My Very Best Friend (10 page)

She falls in love with other men, one a book, but she never forgets the soul mate, in the almost two hundred years she racks up time traveling.

McKenzie Rae and I are radically different in a multitude of ways. McKenzie Rae is daring and brave. I like being home and frighten easily. McKenzie Rae is witty and funny. I am not sure I have a sense of humor. McKenzie Rae is outgoing and social. I like to be alone and I don’t like people much.

McKenzie Rae dresses in silks and high heels. She flashes her cleavage and butt. I prefer my long skirts, bulky sweaters to cover my body, and shoes that are flat and comfy.

McKenzie Rae is good in bed, passionate and free. She has
experience.

It’s embarrassing to admit how little va-va-vooming I’ve had in bed. I am probably a sexual dud.

McKenzie Rae would never need a vibrator named Dan, like me.

We do have one thing in common, though: McKenzie Rae has a soul mate she can’t have.

I have the same problem.

I understand her angst and longing.

I was married once. He was not my soul mate. It lasted two years. By the end of it, I felt shriveled, exhausted, and defeated. I was surprised and unprepared for what I found out about my husband. On one hand, it was devastating. On the other, it was not my fault. I realize that now. It sure hurt then.

I knew Toran knew about the divorce. Maybe I would talk about it with him.

If I had married Toran, that never would have happened.

Toran told me about two home remodelers named Stanley I and Stanley II. They were cousins. I called Stanley I from Toran’s and met both Stanley I and Stanley II at the house the next day. They were about forty-five and have been remodeling and building homes since they were nineteen.

Apparently Stanley I and Stanley II had mothers who were sisters who both wanted to name their children after their father. Neither one would back down. So, Stanley I and Stanley II were born. Stanley II was born one month after Stanley I.

Stanley II asked where I was from, and when I said an island off the coast of Washington, we talked about whales and migration. His knowledge about them was extensive. Stanley I had extensive knowledge about the American stock market. “A gamble, if you ask me, run fast and loose by gamblers and gangsters, sanctified by the American government.”

I knew we would be able to relate. They were smart, had ideas already about what to do with my home, and they were experienced, honest, and articulate.

I hired them and promised to get them a check. They would start immediately, but they couldn’t work this weekend. Stanley II’s daughter was getting married. “Got a temper that one, feisty as a tornado, fiancé is half deaf. I think it will work out because of the deafness, I do.”

“Maisie has her mother’s temper,” Stanley I said.

“And I have been married to that woman with that temper for twenty-five years.” Stanley II sighed.

“Must not have bothered you that much, as you have six kids,” I said.

“My woman, she does let the steam blow off of her when she has her feelings in a stew and a boil, but, to this day, I cannot say I have ever met a woman I wanted to be with more than my Serena.”

“Serena is a blessing, a true Scottish wife,” Stanley I said, nodding. “I’ve been married for twenty years, to my Isla. Five kids.”

“You two have a lot of kids,” I said.

“Too many,” they said together.

We all laughed.

“Any named Stanley?”

Yes, one boy each. Stanley III, Stanley IV.

Dear Charlotte,

I so enjoyed catching up with you when you came to get the key for your cottage. I also enjoyed showing you my garden and your mother’s goldenrod daisies and the honeysuckle vine while we had our tea. Please excuse my emotional response when I saw you, the tears that leapt unbidden to my eyes. It was a gift to see you again, to see the daughter of my friends, all grown up now.

I wanted to thank you for buying Olive Oliver ten chickens. That was certainly kind of you to do, though not necessary. I know that your parents would have done the same thing in this pickle, they being honorable people.

I saw Olive in town and she was infinitely pleased and surprised at your generosity. She said she tried to give five chickens back to you, but you insisted. Olive named them, as she probably shared with you, after flowers: Violet, Snapdragon, Daffodil, Rose, Begonia, Crocus, Dahlia, Marigold, Peach Blossom, and Tulip.

Intelligent and neighborly decision on your part. We now no longer have chicken wars in the village.

