All About Evie (ARC)

by Cathy Lamb

  “Get in the truck,” I told them, pointing at the truck.

  They turned to get in the truck.

  “Tiala,” I called. “I’ll be right back.”

  She laughed. “Okay, goat lady.”

  I opened the front door of the cab and helped them in. Then I drove home, Mr. Bob’s and Trixie’s heads out the window, the wind running through their fur.

  I swear they were smiling.

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  People waved at them as we drove by.

  “You’re naughty goats,” I said.

  They did not seem daunted.

  Each day I walk from Rose Bloom Cottage to my own home through the flowers as they bloom during the spring, summer, and fall: Daisies. Tulips. Irises. Columbine. Lavender. Lilacs.

  Rows of marigolds. Jupiter’s-beard. Foxgloves. Roses.

  I find peace in the flowers. Who knew that my grandmother, a woman who was kind and filled with love and also filled with mental illness, would create something that I, two generations later, would wander through to calm my mind, soothe my nerves, and rest my almost ever-present anxiety as I await the next premonition?

  There are painted Adirondack chairs all over. Purple. Blue.

  Green. Red. My mother says that chairs belong in gardens so that people can “find their own splendor amidst the petals.” So I will often sit in one chair, then another, then a different one the following night, or sit in the gazebo.

  I have never had a premonition while in the garden. It’s as if the delicate colors, the petals themselves, block it out. I don’t know how, or why, that would happen, but it does. How could our willow trees, or the roses that bloom all over the trellises and verandas, or the purple wisteria vine that winds up the gazebo, or the lily pads in the pond, or the secret garden room with the oak tree in the middle of it, stand in the way of premonitions that can hit me at any other time, in any way?

  Maybe it’s the tranquility. Maybe it’s the quiet. Maybe it’s being alone. Maybe it’s my grandmother’s loving spirit, still here, surrounding me like a protective hug.

  At the end of the season, when the flowers are dying, I’ll still sit in those Adirondack chairs or drink coffee on the bridge or lie on the yellow bench overlooking the meadow. Even in November, December, January, and February, somehow the garden protects me. It’s as if the memory of the flowers, or maybe the

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  bulbs that lie under the ground, the perennials that will pop up again, have filled the air with protection. But just in case, in the winter my mother always fills two huge barrels on my deck with purple pansies.

  Lining the walkway between her house and mine, she’ll plant more pansies. My mother, aunts, and I have also planted tons of crocuses. Purple. White. Yellow. Those are the first flowers up, and when I see those flowers, I always heave a sigh of relief.

  They know me, my mother and aunts, and they know the sweet, inexplicable umbrella of safety that their garden offers me, via their mother, a woman of French and Greek descent, a woman of innate kindness who jumped off a cliff, her own demons chasing her into the air.

  Marco came in a week later, on a Wednesday, to buy books.

  “Hi, Marco.” I smiled on automatic, so happy to see him.

  Then I was struck by the premonition I’d had of him, and me, and that cooled me way down. I shivered. I actually felt that shiver wind its way down my spine.

  “Hi, Evie.” He came to stand in front of me in his full masculine, healthy, manly way and smiled. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine.” I was so glad I’d washed my hair that morning.

  Plus, I’d put on my best jeans and a tighter blue shirt with white roses embroidered in lines down the front. It was a tad low cut, thank heavens. Maybe my lacy pink bra would show! “Can I help you find a book?”

  “Yes. Please. I need a few books. I’m thinking history, a biography, and something funny.”

  “So let’s start with history. Here’s our history section.” I turned. I hoped my butt didn’t look too big, but it is what it is, my butt. Who am I to deprive myself of pie? Boring that would be. Plus, it’s what I look forward to every night as I am alone, again, with my books: Pie. What is that saying? The more the cushion, the better the pushin’?

  “What time period are you most interested in today?”

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  He liked World War II, but he also liked learning about the Depression era and how families and individuals survived.

