The First Day of the Rest of My Life E-Book

Cathy Lamb

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 682

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Madeline O'Shea tells people what to do with their lives. A renowned life coach, she inspires thousands of women through her thriving practice-exuding enviable confidence along with her stylish suits and sleek hair. But her confidence, just like her fashionable demeanor, is all a front. For decades, Madeline has lived in fear of her traumatic past becoming public. Now a reporter is reinvestigating the notorious crime that put Madeline's mother behind bars, threatening to destroy her elaborate façade. Only Madeline's sister, Annie, and their frail grandparents know about her childhood--but lately Madeline has reason to wonder if her grandparents also have a history they've been keeping from her. The First Day of the Rest of My Life is an eloquent and triumphant tale of a fierce act of love, a family's legacy, and one woman's awakening to her own power-with no secrets....

Leseprobe

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

CATHY LAMB

For Rachel, our favorite violinist

An Old Irish Blessing

May the road rise to meet you,

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

The rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Contents

Title PageDedicationEpigraphCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENCHAPTER FIFTEENCHAPTER SIXTEENCHAPTER SEVENTEENCHAPTER EIGHTEENCHAPTER NINETEENCHAPTER TWENTYCHAPTER TWENTY-ONECHAPTER TWENTY-TWOCHAPTER TWENTY-THREECHAPTER TWENTY-FOURCHAPTER TWENTY-FIVECHAPTER TWENTY-SIXCHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENCHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTCHAPTER TWENTY-NINECHAPTER THIRTYCHAPTER THIRTY-ONECHAPTER THIRTY-TWOACKNOWLEDGEMENTSABOUT THIS GUIDEAbout the AuthorBy Cathy LambCopyrightAdvertisement

CHAPTER ONE

The Gunshot Anniversary is coming up. Those six gunshots have echoed throughout my entire life. They grabbed everyone’s attention in the courthouse pretty darn quick, too. Bang, bang, bang!

There was the expected cacophony of panic with people screaming and diving to the floor, attorneys scattering, the jury ducking, reporters squawking, photographers scrambling for a photo, and the sheriff barreling toward the gunman.

Or, more properly should I say, the gunwoman.

The gunwoman was my momma.

Marie Elise O’Shea was a well-dressed shooter. She wore her light pink dress with embroidered white daisies circling the trim, matching cotton candy pink heels, red lipstick, liquid black liner that tilted up at the corners, and a yellow ribbon holding back her thick black hair. ‘Yellow means there’s still hope in this pickled, wrinkled, warped world, sugar,’ she told me. ‘Yellow means there’s a new tomorrow scootin’ around the corner, you just wait.’

She looked a little weak, a little tired, but still beautiful, innocent even, the gun a strange, black aberration in her firm grip.

Annie and I were the only two people in the courtroom that sunny spring day who didn’t move when she started shooting. We knew she would never shoot us.

She was shooting for us. Shooting for her daughters, and she had excellent aim. Momma had been raised on a farm in Oregon with fruit trees and rows of lavender and enjoyed target practice as an after-school activity. Some would argue her perfect aim was a good thing, others would argue it was not.

Right before my momma shot off her ladies’ gun she said to those three men, in a voice as hard as a chunk of iron, ‘This is from Big Luke. He’s going to escort you to hell. Goodbye.’ She spread her legs in her cotton candy pink heels so she would have perfect balance, then whipped her gun out from her bra.

Bang, bang, bang. Dead on target. Three more shots to call it good.

Sheriff Ellery knew he did not need to tackle my momma as he would have with any other shooter. He sprinted up to her, sweating, and scolded, ‘Now, sugar, you shouldn’t have done that.’

Momma didn’t argue with him. She handed over the gun to the puffing, distressed sheriff amidst the utter chaos and declared, ‘Ellery, I had to. You know they’ve been threatening to come after my girls as soon as they’re loosed from prison and I can’t have that. I won’t be around to protect them.’ She held out her wrists for the handcuffs. ‘Careful, honey. Don’t you break my nails. And make sure your wife knows that I will not be able to make her appointment tomorrow for her Cut ’n Blow.’

Sheriff Ellery, clearly upset, almost crying, but not because of the missed Cut ’n Blow appointment, snapped the cuffs on. He did not break Momma’s nails. His wife was all aflutter about missing Marie Elise’s Splendid, Superior Cut ’n Blow. Her niece’s wedding was coming up, and the niece’s mother, her older sister, who was so hoity-toity, would be there with her ‘piggly comments,’ and now who would get her all fixed up to do battle with ‘that pig-dragon witch? Who? Why couldn’t Marie Elise have done the shooting on Monday? She knew I had this wedding!’

Momma went to jail on that sunny spring day and worked her magic on the nails, hair, and makeup of many female convicts. One of them later became the owner of a beauty supply chain, inspired by ‘the transformation Marie Elise made to my wretched hair and face. She made me believe in me. Me, Birdie Tyson, former delinquent.’ She named her highest selling shampoo Marie Elise’s Pink.

Some say it was my momma’s parents’ money that got her out of jail because of the supersmart attorneys they hauled on in. Most said it was because the men she shot deserved it and more. But I knew why my momma’s life was spared.

It was because of Marie Elise’s French Beauty Parlor. Yes, the magic my momma brought to her beauty parlor saved her life.

At least that time it did.

CHAPTER TWO

‘Ladies,’ I boomed out, my arms spread high in the air, spotlights shining down so bright I could barely see the thousands of Texan women screaming in the audience, ‘I want you to ask yourselves this question: Do you want to live your life like a mouse – a timid, tepid, squeaking, ineffectual, irritating mouse – or do you want to live your life like Mrs Spinoza? Which one? Which one?’

‘Mrs Spinoza! Spinoza!’ thousands of women shouted back at me. ‘Spinoza!’

‘That’s right! You want to be a Mrs Spinoza!’ I fisted my hands in victory in the middle of the stage as I concluded my speech. My proper black, boring, expensive business suit and I were projected onto three screens in the auditorium. It was what I thought a life coach who needed armor should wear.

‘Spinoza, Spinoza!’

‘Ladies, Mrs Spinoza was fearless. She was adventurous. She was curious. She was a ball-breaking, get out of my way, I’m going to live my life with no boulders in it kind of lady! What are you going to do with your boulders?’

‘Crush them, crush them!’ they yelled back at me.

‘What are you going to do with the mountains in your life?’

