Fishing With RayAnne

by Ava Finch

  “Why?”

  He tests the cordless drill. “Such optimism. Pepé never gives up, does he?” After drilling a hole, he holds his hand open for the bolt, and she snaps it into his palm like a surgical nurse. “Thanks. Plus he’s got no idea of his own smell. Clueless. You gotta pity the guy.” He turns to her. “Your favorite?”

  “Mine?” She grins. “Rocky the Flying Squirrel.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, he can fly.”

  They hold up the next shelf together and fit it into place, the heels of their good hands touching.

  “Point. Least favorite?” Hal huffs at the stray curl that has unfurled to dangle near his eye.

  She wants badly to reach up and tuck it into place but forces herself to concentrate on the question.

  “Foghorn Leghorn, I guess.”

  “Because?”

  “So bombastic.”

  “Good word.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Hal offers, “I’ve never liked Wile E. Coyote.”

  “Not very wily, is he?”

  “Never learns from his mistakes.” The body of the drill suddenly jerks forward and takes Hal with it, pulling his elbow to the wall. He mutters under his breath, “Shit fuck shit.” A section of plaster has caved under the pressure of the drill.

  They watch chips and dust fall while listening to the cascade of plaster inside the wall. RayAnne recalls the first time she’d seen the room. “Oh, this is something I should have remembered.” During the Sunday open house before sending in her offer, she’d seen a broken wall sconce dangling from the very spot, before the owner had the walls patched and primed. Now there’s a jagged two-inch hole and a dent the size of a soup bowl, no lath behind to support it.

  “Damn. Sorry.”

  RayAnne chews a cuticle. “This is what they call a setback, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, it’s for the best; I was just thinking of the noise—all this pounding and screwing with my neighbor just a wall away.”

  “Right.” Hal bites back a smile. “Looks like I’ll just have to come back with some drywall patch and screen. Would tomorrow work?”

  “Sure.” They stand back to at least admire the three shelves that are in place, eyeing the bubble in the level. RayAnne says, “Perfect.” They are shoulder to shoulder.

  Hal nods. “Only twelve more to go.”

  “Actually, one would hold all of my books.”

  “Right, I almost forgot.” Hal goes to his coat and pulls out a package wrapped in the Sunday comics. Handing it over, he apologizes, “I didn’t have any wrapping paper, so . . .”

  “A book?” She tears the paper, ripping Family Circus in half. “Sooo, you’ve brought me a copy of . . . Wow.” It’s a vintage edition of The Wayward Bus in perfect condition.

  “A favorite of mine.”

  “Is it? I love Steinbeck. How did you—”

  “Cassi told me.”

  “Did she?” RayAnne lowers to the couch, pretending to read the flap while wondering what else Cassi might have told Hal. A hiss of windblown snow sprays the window and they both turn to look.

  RayAnne gasps. “It is really piling up out there.”

  Hal frowns. “Ray, I better get on the road before I get stuck here.” Catching his poor choice of words, he says, “I mean stranded. Not that that would be so bad.”

  Wind rattles the fan window above the front door. There’s no attempt of a kiss, just a cheek-scrape and hug that is merely wool to wool and buckles to buttons.

  She stands at the window, watching as he starts the Jeep and brushes several inches from the windshield. The only vehicles crawling along the road are a tow truck and a lone fishtailing cab. Once he’s moving there’s a bit of tire spinning, but he manages enough momentum to pull away, no time to slow and wave.

  Five minutes after he’s gone, just as she’s running the dishwater, her cell phone rings. Probably him, maybe spun-out or gotten stuck? Maybe on his way back, maybe decided stranded is the better option. By the time she finds her phone, it stops ringing. Checking the number, it’s one she doesn’t recognize, but is the same Florida area code as Dot’s. She plugs the number into a reverse search. Just as it comes up as St. Agnes Medical Center, her landline begins ringing from the hallway.

  She bolts toward the phone, something like a cold fist beginning to clench in her gut.

