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Authors: Cathy Lamb

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BOOK: The First Day of the Rest of My Life
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“That would be very bad. Do you think there’s a lot of people out there who would pick up a possum?” Annie said, in all seriousness.
Amelia Lyn pondered that one. “Not a lot. Some. But not a lot.”
“If someone saw the poster of Beth and later saw a possum, how would they know it was Beth?” I asked. “They could be chasing down a native possum who was in a bad mood, vicious, defensive, hormonal, etcetera.”
“If people look at the picture, Madeline,” Amelia Lyn said, only smothering her teenage disgust a bit, “then they would know which possum was Beth and which one wasn’t, you know? I mean, come on. Beth has a distinctive look. Her nose is more pointy, she has longer whiskers, her paws are a light gray. She’s not like other possums. And, too, if you call her name, she always puts her head up and that’s how people would know. I wrote that on the poster, too. ‘Call her name, Beth, and if she puts her head up, that’s her.’ ”
I nodded and tried to be sage. “Do you want people to call you, then, if they spot her?”
“Yep. Call me and I’ll come and get her. I have her pink pillow in her cage, her favorite foods are flowers, bread and honey, grapes, and a plum. I’ll put her toys in, too. She’ll crawl right in the cage when she sees it.”
Annie and I nodded.
“Do you think I’ll find Beth?” Amelia Lyn asked, hands on hips.
“I don’t know,” Annie said, ever the realist. “She could have met a gang of other possums and decided to hang with them.”
“Have you tried whistling to her? Calling her name? Singing her favorite song?” I said. Annie rolled her eyes at me. The Amelias didn’t see it.
Amelia Lyn looked like she was about to cry.
“We’ll help you look for her,” I said.
“You will?” She brightened.
“Sure,” Annie said. “Let me take care of the llamas first.”
The Amelias nodded and we went to work. One llama was half brown and white, one white, one spotted, and two others were black. They were all named after rock stars: Elton John. Jon Bon Jovi. Cyndi Lauper. Sting. Pat Benatar. Annie weighed the llamas, one spit at her, and checked their bodies for growths or tumors or bumps. She gave them a dewormer mixed with applesauce using a syringe and took a peek at their teeth and jaws.
Llamas are adorable, I will admit this. They look like a cross between a camel without a hump, sheep, minigiraffes because of the neck, sheepdogs, and people. It’s in their eyes, the people part, and in their personalities. They are curious, smart, social, and don’t spit as much as one would think. Amelia and Amelia Lyn use them for 4–H. They are pampered and spoiled on this farm.
“I think the gang is looking good,” Annie said to Amelia when we were done. The gang wandered over to say hi.
“Don’t say that so loud,” Amelia said. “They’ll become arrogant. Snotty.”
I laughed.
Amelia seemed baffled by my laughter. Baffled!
“I won’t say it again,” Annie said. “But they are looking good.”
“Shhh,” Amelia whispered.
“Will you help me find Beth now?” Amelia Lyn asked, running to us. She’d been checking for Beth out in the field behind their barn. No luck. Maybe she should put up a LOST possum poster in the field and one of the deer would tell her where Beth was hiding out for a few days, or a coyote would admit to eating her.
“We’ll give it a shot,” I said, and winked at Annie. She knew what I meant. If a possum got too close to me, especially if it made hissing sounds, I’d shoot it.
Together we hunted around the sheds and the barn, under the decks, in the shrubbery, behind the tall pine trees, in an abandoned car, etc., etc. At one point, I kicked a bunch of wood crates stacked high in an outbuilding.
I am not kidding, a possum ran out. Annie and I didn’t move.
“Beth!” Amelia Lyn called. “Beth!”
That creature, no kidding, stopped and put her head up. Amelia Lyn ran to her tearfully, picked her up, and, I am also not kidding, kissed Beth on the mouth.
Sheesh.
Possum lovers. You never know what they’ll do next.
 
“I’ll be going to Fiji again soon,” Annie told me on the drive to The Lavender Farm that afternoon. We had stopped off to check on a sheep named Parrot and a dog named Captain Cook, which was owned by a man who made his living as a pirate. “Argh!” he had shouted at us, brandishing a knife, his patch in place, a red and white striped shirt stretched across his gut.
Quick as a wink Annie had him up against a wall, elbow in his throat, the knife in her hand and pointed toward him. “Tony, don’t you ever wag a knife in my face again, you got that?”
He was hurtin’ so he groaned out a yes. We left with Tony’s pumpkin cake, which was delicious. It was in the shape of a pirate’s head.