‘Climb them, climb them!’

‘That’s right, you’re going to climb them! You’re going to put your heels on and climb over them! Put your heels on, scream it with me!’

‘Put your heels on!’ they screamed, a wave of feminine rage, freedom, and defiance. ‘Put your heels on!’

I strutted across the stage in my heels. Not high-stylin’ heels, boring ones. The ones that say: I mean business. ‘No squeaking, ladies. Speak your mind even if your voice wobbles. Speak up for yourself, no one else will! Don’t restrict yourself and the wacky-cool possibilities in your future, and stop allowing others to restrict you! If they don’t like the new you, go out and make yourself some new friends, make yourself a new family with people who love to live, to laugh, to have adventures! And stop worrying about what you look like, for heaven’s sakes! We’ve had enough of men telling us how to look, haven’t we?’

‘Yes. We. Have!’ they roared.

‘Let your hair down, Texas!’ I ripped a rubber band out of my hair and shook loose my dark brown straight hair. It had been mercilessly flat ironed because the curls reminded me of something I tried every day to forget. ‘Let it dry in the wind while you explore Norway! Let your nails chip and split while you volunteer to dig wells in Africa! Leave your makeup at home when you trek through India! And when you’re back in the workforce, put those red high heels on and stride like you mean it! Stride, don’t step. Stride! Like you mean it!’

Whooee. Yell and shout. Screams from the bottom of those women’s feisty souls.

‘Ladies, thank you,’ I hollered into a massive standing ovation. ‘Now get out there and live the heel-kicking life your gut tells you to live! Kick your heels!’

I left the stage, the screaming crested, stayed there, deafening, and I was hustled back on. My final words: ‘Don’t forget the O’Shea number one principle!’

I waited for a millisecond, until they shouted it back at me.

‘Kick some girly ass, kick some girly ass,’ they chanted while clapping in sync, as I’d taught them. ‘Kick some girly ass!’

I laughed, waved, left the stage.

I was hustled out of the auditorium, hugged and thanked by the Ladies Power organisers as they insisted I come back next year, and gently shoved into a limo. The limo pulled away before the crowd left.

I leant back in the seat and started to shake. I shook like someone had turned a blender on high inside my stomach.

I am a life coach, specialising in relationships, mostly for people with vaginas. I tell people what to do with their lives and who to have in it.

And I had told, over a three-day period, a whole bunch of women that they had to take charge of their lives, be adventurous like Mrs Spinoza, my neighbor for years before she died at the age of ninety-nine at the Great Wall of China, her camera slung around her neck. She had been talking to two young Swedish men about the joys of Russian vodka and toppled right on over. ‘A death you can be proud of,’ I said.

I told them not to take any crap, ‘Live a Crapless Life’; to try new things, ‘Try New, No Wallowing in the Moldy Old’; how not to feel caged by guilt, remorse, or regret, ‘Unstrap Your Emotional Corsets’; and to reexamine commitments made decades ago to a life they no longer wanted to lead, ‘Release Yourself From Your Personal Prison.’

I am pathetic.

Emotional crap wraps me like bondage. I am hounded by guilt. Remorse smothers me. I have so many regrets I could lay them end to end and they would cover Uranus. I have an emotional corset over my entire face. In my semi-electrocuted mind, I am wallowing in my own personal prison with very wide iron bars, a dirt floor, and no windows.

Here is the truth: I am a lie. I am a lie to others, I am a lie to myself.

I kept shaking.

‘You all right, ma’am?’ the limo driver said, his brow wrinkled in concern.

‘Yes. Fine. Fine. I’m fine.’ Sure. Sure I was.

I heard the violin music in my head, a single violinist. I’ve been hearing violinists and full orchestras my whole life. I don’t know why this is, I don’t know where the concerts come from, I don’t know why no one but me hears them. It’s a tricky phenomenon I can’t explain. I only know that the violin music is as much a part of my life as my lungs are a part of my breathing.

The violinist was playing Beethoven’s Für Elise.

How fitting.

Very late that night I flew into Portland, Oregon, drove down a couple of freeways, and returned to the house I live in that I do not like.

It’s built like a square spaceship. The lines are smooth and hard, and the furniture’s the same way. Modern and edgy, like what you’d see in one of those architectural magazines. In fact, it has been in architectural magazines.

I like the view. I can watch the weather become emotional, but I don’t like where I’m standing when I look at it.

Why did I buy it?

Besides the fact that it’s exactly, purposefully, totally opposite from the home I grew up in, I bought it so I can prove that I’m someone. I live here because it’s an impressive house. It’s expensive. Prestigious address. Do I care? Obviously I do. Why? I’m working on that.

My decorator picked all of the hard-edged, oddly shaped furniture. I was not interested in helping.

‘Don’t you want to shop with me, Madeline?’

‘No. I hate shopping.’

‘Don’t you want to look at colors together, designs?’

‘No, that would bore me.’

‘Don’t you want to choose the furniture for your own house?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’ She was baffled. ‘Because I don’t care.’

She didn’t get it, didn’t get me. No surprise. Few people do. I wrote the check, she did the work. I now have a house decorated in angles, planes, corners. It’s geometric decorating. You didn’t like geometry in school? Me either. And yet I live in geometry.

To fill the cold, detached space, I play my violin. I have played my violin to fill every cold, detached place in my life since I was a child. I am a rebel violinist and I had a rebel violin teacher from the time I moved to Oregon. I play classical, bluegrass, Texan-style fiddling, Irish reels and waltzes, and swing music.

My violin has small scratches and dents and a bloodstain on the inside. The blood has sunk into the wood, and if you turn it this way and that, it resembles a smashed butterfly. I know it’s blood because my grandma made the mistake of answering me truthfully one night when I was a teenager.

We were sitting on her expansive white deck on The Lavender Farm, which Granddad built for her because he knew she loved the view of the rows of lavender. I had just finished practicing Kuchler’s Concertino in D Major, opus 15 and I asked her about the butterfly spot. In French she said, ‘Oh, that mark? That is blood.’

‘That’s blood?’ I answered in French. My grandparents and my momma were from France, and taught Annie and me French. My grandparents also taught us, as they had our momma, German. We are better at French.

Her face shut down. Slammed shut.

‘Grandma, blood?’ I knew the violin had been my momma’s. ‘How did it get there?’

