The First Day of the Rest of My Life

  Nola is in there with them, but she stands back. She’s there in case Grandma needs help. She’s fallen twice, ended up in the hospital both times, so Nola stays. It’s a private moment though, as Nola has told me. “I am quiet. I do not get in the way of their love.”

  I am in their bedroom when I’m at home. Annie is also. We don’t get in the way of their love, either.

  Neither Grandma nor Granddad ever looks at us, we are gone to them in the shadows of the dimly lit room. They are in their bedroom, alone together, their nightly routine one they’ve shared for decades.

  Granddad is already in his pajamas, his teeth brushed. He helps Grandma brush her teeth, then takes her hand and settles her in her antique chair in front of her old-fashioned makeup table, complete with an oval mirror and a red rose flowered skirt.

  He kneels and carefully smoothes her palms and fingers with lavender lotion, takes out her tortoise shell or pearl clips and hairpins, and brushes out her white curls, which have not lost their lushness.

  Next, he gently sits Grandma on their king-sized bed with the lace canopy, and she smiles up at him, that suggestive coyness shining forth. He bends and drops a kiss on her smiling mouth and they smile at each other for long seconds, then she puts her arms straight out, like she’s on a cross, and he carefully unbuttons her sweater or her blouse or, like tonight, her fancy dress worn especially for him, and takes it off, folding or hanging it neatly.

  She always says, “Take my clothes off. I am yours. We will go to The Land of the Swans together.”

  There is no modesty as he unsnaps her lacy bra. My grandma, even when I was younger, always wore intricate, lacy bras that my granddad bought for her. Matching underwear, too. One bra, three pairs of matching underwear. She still wears them. He still buys her lacy, sexy bras and underwear because she delights in them. Next Grandma lies back on their bed, a girlish, flirty smile on her face as she watches him pull off her shoes, socks, her pants or her skirt, and underwear.

  He slips an elegant nightgown over her head. He has always bought all of my grandma’s nightgowns, too, and he spares no expense. He buys her what a lady would wear for a husband who loves her dearly. She wears a pad in her underwear, but she doesn’t notice, and I don’t think he notices anymore, either; that is not the point.

  When he is done, and she is covered in lace and love, he gently pulls her back up, and she says, “My heart, take me to the lake and we’ll make love” or “Darling, let’s make love by the lavender near the swan.” He tucks her in, turns out the light, climbs into bed, and hugs his wife, as they have done for decades, during good times and horrid times, their dreams intertwined, their nightmares shared.

  We leave, closing the door softly.

  We don’t want to interrupt their love.

  When everyone else was in bed that night, Annie and I popped popcorn, smothered it in butter, headed back out to the deck, lit pine-scented candles, and wrapped blankets around ourselves. She had returned Mr. Legs, Oatmeal, and Geranium and come back with the gray and white cat, named Cat, who thinks she’s a dog and Morning Glory, who is a cross between a beagle, a German shepherd, and a banana.

  “What exactly do you think they’re hiding?” I drawled. We lay in the wooden chaise lounges and studied the night sky, filled with bright stars, dim stars, and the swirl of the Milky Way.

  “I don’t know, but they’re hiding something.” Morning Glory climbed up on Annie and lay on her chest, followed by Cat, who lay on her ankles.

  “A lot of something.” I love popcorn. I love the whiteness of it. It’s an innocent food. We never had it at the shack, so it makes it innocent, a food with no bad memories, so to speak. “We know they came from France. Momma’s one hundred percent French.”

  We let the silence move between us, liquid, quiet.

  “Granddad told me they left before the war,” I said. “I think he said that. Didn’t he say that?”

  “I think so, but, Madeline, I’m not sure. Did he just imply it? I know when someone’s lying, been trained on that one, but I was young when I asked my questions, hadn’t had the ‘how-toextract-information-from-unwilling-people’ classes yet.”

  I didn’t take that one any further. “He said they came to New York, then to Oregon, and he and Grandma sold fruits, pies, French breads, baguettes, stews, soups, and croissants, door to door. They cooked it out of a cruddy house they rented. The roof leaked, the heat was sporadic, and it smelled moldy, but the oven worked, and that’s where they cooked.”

