by Cathy Lamb
“I think I’m ready to let him serve me chocolate cheesecake without cringing.”
I nudged her with my elbow. “Now you’ve got me puzzled. Baffled. Lost. Speak on, sister.”
“Bertie.”
Ah, Bertie. Lovesick Bertie.
“He always remembers that my favorite dessert is chocolate cheesecake, that I love artichoke chicken soup and the fluffy rolls from Chitty Chang’s bakery. He buys me flowers and chocolates and cards and those sorts of silly things.”
I thought of the lanky, longish-blonde-haired, tough-ass, romantic Special Ops man with the alpacas who were so often “under the weather.” What a man. “He’s got a good memory.”
“Yep. He does. Persistence, too.”
I let the waves fill the silence for us, colored fire shooting across the sky.
“I think I could . . . I think I might could maybe . . .” She took a deep breath.
“You might could maybe . . . ,” I prodded.
“Hold his hand. Go to dinner. Maybe watch a sunset with him on the top of the hill.”
“I’m sure he would be deeelighted.” I laughed thinking about the hope that sprang eternal on Bertie’s face whenever he saw Annie.
“He’s sent me so many gifts since your speech, Madeline, including chocolate cheesecake and a flower pot shaped like a Labrador, and he’s called, so he knows and still . . . still he wants to be with me.”
“He wants to be with you, and he’s a sex god,” I mused.
“Yeah, he’s definitely hot. I think the hotness scares me a bit, though. It’s hard to take a leap into hot.”
“I know about those hard leaps. I can barely get my feet off the floor.”
Another fin appeared, dove back down. So much is going on in the ocean that we will never see. But we know it’s there, powerful, beautiful. Even animals have relationships.
“We should take the leaps, though, Annie. If we don’t leap, we don’t live.”
“Think we could do that? Like normal women?”
“We’ve never been normal. It’s not something I strive to be anymore. It just isn’t gonna work for us. But I think we could give it the ol’ heave-ho and see what happens.”
“The ol’ heave-ho?” She finally exhaled, winked at me, and grinned. “A leaping heave-ho?”
“A leaping heave-ho.”
“A leaping heave-ho for love.”
We high-fived each other, then took sips of our beers. Two geeky geeks.
Well, whaddya know. The O’Shea girls were gonna take a dare on love and life. I picked up another slice of pizza, after pushing my curls out of my face. Annie was on her third piece. I figured I’d have four and quit then. But I might not. The pizza was amazing—thick crust, thick cheese, thick pepperoni. We could eat pizza and ice cream again. Wasn’t that something?
I know I am becoming whole. I am not two people in one, trying to hide my real self. I am no longer a lie. I am not pretending.
I am part of a huge family. I am part lavender farm, part house by the sea and French Beauty Parlor. I am part beat-up violin, part swan, part heart-shaped rocks. I am the daughter of an Irish fisherman and a Jewish pink woman. I am the sister of a vet who likes her explosives.
Together they fit. It was all very American.
“I’m going to say something cheesy.”
Annie pulled a long piece of cheese off her pizza. Perfect timing.
“Good, shoot it out. I hope it tastes good.”
“To me it does. I think, Annie, as overly dramatic as this sounds, that today, right now, on a sailboat, eating pizza, wearing pink, with that killer whale out there goofing around . . .”
“Yeeeesss?”
“Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I’m starting over. I’m redoing myself.”
“Super-duper,” Annie said. “It is cheesy, but I’ll start over with you. It’ll be the first day of the rest of my life, too. My first goal: Give up my trips to Fiji.”
I whipped my head around to confirm that strange declaration. “You’re kidding?”
She smirked. “Duh. Yeah, it’s a joke. Where there are animals with abusive owners, there will always be explosives.”
We clinked our beer cans and watched the sun sink between the islands, like a sleepy blob of melted gold, the waves turning purple and orange in the light. “To explosives,” I said.
“To starting over,” she said.
“Cheers.”
On a night when the clouds billowed and roared with regret and sadness, Annie and I opened, for the first time, our granddad’s leather journal.