  FIFTEEN

  RayAnne rushes along the moving walkway of the nearly deserted concourse, poking at her cell phone. She has landed at O’Hare and is between flights and between gates, but the weather has tailed her from Minneapolis, now bearing down on Chicago, and cancelations are beginning to fill the flight monitors. She may not be able to stay ahead of the storm. Leaving one message after another, her voice is growing increasingly panicky.

  “Dad, wherever you are, call.”

  Then, “Ky, call now. I’m at O’Hare, getting my connecting flight.” She speed-dials another number, and is ready to leave a message when Cassi picks up.

  “Ray! I just got your message. How awful . . . is your grandmother okay?”

  “That’s just it—I don’t know. The nurses don’t say much, and they’re paging the doctor. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” RayAnne struggles to concentrate. “Listen, about Rory?”

  “Of course I can watch him, no problem.”

  “But how about getting to my house?”

  “Again, no problem, I’ve just pulled my skis out of the basement. I’ll be there in like half an hour.”

  “Thanks. Rory’s not used to being alone. Listen, I’ve only got five minutes until boarding. You got a pen?”

  “Yup.”

  “Key’s in the mailbox. Rory’s food and treats are on the counter, so are poop bags, vet’s number, and his chip information. I’ll be at St. Agnes hospital—I’ve left the number. Keep trying Kyle while I’m flying, would you? And my dad? Their numbers are on the inside of the kitchen cupboard above the sink. I’ve only just gotten a text from Ingrid; she thinks my mom is off the coast of Scotland on an island with some pagan cult. Look up bloodtides.com and see if you can find any reference to Findhorn or The Wicker Woman, the Isle of Iona. Maybe there’s some emergency contact number.”

  “Sure thing,” says Cassi. “But will your flight even take off? I just saw Chicago on the news.”

  “Fingers crossed. Thanks for doing all this. Listen, he might not answer you.”

  “Rory?”

  “No. My dad—well, actually both. Just check under the daybed on the sun porch for Rory. I have to go.”

  She speed-dials her brother again. “Dammit, Kyle, answer your phone. Please!”

  When the flight announcement drones over the PA, RayAnne strains but can only make out a gargle of numbers followed by “now boarding.” She runs, reaching the gate as the last passengers are lining up. Still digging in her shoulder bag for her ticket and ID, she steps in line. When the flight attendant holds out her hand, RayAnne still hasn’t found it—it’s painful to dig with her bandaged hand. “I just had it, sorry. Hang on.”

  The wearied flight attendant sighs. “Step aside, miss, and let passengers who have their tickets through.”

  She could swear she’d put it in the side pocket. “But it was just here.” She’s fighting tears. The woman behind touches her arm. “Your bag has got turned, dear.” Indeed it has, and there’s her ticket poking out of the pocket of the flip side. Hastily thanking the woman, RayAnne notes she’s about Gran’s age. Her eyes sting and fill.

  The attendant grabs her ticket and reads it. “Fine. Ms. Dahl. You may board.” She squints at RayAnne and then the ticket. “RayAnne . . . RayAnne Dahl?”

  “Pardon?”

  The attendant literally whips her frown upside down and says in a conspiratorial voice, “You’re the Fishing RayAnne.” As if RayAnn
e might not know.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we’re not supposed to do the fan thing, but . . .”

  Two other late arrivals have rushed up behind them, breathless. RayAnne pinches the bridge of her nose to keep from crying. “Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, I just need to get on. My grandmother . . .”

  The flight attendant gives her a closer look, sees the tears welling, pulls her aside and says, “Hang on.” She quickly takes the next tickets, practically pushing the late passengers down the Jetway before turning back to RayAnne, noticing her hand.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m not, actually. Something’s happened to my grandmother. There was an ambulance, but I don’t know.” Nothing else comes out, just the sensation of heat where her voice was. She shivers in the draft leaking in around the Jetway.

  “Oh, hon, that’s awful.” She taps her nametag, lettered “Heather.” “C’mon, follow me. You need anything, you let Heather know.” Heather frowns and winks at the same time. “Oh, look, some idiot’s put you in coach. Let me fix your seat assignment.”

  Though she is the last passenger to board, she is the first to be given a blanket and a hot drink. A different attendant brings her a packet of tissues. “Lucky you caught this flight, Ms. Dahl; next one’s already canceled.” Before backing away, she whispers, “I just loved that episode with the nun that jumps for Jesus.”

