It’s not possible, not even if you had the help of the entire team from Miami.
With the initial bump of tours already drying up and the feds seizing the property of our local Viagra dealer—while the news cameras rolled, naturally—we haven’t even broken seventy percent yet.
The breaths I inhale don’t reach my lungs, and without warning, everything in the bathroom seems to be in the wrong order.
I rearrange the bottles and tubes on the counter as the static in my head grows louder and louder in volume. I refold the hand towel so it sits nicer on the ring and then eye the damn mascara tube, still in the wrong position.“Urgh.”
I nudge it a centimeter left and bump the bottoms of my makeup containers until they’re perfectly even, but the uneasy knot in my chest continues to insist there’s something disastrously off.
Not just wrong, but unsafe.
No firm is going to hire a person who ran a retirement community into the ground. I’m never going to be someone whose reputation precedes me again—at least not in a good way.
I’ve grown as used to getting stuck as a person can be, my sense of logic constantly at war with my OCD.
Since they won’t line up right anyway, I spend another minute shoving products in my toiletries bag, but my intrusive thoughts are piling up fast, feeding the glitch in my brain that quickly becomes a monster with teeth. Resets are important, as is feeling in control, and that’s typically what I need when this happens.What’s something I can finish fairly quickly?
From the linen closet I grab Clorox wipes, Windex, and paper towels and begin wiping down every surface, nook, and cranny.
That’s where Grandma Helen and Wanda eventually find me, down on all fours, sweat beading my face and melting off the makeup I applied.
Concern flickers through the duo’s features, as if a clean bathroom is cause for alarm, when I find it incredibly soothing.
“Are you ready to go?” Grandma Helen asks, and obviously not, but I suppose we might as well get this evening over and done with.
I turn the handle of the sink to hot and pump an inordinate amount of soap into my palms, getting a thick lather going. I’m both glad and disappointed they interrupted before I could arrange the shelves in the medicine cabinet or deep clean under the sink. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
While it’s true,readycertainly isn’t what I’m feeling when I reverse Wanda’s golf cart out of the driveway ten minutes later. As relieved as I am that she hasn’t plastered her vehicle with loofas that announce her sexual preferences, she’s hung beaded curtains that rattle and create an awful racket as I nudge the accelerator faster. The slick soles of my heels cause my foot to slip against the pedal, but luckily, Arlene doesn’t live far.
A handful of streets later, we walk through her front door, my senses cranked to high as I seek out any context clues that might provide insight into our mystery evening. They’d given me a super vague, “dress nice, but not any of the stuffy, buttoned-up clothes you wear to the office,” and no matter how studiously I observe outfits and hairdos, I’m no closer to figuring out where we’re headed. I pause to study the pictures arranged on the far wall of Arlene’s living room, the wide variety of frames and snapshots creating a timeline of her family and life. My eye catches on a school picture, and I know without having to ask, it’s Noah as a boy. He doesn’t seem like a person who could’ve ever been young, but there he is anyway, freckled cheeks, grinning widely and missing his two front teeth.
I return his smile at least two decades late, tucking away the picture in case I need leverage or blackmail material, although I haven’t seen him around in a while.
Funny how we constantly ran into each other in the beginning to then go a couple of weeks without seeing hide nor hair, save the evidence of the landscaping. Over half the property has been transformed, with new shrubs and flowers popping up right and left, while the overgrown grass gets trimmed, nary a clipping left behind.
“Mia, hon, where are you?” Grandma Helen waves me over to reassure Arlene the print of her blouse isn’t too busy.
The silk camise is an olive green, the gauzy blouse over it a paisley pattern in a mix of blue and the darkest of greens. Stacked gold necklaces with tiny blue beads complete the look, along with the light coral lip and peachy-pink rouge on her cheeks.
“Depends on where we’re going,” I snark under my breath, then loudly launch into how nicely the colors bring out the blue in her eyes. “Still loving the hair, too. It suits that inner sass these ladies are coaxing out.”
The bright pop of color on her lip flashes with her smile, evoking the inner sense of accomplishment I’ve been missing since that Viagra dealer wrecked my progress.
“So?” I ask, dying to know. “How was your date last night?”
Arlene gives us a short recap while grinning and blushing, her hand fluttering up to her chest. “He said I looked radiant,” she says with a little giggle, “and he opened every door for me. We shared a slice of key lime pie, and he wants to see me again next week.”
“Yeah, he does,” I say, as the rest of the women add similar comments, and Arlene’s absolutely glowing.
While I can’t take much credit for Arlene’s transformation—which goes far beyond the exterior—watching her come into her own fills me with the proudest of joys.
We’ve also begun gently correcting one another if anyone slips into negative self-talk, validating feelings and pointing out personality traits of theirs we love and appreciate.
And while I might’ve been the teacher, the students are definitely becoming the masters.
“Fine, I’ll give you a hint,” Grandma Helen says, and I whip my head toward her, desperate for any nugget.
Only for the doorbell to interrupt.
