Last Chance Llama Ranch

by Hilary Fields

  “We know it’s not really your birthday, sweetheart,” Pierce intoned. “We thought we’d try to catch up with you a bit early this year.”

  Oh, joy.

  “Yes, darling. We were rather hoping to schedule our annual family détente to coincide with your big day,” said Gwendolyn, pinching off the small smile that was all her Botox would permit.

  Merry smothered a smile of her own, and across several time zones, she saw her brother do the same. Détente was more accurate than Gwendolyn, not known for her interest in wordplay, probably intended.

  “Your father’s just wrapped up that treaty in Ukraine,” she went on, “and I’ve got some time off from the foundation, so we thought now would be a good time…”

  “I’m free too,” Marcus interjected. “I always make time for my little sis. Let the runways of Milan pine for my presence; I’m damn well going to give Sasquatch a squeeze for her big day!”

  Merry winced. He’d probably still be calling her Sasquatch when he was a white-haired, white-toothed model for Cialis, and she was a toothless, towering old crone. She grabbed her cell phone and, holding it out of sight of the webcam, quickly thumbed a text message. Sasquatch, eh? Thought we’d decided to give that one a rest.

  Her phone, which she had on mute, buzzed almost immediately.

  Seriously, Sis, have you looked at your hair today?

  Merry typed a tongue-stickie-outtie emoji, and on Skype, Marcus responded by giving her a real, if silent, raspberry from over their parents’ heads.

  “Yes, darling boy, we know how much you adore your sister,” Gwendolyn said, oblivious to her children’s covert bickering. As if it could not help itself, one birdlike hand rose to smooth the cowlick that ruffled the otherwise perfect coif of her son’s silky locks. “We’re all eager to find out how you’ve been getting on, Meredith.”

  Marcus shrugged away from her fussing, and Merry saw him thumbing the screen of his phone. By which she means, “What shameful circumstances you’ve gotten yourself into,” Marcus texted, as effortless with his smartphone as he was strutting his stuff down the catwalk during fashion week. *Meredith.*

  Gwendolyn always called her Meredith. Never mind that it wasn’t her name. Merry’s mother refused to acknowledge her mistake in allowing the then-eight-year-old Marcus to name their infant daughter after his favorite fictional character—Tolkien’s Meriadoc Brandybuck. “We were in a phase, darling,” Gwendolyn had said once Merry was old enough to ask why she’d been burdened with such an unusual appellation. “And I was never one for fiction—I assumed if our Marcus chose it, it must be a respectable name. Anyway, all the parenting books were saying it was a great way to help siblings bond.”

  Perhaps it was true. Despite her near-constant aggravation with her brother, Merry loved Marcus fiercely. He was a scamp, a scoundrel, and a scalawag, but he was loyal to a fault—and smart too, though he did a pretty good impression of a dumbass when he wanted to. And after all, he was the only other person who knew what it was like to grow up with Pierce and Gwendolyn Manning for parents.

  “I’m sure Merry is getting on just fine,” Pierce said, patting his wife on one slender shoulder before peering into the camera to wink at his daughter. “Working hard at the new job, eh? Making us proud, I’m sure.” His expression said he wasn’t so sure, but at least he was sticking up for her, Merry thought. Her stomach suddenly felt heavier than the lunch-plate-sized turtle on it could account for. Because it was clear her mother wasn’t on the same page with Pierce.

  Gwendolyn faced her husband, turning her cameo-perfect profile to the camera. “Is that so?” Her voice, though still measured, could have etched glass. “Then why was she cavorting naked in Turkey only yesterday? And drunk in Denmark the week before that?” She faced the webcam again, glaring just left of dead-on into Merry’s flinching eyes. Now we get to the real reason Mother called, Merry thought, letting her weight sink deeper into her nest of pillows. Let the guilt trip commence in five…four…three…

  “You might have taken that job with ESPN, Meredith,” said Gwendolyn. “They would have been happy to have you. There’s no shame in being a sports commentator. Many athletes join the networks after they retire…”

  I didn’t retire. I did a Wile E. Coyote into a conifer, Merry thought.

