What I Remember Most (32 page)

On Tuesday night Moose came in. We chatted. He asked me out, I said no, he said you’re breaking my heart, and I said I’m sorry, and he said, “But don’t worry, Grenady, I won’t sing you a song. Have you met my mother? Mom, this is Grenady . . .”

I did, indeed, like Monica very much.

But I was not in love with her son.

I received a message from Covey on Wednesday. He was raving, barely in control.

“Look, Trailer Trash Lady, no one’s going to jail here except for you.
I’m
innocent. You want to plead out, go ahead, it’s your time behind bars, and as I remember it, you have claustrophobia, anxiety, and a certain aversion to being locked in or locked out of anywhere. I don’t think jail’s going to work for you. Call me right now.”

I did not call back. Alice, My Anxiety, was curled up under a table.

“You outdid yourself.”

“Pardon?” At least Kade was smiling.

Of all the freakin’ mornings to be late. I’d set up Kade’s office on Sunday, went to bed early, and woke up at eight-thirty on Monday. I’m always at Hendricks’ working away by then.

I had flown out of bed, taken a three-minute shower, brushed my hair out, and dove into my clothes. I brushed my teeth, shoved makeup into my purse to put on later, and took off.

I sprinted into Hendricks’ and tried to sneak into my office, but Kade saw me coming.

“Thank you, Grenady.”

“Do you like it?” I tried to catch my breath from running in.

“Yes, I do.” He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. I could tell he was happy. “Grenady, I hardly know what to say.”

I peeked into his office, where about twenty employees were gathered. I heard the excited chitchat.

“It’s like looking at one of those before-and-after pictures of a house,” Kade said. “Only it’s my office and I barely recognize it.”

“But you still want to work in there?”

“It’ll be hard. Distracting.” He winked.

On the steel blue wall to the left of his desk I hung five matted and framed photos. I’d had the photos enlarged and placed in twenty-four-by-thirty-six-inch frames. One was of Kade standing in front of his pickup truck years ago, his hand-carved furniture piled into it, when he first started Hendricks’ Furniture.

Another photo was of Grizz’s garage filled with Kade’s saws and workbenches and Kade working in a white tank top. (Seeexxxy!)

The third was of the outside of the pole barn; the fourth was a sign that said H
ENDRICKS
’ F
URNITURE
, the first sign Kade made for the pole barn. The fifth was Kade’s building now, with the modern brick exterior, the multitude of windows, and the red barn doors.

To the direct right of the office door I hung the old Hendricks’ sign that I’d found in storage. On the other side I hung his work gloves.

I’d found the gloves in the storage room and asked Kade whose they were. He said they were his: he’d used them when he started the company, and they’d lasted ten years. Sounds silly, but I framed them. They were in bad shape and had a couple of holes, but to me they spelled out hard work and determination. I put a lamp with a wood base and a white shade on the grizzly bear table in front of the wall of windows, and I moved the armoire with the leaping salmon at an angle in the corner.

Behind his massive desk with the fly fisherman in the stream I’d hung the collage.

When I walked into the office with Kade, Rozlyn turned around and said, “I don’t think I can work today, my friend. I have to stand and stare at this work of art and have my hot flashes.”

“It’s sooo good, Grenady,” Sam said. “So good. Wish I had a better vocabulary to talk about this.... I mean, it’s very, very good.”

“I am, once again, stunned speechless,” said Angelo the ex–football player with the broken nose, spreading his muscled arms wide. “More breathtaking artwork from Grenady. Breathtaking.”

Petey said, his Irish brogue so musical, “I need one of these, lass. This is not a want. I need one like I need my Irish whiskey.”

I smiled and felt myself tearing up.

“Oh no! She’s crying!” Rozlyn yelled, and pulled me into a hug. “It’s okay if you cry, baby, we all do. Maybe you’re premenopausal. How are your mood swings? That’s an indicator.”

Kade’s collage of the Hendricks’ Furniture building was huge, a six-by-three-foot canvas. I’d painted the background with several shades of blue, the sunset spreading across the horizon, with slivers of pink, purple, and red, like liquid silk. I set it in fall, as Kade asked, so the trees’ leaves were orange, gold, brown, green, and yellow.

