by Cathy Lamb
“I’m angry that my kids don’t come to see me,” huffed LouLou Meiers. LouLou was the wrong name for this woman. “LouLou” is the name of a fun and sweet woman who likes to party. This one served in the military for twenty-five years and always talks like a drill sergeant.
“Maybe if you didn’t scare them so much and always tell them to address you as ma’am instead of mom, and if you didn’t wake them up at the crack of dawn for running and exercising when they’re here visiting, and if you didn’t insist that they fold their sheets like they’re in boot camp, they’d come by more.”
“Humph,” LouLou said. “Up early, make your bed right, exercise your body so you can exercise your mind. Go to bed early. That’s how I raised ’em, that’s how it’s going to be when they return for visits.”
“It’s not working, LouLou.”
LouLou appeared baffled. Why would anyone not want the discipline of a military life?
“Let’s do it,” a mother of five said. “I’m mad because my teenagers are awful. They are wild and sneak out of the house and drink alcohol and are probably having sex. It’s a small island, you would think I could find them screwing around, but no. So. Tonight. At the lake. No one’s around.”
“I’ll do it. My menopause is a raging red bull inside of me. Have I told you about the vaginal dryness I’m experiencing? I need gel or oil or something for it. My aunt told me to put basil leaves on it. My cousin told me the skin of a banana would help. It didn’t.”
There was some interest in talking about vaginal dryness, but soon they were back to the naked run.
By God and by golly, they did it. I heard about it later. Nighttime. Naked. Running. Jogging. Walking. Around the lake. They invited me and I said I had a lot of work to do at the bookstore, woe is me. Plus, I’m not going to do something I hate to do, like running. The only time I want to run is if a bear is chasing me.
As for the book? Most of them liked it. But one of them thought it was a “ridiculous and unrealistic look into a half-cocked woman’s first-world problems. Annoying. Irritating. Honestly, I wanted to hit her. Let’s go back to a classic for next week as this book made my brain rot.”
* * *
Seeing someone’s future, especially if it’s bad, is totally distressing.
Part of it is because if I can prevent it, I have to plan. I have to figure out how to do it, when to do it. It often involves keeping a vigilant eye out for when the premonition is coming. I’ve learned to look at people’s clothing in the premonition, which is how I can try to identify when something is going to happen.
As a kid, once I accepted that I wasn’t causing the bad event to happen, once I understood that other people couldn’t see the future, it was even more terrifying.
As an adult, it’s still terrifying.
You can save someone, or leave them to their fate.
You can interfere, or not.
It’s often a moral nightmare.
I suppose some theologist might say, “Leave fate to fate.” Or “Don’t interfere with others’ lives.” Or, the one I like least, “It’s God’s will.”
That is easy to say perched atop a philosophical, fundamentalist, or religious mountain.
But when you know that Mrs. Keeton, who is your favorite librarian, or Antonio Juarez or little Jason Chambers is going to die if you don’t do something, if you don’t say something, and they are loving people with many people who love them who will be crushed if they are killed, and who knows what horrendous reverberations will strike amidst their family and friends, you act.
You have to.
I had to.
Most of the time.
But sometimes I don’t do or say anything, and I have to emotionally and intellectually make decisions that I don’t like to make. Sometimes, for example, if I see that someone is going to die soon of a terminal illness, and there’s nothing I can do to change that, I say nothing.
I have also declined to help, to intervene, several times because the person was absolutely awful and the people around that person would be better off without him or her.
Sounds harsh, doesn’t it?
Who am I not to interfere when I see doom coming for them, even if I think the world would be a better place without them?
I don’t know. It’s like playing God, but I am an imperfect God.
I can see incredible, happy news coming for people, too. I see their laughter, their relief, their families celebrating. I love those, and whispering to someone who is in pain now about what will come for them later, bring them joy, is a relief to them and me. It lightens life’s load.
