Forever and a Day: Chapter 6

“Do what you will, this world’s a fiction and is made up of contradiction.”
– William Blake

“It’s been a pretty hectic for you, hasn’t it Fran?” My Mom hands me a cup of coffee and sits beside me at the kitchen island. “How is Annie?”

“She’s going to be released tomorrow. She’ll go into a treatment program. It’s going to take time, they say, for her to be well enough to be on her own. It’s like a self-imposed prison.”

“I think the key to understanding her anorexia is that it is a disease. She doesn’t have control of the disease. Not yet. But I understand her mother and father are being very supportive.”

I look over the rim of my cup. “Yeah, isn’t that a twist of a family plot?”

“What about her sister, Elizabeth, or Betty? Is she close to Annie?”

“Bette, as she calls herself nowadays,” I put my cup down, “isn’t close to anyone. I think she moved to Nevada after she dropped out of college. Exotic dancer in Vegas is the rumor.”

“Ah, what a waste of beauty and brains.”

“Or,” I punctuate the air with a finger, “she’s living out her fantasy.”

“Like I said, what a waste.”

“Oh, but really? What if she is the best exotic dancer of the West? Wouldn’t that be fulfilling one’s destiny? Who’s to say that being a biologist, engineer or doctor is better than being the person you have to be?”

“Well, I hope you are not trying to tell me that you have decided on a career as a circus performer.”

I laughed out loud remembering the scene with Dusty in my bedroom when I put on the jester’s hat. “I’m afraid I’d not be very good at it. Maybe a clown with big painted tears and a bulbous nose. Mute.”

“Oh, that would never happen, Fran! You, not saying a word?” She leaned back and laughed.

“I got you to laugh.” I clinked my cup to hers and we drank our coffee.

“How’s Grandma doing?”

My mother fidgets in her seat, then stills. “She’s sleeping a lot lately. And slipping,” she points to her temple, “confusing the past and present. People, places, time.”

“The continuum shift.”

“It’s all very real to her.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “That’s the beauty of it, Mom. It is real to her.”

“It’s not so real for the rest of us.”

Our lively, depressing conversation was interrupted by the burping of the telephone. “We must be the few anywhere that have to still have to have a landline because our cells drop calls. I’ll get it.”

I had expected a salesperson but instead recognized Scott’s voice. “Fran? Hi!”

There is always that awkward moment of panic of what to say next, and inevitably I say something lame like, “Hi, Scott. How are you?”

“Uh, um fine. I couldn’t find your phone number, um, your cell. I took a chance that this would be your home phone. Hey! I was right!”

Well, this convo was lame-er. At least, I reasoned, he’s as nervous as I am, which surprises me as he always came off as overly confident when I was around him at Reed.

“So what’s new with you? Have you boxed any good books lately?”

“Oh, no. I’ve been working with my Dad. He’s got a big construction project in Kent and I’m on the clean-up crew. You might say I’m the supervisor of the clean-up crew.”

“Is it just a one man crew?”

His laugh was deep and long. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Psychic. One of my many talents.” Or basic psychology.

“Listen Fran,” he paused, and I wanted to, but did not, interject that I was listening, “would you like to go see the Impressionist exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum Friday? I could pick you up at 11 and we could have lunch at the café at the museum after we see the exhibit.”

I stifled a quick retort, ‘Or dinner’, as I could spend a lifetime with Monet, Manet, Renoir, and especially Degas and Cézanne. “That sounds really nice. The house with the huge purple rhododendron by the parking strip.”

“It’s date! See you Friday at 11, Fran.”

My mother arched an eyebrow. “Someone new? I could tell by your expressions.”

I shrugged, being used to my mother’s acute observations. “Scott Nicholson. Seattle Art Museum. The Impressionists.” I replaced the phone in its cradle and stood there looking at it like it might jump back into my hand.

My mom swiveled and stood, tapping me on my shoulder. “I suggest you leave the clown outfit for another time.”

My father had come into the kitchen and I saw the wink intended for my mother. “What this? A young man come a-courting?”
“Yes, Dad. Scott Nicholson—-he works for his Dad in construction.”

“Nicholson and Garry. Big outfit from the east side. Gainfully employed.” He nodded and smiled. “I approve.”

I eyeballed him, then my mother. “Sometimes I feel like I’m still in high school.”

Dad got serious. “I was kidding you, Fancy Fran.”

“I know Popsicle, I know.” I left them to themselves, taking my cell phone outside. While I dialed Dean’s number, I noticed Grandma had dug another hole beneath the rose bush. Maybe she was finding a way to China. She had spoken often of traveling in her retirement years.

It was a relief to get Dean’s voicemail and I left a short three sentence message. “Hi, Dean. Sorry something has come up for Friday. I’ll catch you later.”

Later he texted me, asking for another date and time. I didn’t reply.

