What I Remember Most

by Cathy Lamb

  “Nope. Again, I’m a guy, Grenady. G.U.Y.”

  I thought quickly. “How about if I make a painting, a collage of Hendricks’ Furniture? Of the building itself?”

  “I already can’t wait to see it.”

  “It’s a neat building, all the brick, the red barn doors, the trees, the deer. I’ll paint the sign and put some of the furniture out front.”

  “Go for it.”

  “What season do you want the background to be in the collage? Fall is always pretty with all the leaves changing colors, but maybe you like the snow?”

  “Let’s do fall. You started working for me in fall, too, and it’s my favorite season.”

  “It’ll be fall, then. I don’t want to mess with your favorite season.”

  “Good.”

  Kade was the exact opposite of Covey. Kade could knock the snot out of Covey.

  “Good,” I said, not able to look away. “And good.” He smiled. I liked his teeth.

  I worked until seven that night. On Tuesday, I worked until three o’clock, then Kade, Cory, Petey, Angelo, and I painted Kade’s office. It was fun. We joked and laughed. It was done quickly. At five o’clock I headed for The Spirited Owl. It took me a little longer to get there because the town was reenacting a cowboy-to-cowboy, 1850s shoot-out and there were people lined up and cheering them on.

  I was wound up after my shift at The Spirited Owl, because two women launched into a fight over a man. When their voices pitched, I walked around the bar, put my arms around both of them, and gazed at the man in question, who had a smirk on his face. I knew he was enjoying the ruckus and the attention, because I knew him, and said, “Lorene, McKayla, do you think that Eric’s worth all this? Take a hard look. I mean, would either one of you want to spend the rest of your life with him? Are you kidding me?”

  They stopped catfighting.

  Lorene’s shoulders slumped. “He’s like a game. I wanted to beat McKayla. We always compete over everything. Have since we were ten.”

  McKayla humphed, then said, “I don’t want Eric for my whole life. Yuck. I only want him for the weekend to get my libido under control.”

  “Don’t ever ruin a friendship over a man,” I said. “They’re never worth it.”

  “Hey!” Eric, who is not that bright, said, “I’m worth it.”

  “No, buddy,” I said. “You’re not.”

  I brought home pasta primavera and a slice of raspberry pie, then took a bath for an hour.

  Lights off. Candles on. Bubble bath.

  Bliss.

  On Sunday I woke at six o’clock in the morning to turn the heat on higher. There was snow on the ground and fog stuck on the mountains. I closed the drapes to keep the fog out and went back to sleep until eleven. My body was breaking down, I could feel it. Too much work.

  I grabbed coffee and went back to bed until Cleo came up. She was wearing a Superman outfit, a green tutu that hung to her knees, and pink high-tops.

  “I’m lovin’ that outfit,” I said.

  “Thanks. I’m a superhero who can dance ballet. Want to watch me?”

  “Sure.”

  She jumped and pirouetted, then turned around and pretended she was fighting a zombie with a big gun.

  She said, “If I came back as a piece of art supplies, I’d come back as a paintbrush. What about you?”

  I told her I’d come back as paints because then we could make a painting together.

  She said, “I wish I had three ears” and “Why is dirt brown?” and “There are billions of stars, billions of aliens with one eye. Cyclops City!”

  “You sure think a lot.”

  “I know. It’s like my brain”—she made spinning motions with her fingers by her ears—“it doesn’t stop thinking of weird stuff. Do you think I’m weird?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “I’m weird, too, Cleo. Be proud of it.”

  “Okay, weirdo.”

  “Nerd.”

  “Nerd rhinoceros.”

  I called Rozlyn. Rozlyn was weepy. Her head was hurting again. I told her we should go to the ER or, for sure, the doctor’s tomorrow. She insisted we wait until she had her appointment. I walked over and argued with her. She wouldn’t move. Her headache made me feel sick.

  Cleo and I watched a Disney movie while Rozlyn took a nap, then we made brownies out of a mix and added extra chocolate chips. We ate two brownies each, then got Liddy, and she followed us around the property like a dog.