  “Right, and he said the house caught fire on a winter night and burned the kitchen down, including their cooking supplies and their ingredients, and they started over.”

  I nodded. “That’s them. They are not quitters.”

  The rest is Swan Stores history. They rented a corner of a building outside of Portland. They lived upstairs and sold their food downstairs. “We were dead poor,” Granddad had told me, “for a time.”

  Their flagship store is now located on that corner, tens of thousands of square feet. Fresh local ingredients, French food, great bargains, and bulk items drew crowds, and helpful employees kept them coming back. Swans grew; they expanded, hired, expanded, hired. “We never stopped working,” Grandma told me. “Except to take care of your momma.”

  “They did both say they were born in Germany,” Annie said. “And they moved to France as very young children. Their parents were friends, I remember that part. They lived in the same village in Germany, and both families moved together.” She tossed two pieces of popcorn up in the air and caught both with her mouth. I was not fooled by her nonchalance. She was trying to puzzle this out with me. “But from there and back, things get fuzzy. I’ve never liked fuzzy.”

  Morning Glory whined at her. Annie whined back.

  “They’ll hardly say anything about France,” I said. “They’re vague. They change the subject. Who did they used to be? Who were they before they came here? All they will say is that the coffee was better in France, and so was the cheese and chocolate. Everything else is better in America. I asked Grandma about her own family, but she always stopped my questions by saying, ‘That was a long time ago. That was when the unicorns and the nymphs ruled the world’ or ‘It’s like a storybook, but the storybook has been read and doesn’t need to be re-read.’”

  “One time Granddad told me that he and Grandma’s parents were gone, and it was just us now. I remember he became quiet after saying that, then he walked away from me, down the hill to the pond, and sat on the dock for a long time. I snuck down and spied on him, and he had his head in his hands. I didn’t want to ask him any more questions, because obviously it took him to a very bad place.”

  “Annie, do you remember how Momma used to cry at odd moments? She would never explain why she was so upset. She’d go outside and watch the waves, she’d speak in French, as if she was talking to someone, and she’d play her violin. Sometimes I’d take my violin out and we’d play together.”

  “They’ve been deliberately evasive.” Annie tossed up more popcorn. “I spent a number of years in hot, dry countries talking to evasive people, and those two are masters at it.” She pet Morning Glory. He panted at her.

  “Think we’ll ever know what’s really there?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  We sat in the liquid silence again and watched the stars while we shoveled innocent buttered popcorn in. One shooting star, two.

  “All three of them shared a secret.”

  “That I would bet my house that I don’t like on.” I reached for Annie’s hand and held it. We both had butter on our fingers from the innocent popcorn.

  One more star fell through the night. It was now gone.

  Dead.

  Lavender can be used for love. It has a romantic history.

  Cleopatra, that raving feminist, brilliant strategist, and manipulator used it to seduce, it is said, Marc Antony. I hardly doubt she needed help, but being in a bad political position, she can’t be blamed for pulling
out all the stops.

  Lavender was used over a hundred years ago to promote chastity. There are no scientific studies that support any success in this matter. Conversely, the smell of lavender is apparently sexy to men and can help the old guys get it up again. Young women used to stuff lavender in their beds so they could have a rocking good time in the sack, or tuck a few stems between their breasts to attract young gentlemen.

  Lavender is also used to heal a broken heart.

  So far, it has not worked for me.

  Georgie, dressed in a yellow wrappy sort of dress with sunflowers and a perky blue hat, reminded me that I would be on the local TV show Portland Sunrise on Friday. “Tracy Shales’s assistant called and wants to talk to you.”

  Stanley barked at me. I got on my haunches, shook his paw. He barked again and I hugged him.

  My mind was mush. I had eight million e-mails to plow through and phone calls to return, including one to Janika Jeffs, who was running the Rock Your Womanhood conference. “We are so excited to have you, Madeline. We did a survey, and eighty-five percent of our seven thousand participants are coming because of you! You! You! You you!”

