The First Day of the Rest of My Life

by Cathy Lamb

  It wasn’t exactly that simple. They weren’t “minor” fistfights. She knocked out three teeth on one co-worker because he continued to make comments about her “tight, sexy ass.”

  The other co-worker whispered several disgusting suggestions in her ear. He was a married man; he had done it before and she’d warned him, but this time she kickboxed him so hard in the groin he had to be hauled away in an ambulance.

  “I believe you almost destroyed one man’s left testicle.”

  She humphed at me. “If he hadn’t been lewd, it wouldn’t have happened. There would have been no crushing.”

  True.

  “His wife divorced him.” She sat up straight. Woman power! United we stand! “No one should stay married to a man who had to have his testicle kickboxed for being sexually creepy.” She shook her head, as in, Good for her, and humphed at me again.

  “So you told me to start my own business and to wear red because that’s my favorite color. So now I have my own company and we wear red.” She stood up. “What do you think of our uniform? I don’t think I’ve ever been wearing it for my O’Shea Reencouragement and Reigniting Sessions.”

  The uniform was a tight red T-shirt that said, “I’m here to charge you up,” tight jeans, and a red belt with rhinestones. “I think men probably get hard-ons looking at you and your employees.”

  “Probably,” she said cheerfully. “All those hard-ons paid for my Porsche. Sal”—Sal is her husband—“he wants to do it in my Porsche. He’s built like a truck. He’s six foot five. How am I going to do it in there without having my butt pressed against the horn?”

  “You know you can go to a marriage counselor for this.”

  “Screw to death marriage counselors. You’re my life coach. Tell me how to fix this problem. Use one of those acronyms you have. How about this acronym? D.I.C.K. Or this acronym, P.E.N.I.S.”

  “May, I have told you that you should not tell your husband if he mows the lawn and uses the edger he gets sex.”

  “I don’t see a problem with it.”

  “It’s sexual blackmail. You make him earn sex with you. It should be freely given to your husband, when you want to, with a lot of love and hugs, and passion, and he should do the same for you.” What was I talking about? I didn’t know anything about this stuff. Noth-ing.

  “He likes it.”

  “He likes the sexual blackmail?” I swung my foot in its boring low heel and fiddled with a button on my boring suit. My clothes do not attract men, unlike May’s getup, which is the way I need to have it.

  “Sure he does. I told him if he built me a shed, I’d stay in bed with him for four hours on Sunday dressed like a hooker.”

  “Did he build you a shed?”

  “Duh. Saw, pound, nail, smile, it’s up. Gee, Madeline. He can’t get something for nothing.” She threw up her hands. “It was a great shed, too. I gave him extra”—she winked at me—“attention, down there, because he hung all these hooks for the rakes and shovels and stuff. It’s a shed of legends.”

  What a shed! And it only cost her a few hours!

  “Maybe you should surprise him one night and give him a free pass.”

  Her jaw dropped. “A free pass for sex?”

  “Yes. Bring up some chocolate, turn the lights down low, light a candle. That sort of thing.” What sort of thing?

  Her head shook back and forth. “Hell, no, Madeline. Last time I brought in chocolate and beer and Twinkies, he had to re-roof our house.”

  “He had to re-roof the house for a romantic evening?”

  She flipped her hands out like, And what’s wrong with that? “Yeah. You think I’m going to put out for nothing? We needed a new roof.”

  “Did he enjoy his romantic evening?”

  She laughed. “Sugar. He re-roofed the house so he got one long night of passion. I even added in the Tiddly Wonder Ropes and Stash ’N Sticks games.”

  Tiddly Wonder Ropes? Stash ’N Sticks?

  “He couldn’t even get up the next morning.” She clapped her hands once and rocked back and forth with laughter. “He actually begged me to stop. Begged me. He limped down to the couch to watch football and I said, ‘Was that worth it to re-roof the roof?’ and he said, ‘Sugar, I’m never gonna forget it.’”

  “Okay, then. What do you have to do for sex from him? Do you have to do some sort of chore before he’ll make love to you?”

