Sculpted: Gentian blue eyes, silk cheeks caressed by the soft hand of a god, beyond a diamond, flawlessly faceted. No jewel, no flower, no Renaissance Master could ever match her.
Blemished: Snot nose. Miss Prissy Princess. The boys, like ugly little toads, hopped around Snow White-but she was dirt black inside.
Snatched: Her rich parents, smashed by a drunk who swatted them dead, like flies. Orphaned, the judge awarded her to an unknown grandmother who drove her away to the Wyoming Mountains.
Angered: The old woman looked like a witch. The child simmered and boiled and bolted away into the hands of an alligator elegant man-”You have to take your clothes off.”
Refreshed: That old mountain magic flowering in that young breast, glowing in that wondering mind, and stretching rock strength down the bones of those swelling young legs.
Transformed: A dream summer of beauty and wonder, beauty burning within and glowing all outward, enchanting like elven laughter, uplifting like the rainbow, breathtaking like the thunder, and warming like the sunlight.
Wise: Gram never told me what the tree meant. She just said look. She just said learn. She just said beauty. She just said love.
Enjoy the first pages of The Other Edge of Beauty
Prologue
She snatched me.
I could not have written this until she died.
I respected her too much to reveal her name while she lived.
But now I can tell the world.
And the world needs to know.
Millions of you would recognize her married name as the stunning, arrogant wife of George Michael Vanderfeller III, who took his money and disappeared–twice.
Carolyn Faye is the name she took to vanish from the media.
In her words, she simply changed from a rich bitch to a woman.
In my words she transformed into a saint. From a cheerleader into a slut into a society star into a bag lady into a wild woods woman into…well, I’ll have to tell you about that later, because you wouldn’t believe it now, and you might toss her book aside, and I do want the world to know who she was in her second, hidden life.
I hated her, then I loved her.
She snatched me from the city and took me to the mountains.
Many people never see those mountains. I was lucky enough to have lived there, loved and guided by a warm and wise woman. This memoir is hers, and a little of mine since I carry her within. The story might get a little raw at times—she would have wanted that way, and I think you will too. And she would want bare honesty. I’ll try, but I am biased– she is my model, my mentor, my grandmother, and the greatest gift of all my life—I am one-fourth genetically and one-hundred percent personally grafted into her. I wish all of her, all her wisdom, goodness, strength, and sensitivity to beauty could be entwined into my nerves, arteries, sinews, fibers, and bone of my body and soul.
Some of you, when you were hurting, might have been lucky enough to have met Carolyn personally. Thousands of you, hundreds of thousands of you across the country have been helped by her. That will become clear later. But everyone in the town of Bow, Wyoming, all one-hundred and forty-four occupants, knew her. Mention Carolyn’s name in Bow, and watch people smile and sunshine flash across their faces. Carolyn did that to people.
They called her Mountain Momma, and they will tell you how one time she drove her pick-up truck right up into a blizzard in the mountains, parked the truck in an old wooden shack at the top of Bow, hopped onto a snowmobile and went right through that blizzard into that Snowy Mountain Range and was packed solid into an ice block for the whole winter. They thought they would find her frozen body thawing in the spring, still stuck to the snowmobile—or more likely, her bones, scratched by teeth and scattered nearby.
The first part of that story is true. The part about the blizzard was wrong. I know. I know Carolyn and she watched storm clouds like a cat watches a mouse. No blizzard would ever catch her.
So if you want to know the real story of her disappearance, and of some of the deep down things she has done, read on.
I must write on. I must release this welling up, almost forcing itself out, unfolding from within. I need to tell her story
Carolyn loved stories. That first summer that I met her, she told me parts of her life. I begged for more. On a good day I would get three or four of her adventures, and I replayed them in my head. So I know they are accurate. I was only eleven, but I remember them with awe. And I want to get them down on paper now exactly like my Gram told them.
Gram’s stories are true. The parts about me are blurred a little, because I do not have Gram’s courage and honesty. I have bent the truth-telling to put a little shine on my story. But doesn’t everyone bend the truth a little? Because I was such a miserable, unlovable snot nose I thought I needed the touch of a few graces.
Oh, and please forgive the rough spots–I am not the story teller that Gram was.
I sent this to a literary agent who loved the story but didn’t believe a grandmother would share the ugly parts of her life with her young granddaughter.
She did.
That agent also didn’t believe that an eleven-year-old girl could have a vocabulary like that.
I did.
I ought to know. It was me. Maybe I’m adding some adult words now, but I’m trying to say it like I said it then. I did read a lot–that was probably the one good thing I did in my childhood before I met Gram. I stuffed my hollow life with books. Also, my agent didn’t like my foul mouth–but I won’t change the dialogue. It was the way I spoke. I had a torturing tongue. I thought nasty things, and I spat them out with my brat breath. You could have probably called me evil—that, too, was before I met Gram. She scrubbed my tongue, and she did it good. But she used the brush of example and kindness.
