by Kris Radish
Before she can try to answer her own questions, Jane remembers the white envelope and quickly rips it open. Oh! Will this class never end?
The heated leather seats continue to remain warm as Jane pulls down the mirror inside the visor. Maybe if she looks into her own eyes she will see the new woman who just became emotional and actually hugged someone in front of three other people. And why did the moment feel so normal?
Jane is a woman riddled with so many secrets that she feels as if she’s been juggling her entire life. Was it really so hard to let go a little, Jane? And why is it so damn difficult to be honest? Why can’t she admit that she has lost not just her clients but huge doses of her self-confidence? Why can’t she tell them that she still feels winded all these years later from finding out that she was adopted? Why can’t she even tell those women, or anyone, that she’s adopted and it’s affected her entire life? What about the constant wondering about her birth mother and her plan for a new career and a life that will expand beyond what she has ever dreamed possible? What about Derrick and her inability to open herself to him?
It occurs to Jane for the first time that perhaps this class is a good thing. Maybe, even if she and the other women in the class aren’t quite on the same rung of the ladder, they really do have more in common than she has allowed herself to believe. Is that even possible? Did Kit sneak something into her coffee?
Right this moment, Jane is hard-pressed to think of any other women whom she could call and have a cup of coffee or even a glass of her beloved wine with. She wonders if all the so-called friends she had during the past ten-plus years were just hanging around because of the free lunches, spa afternoons when she received a bonus, or because, well, she’s Jane Castoria.
Maybe this is it. Maybe being nice at the meeting and playing the game by someone else’s rules is going to get her through this blip on her life screen. She surely feels good, even if she overexposed a few portions of what the other women might call her heart by being involved and interested during the meeting. And hugging Leah did feel wonderful.
“Jane, it’s okay,” she says out loud, still looking into her eyes, which are illuminated by the tiny white lights that surround the visor. “You did good tonight. Really.”
Jane smiles, shuts the mirror, turns the car off, and walks into the house. It feels so quiet and empty. Compared to Kit’s house with all those photographs on the wall, the candle, that damn flickering light she tried to ignore all evening, and furniture that was more battered than bruised, her house is a glimmering palace. Jane suddenly isn’t sure if that’s good or bad.
Derrick has left the lights on that run along the bottom edge of all the kitchen cabinets. Where did he go? When Jane looks at her diamond-studded watch and sees that it’s past eleven-thirty she starts to look around for a note. There are no messages from him on her cellphone or on the house answering machine. No note in the usual place.
This is almost as odd as Jane’s emotional breakthrough. She hasn’t confronted Derrick yet about her suspicion that he’s seeing someone else. Maybe she was wrong. He’s been quiet but that’s nothing new, and this morning he kissed her goodbye before he left. She stands in the quiet kitchen for a few minutes trying to remember if he said anything about where he might be going. Nothing comes to mind, and then her gaze falls on the wine. Jane walks over to the rack and puts her hand on one of the bottles. It’s cold and smooth, and she pulls it out and reads the label.
There’s no way she can remember where the bottle came from or how long it has been sitting in that lovely horizontal position. It’s a lusty California Zinfandel, and she cradles it for a few minutes, imagining what it would taste like if she opened it up, let it breathe, and then took a sip after she had swirled it in one of her deep-bowled, long-stemmed glasses.
A car passes in front of the house and she leans into the window to see if it’s Derrick pulling into the driveway, but the lights flicker past. Jane closes her eyes, spins the bottle in her hand, places it back in the rack, leaves the kitchen light on, and walks slowly up the long stairs and toward the dark master bedroom.
Grace has just pulled into her own driveway after dropping off Leah. She’s beyond weary and still can’t believe everything that happened at Kit’s house. Talk about spontaneous affection! It wasn’t as if the class had turned into a lovefest, but something had happened. Maybe it was those warm and fuzzy UGG boots.
The tiny one-car garage is so jam-packed with junk that Grace has mostly been parking in the driveway for about three years. Every night when the temperature drops like this, and she has to get out and move something before she can park, she vows to clean out the damn thing and use it as a garage and not as a massive storage bin. The space, like her own head, is probably filled with useless stuff anyway.
She can see a light in the living room and as she opens the front door—already a little upset because Kelli didn’t lock it—she’s hoping that her daughter has gone to bed. No more emotional stuff tonight, please. Grace needs some time to process what has happened and to sit alone somewhere inside her own house.
Kelli is not asleep on the couch, where Grace usually finds her if she comes home late. She turns off the light and tiptoes down the hall. She finds Kelli curled on her side with her reading light still on and the book she must have been reading on the floor. First Grace pulls the covers up and tucks the ends under Kelli’s back. Then she bends down to pick up the book Kelli was reading.
How to Raise Your Mother.
Her heart stops. It comes to a quick halt, as if it has just hit a brick wall, and then starts up again about fifty times faster than it was beating before she read the book title.
Oh, Kelli! Grace sets the book back down on the floor, switches off the light, bends down to kiss her daughter’s hair, which looks like a brown waterfall on the white pillowcase, then quietly leaves the room.
