Big Green Country

by Frances Rivetti

  He turned toward me, a pair of soft, brown eyes widening and magnified behind his thick eyeglass lenses. I thought at that moment he might have taken pity on me, hung a U-ey — flipped a fast and sudden about-turn in the rising waters of this lower trough of a craggy ranch road. “Life goes on,” he said with the slightest of smiles, revealing his small, neat teeth, though he was barely what I’d describe as at ease. I wanted to believe him, this young, smart, hopeful, rational engineer of tomorrow. Everything would be all right in the end and what is it they say — if it’s not all right, then it’s not the end? If he was tempted to drive me back to my senses, return me, like a wrongly addressed pastprime Amazon package to my well lit upper floor unit with its marble countertops and its twinkling, vintage crystal chandeliers, well, he chose not to act on it. How many times had I avoided this scene? Failed to show up to any of Bridget’s half-hearted attempts to gather me back into the fold. I might at least have made an appearance for one or two lousy birthdays, holiday afternoons. I consoled myself that he would make it back over the bridge by dark, time enough to fit in a handful of less demanding rides as the city folk made their way home from San Francisco’s almost embarrassing overload of warm and brightly lit restaurants and bars.

  “Looks like a good place to visit in the summer months,” he shivered, visibly. I figured he must have been aware he was breaking one of the basic rules of the rideshare code with regard to making comment on my questionable destination. He couldn’t stop himself as he scanned the dense green stretch of sodden ranch land that circled the blurry silhouette of the house. I narrowed my eyes and looked for the old, familiar mound of trees I’d climbed with Bridget, as kids, a clump of Coast Live Oaks, barely visible through the heavy mist. In stark contrast, two rows of unruly and oppressively large eucalyptus trees shielded our approach, like a foreign militia of giant, unpredictable soldiers, in salute of my return.

  After narrowly dodging a deep, wide puddle at the end of the driveway, the spluttering vehicle crawled to a stop by the steps of the ramshackle porch. “Right here?” he asked, thick eyebrows raised, his eyes darting from a flattened portion of picket fence to porch steps almost totally devoid of the last vestiges of peeling white paint. A fierce wind howled as it whipped off the churning Pacific, topping the rocky shore, rolling, madcap and pummeling the once ornate, now decrepit 19th century carvings. Fallen leaves and other debris from the eucalyptus trees smacked against my face and hands.

  I was stone cold sober for the first time in weeks and with nothing more than a halfempty water bottle in hand, I was able to thoroughly soak in all these visuals of my homecoming. The thought briefly crossed my mind of a faraway mother somewhere on the other side of the world missing this well-mannered student in his polished leather lace-ups as he made his first tentative move to step out onto a dry patch of ground. He hovered a second or two before braving the muddy mire as he planted my two small bags in a sheltered spot at the foot of the porch. If my sister heard the engine running, she’d chosen to ignore it, hoping, I guess, whomever it was would simply turn around and pass on by. I stood there, wrestling with what I should say as I watched the taillights of the mud splattered sedan bob up and down in a spray of puddles in retreat on the uneven surface of the unpaved road. Poor guy couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I fixed my eyes on his vehicle as it skirted a series of muddy potholes and sunk into the steely light of the distant horizon.

  I was pumped and primed to ask my sister for shelter, beg a little if need be. After all, it was Bridget who had held the fort since before dad died. On paper, we co-own the property, for what it’s worth. In reality, I hadn’t had a single iota to do with its maintenance and upkeep and not much more to do with Bridget and later on, my niece, Mia, her kid, since I’d left home more or less at the age that Mia is now. Bridget, for her part, had spent the past twenty-plus years in a perpetual state of being pissed at my lack of interest. And, in turn, honestly, she’d had little choice but to leave me to my own shallow devices. For the longest time, I’d felt like I’d been given a get out of jail free card, a ticket to a new life, far from the more uncomfortable memories of early hardship out on the ranch.

  I could’ve used a drink to settle my nerves, a glass of wine at least to smooth the sharp edges of my pitiless return. Too bad I’d drained the last drop of my soon-to-be exhusband’s favorite wine club subscription — a case of bloated Napa Valley Cab, each bottle topped with a pompous ruby-red wax seal. He’d inadvertently left a blissfully intact case under the stairs and I stand in full, unabashed confession to having savored each and every last sip and swirl of this particularly insane and grossly priced wine shipment that was charged to Andres’ credit card quarterly. I know my wine and it was a good one.