  She laughed, giggled, laughed more, snort-laughed. “You’re so funny, Madeline. You crack my funny bone. You have such a dry wit, that’s what I’d call it, a droll and dry sense of humor. Like a dry martini. You get irony. Not many people get it, but you’re an expert.”

  I resisted laughing out loud. “So what can I help you with today, May?”

  “Fire me up, but I don’t know how to say this. . . .”

  “Spit it out.”

  “I could, but the idea is still formulating, mixing around in my head. . . .”

  “It is a personal issue? A business idea? Please tell me it’s a business idea. I don’t know what else to say about your sexual blackmailing.”

  “It’s business, pure business. I’ve got a head for business and you’ve given me the confidence to know that I can do it. The day when you and I went boating in bikinis in the rain helped, although I don’t think that you wearing a bikini over a T-shirt and shorts was fair play, but you’re modest, I get it. And when you and I wrote poems about becoming queens and decorated cardboard crowns, that helped, too. I could practically see the crown on my head.”

  “You can do anything. May, you’re a natural leader. You’re tough and sharp. You have vision.”

  “I love it when you talk like that, Madeline. Frickin’ love it. Frickin’. Me and The Bouncers dig it.”

  “So what’s the new business idea?”

  May pursed her lips together, then stuck her chest out. “The Bouncers.” She pointed to her boobs. “The Bouncers and I think I should open another business.”

  “And that business would be?”

  “Bras.”

  “Bras?”

  “Yep. I’m going to make bras and call them The Bouncers.” She opened up her bag. “I took the liberty of making you one, Madeline—36C right?”

  Man, she knew her breasts. “Yep.”

  “Here. Try it on.”

  It was padded. It was lined. I put it on and stared down at my cleavage. It pulled ’em up and stuck ’em together. It was an incredible feat of brassiere engineering. “Wow,” I said. “But, I’m confused. You own an electrical company and you want to make bras? Those are two leaps away from each other.”

  “Not really. The Bouncers get men charged up, electrically speaking, and The Bouncers will get women charged up, personally speaking.”

  I could see the electrical connection.

  “Yep. That’s it. Wow. Your bouncers look a lot better in my bra. You know, Madeline, you’re a pretty woman. Sweeping cheekbones, poufy lips, a lot of hair. You cover it up. I don’t know why. You gotta get some bounce in your own life. Some sparkle. I’ll send you some sparkle. But how do you think The Bouncers will do?”

  I grabbed my boobs. “I think you’re in business, girlfriend. I think you’re in the boob business.”

  My next client cried. Head in hands, despondent, despairing.

  “No one will hire me. No one.”

  I looked at the young man across from me on my leather couch. It was raining, lightning and thunder. My dad would have said it was Mother Nature throwing a temper tantrum.

  “No one will take a risk and let me prove myself.” His hands were worn out, his face waaaaay older than twenty-two. He was too skinny.

  “I go in, fill out applications, ask to speak to the manager, I start to hope. . . .”

  He shook his head, defeated.

  “But they get to that one part in the application, and I can see it in their eyes. I can see it.”

  He crossed and recrossed his roughened work books, dirt on the bottom.

  “T
hey don’t want me.”

  His shoulders slumped.

  Ramon Pellinsky is from Youth Avenues, a nonprofit for homeless and troubled kids. Ramon’s twelve-year-old brother is in the program because their childhood was based in chaos. What did I see in Ramon? Potential.

  “I did everything I could, Miss O’Shea. I took college classes when I was there, got a degree, stayed out of trouble, went to the counseling sessions, and when my sentence was over, I got out.”

  He ran his hands through his brown, not too clean hair.

  “How can I be anyone when no one will give me a chance? How can I make a life when I can’t even get a job?”

  His eyes filled with tears and he did not bother to wipe them away. He had no energy. He was at the bottom. He was drowning.

  “Ramon,” I said. “Ramon, look at me.”

  It took a bit for his eyes to meet mine, his shoulders shaking. People, I have found, can’t meet your eyes when there’s no self-esteem to meet them with. “You said you took online classes in jail and also classes where the professor came in to teach. What did you take?”