  Later, I studied the quilt Rozlyn was working on. Three women, about Rozlyn’s size, in black bikinis, doing the cancan onstage.

  “That’s Mommy saying she can do what she damn well pleases,” Cleo said. “And this quilt”—she unfolded one on a shelf—“is Mommy saying that women need to get out and see the world and the tigers and lions.” It was a woman in a Jeep on a safari, animals all around. The woman was wearing a silvery cape.

  I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up with Cleo curled up next to me. I checked on Rozlyn and gave her an ice pack for her head, which was pounding.

  Something was wrong. We both knew it.

  “Found them.” Kade dropped an envelope on my desk.

  “The photograph of your truck with your furniture in the back?”

  He nodded. “Grizz took it.”

  “And maybe a photo of Grizz’s garage and your saws and equipment inside when you first started?”

  “Got it.”

  “And the pole barn?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Perfect.” I about wriggled with joy.

  “Now what are you going to do with them?”

  “That’s a secret for me to know and for you to find out.”

  He had such a sexy smile. “I told you, I don’t like secrets.”

  “And I told you to buck up and too bad.”

  He laughed. What a sexy laugh.

  “Okay. Keep the secret. And why don’t you take Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday off, too. Don’t come in here. Stay home. Paint my picture.”

  “I don’t need to—”

  “I asked it as a question, but I didn’t mean it as one. Your schedule makes me tired. Stay home. Paint the picture. I’ll see you on Friday.” He held up a hand. “No arguing.”

  I was wiped out. I was frazzled inside and outside. I thought about painting in my apartment, padding around in my slippers and pajamas all day, making a collage. It was like my old life, before Covey. I missed that life.

  “But what about—”

  “Friday. Besides, Grenady, I have more work than I can handle, and I don’t need any more, thanks to you.”

  A vision of drinking coffee while I worked came to mind. Being alone. Sleeping in a tad. I would still have to be at The Spirited Owl at five-thirty, but... “Thanks, Kade.” My eyes burned.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I sagged with relief.

  “Sleep, Grenady, please.”

  His softened-up eyes about undid me.

  I stayed home.

  I loved it. I slept in. I outlined Kade’s mural on my sketch pad in bed, drinking coffee. I dropped off the photos he gave me at a photo shop and told them what I needed. I bought frames and mats. I put together a six-by-three-foot canvas, then started outlining my collage on it. I ate chocolate cake and a lemon cookie. More coffee.

  I went to The Spirited Owl, had a good night in tips, and was home by eleven. I slept in until eight on Wednesday and Thursday, and worked on Kade’s collage, humming, lost in my art, the world gone, until my bartending shifts.

  On Friday I went back to Hendricks’ and was buried. E-mails. Calls. Clients. A meeting with Kade about sales, Rozlyn about pricing for pieces, and Eudora about logistical stuff with the company, but I felt better. Not quite as exhausted. Those days at home reminded me of how much I love working at home. I’m a homebody at heart, that’s for sure.

  I slept in Saturday, then worked on Kade’s collage until my shift at The Spirited Owl. I was nervous. I
wanted Kade to like it. How humiliating if he didn’t. Plus, he would feel compelled to hang it in his office so it wouldn’t hurt my feelings.

  Cleo came up to visit while I worked. She was wearing a red, blue, and yellow hat with one of those twirly, spinny things on top of her head. She was also wearing one red tennis shoe and a tap dance shoe because today was “mismatch shoe day.”

  “Can I paint with you? I want to paint a picture of a monster with black teeth and a red cape.”

  I laid out newspapers for her on the table, then realized that the front page story was about that serial killer again. Ugh. I didn’t know why the story was bothering me so much, other than the usual reasons, but I didn’t want to look at it. I snatched it up quick and put the comics down for her. I gave her a small canvas. She painted the monster while I worked.

  I didn’t know that Cleo was watching me until she said, “Grenady, you are the best artist on the planet and on Pluto.” She fist-bumped me. “But do you know how to make friends? I’m having problems with that. Except for Liddy. We’re best friends.”

