Life Without You

Chapter Five

“Ooh, can I go, too?” My sister was surprisingly excited over the thought of underwear shopping—especially for a pregnant woman. Maybe she was thinking ahead and looking forward to being able to see her toes…and other parts of herself when she looked down again. Or perhaps there was some kind of Panty Fever sweeping Pensacola and the rest of the Florida panhandle that I didn’t know about; but the last time I checked, we were hardly the lingerie capital of the world. People here were generally more focused on fishing lures and tackle boxes than fishnet stockings and bustiers.

“When are you going?” Charlie asked, breaking into my thoughts.

“Seriously? You want to go underwear shopping with me?”

“It’s not just underwear shopping, Dellie, remember? It’s part of your bucket list,” she said, reminding me of my new project. I’d told her about it in a text, and now I was wondering if maybe that had been a mistake. “We have to find you something really pretty. The sparklier, the better. No Granny Panties for you,” she declared.

“Why does it matter what they look like? No one’s going to see them, anyway,” I replied, feeling myself waver a bit.

“It matters because you see them,” Charlie said.

“So?”

“So that still matters. No one else sees them, true. But you’ll know they’re there. Think of them like a superhero cape.”

“Since when did I become Wonder Woman?” I snorted.

“Who says you can’t be?”

“What do your panties look like?” I asked, my curiosity suddenly piqued.

Charlie sighed wistfully from her end of the line.

“You don’t want to know,” she moaned. “I miss pretty panties. And pretty bras. I’d kill for a new bra.”

“Really?”

“Are you kidding? I haven’t had a new bra since the last time I was pregnant, and now I’m in this nursing bra that’s barely holding its own. I’ve got saggy boobies, so nothing looks like it fits right.”

I shook my head. “Charlie, you’re crazy,” I said. “I just don’t see it. You’ve got three kids and you look more put-together than I do. And I don’t even have the saggy booby thing going on. I’ve got the no booby thing, remember?”

“Believe it. This is the same nursing bra I used on the last go round, so it’s looking pretty sad.”

I smiled. “Well, your underwear might be sad, but I seriously doubt that Mike is,” I said wickedly.

“O-delle!” she scolded, sounding slightly scandalized. I could almost hear the blush in her voice. But there was also the slightest tinge of delight.

“It’s true, and you know it, Charlotte. Don’t try to be all sweet and innocent preacher’s wife with me.” I laughed. “I know better than that. I don’t care what the sorry state of your underwear might be, Mike can’t keep his hands off you. And why not? He’s a man of God, and you and I both know that God is a huge fan of sex. Remember that sermon Mike preached on Song of Solomon? Some racy stuff right there,” I sniggered oh-so-maturely. It seemed so easy to be silly when we were talking about something else other than me. “Plus, I happen to know for a fact that eighty percent of the women in your congregation would trade places with you in a heartbeat, and the other twenty percent are playing for the other team and just haven’t ’fessed up to it yet.”

“Stop it! You’re being terrible!” she managed through giggles.

“Mommy, is Daddy tickling you?” I heard from somewhere on the other end.

“Oh, is that what they’re calling it now?” I snickered.

“No, sweetie, Mama’s just talking on the phone with Aunt Dellie, and she told Mama a joke,” she called through the laughter.

“Aunt Dellie! Hi, Aunt Dellie! When can you come play?” I heard my niece screech in excitement.

“Yes, Aunt Dellie, when can you come play?” Charlie echoed.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I said. “Don’t bring your sweet little angels into this to throw me off topic,” I commanded.

“Never,” my sister agreed.

“I mean it, Charlie. You’re like the Proverbs 31 woman and Heidi Klum all in one. I think half the women on the planet hate you just on principle.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You do occasionally look in the mirror, right?”

“Only when I have to,” she sighed.

“No pity here, babe. Nu-uh. If I didn’t love you so much, I’d hate you. But you’re far too awesome for that. And that husband of yours is definitely not hard to look at.” I paused, feeling a little ding in my head go off. “Ooh, there’s gotta be an article there. ‘Below the Bible Belt: Hot Southern Preachers and the Women Who Stoke the Fires of their Pulpits.’” I tittered.

“Shame on you! Does Mama know you talk like that?”

