I feel her around me, calming me as my cries turn to painful hiccups. “Cher, baby of mine.”
“Don’t go.”
There is a hand on my shoulder. This time it’s real. “Lou Ann!”
I lift my face and see Lindsey through my swollen, tear-filled eyes. “My momma’s gone.”
23
July 30
I’m alone and lost.
I AM ADRIFT, no longer connected to anything. A vital part of me is gone. It feels like my heart no longer beats in my chest, yet I am still here. Mother is across the parlor from me. I can see her profile, but she is not here. She stayed with me for the first two days after her passing, but I felt her leave the night I requested an autopsy. I don’t know if that is a coincidence, or if she’s mad because I went against her wishes, but I don’t think I could live the rest of my life not knowing why my mom died. I know Lindsey couldn’t. Her guilt was almost as paralyzing as mine until learning Mom suffered a heart attack due to a blood clot that originated from a microbleed in her brain. Even if someone had been next to her and immediately called 911, she likely would have died on the way to the hospital. Lindsey seems comforted by this. I am not. Likely only adds to my guilt.
The past five days have passed in flickers of time. I’m in one place, and then I’m somewhere else, and I hardly recall the in-between.
I am dressed in my black suit and new Louboutin heels like the day I took Mom from Golden Springs. The day my life changed, the day my priorities changed. A pillbox hat sits on top of my head, and my lips are Seductress Red in honor of my mother.
Patricia is embroidered in blue on white silk inside the casket; I hadn’t realized how opulent the interior draping was the day she picked it out. The shirring and tassels alone are pure brothel, just like she wanted. There are several poster-size photos of Mom about the room. Most of them are black-and-whites of her and my grandmother and great-grandmother. She would have loved the portrait I had colorized of her wearing her blue organza prom dress, which I placed at the head of the coffin, but my favorite is the picture of her wearing the big blue hat with the broken ostrich feather taken the day I pulled the trunk from the attic. Lindsey and I picked out some of her Bob Ross paintings to display on the mantel above her casket.
Moonlight Sonata plays on the old Victrola, and I sit on the chesterfield where Mother and I talked and laughed and sometimes argued. I can almost smell a lingering trace of Pirate’s Booty on the cushions. Lindsey sits next to me. Her eyes are as swollen as her ankles. Raphael is unusually quiet and still, seeming to mourn with us.
There are people here whom I’ve never met. Some are from Mom’s childhood, others are relatives so distant I’ve never even heard of them before. More than I imagined have come from around the area to pay their respects to a woman they’d never met.
They’ve brought food and say they’re sorry for my loss. They say they know how I feel. I don’t think that can possibly be true. Not unless they’ve experienced a pain so deep it pierces their soul. Not unless they are completely alone in the world and nothing will ever fill the massive hole where their heart once beat.
Simon is here somewhere, but I cannot look at him. He has reached out to me several times, but I cannot see him without being overwhelmed with guilt and shame. While I was kissing him, feeling my body come alive with his touch, my mother’s body was doing the opposite just down the hall. It’s not his fault, but I blame him just the same.
I look at the pointed toes of my shoes. It’s been five days since I walked into Mom’s bedroom and found her on the floor. Five days of planning her funeral according to her wishes. Five days of hell and heartache and sleepless nights. Five days of promising God anything for just one more day with her. Just one more day of looking through old albums, painting happy clouds, and watching Wink Martindale. I don’t care if that day is spent with her accusing me of trying to kill her or steal her shoes or both.
The funeral director whispers to me that it’s time to begin the ceremony. I nod, and he starts with a prayer and Bible verses my mom picked out. He reads the eulogy that I wrote honoring her life. I recall sitting at my computer for hours, but I don’t remember what I’ve written until I hear it from his mouth. It is inadequate, and I am ashamed. I should have said more. I should have described her life in more grandiose terms. If nothing, Mom was over-the-top and grandiose, and my eulogy falls short.
