If I Should Die Tonight

CHAPTER ONE

Randy

New York, Monday, September 10, 2001, 5:55 a.m.

Hey up lady, is it too early to call?

When is it ever too early for you to call? Randy placed the phone in the crook of her neck and headed to the kitchen. What’s up Amelie? she asked pausing before her armoire.

You’ll never guess who I just got off the phone with.

Randy shifted the phone to her other ear. Let me see now…mmmm…at this time of the morning, the ghost of Schumann past?

Close, but no.

Okay. That’s all I’ve got. No twenty guesses today. Not in the mood.

Mummy.

Sod off. You’re bloody kidding, right?

I’m not.

What did she want?

She’s passing through New York in two weeks.

Good for her. She calls to tell you this, Randy looked at her watch, at five minutes to six? Does that woman ever sleep?

Isn’t she’s the reason we’re early risers? Amelie reminded her sister.

Yep, another reason to keep our distance but still isn’t it way too early for this conversation, Randy reached inside the linen chest. The towels felt like she imagined cumulus clouds did, warm, soft and fluffy. Throwing the towel over her shoulder, she went to the small kitchen off her bedroom, pulled open the refrigerator and dropped three cubes of ice into a glass. Pressing against a paneled wall she pulled out a bottle of Ketel One. Uh-uh, Randy said, in response to Amelie’s continuous prattle. More than anything right now, she wanted to get off the phone and get on with her morning routine. For this conversation, she needed more than vodka.

Can you at least try to make time to have dinner?

Randy inhaled, dropping her shoulders as an sigh left her lips. Why would I do that?

Just give it a try, Amelie encouraged.

It’ll only end up as usual.

Please, Amelie begged.

You really can’t be serious. Mother and I haven’t spoken in years! Why all of a sudden she wants to mend fences and start all over again? Amelie, as you well know I’m in no state to fight with Mother. Plus, there is absolutely nothing I want to say to that woman now or in the future. Randy poured vodka over ice and added a splash of tonic water. Passing the full-length mirror on the way to the bathroom, she gave herself a once over. She needed to stop drinking. Been telling herself the same thing since she took her first drink at the age of thirteen. From that first sip of the Black Label Scotch she’d found hidden at the back of her mother’s closet, she knew they’d become good friends.

Randy…

Amelie, Randy interrupted her sister, You and Ashley have dinner with Mom. Tell her I’ll be out of town. She couldn’t possibly miss me after all this time and let’s face it, two out of three ain’t bad, she grinned at her clever Meatloaf reference from his song of the same name. He was one of her favorite singers.

It’s you who she wants to see. Give her a chance.

To do what? To tell me how self-indulgent I am? What a bad mother I am? For Christ, sakes talk about the pot calling the bloody kettle black! Or maybe I should give her another chance to remind me how good a life I have in spite of everything? I’ll pass.

Just think about it, Amelie pleaded.

Yep. I will. I sure will. Bye. Randy dropped the phone onto the counter. Just the thought of her mother made her want to get drunk. Randy had vowed never to set eyes on her mother ever again after their last big blow up five years before. And nothing, nothing in this bloody life would make her change her mind.

• • •

Throughout the years, Randy’s choice of drink changed to fit her upper-crust lifestyle. (The fancier her lifestyle got the fancier her drinks got. She’d graduated from Black Label Scotch to the vodka and cocktails that now ruled her life.) But, she was no common drunk. She was an Eastside drunk; Chic, edgy, controlled women whose lives centered around lunches and cocktails, dinners and cocktails, charity events and cocktails, and then the necessary bedtime cocktail that helped them moan convincingly under husbands who offered nothing but money.

