Lila Blue (5 page)

"Namaste," I said,
tasting the sounds on my tongue. It felt nice. "Namaste."

"Exactly," Lila said, and
she made prayer hands, bowed to me, and said it again, "Namaste."
Then she Namasted the cats one by one, and they meowed back at her. She
laughed.

"To me, Namaste is like gods
winking at each other. God inside me recognizes God inside you and says, 'Hi. I
see you. Isn't this fun to be scattered all over creation so we can love each
other?'"

"Wait. God in you, God in me,
God in cats, God in seashells?"

"Precisely." She smiled,
as if that explained everything, so I let it go.

"Well, then why does anybody
go to church?" I asked.

She grinned and shrugged. "You
should ask people and then really listen to them. You learn a lot from
listening with a peaceful mind. We all have excellent reasons for doing what we
do."

I nodded, relieved. "I'm glad
there's no church attendance rule."

"Good. Thank you, Sandy, for
being brave enough to bring it up. Please ask me anything, talk to me about
anything. I don't have a church attendance rule, but I do have rules. We'll
discuss them after you've had a chance to study them." She winked at me.
"And you will be tested."

For lunch Lila taught me how to
make amazing grilled cheese sandwiches in a big cast iron skillet on top of the
stove. Her kitchen was nothing like my mom's. No microwave, no dishwasher, no
toaster oven. Just a refrigerator, a stove, and a sink.

"I have appliances," she
said, as if my shock at her not having a microwave was an insult. "I have
a coffee grinder, electric, and a coffee pot and toaster, also electric."

"I only know microwave,"
I said. "My mom says I'm too young to use a real stove."

"How old are you," Lila
said.

"Twelve."

"Twelve is old enough for
practically everything!" Lila said. "I think Shakespeare's Juliet was
only thirteen. And she killed herself beside her lover!"

I stood looking at the stove as if
it might bite me. My mom hardly ever used hers. She microwaved. Mostly she ate
things whose name started with
Diet
that came in a box or carton. My mom
was terrified of gaining an ounce. She was five four, weighed one twenty, and
fervently believed she was fifteen pounds overweight.

Grandma Betty liked the Olive
Garden and In & Out Burger and Red Robin. I knew those menus by heart. I
could survive in Sacramento. I looked at Lila and couldn't imagine how to
explain my life to her.

"I see I got a bit off track
there, didn’t I," Lila said, "because Juliet’s death doesn't properly
relate to the present discussion."

I nodded mutely, so Lila smiled and
patted my arm. “You’re old enough to learn anything you want to,” she said.

Next she explained each step while
creating a yummy smelling grilled cheese sandwich, and then she stepped back from
the stove and gestured for me to take over. "Mine's done," she said.
"Your turn."

I'm sure I looked as shocked as I
felt, but Lila smiled, so with her guidance I made my own delicious smelling
melted cheese sandwich. Mine was a little burned on one edge, but Lila said it
was perfect because carbon was an essential nutrient for life on earth. The
alien abduction scenario flashed through my mind again.

The sandwiches tasted as delicious
as they smelled. The grainy bread, which came from the bakery next to Lila’s
barbershop, was toasty on the outside and soft on the inside, and the cheese
was perfectly melted. Only a diet cola could have made it better.

When I asked Lila for one, she
said, "Nope. Nothing fizzy here. Comes under house rule number two."
She shook her finger at me and gave me a stern look. "And diet anything is
absolutely forbidden in my house, understand? I will not have people eating
poison in my sacred space."

I hadn't memorized the rules yet,
and our sandwiches were cooling off. So I decided milk would be fine.

After sandwiches, Lila taught me
how to tackle the pineapple.

"Imagine, sweetheart,"
she said, holding up the fruit and admiring it as if it were precious art.
"A few days ago this fat fellow was growing in a hot field in Maui
thousands of miles from here, and now it is right here with us." She
kissed its green spiky top. "Everything is a miracle if you look deeply
enough to see the truth."

Lila turned the pineapple carving
into a science and cooking class, just as she had done with the cheese
sandwich, so I learned one way to get into a pineapple. The hardest part was
how slippery the pineapple juice made my fingers. When I was finished peeling
and cutting up my slice, I had to wash my hands three times to get the slimy
juice off. It was weird.