She waved me off, her jumbo-sized diamond wedding ring flashing. She muttered in German, ‘I don’t know. Silly me. I don’t know why I said that.’

‘But Grandma,’ I said back to her, in German, ‘I want to know about the blood.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she snapped, then seemed to regret her clipped words, her lips tightening. She tucked the waves of her thick white curls back into a ball on top of her head. ‘It is not blood. It is … a stain. I think it is from red grapes.’

‘Red grapes? How would a red grape get in there?’

‘It’s a question mark, isn’t it?’ She patted my hand. ‘Maybe a peasant with a swirling black cape borrowed the violin from your momma and was playing it by a grapevine and one ripe, juicy grape popped in. Or maybe a falling star knocked the grapes off and they landed in the violin when your mother was dancing in a field with a fawn, a crown of daisies on her head.’

As my grandma was an incredibly popular children’s author and illustrator, her answer was not surprising. ‘What about all these other scratches and these dents?’ I pointed to them, here, there, everywhere. It was an old violin.

She ran a gentle hand over my cheek, then spoke in French again, her luminescent blue-green eyes filling with tears. ‘All those marks are a mystery to me. A mystery. Perhaps a grumpy bluebird came down and scratched the violin when we weren’t looking. Perhaps a bear’s paw made that dent as he danced a jig. Perhaps an elf came and hit it against his knee. All a mystery.’

But I knew the marks weren’t a mystery to her. I knew she was lying. I knew because her hands shook and she blinked to clear a wall of tears.

‘Grandma …’ I didn’t like to upset my grandma. I loved her dearly. She had saved me, saved us, but I wanted to know about the blood.

‘All I know for sure is that I love you, my darling.’ She kissed my cheeks, four times, back and forth, as the French do. My grandma was slim and trim – she walked five miles a day over the hills of her property – and she always dressed impeccably. Scarves, jewelry, hats on special occasions, heels. She dressed French. Even her hands still looked young, especially when she was drawing and painting the swans that graced her children’s books, her imagination a free-flowing, curving, color-filled playground.

‘Come, let’s walk between the lavender rows. We’ll drop a few marbles between the plants for magic and I’ll tell you a story about a wee swan who always wore pink, not black like all the other swans in her school. She loved the color pink and she loved sparkling shoes for her webbed feet. Now, one day, this swan …’

But lately, long years later, I don’t have the same grandma. She has rounded the corner into dementia, and she says things like, ‘If you go to the left you will die, if you go to the right you will live but they will pull off your arms and legs and run you naked where the swans can’t come’ or ‘Pile up, pile down, the black ghosts are coming and we have to hide in the lavender or a barn. Be quiet!’

Always, always, I have known that there are secrets in my family, lies, if you will, loving lies, cover-up lies, but lies all the same. With my grandma’s dementia, however, those lies are being exposed, via the scratches, dents, and blood on a violin my momma gave me, who received it from Grandma.

So, in my more brutal moments, I acknowledge this truth: I am a lie. I come from a family of liars. What saves me is that I love the liars.

‘She’s on the phone again,’ Georgie told me.

‘Tell her I don’t want to talk to her.’ I clenched my teeth and shook my head. I had come to hate the woman on the phone. It wasn’t personal. I hated her because of what she was trying to do to my carefully constructed, fragile life and to my sister’s carefully constructed, fragile life.

‘Ms. O’Shea is not available to speak with you right now, Marlene,’ Georgie said with firm professionalism.

Georgie is my assistant. She has a dog, Stanley, who barked twice at me, then lifted a paw. I shook it. He barked again. I knelt and hugged him, the dog’s head cuddling into my neck, paws on my shoulders. If I don’t hug him, he won’t stop barking. When I tried to pull away, he held on tight and wheezed in my ear.

‘I said, no,’ Georgie said. ‘That is a refusal. A negative. A denial.’ Her tone clashed with her dyed, snow white hair with pink tips, her lace skirt, and her cowboy boots. She is twenty-five and can wear anything. I look at her and am reminded that I have broken and smashed my momma’s cardinal rule on clothing: Don’t you dare be a frump. Don’t you dare! Let yourself shine.

‘Why are you having such inner turmoil with the word no?’ Georgie went on. ‘Ms. O’Shea is not available. This is not a wishy-washy philosophical difference that you can play with and manipulate at will. Your spectrum of denial is puzzling me.’

I didn’t know what a spectrum of denial was. I would ask later.

‘Ms. O’Shea has already given you her answer. She does not want to be interviewed for the article … No, she does not have to participate. There is free choice in her spiritual and in her legal reign … No, you are not to call her family, either. Do not contact the Laurents. They are elderly and do not wish to speak to you. Fry me on that one.’

I shuddered and took a ragged breath as a sense of wretched doom tripped along my nerves. Stanley squeezed my neck. He is so affectionate.

I had hardly slept. When the sun was still grumpy and tired, I drove to my office in a fancy building in downtown Portland to begin my usual fifteen-hour day. My office has three rooms: the reception area, which is decorated with leather chairs, taupe colored walls, and modern art paintings and sculptures; a conference room with a wall of windows and a long mahogany table for group meetings; and my office, in the corner, with two walls of windows, my thick glass desk with raw edges, a leather V couch over a colorful rug, and more modern art.

I really do not like modern art.

‘The family will not talk to you,’ Georgie said again. ‘We have already told you no. Release your request from your inner being and go spearhead someone else before I freakin’ let you have it.’

I had to love Georgie’s manner. New wave with a shot of bullying.

‘Fine. Go ahead and talk to the kids she grew up with.’ Georgie tapped the tattoo on her arm. It’s a picture of her grandma smoking a cigar. ‘I can’t muzzle everyone in her childhood, but stop unleashing your irritating personality on us.’

I froze at that. Marlene was talking to people in my childhood? Who? I thought of one person in particular. What would he say? How would he react? Would he refuse to talk or would he admit the truth, publicly? He’d been on TV two nights ago …

I released Stanley, and he barked in protest, as he was not done with the hug. I ignored him and grabbed the phone from Georgie. ‘Listen, Marlene, this is the last time. Either you stop calling me or I’ll call the police and have you arrested for harassment. Are you getting this? Do not call me, do not e-mail me, do not contact me or my family in any way, shape, or form.’

I listened, feeling my fury boil like hot tar as I fought back utter, bleak, white-hot fear.