Grace stands outside Kelli’s room for a few moments, and feels as if her emotions have started running over each other. She has so misjudged Kelli and she’s determined to make it up to her. She’s also dying to sneak back into the bedroom and get the book so she can read it herself.
There is a long mirror at the end of the hall framed in cheap dark wood. Grace intends to walk into the kitchen and make herself a cup of warm milk with vanilla, one lovely childhood memory that always comforts her when she’s feeling exhausted inside and out. But as she begins walking she sees herself growing larger in the mirror and then stops in front of it so she can lean in and look into her eyes.
There’s enough light coming in through the front window via the porch light she has not turned off so that she can see herself clearly. There are so many red veins running through both eyes that it looks as if she’s coming off some kind of record-breaking drinking or non-sleeping binge. Her eyebrows are thick, and she realizes that it’s been over a month since she has bothered to narrow them into non-frightening arches. The skin under her bushy eyebrows is sagging so much that there is now a canopy protecting her eyes. There are lines and creases everywhere, and Grace isn’t sure if she should laugh or put a bag over her head.
“This is me,” she says softly. “Take it or leave it, world.”
Maybe it was because they were at Kit’s house, a warm, cozy home, instead of an institutional building. Maybe it was just time for this to happen and everything Dr. Bayer had been trying to get them to do, think, feel, and say finally rose to the top. Maybe everyone recognized the class as the last chance it was meant to be. Maybe they are all as exhausted as she is right this moment.
They had found at least a few common denominators beyond their anger. They all seemed to recognize that, with or without children or motherhood, they had shared emotions, dreams, aspirations. They even joked once, after Leah’s story, about pooling their talents of singing, dancing, joke telling, and Leah’s organizational skills to put on some kind of show to raise money for anger awareness or the women’s shelter.
At first it had been a joke, but the
n Dr. Bayer started hinting that they still had some pretty difficult tasks to perform for her and that there might be a final test or project. That’s when everyone really stopped joking, because they knew Dr. Bayer wasn’t joking, either.
Grace closes her eyes for a moment, when she thinks about how she snuck into the file room at the hospital and looked through Jane’s reams of notes, tests, and personal interviews. She knew that Jane looked familiar, and her snotty attitude was like a red flag indicating Jane was hiding something serious.
Grace hates herself now for crossing a professional line in a way she never thought she could and she has to think of a way not just to forgive herself, but to make it up to Jane. Even as she remains shocked at what she found, at the lies Jane must be carrying around—lies that perhaps add to her own anger, Grace knows she crossed a line herself that should never be crossed.
But even that is fixable.
“As Kit would say, Grace, let ’er rip,” she says, opening her eyes to the same woman, but with an ache for even more change wedged inside her heart.
Grace pushes herself away from the mirror, takes a deep breath, smiles, and has a sudden urge to pick up the phone and call Dr. Bayer to tell her that she’s going to try even harder. And, with that purpose rising inside her like a volcanic eruption, she walks into the kitchen to get her milk.
Before she makes it to the refrigerator, she stops by the kitchen table and bends down in the darkness. She can’t believe what she’s seeing. Kelli has set a cup and the jar of vanilla on the table, in the spot where Grace always sits. There’s a note:
Mom,
You never talk about your Tuesday class. I know where you go and I know it’s hard. I just wanted you to know I love you and I’m sorry for anything I’ve done to make your life harder.
Kelli
Grace sits down, because if she doesn’t she knows she will fall to the floor. She picks up the note, kisses it, and within seconds is using it to wipe a flood of sweet tears from her face.
Then she remembers the unopened envelope, rips it open, reads it, and thinks that this just might be the first day of the rest of her life.
My God it was a night and a half! Kit is mentally and physically exhausted from the class and the conversation and the dozens of revelations, but she’s unable to get to sleep. She has moved all the furniture back into place and made herself about ten pages of mental notes. Clean the carpet and couch. Take down the damn drapes so more light can come into the living room. Brighten up every room with new paint. Apologize again to Peter for being so moody and treating him as if her problems are his fault.
Maybe she’ll turn the house into her second project—her first project being herself. Maybe Peter will help her. Maybe her daughter will show up and help, too. Maybe an elephant will fly out of her left ear. Why not? Now that she has this new, and absolutely fascinating, assignment from Dr. B., Kit is even more charged up.
Kit shuts the dishwasher door and wanders back into the living room to make certain she has picked up everything. She walks past the couch and into the kitchen and decides to sit at the table and have an ice-cold beer. It’s ridiculous, she realizes, because it’s probably twenty degrees outside, but she’s so thirsty she could drink a keg by herself.
There’s not one damn beer in the fridge when she pulls it open. Normally, this might upset her, what with the unwritten family rule that whoever takes the last of anything has to restock or refill. The toilet paper is always the worst. Kit feels as if she’s the only woman in the entire world who ever puts a new roll on the holder. Everywhere she goes, she does this. Restaurants. Gas stations. Other people’s homes. What is up with that?
She closes the refrigerator and heads into the garage, where a stash of beer is always kept, and realizes that she’s really, really tired. It’s one of those exhausted-wanna-drop feelings that make you feel woozy, but her head is spinning from the meeting.
