by Cathy Lamb
A: Get drunk.
Q: You’re not serious.
A: Of course not. That would be stupid. Only stupid people get drunk. Get a massage. A long one with those hot rocks and lotions that smell like pine trees. If there’s a massage oil that smells like wine, get that one. Don’t drink the wine oil. Know that this time of your life will pass. Teenagers are going to be difficult, accept that fact, accept that your perfect child will make perfectly awful choices and will most likely lie to you. Know it’s coming. As for your parents, care for them, check up on them, keep to a schedule if possible. Hire a housekeeper, hire a lawn guy, take the pressure off yourself, and let your standards down. Treat yourself as your own cool best friend or you will fall apart. Most importantly, remember this: If you’re doing your best, it is good enough. It truly is good enough.
Q: What’s happiness look like?
A: It’s moments. A moment in a forest. A moment holding someone’s hand. A moment of quiet. It’s ridiculous to chase down happiness as if it’s prey and you’re the predator, and if you can just catch it, bite down on it, you’ll be there. That’s untrue. Happiness, most often, is a choice. Make the choice to sit, breathe, and be in that moment.
The reporter left after I gave her advice about her job (how to deal with jealous female co-workers), her mother (bipolar), her boyfriend (troubled). “You’re the best, Madeline. I would love to be you when I’m older.”
“Super. Then there will be two of us. I will call you Madeline O’Shea Number Two.”
Happiness is in moments. Where the heck did I get that?
Georgie stuck her head in. “Aurora King is early today.”
“Good. Tell her to go outside and toss glitter at unsuspecting people because I don’t want any in my hair today.”
“I’ll do that.”
“What is she wearing?”
“Green. Lots of fluff. She says that your aura is steely. Rigid. As if you’re preparing for collapse but you don’t know it yet so you’re holding yourself tight—tight to your spirit, but the spirit is unleashing itself. She sees exposure wrapped around your fiber, that’s her wording. She sees a piano and hankies and a spotlight and there’s a bit of purple around the edges for sex. I don’t know if that means purple sex, but I doubt it. I doubt the part about the sex for you, too. Remember I said I’d take you shopping any time.”
“Send Aurora King in and tell her not to throw glitter at me again.”
“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 green glitter at me.
Two days later I was still picking it out of my hair.
I wrote my column, which centered on choosing a career based on what you loved doing as a child. “Find Your Child, Talk to Her” was what I titled it. “Get a picture of yourself when you were a child. Ask that child, ‘What do you like to do? What are your hobbies? What are you interested in? Where do you like to go on weekends? What are you curious about? What makes you laugh? Who do you like hanging out with?’ Take that info and think about it. Shake it up, spin it around. How can you apply that to your own life. . . .”
I answered a ton of e-mails, some from the Rock Your Womanhood chiefs, others from people on a couple of charity boards I sit on, and I took calls from a few hysterical clients. One client, Janice, quit her job in a grand way: She had a banner made that read, “Omar, you have a small dick,” and strung it across her boss’s office when he was at a meeting.
“Do you want me to show you the banner, Madeline?” she’d asked eagerly. She was in a bar. She’d had too much scotch, that was clear. “I want you to call a cab and go home, Janice. I want you to walk by the river tomorrow until you can’t take another step. I want you to drink coffee and read a book. Tomorrow night, start journaling. Write down the O’Shea Make a Change plan we talked about. Start job shopping the next day, when you’re not hung over. This time, find something you like and believe in.”
“But it was true. Omar did have a small dick.”
“How do you know?”
“My friend is his ex-girlfriend. She said it was the size of her middle finger.”
Lovely image.
“Avoid making banners at your next job.”
When I was finally done, my brain fizzling, at eleven o’clock that night, I decided to stay at my own home. I actually drove by my spaceship house initially and had to back up when I passed the corner. My jaw fell open as I stared at what Ramon had done.
A long, elegant, arborlike structure had been built across the front of my property, parallel to the sidewalk on top of the rock wall. The arbor’s lines matched the lines of my modern house, and it was . . . stupendous.
That would be the word for it—stupendous.
I parked my car, scrambled out, and gaped.
My neighbor, Roth Hamil, wandered over. He always walks his dogs at night. Like me, he has insomnia. He’s a proctologist. I would be up all night, too, if my day consisted of rectums. “Incredible, isn’t it?”
I nodded, speechless.
“He’s building a deck in my backyard when he’s done. I’m second.”
“What do you mean, you’re second?”
“Walt and Cherry got him before me. Then it’s my turn. George and Darren get him after me, then Pho and Stephanie.”
“You’ve all hired him?” I felt this soft, warm glow.
“Sure have. We’ve been watching him transform your yard. He’s got a lot of work now. Good man, he is. Good man.”
I nodded.
“He told me about the robbery. He told all of us.”
“We all make mistakes,” I said. “It was a desperate situation. Lousy home life. He was a kid, trying to help his brother. He paid his time in jail, now he’s trying to get his life back.”
Roth nodded. “We men are a flawed species. We don’t think right. He’s gotta forgive himself and move on.”
“Yep.”
