Lila Blue (14 page)

David's best friend Gerald, the one
he'd bought the bike from, took hundreds of pictures in the park and put
together a Memory Book of the best ones for Terry and for Lila and Ray. He'd
taken lots of pictures of David at work too, and those were included at the end
of the book.

Of the memorial service photos, I
studied those of Lila and Ray and Mark and Terry and her parents. Terry was a
big woman, taller than Lila and quite a bit broader. She was six months
pregnant, but that couldn't have accounted for all the extra weight she was
carrying. She looked older than her mother in one photo. In it they held paper
plates full of picnic food, but they weren't eating. Mark, who had just turned
seven when David died, was standing beside Terry, watching the food from his
paper plate fall onto the ground at their feet.

I studied the photos of Ray, Lila's
husband for thirty-five years, David's father, my grandfather. He may have been
good at being invisible in a crowd, or maybe Gerald was respecting his privacy,
but there were only two photos where you could really see Ray. One showed Lila
and Ray standing very close to each other, shoulders touching. They were
exactly the same size. A short older lady whose back was to the camera was
talking with them, and they stood still, listening. They both had the same tilt
of head, the same concerned, tired look, the same sadness around the mouth and
eyes. They looked more like brother and sister than a married couple, except
Lila wore her crown of thick snowy hair and Ray was bald.

"Grandpa Ray was bald?" I
asked Lila. "Is that normal for a barber?"

She shook her head and sighed.
"Everyone teased him about it. I know it hurt his feelings, he was a very
sensitive person, but he didn't let on. He'd smile and let people have their
fun."

She said they met at a barber college
in Portland. She was just out of high school, and her family was poor and
needed her help, so being a barber seemed a good way to start making decent
money without too much schooling. She loved working with hair. She'd been the
family hair cutter since she was ten, so she was already better than some
graduates before she started trade school.

Ray was ten years older than Lila.
"He was the innocent one, though," she said, grinning at me.
"I'd sown a few wild oats during high school."

"Grandma!" I said. Somehow
I wasn't surprised.

 "Well what did they
expect?" she said. "I was curious about everything, and the entire
subject of sex was completely forbidden. Don't they know that forbidding
something makes it irresistible?"

I smiled at her and shrugged. She
treated me like a grownup, and it made me happy.

She said Ray wasn't completely
bald, but his hair was very thin on top and coarse and wiry and curly in some
spots and wavy in others. "Not good hair at all," she said. "I
shaved his head for him every morning after he shaved his face. He kept us both
skilled with a straight razor."

I wondered if there was anything
Lila couldn't do. She seemed skilled at everything.

"He adored my thick wavy
tresses," she said. "Believe it or not, my hair was red like yours when
I was in school. Oh, I was so proud of my hair. 'Delilah's Pride and Joy,' Ray
would say when he braided my hair or brushed it out. I think he fell in love
with my hair first. Imagine how happy he was when he found out about the rest
of me!"

I laughed. How wonderful it must be
to love yourself so easily.

Lila glanced up, made prayer hands
and raised her voice to heaven. "I still wear my hair long for you, Ray
darlin’. I hope you appreciate how much trouble it is now that you're not here
to do it up."

"Grandma, is your name
Delilah? Like Samson and Delilah?"

"Delilah Ann Hamond Blue, at
your service," she said.

"But Delilah cut off Samson's
hair," I said.

"Samson was lucky she didn't
cut off something else," Lila said. "He swore he loved her, then he
straight out lied to her three times, three days in a row. After the third time
he lied, she lost her patience. Plus his armies were slaughtering her people,
so I'd say old Samson was lucky he lived to tell the tale."

"You should start your own
church, Grandma," I said. "People need to know these things."

She laughed. "You start a
church, Cassandra. I'm happy living my life right here right now. Here and now
with my darlin’ Cassandra."

Before I went to bed that night, I
studied the Memory Book again. After the memorial service photos were the
photos of my dad at work. Gerald must have really liked my father and found him
photogenic, because there were wonderful photographs of him. In one I liked,
David was driving a forklift. It was painted orange and he was wearing a yellow
hard hat. It was one of the few photos where he seemed aware of the camera. He
looked relaxed and happy, and he grinned at the cameraman, and now, eight years
later, at me.

 I studied that photo a long time,
reminding myself David loved me for two years. He loved my mother for three
years. He really loved us.

Another photo was a black and white
close up of his face in profile. The background was unfocussed, but you could
see every dark whisker root on his clean-shaven face. His eyelashes were thick
and long, like a baby doll's eyelashes, too pretty for a man. David seemed to
be talking business with someone just to the left of the photo frame, and he
looked grown up and serious. Competent, friendly, helpful. He probably would
have been happy in that job forever, helping people buy building supplies,
maybe working up to assistant manager by now. Good work. Worthy work. Like
cutting hair.

