by Helen Ellis
It was a fish. A whole fish. Not eaten or even bitten. A whole fish.
It looked like the bald eagle had swooped it out of a lake; or bought it in the Publix seafood department, unwrapped it from wax paper, and displayed it on the brown and amber leaves like Trisha Yearwood might do on her cooking show.
Vicki’s first thought wasn’t It’s a sign, it was YUCK!
And then she thought: Thank goodness my mom is visiting, so she can come and get it.
When Vicki’s mother saw the fish, she said, “See, it’s another sign! A fish straight from Jesus!”
Vicki’s mother refused to remove it. She didn’t want to be disrespectful. “Besides,” she said, “I’m sure the eagle will come back for it.”
It did not.
Vicki said, “But something enjoyed it.”
“Anyway,” she continued, “all I can say is that from that point on, I knew that something was watching over me.”
* * *
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Vicki survived her mastectomy, and then a near-fatal post-op complication that hit her hours after she’d been sent home following a ridiculously short stay in the hospital. The complication was something to do with the “drains” sticking out of her torso. I don’t understand why women are sent home to drain anything after surgeries. We wouldn’t pay hard-earned money to send our cars through a car wash with the expectation to squeegee our own windshields.
Anyhoo, in preparation for implants (which would be surgically slid into her chest months after she’d undergone twenty-eight radiation treatments), the surgeon had inserted “expanders.”
Not-so-fun fact: when they cut off your breasts, they take a lot of your skin. If you choose reconstruction, you have to stretch your remaining skin to cover whatever cup size you’ve purchased. What they do is put half-empty bags of saline where your boobs used to be, and then once a week fill ’em up. FYI: expanders aren’t supple. They’re hard like those green plastic pint cages that hold grape tomatoes at the farmer’s market.
Yes, Vicki let me touch them and that is what they felt like.
* * *
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Six months later, Vicki and I met Paige in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina to celebrate her fiftieth birthday. Paige’s friend Scarlet joined us for this trip. She is younger than us, and as fate would have it married to Vicki’s brother. I’d met her only once before, but she’d made an impression.
Scarlet was maid of honor at Paige’s second wedding to a doting, handsome veterinarian, who we all like so much we pronounce his two-letter name with three syllables. As Paige said her vows, her young daughter clung to Scarlet’s dress and cried happy tears. And this may be my poetic license remembering, but I swear Scarlet is such a good friend, she blew that child’s nose in her skirt.
The fourteen-room hotel of suites and a spa that Paige had picked for our long weekend had no TVs, but there were ceiling fans, which is my idea of nature. Paige’s first choice had been to rent a cabin in the woods, but that’s too much nature. I don’t do cabins in the woods because I have seen too many movies about cabins in the woods. If someone wants to murder me, they are going to have to get past reception.
Otherwise, I’d told Paige, I’d do whatever she wanted.
Here’s what Paige wanted to do for her fiftieth birthday: wear matching mood rings; have facials and take a bath in a tree-house tub; white-water raft with a good-ole-boy Adonis who ordered us to “Paddle, ladies!” and then paddle and paddle and paddle and scream; eat cheese every night at 4:59 p.m. and then hit a casino.
Turns out, Paige likes the slots. And I can be deposited in a poker room and picked up whenever the rest of y’all are ready to go.
One night, Vicki sat behind me while I played cards. Her hair had grown back half an inch, and her hairdresser had dyed it burgundy. She looked glamorous as she sipped Chardonnay from a plastic beer cup, while the drink of choice at my table was a fireball shot.
I asked the dealer, “What’s a fireball shot?”
Answer: Jägermeister and cinnamon.
But another player explained it better: “What it is, is dry cleaning the next morning.”
* * *
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For our last night at the casino, we got balcony seats to see TV’s Long Island Medium, Theresa Caputo.
The theater was so large, Styx and ZZ Top would be there next month.
When the lights went out, an American flag was projected—waving—on a huge screen at the back of the stage. Everyone in the audience stood, put our hands over our hearts, and sang the national anthem. And then the medium appeared at the front of the stage next to a round table of candles.
Her white-blond hair wasn’t teased as pageant-tiara high as it used to be, but it was still plenty big and it was still plenty blond. It was lacquered with so much hair spray that it somehow looked as fortified as an igloo and as fragile as a sugar cage that comes around the fanciest of desserts at the fanciest of restaurants. Her nails were as long as ever, but she’d let go of her signature French manicure in favor of a beige polish that was subtle, but as glittery as Nancy Kerrigan’s Olympic Vera Wang sleeves. She wore a tight black dress and super-high heels. She smacked her Long Island accent like pink bubblegum.
And we were all there for it.
Theresa said, “Look, I don’t know how this works with me, it just works. Spirit talks to me, and I go to where Spirit tells me to go. Sometimes I get a physical feeling. And sometimes I get hot, because I’m fifty-two—if you can believe that—and it’s not Spirit, it’s the perimenopause.”
I whooped and clapped, but nobody else did, but I didn’t care. God bless this woman for yelling “menopause” in a crowded theater. I wasn’t sure if I believed in her powers, but I believed we could be friends, so she had me now, and I was rooting for her.
