Read The First Day of the Rest of My Life Online

Authors: Cathy Lamb

The First Day of the Rest of My Life (10 page)

BOOK: The First Day of the Rest of My Life
12.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
It was right after that that the talk changed. She started telling part of what Annie and I believe to be her “real” story, mixed with the stories she told in her swan books, with a dollop of horror and violence thrown in. We’d tentatively, gently, asked Granddad about it, and he’d shut down, put us off. “It’s something best not talked about. It’s in the past and there it will stay.”
Mr. Legs shifted positions on Annie, as if he was confused, too.
“Yes.” Granddad’s eyes, eyes that had seen so much tragedy, so much laughter, were so very tired. “She would understand.”
“It’s all right. We had to do it . . . and then, love. Between us, love,” Grandma said, dropping a kiss on his forehead. “We weren’t expecting it, we weren’t planning on it, but it came. Like the sunset, like the sunrise, even though the violins weren’t matching. Our love came on the backs of swans and blue jays carrying red hearts.”
I remembered one of the illustrations my grandma drew for her books. There were swans and blue jays and they were carrying red hearts.
“And we’re here now,” Grandma said. “Past the barns and hiding in rivers, over the mountains, away from the guns and the work moving rocks, and the no water and the lice, we are here.”
“That’s right. Enjoy your bath, my love. I’ll be with you in a minute,” Granddad said.
Grandma smiled, kissed him on the lips. “My V privates will be scented then.”
Nola took her arm, smiling, and led Grandma away. I looked up at the sky and saw a star shoot down. The wind picked up a bit, ruffling my hair, my stomach in knots.
In the distance Morning Glory howled again. She does not like to be all alone.
Who does?
 
Later Granddad put Grandma to bed. I knew their routine.
Nola is in there with them, but she stands back. She’s there in case Grandma needs help. She’s fallen twice, ended up in the hospital both times, so Nola stays. It’s a private moment though, as Nola has told me. “I am quiet. I do not get in the way of their love.”
I am in their bedroom when I’m at home. Annie is also. We don’t get in the way of their love, either.
Neither Grandma nor Granddad ever looks at us, we are gone to them in the shadows of the dimly lit room. They are in their bedroom, alone together, their nightly routine one they’ve shared for decades.
Granddad is already in his pajamas, his teeth brushed. He helps Grandma brush her teeth, then takes her hand and settles her in her antique chair in front of her old-fashioned makeup table, complete with an oval mirror and a red rose flowered skirt.
He kneels and carefully smoothes her palms and fingers with lavender lotion, takes out her tortoise shell or pearl clips and hairpins, and brushes out her white curls, which have not lost their lushness.
Next, he gently sits Grandma on their king-sized bed with the lace canopy, and she smiles up at him, that suggestive coyness shining forth. He bends and drops a kiss on her smiling mouth and they smile at each other for long seconds, then she puts her arms straight out, like she’s on a cross, and he carefully unbuttons her sweater or her blouse or, like tonight, her fancy dress worn especially for him, and takes it off, folding or hanging it neatly.
She always says, “Take my clothes off. I am yours. We will go to The Land of the Swans together.”
There is no modesty as he unsnaps her lacy bra. My grandma, even when I was younger, always wore intricate, lacy bras that my granddad bought for her. Matching underwear, too. One bra, three pairs of matching underwear. She still wears them. He still buys her lacy, sexy bras and underwear because she delights in them. Next Grandma lies back on their bed, a girlish, flirty smile on her face as she watches him pull off her shoes, socks, her pants or her skirt, and underwear.
He slips an elegant nightgown over her head. He has always bought all of my grandma’s nightgowns, too, and he spares no expense. He buys her what a lady would wear for a husband who loves her dearly. She wears a pad in her underwear, but she doesn’t notice, and I don’t think he notices anymore, either; that is not the point.
When he is done, and she is covered in lace and love, he gently pulls her back up, and she says, “My heart, take me to the lake and we’ll make love” or “Darling, let’s make love by the lavender near the swan.” He tucks her in, turns out the light, climbs into bed, and hugs his wife, as they have done for decades, during good times and horrid times, their dreams intertwined, their nightmares shared.
We leave, closing the door softly.
We don’t want to interrupt their love.
 
