Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights (3 page)

The daughters thought preserving the bird was crazy. You’d think they would appreciate his life-giving sacrifice, maybe build an altar and burn some incense like the Vietnamese ladies in my local nail salon. But they took the stuffed bird as further evidence of their mother’s weirdness. For some reason they never mentioned their father being weird.

There were exceptions. In Mother’s world, all roads lead to Mother. When she was feeling especially slushy she said the bird died so she could be born. It wasn’t a story she ran with when her sister was around. My grandmother’s eyes lost focus when her daughter talked like that. Even mothers get sick of listening to their offspring’s bullshit apparently. I thought the bird should be buried with Grandma. I had a vision of them reanimated in a new place, maybe hooking up with my grandfather.

I didn’t know much about my other grandmother, my father’s mother, the wood burner. She was already a widow when I was born and a bit severe. I’d had little contact with her even when my father was alive, almost none after he died. My mother said she never approved of their marriage. I’ve since learned from my cousins that she didn’t approve of any of the spouses her children chose. It was so typical of my mother to leave out that part.

My father died twenty years ago. I remember his mother running out of the viewing room crying, saying that that was not her son in there. It was a shock to see her show emotion, but I could see her point. It didn’t look anything like him. She died soon after my father. The grief hit her rigid back and knocked her down.

My attention snapped back to traffic; it was finally starting to speed up. My Prius was whirring behind the pack while it built up momentum. Sparky is an okay car, but she won’t break any speed records. I listen to the radio on scan. A former boyfriend said I listen to the radio like I’m on speed. Drug runners know those things. He was a drug runner masquerading as an investment banker. He had a great sense of humor. Well the drug runner did; the investment banker could get a little condescending. Leave it to me to find someone for myself, and someone for my mother, in the same man. I ran into him right after I bought Sparky. He couldn’t understand why someone like me, with what he referred to as a zero-to-sixty personality, would drive a Prius. I was reining in my tendency to go too fast.

Traffic slowed down again and Sparky started acting funny. When I braked she lurched forward until I stomped down hard with both feet. She stopped just inches from the fender in front of me. Shit! I inched along giving the guy ahead of me a little more room, but each stop was an adrenalin rush. I looked for a place to pull off. The only thing in any direction was a truck stop with a café and motel.

I turned into the crowded parking lot and parked on the perimeter where the asphalt died into the edge of a field, a soft place to land in case the brakes failed. The diner was a brown-and-orange fifties model with bad maintenance. I could see only slashes between the hulking semi-trucks that surrounded it like behemoths at a watering hole. They’d probably blown past me in their rush to get food poisoning at the place.

I called my mother. They were still at the Anchor, swilling I’m sure.

Binky grabbed the phone from Mom. “Did you get my blanket at Grandma’s?”

“I didn’t know you wanted it, Binky. I left it for one of the residents.”

“I wanted to give it to Amber. Something to remember her great-grandmother by.”

“Remember her by? She never even met her.”

“She did too. I took her when she was a baby.”

“Amber is ten, Binky.”

“Time flies when you have kids, Hannie. They’re a time suck. You’ll see if you ever get around to having any.”

“Ten years isn’t just a suck, Binky, it’s more like a full-blown warp. You only live thirty minutes away.”

“Don’t scold me, Hannie. I made her the blanket.”

“Oh please, that blanket is ugly as sin, eight feet long, and barely wide enough to cover her body.”

“She loved it. She always mentioned it to Mom.”

What was jaw-lock annoying was that my grandmother never failed to say how nice it was that Bettina had made her a blanket.

“Well call the nursing home then,” I said. “Go get it. You’re right there.”

“You were supposed to be taking care of everything, GG.”

“Well I didn’t take care of that, Bettina.”

“Oooo Bettina. You getting all serious on me, Hannie?”

I couldn’t say Bettina when I was little, so I called her
Binky
. Binky is too nice in a fight.

“I have to go,” I said. “I need to figure this out.”

“Oh don’t get all stiff neck on me, Hannah,” she hung up. Apparently my family had stopped saying good-bye.