“Off to Fiji?” I said, watching the farmland, the fields, and the orchards roll by. “Need a break? A tan?”
“Yes, I need a break, so to speak.”
“I worry about you when you’re in Fiji.”
“I worry about what happens to four-legged animals if I don’t go to Fiji.”
“You need to be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“Will you be retiring from your trips to Fiji anytime soon?”
“Doubt it.”
“Perhaps you could try another country?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you worried that someone with handcuffs will someday catch you on your trips to Fiji?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I can’t concern myself with that. I need to do what’s right for Fiji.”
“Got it.”
We rode in silence, then Annie asked, “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay.”
I knew what we were talking about. Granddad’s revelations. That article. What happened to us. I still saw no reason to tell her about the blackmail. We’re so close and yet this horrible, tragic, sick thing is hanging between us. I love Annie with all my heart, and she loves me. In many ways, I will never be closer to her than I am to anyone else. On the other hand, we saw each other in these twisted positions, being hurt and humiliated, and we’ve hardly talked about it, ever. What was there to say?
Gee whiz. That was a bad spot, wasn’t it? Cup of tea?
“I’m fine,” I said again, as if to reassure myself.
We rode in silence.
“You’re not fine.”
“Neither are you, Annie.”
We rode farther, in silence.
“You’re right. I’m not fine, Madeline.”
She pulled into our driveway, lined with the pink tulip trees that Granddad had planted for Grandma. We drove past the house, past the rows of lavender, the barn, the apple orchards, the place where the summer vegetable garden would be, and up through the forest to the highest point of our property. We both got out of the truck and went to sit on a wrought iron bench we’d brought up years ago. We sat side by side, our straight hair mingling in the breeze, our shoulders pressed together.
Ahead of us, the whole valley spread out, the topography fascinating. In some places it was raining, in others, sunshine laced through the clouds. If only I could sew the picture of that valley into a quilt and somehow stitch in all the emotions of weather. . . .
“Everything’s coming down pretty quick here,” she said.
“Yep.” It was an understatement. We liked understatements. It kept a menacing world at bay.
“Who knows what the reporter has, but my guess is that she’s got the whole story.”
“Nailed down.” I tucked my hair behind my ear as a cool, subdued breeze meandered by.
“She called me again.”
“Damn and damn again.” I hated that Marlene had control over my life, that she could wield my past over my head, swing it around, and lob it like a bomb. “She’s a pit bull with a pretty voice.”
“We will not be able to hide from our past anymore.”
“We will definitely lose our privacy.”
“The photographs will probably be sent everywhere. Famous life coach and sister, Ivy League veterinarian . . . nude. In heels. A rope. A sailor hat. A fake snake. A naked man.”
“Completely likely.” I felt a shiver wrap tight around me.
“And, you, Madeline, with your career, this is gonna be ugly.”
“Yep.”
I thought about that. The conference, the speech, my clients. “We’ll be exposed.”
“That’s the word for it, exposed.”
“It’ll feel like we’re naked again.” I could cry. I reached for Annie’s hand. She held it. I knew she felt like crying, but she wouldn’t. Annie never cried. “And what we learned from Granddad, today, that could be in the article, too.”
“Possibly. She asked me about Holland, as you told me she asked you.”
“She’s got something. I don’t know what, I don’t get it, but she’s got something.”
The breeze blew our hair together. It was a pleasant, friendly breeze.
“Madeline, I’m tired of hiding.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean”—she took a deep breath—“we knew this day was coming.”
I had known that. “We’ve been dreading it.”
“Yes, we have. But dreading it kept it a secret, kept it as a hidden shame, when we were not responsible for it, we didn’t ask for it. We were victims of a criminal attack as children. There is no shame for us in that. We’ve been running from it ever since. When we were kids we naturally wanted to protect ourselves. Part of me, even with my cache of explosives, wants to protect the girl I was. The girl who wore tutus and grizzly bear outfits and sequined poodle skirts. But running is not in my nature.” She tucked a strand of hair back. “I’m sick of it.”
After being in the city, the silence of the country is soft. Your brain can finally de-sizzle, wander around, fly, soar over hills and grassy fields, through cornstalks, around flower beds, over a coyote or a raccoon, and around the moon and back. Nothing gets in the way, so to speak, of thinking, and I was thinking very deeply.
“I’m exhausted from the run.”
“Me too, Madeline. I can’t run anymore. I’ve crossed the finish line. I am done.”