“Where do you think I get it? You can add us both to your prayer list,” I teased. “Or tell that church gossip of yours MayBeth Andrews. She’ll have an email chain out faster than you can blink.”

“Now, now,” Charlie tsked. “MayBeth means well.”

“Of course she does, bless her heart,” I said sarcastically, invoking the phrase Miss MayBeth loved to insert into every possible moment of conversation. Now there was a drinking game in the making—MayBeth said, “Bless her heart!” Everybody drink!

“She does. I think it’s just misplaced good intentions. You know how her mother is, and that’s where I think she gets it. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as they say.”

“Uh-huh. Well, maybe MayBeth could use some new panties of her own,” I grumbled.

“Bless her heart,” Charlie said, dissolving into laughter.

The panties exploding in a riot of color from their various drawers at the lingerie store were nothing if not a bold statement in celebration of the right to decorate your derriere. And various other lady bits, of course. And since I hadn’t been to the lingerie store for more than a year, I felt a bit like a little kid in a candy store as I rifled through the multitudinous styles and fabrics that came in my size.

Throngs of thongs and billions of bikinis, heaps of hipsters… It made the eyes cross. If I was going to be honest, I wanted them all. I wanted to gorge myself on them and not have to choose. I wanted to lay claim to every pair that even hinted at impracticality and march my soon-to-be-spectacular butt up to the black-clad ladies behind the cashier’s counter and plunk down my pile of goodies.

Not so much for the panties themselves, but for what they represented. All through my mess of a marriage, my cache of fun, flirty panties had gone either unappreciated or scoffed at—a reaction that I had definitely not expected. Naive perhaps, but I had thought that the man I married would take one look at my lovely little lacies and light up with glee. Instead, I got raised eyebrows or shrugs, followed by a dismissive, “They’re a pointless waste of money.”

So I had done the logical thing, the economic thing.

The defeated thing.

I had taken stock of all of my brand-spanking-new-with tags but un-returnable pretties and posted them for sale on Craigslist and eBay, netting me far less money than they were worth, perhaps; but soothing my sense of having made an unnecessary and extremely unwise splurge on something so silly as panties.

Which, consequently, now left me with a huge hole in my underwear drawer—not only number-wise, but in regards to variety and style. Everything was either black, white, or nude. And now, after so many wears, all of it had seen far better days. Hence my mother’s concern at the TSA agents catching a glimpse of the sad state of affairs if they so happened to rifle my drawers. Not to mention Charlie’s support of my bucket list and her insistence that I make a concerted effort to replace the contents of my lingerie drawer with something a little more racy.

We were all, in a way, trying to resuscitate me, one pair of panties at a time.

One bucket-listed goal at a time.

“These are perfect, Dellie!” Charlie squealed, gleefully holding up a pair of extremely pink, extremely sparkly pair of bikinis that were covered in sequins.

They were loud.

They were proud.

They were the most impractical, most sparkly pair of panties I had ever seen.

And they were going to be mine.

“Oooh, Charlie,” I breathed, taking the substantially sequined slip of fabric in my hands, stroking the sparkles reverently. “They’re beautiful.”

“And you’re going to get them, even if I have to drag you to the register by your hair,” she insisted.

“They’re so pretty,” I said again, still not raising my voice above a whisper.

“And you’re getting them,” she repeated. “Right?”

I flicked the price tag. “Good God, they’re expensive. I can’t get these, Charlie. It’s ridiculous. They’re so far from practical it’s insane,” I said, feeling my desire for the panties and my resolve at working on my project slipping under the surface of my budget consciousness.

Charlie narrowed her blue eyes at me. “Odelle Pearl,” she said, her previously radiant glow of triumph now replaced by a glower. “Do they cover your ass?”

“You said ass,” I squeaked, eyeing my eighteen-month-old nephew as he peeked out from the baby backpack currently strapped to her back.

“Zeke’s not going to rat us out, so stop trying to distract me while you come up with excuses about why you really shouldn’t get them. You. Are. Getting. Them,” she growled.

“But they’re…they’re…” I stammered.

“They cover everything that needs to be covered, Dellie. They just do it in a spectacularly sparkly way, which makes them absolutely, insanely perfect. And therefore, they are necessary.”

