by Cathy Lamb
“I don’t need my percentages,” my mother said, her hands clasped together so tightly her knuckles were white.
“I don’t, either,” Aunt Camellia said. She shook slightly. “Percentages are for math, not family.”
“We know who we are,” Aunt Iris said. Her voice was rigid. “This is ridiculous. Insensible! There’s no need for a test.”
I shared a concerned glance with Jules. What the heck? Why the resistance?
“You said that you girls have already done it?” my mother asked, threading her fingers rhythmically in and out. “You mailed it back?”
“Yes, we did. Jules mailed it. Why? It’s interesting. That’s all it is. Tells us something about our ancestry. Maybe Jules and I will find out that we’re part Chinese.”
“And if we find out that Evie is part Italian, it’ll account for why she likes spaghetti and lasagna so much. We’re already predicting she’s part witch.”
We turned to smile at our mother and aunts.
They were not smiling at us.
“No, thank you,” my mother said. She collapsed back in her chair, her face drawn.
“I’m going to skip it,” Aunt Iris said. “The government knows enough about me already. They’re invasive. When they have my spit, what will they do with it? Steal the information? Sell it to the highest bidder? Use it to determine what I’m going to get sick with and die of so my insurance company can deny me coverage? Tell me they can link me to a crime I haven’t committed? No. I’m not giving my spit away. They say that you’ll find out more about your ancestors, but they’re storing your DNA so they can use it. Like Big Brother. 1984 here we come!”
“I say no, too,” Aunt Camellia said. “We’re a family. That’s all we need to know. We share the same familial auras. We share the same genetic spirits. We share the same emotional tie to our combined love.”
“Please?” Jules said. “We can all compare.”
“No,” my aunts and mother said altogether, with raised, fraught voices.
“Okay,” I said, trying to turn down the heat. “It’s okay.”
“Sure,” Jules said, softer.
“Girls,” my mother said, pressing both hands to her pretty, white bell-shaped hair, “it’s been lovely, but I’m tired.” And with no hugs, no kiss on the cheek, no “I love you,” she walked out. I swear she wobbled. My aunts made their excuses, thanked me for dinner, and hurried out after my mother. No hugs there, either.
“What the heck just happened?” Jules said, baffled.
“I have no idea,” I said. My instincts were like strobe lights. Something was going on. It wasn’t what they said, or their verbal rejections. It was what they didn’t say.
* * *
Later that night I saw my aunts and mother in the gazebo, the stars peeking out between the clouds, the purple wisteria in shadow. The roses nearby, in neat rows, were still in the quiet. Their heads were close together, then my aunts put their arms around my mother. They stared toward the ocean in the distance, lights from the fishing boats twinkling.
I had another piece of butterscotch pie as I watched them. Sometimes butterscotch helps me think better. I think. Or something like that.
But it did nothing that night to help me figure out what in the world was going on.
They worried me.
Chapter 20
“King Koradome, the evil merman, was right. Serafina kept helping people. She held sailors up in the water who had fallen off ships. She rescued her sister from the jaws of a shark. She helped the older mermen and mermaids when they were sick. She was generous with the shells she found in the ocean and gave them away as gifts to mergirls and merboys who needed a smile. She rescued a mermaid with four mermaid children who had been caught in a fisherman’s net.”
“Did she lose her rainbow scales?”
“She did. Every time. The shiny, colorful scales flew off one by one, with each kind deed, through the sea to King Koradome in his black rock home. He laughed in victory when one reached his palm, and he put the scales in a tall glass jar. He liked to stare at them as they shimmered with light and layers of color. He liked knowing that her family, that Serafina, was suffering as they watched her lose her special tail. First it was one row of scales, then another and another.”
“Did she lose all of her scales?”
Chapter 21
“I don’t like memoirs.”
“What?” I glared at the sulky young woman in front of me with pink- and purple-streaked dreadlocks. She had a serpent tattooed on her arm. A mean serpent. “How can you not like memoirs? It’s a peek into someone’s life, a part of their life that’s tragic or interesting or funny. How do you not want to read about someone else?”
