by Cathy Lamb
“Don’t bother her,” Aunt Iris said. She always defends me and respects my decisions, even if she does it in a cranky way. “If she doesn’t want to meditate, she doesn’t have to. A woman should never do something she doesn’t want to do. She should say no, then drink a beer.”
“It would help,” my mother whispered, but I heard it. “She’s wound too tight.”
“I heard that, Mom,” I called out.
“Sorry, dear. But it would.”
I knew what she was talking about. I didn’t think naked meditation would help at all.
* * *
I said hello to all my animals on the way home: two alpacas—Virginia Alpaca and Alpaca Joe; two black-and-white goats—Mr. Bob and Trixie Goat; two horses—Shakespeare and Jane Austen; four cats—Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Ghost; and five lambs—Padre, Momma, Jay Rae, Raptor, and The TMan.
Sundance, my seventeen-year-old dog, who has gone through several nervous breakdowns with me, ran right toward me on his three legs as soon as I left Rose Bloom Cottage and stood up on his hind legs for a hug. That golden, furry mutt is my life. I swear he’s a human covered in fur.
His fellow dog brothers, Butch and Cassidy, wiggled their tails while I pet them and gave them a hug. They are both shades of brown. I pulled on my farm boots and gloves and a light jacket; checked and replenished all of the animals’ food and water; dumped more hay out for the horses; told the goats not to escape again, as they did regularly; promised Jane Austen I’d ride her again soon; and talked with the sheep about how cute they are.
About an hour and a half later, I headed home to the carriage house, my home. The cats and dogs came with me. It was almost time for bed, and everyone would soon be snoring in my bedroom—yes, the dogs and cats mixed together. It is what it is.
I love my animals. They have kept me relatively sane for years.
* * *
I went to bed that night and pulled a book off the top of my stack. Then I pulled out the third book down. That was a bad move. The whole stack fell over. I sighed. Book hoarding.
I tried to read but thought this: I had not seen Marco in six days and twelve hours.
It bangs my heart up to see that man, as I know I can never be with him, for the worst reason, but I still want that glimpse. I want to see the smile or hear the laugh.
And after I see him? I take my banged-up heart and go back to being alone.
* * *
I try to avoid the house at all costs.
I’ll even take a longer route to make sure I don’t have to see it, to remember, but I couldn’t today. I had to bring Torrance Maricello his books, and he lived on the same road out in the country, so I had to pass it. Torrance is eighty and recently had surgery, and couldn’t come in to the bookstore.
The house is tucked back in the trees, in the middle of a field, a little ways out of town. The wildflowers and feverfew and irises would bloom soon, an old willow to one side, a gnarled oak tree in the front. Weeds had overtaken much of the yard.
It used to be charming, a bright yellow home with white trim and a green door. Now it wasn’t. I had many memories that were stuck behind the dirty, ragged white picket fence and in the backyard, by the pond. There were memories at the end of a rope swing hanging from the willow tree, in the highest branches of the oak tree, and in a fort that has since fallen down behind the house.
Inside the house, too, were memories. In the kitchen with hand-painted yellow tiles. In a back bedroom painted a cheerful pink.
The pink bedroom didn’t match with the blood in the kitchen.
I sniffled as my eyes filled with tears.
What happened there was my fault and I have never forgotten it, never forgiven myself. I had been young, yes, but I had known better.
* * *
“Can you believe I’m getting married? Me. Antiestablishment. Antitradition. Anti, what else am I anti?”
“A lot, Jules, you sister-rebel.” I held the phone in my hand, Sundance walking along beside me as I headed down to the beach the next night to watch the sunset. I was in my usual uniform, jeans and a purple, hippie-ish top with a ruffle at the hem. I like my clothes flowing. I like embroidery on them, especially if there are roses. I like dangly earrings and bracelets, but I rarely wear necklaces, as they can make me feel like I’m choking. You could say my style is: easy, colorful, flowing, embroidered, and painted island style. With rock band T-shirts thrown in now and then when I’m feeling musical.
Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Ghost were tumbling behind me somewhere, and Butch and Cassidy had run ahead, barking, their tongues hanging out as if they’d forgotten to put them back in. Behind me, my mother and aunts’ daffodils and tulips, ready to bloom, were swaying with the wind.
“Yes. I’m a rebel and I’m getting married. How can that be?”
“You found a biker who matched your coolness. You found love and lust and now you’re going to stand in front of a minister and say ‘I do.’” I grabbed the baggie in my pocket. There were only a few chocolates in there. Mocha. Divinity. Chocolate sprinkles. I was eating them because of the health value. Dark chocolate helps with immunity and all, or something like that.
“Jay Dove Boy is a minister, he got a paper off the internet that says so, and he’s Mack’s best friend from when they were nine years old and he’s going to marry us and make us one. He says it’s the biggest honor of his life and he knows exactly what he’s going to wear: his favorite motorcycle leathers. It’ll be awesome.”
Jules’s real name is Julie, but no one ever calls her that. I started calling her Jules when I first started talking, and it stuck. We don’t look anything alike. I have black hair halfway down my back and golden eyes, she has long blonde hair and the dark brown eyes of my mother and aunts. She’s five eleven, I’m five three.
My sister launched a company ten years ago in Seattle. She did not like school, because she has a mild case of dyslexia and she felt like “a damn failure, and stupid.” She was super popular in school because she is like my mother and aunts: always up for a party, willing to dance, game to laugh. But continually getting poor grades in school no matter how hard she tried, no matter how hard she cried with frustration, was simply too discouraging.
But she was always, from the time she was three, an artist. We couldn’t believe the pictures and portraits she drew. She utterly loved art, and she drew pictures of me all the time with a huge smile that took up most of my face. At three years old she started calling me her “love-sister.”
After high school she worked in a coffee shop in Seattle and created her art at night. She fell in love with motorcycles when she was nineteen because of a boyfriend. She later ditched the boyfriend, not her motorcycle. She painted her own motorcycle with a picture of her as a horse/woman, her long blonde hair flowing, and people loved it. Her business, custom paint jobs for motorcycles, Jules’s Daring Designs, was born.
She’s painted everything on motorcycles from skeletons wearing jeans to flames to the galaxy to people to flowers to plaids and checkerboards to swirls and twirls. Sometimes people want simply one color, pink or blue or red, and she’ll do that. Most of the time, though, they’ll ask for more, and the customer and Jules will create a design together.
She is so talented and has a wait time of six months.
Jules has tattoos. She has a pink rose, which is for me, on her left arm. She said she never thought of me as any other flower than a pink rose. Next to the rose, in a bouquet, is an iris for Aunt Iris, a camellia for Aunt Camellia, and a poppy for our mother. She has a small orca with our dad’s name, Henry, below that.
She has a heart near her privates with an arrow pointing down (don’t ask any questions then I don’t have to answer them); a picture of Rose Bloom Cottage on her left shoulder blade; and her fiancé, Mack, and she got matching tattoos of their two motorcycles together, which are on her right shoulder blade. On her right arm she has a tattoo of Mack’s face, smiling and sweet, and he has a tattoo of her on his left arm, smilin
g and sweet, so when they stand next together, their tattoo faces smile at each other.
My sister has three hoop earrings in each ear. She has a small diamond stud piercing above her top lip. She looks wild and free and men love her. She finds many men annoying and condescending and tells them so.
We are so different, and I so love her. I’m going to be her maid of honor when she gets married this summer right here, on our property, the garden in full bloom, roses everywhere. Her fiancé, burly, huge, big beard, tattoos, six foot six, is a pediatric nurse. The kids love him because they can see his heart, as all kids seem to be able to do.
“Evie,” she gushed. “Hang on to your hat, hang on to your butt, your maid of honor dress is being made.”
“I’ve got ahold of my butt. Not wearing a hat. What does it look like?”
“I’m not telling you! It’s a surprise! Also, I’m pretty sure I know what I’m wearing for my wedding shoes.”
“Heels? Flats?”
“It’s a surprise!” She laughed. “And I know what my cake is going to be like.”