There are no words to describe the agony of seeing my mother in a coffin. It’s raw and jagged and burns my eyes with hot tears. How will I live without her? We had our spats and periods of time when we did not speak. Silly and regretful, but I always knew that my mother was just a phone call away.
I make it through the last hymn, and I manage to rise and walk across the parlor. I stand before Mom’s shiny white casket, with the gold handles and blue pillow to “match” her eyes. She wears a new blue organza dress and Passion Red lipstick to match her nature.
I kiss her cool cheek and whisper, “I love you always.” I am ushered outside so I won’t see the lid close on my mother. Lindsey stands beside me, and I lock my knees so I won’t buckle on the wooden porch. The first time I stood in this spot, my pump got stuck in a hole while Mom insisted Wynonna stole “the good key.” I wish I could go back to that day and do it over. I wouldn’t yell at Mom for saying Tony’s name.
Lindsey puts her arm around my shoulders, and I turn my face away from Simon and the other pallbearers carrying Mom’s closed white casket to the waiting surrey. I don’t want to do this. I want to run upstairs and pull the sheets over my head, but I put one foot in front of the other and follow behind the carriage. It’s hot and humid, and my footsteps falter on the old cobblestones. Simon takes hold of my arm and steadies me. I am grateful, but I pull away.
It seems to take forever to reach the cemetery. Grandmother’s white vault is open, and Mother’s coffin is slid inside as we bow our heads in prayer. I’m mad at God. It would be one thing if Mom had actually committed suicide. It’s another that she didn’t and that God took her anyway.
“Amen,” I say along with the others standing around the vault. With that one word, it’s over. Mom is truly gone. I am folding in on myself. I do not know how much longer I can remain upright, but I do make it back to the house somehow.
“Can I get you something to eat?” asks a woman from one of the local churches. I don’t even know which one, because Mom and I never set foot in any of them.
“No, thank you.” I kick off my heels and carry them upstairs to my bedroom. I know the polite thing to do is return downstairs. I need to thank people and make an extra effort to talk to distant relatives. I just can’t right now, and I lie down alone instead. I have not slept for more than a few hours here and there for the past five days. I close my eyes, even though I know I will not sleep.
There’s a knock on my door, and I hear Simon. “I’m coming in. So cover up if you’re naked.” He doesn’t wait for a response before he walks into my room.
“I’m not naked.” I sit up and scooch back against the headboard. “If you’ve come to tell me I’m rude and bad-mannered for not returning downstairs to chat with the church ladies, I don’t care.”
He’s removed his black suit jacket and loosened his gray tie. “I’m not going to tell you how to behave at your momma’s funeral.” He sits on the side of the bed as if I invited him. “You look tired.”
“I am.”
“And mad as hell at somebody.”
“I am.”
“And I get the feeling that ‘somebody’ is me.” He unbuttons the collar of his white shirt. He shakes his head. “But for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.”
I lean my head back against the headboard and close my eyes. “I was with you when I should have been with her. I know it’s not your fault, but…” I shrug and leave the rest unsaid.
“And you think you could have saved her?”
“Maybe.”
“Lindsey thinks different.”
I
crack my eyes open and look at him. “Maybe Lindsey wants to think different.”
“You really believe that?”
No, but I’m angry and sad and miserable. “My mother got out of bed to stash her Little Peanut box, but she didn’t make it.” The day after Mom died, I noticed the lid to the coal bin was open. I feel a tiny bit better knowing she rudely shooed me from her room so she could hoard her cake, not because I was annoying her. “She died on the hardwood floor. All alone, while I was down the hall fooling around with you.”
“I thought it might be something like that. If you hadn’t been in the back parlor ‘fooling around’ with me, what would you have been doing?”
“I’ve asked myself that question, and I don’t know.” I shake my head. “But the answer doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything.”
“Mais, locking yourself away does?” He stands and walks to the door. “Your momma was a unique woman. I’m glad I knew her.” He pauses long enough to say, “You should try and join the living. It’s gotta be better than grieving alone.”
