I would love it if Ned went to Alaska. But I am doubly angry at him, now on my mother’s behalf, for wanting to do so. Suppose he goes and she never looks peaceful like this again? Suppose she becomes like Dorothy when Ned’s father left?
“I’m sorry to say it but I think Ned is doing a really terrible thing wanting to go to Alaska like that. I think he’s really”—I am hesitant to be so harsh about my mother’s husband but she should at least have the idea suggested to her—“not a very good person after all. At the very least, he is doing a bad thing.”
My mother looks at me and she doesn’t lose her placidity. She looks neither angry at Ned nor at what I have said. “Most things we think other people do that are bad are merely inconvenient for us, Jane. Most people we think are bad have just not acted in a way that was convenient for us. We assume they must have evil reasons if they do things that don’t turn out well for us, but most of the time we just don’t get it.” She shrugs.
I am flustered by this. I still want to think of Ned as bad. I don’t want to think of all these complications so I change the subject. “Have you noticed that Maya has been a little weird lately?”
“I’ve noticed you watch her with a worried expression,” says my mother. “She’ll be much better when we get home and she makes a friend.”
“Do you really think that’s it?” I say hintingly. I don’t want to worry her but maybe she ought to at least think about these things. “You know I was watching The Price Is Right with her and Dorothy for a few minutes and there was a commercial. With the six signs of depression.”
“And you thought Maya had some?”
“She had all of them,” I say.
My mother reins in her horse, turns to me and smiles. “Maya’s going to be okay, Jane. Even with her family history of mental illness, it never occurred to me she’d be anything else. She’s sensitive and she’s going through changes. As we all are. Sometimes when people are going through changes you just have to give them space to make them. But she’s solid. Just wait and see.”
All this business about changes goes right over my head because of the arresting first thing my mother said. What family history of mental illness? There is no mental illness on my mother’s side of the family. She must mean Maya’s father’s family history. This is the first time my mother has ever made any reference to any of our fathers and I think it just slipped out.
Back in Massachusetts I managed to figure out four men who were probable fathers of my brothers and sister and me, assuming each one of us had a different one. But I was never sure which man had fathered each of us. Which one of them had mental illness in the family?
Which potential father had a family history of mental illness? Immediately Crazy Caroline springs to mind, sister of a poet who I thought might have fathered one of us. That is the obvious answer. And she really was crazy. Certifiably, sadly, frighteningly crazy. That would make the poet, H.K., Maya’s father.
The rest of the ride is ruined for me. I look in the direction of my mother’s hands, pointing out hawks and vultures and snakes and dust devils, but I can’t care. How I long for my best friend, Ginny, back in Massachusetts. For someone who will behave normally when I tell her that Maya’s father is H.K. and Ned wants to desert us all and go to Alaska and there’s a bag of money sitting in the house and one of Ned’s sisters believes the Virgin Mary appears to people in waffles and how Ned betrayed me with Ben, and about Ben, and who, when I tell her these things, doesn’t just sit there smiling serenely but runs around in circles like a chicken with her head cut off, screaming, “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!” Now, that is what is called for. That would be satisfying. But there is no such person here.
Later, as we turn the horses for home, it occurs to me that just as momentous as knowing that H.K. is most likely Maya’s father, is that by discovering this, I narrow down the possibilities of my own. The man who fathered me must now be one of the three remaining: Mr. Fordyce, who lives in a trailer outside of our town in Massachusetts and looks like Santa Claus; the clothes hanger man, whom I alone saw drown; or, and here I shiver with revulsion, Ned.
“Where were you?” demands Maya after we have untacked the horses and come onto the porch. She stands in the doorway with her hands on her stubby little hips.
“We went for a ride,” I say.
“You didn’t tell me you were going horseback riding,” says Maya.
“Maya, you don’t even like horses,” I remind her tiredly.
“Nobody ever tells me anything,” pouts Maya.
