Menagerie

by Kristy Tate

  “Finally, something we can agree on.”

  Lizbet whirled and came face to face with Josie. Today she had on a light gray skirt and a frilly white silk blouse. It was the most feminine thing she’d ever seen Josie wear.

  “Who are you talking to?” Josie asked in a quieter voice.

  “Myself.” Lizbet sniffed.

  “My mother tells me you’ve taken a job at Neal’s Nursery.” Josie studied her.

  “Yes. Mr. Neal... We’re going to work something out until I can get a social security card. He’s being really kind.”

  Josie flushed and guilt stained her cheeks. “I don’t want you to think I’m not sensitive to your situation. You obviously care a great deal for Daugherty, but I know...”

  Lizbet waited, wondering what Josie would say. Finally, Josie turned away without saying anything, leaving Lizbet to wonder what Josie did or did not know.

  Josie’s brief moment of humanity almost made Lizbet doubt Tennyson and his schemes. But since she knew that neither Elizabeth nor hundreds of animals deserved to lose their homes, she decided to wait and see what happened. Besides, she didn’t know what Tennyson had planned.

  “How bad is it going to be?” she whispered to Tennyson as soon as they were in the shelter of the woods.

  Tennyson lifted his tail and strutted down the path ahead of her. “I already told you. It’s not going to be bad. It’ll be good. Very, very good.”

  #

  Declan watched Lizbet walk away wishing he could go with her. He went through the motions of setting up tables, chairs, spreading the white linen table cloths, and placing the flower arrangements as directed, but his thoughts kept wandering back to Lizbet.

  Was he so into her because he couldn’t have her? She refused to take him seriously because she thought they could still be siblings, despite his father’s patent denial. A few weeks ago he would have eaten his shirt just to have Nicole smile at him and now that he and Nicole were both going to Duke—and Jason was not—he wasn’t interested in Nicole anymore.

  Was it possible that he only wanted what he couldn’t have? What did this say about him? Declan ran a finger around his shirt collar. He wasn’t used to wearing a tie and he didn’t like it. It reminded him too much of a noose.

  Someone in the catering van yelped.

  “What is it now?” Mr. Croft barked from behind the bar. The goblets jiggled as he bobbed up and hit his head against the shelving.

  “Nothing,” Missy said in a trembling voice that clearly said something was wrong. She stuck her head out of the van and waved Declan over as soon as Mr. Croft ducked back behind the bar again.

  Declan tried to casually stroll across the astro turf. He climbed into the van where Missy shook with distress. He liked Missy and he knew she was a talented cook. Everything she made not only tasted like it heaven but also looked like a work of art.

  “What’s the matter?” he whispered.

  “My nail,” she whimpered.

  “Your what?”

  “My nail!” She held out her hand, showing him her four long creamy fake fingernails embellished with daisies. One finger had a stubby plain old fleshy looking nail. “My nail fell off. It’s somewhere in here.” She looked ready to cry.

  “By in here, you mean in the van?”

  “Scary scenario—in the food.”

  Declan studied the platter of fresh shrimp and poked at it with his fork. Then he went to the pasta salad. Both dishes seemed like the perfect hiding place for a fake fingernail.

  “What are we going to do?” Missy asked.

  Declan thought about pointing out that since he had all of his fingernails intact, “we” wasn’t the real pronoun she was looking for, but he just shrugged. “I guess we wait for someone to bite down on it and hope no one chokes.”

  “Missy! Declan!” Mr. Croft barked.

  “I’m so fired,” Missy moaned.

  Declan patted her back. “Maybe it fell off before you got here.”

  Missy shook her head. “No. I know they were all here when I put on my apron. I would have noticed when I moved my ring.”

  Declan knew it was a standard practice for the married caterers to move their wedding rings to their right hands. It helped them get bigger tips.

  “Missy! Declan!” Mr. Croft repeated. “What are you doing? It’s time to get this show on the road!”

  “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” Missy whispered.

  Declan nodded.

  “I’m so fired,” Missy groaned, exiting the van.