Maybe for him, but I prefer to grieve alone. I need to wallow in my misery and guilt, and that’s exactly what I do over the next few days. I eat when I’m hungry and spend as much time as I can out on the balcony staring at the Mississippi through the filter of live oaks. Magnolia and wild honeysuckle scent the heavy humid air, and I swim in it until I am dripping with sweat and forced inside.
A week after the funeral, I turn my attention to business, and the decision I’ve put off making. With Mom gone, my time is free. There’s no reason to find a new Love Guru now. Nothing is keeping me from stepping into my Lulu shoes and picking up where I left off. I know the business I built better than anyone, and there’s no reason why I can’t get the excitement back.
Except that I don’t have any desire to get it back. I don’t have the drive or heart for it. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but over the past six months I fell out of love with Lulu. Out of love with my whole life, really. I’ve said everything I know to say, and in as many ways as possible, about love and life and dating. I don’t have the passion I once did, and I’m okay with that. I open up my fingers and let go. I am relieved and freed enough to look at video hopefuls with a new perspective. Freed to see the excitement and passion in someone else’s eyes.
Unencumbered by the heavy burden that has weighed on me for months, I don’t take long to find the new Lulu. She is creative and driven and has the spark I’ve been looking for, and of course, she’s gorgeous, with great style. I call Margie with the news, but the fine details will be worked out later. The business will be restructured, but I am the president of Lulu Inc. and will remain in that position. I just won’t be involved in the day-to-day, or even month-to-month, decision-making.
When I hang up the phone, I actually feel lighter, and I go to bed knowing I’ve made the right decision. I quickly fall into a healing sleep that has eluded me since the day Mom died. A deep sleep that is interrupted by someone insistently shaking me awake.
“Lou Ann.”
I squint against the hall light flooding my room. “What?” Lindsey is speaking to me, but my head is dull. I just want to be left alone, and I close my eyes. “Go back to bed.”
She shakes me again. “My water broke.”
“What?” I sit up straight. “What! Are you sure?” It’s six days past Frankie’s due date and Lindsey has had several false alarms.
“Um… yes, Lou Ann, and my contractions are five minutes apart.”
“We need to get to the hospital.” I throw the covers off my body. “It’s Frankie’s birthday.”
24
September 12
Welcome to your life, Frankie!
Welcome to my new life.
HERE COMES a big one.”
“Don’t tell me!”
I turn my attention from the peaks and plateaus of the monitor measuring Lindsey’s vitals to her red face. “Sorry.”
Lindsey has opted for a natural, drug-free birth. About two hours ago, she began to regret that decision, but it was too late for one of those spinal taps. She grabs onto the side rail and does her who-who-who breathing, and I’m glad it isn’t me in that bed.
Watching the whole birthing process has been a huge learning experience. Lindsey’s had so many fingers up her vagina, she should start charging admission. From the safety of my chair next to her bed, I find the whole thing fascinating. When we arrived at the hospital at four this morning, her contractions were four minutes apart. Nine hours later, her contractions are closer and lasting longer, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she starts screaming bloody horror like in the movies.
“I have to tell you something,” Lindsey says as she takes deep cleansing breaths and the spike on the monitor drops.
“If you want to tell me you’re pregnant, I already know.”
“Not that. I lied about Frankie’s father.”
I look over at her. “What?”
“I lied about telling him I’m pregnant.”
“Okay.” This is kind of a bizarre time to bring it up.
She reaches for a cup of water, and I stand to help. “I don’t know who his father is. I just said that because I didn’t want you to think I was a slut.”
I just look at her, kind of shocked that this is what she wants to talk about right now.
“I had a few wild months after Mrs. Rogan died.”
“Mrs. Rogan?”
“My client before Patricia. The Rogan family wanted me to stay in the house and take care of the place until they settled her affairs and put it on the market.” She shakes her head. “I lived out my sexual fantasies. I think maybe two or three times.”
“Most women do that. It’s normal.”
“A week. Sometimes twice in one day.”
