by Cathy Lamb
Her garden, with its pathways, separate rooms, trellises, and patios, has been featured in numerous magazines. She has two trellises full of honeysuckle, and the reason behind it makes me sad.
Her home is a piece of utter peace.
Peace in the Hollywood Hills.
It was endlessly sad that Brooke wrecked that peace. She was glass smashing through glass.
I hadn’t seen Brooke in years.
I didn’t expect it to be peaceful.
Brooke cried when she opened my mother’s front door and saw me, the fountain trickling behind us, the trellis overhead dripping with pink bougainvillea.
I tried to harden my heart to her, there on my mother’s doorstep, to toughen up, so I wouldn’t be hurt again, sucked back into her miserable life, her troubles, her drug addiction, her lies, because I knew I would collapse under the weight of it if I did.
I tried to see her dispassionately, or at least with the anger I felt toward her for breaking up our family, for leaving Tate, for not being a sister to me.
I tried to summon up some of that righteous, roaring anger and piercing resentment as the wind whistled through the jacaranda trees.
I could not.
Her face was swollen on one side, one green eye almost shut. She’d had stitches. Her body was thin, her hair was thin, her clothes were thin. Her life was thin, paper thin, as if it hung by a feather of a dying bird. It was she who had lost out. She had lost out on Tate, our family, a family of her own. All those years of her life, ruined.
I threw out my arms and she hugged me close, her body shaking, her tears a steady stream pouring from her eyes.
“I have missed you so much, Brooke.”
She said, “I missed you, too,” but I could hardly understand it through her sobs.
Brooke appeared to be completely sober, but she looked half-dead, a tired skeleton with skin and dried, dead-looking auburn hair.
“It has not been a pleasant time,” Brooke said, a wry understatement. “It’s a shipwreck time of life.”
I put my teacup down on my mother’s kitchen table. The table had been a gift from one of her co-stars, Blake Montorio. She had chosen him out of three other hopefuls to be on Foster’s Village. He’d made his mark on the show before the manipulative Elsie had him locked away in an insane asylum for five years. In real life he’d gone on to a successful career in movies. He’d been grateful ever since.
Brooke traced one of the carvings in the table with her finger. The table, long enough for ten, had been made by a Santa Fe artist especially for my mother. We called it The Table of Witches. It was a blend of oranges, yellows, reds, blues, and greens.
My mother had told Blake of our witchly past, and the artist had painted pictures of women with auburn-colored hair in bold dresses with stars and hearts high up in the branches of trees, a half moon shining in one corner, a group of white stars in another. The trees looked alive, their branches twisting and turning, entwined with one another, the witches dancing across the bridges and arcs. It was magnificent.
“It’s a shipwreck time of life and Brooke’s having a bad hair day,” my mother drawled. “Look at her locks.”
I shook my head at my mother. “We’re getting into that now? She’s had a shipwreck time. I’m not worried about her tangles.” I was horrified, sickened by Brooke’s appearance, though I’d seen her in this state before. You don’t get “used to” seeing your sister beat up. I reached for Brooke’s hand, chilly cold to the touch, and squeezed it.
“Um . . .” Brooke said, her voice hoarse as she pushed a trembling hand through her lank hair. “I left my . . . uh . . . my ex-boyfriend before rehab and he disagreed with my leaving, so when I was released from rehab, and he was later paroled out of jail, he came and found me and rearranged part of my face. I then went to the women’s shelter.”
“I took her to the doctor.” My mother’s face was ashen, but she was trying hard to regain her sassiness. “We went to see a handsome doctor and all Brooke wanted to do was talk about the bruises on her face, the cracked ribs, the stitches she needed in two places, and the red line she had growing up the side of her leg toward her heart that could have killed her.”
“Brooke—” I felt faint. I gripped my teacup. We were all having orange herbal tea and spinach mushroom omelets, but no one was eating.
