by Cathy Lamb
ALL ABOUT EVIE 205
“And you love scotch and men in kilts, so I could see you being more Scottish.”
“And you love tea and cookies, Evie, so you’re probably more English. As soon as we’re married, Mack and I are going to stop using birth control so I can get knocked up with a baby Mack. We’re planning on spending a lot of time bouncing in bed on our honeymoon so with his strong sperm and my open ovaries, whoa ho! Baby could soon be on the way.”
We spat in the tubes, filled out the paperwork, boxed it up.
“Fun,” I said. “Don’t be surprised if we find out that you are from outer space.”
“Or that your genes are absolutely undetectable because you are a foreign species.”
“I think we already know I’m a foreign species.”
She gave me a quick squeeze. “Maybe you’re a witch. Now, that would explain everything.”
“I do have witch DNA. I think that’s already been scientifi-cally established.”
“I’m going to mail these off when I go to town today. I bought tubes for Mom and the aunts. It’ll be interesting to see their genetic recipes, too.”
“Maybe we’ll have a surprise,” I said. “Wouldn’t that be fun to have a surprise? To be from somewhere we knew nothing of, like Zimbabwe or Ireland or Russia?”
“Oh, I would love it. Hidden family secrets and all that.” She put the boxes in her bag, then looked at me across the table.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
“No, tell me the truth.” She leaned forward, fiddling with one of her many hoop earrings.
I glanced at her tattoo of Mack. “You better not ever get divorced, because that is a huge picture of Mack on your muscle.”
“I will never divorce Mack.” Her face scrunched up as if she was going to cry. “Never. I love him so much.”
“Geez, Jules. I’m sorry. I am. It was a joke. A bad joke.”
“It’s okay,” she squeaked out. “It’s okay.” She squeaked again
206 Cathy Lamb
and teared up, and I gave her a hug and blinked my eyes fast so I didn’t cry. Okay, maybe a tear or two squeezed out. Jules is very emotional. I am, too, but I squish it inside and then all of a sudden it bursts like a firework. Jules will cry when she’s sad or afraid or lonely, although she hasn’t been lonely since Mack roared into her life on his motorcycle, but she gets the cries out.
I try to restrain myself most of the time.
“I want to know, though, Evie. How are you?”
“I’m fine. The bookstore is going well. Selling books, cake, tea, Mom’s political bouquets, Aunt Camellia’s lotions and potions . . . did you know she named one lotion Titillate and Forni-cate? And I’m still selling Aunt Iris’s flower photographs and cards that you can’t quite figure out and can’t quite look away from that have a seductive and sexual overcast to them. Who knew flowers could look like that?”
“And your fortune telling?”
That’s what she called my premonitions. She’s called them that since we were kids. As a kid, that’s how she could describe it, and it stuck. “They’re not that bad lately.” That was a lie. But why burden her?
She smiled. “I love you so much, Evie. You’re not only my love-sister, you’re my bestie best friend ever in the world.”
“I love you, too, Jules.” I gave her a hug. “I’m going to look so hot in my maid of honor dress.”
She laughed. “Roarin’ hot! Wait until Marco sees you!”
I almost blushed. Dang, I am too old to blush, but I almost did.
“You’re blushing.” She laughed again.
Then I cried about Marco and she knew, as my mother and aunts knew, why I was crying and what I’d seen in the future for us, so she cried, too, in sisterhood.
“I’m sorry, Evie,” she sobbed. “So sorry.”
“Me too.”
Later that night my mother, aunts, Jules, and I went to one of only two bars in North Sound. My mother and aunts climbed up on the bar and warbled and sang karaoke. They sang Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” and Aretha Franklin’s “Think . ”
ALL ABOUT EVIE 207
Then Jules got up with the band and burned the place down.
She plays guitar. And she sings. She and Mack have their own band and do well locally. I mean, how cool can a sister get? She rides motorcycles, she designs stuff for motorcycles, and she plays in a band and skydives!
I should hate her, I should.
But I can’t, so I don’t.
I cheered along with everyone else when she was on her knees, strumming away and singing at the top of her lungs.
The Book Babes were back. They bought coffee and southern pecan praline cake.
They had read a book about a woman who made fantastical wood chairs with wings and dragons, giant teacups and pink crows, Picasso-style angles and jellyfish shapes.
They decided to draw the chairs they would create if they were painters and carpenters and they described why they made the chair they did.
“My chair is six feet tall and in the shape of a winged, imperial goddess. Because I am a goddess in my head when I’ve had too much tequila. That’s what I do when I’m drunk: I pretend I’m a goddess. I even put on a white net tutu and a white shiny bodysuit and wear my silver heels. What is wrong with me?”
“My chair is more like a couch. I need a nap. I have five teenagers. Can you say ‘Hell on earth’? No one tells you what it’s like to raise teenagers, because if that secret became general knowledge, the human species would die out. Also, did anyone else hear the rumor that my son was the one who painted a red bra on that horse statue in town?”