Sweeping her gaze downward she ignored the years of alcohol abuse etched on her face; the dark circles under her eyes, the cheeks that were a little too sunken, and the paunch sticking out from her otherwise svelte five-feet-eight frame. Her betrayers were easily camouflaged by make-up and custom clothes. What wasn’t so easy to ignore this morning, however, was the slight tremor of her hands. How did her life get this twisted and unhappy? Randy hadn’t known when Lawrence brought her as his new bride to the high-rise building with rubbish piled out front and more chains on the door than a linked-fence, that theirs was a life to be coveted. She’d felt imprisoned. It hadn’t taken long to find out that living at 70th and Park raised eyebrows and opened doors and checkbooks. It was considered the gold coast of New York. Still, the vapid group she hung around was tiring at best. Today she was every bit of an East Side woman living the life her mother thought was beyond compare. Randy sucked air through her teeth as she placed her glass on the ledge of the inlaid tub. Plugging the tub, she spun the taps on. Emptying a sachet of bath salts, she watched as crystals seeped orange pigment into the clear water and when the water began rising, she squeezed in a generous amount of bubble bath. Orange foam popped and wiggled.

In deft movements, Randy twisted her hair atop her head, shed her robe and skivvies, tilted the television to the perfect angle, and climbed into the deep whirlpool tub where turbo jets bubbled the perfumed water. Sinking inch by inch, she could feel the heat evaporating leftover alcohol from her pores. Settling in, she picked up the remote and began scanning channels on the overhead T.V. Her edges were raw, to begin with, and the discussion about her mother’s visit had made it worse.

Randy flicked the remote control to find a mindless, (which wasn’t hard to do) television show to watch as she contemplated yet another day in her hell of a life. Commercials! Randy poured vodka. Oh hell, she groaned as the Cialis commercial started right after the Cymbalta one ended. This damn nation was becoming a bunch of hypochondriacs! ‘Yumm,’ she closed her eyes. Nothing tasted better than the first sip of a morning ‘cocktail.’ It was, as usual, the beginning of her escape to her fantasyland where double rainbows promised a new beginning. She had written those words in 1969 and they were still very much her rock even today. They had seen her through some pretty challenging times. Her escape to wonderland was the promise for the crummy cards she’d drawn in this life. Randy suppressed a smile, lifted her glass in a cheer and said, To me.

She was about to hit the TV’s off button when the Big O, who was handing out copious amounts of tissues to the man in front of her, loomed on the screen. It had to be some kind of special because the time slot for the Oprah Show was all wrong.

I didn’t know. I still don’t know. We were just playing house and…

How can a grown man play house with a child?

Randy bolted upright and turned up the volume. Emotionally taxing subjects were usually off limits for her fragile mind but she was riveted and without warning, down, down, down she went falling head first into a memory she’d buried under years of denial.

• • •

Leicester, East Midlands, England 1969

"There’s a brown girl in the ring, tra la," they all sang, everyone reluctantly, except Randy whose robust voice was loud and committed.

"I’m done playing this stupid game, Randy interrupted mid-song annoyed at the lackluster efforts her sisters, Ashley and Amelie, were making to participate in her Heritage Program. As a part of the only black family in Leicester, though it had a rapidly growingly South Asian population, Randy had taken it upon herself to indoctrinate her sisters in Jamaican culture in the form of childhood rhymes she held onto for dear life. Of all the childhood ditties, I’ve Come to see Janie, Carry Mi Ackee Go a Linstead Market, Clap Hands till Mama Comes Home, Brown Girl in the Ring" was her favorite and she believed it would build cultural confidence in her sisters as it had in her. Now even the songs were of no more interest to her sisters. She supposed, just as Jamaica had grown distant to her with each passing year in England, so had the little songs Sadie, her nanny back in Jamaica had taught her…all was fading.

"C’mon. Let’s at least get to the ‘show me your motion’ part," Ashley said.

"Nope. Not me. Not another second."

"You’ve something better to do?" Ashley asked.

"Maybe, maybe not. But, from this day forward I’m through with childish games. No more trying to remind you where we come from. You are both very ungrateful and I don’t need this anymore. As far as I’m concerned you can become as British as the Queen. You can, in fact, become Ladies of the East Midlands!" Randy folded her arms across her budding breasts.

At thirteen, on the cusp of being neither woman nor child, the daily routine of playing with her sisters bored her more than it did them. But it was better than hanging out at the Leicester Neighborhood Park or at the pool where kids were forever trying to touch their curly hair, something, which at best was, tedious.

