I tossed the bag into the trunk and walked around to the driver’s side. Hand on the door handle, I stopped and looked up at the sky. It was hazy, with clouds the color of smoke. A cloud directly above me looked like an elephant. I looked down at my side, as if Clementine were beside me, to point out this fanciful elephant. But she was not in her usual spot by my left side. She was flying somewhere amongst the clouds. This elephant was for my eyes only.
I opened the car door. Take your new camera. Again, I heard Bliss’s voice. She annoyed me even when she wasn’t physically present. But I went back inside and put the digital camera, still in the box, in its new bag. On my way to the front door, I hesitated, when I heard another voice. Snap away, Lou. It’ll help you remember who you are. This time the voice was male. And, Lou? This was an old nickname from my art school days. No one had called me Lou for at least a dozen years. It took me a moment to locate it in the recesses of my memory. It was Finn. Finn’s voice, low-pitched and slightly lyrical. I shook my head, like drops of water that resided there needed tossing. What was wrong with me? Talking to stuffed bears, seeing imaginary elephants, and hearing voices? This was not part of my consciousness, fanciful sights and voices of the unseen.
I tossed the camera bag into the front seat of the car, which was decidedly different from the White Whale. I glanced over at the white minivan, spattered with mud and Clementine’s old stickers on one of the windows. Don’t worry, I’ll be back for you, I thought. I’m the one abandoned here, not you.
Now I talked silently to cars? Is this what happened to divorcées? For the third time in less than a week I thought about getting a cat. Setting those thoughts aside for now, and feeling slightly excited despite my pessimistic attitude, I slid into the seat that hugged my hips and smelled of a new leather coat.
It neared nine when I merged onto the freeway from my quiet neighborhood, feeling with certainty that this was a misguided adventure. It’s just a road trip, I told myself. “It doesn’t have to be anything more than that,” I said to Belinda Bear.
But as we all know, there is nothing as simple as we imagine.
CHAPTER 6
AROUND NOON two days later, sixty miles west of my destination, I stopped at a roadside rest area. After I used the facilities and washed my hands, I bought a diet soda from the machine and walked across the grass, past picnic tables with families having a snack, and a man with a dog on a leash. Several boys, around my daughters’ ages, tossed a football back and forth. At the edge of the manicured grass, I stopped, sipping my soda. I peered at the mountains surrounding the park, its grasses yellow under a cloudless blue sky. Suddenly, I shivered, despite the warmth of the afternoon. It felt like someone watched me. I looked around but no one paid any attention to me. I must be losing my mind with all this alone time.
Shrugging, I returned my gaze to the view. The Idaho terrain was rugged and wild, the arid air easy to breathe. A dragonfly buzzed by me and landed on a tuft of grass. Sparrows and jays darted from tree to tree, calling to one another. A lizard scampered up a fir trunk, his tail twitching. I stretched, looking up to the sky, which was a bit of luck. If I hadn’t, I might not have seen him. A hawk, I thought at first, until from behind me I heard a gravelly voice say, “Peregrine falcon you see there.” Startled, I jumped and turned. The voice belonged to an older man. Tall and slim, dressed in a black suit and red tie, he fiddled with a set of binoculars around his neck. When he saw me looking at him, he pointed upward. I followed his finger back to the majestic bird.
“Peregrine? Like the name of the town?” Why did this man wear a black suit in the middle of the summer, I wondered?
“Yep. We’re fond of the peregrine here in Idaho.” I guessed the man to be around eighty. Thick white hair, trimmed neatly, shone in the sun. His dark blue eyes seemed fierce and focused.
“I’m headed there. To the town, I mean.”
He put the binoculars up to his eyes. “It’s at the foot of Blue Mountain but you won’t find much there. Nothing but a one stoplight kind of town, if that.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
He pointed to the sky and the falcon. “Keep watching. He’s hunting, I ‘spect.”
“What do they eat?”
“Small birds and bats mostly.”