Olive said she’ll kill Tulip and send her over. Perhaps I will go to Gitanjali’s spice shop and buy spices and chat with Gitanjali about how to prepare Tulip. Do you know Gitanjali yet? I am (delicately) trying to get to know her better, as she is an intriguing woman.

So far I have bought twelve pounds of cardamom, four pounds of cinnamon, and two pounds of dill weed. Gitanjali gave me recipes to follow. I have filed them in a new recipe box I bought called Gitanjali’s Recipe Box for this particular purpose, but I have no clue how to cook.

Yours,

Chief Constable Ben Harris

A friend of your parents, may the choirs of angels accompany your father as he plays the bagpipes for Our Lord.

Dear Chief Constable Harris,

The pleasure of our visit was all mine. You are right, though. Seeing my mother’s goldenrod daisies and the honeysuckle vine did send the two of us down an unexpected emotional lane! Next time I will bring more tissues. I am glad we have reconnected, and I shall tell my mother in South Africa in my next letter to her.... I know she thought the world of you and Lila, as did my father.

I was happy to buy the chickens and have them delivered. I don’t want to be involved in any village chicken squabbles, and a chicken crime was committed.

I have met Gitanjali, and you are correct. I liked her. If I am not being too forward, perhaps you would like me to speak to Gitanjali when I see her at Garden Ladies Gobbling Gang and tell her what a long-term and loyal friend you were to my parents, that you are a man of character and integrity.

Yours,

Charlotte

Charlotte,

I would be most indebted to you if you could put in a word for me with Gitanjali. My intentions are honorable. I don’t want to offend her in any way or to step in a direction where she would not wish me to step. She is a gentle woman and I don’t want to alarm her. I am not a skilled man when it comes to dating. In fact, it confounds me. I am, currently, confounded.

I did, however, buy three pounds of curry powder today from her and two pounds of Indian gooseberry. She gave me more recipes to follow. I have no idea how to cook. I did file the recipes away in the Gitanjali’s Recipe Box.

Gratefully,

Chief Constable Ben Harris

A friend of your parents, may your father win all the events in heaven’s Scottish games.

Silver Cat showed up at Toran’s the next evening. Toran heard a meowing at the front door and opened it. Silver Cat limped in. He picked her up and cradled her against his chest. “Isn’t this the cat that was at your house?”

“Yes. That is. I didn’t know where she came from. There are a few houses down the road from us, I thought she might belong to them.”

“We’ll check. I’ll put up signs tomorrow.”

Silver Cat meowed. I meowed back, then Toran meowed.

I had a feeling we had a new cat.

5

“I want to take a shake of a lamb’s tail minute to welcome Charlotte Mackintosh to our St. Ambrose Ladies’ Gab, Garden, and Gobble Group,” Olive Oliver said, her white braid over her shoulder. Tonight she was wearing a knitted pink scarf with a frog with a long pink tongue. The frog looked inebriated. I don’t think it was intentional.

Seven women, including me, were in Olive’s living room, tea, cream, and sugar ready. Olive lived right outside of town, within walking distance, in a three-hundred-year-old stone home with her husband, their acreage, and animals behind the house. She had a rock wall in front of her house and white daisies surrounding the border. The home reminded me of Snow White’s.

Her husband was a carpenter. They had married ten years ago, and she made and sold scarves, which accounted for the dizzy white cat and the inebriated frog. Her business was called Lady Olive’s Scarves. She was an animal lover who believed, “Animals should be cherished until eaten.” In addition to her chickens, she had pigs, horses, and lambs. She did not eat the horses, she told me. “I won’t eat an animal I can ride.”

“Yes welcome . . . hello, Charlotte . . . nice to meet you, from the States then . . .” the women’s voices blended.

“Your grandma,” Rowena said, “told my own mother that she would become pregnant when two pies were baked and when the moon was full, but colored orange like fire. Sure enough, when Mr. Beacon’s barn burned down and turned the moon orange, my mother was pregnant with me and it was the same day she baked two pies: huckleberry and strawberry.”

