Page 1 of The Matchmaker Club
1
Mr. Intensity
The Reed Women Family Journal
Entry #127
Taylor
Our Family Curse
It is an indisputable fact that Reed women arenotmarriage material.
My great-grandmother, Marlena Reed, loved once, but he left our small town to build an empire and married a woman more “suitable” for someone of his stature. Heartbroken, Marlena took off to fulfill her dream of becoming a stage actress at the age of nineteen but instead became a famous burlesque dancer in the 1930s. She was arrested eight times for indecent exposure, even though she never showed any nudity. With large feather fans—inspired by the great Sally Rand—Marlena only gave the illusion of nudity.
My great-grandmother never wanted children, but things happen, and at the age of thirty-one, she gave birth to Hattie, my grandmother, who then got pregnant at Woodstock at the age of twenty-two with my mother, Sara. A year later, she got pregnant in San Francisco with my aunt, Elaine.
All the fathers of my family’s children are unknown.
What I know of my own father is that he was an artist in the south of France who went by the name of Jean-Michel. My mother had met him at an artist retreat in Tuscany, where they’d engaged in a lovers’ tryst that had lasted one week. She’d never asked for his last name or an address—no way to contact him.
And that’s how I became a Reed, like my mother and her mother before her.
Being from a small town, you can only imagine the rumors surrounding us. Some are polite enough, some think we’ve killed our male heirs, and some believe we’re actual witches.
As for love? I learned early on, during my high school years, that boys wanted me for one of two reasons: to brag that they had survived death or to piss off their parents.
Apparently, Reed women aren’t girlfriend material either.
This is my one curse.
You could say that it’s unfair, but I don’t really feel that way. I love my aunt and grandmother and wouldn’t want them any other way.
As for my mother… I don’t remember her, but I feel like I know her more than ever possible because of the people who kept her close in their hearts. Through them, I can almost hear her laugh or see the way she smiled when she got brilliant inspiration to set paint to canvas. I even understand why she’d never gotten my father’s number during one of the most romantic trips she’d ever had in her life. My mother didn’t believe in forever. She believed inmoments.
I suppose that’s why she didn’t accept chemo when she was told she had breast cancer. Maybe she would have if it had been caught sooner. My grandmother believed that, only because of me. She said my mother adored me but couldn’t bear the thought that my only memories would be of her lying in bed and dying. She wanted me to remember her as she should have been… or used to be.
My mother died on a Wednesday in March. I was three years old.
I’m not telling you all this so you’ll be sad for me. I don’t feel sad. We Reed women see death in a way that most do not. My mother had the time of her life before she died, and I feel better for knowing that.
But I do miss her.
And I know it’s strange missing someone you’ve never really met, but through every cassette tape she made for me and every page in our family journal, I feel my mom with me. I believe she guides me in our Matchmaker Club. It was her idea, after all.
And who better to guide me than my mom?