Her eyes widened, surprised at my semi-anger. But, come on. You don’t like memoirs?
“I don’t.”
I wanted to shake her right there in my yellow bookstore by my yellow rose wallpaper. “You have got to be kidding me. How do you learn about how others cope with their lives or the adventures they’ve experienced or their crazy families if you don’t read memoirs?”
“I . . . well . . . I don’t know.” She seemed confused now, as if she was actually considering my question.
“You have got to read a memoir.” I marched over to the memoir section and pulled down three books. “Try these.”
“But I don’t like memoirs.”
“Now you’re repeating yourself. You’re irritating my brain. What’s your favorite genre?”
“I like books about vampires.”
I sighed. I groaned. I slapped my forehead so my brain didn’t fall out of my ears. “Look. Vampires are fine now and then, but you can’t build a personal reading library on vampires!”
“What’s a personal reading library?”
I groaned again. “Sit down.” I pointed to the seats by the windows. “Sit. Open the book. Read it.”
“I have to meet my mother soon.”
“Text her. Tell her to come here when she’s done doing whatever. You have got to expand your closed mind and read about other people in this world who don’t bite necks and have long teeth.”
The young woman sat down and sulkily opened a book while I crossed my arms and waited. I stood there for one minute.
She liked the memoir so much, she didn’t even notice when I left. Because I felt bad about getting mad at her, I brought her a piece of peppermint cake and chamomile tea. Her mother walked in. “How come your daughter reads only about vampires? I mean, bite me. That’s a very limited scope of reading.”
“What? You blame me? I can’t control her. She’s weird. She likes vampires. Look at her hair. She always wears black. Did you see that snarky serpent? She snuck out and got two tattoos on her butt last weekend—one of a skull, the other of a skeleton. Yeah, she has a skull and a skeleton on her butt. She listens to music that sounds like the devil banging on drums. She’s out of my control. What can I do?”
I pointed to her. “Your daughter is reading, wait for it”—she raised her eyebrows—“a memoir.”
Her mother gasped. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
The mother bought her daughter three memoirs. The mother winked at me when she left. “No more vampires for a few days.” She mimicked chomping down on someone’s neck, and I laughed.
* * *
Jules had to leave the island the next day. She came into town to hug me at the bookstore.
“Whew. Got a lot ready and done for the wedding, but Mom and Aunt Iris and Aunt Camellia are all quiet and secretive. I can’t figure it out. It’s something about the DNA test. It’s confusing.” She ran a hand through that long blonde hair of hers, then started playing with her three necklaces. “They seemed almost angry about the whole thing. Or worried.”
“It’s both, I think. Mom won’t talk to me about it. I don’t get it.”
“I don’t, either.”
“Maybe they do think it’s a violation of their privacy.”
“M
aybe they’re worried that who they think they are isn’t who they are.”
“We’ll show them our results when we get them. Maybe they’ll feel better then, find it interesting and not invasive. They’ll try to figure out which part of our makeup is from Mom, which is from Dad, then maybe they’ll do it.”
“Maybe.”
* * *
Maybe not.
Probably not. I didn’t understand their vehemence, how adamantly they were against the test. I didn’t understand my mother’s inexplicable sadness.
That bugged me. I like to understand as much about life as possible, especially with my premonitions curse, and this one I did not understand.
* * *
Two days later, Chief Reginald Ass Burn lumbered into my bookstore, my haven, my slice of literary heaven, in his uniform, chest puffed up, face flushed around the edges. His scraping negativity was already invading my space. It’s hard to have mean people around your books, infecting them.
“Evie, may I have a word with you?”
As soon as I saw him I had tried to sneak like a snake up the stairs to my office. Surely it was time for the chocolate chip cookies I brought for a snack?
“Yes?”
“Privately, please,” he commanded. He dropped those slitty eyes to my chest. I was wearing a black classic T-shirt with my favorite women’s rock band and jeans that stopped mid-shin embroidered with white roses at the bottom.