I almost had myself convinced that I would answer his texts, return his calls, but I didn’t find the time. When he left to move back to Boston to do his internship, I did text him, wishing him all the best.

Horror vacui, nature hates a vacuum. I spent every day of my remaining vacation with Scott after he got off work. We did activities together; hiking, canoeing, long walks around downtown Seattle, ferry rides, and an almost disastrous bike ride along the Burke-Gilman trail. I liked him a lot, and throughout the following school term at Reed, several people would remark that we made a good-looking couple, a perfect twosome someone said. No, I thought at the time, just good enough. But I couldn’t figure out what it was or wasn’t about the relationship that I never felt connected. Not like the way I had felt with Dean.

Several of our friends were getting married the next summer, and we attended weddings and receptions as the ‘next ones’. Only I purposefully avoided catching the bridal bouquet every time it came whizzing right for me. I didn’t spend as much time with Scott, as Annie had gotten out of the eating disorder program and was at home, piecing her life back together one day at a time. She was preparing for her own wedding to Jon. It was not as painful to be around her now that she had gained forty pounds and looked normal again.

“Annie, you seem distracted and worried. Is there something bothering you?” I reached over and took her hand. “You know, you can talk to me.”

“It’s all these details! I don’t think it’s worth it!” She pushed aside the brochures for wedding venues, limos, caterers. “It’s all too much!”

“Annie, come clean with me. We’ve been friends too long, through too much. I know you. What is it?”

Tears streamed down her face. She extracted her hand from mine and burrowed her face into her hands. Her words, muffled and staccato, wrenched my own heart. “I can’t have children. Ever.” She sobbed. “What’s the point of getting married?”

“Does Jon know?” I frantically searched my thoughts for something to say that would make a difference to this unexpected out burst.

She nodded her head vigorously.

“Then if he’s all right with it, isn’t that the best reason to marry a man who loves you and you love him? You love him, don’t you?”

She nodded even harder, mumbling, “Yes, yes, yes! But…”

“Well, that intrusive ‘but’ in my face.”

She snorted a laugh, wiping tears from her face. “He’s a good Catholic boy and said from the get-go he wanted a family.”

“So adopt. Any problems with that?”

“Guys, ya know, want their own progeny. I don’t want to wake up one day to see him full of regrets.”

“Well, now there’s an image I can’t quite figure out.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Geez, Annie, there are options. Surrogate mother for one. And really how much do you know about the future? Anything, everything can change with new technology. We’re in the Renaissance, Age of Enlightenment with Technology. You cannot give up hope for your future. You are here, alive, today. You of so little faith.”

She examined me with a critical eye. “Yes, faith, that elusive thing with wings that flutters around my consciousness. I have asked myself, my broken self, how do I have faith when I am living in a fractured world?”

“You know what my Dad said to me the day of Colin’s funeral? For he had no answers to the why and wherefores either, but he has faith and he said, ‘I can be faithful, act like I am full of faith’; I took it to mean that even in moments of despair, there is hope. We don’t know if there is a tomorrow, because we are only conscious today. There is no forever, only the moment we live in, but don’t we, all of mankind, want to believe there is forever? That’s why we marry and have children.”

“Gads, Fran, I don’t know if what you said is a commemoration or condemnation of marriage.”

“Yes.” I smiled and she smiled, throwing herself at me for a long and welcomed hug.

I pulled back and looked at her critically. “Annie, there’s something else bothering you. What is it?”

“Oh, Fran, it’s this whole secrecy about my ‘condition’—-I feel ashamed to have this eating disorder—-I’m not supposed to talk about it—-just to you and my therapist. Otherwise, I’m not really sick, I’m,” she lowered her voice and shifted her eyes, “recovering. We don’t mention the hospital, rehab or treatment. You know, like it’s a secret not to be spoken out loud, no one is to know that I am all pieces glued back together.”

I grabbed her by the shoulders and squared off face to face. “Annie, you have a voice. Use it. Speak up, speak out about this disease and help others understand. You’re good at helping others, you always have been—-so use your experience to help others—-use your voice, so others can hear they are not alone. Don’t hide behind secrecy—-it’ll only make you ashamed and miserable. And you are not that, Annie, you are not a miserable, scared little girl. You are a woman with a strong, beautiful voice and something to say. Say it. Leonard Cohen has a line in Anthem: ‘there’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ You’re not broken, Annie, you’re cracked a little like all of us.”

She looked at me with her mouth agape. She nodded, gulped, said in a hoarse whisper, “I applied for admission to the U W. I want to go into social services.” She scooped brochures through her hands. “You said it, you said what I have been trying to articulate. Thank you.”

I reached over and tossed a handful of brochures in the air. “Let’s get these wedding plans organized, girlfriend! Before the day is here!”

