Forever and a Day

Forever and a Day

Jacquie Ream

Illustrated by

Phyllis Emmert

Book Publishers Network

P.O. Box 2256

Bothell, WA 98041

425-483-3040

Copyright © 2017 by Jacquie Ream

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

LCCN: 2017943882

ISBN: 978-1-945271-62-5

eISBN: 978-1-948963-03-9

Artwork: Phyllis Emmert

Cover designer: Laura Zugzda

Page designer: Stephanie Martindale

Production: Melissa Vail Coffman

eBook: Marcia Breece

To my friend, Stephanie Martindale, a woman of quiet faith and fortitude, who knew how to laugh.

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

– Muhammad Ali

Preface

If you have followed Fran, Dusty, Dean, and Annie in the Bully Dog Series, you might understand that I am saddened by their departure from my imagination. Fran will always make me smile to think of her as a young girl, bullied at school, who found her voice and stood up to the bullies. Dusty tugs at my heartstrings for she will always be torn asunder and reformed by the creative energy of an artist. Dean, the intellectual, always defining and redefining himself and the world, will struggle but ultimately win the wrestling match with his demons. And Annie, the saint and the sinner, is the synthesis of the friendships. These musketeers, these lifelong friends, these characters who embody courage, wit and grit, and faithfulness have stepped off the written page and into lives of their own.

I will leave them with some last measured thoughts. Fran, if Mother Teresa can have profound doubts about her faith every day and yet act full of faith, essentially becoming the saint of skeptics, then so must we be faithful. Dusty, as Lord Byron put it succinctly about Childe Harold, i.e., himself, the heart will break, yet brokenly live on. Dean, take Ray Bradbury’s advice and jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. Annie, speak your truth, shout your truth, sing your truth, for as Buddha said, Three things cannot long stay hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

I wish you all a successful journey and hope that each one of you will drop me a line or two—I do not expect a novel!—in the ensuing years just so I know you are doing well as life goes on, through all the highs, the lows, and the mundane, for each one of us—you, me, and the reader.

Acknowledgments

As a writer, I appreciate technology and people that support the writing process with computers and readers. You might think it rude of me to list the technology first over the person, but without the computer, the typewriter, or the pen, I would have no manuscript to give my readers. I have replaced computers with upgrades, never so with my readers. I appreciate and feel most fortunate to have and to keep Nancy Adams, Heidi Clarke, Peggie Recker, my daughter, Brandy Ream, and my illustrator, Phyllis Emmert, as my circle of friends and family.

Chapter 1

Life’s like a movie.

Write your own ending.

– Kermit the Frog

Cocooned in my quilt, I stay, reluctant to let go as the dream dissipates into pinpoints of sunshine. The smell of brewed coffee and the household stirring call me. I hear my father in the kitchen, dicing and humming, making a quiche, I hope. I stretch and inhale, breathing out slowly. Ah, to wake up with the whole day to laze; that’s my idea of the first week of my summer vacation. My muscles ache, sore from a full forty-hour week of taking inventory at the Reed College bookstore. After finals, my brain cells were squeezed dry, and it felt good to stay an extra week to do mindless work and get paid for it. It is not as if I had to read all those books; I needed just to box them up and have Scott stack them.

My room looks the same as when I came home for Christmas, courtesy of my mother, with the Home for the Holidays banner still taped on the newly dusted bookshelf, which is really funny if you think of the two different versions of the same song by J. Cole and Perry Como. Of course, my mother would freak if she even heard J. Cole’s lyrics. I thought about telling her but reconsidered, keeping it as my private little joke.

She doesn’t find much humor in anything since Grandma came to live with us. Early-onset Alzheimer’s now defines my once vibrant grandma who babbles and sighs a lot. I remember tenth grade is when I stopped calling her Granny because I didn’t like the feel of the word on my tongue and it reminded me of the whole wolf imagery in Little Red Riding Hood, and she became Grandma. Mom and I once ticked off several breeds of dogs that Grandma might be and simultaneously cried out, Poodle!

