If You Could See What I See (5 page)

I sat on an iron bench in the garden under a willow tree and watched the city lights twinkle in the distance.

I closed my eyes, trying to unwind in the wind.

I jumped when I heard his voice, when he called my name. I knew it couldn’t be him,
I knew it,
he wasn’t here, but I still whipped around, scanning the grass, the maple trees, and the pine trees before moving to the tree house, my hands out and up, as if I could defend myself. My heart pounded, a dull thud echoing throughout my tense body.

There was no one. I was still all alone. I put my hand to my constricted throat.

The maple trees rustled, they whispered.

I sank back onto the bench and tried to listen to them, to the wind, not him.

 

“I want to have some adventures before I die, become a stiff corpse, and rot in a steel coffin.”

“Lovely vision.” I nodded at my grandma. It was Saturday noon, and we were at her white Queen Anne home. She was dressed in a dark green silky dress with a square neckline and bone-colored heels. The baubles: emeralds. “I’ll come with you on the adventure.”

“Me too,” Tory said, winding all that black hair into a ponytail. “Let’s start in Vegas. High-stakes poker. Give me a date and I’ll check all of our horoscopes to see if we’ll have good luck. Leo for Meggie. Scorpio for Lacey. Virgo for Grandma.”

“I’m in,” Lacey said. “Only don’t ask me to do anything that causes me to feel dizzy. I hate morning sickness.” She swayed, put her hand over her mouth.

“You’re having a girl,” Grandma said.

“How do you know?” Lacey asked through her fingers.

Grandma waved her hand. “Because I know.”

Grandma’s formal table was polished, the china laid, the crystal glasses sparkling. Her home is exquisitely decorated and refined. While Lacey tried to battle down morning sickness, the rest of us nibbled on tiny, crustless sandwiches that Grandma had ordered in: tomato, cheddar, and watercress or ham, brie, and apple. Cream puffs, miniature cakes, chocolate fudge, tarts, and pink meringue cookies sat on doilies on a three-layered silver tray. I ate dessert first, as per my usual. If I died by a freak accident before the meal ended, I didn’t want to miss out.

“What do you want to do, Grandma?” I asked her, sipping my beer. It went well with the tarts.

“I want to do something dangerous.” She tapped her manicured fingernails, her hair up in a chignon. “I want to dance on a bar. I want to bungee jump. I want to go on a trip with you girls and your mother, if she doesn’t make a complete fool out of herself on her book tour.”

Lacey, Tory, and I laughed. On another talk show our mother had given graphic directions on how to give a blow job using an ice-cream cone. It made headlines because that part of the show had to be blacked out.

“I’ve worked all my life and now I want to have some fun. You three are going to have fun with me. We’ll call it the Bust Out and Shake It Adventure Club.”

“You want to bust out and shake it?” Lacey asked.

“Yes. We are going to take off and live life dangerously together.” She poured tea out of a silver teapot, passing each fragile, flowered teacup and saucer to us. “You three are going to bond and become friends if I have to knock your knotted brains together.”

Her expression suddenly changed to one of pain. She put the teapot down, reached back, and rubbed her shoulders. I had asked her about these sudden spasms when I was a little girl. “Does your back hurt, Grandma?”

And she would say, her Irish brogue soft, “I’m patting the fairies.”

When I was in my teens she would say, “I’m squishing all my brilliance up to my brain.”

And when I was in my twenties she would say, “Quit asking. I don’t want to talk about it.”

I know the pain is because the whippings somehow caused back problems.

“Are you okay, Grandma?” Lacey asked, soft as butter.

“Must you treat me like I’m a weak old bat? Of course I’m okay. Had a twinge.” She impatiently rolled her shoulders. “Girls, I don’t have a minute to waste. I might even get laid. I know exactly who I want.”

“Who do you have picked out for this night of heaven?” Tory asked.

“It’s that tall man on TV. Tells everyone how to run their lives. Rah rah rah, blah blah blah.”

I didn’t know who she was talking about.

“He stands up onstage, paces back and forth, big teeth, he’s like a counselor and a male cheerleader and a black-haired lion mixed up altogether, only I can’t concentrate on what he’s saying because he’s so sexy. It doesn’t matter what sexy men say.” Grandma waved her hand. “You have only to watch the body. He’s a tall drink of water, and that’s who I want in my bed.”

“We’ll try to get him for you, Grandma,” I told her, loving the chocolate fudge.

“I’m going to be like you, Grandma,” Tory said. She hiked up a bra strap. Her bra was watermelon pink, another best seller of ours because of the padding. “I’m never giving up sex, not even when I’m old.”

