What I Remember Most

by Cathy Lamb

  I will always miss my parents. But what I’ve learned is that nostalgia, the “if onlys” can be dangerous. It can bring on heavy sadness and sharp despair and it does not change the past.

  So I am here, in the present.

  Rozlyn DiMarco died in the fall when the leaves were on fire. Bright golds, scarlet reds, pumpkin orange, the mountains blue and purple at dusk, the sunrises full of streaks of pink. Nature was a layered, colorful collage, a last gift, it seemed, to Rozlyn.

  Before she died, she told Eudora and me she would “Live like crazy,” and so she did. She and Cleo went to Disney World for a week. They went to the beach and splashed in the waves. They made a Thanksgiving dinner in August together and invited everyone. They baked an eight-layer chocolate cake and a pizza in the shape of a smile.

  They sewed a special, queen-sized quilt. They cut up their favorite old clothes into squares and made a double border around the edge. In the center, they cut out a huge red heart.

  They rode Liddy and took long walks. They took photos of everything they did together. Rozlyn gave me the photos, and Eudora and I put them into photograph books. Who knew that ex-spy Eudora would know how to cut out papers and stickers and make those fancy album pages?

  Rozlyn wrote Cleo a letter and gave it to me. I put it in the back of the last photograph book, the finality sobering.

  Rozlyn danced outside one night naked to the song “Greased Lightning” and made Eudora and me dance naked with her. We went skinny-dipping in the river and got drunk off margaritas. We took Cleo roller-skating, rafting, and camping.

  She lived like crazy until the disease beat her down and she couldn’t live anymore, her head aching.

  Rozlyn died as she wanted. She had a special date with Leonard three nights before and said good-bye to him. She said he “blubbered like a baby, but I told him to quit it because I wanted to ride him like a bucking bronco one more time.” She knew it was over. She hugged me and Eudora, then closed the door to her home on a Saturday morning to spend time with Cleo only.

  There are, sometimes in life, gracious moments, as I call them, and Rozlyn had one. Cleo left for school on Monday. I took a day off work to be with Rozlyn, and she came upstairs to visit. We sat out on my porch, the sun shining on her face, the billowy white clouds moving right along, the trees singing a whispery song.

  Rozlyn didn’t look well. She was pale, shaky. She’d lost weight. Her time had been less than expected. She was supposed to have two years, but her doctor had told her recently it could happen anytime, the tumor in her head instantly sucking the life out of her. I felt angry about that, cheated, defeated.

  She reached out her hand and I held it. “I love you, soul sister,” she told me.

  “I love you, too, soul sister.” I choked up.

  She closed her eyes, sighed, and her whole body jerked twice, as if it had been shot, then her head fell to the side.

  I felt her life drain out in my hand, her grasp loosening. “I love you, Rozlyn,” I cried out, wanting her to hear those words as she left. “I love you.”

  I did not call 911. I did not try to save my soul sister. She was not savable. She would not want to be revived only to die again anyhow. She had died as she wished. She had not wanted it to happen in front of Cleo, and she had kept her promise to herself to live like crazy.

  I put my cheek to hers and cried for my friend, my tears dripping off both our faces.

  I cried and cried for Rozlyn, then I cried for Cleo. Then I cried for all of us.

  It is inexplicable how some of the very best people die way too young.

  It knocks you flat, that it does, and you wonder how you will ever, ever get up again.

  Rozlyn’s funeral was held outside, on her property, the Christmas tree farm and the meadow in the distance, the mountains towering behind. It was attended by two hundred fifty people, including everyone at Hendricks’.

  We had a potluck dinner afterward, as Rozlyn wanted. “Cleo needs this to happen in a familiar, loving place. Make sure Liddy is nearby. That horse is her best friend.”

  We set up white tents and long tables. Kade brought the wine and beer, as Rozlyn had requested, so that people could have a drink on her, and “rock and roll on.”

