Life Without You

But I digress.

I stood at my closet in sad—and getting increasingly sadder—contemplation of the contents within. If I was going to start packing for a month away, I needed to face reality and figure out what was actually wearable in there. At first glance, it looked pretty good, but a more thorough investigation revealed a copious number of tops, dresses, and skirts that I wasn’t comfortable with anymore.

Not in my current state, anyway. With my naturally slight build, I’d never had a weight problem; but even my once-slim frame had been greatly reduced by small anxieties that had built up over time and become almost overwhelming. I found relief only when I channeled them all into one focus: food and my ability to control it. True, the weight loss had been unintentional, even subtle at first. But now it was undeniable. Startling, if I was being perfectly honest. My clothes hung limply on me, my light brown hair—the curls once so bouncy—was thin and dry, my once full cheeks left hollow. The only things that seemed not to have changed were my eyes. Those, at least, were still a shade of almost aqua blue that constantly caught people’s attention. This, I thought, seeing my reflection in the mirror mounted on my closet door, this is why I try to hide. This is why… I shook my head against the encroaching feelings of defeat, of anger at myself, of frustration at my own weaknesses. Now was not the time for this. Now was the time to get out of my own way, to pack my bags and try to find a new future.

I shifted my focus back to the numerous articles of clothing hanging so neatly in my closet and shook my head again. This was really getting me nowhere. What I needed—besides a total life makeover—was a wardrobe overhaul, a bigger budget, and some time with my sister. For some reason, staring into my closet was making me miss her like mad. I took a peek at my watch.

Half past noon.

Hmmmm. Probably not the ideal time to call her, since it was likely that she was elbow deep in lunchtime with the kids. After sandwich crumbs and applesauce smears were wiped up, she would have to get them down for naps, and then she’d have a little time to talk. I squinted up at the ceiling, mentally calculating. That put me at about an hour from now.

One. Whole. Hour.

Unfortunately for me, the prospect of an hour seemed almost endless, and I needed to talk to someone.

I reached into the back pocket of my jeans for my phone and scrolled through to the speed dial button for my mother. Hopefully she would answer.

After an almost interminable few seconds of having to listen to it ring on the other end of the line, she finally picked up, sounding out of breath but perky.

Definitely a good sign, I thought, instantly feeling my mood lift a little.

“Hi, Mama,” I said.

“Oh, hi, Dellie, baby. How are you?” she asked.

“Fine.” I shrugged, even though I knew she couldn’t actually see it. “Just trying to figure out what to take. Not getting anywhere,” I sighed.

“No? Even with all of that stuff in your closet?” she marveled. I could just picture her, mouth agape, blue eyes wide with incredulity. As my mother and former cohabiter of anyplace I’d called home for most of my life, she had reason to be so amazed. She’d seen the size of my wardrobe while I was living with her and my dad before I was so unhappily wed, and she had helped me move from said house of mirth into my current apartment. Which most likely meant she also assumed that I still wore all of it.

Or, at least, most of it.

In all reality, though, I was wearing a steady rotation of about ten outfits, thrown on without thought beyond the fact that they were functional. My jeans were old enough to babysit for my shoes, and my one bra was almost old enough for pre-school.

If it wasn’t so sad, it might have been funny.

“Most of the stuff in my closet is destined for the consignment shop,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

“Why? You’ve got so many cute clothes.” Quite a reasonable observation. And very true, indeed. They were cute, and I really liked most of them. But most of the pieces felt like they belonged on someone else, with a different life. Someone who went out with friends and had spur-of-the-moment lunch dates. Someone who didn’t look just as hollowed out as she felt on the inside most of the time. Someone I missed.

I sighed, hoping she hadn’t heard it.

“Are you okay, honey? Are you sleeping okay?” she asked, concern creeping into her voice. “Are you eating okay?”

I couldn’t help the smile that tugged at my lips. No matter that I was now in my thirties or that we saw one another on a pretty regular basis, she was definitely still my mama. And I had to admit, there was a certain degree of comfort in that knowledge.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, a blanket answer to all three questions. It might not be the absolute God’s honest truth, but it was what came out. Much as I really wanted to lay everything out there right now, I didn’t want to worry her, either.

“I know you probably think I’m being nosy, but I’m your mother, and I only want the best for you. I want to see you happy, and healthy, and have everything good in life.”

I smiled. “I know, Mama, I know. I’ll get there. Things are just a little stressed right now.”

“I know that—which is why I’m glad you’re going to take this trip. I really think it’ll do you some good.” I heard a smile creeping into her voice. “And you can do a little bit of spying on your grandfather for me.”

“You bet. I’ll have daily updates for you, if you want,” I replied.

She laughed. It was a beautiful sound—one I couldn’t bear to think about never hearing again. How do you deal with the loss of your mother? I wondered silently.

“Mama?” I ventured. “I know you’re worried about me, and you’re worried about Grandpa…but how are you? How are you feeling these days? I know it’s been a few weeks since we had some time together, and I feel like I’m being a horrible daughter,” I said, adding one more item to my own guilt list. “Are you doing okay?”

There was a deafening silence on the other end.

“Mama?” I asked again.

“Mmm?”

“I love you.” My voice was thick with emotion.

“I love you back, baby. So much,” she whispered.

“So, so much,” I echoed.

“Now go pack,” she said, clearly having decided to regain her grip on her composure. “You only have three days until you leave.”

I rolled my eyes, letting my gaze fall on the itinerary I’d printed out. As if I could forget. Three days to pack. Three days to wrap my head around this whole thing. Only three days. I felt my gut tighten.

“Three days,” I repeated flatly.

“Suck it up, Buttercup,” Mama said, sounding gleeful.

“And put on my Big Girl Panties?”

“You got it. Just make sure they’re presentable.”

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.