I looked down at the panties in my hand. They were so pretty. I could imagine myself wearing them. Feeling pretty, feeling strong. Feeling special and confident, even though no one would know I was wearing them.

They more than simply panties. They were a symbol of freedom. A symbol of hope.

And therefore, just as my sister had so wisely declared—necessary.

Those last days flew by as I finished packing, still trying to kick myself into the proper headspace for this whole adventure.

That was how I was trying oh-so-determinedly to think of it.

An adventure. A search to find a new me…or even to reconnect with the self I had let myself lose. Once upon a time, people had told me I sparkled, and I wanted more than anything to be that girl—or rather, that woman—again. I wanted to be inspiring to people, to leave them basking in the afterimage brightness of my glow. I wanted to approach life with abandon and optimism, rather than fear.

As I strapped myself into my seat on my US Airways flight, a small smile crept across my lips. I may have been dressed in a pair of plain-Jane jeans that needed replacing and a well-cut but unremarkable white button-down, but underneath it all, there was a pair of panties with enough shine to guide a plane back to the runway.

Remember who you are, Dellie, I thought, settling in as the flight attendant instructed us on the finer points of surviving a crash landing. Remember who you are and let people see you sparkle.

Chapter Six

There had always been a can of White Rain hairspray in the cabinet, the kind with the shiny green cap and green writing on its silver surface. I remembered the smell of Noxzema, the mentholated white cream in the blue plastic jar, before they went all designer and started making everything from lotions to blackhead-zapping treatments and exfoliating scrubs. Back then, you had one choice: the no-nonsense blue jar with a screw-on lid. No pumps, no frills. Just that unmistakable blue jar. I would look for that jar on every visit, making sure that it was still there in the center cabinet of her tri-paneled medicine cabinet. Some part of me was always looking for reassurance that nothing had changed within the safe little realm of my grandparents’ home. That while we were getting older and everything else was different, there were certain things that were still sacred. So there, in Grammie’s mirrored medicine cabinet, was a thick balm of reassurance. It gave me endless pleasure to unscrew the lid and breathe in its familiar scent, a scent I smelled nowhere else but at my grandmother’s house, the scent of maturity and skin that was being pampered by a deeper clean than my own little face was used to getting. The smell of being a Big Girl, all grown up.

Depending on the time of day, there might be a set of partials soaking in a glass by the sink, the bright pink of artificial gums looking almost lurid as they waited for their next wearing. Multiple tubes of lipstick were always scattered in various locations—some on the faux marble counter to the left-hand side of the sink; some in the little medicine cabinet, on the shelves next to the Gold Bond powder. Again, those were the simpler days, before they branched out and explored all kinds of different formulations of their stock product. Gold Bond was Gold Bond, and it came in a harvest gold plastic canister with a red sifter top.

But back to the lipsticks. They were all invariably Revlon or Cover Girl or Avon, but all of them bore close resemblance to one another in shade—a mauvy rose shade that seemed to get pinker and pinker as time wore on and she got older. Grammie wore Cover Girl blush and pressed powder—another one of those smells that, for some reason, made a heady, heavy imprint on my brain. Lever 2000 or Tone were her soaps of choice, resting in the soap dish tile above the sink, settling with authority into a little suction-cupped soap-saver mat. Sometimes she had Pert Plus shampoo on the ledge of the fiberglass tub-and-shower combo, sometimes it was Pantene. And more often than not, there were foil packets of Alberto VO5 Hot Oil Treatment somewhere in that medicine cabinet, buried amidst all the other clutter along the white plastic shelves of its interior.

These were some of the sights and smells of Grammie’s bathroom, that special lair of lady-dom where us girls prepared every morning for the day and every evening for bed. This was the one with a high, handicapped toilet rather than the standard bowl, where you could peek out the shoulder-height window to see who was on the deck, who might be ringing the bell at the back door or was thomping away after letting the old screen door slam shut behind them. These were the sights and smells that were decidedly absent for me, as I stood staring and studying from the doorway. They made me feel her loss even more acutely, those personal little things that were no longer there.

