The First Day of the Rest of My Life

  Yes, I advise people, I thought, but I rarely follow my own advice. Should I announce that on air? “Yeah, I sling out O’Shea Principles and quotes but I am a lost cause.” Should I say that? Should I say that I’m a lie? It’s exhausting being a lie.

  “Tell us how you got started, Madeline.”

  “I was getting a degree in counseling, but I wasn’t doing very well in my classes because I spent so much time playing my violin in the university’s orchestra. I also stood on the street corner and played my violin for money for a few hours a day. Anyhow, I started writing an advice column for the university’s newspaper because it paid twenty dollars. Soon it was picked up by other newspapers and syndicated. Grew from there. I took on clients. I was asked to speak at various events, small ones, then larger. I started writing my column in Boutique.”

  “You were young when you started advising people on how to live their lives.”

  I was young when I started listening to advice. My momma in her pink beauty parlor was an overflowing fountain of it.

  “I gave them the truth, Conner. I was young and blunt and saw through all the bull-arky that surrounded their lives and their relationships. I showed them a path out. Here’s how to deal with an ass at work, here’s how to widen your life, here’s why you gotta get rid of that person. I added acronyms like D.O.N.’T. B.E.A.W.U.S.S. and I was in business.”

  Yes, I was young. At first I counseled a lot of young people. Then they brought their parents in. Grief, the gunshots, the trials, all of that made me waaaay more mature than I should have been. And I was angry, I was not sympathetic to whiners or sulkers, and I swatted my clients’ sorry butts more times than I can count. Funny enough, they bought into my tyrannical tirades.

  “Your career is blazing hot and getting hotter, Madeline. Why do you think people need life coaches?”

  I did not say, “Because they need someone to hold their hands when they launch their animal booties.” I said, “People need life coaches because life is a freakin’ mess.”

  Conner laughed. “It sure is.”

  “I can only compare life to being shot from a cannon into the middle of space and being bombarded by all sorts of debris—pieces of satellites and shuttles, asteroids, shooting stars, maybe an alien spaceship. We’re hit all the time and sometimes we can’t find Earth. We can’t even find the Milky Way galaxy. We’re lost. Running around, dodging this and that, trying not to get hurt or killed, and all the while we’re looking for home. That’s how life is. It’s a meteor shower. People call me to help them get recentered, to help them with their life relationships, whether it’s work or personal, so they can get back out there and do the three Fs.”

  “What are the Fs?” He knew what they were. We had discussed them at length when discussing piggies.

  I winked at him, and he chuckled. “The three Fs stand for fight, fortitude, and forgiveness. We all have to get out there and fight. Fact is, life feels like a fight sometimes. You have to fight for your job, your promotion. Sometimes you have to fight with your mechanic who thinks it’s okay to charge a woman twice as much as a man. Women have to show their balls, no other way around it.”

  Conner slammed his mouth shut so he wouldn’t laugh.

  “You have to fight for yourself, surround yourself with good people, positive people, so the negative spiders at the bottom of the barrel don’t bite you. You have to have fortitude, strength. Don’t whine. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Don’t pity yourself. On any day I can tell you that there are, literally, billions of people on this planet having a worse day than you. And forgiveness is to forgive people who have wronged you and let it go, and forgive yourself, and let it go. So three F it, Conner.”

  “With the three Fs in mind, we’ll have our first caller on the air. He doesn’t want to give his name, but he wants to know what you think of open marriages because he wants to be in one.”

  “Hello,” I said pleasantly.

  “Hi, Mad-e-line! Wow. Sweet. Awesome. Thanks for taking my call. I saw a photograph of you and can I say that you are gorgeous?”

  “You could say that, but we’re not on topic, are we? Would you tell a man that he was gorgeous? No. Okay, so you want to be in an open marriage. Are you in one now?”

  “Geez . . . uh . . . blunt question there. . . . I’m married . . . yeah.”