  “Of all the opportunities afforded to you, Meredith, I’ll never understand why you chose to sign up with that website. If not the networks, you should have taken up your rightful place at the foundation as your grandmother wished,” she continued. “Instead, you spend your days capering around like a monkey. It’s undignified, and unbefitting an athlete of your stature. After all the years we worked to craft your image…” She stopped, pursing her lips with displeasure.

  “I needed a change, Mother,” Merry said wearily. There wasn’t much point going over this ground again. How could she explain to Gwendolyn how exquisitely painful it would have been to spend her life attending sporting events, watching former colleagues doing what she herself could no longer do? Fawning over them in interviews, watching them beat her best times…Gwendolyn could never understand. She had chosen to give up figure skating (and an Austrian grand duke) to marry Merry’s father. Merry, on the other hand, had gone down in flames. To see that knowledge reflected in the eyes of her peers as she gushed over their accomplishments for the cameras? It would have killed me. Never mind how welcome those TV bucks would have been—the cost to her pride was just too high.

  And the cost if I slink back into the family fold and take my place at Mother’s foundation, spending my days sponsoring society luncheons and arranging benefit balls? Merry shuddered. Forget my pride…my very soul is at stake.

  Though her better judgment was jumping up and down, making “shut up and tell her what she wants to hear!” gestures, Merry couldn’t help herself. “And the thing in Denmark wasn’t some drunken debauch, Mother. It was an artisanal beer tasting that got a little out of hand. My readers thought it was funny—”

  “Well, we did not, Meredith. People are talking.”

  “That’s the idea,” Merry said. “Creating buzz is what the magazine pays me for.”

  “Buzz,” scoffed Gwendolyn. “This can’t be what you want for yourself, Meredith.” She shook her head, dripping disappointment. “To be some stand-up comedian on a…what do you call it? Blarg?”

  “Blog,” Marcus put in, helpful as always. “It’s called a blog, Mother.”

  “Yes. That blah of yours. You were a world-class competitor, Meredith,” she said. “And now you spend your time writing fluff that will be forgotten the next time some teenaged pop singer decides to tweak—”

  “Twerk,” Marcus interjected.

  “—all over the Internet. You’re undoing all our hard work, Meredith, making yourself a laughingstock instead of the legend you were meant to be. And for what? A travelogue on some garish little website no one’s ever heard of?”

  That “garish little website” gets millions of hits every month, Merry thought, stung. Besides, it’s not a blog, it’s a magazine column. Totally more dignified. Merry opened her mouth—to scream with frustration, to defend herself, or apologize—she wasn’t quite sure. “Mother…” she began.

  Pierce, ever the diplomat, stepped in. “Let it go, Gwendolyn dear. Merry’s old enough to make her own decisions. After what she’s been through, she may just need a bit more time to explore her options. If she makes a few wrong turns here and there, we need to respect that. Give her some space.”

  Yes, please, Merry thought.

  “Really, Pierce,” Gwendolyn said. “I’d hardly be doing my duty as a mother if I blithely gave my blessing while my only daughter turns her back on all our dreams.”

  “Our dreams?” he asked. “Or hers?”

  Gwendolyn’s mouth snapped shut.

  Merry felt a stab of vindication. Exactly.

  Thanks, Dad, she mouthed, and she saw her father blow her a kiss as he gathered the aggrieved Gwendolyn in his arms. Her expression t
urned tender as she looked up at her handsome husband, as unable to resist his charms as she’d been when they’d met nearly forty years earlier. Pierce was the only one who could soothe her ruffled feathers, and he seemed to quite enjoy it. Experience told Merry they’d be under each other’s spell for a while.