First there was Leah’s story. Kit figured all along that the story must be pretty bad, but she wasn’t prepared for what she heard—the depth of sadness and sacrifice that Leah must have endured, the asinine family demands, and then the mother, of all people, never helping her.
Kit knows one thing for certain, and that is she would do anything, absolutely anything, for her daughter. As she rummages in the back of the frigid garage looking for the beer, she can’t imagine abandoning her rock-picking daughter. She knows that if anyone messed with Sarah her father would turn into Rambo. What kind of people do those things?
Kit is no fool, and she knows some people still live in the Dark Ages, and that there are women, maybe even on her block, who are living as if they have been captured and are being held against their will. She knows that change and chance aren’t always easy, because she has been struggling with those things herself.
And, beyond Leah this past evening, it was as if all of them, herself included, just said to hell with it and did what Dr. Bayer has probably wished they could have done all along. They cooperated and shared and talked openly, and there wasn’t one fight or slap or evil word exchanged. Or was I dreaming? Kit wonders. Am I that tired?
She locates a twelve-pack, hoists it onto her hip as if it were a baby, and all but runs back into the warm house. She sets it down on the floor in front of the refrigerator, and before she pulls open the door she sees her reflection in its smooth surface. She has one hand on the door handle and suddenly she can’t move. The broken light above the sink is still flickering, and when she leans in it’s as if her own eyes are blinking on and off.
The stopping and standing still is what pushes her into a realization that is as simple and pure as the first snowfall of winter. Time. These days following her mother’s death have been a gift of time. Time to think and grow and prune off the ends of her life that she has let grow and fester like a tangled root in a flourishing garden. And what has she done?
Kit looks into her eyes so deeply she thinks she can see the inside of her brain. What is wrong with you? All these days and weeks, and now months, when you have buried the grief over the death of your mother in anger. All these moments when you could have focused on yourself and who you need to be now, for you and for Peter. All this time, so damn much time, when you could have designed a new life plan, thought of this change as a sweet gift, and let go of all the weight you’ve been carrying around your entire life. All the chances you’ve had to finish reading the note. You are such a baby!
Kit closes her eyes and drops her head against the cold door. She’s suddenly filled with a confused mixture of hope for what she can still do and be, and sadness for what she has given away, what she has been on the verge of losing. The flickering light suddenly stops and decides to give it up, and the kitchen is plunged into total darkness.
Kit pulls open the refrigerator door, throwing light into the room, places the beer on a shelf, takes one for herself, closes the door, and opens the bottle by using the handle on the door. This makes her smile. The first time she caught her daughter doing the same thing, she yelled at her. Then she started doing it all the time because it was so easy and convenient. Just like time. It’s right there, so use it.
She closes the door, checks to make sure the other doors are locked and the front porch light is on in case Peter comes home early. Then she walks up the stairs, sits on the top step in the dark, and realizes that her head is also spinning with ideas, plans, and possibilities.
Tomorrow Kit may start a new everything. “May” being a key word, because she’s also remembering what her oldest brother once told her. Life, he said, is kind of like a case of beer. You have to take it one bottle at a time.
40
It Ain’t Over Until
Olivia is pacing in the kitchen and Phyllis is having a hell of a time trying to keep up with her. The eat-in kitchen has a small table in the center that Olivia uses for storage more than anything else, but for the past forty-five minutes she’s been using it as the center of her racetrack.
Phyllis is so confu
sed she’s thinking about barking. What is happening around here? Late nights and extra treats all the time, and Olivia hugging her and whispering right in her ear. She’s gotten down on the floor and all but crawled into the dog bed three times in just the past few days.
Now it’s this jogging in the kitchen thing. Doesn’t this woman realize how short Phyllis’s legs are? Phyllis would almost rather be outside, where it’s snowing lightly, than running around the table like this. She is absolutely exhausted and totally confused.
And not unlike Olivia, who has been pondering what to do with the latest bag of befuddlement from her Tuesday-night warriors. Why in the world she didn’t hang up her professional hat in September before she got the bright idea to experiment with these women is now completely beyond her; she’s pacing in her kitchen like a woman who has gone off her manic medicine.
It’s Saturday afternoon. Usually this is the best day of the week for Olivia and Phyllis. Phyllis gets to go in the car and stick her nose out of the passenger-side window. The smells! The dogs she sees at the stoplights! The tiny pieces of hamburger she gets when they stop for lunch! The long park trail where they walk for at least two hours!
There has been none of that today, and Phyllis has about had it with Olivia’s endless nervous energy and this horrendous disruption of the normally glorious Saturday schedule.
Phyllis barks once when Olivia rounds the corner and accidentally knocks over a stack of magazines.
Olivia is absolutely stunned. Then she stops, which is exactly what Phyllis wanted.
“What?” Olivia almost shouts.
What? Stop! Phyllis barks again, immediately setting a new record for the number of barks in one hour.
Olivia is out of breath and when she looks down at Phyllis, who is absolutely not wagging her tail, but whose mouth is open and whose tongue is dripping because she is so damn hot from running in the kitchen, she realizes what she has been doing.