  “I hate when people are vague. Are you in an open marriage now?”

  “Uh. Boy, uh, my wife isn’t in an open marriage, but I think I want to embrace that lifestyle. . . .”

  “Which means you’re cheating on your wife, do I about have it?”

  Conner’s expression was stamped with surprise.

  Dead silence. Dead. “Uh. Ah. That’s a hard question.... I’ve met someone, but . . . I . . . I still love my wife.”

  “But you’re sleeping with two women, right, and you want me to condone this?”

  Conner mouthed to me, “How did you know?”

  The caller’s voice came out spindly, winded. “I’m, professionally speaking, I uh, I just was wondering what you think of open marriages.”

  “You don’t have an open marriage. You are cheating on your wife.”

  I heard him suck in his breath.

  “You are a slug. You are a dishonest cheat. You are cheating your wife, your kids, your marriage vows, and you’re cheating this woman you’re with, although I don’t care about her because she knows you’re married, so that makes her a hormone-flashing slug.”

  He coughed, sputtered, his voice pitched. “Yeah . . . she knows.... We met at work and we can’t control our feelings for each other. You can’t stop yourself from falling in love, can you? But I still want my wife and the kids.... This gal is only for me, you know, to give me some relief, to help me get through my day, to offer sex and fun.”

  “Yeah, bite me, you creep. You’re a liar. Your morals are in the mud. No, they’re beneath the mud. They are in a swamp of infested termites. This is not an open marriage. What do I think of open marriages? I think open marriages work until you realize that your partner is boinking someone else and has a whole secret other life without you and is comparing your performance, and the size of your thingie, with her new partner’s. I think open marriages are slimy and crude and beneath all of us. Kind of like you.” I looked up at the phone number on the reader board and the name of the caller. “Okay, Korbin Berndale of Southeast Portland, I hope I’ve answered your question.”

  I disconnected the call. Conner said, “Thank you, Madeline !”

  I winked at Conner. He laughed back. I had high hopes that his booties would sell. Monsters and chickens together! Zebras and King Kong!

  “We’ll go to commercial and be back with Ned, who hates his in-laws, particularly his father-in-law who is constantly putting him down. This is Conner Mills for KBAM.” We took our earphones off. “Madeline, you gotta get your own radio show. You’d sizzle the wires off the damn poles.”

  After leaving the radio station, I walked back to my office. On the way I passed a major chain bookstore. In the windows were his books.

  I wouldn’t buy them.

  I had an idea of what they were about, because I’d read the reviews, but I couldn’t go there, couldn’t read them.

  He was famous for those books. He was a professor at a college. He lived on acreage in Massachusetts. He traveled. He wrote.

  He knew. He knew what happened.

  After we left Cape Cod, he tried to keep in contact. Letters, postcards, drawings. I never replied.

  As adults, letters, e-mails, a postcard arrived, infrequent, friendly, cheerful, nonthreatening.

  I shut down.

  I thought of him often.

  But I would not respond.

  He was coming to Portland to speak.

  I would not go and see him.

  I wouldn’t call him.

  I couldn’t.

  Torey Oh growled at me.

  “Good,” I said. “Do it again.”

  He growled deep, flicked h
is tail. The long, brownish tail was attached to the back of his suit. It was not a real tail.

  “Once more, with feeling. Growl! Grrr!”

  He growled, arched his claws up, then hissed.

  “Motivating, Torey. That was motivating.”

  Deep-throated roar, scarily threatening.

  “Outstanding. I think we’re making progress.”

  “You do?” Torey settled on the floor, cross legged, and I joined him. Good thing I was wearing a blue suit jacket and pants, not one of my dull skirts.

  I adjusted my armor. He wrapped his tail around his lap.

  “Good releasing of your animalistic emotions,” I said. “And I like your suit.”

  “Thanks. I got it from the tailor’s. I think this charcoal color matches with my tail, don’t you? The fabric of the suit, versus the fluffiness of the tail, but I think the tail is making a statement, too.”