"That’s not fair," Ashley yelled looking to her sister Amelie for support. Amelie shrugged her shoulders wishing she was home playing the piano. Unfortunately, their Grandpa had accompanied Aunt Clarissa to some function or the other and since they couldn’t be home without adult supervision they had to remain at the park or the pool where there were always adults, until someone picked them up.

"Let’s push on over to the pool then," Ashley said, stirring Randy from revere.

"I’m not doing that either. I can’t be around noisy kids today. Don’t you get it? Randy snapped. Tell Mummy I went to my room to read."

"I’ll come home with you and play the piano," Amelie said, perking up. She too disliked these nonsense games. All the culture she needed was listening to her grandpa’s piano.

For sisters, none of them were alike in spirit or looks. Each as unique as a snowflake unto itself they were the best of friends, and each other’s safe haven.

"How am I to read with you banging on that noise box? Randy was losing her patience. I want to be alone," she said dramatically.

"It’s an instrument, Amelie corrected. A beautiful instrument."

"You have no choice but to come to the pool, Ashley insisted. We can stop for ice-cream. Plus, Grandpa isn’t home so who wants to be alone with crazy old Uncle Joe?"

"Uncle Joe isn’t crazy. He’s just not right upstairs, Randy said tapping her hand to her forehead. I’ll be fine." Apart from Grandpa, Randy was the only one who bothered to notice Uncle Joe. He was slow. Not right in the head as her mother often said. Randy would sit with him and with the utmost patience explain simple things to him. She’d even let him brush her hair, a task he never seems to tire of.

"You know how Mother feels. She doesn’t want us alone with Uncle Joe. He can’t look after us."

"If Mother cared that much about us, she’d have taken us along with her or stayed home, Randy snapped. Anyway, go on now, Ashley and, Randy warned her sister, make sure you keep close to Amelie. If anything happens to her, Mummy will kill you,"

"But we’re all grown up, Amelie, all of seven said proudly. We can take care of ourselves."

"Oh, stop jabbering and run along to the pool, will you," Randy said shooing her sisters. None of them wanted to admit that Amelie was their Mother’s and Grandpa’s favorite. She was a gentle spirit who felt no need to fight except for her Grandpa’s lap and the old piano he introduced her to before she could say a single word.

• • •

It was summer and the sense of freedom, solitude, and adolescence was intoxicating. Like any other teenager, Randy simply wanted to sit in her room and read a good book or listen to the music of her new obsession, Rod Stewart. She wasn’t into boys yet like some of her friends; she preferred books.

"I’ll tell Mummy you had a headache," Amelie offered.

"Brilliant! Good girl, Randy patted her sister’s head. Hurry on now to the pool and don’t forget your lifejacket."

Randy walked the short distance home. Their house was a typical Victorian terrace on Morton Street which was always teeming with activity. Randy greeted neighbors and friends all the way to her front door. As usual, the door was open so she dropped her books on the sofa, darted to the bathroom to wash her hands and then to the kitchen to quell her hunger. Randy opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a plate of cold chicken. She sliced the hard dough bread (the one thing Jamaican her mother could never give up) and peeled a ripe avocado which she sliced into half-moons onto the bread. Carving into the leg of chicken she layered her sandwich and chewed on the chicken bone (though she had no talent for pulverizing it into calcium the way her mother did). She, who had learned from Aunt Clarissa to be the perfect hostess, was in her element acting like a grown up. She set the table with a floral mat and napkin and settled herself with her sandwich and a cup of tea.