“My chair is black. Pure black. Because that’s the kind of mood I’m in now. I hate menopause. I’m sweating at random times as if I’ve got a hose over my head. I have hot flashes at night that soak my sheets. Did I want to go swimming on my mattress? No, I didn’t. I’ve gained twenty pounds in six months.
I have chin hairs sprouting every day. What? I’m a man? I need a beard for what purpose? Black chair, black menopause.”
“My chair is colorful because I am eighty-two years old and
208 Cathy Lamb
that’s all I want to see from here on out. Color. Red. Blue. Purple. I’ve had enough tough times in my life, and every day forward from here on out I want to have red, purple, yellow, and orange around me.”
“My chair is pink with a lion roaring in the background. See the head? That’s how I feel. I feel like roaring. I’m a woman, hear me roar. Remember that slogan? Hear me, I’m going to roar.”
And she did. That long, growly roar startled everyone in the bookstore. One woman dropped a pile of books, and another dropped her teacup full of lemongrass tea and it shattered, but the book club clapped enthusiastically.
One can see why so many women want to join this book club.
“Spit here,” Jules told my mother and aunts. She held out the DNA tubes to each of them. We were at my house, at my kitchen table, a row of pink Dolly Parton roses in short glass vases running down the middle.
Sundance had his head on my lap, and Venus was in my lap.
Butch and Cassidy were wrestling in the family room. They’d already knocked over a pile of books and almost knocked over my wine barrel coffee table.
I’d made pasta and salad. I’d bought bread. Aunt Camellia had baked a butterscotch pie. I had a slice of that pie before dinner, simply as an appetizer, and a slice for dessert. Can’t get too thin!
“Spit? Spit?” Aunt Camellia said, hand dramatically to her chest. “A lady doesn’t spit. Poor manners. Not done.”
“What in the world?” Aunt Iris said. “Why would I spit in a tube? Does that sound sane?”
“It’s for a DNA test,” I said. I scraped my fork across my butterscotch pie plate. No need to waste this scrumptious pie. A lot of people don’t know that butterscotch pie is good for them.
“A what?” my mother said, but she said it wit
h a sharp tone that indicated she knew what it was but couldn’t believe we were doing it. I stopped scraping my plate and studied her.
“You spit in this tube,” Jules said, flipping her blonde hair
ALL ABOUT EVIE 209
back, “and I’ll mail it back to the DNA company and then they’ll tell you what you’re made of, what countries our ancestors are from.”
The silence was prickly.
“Where I’m from?” Aunt Camellia said, with an edgy tone.
“I’m from here. We’re from here, San Orcanita Island. Our parents are from here. I left for forty years and wandered, but that is all I need to know.”
“Aunt Camellia, you’re not one hundred percent American Indian,” I said. I saw Mars out of the corner of my eye. He was trying to climb a stack of books. Yep. He brought them down.
What a mess. “You said your dad was half Norwegian and half English. You said your mother was half French and half Greek.
But if you spit in this tube, you’ll know for sure. It’s this new genetic test. Evie and I already did it.”
“You what?” my mother snapped. I turned to her, as did Jules. She seemed alarmed.
“Jules and I already did it and sent off our kits.”
“You already did a DNA test?” my mother asked. She leaned forward, intense.
“Yes,” Jules said. She looked as confused by my mother’s sharp reaction as I felt. “I mailed it off when I was in town the other day and sent Mack a love letter.”
Aunt Camellia’s face froze.
Aunt Iris dropped her glass to the table, and it spilled.
My mother lost all color in her face.
What? What was going on here? Why the silence? Why the stricken atmosphere?
“Here, Mom, spit away,” Jules said. “It’ll be cool. Like a genetic puzzle. We’ll all come up related, linked up on the DNA website when we get our results back. It’ll show that you’re our mom and that you two are our aunts, because we share the same genetic stuff.”
“The website can link us up?” my mother asked, her voice choked. “They can tell you who you’re related to?”
“Yes, because we’re family,” I said, baffled by her response.
“When the DNA test is sent back to you,” Jules said, “you
210 Cathy Lamb
get to see your percentages. You three will have different percentages of Norwegian, English, Greek, and French from your parents. Plus, there could be some slinky surprises in there, at least I hope. Wouldn’t that be fun? You three don’t get the same blend. Evie and I will get different percentages, too.”
“I don’t need my percentages,” my mother said, her hands clasped together so tightly her knuckles were white.
“I don’t, either,” Aunt Camellia said. She shook slightly.
“Percentages are for math, not family.”
“We know who we are,” Aunt Iris said. Her voice was rigid.
“This is ridiculous. Insensible! There’s no need for a test.”
I shared a concerned glance with Jules. What the heck? Why the resistance?
“You said that you girls have already done it?” my mother asked, threading her fingers rhythmically in and out. “You mailed it back?”
“Yes, we did. Jules mailed it. Why? It’s interesting. That’s all it is. Tells us something about our ancestry. Maybe Jules and I will find out that we’re part Chinese.”
“And if we find out that Evie is part Italian, it’ll account for why she likes spaghetti and lasagna so much. We’re already predicting she’s part witch.”
We turned to smile at our mother and aunts.
They were not smiling at us.
