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Authors: Cathy Lamb

The First Day of the Rest of My Life (40 page)

BOOK: The First Day of the Rest of My Life
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“Starting over sounds good. A reset. And I’m pleased we have no maggots anywhere.”
“Take your own advice, Madeline. Move. Change. Alter your freakin’ path. Don’t you use words like that?”
“Yes, I do.” I thought of my upcoming speech for the Rock Your Womanhood conference, then dunked my nacho in salsa.
“I also went to the beach when I was there.”
“You did? How was it?”
“I sat there for hours, watching the waves, back and forth, in and out.”
“And?”
“And, I loved it. As you know, like you, I haven’t been to the ocean in years, but maybe it’s time, Madeline, maybe we should go.”
The idea made me sad a bit, but excited, too. Our whole family had loved the sea until it had eaten two members. “I miss the sea.”
“I’ve always missed it.”
“So have I. I thought it would make me crack if I saw it again.”
“You’re cracked, anyhow.”
“I am.”
“Maybe we should dare, Madeline.”
“I could take that dare. Maybe.”
We sat for a bit, eating our nachos, cheesy, salsa-y, yummy.
“Love you, Annie.”
“Love you, too, sister mine.”
We put a nacho in each other’s mouth.
They crunched.
 
Why is it that at nighttime we usually get most honest with ourselves?
Is it the cover of blackness?
Is it because what’s bothering us—loneliness, frustration, anger, worry, regret, ambition, greed—keeps us up at night and we’re alone with our thoughts?
Is it because night is quiet, the moon is staring at us, the stars are far away, and there’s more truth in the air, more clarity, without the hassle and stresses of daytime?
Is it because people are asleep around us so we feel more alone as they skitter and toss through their own dreams?
Nighttime, way late at nighttime, is when I think best.
It was so darn dark and cold out that night. So darn dark. My dad would have said the weather felt threatened.
In my head, through that darkness, I heard Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor.
It was appropriate background music for my curiously methodical thoughts.
“That reporter, Marlene, called here today,” Granddad told Annie and me the next night after a spaghetti and meatball dinner on the deck.
“Dammit,” Annie muttered.
I stood up and paced, trying to find my breath, which felt like it was hiding in my lower back. I wanted to kick Marlene. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to shove her against a wall and pummel her.
Annie got up and paced, too. We paced and passed each other, turned on our heels, kept pacing.
“What did you say to her?” I asked. Damn, but I hated Marlene. What was she thinking, talking to an old man who had had a heart attack after I told her not to?
Granddad didn’t say much at first. He continued to swing on the swing. “I told her not to write the article.”
“And she said?” Annie asked.
“She said the article was being written. She had a melodious voice.”
“Did you tell her that you wouldn’t speak to her?” Dread entered my body and whirled around, freezing cold and threatening.
“I did. We talked about how I wasn’t going to speak to her. She was very pleasant.”
“And you hung up?”
He nodded. “I did. But first she asked me if my parents were from Holland.”
“Which they are not,” I said.
“Granddad, where is she getting Holland from?” Annie asked. “Why Holland?’
Granddad went on as if he hadn’t heard. “Jews have been running around the globe forever. Scattering to all corners, persecuted, hunted, destroyed . . . prey for others.”
“Did she ask anything else?” Annie asked.
“She told me she had been looking at Holocaust records. She was very conversational.”
The word Holocaust sunk heavily between us. “Why did she ask you that?”
Granddad’s face crumpled for a long minute until he visibly pulled himself together, head up, shoulders back. “She asked because Anton, Emmanuelle, and Marie Elise Laurent died in Auschwitz after being in Drancy. So did their two other children, one boy, one teenage girl.”
“What?”
“What the hell?” Annie muttered.
“Yes, the Laurents died in Auschwitz,” Granddad said.
“They died.”
“So, a different family of Laurents?” I asked, completely confused, that sense of dread eating at me like a disease.
“Yes, they were different Laurents,” Granddad said.
I sagged with relief. Not that I was grateful another family died, but there was something ominous here, frightening, that I didn’t understand.
“So, she’s confused,” Annie said. “The reporter is confused and is including another family in her article?”
“No, she’s not confused,” Granddad said, leaning his elbows on his knees, head bent, before he pulled it up, as if he was pulling up a lead weight, his eyes tortured. “The Laurents died in Auschwitz. Their names were Anton, Emmanuelle, Marie Elise, Aaron, and Johnna Laurent.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “That’s your name, Grandma’s name, Momma’s name. Help me, Granddad, what’s going on here?”
“Why is she digging like this,” Annie asked. “What is this? Why are we even talking about it? Who are Johnna and Aaron?”
“My dears.”
I swear my granddad aged another ten years in front of us, as if the white light of the moon had sucked those years away.
“We are not the
real
Laurents.”
28
M
omma came home from jail, and three days later we had a bang-up, rocking-good party. “We have to celebrate life,” she told us. “You Pink Girls, you are my life.” She kissed and hugged us, then together we made chocolates brownies with mint, like our dad used to make us.
Most of the town came, and Momma was deluged in flowers and gifts. Granddad and Grandma brought in crab, shrimp, lobster, salads, and a cake in the shape of a sailboat. Tents were set up, a band arrived, twinkling white lights were hung.
My momma smiled, she laughed, she hardly left our side. We linked our arms around her waist and held on. Steve was there, but I couldn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t smile back at him, couldn’t go with him and the other kids to run around our property, I couldn’t. I was bad. I was less than him. Not good enough.
We had spent almost all of the past three days together with our momma, in our house by the sea. My momma, Annie and I, and our grandparents. We played games and laughed and talked and tried to recover from the disastrous wreck our lives had become.
My momma cut our hair and did our nails. We did her and Grandma’s nails. Even Granddad let us polish his nails, as our dad had before us, and he proudly showed them off at the party.
The sun shone, the rain sprinkled, rainbows appeared everywhere, like magic—Marie Elise’s magic. I heard triumphant violin music in my head as my momma and I played our violins together out on the porch for everyone at the party, with Annie inside banging on the piano.
But my momma was fading, we could all see that.
Fading quickly.
 
