Seized

by Lynne Cantwell

  “I am,” I nodded, shamefaced. “I’m not proud of it. But I’d always thought I would end up with someone who was my intellectual equal.”

  “Y’know,” she pointed out, “other than his years on the rez, you and Joseph were both raised on the same rung of the socioeconomic ladder.” She was right about that. My upbringing had been solidly blue-collar – well, pink-collar, actually. If Mom and I were middle class, we were on the lower edge, and trailing.

  Which went a long way to explain why I was uncomfortable with showy wealth, like Brock’s condo in Vail, and why I drove a cheap, goofy-looking car instead of a Mercedes. My Protestant upbringing strikes again.

  “And,” she went on, “you both come from what social workers used to call a broken home. His parents were battling their own demons instead of raising him. And you never had a father at all.”

  “That’s all true, I suppose. But that doesn’t have anything to do with whether we could have a conversation,” I argued. “Or whether we like the same types of movies, say, or read the same kinds of books. Or share the same values.”

  “Good points, all,” she said. “These are clearly Important Questions for Our Time. But I can’t solve any of them for you – you will need to think them through yourself.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” I put my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand.

  “What I can do, though,” she went on, “is get another reading on Brock for you.”

  I glared at her. “You just don’t like him.”

  She sat down across from me and put her hand on my forearm. “Naomi, honey, I don’t want to see you get hurt, either. And not just because I’m your friend, but because I’m the one who always ends up watching you pick up the pieces, and I’m over it.”

  I smiled at her. “You’re a good friend, Shannon.”

  “I try to be.” She straightened and let go of my arm. “Done with your tea? Good. Let’s go find that asshole you’re engaged to and get rid of him.”

  I laughed and shook my head. But obediently, I put my plate and mug in the sink.

  “Okay, so if he asks,” Shannon said as I looked for a parking place for the Cube, “you’re there because…?”

  “Because I’ve got one more report that I forgot I had to do, which is due tomorrow, and the clerk’s office is closing early because it’s Christmas Eve,” I said. “And like a dope, I left my notes at the office.”

  “And I’m tagging along because we’re going to get dinner after you pick up your notes,” she said.

  “Perfect.”

  As if God were looking out for us, I found a parking place right across the street from our building – directly in front of Brock’s Porsche 911 Cabrera. “He’s definitely here,” I said.

  “Let’s roll,” she said, and I giggled.

  Inside, as we approached Brock’s office, Shannon staggered, a look of shock and pain on her face. I touched her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “Wow. I see what he meant. Wow.” Then she sucked in a breath of air and straightened. “Okay. I’m okay. That was just – wow. I didn’t expect it.”

  Throwing her a concerned glance, I walked the last three paces to Brock’s office. The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it a little farther open and peered around the door frame, to avoid disturbing him if he was working.

  He wasn’t, of course.

  Pushing the door open the rest of the way, I crossed my arms and propped my shoulder against the frame. Then I cleared my throat.

  The two of them broke apart. The tiny blonde, who I recognized as a brand-new associate, at least had the decency to look embarrassed as she got up off her knees. He simply tucked in and zipped up, his face expressionless.

  “Just another late night at the office?” I said.

  “Carrie, you know Naomi, don’t you?” he said, apparently determined to tough it out. “Naomi is…”

  “Brock’s fiancée,” I finished for him. Carrie squeaked.

  “And I’m Shannon,” my loyal sidekick said, stepping out from behind me. “Hi.”

  “I have to go,” Carrie said, turning an adorable shade of pink. “I have work to do. Lots! Lots of work to do. Nice to…um.” She glanced around and snatched something lacy off Brock’s guest chair, then maneuvered carefully past us, out the door. I could hear her running down the hall, and then the door to the stairwell slammed. Apparently she didn’t trust the elevator to arrive fast enough to put sufficient distance between her and us.

  I turned to Brock. “So,” I said mildly, “is she the reason you couldn’t get away for the holidays? Or did you really have to work all weekend, and the opportunity merely presented itself?”

