Lucy

by Laurence Gonzales

  “Sure, I guess. It was on the news.” Jenny sat beside her and waited. Elise sighed. Then she began, “Well, my mom, she got us up real early yesterday morning, me and my little brother Dave and the twins, Jill and Jolene. Mom said we were going to take a trip. And then she put us in the car and took us down to Hinckley and drove out onto the pier. It wasn’t quite light yet. Then she just kept on going right into the lake. I had Dave’s hand. I don’t know what happened. I lost him. I was the only one who got out.”

  Jenny had heard all kinds of stories but this one left her completely speechless. She imagined that Elise had been watching those kids on the waterslide, thinking about her brother and sisters down at the bottom of the lake.

  From her own experience, as well as that of the Randalls, Jenny had some ideas about how you might come back from something like that. She took Elise under her wing and over the next few months she began to come around. Elise befriended some of the younger girls. It turned out that she was an artist. Her father had been a commercial artist and taught her from an early age but he had left the family. As Elise came out of her shell, her talent became clear. She would sit at the cafeteria table and draw beautifully realistic portraits of the children—upside down so that the kids could see them take shape. Or she’d carve perfect bas relief faces using modeling clay and a butter knife from the lunch room. Jenny needed someone like Elise in her life. Elise had lost everyone in her family. Jenny could never feel self-pity when she was around her.

  That’s why she returned to Chad to work with Harry in the hospital for another two months. She could not think of her own sorrow when she was face-to-face with an eight-year-old whose hands had been blown off.

  53

  A WEEK AFTER THEY RETURNED from Africa, Harry took Jenny to dinner at the little Italian place in Rogers Park where they had gone on their last date more than two years before. She knew that he was up to something. She felt it. Waiting for their carafe of wine, Harry nervously rearranged the shakers of salt and pepper and Parmesan cheese.

  “What is it, Harry? Are you practicing your interior decorating skills?”

  Harry laughed and the waiter brought the wine. Harry poured. Then he reached in his jacket pocket and brought out a gray folder about the size of a greeting card and set it on the table. He lifted his glass to Jenny and said, “I found this while I was dumpster diving and thought you might want to have it.”

  She laughed. “What on earth …?”

  “Chin-chin.”

  They clicked glasses. When she picked up the folder, she realized that it was made out of duct tape wrapped around cardboard. Inside, framed in duct tape, was a snapshot of the two of them that someone had taken in Chad. Dressed in hospital scrubs, they looked exhausted, disheveled, and happy. Something lumpy was taped to the opposite side of the card. She rubbed her thumb over the lump.

  “Pull off the tape.”

  Jenny pulled back the duct tape to reveal a diamond ring.

  “Every girl should have diamonds and duct tape.”

  “Harry, you need adult supervision, do you know that?”

  “Well, that aside, what do you say?”

  “You’re so romantic. How could I resist?”

  Neither of them wanted a showy wedding. Born out of shared experience, their friendship, their love, simply wasn’t like that. It had become clear that they were going to stay together, and so they made it official.

  Jenny could do nothing to speed the passage of time. No one could bring Amanda back. Harry and Jenny had to try to live their lives, just as Ruth and Luke had. And between Harry’s work and the shelter and Africa and the household, they found that they did have a life once more. And they learned that time, which they once believed had stopped forever, did indeed pass.

  Great mountains of snow turned to gutters rushing with black water, and the temperature shot up into the seventies. A midnight thunderstorm lured lightning out of dark clouds, and Jenny lay in bed thinking of the girls and holding herself tight against Harry.

  Ruth and Luke arrived the next day. They had come to visit half a dozen times already. Harry grilled tuna steaks and vegetables. They ate outside, and as the light fled, Harry and Luke talked and laughed on the lower deck overlooking the poisonous garden.

  Ruth and Jenny were loading the dishwasher.

  “I want to thank you and Harry.”

  “Oh, it was nothing. Harry loves to cook.”

