The Last Time I Was Me. Cathy Lamb

      EPILOGUE

      A READING GROUP GUIDE

      DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

      CHAPTER 1

      Women can look so innocent.

      And a few of them might be. Innocent, I mean.

      Most aren’t.

      Most have secrets. Pretty big ones, if I do say so myself.

      They silently nurture raging passions they’ve smothered for years because life has insisted they do so. They hide who they truly are because they’re in a box and no one in their families would feel comfortable if they broke out of that box like a rose on speed. They think non-innocent thoughts like: Should I castrate my husband? Should I leave my family and pesky in-laws, head for Tahiti, and have a fling with a lifeguard while downing daiquiris?

      Women can smile and be gracious and kind. And most women usually are. Gracious and kind, I mean.

      But to assume that a woman, any woman, is completely innocent is to be completely naïve.

      For example, take my recent not-so-innocent nervous breakdown.

      The breakdown happened to occur in front of eight-hundred-thirty-four advertising execs and their minions. All of whom think they are imminently cool and vitally necessary to the earth’s continual spinning around the sun.

      As the creative director for a stratospherically successful advertising firm in Chicago I suppose you could say I went out in a big way.

      My mother had died two months before.

      I had also found out that my longtime live-in boyfriend had not one current girlfriend on the side, but a small harem. This had prompted me to retaliate against him in a colorful and creative manner using, among other things, a hot-glue gun. The police were called, handcuffs were snapped, charges were filed, and now I had to be in court in a few months to fight assault charges.

      Plus, Jared Nunley, the boyfriend, who will heretofore be known as Slick Dick, was suing me for every nickel I had.

      Me, an ex-soloist in my church choir, who sold the most cookies three years in a row in Girl Scouts, had charges filed against her for assault.

      The truly bad thing about it was that my ex had no lasting damage done to his body.

      I had worked days and nights for a week for this particular presentation and Jessica, my insanely competitive twenty-three-year-old intern, kept implying that I was creaky-old and out of touch, with one of those saccharine sweet smiles you want to rip off people’s faces. I suddenly felt this insidious crack in my body breaking me open right up at the podium.

      It was a small crack starting in my small toe on my left foot. The crack raced by my ankle like a miniature rocket. The crack said, “Cancer has killed your mother. You are alone.” The crack wound up my thigh. “You have nothing,” the crack mocked me. “Your fun little town house doesn’t count. Neither does your sports car. Neither do all your little trips. To say nothing of that silly shoe collection of yours.” The crack zipped up between my legs and another crack joined it right in the heart of my femaleness.

      “You have worked incessantly for almost twelve years, with hardly a break. You have traveled to keep persnickety, picky clients happy all over the world who would only be satisfied if you brought them Pluto. You have handled other creative people, most in their twenties, who are crazed and edgy and who insist on riding their motorcycles through the building for inspiration, wear no shoes, drink beer for breakfast, and don’t wash.

      “Jared cheated on you,” the crack whispered. “You slept with him, and only him, for two years. God knows how many women he slept with during that time. You paid for all the groceries, including that vile sushi he loved, cat food for his mangy overgrown rat, his various electronic toys, and his nose-hair razor. He took off with the stereo equipment, your mountain bike, and nineteen-hundred dollars in cash. You had to fake every single orgasm with Jared. You miss that mountain bike.”

      The crack arrowed straight for my heart. “And you still miss Johnny and Ally.” The crack splintered into a million pieces and each crack burned its way across every pulsing artery and spindly vein in my body until I was one throbbing mass of aching pain.

      The crack wound its slippery way up to my mouth. “That drinking problem of yours that started two weeks after that night has got to go. It’s out of control. You’re out of control. It is going to kill you.”

      So the tears started. Right up at the podium with eight-hundred-thirty-four shallow schmucks looking on. I felt a surge of laughter bubbling and it rolled right out of my mouth-loud, rollicking laughter, who knows why.

      Now, anyone who is relatively smart like me-not that I have always been smart in my life but I do know I’m relatively smart-would have hightailed it off that stage. But I didn’t.

      I stood there and laughed and cried, my body quaking with pain.

      The schmucks’ mouths were hanging open in shock. Slack and loose.

      I decided to make a speech.

      An odd speech, a little speech, definitely a speech.

      I spoke my little mind. All that I had been thinking about during my years in advertising came right out of my perfectly lipsticked lips as I stood in my perfectly fashionable blue suit and blue high heels with the tiny gold chains in my perfectly way-too-thin body, and my perfectly sparkling jewelry that Jared supposedly “gave” me, but I ended up paying his credit