For some unknown reason, her first home in Jamaica came floating into her thoughts. How different it was from their little house in the middle of England. The massive estate was dotted with Austin Rose hedges. Mangoes, tamarind, star-apple, cashew trees and a rambling old almond tree, all majestic and fruitful, laid claim to acres of land. She didn’t remember as much about Jamaica as she used to, often having to close her eyes to hear the sounds and remember the smells she’d cherished as a child; the whistle of the peanut cart, the tinkle of the milkman’s bell or the shaving sound of ice from the snow cone man, the distinctive smell of ripe June plums and naseberries. The one thing she did remember only too well was her fear of tropical lizards that crawled along her bedroom wall, always glad that she was under a mosquito net. But, most of all, she missed her father’s lunchtime visits and the Bustamante toffees he’d bring her and Ashley as treats. She hadn’t realized then that her father was English. She thought his accent was simply his until she came to England and everyone sounded like him. Time had faded some of the pain she’d felt about the loss of her father and today, at thirteen, she felt all grown up and ready to put childish things behind her…including any more questions about her Dad.

Heading to her room after her afternoon snack, Randy stripped off her clothes and readied herself for a long, luxurious bath. It was probably foolish to eat and then bathe but she wasn’t worried about indigestion like old folks. Before getting into the tub, she scanned the bookshelf for a good read, deciding on ‘The Good Earth.’ She’d read it countless times but she simply loved the book. As she leaned over to pull it out, she was aware that her young body had entered a new phase of development. Her breasts were the first to reach the bookcase. The once little nubs on her chest seemed to have sprung up overnight and still, too shy to look at them she plunged into the tub feeling particularly liberated about her decision to stay home. There’s a brown girl in the ring, tra la let me show you mi motion, tra la, Randy began singing in a beautiful falsetto voice, her Jamaican accent no longer as distinguishable as Sadie’s.

Cigarette smoke! Randy jumped from the tub and was about to wrap a towel around her when in the mirror, her eyes met a pair staring at her through a veil of cigarette smoke.

"Uncle Joseph! What are you doing? Randy screamed at him. Can’t you see I’m naked? Get out of here now! Remember what Mummy says, you have to knock on a closed door.

"I just wanted to see you, her uncle said coming into the bathroom and closing the door. Randy backed away covering her nakedness with the towel. Mother will be quite mad when I tell her about this. Get out right now! Randy tried to sound stern. When I’m out we’ll go to the park and sing our songs."

Uncle Joseph, though dimwitted, was her favorite uncle. He would never hurt her. Yet looking into his eyes, she could see that he was wrestling with something deep and dark and talk as she did, he seemed given over to another matter entirely.

"You’re such a big girl now, he said, backing her into a corner. I want to brush your hair…big girls need things right Randy." His smile disappeared and his expression hardened.

• • •

The voice came through the fog. Fog. Yep. That’s the way she’d been living for twenty-seven years…in a fog and inside her pain. His steps were getting closer. Randy emptied her drink into the whirlpool and hurriedly sunk the glass into the sudsy water, holding it firm beneath her thigh. Such a waste, she flipped the tap and gulped a mouthful of water, switched off the T.V., sprayed a little more Penhaligon’s air freshener and waited. She was a pro at concealment. Vodka, her preferred drink, was colorless, odorless and easy on the taste buds yet it delivered the punch she needed to face each day.

Randy, Randy, RANDY, the voice was closer.

In here," she gargled exhaling into her hand; no smell. She’d never, ever smell like a drunk the way her mother used to when braiding her hair for school.

The double glass doors of her bedroom, now frosted with steam flung open and her husband, framed in the diffuse lighting and looking natty in his custom jacket stood fuming. He was tall, well-built and impeccable. Though his face had elements of fine features, the perfect flair to his nose, he was not a handsome man. But he was successful and offered stability, purpose and he was in love with Randy, the three things her mother Emily, who desperately wanted to marry her off at age twenty-one, was happy with. He was eight years her senior, already established by the time she’d graduated from Vassar and went to work at the Metropolitan where they had met. He’d courted her hard, told her of the jolt to his heart and his instant attraction to her from the moment their eyes met across the room. She remembered no such thing. She’s dated him and then took him home. After Emily conducted her inquisition it was decided that he was to be her husband.

