“Not to mention that you were married to Jane’s former husband, and there’s the whole six degrees of separation thing.”
I shake my head. “Six degrees?”
“It has been empirically measured that we are no further than six degrees, or steps if you will, from anyone here on earth. Hence, the small world theory and the reason you are a mere one degree from Jane. Therefore, if you were married to the same man…. Gosh, you know.” Helena puts a finger to her temple. “I don’t believe that’s even one degree of separation. You’re related. It’s the equivalent of coming from a small, mountainous state and announcing you’re about to marry your brother.”
“It is not! Helena,” Haley barks. “It’s like this, Lindsay. Women don’t like to share men. You have already shared Ron, and now you’re asking Jane to share her son with you. Remember how Rachel and Leah didn’t want to share? Same thing. She’s crying out to you, ‘Mine!’”
“You’re both here to drive me crazy. Tell me the truth. You’ve got a straight jacket in your suitcase, and you’re here to take me away so that no one has to deal with me at all. Isn’t that right?” I look at them both, and they blink innocently. As if everything they’ve told me should make perfect sense, and I am the one who has completely lost touch with reality.
“Let’s go find the first buffet, shall we?” Haley asks, laughing. She hangs on to me as we walk, balancing herself carefully on her sparkling new Keds. Haley is not the most stable when it comes to walking, and I’m sure the sway of the boat is doing nothing to help the situation.
But suddenly I’m struck by what Helena has told me. “It’s like I’m dating my brother?” I ask Helena. “Really?”
“Mathematically speaking, yes.”
“But we’re bad at math, Helena, so it hardly matters,” Haley says.
“Right. It hardly matters. I don’t think Ronnie or his mother are speaking to me anyway.” I swallow the emotions this brings up for me. I wish I could be the sensible girl who doesn’t feel everything so deeply.
“Well, it’s fine. You didn’t know them two months ago, and you won’t know them two months from now. They were bit players in your life, that’s all. Just two walk-on roles.”
I stop walking as I try and figure out why Haley’s statement makes me angry. “Ronnie has the same protective nature Ron had, and I felt really safe in his arms. I felt like I could simply sit with him for hours, and we connected without words. That’s what I loved about him.”
“You didn’t love anything about him,” Haley reminds me. “You barely knew him. This was just a stressful time in life, and the two of you came together in grief. It’s a beautiful thing really. So romantic, but hardly real.”
“It was romantic, Haley. In a way I haven’t experienced before, and I know this is partly because I can’t have him in my life. I broke the only promise I made to his mother. I lied to him. His appearance in my life—well, it absolutely brought out the worst in me. There’s no doubt. But on some level, I felt at my best with him, too.”
Haley stops walking. “Did you say his appearance brought out the worst in you?”
“Crazy, isn’t it?”
“Ridiculous,” Helena confirms.
“I’m not so sure,” Haley stammers. “I know you, Lindsay.”
“You’re lonely. He’s lonely, it’s a stressful time and BOOM!” Helena claps her hands together. “It’s social combustion. Oh, can I have the key to put my stuff in your room? You can’t believe how disgusting ours is. No window or anything, and Haley keeps bumping into the wall because she can’t tell which way is up.”
“Sure. Sure.” I take out the key and hand it back to her. “Suite 8000.”
We walk down the hallway, and Haley falls into the wall while we search for the buffet.
“I can’t believe you came on a boat for me. You have trouble walking on dry land.”
“I’m here because it’s you in crisis this time. I’m so sorry again about your mom. I know you wanted to see her before something like this happened. I’m here for you, girl. I’m your tub of chocolate frosting.”
“Aww.” I stop and hug her. “You like me. You really like me.” I give her my best Sally Field.
“You can make fun of me all you want, but I am so glad to have my best friend back. I worried that you were going to spend your life getting your hair done and calling me for shoe sales. It was so unlike you.” She pauses for a moment. “Well, there’s more to you than that. Let’s agree on that much.”
