The First Day of the Rest of My Life

by Cathy Lamb

  Even when I was a teenager, my childhood a catastrophic wreck, her imaginative stories took Annie and me away from the harsh reality of the charred ruin of our lives.

  “That sounds like a fantasy garden,” I said.

  “It was!” She patted her white hair, up in a sophisticated chignon. She was wearing her diamonds that morning, with a red sweater and beige slacks. “There were fountains and pathways, flowers blooming everywhere in pots and in the trees! Do you remember the swans on the pond, Madeline? We named them Queen, King, Prince, and Princess! And the stories we told! How they turned into kings, queens, princes, and princesses at night and danced across the pond on ice skates when you and I were sleeping.”

  “Were they good dancers?” I sunk into my grandma’s storytelling. There is comfort in hearing stories from the same beloved person again and again, even if that person is sitting beside you, awash in dementia and needing twenty-four-hour care.

  “Yes, most elegant, with tuxedos and gold dresses, crowns, jewels. The orchestra was there, too. Mother and Father had their orchestra friends over all the time, you remember, for impromptu concerts. They all brought their instruments out on the patio and they would play, Father on his violin in his silvery chair, and all their children would run around and laugh and chase each other and the fairies would come out and light the way on the paths of lavender with their glittery wings. Now, do you remember where this scratch came from?” She touched the scratch on my violin with her finger.

  I shook my head, and she cupped my cheek.

  “It was so funny! You were running with your violin, around and around the pond, and you ran to give Father a hug, and you tripped over a cello—it was owned by a renowned cellist—and you fell on the patio and that’s how it scratched. The Tinkerbells had to pick you up. It was brand new, too! Mother and Father had given it to you for your birthday.”

  There was her past, her authentic history, mixed in with a few Tinkerbells.

  “But then they came!” Grandma said, shoving my hand away. “They shot their ghost guns and they set the house on fire! All of the paintings, the staircase, Mother’s dresses, Father’s tuxedos, the instruments, they burned it all after the murders.”

  “Grandma,” I said hurriedly, as she started shouting and stood up, shaking her fist through the mist of the morning and cursing in French, then German. “It’s okay, Grandma. I’m right here. It’s me, Madeline.”

  “They came with their ghost guns and you jumped from the sky and hid under the boat with the boy with the blood, but the swans, they grew and grew, and protected you from the black ghosts!”

  I felt like I’d been stabbed in the gut. “What?”

  Her eyes went blank, blanker than they already were. She was lost in her own turbulent memories. She balled her hands into fists and jammed them together, slipping into German. “I hate them! I curse them! They did it! They put hate in themselves and killed and he couldn’t walk! No walking! But he had a gun. And she did, too! She shot, too! For protection! For love!” She hit her fists together, hard, swore again, then the fight left her, in a rush, as if it ran out through her feet, and she sank back onto the swing. “I miss them, don’t you, Madeline? I always miss them. The fairies couldn’t save them with their glittery wings. The pelicans who served tea couldn’t get through the gates to help. The flamingos tried to fly in but they were shot, too. Pink and dead. Even the mice with the hats were smashed by black boots. There was no more magic.”

  “Grandma, I—”

  “It was all gone, Madeline, remember? Like that. Burned. The ashes fell down. Even the swans were burned down to their beaks. That was all that was left of the swans.”

  My dear grandma, the woman who could weave a story from the wind and the curve of a flower petal, started to cry. “Down to their beaks. There was no honk left.”

  I held her close, rocked her back and forth, shaken. Her past was shaking me, the honks were shaking me, and somewhere between the shots and the honks, there was the truth.

  I received yet another e-mail from Marlene, the reporter I hated. It wasn’t personal.

  “I would still like to interview you for this article, Madeline. I know you don’t want to do it. I know you’ve asked for privacy, and I understand your request. I do. But please know that this is an opportunity for you to share what you remember about your mother. I would like your input, and Annie’s, and I would like to talk to your grandparents. There’s some confusion for me, and I’m hoping you can clear it up. I’ve looked up your grandparents and I have a few questions. . . .”