Sweetie pie, I want to say to her, you don’t know the half of it.
Maya
When Ned and his sisters return they are chipper. They have found an assisted-living facility with a vacancy. Dorothy can move in anytime.
“It’s a dump,” says Dorothy at dinner. “But I guess my presence will improve it.”
“That’s the spirit, Mom,” says Candace.
Dorothy smiles. She seems pathetically anxious to spend what time she has left with her returned children before they leave again. She is amiable at the cost of doing this thing she really doesn’t want to do, moving to assisted living. It is better than being on the outs with them. I know this because Dorothy confides in Maya, who confides in me.
“It was the best we could do, Mother,” says Nelda.
“You’re lucky we found that,” says Candace.
“My God, what do the old people do around here?” says Maureen, clucking her tongue and loading up her plate. That things are settled and they can all leave now has clearly given her a hearty appetite.
“Anyhow,” says Candace to my mom, filling her in on the details of the day, “they have one nice apartment available but expect two even nicer ones to be available soon. They said they can’t be sure exactly when, of course. But if you and Ned can hang out here awhile longer—it might not be until August, although probably no later, they said—then she can get into something better.”
“Of course we’ll stay until she can get into the nicer apartment,” says my mother.
“I don’t get it,” says Dorothy. “Why don’t they know exactly when these people are moving out? Don’t they have to give some kind of notice?”
The silence at the table is deafening and then Dorothy says, “Oh, oh my, oh yuck. They’ve got a couple of people dying whose rooms are going to be available.” She drops her fork and looks ill.
“In such cases, Mother,” says Nelda, “it is perhaps best to be pragmatic and not think sentimentally.”
“Oh dear,” says Dorothy. “You just wait until you’re my age, you’ll think ‘sentimentally’ too. I suppose someday someone will be hoping I die quickly so they can get my apartment.”
“Mom, please …,” says Candace.
“Well, anyhow, I suppose that means you’re all going now?”
“Aren’t you glad that Ned and Felicity can stay and help?” asks Maureen. “Goodness, these days with everyone working, it’s hard to find someone who can uproot themselves like that. You ought to be grateful.”
“Thank you,” says Dorothy. She looks a little sad and lost and the sisters, I notice, make an effort to keep up a cheerful flow of inconsequential conversation after that. Maya reaches over and holds Dorothy’s hand through the rest of dinner. I see Dorothy clutching it in her lap.
The sisters are going at the end of the week and in the meantime we are all kept busy by the impending ranch sale and move. I am helping my mother and Candace pack boxes of things Dorothy wants to take and arrange for the sale of other things. Dorothy wants to have a garage sale of smaller items while she is still at the house and can supervise the pricing. She is sure that left to our own devices we would undersell her things. My mother thinks it is only fair that Dorothy have as much control of this whole mess as possible. She and Ned and I bring things into her bedroom and let her set the prices and then carry them out to the barn, where we have set up tables.
“Suppose I am fine in a few months?” says Dor
othy. “Then what?”
“Then you change your plans, Mom,” says Ned, shrugging. “Life is plastic. You can always change your plans.”
“Yes, look at you, you’re going to Alaska as soon as you can dump me in a home,” says Dorothy.
“Ned,” says Candace as the three of us go down the stairs with armloads of overpriced knickknacks, “you shouldn’t say things like that to her. You’re just giving her false hope. You know the doctor said that she won’t walk unassisted ever again.”
“Aw, those guys don’t know everything. Besides, what’s wrong with a little false hope? And you know she’s going to be easier to deal with if she thinks she’s got something to look forward to. Well, anybody would be,” he says fairly. “And I’m the one who’s gotta put up with her. You’re leaving at week’s end.”
Candace sighs and puts her things down on the table in the barn and says, “Well, maybe you’re right. Speaking of which, I got you a little going-away present.” Out of her pocket she pulls a cell phone.