  I was spent. Despite my foolish intentions to make this the first day of the rest of my life and all that baloney, the near constant melancholy that set in as my situation with Andres had slowly eroded was proving hard to shake. I’d grown comfortable with it, I suppose, a protective layer I’d clung to in a sick sort of way, my hopeless cloak, a security blanket that kept me from any further vulnerability. Damn it, Andres had been the bigger fraud, the cheater and worse, in my mind, the guilty partaker of way more sinister corporate pursuits than I’d been greedy enough to contrive. I’d been the fool for blithely going along with it all, for failing to call it out, for sticking around and indulging his bougie lifestyle.

  Even aside from his philandering, his secretive work assignments, the high risktaking venture capitalism he’d dragged me down with, Andres had been excessively conceited, a disappointing, mediocre partner at best. It was my sister I ought to have been thinking of, not the tail end of the grim shell of my marriage and its doomed investment strategy. Bridget is not well. By then, she’d been sick for several months. Shame on me for I have to admit, I’d known full well all this was true.

  I muttered more basic encouragements to myself as I lingered under the dismal glimmer of the porch light. “Be yourself, Maggie. Do not even think of groveling, girl.” Despite the desperate measures I’d taken to shed my city skin, at that moment, the only thing I felt like was an imposter and I hated it. Anyway, I’m over it now, for sure, there’s no more regret. I’ve completely lost the stomach for the constant cosmetic upkeep, the mind-numbing flow of posts, tweets, shares, likes, comments, email, texts, chat, blogs, wikis and other such crap and nonsense I’d been required to keep up with to stay relevant. All this babble and complex social code proved way too much for my addled brain, then and now. I want no more of it. Have I made myself clear, my total and enduring distrust of digital technology stems from the inside out? Do I miss it, the glamour of life on the cutting edge, the power of knowing what’s next on the bleeding edge of science and technology? Hell no.

  As for this place, the ranch where I was raised, it might as well be the back of beyond, world’s end, a dark hole in the universe for all my soon-to-be ex, my cutthroat, minted former coworkers, the last of my fair-weather friends, in truth, could give a damn. And, the funny thing about this inaccessibility, my newfound splendid isolation, it’s become my most valued commodity. I left behind the old me when I patterned the initials of my maiden name in the passenger seat window of the rideshare car. Using the tip of my manicured pointer finger, I outlined M.M. — Maggie McCleery version 3.0. And with that, I was fully unshackled, tossed into the roiling sea, a willing wave rider, a hopeful piece of flotsam in the surf of letting go.

  The split with Andres was one thing. I’d grown to detest the stifling, boxed in rules and regulations of a self-imposed downward spiral in the nauseating, thankless world of tech internal communications. In other words, my getting paid to systematically plot the corporate information flow that influenced the attitudes and behaviors of my workmates had constituted, in base terms, my downing the daily poison for years.

  I felt the damp wood of the sagging porch sigh under the weight of my feet. I strained my eyes in the dim light, making out a fuzzy silhouette through
a small pane of cracked and clouded, turquoise colored glass in the upper portion of the scuffed and weather beaten door. The rusted doorbell damn well jammed in protest at my disturbing the silent house, my unsuspecting sister and whomever else was home with her guy Bobby, maybe — though I’d been hoping for it to be my niece, Mia to be the one to break the proverbial ice. I rapped my knuckles on the glass panel, its fragility mirrored my own.

  It was Bridget who came to the door. I’m not sure which of us took a step or two backward, first, she or me. And well, we froze, the both of us. She visibly recoiled. Bridget retreated into the shadows of the entryway as if she’d seen a ghost. My own sister stood there, rail thin, birdlike, staring at me, an unwelcome apparition, my abrupt arrival shrouded by storm clouds and the merciless wind that chased in alongside me and what I’d naively dared to think were the last of my troubles.

