by piles of jeans
and sweaters and underclothes.

"Was it cold there?" I
asked, wondering about all the sweaters.

"Hot," she said,
"but the practice rooms and concert halls were freezing."

"She was in Denver,"
Molly said, as if that made everything clear. I'd never been east of
California.

Molly and Reba talked about their
adventures since they had been apart and what they planned to wear the first
day of school. Only part of my mind was in the room with them. Another part was
with Dante and his father and the rest was stuck on that picture of me on their
bulletin board. Could the world actually be so mysterious and magical?

When Molly, Reba, and I returned to
the shop, Lila was helping Kitty Lynn decide which dishes to buy. Kitty was
buying new food and water dishes for Juliet, because she thought it was
insulting to feed her new best friend from plastic bowls.

"Juliet loves purple,"
Kitty Lynn said. "I think these two would be perfect." Juliet was
sitting patiently by her side, looking up at everyone with syrupy eyes. Kitty
put the two flat bowls on the floor side by side and Juliet sniffed each one
and looked up expectantly.

"I think she approves,"
Dante said, smiling at me over Kitty's shoulder.

"She's the boss," Kitty
Lynn said, and she laughed, picked up the dog, and hugged her like a baby while
Dante wrapped the dishes carefully in newspapers and fitted them in a brown
paper bag with handles.

The Pottery used a carved wooden
box with a hinged lid to hold their money. There was no cash register in sight.
They did take credit cards though, and Kitty paid with one.

Juliet was an all American success
story. She went from being an abused dog in a homeless shelter to a princess
who ate from expensive original artwork dishes in the blink of an eye, all
because someone saw her picture in the newspaper.

When we were leaving, Molly hugged
Dante and Reba, and the rest of us all smiled and bowed our goodbyes and headed
out. I wanted to say something more to Dante, but no words came, so I smiled at
him and received his smile in return.

Dante's smile was more eloquent
than any words could have been, and I closed my eyes in the car on the trip
home and saw him smiling at me again and again. If his smile felt this good,
what might his kisses feel like? Something told me I would find out one day,
and I shivered with anticipation.

We had to drive past the community
hall to get home from The Pottery. The council meeting was still going on, and
the parking lot overflowed with cars and trucks. A chartered bus was parked
nearby on the highway, and people spilled out of the open doors of the meeting
hall. I'd never seen so many vehicles all in one place since I'd been in
Oregon.

Lila laughed when she saw all the
activity. "Marta and Hank wanted a big turn out," she said.
"Their wish came true."

Molly asked to stop and see what
was happening, but Lila and Kitty Lynn wouldn't consider it.

Kitty said, "I need to get
Juliet home so she can try her new dishes." She kissed the top of Juliet's
head. "She's had so many changes in her life."

"Life is change," I said,
and then I laughed at myself because it was something Lila said to me when I
complained about things not staying the same.

Molly said, "Change is
life."

We all agreed that was just as
true.

Molly said, "Curtis taught me
about word equations, so now my brain won't leave them alone."

"Like what?" I asked.

"
Is
means
equals
,
so you can switch the sides of a sentence and it still has to be true,"
she said. "So God is love equals Love is God."

"Time is money equals Money is
time," I said. I recognized the word game Shakti and I played as a form of
word equations. Molly and I entertained each other that way until Lila dropped
them off and drove us home.

A few minutes after we got in the
door, Marge called to tell us about the meeting. The bus was from Portland, and
it was full of men from a gun club. Not one woman on the bus. The gun guys said
the community had no business discussing handgun restrictions and that whoever
organized the meeting was un-American. Every time someone from Rainbow Village
tried to talk, they had a long speech to put the person down, backed up by
research statistics from gun experts.

Hank stopped them after a while,
saying that only people who lived in the community could contribute to the
discussion, but they were ready for that. One of their members did have some
beach property here, so they gave him written speeches to read, and then they
booed and cheered loudly in response to anything local residents tried to say.
In a nutshell, the bus guys filibustered.

Finally Marta gave up trying to
talk and took pictures of everyone. There were news people from Portland, too,
so it was a circus. Like Marge, most residents gave up and went home. Any
chance of real discussion was impossible.

"What silliness," Lila
said after she got off the phone and told me the story. "That's what
happens when you shine the light on a can of worms."

"I'm so glad we were at The
Pottery," I said.

"Me too," Lila said.
"I always feel refreshed when I visit there, the way I imagine some people
feel when they've been to church. It's sacred space."

I thought about the picture of me
in the center of the bulletin board at The Pottery. "Lila, do you think my
picture in the Portland paper made the gun men come?"

"I don't know, Cassandra. Even
if it did, it doesn't have anything to do with you, not you as a person. You
didn't speak out against guns, you didn't shoot out any windows, you didn't
write a column or play with guns. It has nothing whatsoever to do with
you."

"Then how did my picture get
in the middle of it?"

"How does anything work out
the way it does?"

I laughed. "Grandma, I can see
where this is going."

"Where, then?" she asked.

I took a deep breath, smiled, bowed
Namaste to her and the cats who were spooned on her lap, and launched into her
philosophy statement. "All that's real is here and now, so right here and
right now, everything is beautiful. We're home. We're healthy. Life is
good."

"Nice job," she said,
laughing. "It sounds just as good coming from you as it does from
me."

"Better," I said,
"because I'm young to be so smart."

"And you're smart to be so young,"
she said, grinning at me.

My mind jumped up and ran away with
word equations until it wore itself out and I had to put it to bed.