But almost each day I have to go and stand on the edge of the ocean, near my carriage house, feet in the sand, and watch the waves to maintain my calm and prevent “the shakes,” which happens when I get overstressed.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Like life in general. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
* * *
I saw Marco two days later at his clinic. Butch hurt his foot. He was limping. He chased after a squirrel, and the squirrel won. Marco got him all bandaged up. Butch licked him when he was done.
We had long moments of gazing into each other’s eyes. I saw in his eyes . . . attraction, I thought. Interest. Confusion. Sadness. And questions. Lots of questions. I had the answers but couldn’t share them with him. I had shut him down many times when he gently asked to go on a hike or lunch or dinner . . .
Afterward I went and bought an ice-cream cone. Peppermint and chocolate chip are so good next to each other.
Then I went to my beach and cried my eyes out.
I stopped crying when Mr. Bob and Trixie Goat appeared.
“How did you two get out of your pen again?”
Mr. Bob kicked his legs up, taunting me. Trixie head butted him. I swear she smiled at me.
* * *
“I can hardly breathe, Evie.”
“Yes, you can. Sit down, Jules.” It was late, I was in bed, and I put aside two books I was reading, a memoir and historical fiction, while I balanced my phone in my hand. Sometimes I like to mix and blend my books. When I placed the books down on top of a stack of books, the stack fell over. Dang it. That had happened in my kitchen nook today, too, next to the library filing cabinet. A whole stack toppled over.
“I can’t breathe, Evie. I’m pacing.”
I heard Jules trying to get her breath. “Everything’s going to be okay, Jules. It is.”
“But I’m getting married. M.A.R.I.E.D. Did I leave out an R? I think I did.”
“Do you want to get married?”
“Yes, I do. I would give up my motorcycles, my house, and all my tattoos to marry Mack.”
“So you’re worried about the day of the wedding?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I heard her gasp. “I’m going to have a panic attack. I hate panic attacks. Oh no. Here it comes. It’s like a wave, you know? A tsunami of fear and breathlessness and you have to fight back the tsunami. Oh no. Oh no.”
I thought about what I could do to get her to calm down. Panic attacks are the worst. You feel like you’re dying or losing your mind. I don’t know which is worse. “Tell me why you love Mack.”
“He’s acrobatic in bed,” Jules gushed, her breathing still short. “I mean, that’s not the only thing. But look at him. Lots to cuddle.” She took a deep breath. “Lots to love. I love how big he is. Everywhere big, if you know what I mean. But I can handle it! He thinks he’s fat, but I think he’s a huggable bear.”
“What else?”
“He’s romantic.” She wasn’t panting anymore. “When we’re in bed, he takes his time, you know? Sometimes I’m, like, let’s do a quickie because I have to go to work and paint a bike, but he’s like, no, baby, let’s have some fun. And pretty soon I’m late to work.”
“And what else do you like about him? About his personality?” I tried to stress the word personality. Not bed. Personality.
“He’s sexy. I mean
, the way he thinks about me, about us, how he kisses me and holds me. And I like how creative he is. Always thinking of different things we can do in bed. He brought home these fun sex toys the other day. We have enough for, like, a month now.”
I’d try to ask things in a different way. “Is he generous? Is he kind? Is he thoughtful? Is he protective?”
“Yes. Absolutely generous. When we’re in bed he always lets me have my woo-woo first. He says he’s a gentleman and it’s always ladies first. When I need to have another one, he’s very welcoming about it. And he’s kind and thoughtful.” She was breathing, calming down. “He knows that I don’t like sex first thing in the morning, so he always lets me get showered and have my coffee first, and he’s protective because he always makes sure that all the curtains are closed before we have sex on the kitchen table or the island in the kitchen. He says he doesn’t want any of the neighbors seeing his beautiful fiancée.”
I gave up on the personality questions. “You sound better now, Jules.”