  Can you confirm that your grandma was born in Holland before moving to France as a young girl?

  Holland?

  She wasn’t born in Holland.

  Can you confirm that your grandma was one of eight children and her parents’ names were Solomon and Yentl Levine?

  Grandma was an only child. I don’t know her parents’ names. I don’t know if I’ve ever known them. It was part of a past she mostly refused to talk about.

  Can you confirm that your grandfather’s parents’ names were Shani and Tomer Laurent and their family has lived in France for hundreds of years?

  My grandparents were born in Germany, then moved to France when they were very young children. Their parents were born in Germany, while their parents on both sides were born in Russia.... I didn’t know their names, either. . . .

  Can you confirm that your grandfather had two brothers, Meyer and Sagi?

  My granddad did not have any brothers.

  In doing a little research, I am very confused about something else, too. If you could call me, perhaps you could clear things up.

  I was confused about all the questions.

  I deleted the message and called Keith Stein.

  “We’re about done, Madeline. There’s nothing I can do here.” He cleared his throat. “You need to prepare yourself. You need to prepare your sister and your granddad. I know your grandma has dementia, but she’s a smart lady, so keep the newspapers and Marlene’s magazine away from her.”

  “The newspapers? Plural?”

  “The newspapers, plural. I think they’ll run with this, too. It’ll die down, Madeline, trust me, but it was an enormous case years ago, and as you know, people have always been curious about what happened to you and Annie. Your granddad fended them off for a long time when you were kids, but with your popularity growing . . . this is one more twist that they’ll be interested in.”

  I was a twist. Annie and I were a twist. Our momma was a twist.

  I thought of my momma. Her maiden name had been Marie Elise Laurent. What a beautiful name.

  My granddad’s name is Anton Laurent. My grandma’s name is Emmanuelle Laurent. Her maiden name was . . . her maiden name was . . . what was her maiden name again?

  Holland? Where did Marlene get Holland?

  12

  Sherwinn did not waste much time after he married our momma on a day when mirrors broke, a storm blew in, and the steaks burned to turn our lives into a torture chamber.

  “Come and sit on my lap, Madeline,” he told me, winding his fingers around the curls of my hair. Of course he couldn’t see the red in it.

  “No, it’s okay.”

  My momma had already gone to bed, the fatigue catching up to her. “I am wilting like a lazy yellow tulip,” she’d said, her skin pale. We didn’t know then what was growing in her head.

  “Right here, right now.” He patted his lap. He was sitting in the leather chair my dad always sat in. I used to climb on my dad’s lap all the time, Annie and I together, and he would read one story after another to us. He especially liked stories about boats, fish, and fishermen. Sometimes he’d make up stories about brave fisherwomen who caught more fish than all the fishermen—striped fish, polka-dot fish, pink fish, fish the size of our house by the sea. “Women can talk to fish and the fish listen,” my dad told us. “There are magic fish out there, Pink Girls. Magic fish.” We’d giggle and he’d wriggle his eyebrows at us.<
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  “Get over here, Madeline.” Sherwinn’s voice hardened, but he kept it down so my momma wouldn’t hear. “Get over here right this damn minute.”

  “No, I don’t want to.” I felt a cold snake of fear swirling around my spine.

  Annie was upstairs doing homework. I’d tried to go upstairs as soon as Sherwinn came home from the bar, but he hadn’t let me. He’d had me make him a turkey, lettuce, and pickle sandwich and he’d watched me the whole time. “Add more ketchup. For blood.” He’d giggled.

  “Yes, right now. Don’t be a bad girl.”

  “No.” The snake twisted around my spine and stopped up all my breath in my back.

  Sherwinn got up from my dad’s leather chair, smiled that sick, scary smile at me, then took his muscled arm and swept all my homework off the table and onto the floor, even my pink pencil box my momma bought me and my pink folder for my spelling words. He picked me up out of the chair and flung me over his back.

  I struggled, and he laughed, bringing me down on his lap in my dad’s chair, one meaty hand over my mouth.

