roses and mountain air. “I love to fly at night.”
“Well, Amelia, your night flying skills are excellent—”
“Some people question my flying abilities.” She adjusted her goggles over her face. “Again, they’re men. Stupid, know-nothing men. Eight brain cells. Maybe. I’ve written a poem about them, shall I pronounce it to you?” She straightened her flight jacket and clicked her boots together. “ Men. Slimy and rude, loud and uncouth. Never inclined to give up their booth.’ That about sums them up.”
“Sure does, Amelia.”
“I’m a nurse, you know. I aided the soldiers in World War I and I know what I’m doing. If your arm is amputated while you’re here, I can sew it back on. If your head has a bullet in it, I can get it out with a spoon. Care to fly with me soon?”
“It is my dearest wish,” I told her. “It will be my pleasure.”
“Women power!” she shouted, fist up and swinging. “Women power!”
I raised my fist. “Women power!”
By the time we moved in with Grandma, my first year of high school, all of us were covered in so much fear we were quaking. It practically dripped off of us. Momma was holding on by her fingernails and most of the fingernails were split in half.
Henry had regressed at least two years and was babbling, his speech lost, bladder control iffy because of what he’d been through. Janie was anxious to the point of cracking. Cecilia was furious and inhaling food. I had retired into my head and my blackness.
But Grandma’s gracious home was an oasis in the midst of an ocean of night terrors come alive. We had clothes that fit. We had food on a regular basis that she cooked from scratch. We had heat.
When Momma hit blackness and crawled to bed, we were not alone. Grandma was not a saint—she had a flaming temper and did not bother to mince words—but she hugged us warm and tight, unlike Momma, who avoided all displays of affection with her daughters as one might avoid malaria, and she cared. Grandma cared about us.
By any account, you could say that Grandma saved our family. She was smart, strong, and ran a tight ship. As captain of that ship she hounded Momma to get counseling, to get a date, to gain weight, to button her shirt up, to go back to school so she could be “someone,” to stop hiding in her bed, and her hair! A mop! Grandma reminded Momma that she’d warned her this would happen! She knew it! She’d told her! It was endless.
As I grew older I realized that Momma’s relationship with Grandma was a carbon copy of our relationship with Momma: difficult, competitive, critical, demanding. Never good enough.
It’s genetics, and we were screwed in that department.
When they fought, we hid in our closets.
Amelia and Momma, however, never fought.
Grandma/Amelia rose onto her toes. Clicked her boots. “I must be off to the tower. I have to hide my secrets again so the natives won’t steal them.”
I nodded sagely.
“Will you be residing here for a while with my copilot and what did you say your name was and do you fly?” She stuck her arms straight out, made the sound of a plane engine deep in her throat, and left the room.
I wandered into Janie’s bedroom.
“Get out of the closet, Janie,” I said.
“No. I’m in self-analysis contemplation.”
“Come on. Out you go.”
I opened the door to the closet. It was filled with stuffed animals. Janie’s face was buried in an alligator. She was sitting on her yoga mat.
“I’m regressing back to childhood, Isabelle,” she whimpered. “I can feel it. Feel the backward passage of time flowing.”
I got down on my knees. “Take it on the chin.”
“I can’t.”
“You better. She’s gonna eat you alive, regurgitate you back up, and start picking at your bones if you don’t.”
“You sound gruesome. It makes me uncomfortable.”
I rolled my eyes. She writes graphic crime novels and I’m gruesome? “Sorry, but it’s true. Find a backbone and stick it in your spine.”
Cecilia came into the room. “Okay, ladies…Oh, man. What the hell? Get out of there, Janie. Right now. Stop being such a wimp.” She shifted her weight to a rocking chair. The chair made cracking sounds. She wiped the sweat from her brow. She was wearing a dress that resembled a green tarp, her long blond hair in a messy ball on her head.
“I have the list from Momma.” Cecilia whipped out the list. It was written on pink paper. I collapsed on the bed. Janie shut the closet door.
“Damn!” Cecilia threw the list down, yanked open the closet door, grabbed Janie by her ankles, and dragged her to the middle of the rug. Janie struggled like a dolphin would if caught in the jaws of a killer whale and tried to crawl back into the closet, but Cecilia hauled her back out.
“We’re too old for this…” I drawled.
“Oh, shut up, Isabelle!” Janie said. “You tackled me outside of my own houseboat!”
Cecilia grunted and flipped Janie over. Cecilia is fat but she’s about as strong as Popeye. “Listen to me, Janie!” she screeched. “You’re not going back in the goddamn closet!”
“Yes, I am, and then I’m going home,” Janie wailed. “Home to my houseboat—let go of me, I was in my restorative mood, claiming my own gentleness in my journal—”
Cecilia got down on all fours and put her face two inches from Janie’s. “You listen to me, you skinny, obsessive crime writer, you are gonna get yourself together and help me. I can’t, I won’t, do this all by myself when you hide in your houseboat, tapping this, tapping that, counting this, counting that, indulging yourself in your problems while you write about ripping people’s throats apart with barbed wire and a machete. That’s sick, Janie. No wonder you can’t sleep at night….”
“I turn off my light at precisely 10:14 at night, fluff the pillows four times”—she dissolved into tears—“tap the tables on both sides of my bed four times, drink water, touch the closets, check the front door to make sure it’s locked, check the stove, check the door and stove again, touch the lock of the door, touch each knob on the stove, retouch the closet doors, get in bed, fluff the pillows, tap the tables.” She put her hands on her face in complete despair. “After that I sleep.”
Cecilia was speechless.
I crossed my legs, examined my nails. “Think that’s exhausting? Ask her about her morning routine.”
Cecilia turned her head toward me, her blond hair flipping over her shoulders. She has amazing hair. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Nope. No joke. Now let’s see that list you have.”
Janie clapped her hands four times.
The list Momma had compiled of things we needed to do while she was in the hospital was extensive and detailed. I will not share each glorious detail here because if I did, you would probably want to check your own self into a nice, quiet, mental ward and a nice, quiet straitjacket.
Beyond obsessive detail on how to keep the house cleaned in her absence (corners, girls!) and admonishes to not eat too much or we’d get fatter (Cecilia), or too little and appear corpselike (Janie), and not to sleep with the gardener (me), Momma detailed Henry’s schedule.
Henry helped at the bakery at least twice a week. He also had to be at the church on Sunday from 8:00 to 1:45. Henry was in charge of bringing the boxes of doughnuts in from Mrs. McQueeney’s car. A description of Mrs. McQueeney followed: “Her facial features are a cross between