Rowena has red hair and gold eyes and is bright and confident. She was wearing a funky necklace with a rock wrapped in silver wire. It was earthy. I liked it. Next to her I felt like a dull possum, but I couldn’t help but like her. I liked her when I was younger, too. She’s about five years older and was always nice to Bridget and me. Her family’s farm is down the road, which her elderly parents had sold to Toran.

When Rowena saw me she screamed and hugged me. I am not used to people getting excited to see me or long hugs. I was surprised to find that I became very emotional.

Which made Rowena yell, “For the love of God, Charlotte’s crying! For the love of God, I’m crying now, too.”

“Your grandma told me that when two birds collided, and a shot went through a foot, I would be free,” a blond woman named Kenna said. She’s a doctor. “When that horrible first husband of mine saw two birds collide in midair and fall, he thought that was so neat he accidentally shot himself in the foot and died of an infection, the buffoon. I was in medical school then. He used to slug me when we had a fight to ‘shut my trap shut.’ Said I was getting too uppity for him. When he had the infection he was even worse. He tossed my cat, broke its leg.”

I sucked in air, other people made equally angry noises. Cats are furry people and must be treated with respect.

“The cat tossing did it. I moved out.” Kenna smiled. “Too bad he died alone.”

“Too bad,” Olive drawled.

The other women nodded.

“It’s been years, but I still miss your grandma,” Kenna said.

“Me too.” I felt a pang in my heart. “My grandma died two years before my father. She told me she would die after the houses were flipped upside down, thousands of trees were on the ground like toothpicks, and the wind spun hell up from its grave. She died about two weeks after Hurricane Low Q.”

They all remembered Hurricane Low Q.

“I would love to see your mother again, prettiest woman in the village when she was here,” Rowena said. “I remember thinking that when I was a child.”

“Well,” a woman in her late fifties humphed. “She was
one
of the prettiest women here, in an
American
sort of way.”

I studied her. Grayish hair. Face set like a bulldog. Her upper body was normal sized, although she had ponderous boobs, but her hips sprawled. It seemed as if she had two bodies, one average sized sitting atop a lap spreading like packed oatmeal. She smiled with irritating condescension at me. “There were others who were as pretty, or prettier, everyone said so.”

“So you knew my mother, Ms.—” I paused and waited for her to fill in her name.

“
Mrs.
David Lester.”

As a feminist I fought not to roll my eyes back into my head. Why on earth would a woman identify herself by using her husband’s name, as if she is no one, only an appendage, like an octopus’s leg?

“Mrs. Lorna,” she emphasized. “Lorna Lester. And yes.” She squiggled her oatmeal butt in the chair. I could tell by her drawn, disapproving expression that she hadn’t liked my mother. “I did know Jasmine. Some. We didn’t socialize. We had different . . . friends.” She pursed her lips. “Her friends had different . . .
values
than myself.”

Ah. I got it. Let’s imply that my mother had poor values, in front of all these ladies. I studied Lorna Lester. I wasn’t surprised that my mother wasn’t friends with her. She wouldn’t have liked that patronizing, petty personality. My mother liked interesting, outgoing people with an edge. She was friends with prosecutors, professors, doctors, two strippers—one of whom was transgender and made the best banana pie ever—artists, writers, and two ex-cons who now run a floral shop. She was friends with other feminists and political activists, and with one member of the mob in Jersey.

“What would those different values be?” I asked.

Lorna made an impatient
pfft
sound and waved a hand, as if it was “nothing,” my mother
nothing.
“We were different . . . women. I valued my home life, and my husband and daughter.”

I heard Kenna, the doctor, groan and mutter, “Not again.”

Gitanjali murmured, “Unkind. Let us be gentle.”

“My mother didn’t value her daughter and husband?” I felt my temper rise. I am somewhat shy and socially insecure, but I am no doormat, and don’t mess with my mother.

“Well, your mother
worked.
”