The next morning, Lila was in the
kitchen getting ready to scramble eggs when someone knocked on our door. It
took me several moments after I opened the door to sort out that the woman in
the strange couple standing before me was my mother. Her hair was very short
and bleached blonde, in a spiky arrangement that made her look like a teenager.
She'd lost so much weight her bones looked sharp. There were dark circles under
her eyes, and she wore shapeless clothes and no makeup. Her favorite spike
heeled shoes were the only familiar things, and those were too big. I'd never
seen her look so sick, even the time she'd had walking pneumonia and had to be
hospitalized on my seventh birthday.

She stared at me too, trying to
register the changes in me, and then she stepped inside, threw her arms around
me, and said, "Sandy. Oh God. I was afraid I'd never see you again."

"Mom?" I stood there
letting her hug me, but I wanted to push her away, because she didn't smell
like my mother. She smelled of plain soap and underneath that a strong chemical
smell that seemed to come out of her skin, something acrid I wanted to pull
away from. I was afraid it would get on me and I'd never be able to get it off.

Lila came in then, and she must
have quickly figured out what was going on, because she said, "Janice.
Here, come in. You're just in time for breakfast." She introduced herself
to the man.

"Roger Hillmen," he said.
"We drove all night."

Janice hugged me as though she was sinking
and I was the only thing she had to hang on to. I felt terrible about it, but I
wanted to get away from her. She smelled horrid, worse than sick, worse than
dirty. Lila rescued me by putting her arms around us both and leading us over
to the couch. She held Janice’s hands, pulled her down to the couch, and sat
beside her.

"Cassandra," she said to
me, "Get your mother the afghan from the foot of my bed. She's chilled
from the fog."

I did as she said, and Lila draped
the afghan around Janice's neck and shoulders, making her look exactly like a
refugee waif. Lila sat close to my mother's left side, holding her hands and
letting Janice lean into her body for support.

I went to the bathroom and scrubbed
my arms and face where my mother had touched me. After I felt better, I went to
the kitchen, poured coffee for Roger and Janice, and took it to them.

Roger took the cup I offered him
and smiled. He was an extra large man, tall and broad, with short salt and
pepper hair. He wore a crisp, long sleeved dress shirt and jeans. In contrast
to my mother, Roger was super clean and healthy looking.

I put Janice's coffee cup on the
table in front of the window, because Lila was still holding my mother's hands,
giving her someone to hang on to. Janice didn't look at me. She stared at her
hands in Lila's, seemingly unaware of anything else in the room. I wondered if
she was using a drug that blocked out everything in her peripheral vision, like
me.

I stood silently near her for a
moment, and when she didn't acknowledge me, I knew my forgiveness practice had
been working, because my heart filled with compassion for this sick, frightened
little sister who was my mother. I bowed a silent Namaste to her, then returned
to the kitchen to make more coffee and prepare breakfast for our guests.

I put out more placemats and dishes
and started making biscuits. The adults didn't need me in the living room, and
baking was a way I could calm myself and recover from the shock of seeing my
mother so ill.

While I worked I heard Lila
patiently extracting the story of how they got to our house. I listened as one
would listen to a television program in another room, with part of my
attention, detached, as if their story didn't involve me.

Janice had gone to Mexico with the
man who had offered her a job, but it was a scam. When she realized she was in
trouble, she managed to get back to California and go on a terrible binge.
Someone found her passed out in a parking lot, and she ended up in the
hospital.

She tried calling her mom, her
sisters, and us, but no one answered, so she called Roger.

"I told her I'd only help if
she wanted to get sober," he told Lila.

"A true friend," I heard
Lila say to him.

He thanked her and went on.
"I'm driving her to Seattle. It was the only rehab place I could find that
would admit her today. They had a cancellation and said if we could get there
by tonight, they'd take her."

"If Sandy could stay with you
until I get better?" I heard Janice ask.

"Yes," Lila said.
"This is her home as long as she wants to stay."

"I didn't bring the
papers," Janice said.

"Don't worry," Lila said.
"We can take care of the details later."

Roger said, "I'm headed back
to California tomorrow, so I can mail things from Sacramento..."

"And money," Janice said
without waiting for him to finish. "It's really expensive. I'll pay it all
back. I promise."

"Yes," Lila said.
"I'll give you the money. You can pay me back when you are healthy. Don't
worry. There's plenty of time."

"Thank you, Lila," Janice
said. "I feel bad I can't take care of Sandy." She laughed weakly.
"I can't take care of myself right now."

"You'll heal," Lila said.
"You are among friends, and you will heal. I know you will. You have a
long, beautiful life ahead of you."

"Do you really see that,
Lila?" Janice asked. "My future?"

"Yes! I see your beautiful
life waiting for you. Better than you can imagine. All you have to do is get
well. Don't worry. Everything is fine." The conversation in the living
room paused on that hope filled note.

I put the pan of biscuits in the
hot oven, turned on the timer, and put jam, honey, and butter on the table. If
Janice felt like eating, I thought she might want honey on her biscuits.

I went to the archway between the
kitchen and the living room and looked at my mother. She was crying and hugging
Lila. Beyond them outside the picture window, breaking through the fog,
sunlight flashed sudden brief rainbows. When I looked at my mother, I imagined
not only Lila comforting her, but also, surrounding them, a host of nearly
visible saints and angels. The whole world was shining light on my mother.

Lila had been right. My mother
wasn't lost. She found us. And she was on her way to a safe place where she
could begin her healing season. She was not lost and she was not alone. She
found Lila, and Lila's love and support could work miracles. I was living proof
of that.

Roger leaned back, stretched out
his legs, and crossed his ankles. His left arm lay across the top of the couch
toward Janice, but he didn't touch her. He stared outside where the seagulls
had started their morning commute south. The rainbow sunlight had dissipated
the fog enough so large areas of beach flowed in and out of visibility. In some
places I could see foamy waves rolling onto sand, again and again, endlessly.