Part 1 (1/2)

The Fifth Stage.

BLUE FEATHER BOOKS, LTD.

by Margaret A. Helms.

CHAPTER 1.

I was born two months before my eighteenth birthday. Sounds silly, but that's how it felt at the time.

On a rainy October afternoon, what seemed like an innocent conversation twisted into an incident that shattered my hazy existence and blinded me with the trutha painful truth at the time, and a sometimes infuriating fact even now.

Until that day I had lived a textbook childhood, but what else would you expect from a girl delivered in the sixties who grew up in a sleepy mid-South town that barely managed its own ZIP code? Franklin was the kind of place where people left their car windows rolled down at night, and most folks didn't lock their front door because they couldn't remember where they hid the key.

Franklinites were in a self-induced trance, perhaps a time warp.

They were happy to have one movie theater, two red lights, and four town cops. Life seemed simpler that way. In a time when disco sucked and kids in far-off places like Seattle and New York were piercing their ears with safety pins and snorting cocaine, the most incorrigible teenagers in Franklin were still smoking homegrown weed and hurling rotten eggs at the high school princ.i.p.al's house.

My family was placid, even by Franklin standards. Our house was like any other in town, no better, no worsered brick with white painted eaves and shutters. Like most homes of that time, the family room centered around a nineteen-inch color TV. Our set had vertical control problems and a glitch in the picture tube that made Bonanza's Lorne Greene look nine feet tall as he rode his trusty steed across an eggplant-colored prairie.

My dad used to say he didn't get his first remote control television until 1985, but if he were alive today, I'd beg to differ. In our house, I was the remote. From the time I was big enough to reach the dial, I'd stand for what seemed like hours, turning the big silver channel changer to one station, then the next while Dad reclined in his easy chair, directing me with ”Okay, go on, next, go back.” If we'd had more than 1

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four channels, I would've been in prison for murder by my twelfth birthday.

Other than the occasional channel conflict, we got along pretty well. A fine, upstanding family, the folks around town called us. Mom's full-time job was keeping house and raising my brother, Robert, and me.

Dad went to work every morning in a coat and tie and came home each evening to a warm dinner. Four more kids and a live-in maid and we would have been a regular Brady Bunch.

Robert was the ultimate example of a Brady boy: considerate and compa.s.sionate, but likely to break a vase once in a while. I didn't feel like a Brady girl thoughnot perfect like Marsha, a bit more unsettled than Jan, and never a cute, lispy cherub like Cindy.

With barely two years between us, my brother and I shared our mother's steel-gray eyes and abundant blonde hair, the only remaining and slightly-diluted traits of a Swedish ancestor long buried beneath our mongrelized family tree.

”I'd swear them two was twins,” the waitress at Woolworth's lunch counter would whine between gum-pops. ”Why, they're the spittin'

image of you, Maureen.”

Mom would pay for our milkshakes and thank her for the compliment, but Robert saw red at the comparison. He couldn't stand that I was nearly as tall as him and could win two of three falls in our daily wrestling contests. After a while, he started calling the waitress Babbling Betty, but I liked her. Her friendly eyes reminded me of Miss Ann, our Sunday School teachera trashy, trailer-park version with a half-smoked Lucky dangling from her lips, but Miss Ann nonetheless.

In our earliest years, Robert and I were constant companions. We would run barefoot through dew-covered gra.s.s, chase lightning bugs to the point of exhaustion, and tumble into Dad's ratty old hammock. We'd giggle and tickle each other breathless and finally succ.u.mb to weariness and the muggy summer heat and allow the man in the moon to lull us to sleep.

Eventually, Mom's voice would come booming out the back door.

”Robert! Claire! You can't sleep out there all night. Go brush your teeth and get ready for bed.” We'd stumble to the bathroom, and Mom would stand over us like a vulture over roadkill as we washed behind our ears.

”My children won't go around nasty,” she'd say, making certain we did a proper job. ”People will think I don't take care of you.”

Then she'd march us to our rooms and tuck us in with a kiss. Even now I can't go to bed without was.h.i.+ng behind my ears and brus.h.i.+ng my teeth.