  #

  Lizbet went deeper and deeper into the woods. She’d never really taken the opportunity to explore all of Elizabeth’s property before, but now, as she wandered along the path beneath the thick canopy of pines, cedars, and firs, she wondered why. The sun sent beams of sparkly light through the branches. Robins, woodpeckers, and squirrels called hello. Fragile lilies lifted their white blossoms skyward, hoping to catch the sunbeams.

  A dragonfly flitted past. “Follow me,” he said in a voice so low, so hushed, that she thought it might have been her imagination. She did as he asked.

  The light faded, despite the noon sun, as the trees’ canopy grew denser. The ground sloped upward and Lizbet scrambled up the path. The dragonfly darted in front of her, just out of reach. The hill crested and suddenly Lizbet stepped into the open air. Large stones circled the clearing. One large altar-like stone with a slab of granite stood in the center.

  “What is this place?” Lizbet asked.

  But no one answered.

  She glanced overhead, hoping and expecting to see birds or squirrels, or anyone or anything, but the air was heavy with silence.

  A thought or distant memory came back to her. Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

  Lizbet didn’t question. Even though she didn’t know if the thought came from within or from without, she did as she was asked. She sank to the ground and pulled off her sandals. She crossed her legs, and placed her shoes in her lap. Her head grew heavy, and her eyes shut as a wave of fatigue swept through her. Lying on her side and using her arm as a pillow, she slept.

  #

  It started with the frogs. Small, slimy, and green, the tree frogs dropped from tent poles and landed on the bar.

  “What the—hey!” The bartender used his white towel to swat at the jumping frogs.

  A lady in a white sundress screamed when she opened her purse and a mouse climbed out.

  A wren flew beneath the tent and beat his wings against the canopy, making the sound of jungle drums.

  Declan watched his mom frantically totter from one end of the hospitality tent to the other in her three-inch heels as she waved a napkin in the air and shouted, “Shoo!”

  A black and white spotted goat darted inside, jumped onto a table and began wolfing down an overweight bald man’s steak. “Hey!” the man cried, pushing the goat to the floor.

  The goat let out a bleat that sounded like a laugh before bounding onto another table and scarfing a bleached-blond woman’s chicken breast. The woman screamed and backed away, taking down chairs in her hurry to distance herself from the creature eating her lunch.

  Declan watched, his mouth dropping with amazement as squirrels, mice, and rats scampered across tables, ran over chairs, and scaled the tent poles. Throughout it all, Lizbet’s giant marmalade cat sat in the corner watching. Declan swore it looked as if it were grinning. But that wasn’t possible. Cats couldn’t grin.

  Right?

  If Lizbet’s cat was here, did that mean Lizbet was, too? He scanned the room, taking in the chaos, the screaming women, the flustered men, the cavorting animals. It seemed almost staged. Choreographed. Intentional.

  But that was impossible.

  He’d heard of lion tamers, of course, but no one he knew of trained frogs, or squirrels, or goats...and was that an opossum waddling across the Astro Turf?

  A lady in a sapphire-colored sheath began to scream.
She fished a finger into her mouth and pulled out an object seconds before fainting.

  “What’s going on?” Missy whispered as she climbed from the back of the van.

  “I think Mrs. Dutton found your fingernail,” Declan whispered back.

  #

  Lizbet slipped into a deep sleep. Men and women with jet black hair danced before a fire.

  Sun of light, stars of day,

  Make me thine, this I pray.

  Meld my heart. Take my hands.

  May I serve in distant lands?

  Bless the beasts, calm the sea,

  Let all thy earth a witness be.

  Of thy bounty and thy grace.

  Let all of nature reflect thy face.

  Lizbet woke with a jolt. Sitting up, pushing the hair away from her face, she took stock of her surroundings. Where was she? Slowly, her memories returned. The woods. The circle of stones. Still, even as awareness flooded back, she found the quiet deafening. Where were the animals? The breath and life of the forest? She climbed to her feet and brushed off the dust, grass, and twigs from her skirt and blouse. She spun around, wondering which direction to go in. This, she decided, must be how those who can’t talk to animals feel all the time, every day.

