Considering my recent woodland excursion, you may find it odd that Grumps still calls me City Gal. But now it’s a joke. He doesn’t treat me like a kid anymore, either. He knows these woods have changed me, taken root under my skin. In fact, I’ve been thinking about writing a new blues song, inspired by my arrival here, called “Lost in the Woods.” The only line I have so far is “I lost the trail and found where I was going.”
I’m thinking about that new song, and in the midst of trying to rhyme a line with “showing,” “glowing” or “knowing,” when Grumps calls out Del’s name. I shoot my head out my bedroom door, eyes and ears alert. Yes, Del Pyne is here, inside our cabin. His heavy black boots are sodden, his clothes are dripping into a puddle big enough to spawn a lake trout, and his spiky black hair is matted down to an oil slick. Grumps hands him a towel and shoves a stack of papers on the table in front of him. He doesn’t even touch the towels or the papers because he’s distracted, beaming at me with the world’s truest smile.
“It’s great to see you, Del.” I say, more tenderly than I planned. “I thought you were back at Yale.”
“I was. Something came up. I had to come home. I’m glad I did. I’m so happy to see you.” He steps forward and opens his arms to hug me. I also move forward. But Grumps steps between us and speaks in a fatherly tone, like I’m a kid again, “Mona Lisa, I have a private business matter to discuss with Del Pyne. He graciously drove all the way back here from New Haven today in this storm. He doesn’t have much time and neither do you. You need to finish packing. Your mother will be here any minute to take you back to Hartford.”
Del shudders at that last word. “Can’t our business wait a couple of minutes, so I can talk to Mona Lisa, Mr. Elmwood?”
Grumps shakes the papers at him. “No, Son. There’s no time left.”
Del scribbles his signature on one of the papers, and turns to Grumps. “Fine, then I agree to your terms, Mr. Pyne, with the stipulation previously discussed.”
Grumps shoves the signed paper in an envelope and seals it. “You need to get this to Sadie right now, before her office closes for the day.”
I wonder where this mysterious Sadie works. The post office? The bank?
Del pushes past Grumps toward me. He puts a hand on my arm, setting it afire. “Good-bye, Mona Lisa.” His eyes sink as he turns and heads out. I think I hear him whisper, “I’ll miss you.”
Wind and rain whistle and splatter into the room until he slams the door behind him. Why did he leave so suddenly? I tell myself the only consoling thing I can. That I’ll soon be back in Hartford, where I can put Delaney Pyne and the rest of Indian Stream behind me for good. Del’s world is ugly and complicated. His mother is the walking dead, his father is a murderer, and his lemonheaded girlfriend hexed him, whether he knows it or not. I’m sick of these backwoods people and their dark secrets.
Before I can confront Grumps about what he was doing with Del, the door bangs open and my heart leaps with hope Del has returned. Rain sprays sideways, and in blows a mud-plastered, dangerously tanned woman—my mom.
I feel like I’ve been shot.
“Let me guess, Mona,” she hurls her words at me like daggers. “From the lousy look on your face and the lousy expression that Delaney Pyne wore when he just passed me, I’ll bet my father, here, is doing something secretive he won’t explain to you.”
I finger the picture of Mom and Mia in my pocket.
My mother storms around the room, soaking everything. “I see you still have no running water or adequate electricity, Dad.” She turns to me, “Mona, I apologize for leaving you here in this hellhole while your father wasted my time studying his ridiculous bear sacrifices. Even your grandfather knows animal sacrifice is nonsense.” She scowls at Grumps. “Don’t worry, Dad. We’ll be out of your hair in no time.”
Water sprays off her as bitingly as her sarcasm. Grumps opens his arms, but she storms toward my room, arms swinging like flying hatchets. An alien may as well have landed in this log cabin; that’s how strange and out of place she seems. I cautiously follow her inside my room where she shoves dirty clothes into my duffel along with my clean stuff and wraps the handle around her arm, tightly, like a tourniquet. Her choice to soil clean clothes seems super-callous to me. She’s obviously forgotten how long it takes to wash them when you’re doing it in a lake.
