“Lance, you own companies, you’re a successful businessman. I’ve seen you give so many speeches, you’re in command of the whole room, you know all the numbers off the top of your head, you know where your business has been, where it’s going, you get all the technical stuff….”
“That’s business! This is…this is”—hard exhale—“…this is a woman!”
After a half hour of reassuring Lance he was a stud, I hung up the phone and snuggled next to Jake. “I like your cousins,” he said sleepily. “I do not, however, care for your uncle, and that’s not going to change, Stevie. The man’s a disease.”
“I don’t like him, either. Give me a kiss.”
Zena said to me, “I met someone at your cousin’s party.”
I feigned innocence, took a container of fruit out of my bag, and stared straight ahead at a bunch of men in kilts playing bagpipes in Pioneer Courthouse Square. They had nice legs. A man in a skirt is kinda sexy. Do all women want to flip that skirt right up or is it just me? “Who did you meet?”
“It was a dude dressed up in this way-out rock outfit. I mean, it was one of the best ones there. His face was all painted in black and white and red, same as your face, now that I’m thinking about it. Anyhow, I said hi, and he said hi, but that was about all he said.” Her brows came together. She was puzzled, baffled. “Anyhow, I asked him to dance, and he said yes. The guy’s huge—building-sized—but he could dance okay, sort of rigid and robotic. After we danced I asked if he wanted to get something to eat, and he nodded, so we sat down and ate these incredible steaks—my favorite food—and he still didn’t say much at all, but he kept smiling at me.” Her brows came together. She was puzzled, baffled. “Actually, he didn’t eat.”
“So he was a quiet sort?” I handed her some carrots from my garden.
“Yeah, so quiet.” She crossed her arms, figuring that one out. “So, anyhow, I told him about roller derby, and he seemed to enjoy hearing about that. I invited him to come to the next match and I gave him my cell number, and he nodded. He seemed nervous. What’s there to be nervous about? I dunno. Maybe he won’t come. I don’t even know his name or what he looks like. He doesn’t know what I look like, either, because I was a KISS band member, but he knew a lot of people there because people kept coming up and talking to him, hitting him on the back…. So a lot of people think he’s cool. That’s good, it’s a good sign. Probably not an ax murderer.”
I tried to figure out what to do here. Should I tell her? If she knew he was my cousin, would that interfere with how she felt about him? Would she think that was weird to be dating my cousin?
“I don’t think he said much of anything at all to me. Maybe he didn’t speak English?” Her brows came together. She was puzzled, baffled. She pulled at her fishnets, her purple boots crossed at the ankle, then shrugged. “Well, whatever.” She handed me a cookie.
I smiled.
The bagpipes blared.
I did want to flip those skirts. One flip. One peek. A small peek.
Cherie had a divorce case that was “on fire,” so to speak.
She was representing the wife, Claudia.
Claudia wanted a divorce.
Terrence, the husband, did not want a divorce, although by all accounts he was a difficult son of a gun. He had agreed to move out only because Claudia told him she might think about a separation, not a divorce, if he did.
The Colliers had a sprawling home in the country, horses, and a popular pumpkin patch called “Collier Family Pumpkin Farm.” The place came complete with a train that took kids out to the pumpkin patch, hay rides, a barn filled with goodies, jellies and flowers and gourds, and a petting zoo for the kids.
“I respect this client because she’s so creative,” Cherie told me. “You’ve got to love the ingenuity I’ve seen here.”
Cherie had me come to the meeting between them and the husband’s attorney to “enjoy the fireworks. This’ll crack up your day.”
“I don’t want a divorce,” Terrence said. He had a gut and a balding head, and his attorney resembled a dazed crocodile. “I know you’re upset about the porn, Claudia, but we can reach a compromise on it.”
“No compromise,” Claudia said. She was elegant and refined. I could not imagine how those two got together. “I will not have women in my home with their legs spread, tickling boobs the size of Rhode Island. I told you last year when I found out about your porn to get rid of it.”
“And I did!” He spread his arms out wide, like a drunken eagle, his eyes earnest.
“Dumping it in a storage locker is not getting rid of it.”
Porn Husband went pale.
