The First Day of the Rest of My Life

  “Hi, Annie,” I called out when I heard the front door open.

  “Hello, Madeline, how are ya?” Her cowboy boots thunked against the floor. She is the most courageous person I’ve ever known. She’s gorgeous and looks a lot like our momma, with the blue-green eyes of our grandma—but she hides her gorgeousness. No makeup, no frills. She is also slightly off her rocker.

  “How are you, Ms. Vet?” I asked, giving her a hug. She hugged me back.

  “Haven’t had to run from anyone swinging a machete today, so that makes it good. You?”

  “Not bad.” She knew I wasn’t “good.” She knew I felt like I was collapsing from the inside out because I was two people, in one, and they were clashing.

  “Good morning, Grandma.”

  “Good morning, Anna.” Grandma smiled angelically, as if the fear of minutes ago had never occurred. “You can’t bring much when we leave, remember. I will leave all my shoes, and you’ll have to wear clothes under your clothes, then your blue coat.”

  “Okay, Grandma, I’ll get the blue coat. Hi, Nola.”

  Nola smiled back. “Good morning, Annie.”

  Nola and Annie launched into their usual discussion of the headlines in the news, as Grandma climbed back into the labyrinths of her mind and I poured lavender tea for Annie.

  Annie lives in a blue home she built years ago, about an eighth of a mile away, up the hill from our pond and dock. She is my best friend. I have brown eyes, with gold in ’em, but we both have dark brown hair with, no kidding, a reddish sheen from our Irish, Boston-born-and-bred father. Hardly anyone else ever sees the red, but to us, it’s like a beacon. I flatten my hair until it’s straight—no curls allowed. Annie pulls her curls back into a tight braid—no curls allowed, either.

  After high school Annie went to an Ivy League school. They were impressed with her grades (all As), her SATs (perfect score), her years of karate (black belt) and her awards in that area, her years of archery and awards in that area, her crack shot with a gun, and her awards in that area. She also wields a mean chain saw and can carve anything out of wood including, but not limited to, a pioneer woman with a gun and two kids, a Porsche, two girls on a bench holding tulips, a swan in full flight, high heels, a sea nymph, a cracked violin, a cupcake, Zeus, and—one time, after a bad date in high school—a large penis, which she propped on the guy’s lawn.

  She also made a carving of a girl named, get this, Buffy, who called both Annie and me “ugly, wild freakoid horse monsters,” but she made Buffy about a hundred pounds heavier with pimples on her face. She brought it to school five days later.

  Buffy wasn’t pleased.

  Annie graduated with degrees in economics and Arabic. After that . . . well, it’s sketchy. She spent six years in . . . whatever (undercover) U.S. government agency she joined, of which she does not speak. She spent much of her time in places that precluded her from telling me much about where and what she was doing, and sometimes she would come home with a mashed-up face or another injury.

  However, I do know her particular expertise: Explosives.

  Now and then she blows up: Houses.

  You think our government doesn’t train women to explode people/buildings? That would be: Wrong.

  When the home of a vicious, demented man who had a dirty, pathetic puppy mill in northern California exploded into Kingdom Come, when Annie was supposedly “vacationing in Fiji, loved the sun,” I looked the other way.

  When the home of another vicious, demented man who whipped and starved his horses for sport caught fire and turned to a hunk of ash in Washington when Annie was supposedly “vacationing in Fiji, loved the sun,” I also looked the other way.

  No one was hurt. Annie did not come home with a sunburn.

  Annie relates better to animals than people, and she cannot abide abuse of any kind. She decided to be a veterinarian during her “mystery” years. “I saw too many human limbs in places where they shouldn’t be, and I decided I wanted to be a part of putting things back together, not destroying them. But I don’t want to work with people. I love animals. They don’t frighten me, they don’t need anything from me but medical care, and they won’t hurt or betray me intentionally.”

  She has a half-blind greyhound with only three legs, who she found limping across the road, named Mr. Legs. She has a mutt who looks like a cross between a beagle, a German shepherd, and a banana named Morning Glory. The dog was so diseased when Annie rescued her from a shelter, anyone else would have put her down.