“There are worse kinds of lives.” I grin at her. “Look at you, you’re still wearing Keds! The same shoes you wore when you were five, only now they have rhinestones on them. Is it any wonder I must call you with shoe sales?”
“Listen, Lindsay, you have to think about your skill set. I used mine, and I never even went to college. You’ve got a degree. You’re light-years ahead of me.”
“But I never used it. I worked at Nordstrom’s. I sold suits by flirting. It’s not like that’s a real skill.”
“It is, but technically, it usually leads to illegal work, so we’re going to have to find something else, but you keep avoiding that conversation. Remember when we talked about design…styling…the ministry? At some point, you have to make a choice.”
“Hence the flow chart I brought.”
“You’ve just gotten out of the habit of asking God what the right things are. You know in your heart. That man you were talking with up on deck?”
“Norm?”
“Norm.” She rolls her eyes as though she hadn’t heard his name the first time. “Do you know, Lindsay, the first time I met you, you flirted with a coffee barista half your age. Oh, you read him the riot act that nothing was going to happen, but do you realize your first language is flirting? It’s your comfort zone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You have gotten by your whole life by flirting and being beautiful. But what happens when you’re not? If you’re not? What happens when you’re Cherry and your chest is still thirty, but you’re not?”
“Banish the thought from your head! Right now!” I stop walking and wag my finger at her, as if I’m Bette. “I never thought of myself as beautiful. I always thought I was high maintenance with decent results from lots of cash spent. Besides, after I married, I didn’t flirt.”
“You did. I’m sorry to tell you that you did. Ron never minded—he knew you were there to stay—but you did flirt when you were married.”
“Well…so what? It was innocent.” But I’ll admit, it doesn’t sound so innocent now coming out of her mouth. I run through the men in my life I may have flirted with while married to Ron, and I’m ashamed to admit how many names pop into my head. Gosh, I hate those kinds of women. And here I am one. “Does everyone else think that? Was I the kind of woman people kept their husbands from?”
She looks away.
“No, seriously. I wasn’t that girl!” I give her this pleading look. “No one wants to be that girl. Why are you telling me this now?” First, Haley has the nerve to tell me I’m holed up in my condo like the old women with cats, and now, she claims I’m a shameless flirt. I know I came on this cruise for a little soul-searching, but perhaps I got more than I’d hoped for in her answers.
“You’re asking why mothers don’t like you, and I’m telling you. You don’t look like you’ll be faithful to these men to other women. The Trophy Wives Club knows better, but you asked, and I’m your friend, so I’m telling you. It’s hard for me to believe that Ronnie is anything more than your latest flirtation.”
I feel my head fly back and forth as I shake my head. It’s not like that, I want to tell her, but what can I say to prove my point, really? I suppose I am a flirt. It simply never meant anything to me, but now—now that she thinks Ronnie is just another conquest, that Jake is another notch on my lipstick case—now it’s my reputation at stake.
“I can’t believe this is coming from you, Haley. You, who fell in love with your husband’s prenu
p attorney. How can you of all people question me?”
She holds up her palms, but soon has to use them to brace herself against the wall. “All I’m saying is there has to be more than possible romance in your life for me to believe you’re ready. You have to go after something, and it should be something tangible. Even if it’s the wrong career choice, you’ll realize it before you get there—maybe it should just be something other than a man.”
What else is there? I think to myself before understanding how on-target Haley is. It hurts me to hear her say the words, and I can see in her muddled expression, it pains her to say it. But she’s right. Just like I was right about the empty frosting cans in her room. They were symbolic of her empty life. “That’s why I came on this cruise though. To regroup and fix myself so I knew that I was ready.”
“What would happen if you truly trusted Christ to be your husband?” She says this with all the soft passion of a television evangelist, and it sparks something ugly within me.