I wondered what a spoiled brat like Amber would say about her great-grandmother’s blanket. About her mother who made it for that matter. That gift could come back to bite Binky in the butt. As far as I could tell Amber didn’t know much about anything. Unlike her brother and sister, she hadn’t carved out a niche in either sports or academics. She was cute, she knew cute, except for her sneer. She could really sit on the sidelines and sneer. She’d sneer at that blanket. We had that in common. I needed to hear a friendly voice so called Steve, the man I was dating.

“I’m stuck in the boondocks with a broken car.”

“Did you call triple A?”

“Not yet. I thought I’d explain it to you and see if you knew what could be wrong.”

I told him how the car was acting. I don’t know why. Steve was a film editor from New York. He didn’t learn to drive until his late twenties when he was forced into it by taking a picture in Los Angeles. For negotiating subways in New York or Paris, he’s your man, but even after ten years of practice, he drove like a beginner. He had no rhythm. It set my teeth on edge.

“I don’t know anything about cars, you know that,” he said. “I know about town cars and triple A. Are you somewhere safe?”

“I’m somewhere, safe remains to be seen.”

“Well hang up and call, lock the doors, then call me back.”

He must have thought boondocks meant the Bronx or South Central L.A. I got out and stretched while I assessed the safe factor. I could smell smoke in the air and in my hair. I sniffed my forearm. All of me smelled like smoke; and it wasn’t that nice flaming marshmallow-on-a-stick campfire smell.

It was a definite Oh Shit situation. My parents didn’t allow profanity when we were growing up, except when things went south. My father enjoyed reading us excerpts from a book of black box recordings. The last words uttered by pilots before hitting terra firma or taking the big plunge; good stuff, Dad. A tiny few said, “Oh Jesus.” My mother always said they were praying, which always made my father laugh. Fewer still said adios to the spouse. Most threw out either “Oh Shit” or “Oh Fuck” to join the Gettysburg Address and “I have a dream” in the ether, for all time. Unlike Lincoln or King, I doubt it was one of their finest moments. We could say one of those when, for example, the car let us down in the middle of nowhere.

A big green truck with a leaping yellow stag was parked nearby. The cab was tilted up and a guy was so deep in the engine that his legs were hanging in the air over the side. A large German shepherd was guarding a tool chest on the ground. It was broad daylight and the legs guy looked like someone who might know a thing or two about cars. I wasn’t sure about the dog. I took a few steps toward the truck. The dog watched. A few more steps, dog still cool with it. I got all the way to the truck and started to tap the guy’s leg, but the dog stood up. Got it. I just called.

“Hello?” The dog lay back down.

“Yeah?” said a muffled voice at the end of the legs.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“I
can
hear you, so I suppose you
may
.”

Oh brother, that was a smart ass at the end of the legs. I decided to go inside and ask around, but his muffled voice came back: “Fire away if you’re still there.”

I imagined firing away at his ass. In his surprise, he’d jerk his head up and gash it on the hood. Then he’d slide to the ground unconscious and bleeding. I’d want to help, but his dog would keep me at bay. Smartass would bleed to a slow gasping death. I’d say, “May I help you?” over his death rattle. An animal control officer would finally arrive and shoot a tranquilizer dart into the snapping beast, while the late-arriving EMTs waited helplessly on the sidelines. Too late, can’t help ya. I’ve probably seen too many movies.

“Is there a car repair place near here?” I asked.

He was quiet under the hood. Then he slid out far enough to look down at me. I envied him his core strength; I’d be a heap on the ground if I tried that. He was a young guy, about my age, dressed in greasy overalls with a bandana covering his hair. The look in his vivid blue eyes said I’d dropped down from Mars. He slid out farther, hitting his head while he was at it. Yes!

“Fuck,” he said as he slid to the ground rubbing his head with the relatively grease-free back of his hand.

“Sorry.” I looked for spurting blood. Sometimes a little fantasy is better than nothing.

“What are you sorry about?” he asked.

“You hit your head,” I said.

“You didn’t hit it.” He gave me the barest squint, but I hid my tiny riff of glee. He looked over my shoulder to Sparky. “That must be your car.”

“Yes, it keeps lurching. It barely stops.”

“There isn’t anywhere around here that knows how to work on that. You need a dealer.”