Lila had other photos of course.
David was their only child, and she and Ray adored him. There was an old-fashioned
baby book, complete with footprint and handprint and a tiny brown curl of his
hair. I smelled the hair, but it smelled like dusty old paper. Whatever
remained of my father had apparently lost all its life force.

Lila and I looked at her family
photo albums together on the couch in front of the ocean. But I carried
Gerald's Memory Book around the house with me and studied it carefully before I
went to sleep. The pictures in it were not posed. I loved the ones of David at
work and those taken in a little tavern on Friday nights after work. Gerald had
put dates, times, places, and sometimes camera data on little labels under each
photo.

One picture I kept going back to
was of David playing pool. He was bent over the green felt table concentrating
on lining up a shot. The camera must have been hovering over the ball, because
it showed his left hand supporting the blue-tipped end of the pool cue and then
David's intense wide-open face beyond it. His hand and face took up most of the
photo, and because of the perspective, his hand seemed a large separate
creature. The light on his face was perfect for showing the green of his eyes
and deep brown of his curly hair. I was startled to see a small dark mole right
in the center of his forehead. I had the exact same mole. His showed up clearer
than mine did, because I had so many freckles that one or two more marks on my
face were not that noticeable.

Now I understood why my mole had
upset Janice so much. She had tried to cover it up by straightening my hair in
long bangs to cover my forehead, but that never worked well enough to please
her. Once she tried to pressure a doctor to cut off the mole, but he wouldn't
do it. I used to think she was trying to make me pretty. Now I thought it was
much more complex than surface beauty.

I wondered how many other things
I'd believed about myself and my mother were wrong. My father was the sun, my
mother was the earth, and I was the moon. I revolved around her, but she
revolved around him. For me and my mother, even though our star was dead, there
seemed little chance of escaping gravity.

By the middle of July, when Mark
and Jamie and their parents were scheduled to arrive at the resort a few blocks
north of us, I was ready to meet them. I didn't know if they were ready to meet
me, but Lila said the sooner the better works for most things.

"Do I have to be around
Terry?" I asked. Lila and I were walking on the beach before breakfast a
few days before they were to arrive. I needed to blame someone, and David was
dead, so Terry seemed a good target for the anger that still bubbled up inside
me.

"Terry has become a fine young
woman," Lila said. "David had a small life insurance policy and we
helped as much as we could, so she wasn't destitute, thank goodness. She used
the money for a down payment on a little house a few blocks away from her
parents. Then she worked hard and became a realtor."

Lila and I were strolling along in
the early morning misty sunshine. It was a glorious day, and the tides were
getting so low that lots of agates and pretty shells were being exposed. I'd
replaced the porch basket I had destroyed, and we were quickly filling the
replacement with newfound treasures.

I stooped to pick up an amber clear
stone about the diameter of a nickel and showed it to Lila. She smiled and
nodded approval, and I tucked it in the pocket of my jacket with the others I'd
found that morning.

"Terry loves houses,"
Lila said. "She has a gift for helping people find their dream homes. When
Jamie was three, Terry married her broker, and now she and Rich run a very
successful business together. They love their jobs, and they have plenty of
money for travel and good schooling for their sons. She found a happy outlet
for her ambition, and she and Rich are good together. David's death forced her
to discover what she could do on her own, and it gave her the money to get
started. So it turned out he gave her what she wanted after all."

"But he had to die to do
it," I said, still having a hard time believing Terry was innocent of wrongdoing.

"Cassandra, blame isn't
helpful. David died. He chose the time and place and method of his death. No
one is responsible for that except him, and maybe not even him. Maybe our life
stories are written before we are born. Shakespeare said, 'All the world's a
stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and
entrances...' Maybe he was right."

"Well I certainly didn't
choose this part," I said, crossing my arms.

"Which part of 'this part'
didn't you choose?"

"What do you mean, Lila?"

"I mean this moment, here with
me, on the magnificent Oregon Coast? Being a beautiful, intelligent human on
the threshold of womanhood? Loading your pockets with pretty rocks and
shells?"

"I don't want
this
moment to change," I said, guessing where she was headed.

"All those other scenes got
you here, Cassandra. Maybe some wise part of you begged for this role to play
in this lifetime."

"Why would anyone choose a
part where they murder someone or commit suicide? That doesn't make sense at
all."

"I don't know," Lila
said. "Some people love scary movies or dark comedies or tragic love
stories. Maybe those people choose similar parts to play on the world
stage?"