  “The assistant wants to review what time you’re supposed to be there, makeup, the questions that will be asked of you, all that.” Georgie swirled the yellow ties on her dress. “I think this is a good way to forward your spirit to others.”

  “Thank you. I like to forward my spirit.”

  “Tracy’s got a lot going on right now, swirling trauma and drama,” Georgie mused.

  “I know.” Tracy was in a rather public spat with the station’s manager, Thacker Blunt. She was a popular morning show host. Tracy was forty-eight, not thin, and had short brown hair. She was funny, quick, smart, and had fought breast cancer twice and won. She wore a scarf when she hosted the morning show during chemo, and a couple of times she took it right off and there was her bald head. It was a round, shiny, attractive bald head. That woman was roarin’ popular.

  But when a young, leggy, snooty blonde was invited onto the show to “help her” cohost, Tracy saw the beginning of her demise.

  When the young, leggy, snooty blonde named, get this, Tawni, was clearly taking over, in a sneaky way, and given more significant stories and the opening greeting, and when eventually Tracy was “reassigned” to a weekend news reporter position, the women of Portland howled.

  Very loudly.

  Not only her female viewers, and all of the women she knew in the statewide breast cancer organization, to which she had donated time and money, but her church, her walking group, and her neighbors got involved, too, one of whom was the former mayor of the city, another a state senator.

  Not pretty.

  During those two weeks, the young, leggy, snooty blonde, Tawni, said, on the air, when she was interviewing a red-haired fashion designer, “Ladies, if you’re a size twelve or above, these clothes aren’t for you. They’re a no-no. A boo-boo. Isn’t that right, Magdalena?” Magdalena, the local fashion designer, looked like she wanted to choke on her turquoise necklace.

  “No, absolutely not. These clothes are made for all women, they accentuate curves—” the designer rushed, a gold streak in her hair falling forward.

  Tawni smiled, so patronizing. “Designer clothes don’t hang right on heavy woman, we know that. But there are alternatives, aren’t there, Mags? Stores out there that cater to large women.” Tawni smiled, fake white teeth gleaming, then crossed her thin legs and designer heels.

  “And, in fact, even when I walk by those stores for biggy women, I’ve seen things that I like, and I’m a size four! Four! I’ve seen bright colors, cool belts that can hide those extra cuddle rolls, ladies, and pretty scarves that cover problems on the neck and minimize attention to the face!” She pulled her shoulders back, fake boobs protruding. “Women of all sizes have choices, luckily, and the fatter ones, oops, the heavier women, the weight-challenged ones, can look good, too, with some focused, intense, determined attention to detail and material, isn’t that right, Mags?” Fake smile, again.

  And Magdalena said, pasty white, almost frothing with fear, “My clothes can be worn by everyone, of all sizes. Now let me tell you about these fabrics.” She held up a skirt, her hands shaking. “I bought this fabric in India—”

  “Come on, now, Mags! You’re a size four, too! Do you think your clothes would be flattering on a woman who is a size twelve or fatter? They wouldn’t hang right because of the lumps and bumps. Let’s not mislead the viewers! Part of being sexy is taking an honest look at yourself and taking action against your own fat.” She wiggled her shoulders, then wagged a finger at the camera. “We all have to take responsibility for ourselves! So, hit the gym, ladies!”

  Portland Sunrise cut to commercial after Magdalena, the shaking fashion designer, leaned heavily against her chair and went from pasty white to green.

  The cacophony of the outrage forced Tawni into an apology. The next morning, a sulky and petulant expression pasted to her condescending face, she whined, “I’m so sorry if I offended heavy women.” She could barely hide her impatience. “I was trying to point out that designers don’t make these clothes for women . . . of a certain size. And that we all have a personal responsibility to ourselves and to others who have to look at us to be attractive, not fa—not heavy. But we’re all beautiful, right? We’re all beautiful!” Tawni swung her shoulders back, the protruding fake boobs once again at attention. “Skinny girls, fat women, we’re all beautiful on the inside! That’s what’s important. It’s not important if you’re bigger than a size eight! What we all have to do as women is bond together!”

