Excerpt: Magical Midlife Madness

Chapter 1

This was not the fresh start I’d had in mind.

I sat in my idling car in front of my parents’ house, going over my life choices.

When the—now ex—husband had told me he was moving on and that he wanted a divorce, I was pretty sure he hadn’t expected me to exclaim, “Awesome!” I’m positive he didn’t think I’d start packing right away. And when I pouted at his “concession” that I could stay in the house until it was time to sell, I definitely confused him.

He had found someone else. Someone he had more in common with, apparently. Someone who shared the same life goals and liked to hold hands like we used to.

I’d told him that I hoped she was young, because if she was my age—tiptoeing past forty—and had any relationship experience at all, the second she learned that he liked his boxers ironed but wouldn’t do the ironing himself, she’d be gone-skies. Only uptight guys ironed their boxers, and only self-absorbed, entitled dickheads had someone else do it for them and then negatively critiqued the creases.

Our life goals had only diverged because I’d gotten tired of supporting him through all of his endeavors without being allowed to achieve anything for myself. Somewhere along the way, when I was cooking, cleaning, ironing, changing beds, changing diapers, working, doing the bills, cooking—oops, I said cooking twice—I had started to wonder when my life would begin. When I’d kick butt and take names. When I would be recognized for my merits instead of looked down upon for the untidy laundry room.

I wanted more than this provincial life.

Matt had done me a favor by cutting me loose. He’d pushed me down the first step to my freedom. With my son starting college, thereby taking away any excuse to stay, I could finally start my own adventure. Create some herstory.

I stared at my parents’ house through the car window.

My jump-off point needed a little work.

I put my ten-year-old Honda into park.

I could not believe I was doing this. At forty years old, I was moving back in with my parents in a city just north of L.A. What had I been thinking?

But I knew what I’d been thinking. I had money from the divorce, but no home, no job, and no idea where I wanted to find those things. My son didn’t want me following him to the East Coast where he was going to college—another relief because I didn’t want to spend my weekends doing his laundry—and I was tired of L.A. I needed to go somewhere new, but it wouldn’t be sensible to waste money on hotels during my time in limbo. Which was why I’d taken my mom up on her offer to crash at my childhood home for a while.

Crash? What was I, twenty?

Midlife ladies did not crash. Not unless there was a lot of wine involved and a rogue set of stairs jumped in front of her.

I climbed out slowly, surveying my parents’ mud-brown house. Nails were sticking out from the siding in places, randomly trying to flee confinement, and while the front lawn was perfectly manicured, it was surrounded by weed-choked bushes, fallen leaves, and a couple of rusty wagon wheels for decor. It couldn’t look weirder if they’d actively tried for it. 

Home, sweet home.

I grabbed a couple of suitcases out of the trunk and walked to the front door, the funeral march playing in my head. An old Wagoneer Jeep and an older truck sat in the driveway, both of them mainstays of my childhood. They were still on my dad’s “projects list.” He intended to fix up the former to its past glory, which would be quite the job since the roof was cracked to hell, the wooden siding was multicolored and fading, and weeds were literally growing up out of the floorboards, and the latter would become a dump truck (just you wait!). It would get a new motor, the back would be taken off, and a dump truck bed would be installed (no problem!). There was even already a motor or ten in the garage. Stacked on the floor. With rats living in them…

The porch groaned under my weight, in dire need of some new boards. The door, once stained a deep brown with lovely stained glass, now had deep scores at the base where the last dog had made its own doorbell. Someone had painted the damage a lighter mustard-brown, not even close to matching the original mahogany hue. At least the stained glass was still lovely. There was that.

“Hello?” I asked, letting myself in the front door.

Two pairs of shiny, black-marble eyes looked at me from the deer heads mounted on each side of a painting of a deer.

The TV blared, the sound filling the living room to bursting. My dad sat on his recliner with his hand tucked into the waistband of his sweats and his chin lowered to his chest, sound asleep. Cars streamed across the screen, some Nascar race or other.

