What I Remember Most

by Cathy Lamb

  Using a dolly, I moved some ugly file cabinets into a catch-all room with the copy machine. I put the boxes stacked up around my desk into a closet to clear things out. I’d fix the closet and the catch-all room later, but my first goal was the lobby.

  I rolled up a rug and had a man named Sugar, who was there working, help me haul it to the trash. It was stained and old. The wood floor was much better. There were some nondescript pictures up, a bulletin board filled with notices and other unnecessary papers, a dead plant, a white board calendar, and other junk. I got rid of all of it.

  I whipped out drop cloths, taped the trim up, poured the paint I’d bought earlier in the week on my lunch break, and went to work.

  I am a quick painter, as I have been painting walls since I was a teenager. I painted around the trim first with a brush, then used a roller on the walls. I transformed the grayish, depressing walls into a light beige taupe color. Like coffee with a dollop of whipping cream in it. The trim was white, but it needed to be whiter and brighter, so I did that next.

  When I was done making that trim pop, I went to pour beer, wine, Cherry Hookers, and Fuzzy Navels at The Spirited Owl.

  “Don’t mess with Kade, Grenady. None of us do, but he’s the best boss.”

  “What do you mean, don’t mess with Kade?” I handed Cory Janes a beer across the bar. It was ten-thirty that night, and The Spirited Owl had finally quieted down.

  “I mean”—Cory took a long slurp of beer—“catnip and whales.”

  “Catnip and whales?”

  His friend, Jeeps, next to him said, “Here we go, Idaho. Whenever he drinks too much he pairs opposing words together.”

  “Yep,” Cory said. “Don’t know why I said that. Octopus and mirrors. Don’t know why I said that, either. Soufflés and turtles.”

  Cory was a young employee of Kade’s. He was smart. I learned that he read two science journals a month, cover to cover. I decided to take advantage of his semidrunkenness to learn something about my boss. “Why do you not mess with him?”

  “Because he’s one tough mother you-know-what. Bad words and peppermint.”

  “Cory doesn’t like to swear,” Jeeps said helpfully. He was twenty-five, like Cory, and on leave from the military for two weeks. He was hoping to find a wife in that two weeks. “His mother taught him not to swear.”

  “What do you mean, Cory?” I asked while I made a whiskey sour and a mojito for one of the tables.

  “I mean that Kade did time,” Cory said. “Jail time. He was in a gang in Los Angeles. He was the boss of the gang, I think, by the time he was eighteen or something like that. Spent, like, five years in jail. He showed leadership. Lead. Er. Ship. Gang leadership.”

  “Kade was in jail?” Jail? Kade?

  “He doesn’t hide it at all. It’s not a secret, and he didn’t try to make it one. We all know. Fact, when Arnie Struthers applied for a job he had a rap record. Told Kade he robbed three banks when he was twenty. Now Arnie’s thirty, and Kade said he trusted him and he hired him and now Arnie’s an assistant manager. Doesn’t bother any of us. Same with Tomas and Emiliano.”

  “I was arrested when I ran naked through town last year after I had too many beers at Gavin’s Halloween Party,” Jeeps said. “Dumb me. It was cold out so I was shrunk, you know what I mean. This girl named Patty saw me, and now all the girls think I’m small. It’s embarrassing. I’m not small. I’m not big, average.” He stared into his beer. “Average. But I’m loving. A loving guy.”

  “Yeah, Kade was in jail,” Cory rambled on. “I shouldn’t be talking about him. I love the guy. He’s been good to me. Day one. Gave me a job. I’ve been there five years and I’m always learning something new, and he likes to talk about science with me. He knows a lot. We talk about space. We talk about ocean drones, geographic information systems, carbon dating, climate change . . . Pancakes and peaches.”

  “And?” Tell me what you know before you’re too tipsy to talk.

  “Learned how to fight in there.” Cory stared at the ceiling for a second, as if puzzling something difficult out. “But if he was head of a gang in L.A. he would have learned how to fight there, too. That’s how he got those scars on his face, that’s what I heard. Knife fights. Gangs and jail.”

  I swallowed. “Knife fights?”