  When I kept struggling, he yanked my curls back and hissed like a demon. “Shut up, Madeline. I’m going to give you a checkup because you’re a dirty girl.” He let go of my mouth and put a hand on my neck.

  “I don’t want a checkup. Dr. Dorn does my checkups.” The freezing cold snake kept slithering.

  “I’m going to do it. That geeky doctor doesn’t know what to check for, but I do.” He grinned at me again. “Don’t say a word, Madeline, not a word,” he hissed in my ear. “You have to be quiet for your checkup. Be a good girl. You want to be a good girl, don’t you?”

  I nodded, panicky.

  “Your momma needs you to be a good girl. No one likes a bad girl. No one wants to be with a bad girl. No one wants to live with a bad girl. You be good and don’t cause your momma or me any problems, you got that? I don’t want to tell your momma you’re a bad girl because then you couldn’t live with us.”

  “I’m not a bad girl,” I protested, fighting back tears. The snake bit my spine.

  “Not yet, you’re not. Now hold still so I can check you.”

  I struggled and he pulled back on my curls, wrapping them around his fingers, as if he enjoyed it, my neck snapping back.

  “No checking, no checking . . . I don’t want you to check me. I’m healthy!”

  He pulled my hair again, and I felt some of it rip from the roots of my scalp.

  “I said to be good,” he hissed. “Be good, you short bitch.”

  Hot tears flowed out of my eyes and my nose started to run.

  “Momma,” I pleaded, my voice cracking. “Momma!”

  Sherwinn slapped a hand to my mouth. “Shut your face.” He laughed, low and husky, with a high-pitched corkscrew at the end.

  That corkscrew shook my whole paralyzed body as his hands, Sherwinn’s beefy, sweaty, sticky hands, “checked me,” from the top of my head, over my shoulders, down my chest, between my legs, up between my legs, and over my butt when he flipped me over, my face staring at our wood floors. When he was done he gripped the curls of my hair. “Did you like that, Madeline?”

  He made my head nod up and down, then giggled.

  I have no idea how long this went on. I have no idea if it was five minutes or five hours.

  What I do remember is going still, every bone going still, even the cold snake stilled, as my mind left me, I know it did. It left so that it could save me from those cascading pits of emotional destruction, and all I could hear was violin music—sweet, piercing, haunting violin music—as I was checked.

  My hell began.

  In the morning Sherwinn smirked at me, and when my momma wasn’t looking, he snuck up on me in the bathroom when I was brushing my teeth with cinnamon toothpaste and whispered, “We’ll have more fun tonight.”

  I vomited in the sink, the red toothpaste mixed with streaks and smears.

  He laughed, with that sick corkscrew at the end, then ripped my hair back. “If you tell your mother what happened, I’ll do to her what I did to Mickey.”

  I wiped my mouth, panicking again, tears rushing to my eyes. “What do you mean?” I coughed. “What did you do to Mickey?”

  He giggled again.

  Mickey was my hamster. My dad had given Annie and me hamsters about a week before he died.

  I ran out of the bathroom and peered in Mickey’s cage. His body looked funny, like he’d been squished, like he was a hamster pancake. He used to be fluffy and plump, now he looked so . . . thin.

  “Mickey?” I said, my voice weak, shaking, the vomit scent circling around me. “Mickey?” I opened the cage and stuck my hand in, stroked his furry body. “Mickey!”

  I put my head back and howled.

  Mickey was dead.

  Sherwinn had killed my Mickey.

  I hardly remember the next few days of unrelenting misery and fear.

  The only thing I remember is that a full orchestra—cellos, clarinets, French horns, bassoons, trombones, tubas, violins, trumpets—was blaring in my head and it never let up, it never let me go, it never left me.

  Some people would say that hearing an orchestra meant that I was teetering, at least somewhat, into craziness. Others would say it was brilliance, not necessarily healthy brilliance.

  I would argue that the only thing that kept me sane was that orchestra.

  The only thing.

  After Sherwinn killed Mickey, I sat like a mummy at school.

  I didn’t do my work. I stared.

  I didn’t play at recess with my friends. I stood against the wall of the school.

