“Are you worried I’ll call in later and ask for my designer belt collection back?” I joked.
She laughed. “Something like that, ma’am,” she replied, looking over my shoulder at the half-empty apartment. “You’d be surprised. Sometimes people have second thoughts.”
At least I’d taken sensible precaution to check the inside pockets of my Fendi purses and my newly discarded jackets and pants. I’d salvaged several fives and tens and a handful of crumpled twenty-dollar bills along with a surprising amount of loose change from the many days, months, years of those foolish, carefree latte runs. Given that there’d been a free-for-all espresso bar at work and a rotating menu of no cost lunch offerings from the hippest Bay Area restaurants retained to keep the worker bees happy, I’d managed to spend a shitload of money on nothing.
“Not many family jewels to be found in this lot,” I quipped. “Never had too many of those I’m sorry to say.” Despite my tendency to overspend in the luxury clothing, food and wine department, other than my wedding band, engagement ring and my prized pair of diamond studs, the only other bauble or bangle I owned was a Rolex watch Andres had gifted me. The watch was his material idea of compensation after he’d talked me into sinking our combined fortune into the stupendously fucked-up startup failure.
Pairing down to my post-city regime, two pairs of J Brand jeans, T-shirts, a couple of soft, simple, Michael Stars cashmere sweaters and my favorite pair of ankle boots felt surprisingly good, liberating in fact.
Quitting work had been a whole lot easier than I had imagined when it came down to it. I guess I had been addicted to the rush of my own self-importance even though I’d worked for the same global brand tech company for way too long to remain relevant. It didn’t take me long to learn that nobody is indispensable, no matter how pumped up the hype and the role-playing. News flash: As far as I know, the world is still turning without me playing my trivial bit part. The firm we worked for, Andres and me, morphed through a number of major overhauls as tech advancements progressed. I’d hung in, rising to the top of the internal communications team as the employee number grew from 500 into the many thousands. After the company went public, we’d been giddy with the greedy notion of making even more bank. And, after we found ourselves forced back into our longtime work roles, I’d found myself reduced to dodging Adderall-popping millennials like bumper cars — both in the treacherous minefields of the tech world as well as in the marital bed.
Andres had a thing for the doting younger-by-the-year women with techno stars in their eyes and stamina to match. His ego was all the more inflated by his work in the minefield that is AI. All I have to say on the subject at this point is that it’s going to come back to bite him. If you ask me, the entire shit show of what’s in the works with artificial intelligence is a waiting game; some would go so far as to say it is the most dangerous degree of society upheaval in-waiting in human history. If Andres thinks he’s somehow exempt from being replaced by a more efficient robotic workforce, well, his bloated manly ego is only fooling itself.
I’d worked hard to stay in the game to make the world a better place, to keep myself in shape for it, it wasn’t just the frequent shopping expeditions that perked me up, I’d desperately gasped my way through endless sweaty spin classes in my lululemon technical athletic gear in the company gym, paid top dollar for hair care, splurged on regular spa mani-pedis, Botox every three months — all the trappings of the fortysomething female desperately trying to stop the clock from ticking too fast. You name it, I’d been up for trying it. And then it all became crystal clear what a colossal waste of time and money and effort it was.
Regardless of the degree of superficial preening I’d committed and subjected myself to, a revolving door of dot-com babes proved willing to overlook Andres’ wedding ring for a quick fuck after work, a leg up the career rung while I was stupidly busting my sorry, ever-spreading ass on the spin bike.
~ I plopped myself down on a rickety stool, relieved to be back at our rust bucket ranch if only to be free of all that. I crossed my legs at the ankles and slid my beloved $398 Frye Sabrina Chelsea boots (in antique polished cognac leather) off from the heel, dropping them, one by one, under the narrow counter where, after Mom died, Bridget and I would huddle over endless cereal suppers. I remember well the taste of the tears that mixed into the milky pink excess at the bottom of the drab, brown-colored bowls that have been in constant use since our grandmother’s reign over the kitchen. How we had laughed and cried and fought, Bridget and me. We’d done what we thought we needed to do in figuring out our scary, uncertain futures even if it had meant parting, doing our own thing. Now it was time to draw the line in some sort of a sisterly truce. We both knew we had to make things right.
