The First Day of the Rest of My Life

  “Go inside,” Sherwinn said, menacing and huge beside us. I was panicked down to my toes. I reached for Annie’s hand.

  “No,” Annie said, her voice loud. “Take us to the beauty parlor. Momma knows we’re coming.”

  Sherwinn laughed. “I told her I was taking you all out to ice cream. She’s resting at home, anyhow. She didn’t feel good.”

  I didn’t feel good, either. My momma’s headaches were worse, she slept a lot, my dad was dead, and Sherwinn was here. “We don’t want to go in.”

  “Too bad,” Sherwinn whispered.

  As if on cue, Annie and I turned to run. We got about three feet before Sherwinn lifted us up by the collars of our pink dresses, spun us around, and tossed us through the air. We landed with a thump in the weeds, near the oak tree, as if we were hardly better than they were, hardly better than the green nuisances, the air, and our innocence, rushing right out of our bodies.

  Annie didn’t move. “Annie!” I shrieked, crawling over to her and pushing her curls out of her face. “Annie!” She opened her eyes, dazed.

  “Are you okay?”

  She tried to sit up, and I put my trembling arms around her.

  I felt, rather than saw, Gavin and Pauly sauntering over, as Sherwinn prodded us with his boot. “You girls quit fakin’ it and get up.”

  “We’re gonna have a modeling session,” Pauly said. He ran a hand through my hair, and I pulled my head away, then slapped at his hand. “Dark hair. That’s good.” He didn’t see the red. Someone like him would never see it. “Models pose in all kinds of positions. Like queens, you know? You’ll be famous. You girls are gonna be famous all over the world.”

  I pulled away. “I don’t want to be famous.”

  Pauly laughed, a smoker’s laugh, heavy and polluted, his bowling ball stomach heaving.

  Gavin scratched his crotch, started to sweat.

  Sherwinn said, “Too bad. You’re gonna be slut models. You first, Annie. You look like your mommy, you know that? You’re a short Marie Elise, except for those bluish eyes ya got.” He grabbed Annie and yanked her in by her collar, her arms and legs flailing. I leaped for her, but I was too late. Gavin grabbed one side of me, Pauly the other, my legs spread, my arms spread, my pink dress up to my waist, as they trudged up through the weeds, those nuisances, up to the porch that was sliding off the shack’s frame.

  I struggled, I kicked, I yelled. Annie tried to stand up and fight Sherwinn, but she was no match for him. He hauled her up into midair and socked her in the stomach. When she doubled over, he slung her over his shoulder and stomped up the steps.

  “Annie!” I screamed. “Annie!” I kicked again, smashed Pauly in the face, and freed a foot. Gavin wrapped his hairy, smelly arms around me, his breath a mix of beer and rancid rot, sliding down my throat.

  We were shoved into Pauly’s house, a house that reeked of old pizza, beer, cigarettes, stale air, and pungent, soul-sucking moral depravity.

  We fought, we argued, we begged. It didn’t help at all. Pauly got out his camera, yelled at his red-haired, fifteenyear-old son, Sam, to “take a fucking walk” when he got home from school, and took photos. Sherwinn backed up his threats with his fists, Gavin “got ready,” so to speak, and we were photographed.

  Sherwinn wrestled the pink sundresses right off us, buttons flying. We tried to cover ourselves with our small hands as hysteria took hold. It didn’t work. Our underwear went arching into the air after that.

  We were girls, girls who wore pictures of lions on our T-shirts, sparkly nail polish, red jeans, and flowers in our hair. We were photographed without clothes on.

  They thought it would be cute if we still wore our white socks with the lace trim and our white Mary Jane shoes.

  “You’re models,” Pauly told us, swiping a hand across the front of his pants. “Sexy models.”

  Gavin scratched, sweated.

  Sherwinn wrapped his fingers through our curls. “They’re gonna love the curls, aren’t they?” he asked Gavin and Pauly. Those creepy men nodded. Pauly burped.

  They told us where to sit, where to stand. We cried and cried, buckets of searing tears, our little girl bodies, only starting to grow into womanhood, rocking back and forth, horrified, shamed.