That’s not so normal. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because I don’t want you to be surprised if he comes out part Asian or black or Hispanic or Russian.”
Russian?
“Or Swedish.”
“He’ll come out looking like Frankie. That’s all that counts.”
“I’ve felt so horrible for lying to you.”
“I really don’t think it matters at this point. I don’t care. I love you… and here comes another one.”
“Don’t tell me!”
I sit back down in my chair and keep my mouth shut. Or at least I try, but when the doctor comes in and wheels a stool to the end of the bed, all bets are off. I move behind his left shoulder and watch Lindsey grab her bent knees and push. It’s not a pretty sight down here in the front row. Kind of disturbing, but exactly where I want to be sitting.
“There’s his head,” the doctor announces from his catcher’s position.
“Where?”
“Right here.”
I bend my head down and look right up Lindsey’s hoo-ha. “That hairy-walnut-looking thing?”
“Yep.”
“Oh my God.” It hits me that I am seeing the top of an actual baby’s head. I know this is biologically natural, but it’s new to me. A few more pushes and Frankie’s head pops out like a little purple alien. “Oh my God, Lindsey, Frankie’s head’s out. I can see his face.” The doctor suctions the baby’s nose and mouth. Lindsey pushes out a shoulder, and then Frankie just slips into the world and is put on his momma’s stomach. Lindsey’s bawling and touching him, and he opens his mouth and screams and screams.
“That’s my favorite part,” the doctor says, and I agree. A nurse hands me scissors to cut the rubbery cord. His color has changed to pink, and he is rolled up in a swaddling cloth like a burrito and placed in his mother’s arms.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” Lindsey asks through blubbery tears.
“Beautiful.” I touch his cheek with the back of my finger. He’s the softest thing I’ve ever felt. He has so much dark hair. “He looks like he’s wearing a little toupee,” I say, just before I start blubbering too. I’ve never experienced this kind of awe and sheer j
oy.
“I’m your momma,” Lindsey tells him, and I think of my mother. For the first time since her death, her memory isn’t accompanied by pain. I think about her on the day of Lindsey’s baby shower, smiling when she beat the other women in the worst-birthing-story competition. I think I’m going to miss hearing about how I ripped out her uterus.
I take tons of pictures, and after a nurse snaps pictures of the three of us, Frankie is taken across the room and put in a little bed beneath a warming light. He weighs in at ten pounds two ounces and he is twenty-three inches long. He looks tiny to me, but I guess that’s considered big. At least that’s what the nurses tell me. His thick hair is parted on the side like a little old man’s, and I think Lindsey can cross Swedish off her list.
The next day, I drive the three of us home and feel bad when Lindsey sucks a breath between her teeth as she gets out of the car. She walks slowly into the house, Frankie in his car seat in one hand and a bag of hospital swag in the other. I follow behind, carrying a gigantic floral arrangement that I can’t see over or around. I can only look at my feet and take careful steps. The flowers are from Jim, and the card reads, To my wonderful girl and little man. Considering all things, it seems kind of presumptuous to me, but Lindsey cried and didn’t ask my opinion, and I’m out of the relationship advice business.
While Lindsey takes a shower, Frankie naps in the cradle Mother and I bought him. Next to his head is the blue elephant named Earl. He’s a perfect baby.
The first few days are rough, and I start to think he’s less perfect. Frankie doesn’t like to sleep at night, and when Lindsey’s milk comes in, her boobs are like sprinklers. This makes Frankie very mad. Of course, Raphael has to get in on the act and starts to imitate a crying baby. If it isn’t one of them wailing, it’s the other, but by the end of the week, Lindsey and the baby have calmed down. Raphael has calmed down too.
When it’s just me and Frankie and Raphael in the room, the bird even purrs and shifts from side to side like he’s dancing. Frankie’s blue eyes get big when he watches Raphael squawk and smiles when the bird opens his beak and bays like a hound dog. Raphael hasn’t given up his feud with Lindsey, but he controls himself when the baby is near.
How Lulu Lost Her Mind Page 25