‘We are not cooperating because we don’t want the article written.’ I listened for a moment. ‘Marlene, if you persist with this article, I will shove legal papers up your ass so fast you won’t be able to sit on a toilet for a week, and then I will start on that rag you call a magazine. You will not print anything about my family or our past. You will leave the whole thing alone. You will kill the story because there is no story. None.’ I hung up.

I stood by Georgie’s desk, trembling head to foot. I hate the shakes. I do. And I hate Marlene with a passion. It is not personal.

‘Call my attorney again,’ I told her, breathless. I have a problem with breathing. ‘Get Keith Stein on the line right now.’

‘Got it.’ Georgie picked the phone back up. I liked her. She was smart and loyal. I had given her a very sketchy, brief outline of why Marlene wanted to write the article. She had nodded, taken it in, allowed me not to fill in the blanks that I didn’t want to share. She’s a confident person and she’s OK with blanks.

Stanley barked at me. Twice. I shook his hand, he barked, I hugged him as certain scenes of my past rushed in like a noose, squeezing the life out of my esophagus. I smelt sweat, cigarettes, and a dank shack. I closed my eyes.

Within a minute I was rapid-fire talking to Keith. I’ve known Keith since high school. He was a bulldog when we were younger and he’s a bulldog now with a broad, spiky bite. He owns a megasuccessful law firm and boils people down on a regular basis for breakfast. He enjoys his work. ‘Shut her down, Keith. I don’t care what you have to do, but shut her down.’

‘I am here to find my inner being. It’s here somewhere.’ She batted her false eyelashes. ‘I think it might be hiding in my Prada.’

‘I am here to begin my descent and foray into the world.’ Her sister tapped her designer shoes. I believe they cost eight hundred dollars.

‘I am here to spread my wings and fly. Fly and fly. Fly.’ The third sister flapped, diamond tennis bracelets flashing.

‘Fun and fun!’ Adriana laughed.

‘Wicked naughty!’ Bella giggled.

‘Fantabulous!’ Carlotta gushed.

I do not like handling three-way coaching sessions.

However, I have made an exception for the Giordano sisters this past year because they are so flamboyant and hilarious, altogether. It’s like dealing with three incoming fashion missiles. They each take turns talking, one after another, in alphabetical order. ‘So we never dominate one another’s spirits,’ Adriana told me. ‘We each take a turn on the verbal stage of life.’ Bella sighed. ‘We like to be in sync with one another, in harmony,’ Carlotta tittered.

They are of Sicilian descent.

Adriana, Bella, and Carlotta are all unusual women. They are in their thirties, and because of a massive amount of wealth left to them by their father, a jailed mob boss who hid his piles of money, I am quite sure, in several illegal, off-shore bank accounts, they have had the luxury of falling into eccentricity.

Their one-hundred-year-old brick mansion is on a hill with sweeping views of the Willamette River and the city. They have livened the place up by painting the trim purple, adding a purple deck, a purple gazebo, and a myriad of striking steel sculptures and outdoor art all over their property, which has been featured in different newspapers and magazines. In one magazine, the sisters posed in old-fashioned, striped swimsuits and parasols.

On their front lawn alone, they have many organically shaped, neon-colored glass structures that are museum worthy and stunning. One is a shiny purple and blue jellyfish, another is a grouping of tall, twisting corkscrews, and in a back corner are fanciful glass flowers about six feet tall. In their pond, with a fountain in the center, they have colored glass balls with dots and an arc of rainbow-colored glass fish leaping from the water.

Each has a pet cat that comes with them to ‘life-coaching class’ in a specially designed cat basket with the cat’s name written on the front.

Princess Anastasia is Adriana’s cat. She was wearing a princess outfit in white silk. She even had glittery bracelets on her legs.

Bee La La is Bella’s cat. She was dressed as a bee. No explanation necessary.

Candy Stripe belongs to Carlotta. She was dressed as Wonder Woman. Were you expecting a candy cane?

Princess Anastasia made a spitting sound at me.

Bee La La rolled her eyes, I swear she did.

Candy Stripe yawned, took a nap.

The Giordano sisters’ momma passed away ten years ago from a heart attack. ‘Poor Momma, we love you, Momma,’ they chanted.

‘She died of a heart attack when she found out Daddy had a mistress,’ Adriana said. ‘Poor Momma, we love you, Momma.’

‘Poor Momma, we love you, Momma,’ Bella echoed, then coughed. ‘Well, there were two mistresses. The first one told Momma about the second mistress because she was so mad that Daddy was cheating on her, too.’

Carlotta squirmed. ‘And the second mistress was so mad she was the second mistress and not the first that she burnt down the house that Daddy had bought the first mistress. Everybody lived, but the second mistress had to leave the country and go to Sicily.’

‘Her daddy was from Sicily,’ Adriana explained patiently. ‘It’s so pretty there. He was in The Family, too. She can’t ever come back to America, though.’ Adriana shook her head, so sad, so sad.

‘No, she can’t,’ Bella confirmed. ‘Not even for shopping! She misses out on Rodeo Drive.’

‘And the New York shows,’ Carlotta whined.

‘And Vegas!’ Adriana moaned. ‘Such a punishment for a wee fire. She was even insured!’

They all sighed. The unfairness of arson!

‘The second mistress loved to gamble. She practically lived at the casinos,’ Bella explained. ‘Daddy said she lived at her plastic surgeon’s, but he was being grumpy that night. He had a grumpy side.’

Another group sigh. That grumpiness their mob boss father displayed! So grumpy!

‘And when the first mistress’s house was burnt down she told Daddy to build her another one or she’d go to the police,’ Carlotta said. ‘It made Daddy really grumpy then.’

There was a heavy silence.

‘She disappeared,’ Adriana said, tapping her long nails together. ‘No one knew where she went to …’ Good God.

‘We think maybe she went to Baltimore,’ Bella said, twisting a diamond hoop earring.

Baltimore? I raised an eyebrow.

‘Or maybe Boise. Could have been Miami,’ said Carlotta. She crossed her Jimmy Choo shoes. I raised both eyebrows.

‘I think that she had family in Sacramento. Or maybe it was Baton Rouge,’ Adriana said. They all nodded at me. I nodded back.

‘Daddy wouldn’t have killed her,’ Bella said. ‘Goodness, no,’ her sisters agreed. ‘No.’ Good God, again.

‘We love Daddy so much! We love you, Daddy!’