  On Tuesday night Moose came in. We chatted. He asked me out, I said no, he said you’re breaking my heart, and I said I’m sorry, and he said, “But don’t worry, Grenady, I won’t sing you a song. Have you met my mother? Mom, this is Grenady . . .”

  I did, indeed, like Monica very much.

  But I was not in love with her son.

  I received a message from Covey on Wednesday. He was raving, barely in control.

  “Look, Trailer Trash Lady, no one’s going to jail here except for you. I’m innocent. You want to plead out, go ahead, it’s your time behind bars, and as I remember it, you have claustrophobia, anxiety, and a certain aversion to being locked in or locked out of anywhere. I don’t think jail’s going to work for you. Call me right now.”

  I did not call back. Alice, My Anxiety, was curled up under a table.

  “You outdid yourself.”

  “Pardon?” At least Kade was smiling.

  Of all the freakin’ mornings to be late. I’d set up Kade’s office on Sunday, went to bed early, and woke up at eight-thirty on Monday. I’m always at Hendricks’ working away by then.

  I had flown out of bed, taken a three-minute shower, brushed my hair out, and dove into my clothes. I brushed my teeth, shoved makeup into my purse to put on later, and took off.

  I sprinted into Hendricks’ and tried to sneak into my office, but Kade saw me coming.

  “Thank you, Grenady.”

  “Do you like it?” I tried to catch my breath from running in.

  “Yes, I do.” He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. I could tell he was happy. “Grenady, I hardly know what to say.”

  I peeked into his office, where about twenty employees were gathered. I heard the excited chitchat.

  “It’s like looking at one of those before-and-after pictures of a house,” Kade said. “Only it’s my office and I barely recognize it.”

  “But you still want to work in there?”

  “It’ll be hard. Distracting.” He winked.

  On the steel blue wall to the left of his desk I hung five matted and framed photos. I’d had the photos enlarged and placed in twenty-four-by-thirty-six-inch frames. One was of Kade standing in front of his pickup truck years ago, his hand-carved furniture piled into it, when he first started Hendricks’ Furniture.

  Another photo was of Grizz’s garage filled with Kade’s saws and workbenches and Kade working in a white tank top. (Seeexxxy!)

  The third was of the outside of the pole barn; the fourth was a sign that said HENDRICKS’ FURNITURE, the first sign Kade made for the pole barn. The fifth was Kade’s building now, with the modern brick exterior, the multitude of windows, and the red barn doors.

  To the direct right of the office door I hung the old Hendricks’ sign that I’d found in storage. On the other side I hung his work gloves.

  I’d found the gloves in the storage room and asked Kade whose they were. He said they were his: he’d used them when he started the company, and they’d lasted ten years. Sounds silly, but I framed them. They were in bad shape and had a couple of holes, but to me they spelled out hard work and determination. I put a lamp with a wood base and a white shade on the grizzly bear table in front of the wall of windows, and I moved the armoire with the leaping salmon at an angle in the corner.

  Behind his massive desk with the fly fisherman in the stream I’d hung the collage.

  When I walked into the office with Kade, Rozlyn turned around and said, “I don’t think I can work today, my friend. I have to stand and stare at this work of art and have my hot flashes.”

  “It’s sooo good, Grenady,” Sam said. “So good. Wish I had a better vocabulary to talk about this.... I mean, it’s very, very good.”

  “I am, once again, stunned speechless,” said Angelo the ex–football player with the broken nose, spreading his muscled arms wide. “More breathtaking artwork from Grenady. Breathtaking.”

  Petey said, his Irish brogue so musical, “I need one of these, lass. This is not a want. I need one like I need my Irish whiskey.”

  I smiled and felt myself tearing up.

  “Oh no! She’s crying!” Rozlyn yelled, and pulled me into a hug. “It’s okay if you cry, baby, we all do. Maybe you’re premenopausal. How are your mood swings? That’s an indicator.”

  Kade’s collage of the Hendricks’ Furniture building was huge, a six-by-three-foot canvas. I’d painted the background with several shades of blue, the sunset spreading across the horizon, with slivers of pink, purple, and red, like liquid silk. I set it in fall, as Kade asked, so the trees’ leaves were orange, gold, brown, green, and yellow.

