by Cathy Lamb
“But”—Lacey shifted baby Victoria to her other shoulder, then borrowed my mother’s hankie to wipe her own tears—“why didn’t she want us to know?”
“Because she didn’t want the fuss, honey. She didn’t want the panic and stress. She didn’t want people to treat her any differently than they were.”
“But why didn’t she agree to treatment?” I asked. I could not stop my tears. I took the hankie from Lacey.
“It was hopeless. When they found it, it was too far along. She didn’t want to go through chemo and radiation. Besides, even the doctors said it would extend her life for weeks only, if at all.”
“So she said to hell with that,” Tory said. She was pale and leaning heavily on the table.
“It wasn’t going to cure her, so, as she said, ‘Why inflict torture on myself?’ She chose to live the end of her life the way she chose to live her whole life. On her own terms,” my mother said. “She accepted medication from the doctors that made her life easier, took away some of the pain, but she didn’t try to cure herself. She didn’t want to spend the last months in the hospital. She hated hospitals, she hated going to the doctors, she hated needles. She was adamant.”
I sat back in my chair, stunned, sunlight glittering off the chandelier. Lacey lifted up her shirt and nursed Victoria, wiping her tears off Victoria’s face as they fell.
“Your grandma did what she wanted to do, girls. She spent time with you all finishing up her Bust Out and Shake It Adventure Club list and making memories she knew you wouldn’t forget. She wanted you all to laugh and have adventures together, to heal the rifts. She wanted you, Meggie, to be happy again, to live again. She spent time at the business, her legacy. She took mornings off so she could rest and read and, as she said, ‘Be quiet and shut my mouth for once in my life.’”
“Mom, you should have told us,” Lacey said.
My mother shook her head. “I couldn’t. I swore I wouldn’t. She deserved her privacy. She deserved to die the way she wanted to die. It was not for me to override my own mother. She was not senile. She had no signs of dementia. She made a rational and reasonable choice. Who was I to force her to undergo treatment? Who was I to tell you all about her health? This wasn’t about us, it was about her and her having control and enjoying every minute that she had left. How she handled her death and illness was not my decision.”
I would miss my grandma forever, I knew I would. Her illness explained why she only worked part time for the first time in her life. It explained why the doctors at the hospital knew her name when we were there after the accident. Most of all, it explained her eagerness to restore my relationship, and Lacey’s relationship, with Tory. She believed in family and love above all else.
“She wrote two letters. This first one is for us,” my mother said, taking the hankie back from Tory as she pulled the letter from the envelope. Although my sisters and my mother and I inherited the bulk of her estate, the letter gave us specific directions on how much money to give to a list of people, including funds to pay off Lance Turner’s home, continued support for Mrs. Wolff who had Alzheimer’s, and to the local community college for scholarships. It also told us how she was to be buried and what her memorial service should entail.
“She has got to be kidding,” Lacey said, about the memorial service.
“Rockin’ it till the end,” Tory said.
“She rocked,” I said.
At her request, we had Grandma’s memorial service at Leonard Tallchief’s restaurant, which was shut down for us. Family, friends, neighbors, and employees were invited.
I read Grandma’s second letter out loud to the entire group after hors d’oeuvres were served.
“I wanted to invite you to one last formal dinner with me.” I choked up. “Everyone here was invited because I love and care about you. I want you to remember, as you go through the rest of your life, that I thought you were damn special. Damn special.” I laughed, couldn’t help it. “This will be a seven-course dinner that Leonard and I planned down to the finest detail.”
I looked up at poor Leonard. He was a wreck and wiping his eyes with his white apron.
“You will enjoy the meal,” I read. “If you must stand up and talk about me, you can only say something funny. That’s it. Only laughing at my service, no tears. I’ll miss you, you’ll miss me, blah blah blah. Buck up. No whining. My death is a part of my life. Don’t ruin this last day for me by getting all gushy. It’s embarrassing. You especially, Brianna. I love you, daughter, but you are overly sensitive and prone to uncontrolled emotions.”
We all laughed.