“Lila Sassafras Elmwood!!” belts Grumps. “You can’t come here for the first time in decades, insult me and my home, rudely snatch up your daughter, and then run back to the big city without a decent word to me.”
“Reality check, Dad. Reality check,” Mom twists the duffel handle further, making her wrist red. “I live in the twenty-first century. Stop pretending you live in the nineteenth, then maybe we can talk.”
Grumps body slumps. I cringe at the thought of him morphing back into the miserable, lonely, filthy old man I saw when I first arrived.
He converts his remorse to rage. “You better look in the mirror, missy. For a pretty gal, you ain’t looking so good, these days. Misery is taking its toll. I’m not the only one who is stuck in the past because someone I cared about died. I work out my feelings for your mother the old-fashioned way. I’ll admit, I cry a lot, because that’s natural. You dope yourself up with medications so you don’t have to think about your past.”
Mom storms to the kitchen counter where she picks up a bunch of bananas and shakes them at Grumps. “At least my mourning process doesn’t include delusions about magical bears.”
“How dare you speak that way about The Great Bear?” says Grumps.
Mom unwraps the duffel from her wrist and throws it on the ground so she can fling her arms around, lunatic-style. “Don’t go there, Dad. I hit a bear once, a normal bear, and I’m sorry. It was an accident. It wasn’t my intention or my great aunt’s intention for that to happen, and it had nothing to do with any woodland curse. So just drop the issue, once and for all.”
“Mom, you hit a bear?” This stuns me more than her sideways confirmation about knowing Mia Delaney.
She waves off my question as insignificant, even though I’ve never heard of anyone hitting a bear. I wonder if she killed it, if this murdered bear was a relative of Marilynn, maybe even her parent. Now I know Marilynn dislikes me because she sees me as “the murderer’s kid.” I suddenly feel guilty about judging Del for having a murdering father. I imagine what animal-loving Principal Dibble would think of my mom if she knew she killed a bear.
Grumps continues, his voice shaking. “We have more in common than you want to admit, Lila. Neither one of us finds it easy to mourn the loved ones we have lost. Bears, mothers, friends….”
“Maybe you’re right, Dad.” Mom eyes me furtively. “But, you know I can’t talk about that right now.”
I speak up. “I know about Mia, Mom. Don’t avoid talking about her on my account.”
“What? How did you find out?” Mom’s face is veiled in shame, as if she’s been stripped naked.
“I pieced it together from things I heard,” I explain, thinking it imprudent to bring up my interaction with the dead, at this moment.
Grumps presses Mom. “There’s no reason for us to quarrel, Lila. Neither of us is comfortable with the sacrifices these woods have asked of us. That bear…”
“Stop it, Dad. You’re prattling like some yogi mystic again. These woods did not ask anything of anyone. They did not ask you to move here so you could be bored to tears. You moved here because Bilki wanted to be near her relatives. That was your mistake. It made you miserable and it ruined my life. Fare thee well.”
I’m still in shock over learning Mom killed a bear when she drags me outside into the sopping downpour and shoves me inside Red Bully. I feel a sharp physical pain in my chest at not having a chance to say a proper good-bye to Grumps. Her soggy head shakes with fury. She shuffles inside her pleather purse, through bundles of crumpled receipts, k
eys, and pill bottles, to locate her nerve medicine. Dad raises a finger to acknowledge my return and hits the gas. Through the rear window, I can barely make out Grumps’ sad Santa frame, waving from the doorway through the torrents of water. Marilynn materializes and ambles toward him. I take a deep breath. Her odd blond tuft of head fur drips water into her copper penny eyes, making it look like she’s crying, which I know is not the case. In the trees, I spot what look like three moving boulders. That’s probably her cubs. But they quickly fade from view.
The cluster of four birch trees that guided us here from the main road comes into sight. We pass it, and I know I’m leaving Indian Stream. Not everything that happened here was bad. Some of it was miraculous. I met Del, and some interesting Abenaki relatives. Best of all, I got to know Grumps.
