more breaths and went deeper, examining the emotions imprisoned inside my bubble. Anger, frustration, fear. I tasted each one, explored them like a loose tooth. They were familiar, yet new.
My God. These are my emotions.
After so many years of harboring the runaway emotions of other people, my own had taken a backseat. Now all I had were what belonged to me, and I was ill prepared to deal with them. It was a terrifying thought.
Could I squash them down like I used to? Probably not the healthiest approach. Could I send them out into the world the way I had learned to do with other people’s garbage? No. I was going to have to deal with them, one by one, just like any other well-adjusted adult. I could see this was going to take some time.
I spent several hours out there, poking and prodding at my emotional self. By the time I was done I had examined my fear and anger with a microscope, turned them over in my mind like shiny stones. I became thoroughly acquainted with them so I could differentiate between what was mine and what was borrowed from somebody else.
Then I put them away on a shelf in my head, brushed the sand off my skirt and went home.
“Wolf man?” I asked Maurice when I came through the door.
“Skunk-ape,” he said. He had a face like a bunny about to bolt.
I sighed. Maybe I didn’t want to know after all. “What’s for dinner? I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
His face brightened, and he darted into the kitchen babbling about tarragon and coriander. I had no idea what I ate that night, but it was delicious.
Meeting my own feelings for the first time in years had restored my emotional stability. I didn’t once feel like gutting anyone with my dessert spoon.
* * *
I was smug that evening, sitting in front of the TV with a belly full of food I hadn’t cooked. My kitchen was clean without my lifting a finger, and the weird wine stain shaped like Phyllis Diller had been magically erased from my living room rug after five years of residence. Best of all, I was confident that I was mostly getting the hang of this emotional rodeo thing.
Things were looking up.
The news drifted over me as white noise. A shark attacked a local surfer off Muir Beach. Somebody’s sweet old granny robbed a San Rafael convenience store. A clerk at a Sausalito grocery was found dead in the storage room.
I sat up.
I’d been in that store the day before. It was next door to Andrew’s herb shop. And I knew the tattooed face of the woman in the photo.
They cut to video footage of the scene. Police and paramedics scurried across the screen like worker ants. An officer brushed aside a microphone when a reporter shoved it up under his nose.
The camera crossed to the ambulance as an EMT slammed the back door shut. I shivered. I had spoken to the dead clerk yesterday. Apparently, I’d been wrong. Selma hadn’t been “better than fine” after all. She was zipped into a body bag and buckled in for a trip to the morgue.
The paramedic turned to face the camera before he realized it was there, and I sat up straighter. The winking, coffee-drinking guy from across the street. And wow, he was really hot. I’m not usually big on uniforms, but he filled his out nicely.
So focused on how edible the emergency guy looked, it wasn’t until ten minutes later that I thought to wonder how the clerk had died.
Chapter Five
Sunday was a much-needed day of calm and normalcy until I decided to give myself a manicure.
Storage space was at a premium in my bathroom, so I stored many of my girly items in the hallway linen closet. I had a metric crap-ton of face creams I didn’t follow through on, bath salts I had no time for, hair removers, hair thickeners, self tanners, skin lighteners and, of course, seven thousand shades of nail polish—many with unused matching lipsticks. Seriously, this was not the ’60s. While I might’ve found a use for orange nail polish, nobody ever looked good with orange lips, no matter what the decade.
My God. These are my emotions.
After so many years of harboring the runaway emotions of other people, my own had taken a backseat. Now all I had were what belonged to me, and I was ill prepared to deal with them. It was a terrifying thought.
Could I squash them down like I used to? Probably not the healthiest approach. Could I send them out into the world the way I had learned to do with other people’s garbage? No. I was going to have to deal with them, one by one, just like any other well-adjusted adult. I could see this was going to take some time.
I spent several hours out there, poking and prodding at my emotional self. By the time I was done I had examined my fear and anger with a microscope, turned them over in my mind like shiny stones. I became thoroughly acquainted with them so I could differentiate between what was mine and what was borrowed from somebody else.
Then I put them away on a shelf in my head, brushed the sand off my skirt and went home.
“Wolf man?” I asked Maurice when I came through the door.
“Skunk-ape,” he said. He had a face like a bunny about to bolt.
I sighed. Maybe I didn’t want to know after all. “What’s for dinner? I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
His face brightened, and he darted into the kitchen babbling about tarragon and coriander. I had no idea what I ate that night, but it was delicious.
Meeting my own feelings for the first time in years had restored my emotional stability. I didn’t once feel like gutting anyone with my dessert spoon.
* * *
I was smug that evening, sitting in front of the TV with a belly full of food I hadn’t cooked. My kitchen was clean without my lifting a finger, and the weird wine stain shaped like Phyllis Diller had been magically erased from my living room rug after five years of residence. Best of all, I was confident that I was mostly getting the hang of this emotional rodeo thing.
Things were looking up.
The news drifted over me as white noise. A shark attacked a local surfer off Muir Beach. Somebody’s sweet old granny robbed a San Rafael convenience store. A clerk at a Sausalito grocery was found dead in the storage room.
I sat up.
I’d been in that store the day before. It was next door to Andrew’s herb shop. And I knew the tattooed face of the woman in the photo.
They cut to video footage of the scene. Police and paramedics scurried across the screen like worker ants. An officer brushed aside a microphone when a reporter shoved it up under his nose.
The camera crossed to the ambulance as an EMT slammed the back door shut. I shivered. I had spoken to the dead clerk yesterday. Apparently, I’d been wrong. Selma hadn’t been “better than fine” after all. She was zipped into a body bag and buckled in for a trip to the morgue.
The paramedic turned to face the camera before he realized it was there, and I sat up straighter. The winking, coffee-drinking guy from across the street. And wow, he was really hot. I’m not usually big on uniforms, but he filled his out nicely.
So focused on how edible the emergency guy looked, it wasn’t until ten minutes later that I thought to wonder how the clerk had died.
Chapter Five
Sunday was a much-needed day of calm and normalcy until I decided to give myself a manicure.
Storage space was at a premium in my bathroom, so I stored many of my girly items in the hallway linen closet. I had a metric crap-ton of face creams I didn’t follow through on, bath salts I had no time for, hair removers, hair thickeners, self tanners, skin lighteners and, of course, seven thousand shades of nail polish—many with unused matching lipsticks. Seriously, this was not the ’60s. While I might’ve found a use for orange nail polish, nobody ever looked good with orange lips, no matter what the decade.
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