"No," I said, shaking my
head.

"Okay," said Lila. "I
prefer love stories with happy endings, myself."

I picked up a pretty mussel shell,
medium sized. The two shells were still hinged together, and the mother of
pearl lining of the inside of the shells caught the light and threw back pinks
and purples and blues. It was a perfect specimen, and since I had already
collected half a dozen just as pretty, I placed it back at the surf line so
some lucky visitor would find it, and it would be her only one, not her
seventh.

"So Terry chose to fall in
love," I said, "get pregnant, leave her husband, demand he come back,
and then have him kill himself by running a motorcycle off a cliff."

"Maybe she likes the kind of
story where the heroine grows through adversity? Maybe her soul needed the
challenge of losing everything but having to survive for her children?"

"Grandma, a lot of your ideas
make sense," I said. "But this one is flat out insane. Not only that,
it's wrong."

Lila laughed her wonderful laugh.
"You might be right about that, Cassandra."

"Good," I said. "Let's
pretend we have one lifetime, this one. It's the genetic roll of the dice.
Okay?"

"Good idea," Lila said.
Her eyes sparkling with joy, she smiled at me, drenching me in love.

After our walk when we had finished
rinsing our feet, Lila said, "In any case, I'm proud of Terry. It wasn't
easy. She must have blamed herself. We all blamed ourselves and each other. We
were out of our minds with grief. But she pulled out of it and provided a good
life for herself and her sons."

After I'd arranged our new rocks and
shells in the porch basket, I said, "You're proud of everyone,
Grandma."

"Yes, I am. I'm proud of us
all. We survived something that was impossible to survive. We went on living.
It was too much for Ray, though. He died of a stroke six months after David
died. He was sixty-six. At least he got to meet Jamie, our magical child, our
nature sprite."

We sat on the porch steps facing
the sea and towel dried our feet, letting the sun warm our backs. "Do you
miss Grandpa?" I asked.

"Of course I miss him. We lived
together and worked together every single day for thirty-five years. He was my
heartbeat." She smiled at me and patted my hand.

"But he's still here,"
she said. "Sometimes I feel him walk into the room, and I look up to greet
him before I remember he's dead. And at night. He often comes and sleeps with
me," she said, nodding and giving me a dreamy smile. "I feel his body
next to mine, and he's just as solid and real and sweet and gentle as he always
was."

"You mean you dream about
him," I said. "He comes to you in your dreams."

"He does come to me when I'm
sleeping and dreaming, yes," Lila said. "But he also comes to me when
I'm awake in my bed, and not always at night. Sometimes he comes when I lie
down for a rest in the afternoon. I can't see him, but I feel him. In many
ways, he's still alive for me. I know it's mysterious, but it's true."

"Wow," I said. I knew my
grandma wasn't crazy, but this was too much.

Back inside the house when we were
cooking bacon and biscuits for breakfast, I asked Lila, "How long do you
think Terry will be here?"

"Not long. Terry and Rich have
to get back to their real estate business, so about noon Monday they'll bring
the boys here. The boys are staying about ten days this time, because Mark has
to get back for football practice and his driver's education class. It's
possible that Jamie will be able to stay longer, but we'll see."

I looked around Lila's house, which
seemed exactly the right size for two humans and two cats, and I couldn't
imagine adding two boys to the space.

Lila smiled at me and said, "Don't
worry. Everything will be fine. You'll see."

"And you'll be so proud of
us," I said like a grump.

"I will, Cassandra. I'll be
happy and proud and grateful. Life is very good."

I concentrated on making the
biscuits. The trick is to handle the dough as little as possible. Exactly the
right amount of liquid, a tiny bit wetter than a person might think, and then
the gentlest touch. A heavy cookie sheet and a hot oven are essential, too.
Lila said I must have baking in my blood, because I learned so fast. She said I
was ready to bake pies whenever I felt the urge.

After I put the biscuits in the
oven and started setting the table, I said, "Grandma? What do they know
about me?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure
everything they know about you, they got from me," she said. She was slow
frying the bacon in her heavy cast iron skillet. The smell made my mouth water.

"What did you tell them?"
I said, wondering how I would describe myself to someone. I got out the jar of
homemade strawberry jam that Kitty Lynn had given us when we went to her shop
to choose the pretty green yarn for my afghan. Her jam would be perfect on hot
biscuits. "I hope they don't think I'm weird," I said.

"Would it bother you if they
thought you were weird?" she asked.

"Wouldn't it bother
anyone?"

"Not me," she said.
"I think weird is a compliment. Who wants to be commonplace, normal,
middle of the road, one of the crowd, a sheep, a lemming, an ant?"

