Authors: Dorothy Phaire
“I’ll work on it, Helen,” said Renee, holding out her hand for the prescription. “You know, a friend said something to me last night and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. She said live until you die. Up until now, I haven’t really been living at all.”
“Your friend’s right. I’d like you to come back early next week. If you can get your husband to come with you, that would be helpful to your progress and to his. You will need a lot more help than this one session to get through this, Renee. You don’t have to do it alone, you know.”
Renee nodded, but she knew it would be a cold day in hell before Bill would come with her to see a psychiatrist. It was about one thirty when Renee arrived home after her session with Helen and after getting her Lexapro prescription filled at the pharmacy. What was left of today’s stack of mail sat on the pier table in the foyer. Bill had already picked out his mail but she knew he was not home because his sports car was missing. That’s the only thing he drove these days. Renee wondered if he received her scented, mysterious envelope. She grabbed her mail and headed downstairs to her office.
Before unlocking the door to her office, she turned back and started towards the stairs leading to the first floor landing. A dark-pined, hidden alcove under the stairway caught her eye and she stopped. Renee had passed by this alcove hundreds of times when coming down to her office without giving it a thought. Now she couldn’t ignore it.
Pull yourself together, Renee. For God’s sake, you're a trained psychologist,
she tried demanding of herself. The narrow, 26-inch staircase snaked around a column that reached to the attic floor. The sun emitted a shaft of light through a small window above the alcove. Renee passed through the swirling dust gnats that bounced off the light as she slowly climbed the uncertain stairs. She approached the staircase in a trance-like state as if some spirit hovered about, warning her to go back. When Renee almost reached the top landing, she lost her footing and nearly tumbled down the rickety stairs. She grabbed hold of the banister and continued forward.
The attic housed a tower of cardboard boxes and a chest full of her high school and college graduation gowns, yearbooks and memorabilia. Aunt Clara’s cedar chest stood in the middle of the floor, and had not been opened since college. Whatever had been tucked way in its cedar chipped linings had moved with her from house to house, untouched and buried. Renee looked around and flinched upon seeing her mother’s full-length, mink coat draped around a life-like mannequin. She dropped the handful of mail on the attic floor. Then, walked over to the mannequin and stroked the coat’s fur collar, and thought of her long-deceased mother. Renee recalled how thrilled her mother had been to receive it from her jazz musician lover, who was Renee’s father, after one of his more profitable gigs when he performed onstage with Lena Horne in the early fifties. Her parents had never married, but no one who saw them together ever doubted their love and commitment to each other.
Renee wiped a tear from her eye as she thought about how much she still missed her parents. Her mother, Tina Joye, beautiful, willful, and smart, would have been more than a loving mother had she been alive today. She would have been Renee’s best friend and confidant. Renee remembered her mother as she was just before her death, a petite caramel-colored, twenty-five year old beauty with silky, black hair. A true free spirit who had been a singer and showgirl until a tragic accident took her life. Renee’s mother had been killed instantly in a bus accident on March 5th, 1959 while traveling with her tour group when Renee was only seven years old. Her father, LeRoy Curtis, an alto saxophonist and composer never made it big in the music business but toured all over the United States and Europe, thirty-five to forty weeks a year. Growing up, Renee rarely saw him. With her father on the road most of the time and her mother dead, Aunt Clara begrudgingly took on the responsibility of raising her.
Renee put on her mother’s mink coat and suddenly felt a bit flirtatious and carefree just as if she had taken on the persona of her feisty, showgirl mother. Here was a woman who managed to slay her own dragons—the biggest one of them being Aunt Clara. If only she could be more like Tina Joye, she wouldn’t be afraid to fight for her own happiness. Renee twirled around in a half circle then bumped her ankle on the large cedar chest.
“Damn,” she cursed aloud rubbing her ankle. Renee took off the coat and gently laid it down. She knelt in front of the chest, and brushed away its thin blanket of dust and spider webs. She struggled to open it. Eventually, it gave way and creaked as she pushed the lid up. She pulled out her black high school graduation cap and gown. Next came her yearbook, and piles of cards. A stack of bound letters stuck out from under an indigo blue, satin prom dress, poi de silk pumps, and elbow-length evening gloves. She remembered hating that dress, which her aunt had bought for her senior prom, but Aunt Clara said she was too dark-skinned to wear pastel colors that light-skinned girls could easily wear.