  She has two white, furry dogs she stole from an abusive home, named Door and Window, who were smothered in muck and shaking when she rescued them. She went to the owner’s house when he was gone, cut the chains that kept the dogs leashed to a tree 365 days a year, attended to their various life-threatening wounds and infections, and exploded the man’s house. The report in the local Washington State newspaper said there was “clearly an electrical wiring problem. These are old homes, code not up to date. . . .”

  She also has six cats. One of the cats, named Cat, thinks she is a dog and hangs out with the dogs and eats from their bowls. Another cat, Lisa, is missing an ear and half a tail. Bob is cranky and spitty, Tornado, in my mind, suffers from multiple personality disorders, and Geranium and Oatmeal follow her around like she’s the pied piper and meow at her. She meows back.

  “You were busy last night,” I said as we all warmed our hands on Grandma’s pink-flowered teacups. “How’s the mother pig?”

  “She’s doing great. It was Braddock’s pig, Stella. You know, the skittish one, always anxious, runs from most people? She shot them right out. She loves her piglets. You’re staying tonight, right?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Good. I may need help. You can handle the yucky stuff and any animals who bite.”

  I laughed. “Always a pleasure to go out on your vet runs with you.”

  I poured everyone more lavender tea and we all chatted the chat of women, the sun rising over the lavender rows; Mt. Hood turning orange and pink, the trees in the distance swaying, dancing their own natural dance; my old, scratched and dented, and well-loved violin in its case propped in the corner.

  “I hate the black ghosts,” Grandma muttered. “They come in the night and wring the swans’ necks.”

  “Me too,” Annie and I said together, quite seriously. We did not like the black ghosts, either; they had spooked through our dreams on many occasions.

  I winked at Annie.

  We are best friends.

  Lavender has an interesting history. It’s been around forever. In fact, the rumor around town is that Adam and Eve grabbed it in the Garden of Eden after God told them to get the heck out because Eve, enticed by the naughty snake, ate that luscious apple. It is strange they did not grab more fig leaves to cover their naked selves, but still, the scent of lavender from the garden they were supposed to be guarding was probably not one they wanted to part with. They knew a pretty flower when they saw it.

  The word lavender comes from the Latin word lavare, which means to wash. The Romans, among all their other brilliant discoveries, used to wash with it. They even brought lavender with them when they invaded and tromped on England one summer for kicks. After fighting the tribes, with a good dose of smashing and killing, somehow that lavender took root in England. It is unlikely that the battle-weary English were grateful for the way this purple plant arrived on their lands, but they came to love it.

  The Egyptians were creative and inventive with their lavender. They used it as perfume and for mummification. Poor King Tut, that critically sick and hurting child prince, had some in his tomb, although it obviously would have been of no use to him then. My favorite story is about a Hebrew widow named Judith who lived about 550 BC. She wasn’t pleased when a temperamental Assyrian general name Holofernes invaded her country by orders from Nebuchadnezzar II, another nut case who was ticked at other countries that did not support him. Judith seduced Holofernes with her charm and a few sprigs of lavender. When he
was drunk as a skunk she cut off his head and took it home with her.

  I don’t know what she did with the head after that.

  Perhaps she stuck some lavender in his mouth.

  What I do know is that when I arrived at The Lavender Farm, after the gunshots, I spent endless hours in a numbed state, marching up and down those lavender rows searching for peace, tying bouquets together, winding the stems through wreaths made of sticks.

  I am still searching for that peace.

  At three o’clock that Sunday morning, when it was pitch dark, I sprang out of bed in my old bedroom when Annie burst through the door. I had been asleep for maybe an hour.

  “Up and at ’em, Madeline,” Annie said. “I need help and my elf helper quit last week.”

  “That’s a negative. No to helping. I can’t help. My body won’t move.” I lay back down and pulled my pillow over my head. It was warm and comfy amidst my fluffy, white down comforter and purple pillows.

  “Sleep is overrated, especially when animals need you. I’ve got a horse giving birth and a very strange farmer suffering from morning sickness who will be of no help. Shovel your ass out of bed.”

  I groaned.

  I moaned.

  I ached with fatigue and a dreadful sense of impending doom.

  I flipped off the covers and shoveled my ass out of bed.

  Horses are part people.

  Anyone who has spent time with them knows this. They have their own personalities, problems, fears, issues, strengths, obnoxiousness, and even humor. They have emotions; they feel love and hate, jealousy and anxiety, friendship and exclusion.