There was his guilt. His regret. His atonement.
Millions and millions of dollars.
To the Laurents.
To Anton Laurent.
To Emmanuelle Laurent.
To Marie Elise Laurent.
To Johnna Laurent.
To Aaron Laurent.
In the margins, all over, I am sorry.
I am sorry.
“Come in, friend,” he said. “Come in.”
I didn’t call him until I had things together.
I had bought into our materialistic society’s definition of success because I had felt like nothing, “less than others,” and felt I had to own all the “stuff” in order to prove my own worthiness. Stuff never brought me worthiness or esteem, never helped me to like me. It was a losing battle, but I had to fight it, and lose, before I understood that part. Slow learner I can be.
It didn’t take me too long to shed all that crap. I sold my house that I didn’t like. Living in a modern spaceship, that was completely opposite from our house by the sea, hadn’t blocked out those crushing memories, as I’d hoped, it had simply magnified my loss.
I gave my car away to be auctioned off at Youth Avenues. The house and the car reminded me of how I’ve tried to be someone I’m so not, to project an image of me that is patently false. I closed my office downtown, added an office to Grandma and Granddad’s house with a view of the lavender rows, and started seeing my clients there. I thought I’d lose a bunch of them because of the drive.
Nope, didn’t lose any. In fact, they love it on The Lavender Farm, and they all come about an hour early and walk around to get some peace in their lives.
My office has two sets of French doors and lots of windows. I have a comfy L-shaped blue couch with fluffy pink pillows, a number of lights with flowered shades for gentle effect, a leather chair, a compact kitchen where I can make my clients tea or coffee and we can sit at the kitchen table or, in warmer weather, head for the deck and the view of the blue and purple mountains west of us. There is absolutely no modern art.
The Giordano sisters said being out at The Lavender Farm was “nature touching their feminines.” Adriana said, “The farm helps me quell my inner and outer mood swings.” Bella said, “Menstrually, this is a far better place for me.” Carlotta said, “In spirit, I believe I am a tree.” They brought their cats.
Corky (mean lady) does not throw chairs when she comes out. In fact, sometimes we sit on the deck and drink lemon tea and watch birds. That’s what she likes to do. “See, when you hate yourself, you hate everyone around you,” she said. “I had a lot of hate. Thanks for telling me to volunteer. Holding sick and premature babies has made me not so obnoxious. Don’t you think?”
Georgie still works for me. She does a lot of work from her house, via computer. I can hear Stanley barking at me when we talk on the phone.
Going to the dock over the pond and playing my violin brings me peace. I can still hear Ismael, and we laugh about it over the phone. The gunshots are so quiet now, dim and dull, as if covered by a noisy Israeli family, a quiet bench on the hill, and Annie’s friendship. Sitting in the middle of rows of lavender rejuvenates me. Touching it, smelling it, creating wreaths and potpourri and other crafts, I’m happy. I do not want to leave The Lavender Farm again. This is home.
I was sitting in the middle of the lavender rows when he arrived, two marbles in my hand that I’d dug
up, one purple, one pink, both with silver flecks.
He climbed out of his truck and saw me right away. For a minute, we stared across the purple streaks as I heard Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 17 in my head, rising up, up, and up further still.
He was very tall. He was wearing jeans and a white, buttondown shirt. I was wearing jeans, too, and a white shirt, and my cowboy boots. For some reason, a vision of May’s “We’ll charge you up” silver sequined bra and thong came to mind. Maybe I’d be wearing them soon.
I had spent ten days reading his books and drinking lemon tea. I started with his first one, The Girl in Pink, and moved on. He had written five books. I had been petrified of what I would read, the memories it would bring back. I knew that Steve had not written about the trials, the photographs, the abuse, or me. He had too much character to write about that.
No, these were touching, tear-jerking love stories, two lives, a boy and a girl, best friends, who grew to be a man and a woman, their lives never meeting at the right time, the right moment. Georgie was right, there was magic to them somehow, humor, a touch of heavenly miracles. Each character dealt with the challenges, disappointments, and joys that can be expected in life, but it was the prose, the rhythm, the words that described the pulse of each character, and their everlasting hope of finding love, that kept me reading.