  Chapter 2

  Mia

  Last night I dreamed I was back at the ranch. Only it wasn’t me as I am now, it was when I was a kid. Before Bobby came into our lives. This is pretty weird, as I don’t have a lot of memories of being little, like, you know, before kindergarten. I never went to preschool. There wasn’t one out there and who had the money to pay for it even if there was? Not my mom, for sure. Anyway, who the heck, except me, remembers this stuff from early childhood, how things were before we had the words to describe it?

  This morning I’m working outside in the garden. I’m proud to say I’ve been hard at it, planting a whole bunch of tomatoes and corn and eggplant, peppers — summer squash from starters that I grew myself from seed in small plastic pots in the greenhouse. I’m kinda kneeling down, or as best I can on a folded, old newspaper as I dig a series of deep, narrow furrows into the rich, black soil. All I’m thinking of is last night’s dream and how totally creepy it was.

  I don’t like talking about the past. I have gotta believe what’s done is done for the most part. That’s how I look at it now. “Do you, girl.” I tell myself. This time, though, I’m breaking my own rule in forcing myself to circle back to last night’s freaky dream. I want to better remember myself as little me, to feel the pull of it as I figure myself out, how I came to be here, where the hell I’m going.

  In the dream it was nighttime, winter, cold, wet. I was outside, totally alone in the old dairy pasture, running around in circles in the spooky, pitch-dark rain. My jeans and T-shirt were soaking wet, my feet bare and scratched up under the mud. I was frightened, go figure, shivering like crazy and no matter how hard I tried, I could not find my way back to the house.

  All the lights were off. “Mommy,” I cried, over and over. “I’m here, where are you?” Who else was there to take care of me? In real life, my mom went to work part-time at the roadhouse after Bobby came along, soon after I started school. By the time I hit my teens, the both of them were gone most every late afternoon and evening, except for Mondays and Tuesdays when the roadhouse was dark.

  Today, as soon as I finish digging these rows, I’m gonna stick a bunch of metal cages into the ground, place them over the tomato plants I’ve established. The cages are meant to stop the vines from toppling over when they’re full with fruit. Be honest, did you know a tomato is a fruit? There were plenty of nights when I’d worked myself up, back when Mom first started working the dinner shifts. I’d made myself sick with worry that she’d never come home, that I’d be left there on that lonely ranch all on my ownsome, forever, like crazy Norman Bates from the Psycho movie she and Bobby watched on the TV one night when they thought I was asleep. I’d snuck down the stairs and witnessed more or less the whole sick, sensation seeking horror of it from my hiding place in the shadows behind the hallway door.

  Sticking my hands into the soil is surprisingly satisfying. My nails, farmer’s nails, are clipped short and yet they’re still full of dirt. Now, here, away from all that went down, I’m finally learning a big lesson in how to enjoy my own company. I like being alone. It’s the sense of peace I guess that brings me some relief. When I think about it, maybe my mom was a little too clingy for my own good before she had Bobby to keep her company. She trapped me out there and then she pretty much kinda ignored me for the rest of my growing up, never so much as asking me about school, how my day was, my grades and all, who I was hanging out with. There was never any talk about what I might want for my future. I guess it was enough work for her to get up and face each new day as it dawned, never mind the bother of me. I get it, now.

  It’s heating up, close to noon. I move on to checking the sprinkler heads on the drip irrigation system that runs from the grey water tank. I’ve been taught to check for stones and dirt that clog up the sprinklers. I take time to twist them around to make sure they’re pointed in the right direction for keeping the veggies well watered during the warmer days ahead.

  To think, I was the stupid, lazy little ranch chick who never so much as stuck her hands in the mud — least not ‘til now. Whenever I’m outside, I catch myself over and over, checking for a way out, the fear of being penned is hard to shake.

  Turkey vultures hover overhead looking for lunch. Some sad critter must have met its end in the garden during the night. I watch them going about their business. They’re impressive. I’ll give ‘em that. Super scavengers. It’s crazy that the turkey vulture travels up to 200 miles a day in search of its next meal. Pilots have reported spotting them flying, like as far as 20,000 feet up in the sky. Blows my mind. I wrote a report on turkey vultures one time in high school biology, back when I gave a crap. I was really into it. I hand illustrated it with colored pencils and all.