I crossed my legs. I was wearing short blue pumps today. Expensive. Dull. No flash compared to theirs, high heels built to rock the fashion world.

Daddy was currently serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison. I believe it was for a few crimes in the realm of murder, assault, loan sharking, hookers, wire fraud, and tax evasion, but I’m not sure. Some things one does not need to know.

Another group sigh, pitched high at the end. Mob boss daddy never would have killed his mistress for threatening to go to the police. Almost sinful to think such a tawdry thought! Sinful!

‘All right, ladies.’ I cleared my throat, ready to jump into the facade that would follow. ‘I know that you all are thinking hard about different careers to pursue.’

‘Yes! Full speed ahead!’ Carlotta said, full of cheer, sitting straight up. ‘A career!’

She said career like this: ‘Ca Rear!’

‘Goody!’ Adriana said, clapping her hands.

‘Working me, working me!’ Bella said, wiping a hand across her imaginary sweaty brow.

I wanted to choke. These women didn’t want to work. They didn’t want careers. They wanted to shop and go to lunch. I eyed their designer clothes, the fur-trimmed coats they didn’t need on this warm day, their thousand dollar bags, and their decorated cats.

I got up and opened a wooden chest. ‘Ladies, you’re going to get dressed up in different uniforms and you’re going to see which uniform fits you best. I believe this will help you decide in which direction you should go, uh, career wise.’

‘A costume party!’ Carlotta cheered.

‘Dress-up time!’ Adriana called out. ‘Outta sight and groovy! We adore you, Madeline. Every time we come to life-coaching class we have so much enlightenment!’

‘How come you never come to our parties, naughty girl!’ Bella squealed, as she plowed through the chest, her jeweled necklaces falling forward.

‘Yes, we invite you all the time. Last weekend we had an all-green party. Everyone wore green and we ate pink food,’ Carlotta said. ‘One man wore a black thong and painted his whole body green! He was a green bean, get it?!’

‘And the weekend before we had a motorcycle dude party. Wasn’t that funny when Charlene Fay drove her Harley into the pool!’ Adriana laughed. ‘She barely missed the glass fish!’

‘And last month: Halloween Early party!’ Bella said. ‘We had a King Kong, a banana, Wonder Woman, a condom – that was Paul, who came with his girlfriend, Cal, who was a diaphragm. It was so birth controlly. Environmentally correct!’

I sighed.

‘But let’s talk about our new Ca Rears,’ Carlotta said. ‘A Ca Rear!’

I knew my sisters, I knew what they wanted to do, I knew what their goal was. Sometimes being a life coach means you offer people direction, encouragement, a plan, goal setting, counseling … and sometimes you offer them what they need: a laugh.

Ten minutes later we began our ‘Career Parade.’

Adriana swaggered about in a nurse’s outfit. She had added her own personal style. She wore her black lace bra with purple trim over the white nurse’s uniform. She twirled a pink parasol and tottered on Bella’s pink heels with cheetah print toes.

Bella model-walked, hips waving, in a blue jumpsuit uniform, a lot like a mechanic might wear, only she had thrown her lace scarf around her shoulders, unzipped the top of the jumpsuit to the waist so her purple camisole showed through, and rolled up the pants legs to her knees to show off Carlotta’s knee-high leather boots.

Carlotta was wearing a pink tutu and pink tights and a green silk shirt. To make it more ‘Carlotta-y,’ she was wearing all of her jewelry and all of her sisters’ jewelry and a black fur hat. She was also wearing Adriana’s sage designer heels.

‘I love coming to coaching class!’ Adriana said. ‘I love it!’

‘You’re the best, Madeline,’ Bella said. ‘I feel so careerish right now! Don’t you, girls?’

‘Yes, we have a Ca Rear!’ Carlotta said.

‘I’m a nurse like Mary Poppins!’ Adriana said. ‘Fun and fun!’

‘I’m a mechanic for a soft porn show!’ Bella said. ‘Wicked naughty!’

‘I’m a ballerina slave for a leprechaun!’ Carlotta said. ‘Fantabulous!’

They pulled their cats out of their baskets – one who spit, one who rolled her eyes, one who was asleep – and strutted around my office.

Who knew the world needed nurses who wore black bras over their nurses’ uniforms, mechanics in purple camisoles, and ballerina slaves in pink tutus.

Yes, this is my life.

At least the Giordano sisters aren’t liars.

‘Your next client is here, Madeline,’ Georgie said. ‘It’s Aurora King. She’s got her sparkling pink fairy dress on today. She’s wearing a tiara, too. She wasn’t wearing a tiara when I met her in Spirit Yoga class and told her about you.’

I smothered a laugh. Diane Smith had changed her name to Aurora King so she could be a whole new person. I respected that. I liked whole new people and I liked Diane/Aurora. ‘She wants to talk about my fairy dust, doesn’t she?’

‘She says she’s seeing it in your aura. In fact, she says she’s seeing a threat. A threat to you and your very essence. I’m quoting her. Apparently you have, what is it, Aurora? OK, she says that there is something lurking. She thinks it’s an emotional hurricane with a scary train ride and the Pyrenees Mountains. What else? And a tree with branches that criss and cross and a horse-man.’

‘Send in the fairy and her dust for my aura. But tell her not to throw glitter at me like last time.’

‘Don’t throw glitter at Madeline,’ I heard Georgie say as she disconnected.

I opened my door to Aurora.

She threw pink glitter at me.

Two days later I was still picking it out of my hair.

Late that night, completely wiped out from work, I drove up the winding street to my modern house with the geometric decorating that I don’t like. I dropped my keys and purse onto a modern, black metal statue shaped like a person with an octagon for a head holding a tray. I slipped off my boring heels and passed my black leather couch – not the cushy type, the hard type. Hanging over it was a light made out of chrome that resembled a giant, spying eye.

I headed to my bedroom with the modern bed frame constructed of shiny steel. I did not open the doors to my closet to put my suit away. I didn’t have to, because I have no closet doors in my entire house. Not even my pantry has a door. First thing I did when I bought this house was to take off all the closet and pantry doors everywhere so my mind wouldn’t short-circuit every time I wanted to grab a skirt or syrup.

All of my suits are lined up nice and neat, by color, same with my low-heeled shoes, my slippers, my tennis shoes, my sweaters, my ironed blouses. Obsessively neat. Everything is in tight, methodical order. Clearly a control freak jacked up on high octane obsessiveness did this, but I cannot have it any other way. I have to have order.

