by Robert Elmer
Implication: Will and Merit didn’t attend a “good” church. Merit turned to her friend for help. More than anyone else in the room, Cheryl would understand.
“I don’t think you need to worry about them, Bernice.” Cheryl said it loudly enough to smooth out the awkward exchange. “I’m sure Merit and Will are going to get settled just fine.”
Merit looked for another brownie as Bernice finally smiled and drifted off. Merit appreciated the older woman’s concern—who couldn’t use a little prayer now and then?— but with Bernice, things could easily get dramatic. Merit’s pastor, Jerry, probably would have called her “one of those crazy fundamentalists.” Merit didn’t know whether she was or not, but she did know she breathed a little easier when Bernice left.
“Thanks for the backup,” she whispered to Cheryl. “Can you tell I’m running out of pleasant?”
“You’re not running out of anything, Merit.” Cheryl patted her hand. “All you have to do is be yourself when they ask you to…”
Her voice trailed off. There was more to this going-away party than Merit realized.
“What?” she asked. “When they ask me to do what?”
Cheryl didn’t have to answer.
Marcia Cobb had set up a podium just behind the cake and clinked politely on a punch glass with a ballpoint pen. The real meeting came to order. She leaned into the microphone and tapped it for good measure.
“Am I on?”
Doris Hodges let her know she was with a vigorous windmill wave. In other words, get on with it.
“Okay, then,” Marcia continued. “Let’s settle down, everybody.”
Marcia had once been crowned Miss Contra Costa County back in the early 1950s, and even today she still held herself with that straight-backed aplomb beauty pageant contestants learn early—the balancing-books-on-her-head look.
“We all know why we’re here,” Marcia began, projecting over their little crowd. She didn’t need the sound system. “And you know we’re all going to miss our Merit terribly when she and Will leave for the wilds of Idaho.”
The wilds. Merit supposed she wasn’t too far off.
“But before they leave this weekend, we wanted to present her with a small token of our affection.”
Bernice Carruthers presented Merit with a lovely floral arrangement and a gift basket of new release paperbacks (mostly cheesy romance books), a coffee mug with the Walnut Creek Bookworm Society logo (that cute litde worm with a big book and glasses), packets of fancy chai tea (which they knew she loved and probably believed she would never be able to get in Idaho), and small squares of Ghirardelli chocolate. They knew all her cravings. After so many years of monthly book club meetings, how could they not?
Marcia went on with her very nice introduction for the next few minutes, and all the ladies clapped at Miss Contra Costa County’s cordial comments, but that only meant they would expect Merit to say something clever and inspirational as well.
There was no escaping the lump that swelled in her throat as she dutifully took her place behind the microphone.
“J, ah…” She blinked her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and somehow found the words to continue. “I told myself I wasn’t going to start bawling, but since everybody else is, what else can I do?”
While they laughed, she took another deep breath and dabbed at her mascara. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach, unwelcome and persistent, and quickly more than just a flutter. But there was no time to think of tummy troubles just now. She pushed it aside and continued.
“First of all, I just have to thank all you ladies for, for…,” she waved her hand at the tables, “for all this wonderful food, for making me feel special, for being here. However—”
The unwelcome butterflies fluttered even more furiously. What had she eaten to bring this on?
“However, if one more person mentions how brave they think I am… well, I’m just going to scream! I am not in the least bit brave. Nothing like that. It’s just an adventure that Will has wanted for…well, ever since we’ve been married, he’s talked about doing something like this. And since we’re a package deal, off we go!”
That brought a small round of applause, though she hadn’t been looking for it. She waited for the clapping to die down before going on.
“We’re excited to fix up the place, and I even talked Will into letting me have a corner of the resort store for a little lending library. So if you have any donations to the cause…”
Nods from the crowd told her she wouldn’t have a problem getting a few books together.
