Sand in My Eyes (11 page)

While waiting for it to warm up, I took the letter my neighbor had given me from my pocket and set it on my desk for inspiration, then pulled my clothes off and rummaged through drawers in search of anything comfortable to wear. There was not a single clean garment to be found in my house, so I stood on my tiptoes and reached high in my closet, pulling down the box in which, long ago, after the birth of the twins, I had stashed my sexy items. The long, red, silk nightgown I wore on our honeymoon was no longer my style, but, oh well, it was clean, and Timothy wasn’t home to see me looking ridiculous in it, I thought as I sat down at my desk and put my fingers to the keys.

I sprinted past the conference room and out the front doors of Anchorage Publishing Inc. like a woman whose feet were freshly unshackled and set free. As I ran into the parking lot, I pulled the happy, competent, confident mask off—the one with the smile and the expression that said that I loved my job and that I was fine, my life was fine. And as I put my key in the ignition, I felt shame for having let things bother me to this point without voicing it, without changing the things I did not like and for letting the stress of my job root its way under my skin. I had been operating for too long like a vehicle in perfect working condition, but there had been lights flashing in my head, strange noises in my mind, indicating a problem for months and cautioning me to slow down. But I hadn’t. I kept going
.

“I can’t go on like this—running on empty,” is all I said as I sped out of the parking lot, fleeing my career
.

Like the orchid, I no longer wanted a stressful environment. It’s why I quit. I did it for myself and must never forget the story of why I left my job behind. There won’t be room on my stone someday for the whole story, but there won’t be room for a phrase as big as “publicist extraordinaire,” either. I don’t think it would be hard to fit “mother,” and I could shorten it if I have a smaller stone. I could just have “mom” or, if really pressed for space, “ma.”

I wrote until the wee hours and, after dropping into bed, let my subconscious think about what to write next. And the next morning in the little yellow room, there was an orchid sitting in the early sun, and a woodpecker having fun hammering its beak into my tin roof, drilling my nerves. I went to my window, wondering how I might steer the bird toward my neighbor’s roof instead. People her age go to bed at dusk. They don’t mind birds waking them at the crack of dawn.

And there she was out my window, this older woman watering roses and loving her life, and the sight of it got me to thinking about the story I was writing. I no longer believed that a story about a young woman bemoaning her life was anything the world would want to read, nor was it the life I wanted to live. “Fedelina, Fedelina, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” I thought as I stared out at the colorful varieties of flowers that had newly opened. Then, with the letter my neighbor shared with me lingering in my mind, I sat down and began to write again.

A cattleya will always be a cattleya whereas a woman has the ability to change, constantly adjust who she is, how she thinks, behaves, reacts, and so forth. This freedom and ability to change is why I quit my job and moved my family down south. The problem is, moving to an island didn’t fix my problems. It didn’t repair my glitches
.

After a few paragraphs, I got up and walked over to the stack of books I kept in the corner of my room—books I once promoted. I picked one up and stared eye to eye with the author on the back cover.

“Anna Hott—best damn publicist in the country,” the author had said to me. “I see now why a book can live or die in your hands, and it’s you I thank for turning me into a best seller, so what the hell were you thinking quitting as you did?”

From the bedroom of my stilted house in Florida, I questioned myself for having left behind the job I was good at—all that professional praise. But then I heard the voice of another one of the authors I had promoted—the demanding, egotistical, publicity-obsessed type.

“Get me on this show, that show, and every show in America! My book is perfect for them all, Anna!” She would call me five, six, seven times a day for months, stalking me. I took hold of the spine of her book, pulling it from the stack.

“You looked like a fool,” I said as I flicked her glossy photo, “and nearly damaged my credibility by going behind my back, stalking the producers on your own like that. You wrote a book on baking muffins! I’m sorry, but a book on muffins is not controversial news.”

My room was turning warm and stuffy, and I feared the orchid might wilt, so I opened the window, the one without a screen, and I tossed the book out much the way I had my career. Then I walked over to the stack of books and picked another up. “I know you thought every living, reading creature in the universe ought to buy your book,” I said to the four-color author photo as I carried it to the window, “but you put unrealistic expectations on me and couldn’t care less that an in-house publicity department is a hectic place, that I was swamped, that I had fifteen books at a time to promote!”

I threw his book out my window and walked back for more. I couldn’t stop. “Bad publicity is still publicity, Terry,” I said waving to another book as it landed in Fedelina’s hydrangea bush below. “I told you a thousand times to stop calling me up, moaning over the negative review in the
New York Times.”

I turned from the window—and from the should-haves and could-haves
in my mind—wishing that instead of exhausting my energy all those years in a non-lucrative, anxiety-producing, adrenaline-rushing, coffee-addictive career as a book publicist, promoting fifteen egocentric authors at a time while running on fumes, that I might have instead written something myself. With this in mind, I sat back down at my computer and started to write again.

Time gone by makes it easy to forget the details surrounding why a woman once did what she did, said what she said, and reacted in the ways in which she reacted. It’s why she’s hard on herself looking back. But if she were thrown back in time, given a second chance, she’d do it all the same. Everything is harder when going through it, and I never wanted to start living in a constant state of judgmental hindsight, critical of myself for having walked out on my career, a career I was good at. A woman should forgive, but never forget the details leading up to where she is now. And I knew “best damn publicist in the world” wasn’t something I wanted on my tombstone someday. I wanted:

MOTHER — WOMAN WHO LIVED — CULTIVATOR OF BEAUTY
.