“No reason to, young lady.” Grandma took a sip of tea, pinky up. “But there’s someone in this room who has given up sex, and that’s a poor trajectory. Very poor.”

“It’s Meggie,” Lacey said, pointing, as if my grandma and Tory would have a hard time locating me. I sighed. “She’s in the desperate desert zone.”

“Meggie, you need to find someone right away,” Grandma said, “It’ll put some color in your cheeks.”

“No, I don’t.”
No, oh no.

“Yes, you do.” Tory wagged her finger at me, those gold eyes sharp. “Use it or lose it, and my guess is that yours is already half gone.”

“Funny, Tory, thank you,” I said.
No, oh no.

“You don’t have the look of a woman who wants to get laid, and that will put men off,” Tory said. “Look at me. Look at my body and how I dress. My image says that I’m interested and I’m a making-love hummingbird. Your image says that you have a dried prune for a vagina.”

“You always make me feel warm and fuzzy about myself, Tory.” I knew about my dried prune image. I didn’t need to be told. “I will never be able to look at prunes the same way.” I ate a cream puff with no prunes.

“And you have the look,” Lacey said to Tory, her face tight, “of a woman who wants to get laid every hour, on the hour, in the back of a pickup truck, guns hanging in the back window.”

“Good. And I bet Scotty, that half-brained, camel-nosed jerk, misses me!” Tory’s eyes misted, and she wiped them on a white linen napkin. “I hate that guy.” Scotty is six four, with glasses, slacks, and button-down shirts. So, so bright, he invents things for a huge computer company, makes tons of money, and doesn’t care about the money. He is sweet and protective of Tory. She’s furious that he’s not chasing her down for the umpteenth time after her last unnecessary temper tantrum. Every day he doesn’t beg her to come back, she gets more entrenched in her anger.

“You need new bras and panties, Meggie,” my grandma said. “I can tell. This is a disgrace. Hold your shirt tight so I can see what size you are now.”

“They’ve shrunk,” I said. I held my shirt tight against my chest.

“Like deflated balloons,” Grandma said. “Thirty-four C.”

Tory and Lacey nodded.

“Down a cup. Size small panties. You should be at least a medium. Curves are better than bone, remember that,” Grandma said.

Not wanting to have a discussion about my shrinking bust, I grabbed a pink meringue cookie and said, “Let’s talk business.”

And that was it for our frolicking conversation about my prune, the hated Scotty, and Lacey’s baby girl. Grandma pulled out pink folders, so did I, so did Lacey and Tory, and we had ourselves a serious, detailed business meeting about Lace, Satin, and Baubles.

It took three hours. Numbers were bandied about, our factory in Sri Lanka was discussed, our employees in Portland were discussed, designs and manufacturing and sales were heatedly debated. One lemon tart was thrown, a glass was dropped too hard on the table, and Tory stalked out twice, but we got through it.

“Get crackin’ on the company, girls,” Grandma said, shutting her final pink notebook. She does not mess around with the business and neither do we. We take it very seriously. Too many people depend on it. “You need to reinvent. You need to re-figure out this market. The economy has slashed us to the bone. You need to modernize and be unique, but you need to stick with what Lace, Satin, and Baubles is all about: a family company that makes a seductive, sexy, high-quality product with soul. Know your customer. Invite them to know us.”

“We’ll get on it, Grandma,” I said, exhausted.

“I love you three. You’re difficult, opinionated, fiery. Like we raised you to be. Good job.” She poured herself and Tory generous shots of whiskey. I don’t like whiskey.

It was high praise. Grandma rarely compliments.

We headed out the door after we kissed Grandma good-bye.

“Tony Robbins!” she declared as we headed down her winding drive, the birch trees forming a canopy overhead, two fountains trickling, the grass a green swath of soft earth-carpet. “That’s who I want in my bed, Tony Robbins! Call him, girls! Call him right away for Bust Out and Shake It Adventure Club. I’m sure he’d love to join.”

She lit a cigar and settled on her front porch with her whiskey as we waved.

“I know who he is,” I said. “Excellent teeth.”

“Me too,” Lacey said. “Nice choice.”

“Think he’d do a threesome?” Tory asked.

Not with me and my prune.
Oh no.

 

At two in the morning that night, with the white lights looping through the rafters, I grabbed a pad of paper and colored pastel pencils and started drawing lingerie.

I remembered drawing and designing lingerie with my grandma, starting when I was twelve.