“I’m done, too. I can’t live like this.” My lies, my cover-ups, my fear, it was all strangling me. “I’m with you at the finish line. I won’t run anymore, either.”
The pleasant, friendly breeze blew our hair together again, our shoulders touching, the weather parading across that quilted landscape.
“I think I have an idea of how we should handle this magazine article without exploding Marlene’s home,” Annie said.
 
Later Annie and I turned on her outdoor lights and I watched her fire up her chain saw and attack a piece of wood. It would morph into a pirate. She is so talented.
The next morning she left for Fiji. She wasn’t gone long.
A few days later I read about a house that had caught fire in the middle of the night in California. The owner was not home.
Firefighters were very disturbed to find an outbuilding filled with roaming, aggressive pit bulls, and other pit bulls in cages. Many of them had festering wounds, missing fur, sawed-down teeth, bite marks. Others were too thin, limping, sick. Dogfighting paraphernalia was also found.
The home was owned by a man who owned a string of chain stores.
He was arrested for animal abuse and neglect. It made front page news.
“We don’t know yet what started the fire,” the fire marshal said. “It appears to be faulty wiring. Although the home is new, so the electrical work should have been up to date. Still, faulty wiring is the likely culprit based on what we found. . . .”
22
P
rison was not a happy place for Sherwinn, Pauly, and Gavin.
They were sent to a prison off the Cape, and the other prisoners beat Sherwinn and his co-devils to a pulp the first, second, and third days they were there. My dad had a high school buddy incarcerated because he was convicted of running an organized drug ring, and he used his organizing skills to schedule regular beat-up times for all three of them.
Sherwinn and crew ended up in the jail’s hospital. They had multiple broken bones and lacerations, some of which were made with a knife, others with a brick, and they had testicle problems that were caused by “groin crunchers.” I do not know what a “groin cruncher” weapon looks like. I bet it hurt. Apparently there was also a “titty squisher” weapon used on them and a “concussion inducer.”
“The warden,” Carman told my momma one afternoon when it poured like the clouds had been saving rain since Noah and his ark sailed off, “is my uncle, honey. He told me that he didn’t give a muskrat’s ass if those freak-asses were taken apart with a crowbar and planted in the back garden of the prison as fertilizer, but he didn’t want it happening on his watch. He’s got six daughters to put through college or marry off and he needs the job. No offense, honey. He told me to tell you that he’s very sorry. Very sorry, and they would have made good fertilizer, his words.”
She hugged my momma, and when she saw me hiding around the corner in our house by the sea, she hugged me, tighter and warmer the more I shook. “Baby, I pray for you every day. I love you so much, Madeline.” I tried to hug her back, but I was shaking too much. “Madeline, darling, darlin’. Now you stop. You’re making me cry and my mascara is smearing! What the heck—” She burst into tears. “Let me sing you a love song.”
I feel like I’ve been shaking in one way or another my whole life, but the shaking is mostly contained inside me, locked up with my bad breathing skills. Honestly, since the day that Sherwinn came after Annie and me, I don’t think I’ve stopped shaking.
 
News of the photographs of Annie and me swirled around the Cape, and though most people were very kind, and we were deluged with stuffed animals, pretty new clothes, and dinners that would feed us for months, there were a few people who blamed us.
Yep, they blamed the victims.
Blamed the victims,
two young girls who enjoyed playing jacks and hopscotch.
In a few warped minds, in some twisted, sick way, we had “enjoyed the attention,” or “cooperated,” or were, “rebellious, uncontrollable youths . . . always dressed in pink like that!”
Mrs. Tilda Smith, a customer of Momma’s with a bottom the size of Arkansas, felt we had “asked for it.”
“Obviously they wanted to be a part of that filth, or they would have walked right out that door and away from those cameras! Wild girls! Wild! Marie Elise simply isn’t up to raising her children with good morals. Why, what would you expect from a woman like that? Always in heels! Always dressed up in skirts and that
eyeliner
, so la-di-da French, thinks she’s better than us!”
Jealousy of one woman over another has caused Herculean damage over the years, hasn’t it? Cavewomen were probably slugging each other over who had the best furs or the most teeth.
Trudy Jo told me later that Momma heard what Tilda Smith was saying about her daughters.
“Your momma was so mad, she kept slamming her brushes and combs down, and she scrubbed Angela Peacock’s head so hard when she was washing it, I’m sure Angela thought she was getting a brain massage instead of a Marie Elise’s Magically Excellent Shampoo, Cut, and Blow Dry.”