I have used both closets in my room for clothes, and I hang the hangers about four inches apart. Why? So I can see clear through to the wall behind it. Clear through.

Instantly I need to know if any sick, demented people are hiding in my closets, so no doors, and no cramming.

Where did I get this quirk from?

My childhood. Why?

He used to leap out of our closets. Sherwinn leapt. Right at us.

BOUTIQUE MAGAZINE

A Life Coach Tells You How to Live It

By Madeline O’Shea

Vasectomies and You

After particular sessions, I ask my clients if I can print what they’ve said to me in order to share a tidbit of women’s wisdom with other women who might need this tidbit.

My most recent client, we’ll call her Tess, agreed. ‘If I can help one woman out there deal with a man who’s afraid he’ll never be in heat again like a horny dog if he gets a vasectomy, it’ll be worth it.’

Tess is five feet one, a hundred pounds, with blond hair that she calls ‘The Frizz Blast,’ and, in her words, ‘outsized brown eyes. I look like a raccoon with blond hair and the teeth of a cow. They stick out, you know. See?’

Here is Tess’s story:

‘My husband did not want a vasectomy. It was like trying to get a drunk bull to squish through a tire. I am freakin’ tired of birth control. The pill makes me vomit and dizzy. Diaphragms are gross and condoms are what you use when you’re a teenager rolling around naked in the back of an El Camino. Do I look like a pesky teenager? No, I don’t. So I told him he needed to go in and get clipped.

‘He acted like I’d asked him to give up his whatsits on a plate with a garnish of pickles and relish. I have given birth to five children, two at one time with the twins, and I have never, ever whined like that man did. But I told him no sex until you’re castrated, whack and whack. It took him a week and he finally caved in, but he was pale white, like a ghost, so I trailed after him going, “Booooo boooo.”

‘Anyhow, I had to drug him before we even got to the hospital that morning. A double dose. I had to drag him in like a dead dog. If he could have cupped his jewels with both hands without looking ridiculous, trust me, he would have done it. So I hand him over to the doctor and the doctor claps him on the back like, Buck up, man.

‘Honestly, I pushed five kids through something that is normally the width of a grape, and I didn’t moan and piss like that. So I’m in the waiting room and I brought a flask of whiskey with me – I needed it after what I’d been through – and I start reading my romance novel and I’m perfectly happy. His mother, Hatchet Face, is with the kids and I am finally alone for the first time in months. Even when I pee the kids come into the bathroom and fight with each other on the bath mat. Anyhow, I am sitting there hoping the vasectomy takes five hours or there’s some earthquake-sized complication and we have to be admitted overnight. I mean, wouldn’t that be great? I could stay overnight in a hospital! No kids and hopefully my husband would be out cold. But no! The doctor is a man and doesn’t understand. Way too quick, and right when I’m in the middle of a hot sex scene, as if I have the energy to think that sex can be hot anymore, the deed is done, he’s been sliced and diced. The nurse comes to get me. I wanted to cry when she said my husband was ‘ready.’ Darn it, though, I wasn’t ready!

‘So I trudge to the room and there he is, lying down, his face gluey white. And I let this man get me knocked up five times? This coward? This ghost? “I think I saw smoke, Tess, and I smelt it,” he whispers, his eyes staring wildly, like he’s seen the hounds of hell running around his balls gnashing their teeth. “There was fire. I think I saw flames. I was on fire!” That man got teary eyed over his testicles. It’s not like they were removed and put in a jar of formaldehyde.

‘“You had a vasectomy,” I hiss, pissed off there weren’t complications. I wanted to read my romance! It would have been great if the knife had slipped and we’d had to stay a week in the hospital. That would have been a treat. “There wasn’t any fire or flames,” I tell him real snarky.

‘“I’m not a man anymore,” he moans.

‘“Yeah, you’re a man.” I roll my eyes. “You still got your pecker.”

‘“I’m not a man …”

‘“If you’re not a man, you’re not a man, you eunuch, so maybe you won’t pester me so much for sex anymore.” I have had sex hundreds of times, Madeline. How many more times do I have to have it?

‘So, after a lot of irritating whining, so bad I wanted to smack him, we went home and he lay in bed with an ice pack on his balls, still moaning, and he reminded me of my childhood dog, Frisky. Frisky ran out and chased down kids and bit them, letting out this terrible howl. He would dart out the door before we could stop him. He even had a girlfriend dog that he would visit every once in a while, even though the girlfriend’s boyfriend dog chewed him up a couple of times. My mother used to have our neighbor’s Saint Bernard chase Frisky down and get him home.

‘Anyhow, as soon as my mother got that dog castrated, the ol’ balls cut off, he settled right on down. No more gallivanting around, no more cheating with the ladies, no more biting kids on bikes. So that’s what I told my husband when he was in bed groaning about the fire and smoke again. I told him about Frisky and said, “You two got something in common. Now shut up and quit whining.”

‘He complained for days from bed. By the fifth day, when he yelled my name three times and I walked back to the bedroom, carrying the baby, the toddler hanging on to my heel, and he whined, “Can you refill my orange juice? And I need another blanket. I’m chilled. Do you know where my gray socks are? No, not the white ones. I need my gray fishing socks. Can you put them on my feet?” I let him have it. I told him that I’d given birth to five kids. I’d been pregnant for most of our marriage. He never took care of me when I got home from the hospital, even the time I got sick with the flu after the third kid. Didn’t even take a day off work to help out, but two weeks later he was able to take six days off to go fishing with his buddies. I hadn’t lain in bed for five days after I’d had the kids. In fact, on the second day I was up and taking care of him and everyone else. He never brought me a meal in bed or so much as orange juice. He never brought me socks and put them on my feet. I told him all that and I told him I was sick of his being a baby and I poured an entire pitcher of orange juice on his crotch and told him to get his slack balls out of bed.