“Lingerie has to speak to you,” she told me. “It’s not all about sex. It’s about the woman. It’s about who she is, who she wants to be. It’s about her intimate self. We have to be the place women go to to buy lingerie, not only because we create lacy, slinky, seductive tidbits, but because our lingerie says something to their souls. We have to speak to their souls and know them, and they have to know us, our brand, our image.”

I drew and sketched and colored for hours.

Grandma. She had a life story. Her childhood was a secret tucked away across a vast ocean, on a craggy island. Would she die before we understood what happened to her?

I closed my eyes. I let my mind wander into a daydream. It started in the rolling hills of Ireland. I saw a young, red-haired girl, her back arching in agony as she was whipped, blood streaking her white skin. As she screamed, my dream sent me over the curve of a rainbow, past a dancing leprechaun, and onto the wings of an owl flying across the Atlantic. I saw my grandma at sixteen years old picking strawberries under a burning sky, then sewing nightgowns by a dim light at night, all alone. It spun past silk, satin, lace, baubles, The Irishman, and into our pink building downtown. It swooped past by my grandma’s cigars and her whiskey and twirled around her elaborate chandeliers, the fainting couches, and tulip lights.

I saw myself, how I’d always wanted to film her, know her story, understand her history, and how she’d refused, that brogue adamant.

Maybe she would say yes now?

Did I have a right to know the story? No. Did I
want
to know? Yes. It was part of her. I loved her. She was my grandma. She was Lace, Satin, and Baubles.

 

The next day Abigail Chen brought in a box full of lacy, satiny, gorgeous 34 C bras, panties, thongs, negligees, and nightgowns. “Your grandma said she picked these out herself. She said to tell you if you wear the same blah blah blah bra and grandma panties here again, she’s going to, and I quote, spit nails.”

Abigail opened up the box and took out handfuls of exquisite fluff. “I do love what we make here, Meggie.”

“So do I.” I don’t wear that fluff anymore.

No, I do not.

I would not.

I am being true to me, the beige me.

4

“T
hey’re restless.”

“What do you mean?” I took a sip of beer. It was ten in the morning. Time for breakfast. I pulled out beef jerky and ate that, too.

“I mean that the employees know the orders have slowed further,” Lacey said. “They know we’re not hiring, even when Duluse left for Africa to find himself and Caterina left for California to go to yoga camp, and Elga died.”

“Elga was seventy-six. Did they expect us to replace her? Her knowledge about the company was endless.” I still missed Elga. She was a major smart aleck and said things like, “Roger’s head is up his ass and he can’t see past his intestines, so don’t listen to him today” and “Murta’s hormones are driving all of us crazy, so I locked her in the closet.” I thought she was kidding until I found out that Murta was, indeed, locked in the closet, and happy about it because, as she told me, “Menopause is a nightmare and I need some time alone. Shut the door, Meggie.”

“They understand that we’re struggling and that is gross that you drink beer this early.” Lacey put her heels up on my desk, I put my boots up.

“It’s not gross. I like it, so I do it.” I would also like to have a roll in bed with Blake. Can’t have all ya want. That body was something else. I would like to forget the cacophony in my head while straddling myself across him.

“But beer?”

“I’m sorry, Lacey.” I set the can down on my desk with a bit too much force. “I have beer in the morning now and then.” It started years ago in the middle of the swamp. “Maybe we should go over your odd habits. Let’s start with how you can eat only an even number of Oreos, not one, not three, it must be an even number.”

“Oreos are organized. There’s the black cookie, then the cream center, so I like to keep it organized. Two, four, six, or twelve at a time.”

“What about how you will never get up on the right side of your bed, right foot down first, because you think it will bring bad luck?”

“It will. Three times in my life I got up on the right side, right foot down, and bad things happened.”

“And bad things have never happened when you got up on the left side?”

“No, they happen, but if I’m up on the right side,
for sure
they’ll happen.”

“Ah, well, that makes sense. What about how you watch horror movies to de-stress and how you imitate Tina Turner when the kids aren’t home and prance about your house in those silver high heels and short silver dress and shake your butt?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. Zero. It’s fun. But don’t bug me about my morning beer.” I dropped my boots down and looked out my window. There was Mount Hood. I used to ski there. Loved it. Hadn’t skied in years. He didn’t ski, so I gave it up. If I didn’t, I paid for it later. Looking at Mount Hood almost made me hurt. “Okay, so the employees are asking questions.”

“Yes. They want to know what’s going on.”

“I’ll tell them soon.”

“What?” She was alarmed.