The peregrine soared above us, not directly but close enough that if I had my camera I could capture him. I instinctively reached for it, as if it were around my neck. Startled, I put my hands in my pockets. I couldn’t remember the last time I reached for my camera. Just then the peregrine dipped, almost like a kite dips suddenly in the wind at the beach, and captured a sparrow in its beak and then swooped high once more. “Did he catch that bird midair?” I heard myself ask.
“Yep, that’s what they do. Sharp eyesight. They can see things we can’t. A photographer like you might capture it with your fancy camera but my old eyes are too weak to see the prey, only the hunter.”
“What did you say?” I asked, sharply, peering at him now instead of the activity above us. “How did you know I was a photographer?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, aren’t you?”
“I used to be.”
“No such thing as used to be. It’s always in there someplace. Now go get your equipment before he disappears.”
For some reason I can’t explain, I did what he told me. I jogged to the car and grabbed my new camera. I sprinted back across the lawn. The man squinted into the sunlight, watching the bird.
“His wings are enormous.” I slipped the lens cap into my shorts.
“Probably a four-foot wingspan, but his body’s the size of a crow. They were almost wiped out completely, you know. DDT and other pesticides were killing him but he’s back now, stronger than ever. They prefer wide, open spaces but they travel long distances. Peregrine means wanderer,” he said. “Like you.”
“Oh no, I’m not a wanderer. I never go anywhere.” I wanted to tell him why I traveled alone now, explain to him that I was a mother even though my children were not with me. I felt their absence at that moment, keenly, a piercing pain that penetrated the dull ache I’d carried since their departure. Suddenly, I wanted them to see the peregrine more than anything. They should be close enough that I could smell their hair as we tilted our heads back to see the majestic bird and its steep, swift dives. Clementine should be glued to my side; the bird would scare her in that way children are frightened and thrilled at the same time and she would press her small body against my leg. But my family was no longer intact. There would be no more road trips with the four of us. I blinked back tears and saw the three of them standing in the sunshine like ghosts—there but not there. Then, the image disappeared. I swallowed the lump in my throat.
I glanced at the man; he peered at me with his head to one side. “Wandering’s a state of mind. People prone to thinking of where they should be instead of where they are.”
Irritation stirred in my stomach. I averted my eyes. This person didn’t know me. He knew nothing of my situation, and his assertion was presumptuous and pretentious, one of these people who thought they knew things from some kind of transcendent instinct. I had no use for such people.
“They mate for life,” he said. “Don’t know why but that’s always fascinated me.”
The peregrine soared above us once more, but it looked like without his latest capture. Had he already deposited it with his family? Focusing with my zoom lens and using a fast shutter speed, I caught him as he dipped down, closer and closer and snagged an unsuspecting, small brown bird in his claws. I snapped many times in rapid succession, delighted by the speed of this new camera, as his enormous wings carried him high above. Then he was gone. I turned to say something to the man. But the space he’d filled was empty. I searched the entire rest stop area with my eyes. But he was nowhere to be seen. I shivered.
I put my camera in its bag and walked to my car. Belinda Bear waited, her head still flopped to one side and her seatbelt fastened. “BB, I’m starting to lose it
.” I started the car and backed out of the spot, then put it into drive and headed toward the freeway entrance. “I blame you. You’re a terrible conversationalist.” In answer, Belinda Bear’s head flopped to the other side so that she appeared to gaze out the passenger side window. “Well, be that way, then. You need to work on taking criticism better.” She remained silent.
A few minutes later I sped down the highway. The words of the stranger echoed in my mind, bothering me. Wandering’s a state of mind. People prone to thinking of where they should be instead of where they are. Michael had said something similar to me on the day he left me. Damn Michael and his pontificating. I pushed it all aside, turned up the radio, turned Belinda Bear’s head toward me and concentrated on the road ahead.
***
I arrived in Peregrine, Idaho an hour or so later. Peregrine was small even on small town scales. The population sign said 477, difficult to fathom, given that my daughters’ new elementary school held over 800 children. But from the looks of it, the sign didn’t lie. The town wasn’t much more than a street of buildings, made of brick and stone, almost quaint but leaning toward dingy. There was a post office, several churches, a hardware store, a grocery store, and a restaurant that looked more about booze than food. Signs for drink specials and karaoke lined the sidewalk outside the door.