“So, while he’s forgiving himself, he’s gonna build me a deck.” He rocked back on his heels. “I can’t wait.”
I made a call the next day to Keith Stein, the lawyer bulldog, and explained the situation with Ramon and his brother. Bulldog lawyer understood. His childhood had consisted of a drunken father and a mother who disappeared when he was in kindergarten. She was in charge of planning the class Christmas party and when she didn’t show up with the cake and party games he knew she’d taken off. “The other kids blamed me for having no party. It was terrible. What was worse was watching my momma before then, and knowing, absolutely knowing, that she was going to leave me. I knew it. Hell, yeah, I’ll help Ramon. Give me his number and I’ll call later this morning.”
“Send me the bill.”
“I’ll discount it.”
I called Ramon next. “I love it.”
“You do? That was a daring move architecturally and I knew that, but I thought your house should make a statement, you know? I’m going to plant three clematis. They’ll all meet and you’ll have this draping vine all over it. It’s gonna be awesome.”
“It’s incredible.” I listened. “Where are you?”
“We’re at the science museum.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“My brother and I.”
I did not miss the joy in his voice.
“Once a week I get to take him out and we’re going to do something to make us smarter. This week it’s the science museum. Thanks, Madeline, for the check. I got the cards printed up that you said I should. You gotta see my truck. That sign you paid for is awesome sweet.”
“There’s a man named Keith Stein who’s going to call you. He’s an attorney. He’ll help you get custody of your brother.”
I heard silence.
“Ramon? Are you there? Are you there?”
“Madeline,” he said, his words all wobbly. “Man, I am never going to be able to thank you enough, lady, never.”
>
Grandma’s second-story, white-walled studio, with two skylights, faces west. Her easels, paints, pencils, canvases, and all other painting and drawing supplies, including several tables, a rocking chair, and a huge island with multiple cubby holes in the center, fill the bright space. She loves coming up every day to paint.
She doesn’t always finish her work anymore. The head of a swan, no neck or body, was carefully painted in the middle of one canvas. On another, there was a bold outline of half a blue jay, a tear in one eye. In a third, a yellow bird with a blue bandana around its neck teetered on the edge of a building. It had no wings. Some of her other paintings, the paintings that will live in children’s hearts forever through her books, were carefully wrapped, hung on the walls, or propped on built-in shelves. Others had been auctioned off at various charity events for thousands and thousands of dollars.
“Let’s get ourselves a little privacy, Madeline, Annie,” Granddad said the next rainy Saturday afternoon. We knew what he meant. He needed to talk to us away from Grandma, while Nola and she were baking ladyfingers downstairs.
We settled in three chairs in front of the French doors that led to the small deck. I could tell he was trying to rally himself, as if he were waiting for all his bones and muscles and even his soul, to line up and speak. “I need to tell you how your mother, your grandma, and I got out of France.”
I sagged, with relief and dread. “You said you left before World War II started,” I said. “I think I remember you saying that.” Hadn’t he said that?
He closed his eyes.
“Isn’t that right, Granddad?” Annie asked, her braid over her shoulder.
Looking at him, I thought he was painfully dying before my eyes, maybe not physically at that second, although that was a definite risk, but spiritually.
“They were forged.” He clasped his hands tight together, his eyes way off in the distance, staring at the rain weeping on our lavender plants. “The papers were forged.”
I glanced at Annie, feeling my breath get stuck somewhere in my left arm. I tried to suck in some oxygen. “What was forged?”
“They were forged for a family that I knew, with the help of someone from one of the embassies in France. The family had a mother and father, a teenage daughter, a young daughter, and a young son. Their family was like mine. I didn’t know them well, but the father told me one day that he had the forged papers. He was trying to help me, trying to help us get out, too.”
He put a hand to his eyes and rubbed them.
“You needed help getting out of France?” I asked.
“Granddad, why did you need help?” Annie asked.
He sighed, his voice cracking. “Because I knew I couldn’t do it on my own. It was almost impossible.”
“I thought you flew out of Paris, went to New York, didn’t like New York, flew to Oregon. Didn’t you?” Did I assume it, as a younger person, and as I aged accepted it as fact? Maybe he hadn’t mentioned a plane at all....
He laughed. There was zero humor in it. “No, that was not true.”
“Not true?” Annie asked. “So what the heck is true? You may be old, but I’m not above using some truth-gathering maneuvers on you at this point.”
What is true? Those words wrapped around my neck and squeezed. What is true? What is true in my life, at all, at this point?
“Jews could not simply leave after France was invaded and the detentions began.”
“Jews?” Annie and I said together, shocked.
“What do you mean Jews couldn’t leave?” Annie asked.
“I mean, my dear, that your grandma and I, and your mother, are Jewish. You two are half Jewish.”
I tried to speak, no words came out.
Annie tried to speak, no words came out.
The rain seemed to be seeping through the windows and wrapping a cold coat around me. “What are you talking about?” I whispered, although the pieces were falling rapidly into place, finally making a tragic sort of sense.
“We could not easily leave France because the Germans marched right into Paris and took over. With the cooperation of the government and millions of French people, the Jews were stuck, and Hitler and the Nazis tried to obliterate us. A whole race of people. He wanted us gone. So many people decided that was the best solution. So many.”
