Evergreen

by Rebecca Rasmussen

  Tonight, her dad chose a song he’d been singing to her forever.

  Go to sleep my darling, close your weary eyes.

  The lady moon is watching from out the starry skies.

  The little stars are peeping, to see if you are sleeping.

  Go to sleep, my darling, go to sleep, good night.

  35

  Phee thought purple cowboy boots sounded like a lot more fun than the boots they made when she was Racina’s age. Like Racina’s dad, she wanted to go to town and get them for her right away. When Racina explained about wanting to earn them, Phee offered her ten dollars to help her organize her books, which was what the boots cost. When Racina tried to bargain her down like she did with her dad, Phee said there were two kinds of people in the world: the kind who overestimated how much they were worth and the kind who underestimated how much they were worth. She said it was much better to be the first kind.

  “Why?” Racina said. Her dad had just dropped her off at Phee’s cabin and had gone on to chop wood with Uncle Hux. Racina was going to spend the morning here and the afternoon at Dr. Beller’s office in Green River so Dr. Beller could run some tests.

  “The second kind of people aren’t usually very happy,” Phee said. “They think they don’t deserve to be. They’re a glum group, frankly.”

  “Okay,” Racina said.

  “Smart girl,” Phee said. She handed Racina a crisp ten-dollar bill, which her cat, Liddy, tried to bat away with her paw. “Stop that. You’re a mean old thing, aren’t you?”

  “Why does she only like me when I’m sick?” Racina said, putting the money in her pocket. The only times Liddy ever let Racina pet her without hissing or clamping down on her fingers was when she wasn’t feeling right. Then and only then would she lick Racina’s face. But the moment she was well again, Liddy would stop all that sweetness and turn sour.

  “It’s a strange habit of hers, isn’t it?” Phee said, looking toward the bright yellow windowsill in the kitchen where Liddy had escaped. “The only time she doesn’t mind me is when I’m opening a tin of sardines for her.”

  Before they got to the books, Phee poured a glass of juice for Racina and showed her a picture of a jacket she and Uncle Hux were thinking of getting her for next winter. According to the catalog, the jacket was made of goose down and weighed only thirteen ounces. It was waterproof, too. Uncle Hux was the one who picked out the color. Red onion. He thought it would look pretty with Racina’s dark hair.

  “I love it,” Racina said.

  “Then it’s yours,” Phee said. “Your current coat is so heavy it makes you hunch. This one’s supposed to be warmer, too.”

  “Thank you so much,” Racina said. She was hopeful that this jacket—because the description said it had been tested to thirty-seven degrees below zero and wind chills even greater than that—would convince her father to let her go out and build a snowman or make an igloo next winter.

  Racina put her juice glass in the sink, and the two of them started alphabetizing Phee’s books, which smelled a little rotten and a little sweet at the same time, like old leaves or wet newspaper. Phee said she’d been meaning to do this for a while but her hands were too undependable. Some days she couldn’t even hold a pencil. She had special metal braces for both hands, but she didn’t like to wear them because she said they made her feel like a robot. She said her hair was the only thing about her she didn’t mind being silver.

  “I wouldn’t mind silver hair either,” Racina said. “I think it’s neat.”

  “You may be the only one in the world who thinks so,” Phee said. “Getting old doesn’t win most of us any beauty contests.”

  “Aunt Leah puts green clay all over her face to keep it young,” Racina said. Last time Aunt Leah did it, she let Racina put some on, too.

  “I’m afraid no amount of clay will fix me,” Phee said. “I’m dealing with deep and mighty ravines. Mountains. Deserts.”

  Phee got out a stepladder for Racina to stand on, since she couldn’t reach the top row of books on her tiptoes. “What’s up there anyway?” she said.

  “It looks like some books about gardening. There’s one about airplanes, too.”

  “Can you bring those down yourself?”

  “I think so,” Racina said, but Phee put her hands on Racina’s ankles anyway.