I found the Bed and Breakfast at the south end of town, located in a restored Victorian. Following the signs to the parking area behind the building, I took one of two remaining spaces and turned off the car, looking over at Belinda Bear. “You ready for this?” Her shiny eyes sparkled in the sun. I undid her seatbelt and tucked her under my arm, then grabbed my things from the trunk. Bags and Belinda Bear in hand, I meandered down a brick path to the front steps. A deep porch, painted white, with wicker furniture and pots of red and yellow zinnias and marigolds, wrapped around the front of the house. The stairs creaked, as did the front door when I opened it and went inside. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light after the bright sunshine but I immediately breathed in the distinct scent of old things. Some called them antiques, but I thought of it only as old stuff—other people’s stuff. I was all too familiar with the smell, having been dragged by my father to swap meets and antique shops when I was a child. Before he died when I was fourteen, I accompanied him many Sundays to the local swap meet in his town, along with several antique shops where he knew the owners and spent hours talking about various items. We spent more afternoons than I can count scouring over the tables, my father bargaining with the merchants over mere nickels, for a tool or trinket or random piece of machinery. As I grew older, I enjoyed it less and less, but it was a way to spend time with him.
He and my mother divorced when Bliss was two and I was seven. When he moved out of our house, he relocated a half hour away, marrying a woman with three children of her own a year or so later. After his new marriage, Bliss and I only saw him every other Sunday. We spent most of that time at the swap meet or antique shops, followed by a trip to the ice cream shop, the highlight of our time with him. Bliss always ordered a chocolate cone, whereas I chose either strawberry or mint chocolate chip. Afterward, he drove us back to my mother’s. I understood later my father’s new wife didn’t want us at her home. My father coped with her rules by taking us out instead of the awkward visits we would have endured at our stepmother’s home.
My eyes having adjusted, I looked around the foyer of the Peregrine Bed and Breakfast. A desk with a computer and various brochures faced the doorway. A woman stood behind the desk, typing into the computer, wearing a flowing black cape over a black dress and black leggings, despite the summer temperatures in the low eighties. The deep crevices around her mouth and the loose skin under her chin and neck indicated her age to be someplace in the late fifties. Her black hair, obviously dyed, matched her clothes, both of which were stark against chalk-white skin.
She stood and held out her hand. Her long red nails, shaped into dull points, poked into my flesh when we shook. “Welcome. I’m Moonstone, the proprietor. You must be Blythe Heywood.”
I nodded, feeling self-conscious, and shook her hand, which was ice cold. I glanced around the lobby and then beyond to what looked like a sitting room with a Victorian style couch and chairs and various other pieces of furniture, all in dark wood and fabrics in shades of pink and burgundy. There wasn’t an inch of space not filled with some kind of antique. “Good to meet you,” I said.
She pointed at the stuffed bear tucked in the crook of my arm. “And who is this?”
I flushed. “Oh, just a silly toy. My daughter told me to take her with me as company.”
“How sweet.”
Feeling like someone just let out of the insane asylum, I nodded and smiled. “Well, you know, anything for kids, right?”
“Absolutely. Plus, I’m sure she was company for you on your long drive. I’m glad you found us without any trouble. Your sister was quite specific that you needed my best room for the week. Not that I needed instruction. I’d already anticipated your arrival.” Her face, carefully painted with a thick coat of makeup like one might see on a theatre actress, with false eyelashes and bright lipstick the color of nothing I’d seen in nature, beamed at me, like we were old friends.
“I’m sorry?” I asked. What did she mean? Anticipated?
“I saw your arrival in a dream.” She splayed a red-tipped finger on the counter and made three succinct taps. “I’m a witch, you see.”
Oh for heaven’s sake, I thought. Two days out of the suburbs and I immediately meet a man who thinks he’s clairvoyant and a woman who believes she’s a witch.