“I’m very busy right now,” I said. “What can I help you with?”
“I want to talk to you about your ticket. Alone.”
“I don’t want to talk to you alone. What about my ticket? I paid it. In full.”
“I told you, hon, that you didn’t need to do that. You only had to get your taillight fixed and come to me with your ticket when it was done and I would reduce it. I told you that you might have a lucky day.” He smirked at me.
Oh, gross. So gross. First, calling me “hon” and then saying I might have a “lucky day.” He was trying to insert a sick slice of sexuality. In my bookstore! A place of literary excellence. A place for books, for authors, for creativity and pie and cake and tea and coffee. A place for kids to learn to love books. A place for reading, the holy grail of life.
“First off, don’t call me ‘hon.’” My voice was like iron crushing nails. “You are not a member of my family, you are not my boyfriend or husband. I have a name. It’s Evie. Or you can call me Ms. Lindsay. I am comfortable with that. Second, I don’t need to have a ‘lucky day’ with you for a ticket. I don’t appreciate the sexual connotation, as it makes me feel nauseated. I didn’t want to have a conversation with you, as our last conversation was unpleasant for me, so I paid it in full so I could avoid you.”
His eyes narrowed. He had lost. In a way. He had way overcharged me but had wanted to cut the amount down, as he knew it was unreasonable. He had wanted to appear magnanimous, the generous male savior. I had taken his control of that scenario away.
“I’ll need to talk to you about that, Evie.”
“We have nothing further to say about it. You gave me a ticket, I paid it. I wrote a letter of complaint to your boss, as I thought the fine was excessive, and I made a copy of the ticket and I wrote down everything you said to me, verbatim.” I watched with pleasure as Chief Ass Burn’s face lost color and became a fleshy white. “I fixed my taillight. If there’s nothing else, I have to work now.”
I turned away and bumped straight into Marco. At some point he’d come up behind me. He was standing still, his eyes locked on the chief.
“Is there a problem?” he asked, his body stiff, watchful. He was wearing a short-sleeved black T-shirt, and his tattoos showed. Who knew that tattoos could be so sexy? I studied the tattoos for a second on those muscles, then tried to refocus.
“I don’t think it’s your business, Marco,” Chief Reginald Ass Burn said, but he was uncomfortable, I could tell. Men who have nothing to them always get uncomfortable around men who have something to them.
“Oh, it’s his business,” I said. I told Marco how much my ticket was for a broken taillight but that I’d paid it in full.
“I heard about your ticket, Evie.” He kept his eyes on the chief. “I received the town text about it. It was overly punitive, Reginald. I’ve never heard of a ticket being so high for a broken taillight. Surely the state of Washington has an average ticket price for that sort of thing. You’ve gone well beyond reasonable.”
Chief Ass Burn twitched, flushed. “I offered to reduce it. All Evie here had to do was get it fixed, then make an appointment to talk to me at the station, and I’d take care of it for her.”
“He said I could have a lucky day with him,” I told Marco, not moving my eyes away from the chief. “I’m sure the chief only meant that I would get lucky in terms of paying less.”
Marco took a step closer to the chief. He was about six inches taller, built like a tank, and ticked off. He stepped in front of me. I think it was protectively reflexive. Romantic. Although, I told myself, I could slay my own dragons. Still! What a handsome tattooed prince I had!
“ ‘Lucky day’ is an inappropriate term to use with a woman, especially since you are the island’s temporary police chief.”
“I don’t need you telling me what’s appropriate and what’s not, Marco. You stay out of this.”
“No,” Marco said, his voice quiet but hard. “I won’t.”
“Is there anything else?” I asked the chief.
Chief Ass Burn glared at both of us, back and forth, then smirked, but he’d lost some of his confidence. “Not now. Maybe later.”
He left the bookstore. My employees, Tiala, Ricki, and Brenz, had watched the whole thing. They were right behind me, and I hadn’t even noticed. Also behind me were about six other people who lived in town, plus another three or four tourists.
