“Lady Tremaine. You know, the wicked stepmother.” Ben remained silent, and I groaned. “She was so selfish sometimes. Often.”
“She definitely was.”
“I wish she’d fought for us; why didn’t she?” I’d asked Leah, Dad, and Bryony question after question about that time in our lives, but no one could satisfy my thick layers of hurt and doubt.
“I think she tried, Reese, remember? Dad told us—”
“But she was such a steamroller; how could she not have tried harder? It was always about her way, her plan, her—” As quickly as it had spiked, my anger dropped, and I stopped. “We’ll never know and that sucks on a whole other level.” I sighed. “I’m mad at Dad too, you know.” But my voice lacked conviction.
“I know,” Ben said softly and cleared his throat. “I’m trying to let it go. What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about trying out New York City.”
“Remember when we met up in NYC over New Year’s in college?” His laugh filled the line. We’d been to Madison Square Garden, taken a walk in Central Park, paid our respects to the 9/11 memorial, skated at Rockefeller Center, and watched the ball drop in Times Square with a million other people.
“How could I forget?” We’d eaten hot dogs from street vendors, drunk cappuccinos from the local cafés, and waited in line for our cupcake from Magnolia Bakery in the West Village.
“We really did New York.”
“It was amazing.”
“I thought the whole experience was overrated.” I could hear his grimace over the phone.
“And I loved it. The lights, the art, the people, the movement.”
“It was totally you, sis. You know, Mom lived there once, for a couple of weeks, when she was trying to figure out life.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“I don’t know any of the details, but she told me about it. You’re so much like her.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
“Ben…I think I might try to go out on my own again. I’m still young.” The pit in my stomach grew three sizes as I said the words aloud.
“You are.”
“And I’m adventurous.”
“Then you should.”
“Yeah, I should.”
“You are indomitable Carrie Fisher.” His grin shot through the phone.
Within a week, Rocky and I found a 200-square-foot studio apartment conveniently located around the corner from a subway stop, a coffee shop, grocery store, and a couple of local restaurants. Rent was $1,300 a month, the absolute cheapest I could find. Rocky thought it was hideous, and I quite agreed. I imagined it was my own personal Tardis—much larger on the inside than its exterior.
We moved in the following Tuesday.
I don’t know who in their right mind thought parquet floors, a red brick wall, and yellow-tiled bathroom were a good combination. A tiny balcony with a fire ladder completed my space. Noise from the outside seeped through the cracks in the walls at every hour of the day or night.
A sanctuary it was not.
But this musty mess was all mine.
I painted the kitchen a lovely roseate in Mom’s honor and didn’t allow myself to think about the deposit I would never see again. Good riddance. A week after I told him, Ben mailed me a box of kitchen towels with a hideous host of pink flamingos printed across the white cotton. A little housewarming gift. She’d be so proud, he’d scrawled along the box. Now go fly.
I got a job as an assistant florist at a large local flower shop and put every last piece of my IKEA furniture together myself. I decorated my apartment the way I wanted with knitted throws and pillows everywhere. I bought candles by the dozen and anything that intrigued me at second-hand stores. I needed my home to be cozy. I hid all the photos I had of Charlie into my biggest shoebox, which I pushed to the back of the closet. I started saving to take more flying lessons.
Night after night, I ate dinner on the red plate I’d carried with me from Omaha and didn’t bother buying extra dishware when I visited the thrift stores. I didn’t want company.
Mom bequeathed upon me the legacy that was Bernice’s Masterpieces and a few dozen boxes stacked taller than me showed up at my doorstep two weeks after I moved in. Her “empire” apparently consisted of her entire inventory which filled my already overcrowded living space with a host of hideous materials and a check that was my inheritance.
There was a note, dated five years before.
I know you’ll find your own empire, Reese, but until you do, mine’s big enough to share. Shine on, baby girl. Shine on.
We lived with the piles of cloth for a week, but the porcupine designs scared Rocky in the middle of the night. So I finally took the whole lot of it out to the curb, but not before I sewed myself an apron from one of Mom’s patterns. It seemed a little short and had more lace than I usually preferred, but it would serve its purpose for baking the family sugar cookies. I’d promised Ben I’d bring six dozen of them to his wedding.
It took me thirteen loads to take all the cloth down to the truck to donate and by my last trip, there was quite a gathering outside my place. I saw two women in a brawl over a leopard print. Rocky and I walked past them without comment.
Ben and Maya kept their backyard wedding as simple as they’d promised. Maya wore a short ivory dress, a light fabric which swished with her as she moved. She and her mother had sewn it together. They told us the story the night before the wedding, mocking how frustrating the experience had been. Maya’s mom Megan shook her head, saying, “You know mothers and their daughters,” but her laughter broke off as I abruptly stood.
“I’m sorry,” Maya mouthed behind her.
“I’ll grab us another bottle of red.” I cried in the bathroom for ten minutes straight, until Charlie came and found me. He moved me into the guest bedroom and settled me on his lap. He held me, cradled into his warmth, and let me cry. His rough hands wiped the tears from my cheeks, and we said nothing.
Dad sobbed through Ben’s entire wedding and sat with me as the dancing wound down.