She went back to work at Marie Elise’s French Beauty Parlor, that beacon of pink, but only when Annie and I were in school. I think she did it to keep her mind off herself and her terminal illness. She left early to be home when we got home. On Saturdays we went with her.
The hair spray poufed in plumes, the scissors snipped, the dryers blew, the chandeliers glittered against the pink walls, and the women chatted and laughed and passed bottles between them in the resting room overlooking the sea, which my momma ignored.
Carman burst into love songs, poured champagne for all and offered up toasts.
Shell Dee regaled us with information about the human body, how waste is made, and her frustration about losing weight. “Calories in, calories out. What I wish is that we had a bug we could swallow that would eat up all the extra food inside of us and make us skinny. Honestly, you know how many women would be scarfing those bugs if they knew they could be a size six? What’s an itty-bitty bug inside your gut when you have a tight boom boom?”
Trudy Jo talked about her kids. “Steph is a teenage girl. That means her hormones rule her brain. She has a boyfriend now. So he rules her brain. She has lost hers. There is no fluid in there or anything else. There is the word lust. Lust rules her brain. What would Shakespeare say? ‘We should be woo’d and were not made to woo.’ ”
We did our homework or read or brought the ladies pink cookies on platters with Red Hots or poured pink lemonade and helped clean up.
Maggie Gee brought Grandmother Schiller in for a Marie Elise Dye and Cut to Die For. Grandmother Schiller hugged my momma, her white hair swinging fashionably about her shoulders. “You nice lady, Marie Elise. Good shot, too. You got good shot. Bad men gone. Good job. How you like my hair today? I brush.”
Jessie Liz’s boy was still painting naked ladies on bare walls in town, but this time he’d painted a fat naked lady on a wall and the woman had half red and half pink hair. It was rumored that Tilda Smith was not pleased and threw a fit. Jessie Liz and Momma laughed so hard, Momma had to cross her legs so she wouldn’t pee on her pink skirt with the ruffle.
LaShonda had not conquered her bra addiction, but she did bring three for Momma. “You’re stacked, Marie Elise, I know that, and I think these will fit you fine. I’m so glad you’re back, honey.” The bras were purple, pink, and bright green with lace.
Momma asked our grandparents to stay permanently at our house by the sea. She did not need to ask again; they wanted to be with their daughter every day. They spoke French or German to us most of the time. Grandma taught us how to paint, Granddad taught us basic economics and how to run a business. We played by the sea, took the boat out and watched the sun set, canoed and hiked, laughed and sang French songs.
And, one day, a day with generous sunshine, a yellow circle of fire hanging politely in the sky, and a cool, melancholy breeze, our momma could not get out of bed.
Like that, overnight, our momma took a turn for the worse around a deadly corner.
She became pale, fatigued, wretchedly sick, her head aching so badly from that thriving tumor she couldn’t move.
She went to the doctors, she went to the hospital.
There was nothing they could do.
The tumor was eating her.
 