“I have a special treat for you,” I continued, hearing my grandma’s voice in my head. “I’ve hired a band, and I want you to dance. Dance for yourselves, for me, for us. Dance because life is a precious gift and you have to accept the good with the bad. My death might be considered bad, but what’s good about my life is that I was privileged to have you in it with me. Now, don’t be all reserved, boring, and stick-in-the-mud-ish. Have fun tonight. For me, make a promise that you’ll have fun. This is my last gift to you. I love you.”
When I was done, people were not obeying Grandma. They cried, some louder than others. I heard muffled sobs, hand over mouth. I saw shaking shoulders. Even the men were blowing their noses, wiping tears away. I hugged Hayden, Lacey hugged Regan, my mother hugged Cassidy.
Then Tory stomped up to the front of the room in her stilettos and purple dress. “What is wrong with you people? Look at you! Crying like babies! Blubbering about. Blah, blah, blah. Do what Grandma told you to do, buck up!” She waved at someone at the back of the room.
A band entered—long hair, bass guitars, a drum set already up. “Everyone,” Tory said, her voice snappish but insistent, “we’re gonna do what Grandma told us to do. We’re gonna party. Now get off your butts and dance.”
The band strummed the guitars. The drums rolled. They jammed.
Dancing. Now?
Why not?
I grabbed the police chief, Lacey grabbed Matt, Tory grabbed Farmer Scotty, the kids grabbed my mother, and we headed to the center of the dance floor. Soon we were joined by the rest of the gang.
We danced. For Grandma. For her and her legacy to us. Because life, as she said, is a precious gift.
“I’ll miss hearing her heels tapping down the hallways at work,” Tory said to Lacey and me at three in the morning, after the party. “It was like listening to a human battle-ax coming your way, but I’d do anything to hear it again.”
The three of us had gone back to Lace, Satin, and Baubles. We sat in Grandma’s office, at her long antique table, under the chandelier she bought for sparkling light to get rid of the darkness of poverty, and pink, because her poor, exhausted mother loved that color.
“I’ll miss the way she ran the company,” Lacey said. “Part military commander, part fashion maven.”
“I’ll miss her cozy warmth and affection,” I said, and we laughed.
“The only thing on her Bust Out and Shake It Adventure Club list she didn’t get was Tony Robbins,” Lacey said.
“That’s a shame,” I said. “She was so close.”
“Tony missed out,” Tory drawled. “He, Grandma, and I could have had a threesome.”
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Lacey said. “I can’t believe it.” No, it is hard to believe in death.
But it forces you to believe in it eventually.
And yet. My grandma had lived. She had truly lived. Hers was a life of poverty and brutality, loss and grief, hard work and determination, character and courage. She had hit the absolute bottom of despair and degradation, yet she had lived with love and hope and compassion for others. She had built something. She had triumphed.
Yes, she had lived.
I put my hand out. Tory put her hand on mine, Lacey’s on top of Tory’s.
We cried together.
As Grandma had always wished it to be.
Part of me thought I was aching for more puni
shment by flying down to Aaron’s grave a week after the private burial for my grandma, but the other part of me knew I had to do it, and the time was right.
I would be gone for one night only. I left on Saturday morning. I told Blake where I was going. He wanted to go with me. I declined. He was hurt that I was excluding him and hurt that I didn’t want him there for moral support.
“Blake, I have to go alone. I have to.”
I had shown him the DVD, although I didn’t watch it with him. I thought he needed to know what I had dealt with in my marriage. Maybe it would help him understand my garbled-up mind.
He walked over to my tree house after he watched it. I sat in a yellow Adirondack chair, and he sat in a green one. Pop Pop jumped up on his lap, Breadsticks curled up on mine.
I could tell he was deeply moved. “Aaron was mentally ill. Don’t let him hurt you anymore, Meggie.” He gently suggested a counselor. It had been suggested to me many times. I’d always said no. This time I said yes.
