by Cathy Lamb
Within two weeks I saw them hanging in the windows of a toy store. A week later they were gone. I called Al. “They sold out, by damn! Sold out! I gotta get crackin’! Crackin’!”
Later that day one of my clients, Shelby Edwards, cancelled. I was her one allowed call from the police station. She is a politician. “Yep, Madeline, can’t make it to my appointment. Been arrested for embezzling. You were right. I should have done something honest. That’s confidential, right?”
“It’s confidential, but you have broken O’Shea’s Principle Number One: If you are dumb enough to commit a crime you will go to jail. Before you go to jail, you will be plagued by guilt, fear, and the sneaking suspicion that you are a loser. Bad mistake, Shelby. I’ll visit in jail. No charge.”
“Gee, thanks, Madeline. You’re a sport. Can you run by my house—key’s under the purple flower pot—and get my cat?”
I would, I did. I gave the cat to my neighbor, Alex, whose own cat died at the age of twenty-two of what Alex says was “earwax.”
To my next client I said, “Quit your job.”
“You’re serious?” Hope spread on that handsome face.
“Yep.”
Hayward is an attorney who wants out. What sane attorney doesn’t want out? Would you want to fight and argue all day with people with massive egos, not to mention the incessant stress of trials and reams of hideously boring briefs and depositions ?
We looked at his finances. I told him to quit and go to the police academy and become a police officer because he’d always wanted to do it, ever since he was six and got a water gun for his birthday.
“You think I can do it?”
Hope was taking hold of Hayward. “I know you can do it. Your student loans are paid off. Your house has a reasonable mortgage. No credit card debt. And you’re miserable. Quit, Officer Hayward. You’re gonna look hot in a uniform, anyhow. Totally hot. Maybe you’ll get a date for once.”
He sagged in relief. “I needed someone to tell me I’m not crazy for doing this.”
“You’d be crazy to stay where you are.”
He rubbed his eyes. “One of my clients was arrested today for embezzlement.”
I thought of Shelby, but I did not laugh, no, I did not.
“She didn’t even call me. I heard it from a police contact. Embezzlement. She’s guilty, I know she is, and she does, too. And I don’t want to defend her. I can’t do it. She’s got a public position, too.”
I nodded. This was not the first time one of my clients alluded to another.
“You’re miserable, right, Hayward?”
“I could not be more miserable.”
“Buddy, you could crash and die tomorrow and if you’re lying on the pavement, staring at the sky, and a meteor of white light is rushing toward you, I can guarantee you’re going to wish you had followed O’Shea’s Live or Maggot Rot Principle.”
“Which is?”
“You can die any day, any time. Live your life with meaning and joy, or allow yourself to rot with maggots on the inside until you come to a point where you wish the maggots would eat your liver so you could cut out early.”
“You never mince words, do you?” He grinned back at me. Hope had wrapped around Hayward. Yes, it had.
“No point. I could die tomorrow. Why be vague?”
“I could do this.”
“You will do this. Go get your uniform. Come visit me when you’re wearing it and try to get a date. Off you go, officer.”
“Hello, cat sisters!” I said. “Meow!”
I had spent a lot of time thinking about the Giordano sisters. They are the most shallow women I have ever met in my entire life. They spend hours on their makeup and clothes. They spend fortunes on themselves. If they gave up spending money for one day, they could feed part of a third world country. The excess kills me, here.
And yet, they’re so darn likeable.
So what did they need? Depth. Purpose. A reason to be on the planet. Underneath the furs and manicured nails and silk and Ferraris, they were cats who needed to be needed.
“Hello, darling!” Adriana called out, sweeping through my office carrying Princess Anastasia, white gloves to her elbows, a white silk dress and a white hat at a jaunty angle. The cat was wearing a white bow and a white skirt. She looked bored and embarrassed. When she saw me staring at her, she made a spitting sound.
“Sweeeeeeetheart!” Bella sang, holding all consonants. She was wearing a red hat with an impressive diameter and a two-foot-long red feather. She had on red gloves, a matching red dress, and heels. Her cat, Bee La La, had a red bow around her neck and a red cape. She rolled her eyes, I swear she did.