The next Saturday Momma gathered up her energy and the five of us took the boat out. We sailed for hours, and we sat, cuddled up to our momma as she tipped her head back to the sun that shone on all of us like a warm blessing. We ate shrimp and crab sandwiches and lemon meringue pie.
My momma weakened further as the weeks wore on, the pain in her head, constant and excruciating, and Annie and I cried on her many times, soaking her pink shirts, pink dresses.
“Girls, remember that we’re a family,” she told us, cupping both our faces with her soft hands, her nails painted pink. “Your dad, me, you two, Grandma and Granddad, your dad’s parents. Take that love, take the love that we’ve always given to you, and hold it in your hearts, never let it go, believe in it, bask in it, build a future on it. Love transcends everything, even death. That means our love is always around you.”
“But we’ll miss you, Momma,” I said, broken, a child who had lost so much and was about to lose more.
“I’ll miss you, too.” Her eyes flooded. She didn’t hide the tears.
 
To this day, I am glad that my momma didn’t lie to us, didn’t deny the truth of her upcoming death. She didn’t dwell on it, didn’t bring it up much, but when she did, she was honest, she was frank, and she offered up her wisdom and advice for the rest of our lives: “Honey, you must go to college . . . you must not smoke or drink . . . do not have sex before you are married, earn that white wedding dress . . . you must choose a man who believes you are the sun, the moon, and the earth and will treat you every day as the precious woman you are . . . don’t use too much hair spray, it’ll give you helmet head . . . unless your house is on fire, there is no excuse not to wear lipstick . . . show compassion to others and don’t you dare judge anyone harshly or, you mark my words, God will bring you down a notch or two ... don’t forget you’re an O’Shea and a Pink Girl . . . high heels are a must, a
must,
because a woman must feel powerful . . . don’t wear too much makeup or you’ll look like a streetwalker . . . keep your breasts covered unless you are with your husband in the bedroom and then you may prance around in nothing, or cover yourself with only a red boa and flick it at him . . . don’t ever forget that your dad and I love you more than anything and we will always be with you.”
“What’s going to happen after you die?” Annie asked one night, finally speaking a little again, her body quaking in her blue owl pajamas.
“What’s going to happen?” our momma said, a bit drugged out from the prescriptions that didn’t do enough. “Why Big Luke, your dad, he’s going to come down and get me. He’s going to open his arms and I’m going to float into his, and we’re going to fly over the sea because we all love the sea, all the O’Sheas love the sea, and we’ll float over you, because we love you two so much, and we’ll be together again, Dad and I, up in heaven looking out for you girls.”
“Can he take us?” I asked, sobbing, my hands kneading my own blue owl pajamas.
“No, Pink Girl, he can’t.” Her voice was down to a whisper, her strength going, that fire-whipping pain radiating to every pore in her body. “We can’t. We won’t. You two girls have your whole lives. Decades ahead of you.” She stopped and put a hand to her head. The pain was killing her. “But when you are very, very old, and it’s your time, Dad and I will come and get you, with our arms out, and you’ll float to us and we’ll fly over the ocean because we all love the sea and we’ll head up to heaven together in the clouds.”
“I want to go now,” Annie said. “With you. I want to go.”
She kissed us on our foreheads and pulled us close, all three heads together, only one head being killed by an alien tumor. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry.”
We fell asleep in her arms, the three of us, Annie and I in matching blue owl pajamas, abject fear and grief spiraling through our dreams.
The next night, very late, our momma took our boat out.
By herself.
I woke up in her bed, Annie asleep beside me, and I knew our momma was gone.
I heard Vivaldi’s
The Four Seasons
in my head as I tumbled out her French doors to the deck. Way off in the distance I saw our boat. I saw it under the white light of the moon, the sea soft and calm, barely a ripple, and I knew what our momma had done.
“No!” I screamed. “No!”
My screams woke up Annie, who started screaming, too, and she leaped up and hid under the bed until she realized we weren’t at the shack amidst a sickening crime, we were at our house by the sea. The screams woke up Grandma and Granddad, who pounded into our momma’s bedroom. I pointed to our boat, way out in the ocean, under the light of the moon, on that soft and calm sea, and Granddad took off running.
He tried, he tried so hard to reach her. He took Steve’s parents’ boat onto the water. Another neighbor heard our cries and took his boat out, too, speeding over the waves, but they were too late. Too late. Too late.
Too late.
 