‘I kicked him out of the house. I packed his suitcase and threw him out and told him to go home to Momma, the Hatchet Face. I threw an ice pack at his head, too, I was so mad. I felt like years of fury were bottled up in me and they all came out. He works eight hours a day, an hour off for lunch, comes home, lies on the couch, and makes derisive comments about how I, “don’t work … he’d like to stay home all day and watch TV, too … it’s his money, not mine …”

‘I called a lawyer, and the lawyer served him at work, told him what his child support was gonna be for five kids. He came home three days later on his knees after being with his mother, who is a tyrannical dictator. I told him to stay with her for three months because I needed a break from him. The next weekend I dropped all five of the kids off at his mother’s house – thank heavens I’m done nursing the baby. I also dropped off all the crap he has stacked in our garage that he refuses to throw away, plus his beer bottle collection and the lights shaped like beer cans. My daughter said his mother left for a hotel by Saturday morning. By Saturday night my husband was crying because the baby wouldn’t stop crying, my two-year-old kept fussing, and the other three kids were driving him crazy and wanted to come home to me.

‘I had the best three days of my life, Madeline. Can’t wait to drop the kids off in two weeks again. He’s begging to come back home. Begging like a fiend. You know what the lesson here is?

‘If you’re going to have balls in your life, make sure they’re good balls. If I’m going to allow his balls back in my life, there’s going to be huge, huge changes. If he doesn’t want to make them, he’s out. He causes me too much stress. My life is easier, easier, Madeline, without him, no question. He’s more work than my kids, and he never gives back to me. He takes. Sucks me dry emotionally. I need to go ballless for a while. The kids and I and none of his balls. And, hey, twice a month, I get free weekends, Friday afternoon to Sunday evening, and every other Wednesday I get three hours to myself. Plus, he’s paying through his nose for child support and alimony. Loses more than half his check. Now that I don’t have to pay for his gambling and beer runs, I’m way ahead.’

Tess left later, and I thought about what she said.

Ladies, you don’t have to have balls in your life. It’s a choice. Remember that. You can be on your own. You can be very happy on your own. In fact, much happier than you are now if you’re living with a man who sucks the life out of you.

Think on it. Balls or no balls?

I hit send in my e-mail program, which flew my article to the magazine I write for, Boutique. It has a huge readership and is growing every day. Good platform for me.

It was very, very late by then, the whole city snoozing, but I was starving so I ate a bunch of fruit, including a mango, an apple, and two bananas, and macaroni and cheese out of a box. I then dug through a pile of mail stacked up in the tray of the black metal man with the octagonal head that freaks me out.

I flipped through a few utility bills, and saw a manila envelope.

It looked so benign, so normal, so boring. It was not benign, normal, or boring.

I opened it up and stared at the contents, my hands shaking so bad I thought I’d been stricken by palsy. Inside was what I had been expecting, and dreading, and fearing, for a long, long time.

It had found me. It was here.

I dropped all the mail on the floor and ran for the bathroom, my head soon slung over the toilet.

CHAPTER THREE

‘The black ghost is flying in soon. He’s coming for us. All of us.’ She tugged on my arm, frantic, eyes wild, her French fast and desperate. ‘We have to get out of here. We must save the children from the black ghost’s wrath.’

I stood near the butcher block kitchen table on The Lavender Farm, the morning light pouring through the French doors, as Grandma clutched me. I gave her a hug and answered in French. ‘Bonjour, Grandma. Sit down. I’ll make you some lavender tea.’

‘No!’ she said, grabbing my hands, holding them tight. ‘No time for tea! Other people are already in their secret rooms and climbing into their teapots. No time for sugar! They’re putting lavender in people’s mouths until they suffocate.’

It is awful to watch someone lose their mind, and Grandma was no different. She would sometimes run from our home screaming, or panting, trying to drag us with her, trying to get us into our pantry where the ‘secret door’ was, or to turn off all the lights and be absolutely silent. She wanted to sleep in the barn. She wanted to sleep in one of the sheds or outbuildings or underneath the apple trees in the orchard. She wanted to hide from ‘the black ghosts.’

Her sleep was sometimes shattered with her own screaming, and she would burst into tears at odd moments and call out in a voice raw and desperate the names of people I didn’t know: Avia, Esther, David, Gideon, Goldie – and there was Ismael, who came up often. ‘Where is Ismael? Is he hiding? I feel him!’

‘The black ghosts are gone, Grandma,’ I said, trying to calm her, knowing her mind was erratic, confused, diseased. ‘It’s OK.’

I smiled at Nola, a most wonderful Hispanic woman who worked in my grandparents’ grocery stores, named Swans, for thirty-three years, most of it in management. She left as a vice president and now takes care of Grandma, full time, as a favor to Grandma and Granddad, their long-standing friendship, and our family. She lives here at the farmhouse in her own suite. We all love Nola.

‘Good morning, Madeline,’ she said.

‘Good morning, Nola.’

‘Sister,’ Grandma said earnestly, as she flipped her silk scarf behind her shoulder, ‘they’re using sticks to beat the stars and the violin was dented in the secret room, and they’re packing all the cows in tight until they can’t breathe. We have to go.’

‘I have all the sticks, Grandma, and the cows are OK. They’re in the field.’

She hurried to the window to stare at a couple of cows in the distance. Beyond the French doors lies a land quilt of hills and valleys and forests, and beyond that the blue-purple mountains of the Oregon coast. I don’t go to the coast. I don’t go to the sea. Neither does Annie.

‘The black ghost will tear off our arms and use them for firewood.’

Honestly, sometimes Grandma’s words are terrifying. ‘The black ghost is locked away. He’s gone.’

Grandma put a hand out and ran it through a ray of sun, her jeweled bracelets from Granddad tinkling. She switched to German. ‘He’s locked away?’

I nodded, answered in German. ‘All gone.’

I had arrived at The Lavender Farm an hour before. I couldn’t sleep, anyhow, so I left my home at dawn, traveled down the freeways, out through the suburbs, and into the country. My grandparents’ white, old-fashioned farmhouse is filled with nooks and crannies and window seats, Grandma’s skylighted painting studio, a modernized kitchen with a long granite counter and open shelving, and an island painted blue. A grand piano in the living room takes up a corner, but Annie never plays anymore, though she knows how to make that keyboard sing.

Several paintings of Grandma’s swans were hung throughout the house: white swans in boats on a pond playing violins, black twin sister swans twirling parasols, swans crying into lace hankies, swans gathered for picnics of chocolate cake and pears, swans chasing a naughty fox wearing a black burglar mask, swans in tuxes and silky dresses in an orchestra. And, always, sparkling marbles, glittering crystals, mischievous elves, grinning grizzlies, laughing caterpillars, tea-sipping mice, and kite-flying gnomes hidden throughout the paintings, which young readers loved to find.

