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Authors: Cathy Lamb

The First Day of the Rest of My Life (47 page)

BOOK: The First Day of the Rest of My Life
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“No, dear. We are staying. Your grandma and I are not leaving. I am not leaving my son again.” Granddad’s face started to crumple. “I can’t leave him again. I love you both, you know that—”
“Granddad, we know that.” I reached for his shaking hand. We were in one of the lush gardens around Uncle Ismael’s home, out on the patio, under a green umbrella, two palm trees swaying.
“And we love you,” Annie said, “but, what do you mean, you’re staying?”
“We are not leaving. We will be buried here in Israel.”
I cleared my throat. Every day in Israel had been a day of emotions. We were hugged and held, our hands caressed, our cheeks patted, our shoulders linked by others’ arms.
Annie,
Annie,
who avoided human contact except from Grandma and Granddad and me, actually embraced our family. She hugged them and didn’t look like she was under forced oppression. One of our cousins said, “Annie is such a warm and generous person, so affectionate, Madeline, like you.”
I was watching a miraculous miracle.
“You . . . ,” Annie said. “You mean, you mean you’re not going back to Oregon?”
He shook his head.
“You . . . ,” I said, tripping on my words. “You’re going to live here?”
He nodded. “Ismael and Devora have invited us to live with them here, and Nola has accepted, too. She will stay with us. We will fly her sons over three times a year to visit. Their house has plenty of room.”
That was true. Uncle Ismael and Devora, his cozy, comfy wife who had fought in a war and was a crack shot, were very successful. They had a thriving import–export business that reached worldwide.
“But even if there was hardly any room,” Granddad said, his lips tightening together, “or my son lived in a shack, or a one-room home that he would not leave, and he invited us to stay, we would stay. I would stay with them in a hut. I would stay with them anywhere.” He turned to us, gripped our hands hard. “Stay here, Madeline, Annie, please. Stay with us. Let’s make a new life here, all of us, together.”
I leaned back in my chair, as did Annie.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“No, my love, I am not. You girls, you are my life,” Granddad said, anguished, breaking. “I love you more than my own life, I always, always have, but please understand, I can’t leave my son again, I can’t. It will kill me.”
“But Granddad—” I said.
“But Granddad—” Annie said.
Then we closed our mouths and were silent.
But what?
What argument was there? None.
“My brain is almost exploding,” Annie said, “but I can’t think of any good reason why you shouldn’t stay here.”
“I have only met my son again, after all these years,” Granddad said, a hand brushing his white hair back.
“We understand,” I said.
And we did. We got it.
Annie leaned over and kissed him. “Granddad, you can’t be away from Uncle Ismael and the gang. Not for one day. Not for one minute.”
Nope. He couldn’t. No can do. I would react the same.
“Will you all stay, too?” he asked, eager. “We can sell The Lavender Farm, or keep it, whatever you wish to do. You can build houses here, start a new life, be with your family. Seven children, Ismael has. Seven. All of your first cousins, and they have children, too. They are your family. . . .”
I loved Israel. I loved Tel Aviv. But I wanted to live on The Lavender Farm and, maybe, perhaps, I wanted to call the snake hunter. I choked up when I looked at Annie. I didn’t want her to move to Israel, but it was her choice.
“Granddad,” Annie said. “I’m not going to live here, but Israel is . . . it’s beautiful. I feel like it’s part of me, part of the missing part of me. So, I’ll make a deal with you, Granddad.”
Our granddad leaned forward.
“Madeline and I, we’ll stay for a while, then we’ll come and visit all the time, okay? We’ll visit. You stay with your son.”
“Is that a promise? You will visit often?”
“It is, Granddad. It is a promise.”
More tears.
Our new family was not pleased about Annie and my leaving for Oregon. They argued, they pleaded, they cajoled.
Why, Annie could work as a vet! Plenty of people in Tel Aviv needed life coaches! If we didn’t stay we would miss Kelila’s wedding, and Maya’s fortieth birthday, and Rivka and Yudel’s anniversary, and two bar mitzvahs! Two! All in the next few weeks. We couldn’t go!