She took out one of the letters from the chest and examined the return address. She could tell from the return address that the letter was from her old boyfriend, Randolph DeWitt. It had not been opened. Renee surmised that Aunt Clara had kept it from her and after awhile it had been long forgotten. He wrote it when he was staying with his grandparents in Greensboro, North Carolina the summer she got pregnant. Renee’s hands shook as she opened the folded letter. Randolph had been her first and only love at Coolidge High School when they were both sixteen years old. Her palms felt sweaty as she played with the paper’s folded edges. Renee closed her eyes, and the memories rushed back in panoramic color.
Renee held Randolph’s unread letter as the scenes from the past replayed before her like a bad movie. Sitting on the attic floor before the cedar chest with her legs tucked under her, Renee opened Randolph’s nearly thirty-year old letter, written on lined school paper and stained yellow from age and she cried. She recognized his handwriting, even after all these years. Reading it now she struggled to make out his immature handwriting, through her tears.
Dear Renee,
I got your letter on 8/13/72 and mailed mine on 8/13/72. Excuse my sloppy writing but I've been nervous lately. I still wish we could seek our future together but I know it's out of the question. I was very hurt when my folks told me you lost our baby and I felt that life wasn't hitting on nothing. It's okay down here in Greensboro with my grandparents but I wish I was still up there in DC with you and the gang. When my Pops told me that your Aunt, came to see them and wanted me to stay away from you for good, it hurt me to my heart. I'm sorry our little baby didn't make it, Renee. But does that mean you and me have to break up? I know I promised my Pops never to talk about it to you and I hope this doesn't make you cry but I still love you and I don't know why your Aunt hates me. My Pops said I should leave you alone for awhile like she wants. They don't want no more trouble for her or for you. I heard she transferred you to that school for girls in Northwest Washington, Maret, starting in the Fall. We start school September 4 back at Coolidge and my folks said I will have to stay down here until the end of August. So I guess that means I won't get to see you much anymore. I plan to go into the Army after I graduate high school next year. I guess you will go on to college like your Aunt wants. I remember you saying that you wanted to be in show business like you Mama was. I really liked you in our school play about Romeo and Juliet. I could never get up in front of all my friends, teachers, and parents like you did last year. I was proud to tell everybody, that's my girl!
I put your picture in my wallet, so when I open it up your picture is the first thing I see. Hey! I got good news, Pops gave me the Wildcat and we drove it down here. I guess he felt sorry for me. It's a nice car but it's eating up my savings. I'm going to give it back to him when I get my Volkswagen. A V.W. is much cheaper to operate. Well I would send you a picture of me too but I don't have any, plus I have gone from bad to worse. When Mother Nature was giving out faces she left me out. (smile) Other than that I'm OK I guess and my brain is still the same, increase No! Decrease, Yes! Well, I guess I better go before I bore you to death. Plus Grandma is on my back, she wants me to go into town to the store. Now I wish I couldn't drive at times but if I couldn't drive she'd probably make me walk the five miles. Take care of yourself and I hope you find peace of mind.
Yours Forever,
Randy DeWitt
P. S. I liked the pink paper and perfume in your letter. It smelled like the roses in my Mama's garden. (I dig it). I miss you a lot and think of you all the time.
Renee’s tears spotted the frayed letter so much that she had trouble re-reading it. She went back over the part of Randolph’s letter that said she had once wanted to be in show business. She had completely forgoten about her childhood dream to perform on stage just like her mother. But as with so many other things she wanted, Aunt Clara had squashed that idea. Aunt Clara told Renee that acting, singing and dancing were all useless ways to earn a living. “
Look at where your parents ended up. Besides, what talent do you have? You’re lucky my church lets anybody join the children’s choir.”
These were words she recalled hearing over and over again.