Grimacing, I edged farther into the house. I set my bags down, closed the door, and headed to the kitchen, the first place I always looked for my mother. She stood at the sink, suds covering her yellow gloves, ear buds in her ears, and her phone tucked into the back pocket of her jeans.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, raising my voice over the sound of the TV in the other room. They had a circular open floor plan, in which a wall separated the kitchen from the living/dining room combo, but there was plenty of air and sound flow between the two spaces.

“Mom!” I said, just a little louder. I knocked on the dated cream square tiles climbing the wall to my right. It didn’t help.

I walked closer as she bobbed her head to the music. She scrubbed a pan with gusto.

“Mom,” I repeated, this time tapping her shoulder.

She jumped, screamed, and let go of the pan. It clanged into the sink, throwing up a sploosh of water that covered her front. She rounded on me with wide eyes.

Not turned to me.

Not flinched from me.

Rounded on me, as though this seventy-year-old woman was about to beat the ever-lovin’ crap out of me!

“Oh, Jessie, it’s you!” A smile replaced her look of crazy. She pulled her ear buds from her ears. “How are you?”

Her hug soaked the front of my shirt, and her gloves wet my back.

“Martha, what are you doing in there?” my dad hollered. “The race is on. I can barely hear a thing!”

 My mom rolled her eyes. She didn’t bother to reply.

“Let me just finish this up and I’ll show you to your room,” my mom said, gesturing at the sink.

I scanned the loaded dish dryer perched over the second sink…and the dishwasher beneath it. “You have a dishwasher, why are you doing these by hand?”

“Your father never wanted to waste the electricity on the dishwasher, remember?” She turned back to her task. “I’ve always had to do them by hand. Well, since I retired, I’ve had just about enough of chores. He barely earns any money any more, did he tell you? He doesn’t take a paycheck most of the time. I don’t know why he doesn’t retire. Anyway, we’re living off of my retirement. So I thought, you know what? If I want a machine to make my life easier, I’ve earned it.” She nodded adamantly. “But the thing was so old, it broke after the second wash.” She sighed. “So I went to Wired Right down on the square there. You know the place. With the green awning?”

She turned back to make sure I was on the same page so I nodded even though I had no idea.

“Well, I bought the very best they had,” she said. “With all the bells and whistles. Cost me an arm and a leg, but you know what? To heck with it. And he can’t say anything, because he spent all that money on that new motor. So there.”

“Right…” I leaned against the counter. “So where is it?”

“Delivers on Tuesday. Boy will I be glad to get these dishes out of my hair. Then I can go upstairs to my sewing room and shut the door. You can barely hear yourself mutter down here.”

“Cool. I can just head up to…my old room, right?”

“Just wait there. You want a beer?” She paused and drew her hands out of the soapy water, white bubbles shivering on her yellow gloves.

“Sure,” I said, because that’s what this house did. If people came over, everyone drank a beer. What else did I have to do? The future stretched wide open ahead of me. All I needed was the courage to walk into it.

With one beer down and another in my hand, I followed my mother up to my transitionary room. My dad still had no idea I was home, but all the dishes had been dried and put away.

Why I needed a guide, I did not know. I’d stayed in this house multiple times with Matt and Jimmy for the holidays, and we’d always slept in my old room. This was the first time I’d been given guidance. It made me suspicious.

We tread up the worn russet-brown carpet that had long since put up the white flag. My mother had started painting the wall beside me a turd brown, only she hadn’t finished, possibly hoping my dad would get the ladder and finish it up. The project cars out front apparently hadn’t made an impression on her. The wall looked like a crap-striped zebra, white stripes between the brown, but nobody seemed to notice or care.

Speaking of noticing or caring, the cool painting I’d given them three years ago sat in the little alcove that overlooked the living room, resting on the ground against the scuff-marked wall.

Happy anniversary, indeed.

“Mom, I know where the bedroom is,” I said as we passed the hall closet that still didn’t have doors thirty years after my dad had designed and built the house.