It was what my momma wanted. She dropped herself into the sea. She ended her life, and the debilitating pain in her head, when and where she wanted to. She didn’t want to suffer but, much more than that, she didn’t want us to suffer further watching her. I knew our dad would come down and get her. He would hold out his arms and she would float to him and they would fly over the sea, because they loved the sea, all O’Sheas love the sea, and they would fly over us.
Out on the deck, still watching our boat, and way off in the distance, seeing Granddad and another neighbor racing out, I felt it. I felt a hug, I felt them, my momma and my dad around me. Annie felt them, too, because she tilted her face up and kissed the breeze, twice. I put my arms up and I felt my momma’s kiss, my dad’s whiskers. We had our last moments, our last hug, our last touch.
I felt them fade away, and Annie and I held hands, our grandma hysterical beside us, on her knees, keening, wailing in French.
I put my hand out, to catch my parents, but all I felt was the breeze, light, cool, swirling. I closed my eyes and saw my dad standing next to my momma, his arm around her waist. They were not smiling—in fact I could see tears on their cheeks—but I felt their love. I felt their strength. My momma was wearing a pink dress and pink heels, my dad was wearing his jeans and the painted cardboard whale around his neck. His nails were polished.
“Come back,” Annie yelled, through Grandma’s racking sobs. “Come back! Come back, Momma! Please come back! Momma, come back! Please! I love you, Momma, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me again, Daddy! Don’t leave me! Please!”
I put my arms around her, and in my head the violins shut down, bows off strings, and I heard this, “We love you, sweet daughters, our Girls in Pink.”
 
Steve’s whole family tried to help us. All our friends tried to help us. Meals, flowers, gifts, offers of their cottages to go to during summer, ski chalets we could borrow, anything. Let us help you, they said. We want to help. We’re sorry. We’re so sorry about your momma!
But grief is a walk alone. Others can be there, and listen. But you will walk alone down your own path, at your own pace, with your sheared-off pain, your raw wounds, your denial, anger, and bitter loss. You’ll come to your own peace, hopefully, but it will be on your own, in your own time.
Steve cried with me. Every time I cried, he cried.
He used all his allowance money and with his momma, a gentle woman, he went shopping and chose material for pink dresses for Annie and me and a pattern for his momma to follow. His mother sewed them up. They were vogue and straight lined, not fussy.
She must have been up all night for days because Annie and I wore the dresses at our momma’s funeral. Everyone wore pink. All the ladies in their pink dresses and skirts, even the men had on pink ties, pink shirts. The wreath of flowers on her coffin was pink, a pink piece of satin underneath that, pink flowers packing the altar. Women talked about how much they loved my momma, how she’d changed their hair and changed their lives, how Momma’s advice made them stand up and stick up for themselves. They talked about Marie Elise’s French Beauty Parlor and the friendship and kindness they’d found.
Two weeks later Grandma and Granddad and a whole host of people helped us pack up our house. I’m not sure where a lot of the stuff went. My guess is that my grandparents gave much of the furniture away to people in need. Carman, Trudy Jo, and Shell Dee helped Annie and me gather two huge boxes each of our momma and dad’s special things to keep, like china and teacups, photographs, gifts, pink outfits and pink heels, Momma’s violin, the yellow ribbons, her jewelry, a tackle box, a few of his ties, and a couple of fishing poles. When we arrived in Oregon, those boxes went in the attic at The Lavender Farm.
BOOK: The First Day of the Rest of My Life
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