Paint Me a Monster, page 18
“Let me do it.”
“You’re irresponsible.”
A blow to the ego. A left hook to the heart. They’re down for the count. The untimely bell of silence.
“Pop Pop wouldn’t let her grow up,” I sigh.
A little whirlpool of pain spins behind my eyes. Pop Pop’s voice is like distant thunder in my ear. Why didn’t you consult me before making a decision. . . . Hi, Mr. Blah-dee-dah. You remember Eva and my two morons, Liz and Rinnie. . . . Rose, stop with the beauty parlor. Do your hair yourself, like the morons. So you think you know as much as I do? Then why have you had two husbands?
Evan leans away and balances his chair on their two back legs. “For all his smarts, financial ability, and philanthropy, he was a great businessman and a terrible parent and grandfather. He didn’t talk to me for a year after I moved in with Dad. It was his way or no way. He gave me no way.” Evan clunks the chair down on all four feet. It’s the sound of finality.
COOKING LESSON
Violet is still in the kitchen sorting food. She hands a platter of pastry-wrapped hot dogs to my cousin Shelly, who passes them to everyone in the breakfast room. We’re swapping family stories. I pick up a hot dog, peel away the soft layers of dough, and nudge Liz with my shoulder.
“Do you remember the time you invited Theo for lunch and wanted to make hot dogs and salad? You asked me how to cook the dogs and wash lettuce.” I muffle a laugh.
“You were such a twerp,” Liz says, taking over the conversation. “I invited my boyfriend, Theo, over for his favorite lunch—hot dogs and salad. Rinnie cooks, I don’t. I asked her to help me, and she kindly gave me a cooking lesson.”
“Did you see Theo at the funeral?” I interrupt. “He sat behind Uncle Matt.”
“I saw him. He’ll be here later,” Liz says.
“That’s nice of him,” Shelly says.
“Oh, Mom loved Theo. They used to hang out even when I wasn’t home,” Liz says.
“But she didn’t make hot dogs for him,” I say.
“You twerpette,” Liz starts the story, “Rinnie told me I had to wash the lettuce with soap and make sure it was absolutely clean because lettuce spiders bury their eggs in the leaves.”
I interrupt, “And you did.”
“Of course I did. I trusted you.”
“Liz was brilliant the way she separated and gently buttered each leaf with a dip of detergent and her fingertips,” I say. “I told Liz to cook the hot dogs for half an hour and turn them the whole time so they wouldn’t burn. When I told Theo what Liz was doing, he rolled his eyes and paid me back with a knuckle rub to my head. That hurt.”
“You deserved it,” Liz says.
“Did Theo eat the hot dogs?” Sandy, Aunt Millie’s oldest daughter, asks.
“He did.” I say and add, “With a lot of mustard.” A gurgle escapes my lips.
“Cuz, you have some ‘naughties’ in you,” Sandy says. She thumps her hand on my back and knocks the hot dogs from my thoughts.
“It’s amazing you and Liz never had any animosity between you,” she says. “My sister and brothers would have destroyed me.”
I reach for another hot dog, smile, and peel off the dough. Nah. We needed to stick together.
HISTORY
The high-pitched buzz of Gaga’s doorbell sends Mrs. Peck scurrying.
“Hi. Are Rinnie and Liz here?” It’s a familiar voice.
“In the breakfast room, dear,” Mrs. Peck says. “You might want to wipe your feet on the mat before you come in.”
It’s my stepsister Alana. I wonder if Dad told her to stop by. Mom never got to know her very well. Sometimes I think I haven’t either. In the beginning, our friendship bolted through the starting gate spurred by novelty for us both—new stepsisters, a new stepbrother, a new house—for them. It was exciting. Now, three years later, when I think of Alana, I think, she has my dad.
I nod and shake my head, empty out the past and replace “failure to bond” with a smile. It’s time to say hello to Alana. It is nice of her to stop by.
ART IMITATES LIFE
The friction of Gaga’s rubber-soled shoes against the linoleum floor and the scent of bath powder announce her entrance. “Dears, why didn’t you sit with us at the dining table?” she looks at the three of us.
Because your sister, Millie, stole our place, I want to say, but Gaga wouldn’t hear me. She’s dedicated herself to ignoring the ugly.
