in the right spot on your head, or your head won’t rest on your car headrest correctly, or you won’t be able to lay down right on your yoga mat. Not that I do yoga.
You know the day is going to be crap when the hair tie on your ponytail isn’t right. Two loops around is too loose, and three loops is too tight. The day is doomed.
My eyes close, and I can feel his finger twirling the little wispy curls around my face. My brown hair is thick and straight except for a few pieces around my face and neck that always frizz out in little curls. I hate it. My mom said they are my leftover baby hairs. Apparently, I had curls as a toddler. Well, I’m in my mid-twenties, and I’d think my baby hairs would’ve grown out by this point. Maybe that’s what I’ll call my extra curves—baby fat that I still haven’t outgrown.
When I was little, my mom used to call my crazy curling tendrils my “koala ears” because they stuck out so far. We’d laugh. I miss her. She passed away a little over a year ago, just got pneumonia and died. She was still young, healthy, and the doctors didn’t have any answers for us. She and my dad were stationed in France at the time. My dad’s still there. I’ll never forget that call. His voice.
Seems I’m haunted by a lot of voices these days.
Solution for voices in your head—play music as loud as you can! Turning on The Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing”, I follow the lyric’s advice and start a dance across my little house. Instead of having motion detector lights on my house, I should’ve installed a disco ball!
I’ve lived all over the world, but nowhere is better than Haven’s Point, Colorado. It’s a suburb of Denver, about a forty-five-minute drive to the radio station. It’s good that Haven’s Point is close to a big city, a major airport, nightlife, but still quiet and peaceful. It’s not so small that everyone is up in your business—except, of course, my grandmother and her friends. They pride themselves on knowing everything about everyone, especially me. But this town is home. In fact, her house has always been my true home. And now I have my own little place here.
My cottage sits on a crystal blue lake. I own enough land around my place that you can’t see any other houses from mine. My place is small, just two small bedrooms and an office space, but every room has a view. I can soak in my tub or stand in my shower and stare up at the mountains in the distance. To me, it’s the best view in the whole world.
The house has a stone and wood exterior with planter boxes on each window. My Gigi, Imogen Sheridan to everyone else, always says you are either a plant person or not. Not quite sure what she meant by that, so I asked her one day. Does that mean one type of person cultivates life and the other doesn’t? One kind is patient, the other isn’t? She simply laughed and said, “Some people like to play in manure!” She’s wise like that.
Gigi doesn’t like that I live “out here” all alone. It’s literally ten minutes to her house, but she makes that ten minutes sound like a trek across the Serengeti. I learned a long time ago not to argue. We see one another a lot, and always meet up on Monday afternoons. She likes to analyze my Sunday night broadcast.
Only a select few know my actual job at the station, and Gigi is one of them. Most people know I work for the station in Denver, but I’m always vague about what I do there. No one in Haven’s Point would suspect I’m on the radio, broadcasting a national program from Denver! My cover story has always been that I work from home, doing research, social marketing. It’s not a total lie.
Gigi is my biggest fan. She never misses a show, but I’m really hoping she didn’t catch Knox’s voice. I’ve overanalyzed that relationship enough in my lifetime.
*
Cassette
Knox to Mae
Age Fourteen
I got it! I got the lead in the school play! Mrs. Smith said I’m a natural. My dad isn’t thrilled and asked me if I’m gay! Can you believe that? Does he think Sean Connery is gay? Or Harrison Ford? I can’t wait to get out of this house, this