Page 29 of I’m Not Yours

I laughed despite the cold that seemed to be living in my body from the inside out.

Could blood turn to icicles? “My mom is an incredibly talented seamstress. She made all of our clothes and called it Hippie Chick. One time she took yards of beige material bought at a garage sale for fifty cents and sewed my sisters and me dresses with six inches of lace at the hem. People loved them, they stopped us on the street. My mom sold a lot of clothes when we were in that bus. Her flowered shirts, flowy and bright, sold well. She’d buy used jeans for twenty-five cents, cut out patches from colorful material, and sew them on.

She added beads and feathers to plain blue shirts.

She could turn anything into a fashion statement, and she did. ”

“She was a clothing artist, then.”

“Yes, and she taught us. We would all spend hours together sewing into the night. There wasn’t a formal bedtime.

We’d use a lantern and she showed us how to make a boring dress unique, how to make a normal skirt something special.

Ruffles, sequins, embroidery, shortening, lengthening.

And lace. Oh, the lace was always in abundance.

Our favorite. We used it all over everything.

Satin was our second favorite. Sewing was a fun game for us. ”

“And you learned a lifelong skill.”

“That I did.” I sewed until I decided, insanely, that I should let that part of my life fly off into the wind and disappear over the mountains.

Part of me flew off then, too, and I was soon a miserable cog in a legal machine.

I went back to sewing to refind my lost self.

How strange to say sewing recently saved me, but it had.

I was so curious about his family, but we started climbing the staircase and all I could think of was that I didn’t want to go first because I didn’t want my rear in his face, but I didn’t have a choice. A gentleman, he had me go first.

I wanted to grab my bottom and hide it. It is not overly large, but let’s simply say that I enjoy eating, have never desired to be model slim, and believe my curves, instead of the skinny, intense thing I used to be, signal a healthier eating life.

Besides, I could die tomorrow. Why deny myself the finer pleasures of life like chocolate, fresh lobster with garlic butter, and clam chowder?

I tripped up a step, started to tumble forward, my freezing feet and legs not responding, and that strong arm whipped around my middle and pulled me back up. Again.

But this time my back was tight against his chest. The chariot chest. Hard and tight, a thigh partly between mine.

Oh, mercy.

His face was so near to mine. Inches. Oh, inches.

He smelled delicious . . . a combination of the beach and sunshine and musk.

Mercy, mercy, mercy me.

“Boil me dry, and hang me out on a laundry line like a dead possum,” Estelle said, shaking her white curls. “It is a miracle. You have brought a man to this house. Who is he and what does he want and do you even know how to talk to a man without telling him off?”

“He is a tall drink of water,” Leoni whispered, as if Reece could hear her talking through the window as she spied on him from my second-story studio.

“And he’s getting back in his truck and driving away!

Oh, no! Run after him, June! Get him, get him!

” She whirled around and started pushing at my back. “Go, go!”

I wanted to sneak into my light blue bedroom and take a hot shower, but if I did that, my two employees, Estelle, who is seventy-eight and blunt because, “Why waste time at my age?” and Leoni, blond, twenty-seven, and a single mom, would simply trail after me, probably right into the shower. Yes, they are that nosy.

“I am not going to run after him, Leoni.” I dripped on my wood floor. I knew where Reece was going, he was going home to get changed. He said he’d be back up at my house in ten minutes. Ten minutes! Hardly any time to put my face and hair and myself back together!

“Why not?” Estelle asked. She used to be the mayor of a large city.

“Politicians’ middle names are Crooked and Creepy,” she’d told me once.

“I would only go back if I was allowed to throw things at annoying people’s heads.

” She is also a most excellent seamstress, taught by her grandmother, who was taught by her grandmother.

She shook her pointer finger at me. “You need a man in your life to get rid of that excess energy you’re always sizzling off. Keeps a body young.”

“You’re wet, June!” Leoni declared, as if I didn’t know it. She stomped a red, knee-high boot. She dresses in retro style and buys only used, vintage clothing. “Wet and soaked. Did you go swimming in your clothes? That’s dangerous, June. You should know better.”

“A wave ran after me and tackled me to the sand.”

“One of those sneaker waves?” Estelle said. “The curse of the Oregon coast. They sneak up on you and rip-rap, rip-rap.” She snapped her fingers.

“That would be it.”

