by James, David
What I couldn’t understand is how Alex made renovation of our previous love nest look so easy. There never was any shouting, cursing, or throwing of objects. No horrendous surprises. Like everything in his life, it all flowed smoothly and effortlessly.
Mine was another story. The contractor whom Alex hired was out of commission for months with a broken back. So I called around, but Palm Springs was in the middle of a real-estate boom that had no end in sight. Contractors were as scarce as real breasts in Los Angeles. I ended up dealing with drunks, drug addicts, thieves, or psychos—it looked like I was hiring men from the work-release program of San Quentin. Unfortunately, I ended up paying many of these guys just to get rid of them. As Alex warned, they all knew they could put a mechanic’s lien on my house, preventing me from doing anything with it. So now I was down to one contractor: Edwin. Edwin was polite, careful, and he did beautiful work. He was just slower than a Department of Motor Vehicles employee. And there was one other drawback: He moved into a pup tent he pitched in the backyard and proceeded to live there, showering naked using my garden hose on the side of the house. You just couldn’t get good help nowadays.
I climbed over more debris, pushed aside the temporary plywood sheet that masqueraded as my front door, and was greeted with a round of excited barking and animated jumping from Knucklehead. Knucklehead was my Aussiedoodle, a “hybrid,” the woman at the animal shelter said. Mutt is more like it—part Australian shepherd and part standard poodle. But he was adorable. At nine months, he sat 30 inches high already, his tongue lolling as usual out of the side of his mouth, which made him even more adorable. Knucklehead wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but between his sheepdog hair that seemed to be in a perpetual blown-back position and his cockeyed tongue, I couldn’t help but love him. But like I said, he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Once, when I took him to the Palm Springs Bark Park to run and play with other dogs, he got so into chasing a favorite wire-hair terrier named Asta, Knucklehead ran right into a lamppost when Asta faked a right, then lurched left. Knucklehead wasn’t hurt, but it validated my choice of names for him. So, like my house, Knucklehead was a metaphor for my life: askew, confused, always under construction, but lurching forward. To where, I don’t know. Completion, I hoped.
I gave Knucklehead a huge hug, which got him barking with joy and started his stubby tail vibrating with sheer excitement. Ah, unconditional love.
I crossed what vaguely appeared to be a living room, minced my way to what would someday be my kitchen counter, and picked up the phone and dialed Alex, my ex-husband.
“Alex Thorne here,” the voice on the other end of the line said through a hailstorm of static. “AMANDA?”
“YES, IT’S ME!” I replied.
“YOU HAVE TO PEE?” Alex shouted. “I’LL CALL BACK WHEN YOU’VE FINISHED TINKLING.”
“ALEX, LET ME CALL YOU BACK ON MY CELL. THE LINE IS STILL SCREWED UP.”
I hung up, counted to twenty, and wondered if I’d hurt my hand if I punched it through the wall. Men did it all the time. So why not women? Plus, I was a second-degree brown belt in karate. So what if I broke a nail? I did push-ups on my knuckles to warm up before sparring. They weren’t much to look at, anyway. I’d chewed my nails and fingers almost down the second joint. I picked up my cell phone and pressed the “1” button—speed dial for Alex (#1 . . . as if that wasn’t a telling statement).
“Alex here. Is that you, Amanda?”
“Yes, it’s me. A very tired, aggravated Amanda.”
“So did you leave Judith’s with a signed listing agreement?”
“Not quite. The only thing I left with was a feeling of pity,” I sighed.
“Pity?”
“A pity that I didn’t have a brick in my purse to hit her with.”
“That bad, huh?”
“That chick needs to have her head rewired.”
“Amanda, I don’t want to say I told you so, but . . .”
“I should’ve known enough to listen to you, Alex . . . and the rest of the entire sentient world.”
“It was a learning experience. Like I always say . . .”