On the airplane to Los Angeles I was sitting by a two-year-old and her flustered mother, who was holding a crying baby. I put my arms out for the baby, and turned it toward the window, where the sun was streaming in. The baby went to sleep. The mother thanked me profusely, then proceeded to down two small bottles of scotch. She told her daughter it was “adult water.”
Aaron’s grave was in the back of a graveyard under a jacaranda tree, the purple and blue blossoms lush and scented, hanging right over his gravestone.
I sat down and talked to him, the sun warming my shoulders. I talked about how much I’d loved him, how the romance had swept me up. I told him what I admired about him, his intellect, his ability to make films that touched people’s hearts, his compelling personality, how romantic he could be, and how I admired his fight against his bipolar. He could have given up years ago, but he didn’t. He tried.
I told him I forgave him.
I told him I was still angry and would never forget what he’d done.
I told him I wasn’t as angry as I was before.
I told him he didn’t have the right to do what he did to me.
I told him I was sorry that he had so many mental health issues but I was more sorry that he refused to deal with them.
I told him I was sorry that I shut down on him and on his problems, that I had been overwhelmed, sucked dry, almost paralyzed in my inability to address him and his issues anymore.
I told him I was moving on with my life.
I told him I hoped he was at peace.
I told him I didn’t think I would ever have total peace.
I told him I forgave him for cheating.
I told him I had cheated, too, and I forgave myself.
I told him the DVD had followed me around the world before landing in my closet behind detergent, sponges, and Baggies, that it was excruciating to watch.
I told him the DVD had helped me to internalize that it wasn’t me who had caused his problems, nor was it my responsibility at all that he had killed himself. I thanked him for it.
I laid down beside him. I stared at the branches of the jacaranda tree, the delicateness of the purple-blue flowers. I stared at the white, puffy clouds that morphed into one animal or another if I let my mind go blank. I cried.
I was there for two hours.
Before I left I broke the DVD into four pieces and stuck them into the earth. I couldn’t have it haunting me anymore.
When I was done, my cell phone rang. For the first time in a long time, I answered her call. “Hello, Rochelle.”
“Finally, you answer your damn phone!” She went off on a raving tangent, and I knew she was drunk. “I’m having you arrested, Meggie. The police are coming with the FBI and drug enforcement, and I’ve talked to my attorneys and they’re going to file criminal and bad charges against you and make you pay me for what you did to Aaron. I blame you. You were a stupid wife, always leaving Aaron to work, leaving him when he needed you. This was your fault, all your fault, what he did—”
“Rochelle, I am very sorry that you lost your son.” I would not be mean to this woman—she had lost too much—but she had been a pathetic, bottom-rung mother, one who refused to protect her own child from a pedophile, despite Aaron’s pleas for help. “He had an extremely difficult childhood.”
“Difficult childhood? I loved him.” She went off on another tangent, nonsensical but threatening. “I was a good mother!” she repeated, with a moan. “A very good mother!”
I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle her. I wanted to shake her. I wanted to stomp on her. I thought of Aaron when he was an innocent eight-year-old and that hideous thing that had happened to him, how he’d told his mother, and how she’d chosen a pedophile over her own son. My hands shook with fury as I stared at his gravestone. “Don’t call me again, ever, Rochelle. Don’t contact me.”
“I can call you whenever I want, or telephone you or cell phone call you! I’m going to make your life hell, you Meggie bitch, like you’ve made my life hell in a bowl with the devil. I don’t have my son anymore because of you. He’s lost somewhere—”
I hung up.
For long moments I couldn’t move. I felt a violent rage toward Rochelle. What a hideous mother she had been. Her behavior had been criminal. I hadn’t stopped her calls in the past because part of me thought I deserved it. No more. Never again.
I traced Aaron’s name on his gravestone underneath the jacaranda tree one more time. I blew him a kiss. “Good-bye, Aaron. I am truly sorry for what happened to you. I am sorry.”
Rochelle called again.
I blocked her number.
If she called again, I would tell Blake and get a restraining order against her.
I was done.
I love my tree house. I love how small it is, how cozy, how safe. It represents what I’ve wanted for years.