“I’ll tell them.”

“You’re going to tell them what’s going on with the company? Our nosedive?”

“Yes. We have to. It’s not fair to them. I’m going to try to turn things around. You’re trying, too. Tory’s on board. It’s not enough. The three of us are not enough. We tell them, then they know and can help, too.”

“It’ll scare them. Cause stress. Panic. Frenzies. Revolts.”

“I’m scared. I’m stressed. I will not be revolting.” I did not want to fail here, too, but if I did, I would do it ethically. “They have a right to know. We have a number of single parents here. If they want out, they need to start applying for other jobs while they’re still employed here and will look more attractive to new employers. They need to start saving money to prepare at home. Some of them might be looking to buy a house, which would not be a good idea at this point. Some might be looking to buy a new car. Do you want them to have that car repossessed if things collapse here? We have months, Lacey. That’s it.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay, Madam Daredevil. You’re right.”

“We’ll talk to Tory and then present to everyone.”

“She’ll throw a fit.”

“She always throws fits. Do you think that bothers me?”

Lacey shook her head. I drank my beer.

 

Four huge bags of clothes arrived in my office, all from an upscale boutique.

Dresses, skirts, slacks, sweaters, cool jeans, boxes of high heels. Knee-high boots. A new red coat, which I quickly wrapped back up.

The card said, “Stop looking like a slob. You’re going to be mistaken for a woman who has lost her marbles. Grandma.”

She was pretty close to the truth there. Good thing I like marbles.

 

That night I took my film equipment out of my bedroom closet. I had dumped it in there when I first rented the tree house.

My mother gave me a camera when I was fifteen. I asked her for one because I wanted to take pictures of my beloved granddad, Cecil O’Rourke, because he was dying of congestive heart failure.

I told her exactly what I wanted to do. She put both of her hands on my cheeks, kissed me, and said, “You are a precious child.” She bought the camera that day, and I started taking photos of The Irishman, which is what Grandma, my mother, Lacey, Tory, and I often called him.

I took photos of him bending over a chess game we were playing. I took photos of him with Lacey baking cinnamon rolls. I took photos of him admiring Tory’s new pink boots.

I took photos of him painting fields of flowers next to my mother. He played the fiddle and the flute, and I took photos of him concentrating.

I took many photos of him hugging my grandma. My granddad was the only person to whom my grandma catered. It was almost as if she changed personalities. She was gentle, kind, and romantic around him. My granddad, at six feet three inches tall, with a much more pronounced brogue than my grandma, was tough and blunt. He was the owner of a construction business, but when he came home, the tough and blunt left, and the love came in.

Theirs was a love match like no other. Both of them told me privately what they thought of the other.

Grandma said, “Cecil is my heart. That’s why I make sure he’s happy.”

Granddad said, “Regan is my life. I love her even more than I love Ireland.”

Grandma said, “Without The Irishman, I would be dead, literally. He saved me.”

Granddad said, “My life would have no meaning without her. I would be lost, might as well be dead.”

In the last weeks of his life I caught him looking joyful, peaceful, sad, thoughtful, in pain, uncomfortable, exhausted, and in love when he and Grandma sat and held hands. I took photos up until his last day, at his encouragement. “Take the photos, Meggie. Not all of them will be happy, but life isn’t always happy, is it? It takes guts to live right, and it takes guts to die right. You girls need to remember one thing, and only one: I love you with all my heart.”

He died in bed with my grandma late one night, Irish music playing in their bedroom. She has never been in love again.

Granddad was my father, and he was Lacey and Tory’s father, too. He called us “his gifts,” but he was our gift.

My mother printed my photographs and we put them in a scrapbook together. We all cried and cried over those photos. The Irishman was right. They weren’t all pretty, but they showed
him,
his strength and courage, his dignity and honesty.

Photography became a healing element in my life, then it became my hobby, then my calling. As I clicked away with my camera, the whole world opened up to me, but I could still hide behind the lens, as if a black shroud made me invisible.

I took photos of people slumped against walls downtown, the homeless pushing carts, teenagers smoking, people standing alone, or businesspeople with stricken looks on their faces. I took photos of people in groups, I took photos of children with their parents, and people crying.

My mother soon gave me a video camera, too, and I started making short films about people in high school, how they liked school, or hated it, what irritated them, what made them mad or happy. It was surprising how honest people became when there was a camera pointed at their face. As I was an intense, somewhat socially awkward, driven and Type A person even then, it opened up conversations with people for me.