  The howling reached a deafening pitch, and with Tracy gone and no one watching the show anymore thanks to the womenup-in-arms-rebellion, advertisers pulled their ads quicker than you can say “I hate young, leggy, snooty blondes named Tawni.”

  Tracy got her full-time job back, Tawni moved to Memphis, the advertisers forked over the cash again, and local and national media covered the event.

  Tracy’s popularity could not be understated.

  But Thacker Blunt, the station manager, by all accounts, was steaming mad. Boiling. Pissed off. By virtue of knowing thousands of people in town, a number of them in the news business, I knew that Thacker was a quack. One of my clients said she was fired from the station because she complained about how he always touched her. She didn’t want the legal fight, she did want the wowza “I Will Not Sue You” check, so she moved on. A friendly acquaintance of mine, a newscaster, said that working for Thacker is like facing a firing squad every day, wondering if the bullet will hit your aorta or your co-worker’s.

  “Tracy got her job back,” I said to Georgie.

  “She did. The heavenly karmas intervened in that mess. I hated the other host with the fake boobies.” She whipped out a mirror to examine the silver sparkles on her eyelids. “I’m glad they sacked her. Even watching her on TV was inviting negative back into my life and bones. When she said that stuff about fat women, my mother sat down and wrote to the station and all the advertisers on that show saying she wasn’t going to buy any of their products or watch the station unless they got rid of ‘that bitch.’ My mother used that language, ‘that bitch,’ and my mother never swears. She studied to be a nun, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.” I loved Georgie’s mother. She dressed in proper blouses and proper slacks and wore a large cross every day over her bosom. She and Georgie could not be more different. They were in love with each other.

  “But poor Tracy still has to deal with that manager, and she hates him,” Georgie said. “He’s sleeping with another woman at the station and he’s married and the tramp gal’s married.”

  I shot her a quick look. “How do you know?”

  “I know because my best friend, Elizabeth, works there. She’s got an entry-level job. She’s African American, and she’s got these huge, gigantic brown eyes, like chocolate drops, and she’s this cosmic wonder-girl person, the kindest in the universe, so she’
s everyone’s best friend and they tell her everything. In fact, the gal that Thacker’s sleeping with now even told her that Thacker says he’s leaving his wife. She says they keep some of their sex toys—and one of the toys is this pink snake, I don’t know what that’s for, but she says they keep them in the third drawer of his desk. They go to this hotel called The Chateau outside of town every Thursday night and Sunday afternoon. Apparently the girlfriend likes to be spanked. That’s what she told Elizabeth. Spanked. With a hand and with Pop-Tarts or licorice. I don’t know the connection. That type of weirdness is out of my comfy metaphysical realm.”

  Spanked. As foreplay? It made me sick, and nervous, and a flashback, appallingly clear and graphic, rolled before my eyes like a movie. I shuddered.

  “Yeah, Thacker’s creepy. Elizabeth says they have young, sexy women with cleavage and bouncy butts—her words not mine—working there for about four months, then they leave. So, anyhow, call Tracy’s assistant. I put her number on your desk with the rest of the eternal messages you receive by this time every morning.”

  I would.

  I tried to get the image of a “spanking” out of my head. The one I remember involved an open palm, a piece of wood, and a whip.

  I turned toward my office and shut the door, staring out the windows. It was raining again.

  For years I tried to block out my flashbacks when they came for me. I have learned the hard way that I can fight, wrestle, and push them away, but it doesn’t work forever. They stay there, planted in my brain, until I run them through. Why is that? Is it trauma? Is it healing? My flashbacks can be triggered by anything—a word like spanking, a dilapidated house, two sisters walking together, or someone talking about a beach trip. I don’t go to the ocean; neither does Annie, as I’ve said. Too much was taken by the ocean.

  I remembered a spanking. It hurt. It hurt everything in me.

  Good God I wish my flashbacks would die.

  As a girl, my skin crawled like a thousand red ants were biting my body when I knew that Sherwinn was watching me.