  “What is the statement of this particular tail?” I crossed my legs.

  “The statement is”—he flicked his hands up and down, as if he was playing the drums—“The statement is: Animals.”

  “I like animals. How is your company coming along?”

  “Rippin’ like a raptor.”

  “Rippin’?”

  “Yeah, we’re all on board. Got a growly woman named Geraldine in charge. Vice president is Foresty Green. That’s not her birth name,” he hastened to add. “Her birth name is Cybil, but she didn’t like that name, so she changed it.”

  “I can see why.”

  “Foresty is groovin’ in my vision. See, all the profits are going toward organizations that help animals.” He stroked his tail.

  I nodded. “I like animals.”

  “Me too. Can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Will this make me happy?” He stroked his tail.

  I thought about that. “Torey, you’ve been coming here to chat for a year.”

  He nodded.

  “First you came in your designer suits, and we talked, and I knew you were hiding something.”

  “Yeah, you sniffed that out like a fox.”

  “So we got to the center of you, and why you like the tails.”

  “Because my dad always pulled the tails of our dogs so hard.” He sniffled.

  “Yes.” I tried not to think of my hamster.

  “He pulled them till they screamed and whimpered.” He whimpered, his face started to crumple, and he brought his tail up to hide it. His father seriously damaged him.

  “Right. And, Torey.” I barked at him, softly, until he snapped back out of that memory. “You admitted you wore tails to relax and now you bring them with you here.”

  “I like to do that. You make me feel normal, Madeline, not like I’m a crazy badger.”

  “Is it important to you to feel normal?”

  He thought about that. “I don’t know. . . .” He blinked rapidly. “I don’t know if that’s important. Is it?”

  “It’s only important if you feel it is, but then you have to figure out why on earth it would be important to you, Torey Oh, to feel normal.”

  He barked, twice, like a question, and I knew I’d given him something to think about.

  “And what is normal? What is normal to you?” I asked.

  He stroked his tail, confused.

  I whimpered like a dog. “You took that terrible experience with your father, you left home at seventeen, put yourself through college, started a business with technology stuff I don’t understand, and you’re a millionaire. You’re only twenty-eight. You’re amazingly successful, Torey, I have no idea why you wouldn’t embrace being you.”

  “Because I wasn’t sure if being me was good enough.”

  I felt like I was sagging into myself. Not good enough. I have been fighting to be “good enough” my whole life. When I wore pink, I was good enough. After Momma died, I never wore it again. I glared at my brown heels. Not good enough.

  “Torey, you are good enough. You are more than good enough. You are fantastic.”

  Two tears ran down his handsome, angular face. He wiped them with his tail. “I feel like I’m trying to prove it to myself, but it’s not here”—he pounded his chest—“in the doggy heart.” He made a sad dog sound.

  “What have we done so far, Torey, to make you feel good enough, safe, joyful?”

  “You made me get a hobby.” His face brightened. “You said try snorkeling so I could see a whole new world in the water, with fish and turtles, so I went to Maui three times. I saw fish that looked like they were wrapped in plaid, rainbow fish, fish with fins that looked like feathers, and the hugest turtle ever.” He paddled his arms as if he were a fish, then became more animated. “You told me to get out of that dingy apartment I had and buy a house that was pretty and had views so I could have vision and think into the heavens. I liked that line. Think into the heavens.” He barked, happily.

  Torey and a team of contractors had restored his whole, gracious 1920s home to the period. It was painted yellow with white trim on the outside, yellow and white walls on the inside. The kitchen, the wide wood floors, the box ceilings, the builtins, the shelving, and the fireplaces were all lovingly repaired, sanded, painted, and designed so you felt that twenties homey splendor.

  “I still feel safe there. Lots of land, on a hill, not too big or lonely. It feels like history. The family who built it had a horse farm. I like horses.” He flicked his tail. “Neigh!”