“You’re going to preach at me? You, who is getting married in two months? You, who I rescued out of a ratty motel and told you all about Jesus? You’re going to tell me about faith?”
“Yes, I am. Remember me, who had no value outside of Jay Cutler, until he shoved me out the door and I had to figure it out? It’s time. Life goes on.”
But I’m still lost in the audacity of the situation. “You holed up in a ratty motel for eons and ate chocolate frosting until we came and got you, and you’re going to preach at me.”
“I never said I had all the answers. Only that I figured out my problem. I’m trying to help you move out of this rut. You have nothing to do every day. Doesn’t that bother you? Worse yet, doesn’t it get you into a lot of trouble?”
“I’m sad, Haley.” I feel the sting of tears behind my nose. “I am. I’m sad, and I miss Ron, and I feel there’s no one who will ever take his place, and I’ll die alone and no one will care. No one but you girls will even come to my funeral.”
“You are not going to die alone, Lindsay. It’s time to think about a daily goal. That’s all.”
“I’m making a chart,” I say to spark some encouragement.
“What do you want, Lindsay? I mean, really want? You can’t find that answer on a chart.”
“With colored markers,” I add.
“Even with colored markers, Linds.”
“I want someone to hold me like Ronnie did and make me feel safe. I want a home base.”
“It can’t be a person. Not a human. As you’ve seen, they could leave you.”
“I just want to go back to what was comfortable. Is that so wrong?”
This conversation has my head swimming. I want what I can never have. I want to go backward, and here’s the thing about life, it forces you to go forward. Every time you try to take a step back, some new wind swirls in and forces you ahead. It’s like a big game of Chutes and Ladders. Instinctively, I want to go have fun and slide down to the place where I started, but God keeps pushing up those ladders, like an overwrought personal trainer.
“I wasn’t flirting with Norm. He came up to me,” I say to maintain a sense of dignity.
“You were Kate to his Leonardo. There is not a court of law in this country where you could prove your case.”
“So what are you saying? If I don’t get a job, you’re going to disown me?”
“The Trophy Wives have all tried to tell you gently, but it’s time to get more direct. You know when you came and rescued me from the motel. This is your floating motel. Ron is gone. I’m so sorry. He was a good man, and he loved you deeply, but you can’t live your life in the past. You can’t live your life flirting with every man to make yourself feel loved. It’s time to get real.”
I gaze at Haley in wonder. She went from being a dingbat trophy wife, and I’m sorry, but even us trophy wives have our caste system. She was the type who never questioned, who never rocked the boat until she was replaced. I worked hard to keep my mind sharp, to keep our relationship balanced.
“Who am I kidding? I’m a mess. Ron was the only person who ever accepted me as is, and the idea that Ronnie would do the same thing is nothing more than my own wishful thinking and not wanting to live in reality.”
“That’s not true, Lindsay. We all accept you. Bette, Lily, Helena in her offbeat way, and Penny and me. We accept and love you the way you are. We want you to move forward for you, but if you stay stuck in your pathetic, flirting status quo, you’re still welcome.”
I nod.
My eyes blink. “That’s it. I’m angry.” I look at Haley. “I’m angry at God because He took from me what I loved. The one man on earth who loved me, and I don’t think I care to please Him anymore. Ron was my rock. My salvation. That’s not right, Haley. What if He took Ron from me because I didn’t love them in the right order?”
“God doesn’t work like that, Lindsay.”
“I know you’re right, but that’s why I am here. I don’t care anymore. To trust in the unseen. That verse. Faith is being assured of what you cannot see. I don’t think I can do that anymore.”
“Lindsay, did you have something to drink?”
“No. I never did really put my trust in Jesus. I put my trust in Ron. And he died. What if it’s my fault?”
“Lindsay, you know that you don’t have the power to say who lives and dies, so what are you talking about?”
“God wants me to live without the safety net, and I need to see it beneath me.”