“Should I ask?”
“Nope. It’s a surprise!”
I could hear her glee. That’s all I needed to hear: her glee. She was so excited to marry Mack. I loved the guy. He was a perfect teddy bear for her, a man with a hard childhood who had left home at fifteen and never looked back. Because of his background he has compassion for others, insight into himself and life, and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Jules was his whole world. “She’s my apple pie, Evie,” he told me. “My apple pie.”
And that’s all you need to know when someone is getting married: Does the fiancé think that she’s his whole world? His apple pie? If that answer is a yes, ya got a winner.
“I can’t wait for your wedding, Jules. I’m going to dance and shake my tail.”
“Me too. I’m going to shake my tail. Last night, in bed, after Mack and I, well, you know, and then I started to cry”—she started to cry—“and I told him I couldn’t wait until we were married, and he kissed me and said the same thing, and he’s so good in bed, and I love him and he held me all night long like he always does . . .” She sniffled. “He’s a hugger. He’s like a pillow. He’s like my blanket. He’s warm and snuggly . . . as soon as we get home from work we get right into bed. He makes me feel so much better. After some bang-bang, we get up and he feeds and waters me.” She sniffled. I tried not to laugh. Fed and watered!
“I love him so much, Evie. Last week he bought me a sexy sprite outfit. He knows how much I like sprites.” She blew her nose. “He even bought the wings and the high heels and fishnets.”
I did not know that sprites wore fishnets, but you can learn something each day if you’re lookin’ for it. I listened to my sister tell me all about Mack in bed while I ate my chocolates at the beach so I can be perfectly healthy for the wedding.
Sundance climbed onto my lap. He’s excited about the wedding, too, I’m sure.
* * *
Later that night, after I knocked over not one but two stacks of books in my kitchen nook, I thought of Marco, in a tux, waiting for me by the gazebo, as I walked down the aisle in a wedding dress.
That would never happen.
Oh, heart, calm down. Stop breaking. Eat pie.
Chapter 4
“This mermaid didn’t have a green tail, like all the other mermaids.”
“She didn’t?”
“No. Her tail was the color of all the flowers in your mother’s garden.”
“Purple?”
“Yes.”
“Yellow and gold?”
“Yes.”
“Did she have the colors of roses in her tail?”
“Pink, red, and white.”
“Why was she different?”
“Because she was special. She was a special mermaid with black hair and gold eyes.”
“But I have black hair and gold eyes!”
“She looked a lot like you, only you don’t have a mermaid tail, do you?”
“No. You’re silly.”
“I’m going to tell you the story of the mermaid. Her name was Serafina.”
“Does she swim in our ocean?”
“She does.”
“Where does she live?”
“In her castle, right out there, past our beach. Her garden is made of coral and seashells.”
“Can I see her?”
“You can in your imagination.”
Chapter 5
“What do you mean you’ve never read historical fiction?” I stared at the woman in my bookstore in wonder. “Never?”
She blinked a few times at me in confusion. “Uh. No. Never.”
“What do you read?”
“I read romance.”
“And what else?” I asked. “What other genres?”
“That’s it.”
She was about fifty years old. I was darn near stunned. “You have to be kidding. All you read is romance?” Now, I don’t have anything against romance. I read a few romances a year. They take you out of life and you’re safe in the book: You know everything’s going to work out for this couple in the end. No surprises. But what about variety?
“Well. Uh. Yes.”
She seemed a bit alarmed by my strong reaction. She should be! This was ridiculous! “I’m sorry, but I am not going to let you leave this store until you find a historical fiction book to read. Here.” I pulled out one book, then another, then another. “There’s three books. These are all my favorites. Go to that table right there by the window and try them out. Pick one.” I looked at her sadly and shook my head. “You need to read something new. You can’t read one type of book all of the time, or your brain will drip out of your head and congeal on the floor. Do you want your brain to congeal?”
“Yuck. No. Not today.” She obediently took the books and read the backs, one by one. “I haven’t read anything like this since school.”
