by Jill Barnett
“How long has it been since you’ve been out?”
“Out?” I unwrapped a tamale.
“Yes. You know. To a restaurant.”
“I had lunch with my sons,” I said, but that had been a few weeks back and both boys encouraged me to stay out of the office, which did horrific things to my ego as well as my plans to keep myself powering forward through life.
I knew what my friends would say if I admitted the truth: that I hadn’t left the house for almost two weeks. I suspected Ellie knew that anyway. Probably one of my snitch children had called and tattled on me.
Evidently, I was becoming a drag. Molly hated me, my sons didn’t want me around work, and my youngest wanted to be a man and choose his own college. No one needed me.
“In other words, you’ve been wallowing indoors too long,” Ellie concluded with her maddening ability to know everything you wanted hidden. “All those times you blew us off. I knew you needed a lunch. You need a serious drinking lunch. I, your friend for almost forty years—God, that makes me sound old—am here to get you completely shitfaced.”
With perfect timing the waiter placed three glasses in the center of the table and added a large wooden salt shaker and a blue and yellow pottery bowl filled with sliced limes, before he poured shots from an ornate silver and blue bottle.
“Well, looks like I’m going to drink today,” I said dryly.
“You complaining?”
“No. But I didn’t see you order these.”
“I called ahead. Now bring us a pitcher of margaritas please Tomas, then we’ll order.” Ellie waited until our waiter left and raised her glass, looking at me without a lick of the pity that was in everyone else’s eyes. Still, there was an empty pause before Ellie said, “To Mike.”
It was 5:30 pm when I stumbled out of the back of Ellie’s limo and grabbed onto the door, weaving a little, my hair hanging in my face, because it was so windblown from standing up through the sunroof and singing We Built This City at the top of my lungs as we drove through rush hour traffic.
I turned and leaned inside, where the car smelled like leather and tamales. “Thank you, both for a lovely lunch.” I straightened and turned to try to walk toward the house, but Ellie’s driver, Eugene was there to help me.
Eugene had a great face, like Ernest Borgnine, kind of rough and fatherly at the same time. “I love my friends,” I said to him.
MC was giggling like a teenager, tequila did that to her. Ellie turned down the volume and crawled across the seat like Catwoman. “Remember. Find something to do. You’re living in a vacuum. Do not let your kids keep you from work. You don’t need protecting. You need to keep busy.”
“Your boss is way too bossy, Eugene.”
“Let me help you, Mrs. Cantrell,” he said gently.
I sagged back against his shoulder and looked up at him. “I’m not Mrs. anymore.” What am I?
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
I’m a ma’am? Ugh. “God . . . I’m old,” I said, disgusted.
“You’re not old and even if you are, don’t ever admit it, or worse yet, use the word ‘old.’ You’re just sloshed,” Ellie said. “Get her to the door, Eugene.”
“I can walk,” I insisted. My throat felt scratchy from singing so loudly. But I took two steps up the drive and had to grab his arm. “Maybe you can guide me, Eugene. You can be my personal GPS system.” I laughed.
He took my keys from my newest purse, a pearl-gray leather Vuitton, and unlocked the front door, while I leaned against the side of the house and insisted I was just fine and could easily use the key and walk into my own house without falling face down. “I am a woman of a ‘certain age’ after all,” I said.
I managed to get rid of him, closed the door and leaned back against it, holding onto the handle. The alarm system was beeping in my left ear. Thirty seconds to punch in the code. Squinting, I put in the numbers and turned too quickly, and the room spun. But I told myself I was fine, disoriented, but fine. It felt good to let go. It felt good to drink myself into inhibition, to sing like school girls as we drove through the city.
The stupid alarm began to tick again, the yellow warning light blinking. “What’s wrong with this thing?” I entered the code again, the light changed to green again, so I walked across the limestone entry, surprisingly steady considering.
He was there . . . .sitting in the living room, his head bent over a book, flecks of gray all through that dark, thick, familiar hair.