  I didn’t talk. I hunkered down, numb.

  My teacher, Mrs. Rodriquez, asked me what was wrong, and all I could see was Mickey, dead in his cage.

  “What is it, honey?”

  I had loved that hamster.

  “Can you tell me? Are you sick?”

  If I told, Momma would die.

  “Honey, do you want to go to the nurse’s office and lie down?”

  My dad was dead.

  “You can go home and rest if you want. I can call your mother at the beauty parlor and she can come and get you.”

  My momma couldn’t know. She would become a person pancake, like my hamster. I shook.

  “No, I’m fine,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  Fine. I wasn’t fine. I was dying.

  I stuck as close as I could to Annie.

  Not for me, for her.

  He wasn’t doing the same thing to Annie, was he?

  Please let it be only me. I hugged Annie close, even though I suddenly believed I was dirty. Yucky. Bad. Such a bad girl. Sherwinn’s hands were sticky and hot and mean and they made me dirty. I could feel their dirt on me even in the shower, even though I scrubbed and scrubbed. I could feel that dirt and shame. It never washed away. Overnight I remember feeling that I wasn’t good enough anymore. I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain how I felt, but as an adult, I named it: I was shamed and unworthy.

  But Annie, with her luminescent blue-green eyes and her clean, chocolate brown hair with the red Irish sheen, she was innocent and sweet and kind. I didn’t even want her to know what happened to me. I didn’t want anyone to know. I was so humiliated I could hardly lift my head. And Sherwinn kept telling me that he hoped I wouldn’t be a bad girl.

  “Bad girls get in even worse trouble than Mickey,” he told me after he left my bedroom one night. He’d put his lips on mine and stuck his tongue in my mouth. My body ached. It hurt where he’d touched me, rubbed me with his sweaty hands.

  Two days later, Teresa was dead.

  Annie picked up her hamster in her small hands and ran out into the yard, screaming.

  I turned to Sherwinn, shocked, horrified.

  He smiled at me. “She’s a bad girl, too,” he whispered. “As bad as you.”

  13

  “Thank you for joining us this morning, Madeline.”

  “Thanks for asking me to be here.” I spoke into the mi
crophone, adjusted the headphones over my ears, and smiled across the table at Conner Mills, Portland’s most popular radio show announcer.

  White haired, six foot six inches tall, gruff and blunt, the man had a heart of gold and came to see me at my office because he secretly knitted baby booties and wanted my help in building his confidence and “Grabbing His Gumption,” my slang, to get out there and sell them. “I know I could market these, Madeline. I’m up all night making them, see here, I’m so careful with my stitches.”

  The baby booties were not normal pink and blue baby booties. They were frogs, pigs, salamanders, worms, cows, cats, pigs. But the booties didn’t match. You chose two animals for your baby. “Kids like animals, right?” he said. “They can have a polar bear on one foot and a giraffe on the other.”

  He had a point. Why limit the animals in your life?

  “I’m thinking about making them for adults, too. I made them for myself and my wife. She likes wearing one dolphin because she likes swimming and one giraffe because she likes friendly eyes. Me, I wear a jaguar on my right foot because I like to think I’m fast and a gorilla on my left because I like bananas. See? You can personalize your feet animals. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s brilliant. I’ll take a cat and a gargoyle.”

  “A gargoyle? Hey. I can do it.”

  “One animal purrs at you, the other eats you, Conner.”

  All traces of animal baby booties were gone that morning at the radio station. The man was a pro. Work was work. Do it right or don’t do it at all.

  “People,” he said into his microphone. “Madeline O’Shea lives here with us. She’s an Oregonian, graduated from Beaverton High, and is the nation’s most popular life coach. She’s a weekly columnist for the popular magazine Boutique. ‘A Life Coach Tells You How to Live It’ is filled with advice from The O’Shea Principles, and any conference she speaks at sells out within hours. She’s a life coach who specializes in relationships, but Americans go to her for advice about every aspect of their lives from jobs, career paths, and marriage to enlightenment, fulfillment, and integrating a meaningful life into the life they’re living.”