The light framed Lawrence’s body like the angel he was who had saved her soul and mended her wounded heart. If only the walls could talk. Randy smiled at Lawrence. They were as different as North and South. Randy eyes narrowed. She gazed through him, her smile firmly in place. He had no idea of her disillusionment with life. No idea that she daydreamed of life without him and their daughter. Each time Randy thought of June she was riddled with guilt. She loved her daughter the best she could but it was clearly not enough. Even now she was never quite sure she’d recovered from bringing a child into the world. Her guilt was not only about her dead emotions but that they had no idea that with each passing day, a road trip to nowhere was looking better and better to her. Her rainbow was coming into view.

Why don’t you answer me when I call you Randy?

Cause, I didn’t hear you, honey. I’m sorry. She wasn’t sorry at all.

Tell me, Lawrence repeated, why don’t you ever answer me the first time I call you? He knew she’d heard him. It was a game she played to control. He looked around the confounded garden bathroom he hated. There was a time when Lawrence would have done anything to please his wife. When her shenanigans would have earned her a planted kiss on her forehead instead of the impatience he now felt. Over the years their life had dulled and the ache for his unavailable wife had metered. Unlike Lawrence’s dreary tomb with uncapped toothpaste tubes, rows of spicy cologne and used towels strewn on the floor, Randy’s bathroom was a place of respite. Large and airy with Italian armoires stuffed full of colorful Egyptian cotton towels, the room was centered by an inlaid slate, claw foot tub, with candles and scented oils in cornices along its length. A large skylight served as diffused lighting for rows of breathtaking orchids. The prima donnas of the floral world, in a spectacular array of rainbow colors, lifted the sanctuary to a place of spiritual renewal. White Phalaenopsis floated on spindly stems while Dancing Ladies arched and dangled, flaunting their curiously golden, speckled flowers. A rare, delicate, pink Lady Slipper preened and swayed as the central attraction of the bathroom greenhouse. It was a room of fantasy, like stepping into a rainbow. The fragrance of the orchids mixed with Randy’s expensive perfumes was intoxicating. Randy, surrounded by the beauty of the room, found it the only place where her life could pretend to be in bloom.

Maybe if you didn’t shout so much, I could hear you better, Randy said turning on the faucets, first hot and then cold, to warm up her water and create more bubbles. A mystery why she did it that way but it surely reflected the natural rhythms of life. First things are hot and then cold. She, personally, could remember nothing but the cold, dark corners of her fears.

I wouldn’t shout if you answered me, Lawrence gruffed. You do remember that we have a dinner party tonight, right?

Ah Lawrence, is dinner really necessary? Why can’t you take those people out to a pub or something? Randy said mechanically pouring more Penhaligon’s exfoliating body bubbles into the water. Fragrance permeated the room.

What’s wrong with you? Lawrence demanded. Something’s gotten into you lately. Ever since you started hanging around those loony women. And for your information, we have no pubs in America, only bars. Can’t you try to at least be American for once? You’ve been here for twenty-six goddam years!

Now why would anyone want to do that? Because American’s are so enlightened? Randy snapped. He had some nerve calling her friends whacks. Had he never stopped to listen to the idiots he brought to her home? By loony women, Lawrence meant her friends, Sheila and Adrienne, whom he detested because they refused to let him get away with some of the asinine things that fell from his lips.

Anyway, Randy added, dinner parties are out of vogue in America, you know. Everyone dines out these days.

Not in this house. Dinner. Eight o’clock, Lawrence said with finality. I’ll call you with the number of guests.

As you wish, Randy said.

She could hear him bouncing down the stairs like a damn ball. The man never walked like normal people. As soon as he left Randy got out of the tub, wrapped herself in an oversized towel, slammed the door shut and poured more vodka. She filled her glass with the clear liquid to an imaginary mark. Up to that mark, the vodka took the edge off and kept her from the dark edges of memory, anything more and she’d be incoherent. Lately, however, it took more vodka to reach calm.

CHAPTER TWO

Ashley

Philadelphia, September 10, 2001, 5:00 a.m.