“What? I am.” She breathed deep. “Wow. Way freakin’ better. I’m so happy. I can’t wait to get married and be Mrs. Jules. It’s going to be the best day of my life. Mack says the day we’re married is going to be the best day of his life, too. We decided how many kids we’re going to have over Chinese food last night. Know how we did it? We were eating naked in bed, and we broke the chopsticks up and sat knee to knee and threw the pieces up in the air. All the pieces that landed in the little triangle you make when you’ve got your legs crossed, that’s how many kids we agreed we would have.”
“And what was that number?”
“Eight.” She sighed. “I can’t wait ’til we’re married. Hang on, I’m going to show you my wedding shoes! I can’t keep it a surprise any longer!”
She texted me a photo of her wedding shoes. No satin heels for her. No white ballet shoes. She was going to rock it in a biker way.
“You’re going to be the sexiest bride ever.”
“I know, right?! Wait ’til I get in bed with Mack in these. He’ll lose his mind.”
Well, Mack might lose his mind, but, even better, my sister had lost her panic attack.
Chapter 8
“Serafina spent her days with her four brothers and four sisters.”
“What did they do?”
“They explored the ocean. They swam through ancient sailing ships. They found treasure chests buried deep beneath the waves. They explored coral reefs. They jumped with the dolphins in parts of the ocean that no humans go to. They swam through caves to lagoons.”
“And none of her brothers and sisters had a tail like hers? With colors from the flowers in Mom’s garden?”
“No. They all had shiny green tails, normal mermaid and mermen tails.”
“Where were their mom and dad?”
“They lived in an undersea castle altogether. They loved their children very much. They were surprised that Serafina had such a colorful tail. No one else in their family had anything but a green tail, but they told her it was special and they told her that they loved her.”
“Are mermaids nice?”
“Yes. But one merman wasn’t nice.”
“Oh no. What happened?”
“Are you ready for the scary part?”
“Yes. I’m brave. Tell me.”
Chapter 9
It was my grandmother, Lucy, who planned and planted the lush, winding gardens around Rose Bloom Cottage. Lucy was a sweet, loving, absolutely delusional woman. She was mostly sane for the first few years of her marriage, if only somewhat eccentric and quirky, then she seemed to slip more each year, my mother and aunts told me.
My mother and aunts took care of their mother starting at an early age, as their father owned the grocery store in town and worked a twelve-hour day. Their mother often wandered off. Now and then she stole a boat and snuck off the island, which required every person living here at the time—and there weren’t that many—to go search for her, along with the Coast Guard. She had thick black hair, an olive complexion, and dark brown eyes like my mother, sister, and aunts.
I’ve seen photos of her, and she was stunning. She was half French and half Greek, and she liked, now and then, to think that she was magical. “I’m part fairy,” she told her daughters, “and you are, too.”
Who knew what Grandma Lucy suffered from? They didn’t have all the labels then that we do now. My mother and aunts’ best guess was that she was somewhere on the bi-polar spectrum.
“With a twist of fantasy,” my mother said.
“With a dollop of magical thinking,” said Aunt Camellia.
“She was loving and gentle and flat-out crazy,” Aunt Iris said.
My grandma died when she was forty-eight. She jumped off the cliff at the south end of the island. Two fishermen were in their boat below when they saw her running across the top of the cliff in a flowing pink dress, pink ribbons in her long black hair, her arms outstretched. Lucy never stopped as she leaped off the edge. They swore they heard her laughing, even when she was under the waves.
The fishermen, I was told, were absolutely traumatized as they pulled her broken body out of the water.
Lucy loved flowers. She loved her garden. And when she was in her garden, planting, digging, pulling weeds, creating pathways and different garden rooms with shrubs and trees that still stand today, she was peaceful. She was focused.
She knew where a small wood bridge over a rock river would look best. She knew where her garden needed a trellis and a red bench down a curving path. She knew where the vegetable garden would thrive. She knew where a pond should be built for lily pads and where a blue bistro table should be placed under a willow tree for reading books.