  “Hello?” she called out. “Anyone?”

  Silence answered.

  “Can anyone point me toward the ranch?” When she heard nothing and no one, she sat down on a rock and tried to sort things out for herself. The sun to her left. Shadows to her right. This wasn’t helping. She studied the trees, but the foliage looked as full and dense at one place as another.

  Standing, she decided the only thing to do was look for her own footsteps.

  But where were the animals? She knew there had to be some sort of creature nearby, so why weren’t they answering her? They always had before. “Hello?” she called again and got the same response.

  Feeling anger spiked with a twinge of fear, she pushed into the trees and stumbled through briars and bushes that scratched her legs and caught her skirt in their branches. She disentangled herself.

  Swearing, she returned to the circle of stones. What was it about this place? It was as if it didn’t want her to leave because it had something it wanted her to know, something it wanted her to understand.

  As she closed her eyes, memories of the strange dream floated back to her. Native Americans chanted in a tongue she’d never heard before but perfectly understood. How was that possible? And the rhyme? The words floated back to her as clearly as if she were hearing it again for the first time.

  Sun of light, stars of day,

  Make me thine, this I pray.

  Meld my heart. Take my hands.

  May I serve in distant lands?

  Bless the beasts, calm the sea,

  Let all thy earth a witness be.

  Of thy bounty and thy grace.

  Let all of nature reflect thy face.

  What did it mean? Did it have anything to do with this circle of stones? The roughly hewn rock altar?

  #

  Bedlam was the word that kept coming back to Declan. Ladies screaming, men swearing, animals in all shapes and sizes overrunning the party. He barely noticed when a car pulled in the drive. Two car doors slammed. Declan turned to see Elizabeth and a painfully thin, pale woman who looked vaguely familiar standing at the edge of the pasture.

  “What is going on?” Elizabeth asked, balling her hands and placing them on her hips.

  The woman’s lips curled into a smile. “Lizbet,” she said.

  And then Declan knew exactly who she was.

  Daugherty.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Indigenous North American belief systems include many sacred narratives. Such spiritual stories are deeply based in Nature and are rich with the symbolism of seasons, weather, plants, animals, earth, water, sky and fire.

  From Declan’s Research

  “When I get back to the ranch—if I get back to the ranch—I’ll look up the indigenous people of this area on Google,” Lizbet promised out loud. “I’ll learn about their beliefs, the legends, and lore.”

  A cloud shifted in the sky and the sun touched Lizbet’s skin, warming her. “I don’t know what good I can do, but I can try. But first, I have to get back to the ranch. I can’t stay here by myself.” And at that moment, it struck her that this was exactly what she and her mother had been doing on the island. They had been stagnant, merely surviving, not interfacing with others, not learning, serving, or giving. Keeping to themselves, they’d provided the world little value. True, they hadn’t hurt anyone, but they hadn’t given a thing in return for the use of the world’s air, the sun’s warmth, and the earth’s bounty.

  She didn’t know how she’d be able to explain this thought to her mother, or if she’d ever have the chance, but she knew she had to try. She also knew that if she wanted to belong to the world, she had to contribute something, she had to make it a better place, and she couldn’t do that from where she was now.

  “I need to get back,” she told the sky. “And I don’t know how to do that on my own.”

  She dropped to her knees to pray.

  A sound startled her.

  She looked up and met the gaze of a brown-eyed buck. He stared at her silently before turning away. She followed. She didn’t try to communicate with him because words, for once, weren’t necessary.

  #

  By the time Lizbet stumbled out of the woods, the sun hung low over the mountains. The party tent was once again a deflated thing on the lawn. The chairs and tables had been dismantled and stacked in the back of a pickup that had Tucker’s Party Truck emblazoned on its side with a picture of a pug wearing a pointy pink and white hat.

  She found Declan using a stick to pick up pieces of trash off the lawn. He brightened when he saw her.

  “Go inside,” he told her, smiling brightly.

  “Why? How was the party?” she asked, although given the scattered food and debris, she had a pretty good idea.