  “Must we do this with an audience?” he asked, glowering.

  “The only reason I’d consider leaving is to get popcorn,” Shannon said gleefully, settling herself against the open door. “This is the best show in town right now.”

  “The engagement is off, of course,” I told him.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “How long have you been seeing her?”

  “I don’t have to answer any of your questions. The engagement’s off.”

  “As you wish,” I said. “But I have a few more.”

  No response.

  “Did you ever love me? Or was I simply an opportunity that presented itself?”

  No response.

  “Aren’t you even the least bit ashamed of yourself?”

  No response.

  “But never mind me. What about your career? What if it had been Perry who walked in on you?” I was starting to get a little worked up.

  “The witness pleads the Fifth,” Shannon said with disgust. “Come on, Naomi, let’s leave Old Stonewall to finish the job by himself.”

  I glared at him a moment longer. Then I said, “Merry Christmas, Brock,” turned on my heel, and walked out.

  Out on the street again, Shannon put out her hand. “Car keys,” she said.

  “I can drive,” I protested. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re shaking like a leaf,” she informed me. “We are stopping at a liquor store, and then I am taking you home, getting you extremely drunk, and putting you to bed.”

  “How will you get home?” I protested, fumbling in my purse for the keys.

  “Denver’s got cabs.”

  I won’t recount the events of the rest of the evening; the details are fuzzy now, and what I do remember is unflattering. Suffice it to say that there was a fair amount of blubbering and self-recrimination, and that Shannon, excellent counselor that she is, merely asked me leading questions and talked me in off the ledge (figuratively speaking, of course – I was more angry than depressed), and presumably saved her fist pump of victory for her own private celebration at home later.

  Only two things stand out in my memory of that rotten night. First, Shannon convinced me to go home for Christmas. “You need to get away from Denver for a few days,” she told me. “You’ve got a lot to think about. And while you’re there, you can ask your mom about your Indian heritage.” So I went online and splurged on a last-minute ticket to Indianapolis for late the following morning, returning Christmas night, and a rental car to get me the hour’s drive home from the airport.

  Then later, after Shannon had poured me into bed and taken herself home, I had another animal-related dream. This one, however, wasn’t about the white buffalo calf. Instead, I was a wolf, running flat-out across the plains, the glittering lights of metro Denver in the distance. No, not a wolf – a coyote, howling for the sheer joy of it. And then I was above the plains, floating silently toward the city, then surrounded by bright lights that put a damper on my night vision. I hooted in annoyance.

  I hooted again, and I also heard that hoot, and I realized groggily that I was awake. After a few disoriented moments, I sat up partway in bed, propped on one elbow. I remember squinting at an odd shadow in the corner near the window. But I didn’t feel scared or threatened; instead, I felt protected, secure. I sank back down and slept dreamless
ly until morning.

  Chapter 6

  My head was surprisingly clear when I awoke. I showered, dressed, threw a change of clothes into a bag, and headed for the airport and the grueling all-day cattle drive that modern air travel has become.

  I had debated whether to warn Mom of my impending arrival. I wanted to avoid a lengthy telephonic discussion about why I wasn’t at work, which is where we had left things the last time we talked. I never had gotten around to informing her of my engagement – which was now, of course, moot.

  In the end, I texted her. “Surprise!” I wrote while waiting for my flight. “At DIA waiting for flight to IND – see you soon!”

  “Great!” came the response, a few minutes later. Her un-typed “What happened?” hovered over me like a zeppelin, but it did not ultimately crash in flames – my mother typed nothing further, not even “What’s your ETA?” I sighed in relief, bought a breakfast burrito and a latte, and settled in to wait.

  I expected to sleep on the flight, but I was wide awake – and kicking myself. Just what, exactly, did I hope to accomplish with this trip? Pumping Mom for information had sounded like such a good idea last night, when I was three sheets to the wind. Now I wasn’t sure. I was beginning to remember how hard it was to get anything out of Mom when she didn’t want to give it up. I began to wonder whether I should have just stayed home and searched the web for my answers.