I love the psychedelic rainbow swirling kitchen tiles. I love being wrapped in a hug by the maple trees with their ever-changing leaves, being near to the clouds and the sunshine, the snowflakes and raindrops. I love walking up the stairs to my deck where the Adirondacks in purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red are waiting for me.
I can even sit in the red Adirondack now. It doesn’t bother me at all.
And I love Blake and my collection of animals, too.
“Meeegie! How you doin’?” Kalani waved at me with both hands through Skype. “We so busy now! Ya. We busy since that Fashion Story thingie. I hire more women, no men. They play with their balls, like Tory say. You know Tory? Hey! Thank you putting my story in Fashion Story thingie, about that bad husband and he bite part my ear off, how I have job and house now, no bad men, I the boss. But first I tell you how I am because you say, ‘How are you, Kalani?’ ”
I groaned quietly, so quiet, keeping my teeth out and smiling for her. “Tell me how you are.”
“I do badly.”
“Why are you doing badly?” Oh no. “What’s wrong?”
“I tell you, I cry over your grandma, ya, I cry like this. See my tears? I miss that old, old lady. I always miss her. She tough. She don’t ask me how I am much, but we still talk. I work for her. She my boss. She save Kalani. I tell you already, I tell you again, sorry about that, Meeegie. She good woman, like you. You good, too.”
“Thank you. She really cared about you, Kalani.”
“Ya, I know. I try no talk to her about my gas and my curses, not like that kind of friendship, you know, you and me and Tory and Laceeey, we have that seeester friendship. Laceeey not so fat now with that baby out, but I cry for her, too, when there bad accident, and I cry for Tory, too. All night. I cry so hard for all you and for the teeny, tiny Laceeey baby. I cry for her, so happy baby happy now. Ya. I happy about that.”
“Me too, Kalani.”
“Ah, when Laceeey back? I send present, too, for new good baby. So sweet and good. She probably be like her momma. Not like Tory. Tory not good girl. Tory tell me good girls boring, they don’t get no have fun. I li
ke the fun. Black magic. You want to see new bras now, Meeegie? Here, I ready. I done saying how I am. I show you.”
“Okay, Kalani.”
She showed me the bras and thongs and panties and lingerie. She put on a number of the bras over her own chest. “I like this one. Ya. I like tassels on this purple and gold bra. Women freedom! And this? What you say? Bustier. Black with red flames, for the angry lady. Good. I like tattoo bra, too. Rough ladies wear tattoos. I like nipple cover. I try on for you. See my nipple? I try scented glue in vanilla! Yummy nipple bra now. And whip! That’s liberty. Black leather bra with zipper and skeleton. Ya. I like power when I wear the leather.”
It all looked good. I sighed with relief. Finally, no disasters.
“I’m delighted with the work, Kalani. Deee-light-ed.”
“Oh ya. Me too. We make best bras whole world, right, Meeegie? All these little pieces in bras, so many things must go right, all the parts, sewing, wire, colors, material, lace, the cups be perfect. So hard. But for your grandma we still make all this lingerie pretty. Honor Grandma. Honor ancestors. They still with us. In our hearts. Right? It, what you say, the other day? New American word for me: legacy. It your grandma legacy.”
“Yes it is. It’s Grandma’s legacy.”
“Okay, bye-bye. Love you, seeester Meeegie.”
“I love you, too, Kalani.”
Tory and I had Cassidy, Hayden, and Regan for the day. We took them to a pancake restaurant, then to the movies, then home to my tree house for tacos. First, however, we had Baked Alaska, which we’d learned how to make in dessert class, and Cassidy set it on fire, as we’d been taught. We all cheered. It was getting to be a regular occurrence—the five of us out doing something fun.
Regan played with all of the animals. Pop Pop grinned. He was on probation at doggie day care yet again. Jeepers hissed and hid. It took Regan fifteen minutes to get Jeepers out from under my bed upstairs so he could cuddle him like a baby. Regan also held the lizard, Mrs. Friendly, who was not affectionate; Ham the Hamster, who ran away under my couch; and Breadsticks, who was afraid of Jeepers.