“I think I may have permanent snot marks on my tuxedo.” He proudly displayed his rumpled suit. Ben told me he’d tried to convince Dad to downgrade to shorts and a T-shirt, but Dad would have none of it. He was determined to celebrate his son and new daughter-in-law in style.
“Good job, Dad.” I offered a tight smile.
“Did you know your brother tried to convince me to wear casual clothes?”
“I heard a rumor.”
“Bernice would have thrown a fit. And besides, I secretly loved the duds she always dressed me in when we were younger.”
“You look great, Dad.”
“Maya tried to set me up with her aunt, the one in the middle of the dance floor, flowing about in a green feathered dress, but I thanked her and grabbed a spritzer instead.”
“Maybe you should dance with her.” My throat ached.
“I will samba with the green dress lady, sure. But how could any other woman in the known universe compare to my bride? The memory of your mother is still better than the reality of anyone else.”
“I know, Dad.”
“I have a gift for you, Reese.” He pulled a small, square package out of his suit pocket.
“Dad, it’s Ben’s wedding. Not mine.”
“I found a planner of Bernice’s and cherished the thoughts from my love throughout. She had an entire ‘Note to self’ section which I took to only reading on Thursdays, as a way of keeping our date nights alive. I think she would have wanted you to have it.”
“Dad, I—”
“Go ahead, open it. There are lots of insights and too many questions.” His eyes glistened as I unwrapped the book and flipped it open.
Note to self: Wear the purple dress to Ben’s wedding and the red one to Reese’s.
Note to self: Before making rash decisions on which dress to wear, at least go shopping and c
onsider other options.
Note to self: Remember to tell Carl about the time I went skinny-dipping at Königssee. Give him a visual.
Note to self: I am beautiful. Tell my children they are beautiful.
Note to self: Research ways to cut Carl’s hair while he is asleep. It’s looking hideous. Just call me Delilah.
Note to self: Give Reese some extra hugs today. She’s been prickly. Think up a cacti joke to share with her.
Note to self: Ask Carl about that red-haired lady who showed up with a pie for him when he took sick. I don’t trust her.
Note to self: Find a way to incorporate the following into a gift for them—
Carl, you have taught me what love means, and I can’t thank you enough.
Benjamin and Reese, you have been the greatest joy of my life. Thanks for making me a mom. I am who I am today because the three of you are in my story and are my three favorite people in the ENTIRE WORLD.
***make less mushy.
I closed it with a sigh and laid my head on Dad’s shoulder.
Charlie came over to ask me for a dance, and I held back the tears as I nodded. His hair was sun-streaked and, at Ben’s request, he wore shorts and a button-down shirt. He swept me onto the dance floor, and I floated in his arms. “You’re beautiful tonight,” he whispered into my ear as we swayed together under the canopy of trees and twinkle lights.
On their wedding day, Maya’s blonde hair fell in great waves down her back, she smelled of Dove soap and vanilla. Everyone smiled for hours, and the day felt perfect, almost complete.
21
May
Reese
I didn’t want to talk to anyone in New York. After a lifetime of loud, I wanted to be alone. But on my first weekend in the city, as I was reading a book at the coffee shop three blocks east of my place, a girl wearing a dinosaur shirt said hello and asked me to join her book club. I thanked her and took her number. I never did call her, but after that I made a point of saying hello to more strangers.
When Jaylene, a frequenter at the flower shop, invited me to join a cooking club she was starting in the spring, I told myself it would be the distraction I needed. The club, my only social time, met the first Tuesday night of every month. The cooking aspect was a challenge for me—I may have inherited Bernice’s Masterpieces, but I did not inherit her culinary skills.
There were five of us in total, the perfect number for a road trip someone said, and everyone except me laughed. At every gathering, wine and more wine led to story after story. Brittany and Monisa had kids; the former was happily married to her high school sweetheart, the latter was a single mom. Jaylene and Juanita were living the single life and constantly invited me out into the dating world. I learned about their past relationships, their jobs and drama. Still I stayed silent, at least at first.
After a month, we transitioned to meeting weekly, finding more excuses to come earlier and stay later. We rotated apartments, and I had to buy more plates for my company. After a lifetime of primarily male companionship, I found myself surrounded by a band of strong females, and I liked it. I craved it.
By the second month, I was meeting Jaylene for coffee almost weekly and Brittany for yoga every weekend. We still all gathered for cooking and dinner on Tuesdays, but I was growing close to the girls individually too.
We were all so different. Jaylene was quiet; Monisa was loud. Brittany was artistic; Juanita was an accountant. Monisa was from Germany, and Jaylene was from Canada. We all loved different things and hated different things. The biggest similarity we had was a growing appreciation for cooking, wine, and time together. When I stopped to dissect what drew us so fiercely to one another, I could only conclude it was our diversity. “We’re our own eclectic family,” Brittany said and the girls cheered.
“What about you, Reese?” Monisa demanded at the end of our salmon and summer salad dinner in late June. She was two glasses of wine in and had spent most of our evening telling us about her first love, Jared.
“Yeah, you’re always so quiet,” Brittany said and reached to pour me more wine. “Tell us your story. Start from the beginning.”