“Brooke’s conversation wasn’t engaging, it wasn’t . . . inviting, if you know what I mean,” my mother reprimanded, her coiffed bob swinging. “It was a poor choice of topic. The doctor was very handsome. No wedding ring. I asked him if he was married, he said no, and I said to him, ‘I know of a girl for you.’ ”
I leaned toward my mother, aghast. “You didn’t!”
“She did,” Brooke said. “Mom, what else did you want me to talk about with him?”
My mother sighed, impatiently, but I knew it was an act. She was flattened by the semi-deathly state of her daughter and was using wry humor and false bravado to handle her own emotions. It was the way she’d gotten through this mess and through the varied tragedies in her life. My mother plucked at her white silk shirt and white pencil skirt, designer wear, for sure, her feet clad in Manolo Blahnik. “You could have asked him out.”
My jaw dropped, and my eyes connected with Brooke’s one unbeaten eye. Brooke was all squished down, a broken bird whose wings had been ripped out.
“You have to be kidding, Mom. You wanted me to get a date? I’m a former drug addict. We don’t usually”—she put her fingers up for quotes—“date.”
“A proper date.” She waved a finger at Brooke. “One who will treat you nice, take you to the symphony or tea on Sunday afternoons or to Maui for a luau, and not bash your face up and ruin your ribs and cut you with a knife.”
Ugh.
“Mom, I was in the doctor’s office, on a hard, padded, brown table wearing a blue sheath thing that opened up for the world to see my butt and my bruises, and I was supposed to turn on the charm? Flirt? Be suggestive, seductive? Gee. I could have batted my eyelashes out of my one good eye.”
Ah. There was Brooke, the funny one. She winked at me with the one unbeaten eye, it was a weak wink, but it was there.
“You should not have shown him your ass, you are right there, daughter. There’s nothing to it anymore, no curves, and men like curves. Take a gander at your sister. See her boobs and butt. She flows. Men want that flow. You need to put on weight and get some flow. I have an amazing cook and she’ll have you all fattened up in no time, then you can go back and ask him out.”
“Gee, Mom. I wasn’t thinking of dating, or hitting on the doctor while he was loading me up with massive doses of antibiotics and his nurse was sticking an IV up my arm, after stitching my face up. I don’t know why.”
My mom wagged a perfectly manicured nail and arched a perfect eyebrow. “Never pass on an opportunity to bring a gentleman into your life with whom you can picnic, receive bouquets and jewelry, and play in the waves.”
Her comments were so ludicrous, as she meant them to be, that I finally laughed. My sister and a picnic, a symphony, playing in the waves? Clearly there had been none of that, and there she was, in my mother’s home at The Table of Witches, the first time I’d seen her in years, a complete and total mess, and my mother was lecturing her about getting a date.
Brooke tapped her fingers on the table. “Maybe I could have invited him on our first date to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. He would have been impressed. Or Alcoholics Anonymous. Or to see my counselor, where I could reveal my colorful past.”
“Her hair is a mess, as you can see, Jaden,” my mother went on. “It needs highlighting and cutting and good Lord, Brooke, you could not clean your hair? When she first arrived, I washed it for her, Jaden. I think spiders and webs and frogs were in it.”
“I don’t think frogs,” Brooke said calmly, through split, swollen lips.
“There were!” My mother pointed in the air. “And you need to do your raggedy nails and you need a facial to smooth things up and out, too.�
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“A facial is not going to cover up the bruises, Mom, which I think are now electrifying puce, magenta, and violet colored.”
“You do have a rainbow face,” I observed.
“Yes, a rainbow.”
“You need new teeth,” my mother said.
I peeked at my sister’s teeth. Beige, missing one, chipped. “New teeth.”
She said, “I did a number on those, didn’t I?”
“It’s not exactly a Farrah Fawcett smile, dear,” my mother said. “It would have been hard to attract the doctor with those viperous brown things, or even an insect repellent tradesman, but if you’re truly through with drugs, my gift to you will be new teeth.”
“It’s okay, Mom—”
“It is not okay! No one needs viper teeth, and let’s get you some new clothes,” my mother drawled, using her only personal weapon against this tidal wave of horror. “Rodeo Drive, here we come!”