  We had a professional book conversation, which I loved because of my obsession with books and all things nerdy. I probably told him way more than he wanted to know. I could not seem to close my mouth and stop my stupid talking.

  We then went over to biographies and he picked up one on Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer, after a long discussion we both enjoyed. At least I hope he enjoyed it. He was smiling at me. I probably droned on too long then, too. Then we headed to the humor section. I read a lot of humor because it helps me calm down.

  We pulled a couple. He bought five books. I gave him a discount, but he refused. “Look, Evie, you bring your animals to me, I buy my books from you.”

  He asked about my animals and we chatted, and I insisted that he have a piece of marionberry pie, and I had one, too, and we ate in the café and drank blackberry tea. I hoped he would try to look down my low-cut embroidered shirt, but he didn’t.

  I told myself that this pie would not replace my evening pie, as pie is a fruit, therefore, nutritious, and I don’t like to upset my nightly routines. Then he left and I went to my office overlooking the bay, knowing my employees could handle everything. I sank into my seat at my desk, pulled my arms over my head, and moaned.

  I wanted that man, I did.

  No, I told myself. You may not have him.

  When I was ten years old I had a premonition about a mor-bidly obese woman on our street in the suburbs of DC who was always screaming at her husband and six kids. Three times I saw Gloria Yateman slap her kids across the face. I told my parents, and they called the police and Children’s Services. The police and Children’s Services did nothing, despite repeated calls from other neighbors/teachers who saw her hitting her kids, chasing them, wielding a belt like a lasso, and observing the obvious neglect when the kids were at school.

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  One time I saw Gloria try to run over her husband with their old clunky car. He was a beaten-down, exhausted man. I saw her slug him in the gut, and he bent over, not moving.

  I knew the kids. The second oldest was named Coraline. She was in my class. She would come to school with bruises on her face. I heard her tell the teacher that she fell on the sidewalk or she crashed on her bike or she fell out of a wagon her brother was pulling.

  They were all lies. The kids didn’t have bikes. They didn’t have wagons. They were all pale, unsmiling, scared, bruised kids. Especially Toby. He was in kindergarten and he still didn’t speak. He had a dazed expression and clung to Coraline and her older brother, Rhett. Rhett was a super nice kid. One time someone was bullying Coraline, calling her “skin and bones” and “dumb dumb dumb!” and “retarded,” and Rhett shoved him straight into the brick wall of the school and calmly told him he would beat his brains out if he picked on his sister again, and the bullying stopped. Rhett was a gentle but angry kid because of what was going on at home.

  Their yard wasn’t taken care of, and the gray paint was peel-ing off the house. I had been inside the house only one time, when Coraline said her mother wasn’t home because she was shopping for new clothes. The house was a pit. There was stuff all over, in piles, you could hardly walk. Nowadays, we call that hoarding. Then, there was no label.

  When we heard Gloria’s car in the driveway, Coraline cried,

  “Oh no! Get out, Evie. Go out the back! Don’t let our mom see you,” and she and Rhett pushed me out a window and begged me to stay hidden as I left their property. I didn’t leave, though. I watched through the back window. The
mother came lumbering in, heavy, plodding, her hair all over like a porcupine’s, drunk.

  Gloria started swearing at her kids. She raised her hand to hit one of the younger ones, and Rhett caught her arm. She turned red as she swung her other arm through the air and cuffed Rhett as Coraline pushed the whimpering, frightened younger kids to the bedrooms.

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  Gloria saw all the kids running and she thundered after them, swearing and yelling, her body rolling from side to side. Rhett darted after her, tried to stop her, tried to distract her.

  In the corner of the room, I saw a baby. Motionless. I hadn’t seen him before. I didn’t even know there was a baby. He was the loneliest baby I had ever seen. It was like he already knew that crying made things worse.

  When Gloria came hobbling back in, dragging the fourth kid by the hair, still swearing, then tried to stuff rotten bread in his mouth for “complaining about being hungry, you ungrateful brat,” I had a premonition: Gloria was going to die.