  “He has some scars on his back, too. I’ve seen them. Reason I know is that about four years ago one of the guys cut his leg open with one of the saws and was bleeding like he had a red river coming out of his leg, and Kade runs up, that man can move, I’m tellin’ ya, he’s big but he’s quick. Quick like a coyote, zip, hide, zip, hide.” He raised his beer. “He took off his shirt and pressed it to that waterfall blood and that’s when we saw all the scars. There’s one from a bullet, one that is about six inches all jagged, and a third one that’s raised up. Little ones, too. He has a violent back.”

  I put a hand to my suddenly sweaty forehead. I did not like thinking about Kade getting knifed and shot.

  “I think I could be a romantic, too,” Jeeps interjected. “Say pretty things. Write poems. Women like that junk and I could do it, I could!”

  “But Kade was in jail once upon a time a long time ago,” Cory said, swaying on his barstool. “It was when he was almost a kid kiddy, not like he is now. It’s where he learned how to make furniture, though. That was his job. He made furniture in jail.”

  When he left jail he started a business. Smart man. Who would have hired him? An ex–gang member who had done time. Who looked scary. Handsome, but scary. Like a gang leader who’d been in a gang too long.

  “Look at Kade now.” Jeeps shook his head in wonder. “Employs a bunch of people here in town. Has a toy drive for a month before Christmas for the poor kids who don’t have gifts. Cory and I here, when we were teenagers, we were the kids who got the gifts. Only gifts I got at Christmas. My mom put her name on the gift tags, I don’t blame her. She was sad she couldn’t afford gifts, single mother, nurse’s aide, but later I found out they were from Kade’s company.”

  “Yep. Kade gave me gifts when I was a kid,” Cory said. He wiped his eyes. “He was my Santa Claus. Santy Clausy. Reindeer. He gave me clothes so I didn’t look like a poor elf, and a football. Still have the football.”

  I wasn’t going to judge Kade on doing time. It was many years ago, starting as a teenager. I might be doing some time in the slammer myself. I wondered though, What had driven Kade into a gang?

  As if Cory had heard me, he said. “He grew up in Los Angeles. Tough kid. Poor . . .” Cory shook his head woefully. “Knives and strawberry shortcake.”

  “I think that my naked run and my shrunken state is part of the reason I can’t get a woman,” Jeeps mused. “No one wants a man with shrunken manhood. I want a woman to give me a chance. One chance to show her that I’m a loving guy, not a shrunken guy.”

  “Why was he in jail?”

  “Can’t remember,” Cory said. “He didn’t kill anyone, I don’t think, maybe he did, maybe not. I think that’s a no-no. Yosemite and calamine lotion. Maybe it was dealing drugs? Nah. That’s not like Kade. He doesn’t want to hurt no peoples. Why did I think of that, though? Robbery? No. He wouldn’t steal. I know that because we get bonuses twice a year.

  “Hmm. Hmm. Let me thunk about this. What was it?” He tapped his head with two fingers. “Got it. Assault. He and his gang versus the other gang . . . something dumb like that. They locked him up like a gorilla and pecan pie. Love pecan pie. And I need another beer, Grenady.”

  “Nope. No beer.” I turned away and poured grape juice into a wineglass. I had already ascertained that Jeeps was driving. “You can have wine, though.”

  “Ah, thanks, Grenady. You know, you always make me feel like I’m somethin’.” Cory burst into tears. “You’re nice to me here, and you’re nice to me at Hendricks’. You always say hi to me and now you’re givin’ me wine like I’m some classy guy or somethin’.”

  “You are a classy guy, Cory.”

  Jeeps poun
ded him on the back. “I’ll second that, buddy.”

  Cory burst into another round of tears.

  “It’s okay, Cory.” Jeeps tapped his glass. “He gets emotional a lot. Isn’t afraid to cry. See Cory and I, we’re big, six four both of us, so we don’t have to worry about our manliness and tears, right, Cory?”

  “I’m not afraid to cry.” Cory sniffled. “I’m a man schman.”

  “I’ll get you some more wine in a minute, man schman,” I told him.