I got up from my computer and walked back over to that stack of books, the ones I promoted, this time picking up a highly publicity-driven title, one dealing with sticking by your man after he cheats. I returned to my window and held it tightly in my hand, but Fedelina was down there, holding her hands to her eyes like a visor shielding them from the sun and looking at the sky over my house as if she had spotted a flying object. I didn’t want anyone her age to start believing in UFOs, but I found the activity of throwing books out my window therapeutic and couldn’t stop.

I waited for her to turn her back and, when she did, pulling shears from her apron pocket and using them to snip roses off a bush, I pitched a fast one out my window. “Yeah, right, you so-called relationship guru,” I said, hanging my head out to watch it hit the ground below. “How dare I find out, after scheduling you that ten-city tour, that you were divorced four times?”

My yard, as it filled with the books I once promoted, looked as colorful
as Fedelina’s yard next door, but I feared this act of throwing reading material from one’s windows might be sacrilegious, against literary law, or unpatriotic, and that my neighbor might be the type to report me. I should have gone down there and picked up all those books littering my yard, and bagged up and tossed the regrets that were filling my mind, wondering again whether I had done the right thing, quitting my job as I had. I stood there, trancelike, watching Fedelina with her handful of fresh-cut roses as I had the fading copies that last day of work. I was thinking of all the dull conversations with my husband, for they kept coming too, along with my mornings, and I didn’t know how to stop or alter them.

I moved the orchid pot over four inches, making sure the subtle breeze coming through my bedroom window wouldn’t upset it. I felt envious of it, a flower, for it knew what it liked—sturdy tables, sunrises, and environments without stress, how simple! It was a cattleya, but who was I?

“A woman,” I said. “A disgruntled wife, an overwhelmed mother, no longer a publicist extraordinaire.”

“And who are you without all those titles?” I think the orchid stem asked me.

“A woman wanting to delight in her days, relish her life,” I answered, just as I had read in Cora’s letter. “And a mother—a beloved mother.”

I ducked from the window, not wanting Fedelina to see me standing there, watching her. And there were no more books left in my room, which was good. Throwing things out had to stop.

“This has to stop,” I had declared that day at the publishing house as I pressed the “stop” button on the copier. It’s why I squeezed my hand between the wall and the machine and pulled the plug, and why the room went quiet and I felt dizzy, like I was no longer standing in my own two shoes, but floating above them. There had been something wrong with me that day. And there was something wrong with Fedelina, too. I worried as I looked again out my window and saw her wobbling around, wiping her forehead and then bending at the hips, bracing her hands on her knees as if to hold herself up.

I should walk over, ask her if she is okay—tell her to consider hiring a landscaper, I thought. She had been out there toiling long enough, and
how much time should one old lady spend working in a garden?

She dropped the snips from her hand, and the roses, too, and I watched as she fell down in the grass like an overheated person. She needed help and I had to go. I took off running in my nightgown, racing across my yard and over the books that were scattered like stepping stones under my feet, hurrying toward my neighbor who was down in the grass.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

FEDELINA,” I SAID WHEN
I reached her sitting on the ground, sweat raining from her forehead. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she said, but I knew from personal experience not to believe a person who says they’re fine. I got down on my knees and looked her in the eyes.

“What’s wrong? What’s happening?” I asked, wondering if she had been drinking.

“I’m dizzy, that’s all.”

“How can I help? Do you need me to call someone?”

“No, don’t call anyone,” she said with a slur, her eyes gazing past me. “But your hands are shaking. Your feet, too,” I said. “I need to do something. I’ll call an ambulance.”

“No,” she blurted. “Candy!”

“You mean sugar? Do you have any?”

“In my bag, get me my bag,” she said, her voice trailing off.

“Where is your bag?” I jumped up from the grass and spun in circles, scanning the yard with my eyes. I was ready to rush back to my house, get some of the boys’ candy when she mumbled, “Upstairs.”

I hurried around to the front of the house and up the old, tilting-to-one-side wooden steps, tripping and bruising my shin. When I spotted the straw bag, I wanted to go inside and phone for help, but it was easier in the moment of emergency to do what she told me to do rather than
what I thought I should, and I returned to where she was, dumping the contents of her bag into the grass. Out came a meter, a syringe, insulin, alcohol, wipes, and a piece of paper with handwritten emergency names and phone numbers.

“Can … dy,” she mumbled, her voice deteriorating in tone.

“I know,” I said, spotting a roll of hard candies. I tore the wrapper off and, when I saw her hands trembling worse than mine, I pressed a piece to her lips, but they remained closed and her eyes were suspiciously confused.

“Here’s the candy,” I said. “Open your mouth.”

She parted her lips and, one by one, I fed the candies into her mouth and she chewed. I glanced at the handwritten names and phone numbers, fearing that if the sugar didn’t soon stop her slurring and shaking, I would be held responsible, having to explain to Liam, the first name on her list—maybe her son—why I didn’t call him or an ambulance when I first saw his mother collapse in the grass. “One more piece. Come on, Fedelina, keep chewing.”

It was this last piece that started to settle her. I took hold of her hand and held it softly. I would sit in the grass holding her hand as long as was needed, until she stopped shaking. I had nothing better to do with my day.

“Oh, I needed that. Thank you. I’m feeling much better now,” she finally said without slurring, her voice clear again. “See that shrub?”

“That one over there?” I asked, shifting in the grass to see where she was looking.