“Good. And I have to tell you that even though Will and I are moving away, I’m counting on you all to come visit us at the resort. You have to promise me that. Your whole families. No charge to anyone in this room. In fact…”
She had an idea. Silly, perhaps, but what would it hurt?
“Here’s what I want you to do. I want you all to raise your right hand in the air and repeat after me.”
Like a court clerk, Merit raised her right hand and waited for everyone else to do the same. A few of the ladies looked at each other like they weren’t quite sure what was going on, but peer pressure finally got the best of them.
Merit led them in a pledge.
“I solemnly promise…” She waited for them all to repeat the words.“…that I will come to visit Merit and Will.”
“…and Will.”
“No matter what.”
“No matter what.”
She looked out at the collection of faces—some wrinkled and worn, others wearing puzzled expressions. She wondered if they would keep their vows, however induced.
An undeniable storm gathered in her stomach, but she wasn’t done yet.
“And that everything is going to be…”
She paused once again to wipe away the tears, and Cheryl gripped her hand as she finished.
“…like it always was.”
If only she believed her own words.
And if only she could shake off the feeling that…
“Merit, honey?” Cheryl whispered in her ear. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? Your hand is clammy, and your face is white as a sheet.”
Merit’s stomach managed a complete somersault.
“I’m sorry, Cheryl.” She barely managed the words, pressing her lips together to hold back a wave of nausea. She calculated the quickest route to the rest room. “But I think I’m going to be sick.”
ten
Felix Unger: The man puts his ketchup on his salad.
Oscar Madison: So? I like ketchup. Its like tomato wine.
from The Odd Couple (1970–75)
Are you going to barf again, Mommy?” Olivia looked up at Merit as they unpacked kitchen boxes. Will stomped the fir needles from his shoes and set one last load down in a pile on the cabin floor.
“That’s not a very nice question to ask your mother, Olivia.” Will mopped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “She’s done a lot of work in the couple of weeks since school got out, getting us moved. It’s not easy for us old people.”
“Speak for yourself, Mr. Sullivan!” Merit laughed from the kitchen, a little L-shaped counter with a nice view of the docks and bay. “You’re the old man around here.”
“Yeah, I’m ancient, all right.” Will bent over at the waist and did his best old man imitation. “Three whole months older than my wife.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
Merit leaned against their little dumpling refrigerator, as though catching her breath. The ashen look on her face made him wonder.
“I didn’t ask if Mom was old,” said Olivia. “I already knew that. I was just wondering if she was going to be sick again.”
“Olivia—” Abby began to scold her sister too. But her mom didn’t seem to mind.
“Not right away, honey. All that pizza and leftover going-away cake made my stomach a little weird. I think I just need to lie down for a minute, if you’ll let me.”
Oli
via shook her head. “A person can never have too much pizza and cake,” she replied.
For a moment, Will thought his daughter might have been right to ask. That pale look on Merits face as she closed her eyes…
“She’s tired,” he whispered to Olivia with a wink. “That’s all.”
“It’s okay, Will,” Merit defended. “She was just asking.”
Merit looked far too comfortable stretched out on the couch. Will hoped he wouldn’t have to move it again from its spot on the inside wall. Twice was quite enough.
“You need anything, honey?” he asked, not expecting an answer.
“Actually… “Merit’s voice thickened to hazy. “I was thinking we should try moving the couch over to another wall, where the light won’t…”
She dropped off. Will looked at the girls with a little smile.
Outside, a jay of some kind chattered in the low-hanging branches of a maple tree, as if to welcome them—or scold them for moving into its territory. Beyond that, the sound of an outboard motor droned on the lake, a fisherman returning from an early morning outing. The sound reminded Will of the horrendous load of work he still needed to tackle out on the docks just to make them safe. Moving their stuff into the cabin was just the beginning.
He had plenty of other things to do: check out the fuse box, scrub the laundry room floor, fix the loose steps on the back porch, tighten the railing on the ramp down to the docks, repaint the two floating buildings—the boathouse and the store, haul away years of accumulated trash and junk. The list went on.