“Mike?” My blood began pulsing. My skin grew hot.
Behind me I heard the alarm begin to beep again. “Mike?” He didn’t look up. I ran toward him. “Mike!” It had all been a mistake. It was a bad dream. A joke. “You’re alive!” I was crying as I reached for him, expecting him to laugh at me. “Mike!”
I kept my eyes glued to his image, afraid to blink or look away.
The house alarm continued to go off.
“Mike!” I yelled, desperate and needing to touch him. Something stopped me, tripped me, was blocking my way to him, and suddenly I was falling.
As if he couldn’t hear me shouting his name, he stayed in the chair, calmly reading, wearing his red polo shirt with the blue ink stain on the pocket.
I never could get that stain out.
My head hit the coffee table, and the image of my husband instantly turned to black.
Chapter Sixteen
It turned out that the alarm company called Molly, who met the police and paramedics at the house. Despite all the blood everywhere and my bruises and aches, I didn’t need stitches or a trip to the local emergency room. The gash causing all the blood was in my hairline and head cuts always looked worse. But as the emergency crew packed up their duffels and gear, one of them mentioned that I shouldn’t be left alone or allowed to sleep for a few hours.
While I knew what he meant, that I might have a concussion, his words said something else altogether. She shouldn’t be left alone. Which appeared to be the singular truth about me. I was broken. I was a mess. I hated what I had become, but I couldn’t seem to stop anymore than I could stop seeing Mike all over the house.
I lay on the sofa, my head throbbing, trying to look as if I were fine, but alternating between embarrassment and frustration. Somehow I had managed to lose a shoe, and a bloody towel lay on the floor next to me.
Molly let the EMTs out and picked up the bloody towel. I searched her face for the hateful look I had seen before, but thankfully it wasn’t there. She was staring down at the thick ivory guest towel; it made of expensive imported cotton and trimmed in satin and lace with small seed pearl trim and came from an ultra-upscale Italian bedding shop off of Union Square.
I had forever scolded one or the other of her older brothers for using the guest bathroom to wipe their ‘grubby’ hands on the good towels. “Mom, you know I’m good,” Phillip would tease me, or “I am a guest,” Scott would argue. “I haven’t lived here for over a decade.”
“I’ll take this to the laundry room,” she said in a hurry and left me alone in the room.
I laid my head back and closed my eyes, and I could hear Molly in the other room.
“There’s stain spray on the counter,” I called out.
“I know, Mother.”
When she came back in I tried to sit up and winced. At least I didn’t feel drunk any longer. I just hurt and my hand went automatically to my head.
“Don’t get up,” Molly said. “Just lie there. What do you need?”
“A stronger ego. Good lord . . . Did you see the looks they gave me? They think I’m a drunk.”
Molly laughed at me. “Well, actually, I wouldn’t want to light a match within two feet of you.”
“You’re kidding?” I closed my eyes, suddenly embarrassed all over again. “Am I really that bad?”
“Do you want me to lie?”
“Yes. No. Ellie and MC took me to lunch. Oh Lord my head hurts.”
“You must have fallen right on your head.”
“I did fall on my head
, and my knee and my hip. I hurt all over already. I can’t imagine what tomorrow will be like.” I was talking too loud and winced again. “You know,” I lowered my voice. “I think I have a hangover already. The stupid alarm kept going off. I thought I saw—” I stopped, remembering Mike’s image in my mind and I was afraid to tell my wounded and judgmental daughter the truth. “I saw something odd. I never knew tequila could make you hallucinate. I think I panicked.” I sank further into the pillows, feeling smaller than I ever could remember.
I lay an arm across my eyes because the tears I could feel welling up would spill out and I would really humiliate myself and fall apart in front of Molly. With every ounce of stubbornness I still had left in me, I willed the tears away. “Any second my eyes are going to shoot right out of my head,” I murmured.
“I’ll get you something for your headache.”