“Yep. I found it.”
“I was…I was…” He struggled. “I was going to sell it.”
“Sell it?” She arched her eyebrows. “Great. And what were you going to do with the money?”
He swallowed hard, his eyes jittering back and forth. “I was going to take you to Hawaii.”
He was a poor liar.
Claudia shook her head sadly. “Well, no Hawaii for us.”
“Why not?”
“I used the pickup truck to unload all your porn for you.” She made the sound of a revving pickup truck.
Porn Husband made a strangled sound.
“Then I used the tractor to gather it all in one place.” She snapped her fingers three times. “I lit a match. Burn, baby, burn.”
He gasped. “You didn’t!”
“I did!” She grinned at him. “Whoosh whoosh! All up in flames. And then!”
“You burned my porn collection?” He was appalled. Mystified. Devastated.
“Yep. And then I accidentally drove your motorcycles into the pond.” She made the sound of a motorcycle, low and deep. A close likeness of the engine.
He slapped a hand to his forehead. “You drove my motorcycles into the pond?”
“Yep. And I learned that our pumpkin shooter can do a lot of damage. Bang, bang, bang.” She imitated shooting the pumpkin shooter.
“How does our pumpkin shooter do damage?” He started to sweat.
“Especially to your Ferrari.” She made the purring sound of a Ferrari. “When pumpkins are shot at it at high speeds, it dents. Me and my girlfriends had a Shoot the Ferrari Party. It was so much fun. We had daiquiris while we did it. Coraleen got so drunk! Bang, bang, bang.”
“How could you do this to me?” Porn Husband was distraught, poor dear.
“Here’s the thing, Terrence.” Claudia leaned forward. “You’re trying to roadblock this divorce. I want out. I’m dating a gorgeous guy ten years younger than me, and I don’t want you in the way. I need vigor and a man with staying power in my bed from now on, you get what I’m saying? I need a man with hair who’s not carrying a dead deer in his gut. I want a man who can hike and boat and doesn’t want to sit in front of his computer jacking off. It’s not attractive. You seem old to me. Rigid. Unexciting. Dry. I want to feel young again, and he makes me feel young and sexy and vibrant, like I’m the coolest woman he’s ever met. I’m keeping the Porsche, by the way. I need a sports car to drive fast.”
Porn Husband was shrinking in his seat. “You’re leaving me for a younger man?” He was aghast! He had never in his wildest dreams believed his wife would leave him! She simply needed time to get used to his porn collection!
“Yes, I’m leaving you for a younger man. He is delicious. So tasty. My girlfriends are at my home right now. Cherie?”
Cherie turned on a TV. There were the girlfriends, waving, laughing. They were behind the pumpkin-shooting gun. I couldn’t tell if Coraleen was drunk again. Out in the middle of the pumpkin patch? Three sports cars.
“Now you listen here, you porn-hungry, saliva-dripping, fart-dropping, acid-belching old man,” classy Claudia said, as polite as you please. “You will give me a divorce or I will tell them to start shooting those pumpkins till each one of your sports cars might have been dropped from Pluto, got it?”
Funny how sports cars motivate men.
>
We wrapped up that divorce with no further ado.
I love my walks. Have you ever noticed the geometric shapes in nature? The triangles that tree branches form? The oval-shaped yellow petals of a flower? The circle of a bird’s nest? Have you ever noticed that birds flying in a flock sometimes form the outline of a fish? Have you noticed raindrops plopping off leaves and the twirl of leaves as they fall and the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine?
Have you noticed?
“I have something to explain to you, Stevie,” Herbert intoned, his voice black and gooey on my answering machine days after the renewal of vows disaster. “It might be difficult for you to understand the extreme circumstances surrounding your leave-taking of Ashville as a child. I’m going to have to ask you to trust me and do as I say: Do not take yourself to Ashville and awaken all those memories of your deranged, demented mother and your grandparents and your sister. That’s a part of your past you don’t need to bother with again. It’s done. In fact, I forbid you to go, young woman. I forbid it. Call me back immediately.” He cleared his throat. “Have you heard from your aunt Janet?”