“Don’t be alarmed. I’m a good witch—more of the psychic variety than one who creates nasty spells or whatnot.” She turned to the computer on the desk, still smiling. Her lipstick, almost purple, especially in contrast to her red nails, bled into the lines etched above her lips. “Although, I’ve been known to make a voodoo doll of a former lover or two. But only when they truly deserved it. What’s a wronged woman supposed to do but use her powers for revenge?” She smiled again, this time wide and with her front teeth showing, and raised her eyebrows at the same time, as if we were conspirators. Then she leaned against the counter, her rather large bosom resting on the desk like two full water balloons, and clasped her hands together, making a V with her arms. “I don’t suppose you’d want me to work one up of your ex-husband?” She held up her hand, perhaps responding to what I imagine was an expression of shock on my face. “Your sister told me you were recently divorced. Can’t give my witch powers credit for that.” She paused for a moment. “But seriously, would you like me to make one of your ex?”
“That won’t be necessary.” I might have smiled if I hadn’t been so taken aback by my strange hostess. Instead I nodded politely, shifting from one foot to the other before taking a step backward. What did we have here? A borderline antique hoarder who also thought she was a witch? For a moment I thought I had drifted back in time to my childhood in Oregon. Coincidently, my phone rang just then. Glancing at it, I saw it was my mother. How ironic that she would call just at this moment. I could just hear my crazy mother and her hippie friends jumping right in to ask this woman all about her psychic abilities. How long had she had them? When did she first notice them? Could she talk to dead people? I turned off my phone.
“Of course not,” she said in answer to my reply about ordering a voodoo doll of my ex-husband. She chuckled as she typed something into the computer. “You’re here to find the love of your life, not act the scorned woman.”
Now I stared at her. What did she know? Had Bliss said something to her about the purpose of my visit in addition to telling her I was divorced? Surely not. Not Bliss. She was too private. Too protective of me. Too concerned with appearing normal. I was shocked she’d said anything about the divorce.
“Isn’t that right, Love?” Moonstone peered at me from under those giant lashes.
“I’m just here on vacation. To see the sights. Relax.”
>
“Look for the signs. And pay attention to them, even if you can’t see everything with your eyes.”
Just show me my room, I thought. And the nearest liquor store.
A few minutes later, I followed Moonstone up the stairs. All the way up the staircase and down the hall, in every nook and cranny, collectibles were stacked and displayed like one might see in an over-crowded museum. I spotted an old phone, a typewriter, a phonograph, depression-era glass vases, even a 1940s camera. I resisted the urge to stop and touch the camera. Near the top of the stairs an antique pistol caught my eye, the kind I imagined a female saloon keep of the Old West might have stored under her bar.
For the door, Moonstone used a key—an old metal one, no slick plastic card for this place. Once inside, she opened the drapes. The room flooded with light; dust particles danced in the air. The mountain loomed large, framed perfectly in the window. She tapped her fingers against the glass. “That’s Blue Mountain you see there. This town was built around the gold they found there back in the Gold Rush days. Legend says the mountain’s magic. You ask it for something and it’ll bring it to you.”
“That’s impossible.” I set Belinda Bear on the bed between the pillows.
“But it’s true.” She looked me straight in the eyes. “Some things are true even if you can’t see them.” Touching her fingers lightly upon the sides of my face, she smiled. “Take a nap with your bear. It’ll do you good.”
CHAPTER 7
AFTER MOONSTONE LEFT, I kicked off my sandals, took Belinda Bear in my arms, and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Not because Moonstone told me to but because I was tired, I closed my eyes. The bed smelled clean and felt soft. I fell asleep and dreamt of Clementine. She was a baby, dressed in her pink bunny jacket with the ears. We were at the zoo and stopped to look at a display of cobras hanging from cypress trees. To show Clementine the display, I held her up to the edge, and suddenly someone shoved me from behind. I dropped the baby, watching her fall into the pit. The snakes enveloped her. I wakened, screaming.
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