You Cannot Mess This Up

by Amy Weinland Daughters

  “Sure.” I was sure she could hear the emotion in my voice.

  Fumbling with some of the words and pronunciations, in her small voice, flat-faced Little Amy read to me:

  Because the Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need!

  He lets me rest in the meadow grass and leads me beside the quiet streams. He restores my failing health. He helps me to do what honors him the most.

  Even when walking through the dark valley of death I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me, guarding, guiding all the way.

  You provide delicious food for me in the presence of my enemies. You have welcomed me as your guest; blessings overflow!

  Your goodness and unfailing kindness shall be with me all of my life, and afterwards I will live with you forever in your home.

  FOR a few long seconds after she’d finished, we sat in silence. I didn’t know what to say. I knew that she read this passage on a regular basis, and I kind of remembered what it had meant, but I didn’t know, after thirty-five years had passed, what in the world I could possibly say. I could have never imagined the opportunity to comment.

  Looking away from me and then back into my eyes, she said, “You know, I really believe this, I believe in God. I think He holds my hand, like in the picture of the little girl, and that He’s always here, even when things don’t go right. Or when I mess stuff up. You know, I mess a lot of stuff up … But He’s always here, He helps me mess stuff up less. He knows I want to be good.”

  I knew I had to say something, but what? I wasn’t her parent. I wasn’t some adult she looked up to. Hell, I wasn’t even real.

  She had it all figured out. She did mess stuff up. As hyper and entertaining as she was, she had a temper, she reacted poorly to things, and she could be a problem. Or, that’s how I remembered it. That’s what they said. But, though I had definitely seen the hyper stuff, I hadn’t seen the angry side of her since I had, well, gotten here. But, that didn’t make it not true. No, spending eight hours in someone’s house didn’t mean you got to see everything. No matter what you thought you knew.

  She believed. She believed in God, and Jesus, and all the rest of it. It brought her comfort, and though I remembered the nightly readings, even at a young age, and the prayers, I had forgotten their impact, what they meant personally, before anyone else explained to me how it was supposed to work.

  Little Amy didn’t know a thing about the challenges of religion, the simplicity of grace combined with the absolute complicated nature of it. The double standards that mixed unconditional love with strict requirements, harsh judgment with hypocrisy and total inclusion with exclusivity. Feeling unloved not by God, but by God’s people. Not being capable, myself, of loving all God’s people. Judging. Being judged. All things brought on by the supposed advancement, promotion if you will, to mature adulthood.

  In Amy’s heart and soul there was no room for any of this. As idiotic, lost and naive as she seemed, and she was, her grasp of what was real was tremendous. If faith were real, she had it. Unsoiled, unspent belief formed in the face of real life, not some sort of milky white, childhood Fantasyland.

  I wanted to hug her tight, perhaps causing some of her to seep into me and some of me to be transported into her. Inasmuch as we were wholly the same person, we weren’t, because life had happened to me and she was still fresh from it. But, then again, life was happening to her too, only enough time had passed for me to forget most of it. Only the highs and lows of the memories of her time had stayed with me. All the details, even the important ones, the stuff I could use now, had been lived away.

  Amazingly, she had sat quietly all this time awaiting my response. Maybe part of the delusion was that I got enough time to think things through while the experience was happening in real time. Or, instead, maybe I had thought it all through in less than a minute, who knew. The definition of what time was had been altered forever.

  “You know, Amy,” I said, fully aware that my words were destined to be inadequate, “I think you’re right, I believe it all too, it’s real, all of it. Sometimes I think of Him putting His hand on my shoulder, like you said, being there with me.”

  She nodded, seeming to look straight into my soul for some sort of guidance, some kind of answer.

  “I mess things up too,” I continued, treading carefully. “But sometimes, sometimes, we think we are messing things up worse than we really are. It’s important to try and be better, always, but also not to blame ourselves for everything that happens in our life.

  “Sometimes bad things happen, even to people who are trying really hard to be good, but, you are right, God is always with us, and will always love us. His love is bigger than anything. Even when things get hard. Even when things go wrong. ‘Always’ is a good word for it.”