“. . . if all you learn about sticking your hand in the fire is not to do it again, it was a worthwhile experience,” I jumped in, finishing Alex’s sentence the way married people do when they’ve been married long enough—correction, were married. “But not all is lost. I have a listing appointment this afternoon at Caliente Sands. Of course, I’m one of four agents being interviewed, and one of them is Mary Dodge, the Dragon Queen of Palm Springs real estate.”
“Now, Amanda, you know what I told you. You have just as much chance of getting it as any other agent. You just have to keep your confidence up.”
“Easy for you to say. You were born with it,” I said. And it was the truth. “You weren’t raised Catholic, or had a bizarre, Lithuanian Old-Country grandmother move in with you for three years and taunt you with tales of wolves dragging village children into the woods and eating them, leaving only the bones behind. No, your parents were the coolest parents on the planet; your mom painting her expressionist paintings and practicing yoga while your dad was raking in the money from some patent your grandfather owned for toilets.”
“Gravity backflow valves. The patent was for gravity backflow valves.”
“Close,” I added.
“And my mother was a minimalist sculptor and painter. So what does that have to do with making me confident?”
I was aghast. “Everything! At least your parents let you develop and experiment. Mine were always looking for ways to make me feel guilty about something I’d done—or not done.”
“You’re not going to start with the Communion wafer thing again, are you?”
The Communion wafer thing that Alex had so easily dismissed was an incident that took place when I was nine that was so mortifying, it still haunts me to this day with feelings of crushing guilt and overwhelming inadequacy.
It was a stormy Sunday in April and I was preparing to receive my First Communion. When I say it was stormy, I am being kind. The lightning and thunder was deafening, the rain poured, and for a few minutes, we received an inch of hail. A tragic foreshadowing, to be sure.
For months before this auspicious day, the nuns had been instructing us on the history, the purpose, and above all, the seriousness of the Act of Communion. Of course, being nuns, the serious nature was accompanied by a story so sick and twisted that if told today, the story would lead to numerous lawsuits and the local Department of Social Services being called in.
The story went like this. A little Catholic girl in Mexico, or some untraceable South American country, was likewise preparing for her First Communion. As a good student, she realized that the Communion host, through the miracle of transformation by the priest during mass, changed the tasteless bread wafer into the actual body of Christ. Cannibalism, to be sure. Now, little Maria put two and two together and figured that if she didn’t swallow the host, but spit it instead into a handkerchief and took the host home, it would be a powerful talisman to grant her self-indulgent wishes like having food on the table and a doll to play with instead of a dead rat or a stick. Well, no sooner than nefarious Little Maria carried out her evil plan, than on her way home the host began to bleed profusely, pouring out gallons of incriminating blood on her, her bedroom, and the dirt floors of her proud, but ramshackle house. In horror, Maria grabbed the host and prepared to run back to the church to return it to the priest and confess her sins. Now, as in all stories calculated to instill terror and compliance through guilt, the ending was not happy for Little Maria. Depending on which nun told the story, Maria was either hit by lightning, torn apart by wild monkeys, or disappeared into a deep crack in the earth that opened under her tiny feet. No matter, the point was that questioning authority or possessing a free will was met with dire consequences.
With this cheerful backdrop, I made my way down the aisle of St. Benedict’s Church toward the priest, terror making
my heart pound like a jackhammer and my mouth dry up. I passed my mother and grandmother, my mother releasing a tiny flutter of a smile to encourage me on, but my grandmother’s expression had only one interpretation: Don’t fuck up, you ungrateful child, or God will come down on you ten times harder than I already do. Any confidence that was left in me before this moment whooshed out of me like the air out of a tired whoopee cushion. I thought about turning and running out of the church, but knew that despite my grandmother’s advanced years, Merciless Martha could still summon amazing speed when she wanted to. So I headed down to the railing and kneeled next to the other terrified girls and boys, waiting for the priest to deposit the large wafer on my tongue when prompted. Before I knew it, Father Brown was standing in front of me. I opened my mouth and stuck my tongue out to receive the wafer from the priest, but because my mouth was so dry, the wafer got stuck on the back of my tongue as I tried to swallow it, causing me to cough the host out onto the priest’s robe, where it stuck for a moment before falling on the floor.