Trudy Jo shook her head. “But your momma, me, Carman, and Shell Dee thought up a plan to take revenge. Your momma named it the Revenge and Vengeance Pink and Red Attack. She was so pleasant to Tilda at first. She swiveled the chair around, and Tilda wriggled her cannonball cheeks into the seat. Have you ever noticed her bottom? It’s like a thing unto itself, her pants so tight the dimples show in her cheeks. Anyhow, I heard your momma say hello, and Tilda said, ‘I can’t wait to tell you what Bianca’s up to again. I was up late last night, watching for burglars with my binoculars, and I saw who she had over!’
“I stood right close to your momma as she mixed up the dye,” Trudy Jo said, “because I wanted to be part of the action, part of your momma’s magic, and hoo-hee. Your momma was so magic that day. She turned Tilda away from the mirror and slopped all that dye on Tilda’s head—it’s shaped like a pyramid, that probably explains her stupidity—and she made sure it was good and in. Then your momma stood in front of her and said, ‘Tilda, I hear from a number of women that you’ve been lying about my girls.’ Now, Tilda, in that chair, she looks like she’s going to choke on her fat chins. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Marie Elsie,’ she squeaks. ‘I think you do,’ your momma says. ‘You’ve been telling people that my daughters wanted to be in those photographs.’
“Now Tilda’s face goes all red and the other girls in the shop made sure all the dryers are off so it’s quiet. Pretty soon the ladies in the resting room are in there, too, because ladies sniff out fights, like they can sniff out burned marshmallows. Your momma is brandishing not one but two pairs of scissors in her hands, and she starts swinging them around like knives.
“ ‘Tsk-tsk! Marie Elise,’ Tilda says in this squeaky voice because everyone’s glaring at her and you can feel those women’s fury. ‘At any time your girls could have told you, and that would have been that. They could have run away. But they didn’t. They stayed and went back again. I can’t help thinking they liked it.’ She wriggled her bottom in the chair, her face all red, and I thought of Shakespeare’s, ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth’ and she is ‘the portrait of a blinking idiot.’ I thought your momma was going to pop. She couldn’t even speak for a minute. She turned and stabbed, I mean, she
stabbed,
the scissors into her work station, then whipped around and trapped Tilda in the swivel chair, her arms on the handles.
“ ‘My girls,’ your momma said in the meanest voice I’ve ever heard out of that darling woman’s mouth, ‘my girls did what they did to protect my life. They are heroes, and here you are with your triangular-shaped head and your blubbery stomach telling everyone in town that they wanted to be a part of it. That they wanted to be attacked. How could you?
How could you?
’
“ ‘Maybe . . .’ Tilda choked out, ‘it’s because you always wear fancy clothes, always in pink, and heels, and I think your girls got that from you and they might . . . might want . . . a man’s attention. . . .’
“Your momma,” Trudy Jo said, laughing, “she swiveled that chair around so fast that Tilda and her dimply bottom went sprawling, and she leaped and stood over her and shoved her pink heel deep into Tilda’s flabby stomach and said, ‘I feel like squishing you, Tilda. I do. I could do it.’ The Reighton triplets, you know those ladies, they’re the three oldest triplets on the East Coast, they started yelling, ‘Squish her, squish her, squish her!’ and one said, ‘Mean women gotta go!’ to which her sisters chanted, ‘Gotta go, gotta go!’
“Your momma leaned down and said, ‘Look, you gigantically bottomed, squid-faced idiot. You are to leave this parlor right now. You are never to come back. If you ever set foot in this parlor again, I will shoot you. Do you have that? Has that sunk in through the fat? And if you don’t tell everyone in this town that you lied about my sweet girls because you are a jealous, demented woman, I will sue you for defamation of character and I will take everything you have, you pitiful slug.’”
Trudy Jo was enjoying the story, I could tell. She clapped her hands and rocked onto her toes.
“Sugar, your momma was in a pink and red mood that day. Tilda’s hair came out pink and red. One side red, one pink.” Trudy Jo sighed. “The Reighton triplets clapped their hands and started a cheer. ‘One side red, one side pink, you are a pig, Tilda, and you stink!’ ”
Trudy Jo laughed. “Tilda screamed and ran out. But I have to tell you the best part. When Tilda was leaving with her pink and red hair, your momma grabbed a bottle of green spray paint that Shell Dee confiscated from her son Derek when he was helping Jessie Liz’s boy, Shoney, paint another outline of a naked woman on the back of Hal’s Hardware. She sprayed a line of green right down that woman’s back and swore at her.”