‘Grandma,’ I said gently. ‘Look outside. Did you see the lavender? It’s going to bloom soon.’

‘What? Who will bloom?’ She tugged at her cashmere sweater. ‘Who will bloom?’

‘The lavender.’ I turned her away from the cows. Grandma could sometimes be distracted by the lavender. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

I saw her blue-green eyes soften. ‘So beautiful. Anton planted those for me. Do you remember?’

‘Yes.’ Anton was my granddad. I didn’t remember him planting them. He’d sowed them when my momma was a young girl, replacing plants as they died. The lavender was just always there.

Grandma’s eyes teared up and she whispered, ‘I love you. You are a wonderful sister, Madeline, and I hope you can forgive me for what I did. It was love, love did it to me. It was after the Land of the Swans, I promise. Don’t forget your violin.’ She gets confused about whether I am her sister or her granddaughter. She does not have a sister. She thinks that Annie is her niece. She does not have a niece. We don’t correct her anymore. ‘You must take it with you. It’s our history. No more crying. You must be brave or they will stick a spear through your heart and hang you on a wall of fire next to the ogre and the dragon.’

I took a deep breath. See, terrifying. ‘OK, Grandma, I won’t cry.’

She patted my cheek. ‘We will have a new life. The black ghosts can’t follow us there. Ach. This life. So much pain.’

I settled Grandma down, then watched my hand tremble as I poured the hot water over Nola’s and Grandma’s lavender tea bags in pink-flowered teacups. I often don’t breathe right, which causes the trembling. It’s not panic attacks or anxiety problems, it’s like my breath is stuck in my body behind organs and inside bones. It’s been that way since the weather was furious.

Nola, Grandma, and I stared at the rows of lavender in the distance, precise, rolling highways of plants that would soon bloom into brilliant fireworks of blue, pink, purple, and white. Grandma abruptly stood and drew a finger through the condensation on the window. I knew she was drawing a swan.

‘There was so much blood that day,’ Grandma said, her words floating, reminiscing. ‘Blood. So many other violin people were turned to blood.’

I breathed in deep, told myself to be calm.

‘And the swans were murdered.’ She used her fist to make the swan disappear. ‘They were all murdered. Dead.’

I tried to breathe like a normal member of my species. It did not work.

‘Play your violin, my sister. Don’t mind the scratches from the mountain,’ Grandma said, her voice still tight, worried. ‘It always calms me down. Please? It’ll calm Ismael down, too.’

I didn’t know what Ismael she was talking about, but I went to the foyer and grabbed my violin. I played Beethoven’s Romance in G major, then I played Massenet’s ‘Méditation’ from Thaïs.

My grandma closed her eyes and listened, swaying back and forth.

When I was done, I bent to kiss her wrinkled cheek, her gaze off again, lost somewhere, floating through her past, jumping from here to there, helter-skelter, one vision after another, the circuits fried, or closed, or blocked, or dead, her brain slowly killing her.

‘Bloody swans,’ she breathed in French, then swore in German. ‘Bloody and broken. Their wings sliced off.’

My grandparents flip between speaking English, which they were taught by their English governesses from the time they were each three, to French, and German.

And in between all those languages lay their lies and secrets.

I sucked in air like I was drowning.

About thirty minutes later, I saw Annie striding up and over a slight hill toward my grandparents’ farmhouse. She’d had a busy night. On one of her calls she helped deliver a foal. I know because she called me on the way home at 1:00 in the morning. She hardly sleeps, like me. It is more comfortable, and we are in more control, when we are awake.

‘Hi, Annie,’ I called out when I heard the front door open.

‘Hello, Madeline, how are ya?’ Her cowboy boots thunked against the floor. She is the most courageous person I’ve ever known. She’s gorgeous and looks a lot like our momma, with the blue-green eyes of our grandma – but she hides her gorgeousness. No makeup, no frills. She is also slightly off her rocker.

‘How are you, Ms. Vet?’ I asked, giving her a hug. She hugged me back.

‘Haven’t had to run from anyone swinging a machete today, so that makes it good. You?’

‘Not bad.’ She knew I wasn’t ‘good.’ She knew I felt like I was collapsing from the inside out because I was two people, in one, and they were clashing.

‘Good morning, Grandma.’

‘Good morning, Anna.’ Grandma smiled angelically, as if the fear of minutes ago had never occurred. ‘You can’t bring much when we leave, remember. I will leave all my shoes, and you’ll have to wear clothes under your clothes, then your blue coat.’

‘OK, Grandma, I’ll get the blue coat. Hi, Nola.’

Nola smiled back. ‘Good morning, Annie.’

Nola and Annie launched into their usual discussion of the headlines in the news, as Grandma climbed back into the labyrinths of her mind and I poured lavender tea for Annie.

Annie lives in a blue home she built years ago, about an eighth of a mile away, up the hill from our pond and dock. She is my best friend. I have brown eyes, with gold in ’em, but we both have dark brown hair with, no kidding, a reddish sheen from our Irish, Boston-born-and-bred father. Hardly anyone else ever sees the red, but to us, it’s like a beacon. I flatten my hair until it’s straight – no curls allowed. Annie pulls her curls back into a tight braid – no curls allowed, either.

After high school Annie went to an Ivy League school. They were impressed with her grades (all As), her SATs (perfect score), her years of karate (black belt) and her awards in that area, her years of archery and awards in that area, her crack shot with a gun, and her awards in that area. She also wields a mean chain saw and can carve anything out of wood including, but not limited to, a pioneer woman with a gun and two kids, a Porsche, two girls on a bench holding tulips, a swan in full flight, high heels, a sea nymph, a cracked violin, a cupcake, Zeus, and – one time, after a bad date in high school – a large penis, which she propped on the guy’s lawn.

She also made a carving of a girl named, get this, Buffy, who called both Annie and me ‘ugly, wild freakoid horse monsters,’ but she made Buffy about a hundred pounds heavier with pimples on her face. She brought it to school five days later.

Buffy wasn’t pleased.

Annie graduated with degrees in economics and Arabic. After that … well, it’s sketchy. She spent six years in … whatever (undercover) US government agency she joined, of which she does not speak. She spent much of her time in places that precluded her from telling me much about where and what she was doing, and sometimes she would come home with a mashed-up face or another injury.

However, I do know her particular expertise: Explosives.

Now and then she blows up: Houses.

You think our government doesn’t train women to explode people/buildings? That would be: Wrong.