Father Brown tried to minimize the incident, picking up the host and pocketing it discreetly in a handkerchief. But Martha, who was prone to Old-World theatrics, let out a wail that sounded like a cougar passing kidney stones. To add insult to injury, Martha left her seat, interrupted the Communion service, and crawled up the aisle to the spot where the host had fallen, kissing the spot fervently, then kneeling there and looking up to heaven while reverently hitting her fist to her chest over and over again.
Somehow, I managed to survive the day; but as I lay awake for hours that night, scanning the room for rabid monkeys or Satan himself, I felt a strange leaking sensation below my waist. Throwing back the covers and pulling down my pajamas, I was horrified to discover my crotch soaked with blood. Clearly, God was making me bleed to death for my sin, and true to form, He wasn’t waiting around to get started. Had I received proper sex education, having my first period wouldn’t have been a big deal, but my parents took an old-fashioned approach to learning about the facts of life: They preferred that I learn them in the streets like everyone else. So, to say the least, I was completely naïve when it came to knowing how my body operated, and I did the only thing a clueless, guilt-racked female of nine years old could do when discovering that God had fatally wounded me: I screamed hysterically. This was followed by more hysterics until my mother had discerned what was happening, but Martha, upon arriving at the scene, threw more gasoline on the fire by reciting the rosary and invoking in Lithuanian for God to do something horrible to me.
I won’t go into detail how, but for weeks Martha managed to find dozens of pictures of the Devil and slipped them under my pillow, into my folded socks, my bookbag—anywhere she could punish me further. The point is, the damage was done. For the rest of my life, when something went wrong and I was in the vicinity, I would feel that I had some hand in it. Self-confidence wasn’t an option when you felt like the walking wounded. This is one of the many, many reasons I fell in love with Alexander Thorne. He was always building me up, always pointing out my talents and encouraging me to do the most with them. He also worked night and day to get me to stop beating up on myself for just being human and making the mistakes humans do. How could I not love a man like that?
Since we’re on the topic of beating myself up, I will take this opportunity to describe how I look. After all, I have lived in this body with this face and this mind for forty years, so no one is as highly qualified to describe myself. Of course, the danger in this line of thinking is that the one person most uniquely qualified to fool oneself is, well, oneself. How many of us motor through life with air bags built into the dashboards of our lives, ready to inflate at a moment’s notice to protect us from a head-on collision with something or someone who reminds us that what we think we are is not always what is really there. That said, I have no such air bags. Mine were deployed so many times as a kid, they’ve ceased to function. So, by reason of deduction, I am seeing me as I really am: like Kathleen Turner punched in the nose. Yes, I’m six-feet one-inch tall (thank you, Goddess, for one redeeming, modelesque feature), with naturally dirty blond hair, average build, which I’ve molded into an athletic slimness with a regimen of cycling and hiking and occasional weightlifting in an underutilized bedroom, but the fact remains that I look like someone punched Kathleen Turner in the nose. And if you think I’m imagining this, I’ve had scores of people who described me this way. Most of them, of course, have made such a description behind my back or what they’ve thought was out of earshot, but my mother, once I explained to her who Kathleen Turner was and she watched Accidental Tourist and Romancing the Stone (but not Body Heat or Serial Mom, both of which she turned off after only twenty minutes), proudly proclaimed it to anyone who cared to listen.
“Doesn’t she look like a movie star?” she would prod from complete strangers in shopping malls, grocery stores, or family gatherings. “Kathleen Turner . . . like someone punched Kathleen Turner in the nose.”
To my mother, this was a compliment. A backhanded one, but a compliment nonetheless. She had defied centuries of genetic shortcomings and produced a bona fide movie star. I remember a particularly insane conversation we had in a woman’s clothing store years ago. She had once again given me her standard introduction that would have been better suited for a drunken Friar’s Club roast.
“Mom, I wish you wouldn’t mention the punched-in-the-nose part so often.”
