What I Remember Most (48 page)

Authors: Cathy Lamb

BOOK: What I Remember Most

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Epilogue

When I’m done at Hendricks’ I go home and work in my studio. The windows let in all the natural light I need, and I can watch the weather roll by, like a moving collage.

I’ve replenished my art supplies and I’ve painted shelves, chairs, and tables all the colors of the rainbow. I’ve bought more art books. I bought two bonsai trees and plants. I light candles on the cold days and paint on enormous canvases. For some reason, it’s the bigger the better now, I don’t know why. I have a new website, and my work is selling again.

I started teaching an art class once a week, after school, at the local elementary school.

It started out as a one-hour class. Now it’s over two hours, as before. I have two classroom teachers who help me, the music teacher, a custodian, a secretary, a classroom aide, and the vice-principal.

We have about sixty kids, including Cleo. Hendricks’ Furniture pays for all the art supplies. Kade uses his muscles and helps carry it in. He stays for a while, too, and the kids love him. He’s an excellent father figure to them.

I know that part of my life’s purpose is to teach kids art, so they can find joy and peace, and create and build, and find themselves somewhere within the color, the texture, the layers. The kids love the class. They call me Miss Grenady. When they see me in town, they run up and hug me, as do their parents. I feel included. I feel liked. I feel like I can hold my head up.

I know that Kade and I will become foster parents in the future. I have to. I want to.

To say that I am “fine” is ridiculous. I am not. I trigger back to my past in all sorts of ways and probably will all my life. Dark forests, fog, empty cupboards, disorganization, ugly rooms, chaos, dog kennels, ropes, even loneliness and aloneness, will set me off. I still have to control Alice, My Anxiety. I will probably always need my black charcoal pencil and my sketch pad to push the past back.

But I like me again. I like making collages and paintings. I like using whipping cream in my coffee, and I like whipping it up and using it on Kade.

I know who I am.

I’ve had tragedy in my life, and miracles. But isn’t that life for all of us?

Some darkness, some rainbows?

Some fear, some courage?

Some love, some loss?

Yes to all of it.

It is life.

I am Grenadine Scotch Wild Whitney O’Malley, daughter of Lilly Maybelle Whitney and Liam Marcus O’Malley, granddaughter of Gene and Linda O’Malley, and Elizabeth Maybelle and Peter Whitney. Second mother to Cleo DiMarco.

The love of my life is Kade Hendricks. I will marry him some day very soon.

Together we will watch the lilies and daisies grow while sitting in our rocking chairs that Kade has made for the three of us. When other sons and daughters come along, he tells me, he will make them rocking chairs, too.

I am looking forward to the rockin’.

In my dream I saw my parents placing the red, crocheted shawl around my and Kade’s shoulders as we slept. My mother was carrying lilies, and she wore her flowered skirt. My father carried his guitar and pointed up to the Big Dipper.

We love you, Grenadine.

We love you.

Peace.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What did you think of
What I Remember Most
? What three scenes best depict Grenadine Scotch Wild’s character?
Which character did you most relate to and why? Was there any part of the book that made you laugh or cry? What was your favorite scene?
If you could spend the day with Grenadine, Kade, Rozlyn, the Hutchinsons, or Eudora, who would you choose and what would you do?
Grenadine says, about herself, “I’m a crack shot and can hit damn near anything. . . . I’m a collage artist and painter. . . . I used to have a little green house. I sold it. That was a huge mistake.... I can smash beer cans on my forehead.... I fight dirty. Someone comes at me, and my instinctive reaction is to smash and pulverize. It has gotten me into trouble.... I have a temper, my anger perpetually on low seethe, and I have struggled with self-esteem issues and flashbacks for as long as I can remember. . . . I can wear four-inch heels and designer clothes like wealthy women, make social chitchat, and pretend I’m exactly like them. I am not like them at all . . .”
Write down, and then share, how you would describe yourself.
Grenadine speaks in the first person. However, there are also police and children’s services reports; memos, letters from a doctor, a teacher, and Grenadine; a report card; a court transcript; and third-person passages from the point of view of Bucky. Did the structure work for you? Why?
Marley, a customer at The Spirited Owl said, “Women are so picky. If you don’t look like Brad Pitt or you’re not rich, they don’t want you.”
Grenadine said, “No, they don’t want you, Marley, because you look like you have a baby in your stomach, you’re unshaven, you drink too much, and all you want to do is talk about yourself and whine in that whiny voice of yours. Would you be attracted to you? No? Then why would a woman be?”
Why did the author give Grenadine a job at a bar? Is she a good bartender? If she gave you advice while you were drinking a margarita, what would she say to you?
Did the author portray Grenadine’s journey in foster care and the children’s services division workers accurately?
Why was Grenadine attracted to Kade? What did Kade have in common with her? Kade had spent time in jail because of gang related activities when he was younger. Would his record have stopped you from dating him?
From Bucky:
She never should have gotten away.
That was a mistake. He had not expected things to take so long. It had always bothered him. He liked things neat. Planned. Perfect.
He wanted to see her again. Before.
He would do it! He would think of a way. He pulled four strands of hair out of his head, then made a design on the table in front of him.
He giggled. He twitched in his chair.
He told himself a nursery rhyme. He changed the words to create a new rhyme. He sang it out loud. He wrote it in his rhyme book.
He giggled again, then he hurdled his rhyme book across the room, tilted his head back and screamed.
What element did Bucky bring to the story? Did it fit?
What did you think of Covey? Was there any good in him?
Did you learn anything about living and dying from Rozlyn? Would it have been more realistic, or a better ending for you, if Rozlyn had lived? Why do you think the author chose for her to die?
Grenadine said, “I paint what’s in my head. I paint whatever I’m thinking about at the time. I’ll twist it up, spin it out, add color, add layers, add collage items, and I keep going until it feels done.”
If you were to make a painting or collage that would tell the story of your life, what would it look like? What materials would you use? What would it say about you? Grab the artist in you and sketch it out....