“Are you all right?” Leoni asked.

“Didn’t hit your head, did you?” Estelle asked, peering over her glasses at me. “You don’t want to lose your marbles. Some of yours are broken already. You weren’t hurt, were you?”

Leoni squealed, as understanding dawned. “Did that tall drink of water rescue you?”

I bit my lip.

“He did! I can tell by the guilty expression!” Estelle pointed her scissors at me. “And it all started with a semidrowning. You look terrible. Makeup streaking, hair a wreck. Could you not have kept yourself dry for this one man?”

I almost giggled, couldn’t help myself, then turned on my heel toward the bathroom.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to get the seaweed, whale poop, and salt water off of me.”

I heard Leoni whisper, “Maybe for the first time in a million years she’ll get a date out of this,” to which Estelle said, voice on full volume, “That mouth of hers is a whip. She scares men. She sews wedding dresses that women kill for, but she swears she’ll dress as a gnome before she be-bops down the aisle in one herself. ”

I rolled my eyes and skeedaddled for the shower, turning on the radio as I hurried in.

My favorite song was on. It was about a small town on the river, sunshine, hope, and a cheating boyfriend who was locked up in jail for running naked through the streets, his girlfriend threatening to shoot him from behind and, “blast his butt to Jupiter.” It was hilarious.

I sang along as I showered, washed the ocean out of my hair and dried off, quick as a lick, then jumped into jeans and white sandals.

I pulled on a white lace shirt and a flowing white lace blouse, both of which I’d sewn, a rope belt I’d wound together with gold ribbon, and gold hoop earrings.

I pulled a comb through my blond curls and dried it.

I added lotion, liner, mascara, and lipstick.

I reached for a lotion that smelled seductive, called Amber Moonlight, and rubbed it on my neck and wrists.

Fifteen minutes tops, I was new, improved, and done.

“He’s been back for five minutes,” Leoni whispered, again worried that Reece had bionic ears. “He knocked and I left him downstairs in the family room. He must live nearby. He’s not wet anymore, either. He is a piece of heaven. A piece of handsome work. A stud.”

“What are you two going to do?” Estelle said, again not bothering to curb the volume of her ricocheting voice. “If I were you, I would dispense with the preliminaries and invite that tiger to my bed.”

I waved my arms at her, as in, be quiet!

“In fact,” Estelle mused, “I think I’ll invite him myself. He probably has a hidden thing for women of a certain age and experience.”

I tried not to smile like a fool at the thought of my taking the chariot driver to bed. “He’s taking me to the emergency room.”

“How romantic!” Estelle dramatically clutched her chest. “Maybe you can take X-rays of each other’s bottoms. Or you can give each other colonoscopies.

Tar and feather me, you can get your pap smear and he can wield the tools .

. . or,” she used her fingers to form two guns, “you can practice giving each other stitches and shots in the butt!” I rolled my eyes.

“Go, go!” Leoni insisted. “Before he escapes! Before he runs off or is intimidated by your harsh and ghastly view of men in general. Please do not go into one of your harangues about how men are comparable to vermin, spiders, or orangutan spit. Please don’t tell him your history.

Please don’t lecture him on the faults of his ‘species,’ and for Godzilla’s sake, don’t list the problems that men have caused in this century, or in the last century. Try to be nice . . .”

“I’m going to be nice. I’m always nice.”

“Not with men, you man-decimating wreck,” Estelle said. “You’re a charging grizzly bear with night sweats.”

“I’m not going to change who I am because of a man.”

“No one’s asking you to change,” Estelle argued. “Heck, I have never changed one iota of my charming personality for a man. We’re telling you not to assume he’s inherently a monster because of his plumbing and I’ll bet he has big plumbing. Big plumbing!” She semishouted the last two words.

I blushed again. Darn it!

“Don’t bring any of your sewing needles with you, is all,” Leoni said, wringing her hands. “Figuratively or literally.”

“We’re going to the emergency room. That’s it. I’m not going to poke him with needles or give him a shot.”

Estelle threw her hands in the air. “You have a date! You had to almost drown to get one, but you have a date!”

“When are you coming back?” Leoni asked. “Don’t rush. You need to savor the sweetness and sparkle of the date.”

“It might not happen again for years,” Estelle said, crossing her arms. “Years. Maybe even this millennium.”