I double majored in finance and business in college, then earned an MBA. However, I took film classes in college, too, classes after college, and joined an amateur filmmaking group. I made several films on weekends, editing until the early hours of the morning after I’d worked at Lace, Satin, and Baubles.

I had some success, even won some minor awards.

Eventually I could no longer ignore the voice in my head yelling at me to leave Lace, Satin, and Baubles and become a documentary filmmaker full time. I couldn’t
not
do it. It was me, I was it, even though it meant leaving the company. I struggled with the decision night after night after night, because I felt I owed it to Grandma, to my family, to stay. I finally decided I owed it to myself to take time off, especially since Grandma ran the company.

I had loved my career as a filmmaker, though I hadn’t made much money at all.

I wrapped both hands around a camera on the floor of my bedroom and thought about my grandma, the business, our looming financial problems, pink negligees, zebra-striped bras, garters and bustiers, lace thongs that were barely there, buttons and baubles, and our employees.

 

“Hello, everyone.” I stood on top of a chair to address all of the employees of Lace, Satin, and Baubles.

“Hello, Meggie . . . hi, Megs . . . hi, honey.”

“First.” I smiled. “I want to tell you all again that I’m so glad to be back at Lace, Satin, and Baubles.”

They cheered. They clapped and hollered.

I choked back a rock, which seemed to have lodged itself in my throat. I could not even speak for a minute. Beside me, Lacey clapped, while Tory stood still and uptight on my other side. I could feel her withering anger. As she told me when I worked here before, “They love you, hate me. You’re the angel, I’m the devil. Angels are so dull, though. Devils go out and play.”

“Thank you for working here. Thank you for your creativity and your dedication, your loyalty to my grandma and to the company. Thank you for building a company we can all be proud of. We don’t simply sell lingerie. We sell beauty. We sell dreams to women. We sell products that make them feel better, prettier, stronger, more powerful. We sell lingerie so women can get out there and write the stories of their lives and look awesome doing it and, at night, or during the day”—I grinned—“they can feel happy and confident when they’re with whomever they wish to be with in their negligees and thongs.”

They laughed.

“On another note, and unfortunately, after looking over our books, our numbers, and our projected numbers, I don’t have good news for you. I want to be honest and up-front. You’ve been loyal to us, I want to be loyal to you and to your families.”

Fear, I could feel it. It rolled at me in electric waves. What I said wasn’t a surprise to them, but once the truth is out in the open, their fears become their reality. “As you know, the economy has about collapsed. People don’t have money for much of anything, and our higher-end lingerie has taken a hit.”

I did not say that the company had made mistakes, too, because I did not want to place blame on Grandma, Tory, or Lacey. But we had. Mistakes in advertising and marketing and sales. Mistakes on our website. Mistakes in our catalog. Mistakes in how money was spent, and not spent. Mistakes in products that shouldn’t have been out there at all. Mistakes in employee costs.

I was working to fix all of the mistakes, but it was easier to blame the economy at the moment.

“I’m sorry for what I have to tell you next, I truly am. As you probably know, we’re struggling. We’ve been struggling for some time. We will have to shut down within the year if we don’t get our sales numbers up.” Okay, that was a little lie. I didn’t see how we could stay open for six months without a few miracles.

I heard the collective gasp. I saw people’s hands flying to their faces. I saw them slump and lose color.

Lance with the dented head from Afghanistan studied the ceiling, grim.

The Petrelli sisters looked grave, too. I knew, without a doubt, that they were concerned about all the other employees, the business itself and Grandma, and not themselves.

Maritza, Juanita, and Valeria exchanged worried glasses, and they wrung their hands. They were thinking of their children. Lele and Tinsu’s eyes became wider, as if they couldn’t believe what I was saying. Lele said, “But I like working here!” as if that would change anything. That thought was echoed by many people.

“We don’t want to close. As you know, my grandma started this company sewing nightgowns in her room in a boarding house after she picked strawberries all day when she was sixteen. We love the company. It will break my grandma’s heart if we close. It is not the goal.” I bent my head for a second, gathered my thoughts. “However, if some of you want to apply immediately for other jobs, I understand. Please do. We will give you the highest recommendations. I understand if you leave. You have your families to think of first. We have always been a family-centered company and we always will be, but family centered means that we know your family comes first.”

When I finished, it was quiet. Absolutely silent. No one even seemed to breathe. You could not hear a pin drop, and there were many pins at Lace, Satin, and Baubles.

“I’m staying,” Maritza said. Her sisters said they were staying, too.

Abigail Chen raised her hand. “I’m staying, Meggie.”