"Not me," I said and
laughed. "I sure hope they think I'm weird."

"That's better," she
said. "What other people think of you is not nearly as important as what
you
think of you. Remember that."

"Okay," I said, not sure
why she was emphasizing it so much.

"So what do they know about
me? Do they know we have the same father? Do they know their dad married my mom
while he was still married to their mom? Do they know Terry pushed us away from
him?"

"They know about you and your
mother," Lila said. "They know you were in Sacramento, and I stay in
touch with your mother. They know you are here now. They know you are my
grandchild and I love you the same as I love them."

"How can you love me the same,
Lila?" I asked, ready to argue with her about something.

"I love all my grandchildren
with my whole heart," she said.

I thought that was a good answer.
It was comforting to know I wasn't on probation with her. "Do you talk
about me to them? Do they ask questions?"

"Jamie is very intuitive and
loving," she said. "He likes to talk about you."

"But Mark?"

"Mark is slower to show how he
feels inside," she said. "I don't think he's ever allowed himself to
grieve."

I nodded. I felt I'd been grieving
my whole life, so we were not similar in that area. I wondered if there would
be anything we could talk about.

"Mark can be friendly and
outgoing, like his mom and Rich, when he's around people, but he prefers
solitude," Lila continued. "He considers Rich his father, both boys
do, and Rich adopted them. Mark says he doesn't remember anything before Jamie
was born."

"But he's older than I am. Why
can't he remember David?"

"He was nearly seven when
Jamie was born, but the mind has a way of protecting itself from psychological
distress. It represses memories and experiences that are too painful to
recall."

"Oh," I said,
disappointed. I'd hoped I could learn more about David through Mark. I wanted
to know what it was like to have David as a father. But if Mark couldn't
remember, how could I?

After they checked into the resort,
Terry called. Lila sounded happy and comfortable talking with her.

"Let me check," Lila said
into the phone, and then she covered the mouthpiece and said to me, "Terry
and Rich are going shopping, and she wants to know if we'd like to enjoy the
indoor pool with Mark and Jamie."

"Okay," I said, surprised
at how many butterflies had instantly appeared in my stomach. They were
fluttering around so much I had to hold my belly and do some deep breathing. I
went to my little room to find my swimsuit so Lila wouldn't notice how scared I
was. It was practically impossible to hide any of my feelings from her, and I
was pretty good at reading her, too. We'd bonded.

By the time I came out wearing my
suit under my jeans and long-sleeved t-shirt, Lila was in putting her suit on.
"Grab some towels from the linen closet, Cassandra," she called from
her room. "Two each, and do a couple of dozen jumping jacks to get rid of
that nervous energy. I can hear you vibrating in there."

"Lila!" I said. "I
am not vibrating."

She laughed. "Exciting,
yes?" she asked. "Meeting your brothers for the very first
time?"

"You said Mark and I were both
clinging to our mothers and crying in your front yard in Idaho," I said,
realizing how picky I was being. I noticed I was more critical when I was
scared.

"You're right," she said.
"All set?"

I nodded, so we locked the house
and walked down the road to the resort. Terry and Rich were coming out of the
building when we arrived in the parking lot, and they stopped to greet us on
their way out.

I recognized Terry from the Memory
Book pictures, only she looked younger and thinner than she had eight years
earlier when she was pregnant with Jamie.

"Cassandra," she said,
smiling and hurrying toward me. She tried to hug me, and when she felt me shy
away, she reached out to shake my hand. "You are so grown up! And just as
beautiful as Lila said. I'm very happy to meet you."

I nodded and couldn't help warming
up to her friendliness. I could see why she'd be a good sales lady.

She pulled her husband over, and he
shook my hand and smiled as Terry introduced me to him. He looked quite a bit
older than she was, and he had a suntan and wore a white golf hat and a bright
yellow golf shirt.

They hugged Lila, and Terry used
the hotel key to let us into the recreation building where Mark and Jamie were
swimming. The only others using the big pool were a young couple with two
children in the shallow end. The warm wet air in the building smelled strongly
of chlorine and reminded me of all the hours I'd spent on swim team with
Shelly.

Terry waved to her boys and said,
"We'll be hours and hours. Order room service for everyone when you're
done here. Or go to the hotel dining room."

After their parents left, Jamie got
out of the pool to greet Lila and to meet me. First he gave Lila a wet hug and
two kisses, one on each check. Next he stood at attention in front of me, a
thin dripping child in a blue swimsuit. He made prayer hands, bowed, and said,
"Namaste, Sister."

He was so cute and solemn and
funny, I could only respond to his greeting the same way. "Namaste,
Brother."