I waved a hand toward the other end of the house. “In the kitchen. The drawer by the sink. Two please. Excedrin.” I paused. “And ice water. Crushed.”
“I know, Mother.”
When Molly came back in the room, I slowly raised my head. “Thanks, sweetie. I’m sorry you had to rush over here. I feel like an idiot. I shouldn’t have had that last margarita.” I set down the water glass. My daughter had put a slice of cucumber and a wedge of lemon in the ice water. Back when she was in college, I had flown down to LA and taken her to a seaside spa for a mother-daughter weekend after her mid-terms. On all the tables in all the spa rooms were pitchers of water with crystal clear ice floating with lemon and cucumber slices. The flavor was enough to change the way I drank water forever after.
Of course she would do that—my daughter with her eye for detail. So what had her sharp eyes seen in mine that I wanted to hide?
“How many margaritas did you have?”
“I have no idea. They came in these . . . ” I raised my hands about a foot apart “ . . . big pitchers.”
“I can make you some coffee.” Molly checked her watch.
“I don’t want to just lie here.”
“You’re supposed to rest.”
“But I can’t go to sleep,” I said, parroting instructions for the keeping of March Cantrell, mad woman. Mad, drunken woman.
“Right. I’ll be right back. Let the aspirin go to work. I’ll get you some coffee.” Molly made a beeline for the kitchen.
“The beans are in the freezer,” I called out weakly.
“I used to live here, you know.”
“Kona. I like the kona blend. Your father loved kona, too. Your Aunt May sent it when she was in Hawaii. It smells so good when you grind it. I wonder why coffee never tastes like it smells?”
No response.
“Did you find it?”
“Yes!” came the sharp reply and I heard the coffee grinder crunching away in the kitchen.
I waited a minute more, and then I stood up and was much more steady-on-my-feet than I had been when I came home.
In the doorway of the kitchen I stopped. Molly was on her cell phone, her back to me. “I might need to cancel tonight. I know. I’ll try, but no matter what, I’m going to be late. I really need to stay here with my mother.” She paused. “Okay. I’ll call you.”
I stepped back a few feet so it looked as if I had just walked into the room. She pocketed her phone and turned around, clearly surprised. “Mom. You’re supposed to be lying down.”
“I’m not dizzy. And I forgot have to make cookies for Mickey’s school.”
“Cookies? He’s a senior in high school. Isn’t that too old for class parties?”
“The parents are selling them at a bake sale to help finance the band trip.”
“Mickey’s not in the band.”
“Mickey has nothing to do with it. The school needed volunteers and I signed up months ago.”
My daughter checked her watch. “When does he get home?”
“Not until nine. He has practice.” I took down a mug and leaned against the counter, waiting for the coffee. “Look. You don’t have to stay.” The coffee maker was gurgling and I turned around. The room spun so quickly I dropped the mug and heard it shatter.
“Mom!” My daughter’s arms were around me. How very odd. That was never her role; it was always the other way around. Molly was holding me up and the room was a blur, my vision swimming like my head. “Come over to the table and sit down.”
I felt frail and frightened and a little nauseated. I rested my head in one hand while I waited for the feeling to pass. When I could focus again without feeling like I would faint, I looked at her, hovering over me. I had really scared her. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll make the cookies. You stay there.” She set a mug of fresh coffee in front of me, swept up the broken china and then said, “Are you okay sitting there?”
“I’m fine. The coffee is helping. The ingredients are in the pantry. Chocolate chip pecan with the ground oatmeal base,” I told her, but she knew. They were the family’s favorite. “The mixer’s right there.”
When we redid the kitchen some years back, we had added a whole line of mahogany small appliance garages along the marble counter. The upper cabinets had beveled glass panes and were lit underneath and inside, displaying all the brightly colored serving dishes Mike had bought me on our trips to Italy over the years. Copper pots and pans and bowls, well-used but polished, hung like monkeys from a heavy iron rack above the center island and Molly took down the largest bowl. She slid open one door; it held the blender, the next one held the food processor, the next the pasta machine. “The last one. On the right,” I said.