  Smiling, she said, “I’m glad you believe too, it must be because we both are Amys.”

  “Maybe so,” I said, trying to lighten the mood and not let on that I could only see this conversation through the perspective of thirty-five years of upcoming ups and downs. She saw only the hazy future, full of supposed promise, but in reality totally unaware of how it would play out or what growing up really meant.

  She was safely there on the front end, and I was somewhat secure on the other side of forty, also unaware of my own future path. The only difference was I knew what was ahead of her. If I could only protect her, prepare her, hold her hand as she went. No matter what I did or said here, she would still have to live through a series of horribly painful events, culminating, or perhaps peaking, when she/we would drink way too much in college and slash her left wrist.

  We didn’t want to die, we wanted someone to acknowledge the pain we didn’t even know we had. Then, the nineteen-year old version of us would have to call home from a pay phone, with our roommate standing behind us with a Bible in her hand, and explain to Mom what we’d done, using real words and being honest about what we thought we remembered when we were Little Amy. Then we’d have to convince Dad, who came alone, to let us stay in school … and then we’d have to face finding the empty bottles in the nightstand when we went home for Christmas.

  How in the world was I supposed to get this little girl through that?

  Holy Shit. Is this why Mary said I’d know what I couldn’t say?

  But helping Little Amy through what came next was as unreal as time travel itself. She would go, not alone, but not with her adult self to misinterpret and distort it. What she would have was the reassurance of that loving hand on her shoulder, the one that was there even though it couldn’t be seen. It would be there—in high school, in college, and beyond, because it was still there, in 2014. Until just now I had forgotten that this is where it had all begun. In this room. Our needs had been met without us even knowing it. I’m not even sure we asked for it.

  Little Amy returned the Bibles neatly to the bedside table, restoring order to the only orderly part of her room. I helped her pull her covers up and turned off the porcelain lamp, hand-painted with the delicate flowers we would not become. As I got up, she was still looking intently at me. I could barely make out her face in the dim glow of the Donald Duck nightlight. “Can I have a hug, Mrs. Daughters?”

  “Only if you call me Amy,” I said, leaning down to hug her.

  Our embrace was long and meaningful, the kind of hug that should have ended sooner, but at least both parties were holding on for dear life rather than one person awkwardly wanting it to end. To be honest, I was probably the one more desperate for her little embrace than she was for mine.

  Luckily, she couldn’t see my teary eyes as I walked out of the dark room. “Goodnight Little Amy,” I whispered as I went out.

  “Goodnight Big Amy!” she said happily.

  Standing in the doorway, I felt compelled to say just one more thing. “Hey Amy …” I said.

  “Yes, Big Amy?” she said.

  “Everything is going to work out really well, remember that, no matter what,” I said, trying to sound as authoritativ
e as possible.

  “I promise, I’ll remember,” she replied, smiling broadly from under the covers.

  I hoped both of us believed me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE HAPPIEST BITCH IN HERE

  Back downstairs, I was shocked to see that several other adults had joined my paternal grandparents and Mom and Dad for cocktails. Stupidly, I had assumed that Thanksgiving ended once we were tucked in our beds upstairs. Seriously, what was left to do? But, on the other hand, seriously, it was only nine o’clock at night and these people had a bar and a refrigerator full of nasty beer.

  What immediately struck me, other than the stream of people coming in the front door, was how loud it was. How in the world were the three kids upstairs staying asleep with all this going on? Beyond that, why had we never known about the afterparty? Or, had we just forgotten it, along with a million other hazy memories which had been filed away somewhere in our subconscious?

  I suppose I had seen this group before, in the summer, wet and celebratory in ill-fitting and awkward swimwear, their hoo-hoos and dingle-dots bursting out. Both then and now they were drinking, talking, and enjoying the common ground of a mortgage, three kids, and life in suburbia. The same life that 85.3 percent of them once swore—in high school probably—they would never have. But, life got in the way, it just happened. They fell in love, got married, bought a car, and had married sex frequently enough for their mothers to cry hysterically when they found out they were pregnant. Then came the real work, the real joy, the real disappointment and the real love.