Merit must have schlepped one too many boxes of kitchen utensils and living room furnishings, and it showed on her face. They’d moved everything in now, though where they’d put it was another question. Still, he shouldn’t have let her carry so much, like some kind of Sherpa.
“Tell you what, girls.” He turned to Abby and Olivia, who were pulling pillows out of a large box. “Let’s leave your mom here to take a nap while we go visit Aunt Sydney. She might be wondering why we haven’t said hi to her yet.”
They stopped what they were doing and looked from their dad to their mom, even though by this time Merit was breathing deeply, fast asleep. For a moment, he considered waking her, reminding her how she needed to face her older sister again, but thought better of it.
“Do we have to?” Abby’s voice sounded small and just a little desperate. “We were going to go exploring, and besides, Michael says she’s.
“Michael says she’s what?” Will crossed his arms, and Abby cowered just a little. Her voice softened even more.
“He said she’s batty.”
Babysitters these days. And big brothers. One never knew what kind of influence they might have on impressionable young minds. Unfortunately, Michael was closer to the truth than Will cared to admit in front of the girls.
“Batty, huh? Well, then maybe we should see if we can find an ice-cream cone at the Mercantile after visiting Aunt Batty—I mean, Aunt Sydney. Would that make it a little better?”
Olivia giggled.
“Ice cream?” Abby’s high-pitched voice would wake anyone out of a sound sleep, let alone a mother. Merit’s eyelids fluttered, and Will put a finger to his lips before gesturing for the girls to follow him outside.
“We moved here so we could mend fences and be hospitable,” he told them as they headed for the Land Rover. “So how about we start today?” Of course, then he had to explain what he meant by fences.
Five minutes later, they drove up a dirt driveway outside town in the state park, over a hill, and down a rutted gravel path.
“Is this really where Aunt Sydney lives?” asked Olivia.
Will couldn’t blame her for sliding a little lower in her seat. He nodded as he wondered what he was getting his daughter’s into. Or himself.
“Yeah, this is the place. I think.”
The trailer was one of those 1950s Airstreams, all aluminum and none too even on its foundation, like someone had dumped it there forty years ago and had never bothered to level it up. A six-foot chain-link fence circled the perimeter. The message was clear: Leave me ahne.
That part he remembered from their visit here fifteen years ago. The trailer itself looked the same. He just didn’t remember all the—
“Wow,” whispered Abby. “She sure likes windmill whirligig things, huh?”
Olivia started counting. “Two, three, four…”
Several of the painted wooden spirals hung from the lowest branches of a fir tree that shaded the trailer, spinning like strands of homespun DNA.
“Five, six, seven….”
Others looked like little men chopping wood or woodpeckers working on a tree branch, springing into action when a breeze caught the propellers.
“Eight, nine…”
A couple of the wind machines featured orca whales chasing their tails, around and around. Most simply chimed and gonged in the breeze, and they could hear the symphony of notes the moment Will turned off the car.
“I think they’re creepy,” declared Abby.
“There’s nothing creepy about lawn decorations,” he told them.
There was no turning back now. They had come to say hi to Aunt Batty, so they were going to say hi. Maybe this way he wouldn’t have to do it again for another fifteen years.
With no sign of life inside, Will led the way up a short set of stairs and across a deck (of sorts) that reminded him very much of the docks back at the resort. Maybe it was the trampoline effect on the soft wood.
“Careful,” he warned the girls, and they tiptoed behind him.
They didn’t notice the cats until they had almost reached the front door.
“A kitty!” Abby bent down to pet the first one, a small black-and-tan tabby who had slipped around the corner of the deck to greet them.
“And two more!” Olivia made the discovery under the steps, and the count began. Before Will knocked on the door, the girls had tallied at least a dozen.