When everyone else was in bed that night, Annie and I popped popcorn, smothered it in butter, headed back out to the deck, lit pine-scented candles, and wrapped blankets around ourselves. She had returned Mr. Legs, Oatmeal, and Geranium and come back with the gray and white cat, named Cat, who thinks she’s a dog and Morning Glory, who is a cross between a beagle, a German shepherd, and a banana.
“What exactly do you think they’re hiding?” I drawled. We lay in the wooden chaise lounges and studied the night sky, filled with bright stars, dim stars, and the swirl of the Milky Way.
“I don’t know, but they’re hiding something.” Morning Glory climbed up on Annie and lay on her chest, followed by Cat, who lay on her ankles.
“A lot of something.” I love popcorn. I love the whiteness of it. It’s an innocent food. We never had it at the shack, so it makes it innocent, a food with no bad memories, so to speak. “We know they came from France. Momma’s one hundred percent French.”
We let the silence move between us, liquid, quiet.
“Granddad told me they left before the war,” I said. “I think he said that. Didn’t he say that?”
“I think so, but, Madeline, I’m not sure. Did he just imply it? I know when someone’s lying, been trained on that one, but I was young when I asked my questions, hadn’t had the ‘how-toextract-information-from-unwilling-people’ classes yet.”
I didn’t take that one any further. “He said they came to New York, then to Oregon, and he and Grandma sold fruits, pies, French breads, baguettes, stews, soups, and croissants, door to door. They cooked it out of a cruddy house they rented. The roof leaked, the heat was sporadic, and it smelled moldy, but the oven worked, and that’s where they cooked.”
“Right, and he said the house caught fire on a winter night and burned the kitchen down, including their cooking supplies and their ingredients, and they started over.”
I nodded. “That’s them. They are not quitters.”
The rest is Swan Stores history. They rented a corner of a building outside of Portland. They lived upstairs and sold their food downstairs. “We were dead poor,” Granddad had told me, “for a time.”
Their flagship store is now located on that corner, tens of thousands of square feet. Fresh local ingredients, French food, great bargains, and bulk items drew crowds, and helpful employees kept them coming back. Swans grew; they expanded, hired, expanded, hired. “We never stopped working,” Grandma told me. “Except to take care of your momma.”
“They did both say they were born in Germany,” Annie said. “And they moved to France as very young children. Their parents were friends, I remember that part. They lived in the same village in Germany, and both families moved together.” She tossed two pieces of popcorn up in the air and caught both with her mouth. I was not fooled by her nonchalance. She was trying to puzzle this out with me. “But from there and back, things get fuzzy. I’ve never liked fuzzy.”
Morning Glory whined at her. Annie whined back.
“They’ll hardly say anything about France,” I said. “They’re vague. They change the subject. Who did they used to be? Who were they before they came here? All they will say is that the coffee was better in France, and so was the cheese and chocolate. Everything else is better in America. I asked Grandma about her own family, but she always stopped my questions by saying, ‘That was a long time ago. That was when the unicorns and the nymphs ruled the world’ or ‘It’s like a storybook, but the storybook has been read and doesn’t need to be re-read.’”
“One time Granddad told me that he and Grandma’s parents were gone, and it was just us now. I remember he became quiet after saying that, then he walked away from me, down the hill to the pond, and sat on the dock for a long time. I snuck down and spied on him, and he had his head in his hands. I didn’t want to ask him any more questions, because obviously it took him to a very bad place.”
“Annie, do you remember how Momma used to cry at odd moments? She would never explain why she was so upset. She’d go outside and watch the waves, she’d speak in French, as if she was talking to someone, and she’d play her violin. Sometimes I’d take my violin out and we’d play together.”
“They’ve been deliberately evasive.” Annie tossed up more popcorn. “I spent a number of years in hot, dry countries talking to evasive people, and those two are masters at it.” She pet Morning Glory. He panted at her.
“Think we’ll ever know what’s really there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
We sat in the liquid silence again and watched the stars while we shoveled innocent buttered popcorn in. One shooting star, two.
“All three of them shared a secret.”
“
That
I would bet my house that I don’t like on.” I reached for Annie’s hand and held it. We both had butter on our fingers from the innocent popcorn.
One more star fell through the night. It was now gone.
Dead.
 