  Except that I didn’t have anywhere to start, other than that my Indian heritage, as Shannon called it, had to be on my father’s side. If I had any Indians on my mother’s side, my genealogist great-aunt would have mentioned it. No, my father had to be the missing link, if you will. And I knew absolutely nothing about him. My last name was Mom’s; my birth certificate said, “father unknown.” I had never seen a picture of him, never heard his name or anything about him – just that he died in Vietnam before I was born.

  I frowned. I seemed to recall that the Vietnam War ended for the United States in 1973, but I was born in 1975. Assuming he’d been killed in combat, there was no way I could have been conceived before he died. Why had that never occurred to me before? Why had I just accepted everything Mom said as gospel?

  Because she clams up when she’s pushed. So there’s never any point in pushing her.

  Well, I had a newfound talent for pushing, and if Mom stymied me, I’d just have to use it on her. Although the mere thought of it made me want to squirm. I sighed and hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  My flight landed on time at Indianapolis International Airport. (I always wince at the name; my mother still calls it Weir-Cook Airport and criticizes the Indianapolis city fathers for putting on airs when they changed it in 1976. Mom can hold a grudge.) I picked up my rental car – a nondescript silver four-door sedan – and was on I-465 heading north within the hour.

  Daylight was fading as I merged onto I-65 toward Lafayette. I’d forgotten how slowly the day fades when no mountains hide the sunset. Electric lights began to glimmer on across the flat landscape. There was only a dusting of snow on the ground – just enough to blur details. It felt like there was nothing to see for miles and miles, as if I were speeding into uncharted territory in this strange car, my only anchors to reality the gas stations and chain restaurants huddled around the highway’s exits.

  Speeding into uncharted territory – not a bad metaphor for my life over the past few days.

  I reached home just after full dark. Mom lived in West Lafayette, in a neighborhood called Wabash Shores despite the fact that the Wabash River is a few miles away. The house was on Indian Trail Drive – which was almost funny, given what I’d been going through lately – and backed to a ravine that had afforded me many solitary “wilderness” rambles as a teenager.

  Many of Mom’s neighbors had decorated up a storm for Christmas: icicle lights hung from eaves, lit netting encased bushes, animatronic armature mimicked feeding deer. I even spotted a few windsock-type snowmen and Santas. But Mom hadn’t even put up a tree. The porch light was on, though, and it looked like a safe harbor in the storm my life had become. I parked the rental car in the driveway and went in.

  Mom was watching some Christmas special on the TV in the family room. She rose from her favorite chair and gave me a big hug of welcome. “How was your flight? How was the traffic getting here – did you have any trouble? Where’s your suitcase?”

  “Mom, stop,” I said, laughing. “The flight was fine, traffic was fine, and I didn’t bring a suitcase – I’m flying back home tomorrow.” At her crestfallen expression, I said, more gently, “We only get today and tomorrow off. I would have come earlier, but I was kind of tied up this weekend.”

  “Well, that doesn’t matter,” she said, more cheerfully. “You’re here now. And supper’s ready.”

  She had not changed in the months since I had last seen her. Perhaps she had more gray hairs, but everything else was the same – she was still an inch or two shorter than me, with brown eyes like mine, a little extra padding around the hips, and the same housecoat I remembered from childhood. She still smelled like lavender. And the house smelled the same, too – of pine cleaner and lemon-scented furniture polish, and of chicken-rice soup made from scratch.

  We made small talk over soup and sandwiches – this cousin was pregnant, that uncle was ill. She had more inside information about my high school classmates than I could ever have learned in months of obsessive Facebook stalking. “Will’s back home again,” she said as we finished eating. Will and I had dated all through high school. “I guess Chicago didn’t work out for him.”

  “Oh. Too bad, I guess.”