  Declan shook his head. “A disaster. But with a happy ending.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Go inside, you’ll see,” he said, pushing her shoulders toward the house.

  Tennyson jumped out of a tree and landed with a thud beside her. She scooped him up. “Did everything go as planned?” she whispered into his fur.

  “Yes and no,” Tennyson purred.

  “You’re not going to tell me anything either?”

  Tennyson wiggled out of her arms and ran toward the house. Lizbet followed.

  The conversation and laughter stopped as soon as Lizbet opened the kitchen door. Seated at the table were her grandmother, her aunt, and her mother. Lizbet collapsed into her mother’s open arms.

  #

  “Let me make some tea and cookies,” Elizabeth said, rising. “All this catching up will take a while.”

  “Let me, mother,” Josie said. She stood and placed a gentle hand on her mother’s shoulder, pressing her into the ladder-back chair. “You sit.”

  “Okay.” Lizbet’s mom gave a nervous laugh. “I’m not sure where to start. It’s been so long. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was a girl in the kitchen, but then I see Lizbet and I know so very much has happened.”

  “Start at the beginning,” Elizabeth coaxed.

  “And then get to the end,” Lizbet added, settling on a chair beside her mom. “I really want to know who tried to kill you and why.”

  “Okay, first off, I don’t think anyone tried to kill me,” Lizbet’s mom said. “I’m pretty sure it was an accident.”

  “What? But they killed Wordsworth!” Lizbet’s world shifted.

  “Knowing how protective Wordsworth was, it was probably in self-defense. Here’s what happened—I was arguing with Rose’s ex-husband...” She broke off and blinked several times. “I guess I need to explain that, too. I have an awful lot of explaining to do. But first, I don’t think Rose’s ex meant to hurt me. We were arguing, yes. But I tripped, fell, an
d hit my head. He didn’t touch me.”

  Elizabeth reached across the table and patted her daughter’s hand. “Just start at the beginning.”

  “As you know, twenty years ago I went sailing with friends. Our boat capsized and Debbie, Kelly, and Rich made it back to shore. I did not. I washed up on Blackstone Island. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember anything—who I was, where I was from, nothing. Zip. A woman nursed me back to health. She and her daughter lived alone on the island.” She paused and laid her hand over Lizbet’s and gently squeezed. “That was you.”

  Lizbet rocked back in her chair. “I’m not your daughter?”

  “Oh, you are. You absolutely are. In every single way, except for, you know, biologically. I couldn’t possibly love you any more than I do now. You saved my life. I would have ended my own long ago if I hadn’t had you.”

  “Why?” Elizabeth wailed. “You were such a happy child! And I know you were happy until the moment you stepped on that boat.”

  “But I couldn’t remember any of that! I only knew what this woman had told me. She said my name was Rose and she claimed to be Daugherty. I don’t pretend to know or understand all of her reasoning.”

  The teakettle whistled and Josie pulled out cups, saucers, sugar, and cream.

  “I couldn’t remember who I was or my previous life.”

  “Why didn’t this Rose-Daugherty person help you?” Lizbet asked.

  “That’s what I want to know,” Josie said. She had a cup of flour in one hand and a spatula in the other. The expression on her face made her look as if she were preparing for battle armed with kitchen weapons. “All she had to do was turn on the news or pick up a newspaper to know we were searching for you.”

  “We didn’t have a TV, and we didn’t get the paper. Daugherty...I mean, Rose, was hiding from an abusive husband. She couldn’t or wouldn’t risk her life to return me to mine. Besides, I know she was grateful for my company. She often said I was a gift from God.”

  “But after she died, why didn’t you return to the mainland?” Josie asked.

  “Where would I go? What would I do? What if someone tried to take Lizbet away from me? I worried every day that Daugherty’s—“ She paused and laughed. “I have to stop calling her that! Anyway, I worried her ex would find us and lay claim to Lizbet. I couldn’t risk losing her. At least on the island we were self-sustaining. We had our garden. We had plenty of money from the sale of the Rose’s blackberry wine business. Together, I thought we had everything we needed.