“Yes, I know, but I made a new quilt and want to make sure it’s okay,” she said.

“It’ll be fine, Ma, I swear—” I fell mute as we reached the room’s open doorway. A stiff-looking turquoise and brown quilt rested on the double bed in the midst of a sea of books. “That’s…lovely. What’s the story with all these books?”

“You think so?” She beamed, heading into the room and pulling up the corner of the quilt. It moved like thin plywood. “I took up quilting. That sewing room is the only place I can get out of the heat!”

I glanced at the open windows, letting in the chill fall air. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes! Your father is so fat, you’d think he’d be insulated enough, but still the house is a furnace.” She huffed. “I found some patterns for quilts at the fabric store. I made them extra warm.”

I paused for a moment, contemplating the irony of that, but decided to press her about the state of the room instead. “What happened in here?” I asked. “What’s that?”

In addition to the books that had been stacked horizontally on every surface and heaped around the bed, a random pile of fur sat in the corner.

“Oh, that. Well, your dad shot an elk last year, but it wasn’t big enough to warrant stuffing the head, so he took the skin. It struck me—what was that Native American tribe that scalped people?” I stared at her, struck mute. “All the white men at the time acted so superior about that, didn’t they? How barbarian to scalp a kill, they said. And look at this! He cuts off heads and hangs them on the wall, and when that isn’t glorious enough, he scalps their bodies. Who’s the barbarian now?”

My mom pursed her lips and turned down the bed.

“That’s…” Best to ignore. Except… “Why is it in the corner? In a pile?”

“He wants to hang it somewhere.”

“But…isn’t Chris’s old room for all Dad’s junk?”

I wasn’t the only one who’d bounced back here—my brother Chris had come to stay with them a few years ago after a tough breakup. The state of the place had not only driven him out of the house, but out of the state, as well. He was now on the East Coast, happy to be on his own in a clutter-free zone.

“That’s the man cave. He’s got so much junk in there, he worried the elk scalp would get lost,” my mother replied.

I didn’t bother to tell her that scalps were on heads and pelts were on bodies. I didn’t think she’d care either way.

“Hmm. Do you need closet space? Because…” She pushed open the dirt-brown closet doors, revealing her clothes and shoes.

I’d never really noticed how many different shades of brown existed in this house. It was like they’d chosen a color palette with various shades of poop.

Sweat prickled my brow. The urge to flee was strong. “Why do you use this closet? Why not your closet?”

“There’s a bunch of old clothes I don’t wear in my closet.” She pushed a few things over, sparing a couple feet of hanging room. “There. That should do you. You mostly wear sweats anyway, right? You don’t need to put those in here. They can stay in your suitcase.”

I didn’t ask what had happened to my old dresser. It wasn’t here, at any rate.

“Right. Fine,” I said, suddenly exhausted.

“Need another beer?”

“Yes. Keep ’em coming. Morning, noon, and night. Just keep ’em coming.”

 

Chapter 2

The next morning, I blinked up at Brad Pitt with his long hair and little smirk. Some of his chest peeked out of his open shirt. Legends of the Fall was scrawled across the bottom of the poster.

My mother slept in this room more often than not because of my dad’s snoring, yet she’d never taken down the hot guy poster from yesteryear? Brad Pitt wasn’t even that hot, anymore. Sure, he was still technically a looker, but he’d crapped on my girl Jennifer, and he’d gotten all scruffy with Angelina, and then he’d pressured her to marry him, only to get a divorce and contact Jennifer again…

I mean, the guy was a dung-dance of dependency. It needed to be said.

He didn’t deserve a place on my ceiling. That was a girl’s crush. A girl who hadn’t yet played the game and lost—and then glugged all the wine, flipped the table over, and slurred obscenities on her way out of there.

I was older now. Wiser. I was done getting sidetracked by a pretty face. Looks tarnished.

Brad had to go.

I flung the covers away, stood on the mattress, and tore from the edge of the poster. Brad’s face split in two. The tape stuck fast.