“The table was full,” I say.
“Well, I’m glad you all got to sit together.”
Something green is stuck between her teeth. The sincerity of her blue eyes combined with the green between her teeth is reassuring. Some things are constant: Food nestled in Gaga’s teeth proves it. She’s still beautiful, I think. Gaga’s beauty grows from the inside out. The warmth of her smile, like the smell of cookies hot out of the oven, engulfs friends and strangers.
“Family is the most important thing of all. Stick together,” she says, looking at each of us. “You each have a gift to give the world.”
Gaga’s lipstick is the same color as a scarlet rose, her favorite flower. Gaga’s focus on beauty shielded her from the thorns on her favorite rose, my mother. I know Gaga will miss Mom. I wonder if she misses Pop Pop.
“Sorry kids. I’m taking your Gaga with me.” One of the ladies from Gaga’s investment group puts her hand on Gaga’s shoulder and steers her into the foyer.
I follow them, not ready to let go of the warmth Gaga offers. The dwindling crowd follows, and I detour to the dining room.
In the dining room, I look at the place where Mom sat every Monday night when we came for dinner, always by her mother, her protector. I look at the table with the pop art desserts. I’m in my Garden of Eden, and it’s blooming with temptation. Mom’s death has something to do with biting into forbidden fruit. Could her end be my beginning? She’s gone. She can’t call me whore or fat ass anymore or try to fatten me up because she thinks I am too thin. Never again will she scream, “You are the bad seed,” even if I am.
The round cake with the hole in the center looks like I feel.
“I’m waiting for you,” it says.
“I am here for you too,” the apple strudel says.
I slice a thin piece of the round cake. A swirl of cinnamon weaves a wavy line across the spongy yellow slice. It dazzles like gold. My eyes are closed so I won’t see my hand put the cake on my tongue.
The impulse drenches my mouth with desire. Lips, teeth, tongue, surge forward. The cake disappears. One bite is too many. A chunk of strudel tumbles down my throat, bits of apple fall from my lips. I reach for the lemon bars, a profiterole, brownies. Come to me. Hug me.
I’m grateful these are not imaginary pastries. I’ve starved a long time. There has been no sweetness. I’m caught in an avalanche and can’t stop somersaulting.
PICTURE-PERFECT
“I’m glad the house is filled with people who care about Gaga,” I say. The variety of black outfits is astonishing. “But I want to be alone with you guys,” I say, putting my arms around Liz and Evan. My gaze flirts with the figures in the painting above the wing chair. Three well-groomed, buck-toothed children stare back. Dark-eyed Evan, curly-haired Liz, and fair-skinned me—before visits to Dr. Johnson for braces.
Evan pops some salted nuts into his mouth and snickers.
“That’s the idea,” Liz says. “No thinkee, no sadee.”
“Do you think it’d be rude to go upstairs?” I ask.
“Yes,” Liz says.
“Rude or not, I’m going for a walk.” Evan stands, reaches into the candy dish, and fills his fist with cashews. “Emergency rations,” he says. “Want to join me for a rush of Arctic air?”
Liz shakes her head. I want to go, but if Liz stays, I need to stay.
A shrunken lady with a black dress and a rainbow-colored hat hobbles into the room, arm in arm with Gaga.
“These are Rose’s children,” Gaga says.
We stand and introduce ourselves.
“My, you’ve grown up. I remember when the three of you sat for this picture. Your mother bribed you to sit still with cashews.”
It’s Mrs. Clark, the woman who painted our portraits.
“I don’t know how you captured the children, Julia, but I love it,” Gaga says.
“It’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, Eva.” Mrs. Clark uses the wing chair for support and straightens the picture frame. “I put irregular pieces together and create artistic harmony.”
“Did she just infer we’re odd?” I ask Liz.
“You are!” Liz mumbles and grins.
HOME COOKING
“I’m surprised there’s no cheesecake on the sweet table,” Sandy says. “Your mother adored baking them.”
“Probably M.I.A. out of deference to Aunt Rose,” my cousin Jeff says. “Everyone else’s would pale in comparison. I’ll never forget the Thanksgiving she brought cherry pies instead of cheesecakes. I’m sure the pies were delicious, but our side of the family was so disappointed we wouldn’t even taste them. Your poor mother! But there wasn’t as much to be thankful for without an Aunt Rose cheesecake.”