Brooke bent her head and cried, her tears tracking straight on down her pale, bony face, and not because of an offered shopping trip on Rodeo Drive. “Thank you, Jaden, for coming, and thanks, Mom. It’s nice to be here.”
“And thank you,” my mother said, her diamond earrings swinging, “for never wearing that outfit again in your life. It does nothing for your figure. Nothing.”
I caught Brooke’s eye.
“Please, darling, I’ve taught you better. Sloppy jeans, stained shirt, no figure, no jewelry, a non-modern haircut, if you’ve had a haircut in years it doesn’t show, and no makeup. No lipstick. It’s a sin, a cardinal sin!”
“You’re right, Mom. I’ve sinned. I’ve got a petticoats-on-fire sort of problem with my personal image.”
“You’re a Bruxelle. We dress,” my mother insisted. “You are simply not fashionable, not vogue, or even hip in a drudge sort of way.”
There we were, in my mother’s home, the fountains trickling, the California wind puffing through, a pile of herbs, oranges, and lemons on my mother’s counter, and she was criticizing my beat-up, drug-addicted sister’s outfit and calling her not fashionable.
“Some wear couture better than others. Some neglect their manicures and pedicures.” My mother stared pointedly at Brooke and we all laughed. “Some don’t understand the value of a bit of Botox.” She patted her cheekbones.
I could tell Broke hadn’t laughed in a long time. Maybe years.
“I do have one thing of value, though.” Brooke pulled her necklace out of her shirt. “I still have the three charms. These are the only things I haven’t lost or sold over the years.”
I could tell my mother was overcome with a brick of emotion but trying hard not to show it. She pulled out her charm necklace, so I did, too. For a moment, we three sat there, the scent of lemons and oranges in a bowl on the counter swirling around us.
“Enough talk,” my mother declared, sniffling. “We’re going to the spa! Brooke’s makeover begins today, and none too soon, if I do say so myself! Lord above, she needs one!”
My mother is a millionaire but I have rarely accepted any of her wealth. I do have an inheritance from my father that initially went to my mother, which she generously passed on to Caden and me. She has never given Brooke money. I have not used the inheritance.
I have accepted from her, obviously, her invitation to live in Faith’s/Grandma Violet’s/her house. That was an enormous gift and meant that I didn’t have a mortgage. She also insisted on pouring Tate the basketball court and she insisted, when Tate was young, on paying for a nanny when I was at work or in school, and all medical bills that weren’t picked up by insurance.
“He’s my grandson, Jaden. Allow me to help.” I did, and I was grateful. We were raising Tate together.
But my mother’s money has padded our lives, I can’t deny it. We all go on splendid vacations a couple of times a year. We are always welcome in her home in the Hollywood Hills. And she knows the best spa in Los Angeles and can pay for it.
We were there for hours. Hot rock massages, facials, steam rooms, manicures and pedicures, haircuts and highlights. Champagne, tiny layered sandwiches, and chocolate mousse.
I tried to lock out all thoughts of Ethan and his brown cinnamon eyes and my sister’s beaten-up eye and relax.
It was glorious.
Two nights after I returned home, still reeling from another alarming, frightening conversation I’d had with Brooke on the patio of my mother’s home, there was a winter windstorm. It knocked down trees all over our area, even some old ones that had withstood many storms in the past, including several on our ten acres.
I would miss those trees. I imagined all the women in my family who have lived here and watched those same trees change with the seasons, the green leaves turning to burnished oranges, burgundy reds, butterscotch yellows, then dropping off, snow and ice covering the branches. The trees would bud again in the spring, green leaves, pink and white flowers. I imagined all the times that Faith had walked among them, with Grace, talking, remembering....
It was under a tree whose branches seemed to stretch a hundred feet out that my mother told Brooke and me, on a hot summer’s day, how Faith and Grace became involved in the Underground Railroad.
“It started with the whipping of a slave. Faith and Grace were at a mansion owned by a hoity-toity woman who was ordering dresses from them.” My mother held her charms in her fingers, as if even thinking about the whipping hurt her.
