Read The First Day of the Rest of My Life Online
Authors: Cathy Lamb
The First Day of the Rest of My Life (13 page)
Tracy pounded a fist into the air, then screamed, “I’m going to suuuuueeeee!”
Chaos. I leaped to my feet, arms up in a victory V. The audience went wild. The cameras later showed them on their feet, standing ovation, fists pumping.
“Thatta girl!” I thundered. “Now everyone!” I jumped onto my chair. “Put your fists in the air and yell, ‘I am a woman who will take no crap!’”
Tracy and the audience yelled it back to me while Tracy joined me on her chair.
“Louder! You can do better!”
They yelled again, “I am a woman who will take no crap!”
“One more time!”
They hollered, “I am a woman who will take no crap!” Even the men yelled that they were women who would “take no crap.” I saw that later on a replay on the news that night. The men bought into it full force, especially the white, middle-aged balding ones.
“I am more than my age!” I boomed.
They echoed it back, deep and passionate.
I grabbed my boobs. “I am more than my bra size!”
They screamed, and they grabbed their boobs. One man had heftier boobs than me.
“I am more than what a man thinks of my ass!”
They full-throttled that one.
“I am me! I am wonderful! I am smart! I kick butt! Say it with me! I. Kick. Butt!”
Whooee!
“I.Kick.Butt!”
“Now come on down here and show Tracy, who has battled cancer twice, who volunteers her time raising money for all sorts of hellaciously good charities, show her that she is one spectacular woman! Come on down, sisters and brothers!”
They poured off the risers, as I cued the sound man and the theme song from
Rocky
pounded the studio.
Rocky
pounded the studio.
Da, Da, da, da-da-da, da-da, da, da-da-da . . .
Two men lifted her up on their shoulders, one with the boobs heftier than mine, and the other men and women crowded around and cheered as they paraded a victorious Tracy around the studio, the cameras catching all of it.
Thacker Blunt lost his job.
He didn’t even get to return to the studio as the beefy security officers called by corporate blocked his way.
For evidentiary purposes only, the third drawer of his desk was opened by his colleagues with a hammer and a wrench.
This is what they found: Dominatrix kinds of treats. Leather vests. A whip. Handcuffs made of leather. Eatable underwear. A black male thong. Licorice. Condoms. A ballerina outfit. A black ski mask with eyeholes. A pair of red high heels, size 15. Hmmm. Who wore those?
Now, what bad person took photos of all that stuff and passed it around, I don’t know. That’s not my business. Someone else passed around pictures of Thacker and the young, leggy, snooty blonde, Tawni, and his girlfriend of today, also a young, leggy, snooty blonde. Who did that was also not my business. The often-promoted girlfriend lost her job. That was her business. Perhaps she should not have her married boyfriend wear red high heels.
It was rotten for someone else to take the photos of Thacker all dressed up in drag and whiz those around the office, too.
His wife filed for divorce. Rumor had it that all his stuff was removed from his house and shoved to the street. Then the wife poured gas over the whole pile and set it on fire. The fire made the news. Some said she was dancing around the fire like a witch casting spells, but I don’t know if that’s true.
The wife was arrested and charged. The charges were dropped.
Tracy’s ratings, once again, skyrocketed.
As for me, my profile as a life coach skyrocketed, too.
Whoo-ha. Tracy slugged a home run.
My sisters, together, we have to slug sometimes.
Slug away, sisters, slug away.
I have issues with sex.
I know this.
I know why.
I have tried to get over it. I had a boyfriend in college once. He couldn’t get over my frozen body, the panic in my eyes, the startling lack of enthusiasm.
I didn’t blame him. He said once, “I feel like I’m forcing you, and I can’t do this again. I can’t. I want a woman in my arm who wants to hug me, to kiss me, who wants me. Madeline, I mean, do you not like sex? Are you gay? I feel awful, I do. Do you like me at all?”
I liked him. He was kind and gentle.
No, I wasn’t gay. No, I didn’t like sex.
I’m a hypocritical life coach who counsels people periodically on their sex lives. A life coach’s job isn’t technically supposed to be counseling people on sex, but I specialize in relationships in your life, so it comes up on a regular basis. If it’s a problem for my clients, it’s a problem in their lives. So I address it as best I can if they bring it up.
I had a woman tell me that in the twenty-two years she’s been married she’s been making love to Jimmy Smits in her head every time instead of her husband. “If I think about my husband, I freeze up.” Turns out the guy had the emotional openness of a porcupine, was often cranky, and had a history of lying. No wonder she froze up.
Another client, a man, said that he’s too intimidated by his wife to have sex. “She constantly criticizes me about everything, my family, how I haven’t been promoted enough, don’t make enough money, I’ve gained too much weight, our neighbors have better cars . . . even during sex, she’ll sigh and roll her eyes or not respond, lie there like she wants to get it over with, it’s a chore, I’m a chore, and I feel like nothing, nothing,
nothing
.”
nothing
.”
I met his wife a couple of times in session. She was so cold I almost froze in my chair. Dyed red hair, slender, lots of makeup, perfect, and expensive clothes. She smiled pleasantly, but in the course of my conversation with her I found her to be manipulative, snobby, an expert at mind games, and shallow. Barbie meets a frozen snowwoman meets an “I Am Better Than Everyone” attitude. She refused to work and spent most of her time making herself beautiful. I advised divorce because of her terribleness, the snowwoman part, and he confessed he would rather commit suicide than be married to her for another week. They had no kids, so he divorced her and moved to Bend for the skiing. He’s a lot happier now.