I did not call him. And yes, I’d heard from Aunt Janet when she was in Paris en route to Africa. “It’s divine here. I had no idea this whole world was outside, outside the door of my airplane….”
While I sanded a chair late the next night, after Jake had left me with a passionate kiss to rattle my brain, I thought about Herbert. He hates himself, I knew that. Herbert is the most unhappy, angry, bitter person I have ever met. No one in our family wants him around. He knows this. He’s smart enough to get it but mean enough, controlling enough, for whatever reason, to not stop the behavior that makes everyone hate him.
And now his wife had left him, his kids wouldn’t have anything to do with him, and he was sunk politically and publicly disgraced.
I tried to feel sorry for him.
Couldn’t quite get there.
I saw Sunshine that night in my dream. She was sitting on the front step of the Schoolhouse House. She smiled and waved at me, the charm bracelet she’d given me on top of her head like a crown. Behind her was the vegetable garden. Beyond that, the corn. In the middle of the corn was a painting Helen had made. It was one of the Schoolhouse House, the only thing she ever painted that didn’t reflect the insane cubicles and hallways of the ongoing hell in her mind. The picture was bright and pretty, wildflowers spotting the landscape. The picture grew and grew until it took over what I was seeing.
Helen came flying out of the hills, only she was a hawk with her own head, and kidnapped Sunshine. She dropped Sunshine on a cliff and whispered, “Night night.” She flapped her wings, harder and harder, until the edge of the cliff started to crack. Helen the Hawk stared at me and said, “I don’t like this Trash Heap,” jumped on the edge, and the cliff broke off. I tried to reach Sunshine, but my feet wouldn’t move out of a teacup. In my dream I knew it was my fault that Sunshine died.
When I woke up, sweating and panting, I knew what to plant in the corner of my garden where the weeds are.
28
Ashville, Oregon
The kidnapping of Sunshine happened on a Friday. That day I made Sunshine a heart collage. I used tissue paper, sequins, broken sticks, a pink button I ripped off my sweater, tiny bits of construction paper, and a red pencil I used to draw a miniature picture of our barn. I was ten years old.
My teacher held my heart up and announced, “Now, this is an artist. Stevie, you are an artist.” My classmates, many of them relatives, clapped for me. I thought I’d burst right out of my Mary Janes and my purple bell-bottom pants with pride.
Sunshine was not there to meet me at the end of our driveway with Grandma and, sometimes, Helen. Helen would often put two pencils behind her ears, or would bite into an apple and hold it in her mouth because she knew I was coming home from school. We would walk up the driveway, say hi to the horses and the sheep, pet any cats wandering around, and head back to the Schoolhouse House together.
I didn’t see any of them, but I did see the lights flashing on the tops of the police cars.
Instantly panicked, I dropped the heart for Sunshine and my lunch box and ran as fast as I could to the house. I was so scared I remember wetting my pants as I ran. I was huffing a bit because I was already putting on weight, eating for comfort, eating to forget that my own mother had a Command Center, called Sunshine Trash Heap, and yesterday had fastened ropes around her head to make a hat.
I flew into the house and found the police, two paramedics, the local doctor, about ten of The Family and friends, and Grandma and Grandpa pleading with Helen, who was standing on a chair with her arms outstretched as if she’d been hung on a cross.
Helen was wearing my witch’s hat from Halloween, which instantly made me feel sick. Helen had always said, “Witches are evil with sorcerers’ powers. They’re not allowed by Command Center. I don’t listen to them because they do bad things and tell me to do bad things. Thormanntory or chitterbong.”
“Helen,” Dr. Mosher said. “Come on off the chair for a second, will you?”
“I can’t. The spell master is starting soon.”
“Helen, we need to know where Sunshine is,” Grandpa said, his face gray.
“Tell us, Helen, my goodness, you have to tell us,” Grandma begged. She was stark white, her hands knitting together, back and forth.
Helen took off her witch’s hat, twirled it around, then put it back on her head. Then she opened up her trench coat. Underneath she was wearing pink pajamas with white rabbits. “Command Center said I had to do it. The witch said so, too. I had to do the first.”
