What I Remember Most

Books by Cathy Lamb

JULIA’S CHOCOLATES

THE LAST TIME I WAS ME

HENRY’S SISTERS

SUCH A PRETTY FACE

THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE

A DIFFERENT KIND OF NORMAL

IF YOU COULD SEE WHAT I SEE

WHAT I REMEMBER MOST

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

For Brad

I hear his voice, then hers. I can’t find them in the darkness. I can’t see them through the trees. I don’t understand what’s going on, but their horror, their panic, reaches me, throttles me.

They scream the same thing.

Run, Grenadine, run!

It’s them.

I needed to hide for a while.

To do that, I had to change my appearance.

I went to a cheap hair salon and had them cut six inches off, to the middle of my shoulder blades, then I had them cut a fringe of bangs. I went home and dyed my hair back to its original auburn color, from the blond it had been the last ten years. I washed it, then dried it with my back to the mirror.

I turned around and studied myself.

Yep. That would work.

For the last year I had been Dina Hamilton, collage artist, painter, and blond wife of Covey Hamilton, successful investor. Before that, for almost twenty years, I was Dina Wild. Now I would be Grenady, short for Grenadine Scotch Wild, my real name, with auburn hair, thick and straight.

Yes, I was named after ingredients in drinks. It has been a curse my whole life. There have been many curses.

I am cursed now, and I am packing up and getting the hell out of town.

Central Oregon was a good place for me to disappear from my old life and start a new one.

I drove south, then east, the fall leaves blowing off the trees, magenta, scarlet, gold, yellow, and orange. It would be winter soon. Too soon.

I stopped at the first small town. There were a few shops, restaurants, and bars. It had the feel of a Main Street that was barely holding on. There were several storefronts that had been papered over, there were not a lot of people, and it was too quiet.

Still, my goals were clear, at least to me: Eat first, then find a job.

I had $520.46 total. It would not last long. My credit and debit cards, and my checking, savings, and retirement accounts for my business and personal use, had been frozen. I had the $500 hidden in my jewelry box and $20 in my wallet. The change came from under the seat of my car. To say I was in a bad place would be true. Still. I have been in far, far worse places than this. At least I am not in a cage. Sometimes one must be grateful for what is
not
going wrong.

I tried not to make any pathetic self-pitying noises in my throat, because then I would have pissed my own self off. I went to a park to eat some of the nonperishable food I’d brought with me.

I ate a can of chili, then a can of pineapple. When I was done, I brushed my hair. I pulled a few strands down to hide one of the scars on my hairline. I put on makeup so I didn’t look so ghastly. I put extra foundation on the purple and blue bruising over my left eye, brushed my teeth out the car door, and smoothed out my shirt.

I was presentable.

I took a deep breath. This would be the first job I had applied for in many years. I started selling my collages and paintings when I was seventeen, and I had not required myself to fill out an application and resume.

I looked into the rearview mirror. My car was packed full of boxes, bedding, bags, and art supplies. My skin resembled dead oatmeal. “You can do it, Grenady.”

My green eyes, which I’ve always thought were abnormally and oddly bright, were sad, tired, and beat, as if they were sinking into themselves.

“Come on, Grenady,” I snapped at my reflection. “You got a moose up your butt? Get it out and get moving.”

I went to every business up and down Murray Avenue and asked for a job. I hoped they would not be thorough in the criminal background check department. That may have been a foolish hope.

I heard the same thing again and again. “We’re not hiring.” They were all kind, though. A woman at a café offered me a coffee and pastry while I waited to talk to her. I was hungry, again, so I ate it. She told me, “This town is dying. We’re on our last gasp. Ya hear it?”

A man at a hardware store said he would hire me but his “no-good, big-footed son-in-law needs a job because he got my daughter knocked up. I would like to knock him up with my fist, but The Wife says I can’t because it’ll make Christmas awkward.”

I looked for a job for two hours—up and down the street. By the time I dumped myself back into my car, the sun was setting.

I drove to a rest stop. I scrubbed my pits, face, hands, and teeth in the restroom before I went back to my car. I changed into sweats, then ate a can of corn and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I don’t like living out of cars. I’ve lived in cars before, many years ago, many times. Sometimes the car was mine, sometimes it wasn’t. I can do it again, but I don’t like it.

The car I have now, an Acura MDX SUV, where the back two rows were collapsed for my stuff and could also provide a cramped but doable bed, is much better than the cars I’ve slept in before.

The other cars were small and tight. The seats were broken on one, so they wouldn’t recline, and the passenger door wouldn’t lock on another, which made me nervous in the middle of the night.

Oh, and then there was Clunker. Clunker was a long, black beast and the most comfortable to sleep in, but the steering was loose and sometimes the brakes would lock up. Made for an exciting ride.

I rolled out my sleeping bag and blankets and lay down, my mind reeling as if someone had stuck a firework in it.

I hardly slept. Fall is cold outside, and rest stops are not restful, even late at night. There were sixteen-wheeler trucks roaring in and out, people in and out, and a group of teenagers partying.

I finally went to sleep around three in the morning, after watching two drunks duke it out with each other. They hit each other so hard they both collapsed flat backward onto the grass, exactly like in the movies.
A perfect outcome,
I thought. Now they’ll shut up.

There was a family with a baby a few parking spaces down, and the baby woke me up twice. Two semis roared in way too fast around four. I woke up with a start and had a vision of a snake wrapped around a knife. I have had this vision since I was a kid and I don’t know why.

Sometimes I don’t want to know why.

I missed sleeping in a bed. I didn’t miss who had been in it with me, but I did miss the mattress part of it.

The next morning I drove south, colorful leaves flying through the air, as if they were racing to get off the trees. I stopped at several towns. The last one was called Silver Village. I had the same poor result as I schlepped door to door, trying to hide my desperation.

I applied in a factory, restaurants, four bars, the library, and two gift shops. I did not apply at the strip club. I am not there yet and probably never will be. I am way too old, anyhow. Strip clubs usually like women whose boobs are in the right place, preferably large. I was stacked on top, but they weren’t young boobs anymore, and my ass wasn’t exactly as tight as a whiskey drum. The scars on my back would not be seen as sexy, either, unless their clients were into S and M.

The people I talked to were all polite, except for one scraggly lady who told me there was no way she’d hire me, ironically, “with a big rack like that. My husband works here, too. I only hire ugly women.”

There were no jobs. I spent another night in a rest stop. Once again, I hardly slept because two women truckers blared the entire sound track to
Phantom of the Opera
while they played cards at a table lit by a lantern. I drove away from them, but then a mentally ill man pounded on my windows and yelled, “The CIA is chasing me!”

I felt sorry for him. I handed him two chocolate candy bars. He said, “Cupcake Man thanks you and so do I.” He took off again, waving the candy bars and shouting into the air, “They’re coming!”

Three teenage girls sat near my car and cried because their car wouldn’t start. I called AAA for them and gave them a pack of gum. They hugged me when they left. They were way late getting home and said, “Our moms are gonna kill us.
Kill us!
”

I thought they should be grateful to have moms who would be so worried that they would “kill” their teenage girls for being late, but I didn’t say it.

I ran to the bathroom when I saw two other women going in at four-thirty in the morning, so I wouldn’t risk getting attacked, then tried to sleep again. A barking dog woke me at five-thirty in the morning.

This was not good.

I looked at my face. Car living is never good for the complexion.