It was me who made the first move: “I’m sorry that I wasn’t here for you, Bridget. Truly, I am.” Without a word, she was thrusting a heavy-duty black rain poncho into my hands. Despite my detachment, I knew what this was for without her having to ask, the old routine that had long since befallen her, checking up on flood levels in the old stock pond. I slid my swollen feet back into my boots. It worked both ways after all, she had never been one to ask for help.
Bridget was nineteen and I was fifteen when Mom died. It was the same sort of cancer, it turned out, that our mother unknowingly passed down to her oldest daughter. Neither of us had any idea how to deal with our dad. We’d been left with a washed up, drunken dairyman with no clue how to survive since his long-suffering wife was no longer taking care of his every need.
We braced ourselves against the driving wind and rain, flashlights in hand as we walked side by side in the dark expanse, frail beams leading us along the muddy track to the same stock pond our grandparents had dug. The pond was filled close to capacity from what I was able to decipher in the low visibility of the downpour. “What’s up, heels sinking into the mud, Maggie?” Bridget asked, sarcasm lacing her voice as she pointed the beam at my feet. My beautiful, American-made boots with their one-inch heel were clearly not the best choice. “It’s time you catch a clue. Someone has to keep a close eye on the pond in this weather,” she added. “And that someone is me, whether I feel like it or not.”
Dad had done a number on Mom as well as Bridget and me. His moods, his negative comments, his morbid, utter lack of motivation at the end. Parental encouragement had been nonexistent. Mom had been a saint to put up with him. Or plain weak, one of the two, though it has taken me a long time to be able to say something as uncharitable as this about my own mother. Once our role model for learning to accept less than we deserved had left this world, things had gone from sad to dire.
I looked around me in the cold, wet, inhospitable darkness and shuddered. By the time I graduated high school, I was totally over my fractured family and this failing ranch. I couldn’t have cared less if I never saw it again. It proved another world from the privileged homes of pampered college friends I sought out during those first few years away from the godforsaken place I left behind. My criteria for studies had been simple — I’d gone to the best school that accepted me with some degree of financial assistance and it had to be reachable by bus. Four hundred and fifty miles to the south, give or take a few, Los Angeles was my first taste of escape, a perfectly wild, crazy, material tonic to wipe out my unsophisticated past.
After graduation, armed with a shiny new marketing and communications degree, I found work in the features department of a glossy magazine — where, despite my humble north coast heritage and limited exposure to the finer things in life, I surprised myself at how adept I was as an interloper in selling the sunny SoCal lifestyle. Southern California was ideal for the new, glossier me, about as far removed from the sinkhole of home as I could have wished for. Life there was surprisingly good, exciting for an ambitious and single country girl in the big city. And when, after a few years, I’d had my fill of Los Angeles, I crept back up the coast to join the ranks of the early tech titans in free-thinking San Francisco. I’m ashamed to say I
waited to tell Bridget I was back in Northern California ‘til our dad, for all his weakness, sold his entire herd of Jerseys, paid off his debts and, in no time at all, proved to us he was capable of succeeding in something. He drank himself to death.
It was Bridget who’d stepped up as ranch matriarch, without the slightest fuss. “I’ve done my best for the place,” she said as we stood side by side, gripping the dripping hoods of our sodden ponchos under the shelter of the barn. An eerie, raspy call of a barn owl stilled our conversation. I caught my breath as his white face, chest and underbelly took flight from over our heads on a buoyant pair of widespread wings across the open fields. Bridget checked the door was secure for another rainy night, pointing out the owl’s nest in the exterior rafters, ten feet above my head. I shared how I had read an article on how the owl is the symbol of the moon’s cycle of renewal, of magic, of ancient knowledge, mystery.
“I’m sure I don’t know anything about that. What choice did I ever have?” Bridget asked.
“You could have walked away, after Dad died, like I did,” I answered, my voice being carried away on the wind. “I mean, who would have stopped you, Bridget?”