Lavender can be used for love. It has a romantic history.
Cleopatra, that raving feminist, brilliant strategist, and manipulator used it to seduce, it is said, Marc Antony. I hardly doubt she needed help, but being in a bad political position, she can’t be blamed for pulling out all the stops.
Lavender was used over a hundred years ago to promote chastity. There are no scientific studies that support any success in this matter. Conversely, the smell of lavender is apparently sexy to men and can help the old guys get it up again. Young women used to stuff lavender in their beds so they could have a rocking good time in the sack, or tuck a few stems between their breasts to attract young gentlemen.
Lavender is also used to heal a broken heart.
So far, it has not worked for me.
 
Georgie, dressed in a yellow wrappy sort of dress with sunflowers and a perky blue hat, reminded me that I would be on the local TV show
Portland Sunrise
on Friday. “Tracy Shales’s assistant called and wants to talk to you.”
Stanley barked at me. I got on my haunches, shook his paw. He barked again and I hugged him.
My mind was mush. I had eight million e-mails to plow through and phone calls to return, including one to Janika Jeffs, who was running the Rock Your Womanhood conference. “We are so excited to have you, Madeline. We did a survey, and eighty-five percent of our seven thousand participants are coming because of you! You! You! You you!”
“The assistant wants to review what time you’re supposed to be there, makeup, the questions that will be asked of you, all that.” Georgie swirled the yellow ties on her dress. “I think this is a good way to forward your spirit to others.”
“Thank you. I like to forward my spirit.”
“Tracy’s got a lot going on right now, swirling trauma and drama,” Georgie mused.
“I know.” Tracy was in a rather public spat with the station’s manager, Thacker Blunt. She was a popular morning show host. Tracy was forty-eight, not thin, and had short brown hair. She was funny, quick, smart, and had fought breast cancer twice and won. She wore a scarf when she hosted the morning show during chemo, and a couple of times she took it right off and there was her bald head. It was a round, shiny, attractive bald head. That woman was roarin’ popular.
But when a young, leggy, snooty blonde was invited onto the show to “help her” cohost, Tracy saw the beginning of her demise.
When the young, leggy, snooty blonde named, get this,
Tawni,
was clearly taking over, in a sneaky way, and given more significant stories and the opening greeting, and when eventually Tracy was “reassigned” to a weekend news reporter position, the women of Portland howled.
Very loudly.
Not only her female viewers, and all of the women she knew in the statewide breast cancer organization, to which she had donated time and money, but her church, her walking group, and her neighbors got involved, too, one of whom was the former mayor of the city, another a state senator.
Not pretty.
During those two weeks, the young, leggy, snooty blonde, Tawni, said,
on the air,
when she was interviewing a red-haired fashion designer, “Ladies, if you’re a size twelve or above, these clothes aren’t for you. They’re a no-no. A boo-boo. Isn’t that right, Magdalena?” Magdalena, the local fashion designer, looked like she wanted to choke on her turquoise necklace.
“No, absolutely not. These clothes are made for all women, they accentuate curves—” the designer rushed, a gold streak in her hair falling forward.
BOOK: The First Day of the Rest of My Life
12.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Mrs. Cooney Is Loony! by Dan Gutman
Three Round Towers by Beverley Elphick
Bait by Karen Robards
Bubble Troubles by Colleen Madden
Vanguard by CJ Markusfeld
The warrior's apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
666 Park Avenue by Gabriella Pierce
Burnout by Vrettos, Adrienne Maria
Expectant Bride by Lynne Graham