  When Racina got all the gardening books down, she asked if she could look at the one about airplanes, and Phee said yes, of course.

  “Have you ever been in one?” Racina said.

  “Once,” Phee said. “A little crop duster.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Scary at first, but then I didn’t want to come down,” Phee said.

  Racina looked at all the different airplanes in the book. Some were small and sleek, and some were so large and bulky looking Racina wondered how they ever got off the ground. She wondered what it would feel like to fly through all that blue.

  “Are people with immune disorders allowed to go on planes?” Racina said.

  “I don’t see why not,” Phee said. “Where would you go?”

  Racina went back up the ladder. “The Arctic Circle.”

  Ever since she’d read about it in Uncle Hux’s book, she wanted to go there even though the author said there were only three things that far north—snow, ice, and regret. She wanted to see the sun at midnight.

  “Where else would you fly?” Phee said.

  “Wherever my mother lives,” Racina said.

  Racina had dreamed about meeting her mother ever since she found out she had one. Sometimes when she and her dad were in Yellow Falls, she’d pretend the women who walked past them were her mother. Once, Racina blew one of them a kiss, and the woman gave her a lollipop that looked like a rainbow, and because her dad didn’t want to offend the woman, Racina got to eat it right there on the street.

  Phee helped Racina down from the ladder even though Racina was standing steadily on the middle step and didn’t ask to come down.

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m tired of not telling you,” she said holding Racina’s hands, even though it clearly hurt her and to do it she had to concentrate very hard. Anymore, her hands nearly always shook. “Your mother lives in Wisconsin, honey. I still talk to her. So does your Uncle Hux.”

  Ever since Racina had learned about verb tenses, she thought maybe that was true, because both Uncle Hux and Phee mostly talked about her in the present tense.

  “Is she still sick?” Racina said.

  “No, she’s much better now.”

  Then why doesn’t she come home? Racina thought, even though she knew the real story of her mother was much more complicated than the one her dad had told her. She knew the words “she had a very hard life that made her sick” were supposed to explain everything that had happened while her mother was in Evergreen without explaining it at all. They were like Racina’s great big coat; they were supposed to keep her safe.

  “She lives on a dairy farm with an old friend of hers,” Phee said.

  Before they finished organizing her books and Racina’s dad picked her up, Phee said one last thing about her mother. “Don’t be afraid to tell him you want to see her. He’s stronger than you think. He’ll be all right.”

  On the way to Dr. Beller’s office, Racina was quiet. Usually she liked the drive to Green River, especially when everything was starting to bloom again like it was now, and the fields and grass and trees were such a pretty shade of green. Today, all Racina wanted to do was be at home with the folder under her bed. She wanted to write down Wisconsin, dairy farm, and old friend. She wanted to write down she would want to see me.

  Her dad was quiet, too, but the fishing rods he was going to drop off at the Hunting Emporium on the way back were tapping against the window in the back of the truck like fingers. Racina didn’t like to fish that much, but she loved to watch her dad make the rods. Each one involved splitting sheaths of wood, sanding, and lacquering them over and over again, which her dad said
took a kind of patience he wasn’t born with. He said he broke a lot of rods when he was first learning. He said he started making them because when Racina had learned how to stand at the edge of the river without almost falling in—when she was about three—he wanted to get her a pink rod and a pink tackle box, but nobody made them in the Northwoods. Even though it was too small for her now, the pink rod was hanging on the wall above her bed. She used the tackle box to hold her art supplies.

  “How much did Phee give you?” her dad said.

  “Ten dollars,” Racina said, showing him the bill.

  “How come you took it from her and not me?” Even though the cab was getting warm from the sun and he was still sweating from chopping wood with Uncle Hux, Racina knew he wouldn’t roll down the window because of the draft it would cause. He kept eyeing the sleeves of her shirt, which she’d rolled up when she was sorting books for Phee.

  “I don’t want to be the kind of person who underestimates my worth,” Racina said.

  Her dad looked at her, but he didn’t say anything.