  Those men didn’t care. They didn’t care about tears at all.

  They didn’t care that we were mentally ruined.

  Click, click, click.

  The next time we were there, I heard the violin music in my head. “Do you hear that, Annie?” I whispered to her. It was snowing. There was snow on the branches of the oak tree. We’d watched it get whiter and whiter while we were trapped in the shack. We were freezing. We were starving. We both were eating far less than we used to. Our exhaustion was a sheer, straight line to emotional death. “Do you hear that? The violins? Don’t you hear them?”

  “I don’t hear anything. I want to go home.”

  I wanted that, too. I wanted home. It never came soon enough.

  The violins came to me, though, soothing. Soothing in the sickness of my shame.

  We were taken to the shack often after that.

  One time I said, my voice weak and wobbly, “What are you doing with the photos?”

  They laughed and laughed.

  Pauly said, through his smoker’s cough, “We’ve started a business.”

  Gavin said, so sweaty, “A model business. Naked models.”

  Sherwinn smirked. “It’s a nationwide business. You girls are getting very popular.”

  I didn’t want to be popular. Annie didn’t want to be popular. Sherwinn threw a pop can at my head when I said, “I hate you, Sherwinn.”

  I stared at the oak tree that afternoon. I wanted to be in the branches, far and away, up in the sky with the weather that my dad told me had emotions. Whenever we were at the shack the weather was scared.

  Sometimes I saw my dad behind my closed lids when we were there.

  Always he was crying, his head in his hands, his broad shoulders slumped, body heaving with grief.

  I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to hug him, to climb on his lap and hear his stories about fisherwomen who caught striped fish, polka-dot fish, pink fish, fish the size of our house by the sea.

  I wanted my dad.

  But he was dead.

  17

  “A man named Steve Shepherd called,” Georgie said, Stanley beside her. “Called about an hour ago. Had a manly man voice. I know who he is.”

  I leaned back in my chair, that name wrapping itself around me, warm and snug, filled with fishing trips and canoeing and lace ribbons. At the same time, I instantly struggled to find enough air. It seemed to be hiding in my nether regions.

  Stanley skipped over and barked at me. I shook his paw. He barked again. I hugged him. He barked when I pulled away. I lifted him up and put him on my lap. He kissed me. I did not kiss him back.

  “He’s that wicked awesome author. I’ve read all his books.” Georgie rubbed her upper arm, near the tattoo of her grandma smoking a cigar. “I told you to read them. They make me cry and laugh.... It’s this whole series, you know, starting with The Girl in Pink, that’s the title. He met her when they were kids, and every book is a new chapter in their lives, but he’s got this creative, wacky angle where their lives are parallel, and sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, and there’s this third element there. It’s like magic, but not magic, and they never quite make it together. . . .”

  I sagged in my chair as Stanley kissed me again.

  “Why is he calling you, do you know? Do you know him? I’ve seen a photo of him and he’s cute. Not like hot cute, not sexy cute, but you know, adorable cute, like you can squeeze him and match your soul with his and fly around and be happy together . . . and he’s romantic, I mean, what testosterone driven male ape is romantic? He gets women’s drifts, their currents.”

  What is a woman’s drift? A current?

  “Do you know him?”

  “A long time ago I did.”

  “You should k
now him again, wrap yourselves together. He’s got a field of goodwill around him. Read his books, then you can see into his mind.”

  Yes, I knew him. I knew Steve Shepherd.

  He liked snakes. Frogs, too.

  After Annie, Steve Shepherd was my second best friend when I was a kid.

  Our parents were also friends and neighbors. The Shepherds had a house down the road, a long rambly thing that overlooked the ocean. There were a ton of photos of us together, as babies in yellow seats on the backs of our mommas’ bikes, as toddlers with life jackets on sailboats, in school plays dressed as pilgrims, in matching Halloween outfits. One year we were fruits with Annie, another year we were the three Musketeers, the next year the three blind mice.

  He was tall and thin and lanky like a giraffe, and a star on the youth basketball team, partly because he was the tallest one there. He had blue eyes and always smiled at me, and he smelled like the ocean, pine trees, butterscotch, and a hint of spring.