“Freakin’—” I grabbed the other side and did the same thing. Little blotches of paper stayed put in all of the corners. Brad’s eyeball waved at me from the small surviving portion of the poster. “Ugh. Get. Lost. Brad!” I caught the last shred, tore that, and frowned up at the specks still holding strong.

What had I used to pin him up, infinity glue?

Wadding up the poster, I contemplated jumping to the floor like I would’ve done the last time I’d lived here. Of course, back then I’d had eighteen-year-old knees and half the weight. If I jumped right now, my knees would probably buckle and dump me on my face.

I gingerly lowered to sitting before placing my feet on the faded brown carpet and pushing up to standing.

My phone chimed as I made my way downstairs. Matt, wondering about the closing papers on our old house.

“Yeah, I made it just fine, thanks. Doing great, couldn’t be better,” I grumbled, finding my mother at the sink again.

On the weekends she usually made a large breakfast, but it was only Tuesday, which meant she’d placed a cereal box, milk, and a bowl out on the table for my father. Given the bowl was empty but used, I suspected he’d finished up and would soon be heading to work. Or out to tinker with his project cars.

But as I stood at the entrance to the kitchen, the toilet flushed in the downstairs bathroom. Clearly the old man was still here.

I turned toward the bathroom, intending to use it next, when the door opened and too much skin stepped out.

“What the—” I covered my eyes and jerked my head away.

“Ladies do not swear,” my father said in disapproval even though I hadn’t gotten to the swear word.

“Fathers do not wander around the house without clothes on when their grown daughters are home, Dad! What are you doing?”

My mother turned from the sink, only then turning off her music. “What’s the matter—oh for the love of… Pete, put some clothes on!” She sighed and shook her head in commiseration with me. “Two months ago, he just up and decided that clothes in the morning were causing him anxiety.”

“I didn’t say they were causing me anxiety! I said they cut off the morning circulation to my begonias, and that caused me to feel a little tight in my chest, that’s all. Not enough circulation.”

“Anxiety,” my mom said, clearly annoyed.

“Not anxiety,” my dad replied, clearly just as annoyed.

“Awesome, great, sound logic—can you put some clothes on now? And use a towel on the dining room chair, please? I don’t want to sit on the same seat as your exposed…begonias,” I said.

“Jacinta Evans, when you speak to someone, you look them in the eye,” my father scolded.

“Pete, you have your testicles out. Of course the girl is going to look away!” My mother turned around, muttering, “I don’t blame her, quite frankly. You need to go to the doctor. I know those things sag, but it looks like you have a medical condition.”

“I can’t do this. I can’t…” I took two deep breaths, ignoring my parents’ continued bickering, and followed the wall to the bathroom. I didn’t want to risk looking around. There were many things a person would rather die without seeing, and the sagging bare backside of one’s father was at the top of the list.

The small downstairs bathroom stopped me short. An enormous, obviously fake tree stood in the corner. Its bright, unrealistically green leaves stretched out over the counter toward the sink and reached above the toilet. The toilet seat had been left up, showing the disgusting underbelly of both the seat, with its many dark cracks, and the pee-sprinkled edge of the bowl. A large digital painting with a jumping dolphin took up more of the wall than was artistically pleasing, not to mention those pictures hadn’t been in vogue since the early nineties. It was clear my dad had been offered some freebies.

My dad never passed up freebies.

I had to kick the seat down so as not to touch stale pee, ignore the plastic leaves poking me in the side of my face, and speed up this soul-searching process. I needed a new place and a new job, fast!

 

“How’s it going?” my oldest and best friend Diana asked later that day with a sympathetic smile. Her wire-rimmed glasses had a smudge on the side that she didn’t seem to notice. She cupped her hands around her steaming mug. It was September, yes, but it was also California. She was the only person I knew who drank hot coffee no matter the weather or time of day. She was a true fanatic. 

A few people dotted the seats in the independent coffee shop, all hipsters with weird hair, a lot of piercings, and surprisingly hushed tones. They were young and looked ridiculous, but at least they were respectful.