Then I added the collage elements. I made a copy of the photograph of Kade’s old pickup truck and glued it to the canvas under a pine tree. I’d had Sam cut out thin wood rectangles and I painted them red and attached them to the building as the barn doors. I painted H
ENDRICKS’
F
URNITURE
in block letters above the door, and I painted sandpaper a reddish color to give the brick texture.

I glued dried chrysanthemums across the front of the building. I used tiny slivers of wood on the trees surrounding the building.

“She put the squirrels in,” Petey said. “Smart lass.”

“She even put in the mailbox,” Rozlyn exclaimed. “And the little red flag is up. It says Hendricks’!”

“And she put the squirrels in!”

I’d painted two squirrels in a tree, then used fur to make their fluffy tails. I painted the three deer that came by Hendricks’ and used painted toothpicks to form their antlers.

“And that rocking chair,” Angelo said. “Charming!”

I’d painted an oversized rocking chair and put it under the pine tree, and I wrote Kade’s name on the top of the chair. I used a piece of red-and-white-striped fabric to form the pillow on the chair. I painted the armoire with the howling wolf doors out on the front porch of the building, next to Kade’s desk with the fly fisherman and the table with the raccoon legs. On the table I painted a vase, then put a dried chrysanthemum in it. I painted Kade’s old gloves on the table, too.

“It’s outstanding, Grenady,” he said, quietly, as the others talked, and more people came in to see what the commotion was about. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but not that. I don’t want you to quit, but you need to quit, quit both your jobs, do exactly what I did, and go back to your art full time. But don’t quit here. Forget I said that.”

I would love that. But I’d miss Kade. “Maybe someday. But how could I leave this place? I’d miss out on lunch with Rozlyn and wouldn’t be able to hear about her hot flashes or her love for Leonard.” I was not breaking a confidence; Rozlyn openly discussed these issues with Kade.

Kade laughed. “She’s blunt, isn’t she?”

“And I’d miss out on Eudora’s wise words, and wondering what in heck she did in D.C. and Russia and the Middle East, and I’d miss talking to Dell once a week. And pouring beer and wine for hours every night at The Spirited Owl to people who do and say strange things? Now that’s special. How could I leave that heaven?”

“Okay, you can quit The Spirited Owl.”

“I’ll tell Tildy you said that. She probably won’t make you your special hamburger anymore, though.”

“I would miss that hamburger, but you need to have time for your art. You have to go back to this, Grenady.” He studied the collage. “Right away.”

“Soon. Maybe. We’ll see.” Change would be forced on me one way or the other. Probably ‘the other.’ Hello, blue, jail-stamped clothes and silver toilet!

“It’s going to be hard for me to work in here now, Grenady. You’ve made it so much more . . . relaxing.”

“Good, you work too hard, Mr. Type-A Workaholic.”

“Me? You’re calling me a workaholic? You who has two jobs?”

I put my hand under my chin and pretended to think about that. “That was slightly hypocritical, wasn’t it?”

“I believe so.”

He turned me on. He did. I could not control my body, and my body wanted that man.

Eudora walked in, stared at the collage, and said, “My God. And she was answering the phone for months?”

Kade put a check in an envelope on my desk that afternoon. I opened it up, saw the amount, and walked straight back to his office. I take pride in my artwork and I want to be fairly paid, but this was too much.

Way too much. I held it out to him. “No.”

“Yes. Don’t argue or you’re fired.”

“Ohhhhh!” I feigned fear, waving my hands. “Now that’s scary!”

Eudora was there and drawled, “I feel scared myself.”

“You’re fired.”

“Okay.” I put the check on his desk and walked out.

Eudora said, “If you’re fired, can I hire you to make me a painting?”

The check was back on my desk in twenty minutes when I stepped out to talk to Rozlyn, who was planning a spying adventure for me, Eudora, and herself. The target: Leonard.

There was a note attached to the check. “You’re still fired, Artist Lady. See you tomorrow.”

I was constantly worried about the upcoming meeting with the assistant U.S. attorney, the FBI, the IRS, and any financial or computer whizzes who were there to take me apart and eat me.

I was even afraid of the postal service guy from the fraud department. I never would have imagined myself being afraid of the postal service.

Alice, My Anxiety, was up and shakin’, and it felt like I was stuck in a beer bottle without the relief of a beer.