No matter to the agent and his problem about what Gram would say or about my vocabulary: Gram is famous enough that publishers will bid at an auction to get her book. And if they don’t, I’ll run off a million copies myself. I’ve got the money, her money, which she never spent enough of on herself.
I have changed the names of two of the towns and of some of the people, and I decided to write it in the third person, like a novel. But all of the stories and the naked beauty of nature remain unchanged. Just dimmed by my pale pen.
Now that you know Marilyn was really Mrs. George Michael Vanderfeller, III, you probably want to know why and how she disappeared from the public, and just how much money she had.
A lot. And you probably want to know what she did with her fortune–she doubled and re-doubled it many times over. But I’m not going to tell you about Mrs. George Michael Vanderfeller, III. I never knew that woman. But I will tell you about Carolyn Faye, and although I wish to have known her far more deeply than I do, I do think I knew her better than anyone. And I certainly know how much I love her and miss her. And how much she is in me, and what I owe her– far more than I owe my mother. I owe her my childhood and the woman I have become.
I owe her myself.
Mariah Faye
Granddaughter of Carolyn Faye
Blessed by her Beauty
Chapter One: The Guardian
The child sucked the air from the room. When the courtroom voyeurs saw her, they held their breath. Outside a sea of reporters washed against the concrete steps. Male or female, even the very old, almost anyone who saw this girl would just pause, look, and sometimes forgetting their manners, would just stare.
Milk skin, silk smooth; teeth of snow; nose and cheeks and chin sculpted by the soft hand of a god. Beyond a diamond, clear and masterly crafted, flawlessly faceted. No jewel, no flower could match this child. No Renaissance master could ever sketch her.
But now sitting at a table in a courtroom, she crushed her lips into her perfect teeth; her blue eyes watered, and her lashes were wet with blinking.
Mariah was eleven. Her rich parents, the Sandstroms of River Hills, had been smashed by a drunk who swatted them dead. Like flies. The judge would soon appoint her guardian.
The old woman entered the courtroom and saw the pre-nubile beauty. The woman’s chest pulled up in a quick jerk and her breath wouldn’t release. “The pain!” she thought. “The pain. The beauty. My replica. The pain. The pain.”
Her past coiled into her sternum like a broken spring, the sharp edge gouging her bones. When her breath came back in rib hurting lunges, the old woman folded down onto the front courtroom bench, across from the stunning child.
“Are you all right?” asked Joan Ryerson, the social worker who was secretly hoping the old lady was having a heart attack. Joan had argued against giving custody to this woman. She was too old. The child did not know her. And the old woman lived somewhere off in some mountains–hardly a home for a child.
Mariah looked over at the old lady who was still gasping and holding a hand over her chest and thought: Good, she’ll die soon. Mariah knew she should feel badly about that thought, but she didn’t. The whole world can die for all I care!
Five minutes later Judge Gearson’s gavel struck: “This court awards full custody of Ms. Mariah Sandstrom to Ms. Carolyn Faye for the period of one year, a review to determine the disposition thereafter. In the interim, Ms. Sandstrom’s inheritance shall be placed in a closed trust account managed by Bank One of Milwaukee. Ms. Faye will not have access to any of these funds, and has agreed to bear all expenses directly related to the care and rearing of Mariah Sandstrom.”
This witch! This witch is going to be my mother? Not a chance. I’ll run away. Mariah felt betrayed. Betrayed by life, betrayed by the Ms. Ryerson, and now betrayed by the judge. Ms. Ryerson had assured her that if she said “no” loudly enough, she would not have to go with this old woman who was making claims to be some kind of relative. But despite Mariah’s protestations, the court had just awarded her custody to this half dead woman, a wrinkled, old crony, old, old, way more than half dead. And this thing that can barely walk is going to be my guardian? My protector? Take me away somewhere? Away from my friends? Her life had ended then and there. It was over, just as she was about to blossom.
Ms. Ryerson had objected, calling the ruling unusual and a risk for the young girl. The girl herself, she pointed out, had plainly stated that she didn’t want the old woman as her guardian, and an eleven-year-old child’s wish usually carried great weight with most judges, but not with the Honorable Judge Gearson. He had made his decision after just twenty minutes alone in his chamber with the elderly woman. He then returned and announced in her favor. The judge said that eleven was just too young to become a ward of the state or to be placed in foster homes until she was adopted, that her relative, Ms. Carolyn Faye, had the financial means and was of strong moral character.
What Ms. Ryerson didn’t know was what the old woman had disclosed to the judge: a thick financial portfolio and some astounding proof of how that portfolio was in play. The judge was in awe. He granted Carolyn’s request to keep her identity and address out of the papers. Carolyn had also promised the judge that, if Mariah was not happy, within a year she would return to Wisconsin and buy a home in a good school district and raise the child there.