  Liddy was tied to a nearby tree wearing her flowered hat. Cleo went and hugged her often. In the middle of the potluck, after the service, Cleo untied her and Liddy followed her on a walk through the meadow, one of Rozlyn’s “women-power” quilts around her shoulders.

  Cleo had, at first, been quiet when I went to school and picked her up the morning Rozlyn died. The funeral home had been by for Rozlyn already. She had not wanted Cleo to see her dead. “Her last memory of me should be of my wicked awesome smile and my love, not a stiff, scary corpse.”

  Cleo and I went on a walk, past the big, red barn, and I held her hand and told her, as gently as I could, that her mom had died. She didn’t say anything for long, painful moments, but I felt her hand quiver.

  She had known it would happen, but children, as adults, often don’t understand the finality of death until they’re in its irrefutable black depths.

  “She’s not dead! She’s not!” She ripped her hand out of mine. “Do you hear me, Grenady? She’s not dead! I know it! I want my mommy! I want my mom!”

  I felt my whole chest constrict. I was Cleo and Cleo was me. I had thought those same words a thousand times as a child . . . I want my mom! I want my dad!

  I dropped to my knees and hugged her, my tears streaming. “I’m sorry, honey, so sorry.”

  “No! No! Get her, Grenady, get her!” She cupped my face. “Right now!” She tilted her head back and screamed, the sound utterly shattering.

  I heard Liddy in the barn, neighing, turning, trying to break out of her stall, to reach Cleo.

  She struggled out of my arms, her face hot.

  “Help her!” Cleo shook my shoulders. “Help Mommy!”

  “I can’t help her anymore, Cleo,” I sobbed, then bit my lip. “She’s in heaven.” Rozlyn had told her that that was where she would be, watching over Cleo like a “quilt-sewing angel.”

  “No, she’s not. You lie.” She hit me on the shoulder with her tiny fist. “Where is she?”

  I could tell that the Cleo I knew was gone, disappearing into her hysteria. Liddy kept neighing, banging on the stall door with her hoof.

  “Where is my mommy? You tell me!” She screamed again, long and raw. It reached up into that bright blue sky and the puffy white clouds. “You tell me right now!”

  That did it for Liddy. She broke out of her stall, the door crashing open, and galloped over to Cleo. I put my arms around Cleo to protect her, but I had nothing to worry about. Liddy stopped before us, her nose to Cleo’s wet cheeks.

  “I want Mommy!” She hit my shoulder again, not hard. “She’s here, she’s here, she’s here!” Cleo took a deep breath, then let all her grief and anger and desperate sadness out again. I swear her scream raced through the meadow, then bounced off those mountains, pummeling both of us. “Mommy! Where are you?”

  She collapsed in my arms, and I sank to the grass and rocked her until she had screamed herself out, limp and lost, Liddy neighing softly beside us, agitated and nervous. I could hardly sit up, my body a wall of searing pain.

  “Mommy! Where are you? Where are you?”

  Watching a child grieve takes your breath away.

  53

  Cleo and I moved into Kade’s house about two months later. It was not a hard decision. I tried living with Cleo in her home, and she couldn’t stand it. She looked for her mother everywhere. I think, for some, living in the home of someone who is gone is a comfort. Cleo is a child. It was not a comfort. She was haunted.

  Kade said, after he made us pancakes one morning at his house, and Cleo was outside, walking Liddy, “I want you two to come and live with me.”

  “Live with you?”

  “Yes. That doesn’t sound romantic. Will you live with me? But when I’ve talked about marriage,
you freeze up. You look worried and nervous. I can see you withdrawing from me, so that’s obviously not in the cards.”

  “You got that right.”

  “I want marriage, in the future. I want brothers and sisters for Cleo. I want the dog. But I’ll wait until you’re ready.”

  I ignored all the happy tingling in my stomach.

  “I want to be with you, Grenady. All the time. I want to sleep with you, wake up with you, take care of you, laugh with you, the whole thing, baby, until we’re old and out on that deck in our rocking chairs.”

  “You’d get sick of me.”