We spent the whole day, until suppertime, making plans. Jon came over after work, looking every inch the technical nerd he was, with basic black rimmed glasses, shaggy hair in need of a cut—-no, in need of a style—-khaki pants with bulging pockets stuffed with note papers, offering to take us both to dinner. I declined, as it was my turn to make dinner for my parents and me.
Mom and Dad were sitting at the dining table, two glasses of wine had been poured, but not imbibed. Dad had his hands wrapped around my mother’s hands, and I could see she was shaky.

Dad looked up, meeting my eyes. “Join us, Fran. We have some bad news.”

You ever just want to bolt? Run away to some exotic locale with palm trees swaying in the tropical breeze, ukuleles strumming in the background while you loll on the beach without a care in the world? My luck there would be rogue wave that would wash me out to sea.

I pulled a chair to sit next to my mother. My mother, the strong invincible one, the one who caught a crisis like a professional baseball player, and managed the play. She, who rarely cried, cried now.

“Dad, is it Grandma?”

Mom nodded and Dad sighed. “Yes,” he said, “she fell and broke her hip. She’s out of surgery, and after rehab and therapy, will have to go into an assisted living home.”

“She just kept begging me to take her home, and I had to keep repeating ‘I can’t, I can’t’.” I had never seen my mother sob like this.

I reached over to her and rubbed her back. I have nothing to say.

“We cannot leave now. I just couldn’t leave her.”

Ding! the bell went off inside my head. My parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary in two weeks—-they are going on a cruise to Alaska, with a week’s stay in Victoria, Canada.

“Mom, listen to me. You have to go. I’ll be here and I’ll go see Grandma every day, that’s a promise. Uncle Ryan is here. We’ve got you covered.”

“No”, she shook her head vehemently, “she’s my mother.”

“And my Grandmother. We’re all family, remember?” I immediately felt that I spoken too abruptly, like thumping her upside the head. “Let me do this for you, Mom. Please. In two weeks, Grandma will be where she’s going to be in the home that I’m sure you have researched to find the best one, getting good care. I’ll make sure she gets good care. What sense does it make for you not to go? I’m here, and I’ll take care of the house and Grandma. Don’t cancel your trip. Have some faith in me that I can do this.”

She blinked several times, trying, I suppose, to put me in focus. I waved a tissue at her. “Here, your nose is running.”

She disengaged her hands from my Dad’s hands, took the tissue. Laughter bubbled up from her, then Dad, then me, all of us getting the humor in the switch in the parental role.

My Dad sniffed the air. “What did you put in the crock pot that smells double delicious?”

“Boeuf bourguignon. Sorry about the butchered pronunciation. Annie has tried to teach me the correct way to say these things, but I have not the knack of the nasal.”

“Well, I’m impressed!” Dad placed his hand over his stomach.

“Don’t be, it’s a simple recipe.” I put the dishes out, then got the flatware. “You know me, simplicity is my motto.”

“I’ll do clean-up as my part. Are you going out with Scott later?”

I serve, and it is gratifying to see them both relish the first mouthful, because the beef stew did turn out delectable.
“No, he has plans with friends. He’s twenty-one, you know. Party time.”

I leaned close to my mother. “I’m always the designated driver, and I don’t particularly enjoy all those repetitive, stupefying jokes or his friends. It’s better he have his play dates with friends and I have mine.”

Dad set his mouth in that way of his that meant a word or two of wisdom would be forthcoming. “Most young men go through this phase. Have patience, it’ll pass.”

“You know me, Dad, patience personified.”

My cell chimed for an incoming text. I was mildly surprised it was from Dean; home for the duration. Whatever that means. No matter, he’s home, it’s now and I’ve got some mending to do. “Excuse me, I need to answer this.”

I went out on the waterside deck. It would be a beautiful sunset tonight, with promises of reds and pinks streaking the clouds over the Olympic Peninsula. When my world shifts on its axis and people fall off, the physical world keeps going on from sunrise to sunset. I need to right my world, so that I am not the only one in it.

“‘Yes’ “ I typed, “I would like to meet Marcus. Tonight, 8.”

I go to my room and take the box with the necklace out of the drawer and sit with my phone on the edge of my bed to google the meaning of the stones. I touch each stone as I read about it. Ruby, given as a gift, symbolizes friendship and love. Sapphire is peace, happiness, communication, intuition, and insight. Blue topaz is courage and overcoming fears; it is the stone for writers, scholars, artists and intellectuals. Emerald promotes self-knowledge, peaceful dreams and encourages balance and patience.

Citrine is said to open the mind to new thoughts and balance in one’s life.

And the bale, the fleur-de-lis, the national flower of France. I rub it gently between my fingers. A symbol for the Musketeers; Dean, Fran, Dusty and Annie.

Obviously, Dean designed this with thoughtful intent. That is one of the many things I love about him, how much thought goes into what he intends. 4ever & a Day, the little heart glints.

I shove the box with he necklace into my purse. The necklace that Dean gave me. The one with the broken chain.