by Ann McMan
And it didn’t look like anything associated with Quinn.
“So, I guess we’re done here?” She tried not to sound too pathetic.
“With that part, yes. But not with our friendship.”
“We have a friendship?”
“I’d like to think so.”
Quinn didn’t know how to reply to that, so she decided to tell the truth.
“I don’t really know what that means.”
Gwen gave her a small smile. “I know you don’t. But maybe your time up here will help you figure it out.”
“You think that can happen?”
“Yes. I do.”
“You don’t think what I’m doing is crazy?”
“The fishing?”
Quinn nodded.
“No. I think it makes perfect sense.”
“I wish it made perfect sense to me.”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing, Quinn. Just keep trying. That’s the best any of us can do. Sooner or later, it will all come together.” Gwen picked up her sandwich and her glass of wine. “Now, I’ve got a date with my laptop.”
“Okay. I guess I’d better get going, too.” Quinn backed away and headed toward the swinging doors that led to the restaurant.
“Quinn?”
She stopped and looked back at Gwen.
“I meant what I said about us being friends. You be careful out on that boat.”
Gwen sounded like she meant it.
Thinking back over their conversation, Quinn thought it should’ve left her feeling frustrated and empty—like rejection always did. But instead, she felt fine. Better than fine, really. In fact, she felt almost hopeful.
And tired.
She’d been out here for nearly two hours now, and had yet to cast a single line.
She looked out over the swells of gently rolling waves that surrounded the pontoon. Being on the lake today was like floating on a sea of blue cornflowers. Shadows in the water moved and shifted in endless patterns on the soft summer air, just like tall weeds in the meadows of her childhood. It was perfect.
Or would be perfect if she could just figure out how to tie these damn knots.
Screw it. I’ll just use one of Junior’s.
Quinn attached one of the small, perfect lures to her line.
She lifted her rod and repeated Montana’s monotonous mantra.
“Ten. Two. Cast.”
The line sailed out over the water in a perfect, textbook arc. It floated away on a stray current of air and slowly unfurled into one long, glorious, seamless straight line that hovered along the surface of the water before gently touching down without even making a splash.
Quinn gaped at the rod in her hands.
How the hell did that happen?
Then she felt it. An unmistakable tug on the line. She held her breath and waited. Sure enough, there was another tug. More determined this time. Her heart rate accelerated. She took a firmer hold on the rod and tried to remember what Junior told her. Then the reel started spinning and the rod was nearly yanked from her hands.
Jesus Christ! Hang on a minute.
She yanked the rod hard—up and back over her head.
Set the hook. I have to set the hook. Then I let it run to wear it down.
Quinn stumbled forward on the deck as she struggled to hang on.
My god.
The thing was flying now. She needed to stop it. She needed to start reeling it in. She needed to take control.
“God damn it! Just slow the fuck down, will ya?”
She yanked and reeled and yanked and reeled.
How had so much line gone out?
Her pole was bent at an impossible angle. She dropped its tip closer to the surface of the water and kept winding up her line—praying it wouldn’t break before she could haul in her catch.
Her catch. Her very first catch.
And nobody was here to see it.
Montana would never believe her. Not if she couldn’t bring the fish in to show her.
It was closer now. She could see something splashing in the water dead ahead. It looked big. It felt big, too. The line was straining. It was getting harder to wind the reel. She didn’t think it would hold. Not much longer. Not when something was fighting this hard to be free.
The net. Where was the net?
She grabbed for it with her right hand and nearly lost the pole.
Jesus fricking Christ!
Now the fish was at the side of the boat. She could see it just below the surface of the water—writhing and thrashing. It was huge. And it was mad as hell.
It looked up at her with murderous eyes.
Phoebe.
Oh my fucking god. It’s Phoebe.
Quinn dropped to her knees and pushed the net into the water, reaching down as far as she could to try and get it beneath the leviathan fish. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about Junior’s mangled finger.
But something had changed. The line was suddenly slack. Phoebe had stopped fighting.
Quinn opened her eyes, expecting to see that the line had broken and the great fish had once again bested her would-be captor.
But Phoebe was still there, sitting almost placidly inside the net and staring up at her.
“Well,” her gaze seemed to say. “What are you waiting for?”
Quinn dropped the rod and took hold of the net with both hands. Jesus. She was a monster.
She pulled her up into the boat and stumbled backward, landing on her ass. The two of them sat there in a pool of sweat and water staring at each other.
Now what?
“Are you going to quit gawking at me and get me into that cooler of water before I prune?”
Quinn blinked. Did Phoebe just speak to her?
“Is something wrong with your hearing?” Phoebe twitched and hit Quinn in the face with a splash of water from the puddle she lay in. “Hurry the hell up. Time is money.”
Quinn scrambled to her feet and grabbed hold of the five-day cooler that served as her live well. She hauled it over to where Phoebe lay, twitching on the wet carpet.
“How do I get you in here?” she asked the giant fish.
“How do you think, Einstein? Just pick my ass up and drop me in there.”