When she gardened, Lucy wore a straw hat, a flowered dress, and her red boots, which still have the place of honor to the right of the front door. She smiled and sang while she worked. She was a master gardener, everyone said so, and her garden is one of her legacies.
Lucy is why my mother and my aunts love flowers, too. They loved their mother. If she wasn’t having a bad day, or a bad week, where she would cry and moan under the covers of her bed with the lights off, she would hug them, sing to them, and make up intricate fairy tales. She did not get meals on the table. She did not do housework, she would disappear for days on end in the woods, she would swim naked in the middle of the day with others around, and she believed she could heal people with a touch.
“She would pick bouquets for people all over the island,” my mom told me. “Dad would drive her around to deliver them to people in need. She said she looked for people who needed a smile. She would put on a flowered dress and a tutu and sparkling glitter on her face and tell everyone she was the flower fairy.”
“When Gene Sheldt lost his wife, she brought him flowers each week for two months,” Aunt Iris said.
“When Jory Lefts was ill, same thing,” Aunt Camellia said. “For months.”
“When Abigail’s husband left her with three kids, she brought the little girls each a bouquet every Tuesday all summer.”
Everyone loved her. She may have been on the mental health spectrum somewhere, but the spectrum was a generous, kind spectrum.
“There was not a drop of unkindness in her,” Aunt Camellia told me.
“It’s why everyone loved her, everyone took care of her, and us,” my mother said. “The neighbors often brought us meals. Cookies. Pies. Cakes. They wanted to help. Mom would greet them at the door in a princess dress and wand, welcome them in, hold their hands, smile.”
“That’s why the three of us were never teased in school about her,” Aunt Iris said. “Even when she would walk to town naked with one of our dogs on a leash.”
“Even when she wore wings,” my mother said.
After high school, one by one, they all left for college. In fact, they were in college when their mother took a flying leap off a cliff. They have all told me how guilty they felt: If they had stayed on the island, would their mother have jumped?
Probably not, they thought. And the guilt never left.
“She loved us, we knew that,” my mother said. “Was it so hard to bear, having all her girls gone, that she couldn’t stand it anymore? Could she not endure the battle in her head any longer? I have cried during a hundred black nights trying to answer that question.”
“Guilt has plagued my soul,” my aunt Camellia said. “My soul will never be able to remove that stain of responsibility in leaving her, of abandoning her, of not being there for her each day, when I knew she was ill.”
My aunt Iris was direct: “The vision of her jumping will never leave me. Because behind her I see myself, pushing her.”
And yet I have also listened to my mother and my aunts talking about their mother, how they intellectually knew that they shouldn’t feel guilty, how they were not responsible, how they did everything for her, and were they never to go to college? Never to leave the island? Lucy had their father, who loved her, cared for her, as best he could. She had friends and neighbors she had known for years. My mom and aunts came home to visit all the time, including all summer to work in the family grocery store, in shifts, so someone would always be with Lucy.
My mother became a nurse, her interest in medicine, in healing her mother, sparking that interest, but then, as she traveled the world, following my dad in the military, where she often couldn’t work, she started her own small floral business. She loved arranging flowers and making bouquets, as she had with her mother, so that’s what she did.
My aunt Camellia owned a huge nursery and a mail order bulb business outside of Seattle. “I wanted to calm people’s spirits, soothe their angst, comfort them in their need, through flowers and gardens.” Again, you can see my grandma’s love of flowers in the business Aunt Camellia started. She sold it for a huge profit when she moved to the island ten years ago and changed her career to become a “Lotion and Potion Pixie.”
Aunt Camellia was married for two years, but her husband, as she says, “turned the other way and decided that I did not have the right plumbing,” and never married again. When her husband was trying to pretend he wasn’t gay, they did get pregnant twice, but Aunt Camellia miscarried. Then something happened, she won’t say what, and she was no longer able to have children, which broke her heart.