“Oh, for gosh sakes, Amanda, you’re always complaining that I never give you a compliment and the moment I give you one, you tell me not to.”
“If I looked like Elizabeth Taylor but had clubfoot, you’d tell everyone: ‘Look, everyone, she’s my little star, Elizabeth Taylor . . . never mind the clubfoot.’”
“What’s wrong with that, Amanda? If you had been born with clubfoot, I don’t think I should be standing there spouting off about my gorgeous little star without mentioning a birth defect that everyone could plainly see. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell the truth.”
“Mom, you don’t always have to spell out everything for people. They have eyes . . . and manners that keep them from harping on things like clubfoot. You know, you go through life like the Pope, always telling everyone else in the world what they’re doing wrong while his own priests are sticking their hands down the pants of nine-year-old parishioners.”
Anything that contradicted my mother’s tragic view of life usually produced an icy stare and ended the conversation for the time being. Alex, always the perennial Pollyanna, mentioned the Kathleen Turner connection, while skirting the nose issue. Why not? Alex was born gorgeous. But in contrast to my mother, Alex saw only the good in me, halting my attempts at self-immolation. Reason number 438 for marrying Alex: He saw in me what no one else could, least of all myself. He was such an expert in seeing the good in everything, he made me think twice about having a nose job. He told me that if I felt strongly about it, then to go ahead and do it. But, as he always said to me, I love you just the way you are. Plus, he would always say he loved my nose. Although it was clearly Lithuanian, he described it as Prussian—an aristocratic term if I ever heard one.
“Well, Amanda, I’m sure you’ll get the listing,” Alex said, shaking me out of my flashback.
“I really need this listing. I need to prove that I can go out and get crème de la crème listings on my own.”
“You got plenty of them in Michigan,” Alex reminded me.
“Yes, but that was there. I need to be taken seriously here in Palm Springs, now that my divorce sabbatical is over. It’s time to go back to work.”
“I wouldn’t put so much pressure on yourself, Amanda.”
“That’s all I do, Alex. You know that.”
“And you do it better than just about anyone.”
“You’re damn straight,” I replied, conscious of the phrase I just blurted out.
Alex laughed. “Do you realize what you just said?”
“Yes, it was already out of my mouth before I kn
ew I said it.”
“Amanda, I wouldn’t worry about getting every top-notch listing. Look at some of the agents in your office. Take Babette, for instance. She’s worked in your office for two years now and she hasn’t brought in one sale.”
“Yes, but she brings in those boobs of hers . . . the ones that arrive half-a-minute before she does. That’s why they keep her,” I conceded.
“Well, that and the money she pays to keep her desk space that she never uses.”
“Touché, Alex.” Alex had hit upon another reason real estate offices tolerate keeping part-time agents under their wings. These laggards pay monthly fees for renting desk space, and having phone service and Internet connections.
“Alex, I have to go get ready for my listing presentation. If I’m going to blow Mary Dodge out of the water, I’ve got to rehearse my presentation.”
“Go to it, Amanda. Knock ’em dead.”
I knew that Alex was wishing me the best when he uttered this. But in hindsight, I wish he had let things go with a simple “good luck.”
CHAPTER 2
Help Wanted: Retarded Baboons Apply Within
I rushed around my chaotic house, making a mental checklist of all the things I needed to bring to my listing presentation. Computer with oversize display, check. PowerPoint presentation loaded on computer, check. Leave-behind folder containing PowerPoint presentation for client, check. Brochure, check. Cell phone, check. Driving directions to client’s house, check. Digital camera to take pictures of house, check. Breath mints, check.
I loaded all my equipment onto my flight-attendant roll-on baggage cart and dragged everything out to my freshly washed and waxed Toyota Land Cruiser. A Realtor’s car is as important as the clothes he or she wears. In the beginning, I clung to the mistaken belief that by driving an economical Toyota Camry, I would be trumpeting to my clients that I was a practical, down-to-earth kind of woman who was frugal and no-nonsense—like sensible shoes.