All too fast, we are up the road and gone. I sink into the backseat behind the wicked queen who is my mother and the evil robot who is my father. Once we’re beyond the bumpy back roads of northern New Hampshire, the weather quiets and the sky turns cornflower blue, reminding me of the flowers from Beetle at the powwow. At least I hope they were from him. I picture us singing together when I get back to Hartford. I fantasize about taking him on the road with me, even though I expect he’s headed for a life as the big man on campus at some small ritzy New England college. I quell all romantic thoughts about Del. He and I will be finished for good the instant I report my suspicions about his father’s role in Mia Delaney’s death to the Hartford police.
Dad wipes his ever-dripping forehead. “Phew, am I glad to be out of that mess. Wild weather, wild animals, wild people. Are they all as crazy up there as your grandfather, Mona?” His eyeglasses flash in the rearview mirror.
I fold my arms in defense of Grumps. “He graciously took me in while you played Indiana Jones. You should be grateful to him. All you and Mom can think about is how much you hate him. I have more serious matters to consider, like how Mom’s friend, Will Pyne, may have murdered a girl from Hartford.”
Mom jumps in. “Don’t be ridiculous. Will did no such thing. He makes a bad first impression. That’s all. Consequently, he has always suffered at the hands of ignorant people who look at the surface and don’t see him for the wonderful heartfelt genius he is. He’s an artistic miracle and probably the only truly sane person in Indian Stream.” She turns, trying to wrangle my trust. “He used to be a good guitarist. You two have a lot in common.”
“I’m certain I don’t have anything in common with Mia Delaney’s murderer.”
“That’s enough! Stop the car, Bryer.”
Dad screeches to a halt on the side of a cliff. I wonder if this choice of location is meant to intimidate me or if his eyeballs have rolled up into his head and he has no idea where we are.
“Mona, listen to me,” says Mom. “Don’t be duped by those insane rumors. If there’s one thing I can guarantee, it’s that Will Pyne never hurt my friend Mia Delaney. Don’t you dare get mixed up in that awful case.”
“It’s been a few years since you’ve seen Will, Mom. He’s pretty messed up.”
“Will is harmless. If you cross me on this, Mona, I swear…”
“Don’t you want to find Mia’s killer?”
“There’s no point in continuing this conversation.” Mom coils up in a ball and leans on her car door.
A sick feeling surges through me at the thought that my mom may know something about Mia’s murder that she won’t reveal. The car goes silent for a few minutes.
Dad finally speaks. “I suppose you rode in that multicolored jalopy your grandfather calls a truck.”
“Actually, Grumps taught me how to drive it. Thanks to him, I’m ready to take my driver’s test as soon as we get home.”
Mom eyes Dad in an unnaturally alarmed way.
Dad rolls up his tattered oxford shirtsleeve. “I almost forgot, Mona. Wait till you see this.” He flashes a freshly inked tattoo on his wrist. It’s an interlocking braid that probably signals his membership in some secret Russian tribal group. I refuse to like it and wish I could stop eyeing it. I never asked my parents if I could get a tattoo, and now that he has one, tattoos suck.
Mom swats Dad’s still-swollen wrist. “He just got it to impress his graduate students, Mona.”
Dad starts the car and kneads the steering wheel. I hope there are no more cliffs around.
I try out a joke. “Principal Dibble has an opinion of where you go in the afterlife with a tattoo.” I point my thumb straight down.
Dad explodes. “That woman has no sense of humor.” He eyes Mom. “Thank goodness you’re done with her, Mona.”
Continuing the playground one-upmanship, Mom rolls up her sleeves and flexes her toned biceps, “Would you believe I dug up twice as many artifacts as the rest of your dad’s graduate students, combined?”
I’m not in the mood to hear how many bear bones she scooped out of the dirt. So I insert a conversation-stopper. “This summer, I fed bananas to a blond bear named Marilynn, and I met my fortune-telling great aunt, Black Racer Woman, whom some folks call a witch.”
Mom rolls her sleeves down over her bulging biceps. Dad turns the dial to National Public Radio and cranks it up despite the spotty signal. I relax and let my eyes follow the Connecticut River. It’s the lifeline between where I’m going and where I’ve been.