  “She let me look at a book about airplanes,” Racina said. “I hope I get to go up in one someday. The big ones go hundreds of miles per hour.”

  “I like you being on the ground,” her dad said.

  “Dad?” Racina started, but she already knew she couldn’t ask him to see her mother. She thought of her fishing rod. Her tackle box. She rolled down her sleeves.

  “Yeah?” her dad said. A wood chip was stuck to his cheek.

  Racina moved across the front seat until she was close enough to lean against him. “How was chopping wood with Uncle Hux?”

  “I chopped him into the ground,” he said, but it didn’t seem like what he’d really wanted to say either.

  When they arrived at Dr. Beller’s office, the nurse took Racina back for a blood test. Usually her dad went with her, but today Dr. Beller wanted to talk to him privately. The nurse who usually drew her blood was sick, and her replacement couldn’t find Racina’s vein until the sixth try. She kept apologizing, and Racina kept telling her it was all right. She didn’t look tough, but she was. She was from Evergreen.

  When her dad saw her arm, he wasn’t as nice.

  “I could do better than that,” he said when they were both back in the waiting room. “I have done better than that.”

  “She was really nice, Dad. My veins are tiny.”

  “Goddamn it,” he said, raising his voice. “Why do people keep wanting to hurt you?”

  “It only looks like it hurts,” Racina said.

  “What’s going on out here? Do I have to call the police to get a little order in my waiting room?” Dr. Beller said from the doorway next to the reception window. She was wearing bright yellow shoes today that crisscrossed at her toes, a dress that looked like geometry, and a little purple flower twirled up in blond hair.

  Dr. Beller winked at them, but before Racina could wink back her dad did.

  “Should we all go back to the exam room?” Dr. Beller said.

  “I like your shoes,” Racina said when they got there. Racina took hers off and hopped up onto the exam table. “Your flower, too.”

  Dr. Beller took it out of her hair and with a bobby pin secured it to Racina’s. “I have a whole backyard full of them right now. It’s like a purple carpet.”

  Dr. Beller talked about how well Racina was doing and how great it was that she’d gone two whole months without so much as a sniffle. She checked Racina’s heart and listened to her lungs. At the end of the exam, Racina’s dad left the room so Dr. Beller could examine her chest and stomach.

  “Does this hurt?” Dr. Beller said, pushing lightly around her belly button.

  “No,” Racina said.

  “How about this?”

  “Still no,” Racina said.

  “This is all very good,” Dr. Beller said. “I’m so happy you’re feeling well. I’m hoping the blood test you took today will tell us a little more about what’s happening in your body when you’re not sick and maybe that will help us keep you that way.”

  Dr. Beller leaned over Racina to take one last listen to her heart. She wore perfume that smelled like lemons. When she was finished examining Racina, she opened a cabinet and pulled out a small basket of toys. “Are you too old for one of these?”

  “Should I be?” Racina said.

  “You should see my collection,” Dr. Beller said. “I’ve got the house and the barn and the tractor even. I’m only missing the old goat now.”

  Racina picked out a little plastic cow to add to her barnyard set at home. The cow was the color of cream with brown spots all over it. It looked proud of itself somehow.

  Racina followed Dr. Beller out to the waiting room. She was lagging behind a little, looking at the cow. She didn’t put everything together until she and her dad were back in the truck and on their way out of Green River. Her dad had started going a new way.

  “Do you like Dr. Beller?” she said.

  “Sarah?” her dad said. “Yes. She’s a great doctor.”

  “I mean do you like her how Aunt Leah and Uncle Hux like each other?”

  “I’m not going to buy her a tiny teacup if that’s what you mean.”

  Racina looked down at her cow. “I wouldn’t mind if you liked her like that.”