  We passed notes in math class that made me laugh so hard, I had tears running down my face. We drew pictures of our math teacher. Sometimes we dressed him as a woman, a monkey, a turtle. Together, he and Annie and I and lots of other noisy friends got together and we all ran around, house to house. Steve always said, “Let’s be friends with everyone, but Madeline, you’re my best friend.”

  We poked our skin with needles, rubbed the blood together, and became blood friends. “Now we’re best friends for life, right, Madeline?” he asked.

  He even tried to protect me from Sherwinn.

  “Lemme tell you something, Madeline,” Sherwinn said one afternoon after I pulled on my pink penguin T-shirt and yanked on my flowered jeans with hands that shook with humiliation and free-ranging fear. “If you tell anyone about this, not only is your momma gonna be like Teresa and Mickey, I’m gonna send the photos to Steve.”

  I’m sure my face showed my devastation, because Sherwinn said, “You thought I didn’t know about your boyfriend? Think I’m that dumb?” He smirked at me, his eyes wandering over my body. “You wouldn’t like for Steve to see those photos, would you? Then he’ll know what I know: That you’re a dirty, bad girl. That you do bad things with men. That you’re not a sweet and innocent girl anymore. Do you want me to show him this photo?” He held up a photo of me. Pauly was on top of me. My face was looking at the camera. I had a dog collar around my neck. “What about this one?” He held up a photo of me with Gavin. I will not describe it.

  I lost it, my hands to my face, the despair that was now my constant companion welling up, swirling around, forcing all the breath out of me in my pink penguin T-shirt.

  Sherwinn ripped my hands away from my face. “You want Steve to know what you look like naked? You want him to see the bruises you got when you weren’t being good? You want him to see you with us doing bad girl things in those red high heels? You want him to see a close-up shot of your privates? No, you don’t.” He leaned in to whisper in my ear, “Keep your trap shut. Keep Annie’s trap shut, and you can be friends with your Steve. But one word and he knows you’re trash, he knows you’re a slut. Got that, bad girl? You got that?”

  I nodded. I got it.

  I got that I didn’t want to live anymore.

  Two days later I saw Sherwinn talking to Steve at the hardware store. When Sherwinn sauntered off, a smile lurking creepily, I hurried over to Steve.

  “What . . . ,” I said, then choked on my fear. “Steve, what . . .” I choked again. “What did Sherwinn say to you?”

  He smiled at me—Steve always smiled at me; he said I was buttered popcorn to him, his favorite—but something in his blue eyes showed worry and unsteady confusion. “He said that you were a great daughter to have, that you did what you were told, that you were obedient. That’s what he said, that you’re obedient, and he said that one day he’s going to give me a present. I asked him what kind of a present.” His face clouded again. He was young but he knew something was off. He felt it. “He said that I’m supposed to ask you what kind of present I’m going to get from him.”

  Everything in front of me went blurry, like I was in a bottle, by myself, stuck in there, trapped, and blackish, bacteria-ridden water was filling it, funneling down my throat.

  “So, Madeline, what kind of a present is it? Madeline, are you okay?” He stepped in closer. “Do you like Sherwinn? Because I don’t like him. There’s something about him, something scary and creepy and gross. I don’t like him. Do you want to come to my house after school from now on? You can bring Annie.”

  I don’t remember fainting. Later, Mrs. Coonstock said that Steve caught me, held me, yelled for someone to call my momma.

  The only thing I remember feeling as I drowned in the bottle was that I would never, ever get out of that bottle. Steve’s face, crinkling in distress, grew smaller and smaller. I wanted to reach for him, hold him, but that infected water was drowning me.

  My dad would have gotten me out of that bottle, I knew that. He would have swam down, holding his breath, and pulled me to the surface. Steve would have done the same thing, if he could.

  I saw my dad again that night when I was trying to sleep, Annie beside me, a dresser in front of our door.

  Our dad was crying. Our strong, tough dad was crying.

  I heard a piece by Mozart in my head and I held on to it as I would hang on to a cliff if I was over the edge, a frothing river filled with alligators below, ready to shred my skin.