“Good, mostly,” I said, dragging the pad of my finger down my sweating glass of iced tea. “It was time, with Matt. I’ve been a drone for too long, you know that. Jimmy is off to college, so it’s about time for me to be…well, me again. I don’t even know who me is, anymore, but it’s about time I found out.”

She nodded, her eyes crinkling a little at the corners. “I totally agree. You’d shut off for a while there. You can finally turn back on again and live for once. Make mistakes. Bang a few younger guys.” Her smile turned devilish. “Live a little! Actually, live a lot. I want stories.”

I gave her a sarcastic huff. She was happily married to her college sweetheart, but she would say anything to make me feel better. She wanted me to be happy. Always had. When everyone else was preaching about the sanctity of marriage and how could he?, she was asking if I remembered when I’d stopped smiling. She was the best friend a girl could have.

“I’m not looking for more stories. I’m looking for…” I paused, thinking about it. “I’m looking for adventure, I think. It feels like time is running out. It feels like I need to get my real life started, the sooner the better. Guys can wait.”

She bobbed her head, then took a sip of her coffee. “Definitely. But honestly, what I was really asking was…how’s it going with the parents?”

“Ugh!” I dropped my head, reminded of the morning. I’d gone on a walk to clear my head, and the instant I’d returned, my mom had asked why I’d taken down the poster on the ceiling. She’d wanted to know where she could get another of those “very pretty young men.” “At some point without my knowledge, she grabbed the cute outfit I’d worn yesterday and washed it. Except she didn’t care enough about the deed to see if it could be dried. She just went ahead and threw it in the dryer.”

“Oh no,” Diana said, her eyes twinkling with delight. She had always loved visiting my parents’ house and hearing crazy stories about them. Having normal parents with a normal house, she couldn’t relate.

“My cashmere sweater is two sizes too small, and the silk shirt is ruined.”

“No!”

I told her about my dad’s new addition to his morning routine.

“No!” She fell against the table in a fit of giggles. “What the hell?”

“I do not know.” I shook my head, wishing I could find it funny. “I really do not. But I can’t stay there. I can’t. It’s too much. All my mom does is wash dishes and read, and she stacks the books a mile high in my room. If there’s an earthquake, I’ll be crushed. Fire? Forget it. I’m toast. The whole place would be ablaze by the time I even opened my eyes. No wonder my brother only stayed for a couple months.”

She couldn’t contain the belly laughter. Or maybe she wasn’t trying.

“You clearly don’t see how dire this is,” I said.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She fought her smile. A fight she lost. “Sorry! But listen to this. My aunt called yesterday, asking if I knew anyone who would be a good fit for the caretaker role of Ivy House. What a coincidence, right? You’d be perfect for it. You wouldn’t need to stay with your parents, you’d have a job, and you’d get to go back to that nightmare house that you loved so much. I told her I’d ask you.” Her eyes twinkled. “Just think, no morning begonias.”

Memories came trickling back. I’d gone on a lot of vacations with her family. She was an only child and I loved to travel, so she got a playmate and I got to see new places. Win-win.

“That place in that small town near the Sierras? What were we…like, ten, right?” I asked.

“Yeah. The big old house in that tiny town.” She clucked her tongue. “What is the name of that town? I always forget. I think I block it out. It’s an Irish name. Murphys or O’Connors or Bollocks or… That big old house with all those rooms and that creepy gardener we thought was a vampire?” She shivered. “I hated that place. I still don’t understand why you liked it so much. You didn’t want to leave, remember?”

A mental image of the guy popped into my head. Pasty white, yellowed teeth, long face, loose jowls—

A sense of euphoria came over me out of nowhere, followed by a strange sense of urgency.