  That is why when horses are abused, my sister becomes enraged. It is why we have fifteen horses on the property, many of whom Annie and I went and got in our horse trailer. With a few of the horses we even had the permission from the abusive / neglectful owners to take them. They often limp off the trailer, their bodies broken, half-starved, weakened, diseased, their hair matted and dirty, infections all over. Worse, their spirits are torn and tattered, hanging on by one hoof.

  They look like they want to die, as if they’ve been whipped and starved into a submission that nothing can bring them out of.

  But Annie prevents the nothing from swamping them. She knows what it’s like to feel the nothing, to feel the bleak despondency and despair that drives you to believe that you would be better off dead. She’s fought through it.

  Annie nurses the horses back to health. They love her. The horses are not riding horses, except for Mr. Pete, who is her horse. They are, Annie says, “in horse retirement. They have a full meal plan and free health insurance. They can run and roll and play all day.” They will live on The Lavender Farm until they die.

  By 3:30 in the morning we were with Jeremy and Loretta Lou. Jeremy is the man with morning sickness. One might say he has a tad of an obsession with his horse, Loretta Lou. Some might say it’s a wee unhealthy.

  “It’s okay, Loretta Lou, honey, honey oat pie, cupcake, it’s okay,” Jeremy crooned to his horse. “You push and push and push and I’m right here, baby. Watch your breathing, in and out, in and out, like this, watch me, watch me. Remember what we learned.” He breathed in and out, but his breathing was shaky, nervous, agitated. “I’m with you, honey. We’ll saddle up and do this together.”

  The horse neighed once, softly, then continued her agitated walk around the confines of her stall.

  “I don’t mind telling you,” Jeremy said to us, his brow letting sweat flow like a sieve, “I’ve had a hoofin’ bad and terrible time with morning sickness for weeks now. Hoofin’ bad time! Morning sickness!”

  Jeremy is in love with all his horses and he likes to use horsey language. It makes him feel “included in the family.”

  “You mentioned your morning sickness a thousand times,” Annie said. “I told you to rest, put those big feet of yours up, calm down—”

  “Calm down?” He was aghast. “Calm down! Loretta Lou is pregnant! She’s going to have a foal! A baby! How can I calm down? I’ve had problems with my stomach, swollen ankles, I have cravings for avocado, I can eat six at a time, and I wash it down with chocolate milkshakes, I’ve never liked milkshakes, my digestive system is a mess . . .”

  “You’ll start to feel better soon, Jeremy,” Annie soothed. “Loretta Lou will have her foal—”

  He clapped both hands to his face. “I’m a wreck, a wreck! I’ve had mood swings, tears, rages, then joy, wonderful joy over the baby, I mean the foal, followed by the pits! Pits of low! Of fear! I’ve had to horseshoe my emotions!”

  “You’ll be a good father,” I said.

  Jeremy burst into tears. “Thank you, Madeline, for saying that. I’ve got my bridles and I’m ready to guide and lead! I hope I’ll be a good father! I hope! But watching Loretta Lou grow and grow, it’s been terrible! I’ve put on ten pounds, too. Right there.” He pointed to his stomach. It did bulge. “I’m going to sing to her now.”

  Jeremy started to sing a lullaby through his semi-hysterical tears as he stroked Loretta Lou’s neck. It was surprisingly poignant, the notes clear and crisp, and yet wistful, too. “That always calms her down, always. I sing it every night before she goes to sleep.”

  “It calmed me down,” Annie said, her eyes on the horse.

  “It calmed me down, too,” I said to Jeremy.

  He sang again, and the horse paced. “Loretta Lou, dumpling, you are going to make a wonderful mother.” Jeremy wept. “A caring, loving mother, and your baby is lucky to have you. Now, hang on, lady, jump your fear, and we’ll have the baby out in a few, and you can begin your mothering. . . .”

  I knew that Annie did not think this one-sided conversation strange. She talks to animals, too, only she talks to them as if they’re mature humans. I’ve heard her discuss with dogs, cats, lambs, horses, ferrets, llamas, and pigs the stock market, the political scene in Oregon and the nation, various environmental problems, the value of a military career, volcanoes, poorly fitted bras, cramps, yeast, transgender folks, rock stars, organic foods, and Armageddon.