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In later years, Mom often found us in Robert's room with Fleetwood Mac, Kiss, or Foreigner alb.u.ms blaring as my brother filled me in on the intricacies of being a teenager. We'd sit by his stereo while he shared a gold mine of adolescent wisdom, deftly guiding me through the roughest parts of life. He cautioned me about Mrs. Johnson, the worst algebra teacher to ever touch a chalkboard, warned me to never eat pinto beans in the high school cafeteria, and told me to always stay clear of the kids who hung out in the smoking zone.

But days like those have a way of sneaking past you, and before you know it, the mystical years are gone. By that October afternoon, Robert had been away at college for two years. There was no one for me to turn to, no one to confide in, but I'm not sure even my brother could've helped me with my quandary.

It wasn't like I didn't suspect something. I was innocent and sheltered maybe, but not stupid. Actually, by the time I turned seventeen, I was beginning to wonder about myself. Something didn't seem right. I was preparing for my senior year in high school and, to my chagrin, hadn't developed the desire to date boys. I hadn't experienced the white-hot flash of hormones my girlfriends so vividly described and couldn't work up a giggle-fit about the captain of the football team if my life depended on it. I never sneaked out for a late-night cruise to lovers'

lane with a guy from Lit cla.s.s and had refused at least five invitations to join the gang for a skinny-dip in Johnson's pond. For some reason, I didn't have the desire to wallow around with some guy like a couple of night crawlers in a bait bucket.

That afternoon in October, I found out why.

CHAPTER 2.

I'm on the verge of forty now, and memories of my youth are starting to haunt me. Long-discarded events tiptoe around my brain, reminding me of where I've been and what I've done, but those recollections don't feel like warm sentiments to cherish in my approaching middle age. They are too vivid, too real.

It's as though I'm going through the maze of discovery again and finding the second time around more difficult than the first. This time I'm staring middle age right in the face, single for the first time in two decades, and more apprehensive about my future than I was at seventeen. It's only a thirty-minute drive to my hometown, but the person I used to be seems a million miles away.

To anyone who doesn't know my story, I might appear to be the picture of success. I have a closet full of designer labels, there's plenty of cash in my wallet, and my investment portfolio befits someone twenty years my senior. But when I'm alone at night and I look into my bathroom mirror, the eyes staring back at me seem jaded, the blonde hair falling around my shoulders is showing signs of gray, and the lines around my lips look deeper every day. What happened to the sneaker- clad kid with the sparkly eyes and fair skin, the girl who didn't have two cents to rub together? That kid had guts. I'm not sure I do.

It seems my life has degenerated into a series of rituals. I get up. I go to work. I go home. At first the pattern kept me grounded, it made those first days alone easier to get through. But the days turned to weeks, the weeks to months, and so on, till there was so little variation that I could operate blindfolded. But over the past few months, I've made a slight modification to my routine. I've taken to dining at a local restaurant three or four nights a week.

Choppy's is one of those middle-of-the-road eateriesnot fancy, but above average. You can get a huge salad, a burger, or a decent steak and won't feel like you've been robbed afterwards. The restaurant is pretty common in appearance. There's an elevated bar area tucked into the far corner, flanked on two sides by rugged brick walls and on the 4

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third by a row of high-backed booths. Someone did put some original thought into the placement of the main dining tables. They're far enough apart to afford private conversation, but close enough together to maximize seating. All in all, I could go to any of a dozen restaurants in town and get the same atmosphere and the same food, but something else draws me here.

You see, I have a crush on the manager, Rebecca Greenway. I don't know much about her, only that she's the owner's daughter. She runs the place now that her father has remarried and spends his time traveling with his new wife. Most of the time Rebecca works in her office, hidden behind a plain door with her name engraved on a bra.s.s plaque. No one would know she was in the building if she didn't make an obligatory appearance during the lunch and dinner rushes. But when she does emerge, she makes quite an impression. Her makeup is applied with a master's subtle touch, her expensive skirt is fresh from the cleaners, and her modest gold earrings bobble about the curve of her cheek. She meanders from one table to the next, flas.h.i.+ng genuine smiles and making sure her customers are happy.