  “I don’t mean for that. I mean for coming into our lives. All the good. All the bad. I think the experience shocked Luke out of his—his whatever. After …” And here Ruth paused, sensitive to the raw and tender wound she was about to touch. “After Lucy left …” To mention Amanda would have been too harsh. “After that, Luke began to slow down. And over the last couple of years, he has really come back to me. Something like this? Just flying off to visit friends for a barbecue? Two years ago he’d have never done this—never. And going to Costa Rica like we did last year? I was in heaven.”

  Jenny dried her hands and hugged Ruth. “I’m happy for you,” she said.

  When Ruth and Luke had left, Jenny sat with Lucy’s laptop at the kitchen table and browsed the ads on Craigslist. Harry was reading the newspaper and muttering about what a miracle God had wrought when he put so many idiots on one planet all at the same time.

  The small ad was listed under For Sale—Books. It read, “Signed First Edition of Jane Goodall’s In the Shadow of Man—$1,015.” Jenny leapt up and shouted. Harry startled and grabbed her arm, thinking she was having a heart attack. He was about to administer first aid when she found her voice and told him.

  The price was the time of day when they would meet in one week. Again, it felt as if time had stopped. Harry made her sleep in the guest room because she was grinding her teeth in her sleep.

  When the day arrived, Jenny drove to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. She sat at a wrought iron table at Chuck’s Lakeshore Inn. The day was cool and windy. A front was coming down from Canada, but it was nice in the sun. She watched one lone sail jerking bravely across the lake. An elderly couple walked hand in hand. A waitress brought her a menu, and Jenny told her that there would be a party of two.

  A few minutes later, she saw Donna coming from a block away, wearing sunglasses, her long braid swinging. She came on and on, growing larger with each step. When at last Donna stood before Jenny, she smiled and sat down. Donna pushed an envelope across the table toward Jenny’s hand.

  “She’s good,” Donna said. “She’s doin’ real good.”

  54

  I SIT IN THE lodge, motionless, sweat pouring off of me as Bev Ann White Feather braids my hair. It’s just about long enough now. My skin is brown from the sun and I gained back the weight that I lost and then some. I call Bev Ann Grandmother White Feather, old and wrinkled as a raisin, her long gray hair braided past her waist and decorated with beads. She brought me back to health, feeding me squab and squash and corn soup. For the first few months, she made me sleep where the moonlight could touch my skin, until my cycles came back into synchronization. I immediately knew that we could communicate deeply. The winters are so cold up here, though. I thought I’d die. At first I worried: What if I get sick? I may die. We all die. I don’t worry anymore. And two and a half years of acclimatization have helped.

  When I’ve sweated through my heavy woolen blanket, I stand and Grandmother White Feather stands with me, touching up my hair from behind. We walk out of the lodge and down the incline through the forest to the river. She takes the blanket and I step naked into the rushing water. The current is swift but the river is shallow, the bottom covered with smooth stones. I wash myself off in the icy water, and when I return to the bank, Grandmother White Feather is holding a big towel. I wrap myself in it. I make a little noise of surprise and put my hand on my belly. She pats my belly, asking, “Is he kickin’ again?”

  I smile at her as she carries the blanket, and we head back up the incline to the cabin.

  I was asleep in Donna’s c
ar when we crossed the Dakota line. More than two years ago, now, it’s hard to believe. I remember it as if it were yesterday. We came out of Iowa past Aberdeen and down the edge of the Cheyenne River Reservation toward Rapid City. Haunting spires of stone decked with quartz crystals had flanked our way as we passed through the Black Hills and descended across the hot springs toward Pine Ridge.

  “These are my people,” Donna had explained to me. “I come from here. This is our land, our sovereign nation. No one can get at you here. I have told my people who you are. I talked to them over many months. They’ll welcome you. My grandmother loves me, and I told her that you are a sister to me now. She’ll look after you.”

  “Will you stay with me?”

  “No. My guys need me. And anyway it would be too weird if I just up and left my bonobos. I need them, too.”