I headed down the hill toward him, stepping over the purple and blue lavender. He smiled at me and we were kids again, except he was very tall and had shoulders like a bronco. In those eyes I saw warmth, kindness, and wisdom.
“Madeline,” Steve said, when I was about three feet from him. “It’s good to see you again.”
“You too.” I smiled back at his smile, couldn’t help it. The words “I missed you” slipped right out of my mouth.
He laughed, but I felt the longing, the friendship that still bloomed, the promise of more. “I missed you, too.”
“You’re a little taller than when I last saw you.” And, oh, he was truly gorgeous in an “I can hug you the rest of my life” type of way.
“Your hair is redder than it used to be.”
I gave him a bouquet of lavender, then stood on my toes and kissed his cheek.
He even smelled the same, like the ocean, pine trees, butterscotch, and a hint of spring.
He smelled like home.
I took a deep breath.
Yep. I could breathe again.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE
Cathy Lamb
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included to enhance
your group’s reading of Cathy Lamb’s
The First Day of the Rest of My Life.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Was Madeline an effective life coach? If you made an appointment for a life-coaching session, what do you think she would tell you to change? Improve? Or would she say that you have “gathered your hellfire” and are on the right course?
2. A’isha Heinbrenner, a client of Madeline’s, says, “You know, Madeline, . . . I’m not lonely at all. It’s bothered me that I’m not lonely, because I thought that I should be. But I’m not. Alone means I’m with myself. Alone means I answer to myself, I do what I want for, literally, the first time in my life. Alone means that I can think what I want. It means I’m not burdened with the constancy of doing things for others.” Can you relate to this statement?
3. If you were on the jury at Marie Elise’s trial, would you have found her guilty or not guilty for killing Sherwinn, Gavin, and Pauly? Did Marie Elise make the right choice? What would you have done?
4. For many readers, the scenes in the shack and in the courtroom where Madeline and Annie recount the abuse they suffered may be very difficult to read. However, if those scenes had been softened, the reality of what happened, and the impact on Madeline and Annie, would also have been softened. Did the author strike the right balance?
5. Madeline said, “Annie relates better to animals than people, and she cannot abide abuse of any kind. She decided to be a veterinarian during her ‘mystery’ years. Annie said, ‘I saw too many human limbs in places where they shouldn’t be, and I decided I wanted to be a part of putting things back together, not destroying them. But I don’t want to work with people. I love animals. They don’t frighten me, they don’t need anything from me but medical care, and they won’t hurt or betray me intentionally.’ ” How do you picture Annie? If she lived next door to you, would you be friends? What do you see happening in her future?
6. In many ways, this was the story about a scratched and battered violin and the lives of the people who owned it over three generations. How did the author intertwine history, both during the Nazi occupation of France and back and forth to Madeline’s childhood, to propel the story?
7. What did the lavender field symbolize? What did the swans and the Land of the Swans symbolize? The marbles? The “emotional weather”? Pink? The ice cream and pizza?
8. Was there a particular scene that best exemplified Emmanuelle and Anton’s love for each other? Which one?
9. How did Madeline and Annie change from the beginning of the book to the end? Would they have changed if they hadn’t been forced to change because of the article and the blackmail? What would they have lost if Madeline hadn’t made her speech at the Rock Your Womanhood conference?
10. Madeline says, “I can only compare life to being shot from a cannon into the middle of space and being bombarded by all sorts of debris—pieces of satellites and shuttles, asteroids, shooting stars, maybe an alien spaceship. We’re hit all the time and sometimes we can’t find Earth. We can’t even find the Milky Way galaxy. We’re lost. Running around, dodging this and that, trying not to get hurt or killed, and all the while we’re looking for home. That’s how life is. It’s a meteor shower.” Is this true? What does it tell you about her?
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2011 by Cathy Lamb
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-5938-7