The condo is mostly constructed of glass and steel and filled with white marble and quartz. I love the ultramodern design, and I’ve covered the cold stone floors with vibrantly colored rugs to warm it up. I leave Mom standing in front of the windows and quickly change into jeans and a Lulu Sweetheart sweatshirt. When I return, she’s still staring out at Elliott Bay, and I wonder what she’s thinking as she looks at the vivid orange and purple sunset.
I call down to the concierge and ask for everything in the SUV to be brought to me, and I place my usual order of Thai favorites from the restaurant down the street. I’m fairly sure Mom likes Thai. It can’t be worse than stuffed green peppers at Golden Springs.
“Are you hungry?”
She turns to look at me. There are deep creases in her forehead and fear in her eyes. “You live here.”
I’ve lived here for the past five years, and for a few months she lived here too. “Yes. You bought me a flamingo oven mitt as a housewarming gift when I moved in.”
Her forehead clears. “And a cow creamer.”
“That’s right.” I look at her and smile. I’d forgotten about the cow creamer. “It moos when you pour it.” She laughs, and I am reminded of the good times. The times we’d been so close there was nothing in the world between the two of us.
The phone rings and I let it go to voicemail and take Mom to her bedroom. She stops in the doorway and starts wringing her hands again.
“What’s wrong?” Mom wringing her hands is a fairly recent behavior, and I notice it’s getting worse.
“Where’s my happy little clouds painting?”
In storage with all the others. Mother discovered her joy of painting while in the first care facility and is a Bob Ross devotee. I still have all her paintings, but I replaced those particular happy clouds with a print of irises. “I like the flowers.”
“Well, I don’t! It’s awful. I want my happy little clouds!”
“There are two of your paintings in the back of my car. We can put one of those up.” She relaxes somewhat and plants her behind in her La-Z-Boy recliner. “Where’s the clicker? Who stole the clicker?” Before she can go into her Wynonna rant, I open the compartment in the leather arm where the clicker’s always been kept. I set her up with the Game Show Network and Tic-Tac-Dough, but she’s not through with her demands. “Where’s my Booty? I always have Pirate’s Booty when I watch my shows.” I promise her that all her things will be brought up shortly, and she calms down a bit more. I just hope she stays calm long enough for me to talk with Margie.
“Okay,” I begin when I return to the living room and get Margie and Fern on the line. “I got a call from Golden Springs Assisted Living when I was driving to the airport this afternoon.” I hit the high and low notes of my day for them both. Well, the low notes anyway. When I’m finished, my agent of nearly twenty years says, “Well, that explains the crazy voicemail. I thought you were being kidnapped or murdered.”
“I’m not that lucky.” I move to my white linen couch, and the three of us talk about my options. Margie is more than just my agent; we’re friends. She’s smart, savvy, and I trust her.
The conversation is short; there is only one solution. “I can’t bring Mom with me, and I can’t hire a nurse in time to make LA.” Even if I find the most qualified nurse in the next ten minutes, leaving Mom with a stranger is out of the question. I can’t do that to her. She’s the only mom I’ve got, and I love her. Her routine has already been disrupted, and she’s afraid. Mine is the only face she recognizes, and she distrusts anyone she doesn’t know. Heck, sometimes she distrusts me, too. When she’s upset, her emotions spiral, and she has to have a target. I know because I’ve looked down that barrel more times than I can count in the past few years. Mom has been an emotional yo-yo throughout her life, but she was never angry—until now.
“Realistically, what are you thinking?” Fern asks, and it really hits me that I’m canceling LA. My publicist is efficient and organized and very good at her job. I hired her to defuse the Tony chapter, and I’ve kept her ever since. I trust her, too.
“Realistically?” I switch the phone to my other hand. No matter how tempting the prospect, I can’t leave my mother right now. “I can’t make LA.” My chest feels tight, and my heart pounds at the same time. “This has never happened to me.” I stretch out on my back so I can breathe. I’ve always made every deadline and event. Like the women I hire, I’m on top of everything. I get it done. I’m in control.
Not this time. I control nothing and I hate it.
“Realistically,” Margie says, “we should think about canceling the rest of the tour and rescheduling.”
“All of it?” I wheeze.
“That’s my thought, too,” Fern says, and I can’t believe this is actually happening. “It’s better to make one decisive announcement than to issue four more over the next few weeks. We’ll put out a statement that you need time to deal with family issues. Your fans will understand, and they’ll be grateful you didn’t draw this out.”
Even after the decision is made and I hang up the phone, none of this feels real to me. I don’t pull out of commitments, and I can’t wrap my head around what will happen next. The only thing that does feel real is the knot in my stomach.
This is not my life. I started Lulu in a lonely dorm room my freshman year at Gonzaga, where I’d hoped to graduate with a degree in journalism. Why journalism? Why not?
I hadn’t known anyone when I arrived there, but that wasn’t unusual. Mom and I moved around a lot when I was a kid. I’d gone to fifteen different schools by the time I graduated high school. I was always the new kid. Often invisible and insignificant—the kid who fell through the cracks.
I worked two jobs to put myself through school and, by my sophomore year at Gonzaga, I’d saved enough money to buy my own computer: a used iBook G3 clamshell—indigo—that allowed me to create my first blog, Lulu’s Life, on WordPress. I carried that iBook everywhere, writing about my life as a lonely girl and commenting on the people I saw around me. Several hundred people joined my page. We chatted and laughed and commiserated, but the blog really took off when I transferred to the University of Washington my junior year and linked Lulu’s Life with Friendster and Myspace. To my surprise, I started dating instead of hiding. I began writing more about relationships and heartbreaks and less about loneliness.
The doorbell rings and two men arrive with a cart of Mom’s belongings. I show them to her room, and she smiles and flirts because she just can’t help herself. She compliments their muscles and calls them handsome. While I’m used to Mom’s behavior, it’s still embarrassing. Of course, she keeps it up until they leave.
“Here’s your Booty,” I say, and hand her a bag of her favorite cheesy popcorn. As I take down the irises print, my thoughts return to my old blogs and the summer Margie first contacted me and changed my life forever.
The Diary of Bridget Jones had been a phenomenal success, and The Edge of Reason was about to be released in theaters. She’d said New York publishers were looking for the sort of “single girl” stuff I was blogging about, and she wanted to fly to Seattle and talk to me in person. At first I thought she was pranking me, but she actually met with me, and A Girl’s Guide to Kissing Toads, my first book, was published eighteen months later.