  If you’ve never seen one, here’s another cool thing about turkey vultures. They’re bald. The reason they have no feathers on their heads is so as to stop any bits of flesh sticking to them when they nosedive headfirst into a fresh carcass. They’re kinda grotesque to look at, what with their massive beaks, hence the sharp sense of smell. I turn to watch them bathe in the sun on the fence posts out back, their huge wings spread six feet wide. Bizarre, but also true, the turkey vulture is known to shit on its own claws to cool itself in the hot, summer months.

  Still, I’m fascinated in some sick way by how mean they look, the largest and the ugliest of the birds of prey, at least in this part of the world, which is all I know since I have never been any place that’s not in Northern California. I go on watching them at their work a minute or two more. Their flapping around reminds me of the most vivid part of my dream, the part where I found my way back to the house, feeling my way up the porch steps in the pitch dark on my hands and knees like a creature myself, crawling through puddles of cold, wet sand. I was deathly afraid that vultures and other birds of the night might swoop down on my hands and into my hair, more so the bats and the rats the size of small barn cats that still populate the place, far as I know. A thin sliver of moonlight illuminated the front door. I rattled the handle ‘til it creaked open and I grabbed onto the wooden frame as a river of cold, salty seawater gushed out, flooding the porch and submerging the steps. I was marooned.

  I waded into the darkened, flooded entryway as jellyfish, dozens of clear, wobbly spaceships floated silently around me in the black water. I pushed on in the direction of muffled voices in the dining room we barely ever used, drawn by the sound of a bunch of people talking at the same time. Four wrinkly old folk were sitting around the table along with Mom, who looked sad, with dark shadows under her eyes. My aunt, Maggie was also there, glowing, in contrast, her long, shiny black hair, like mine used to be, tied back to frame her real-pretty, pink-cheeked face. I’m darker skinned than her and my eyes are more of a hazel brown where hers are green, but we look a lot alike otherwise. They all seemed to know each other around that table. It was like the old ones had stepped straight out of the faded old portrait that hangs on the wall for real. I can see it now, how they were all decked out in old Western-style clothing, the oldies, he in some sort of heavy vest and a collarless shirt, she in a long, blue dress with a delicate floral print. They wore seri
ous expressions on their weather-beaten faces and they spoke my name, like I wasn’t there. “Well! What’s to be done about Mia?” my mom asked, her eyes sunken. I called out again and again, “I’m here, see for yourself,” but nobody heard. I waved my arms and stomped around, wiping tears and snot from my face with the back of my hand. I pulled at my aunt’s arm. Milling it around in my mind now, any fool ought to figure I was starving for attention. Still, did they see me? Hell no.

  I pinch off small sprigs of white flowers not un-similar to those on the old woman’s dress. These sprigs have sprouted from the top of four good-sized basil plants and my fingers at once smell peppery, minty. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to read too deeply into these night visions, nightmares you might call them. I know what a nightmare is and this was not one of them. Why torture myself by trying too hard to figure it all out?

  Mom announced when I was about six or seven, in real life, not in the dream, that Bobby was as close to a dad to me as any. Something along those lines — anyway, turns out she had decided it was time for me to call him Daddy, not Bobby. My real dad was as good as dead, she said. It was the first I’d heard her speak of the man who is my father and it sucked. If I’d ever asked her why I didn’t have a dad, I don’t remember. Why would I? I knew nothing different. It wasn’t like I’d been around a lot of kids with dads when I was little, stuck out there all alone with only my mom for company.

  “Maybe my daddy doesn’t want me because I’m a girl.” That’s what I told myself the day she dropped the bombshell that I did, in fact, have a father. I really thought then, for the longest time, if I’d been a boy, he might not have been so disappointed, gone and ditched us and left me there, alone with her. Later, when I was in junior high, she confessed to me the worst of it, in that he never even so much as knew I existed. I was gutted. I don’t know what’s more hurtful, him turning his back or having no fucking clue? I wanted so badly to find him, write him, phone him, reassure him: “Hey, I’m here, you’d like me.” I’d have done anything to talk to my dad, to see him even once, if only for the shortest time, to prove myself worthy. I’m over that shit now. No more playing small and insignificant. At least there’s that.