  “I took everything, Miss O’Shea. Math, science, literature—that was one of my favorites—history. I love books. That’s where I go to hide, books. I taught my brother how to hide in books, too. I got my GED, started on the college classes. I took landscape design. Ten classes. I studied all these landscaping books, wrote papers, watched videos, looked at all these gardening magazines and studied them.” He paused for a second, looked a shade sheepish. “I like flowers. Sometimes I paint gardens with secret places, you know, a bench in the back, or a gazebo with vines, paths, gates. . . . If I ever get a house I’m going to have a garden.”

  I thought for a few quiet seconds. “Tell me about yourself, then tell me why you robbed that bank.”

  He stood up and paced, back to drowning. “I had to drop out of high school when my mom wouldn’t quit drinking and kept disappearing. I worked construction because my younger brother was at home and we were broke. I had a full-time job building houses and doing landscape stuff, like fountains and walls, but I had to bail my mom out of jail because she’d been locked up for driving drunk, again. So I didn’t have money for rent and my brother needed all this stuff for football and we didn’t have any food, and I got desperate. And I was pissed off and frustrated. No matter how hard I worked at my job, nothing was ever right. Then the construction market started to slow so I took a newspaper delivery job, too. My mom was always passed out or screaming at me and my brother, telling me I was nothing, telling him he was shit. Years of that. Years of her screaming shit.”

  I closed my eyes on a wave of pain for this guy. Wave of pain. Some people should not parent.

  Ramon rolled his shoulders. “I needed five hundred dollars. That was it. Five hundred dollars. So I robbed a bank, got caught, did four years, and now . . . my brother’s in foster care because the state took him from my mom when she crashed in a car with him and had meth in there, plus she assaulted someone with a pickax and she’s in jail now, but if I can get a job and prove I’m responsible, I can get custody of him instead of visitation only.”

  He slumped into his chair again. “I have to get my brother back, Miss O’Shea, I have to. He’s only twelve.”

  “Ramon, you can mow and edge a lawn, pick weeds, plant flowers?”

  “Sure. Yes. Absolutely.”

  “These paintings that you make. Can you transfer the painting into reality?”

  “You mean, can I look at one of my paintings and take a bunch of dirt and turn it into something cool in someone’s front yard?”

  “Yes.”

  Hope peeked through his eyes. “I know I can. I spent hours and hours in prison studying, drawing . . . I even went online and talked to landscapers and gardeners, asked them all sorts of questions. Plus, I know how to work with cement, build brick walls, that sort of thing because of the construction work I was doing before jail. I like being outdoors, Miss O’Shea. I like working in gardens. In fact, I worked in the prison garden.”

  He was proud of that, I could tell. “Tell me about it.”

  “We had all kinds of fruits and vegetables, all the time. I built a whole bunch of raised beds, used organic everything, planted seeds and starts. I built a huge grape arbor, a shed with shelves, brick pathways all over the garden, a huge wood deck, a rock wall, a cement patio with a trellis over it. I planted nasturtiums and edible flowers that the cook put on the guys’ plates sometimes—that’s why all the guys in jail called me Flower. Because of the flowers. Even the warden thanked me. He wrote me a recommendation, so did two guards from jail, but no one will hire me.”

  I thought of the house that I didn’t like. Boring grass, dying. Plain. Dirt. “I’ll hire you.”

  He looked shocked. “You will? To do what?” He snapped his fingers. “I could be your janitor. I could be a janitor for this whole building. Can you tell somebody here that I can clean? I did that in jail, too. Cleaned all the time. Cleaned good—corners, too. The guy in charge of the kitchen, Mr. Morriston, he didn’t like when I worked in the garden, because he wanted me in the kitchen helping him, every corner, every wall, I cleaned. . . .”

  “Nope, nope, and nope. Ramon, you need to shoot for where you want to be, so to speak. Do the Shoot High O’Shea program.”

  “The Shoot High O’Shea program? What’s that?”

