Chapter 7
seven
. . .
Arrangements
Five years ago
lynda carlisle
Summertime, 9:18am
She arranges the flowers with expertise, a skill she had long ago acquired. All her favorites—lilies, the classic roses, pink dahlias for texture and pops of baby’s breath for softness. Sprigs of greens for earthy balance. A holly branch for the symbol of resilience. There was a meditative ritual to these arrangements, and with it came a moment to reflect on where this most unexpected skill of hers all began. She clutches the delicate strand of pearls around her neck as her mind wanders to how far she had come.
Pearls were never something she ever believed she’d own. Didn’t even understand their value. Because Lynda came from nothing, that was the truth of it. And when you come from nothing, things like pearls or jewels made for decorative accessories weren’t exactly on your radar. For many years, the only things that ever concerned her were food and growth.
You learn quickly how to grow up when you’re fighting for your next meal.
The man that helped create her was non-existent (she wouldn’t dare dignify him with the title “father”), and her mother, bless her heart, was more in love with needles and pills than putting food on the table. Hunger was a constant companion, and their trailer was a revolving door of seedy men and early encounters of certain demands. She didn’t even have breasts the first time a man touched her. “I’ll take care of you, you’ll see,” the man had promised. One of her mother’s “friends.” She quickly understood what taking care of her would mean to him, to the others that followed.
But Lynda had brains and courage. And when you grew up in the world she did, you learned to utilize your resources.
She learned that with a smile, she could make the uninvited contacts transactional, and so food and the occasional treat from the local convenient store became things she could proposition. Waves of hunger pains in her belly could be spaced out much further.
She learned that if her belly was full, she could concentrate on her studies. Earn good grades. Get in the good graces of teachers that took a liking to her (a non-physical one, thank the good Lord), and so bloomed this little thing called hope, something her surroundings knew little of.
She studied the voices on the radio, their smooth drawl like a beckoning call. They intrigued her. She developed an obsession with watching the mannerisms of the flawless faces on TV, on the news, understanding that looking and speaking a certain way was how you got money, steady meals, shiny-looking clothing that came together as a set.
As her mother’s disease became more and more chronic, the lure of college became a real possibility. She knew it was only a matter of time before she was an orphan. Perhaps a government scholarship could be within her reach.
It didn’t take long for her mother to succumb to the illness created by her addictions. Lynda became a ward of the state halfway through high school. By the time she was eighteen, she was living in a foster group home for teenage girls. “Bad behavior” may have put her there, though she didn’t see how stealing money in a home that promised to take care of you while simultaneously continuing the neglect she was accustomed to was considered wrong.
For once, though, the system didn’t fail her when she was in the Jennifer Grace Cottage. She was lucky—she had stumbled into one of the good group homes. There was a young counselor there that had kindness and seemed genuinely horrified by her stories, yet also committed to exhibiting odd and innovative techniques to rewire the damage done due to her “complex trauma.” That’s what it was called, she learned. For her, though, it was simply life.
For her housemates that showed interest, she’d help them with their schooling. She showed them how to open a bank account when they were frustrated with the poor teaching techniques of the home’s classes meant to do so. She became an unofficial assistant to the mother hen of the cottage. It suited her, gave her a purpose and some semblance of control. The girls turned to her for advice and guidance, and she gladly imparted what wisdoms she could to their eager ears.
College proved to be her playground. She studied finance (numbers had always been her strong suit). Analysis of numbers, forecasting, transactions, all things that her mind understood. By the time she graduated, she had internship offers at top firms across the United States.
And then she developed a bona fide crush on someone. Someone that had been her mark, but he slipped past her head and into her heart. He was a businessman, a supervisor on her team, and while he came from a world polar opposite to her own, they connected in their ambition and drive. Their business was a competitive one, to put it mildly. He taught her the ins and outs of this strange new world, a fantasy land for all she knew. Money became a laughable concept to her (how these people played with it!) and together they made plans for all the ways they’d achieve their dreams.
While hunger was never a fear she had been able to shake, it was then that she’d realized it was officially an irrational one.
She was free.
Lynda carefully fills a water bottle to later be used to pour into the flower vase. The drive to her destination would be fairly short, thankfully, but still impractical if the container for her bouquet was sloshing around water in her car. Instead, she’d place the flowers in their vase dry, and pour the water in once she arrived. It worked well last time.