  She was going to die wearing the same pink-flowered muumuu she had on that day. She might die later that day. It was going to be at night. She was driving her car, the car was swerving, as she drank straight out of a bottle. She was going to crash into a tree on a quiet, dark street out in the country. I saw her suffering. I saw her legs trapped. I saw her crying. I saw her bleeding. I saw the blood running down her face. I saw her yelling for help, trying to twist her bulk. I saw night turning into day, and she was still alive, but barely. Then I saw her close her eyes, giving up, her face scrunched in a mask of pain, sober at last, and take her last breath.

  I did nothing to interfere in that premonition. A few nights later Gloria crashed her car wearing the pink-flowered muumuu and died.

  There was no funeral. Coraline’s dad, Buxton, had his wife cremated the next day. Buxton took a week off from work. He was a brainiac engineer doing something in the Defense Department and had been beaten up repeatedly by his wife.

  Two days after her death, he had the kids take all of their mother’s clothes out of her closets and dressers and bag them up for Goodwill. He had the kids go through all their things that didn’t fit anymore, too, toys that no one wanted, furniture of no use, and they donated everything. They went through the house and bagged up all of the odd, useless things their mother collected and tossed the junk in a huge Dumpster he had brought in.

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  When the neighbors saw what was going on, we all went over to help. We joined members of Buxton’s family he hadn’t seen in years because Gloria wouldn’t allow visitors. The Big Clean Out was “in lieu” of a funeral. There were about thirty people there.

  Everyone went through the yard and tossed out old and broken furniture, piles of scrap wood, broken lawn mowers, a tumble-down shed, and other junk that Gloria hoarded. Buxton opened the garage, and they started tossing things out from there, too, including two useless cars that were hauled away and two de-crepit trailers on the side of the house. Three giant bins were towed in and out over three days.

  By the time we were all done, the house had been mostly cleared.

  Buxton ordered pizza for all of us, and the kids’ mouths dropped open. “Really?”

  “Really.” Buxton smiled, and you could tell the man hadn’t had a lot of smiles in his life for a long time.

  We had a neighborhood pizza party right there.

  The improvements continued. The refrigerator and pantry lost the locks that their mother had fastened on them, and the shelves were filled with food. The kids bought clothes that fit.

  Buxton had the filthy carpets ripped out and replaced with wood floors. The windows were washed. The dishwasher hadn’t worked for a year, so he had a new one installed. The new oven worked well, too. He had the house scraped and painted yellow, at my mother’s suggestion, and a weekly housekeeper was hired.

  All the kids, including the baby, started to smile and laugh, and they played outside now, with Buxton and with the other neighborhood kids.

  What was wrong with Gloria? She was an alcoholic. She was a hoarder. Was there an underlying mental health or personality disorder there? Probably. But that doesn’t make her easier to live with, and she made everyone around her miserable, scared, starving, and mentally ill themselves. That was what led me to do nothing. I had let Gloria die. I did not warn her. I did not warn her husband.

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  It has always stuck with me, but I don’t regret it at all.

  But that’s the disaster of premonitions: You actually have to think, and analyze, to determine when, and how, you’re going to help someone . . . or not.

  Try figuring that one out when you’re a kid. No wonder I’m screwed up.

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  “What did Serafina have to give King Koradome in order to get out of the cage and help her brothers get out, too?”

  “Serafina would have to give up her colorful mermaid tail to King Koradome, scale by scale.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Yes. King Koradome wanted to punish Serafina for having something so beautiful. He had always wanted her shiny, luminescent scales, so he cast a spell on her. She had to agree to the spell in order to get her brothers out of the cage.

  “Every single time Serafina did something kind for someone else, a scale would fall off, swim through the sea, around the coral reefs and the sunken ships and the mountain ridges, and King Koradome would catch it in his greedy hand. He wanted to collect the scales one by one. He also wanted her family and her friends to watch her losing her special tail, then they would remember who was the most powerful merman of all.”