I pulled my arms around my skinned knees, my tennis shoes muddy from running through the poppy field, while Brooke put her head in our mother’s lap and shut her eyes against the rays of the sun.
“His arms were tied above his head by a rope to a tree branch, his back arching in and out, head thrown back, screaming, his screams racing around the plantation, the white-columned mansion, and the magnolia and oak trees. The overseer, a skinny, short man with a leather hat, brought the whip snaking through the air again and again.”
My mother sighed, so sad, all these years later. “Faith and Grace ran out to stop it, but they knew they were only stopping one particular incident. They heard about other brutal plantation owners, how the slave women were used and abused, how children were sold away from their parents, how plantation owners even sold their own half-black children on the auction block.
“These two women, women who had been coddled and spoiled their whole lives until escaping onto that ship to come to America, decided they would not stand by and watch. They couldn’t. Both knew slavery was a sin, and to do nothing was participating in the sin. They joined the Underground Railroad, hiding frantic, starved, desperate slaves beneath the floor of their shop.”
“Wow. They were like Wonder Women,” Brooke said.
“That was really brave,” I said, awed.
“It was. Women need to be brave, don’t you forget that, Jaden and Brooke. And sometimes you have to fake being brave, until the bravery is real. Faith and Grace did their spells, they prayed, they sold their naughty, sweet nothings in their shop, and it went well for a while.” My mother’s fingers were tight around those charms again. “Until those two got caught.”
Tate’s first pre-season scrimmage against another school did not go well.
He did not start, which was a given.
He played two minutes of the first quarter. I say this with love, but he looked gawky and confused out there in his orange and black uniform. He was outrun by his opponent. His defense was . . . not so good. He basically ended up following his opposing player, instead of trying to get the ball. He missed a shot, missed a pass.
Now, he’d been in practice, but a true game, with fans, noise, the other kids, this was a whole new environment.
But the worst was what I knew, and feared, would happen. Tate endured catcalls from the kids in the audience rooting for our opponents. “Alien Head . . . Monster . . . Dumb ass . . . what’s wrong with your head, buddy?”
A group of kids about twenty feet away from me in the bleachers was particularly nasty. One yelled out, “Shoot
again, elephant man!” when Tate air-balled a shot. The last of many heckling comments, “Hey! Goon! Are you a person?” did it for me, I marched across the bleachers, stood in front of those boys, and said, in a polite tone, “Look here, pencil dicks. That’s my son out there. Clam it up. No one wants to hear what you have to say.”
Most of them were cowed and they dropped their heads, but not one of them. There’s always a wisecracker. “I want to hear what I have to say, lady. Your kid has two heads.” He smirked at me. Smirked. I hate smirks.
I leaned in close. “Yeah, he has a big head. That doesn’t mean you should be making fun of him.” And then I skated into meanness, as I can do, quick as a lick, when Tate is being attacked. “But you have purple acne, a nose like a toilet plunger, and a wimpy voice. We all have things to work on now, don’t we?” I leaned in close. “Now you can close that gaping buck-toothed mouth of yours, or I can stand in front of you all night and stare down your toilet-plunger nose, which is it?”
He gulped.
“Lovely. I see we have an agreement.”
I went back to my seat.
Caden had come up the bleachers behind me. He asked, “What happened there?”
I told him. I pointed at the obnoxious kids. He dropped Hazel in my arms who was wearing an M&M costume, as were Harvey and Heloise. He stomped over to the boys, the bleachers shaking, and they ran out, Damini stomping behind Caden. She yelled, “Assholes!”
The game continued. Caden, Damini, and I all cheered for Tate and his team. The M&M’s jumped around. Tate played in the third quarter with the same results, except he had two passes intercepted and seemed utterly flustered about how to get around the guy pressing him on defense. Tate was pulled out after he tossed, and that would be the word, tossed not passed, the ball away again. The other team took off with it, and scored.
I was relieved when the bell rang and so was Caden, who exhaled. “I’m going to do something to help. I am. I gotta do something.”