  “Were you going to see him while you’re here?”

  “I’ll hardly have time, Mom. I’m only on the ground for about twenty-four hours.” I moved my dishes to the sink and ran water over them to soak.

  She handed me the dishtowel. “You dry.” Then she turned over the bowl I’d just begun soaking and filled the sink with dishwater. “How’s Brock?” she asked carefully, her back to me.

  My eyes filled with tears, despite calling myself an idiot for it. “Well,” I said, “we were engaged for a couple of days there, and now we’re not.” She turned, face filled with sympathy, and hugged me for several minutes while I bawled again.

  “Well, it’s for the best,” she said when I had calmed down a bit. “He always did strike me as being too full of himself.”

  I nodded. I mean, he’d struck me that way, too; I’d just considered it part of his endearing charm, back when we were friends.

  “So now what?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I wish I knew,” I said truthfully.

  “You’ll figure it out,” Mom said, going back to the dishes. “You always have.”

  I gave a bark of laughter and dried my eyes on my sleeve. At that moment, I wasn’t feeling particularly adept at figuring out anything.

  Mom proposed going to midnight service, and I agreed, despite my minor case of jet lag. I figured it would save time in the morning to get church out of the way now.

  I also felt that I needed a little time alone with my God. White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman had said some pretty horrible things about Jehovah. I wanted to take out her comments and examine them, to see whether I agreed with any of them. I was going to have to decide at some point whether the religion I’d been following my whole life was a scam.

  As we got out of the car, I heard an owl hoot close by – not unheard of in this neighborhood, but unusual enough that I grimaced and thought, Another weird occurrence in this weird week. Then I looked at the church doors ahead of us, and wondered whether God would strike me down for having the temerity to enter his house of worship, now that I had been claimed by a Native American goddess. But there was no rumble of thunder as I crossed the threshold, no lightning strike upon my head. So either Jehovah isn’t watching or he doesn’t care, I couldn’t help but think, then kicked myself for being disloyal.

  Mom and I took our usual seats near the middle of the church. I smiled at th
e familiar, comforting sight of the large cross hanging above the altar, decked for the season in evergreen boughs.

  Midnight service at Christmas has always been my favorite. For one thing, it’s devoid of the Nativity pageant featuring the congregation’s adorable but confused children; having been one of those children in years past, I’m grateful to be spared the mortification-by-proxy.

  But more than that, there’s a sense of vigil about the midnight service. The sanctuary lighting is dimmed as we arrive, waiting in the semidarkness for the Christ child to be born. Then at midnight, the lights come up and the choir breaks into “Joy to the World.” And the pastor always speaks to us of the joy and promise of the season – not just in material goods but in spiritual salvation as well, as we celebrate the birth of the child who would grow up to redeem us and restore us to a state of grace with God.

  But this year, I was distracted by a memory of White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman’s words: He sacrificed his own Son, and then twisted the story to make it appear as if it were an honor. What if humanity wasn’t flawed from the start, after all? What if God had lied to keep us from going back to worshipping the other gods that He said didn’t exist?

  Certainly, I had rejected some tenets of Christianity long since. One of them was the idea that Eve had doomed humanity because she did what the serpent suggested. It made women out to be weak creatures who were easily led. I knew enough strong women – starting with my mother – that I had long considered that part of the story a remnant of an ancient misogynistic culture. But I had never followed the thought all the way through; now, I felt I had to. If Eve wasn’t a weakling and the serpent spoke the truth, then God had punished humanity simply for pushing the boundaries. Why would God do that? Why not a slap on the wrist instead?

  If I took the agnostic way out – if I concluded that the Garden of Eden story was simply a mythological explanation for why we don’t live forever – then it was fairly easy to reconcile myself to the story and still believe in the existence of a just and loving God. But what if I stepped away from the Christian belief system entirely and looked at it from White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman’s point of view? I was dismayed to realize that Her claim made better sense than all the Christian explanations of the story I’d ever read.