  “Never, Artist Lady.” He leaned over and kissed me. “I will never get sick of you.”

  It was tempting. He was tempting.

  “Please, Grenady, think about it. I want you and I and Cleo to be a family together. I am begging you. I don’t like living apart at all. I’m lonely without you. I don’t like sleeping here alone. I don’t like driving up to the house and not having you both here.”

  “I’ll think about it.” I kissed him, and he picked me up and put me on his lap in his leather chair.

  “Okay, I thought about it.”

  He laughed. “And?”

  “Yes.”

  The day we moved in I noticed something new in Kade’s yard. It was a white picket fence in a rectangle. He was building a gazebo in the center of it. In the fall he would plant bulbs. Lilies, for my mother, and in the summer, daisies for daisy crowns and roses for Mr. Lee.

  It’s hard not to be madly in love with that man.

  He bought me a ring. It’s gold, with a row of sparkly diamonds. I love it. “So it’s a promise, Grenady, that when you’re ready, you’ll marry me.”

  “That’s a yes.”

  My pink, ceramic rose box for my lily bracelet is right at home on the nightstand next to his bed with the married bald eagles.

  Rozlyn made me the spy girl quilt. I found it wrapped in Christmas paper, in her room, with my name on a card, after she died. She made one for Eudora, too.

  Three women, butts way in the air, slinking through the grass wearing night goggles, miniskirts, and bikini tops over well-endowed bosoms. I hung it in my new studio to honor her and our friendship. I still cry about her. One wonders how much pain a body can take before it breaks, but I am determined not to break.

  Kade, Cleo, and I decorated Cleo’s bedroom together. We hung up Rozlyn’s heart quilt on one wall and the quilt with the woman climbing a mountain in a purple leotard and pink tennis shoes on another. She used two others for her bedspreads.

  Kade built Cleo an exquisite desk. In the front he carved a replica of the heart quilt, which I painted.

  Cleo and Kade were friends immediately. She clung to his hand, wanting him to read her stories or play space alien dress up or do science experiments. He held her, or I did, or we both did, when she cried. Cleo was a different girl after her mother died, as expected. She was more serious, introspective. She cried often. She would miss her mother her whole life, no question.

  But with time, her light, her joy, Rozlyn’s fierce, crazy love of life came shining through again.

  I will keep my word to her mother: I will love Cleo as my own daughter, and I will love Cleo’s children, Rozlyn’s grandchildren, with everything that I have, everything that I am.

  That’s a promise.

  Epilogue

  When I’m done at Hendricks’ I go home and work in my studio. The windows let in all the natural light I need, and I can watch the weather roll by, like a moving collage.

  I’ve replenished my art supplies and I’ve painted shelves, chairs, and tables all the colors of the rainbow. I’ve bought more art books. I bought two bonsai trees and plants. I light candles on the cold days and paint on enormous canvases. For some reason, it’s the bigger the better now, I don’t know why. I have a new website, and my work is selling again.

  I started teaching an art class once a week, after school, at the local elementary school.

  It started out as a one-hour class. Now it’s over two hours, as before. I have two classroom teachers who help me, the music teacher, a custodian, a secretary, a classroom aide, and the vice-principal.

  We have about sixty kids, including Cleo. Hendricks’ Furniture pays for all the art supplies. Kade uses his muscles and helps carry it in. He stays for a while, too, and the kids love him. He’s an excellent father figure to them.

  I know that part of my life’s purpose is to teach kids art, so they can find joy and peace, and create and build, and find themselves somewhere within the color, the texture, the layers. The kids love the class. They call me Miss Grenady. When they see me in town, they run up and hug me, as do their parents. I feel included. I feel liked. I feel like I can hold my head up.

  I know that Kade and I will become foster parents in the future. I have to. I want to.

  To say that I am “fine” is ridiculous. I am not. I trigger back to my past in all sorts of ways and probably will all my life. Dark forests, fog, empty cupboards, disorganization, ugly rooms, chaos, dog kennels, ropes, even loneliness and aloneness, will set me off. I still have to control Alice, My Anxiety. I will probably always need my black charcoal pencil and my sketch pad to push the past back.