  Her dad didn’t say anything for a long time. They drove past the last business and up a winding road with forest on either side of it. There were only a few houses, a few telephone poles, a few places to pull off from the road if you got turned around. Racina didn’t know if he did it on purpose, but ever since he’d started going this way her dad would slow down right before they passed the orphanage her mother grew up in. Today when he did that, Racina saw a bunch of kids chasing one another around the grass, laughing and panting in a way that made Racina jealous. Uncle Hux said it used to be a very uninviting place when it was called Hopewell.

  “I do like Dr. Beller,” her dad finally said. “I like her a lot.”

  Racina liked Dr. Beller a lot, too. She was funny and smart and nice. Unlike all of the other doctors Racina had known, Dr. Beller was the only one who didn’t have cold hands. She was the only one who said there was nothing more wonderful than the sound of a heart.

  “The woods and lemons smell good together,” Racina said.

  “You think so?” her dad said. “What if she doesn’t like me back?”

  “She said all she’s missing now is an old goat,” Racina said, leaning against her dad’s arm while he drove. She could already picture Dr. Beller at the cabin with them. She could see the three of them—the two of them, since she’d be stuck with the dirt tea—making coffee in the mornings and taking it out onto the porch like Racina and her dad did when it was nice outside. She could see them walking along the river. Through the forest. Eating blueberries as they went along. She could see her and her dad showing Dr. Beller all the reasons they loved Evergreen so much. She could see the three of them listening to the radio before bed. She wondered if Dr. Beller would want to tuck her in, and if she did what story she would tell. What song she would sing. What song she and her dad might sing together.

  “Dad?” Racina said, picturing them at her door and feeling funny about it for minute. “Why do you drive this way now?”

  They were past the orphanage, on their way out to the alfalfa and potato fields. The windows were closed, but Racina could smell the wet earth, the plants peeking up through it.

  “I guess it’s my way of finally saying goodbye to your mother,” her dad said.

  “Do you still love her?” Racina said.

  Her dad put his hand on her knee. It was rough in places and smooth in others. “She gave me you, didn’t she?”

  Racina looked at the plastic cow in her lap and the hand on her knee. She didn’t know what a dairy farm looked like or Wisconsin or even an old friend. She only knew that she wanted to know those things the way she knew the woods and the bog and the river.

  “I want to see her, Dad. Phe
e told me she lives in Wisconsin.”

  Her dad took his hand away from her knee as if her knee had stung him. “She shouldn’t have told you that. It isn’t her business.”

  “Is it true?” Racina said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” her dad said in the same sharp voice he’d used when someone from the government came out to Evergreen last year and said they were thinking about finally building that dam again. “You’re not going.”

  “Because when I was a baby she hurt me?” Racina said.

  Her dad hit the steering wheel with his hand. A wood chip went flying.

  “I’m going to kill Phee.”

  “She wasn’t the one who told me,” Racina said.

  “Then I’ll shoot Uncle Hux.”

  “It’s in my medical file,” Racina said. “How my cheek was in the snow.”

  Racina didn’t know why, but something about what she’d said made her dad pull the truck over to the side of the road. Something made him look like he did that night when he was sleeping and she’d covered him with a big wool blanket even though it wasn’t cold.

  “You don’t forgive her, do you?” Racina said.

  Her dad looked toward the last of the woods, which were green from all the rain. The fields up ahead were green, too. “No,” he said.

  Racina touched her cheek. “But I do.”

  Her dad looked at the woods a long time before he put his hand back on her knee, before he turned to the road in front of them, before he let out the breath he’d been holding for years, it seemed like, and said, “I guess that means I have to let you go.”

  36

  Three and a half weeks later, Racina was standing on the airstrip in Yellow Falls. She and Uncle Hux were getting ready to go up in a bright red plane with a bush pilot her dad knew. Uncle Hux told her not to worry when she saw that there were only three seats including the pilot’s; his badger, which he was bringing back to the museum personally this time, didn’t count as a passenger. They were going to be gone four nights, which seemed like a really long time now that the pilot was telling them he was ready to go whenever they were. Except for when she was in the hospital, Racina had always gone to sleep in Evergreen.