I added, Standard!

Mom snapped her fingers and with a sly wink said, Dyed blue!

I leaned close. But never rainbow! I finished with a snort that made my mother chuckle.

My grandma: feisty, smart, strong-willed, and opinionated, the party girl—Democrat, that is. Used to be some lively arguments in this Republican household, but not anymore. The only politics discussed is the family kind, the dynamics of family members.

I sigh, asking myself if I sound like my grandma and wonder if she resents having her vitality ebb day by day. She used to practically prance, but now she uses a cane. It doesn’t seem she really knows what is happening to her. I miss talking with her, especially when she would take my side and sway my mother over to my way of thinking. I can’t help but resent the changes she has made in my life because she cannot function alone. My mother couldn’t come with Dad to Parents’ Night at college because she could not leave Grandma home alone. Really, couldn’t Mom have made arrangements for a caretaker for just a couple of days?

I don’t have to do anything today on this Saturday in May, and I might just stay in bed. Packing pillows behind my back so I can sit up, I look at the new quilt my mother made me for Christmas. It really is an awesome design of Galadriel, played by Cate Blanchett from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Mom has done a remarkable job detailing the sky and mountains in dark shades of blue and purple, the moon and clouds in white and cream and grays as a background to Galadriel in a gauzy, turquoise dress with sparkly white inset, a filigree headband, a shimmering aura over her, and an ethereal gaze somewhere over there in the far distance. Truly, my mother’s work comforts; it’s art not for its own sake but for mine. I should tell her how much I really love this quilt, but lately words clump inside my throat when I try to say anything nice to her. And there are times I feel as if I have to wave my hand in front of her face and speak slowly, Hello! It’s me! Are you listening? Can you spare a few minutes?

Oh, well, let it go—my mantra lately. I feel so many changes in the people I love. Loved. Grandma with her addled brains. Dusty, my best friend, is married with a baby and husband and no time for anyone else in her life. Annie, my childhood friend, has been hospitalized with bulimia and anorexia. My long-time friend, Carol, moved to the Midwest. And Dean—always a river of sadness washes over my heart when I think of him not in my life—oh, well, let him go.

I scan the bookshelves. Should I choose a paperback? Or perhaps select a book on my reader? I have culled my mother’s library for some surprising gems: Dorothy Parker, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and Margaret Atwood. On my e-reader, I have Zadie Smith, Dorothy Allison, Kelly Link, Jennifer Egan, Colette, and a few lightweight sci-fi books. But finally I decide from the stack of paperbacks next to my bed, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

It’s a complicated story, a lot about communism and political strife in Prague Spring, that period of Czechoslovak history in 1968. The plot line with the four major characters is intriguing and, like a jigsaw puzzle coming together, keeps my interest. Inside my head, I have done a little revision with the characters: Franz, an idealistic professor and lover of books, of course is me; Tereza, who sees herself and her body as disgusting and shameful is Annie; and for Dusty and Dean, I cannot make up my mind. Dusty is quirky like the dog, Karenin, not liking much change, and Dean has many attributes of Sabina, especially his lightness of being, but like Karenin, is a little confused about his identify. I go back and forth on who resembles which character the most, as they both have betrayed me.

There is a soft rap at the bedroom door, followed by my father’s voice. Fran? Are you awake? He pushes the door open and pokes just his head inside. Reminds me of the joke about a camel asking his master to please let him just put his head inside the tent to get out of the sandstorm and eventually edges his whole body inside the tent forcing his master out.

Hey! Popsicle, wassup? I slide a bookmark into the book and close it. I can tell he is about to make a snide remark about my messy room, looking from my open suitcase still unpacked, clothing streaming out on all sides and stacks of books next to shoes and a shirt and jeans, to me, but he surprises me