We couldn’t!
It was a bad idea to return to Oregon. Bad! We were family! We had time to make up! Please! Don’t go!
They all came, as a noisy mob, to see Annie and me off at the airport when we left.
Granddad gave me a hug and left tears on my cheeks. Grandma hugged me tight, then slipped something into my pocket. It was a bag of colorful marbles. “For the swans in the lavender.”
They are an emotional group. The men all show their emotions and the women are equally bad.
Very bad.
We had found our family.
I loved them already.
32
W
hen we returned to Oregon I bought Annie and myself Jeeps. They were pink. I ordered vanity license plates. They said PNK GRL 1 for me, because I am the oldest, and PNK GRL 2.
We drove my pink jeep to Anacortes, Washington, and rented a sailboat. For a week we sailed in and around the San Juan Islands. We saw porpoise, killer whales, seals, a bald eagle, and deer. We stopped off at Olga and hiked up to the café and had raspberry and boysenberry pie. We bought pottery. We walked through Eastsound and bought paintings and photographs of the sea. We went to San Juan on the horn-tooting white ferry and had peppermint ice cream. It was so delicious we went back and had strawberry ice cream. Both pink ice creams. We were not afraid of ice cream anymore.
We sailed and sailed, sometimes in silence, sometimes laughing and chatting, often allowing tears to roll, as we reintroduced ourselves to the ocean again, its depth, its personality, its freedom, as our dad used to say. We watched the colors glint off the water, and Annie declared, quoting our momma, “The only color the ocean is missing is pink.”
“I love you, sister,” I told her. I shook my hair in the wind, all the curls flying around my face, tight curls, loose curls, frizzy curls.
“I love you, too.” Her curls flew, too.
We had tossed our flat irons in a steel bin together at The Lavender Farm, and Annie had used a wee bit of explosives to blow them up. “Never again,” she’d said. “No flat ironing.”
We both agreed that our hair was looking a bit redder lately.
“Must be Dad,” Annie said. “I’ll bet he was impressed when you had all the Israeli family doing Irish jigs. You’re a boot-stomping fiddler.”
“Thank you. You’re a hellion on the piano. Your hard rock tunes were especially popular.”
Her face became contemplative as she studied a distant island. “It would be very cool to bang down on piano keys one day and somewhere else an explosion would fire into the sky.”
I rolled my eyes at her. She laughed.
I pulled the hood of my pink sweatshirt up, as Annie had done with hers, our sailboat creating a cool wind.
“It feels right to wear pink again, doesn’t it, Pink Girl?” she said.
“It sure does, Pink Girl Sister.” We had even bought matching pink tennis shoes. Geeky, we knew. In the distance I saw a fin. Yep. Killer whale. It was surrounded by the pinks and yellows of the sunset. There is hardly anything prettier than the sunsets you see when you’re in a boat on the Pacific Ocean, the green emerald islands of the San Juans sticking up like tips of mountains that had been scattered and dropped by a giant hand.
“I think I’m ready to let him serve me chocolate cheesecake without cringing.”
I nudged her with my elbow. “Now you’ve got me puzzled. Baffled. Lost. Speak on, sister.”
“Bertie.”
Ah, Bertie. Lovesick Bertie.
“He always remembers that my favorite dessert is chocolate cheesecake, that I love artichoke chicken soup and the fluffy rolls from Chitty Chang’s bakery. He buys me flowers and chocolates and cards and those sorts of silly things.”
I thought of the lanky, longish-blonde-haired, tough-ass, romantic Special Ops man with the alpacas who were so often “under the weather.” What a man. “He’s got a good memory.”
“Yep. He does. Persistence, too.”
I let the waves fill the silence for us, colored fire shooting across the sky.
“I think I could . . . I think I might could maybe . . .” She took a deep breath.
“You might could maybe . . . ,” I prodded.
“Hold his hand. Go to dinner. Maybe watch a sunset with him on the top of the hill.”