  “It means, don’t shoot low, shoot high. Shoot for what you want, who you want to be. Ramon, my yard is boring. Only grass, and the grass is dying. Draw out a plan for my yard and we’ll work out a price. I’m up in the hills, so if the yard turns out great, I betcha you’ll get more business.”

  He was stunned. “You’re hiring me to work on your yard?” “Yep. Here’s my address. Get on up there. Think about it, give me a drawing, and I’ll give you a check. How’s that?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. You have a record, you did something tremendously stupid, and it’s going to be hard for you to get a job. So, you’re going into business for yourself. You have a pickup, right?”

  He nodded. “My uncle died. It was all he had. He willed it to me, along with his tools.”

  “I’ll pay you half up front for working on my yard. Get signs for the sides of your pickup truck advertising Ramon’s Landscaping Services, get cards and flyers printed out, take photos of my yard before and after.” I saw his face. “No camera, right? I’ll take the photos and give them to you. When you’ve got some cash, get a Web site up and running.”

  I scribbled down my address. “You’re in business, Ramon. You own Ramon’s Landscaping Services. Now get on up to my house and turn it around.”

  He was starting to grasp the Shoot High program. “So I’m going to be a landscaper?”

  “Ramon, you are a landscaper. And you have a lawn-mowing business on the side, that’s what you tell people.”

  I saw his chin tilt upward.

  “You’re also a businessman.”

  I saw his chest puff a wee bit, the tears drying on his cheeks. “Pretty soon you’ll have employees, and you’ll go to clients’ houses and you’ll bring them paintings of what you’re going to do to their yard to transform it, and you’ll smile, shake their hands, look them in the eye, be friendly and honest and get every job done on time and done right, because you want everyone to know you’re trustworthy and honest. You’re going to work harder than any other landscaper in the area and you’re going to build your company on the backs of your happy clients.”

  He nodded, nodded again, his breathing shallow. I could tell he hadn’t breathed right in a long time, either. Maybe ever.

  “Wow. Me. A businessman!”

  “Yep, and a landscaper. Off you go.”

  Finally, finally, on that exhausted, beaten face, I saw a smile. I saw a glimmer in his eyes. I saw hope. Without hope, life is dead. “Thanks, Miss O’Shea. Man, thanks a lot.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  This wasn’t gonna be perfect. He was
young, inexperienced. But he had a shimmer of hope. He had a goal. He could do it, he could build from here.

  By the time I got home, late that night, there was a painting on a two-by-three-foot canvas of what the front yard of my square spaceship house would look like. A second painting showed my backyard.

  I sank down into an Adirondack chair on my back deck.

  The paintings themselves were stunning. His clients would want to keep them. Ramon’s ideas were in keeping with the lines and modern feel of my house. There was a fountain, brick stairs to the entrance, white and pink cherry trees, a retaining wall, an arbor that mimicked the roofline with a vine growing over it, and layered borders of shrubs and flowers.

  I grinned. Darned if I wasn’t proud.

  Ramon, the ex-con, was in business.

  I sent him a check. In the memo part I wrote, “Fear not.”

  The rest of my week was filled with clients, in particular corporate types, one of whom said his life was so filled with meetings and technological input, he believed he had become an emotionless robot. I told him he was correct and helped him rethink his life. “RTYL,” I told him. (Rethink your life.) “Draw a picture of who you want to become.” I gave him six feet of butcher paper. He drew a smiling travel writer with a small laptop, multipocketed vest, and camera.

  The other was a tightly closeted, repressed gay artist who worked as a CEO. “You’re a hypocrite,” I told him. “You won’t live until you get rid of your lies.” I made him stand with me on a table and yell out the truth about himself until he felt comfortable with his truth. He cried when he was done. Good tears.

  I counseled a number of homeless/troubled youth (always for free) from Youth Avenues, a nonprofit group that Swans Grocery Stores financially supports with the mission of helping young people, with lousy beginnings because of lousy parents, get their lives on track. When I meet these kids, if I see potential, if they’re sober and want to go to school, I direct them to a scholarship fund Swans sponsors at our local community college. Free tuition, plus a stipend, and they get to change their lives. If they want to be sober and want treatment, we pay for the treatment, too.