“No, thank you,” my mother said. She collapsed back in her chair, her face drawn.
“I’m going to skip it,” Aunt Iris said. “The government knows enough about me already. They’re invasive. When they have my spit, what will they do with it? Steal the information? Sell it to the highest bidder? Use it to determine what I’m going to get sick with and die of so my insurance company can deny me cover-age? Tell me they can link me to a crime I haven’t committed?
No. I’m not giving my spit away. They say that you’ll find out more about your ancestors, but they’re storing your DNA so they can use it. Like Big Brother. 1984 here we come!”
“I say no, too,” Aunt Camellia said. “We’re a family. That’s all we need to know. We share the same familial auras. We share
ALL ABOUT EVIE 211
the same genetic spirits. We share the same emotional tie to our combined love.”
“Please?” Jules said. “We can all compare.”
“No,” my aunts and mother said altogether, with raised, fraught voices.
“Okay,” I said, trying to turn down the heat. “It’s okay.”
“Sure,” Jules said, softer.
“Girls,” my mother said, pressing both hands to her pretty, white bell-shaped hair, “it’s been lovely, but I’m tired.” And with no hugs, no kiss on the cheek, no “I love you,” she walked out. I swear she wobbled. My aunts made their excuses, thanked me for dinner, and hurried out after my mother. No hugs there, either.
“What the heck just happened?” Jules said, baffled.
“I have no idea,” I said. My instincts were like strobe lights.
Something was going on. It wasn’t what they said, or their verbal rejections. It was what they didn’t say.
Later that night I saw my aunts and mother in the gazebo, the stars peeking out between the clouds, the purple wisteria in shadow. The roses nearby, in neat rows, were still in the quiet.
Their heads were close together, then my aunts put their arms around my mother. They stared toward the ocean in the distance, lights from the fishing boats twinkling.
I had another piece of butterscotch pie as I watched them.
Sometimes butterscotch helps me think better. I think. Or something like that.
But it did nothing that night to help me figure out what in the world was going on.
They worried me.
C h a p t e r 2 0
“King Koradome, the evil merman, was right. Serafina kept helping people. She held sailors up in the water who had fallen off ships. She rescued her sister from the jaws of a shark. She helped the older mermen and mermaids when they were sick.
She was generous with the shells she found in the ocean and gave them away as gifts to mergirls and merboys who needed a smile. She rescued a mermaid with four mermaid children who had been caught in a fisherman’s net.”
“Did she lose her rainbow scales?”
“She did. Every time. The shiny, colorful scales flew off one by one, with each kind deed, through the sea to King Koradome in his black rock home. He laughed in victory when one reached his palm, and he put the scales in a tall glass jar. He liked to stare at them as they shimmered with light and layers of color. He liked knowing that her family, that Serafina, was suffering as they watched her lose her special tail. First it was one row of scales, then another and another.”
“Did she lose all of her scales?”
C h a p t e r 2 1
“I don’t like memoirs.”
“What?” I glared at the sulky young woman in front of me with pink- and purple-streaked dreadlocks. She had a serpent tattooed on her arm. A mean serpent. “How can you not like memoirs? It’s a peek into someone’s life, a part of their life that’s tragic or interesting or funny. How do you not want to read about someone else?”
Her eyes widened, surprised at my semi-anger. But, come on.
You don’t like memoirs?
“I don’t.”
I wanted to shake her right there in my yellow bookstore by my yellow rose wallpaper. “You have got to be kidding me.
How do you learn about how others cope with their lives or the adventures they’ve experienced or their crazy families if you don’t read memoirs?”
“I . . . well . . . I don’t know.” She seemed confused now, as if she was actually consi
dering my question.
“You have got to read a memoir.” I marched over to the memoir section and pulled down three books. “Try these.”
“But I don’t like memoirs.”
“Now you’re repeating yourself. You’re irritating my brain.
What’s your favorite genre?”
“I like books about vampires.”
I sighed. I groaned. I slapped my forehead so my brain didn’t
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fall out of my ears. “Look. Vampires are fine now and then, but you can’t build a personal reading library on vampires!”
“What’s a personal reading library?”
I groaned again. “Sit down.” I pointed to the seats by the windows. “Sit. Open the book. Read it.”
“I have to meet my mother soon.”
“Text her. Tell her to come here when she’s done doing whatever. You have got to expand your closed mind and read about other people in this world who don’t bite necks and have long teeth.”
The young woman sat down and sulkily opened a book while I crossed my arms and waited. I stood there for one minute.
She liked the memoir so much, she didn’t even notice when I left. Because I felt bad about getting mad at her, I brought her a piece of peppermint cake and chamomile tea. Her mother walked in. “How come your daughter reads only about vampires? I mean, bite me. That’s a very limited scope of reading.”
“What? You blame me? I can’t control her. She’s weird. She likes vampires. Look at her hair. She always wears black. Did you see that snarky serpent? She snuck out and got two tattoos on her butt last weekend—one of a skull, the other of a skeleton. Yeah, she has a skull and a skeleton on her butt. She listens to music that sounds like the devil banging on drums. She’s out of my control. What can I do?”