“Mom took pride in her cheesecakes, that’s for sure.” The oohs and aahs quenched Mom’s thirst for attention. A jumble of ideas flash through my mind, but like fireworks, dissolve before I’m able to grasp them. It’s about Mom and thirst and . . .
“Please pass the pitcher,” I say. Maybe watering my memory will help it grow.
“She was a fabulous baker,” Sandy says. “You guys must have loved it when she made desserts, yummy beaters and bowls to lick.” Sandy picks a corner off a brownie, leaving a trail from the tray of cookies to her napkin.
“Loved it? That’s not the word I’d use,” I say, pushing brownie crumbs into a tiny pyramid. “Dreaded it is much more like it.”
Sandy’s face goes blank. “What do you mean?”
“Mom believed in R and R—rules and rituals,” I say. It’s strange my cousin who’s been around longer than me doesn’t have a clue about life with Aunt Rose.
I begin. “First, Mom read the list of ingredients to Verna, who lined the ingredients up in a row, like foot soldiers. Then Mom inspected her troops, commenting on their freshness.” She was a general contemplating her next maneuver.
“That’s the sign of a cook who cares,” Sandy says, shrugging.
“Mom could make cheesecake in her sleep, but she always insisted on having the recipe in front of her.” I continue. “If Liz, Evan, and I even rolled our eyes, we got a dishonorable discharge and immediate dismissal from the kitchen.”
“Wow! I always think of your mom being more like Betty Crocker,” Sandy says. “You know, ‘I love being in the kitchen and baking for my family—lick the bowl, kids!’”
“That’s your mom,” I say. “My mom baked three times a year and made a year’s worth of desserts each time. She just acted normal in public.”
My cousin crunches forward with her hands locked together between her legs. “What are you talking about?”
I think of Mom, in her beautiful, shiny, dignified casket, hugged by walls of wet earth. I wonder if she can hear me. When she gets to heaven, will she tell God I ratted on her the day of her funeral? I go on.
“When Mom made cheesecakes and they were in the oven, she ordered, ‘Only tiptoeing! No noise until the cheesecakes are baked and cooled. They could fall.’ Can you picture it—everyone in the house bound and gagged by cheesecakes? Mom shushing everyone for hours?”
“Come on! It couldn’t have been that bad,” Sandy says. “It’s sort of funny, don’t you think?”
“If you only knew,” my raised eyebrows sigh silently.
Sandy places her elbows on the table and leans into them. “Hmmph,” she says as though pondering Einstein’s theory of relativity.
I want to lift my hands above my head and push the weight of memories away.
“I had lots to be thankful for the Thanksgiving Mom made cherry pies,” I tell Sandy. “We did have lip lickin’ good pie.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Sandy says.
I nod with a sideways sort of grin. Cherry-pie day cast its own spell. The air heaving with the scent of warm pastry and sugared cherries wrapped us in comfort. That smell would make an awesome perfume. I remember Verna stood at the breakfast table surrounded by mounds of white freezer paper. Next to her were towers of freezer paper-wrapped cherry pies. Verna and I carried twenty-eight pies to the basement and stacked them in the freezer, rearranging trays of pecan rolls. The freezer was Mom’s monument to cherry growers everywhere and proof she could cook. Verna and I built muscles that afternoon.
“Wow, twenty-eight pies,” Sandy’s voice drifts off.
“If you only knew how funny it sort of was, Sandy, I could make you laugh till you cry.”
TIME OUT
“Anyone want coffee?” I ask, squeezing past my cousins to get to the kitchen. Except for two women I recognize, but don’t know, the kitchen is vacant. They smile at me, and I smile back. “Thank you for coming and helping us,” I say.
“Are you Lizzie or Rinnie?” one of the women says. “Look how grown up you are.”
“I’m Rinnie. Liz has curly hair.”
“Lovely,” her friend says. “I remember when you were no bigger than a minute. My, how you’ve grown. You look like your mother, same blue eyes. Tsk tsk.” They shake their heads. “We were just off to join the others in the dining room. Call if you need anything.”