  That sent him into another paroxysm of tears. “Shit, Grenady, thanks. Oh no! I said a bad word. I shouldn’t say them in front of a lady.”

  “He’s an emotional drunk,” Jeeps said. “Been that way since high school. Hardly ever drinks, but when he does, he cries. Sort of a cry baby, but a friendly cry baby.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m a friendly cry baby,” Cory said. “Friendly. Like Santy Claus. Like Kade.”

  I sure learned a lot. I turned to Jeeps. “He must have been drinking before he got here. I didn’t serve him enough to get him like this.”

  “He had a few drinks at the bar across the street with some guys from high school before we got here. Why do you think I can’t catch a wife, Grenady? Do you think it’s my face?”

  “No, a woman will fall in love with that face soon. I’m sure of it.”

  Cory threw his head back, wiped his tears. “Squids and torpedoes. Oh, golly gosh. Squids and torpedoes.”

  That night I left the bar with a salad and a baked potato. I thought about what Cory told me about Kade. I was not surprised that this was the first I’d heard of Kade’s stint in jail. It’s a small town. The people were nice to me, and I felt myself making friends, but that doesn’t mean they would open up about the private lives of the people within the town.

  Kade was well liked. He ran a company that employed a lot of people. He was fair. He was talented and successful. He was tough. But people respected him and would not like to gossip about him. Cory yammered on only because he was drunk. My guess is that he would regret it later, but I sure wasn’t going to repeat what I’d heard.

  I drove down Main Street in that faux Wild West town, imagined a gun fight between macho cowboys and headed out into the country. I saw the big, red barn, the outside lights on, glowing through the trees.

  I smiled, feeling all weepy.

  I used the key to open the first lock outside the red barn, then another key for my door at the top of the stairs. I had left a light on.

  Home.

  Covey and I were married when I was in the “falling in love” part, six months from our first date.

  That’s a bad move, in my opinion. The falling in love part lasts about a year and a half or two years. You should wait, I have learned, for that love and lust rush to leave. Then, and only then, can you think with your head, and not your hot vagina, about the other person, your relationship, and how your future will fair.

  The unbridled lust and passion may still be there, but the brain starts moving again, sorting through issues, problems, personalities, and red flags. You start to be sane in the relationship, and you can ask yourself sane questions about whether it can survive a real-world life with what the real world throws at a couple.

  I should have waited until my brain started thinking again. I wanted a happier ending than my beginning. Covey was romantic, attentive, interesting, smart. He made me feel like I was the only woman in the room.

  He made me laugh and was thoughtful. As a surprise, he once sent me a huge basket full of art supplies from an expensive store I could never afford.

  He bought me six hanging flowerpots when I said that I liked flowers, then hired a handyman to build me a trellis so I could hang them up. When my plumbing went out in my kitchen, he had a plumber there in an hour and paid the bill. When my car broke down, he gave me one of his to drive and paid the mechanic.

  He took me on vacations. I had rarely been on a vacation in my whole life. He wanted to “show me some fun. You deserve it, Dina. Where have you always wanted to visit?”

  I said I loved the Oregon coast. He rented a house with a view of the ocean. Then he took me to Maui so I could see “another beach, and compare.” I was stunned.

  It wasn’t the money that Covey spent on me, it was the thought behind the gifts. Even now, I can look back and appreciate that part of Covey.

  But he had the other side, too, and that side overwhelmed the good like a hurricane over a shack. He was the hurricane, I was the shack.

  Covey pushed and pushed to get married. I pushed back, then gave in. He wanted a fancy-pants wedding, I sure didn’t. I invited the entire Hutchinson gang, who came in overalls and plaid shirts and played their fiddles, which all our fancy-pants friends loved, even though Covey glared when they played. “That was a white-trash, red-necked concert,” he told me later. I almost clocked him. It was a bad start to our honeymoon. I should have left then.

  Beatrice Lee came in a formal gown and diamonds, with her husband, Larry, and Daneesha Houston wore blue and hugged me close. I invited six neighbors, but I still didn’t know 80 percent of the people there. We had a seven-course dinner, toasts, a band, and a wedding cake that looked like a piece of edible art. It was all for show. All Covey’s show, for me and for the friends and potential clients he wanted to impress.