  “I told you to get another interest outside of work so you could bond with people, make friends.”

  “And I did!” He pounded his tail, bopping up and down with excitement. “I volunteer at the humane society, and I revamped their computers and I walk the dogs. Now I have friends who love animals, too.”

  “So, Torey, you own a company, you volunteer, you love to snorkel, you have friends. You donate money all the time, so you’re a giver. You’re continually asking me if one thing or another is going to make you happy.”

  “Yes.”

  I leaned over and patted his tail. “Take it, Torey. Take this, take all you have, and be grateful for it, be humble, and accept that you’re happy.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes, Torey. You’re happy.”

  He looked quizzical, confused, then a smile formed.

  “Torey, your happiness is right here. This is it. This is happy. When you look back at your life as an old man, you’re going to say, ‘That was one of the best times of my life.’ This is ‘that’ time. Embrace it. You don’t need to look around further. Sometimes we miss happy because we’re always looking for something else. We worry, we give in to fear, we compare ourselves to others, we’re planning and plotting, but happiness is here, it’s a choice, day to day.”

  Then why wasn’t I happy?

  He swirled his furry tail, his smile growing. He barked at me, I barked back, then meowed, then he reached over our curled-up legs and hugged me.

  He wrapped his tail around my waist.

  I received another manila envelope.

  I didn’t want to open it. I fought it, fought the bile threatening to form a whirlpool and choke off my breath, but in the end, with numb hands and a resigned, numb mind, I slid the note and the photos out. Ah, yes. He was furious. He wanted the money, didn’t I know he would release these pictures shortly and my entire life would be nothing? He spelled nothing as nuthin. He also misspelled pictures. He spelled it pitchers.

  A genius.

  A conscienceless genius.

  I stared at the black-and-white, gritty, trashy, annihilating photos but tried to block the impact of them.

  It was impossible. I remember that day. I remember everything, even that I heard Beethoven, Symphony no. 6, Pastoral, in my head. A lovely piece, triumphant piece, as Annie and I descended into black muck.

  The photos slipped to the floor from fingers that had lost their grip as I leaned against the tight leather couch that I don’t like.

  14

  Sherwinn was “vi
siting” me at night.

  Women said that Sherwinn was movie star good looking, but his face, hard edged and with a scar over his eye, scared the tar out of me. “You want me to take off my shirt so you can feel my chest, sweetie?”

  “No.” I trembled all over.

  “Yes, you do, sweetie. You want to touch me. It’s okay. Women have always been all over me. My aunt, she was all over me when I was eleven damn years old.”

  Something changed in the blankness of his eyes. Something flashed, evil and sick and livid with anger.

  “I was eleven and she was twenty-two. Twenty-two!” he shouted. He pounded the wall above my head. My momma was out with Carman, Shell Dee, and Trudy Jo. They’d gone roller skating. I had begged her not to go. She’d hugged and kissed me, and left.

  “She’d come into my bedroom every night and take off my pajamas. They were my train pajamas, I remember that. Trains! And she’d get on top of me and make me touch her breasts, her hips, that furry area between a woman’s legs—you’ll get that, too, sweetie. For hours she’d be in there with me.” He slammed my head against the wall, the pain splintering through my brain. “Every night. Until one night, I hid a knife between the mattresses and I stabbed her in the leg. She hit me when I did that, but she didn’t ever come again.” He giggled, his mood changing lightning quick.

  He brought his gun in to show me one night and placed it under my chin while wrapping my curls around his other hand. “Do you know what happens when a trigger is pulled under someone’ s chin?”

  I whimpered, then wet the bed, my breathing shallow, weak.

  “The person’s brains go right out the back of their head. They shoot right out, like mush. Like oatmeal. Do you like oatmeal brains, Madeline? No? Then you do as I say, got that? I’m going to go to bed now and make your momma remember why she married me. She likes it, you know.” He twisted the gun under my chin. “Be good, Madeline.”