Dad is the first to speak again, two hours later. “We’re out of the mountains, Lila. You should have decent phone reception now.”
They gaze at one another with crinkled brows. I can see they’re desperate for hopeful employment news. My professor parents have spent every September of their lives inside a classroom. They won’t know where else to go when the leaves start to turn.
Mom checks her emails and giggles. Dad and I simultaneously draw our heads back in shock at hearing girlish sounds coming from Lila Elmwood’s mouth. Mom presses the numbers on her phone frantically and then shifts to her haughty professor voice, stretching out each word as if it has an extra syllable known only to smart people.
After five minutes of this phony prattle, she hangs up and screams. “Twain College wants me back! You’ll never believe what else, Bryer? They want me to head up their new Native American Studies Department!”
“Isn’t that fine, Lila.”
His flat tone tells me he wonders how Twain College can support a whole program based on the boring Natives of this continent when his research on the fascinating indigenous rituals of Russia remains so poorly funded. He hasn’t caught on to the fact that American Indians are the least understood, most important people on the planet—according to Mom, anyway.
On the crowded I-91 highway between Springfield, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut, we hit super gridlock. It’s nearly a hundred degrees, and our air-conditioning is busted. We’re stuck in a noxious cloud of gas fumes that my parents don’t seem to notice. I can see the churning waters of the Connecticut River out my window and feel comforted, knowing they come from the lakes of Indian Stream.
Dad reads emails on his phone while Mom makes a zillion work calls.
“Go ahead and text your friend, Lizzy,” Mom offers. “We can afford an unlimited plan now!”
I had almost forgotten I own a phone. I connect my long dead phone to the car charger. The battery slowly revives, and I text Lizzy. “Listen. Do you want to know a secret?” I hope she hasn’t forgotten our Beatles code. I want to tell her about running into Beetle at the powwow.
She writes back, “Honey, don’t.”
Lizzy has somehow read my mind all the way from Toronto. But she shouldn’t worry about me falling back into depression. I accept the fact that my summer encounter with Beetle was a onetime thing. He will never be my boyfriend, and neither will my summer fling, Del Pyne. Yet I’m entitled to my dreams. It’s head-in-the-clouds moments like these that keep young women like me from crowding the edges of the roof at City Place. I text Lizzy again to
tell her that I’m trying to “take a sad song and make it better.” I know she loves the lyrics to “Hey Jude.”
She writes back, “That’ll Be the Day.”
Ha! I want to tell her she’s an idiot because Buddy Holly wrote “That’ll Be the Day,” not the Beatles. While the Fab Four recorded it, they did it before they were even called the Beatles. Her text technically breaks our rules.
I force myself to push away my mental nonsense and take her words to heart: Lizzy wants me to lower my sights, to realize there’s no reason to suppose this year will be different than any other. I’m still Mona Lisa LaPierre, the girl with the last face on earth that anyone would want to paint—who never, ever, smiles. I have tree bark hair, mudwood eyes, and dresser drawers stuffed with black band tee shirts.
The traffic is moving but we aren’t. Dad doesn’t press the pedal. Mom and I exchange irritated looks. He’s reading his phone and patting it, like a good dog, while chuckling like the mad scientist that we know he is. Horns beep madly all around us. He ignores them.
Mom shakes Dad harshly, “Bryer, what’s the matter with you?”
He unsteadily hands her his phone.
She speaks in a shrill tone as she reads his email aloud, ‘“We at Twain University Press would like to offer you a ten thousand-dollar advance for your book on Russian bear sacrifice.’ Bryer, this is wonderful news!”
I recognize fake glee when I hear it. Apparently, Dad’s archeological dig was more successful than Mom let on. This news will surely compel her to shoot for a bigger advance on her next book. Dr. Lila Elmwood doesn’t like anyone to beat her at anything. Sadly, she’s in for bitter disappointment. Her current research—on the bitten birch bark designs of Eastern Woodland Indians—won’t do it for her.
Wabanaki Blues Page 14