I had hoped that eventually Covey would cave and tell the truth about me. This hope had no basis in reality, as his ranting phone calls indicated. He had lost it when he was told I’d be talking to The Scary Gang at a meeting, Millie told me. His lawyer screamed at Millie, telling her not to let me talk to them, and Millie screamed back, louder, and threatened to box him in the face if he ever talked like that to her again.

Covey had had a lousy childhood. His mother took off when he was four and he didn’t see her again until he was sixteen. His father had one girlfriend after another. One woman stayed from the time he was five until the time he was ten. When she left, she never contacted him again. He had called her Mom. There were a couple more substitute moms. He would get attached, love ’em, then they would leave when they’d had it with his irresponsible, selfish father, and never contact Covey again.

I cried when he told me that story, and he did, too. He said when his mother left him, he cried for a week. When his next mother left, same thing. His father never made much money, and was stingy with what he had. Covey had paper routes starting when he was ten and worked at least twenty hours a week when he was going to school. He gave half his check to his cheap, neglectful, cold father.

He eventually had a huge falling-out with his father, punches were thrown, and his dad had literally thrown him out of the house. Covey was sixteen. His father died in a car accident five years later when they were still estranged. Covey had been born poor, and that fueled his greed later on. He had had nothing, so he had to have material positions—house, cars, stuff—to make him feel equal or, hopefully, better than others.

He’d had loss after loss after loss as a child, so he tried to control any future personal losses in a twisted, narcissistic, semi-psychopathic way.

I didn’t know how severe his abandonment issues were until we were married. He did not want me to leave him. I was his. His forever. He and I.

And now we were done. I was one more woman who had left him. That could not happen, in his mind. It absolutely, positively could not, and I had to be punished.

I didn’t think he would tell the truth about me and my total lack of involvement in his schemes, as it gave him power over my destiny, and me. If he couldn’t have me, it would be better if I was locked up where no one could have me, like in a jail cell. Especially if he was locked up, too.

Sick.

“I have a tumor in my head.”

“You have a what?” Eudora and I leaned forward across the table in the employees’ lounge.

“A tumor.” Rozlyn tapped her head, left side. “Right there. It’s what’s causing my headaches, my vision problems. Think of it as a plum that’s rotting and shooting out minifireworks.”

Eudora and I leaned back in our seats, stunned into silence. “It’s not good,” Rozlyn said.

“Precisely what does ‘not good’ mean?” Eudora asked, reaching for Rozlyn’s hand.

“I mean . . .” Rozlyn hesitated.

I put my hands to my head as a wave of nausea hit me like a brick.

“I went to Dr. Camille Johnson, who you found, Grenady. She had tests run that day.” Rozlyn waved her hand, as in, I don’t want to pause on the details. “They’re going to use radiation, then chemo. It’s a tricky tumor, I’m told, based on where it is. There’s an experimental procedure, a clinical trial. I might qualify, I might not. It’s still new, risky, probably won’t be covered by insurance anyhow, and it’s in New York.” She took a deep breath. “I have about two years.”

“What?” My voice came out stricken. “What are you talking about?”

“I have about two years to live.”

The room spun, then settled. I grabbed Rozlyn’s other hand.

“How do the doctors know that?” Eudora said, throwing a hand in the air, a diamond ring glittering. “They think they’re geniuses or something? Those blowhards.”

“They know based on how fast it’s grown, where it is, and the life spans of other people who have had the same thing.”

We sat in silence for long minutes, shocked. Utterly shocked. What to say?

“I’m sorry, Rozlyn,” I said. “I am so sorry.”

“At first I thought,” Rozlyn said, “ ‘Why me?’ But then I thought, ‘Why not me?’ Why should it be someone else? Unless they’re ninety. Or a criminal. A bad criminal. I’m not special. I’m Rozlyn, mother of the cutest kid on the planet, a woman with perfect boobs, although a large and packed butt, a woman who sews women’s power–truth quilts, wants to spy on a man who hardly knows she’s alive, and is fanatic about making numbers work, but I’m not special. ”

“You are to me,” Eudora and I said at the same time.

Rozlyn squeezed our hands. “My friends.”

We talked more. We were silent again.

I thought of Cleo. I knew Rozlyn was thinking of Cleo, too.