  To RayAnne’s great relief, the seat next to her is empty—she won’t have to talk to anyone. While she’s distractedly thankful for the bump up to business class, being recognized and given preferential treatment adds a waxy layer of unease to her distress.

  She needs to get to Gran now, and could kick herself for not demanding more information from the nurse at the ICU desk, who would only report that Dot was unconscious, that her condition was serious. As far as what that might mean, RayAnne’s imagination is doing its worst. One does not land in the ICU for nothing. About all she could wring out of the nurse was “Your grandmother has had an incident.” What’s an incident? Had she misheard? Had she said accident? She thinks of the narrow lanes of Dune Cottage Village and how the golf carts just barrel through, oblivious. Dot could’ve been thrown from her three-wheeled bike or T-boned by a mobility scooter.

  She supposes incident might be reserved for events like a stroke or heart attack. RayAnne is pressed back into the upholstery as the plane takes off. Usually, the first five minutes of a flight make her rigid with tension, since most crashes occur in that window of time—but in her state, she’s only vaguely aware of takeoff until they are rising high above the city.

  Only when she’s calm enough to think—think back on how Gran has been sounding during their recent conversations—does she realize. Gran is sick, of course. Sick sick. How is it she hadn’t caught the clues during her last visit, or their phone calls since; it’s all so obvious now. When she’d questioned Dot’s tinny-sounding wheeze the week before, her grandmother laughed it off, blaming the cordless phone. Usually the one gabbing on for an hour, lately Gran had taken to being the first to say good-bye, sometimes just trailing off, sounding distracted or tired, making RayAnne vaguely wonder if this was the beginning of Dot seeming old. Of course she’d never let on to anything—at most Dot might admit she was maybe “a titch under the weather” or had eaten something that hadn’t agreed with her. When asked about the constant throat-clearing, she would only grunt, “Dairy.”

  As it all adds up, RayAnne sinks. She rifles back to the last few conversations and cringes, remembers complaining yet again about Big Rick and his performance at Location, how he’d made such an ass of himself: “And, Gran, I know you know he mooned Mom’s mavens!”

  Dot had chuckled. “Well, you can’t pick your family, can you? It’s the luck of the draw.”

  “Gran, even Mom was pretty shrill.”

  “Honey, your mother can’t be all namaste all the time. I imagine even swamis lose it now and then.”

  “But Gran . . .”

  “Sweetheart, what your parents do isn’t your doing. Stop worrying and just embrace who they are.”

  “So you’re Dr. Phil now? It’s not that simple, Gran. It happened on Location, with a dozen people watching . . . I mean, that was my career.”

  There were rummaging sounds on Dot’s end. “Exactly. It’s your career, so take the reins. What is it your mother says, just man up and do it? Or is it ‘vagooge’ up?”

  “Va-what?”

  “Your jinny, RayAnne. Pussy.”

  “Gran!”

  “Well, you have to admit it’s fitting. Listen, you know how I hate to give advice.”

  RayAnne laughed and Dot joined in, having actually heard herself. “But I have just recently figured out this one teeny thing.”

  “What’s that, Gran?”

  “That all we have is who we have . . .” Her voice had an airy, punctured-tire quality. “Warts and all.”

  “Who’s the drama queen now?”

  Gran didn’t seem to be listening, mumbling, “Oh, here it is.”

  “Here is what, Gran?”

  “My thermometer.”

  “Are you sick?” She sounded sick.

  “Heavens no. My meat thermometer.”

  And their very last conversation, in which Dot had dropped hints that RayAnne might consider making her trip to Florida sooner, using the winter driving as an excuse.

  But maybe that’s all coincidence and she only has some elderly-sounding malady like bursitis or pleurisy. Whatever it is, RayAnne has been too busy and self-absorbed to notice Gran’s not been herself, and now she’s ill to the point of unconsciousness? The nurse hadn’t said asleep; she’d said Dot was unconscious.