“I won’t be gone long. As you both know, we’re swamped in work and I don’t even have time to go to the emergency room.”

“Go anyhow!” Leoni said as she cupped her hands into a heart shape. “No matter what they do to you, even if they give you an enema, it’ll be worth it!”

“Don’t screw this up, June,” Estelle said. “When you’re my age, you take romance where you can get it and be grateful for it. Take life by the horns and swing it around and dance with it, that’s what I always say.”

I turned to head down the hallway. I stopped at the photo of my family’s VW van, with all of the MacKenzies in front of it. There were purple peace signs painted on the sides. We were in Montana then. I’d taken an old photograph and blown it up to a three-foot-by-four-foot canvas.

I held two fingers up. Peace.

On my way down the hallway, I ran into an astronaut.

“Hi, Morgan,” I said. Morgan is Leoni’s seven-year-old daughter.

“Hi, June,” she said through her white NASA astronaut’s helmet.

It wasn’t an authentic NASA helmet, obviously.

It was an oversized, battered white motorcycle helmet that she’d stuck a NASA sticker to.

She wore a white astronaut jumpsuit, an ex- Halloween outfit, in red and blue, and carried a clipboard and pen. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to the emergency room.”

Through the eye shade I could see her confusion. “Are you dying?”

“No. A wave got me.”

“Oh.” She wrapped her arms around me. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” I hugged her back. Downstairs Hercules was waiting.

“Good. Do you know about astronauts’ toilets on their space shuttles?”

“No, I don’t.”

“There’s a vacuum for solids and there’s a hose for liquids. There are two bars that hold your thighs down because there’s no gravity up in space and you don’t want to float away from the toilet doing your private business.”

“No, that would be a mess. Sweets, I have to go.” The chariot was here!

“I met that man downstairs.”

“Oh, ah. Good.”

“He’s tall. I think he’s smart enough to be an astronaut.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I asked him if he understood why NASA astronauts need spacesuits and he told me why. We discussed why I need a camera on my suit, a headlamp for seeing outside of the shuttle, an oxygen tank, and a battery and water supply for a life-support system.”

“Wow. I’m impressed.” Aha! He was kind to kids!

“Yeah, me, too. Is that your boyfriend? My mom doesn’t have a boyfriend. I’m going to go upstairs and study my astronaut books.” She tilted her spacesuit helmet up at me. “He’s going to be proud of me, you know.”

My stomach clenched. “Morgan, I’m proud of you already. So is Estelle and your mom and your teachers, who all say you’re bangup smart. You know more about space shuttles and astronauts, the galaxy and astronomy, than almost anyone on the planet and you’re only seven.”

“Well, when he knows I’m an astronaut, he’ll want to see me again.”

My stomach clenched again. Morgan’s father, the loser, the bottom-dwelling algae/larvae, had left Morgan’s mother when she was five.

He told Leoni he was going to the store for a cherry pie and never returned.

Leoni noted that he remembered to take his golf clubs, hunting gear, camping tent, expensive bike, and he cleaned out their bank account.

Ever since, Morgan has dressed, almost each day, as an astronaut because her father was interested, however mildly, in space.

She wants to be impressive so he’ll be impressed with her and come back and live with them again.

It breaks my heart. I hugged her again. “I want to see you every day, right here, because if I don’t see you, I don’t have a good day.”

“Yeah, I know. The kids made fun of my astronaut suit again.”

“What do they know? They’re too young to understand brilliance when they see it.”

“They think I’m weird.”

“Who cares what they think? All that matters is that you recognize that you’re wonderful and cool.

” I tried not to cry for Morgan. “Your mom made peanut butter cookies because she was super mad at the bodices of the yellow, twenties-era flapper dresses. Have a couple, read your space shuttle book, and organize the pink lace drawer for me, will you?” I give Morgan jobs all the time to do.

It makes her feel wanted and needed. I pay her, too.

“Okay.” She smiled at me through the dark visor. “I’ll tell you about a new design for a space shuttle I sent NASA last week. The one I worked on for about three months with all the details and about twenty pages of explanations. I think they’ll write me back.”

“They might, Morgan. As least they know brilliance when they see it.”

I tried not to let my heart squeeze too tight when I thought about the pain of abandonment that kid’s selfish father had caused her, then turned to tromp down the stairs toward Hercules.