“Aw, man, I hate these things,” says Ned, putting down his own load and wiping his hands on his jeans before reaching for it. I have walked out. I am still avoiding being around Ned too much in case I am sucked into conversation. But I pause outside the barn door. Eavesdropping is not beneath me.
“I know, I know,” says Candace swiftly, “but never mind. How can you, with any integrity, go to Alaska unless Felicity can reach you?”
“Well, I suppose that’s thoughtful of you,” says Ned, sounding surprised.
“Or in case Mom or one of us has to reach you, if there’s a problem with Mom and someone, someone without a job, needs to come back and tend to it,” says Candace, and Ned makes a face.
“Yeah, right,” he says sourly.
Candace goes on as if he hasn’t said anything, looking perfectly efficient and pleased with herself. “And you ought to get one for Jane in a year or so. All the teenagers have them now. They all go around texting each other. It’s like jungle drums.”
“It makes me want to throw up,” says Ned.
“Well, who cares what you want to do? I’m giving another one to Felicity to keep in her purse.”
“Uh-huh,” says Ned, and tucks it in his back pants pocket.
“Will you keep it on?”
“Probably not,” says Ned. “It sounds expensive. You have to buy some sort of a plan for these things, don’t you?”
“Not for this one. I got you a pay-as-you-go plan and I’ve loaded up several months’ worth of minutes for you. So you’re all set.”
“Oh jeez, thanks,” says Ned. “Now I’m available to you at a moment’s notice, I guess. How convenient for you.”
“I’ve never seen anyone accept a present so graciously,” says Candace.
“Face it, this is more like a present for you,” says Ned.
“You use it,” says Candace. “You use it or I’m flying to Alaska and … and … doing this.” She reaches up and tweaks his ear. It is surprisingly playful for her and it is as if the years have dropped away and this is how they would have been if things hadn’t gone so wrong when their father ran out on them. Then I wonder if this playfulness is because she is simply relieved to be leaving.
“Ow,” says Ned, and starts to say something, but just then the boys come running through the barn, charging with pitchforks and followed by Ben, who is yelling at them to put them down. I speed into the house.
We have to work like crazy to get things ready for Saturday’s garage sale. Dorothy, when not pricing things, sinks into long sleeps. She doesn’t seem interested in watching TV with Maya very much anymore. She is always sleeping.
When Ned has any free time at all, you can find him on the living room couch with a stack of Alaska guidebooks. Maya comes into the kitchen when I am supposed to be packing pots and pans and hangs around getting in my way so I tell her to go talk to Ned. She surprises me by immediately going into the living room and plopping herself on the couch. I can see her from my seat on the floor.
“When are you getting back from Alaska?” asks Maya.
“I don’t know, Mayie, sometime,” says Ned vaguely.
“Well, when?” asks Maya.
“Maya, I’m trying to read,” says Ned.
So Maya tries to hang out with the boys for the rest of the week but they gang up on her in one of their silly games that is more fun for them than for her. Maya finally has enough and seeks out Ned.
“Max and Hershel keep hitting me with the lasso. They say I have to be the cow and they’re the rodeo stars,” Maya says. “Make them stop.”
“Make them stop making you the cow?” says Ned, and laughs.
This infuriates Maya, who goes stomping out of the barn, where we are, as ever, carrying and arranging things for the next day’s sale.
“Oh, Maya, lighten up!” Ned calls. “I wasn’t making fun of you, it just sounds so funny.”
At lunch Maya says she is ready to make candy again.
“I can’t, Maya,” I say. “I promised Mama I would help them get ready for the sale. Why don’t you help too?”
“I don’t want to,” she says. “Why do we have to stay? Why couldn’t Candace stay? I want to go home.”
“Everyone wants to go home but the others all have jobs to go back to.”
“Nobody will play with me,” says Maya. “Why did Mama go for a horseback ride with you and not me?”
“Maya, for heaven’s sake!” I yell. “Stop whining! You don’t even like horses!”