Would the shock have been less if they’d still been there, unused and collecting the dust of time and neglect? I shook my head and tried to blink back the tears that I felt burning my eyes, my nose, my throat. She wasn’t coming back. I would never get to bury my head in the warm pillowy softness of her frame. She had always disparagingly called herself fat—but she wasn’t fat. She was Grammie, and grammies were supposed to be warm and powdery and soft. She was fluffy. She represented the safety of innocence and youth and fun summers of being carefree.

I looked around at the hollowness of the bathroom.

What was this place going to be like, now that she was no longer here?

I sighed, and it seemed to echo in the small room. I would have almost a month to find out.

Today was day one of my trip.

Today was day one of the Break from Routine listing on my bucket list.

Today was the beginning of my goal to Reconnect With Family, people like my grandfather, as well as the cousins and uncles and aunts who were part of the thread of my extended family—people I’d lost touch with somewhere along the way as my world shrank to be smaller and smaller.

Today was Day One, and I had a lot of work to do.

“Hey, Dellie,” Grandpa said half an hour later, looking up from the paper. He was ensconced in his recliner in the den, his pale bare feet propped up on the footrest, the lamp next to him casting a dim glow of light in the brown-ness of the den.

It was, undeniably, a very brown room. Brown plush carpeting, brown paneling on the walls, brown furniture. Brown, brown, brown. But it had always been that way, in various shades of the same hue, different forms and fabrics coming and going through the years, but always brown. It was a fact that was immutable, and one that comforted me beyond words.

“Hi,” I said, smiling at the familiar sight of him there, in that chair, paper in hand. “What are you watching?”

“The news for now. It should be over in a few minutes, though. Was there something you wanted to watch?” he asked, peering at me from behind the lenses of his glasses.

I shook my head silently, casting a quick glance at the television screen as I shuffled toward the blue recliner that bore pride of place in the room, on the other side of the coffee table from his own chair. It was Grammie’s chair. The more comfy chair, the one that all of us grandchildren made a beeline for. The one that held her scent and bore her imprint.

“This is WAVY TV 10,” said a voice as the newscasters reappeared on the screen.

“No. Nothing I want to watch. Just came to see what you were doing and if you wanted some company,” I murmured.

“I always want your company,” he boomed back at me with a smile. “You’s my gal.”

It was a familiar phrase from him, a simple string of words that I couldn’t hear enough. And now, they seemed to mean even more.

“Good.” My smile back wavered as I noticed how the walls almost echoed with absence.

“So, big things going on in the world?” I asked. Not that I really cared all that much what the news anchors were droning on about, but it seemed an appropriate thing to say at the moment.

“Government’s still the government,” he grumbled good-naturedly. “The race was good, though. My driver won.” His grin widened.

“Yay.”

“Too bad I’m not a betting man; I might have made some money,” he said.

I arched an eyebrow and smiled. “Right, but betting would’ve sucked all the fun out of it for you. I’m glad you’re not the betting type.”

“Why’s that?” he asked.

I shrugged. Something about the idea of my grandfather placing a bet, even if it was just among some of his friends, seemed vaguely unsettling. It seemed dishonest, somehow, and out of character for him. I would’ve had to readjust who I knew him to be. Hardworking, salt-of-the-earth, outspoken.

“Well, no worries. Betting’s for idiots,” he said simply.

“And you’re no idiot,” I returned, keeping my face as sober as possible, even though I felt a smile creeping its way in. Some things never changed, and those were things that were reassuring beyond expression.

“Nope. I’ll tell you who is, though,” he said, the wrinkles of his wizened face shifting as his expression became one of wide-eyed incredulity. “Walt. Old fart,” he panned, not even waiting for me to guess.

I felt my eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Walt bet on the race?” I squeaked.

“Not on this race, maybe,” Grandpa said, shaking his head as he spoke. “He and Harry have started betting on them, though; and last week those two fools lost their shirts in a bet they had going with two of the boys down at the church.”

“Say what?” I knew I sounded stupefied, but truth be told, I was. There was really no other word for it.

Especially knowing Walt. And Harry. The two brothers had been in my grandparents’ circle of friends for more than fifty years, so I had no memories of a summer passing without them in it. In fact, for as long as I could remember, I’d always called them Uncle Walt and Uncle Harry. I’d gone through much of my childhood thinking they must have been blood relatives.