Not a freakin’ thing was working in her life, not the Kabbalah classes, or the evil eye bracelet. Not the guided meditations that implored her to find love for every living thing; the trees, the frogs, the dog, the bastards called men, the racist assholes at her job, nor the silly little Eat, Drink and be Happy book the world was going gaga over. Nothing had worked! Until Frederick, she hadn’t been steeped in anger about colour, now like the Americans, she was stuck in hues and pop psychology. Ashley threw the book across the room. She was done with all this shit. Last night was the final straw. She’d gone to some School of Life event with her friend Marcia and while everyone was going Zen on her, she was acutely aware that her behind was lonely and worse, horny. She was a woman of forty-three and she was damn well entitled to be horny.

But poor Marcia, a magnet for the worst kind of men for whom she had born children and who she was forever dragging to court for child support, was still convinced that the red string she wore on her wrist, the white sage she burned all over the house and her om nerenge chants would cure all. Ashley had left her chanting, gone home, eaten ice cream and then curled up in her 800 thread count sheets. The monotony of her life was pushing her stress button.

The morning was proving no better. Sal, Ashley brightened. He was the best lay she’d had in years. Their last encounter, however, was too brutal for her to be the first to call. There is no pleasing you, Sal had shouted as she’d stormed from his presence in a huff. The more Sal gave the less she wanted.

That’s the problem. She’d shouted louder than him. I don’t want to be pleased. Why can’t you accept things the way they are? It’s such a bore for people to push for more than others want to give. Your love is a choking kind…Why? Why? Why? she’d demanded. I have no idea why I stay in these dead relationships.

As far as Ashley was concerned, she had a propensity to draw out relationship deaths like the opera singer in La Traviata who sang her death song for an hour. Die already, Ashley had murmured under her breath at the theater, earning a scolding from Sal. An hour was way too long to die. She had sacked him that very night.

She found herself agitated all over again just thinking about Sal. That idiot had called her every kind of bitch in the dictionary and then some. It seemed relationships were not the only dead-end thing she was dragging out. She was clearly dragging her feet on quitting her meaningless job at WNCB affiliate in Philadelphia. It was five-fifteen a.m. Ashley punched out the number to her psychiatrist instead of Sal’s.

Mitch, I’m having a panic attack.

Jesus Ashley. It’s five-fifteen a.m.!

And? You’re on call, no? And I’m having a panic attack!

Look, until you’re ready to deal with your fears, nothing will change. It’s that trust issue again, Ashley. That’s all. All your issues are with trust no matter how they present, Mitchell, with his sedate voice and candor said.

What kind of poppycock is that? Give me a better answer for once, Mitchell. Trust me, dear, if you grew up in my household with a stark raving mad ass mother or if you were a brilliant woman among backstabbing mediocre men, trust would be an issue for you too. What you are supposed to do, is help me find out how to get it back. Asshole.

I want you to try staying in a relationship for more than two wee… She hadn’t let him finish.

Don’t be a twit, Mitchell. Why the hell do you think I pay you all this money if I didn’t want to learn to trust? Of course, I want to be in a relationship for more than two weeks but am I to ruin my life again over some idiot man? Plus, I’ve watched my mother ruin her life over and over again and, in the process, she screwed up all our lives. I didn’t beg for that you know. No, I can’t be bothered, Mitch.

But Ashley, it was only…?

Ashley slammed down the phone. She knew what he was going to say. The dumb ass…it is always only something! The dial tone left her lonelier but as much as she wanted to, she knew it would be a mistake to call Sal. In the short time they had dated, Sal had never understood her. It lasted for four weeks. She was making progress. She hoped Mitch was not offended by her dumb ass comment. She should really be more sensitive. Grabbing her keys off the hall table Ashley was heading for the door when the phone rang.

What? she barked into the phone expecting Mitchell.

Who are you trying to kill this early in morning, retorted her sister Amelie’s who like her, was up and in place before the preverbal cock crowed. In fact, they were all early risers. It was a habit from having to play their own caretakers when their mother was too drunk to get them ready for school. Good things come from bad situations though because they were close and protective of each other.

My wonky therapist. What’s up?

Mom’s coming into town.

Hell no, not today, I’m busy.

In a couple of weeks on her way back from Corfu.

"Amelie! Why must you always be the bearer of