“Anybody home?” Will rapped once and then a second time before a tattered curtain finally parted and a wild pair of green eyes stared out at them. Will felt his daughter’s line up behind him, and a long moment later, the door finally cracked open.
“It’s Will, Sydney.” His voice sounded shakier than he’d intended. “Your brother-in-law, Will. We’ve moved into the resort, so I thought we’d come by to say hi.”
Either the woman had not been expecting visitors or she always dressed in an ankle-length tie-dyed dress and sandals. She’d wrapped her long hair in a pink scarf that matched her pink painted fingernails, but unruly tufts found their way out here and there, like snakes trying to escape a sack. A tiny black cat, not much bigger than a kitten, clung to her shoulder like a fur stole.
Will gave the girls a look and a shake of his head, hoping they’d get the hint and stop staring.
“Well, well,” Sydney said.
Abby and Olivia squeezed his hands. They could stand on the deck and try to confirm the fact that they were indeed related, or he could break the awkward silence.
“I brought the girls by to meet you,” he said. “Merit would have come too, but she wore herself out moving—”
“I heard you were buying the old resort,” she interrupted, finally pulling back the door and motioning for them to come in. He had to duck to avoid bumping into one of the Native American dreamcatchers hanging just inside the door. “It’s a shame you couldn’t leave it in its natural state. Better energy that way.”
“Uh, well, yeah. A guy from Kootenai Electric was out the other day. Got us all set up with the power feed.”
She ignored his feeble joke, and Will looked around the inside of Aunt Sydney’s dark little cave and started to get the picture. On one wall hung a full-size watercolor portrait of a cougar, surrounded by several more dreamcatchers and feather arrangements. A floor-to-ceiling carpeted cat-climbing tower occupied an entire corner of the trailer, and perhaps that was the source of the mild but unmistakably odd odor. If the girls had thought
there were a lot of cats outside…
“Wow,” said Abby, finally emerging from her fathers shadow. “How many cats do you have?”
Aunt Sydney smiled for the first time, a crooked sort of upturn of the lips that didn’t quite match her yellowed teeth and dark eyes.
“I lost count after Gloria Steinern had kittens,” she admitted, pointing to the cat at Will’s feet.
The girls didn’t seem to think it strange to meet a cat named after a feminist pioneer, though of course they would not recognize the name. Gloria Steinem the cat, however, was making Wills leg itch where the creature had rubbed up against him. His jeans were no protection at all. Gloria Steinern obviously had no idea this human was allergic to cats.
“When was that?” asked Abby.
The older woman picked up another tabby and placed it on the kitchen counter, where the cat could choose from a half dozen bowls of food. Will’s eyes started to water and his throat began to feel tight. They would need to get out of this trailer soon.
‘Tour years ago, I think,” Sydney answered. “No, five.”
Will stood with his daughters just inside the front door, trying to make conversation. They wouldn’t be able to sit. It looked as if every chair had been taken over by feline companions and their equipment. Aunt Sydney didn’t seem to notice.
“Abby says we’re going to have a pet raccoon,” Olivia blurted. “Just like in Rascal. “
“Liv,” Will put in, “that’s still not a practical idea.”
But Olivia’s announcement brought a righteous frown to Aunt Sydney’s wrinkled face. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to keep a raccoon,” she retorted. “They’re wild creatures, and we’re all diminished when they’re caged. It’s like slavery.”
It was Olivias turn to wrinkle her nose in confusion.
“Like slavery…” she began, and Aunt Sydney was only too glad to explain, pointing out the grievous sins of Mr. Mooney at the Mercantile, who held captive animals against their will. Birds and small animals had a right to be free, didn’t he know?
The girls nodded their heads politely, but not even Will could follow the connection between the supposed consciousness of wild forest creatures and fluoride treatments in large cities. He considered suggesting that impeaching the president would be the only logical course of action, then thought better of it. She might not follow his sarcasm.