  When we arrived on the reservation, we drove along the main road, and then there was a police car behind us with its lights on. Its siren sounded briefly and I nearly had a heart attack.

  “It’s all right,” Donna said. “I know him.”

  The tribal policeman pulled up alongside of us, grinning through the open window. “Well, if it isn’t Donna White Feather. I haven’t seen you in an age.”

  “Hey, Peter. Meet Lucy. Honey, this is Peter Stands Alone. He’s chief of police here.”

  “Hi, Lucy. And welcome.”

  “She’s been sick. Had to have surgery,” Donna said, tapping the top of her head. “I want her to rest here for a while with Grandma.”

  “Sure. There’s plenty of good medicine here. Welcome back.”

  Donna drove us up into the woods to Grandmother White Feather’s cabin and placed me in the old woman’s care. She told me, “This is my grandmother. She will know what to do. Always do what Grandmother White Feather says and you’ll get well.”

  “Welcome, child,” Grandmother White Feather said. She crossed to me and put her hands on my cheeks. Her hands were as smooth as paper and cool to the touch. She looked deep into my eyes for a few moments and then chuckled to herself. She said, “My great-grandfather was one-quarter wolf.” Then she let go of my face and took Donna’s arm, still laughing deep in her throat. “We haven’t seen one like this here in many generations.”

  Grandmother White Feather cooked freshly caught trout with wild rice. Donna stayed the night. For the first time in what seemed like ages I slept peacefully, with the moonlight on me and the night air coming through the window.

  The next morning Donna and I said goodbye. We did not weep, for we knew that this was a time of new beginnings. I watched with Grandmother White Feather as Donna drove away. We could see the dust for a long time. Then she took me to bathe and rest. She made me a medicine bag from crow feathers, deerskin, horsehair, and beads. I wore it around my neck. Grandmother White Feather let me sleep in her cabin and waved at the smoke with a smudge fan of hawk feathers while she sang low in her throat. I slept under four full moons, and she said that it was a good sign that the sky had been clear during all of them. Moonlight heals.

  Through the autumn she taught me her ways. She delighted in the way that I was able to talk to the animals. She talked to them, too. And when she saw how I could call the birds down from the trees or bring a rabbit to my hand, she told me that I ought to meet Stan Brings Plenty, who could talk a deer into coming right to him.

  I liked Stan Brings Plenty right away. Without any effort at all, we began communicating deeply and spending time together. Not everyone was pleased that I was there. A young man named Tom One Horn told Stan Brings Plenty that he should stay away from me, that I’d bring a curse. But then Tom One Horn tried to sneak into my room at night. Grandmother White Feather caught him and beat him with a stick. I worried that he might get mad and tell the authorities where I was. She assured me that no one would betray me. “We settle our own quarrels here,” she said.

  The summer after I arrived, Stan helped me to build my own cabin. That fall he began to come to visit me at night in my cabin. I did a lot of soul searching then. In my nights of desperation I had asked my dead father many times what on earth he was thinking. So, too, I asked myself: What are you thinking? What is the right thing to do? I knew what had been done to me. I knew that there had to be some way to go forward. And I felt in my heart that it was right. Amanda would have wanted me to do it. Something had to change. And in the winter, at last, it happened. Grandmother White Feather gave us her blessing. We’re building another room onto the cabin now.

  I’d finally gotten back to writing my book. I had scribbled only the few pages that Amanda and I worked on. Now I was determined to write the story. I wanted to pay tribute to Amanda. And I wanted to be like Anne Frank and make this work my diary. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as wise as she was, but I always take inspiration from her. I loved her for embracing her suffering and turning it into a thing of beauty that could endure beyond her brief lifetime. And Anne gave me permission to forgive my father. Yes, he had done this to me. He had been a brilliant scientist, an idealist, and anyway, he’d been right about people. Look what they did to Amanda. Beautiful Amanda. His decision to create me may have been wrong but he had inadvertently given me a gift. The gift of struggle. And the gift of being able to chart a course for the future.

  I had never seen the notebook that Mom sent. Donna brought it to me. It was one of the last ones he wrote before he died.