“Good God,” I muttered.
Annie clenched her jaw so the scream wouldn’t come out.
“We were trapped in France. Trapped. I had a grocery store, but that was ransacked and taken from me, so we had no money coming in. Your grandma’s parents weren’t well. We wanted to leave sooner, but we couldn’t, she refused to leave, even though her parents begged her to get out. Then Jews were rounded up, captured, arrested, dumped in trains used for cattle, sent to work camps and death camps. We had to escape. We had to outsmart the Nazis.”
I didn’t even know where to start with my questions, didn’t even know where to go.
“I was young, I was desperate, I was trying to save my family. There were five of us. Five to save, plus her parents.”
Can a brain explode from overload? “What do you mean, there were five of you?”
He turned his head then, to look at Annie and me, and that’s when those old, kind eyes filled with tears. “There were more of us,” he whispered. “More in our family. So many, many more, but they’re gone now.”
“I don’t—” Annie started.
“Can you start over, Granddad? I’m lost—”
“I think I need this slower,” Annie said.
“Who are the five?” I asked. “I thought there were three. You. Grandma. Momma.”
“There were more than that. But we were Jews, and I never—”
Grandma sailed into the studio then, arms outstretched like a swan. Annie and I jumped with surprise; we hadn’t heard her come up the steps. She was wearing a black, lacy negligee with lace trim and three-inch-high black mules. “Darling,” she said, smiling at Granddad. She strolled toward him, bent to kiss his lips, and gave him an eyeful of her bosom. “Were you playing hide-and-seek?” She turned and kissed Annie and me on both cheeks. “Lovely sister, lovely niece. I love you.”
She turned to the painting with the yellow bird with no wings. “I heard you talking.” She picked up a paintbrush, squished out black paint, and right over the wingless bird she started painting. “You were talking about this, weren’t you?”
She drew one thick, black crooked line, then another, until a swastika covered the yellow bird with no wings.
I gasped, stricken.
Granddad groaned.
Grandma pointed at it with the paintbrush, her face drawn tight, angry now. “I hate that crooked cross. I hate it. I hate that it’s twisted. It scares me so I will fix it because of the hate. I hate you, crooked cross!” She growled at it, then turned again and started painting. Soon the black swastika turned into the body of a black swan with fluffy feathers. She added wings, a graceful neck, an orange beak. From swastika to swan, with an arch of purple orchids over its head. Though I was stunned by what Granddad had told us, what Grandma had done, part of me was still in awe of her immense artistic talent.
“There. That is so much better. Swans over death. Swans over blood. Swans eat the cross. This is a black swan.” She turned and smiled at all of us, then set the brushes down. “I think it’s time you came to bed and enjoyed this.” She put out an elegant hand and ran it from head to toe, then shimmied her chest at Granddad. “Right this minute. Come on in, darling, with me and the nymphs. I won’t take no for an answer. Men need sex or their brains dissolve. Sex loosens up their ligaments and bones. But not one bone! One bone is hard!” She giggled.
“Later, girls,” Granddad said. “I will tell you more, later.”
He smiled at us, weakly, then kissed us on both cheeks, like the French do.
We kissed him back, on shocked automatic.
Lavender is a plant with a long history of protection. Frightened people wore it to protect them from th
e plague in Europe. Grave diggers slipped it into their gloves so they wouldn’t be contaminated by the dead person’s disease. Mothers placed it in their children’s clothes to keep evil away. A dot of lavender oil could keep the spirits away from you, and a cross of lavender brought God into the house.
Yes, lavender was thought to add peace and safety to a person’s life.
I have been surrounded by lavender for years.
It’s blue and purple, and all shades in between, and when Grandma told me her tales about the swans soaring over a field full of lavender and giving rides to sword-wielding turtles and squirrels wearing cowboy hats, I thought I’d been transported to fairy land.
But protection?
No. It has never worked for me.
“I put a poster up,” she said.
“You put a poster up?” Annie asked her, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes, I wrote LOST at the top.”
I eyed the young woman, the daughter of the llama owner. Mother and daughter looked a lot alike. The mother had had her daughter when she was nineteen but decided early mother-hood wasn’t going to stop her from becoming what she desired to be above all else: A llama owner.
The mother’s name was Amelia, the daughter’s name was Amelia Lyn. They both had long brown braids, bangs, and wore plaid shirts and jeans. There was no father, because Amelia had had a fling during spring break in Mexico when she was attending an elite private college in California and didn’t know who he was. She moved into family housing, finished school, became an accountant, and got her llamas.
“So, Amelia Lyn.” I hooked my boot on the bottom rung of the wood fence surrounding the llamas. “You put up a LOST poster because you lost your pet possum when you were playing with her outside.”
“I thought she would only wander around in nature, you know, as usual. She’s a good possum and likes to be near me.” Her brow wrinkled. She was puzzled about this possum. Puzzled ! “I turned around for a second because Jason called me on the phone. He’s my boyfriend. We’re not together now, or on the weekend, but on Tuesday we were together, but not by that evening, Wednesday we were on again, but then we broke up last night . . .”