  The plane shudders. She barely registered the turbulence, and now looks out at the speeding sleet and chaos of the storm, as if ordered up to reflect the occasion, the plane blindly tearing through the clouds as RayAnne picks back through static memories. Lightning pulses in.

  You only hear and see what you want. How many times had Gran accused her of that, of daydreaming, living a selective reality, in la-la land. Just bumping along with her head in the clouds.

  As if on cue, the plane banks high and lifts from the storm clouds and turbulence, shrugging them off. Her ears pop as the plane levels out and aims toward a blue-black yonder, a clear night pricked with an infinity of stars. RayAnne rolls her forehead on the cool glass. All is cold and pristine, while below the weather churns. In the distance, a perfect crescent moon hangs like an ornament. Clinging to the sight like a buoy, she is stilled by the beauty and forgets for a merciful moment why she’s on the plane. When she reaches out to touch the glass, each fingertip makes its own little hoop of frost. Her eyes close; she drifts.

  She manages to sleep a little, but it is a fitful, open-mouthed sleep that dries her tongue until it feels like a chunk of bark. In her dream, she’s pedaling Dot’s three-wheeled bike along the beach, but it’s barely moving. One of those dreams. She looks back to where Big Rick is sitting in the wicker cargo basket, and she yells at him to get out, which he does, grumbling that he’s not dead weight. But the bike still won’t go, and she absolutely has to get somewhere. Looking down, she sees the tires are sunk deep into the sand. Realizing she must beat the incoming tide, RayAnne abandons the bike to run from the sea. Though she cannot see it for the fog, she knows it will soon come like a tidal wall. Running backwards, she falls and cannot get up. Flat on her back, she rolls to her side just as Dot sits down next to her, wearing her best nightie and shaking a hospital wristband like it’s a bangle.

  “Here we are, RayBee.”

  “Gran. What are you doing out here?”

  “I live here, goose!” Dot pats the sand that is now a bed, urging RayAnne to climb in and lie back. She taps RayAnne’s forehead like she used to when either imparting something important or scolding her.

  “You k
now to not be on top after you’re thirty, don’t you?”

  “On top?”

  “Unless it’s dark, of course.” She taps. Tap tap tap.

  RayAnne has no idea what Dot means, cannot think with the tapping. “Dark when?”

  “During intercourse, of course.”

  “What?”

  The attendant is tapping her. Not her forehead, but her shoulder. “Ms. Dahl. Ms. Dahl? Sorry to wake you. We’re about to land, and your seat back needs to be upright.”

  Blinking in the bright cabin light, she straightens. In a flash, reality resumes, she stiffens.

  A humid breeze follows RayAnne from the cab into the hospital foyer and the information desk, where the woman looks her up and down, taking in her snow boots, parka, and Norwegian cardigan in which she’s basting in her own sweat. She is directed to the east wing; the elevator takes her to the third floor and dumps her out at a kiosk where three nurses all lean into their computer screens, their backs to the console where patients’ call buttons flash. RayAnne must clear her throat to be acknowledged.

  To RayAnne’s many questions, the Jamaican nurse shakes her head. “Yes, Dorthea Dahl is in dis ward. No, she cannot be seen just yet. Not till attending physician can be paged.”

  “But what’s wrong with her?”

  The nurse comes out from behind the station and steers RayAnne to a waiting area, saying only, “Doctor, he will explain the situ-a-shun.”

  Left alone, RayAnne peels off her parka. In the nearest bathroom, she takes off her heavy sweater and mops her armpits with cold water and pink foam from a dispenser. The brown paper towels she tries to dry herself with fall apart on contact. Feeling no fresher, she settles in the waiting room to fidget. She considers prowling the ICU corridors to find Dot on her own—stick her head into rooms until she finds her—but decides against it, in case the doctor comes looking for her.

  After ten minutes, she checks back at the desk, where she is reminded that it has only been ten minutes since she was last there and is shooed away. Around the corner from the waiting room, she stands in front of a bank of vending machines, rubbing quarters together for another three minutes until she forgets she’s supposed to be choosing something to drink, then stands awhile longer, eventually choosing nothing. The third time she visits the desk, the nurse’s patience quickly expires and she gives RayAnne a look. “He is coming, girl. Trust me.”