The Last Time I Was Me. Cathy Lamb

eat. Would you like to join us? Our treat.”

      “I’d love to go to dinner with you. You are not treating. I am. Don’t argue. I owe you one. Let’s go. I’m starving.” We went to a place called Jack’s. Fabulous clams in this buttery, garlicky sauce. Fabulous steak. Fabulous Caesar salad. I had only two drinks.

      Tall One and Short One invited me to a club after dinner. The thought of going to a bar where men would scam on me as if I was a succulent and easy piece of salted meat held little appeal. They insisted on escorting me back to the bed-and-breakfast.

      I semiboiled myself in a hot bubble bath, cried on my patio while sitting in a tight little ball, then tucked myself into bed.

      Talking to the counselor had loosened too many mind-numbing memories. That night I dreamed of my baby. But she was joined by four other children. In the background there was a farm and a family of lambs.

      I slept better.

      “Okay, call Bob Davis, he’s the governor’s chief of staff, he’s at the number I gave you, so I can quit worrying, and make an appointment to meet Jay Kendall, our current governor, who is also going to be our next governor,” Charlie said, his voice anxious. “Jay’s going on vacation in a couple of weeks and I want you in Portland before to meet him. He needs a new communications director, our other one decided she wanted to study kickboxing full-time, whatever that means, and you’re it. Do it right away and call me when you’ve done it so I can quit worrying. This is a shoo-in. You’re a shoo-in. It’s one phone call. That’s it. One call.”

      I kicked the water in the Salmon River with my feet, careful not to let my cell phone take a nosedive.

      I did not miss the note of desperation in the voice of my older brother, Charlie. Charlie, the dear man, is insanely kind and smart and almost always worried sick about me. He is married with four children. His wife, Deidre, does not work outside her home and never intends to. My brother is smart enough to know that a woman with four children has more than enough to do at home. I have seen a photo of their white, rambling home in Portland and it made my throat close up because you know by looking at it that a happy, rambunctious, and chaos-plagued family dwells there.

      I was wearing jeans but had decided to wade into the river up to my thighs anyhow. I glanced at the sun. It was about 4:00 in the afternoon on a Wednesday, or was it a Thursday? No, it was Wednesday. Thursday. Wednesday. Anyhow, I had been on the river since 7:22 that morning and had decided to end my day immersed in it.

      “Jeanne?”

      “Yes.” I bent to examine some neat rocks in the river.

      “You’ll call and make an appointment? I really want you to do this. It’s an opportunity you can’t miss. Can’t miss.”

      “Of course.” I flicked a few of the rocks over. A little fish swam by.

      He sighed. “I don’t like the way you said, ‘Of course.’ You’re humoring me so we can get off this subject and you can get back to your nervous breakdown.”

      I sang, “I will call,” in English, French, Spanish, Pig Latin.

      “Okay, okay. I got it. Please. Now listen, Jeanne, listen up, I’m worried about you.”

      “I know, darlin’, but I’m fine. Perfectly fine. Needed a bit of a change of scenery, that’s all.” Was that a frog?

      “That’s not all-”

      “I know it.” It was a frog! A tiny frog, right by the bank. Should I catch it? “And, I know you know what happened and I don’t want to talk about it.” My brother knew everything. From a young age he was reading all about politics and politicians. He can tell you, in great detail, all the ins and outs of all of the presidential elections for the last one hundred years. His favorite presidential campaign, however, was Abraham Lincoln’s.

      Anyhow, he earned a scholarship to a fancy liberal college in Oregon, hooked up with a bunch of people there, graduated, got involved in politics, and was currently running the reelection campaign for Oregon’s governor. Along the way he had met about a zillion people. As one of his best friends is also a high mucky-muck in advertising in Chicago, it is not surprising that he had heard of my latest episode. Hopefully, he had not heard about the assault charges.

      “Look here, Jeanne Beanie,” he sighed, using my childhood nickname. I could see him rubbing with two fingers that one lock of blondish hair that always fell over his forehead. Women were crazy about him, but he was so in love with Deidre that a person of the female sort could dance in front of him naked with a purple parasol and pink high heels and he probably wouldn’t notice.

      “You’re a whiz kid. A whiz woman. Clear, articulate, funny, damn smart. People listen to you instead of tuning out like they do with everyone else. You know how to sell people stuff. You know how to lead, how to organize, research, market, create, how to get things done.”

      Yes, and after many a day hard at work at the salt mines getting things done, I usually got quietly smashed out of my mind in the privacy of my own home.

      “So, Jeanne, listen. I need you here in Portland. Right now. Why did you stop in Weltana anyhow?”

      “Because I liked the pancakes.” That was the truth. Look at that! The little frog jumped to another rock. I tried to inch closer. The river lapped around my legs.

      “Because you liked the pancakes?” I knew my brother’s hand was now rubbing that little space on the nose between the eyes. I could see him glaring out his office window in some high-rise in Portland.

      “They’re delicious. Unbelievable. Can you drive out here and have some with me?”

      “No, Jeanne, no” He raised his voice. I knew he was back to curling that curl. “No, not now.”

      I strolled down the middle of the river. I watched a small wave crash into another, blend, crash again. There went the hoppy little frog. I followed.

      I decided to tell Charlie the startling truth so he would get off my tail, God love the man. “I don’t want to work right now, Charlie.”

      He swore very quietly, but I heard it. “Don’t swear,” I said, with quite a prim note in my voice.

      “Jeanne, do it for me. You’re making me anxious. I feel anxious about you.”

      I almost laughed. My big brother needed me employed so he could stop worrying about me and he specifically wanted me near him to make sure I didn’t drive my Bronco into the Pacific. “None of the other people Jay’s got in his office are the remotest bit as competent as you are, plus you’d be awesome-awesome-with the media. You speak like you know what you’re speaking about.”

      “Charlie, political campaigns are nightmares. I’d rather poke my buttocks with sharp needles while cartwheeling.”

      “Plus, plus you’ve always been interested in politics-local, state, even on a national level, you’re a walking, talking political history book. You have a mind like a trap, a good trap, not a bad trap. Come on, Jeanne-”

      “I know nothing about Oregon politics. Nothing. I don’t even know what the gubernatorial candidates look like. I don’t know, or care about, this ‘Jay’ you’re talking about.”

      “He’s a phenomenal man. He’s honest. He knows his stuff, Jeanne, honestly knows it. He’s innovative. He’s decisive. The polls have us in a dead heat against a closed-minded conservative state senator. Please, Jeanne, the pay’s good and I would consider it a personal favor.”

      “I don’t owe you a single favor,” I told him.

      We both laughed.

      I owed him a thousand and one personal favors, and we both knew it. He had saved my life on many occasions. I watched the frog leap again. What a leaper!

      “All right, Charlie, I’ll do it. I’ll make an appointment with this guy.”

      He sighed with relief.