“Yeah,” I said, feeling a creeping smile curve my lips. More images came through, somewhat hazed with age. Big rooms with old-fashioned furniture, dark wallpaper, and a foreboding feeling that wasn’t exactly unpleasant. A strange trap door that led outside, only it was three floors up without a ladder. The attic floor had been covered with random silver gardening spikes we weren’t allowed to play with and a strange old-fashioned mechanical bow and arrow. I didn’t have many memories still clunking around my head from thirty years ago, but that house was hard to forget. “That place scared the hell out of you. You’re such a scaredy-cat.”

“Scaredy-cat? That house was creepy as hell. You’re just nuts.”

“Well yes…” I laughed at her, my mood lightened.

“I have no idea why my parents even took us there. What kind of vacation is that?”

My grin widened, remembering the secret passageways we’d found. It had been so incredibly cool to wander into the hidden places, exploring the house from within its very veins. One spot still throbbed in my memory, a room in subterranean depths.

Blue light from a suspended lantern painted the rough rock walls. Below the lantern stood what looked like a gothic pedestal filled with beautiful crystals, beckoning me closer. My mind had raced, my imagination active, thinking that patch of crystals acted like the organ that kept the house running. That the light glowing within the iron frame of the lantern magically lit all the passageway corridors. That the crystals had whispered to me—wait, Jacinta, you’re not ready. It isn’t time. Try again later.

I shook my head, those brief snippets of time jumbling up, crusty with age. I’d had many adventures in my youth, remembering tree houses in gnarled old trees, or trekking through the creek behind my elementary school, but that house had been a favorite. Nothing else could compare to that creepy factor, to the point that, as I thought back on it, I wondered how much I was dreaming up and how much had been real.

“We didn’t stay in that house long,” I said, sipping my drink.

I hadn’t wanted to leave, I remembered that. Unlike Diana, I hadn’t wanted to part with the strange old place.

Then again, I was a great lover of Halloween and Diana was more of a Christmas person. Scary movies didn’t scare me. I could watch The Gremlins or The Exorcist without batting an eye. New horror flicks? I condescendingly judged the effects and the often-shoddy work of the director.

“She wants a caretaker, like…a house sitter?” I asked. “Or like…someone who is going to continually clean it from top to bottom? Because I remember all the spider webs. That place is huge. That would be a nightmare to look after.”

“Firstly, we were ten, so things appeared bigger to us than they actually were. That’s just logic.”

I rolled my eyes at her.

“Second, it would be just you living there and maybe a butler. How much mess could you make?”

“Wait, wait, wait.” I held up my hand. “What’s this about a butler?”

“Oh yeah. Great Uncle Earl. He’s been old as long as I’ve been alive, but he hasn’t kicked the bucket yet. He stays there. He was let go from his position in England because he was creeping out the kids, so my aunt lets him stay at the estate. It’s an old family joke, the fact that he’s still alive. Everyone says he’s afraid he’ll die if he ever retires.” She must’ve seen my look of confused horror because she waved her hand in the air, wiping the thoughts away. “Who cares about him? He’s clean. He wouldn’t have made it all those years as a butler otherwise. And maybe he’ll wait on you, who knows? That would be cool, right? Either way, at least he won’t be walking around naked.”

“I don’t know. I kinda want to live alone for once. I’ve never actually had my own place.”

“Jessie, come on, I’m not saying live there forever. Good lord, no. Being raised here and then moving to Los Angeles—you’d go crazy downgrading to a tiny town like…O’Kieff? Was that the name? Hoolahans? Still, the place is available if you want to get away from your parents and figure things out. You could even make a little money. Think of it as a begonia-free transition.”

Trading up one crazy living situation for another didn’t sound all that great, especially since I’d have to leave Diana to do it. But not having to look for a job right away…

I sighed and took a sip of my iced tea. It was probably best to just stick it out with my parents. The stress of being there would push me to figure things out pronto. If I put my mind to it, I knew I could do it. 

Something niggled at the edge of my thoughts, though. A pulsing. A…beckoning.

My heart sped up and a light sweat coated my brow. The words fell from my mouth before I’d known I was going to say them.

“Sure, why not. When can I start?”

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