“Where is she?” Grandpa said, his voice snapping. “You drove her away in the car, Helen. Where is she?”
Helen drove the car? Helen was not supposed to drive the car. They hid the keys from her all the time. The last time she stole the car she put it in the fountain. Before that she drove it to the mountains, then danced on the hood in the rain.
“It’s not here. It’s resting. It’s on a cliff.”
Grandma burst into tears.
“Where’s Sunshine?” I asked Grandma, already crying. “Where is she?”
Grandma shook her head, held me close.
Then Grandpa lost it and yelled at Helen, and she hissed, “I will not have you undermining Punk! He’ll be meaner to me. Stop it! You pig! You overnoisy warlock!” She stuck her left hand out and shook it hard. “Get that off of me, get that off of me!”
“Helen!” Grandpa snapped. “Helen!”
“I said, off, off, it should be off!” She shook her left hand again.
I was sick of this. Sick of her, sick of her rantings and anger, sick of how sad and scared she made me feel, and I wanted Sunshine back. I wanted her back so bad. Sunshine, my little sister, my best friend.
I had no idea I was going to tackle Helen off that chair until I landed hard on top of her.
“You are a dumb mom!” Helen could make me feel like nothing because she never told me she loved me, and she could yell at voices and visions, and I could get by all that, but I could not get by her taking Sunshine from me.
“Where is she, you dumb Helen. Where is she?” I hit her in the nose as hard as I could, and I ignored her cry and the blood that spurted onto my charm bracelet.
Grandma tried to pull me off Helen, but Grandpa stopped her. Grandpa stopped them all. He barked out, “Let her be!” Of course, the man was desperate. He had been getting nowhere with his daughter, so perhaps her daughter could help get his granddaughter home.
“I hate you, Helen! I hate you!” I yelled at her, two inches from her face. “Give me back Sunshine right now! You better not have hurt her, you dumb Helen!”
I pulled her hair and she tried to get up, but I wouldn’t let her and shoved my knees in her stomach. Later I heard the adults talking and found out that Grandpa was holding Helen’s legs down in the back and Grandma was holding one arm, the doctor the other, but in my blind, red rage I couldn’t see th
at.
“Where is Sunshine?”
Helen pulled her lips tight together. “It’s hiding!”
“No, she’s not!” And then I had an idea. “Where is it? Where is Trash Heap?”
“Command Center said I can’t tell!” Helen said, rolling her lips together, the blood now in her mouth, but I saw something in her eyes breaking, something cracking.
I pulled her hair as hard as I could, my other hand on her neck. “Command Center is dumb! He doesn’t know anything! He’s a bad voice you hear in your head, and if you took your medicine, you stupid Helen, the voices would go away. Now, where is Sunshine?”
She started to cry but I didn’t care at all, not one whit. I wanted my sister.
“Where is she!” I lifted her head with my hands and cracked it back down. I hated myself then. I couldn’t believe I’d hit my own mother, couldn’t believe I was so angry. I was an animal, a criminal, a horrible person.
“She’s on the cliff by the stars.” She breathed, then cried out, her eyes lost, pathetic. “I gave her away to the cliff so Command Center wouldn’t get her.”
“What cliff?”
She cringed, then tears rolled out of her eyes and they mixed with the blood, and I had her tears and blood on my hands. I slammed her head up and down again, hating myself to my deepest core.
Grandma, beside me, made a sobbing sound deep in her throat. I can’t even imagine being in her position: allowing her granddaughter to hit her daughter so that the other granddaughter could be found.
“That cliff high in the sky near the stars.” She relaxed underneath me, her eyes half shutting. “Now Command Center is going to kill me. He’s going to cut me up with a sharp knife. Shut up, Punk! I hid Trash Heap from you. You can’t get her now. Trash Heap is gone.”
I froze. I remembered her painting with trees like jail bars and I knew what cliff Helen was talking about. It was hidden in the woods, off the trail that started in the state park. We had been there once before, when we all went on a hike and Helen had run off. We’d chased her to the cliff, an outgrowth of the mountain, shaped as a finger. We had found her lying on it, hugging it, the drop off that finger so far down I got dizzy staring at it. She’d called it the Star Cliff.