“We’re here for our life coach session, sweetie!” Carlotta announced. She had on a purple hat with one of those black nets that halfway cover the face and a purple ensemble with flared pants and a jacket. You guessed it. Candy Stripe wore a purple bow and a silky dress. She yawned. Such a sleepy cat.
Ah. They were playing the part of European socialites. How dandy!
“Ladies, we’re going to be cats today.”
They sat straight up—the ladies, not the cats.
“Cats!” Adriana exclaimed. “That sounds fun and scratchy.” She put her claws out and elegantly scratched the air.
“I’m a slinky cat,” Bella said, standing up and stretching like a cat, her diamond bracelets glittering on her arm.
“I’m a ferocious cat,” Carlotta said. She hissed and hissed. “Meow!”
I told Georgie to come on in. She was ready to go. Georgie’s hobby is makeup. She and I used face paints to turn the ladies into cats, then I had them get in their cat outfits, which I’d rented for them.
“Fun and fun!”
“Wicked naughty!”
“Fantabulous!”
“Now we’re going to do something cat worthy. Come with me, cats.”
We left my building and went to a local coffee shop. The ladies meowed at people staring at them. I had each one of them buy one hundred dollars worth of ten-dollar coffee cards and let them loose.
“Be good cats. Find people who look like they need some loving meowing in their lives and hand them a gift card with your paw. No cat hissing!”
They were shocked, then puzzled, finally excited. They meowed at each other, rolled their whiskers, flicked their tails.
They returned later, exhausted, thrilled.
“That was the best thing I’ve done in my life!” Bella said. “The best! I couldn’t believe people’s faces when we gave them the coffee cards. They looked so surprised, then so grateful. I gave one to a teenager sitting against a building. She looked like she’d been there forever and was melting into the wall.”
“One woman cried, she cried!” Carlotta meowed, then burst into tears.
“Meow!” Adriana threw her arms up and let ’em rip.
“Tears! Meow!” Bella buried her head in her arms, her back heaving. “Meow tears!”
When they left I heard “Sweet Georgia Brown” in my head. It was appropriate.
The cats left with a renewed sense of purpose outside their Jimmy Choo shoe collections. Within a minute Georgie called me.
“Madeline, Aurora King is here. She told me that your aura is very, very black. She’s seeing a crash, a change, a reckoning for you. What, Aurora? Okay. She says not to be alarmed, but she sees you naked, emotionally naked, and there’s a plane, too, plus a crowd of people, palm trees, a lush garden. What else? She says the number seven, twenty-eight, a pink handcuff. Don’t ask, Madeline.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. “What is she wearing?”
“She’s in purple today. Lots of tulle and fluff, a wand. She’s clearly in tune with her inner fairy.”
“Tell her not to throw glitter at me.”
“Will do. Don’t throw glitter at Madeline,” I heard Georgie say as she rang off.
I opened my door to Aurora King and closed my eyes when I saw her hand swing up.
She threw purple glitter at me.
Two days later I was still picking it out of my hair.
I was not surprised to get another blackmail letter in a manila envelope when I swung by my house later that week to get the mail. Using letters from magazines, he had misspelled the word regret. He spelled it with two t’s. As in, I would “regrett” it if I didn’t pay up.
I tossed the manila envelope back on octagonal head-man and headed out of the city.
I didn’t know what I would do with this blackmailing deal, but I knew what I wouldn’t do: Pay up.
When I reached The Lavender Farm, I had dinner with Nola, who was smiling gently; Granddad, who looked beyond exhausted ; and Grandma, who was painting a four-foot-tall mother swan who was clearly, frantically, looking for her baby swan. The baby swan was stuck in the thorns of blackberry bushes, a mean wolf with bared teeth beside him. It gave me a shiver.
I cleaned up the dishes, watched as Granddad lovingly got Grandma ready for bed, said good night, then grabbed my violin and headed for the gazebo to meet Annie. I swung my violin to my shoulder and practiced some Texan-style fiddling while Annie sat there, quiet.