I looked to my left to see if Vicki, Paige, and Scarlet were as into this as I was.
Vicki was digging in her purse for travel Kleenex, and Scarlet was asking the stranger next to her for paper napkins because between them Paige was crying so hard she was trembling. She looked frightened, but curious. Earlier in the night, she’d realized it was her father’s birthday. I knew what Paige was thinking: Will he visit me tonight?
Not-so-fun fact: two years after Paige’s dad had helped her escape from her first marriage, he died.
One day he was fine, and the next he was coding at a hospital in Tuscaloosa, a four-hour drive away from Paige in Athens.
Paige got the news from a relative outside her father’s hospital room and remembers, “I went pretty hysterical on the phone at work. They got a heartbeat back, and I calmed some. Halfway there I called, and they said he hadn’t woken up yet. He was in a coma. Me and my brother and sister got to see him, but after the doctors talked to us, we decided to have him removed from life support and he passed away a couple of hours later, with our family singing to him. I haven’t been able to listen to ‘Silent Night’ since.”
I worried I’d made a mistake bringing my friend to the medium’s show.
Theresa said, “If I don’t come to your section, I don’t come to your section, but if you get a message from a reading I give to somebody else, that is a message for you, and you should embrace it.”
I whispered, “There’s no way she’s coming to the balcony, right?”
Somebody shushed me.
Theresa said, “So look, everybody, you see these cameramen?”
There were five of them with cameras on their shoulders. One of them took Theresa’s hand and helped her down the stairs from the stage.
Theresa said, “These cameramen are going to follow me around, and if I talk to you, they’ll film you so your face shows up on these big screens so that everyone can see you. We’ll give you a mic, so you talk into that mic. B
ut don’t worry, we’re not recording any of this. I’m not here to embarrass anybody or be mean to anybody. You might get scared, but I’m not trying to scare you.”
Theresa snuck some popcorn from a woman’s box in the front row.
We all laughed as she ate it. She’s so personable! A hoot.
Theresa said, “So, who here had a son that died?”
We stopped laughing because so many hands went up in the air.
“Hands down, I said Spirit will find you.”
Theresa zeroed in on a couple in the center section. She asked them to please stand. The wife stood, but the husband did not. The woman’s face was fallen. Her body slumped. She was in a piece of clothing that could only be called a top. Her hair was cropped. Her energy flat.
Theresa told the woman what happened to her son was not her fault. It happened in their garage. There was nothing she could have done to stop it.
I elbowed Vicki and mouthed: Suicide.
Vicki had found the lone tissue in her purse and already worn it down to a nubbin.
Theresa told the woman that she had to move on. Her son was at peace. She had to stop punishing herself. She asked the husband, “Is she punishing herself?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Stop it,” Theresa told the woman. “Do you hear me? Stop punishing yourself. Take care of yourself. You have to take care of yourself, do you hear me?”
The woman nodded.
And then, for the next two hours, it was like shooting sad women in a barrel because this was the rural South, and bad stuff, and I mean real bad stuff, had happened to everyone.
Theresa said, “Who found a baby strangled in a blinds cord? You did! Oh God, I know you did. I’m so sorry you experienced that, but there was nothing you could have done. That baby is at peace now, and you need to forgive yourself. You need to take care of yourself and stop punishing yourself. Do you hear me?”
A woman nodded.
“Now, I’m getting cookie. Why cookie? Like a Christmas sugar cookie.”
“My daughter had a dog named Cookie!”
“And your daughter passed?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Theresa clutched her own throat. “She was found hanging.”
“Yes, ma’am, but she would never have killed herself.”
“You’re right, she’s telling me her body was moved.”
“Yes, ma’am, we think her boyfriend did it, and then he moved her, and then he moved away and took her dog.”
Theresa said, “Now, I don’t want calls from the police, but that’s right, he killed her. But she’s at peace now, do you hear me? And she wants you to know that. And that boyfriend of hers is never going to be arrested, so quit trying to make that happen. He’s out of your lives now. And it’s over now. And you need to let go of this and take care of yourselves. Whose son died right in front of her?”
Theresa moved on to another woman whose son had shot himself. Right in front of her. Years ago. But this woman was still so distraught she wouldn’t speak, so her grown daughter did the talking. The mother seemed oblivious to the fact that her daughter was alive and with her, holding her hand, communing with a celebrity spiritualist, and sharing their sorrow with thousands of strangers.
Theresa said everything she’d said to the others: Let it go, take care of yourself, there’s nothing you could have done, stop punishing yourself. Do you think your son would want to see you living like this? You’re not living!
But no matter what Theresa said, we all knew this woman would never let go of her guilt. Her grief was her identity. She was haunted by her son. But she was the one who looked like a ghost.
Every woman Theresa moved on to was ghostlier than the last. Stringy hair and hollowed eyes. Sagging skin and never-smiles. Some of their bodies were so broken or misshapen that they stood with canes. When they spoke, their mouths were missing teeth. Some of them had lost their minds.