  “I want you to pretend you’re in the field, Loretta Lou,” Jeremy instructed, still sweating, his face inches from his horse’s. “Put yourself in a field of buttercups, that’s it, buttercups, and clover and hay and some cheesecake, no, not cheesecake, I like cheesecake you don’t, but think of that field, go into your pleasant spot, love, your tranquil Zen mode. . . .”

  The horse swung her head a few times, stomped a foot, but was otherwise calm. I felt sorry for her. Her stomach was enormous. It looked like, well, it looked like she had a horse in it.

  “Sugar lips, you can do it! You can push, darling,” Jeremy said. “Breathe in and out, like we’ve practiced, like we’ve talked about, stay calm, stay in your pleasant spot, focus, focus. . . .”

  Soon Annie’s gloved hands were moving under the horse, while Jeremy kept singing lullabies, his voice cracking as he cried like a baby. “Push, breathe, push, breathe, push!”

  I saw two hooves, then two legs, the head of the baby horse, and then the rest of it came right out onto the hay. Annie ripped the sack and declared it a “splendid foal.”

  “You did it, Loretta Lou! You did it!” Jeremy burst into another torrent of tears, stroking the horse’s neck. “You did it, Momma, look at your baby!”

  We oohed and aahhed over the foal, which Jeremy named Lou Lou. “Do you like that name, Loretta Lou? How about Lou Lou for your baby girl? Do you? All right, Lou Lou it is!”

  Soon, Lou Lou wobbled to her feet, surprisingly quickly, I thought. If I had just been born, I would have wanted to curl up in a ball after having a beer.

  “Thank you, Annie. And Loretta Lou thanks you, too, don’t you, sweetheart, don’t you?” He nuzzled her neck. “Sweetie . . . sweetie . . . sweetie.”

  I glanced over at Annie. Even in the dim light, I could see her turning white, all blood leaving her face as if it had decided to get outta town. My knees grew weak and spaghetti-like, my heart pumped, my hands tig
htened into fists.

  “Sweetie, you were so brave. . . .”

  Annie swayed. I staggered over to her, feeling like I was seeing her from a million miles away and would never reach her as the walls of the barn closed in tight.

  She reached out a hand and I held it.

  “Sweetie!” Jeremy crooned, then looked up at us, his face alarmed. “Are you two all right? My horsey goodness! Here, sit down, please, rest your saddles; you’ve been up all night. I’ll run in and get you a drink, be right back, stay right there, Loretta Lou, sweetie. . . .”

  We sweeties leaned hard against the wall of the barn.

  Annie grabbed a nearby bucket and puked.

  “I so hate that word,” Annie said, wiping the back of her mouth.

  “Me too.”

  I reached for her hand, not the one that she’d wiped across her mouth. I closed my eyes. Annie sighed.

  My heart felt like a rock with a giant hand squeezing it tight. I felt her pain, she felt my pain. It was awful.

  Sweetie, do this, do that, sweetie, turn this way. Goddammit, sweetie!

  Sweetie, if you don’t unclench your legs . . . sweetie, if you want to get home on time, you’ll smile . . . turn over . . . sweetie, stop crying, for God’s sakes, you stupid girl . . . shit, we gonna be here all afternoon or are you gonna do your job? Sweetie, move your hands out of the way . . . sweetie, I ain’t got time to fool around . . . if you tell your mother I will put her in a coffin myself, got that.... A giggle followed by, It’ll be your fault, you dirty, curly haired girl....

  Shut it down, Madeline, I told myself. Shut it down.

  Shut Sherwinn down and out.

  In that barn I tried to shut my own brain down so it didn’t implode.

  Before I left early the next morning for work, I hiked down to our pond. It’s a pretty good size, and Granddad stocks it every year. I spent hours fishing here when I was younger, right next to Annie. Sometimes we took a rowboat out, sometimes we stood on the long dock, fishing poles hanging over the edge. Being at the pond makes you feel like you are in a painting—a meadow here, fir trees there, a picnic table in the distance, cattails and lily pads. Sometimes deer stroll through, coyote, raccoons at night, and there are always birds, chipmunks, and squirrels.