I am covered in dust, which I am allergic to. I don’t want to be here either, carrying endless loads into the barn, avoiding Ned and Ben.
We don’t see Maya again until dinner and then she is quiet. She doesn’t sleep in my room that night.
The day of the garage sale is crazy. People start arriving at seven o’clock, before we have even had breakfast.
“Oh my gosh, look at the crowds,” says my mother to Ned. “Who would think there were so many people in Nevada? The ad said the sale didn’t start until nine. What are they all doing here at this hour?”
“I guess they figure the early bird gets the worm,” says Ned, grabbing a cup of coffee and heading outside. “I’m going to let them in. After all, if we want to sell this stuff, the earlier we get rid of it, the earlier we can quit.”
After that we are all kept on the run. Ben is watching the boys. Dorothy has told him that she will put the sale of the horses in his hands and he can stay on until the ranch is sold and she moves into the home.
Around noon my mother goes in to put lunch out for everyone to grab when they get a chance. She gives me a tray to take to Dorothy, who is asleep as usual. “Jane, have you seen Maya?” my mother asks when I return to the kitchen.
“No, she’s probably sulking somewhere,” I say.
“Well, can you check for me?” she asks, heading back to the crowds in the barn.
“Sure,” I say.
I look around the house but don’t see Maya and I am about to check the outbuildings when I am buttonholed by a man who wants to know if we will take a quarter for a bronze horse statue priced at twenty dollars and I have to say no and he starts to argue with me, and another woman comes up and offers ten dollars for it and I get drawn back to work, despite myself, and the rest of the day passes in a blur.
At dinner we all drag exhaustedly to the kitchen table. My mother throws eggs into a pan, makes a giant omelet and then says, “Where did you find Maya, Jane?”
“I didn’t,” I say, sitting at the kitchen table sucking on an orange. “I got sidetracked.”
Ned comes bursting into the kitchen. “We made twelve hundred dollars,” he says. “That includes some tack that Ben couldn’t sell in town.”
“Have you seen Maya, Ned?” asks my mother, frowning and putting more bread in the toaster.
“She’s probably with Dorothy,” he says.
“Jane, could you check?” asks my mother but her voice is strained. She wipes a tendril of hair off he
r sweaty forehead. I can’t understand why she is worried. Maya can’t go far. There’s nowhere to go. But Dorothy is asleep again and Maya isn’t with her. I look all over the house. Ned goes out to check the barn. Candace, Nelda and Maureen scour the outbuildings. Everyone starts calling for Maya but she isn’t answering.
Dorothy wakes up and doesn’t improve matters by shuffling to the top of the stairs and calling down, “Phone the sheriff! All those people here today with their cars. Anyone could have snatched her.”
“Mom, stop,” says Ned. But now he looks worried. My mother says no, she doubts that Maya was kidnapped, but where could she be?
We all forget dinner. Now I am worried. My mother and I are looking together again through the barn when Ben comes in. She explains what we are doing and he says he will saddle up and start riding the property in case she has wandered off.
Just then we hear the wolves.
“Darn it, I’m going to shoot those things,” says Ben, throwing an unsold saddle onto Satan. He can tack up a horse with lightning speed and is galloping off within minutes.
“Do you think a wolf ate her?” asks Max, his eyes like saucers.
“NO, MAX,” I say.
“No, Max,” says my mother, picking him up, something she hasn’t done in a long time, but I think she just wants to hold someone. “Now, let’s just calm down and think. Let’s think where she might have gotten to.”
We are standing there and Ned comes in to say he’s checked the truck and the car and she’s not there either. Ned is looking frantic now. “It’s just that you can usually predict where she will be. This isn’t like her to be nowhere.”
“Exactly,” says my mother. “Did something special upset her?”
“No one would play with her,” I say.
My mother frowns.
“She’s had enough,” says Ned. “She wanted to go home a long time ago. This is all my fault. We never should have come here. We should have taken her home.”
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