  But I like me again. I like making collages and paintings. I like using whipping cream in my coffee, and I like whipping it up and using it on Kade.

  I know who I am.

  I’ve had tragedy in my life, and miracles. But isn’t that life for all of us?

  Some darkness, some rainbows?

  Some fear, some courage?

  Some love, some loss?

  Yes to all of it.

  It is life.

  I am Grenadine Scotch Wild Whitney O’Malley, daughter of Lilly Maybelle Whitney and Liam Marcus O’Malley, granddaughter of Gene and Linda O’Malley, and Elizabeth Maybelle and Peter Whitney. Second mother to Cleo DiMarco.

  The love of my life is Kade Hendricks. I will marry him some day very soon.

  Together we will watch the lilies and daisies grow while sitting in our rocking chairs that Kade has made for the three of us. When other sons and daughters come along, he tells me, he will make them rocking chairs, too.

  I am looking forward to the rockin’.

  In my dream I saw my parents placing the red, crocheted shawl around my and Kade’s shoulders as we slept. My mother was carrying lilies, and she wore her flowered skirt. My father carried his guitar and pointed up to the Big Dipper.

  We love you, Grenadine.

  We love you.

  Peace.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  What did you think of What I Remember Most? What three scenes best depict Grenadine Scotch Wild’s character?

  Which character did you most relate to and why? Was there any part of the book that made you laugh or cry? What was your favorite scene?

  If you could spend the day with Grenadine, Kade, Rozlyn, the Hutchinsons, or Eudora, who would you choose and what would you do?

  Grenadine says, about herself, “I’m a crack shot and can hit damn near anything. . . . I’m a collage artist and painter. . . . I used to have a little green house. I sold it. That was a huge mistake.... I can smash beer cans on my forehead.... I fight dirty. Someone comes at me, and my instinctive reaction is to smash and pulverize. It has gotten me into trouble.... I have a temper, my anger perpetually on low seethe, and I have struggled with self-esteem issues and flashbacks for as long as I can remember. . . . I can wear four-inch heels and designer clothes like wealthy women, make social chitchat, and pretend I’m exactly like them. I am not like them at all . . .” Write down, and then share, how you would describe yourself.

  Grenadine speaks in the first person. However, there are also police and children’s services reports; memos, letters from a doctor, a teacher, and Grenadine; a report card; a court transcript; and third-person passages from the point of view of Bucky. Did the structure work for you? Why?

  Marley, a customer at The Spirited Owl said
, “Women are so picky. If you don’t look like Brad Pitt or you’re not rich, they don’t want you.” Grenadine said, “No, they don’t want you, Marley, because you look like you have a baby in your stomach, you’re unshaven, you drink too much, and all you want to do is talk about yourself and whine in that whiny voice of yours. Would you be attracted to you? No? Then why would a woman be?”

  Why did the author give Grenadine a job at a bar? Is she a good bartender? If she gave you advice while you were drinking a margarita, what would she say to you?

  Did the author portray Grenadine’s journey in foster care and the children’s services division workers accurately?

  Why was Grenadine attracted to Kade? What did Kade have in common with her? Kade had spent time in jail because of gang related activities when he was younger. Would his record have stopped you from dating him?

  From Bucky: She never should have gotten away.

  That was a mistake. He had not expected things to take so long. It had always bothered him. He liked things neat. Planned. Perfect.

  He wanted to see her again. Before.

  He would do it! He would think of a way. He pulled four strands of hair out of his head, then made a design on the table in front of him.

  He giggled. He twitched in his chair.

  He told himself a nursery rhyme. He changed the words to create a new rhyme. He sang it out loud. He wrote it in his rhyme book.

  He giggled again, then he hurdled his rhyme book across the room, tilted his head back and screamed.

  What element did Bucky bring to the story? Did it fit?

  What did you think of Covey? Was there any good in him?