Glug. Glug. Glug. The coffeemaker burps in response. China cups line the counter. The scent of hazelnut and coffee is so mouthwatering I swallow each inhalation. A tray of frosted raspberry-filled cookies is piled as high as the saucers. Before I realize it, my tongue caresses the roof of my mouth with a finger-full of frosting. Liquefied silk. Its long-forgotten pleasure dissolves into another time; a time of patting dough into circles with floured hands, a time of peppering dough with cookie-cutter shapes, a time in a happy kitchen with Verna, laughing and licking beaters. I remember her words, “Pat the dough nice and flat, cut a cookie just like that!”
I close my eyes and take a choppy deep breath. I want all the raspberry cookies. Gooey, flaky, chewy, crispy, crumbly. Anything but crunchy. Raw vegetables are crunchy. Thank goodness for coffee.
MAY I BE EXCUSED?
My brain is thick with other people’s conversation. I excuse myself, and Liz joins me.
“Liz, I’m going upstairs. I need some alone time. If you need me, knock on the door.”
“Are you OK, Rinnie?”
“Yeah, sort of overwhelmed. Mom’s really gone.” I start to go up the winding staircase.
“Rinnie. Things don’t make sense to me either. Maybe we can talk later.”
“OK.”
I smile and thank God for my sister. What would I do without her?
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
I snuggle into the blue chair and watch the indigo lines of the cushion bend and sink beneath my body. I’m upstairs in the blue room. What’s left of the funeral party lingers downstairs.
Liz, Evan, and I have named all twelve rooms in Gaga’s house after colors. When Liz and I first began to stay here during exam week, I was in the ninth grade.
“Because I’m the oldest, I get first dibs on a room,” Liz said.
She chose the pink room. Liz prefers the woven rug, thick with embroidered roses and ribbons of gold and green, to the plain carpets in the other bedrooms. A curved high-back chair covered in pink velvet soft as the satin-sheathed down quilts on the beds faces the doorway. Liz is queen of the pink room, and the chair is her throne.
Liz wants to be the queen. I don’t mind. Her room is next to Gaga’s, and Gaga snores.
When Evan spends the night, he stays in the caramel-colored room at the back of the house. It belonged to Uncle Matt. From the windows, the swimming pool, rose garden, and landscaped patio create a golden triangle.
My room is the blue room. Blue cornflowers sway in an imaginary breeze across the papered walls. The furniture is painted the blue of a summer sky at noon. Milky blue pleats of curtain blend into the walls. Only the carpet is white. I feel like I am wrapped in a cloud when I’m in this room—a cloud of tranquility.
The blue room used to be Mom’s room. But now the photograph of her in her lace wedding gown, emerging like Aphrodite from a veil that billows on the floor, is the only reminder that she once lived here. I try to imagine her putting makeup on in this room, dreaming of boyfriends, travel, and one day having children.
What declares my existence in this room? Textbooks, the desk piled with exam notes, stacks of possible exam questions I wrote, hair clips, a blue tunic and white blouse in the closet, my favorite writing pen on the night table, peach body wash, zit medicine in the cupboard. On the wall hangs a picture of the Grand Canyon I painted in the eighth grade. Taped to my bedside table are two biology tests. Excellent reads one. Superior work reads the other.
I yawn and crank open a window to let in some fresh air. The smell of winter’s dampness curls off the frost-brushed bushes below like smoke. It’s the smell of wood snapping in fireplaces. But I think of the summer roses and smell Joy, Mom’s favorite perfume. She was a Rose and a Gardener, but she didn’t tend herself, and her thorns were sharp. Mom’s presence in this room, like her Joy, is no longer.
It’s quiet here. Peaceful. And an image of Gaga, Liz, and me at the breakfast table swirls in my head like the smells of the hot buttered toast and café au lait that swirl up the spiral staircase and wake me when I sleep here. At breakfast, Gaga sits between Liz and me.
“I’m glad you’re here. Did you sleep well, dears?” she always asks.
I know the hiding places in this house, the contents of every closet, the boards that squeak in the attic, and which drawers stick when they open.
The giggle of two girls as they walk across the lawn draws my attention. Their blue and white uniforms label them as Cincinnati Girls’ School students. “Everyone thinks we CGS girls are so smart,” I say to myself. If they only knew how hard I work.