Molly pulled out the mixer and rolled her eyes.
“I keep Williams-Sonoma in business.”
“I can see that.”
And as I watched my daughter make the cookies we had made together so many times over the years, I saw that something was still off with her. Mike could always charm Molly back from whatever dark place her mind seemed to go to. My daughter had stood in this kitchen so many times and yet now I saw that she looked uncomfortable.
I had a crazy thought. All those years ago, when I had stood in my mother’s kitchen, arguing over my wedding and scared to death because I had to tell her I was pregnant. That day I had realized my parents’ house was home, but it wasn’t my home. I wondered if I looked to my own mother then, like my Molly looked to me right now, as if a pair of shoes she had worn forever suddenly pinched her toes.
A few of hours later I walked my daughter to the door. She grabbed her coat and purse while I was looking at the bump on my forehead in the hall mirror.
“Daddy?”
My heart stopped and my gaze flew to my daughter’s reflection. She was standing behind me, alone.
“Molly?” I turned around.
She was holding a white feather in her open palm.
“The cat must have brought a bird in,” I said.” Twice in the last week I found feathers in the house.”
She tore her eyes away and frowned at me. “What?”
“The feather,” I explained. “From the cat.”
“Oh. Right.”
“You said, ‘Daddy.’ A minute ago.” Should I tell her the truth? Should I tell her I saw him all over the house? Did she see him, too? I wanted to ask her. But how would she react? “Did you think you saw your dad?”
“See him? No. No. I was just thinking out loud.” Her look told me to back off. No confession for me tonight. Her cell phone rang again, shattering the moment.
“I’ve got to run,” she said hurriedly and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks for making those cookies, and for taking care for me.” But she looked about a million miles away. “Molly?”
“What?”
“I’m sorry if coming here ruined your plans tonight.”
“I’ll call tomorrow, Mom, and see how you’re doing.” As she walked down the front steps, she’d already pulled out her cell phone.
Chapter Seventeen
Californians, the men and the wome
n, seldom miss their regular hair appointments. Like clockwork I went to the salon every seven weeks, to the same stylist, for the same cut, year after year. As I sat in the chair, staring at my reflection in the mirror, I saw the same woman I had always been.
“March,” Rico said, fingering my shoulder length dishwater colored hair.” I wish you would let me cut your hair.”
“You say that every time.” It was looking dull.
“I know. And every time you say no. You never change.”
“You’re right. I never change. But today I am. Cut it short and color it. You wanted to make it blonde. Go for it.”
Two hours later, after a head full of foils, and some instruction on the use of molding mud and gel application, I came away with an abundance of light blonde streaks and messy short hairstyle Rico had wanted to do for years.
And I walked out of there for the first time in ages feeling like a different woman.
I told myself that now I was now the blonde who could cope with her life. Walking down the city street toward Union Square, where Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue displayed their purses behind glass, I felt like I was in one of those old Clairol commercials, except I didn’t have enough hair to flip and bounce, and I wasn’t wearing a pixie band.
Still, even when I arrived home with a luscious bronze leather Gucci handbag, I didn’t regret the loss of my hair or the change, but I noticed that really short hair made me look more . . . zaftig.
Two weeks later I discovered it was not my haircut when I was standing on the professional scale in the doctor’s office as my friend, Dr. Harriet Fortis, scribbled on my chart.
“March, you’ve gained some weight.”
I stared at the silver metal marks on the scale bar and at the square black weight in horror and hopped down, kicked off my shoes and said to her, “Doctor’s scales always weigh you heavier. I believe it’s a plot by the American Medical Association so you can lecture us about our health. How old is this thing? Let me try again.”
“Okay. Get back on, especially if you think your shoes weigh twenty five pounds.”
“Ha. Ha. You’re supposed to be my friend, Harrie.”