  Yes, one day you’re at the Fast and Cool dancing wildly in a cage. You’re studying in the college library, your entire life and all the dreams you think you have are spread out ahead of you like an endless road. You have skinny thighs, you listen to the right music, you drive with nowhere to go, and you can eat McDonald’s fries without worrying about that inner tube forming on your hips. Poochy stomachs and deformed belly buttons will never happen to you! That crap is for someone else.

  Then, boom! The next thing you know, you’re folding some guy’s underwear, you’re at the Chuck E. Cheese’s—with eyes glazed over—trying to convince a four-year-old that he is not going to win the Angry Bird stuffed animal in the crane game, not even if you give him a hundred quarters.

  From oh-so hot to oh-so tired in about four minutes. It’s a whirlwind, it’s the slowest process known to man, and it’s over before you can even exhale.

  I recognized some of the partygoers as parents of my childhood friends and others as owners of the neighboring homes. As Dad brought me another drink, I let myself slip into the crowd, starting up a conversation with a guy named Steve from the cul-de-sac. Before this, my interaction with him had been limited to a friendly wave when he came home from work in his Chevy Caprice Classic, or an awkward glance when we ran through his yard while he was mowing the lawn in his short-shorts.

  He was mildly attractive, only this was somewhat hidden by the fact that he was wearing a powder-blue double-knit leisure suit with a wide-collared Lycra shirt. The shirt was unbuttoned enough to reveal a bushel of chest hair, in which rested two wide gold chains. The fact that he thought he was a player, and I was an unknown female in questionable attire, didn’t really put me off. I knew the 2014 version of this guy, and frankly, the future was better looking and a little less obvious than the past. OK, a lot less obvious.

  “What do you think of Texas?” he asked smoothly.

  “Well, I could live here,” I replied. “The weather is definitely better.”

  “Wait till the summer!” he warned, leaning down to wipe a pretend scuff off his crocodile boots. “Then you’ll be careful what you ask for, you’ll bake like a Yankee Pot Roast.”

  His wife, Joyce, joined us. She was pretty, very pretty, but by the way Steve leered around the room, he may or may not have totally appreciated that. And, perhaps she didn’t appreciate how tight his pants were, maybe a full-size smaller than his actual dimensions. Seriously, these folks needed to reconsider what was becoming an epic failure in the battle of the bulge.

  Joyce was wearing a dark-red double-knit pullover with a wide collar and matching polyester pants. The smock, I guessed that’s what it was called, had two pockets, almost like something an art instructor would wear. It, the smock thing, was worn over a ribbed white turtleneck. The hemline of the pants was so long —almost dusting the ground—that that you could barely see shiny red shoes poking out. What really made her dazzle was a red-and-white plaid scarf that she had somehow managed to place on her head like a turban. Interestingly, it didn’t cover all her hair. It was more like a ski cap with dark locks hanging out from each side. I’d never seen anything like it, in my life, outside of the Sears catalog.

  Introducing me with a degree of intrigue, Steve told Joyce, “Amy’s here on ‘business’” almost like whatever “business” I was engaged in involved naked people, flashbulbs, and large containers of Vaseline.

  Looking surprised, Joyce turned to me, and in an almost accusatory tone asked, “Really, you are traveling for work?”

  “Well,” I said somewhat cautiously, “It’s not really ‘work,’ I’m just a writer and had to meet with an editor.”

  “Oh!” she said, somehow managing to add a splash of awe to what was otherwise a condescending tone. “How does your husband manage …? I mean, Steve would never be able to cope without me … Well”—she looked at her bridegroom —“how would he ever cook the meals, clean the house, take care of the kids, water the plants …?