And now I was crying.
Because the thought of me and my friends turning into them scared me. These women had been struck down and gotten stuck in a purgatory of their own making. They breathed misery. And that toxin corroded them. They looked contagious. And I didn’t want Paige and Vicki, who’d overcome so much, to relapse.
Paige had suffered the loss of her dad. Vicki had suffered the loss of her breasts. Paige had suffered a first husband who through no fault of her own had taken root in her life and grown like Vicki’s cancer.
But my friends got away.
These other women had paid $175 to sit close to the stage in a last-ditch effort to do the same.
Theresa tried to help them.
She said: “Yes, your father will be at your daughter’s wedding in spirit.”
She said: “Yes, your father leaves the linen-closet door open as a joke.”
She said: “You sang to your father at the hospital, didn’t you? He heard you.”
On the big screens, we could see life flicker behind women’s eyes.
And then Theresa said thank you and good night, the lights went up, and my friends and I collected ourselves.
Paige said, “Even though Theresa said the thing about singing in the hospital, I didn’t really feel a message from my dad. But it made me think of all the messages I’ve felt he’s sent before. We have a red bird that nests outside my bathroom window every year. The cardinal represents a loved one who’s passed. And on the first anniversary of my dad’s death, I went for a drive, crying and trying to kind of escape the pain. I looked in my rearview mirror, and there’s a hearse. On the radio were three songs, ‘Dear God,’ ‘Just Breathe,’ and one other one I can’t remember, but it was the song that was playing in Ann Taylor’s Loft when I picked out my dress for the funeral.”
Vicki said, “I’m the skeptic, but I still felt moved by every story. I felt Theresa was giving people the gift of comfort and peace. And I do believe what she said about signs that we experience ourselves, acknowledging that they aren’t coincidences, but are our loved ones watching over us. Like Paige’s father is that cardinal, and I have my Christmas bald eagle.”
Me, I believe in the magic of lifelong friends.
* * *
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Two months later, Vicki’s husband group-texted us that she was prepped and ready for her implant surgery.
Ellen texted: Sending positive thoughts and prayers your way!!!
Heather texted: Praying for all. Thanks for the update!
Paige texted: Prayers and good thoughts your way!!
And I texted: Don’t let them put her new boobs on her back!
Two hours later, Vicki’s husband group-texted that she was out of surgery and all was well.
Heather texted: Great news, give her my love.
Ellen texted: Awesome thanks for the update! So glad to hear all went well!
Paige texted: Great!
And I texted: Sweet lord, it was as easy as changing a pair of DD batteries. And I do mean DD!
See what I mean about me reverting to adolescent humor with my grown-ass lady gang? Together, we will forever be children. Fuck cancer. Nobody has to die.
She’s a Character
A character is a drinker. But not a drives-the-wrong-way-on-a-highway, beats-her-kids, and shuts-the-cat-in-the-dryer drinker. A character does drink too much, but she can hold her liquor like a woman balances a bag of groceries on her hip. She makes it look easy. But instead of a grocery bag, it’s a glass of wine, or a martini, or something in a short fat glass that’s got a fat chunk of ice in it and is surrounded by liquor that’s turkey-fat brown.
Or maybe she is carrying an actual grocery bag, because she’s a character and, during one of her festive nights out, forgot where she left her purse. So today she’s got a brown paper sack from the Piggly Wiggly with the top folded over like
a 2012 two-hundred-ninety-dollar lunch-bag clutch; but instead of Jil Sander’s name on the front, there’s a pig in a butcher’s hat.
Inside her grocery bag is lipstick and a hair clip. A credit card. And there is for sure more. Maybe her Piggly Wiggly sack has her great-great-grandmother’s wooden dentures in there. You know, something a character can pull out at parties (like boring women produce Ziplocs of loose Splenda) to get a conversation going.
Isn’t she a hoot?
No, she’s a character.
A hoot is a naturally funny woman. A character is a woman who’s funny because she’s tipsier than a Gibson’s pickled pearl onion.
You invite a character to your parties because at past parties she led a conga line, or—when you ran out of canapés—she threw your freezer-burned tater tots into your oven and served them on toothpicks with a squirt of ketchup on the side and got everyone to eat them. You want to see what she’ll do this time. And you know what that character likes to drink, so you provide it.
If she likes Tequila with a worm in it, you give her Tequila with a worm in it. It’s like giving a bump of cocaine to a stand-up comedian. Three sheets to the wind, and she’ll do a tight five on why Egyptian cotton is bologna, nuts, crackers, or any other food word for bullshit.
No, she doesn’t curse. She’s a character, not a boozehound. You can take her anywhere because she’s not sloppy.
Sloppy is fall-down, throw-up, hump-the-host drunk. Sloppy is a hot mess. A character is more of a room-temperature thing out of place. Like a dildo on a coffee table. You can’t believe what you are seeing. But there it is. Right next to the remote.
And you are going to tell everyone what you saw. And everyone you tell is going to want to meet that character. And a character is happy to meet everyone and anyone because a character likes to be the center of attention.