  Then I added the collage elements. I made a copy of the photograph of Kade’s old pickup truck and glued it to the canvas under a pine tree. I’d had Sam cut out thin wood rectangles and I painted them red and attached them to the building as the barn doors. I painted HENDRICKS’ FURNITURE in block letters above the door, and I painted sandpaper a reddish color to give the brick texture.

  I glued dried chrysanthemums across the front of the building. I used tiny slivers of wood on the trees surrounding the building.

  “She put the squirrels in,” Petey said. “Smart lass.”

  “She even put in the mailbox,” Rozlyn exclaimed. “And the little red flag is up. It says Hendricks’!”

  “And she put the squirrels in!”

  I’d painted two squirrels in a tree, then used fur to make their fluffy tails. I painted the three deer that came by Hendricks’ and used painted toothpicks to form their antlers.

  “And that rocking chair,” Angelo said. “Charming!”

  I’d painted an oversized rocking chair and put it under the pine tree, and I wrote Kade’s name on the top of the chair. I used a piece of red-and-white-striped fabric to form the pillow on the chair. I painted the armoire with the howling wolf doors out on the front porch of the building, next to Kade’s desk with the fly fisherman and the table with the raccoon legs. On the table I painted a vase, then put a dried chrysanthemum in it. I painted Kade’s old gloves on the table, too.

  “It’s outstanding, Grenady,” he said, quietly, as the others talked, and more people came in to see what the commotion was about. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but not that. I don’t want you to quit, but you need to quit, quit both your jobs, do exactly what I did, and go back to your art full time. But don’t quit here. Forget I said that.”

  I would love that. But I’d miss Kade. “Maybe someday. But how could I leave this place? I’d miss out on lunch with Rozlyn and wouldn’t be able to hear about her hot flashes or her love for Leonard.” I was not breaking a confidence; Rozlyn openly discussed these issues with Kade.

  Kade laughed. “She’s blunt, isn’t she?”

  “And I’d miss out on Eudora’s wise words, and wondering what in heck she did in D.C. and Russia and the Middle East, and I’d miss talking to Dell once a week. And pouring beer and wine for h
ours every night at The Spirited Owl to people who do and say strange things? Now that’s special. How could I leave that heaven?”

  “Okay, you can quit The Spirited Owl.”

  “I’ll tell Tildy you said that. She probably won’t make you your special hamburger anymore, though.”

  “I would miss that hamburger, but you need to have time for your art. You have to go back to this, Grenady.” He studied the collage. “Right away.”

  “Soon. Maybe. We’ll see.” Change would be forced on me one way or the other. Probably ‘the other.’ Hello, blue, jail-stamped clothes and silver toilet!

  “It’s going to be hard for me to work in here now, Grenady. You’ve made it so much more . . . relaxing.”

  “Good, you work too hard, Mr. Type-A Workaholic.”

  “Me? You’re calling me a workaholic? You who has two jobs?”

  I put my hand under my chin and pretended to think about that. “That was slightly hypocritical, wasn’t it?”

  “I believe so.”

  He turned me on. He did. I could not control my body, and my body wanted that man.

  Eudora walked in, stared at the collage, and said, “My God. And she was answering the phone for months?”

  Kade put a check in an envelope on my desk that afternoon. I opened it up, saw the amount, and walked straight back to his office. I take pride in my artwork and I want to be fairly paid, but this was too much.

  Way too much. I held it out to him. “No.”

  “Yes. Don’t argue or you’re fired.”

  “Ohhhhh!” I feigned fear, waving my hands. “Now that’s scary!”

  Eudora was there and drawled, “I feel scared myself.”

  “You’re fired.”

  “Okay.” I put the check on his desk and walked out.

  Eudora said, “If you’re fired, can I hire you to make me a painting?”

  The check was back on my desk in twenty minutes when I stepped out to talk to Rozlyn, who was planning a spying adventure for me, Eudora, and herself. The target: Leonard.