“I’m sure he would be deeelighted.” I laughed thinking about the hope that sprang eternal on Bertie’s face whenever he saw Annie.
“He’s sent me so many gifts since your speech, Madeline, including chocolate cheesecake and a flower pot shaped like a Labrador, and he’s called, so he knows and still . . . still he wants to be with me.”
“He wants to be with you,
and
he’s a sex god,” I mused.
“Yeah, he’s definitely hot. I think the hotness scares me a bit, though. It’s hard to take a leap into hot.”
“I know about those hard leaps. I can barely get my feet off the floor.”
Another fin appeared, dove back down. So much is going on in the ocean that we will never see. But we know it’s there, powerful, beautiful. Even animals have relationships.
“We should take the leaps, though, Annie. If we don’t leap, we don’t live.”
“Think we could do that? Like normal women?”
“We’ve never been normal. It’s not something I strive to be anymore. It just isn’t gonna work for us. But I think we could give it the ol’ heave-ho and see what happens.”
“The ol’ heave-ho?” She finally exhaled, winked at me, and grinned. “A leaping heave-ho?”
“A leaping heave-ho.”
“A leaping heave-ho for love.”
We high-fived each other, then took sips of our beers. Two geeky geeks.
Well, whaddya know. The O’Shea girls were gonna take a dare on love and life. I picked up another slice of pizza, after pushing my curls out of my face. Annie was on her third piece. I figured I’d have four and quit then. But I might not. The pizza was amazing—thick crust, thick cheese, thick pepperoni. We could eat pizza and ice cream again. Wasn’t that something?
I know I am
becoming
whole. I am not two people in one, trying to hide my real self. I am no longer a lie. I am not pretending.
I am part of a huge family. I am part lavender farm, part house by the sea and French Beauty Parlor. I am part beat-up violin, part swan, part heart-shaped rocks. I am the daughter of an Irish fisherman and a Jewish pink woman. I am the sister of a vet who likes her explosives.
Together they fit. It was all very American.
“I’m going to say something cheesy.”
Annie pulled a long piece of cheese off her pizza. Perfect timing.
“Good, shoot it out. I hope it tastes good.”
“To me it does. I think, Annie, as overly dramatic as this sounds, that today, right now, on a sailboat, eating pizza, wearing pink, with that killer whale out there goofing around . . .”
“Yeeeesss?”
“Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I’m starting over. I’m redoing myself.”
“Super-duper,” Annie said. “It is cheesy, but I’ll start over with you. It’ll be the first day of the rest of my life, too. My first goal: Give up my trips to Fiji.”
I whipped my head around to confirm that strange declaration. “You’re kidding?”
She smirked. “Duh. Yeah, it’s a joke. Where there are animals with abusive owners, there will always be explosives.”
We clinked our beer cans and watched the sun sink between the islands, like a sleepy blob of melted gold, the waves turning purple and orange in the light. “To explosives,” I said.
“To starting over,” she said.
“Cheers.”
 
On a night when the clouds billowed and roared with regret and sadness, Annie and I opened, for the first time, our granddad’s leather journal.
There was his guilt. His regret. His atonement.
Millions and millions of dollars.
To the Laurents.
To Anton Laurent.
To Emmanuelle Laurent.
To Marie Elise Laurent.
To Johnna Laurent.
To Aaron Laurent.
In the margins, all over, I am sorry.
I am sorry.
 
“Come in, friend,” he said. “Come in
.”
 
I didn’t call him until I had things together.
I had bought into our materialistic society’s definition of success because I had felt like nothing, “less than others,” and felt I had to own all the “stuff” in order to prove my own worthiness. Stuff never brought me worthiness or esteem, never helped me to like me. It was a losing battle, but I had to fight it, and lose, before I understood that part. Slow learner I can be.
It didn’t take me too long to shed all that crap. I sold my house that I didn’t like. Living in a modern spaceship, that was completely opposite from our house by the sea, hadn’t blocked out those crushing memories, as I’d hoped, it had simply magnified my loss.