“Then it’s time you darn well did.” I crossed my arms and glared at her. “You have to read in different genres. You have to keep learning and thinking and learning and thinking. How do you do that if you read in the same genre all the time? You can’t. It’s impossible.”
I needed a piece of carrot cake. This was unbelievable. Stuck in a rut with reading. That should be illegal. Everybody should read all types of books. In fact, we should have a day off each month where everyone is required to stay home and read and read and eat their favorite cake.
She didn’t seem startled by my exasperation anymore. She seemed intrigued. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
“That’s right you’ll do it. I cannot have someone in my bookstore who is this rigid in their literary thinking.”
She went and sat at a table right by the window, the sunlight streaming in, the tiny island in the ocean beyond a green jewel. I breathed out. I don’t know why I get so mad at people about books, but I do. Books should be treasured. Books should be read as regularly as one brushes one’s own teeth. I read each day before bed. I read when I have free time. I read when I don’t have free time. I read to hold premonitions at bay. I read to laugh. I read for knowledge and information and history. I read to see someone else’s perspective or their lives or their challenges and how they beat the heck out of those challenges.
I brought her lemon tea and a piece of pumpkin cake with cream cheese icing as a peace offering because once I simmered down, I felt guilty. Customers should not be attacked. The woman was deep into one of the books I’d chosen for her, and she barely looked up. I sat at her table and ate a slice of pumpkin cake, too. Pumpkin cake has pumpkin in it, therefore it is part vegetable.
“I’m sorry I got mad at you,” I said. I had calmed down.
“No problem.” She didn’t look up from her book. “Thanks for the pumpkin cake.”
That woman bought all three of the books I suggested. She will be a happier person now that’s she broken out of her literary cell.
* * *
Virginia Al
paca was sick.
She was listless, lying on the ground, not moving much, her eyes dull, but then she would get up, then down, then stand up again. She wasn’t eating. I bent down and gave her a little hug. Virginia is one of the smallest alpacas I’ve seen. She is sweet and petite. “Virginia, what’s wrong?” She turned those tired eyes toward me. “Are you sick?”
Alpaca Joe leaned over her, as if asking the same question, then he turned and spit on the ground. Alpaca Joe’s a spitter. It’s like watching a baseball player with tobacco in his mouth, spitting away. “Yuck, Alpaca Joe,” I told him. He heard me. He spit again and looked at me. Alpaca Joe can be obstinate. “I saw that.”
Virginia Alpaca leaned against me. She was not curious or alert, her normal state. “Okay, Virginia. We have to go and see Dr. Marco.”
I tried to breathe through that tingling, happy thought. I wasn’t glad that my dear Virginia Alpaca was sick, but I was suddenly all a-jittery at the thought of going to see Marco, my handsome vet, who moved here almost a year ago. I called and made an appointment, then called the bookstore and told one of my employees, Tiala, that I would be late.
“You know Maeve is coming in, right, Evie?”
“Shoot. I forgot. I’ll come by.” Maeve is the bookkeeper and accountant. I had all the paperwork here at home. I had worked on it last night, then promised myself a mystery book. I ate a slice of raspberry pie while I tried to figure out who did it. I was wrong!
I pulled on clean jeans, lacy white lingerie, and a flowing white cotton shirt with a slightly too-low V and embroidered red roses on the front. I brushed out the tangles in my hair and pulled on gold hoop earrings and red, gold, and yellow bracelets that Jules bought me when she went to Mexico. I slipped my feet into red flip-flops, put on some of Aunt Camellia’s pink rose lotion called Let Me Love You, and was ready.
I grabbed the paperwork, then tried not to smile and giggle like a fool at the thought of seeing Marco.
It is fortunate that Virginia Alpaca likes to ride in my truck. I put a rope around her neck and asked her to stand up. She refused at first because she is not feeling well, so I had to go and get a treat. That did it. She stood up. Behind us Alpaca Joe spit and followed us out. I shut the gate on him so he couldn’t come, and he bucked and spit more and made grumpy alpaca sounds. He gets anxiety when Virginia Alpaca is gone.