I wondered, as we headed back to the house, arm awkwardly in arm as we braced against the rain, what difference would it have made in our lives, if she’d sold the ranch — mine, Bridget’s, Mia’s? And where was Mia? What was she up to? We hadn’t got to that. Bridget was busy thinking her own thoughts as we made our way back to the dimly lit house. “The doctors say it will take five years after radiation for me to be cancer free,” she said, positioning her back to me as she pushed open the front door with one shoulder. I looked around for something to wipe the mud from my boots, resorting to a sheet from a stack of damp newspapers.
“How do you cope with the uncertainty?” I asked. She turned to face me in the light of the open doorway. Why hadn’t I packed a pair of rain boots? Even a pair of hiking boots would have come in handy. Shows where my mind was. I ought to have known better having been raised out here.
“I’ve made a fresh start, Maggie,” Bridget said, heading into the warmth and light of the kitchen. “I’ve launched my own business.”
Fat snakes of rain slithered down the windowpanes, distorting any sense of scale of the shrouded expanse of land that rolled down into the savage reach of the Pacific swell. I fixed my gaze on the dark, bleak, void. Forget the wine, I would’ve poured myself a stiff drink or two or three if there’d been any drop of hard alcohol to be had.
“What?” I asked? “How’ve you had the wherewithal to even think of working in your condition?”
“I guess you’d call it a cottage industry,” Bridget had my attention, now. She motioned to a stack of measuring cups and wooden spoons.
I stepped closer to better take in the contents of the countertop, remembering the hippie herbs and potions that were Bridget’s bag back when we were in our teens. She’d spent hours experimenting with and concocting her colorful natural remedies and beauty products, driven in large part by our geographic isolation and coupled with a lack of money in the home health care department, or any department for that matter. Besides, we have all the natural ingredients at hand in our abundant shoreline ecosystem and we know where to look. Granny had passed her peoples’ pioneer cures down to Mom and, in turn to Bridget more than me, when she showed considerable interest in it, early on. We’d never seen such a thing as a store-bought cough syrup or an anti-itch cream as kids, we drank baking soda in water for indigestion, rubbed salt water on mosquito bites, dabbed cider vinegar and honey cures, cobwebs on scratches.
“You’re cooking with cannabis?”
“Damned well, if I say so myself, “ she said, jutting her chin out. “If you must know, I started out baking to bolster my condition,” Bridget explained. “After I’d been forced to succumb to the chemo, I switched from smoking weed to edibles.” She looked me in the eyes. “Micro-dosing is where it’s at,” she informed me with a markedly new air of confidence. “Instead of one big hit, a steady, longer lasting release.”
Bridget patiently explained how she’d progressed into baking for herself and, later, baking for a cancer collective. She had grown too weak to continue her shifts at the roadhouse, but making edibles in her own kitchen was something she enjoyed and was able to manage. “I’ve expanded my range, now that I have fine-tuned dosage and flavor,” she continued — “brownies, cookies, almond bars, canna butter, alternative sweeteners.”
This was news. “You’re making a living this way, Bridget?”
“Attempting to,” she exclaimed. “I have my paperwork sorted out. Bobby’s pulling extra shifts at the bar, I’m making ends meet with my edibles. We don’t need much. I’m all about locally grown, clean product and reputation. If you like, you can sample some for yourself at supper this evening.”
Muted headlights from Bobby’s beat-up Subaru wagon shone a double spotlight through the kitchen window over the otherwise quiet domestic scene of my sister’s revelations. Once indoors, the big guy threw his XXL, damp and dripping standard Carhartt jacket over the back of the nearest chair. Rainwater trapped in its creases rolled down the wax coating, forming a fairly substantial puddle on the linoleum.
“One of these days we’re covering that cursed porch,” Bridget snapped, as the two of us watched the pool of water expand under the chair where the super-size jacket dripdried. “After everything else on the goddamn fixit list.”
“Huh, Maggie, what are you doing here?” A less than enthusiastic welcome home from my brother-in-law, common-law, whatever.
“Bobby,” I jumped off my stool in an effort to greet him. “Hey, it’s good to see you, bro.”