"Virginia Satir said there are
hundreds of ways to wash the dishes," Lila said, "and every way gets
the job done. It follows there must be hundreds of ways to do anything,
including pineapple slicing. Put Satir on your reading list. I think her
comment referred to how ridiculous most family arguments are."

My reading list? Was I in summer
school? Would I be tested on traditional kitchen implements and reading
assignments as well as house rules?

"Don't worry," Lila said,
laughing at the expression on my face. "There's plenty of time for
everything."

We took our time savoring the fresh
pineapple chunks. They tasted sweet and sour at exactly the same time, and I
ate so many my mouth was all puckered and dry feeling when I was done.
Everything I ate at Lila's house so far had been an adventure. I felt years
away from the dilapidated potato chips of Greyhound country.

Lila's big living room was arranged
into little islands for different activities. Her desk corner had an upright
piano as well as her desk, file cabinets, and bookcases. Opposite that on the
wall between the living room and the kitchen was a corner fireplace made of
gray stone. In front of the fireplace were two stuffed rocking chairs with
footstools.

The big sofa sat in the middle of
the room, an island by itself facing the sea, and after lunch I took a nap on
it under a fuzzy white afghan while Lila did some work at her desk. The morning
fog had been replaced by heavy dark rain clouds. When I got up from the nap,
spatters of rain were hitting the window in gusts, and everything outside was a
different shade of gray.

When I was truly awake, Lila gave
me a tour of the room upstairs, which she called the Crow's Nest. It was
straight out of an adventure story. The stairway was steep but sturdy, and at
the top was a big landing with rails, so it felt safe. When we walked through
the upstairs door into the Crow’s Nest, I had to stop and breathe several
times, because it seemed the whole front wall was a huge picture window, and I
was still not accustomed to being perched so high above the sea. When I had
collected myself enough to walk again, I explored the room.

At the back of the house was a big
round window where I could look down on the road and our driveway. From the
ocean side window I could look down at the beach stairs and the concrete patio
area in front of the living room window. Everything outside was dark and heavy
with rain.

A long window seat below the beach
window was fitted with thick corduroy covered padding and big pillows. It
seemed perfect for reading or naps. As if summoned by my thought, Chloe and Zoe
appeared and hopped up on the cushions, facing one another like bookends. They
licked their paws and washed their faces. I couldn't tell which was which, even
though Lila said Chloe was thicker and more cautious and Zoe was the alpha cat,
the boss. They seemed to appear and disappear, sometimes indoors, sometimes
outdoors. They were magicians, or maybe Grandma Lila was the magic one.

On both sides of the big room where
the roof beams sloped down, there were built in storage areas. On the south
side near the stairway landing were bookcases and closet doors above big
pullout drawers filled with quilts and games and fabric. The bookcases were
packed with books of all shapes and sizes.

On the north side above the bank of
drawers were three built-in beds, each with its own headboard bookcase and
reading lamp, like bunks on a ship. Heavy blue and green plaid curtains were
pulled across each bed for privacy.

The bed in the middle was unused.
It had a white sheet tucked over the bedding to keep it clean and the bookcase
was empty and polished. The beds at either end had matching blue patchwork
quilts, and those headboards were stacked with books and toys. One bed had
about a dozen stuffed animals lined up against the wall across from the
curtain.

"Who lives here?" I
asked.

"This is where Mark and Jamie
stay when they come for holidays. They'll be here in July. Maybe you'll meet
them this time."

"The Christmas letters,"
I said, remembering school pictures of two boys, one older than me, Mark I
think, and one younger, who must belong to the stuffed animals.

Lila nodded. "My grandsons. So
you saw the holiday letters and pictures?"

"My mom showed me the
Christmas ones. She said you were a friend of the family. I thought you knew
Grandma Betty."

Lila nodded and smiled. "I'm
glad you saw my letters. I wasn't sure."

"My mom is not big on
writing," I said. "She'll write some guy's phone number on her hand,
but that's about it."

Lila laughed. "Maybe that's
wise. Sometimes writing gets me in trouble."

"Really?"