  I wore a sleek, lacy white gown that Covey bought for me without my input. He presented it as a gift, but it was more like an order. I thought too much cleavage and too much leg showed. It had a silky train and a veil that shot down my back.

  How I looked outside did not match how I felt inside. The whole thing felt rushed. I felt rushed. I felt like I was an imposter. Someone who didn’t belong there with Covey and his rich and sleek friends. I had a sordid, difficult past I did not talk about. I hid it. I was a lie.

  I should have known. I didn’t even have the excuse of being naïve and young when I met him. I was, as often, stupid.

  So stupid.

  He was a stupid mistake.

  Sunday morning I was back at Hendricks’ Furniture at eleven o’clock after a stop at the big-box store for curtains and curtain rods.

  This would be the fun part.

  My hands shook for two reasons. One, I was so excited to be painting on a huge canvas again. In this case, my canvas was a wall. Two, I was worried about what Kade would think. I took off the remaining tape from the trim, pulled up the drop cloths, and cleaned up.

  In the left-hand corner, behind my desk, I painted the gnarled trunk of an oak tree, based on the oak tree at my green house, its branches fanning out on both walls and twisting to form a bell canopy. In the opposite corner I painted a maple tree. I put three pines on the center wall right behind where I sat.

  The trees were a darker beige than the walls, but not much. I wanted them to look like shadows, their forms outlined but not heavily detailed.

  Hours later, I stood in the middle of the room.

  Oh, swing me a cat, I liked it.

  The mural was simple, but it gave the room a clear focus: This was a furniture making company, these are the woods we use. It somehow seemed to highlight my desk with the pine trees carved into the legs and the buck in front.

  I grabbed Tad and Cory, who were working on furniture in the back, to help me move a medium-sized table, the top carved with a polar bear and two polar bear cubs, into the corner. I knew it had not sold yet, because it was not on the website.

  Around the table I put three chairs, each with a hawk, a falcon, or an eagle carved into the back. Tad and Cory also helped me move an armoire into the other corner. It was one of my favorite pieces. The doors of the armoire were shaped into howling wolves, heads back.

  We dragged in a five-foot-long table and set it against the wall near my desk. The table had raccoons, curious and fun, carved into the thick legs. I took that as a sign of Kade’s humor.

  When we were done moving things around, they both told me it was “way better than before . . . good job.” I hugged them, couldn’t help it. />
  Although there was recessed lighting in the ceiling, the room needed more light for ambience. I had bought four lights shaped like metal lanterns that I had seen in a store in town. That morning Ernie, an electrician I knew from the bar, installed two over my desk and the third and fourth lanterns in the corners.

  Ernie has a degree in English from Stanford. He likes owning his own electric company and says he makes “a ton more money than I would as a professor. Plus I don’t have to publish ridiculous papers all the time that only your mother and other jealous colleagues read.”

  I put a light with a base shaped like a steelhead in the corner of my desk and a light with a cowboy boot base on the polar bear table.

  “You didn’t tell me you were a talented artist,” Ernie said.

  “You remind me of a Shakespearean quote: ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.’ You are clearly great, Grenady.” He whistled. “This is awesome.”

  “Thank you.” I was so pleased. “By shots and by fire, thank you.”

  He shot me a curious glance at that phrase. “It’s from my childhood. I have all sorts of . . . sayings.”

  When he left, I used a drill to install the wood curtain rods, then hung blue/beige/red plaid curtains on the windows across from my desk, on either side of the barn doors. They would never be closed, but they added color and softness. I briefly thought that a thick rope around the curtain rods would add to the cowboy feel here, but I couldn’t do it. No ropes. I swallowed hard, pushed what was in my head aside, and went back to decorating.

  Tad Kamaka had done what I’d asked and cut out wood letters, each one a foot tall, with a dark, honey-colored stain, that read, “Hendricks’ Furniture.” I nailed up the letters behind my desk, over part of the pine trees, so it would be the first thing people would see.

  Next to the sign I hung up a photo of Kade. I’d had it blown up to twenty-four by thirty-six, matted it in white, and had Tad stain the frame the same stain as the lettering.