There was no move to embrace, to take a hand, nothing close to even the smallest of polite gestures of welcome on his part. I knew how the land lay and there’d be no sympathy for my shallow sorrows. Bridget shot her guy a stern look. Bobby was rough around the edges, certainly not my idea of a knight in shining armor, but he’d weathered pretty well, considering. He’d grown on the hefty side, his face well-formed, not quite handsome, yet still, he was somewhat doe-eyed, dark-lashed and undeniably masculine. Bridget’s choice was a swarthy, tobacco scented, no frills, hard-core, traditional Italian/American. I was at least grateful that he had stuck by her in her hour of need.
“Sheesh, it’s crazy out there. More than a handful of trees down tonight,” he said.
Giant eucalyptus, “Beautiful Nuisance”, as we call them ‘round here — non-native and everywhere you look, thanks to an unfortunate move in mass planting in the late 1880s. By the time they’d proved themselves totally useless as lumber during the boom or bust years, eucalyptus had grown to dominate the landscape in their enormity. Locals keep them around, largely for their beauty, for sentimental reasons and the shelter and shade they afford, but mostly due to the cost of felling. When a eucalyptus decides it’s time to fall, holy cow, it’s a calamity.
“Best not turn around tonight.” Bobby eyed my bag by the door. He put his arm to his mouth. I looked away as he wheezed and hacked into the coarse fabric of his plaid shirtsleeves.
“Depends,” I said. That same look again, the pair of them shooting spiky, wordless messages to one another, too complex for me to fully decipher. I hoped he wasn’t smoking tobacco around my sister.
“If it’s OK with you guys, I’ll sleep on the couch,” I ventured.
“No need.” Bridget looked away. “Take your old room, Maggie.”
“What about Mia? When will she be home?”
“Sit down, Maggie — Mia’s not here. She’s been away for a while now.” Bobby cautioned.
“What do you mean? Away. Where?”
Bridget’s eyed welled up. She cleared her throat.
“Look Maggie, we don’t know for sure,” she stammered. “We haven’t seen sight nor sound of her since late summer,” she confessed.
“It’s February, Bridget. You have to be kidding. What the hell?”
“Mia pretty much
freaked out after my diagnosis,” Bridget continued. “Left me a note sayin’ she was out of here, that she’d found work, both she and her friend, Jazmin from school, not to worry myself on her behalf. Took off without as much as a goodbye in person, never told me where, how long, who else they were with — nothin’.”
I clutched the sides of the stool for balance as I processed Bridget’s casual bombshell. This was my sister’s teenage daughter, my niece and, aside from Bridget, my only other living family member we were talking about. I hadn’t been the best of aunts, it’s true, or even a halfway good one up to this point, but it shocked me how hard the news of Mia’s disappearance rattled me.
“Why the heck am I hearing about this five months after the fact, Bridget? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me when we talked after your surgery.”
“That’s the point, Maggie. It was me who called to check on you, not the other way around. Oh no, you were way too busy dealin’ with your own dysfunctional life to bother yourself with Mia or me. You never even asked about your niece. What else did you have to do over Christmas and New Years? You’ve never even spent a single holiday here with Mia and me, not in all these years.”
“Are you saying because I had a life and a job that happened not to revolve around this far-flung ranch, I don’t count in this family?”
Bridget pointedly stacked and restacked a set of glass measuring cups. “Last thing I want in my condition is to be a burden, Maggie. Not then, not now, not to Mia, not to you, or Bobby. I let her go, like I let you go — so she wouldn’t feel the pain.”
Fucking hell. Was my sister made stupid by her sickness, selfish or simply unobservant? “Bridget, does Mia have money? She and this Jazmin girl, do they have friends? Someone must know where they are. For god’s sake, woman, have you traced her phone, checked her social media?”
Bobby cleared his throat before speaking up. To everyone’s great misfortune, he’d taken Mia’s phone off his plan the minute she finished high school. Bad move, as it turned out, but who am I to point fingers? “She barely graduated — such an attitude. Lazed around all summer, never even started lookin’ for a job.”
Big Green Country Page 5