"I write a column in our
weekly newspaper. Sometimes people take offense."

Her Christmas letters were so funny
and sweet, I didn't know how anyone could be offended.

I moved to the center of the room
where a sturdy wooden table was set up with six heavy wooden chairs. The whole
room reminded me of an old ship, built to withstand storms on the high seas,
impervious to blustery rogues and pirates.

The pirate image dispersed though
when I saw the half finished jigsaw puzzle at the end of the big table. The
picture on the box showed a field of brilliantly colored tulips with
snow-covered peaks in the distance. It was a puzzle I would have chosen myself.
I looked at Lila and smiled.

I'd been at Lila Blue's for less
than twenty-four hours, and already I felt at home.

The phone rang downstairs, and I
knew it was my mom. She'd be up now and want to check on me before going to
work. I knew Lila had called Janice after I arrived, but I hadn't wanted to
talk then.

Now I wanted to talk, so when Lila
said, "It's probably Janice," I rushed downstairs to take the call.

"Mom," I said when I
picked up the telephone.

"How did you know it was me,
Sandy?"

"I knew."

"How are you, baby?"

I told her I was okay and then let
the silence zing back and forth across the phone lines.

"Did you see the ocean
yet?" She knew I was excited about being near the beach.

"Yea, we walked this morning
before the fog came. It's raining now. It's really cold."

"Is everything okay, Sandy?
Lila said there's plenty of room for you. Do you like it?"

"It's okay," I said.
"How are you and Roger doing?"

"He's not staying here. We're
friends. I told you that before."

"Oh."

"Sandy, I haven't had a drink
since you left."

I held the phone receiver and
stared outside at the gray ocean while the wind threw random sprays of
raindrops at the window.

"I thought you'd be happy for
me."

"That's good, Mom." Did
she want me to be overjoyed that she'd behaved herself for one night? Was it so
hard living with me that the instant I left it was easy to stop drinking?

"Okay, then, Sandy, do you
need anything? Do you like the food there?"

"We had pineapple from
Hawaii," I said, thinking how she would be amazed to see me peeling the
prickly fruit.

"I didn't know you liked
fruit," she said.

"It was okay." I didn't
want her to think I was happy about being banished to the wilderness.

"That's good, Sandy. You have
my work number, so call if you get lonely or need anything."

She'd never invited me to call her
before if I got lonely. I let the silence sit there, because I couldn't think
of anything I wanted to say to her.

"I have to go now. I love you,
Sandy," she said, using her pitiful tone of voice.

"Cassandra," I said.
"People call me Cassandra now. Goodbye." I hung up. It was the second
time that I didn't know what I was thinking until it came out of my mouth.
Cassandra. Okay. I was in a new place, I was growing up, and it felt right.

Lila had come downstairs by this
time, and she was talking to the cats in the kitchen, so she must have heard
the end of my conversation with my mom. I was glad she didn't ask about it.
From then on, though, Lila called me Cassandra. She made my name sound regal.

"Can I stay down here?" I
asked Lila. The upstairs room was wonderful, but it was too big and nautical. I
didn't like the idea of being in the little white bunk in between two boys'
beds. I wanted to sleep in the room across from Lila.

"Of course, Cassandra. We can
keep the Crow's Nest door closed so the cats won't thump about up there."

We worked together to move her
sewing supplies upstairs, and she even cleaned out the big walk-in closet so
I'd have more than enough space for my things.

"Maybe we shouldn't move
everything," I said. "I don't know how long I can stay."

"No one ever knows how long
she can stay anywhere,” Lila said. “You're here now, and I want you to be
comfortable. If you decide to go back to California tomorrow, that's fine. I
want you to be happy." She patted my arm and grinned. "Rule number
seven."

So we cleaned the whole sewing room
and it became mine. After we took my empty suitcase and stowed it on the middle
bunk upstairs, Lila showed me half a dozen patchwork quilts to choose from.
They looked brand new, and most of them were variations of the same pattern,
which she called log cabins. The rectangles all stacked into each other, so I
could see how the pattern reminded people of the way log houses were built. I
chose two quilts for my bed. One had lots of yellows and greens and pinks. The
other had different shades of blue with red center squares.