I gasped. “My momma swore?”
“She called her a bitch. A mean
, skunky
green bitch.”
I gasped again. “My momma never swears.”
“I know, sugar, but she did that day. She screamed it, screamed it!” Trudy Jo fisted her hands above her head in victory. “Everyone clapped! It was a wonderful day at Marie Elise’s French Beauty Parlor. Your momma showed that her magic extends to revenge and vengeance. The triplets did a victory dance.”
I giggled. A tight and captured giggle, but it was a giggle. It was one of very few giggles at that time, but I enjoyed it.
I loved my momma so much.
“Happy dagger!” Trudy Jo said, up on her toes and using a quote from her favorite man. “Asses are made to bear, and so are you, Tilda!”
 
Steve kept trying to talk to me, but I ran away from him.
“Madeline, what’s wrong? Madeline!” he’d yell, chasing after me until he caught up. “Why can’t we be friends? I won’t hurt you, like they did. I’ll never hurt you. Don’t you want to go to the lake and chase frogs? Don’t you want to draw together anymore? I brought you a chocolate.” He opened his hand. My favorite chocolate, only slightly melted, was in his palm.
“I don’t want to be friends with you anymore.” That was a lie, I wanted to be friends with Steve, but I couldn’t. I was dirty. I was ashamed. I was mentally screwed up, emotionally ripped. Steve knew about the photos, I knew he knew, and I couldn’t be with him. He was clean and innocent, and I was in bad pictures and had done bad things.
“Get away from me, Steve!”
“But . . . but why?” His voice was strangled. He didn’t bother to hide the tears in those blue eyes.
“Because I don’t like you anymore.”
“You don’t?” he whispered, so upset. “You don’t like me?”
“No, I don’t. Get away from me.” I ran off as fast as I could. He ran after me, too, calling my name, pleading with me, but I pushed him away one more time, both of us crying, and I ran off again, blinded by tears.
It was so hard to run, I wet my pants, I still remember the feel of that hot urine searing my legs, like defeat. I remember that.
Steve and I were never friends again, even though he has tried, off and on, throughout all these years to contact me. He has not done it in a stalkerish sort of way, but a friendly, funny, how are you doing sort of way.
Some say that young people cannot be in love, they cannot know love, that they
believe
they are in love, but they are not. It is passion only, infatuation. This is false. They can fall in love. They are in love, and their love is intense and real.
I was twelve years old and this is what I knew about Steve: He was my best friend next to Annie. I trusted him, believed in him. He made me laugh. I was happy when I was with him. I could see a future with him. I had daydreams about him, giggled when I thought of kissing him or holding his hand. Those loves we have when we are young are true, and deep, and those people stay in our hearts, and there they last forever.
Steve has been there forever.
 
Not long after Sherwinn, Pauly, and Gavin went to jail we received the first of several letters.
The first one appeared on our doorstep early one morning at our house by the sea, when the clouds were angry.
It was brief, it was terrifying.
It said, “Sweetie, drop the charges or the girls will die.” It was smeared all over with something red. It was blood.
I found the letter after I caught my momma, who dropped to the floor in a dead faint.
My momma called the police. Sheriff Ellery was livid. He called the warden, Carman’s uncle. Sherwinn, Pauly, and Gavin all ended up in isolation for weeks after that. But Sherwin and crew had accomplished their mission: They had scared the liver out of all of us.
How did the letter get there? I figured it was Sam, Pauly’s son, who had snuck peeps at us through the window of the shack and dropped his pants and underwear two times in front of us while his father laughed.
“They aren’t going to get off, Marie Elise,” the prosecuting attorney, Arthur Benning, said. “But they won’t stay in jail that long.”
My momma, my grandparents, and Arthur were downstairs at our kitchen table late one blustery frightened night as Annie and I crouched against a wall, our flowered nightgowns over our knees as we listened, hidden by the shadows.
“What do you mean they won’t stay in jail
that long?
” My momma’s voice sharpened to steel strength. She dropped the ice pack she’d been holding to her head, her tumor stretching, growing.
“He means, honey,” Granddad said, his voice seared with barely contained rage, “that Sherwinn, Pauly, and Gavin will go to jail, but they won’t die there. They’re coming out.”
“That’s correct,” Arthur said. He was about fifty and a former marine. His back was rigidly straight, all the time. He was an iron wall with a head.
BOOK: The First Day of the Rest of My Life
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