I trusted them, but I made them wait. “Next week,” I promised and the following Tuesday they insisted on making a casserole so the cooking part could be shorter and the talking time longer. Only Rocky and I knew the irony.
They gathered in my living room, hugging pillows and goblets of wine, and I told them my tale. I started from the beginning, or the middle, however you want to look at it—for aren’t we all jumping into the center of a story that’s already been started, already fraught with broken edges and someone else’s history?
For some reason everyone was interested in my narrative. Maybe because the last year of my life had been filled with drama. Drama with Charlie. Drama with my dad. Drama with my crazy mother. Drama with my crazy mother dying. Even Blake made it into my stories. When I didn’t give the girls enough details, they went nutty, asked for more. At some point, I started reading to them straight from my journal. I didn’t want to think about how many times Jaylene filled my glass of wine.
They wanted to know why I walked away from Charlie and oohed and ahhed over his photos, which they finally made me pull out, and when I came back from the bathroom, I was pretty sure they’d been making bets about how soon we would get back together. (A week later, Juanita would confirm there was indeed a running wager, but it also included Blake. “But I’m Team Charlie all the way. Clearly,” she said in a rush. “Well, Team Charleese.”)
When I finished my telling, I leaned back and pulled Rocky close. “So, now you know.”
Brittany reached to give me a hug.
“You’re in a liminal state right now,” Monisa said, and I squinted in response. She was a doctor of anthropology at Columbia, and I only ever understood half of what she said. “Liminality. It means you’re in a transition, in a suspended state of being. You live on the threshold between your former reality and your next. It’s most generally associated with a rite of passage, but I’m going to use it here.”
I couldn’t reply or the threatening tears would come forth. But I nodded, yes. Liminal. I am in a liminal state of being. I am a liminal being. It was the first idea in as long as I could remember that made sense.
“Come on, Reese, show us some more photos. Not the ones of Charlie, the ones you took of your family,” Brittany interrupted. When Brittany insisted I could get a showing of my work in her uptown art gallery, I nodded sagely and then rolled my eyes. Rocky rolled his too.
“Just pass the wine.”
After they left, I sat reading through old journals, making lists, throwing out half my closet. Over the next week, I processed film late into the night, listening to Mom’s old “Full Circle” record on repeat, and I tried to forget.
I printed an assortment of photos I’d taken over the last year to give Brittany, but didn’t hold my breath. I had no plan for them, no inspiration. I just knew they were special to me.
“It’s pretty competitive to get a showing here,” Brittany said with a worried look when I dropped them off at her work the following week. She flipped through them quickly, and I realized her wine-fueled optimism had dissipated.
“I know,” I said and left. I still needed to try. I didn’t know what waited on the other side of my liminal space, only that I needed to take the next step. I was ready, finally ready, to move forward, even if it was only by an inch.
October
Reese
When the doors opened at seven o’clock sharp, the gallery filled and the line outside wrapped around the building. My stomach took turns clenching and expanding as I went between people, shaking hands and answering questions. By eight, I’d dashed off to the bathroom to relieve my bowels twice. My hands stopped shaking by my second drink, and the mixing of colors and patterns, the sparkle of champagne, and the glow of bodies lingered the whole of the night. The evening itself was seeped in surreal, but I found a growing excitement at what I’d done.
It meant nothing to anyone, really, but it represented everything to me.
After Brittany’s gallery turned me down, something inside me had shifted, and I decided to give my photos another chance. Before and after work, I travelled between art venues with samples of my photos, collecting dismissals. The idea of having a show, of putting my family’s story on display grew inside of me so fiercely that even as the rejections piled, I kept going. When I finally got a yes, from a cramped, dingy gallery so far east in Queens I wasn’t sure we were technically still in the city, I didn’t believe the owner.
“But why?” I asked before I could stop myself. “I mean, thanks.” I backed out of the door. “You won’t regret this. Not even for a minute.” I was halfway down the street before I questioned whether or not I’d even introduced myself in the first place. I ran back. “My name is Reese, I’ll call you tomorrow.” I left before he could change his mind.
Ben, Maya, and Dad had wanted to fly out for the grand opening, but I’d asked them to come later—“Maybe the second week when it’s quieter”—and they’d obliged. I couldn’t put it into words, but I didn’t want them seeing the photos for the first time in a sea of strangers.
My girls, as I called them—Juanita and Brittany, Jaylene and Monisa—told me they were coming the first night too. “With roses and new dresses,” Monisa said, and I asked them to arrive early.
They came and toasted me, hugged me and covered me with kisses and praise. They told me they were proud of me until I blushed, and then I asked them for some space. We shouldn’t do life alone—we all need community—but I wanted a few moments to myself. I didn’t want to talk or laugh or answer questions or celebrate. I wanted to remember. We hadn’t held a public funeral for my mom, and as far as I was concerned, this was it for me.
Long after the noise died down, and the champagne-filled crowds dissipated, Rocky and I walked alone between my images. My family seemed more real to me than ever before. “I guess larger-than-life-sized images will do that to you.” I rubbed Rocky’s head, and he wagged his tail.
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