“He’s not asking you to do it alone, he’s just saying not with Ron any longer. We’re here for you.” She rubs my shoulder, and I give her a hug.
“Thanks for coming, Haley. I know this is terrible timing for you.”
“On the contrary. My mother can’t reach me, and she can’t nag me about the wedding. It’s perfect timing.”
We finally walk into the buffet, and I’m glad to get away from this painful conversation. Realizing your life is a mess and actually doing something about it are two entirely different realms. I’m going to deal with the one and allow myself to process the idea that I’m a flirt by nature. That’s ugly.
Norm.
Jake.
Ronnie.
Only one face flashes through my mind, and it’s definitely the most inconvenient of the three. Oh yes, I definitely need to learn to live alone and find my purpose. Clearly, it isn’t flirting.
I look back at Haley and her happy glow while she fills her plate with vegetables. Clearly, she’s given up chocolate frosting until the wedding. I, on the other hand, am single with no prospects. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing necessarily, except I’ve just been told I’m a flirt and mothers don’t like me, and my intrigue with Ronnie was nothing more than a figment of my overactive imagination. And I haven’t even started a flow chart. I am so not the king of the world.
Chapter 23
Jane
She’s dead.”
“She can’t be. Are you quite certain?”
“She is.” I sniffle. “She’s dead.” I stare into the phone wondering what Bette means, am I certain? I didn’t take her pulse or anything! “The coroner came and got her a few minutes ago. They wrapped her in a sheet, slid her in a rubberized bag, zipped it up and took her away, like she was nothing more than yesterday’s trash. It’s been so traumatic for everyone in the complex. All of the women are out on the patio weeping. It’s horribly depressing and solemn.” I try to shake it off, but death here in L.A. isn’t like Mexico. With all the plastic surgery and lack of aging, it almost has you believing the residents are going to skirt death.
“Stay there, I’ll be over to get you soon. What about the cat?”
“The neighbors are going to care for them. There’s three of them, and they’re all going to take turns. Lindsay’s going to be so upset when she gets home.” I pace the room thinking about it. Lindsay plays tough, but I see her check on her neighbors all the time. The cats congregate at the doorstep in some sort of emergency meeting, unaware of what’s go
ing on, but fully capable of understanding their life will not go on as before. “At least when you’re dead, you’re not left to wonder what might have been.”
“Jane, what a horrible thing to say.”
“It was a horrible thing to say, but it’s like Dia de los Muertos, La Catrina has come to call.”
“Jane, you’re not making any sense.”
“In Mexico, we don’t fear death, well, except for the angelitos, the little children. We celebrate it on the day of the dead, believe the animas, the souls, come back to nourish themselves for the afterlife. We feed them, as well as ourselves. There is no feeling of celebration here. It’s dark. Somber and frightening.” I feel a chill run up my spine and look down to see Kuku at my feet.
“Is there anything I can do for the ladies there? They’re so frail, most of them. I’ll stop by the bakery on my way and give them some nourishment. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“They’re pulling together.” I slide the curtain open and peer out—just like they usually do to Lindsay. “They’re planning the cat schedule and contacting the next of kin. Apparently, she’s outlived most everyone, but someone thinks she has a cousin or a sister somewhere in town. They’re doing fine, very practical in the matter.”
Truly, they’re weeping, and they haven’t stopped since someone brought her dinner and found her on her porch. The scream is what woke me from my own black nap.
“Death is such an odd experience. It brings about reactions you never expect and hits people in ways you never imagined. I think perhaps we celebrate in Mexico rather than face the painful realities.”
“You’re talking about Ron, I presume.”
How does she know these things? I didn’t think I was, but when she says it, I realize his death is an experience that I never took the time to grieve. I simply went into business mode and did what needed to be done—especially since he’d been dead for a good year before I got word. I never stopped and thought about the man, and regardless of what my endpoint with him was, there’s an extremely complicated middle.
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