  “Do you have a live-in maid, or a nanny?” she asked, putting her hand dramatically to her chin so I could fully enjoy the red-and-white plastic bracelets she was wearing. Namely, how in the world could I pull that off, leaving poor Steve, and his chest hair comb, for seventy-two hours to fend for himself? A guy like this, with a degree in something weighty, and a big-time job with an attractive secretary, a Xerox machine, and socks that needed ironing. How could he possibly figure out to operate the oven and the mailbox door? It wasn’t like I wasn’t good enough to work, I think they were totally OK with that, it was more like my husband was above housework.

  But you couldn’t blame semi-sexy Steve or pretty Joyce. They were just living the way everyone else was. I wondered if Steve was happy being “THE guy” and if Joyce was happy being “the support role”? Maybe they were miserable, or perhaps they were both thrilled to bits with their choice to follow that long, gray line of people living the way everybody else had accepted as acceptable. It was the same line that would one day, not too long from now, be reestablished on Facebook for the whole world to monitor. Those who had a passion to follow the said blueprint for a “good life”—or who were successful at making it seem like they did—would be celebrated, “liked” or “shared.” Those who didn’t would be talked about offline, or shunned online. Exclusion by the lack of clicking in hearty agreement. Really, it wasn’t any different than this. It wasn’t any different than finding out that Steve secretly voted Democrat, or that Joyce was a lesbian who was in favor of abolishing the death penalty. In 1978, it would just take people longer to find out. In 1978, the front door to everyone’s house was totally shut.

  I also wondered, once stripped down to his briefs, if Steve— who suffered from a mild case of body hair—looked like Jim

  Palmer from the Baltimore Orioles in those old Jockey underwear ads I used to ogle in Sports Illustrated. I’m not saying I wanted to see his kangaroo pouch, I’m just saying I wondered about it.

  As Steve sauntered off to pursue more manly endeavors, Joyce introduced me to Patty and Lisa.

  Though both ladies looked familiar to me, I immediately realized Patty was that neighbor who had always yapped about that ridiculous Loop De Loop salad at the Aviator’s Grill at the Hooks Airport. OMG! That was her? She was a real person with a first name? It was almost like meeting a celebrity, like physically interacting with some memory you almost thought was made up.

  Joyce’s first order of busi
ness was to tell the other two women about my status as a working mother. I began to feel defensive, the same feeling I would have had in my own time as I tried to explain my dual roles as full-time mother and sometimes writer.

  “I write from home,” I told the trio. “I still do all the house stuff, the laundry, the kids’ activities, I just write when they are gone and, if I get behind, I write early in the morning or late at night.” They seemed somewhat satisfied with that, but I couldn’t be sure. It was the same scenario as me overplaying my writing work in 2014 and making sure everyone knew damn well how important and crucial it all was. They had to know it was a real job, not just a stay-at-home mom hobby.

  Either way, my listening audience—in 1978 or 2014—could have nodded in hearty agreement, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be holed up in the half bath, a couple of drinks from now, talking about how they couldn’t believe I worked, or didn’t work, or was wearing that eye shadow, or had stared at Steve’s southern hemisphere, or whatever. And the truth was, I could just as easily, given the right scenario, been the person leading the half bath witch-hunt, with another blameless victim totally unaware in the next room. I could almost smell the scented candle.

  Patty and Lisa were both eager talkers, and before I knew it I was happily submerged in conversation. It helped that I wasn’t supposed to remember these people from my childhood and that the only thing that really separated us were the thirty-five years. Other than the whole time-travel angle, we were just four middle-aged women having a drink and talking. We covered everything from our kids’ teachers to how we wished we could find a real way to lose weight. We were annoyed with our husbands about a myriad of things and we would have liked to take a vacation somewhere tropical.

  “What I’m trying to use”—Patty was rocking a blue-and-white striped sweater worn over a tighter matching turtleneck, which reminded me of those costumes the Brady Bunch wore when they sang “Keep on Dancing” so they could pay for the engraving on their parents’ anniversary platter—“are those Ayds Candies, you know, the ones that also have vitamins. You take them before you eat, with a cup of coffee, and then you don’t want to eat as much. It’s an appetite-suppression candy.”