I figured I knew what had triggered the blackmail letters and photographs in the manila envelopes. It was that reporter, Marlene, who I do hate, though it is not personal. She was snooping around on the Cape and word had gotten out about the article she was writing. Apparently it had gotten out to my blackmailer who was, undoubtedly, vermin scum.
I had kept in contact with Carman, Trudy Jo, and Shell Dee over the years, who had together bought the beauty parlor. I was told that no one would talk to Marlene, that she had been asked to leave three bed and breakfasts when the owners found out who she was. Even the hotel was suddenly “booked solid, for weeks, nope, no rooms.” This was the off-season. There were plenty of rooms.
As Shell Dee’s daughter Jules told me, “No one wants to hear about this story again, and we sure don’t want to hurt you and Annie. You two—” She paused and her voice caught. “You two have been through enough. Losing Big Luke, he was my father’s best friend, you know, your pink-loving mother, my mother still misses her every day, you know, what happened to you girls. I still cry . . . cry . . . cry about it, you know.” She burst into tears, then started making that braying donkey sound she always made when she lost it. “You know!”
Mrs. White, Carman’s sister and my fifth-grade teacher, called, too. “No one’s talked, hon, but she’s digging, and she had a fancy-pants investigator-type guy with her, and it’s all coming out, but we won’t give her a lamb’s shake of the tail, honey, don’t you worry. How are you, honey? All famous now, aren’t you? I still miss your momma. . . .”
And the mayor called, an older gentleman. “Big Luke and I, we went way back, and I’m doing what I can to protect his girls. I told the reporter to leave. I threatened her, told her she wasn’t welcome here, and she got two attorneys out here and they ’bout buried me in paperwork and lawsuits. Used the words harassment and discrimination. As if that’s gonna get me all riled up. Couldn’t find a place to stay so she started sleeping in her car.”
He sighed.
“Too bad when she left the car to take a shower at Rick’s Gym, it was towed and dumped in the lake. She found it when she saw the bumper sticking up. Patty told Howie to weight it, but heck, didn’t work. Howie has always had a problem with his listening skills, remember that, Mad?”
Marlene had recently called Annie for the article, which about made my blood boil and fly out of my skin. Annie told her that if she called her again she would “firebomb your house and turn it into a ball of flames.”
The reporter hung up after saying, “That’s not very nice,” to which Annie said, “Neither is trying to write a story that will rip open the lives of my sister, me, and our grandparents, one of whom has recently had a heart attack, the other who has dementia. Even with dementia, she deserves her dignity. Now you have a choice. Don’t write the story or forfeit your house. Which is it?”
The reporter said, “I’m writing an honest story.”
And Annie said, “And I am honestly going to burn your house down.”
Annie was not kidding, but I told her she could not burn the house down. Nope. Never. Don’t.
“Why not? I know what I’m doing. There won’t be any evidence.” Her brows came together, puzzled. She is a little off her rocker. She stroked Tornado, the cat with multiple personalities.
“Because you threatened her. If her house burns, she’ll point the finger at you.”
“Then I’ll have one of my buddies do it.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll end up in jail.”
She thought about that. “I would not like jail. I would not be able to take care of all my animals. Door and Chair need me.” She meowed at Oatmeal, who meowed back.
“That’s true.”
Annie winked at me. “I’ll firebomb her car then.”
“It’s in the lake.” I rolled my eyes, and Annie gave me a hug, then wiped a lone tear from my cheek. “We’ll be okay.”
“This is going to be a mess.”
She nodded, then lifted her chin. Tough. She is tough. Toughened up as kids, further toughened by her work with one of our government’s agencies. Toughened up as she exploded things to kingdom come in faraway lands.
Someone had a stack of nasty photos of Annie and me. Marlene had clearly, inadvertently alerted them to the article by asking about us. They, or he, probably had no idea whom I had grown up to be, but when they did, they thought they could cash in. They probably looked me up, saw the business I have, the speaking engagements, the columns, and deduced that I have money, which I do.