Renee put everything away in the cedar chest, picked up her mother’s fur cost, and swung it over her arm. She carefully maneuvered the steps going back down with one hand on the banister and the other holding onto the mail and the coat. She decided to send the coat to the furrier’s for cleaning. Then, she’d keep it in her closet as a reminder of her mother.
After returning from the attic, she hung her mother’s coat upstairs in her closet and then headed towards Bill’s study to see if he had come home yet before leaving on his trip. Perhaps, Helen was right. She needed to fight for happiness. Bill didn’t appear to notice her come into his study. The smell of leather and polished mahogany dominated the air in his office. A glass-covered cabinet contained a wall-size case of ancient classics, textbooks and software manuals. Bill’s notebook PC sat flipped open on top the desk and his eyes studied the screen. Just then his cell phone rang and when he picked it up to answer it, he spotted Renee standing in the doorway. He waved her in and pointed to a chair, while talking and nodding into the phone.
“Hey, man. Yeah, it’s about that time, Cliff,” he said, with a quick glance of his watch.
While he talked Renee noticed a wastebasket filled with ripped open envelopes and lots of unopened junk mail. She saw her manila envelope sticking out of the trashcan unopened.
“Umhum, that’s right, buddy. The driver should be here in about an hour. I’m taking Air France’s flight 27 out of Dulles at 6:40 this evening and switching planes in Paris at Charles de Gaulle Airport,” he said, studying the passenger itinerary ticket. “I land in Paris at 8:10 in the morning their time. Right,” said Bill, nodding. “Then from Paris I hop on Indian Airlines at 10:30
AM
and arrive in Delhi at 10:15
PM
.” He paused. “Yeah, there’s a layover. I’ll have to stay overnight in Delhi and take a 6:35
AM
flight straight to Bangalore. That’ll put me in Bangalore at 9:10
AM
on Sunday.”
The whole time Bill talked to Clifton Shaw on his cell phone, he typed rapidly on his laptop. Her husband was great at multitasking, thought Renee. It’s just that he couldn’t seem to find the time to fit her into his multiple task plan. “Yeah, 18 ½ hours just to get there, man. You’re right, India’s almost eleven hours ahead of us. Jet lag’ll be a bitch,” he chuckled. “I’ve got a reservation at the Maurya Hotel, something like our Hyatt here in D. C. so it should be pretty nice.” Bill nodded with the phone to his ear, “Yeah, I’ll call when I get there after I check in. You too, buddy. Later.” He disconnected and looked up at Renee.
“How are you, baby?” he said smiling at her. “Sweetie, I don’t want us to be mad at each other before I leave for India.”
“I can see you’re busy and you don’t have much time left. I don’t want to be mad either, Darling. Why didn’t you open all your mail?” she said and pointed directly at the manila envelope.
“Oh, that’s all junk. One of ‘em had a strong perfume smell so that was probably a free sample of some cologne I don’t need,” he said. “I’m sure the rest of it’s from charities and solicitors begging for donations. I’ve got too many important things to take care of right now. I can’t waste time wading through that pile of junk mail.” Renee didn’t try to hide the disappointment on her face, but he seemed not to notice anyway.
She decided now was not the time to bring up her therapy session with Helen and what she remembered from her past. She’d wait until he came back from India when she had his full attention.
“I meant to ask you earlier, but I haven’t been able to catch up with you for five minutes,” said Renee.
“Ask me what?” he said, stuffing papers into a briefcase.
“My secretary is studying for her MCSE certification to become a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. I’m sure you know what that is even if I don’t. Anyway, she wanted me to ask you if it was okay to practice setting up a network and connecting our two PC’s.”
“I guess so,” he said in a distracted manner as he responded to email while she spoke, “She’ll need to know my administrator’s id and password to do that.”
Bill wrote his id and password on a post-it note and handed it to Renee.
“I keep my system backed up regularly so I can easily restore if she screws it up.”
“Thank you, dear. She won’t mess up. Brenda’s amazingly savvy with computers, just like you,” said Renee, trying a little flattery on him.
“Hum, maybe I should recruit her into my boot camp,” he smiled and came from behind the desk to embrace her. “Now, give me a good-bye kiss so I know I’m out of the doghouse.”
“I wish you didn’t have to go. There’s so much I need to tell you.”