  I kept playing my violin, alone and with Momma.

  Annie, though, quit playing piano for months, and then she quit altogether. Why? Because Sherwinn snuck up on her one night and whispered something that made her drop her hands from the keys and stare straight ahead.

  Sherwinn giggled.

  What did he say? “Annie. Naked. Piano. Photo.”

  Click, click, click.

  The next day Steve brought me purple tulips because he knew they were my favorites. He wrapped them with a lace ribbon. He put them in a silver pail. I still have the lace and the pail. He baked Annie and me chocolate chip cookies with his mom in the shape of Mickey Mouse. He put the cookies in an old-fashioned blue and white flowered tin. I still have the tin. The next day he gave me a dinosaur that he put together with rocks and hot glue with the help of his mother. I still have the dinosaur. He gave me a red ribbon because “you have brown hair, but there’s red in it, too, all over. It’s like it’s magic. Red magic.”

  So, yes, I knew Steve Shepherd.

  We had been best friends.

  He was coming to Portland on his book tour, another blockbuster he’d written. A movie was being made.

  I would not call him back.

  I couldn’t.

  I made Grandma and Granddad breakfast a couple of days later. Whole wheat blueberry pancakes, scrambled eggs, and orange juice. I brought it to them on a tray while they were still in bed under a flock of birds.

  I did knock first. No need to surprise those two and their possible naked acrobatics.

  “Thank you, Madeline!” Grandma gushed. She was wearing a light blue lacy negligee with a see-through lacy robe over it. “We’ll need the energy for later, won’t we, darling?” She elbowed my granddad, sitting up in bed next to her. He smiled wearily at me.

  She giggled. “Only the birds and swans can watch!”

  “That sounds lovely, Grandma,” I said, winking at my granddad. He winked back. Always the gentleman.

  “It will be.” She leaned over and kissed Granddad on the cheek.

  “Thank you, my love,” he told her.

  “He’s a randy man! But you have to keep your man happy in the you-know-where.” She pointed at my granddad’s crotch. “He’s a romantic swan, but goodness, insatiable in the bedroom ! He wants me all the time, but then look at me.” She pointed to her chest. “I can’t help that these breasts make him think naughty thoughts, can I?”

  “You sure can’t, Grandma. Those are God given.”

  “God given! Thank you, God!” she shouted.
“Anton loves these breasts. Naughty man!” She leaned over and kissed him on the lips.

  I chatted a bit, then left for work, so glad I was coming back to The Lavender Farm that night and not to the metal man with an octagonal head.

  My first client was a man who wanted a career change. He’d been an inventor. He was a multimillionaire. He’d finally retired from his last job four weeks ago and was “bored out of my mind. Bah! Sitting with old men, boring! Golfing, boring! Hanging around the house, boring! My wife hates when I’m there all day, and I hate it, too. Boring! Retirement, boring!”

  “What do you love doing?”

  He thought about that for half a second. “Airplanes! Old airplanes !” He always spoke with exclamation marks. “My hobby is building toy airplanes. I do it for hours, every day. The wife thinks I’m crazy. Got ’em all stacked up on custom-made shelves. . . .”

  “Want a business doing that? You could sell what you have online or people could order a toy airplane from you and you could personalize it. Name it the Cassandra, the Bryan, the Muhammad. Whatever they want, paint it in their favorite colors. You know how to market, you’ve done that for years. . . .”

  He thought about that, thumped his walker. “Ha-hum! I think you’ve got an idea there, Madeline, young woman. That’s an idea! It’s not boring! No boredom there! I could have a toy airplane business. Hell, young woman, you’ve given me new life!”

  He shuffled out. “Never too late to take on a new business, that’s what I always say!”

  “Go kick some ass.”

  “Ha-hum! Yep. I’m an ass kicker. Still got my ass, so I’ll kick others’ asses.”

  Al Dover is ninety-three years old.

  The next week he sent me an exquisitely detailed toy airplane about three feet long. It was incredible. I hung it by the windows of my office.

  Al named it the Madeline.