I gave my car away to be auctioned off at Youth Avenues. The house and the car reminded me of how I’ve tried to be someone I’m so not, to project an image of me that is patently false. I closed my office downtown, added an office to Grandma and Granddad’s house with a view of the lavender rows, and started seeing my clients there. I thought I’d lose a bunch of them because of the drive.
Nope, didn’t lose any. In fact, they love it on The Lavender Farm, and they all come about an hour early and walk around to get some peace in their lives.
My office has two sets of French doors and lots of windows. I have a comfy L-shaped blue couch with fluffy pink pillows, a number of lights with flowered shades for gentle effect, a leather chair, a compact kitchen where I can make my clients tea or coffee and we can sit at the kitchen table or, in warmer weather, head for the deck and the view of the blue and purple mountains west of us. There is absolutely no modern art.
The Giordano sisters said being out at The Lavender Farm was “nature touching their feminines.” Adriana said, “The farm helps me quell my inner and outer mood swings.” Bella said, “Menstrually, this is a far better place for me.” Carlotta said, “In spirit, I believe I am a tree.” They brought their cats.
Corky (mean lady) does not throw chairs when she comes out. In fact, sometimes we sit on the deck and drink lemon tea and watch birds. That’s what she likes to do. “See, when you hate yourself, you hate everyone around you,” she said. “I had a lot of hate. Thanks for telling me to volunteer. Holding sick and premature babies has made me not so obnoxious. Don’t you think?”
Georgie still works for me. She does a lot of work from her house, via computer. I can hear Stanley barking at me when we talk on the phone.
Going to the dock over the pond and playing my violin brings me peace. I can still hear Ismael, and we laugh about it over the phone. The gunshots are so quiet now, dim and dull, as if covered by a noisy Israeli family, a quiet bench on the hill, and Annie’s friendship. Sitting in the middle of rows of lavender rejuvenates me. Touching it, smelling it, creating wreaths and potpourri and other crafts, I’m happy. I do not want to leave The Lavender Farm again. This is home.
I was sitting in the middle of the lavender rows when he arrived, two marbles in my hand that I’d dug up, one purple, one pink, both with silver flecks.
He climbed out of his truck and saw me right away. For a minute, we stared across the purple streaks as I heard Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 17 in my head, rising up, up, and up further still.
He was very tall. He was wearing jeans and a white, buttondown shirt. I was wearing jeans, too, and a white shirt, and my cowboy boots. For some reason, a vision of May’s “We’ll charge you up” silver sequined bra and thong came to mind. Maybe I’d be wearing them soon.
I had spent ten days reading his books and drinking lemon tea. I started with his first one,
The Girl in Pink,
and moved on. He had written five books. I had been petrified of what I would read, the memories it would bring back. I knew that Steve had not written about the trials, the photographs, the abuse, or me. He had too much character to write about that.
No, these were touching, tear-jerking love stories, two lives, a boy and a girl, best friends, who grew to be a man and a woman, their lives never meeting at the right time, the right moment. Georgie was right, there was magic to them somehow, humor, a touch of heavenly miracles. Each character dealt with the challenges, disappointments, and joys that can be expected in life, but it was the prose, the rhythm, the words that described the pulse of each character, and their everlasting hope of finding love, that kept me reading.
I headed down the hill toward him, stepping over the purple and blue lavender. He smiled at me and we were kids again, except he was very tall and had shoulders like a bronco. In those eyes I saw warmth, kindness, and wisdom.
“Madeline,” Steve said, when I was about three feet from him. “It’s good to see you again.”
“You too.” I smiled back at his smile, couldn’t help it. The words “I missed you” slipped right out of my mouth.
He laughed, but I felt the longing, the friendship that still bloomed, the promise of more. “I missed you, too.”
“You’re a little taller than when I last saw you.” And, oh, he was truly gorgeous in an “I can hug you the rest of my life” type of way.
“Your hair is redder than it used to be.”
I gave him a bouquet of lavender, then stood on my toes and kissed his cheek.
BOOK: The First Day of the Rest of My Life
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