  “He’s mean.”

  “Yes, and he knew that Serafina would not be able to stop doing nice things for people, helping them, no matter what it cost her.”

  “Was he right? Did Serafina stop helping people so she could keep her tail?”

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  Chief Allroy was hiking and fell. He broke both legs. No one could find him at first. We all went out searching for him. Finally, right before the sun hid beneath the horizon, twenty-five-year-old Devonna Shepherd, who everyone says has the sight of an eagle, spotted him. He was way down a ravine, hardly moving. He did, however, raise a hand in hello, then passed back out.

  He was helicoptered to Seattle. He was in bad shape but would make a full recovery eventually.

  “Such a shame,” my mother said that night at my house, where we were eating chocolate croissants that I’d bought from the bakery that makes all my delicious bookstore cakes.

  “We’ll have to bring him—”

  “Shhh!” Aunt Camellia said, trying to be discreet as she nodded her head vigorously in my direction.

  I rolled my eyes and put my purple rose teacup back down on my butcher block table. Sundance barked at Aunt Camellia as if he were in on the joke. Butch and Cassidy laid on my mother’s and Aunt Iris’s feet. Those dogs shifted their loyalties with my mother and aunts around. It was a tad annoying.

  “What?” my mother said. “The pot will help with the pain.”

  “Those dang drug companies made those painkillers a whisper away from heroin,” Aunt Iris said, so angry. She ran a hand through her short white hair. “A whisper! A millimeter! A feather! Profits before people. That’s why all those good people got addicted. You want the chief to get addicted to something a

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  hop and a scotch away from heroin? Neither do I. Pot is the practical answer.”

  “We can put it in his cookies,” Aunt Camellia said, “and add a blessing.” She spread her palms up and out, as if catching blessings.

  “I can’t even believe I’m hearing this,” I said. Mars jumped on my lap. Venus jumped on a stack of books in the family room that were propped against my pink rose wallpaper wall. I knew he was going to knock them over. Yep. They tumbled down, and he hissed. “You’re talking about making the police chief stoned.”

  My mother and aunts studied me curiously, then Aunt Ir
is said, looking straight at me, as if I weren’t even there, “She’s a little too Goody Two-shoes, isn’t she?”

  “I think she needs naked yoga,” Aunt Camellia said. “Communing with grace from above will help her soul to relax, the stars a balm against her almost sanctimonious angst.”

  “It was her father,” my mother said. “He always followed all the rules.”

  “I’m sitting right here, Mom, Aunts,” I said. “Eating croissants with no pot in them.”

  “She does get snippy,” Aunt Iris said.

  I rolled my eyes. “What are you doing with the money, anyhow? You don’t need it.”

  “We do need it!” my mother exclaimed.

  “Why?”

  “Antarctica!” the three of them said together. Then they laughed.

  “What do you mean, Antarctica?” Sundance put his head in my lap. It didn’t bother Mars. They’re friends.

  “We’re going to Antarctica for a visit,” my mother said.

  “And we’re going to make special Antarctica hats. Warm ones!”

  “I can’t wait to see polar bears,” Aunt Camellia said. “If I die and come back as an animal, I want to be a polar bear. Majestic, strong, wise. Also, they have sharp teeth, a warm white coat, and a strong bite.”

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  A strong bite? Aunt Camellia wanted a strong bite? Did she have cannibalistic tendencies?

  “I want to study the weather,” Aunt Iris said. “The temperature during the day versus the night and how it shifts through the seasons. I’m interested in the ocean currents, the animals who live and survive in Antarctica, and what’s underneath the layers of ice in terms of billions of years of history on that continent. I want to know who came first to explore Antarctica.

  Did they freeze to death and die? Who came next? I want to know about the effects of global warming. They better have presentations and videos to watch so I can learn something onboard.”

  . . . and there was the smart one whose mind freely, but sensibly, roams the planet.