“Okay thanks.” I headed back to my car. I looked back at him; he was watching me with a smirk. I don’t know why I cared, but I wished I still had my old VW GTI instead of the wimp car. I grabbed my phone and searched for Toyota dealers. Shit. I really was in the middle of nowhere. I called triple A before I realized I didn’t know where I was. The trucker was putting away tools so I yelled over to him.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Can you tell me where the fuck I am?”

“Grub ‘n Scrub. They’ll know.” He was smiling.

Triple A said at least an hour. I called my mother. I thought maybe they’d rescue me, or at least come and get Grandma’s stuff. She talked it over with Bettina.

“We can’t, Hannie. Bettina wants to stop by the rest home for the blanket, so Judith is driving me home and they have dinner plans.”

“Mom, I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere. You’re just going to leave me out here over that stupid blanket?”

“Oh, Hannah, don’t be so dramatic. You’re a big girl. You’ll be able to find a place to stay while they fix the car.”

“What if they can’t fix it? Tomorrow’s Sunday, I could get stuck here. I have plans. I have a job.”

“Oh well, if you get stuck, rent a car and come stay with me.”

I hung up and headed into the diner for god knows what to eat. A waitress in a brown-and-orange uniform led me to a booth right by the kitchen. They had a Thanksgiving dinner special, aka Ptomaine Special. I ordered split pea soup and coffee. She did an eyeball half-roll when I asked about espressos. I took in the room.

The cook looked like he had pancake batter glued to his beard with bacon grease. He wore a grimy apron and one of those little captain hats with the small brim. He glanced up, smiled, and winked as he ticked the brim in salute. He’d done it before; there were greasy tick marks all along the edge. He had a nice smile through the globs.

I took out my phone to fire up a solitaire game. My screen image was an old picture of the family camping under the wing of our plane in the Idaho backwoods before it filled up with suspicious survivalists. It was taken a still happy month before my father died. We sure hadn’t seen that one coming, except I guess I sorta had.

Before my grandmother’s dress and bird, the only other time I’d cleared out someone’s things was for my father a month after he died. My mother said it was just too painful, so I did it.

I’d had a clear premonition of my father’s death exactly one week before it happened. I was watching a sunset out my sister’s bedroom window. My mind’s eye didn’t see the plane crash into a mountain of snow; it simply saw the end. So even while we waited for the call about his missing plane, I knew he was gone. It was a strangely calm place to sit and wait. Nobody in the family appreciated me saying that he was dead. The premonition, what felt like a psychic connection, made me wonder which one of us made the decision that I should stay behind that day; I always went with him.

I can barely remember the month between the phone call about the crash and clearing out his things. Except for a few film clips, it’s all kaleidoscopic shards with what felt like cotton-stuffed ears. I’ve bored friends and lovers, and even the occasional therapist, to tears, recounting how disconnected it all felt. The only one who didn’t mind my endless word circles was my ex-husband. I thought it meant he cared. It turned out they overlapped with his endless circles like the Olympic rings of a bad marriage.

I don’t remember what my brother and sister were doing during that month; they are close in age, so maybe they were consoling each other. My mother went into full retreat. I don’t know how she spent her time. It wasn’t with me. Aunt Judith, who never had children, offered nothing but tight lips and arched eyebrows at what women wore when they came to visit the family. The men in the family talked a lot about money. They were worried, with good reason.

I remember swimming unseen through the sea of adults milling around our dining room table at the reception after the funeral. It was subdued. My father had been the life of the party. He had always moved fast. I overheard one friend say that if you were talking to him and you blinked, he might disappear. I knew about that. I had blinked and he had disappeared on me too. I was good at changing frequencies and spotting other planes. I’ll always wonder about spotting that mountain; I might have saved his life. Not all of life’s wonders are wonderful.

I loved flying lingo like “no joy” and “roger that.” My father’s name was Roger. He always smiled when I said, “Roger that Roger.” After the tenth time I would have strangled me. I sometimes imagine that I would have still been saying it as a rebellious teenager and that he wouldn’t have smiled. It’s all in the delivery. I could imagine him saying, “Don’t Roger me that, little girl,” or whatever he would’ve called me. I wonder what he would have called me when I wasn’t a little girl anymore. As it turned out, I was never a rebellious teenager; my mother just wasn’t up to the challenge.