As she screws the cap on the filled water bottle, she thinks about her husband, knowing he would laugh to see her taking such care to ensure the perfect flowers be delivered intact. He wouldn’t understand exactly why this mattered to her so much. Not his fault, Lynda had purposely kept certain things from him.
She and her husband married young, twenty-two and twenty-eight, respectively. She kept her background vague, happy when the mere term “orphan” quickly shut down further questioning. Rich people didn’t like to talk about uncomfortable things, she found. Convenient for her. Her husband’s family took her in as one of their own, charitable in that way, and suddenly her old life was a chapter closed. No—more than that. A bad novel that was decrepit and better suited for kindling. This book now was her real story, and she created the narrative with precision.
Years later, she still laughs at her life, living within these means. Who would have thought! A mansion, the best schooling for her children, cars and jewelry and all the fine things. She paid most of it little mind, seeing the opulence as more of a necessity to keeping the appearance, lest the image should falter, careful connections starting to question her authenticity or right to be here, and she’d be left hungry again.
So yes, Lynda dressed a certain way, spoke a certain way. Wore pearls and acquired a green thumb that resulted in the gift of beautiful gardens, something she insisted on maintaining herself despite her husband’s urging to allow the landscapers to handle it. It was the one thing she refused, because no one knew how to curate a glorious garden in the way she could. Gardens were something exquisitely within her control. She found peace in strolling through to the area specifically for her cut flowers. Peace in creating beautiful arrangements.
And she would continue to allow such beautiful things, luxuries and the rest of it, to rain down on her family without guilt, because her children deserved better than the life she lived. No one deserved that kind of suffering, and she’d be damned if anyone ever took it away from her.
For Lynda, her crushes were not ones of naive fascination based on whim, but of the obsessions with survival and control. And there wasn’t a crush in the world that would ever be out of her league.
The funny thing about life is that you just never know what curveballs will be thrown your way. You can have the best laid plans, have made all the right choices, and still, the universe proves to know better. The house always wins.
It was years ago when she got the call that her husband was in the hospital. She had nearly thought the voice on the other end of the line had the wrong number as they explained that her husband was clinging to his life. Attacked in his usual parking garage while preparing to head home after work. Beaten nearly to death by some angry faction or another. Lynda went into survival mode. Were the necessary documents all signed or on file, the finances in order and readily retrievable? There were arrangements to be made and loose ends to be tied, and fast. They had prepared for this kind of thing, in the off chance they were ever in trouble. Being in the business that they were, it was wise to do so, as they were surrounded by wealth and greed. When you take risks with people’s money, people that had an obsession with only making more, you never knew when the tides would turn on you. Still, she had thought they’d been smarter, never making deals if she had suspicions or a bad hunch. One wrong move, and these people could be your enemy.
Thankfully, the universe proved to be on her side this time. Her husband lived, despite some damaging blows to the head. The gift of having been found soon after his attack, the doctors explained. Too long in that beaten state and he might not have been so lucky. She realized that they needed to be more careful and focus on their less risky businesses, even if it meant smaller rewards.
She had some contacts in the Midwest, and so they moved to a safe and quiet suburb in Ohio that was neatly nestled near Cleveland. The kids were still relatively young, not yet adults. They’d adapt to their new surroundings. Lynda and her husband would find a new business venture, perhaps, one that could offer them more control over their day-to-day lives, with no one to answer to. It made the most sense. You do what you need to do to protect your family at all costs. It was something she had learned in her group home days, and was further emphasized once she had children of her own. While—thanks to her upbringing—this had initially been a foreign concept to her, it quickly became her mantra.
Hunger would always be a lingering threat in the back of her mind (there wasn’t a plate of food in front of her that she didn’t finish), but her fear for safety of her family was far heavier. She’d be damned if anything happened to them. Her family was her proudest accomplishment, and they were a team. She’d do anything for them. She’d kill for them.
And so, they built a new life for themselves, this one even more successful than the last. They’d be smarter, pay closer attention to those they kept in their circle. Potential enemies and friends alike, if they had to. More often than not, she would soon discover, they came hand in hand.