Quinn hesitated.
“That would mean now,” Phoebe demanded.
Quinn obeyed. Phoebe sank to the bottom of the big cooler and waited. Quinn quickly turned on the makeshift aerator and oxygen began pumping into the cold water. After a minute, Phoebe drifted back up to the surface and faced Quinn again.
“So. What did you want to talk with me about?”
“What?”
Phoebe rolled her dark eyes. “Why are you so hell-bent on catching me?”
Quinn’s head was swimming. “How can you be talking to me?”
“I have an I.Q. in the triple digits—which is more than I can say for most of your ilk.”
“My what?”
“Your ilk. It means . . . never mind what it means.” Phoebe tossed her head toward the smaller, red Igloo cooler that contained Quinn’s lunch. “Go get us something to eat. That wrestling match wore my ass out.”
“You’re hungry?”
“You were the smartest one in your class, weren’t you?”
“Hey. You don’t have to be so nasty.”
“Fuck you. I’m two hundred years old. You think I give a shit about your feelings?”
“Jeez. Alright already.” Quinn retrieved the cooler. “Do you like Amish bologna?”
Phoebe stared at her. “I don’t even know how to reply to a stupid question like that. You got any clam strips in there?”
Quinn looked before answering. After all, she was sitting here having a conversation with a giant bass—so the sudden appearance of clam strips in her lunch box wouldn’t be any more incredible.
But, alas, there were no fried anythings.
“Nope. Just the bologna.” She remembered the Ziploc bag full of gelatinous muck, and lifted it up. �
�And some of this stuff.”
Phoebe’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell is that?”
Quinn jiggled the bag. “Some kind of aspic.”
“Aspic? Tomato aspic?”
“Yeah.”
“Fork it over.”
Quinn looked at her. “Are you serious?”
“Do I not look serious?”
“No. You look like a bigmouth bass.”
“That’s largemouth bass, nimrod. Now, gimme the damn aspic. I haven’t eaten since I left Baie Missisquoi this morning.”
Quinn blinked.
“It’s in Canada. You know? Where they make Amish bologna?”
“You know about Canadian bologna?”
“I know about everything.”
Quinn bent over the live well and carefully squeezed some of the aspic out of the plastic bag. It hit the surface of the churning water in a flat, gooey glop. Phoebe ducked her head and sucked it up with greater efficiency than a Shop Vac. When she finished she eyed the bag.
“Any more in there?”
Quinn was surprised. “You like it?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know.” Quinn shrugged. “I think it’s kinda gross.”
“Gross? You ever eat a night crawler?”
“No.”
“I rest my case.”
Quinn gave her the rest of the aspic. Phoebe dispatched it with ease.
“I can’t wait to tell Junior that you like this crap.” She looked at her box of fishing tackle. “But I don’t know how I’ll ever get it to stick to the end of a hook.”
“Well look at it this way: you won’t have to worry about tying flies any more.”
“I guess that’s true.” She looked at Phoebe. “Do all bass like this stuff?”
“How should I know?”
“I thought you said you knew everything?”
Phoebe twitched her tail. “Don’t play twenty questions with me, asshole. You’ll lose.”
Quinn sat down and pulled a bottle of beer out of her lunch box. “Want some of this?”
“No. That stuff gives me gas.”
“Junior said you liked hooch.”
“I’ve been known to indulge in a bit of rye now and then, but beer just makes me stupid.”
“Stupid?” Quinn cracked open the bottle.
“Yeah. The last time I drank it I ended up getting hooked by some assholes from Jersey.”
“I thought you’d never been caught before?”
“Before what?”
“Before now.”
Phoebe tsked. “I’ve never been caught period. Including now.”
Quinn took a big swig of the beer. It was fine. Frothy and ice cold. Just the way she liked it. “Well,” she said, “I think you might need to rethink that. I mean, I’m here and you’re there.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you look pretty ‘caught’ to me.”
Phoebe looked up at the sky and shook her head. “Zero to stupid in one swallow.”
“Hey.”
“Let me explain something to you, Einstein. You didn’t catch me. I saw you the other day and realized that you’d never give up this ridiculous quest until I explained a few things to you.”
Quinn blinked. “You wanted to talk to me about the tournament?”
“No. I wanted to give you fashion advice.”
Quinn sighed.
“You need to lighten up, Einstein. And you need to quit wearing those dog collars during sex. You’re seriously cutting off the flow of blood to your brain.”
“How do you know about that?”
“It’s not rocket science. You BDSM authors are all alike. Every one of you is stalled-out someplace in stage two. It’s textbook Freud.”
“Stage two?”
“Don’t ask. Eat your sandwiches.”
Quinn unwrapped one and took a big bite. This one had the brown mustard. It tasted sharp and tangy. That made her think about Gwen. She tasted sharp and tangy, too. Quinn was sorry that Gwen didn’t want to rekindle their relationship.
“It wasn’t a relationship.”
Quinn looked at Phoebe with surprise.