After the hearing, in one of the strangest judicial procedures, the judge summoned Ms. Ryerson into his chamber and told her he would not disclose the girl’s destination, only that they were going west somewhere into a remote area. Ms. Ryerson was somewhat placated upon hearing that the unknown rural area had school buses, but to give a child to a 60 some year old lady out in the wild? It jarred common sense. What if the old lady died? What of marauders? Wisconsin seemed cosmopolitan compared to western mountains.
But the social worker’s concerns were small compared to the feelings of the girl. Her school had ended, her friends had ended, her life had ended. She was to be taken away to a wilderness that she had never seen, to a foreign state that seemed as strange as a foreign country or a different planet. She was afraid and sullen, bitter anger boiled, but the child let off no seen steam.
She had blamed her parents for something vital which had been missing during her eleven years, but now she shifted her anger to this hag who was ripping her out of the little life she had known. If Mariah were a magnifying glass and could focus her anger, she would have burned a hole through the leather weathered face of this woman. Mariah’s eyes, one shade lighter than sky blue, slitted and stared out like little hard marbles.
The old woman, the new guardian, saw the icy rocks in Mariah’s eyes: The pain! The pain.
“Come my dear, it is time to go.”
“Don’t—call—me–dear,” the words came out in chiseled blocks.
“Well I’m sorry young Miss. Let’s begin our journey.”
She held out her hand.
The girl let the adult’s hand dangle like a scarecrow’s, and said: “And my name is not Miss,”like a little girl. My name is Mariah Sandstrom. Call me Mariah when you talk to me,” she said in a voice of cold command, numbing coming from one so young.
Carolyn withdrew her empty hand and walked toward the door. The little girl followed, seeming to shrink as she circled the social worker like a puppy who did not want to leave her dead mother. She glanced at the judge and then crept after Marilyn toward the door that seemed to open into all blackness.
Bright lights exploded on the outside steps. Black cameras bobbed high on an ocean of arms and heads. Reporters struggled to catch the agony of the young heiress in the crutches of an crony who was obviously after the child’s inheritance.
Four police officers pushed like a tugboat through the human flood, and helped Ms. Faye and Mariah into her vehicle. Mariah was too numb to notice that she had just been put into the front seat of a white GMC Custom Cab, no truck for an old woman. Carolyn patted the dashboard and said: “Meet White Light. His full name is ‘White Light of Freedom,’ but you can call him ‘White Light.’ He’s going to lose this insane crowd of reporters.”
In the back seat of the extended cab, a golden retriever began barking excitedly. “And your new friend is Honnengold. You will love her, because she will love you.”
Mariah said nothing until Honnengold poked her long wet nose over the back of the seat, and began sniffing Mariah. “Eeew! Get this ugly monster off me,” said Mariah as she put her hands up in front of her face.
“Honnengold! Get back there,” Marilyn pointed to the back seat. “And you stay there.” She looked at Mariah’s face and was relieved that there was no fear: “I’m sorry. Honnengold usually rides shotgun for me. She’s not too happy being in back. She’s a friendly dog, and she might want to lick you like a lollypop, but I promise she will not bite. And she understands very well, and she heard you call her ugly, but I think she will forgive you.”
This old thing is insane like her dog.
Carolyn left the parking lot. Prurient lens violated her windows. She drove deliberately, annoyingly slow through the downtown streets of Milwaukee. The train of vans and cars followed her like she was the president.
“You’re a big story, Mariah. Look at the vans with their T.V. cameras on them. They want to know everything. You’re popular. You’re an heiress.”
Mariah scowled sourly.
Carolyn planned her escape. She slowed down for a green light on Kilbourne and said: “Hang on Mariah. We’re going to shake that wolf pack. White Light doesn’t like tailgaters.”
Carolyn stopped as the light turned red. Lulled into lethargy, the reporters stopped.
She stomped the gas. The GMC Custom Cab’s 402-cu.in. big block growled and spat out 300 horses into the four huge knobby tires. Black rubber screamed grey smoke as White Light burned across the intersection and into the expressway tunnel going north.
The journalists cursed and hit their palms on the steering wheels, as the cross traffic cut them off from their prey.
White Light shot out of the tunnel like a bullet from a gun barrel. Carolyn braked hard, exited west, and then drove normally.
“How did you like that ride? Not bad for an old lady, huh?”
Normally Mariah would have been impressed, but the noise and the turns just seemed to make her brutal departure feel more like a kidnapping.
She simmered in silence.
The papers did not get Ms. Faye’s destination nor the interviews they desired, but they had a field day with their headlines:
CHILD TORN FROM OUR CITY!
MYSTERIOUS OLD WOMAN GETS GIRL!
YOUNG BEAUTY, OLD BEAST!
HEIRESS VANISHES FROM THE COURTROOM