Silly, perhaps, since the two men were light-skinned African-Americans, but with a family tree as odd as mine, you never knew exactly where one branch might lead. And Lord, if there weren’t things buried deep in family histories that no one ever talked about. They just were. And, as inconceivable as they might have actually been, some things were just glossed over.

Like mom’s cousin Jean, who was three months “premature.” ’Cause goodness knows, her mama walked down that aisle a virgin, pure as the driven snow. It didn’t matter that Jean weighed a healthy eight pounds when she was born. Nope. That cute little butterball of blondness was born three months early.

Also a subject never raised at the dinner table was the fact that Great Uncle Billy was looking mighty chipper in the months before he died. No one ever talked about that one, no ma’am. His buxom twenty-five-year-old home healthcare worker wasn’t responsible for that in any way. It didn’t matter that no one had ever heard of the company she worked for, and that Uncle Billy’s buddies had knocked on his door one day with her in tow—looking mighty professional in thigh-high hooker boots and a skintight nurse’s uniform. The minute the bubble she’d just blown into her bright pink Bubble Yum bubblegum popped and Billy could see the face that went along with the bosoms, she was hired. She was his angel from heaven, bless her heart. She ministered to him in his last days and eased his passing.

Uh-huh.

And now, she was mourning his loss just like the rest of us. Only she was doing it from somewhere on a beach in St. Thomas.

But I digress.

“Since when do Harry and Walt bet on races? Or anything?” I demanded.

Grandpa shook his head, obviously aggrieved. “Since Evelyn died and took Walt’s sense with her. Now he and Harry are running around acting like idiots. Doing things neither one of ’em would’ve done when she was alive. Jackasses,” he spat.

“Grandpa!”

He shot me a look. “What? It’s true.”

“Still.” I paused, studying the ceiling. “Is there something to worry about with those two?” I asked quietly.

I saw him shaking his head out of the corner of my eye. “Worry? No. They’ll come to their senses after they lose enough times.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“She’s only been gone for a few months,” Grandpa said. “They’ll come to their senses,” he said again, a little more quietly this time.

“Don’t we all,” I whispered, not taking my eyes from the ceiling. “Don’t we all.”

I woke up drooling thirty minutes later, startled by a warm hand on my cheek. Grandpa’s hand, gnarled with age and peppered with liver spots. A Band-Aid was wrapped around the knuckle of his left index finger, covering a cut he’d gotten earlier in the week while he was replacing some rotting wood on the deck outside. The man was never idle, never really still. Even when he was outwardly still, there was the underlying hum of some pent-up energy just waiting to be released. It was an inherent part of him, and I wouldn’t have recognized him without it. No one would have.

I smiled sleepily at him. “Oops. I guess I was drooling, huh?” I sat up, uncurling my legs from where they’d been tucked up under me in the recliner. My eyebrows knotted together. “Please tell me I wasn’t snoring. Or talking in my sleep. I was, wasn’t I? I do that sometimes, I’m sorry,” I babbled.

“No, no. No snoring.” He smiled. “Or talking. Don’t worry.” He stopped and looked up at the clock on the mantel. The room had gotten darker without the glow of the TV, which now sat black and hulking from its corner perch on the entertainment center. “It’s just late, and I think we both might be ready for bed now, huh?”

I nodded, stretching as I rose from the chair.

“Bed. Good idea,” I agreed. “Very good idea. Good night, Grandpa.” I leaned forward on my toes to kiss him on the lips.

“Good night, Dellie,” he said, returning my kiss. He pulled me in for a hug, wrapping his warm, strong arms around me. It felt good, safe—familiar. And I breathed in the scent of him—an indefinable mix of soap from his shower earlier that evening and Grandpa.

“I love you,” I mumbled into his neck.

“I love you, too, Dellie. And I’m glad you’re here.”

I moved my head from the crook between his neck and shoulder to look into his eyes as they glittered in the darkened room. “Me, too,” I said on a whisper. A smile wavered across my lips, unsettled by feelings of fear that were encroaching, but I held on. “Very glad.”

And I was. Glad to be there. Glad to be looking into the eyes of my grandfather, hoping that he would still be there to smile back at me for many years to come.