“You and Gwen at that hotel in San Diego?” Phoebe explained. “That wasn’t a relationship.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Please . . .”
Quinn sighed and looked down at the soggy carpet beneath her legs. Her pants were completely soaked. It would take hours for them to dry out. She really needed something else to wear on the boat, but she’d only packed black jeans. That was because she pretty much only wore black jeans. Ever.
“Gwen’s a good woman,” Phoebe explained. “But she drinks too much, and that clouds her judgment.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Nothing. That’s the point.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t. And you never will until you figure out that you can’t control everything.”
“I don’t try to control everything.”
Phoebe sighed. “Let’s try another approach. When was the last time you had sex without tying somebody up?”
“Um.”
“Or simulating some other kind of violence or force?”
Quinn didn’t reply.
“Or making yourself vulnerable?”
“I don’t see what this has to do with fishing.”
“It has everything to do with fishing because it has everything to do with why you want to catch me.”
“I don’t get it.”
“That’s because ‘catch’ and ‘release’ are concepts that elude you—in every part of your life.”
Quinn didn’t say anything. She honestly had no idea where Phoebe was going with all of this.
“You never let go of anything, Quinn. And you don’t understand that things don’t happen to you—they just happen. There is no grand design or plan that dictates the way your life evolves. There’s no big reveal waiting for you around the next corner, no matter how fast or far you go on that hopped-up Harley of yours. Life is just what it is. Right now. In this moment. And if you’re lucky, you get the next moment after this one. That’s it. That’s all there is. Things don’t have meaning. Things are just things. Shit happens. We get over it and we move on. We don’t keep making more of it and smearing it all over everything in our paths because it’s the only thing we know. Once you understand that, you can relax and stop equating feeling with pain. And then you can learn how to let go.”
Quinn put down her sandwich. She didn’t feel hungry anymore.
“So that’s it?” she asked Phoebe. “I want to catch you so I can let you go?”
“Pretty much.”
“Am I supposed to know what the hell you’re talking about?”
“You tell me.”
Quinn shook her head.
It was Phoebe’s turn to sigh. “Okay. That’s all I got. Nobody can say I didn’t try.” She flipped her tail. “Toss me back in. I’ve been up here too long and I’ve got to be in St. Albans by twelve-thirty.”
“You’re leaving?”
“And they said you weren’t trainable.”
Quinn got to her knees. “Do I pick you up or use the net?”
“Just pick me up—but don’t get any ideas and try to cop a feel.”
Quinn thought about that. An idea occurred to her. “Are you married?”
“Married? You mean, like to another fish?”
“Yeah.”
“Hardly.”
“Why not?”
“Have you ever seen a male bass?”
“Only in books.”
“Yeah, well, they look a lot worse close up.”
Quinn carefully lifted her up and carried her over to the side of the pontoon. “What about the females?” she asked.
“What about them?”
“Do you like them?”
“We’re in Vermont. What do you think?”
> Before Quinn could reply, Phoebe flipped out of her hands and dove back into the lake.
“Wait!” Quinn called after her, but it was too late. Phoebe was gone.
Quinn strained to see her beneath the surface of the water, but she’d already disappeared from sight. There wasn’t even a wake to show where she’d been.
Something hit her in the face.
Then it happened again. Harder this time.
She blinked her eyes open. Rain. It was raining. Hard. She could hear thunder rolling in the distance.
When the hell did that happen?
She looked down at her clothes. They were soaked. So was her partially eaten sandwich. Three empty Backcast bottles were lined up in a tidy row next to her red Igloo.
She slowly sat up and looked over toward the live well. It was empty.
And the aerator wasn’t connected.
Jesus. I fell asleep. She rubbed her eyes. What a crazy-ass dream.
Thunder rolled again. It sounded closer this time. She needed to get off the water.
It wasn’t until she picked up her lunch box and the half-eaten sandwich that she noticed the empty Ziploc bag.
She stared down at it for a moment before looking out over the slate-gray water, which now was rolling like thick soup in a cauldron.
No fucking way . . .
Essay 4
“The question has been asked, ‘What is a woman?’ A woman is a person who makes choices. A woman is a dreamer. A woman is a planner. A woman is a maker, and a molder. A woman is a person who makes choices. A woman builds bridges. A woman makes children and makes cars. A woman writes poetry and songs. A woman is a person who makes choices.” —Eleanor Holmes Norton
A woman is a person who makes choices.
I learned that when I was ten. Maybe eleven. Certainly, I was ten or eleven, because we were living in upstate Pennsylvania. Our house was located on the outskirts of a small town on the Allegheny River. It was a sprawling, once-dignified area that had seen vast fortunes made and lost a century earlier during the Western Pennsylvania oil boom. Since those days, life on the river was anything but refined—and most of the town’s residents led unremarkable lives. They lived, worked, and died in the long shadows cast by faded reminders of a better time. All around us, wide avenues and empty mansions hinted at how rich and storied life used to be. How elegant and full of promise.
But we knew better. We lived lives without promise.
At least, I did.