“Chief Ass Burn is a piece of work,” Mr. Jamon croaked out, leaning on his cane with one hand while the other hand held a torrid bodice-ripper book.
We all nodded.
Marco had hardly moved, watching the chief leave.
“Hi, Marco.” My voice was shaky.
“Hi, Evie. I was looking for some new books.”
“I happen to sell books.”
He smiled. I smiled. He was a gentle, tough giant.
And a reader.
That was one of the most attractive things of all about my Marco. He was a book nerd.
Book nerds unite.
* * *
I thought about Chief Ass Burn later that night. He was a threat. He was a heavy, unattractive man with control issues. Probably a narcissist. Praise him or he hated you. He wanted to date me, but he hated me, too, because I had rejected him.
I was worried. Not for me but for my aunts and mom and their new business in the greenhouse.
Once again, I told them of my ratcheting-up concerns after work the next day. We cut flowers for their business, armfuls of roses, then stood near Alpaca Joe and Virginia Alpaca as they stared at the four of us as if they were part of the conversation. As Sundance was by my side, that furry friend, it felt like we were having a human–animal meeting. In the distance Mr. Bob and Trixie Goat stood on top of their blue home and studied us as if saying, “What in the world? Why weren’t we invited?”
“We’ll be fine, dear,” my mother said. She seemed sad. “No one will tell.”
“We have to carry on our mission for nurturing the people of this island. The marijuana helps them, soothes their minds and bodies when they’re broken,” Aunt Camellia said.
“We’re going to Antarctica on pot,” Aunt Iris said. “At least, partially. There is no way we can sell enough pot to pay for the whole thing. Seeing and studying icebergs, ocean currents, and penguins is expensive. I’m the chief financial officer, so I know.”
They had a chief financial officer for their pot business? Geez. What was my mother, the chief executive? I groaned. Was there going to be a board of directors next? How had it come to this?
> I argued, they shut me down. Alpaca Joe spit. Virginia Alpaca made a purring sort of sound. Sundance looked up at me like, “We tried,” and the goats bleated. Wait. The bleating was too close to me. Somehow, some way, Mr. Bob and Trixie Goat had escaped again, and they skittered around the edge of the alpacas’ fence and right up to us to join the conversation.
“How did you get out?” I semi-shouted. “I can’t believe this.”
I would have to chase them to get them back into their pen. They kicked up their heels and ran.
“Please stop selling pot,” I said to my mother and aunts, before Sundance and I ran after the naughty goats. “Chief Ass Burn is a problem.”
My mother smiled, that mysterious sadness still there, though. “No one will tell him.”
Aunt Camellia said, winding her curls on top of her head, “I’ve already put multiple curses on him with my vengeful candle.”
Aunt Iris said, “He knows he’s not allowed on this property. But I think I’ll make a sign and nail it to the big oak right at the turnoff on Robbins Drive.”
* * *
I spent over two hours caring for and visiting with my animals after catching Mr. Bob and Trixie Goat. Butch and Cassidy ran around with their tongues out chasing squirrels, but Sundance stuck right by me. I do have a favorite, and it is Sundance, but I would never tell, or show, my other animals that. I reached down and pet his head. He licked my hand, then stood up for a one-armed hug.
Mr. Bob and Trixie Goat climbed on top of the roof of their little house and danced around as if they enjoyed hearing their own hooves tap. Shakespeare and Jane Austen chased each other and came right over for me to pet their heads. The cats circled my legs. The alpacas wandered around their home. I think Virginia Alpaca likes to play hard to get. It drives Alpaca Joe nuts. The lambs trotted out of their pen in a little line, as usual. So obedient.
“Hello, Padre, Momma, Jay Rae, Raptor, and The TMan.”
No matter how much work they are, no matter how early I have to get up every day to take care of them, no matter how many times I’m at Marvelous Marco’s paying vet bills, I love my animals. They have given me peace.