Another woman liked having a lot of sex. I don’t know where the line of nymphomania starts and ends, but I think she was deep into the nympho side.
“I can’t be with only one guy. One stud. I mean, I wear them out. I tell the guys I’m dating that I’m dating other guys. I like sex. I need several studs.”
“And you like a lot of it.”
“Yes.” She smiled, sat up straight. She was wearing an innocent yellow dress and yellow heels. “I love it. I can’t think sometimes unless I’ve had sex.”
“No thinking at all?”
“Nope. Brain dries up. I have to have it in the morning before work to get myself together. And I like to have it in the middle of the day if I have a full schedule in the afternoon. An orgasm releases my stress, like a river floating it away.”
I nodded, river-like.
“And I like to have it before I go to sleep or I can’t sleep. I’m up all night! Is there something wrong with me?”
“Do you feel like something is wrong with you?”
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m addicted to sex, but it’s a healthy addiction. I keep my job, I never sleep with anyone I work with, I don’t sleep with friends’ husbands or boyfriends, or anyone attached at all. But I have a few single men on the side.”
“A few?”
She grinned, fiddled with her pearl necklace. “Yes, I love them all. They love me. We have fun. It’s not serious. I think of them as my morning, noon, and night orgasms.”
“Don’t you mean your morning, noon, and night men?”
“No, no, my, no.” She grinned again, fiddled with her pearl earrings. She looked so sweet! “They’re my orgasms.”
“So these men equal orgasms? Do they know that’s all they are to you? Is that fair to them? Are they getting hurt in this process? Do they feel used?”
“I’m respectful. I don’t look at them and say, ‘Hello, Morning Orgasm! Hello, Lunchtime Orgasm!’ It’s not like that. We need each other at different times.”
“Aren’t you at work at noon?”
“Yes, but I leave and meet my afternoon orgasm.”
“At his house?”
“No.”
“At your house, a hotel?”
“It would be too committed to meet in either place. We usually meet at a Starbucks. In one of the restrooms. Then we have a drink together. I like their sandwiches and their yogurts, too. Then I go back to work.”
She smiled.
She’s a cardiac surgeon.
She’s apparently quite talented.
Amazing what an orgasm can do for a woman.
So I’ll tell people what to do about sex.
As if I know what I’m talking about.
I am a hypocrite. I hate that part of myself.
That “other” part.
I thought of the man I used to know who liked snakes. Seeing him on TV awhile ago had brought so much rushing back.
I ignored the voice that told me I was a slut.
“Keith Stein on the phone, Madeline,” Georgie called. “And Stanley wishes you a tranquil day.”
Stanley barked.
I picked up the phone.
“We can’t do anything about the article, Madeline. They’re determined to print it. It’s the anniversary of the trial. She’s interviewing everyone—both judges; some of the jurors; the people in Cape Cod; relatives of Sherwinn, Gavin, and Pauly; even Pauly’s son, apparently. And she wants to talk to you, Annie, and your grandparents, as you know.”
I felt myself boil once again. I haven’t hidden that part of my life, but neither have I talked about it. It happened years ago. It was nationwide news then, but Annie and I were able to slip into life here in Oregon with few people knowing that we were Marie Elise O’Shea’s daughters. By the time we arrived, many months after her trial, the media was no longer interested in us.
Annie wasn’t speaking when we arrived in Oregon; she was half-comatose, stuck in her own world, barely moving mentally or physically, certainly not crying, Annie never cries. I was raging, destructive, hurting.
Grandma and Granddad’s love, patience, and attention was unending. After tending to the animals here, the sheep, the dogs, and cats, Annie started talking again, and after hundreds of hours of pounding horseback rides, almost obsessive playing of my violin, and the violin in my head playing softly almost nonstop, I began to stop wishing I were dead.
Annie didn’t play the piano, though. Not a key. Even though Granddad and Grandma encouraged her to. She refused. “The piano is dead for me.”
The thought of dealing with what happened again via a magazine article . . . of reliving it . . . the trials, the gunshots that to this day I
still
hear in my head, Marie Elise’s French Beauty Parlor . . . the pain it would bring to my family. I hated that reporter.
still
hear in my head, Marie Elise’s French Beauty Parlor . . . the pain it would bring to my family. I hated that reporter.
I hated her. It’s not personal.
Hate kills you.
And I still hated
them.
After all these years, I still hated them.
them.
After all these years, I still hated them.
I felt my rage, hot, simmering, overwhelming, slicing up my breathing into bits.
When I got home, I opened the drawer where I’d flung the manila envelope. There it was. My emotional demise.
Sherwinn pretended he was nice in front of our momma. Gifts of necklaces with heart lockets, or rings with big pink stones from the five-and-dime, hair ribbons, jewelry boxes.
We never believed he was nice. Never.
We never believed he was kind. Never.
Kids can sniff out this type of deceit in adults. They sniff it.
We did believe him when he told us we were bad girls, that he would tell everyone.
We believed him when he said he would kill our momma.
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