  “My dearest, darling Lucy,” he wrote. “I don’t know if or when you’ll ever read this, but I write to you with all my heart nonetheless. When I set out on this course, I was young and idealistic and perhaps even a bit angry at the world. I had had no children, so how could I know what a child really was? I saw you in the abstract as an idealized person, a strategy for saving the beautiful bonobos and for somehow redeeming mankind all at one go. A wild, ambitious, and even a crazy idea, I now see. Then in the process of raising you and coming to know you, I learned so many things that I was too callow to know when I began. I learned what a beautiful, brilliant, astonishing person you are. I named you Lucy not, as some might think, because of the australopithicine of the same name, but because the name means ‘light.’ And you became the light of my world. I fell in love with you. Yes, even parents have to fall in love with their children, who are strangers at first. And almost from your first contact with me—a glance, a happy cry, your tiny hand gripping my finger—the reality of what I’d done began to descend on me, and I was filled with dread and doubt. I was filled with such love for you, but that love was always tinged with worry, for at last I comprehended what I’d done. And the more beautiful and fully formed you grew, the greater my fear that there would be no escaping the pain that you would have to endure. For that I beg your forgiveness. And I beg you to accept my love if I cannot be there for you when you pass through your trials. Be steadfast, my beloved daughter. Be steady and strong. Embrace the struggle. And never give up. I love you—Papa.”

  I cried when I read it. I cried and forgave him and loved him once more. I think he understood the human saga: That we all bequeath some terrible gift to future generations, just as some mad protohuman long ago gave us the gift of fire, the gift of stone, the gift of iron. Papa, Papa, requiescat in pace. I’m not sure if my book will ever be published but I shall celebrate you in it, too. Now I have to let go of the outcome and just trust the process. I put the words on the page one letter at a time. There is no other way to do it.

  Little news from the outside world reaches me now. I like it that way. Some of our people here live in modern houses and watch television, but I prefer the woods. I think of Mom and Amanda and Harry all the time. All these months and years I’ve had such love and pain in my heart for them. It seems so long ago, yet they all seem so alive. I think of them every day and nothing has diminished. They are in me. They inhabit me. Dear Amanda. You kissed me in the woods. Sometimes at night the breeze comes in through the window, and I catch your scent and I ache for you.

  Donna had said that she would bring
me news of Mom when the time was right. I waited and waited. Then a few weeks ago it happened. Donna was in the habit of coming to visit us a few times a year. And she came with the news that she was going to see Mom at last. She had made discreet inquiries among her old military contacts and she thought it would be safe to go now. I asked her if she could take a letter to Mom.

  “Dear Mom,” I wrote. “Donna tells me that the government isn’t interested in us anymore. I guess they had no idea what to do with me and are just as glad now that I’ve disappeared. She said that they might suspect where I am, but they couldn’t come onto the reservation without making a huge political mess. So as long as I stay out of sight, they’re just going to pretend that I never existed. Anyway, there’s a new president at last, and the word is that he would welcome us if he didn’t think it would be political suicide to do so. Donna described it as a kind of truce. As she put it, ‘Some things never happened even if they are true.’ Anyway, the reporters have gone on to other stories by now and the public has the memory span of a housefly. It really is like I never existed. That’s okay with me.

  “I guess you’re probably reading this with Donna watching you and so you most likely know all this already. She says it’s okay for you guys to come now. I hope you will. I would like you to be here for the birth. And I wouldn’t mind having Harry as my on-call doctor just in case. How is he? I’m dying to hear how you two have been doing and what you’ve been up to. Please give him my love and ‘a big wet smoocher,’ as he would say.

  “Everyone wants me to have a boy but I hope it’s a girl so that I can name her Amanda. Naturally I want to know what the future will bring. But with Grandmother White Feather’s help I’ve learned to be grateful for the sun and the stars, the water and wind, and to take each day as it comes. Please do come. I want a hug and I want you to hold the baby.

  “Your loving daughter,

  “Lucy”