Has that money, or my inherited money, saved me from pain in my life?
Not at all.
Truth: I’d toss everything I had off the Broadway Bridge, every penny, to have my parents alive today.
The blackmailer wanted $300,000 in cash. Of course he did.
I heard my old friend, Vivaldi, in my head that night, the notes soaring up and around the hills and valleys and out across the coast range, and the faraway ocean, the weather peaceful, a storm brewing madly underneath the placid clouds.
Granddad was still so weak, but it was the bleakness in his eyes that caused me grave worry, although not a complaint left his lips. All he would say is, “The old ticker gave me a hiccup. That’s it.” Or, “I don’t know what all this damn fuss is about.” Or, “Stop mother henning me. Do I look like a chicken?” Or, “Medicines. I think they make me sicker than if I did nothing at all.”
But he wanted to talk about the article. “Madeline, my dear,” he said one night after a dinner of seafood pasta and Caesar salad, his voice raspy. “This reporter.”
“Yes.” I reached for his hand across the kitchen table, feeling nauseated at the thought of that article. See what stress does? It makes you physically ill.
“You said this reporter is researching the trials, what my daughter did in court. . . .” His voice trailed off. Anytime my granddad, tough, weathered, strong, brought up my momma, he would cry. Sometimes it was only his eyes flooding, other times he had to leave the room for a few minutes.
I waited.
“I know she’s writing about what happened to you and Annie. Does she—” Another pause. “Does she have the photos in hand?”
“I would think that she’s seen them, Granddad.” I hadn’t asked. I didn’t even want to know. It made me feel like my stomach was grinding rocks. I thought of my young self. I wanted to protect my young self—my old self, too. I wanted to protect Annie. “I don’t know how, but Sherwinn mailed them out. It probably wouldn’t take much to get ahold of them. Journalists are tenacious.”
He ran both of his hands over his face. “I’m so sorry, my love.”
“I am, too. I wish she would leave it alone, not drag this whole thing out. Annie’s carved a King Kong and she’s working on a shark if that tells you a bit about her mood.”
Granddad cleared his throat. “Honey, I have to ask
you another question. Is there anything else this reporter is writing about?”
I remembered Marlene’s questions, the questions that had plagued me.
Can you confirm that your grandma was born in Holland before moving to France as a young girl? Can you confirm that your grandma was one of eight children and her parents’ names were Solomon and Yentl Levine? Can you confirm that your grandfather’s parents’ names were Shani and Tomer Laurent and their family has lived in France for hundreds of years? Can you confirm that your grandfather had two brothers, Meyer and Sagi? In doing a little research, I am very confused about something else, too. If you could call me, perhaps you could clear things up.
“I’m confused. I don’t understand but . . .” I told him the questions Marlene had asked me.
Granddad’s face dropped into his old, age-spotted hands. “That’s it then,” he whispered. “That’s it.”
I could hardly speak. My granddad had rarely appeared defeated in my whole life. Watching him grieve over my dad, even as a child, I knew he was broken. When he was at the hospital with Annie and me and he realized the abuse we’d suffered, I saw his devastation again. During my momma’s trial, the night before the jury came back, same thing. His worry had almost killed him, and when he could not rescue my momma, that bleak, raw grief swallowed him.
And now. He’d had another blow. A hammer blow. “What’s wrong, Granddad? Granddad, please. What is it?”
He shook his head, his broad shoulders caving in.
“Why did she ask that, about Holland? Your parents’ names aren’t Shani and Tomer. You don’t have brothers. She’s obviously confused and for some reason is researching another family for an article about Momma, but I have no idea why.”
“Dear God,” he said, his words raspy. “Dear God.”
“Dear God, what?” I pleaded. I was getting so tired of not understanding whatever my grandparents were hiding from me. I’d had enough lies in my life and they were all scraping me bloody. “Please tell me.”
He turned pale—a sickly, pale color—and whispered, as if to himself, “It will all come out. She’ll find it. She probably already has. She knows.”