  OMG, Merry texted Marcus. Help me out here. Pull a fire alarm. Fake a seizure. *Anything.* She saw Marcus smirk as he read her message. Honestly, Poopyface, she continued, typing rapid-fire. I don’t know how you stand being in the room with them when they get like this. And why are you even visiting? Calvin Klein run out of banana hammocks for you to model?

  All part of my cunning plan, he typed. Every time *you* dodge the ’rents, *I* look more like the golden child.

  What else was new. Merry rolled her eyes at him. Are you *trying* to make me look bad?

  It’s not hard…;-P

  Merry scratched her nose, very deliberately, with her middle finger.

  Marcus snickered silently, waggling his ears in a way his legions of sighing fans surely never got to see.

  Merry stuck her fingers in her mouth, pulling a grotesque face.

  “Meredith, you know it’s not good for you to tempt fate that way,” Gwendolyn said, emerging from her preoccupation with her husband with her usual uncanny timing. “After all we’ve gone through to put you back together, I would think…” She shook her head, her silver-blond bob unmoving. “Well, it’s your face, I suppose. You’ve jolly well never listened to me before, so why should I expect you to start now?”

  Merry knew there was little point arguing that mugging for her brother was unlikely to undo tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of plastic surgery. “Yes, Mother. Thank you for the reminder.” Stretching sideways toward her nightstand, she rummaged around for the container of Tums she kept in the drawer, grabbing a fistful. Cleese stuck his head forward, his turtly tongue darting out to lick one greenish tablet. “Stop it, you,” she scolded under her breath.

  Pierce heard. “I hope that wasn’t meant for your mother, young lady.”

  “No, no, Dad,” Merry assured him. “Just talking to my pet.” She crunched three antacid tablets. A headache was starting behind her right eye, but there was no cure for that—barring hanging up on her parents. “No disrespect intended.” She scrubbed a hand down her face.

  “Yes, well.” Gwendolyn seemed only slightly appeased. “I can see we haven’t called at a very good time. You look like you haven’t slept in days, darling, so we shan’t keep you. Just promise me you’ll make time for our get-together. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to see our only daughter once a year.”

  “I don’t know when I’ll have time for a visit,” Merry hedged. “Now’s not really a good time. I’ve got a very heavy schedule for the magazine, and I’m leaving on assignment almost immediately.”

  This was not true.

  Merry had yet to accept her next adventure. She’d been hoping to have a few days off to just be a regular person for a little while. Renew friendships long neglected. Visit a museum just because she wanted to, not because she was writing about it. Maybe even hit a few thrift stores. (The “care packages” her mother sent—full of designer clothes that rarely, if ever, fit as intended—were doing Merry’s social life no favors.)

  “Merry,” her father said ponderously, “I think it would behoove you to make time for a visit. Of course we want to see you—we do worry about this new bohemian lifestyle of yours—but we also have important family business to discuss. Your grandmother’s bequest has to be addressed—in person—if you want to receive your inheritance.”

  Bzzzz.

  There’s the carrot… Marcus texted.

  Merry let out a long breath. She knew as well as Marcus did what was coming. I’m not biting, she texted back. You may be a suck-up, but *I’m* above such shameful tactics.

  Hey, don’t knock it. Sucking up is a fine art! Marcus made fish-faces at the camera over their parents’ heads.

  Merry had to smile. Enjoy your filthy lucre, she typed. Cleese and I would rather starve in our garret. She looked away from her dueling screens long enough to feed her turtle another piece of lettuce. It might be the last bit of green either of them saw for a while. “I understand, Dad,” she said aloud to the webcam. “And I do take this seriously. I’m just not prepared yet to…”

  Her phone bleated like an electronic raspberry, interrupting her thoughts. You may not suckle at the family teat yet, Marcus’s message said, but you know when it comes to that big, sweaty wad o’ Granny-cash, you ain’t gonna say no.

  Merry did not type “fuck you,” but it took most of her dwindling store of restraint. The truth was, her brother might be right. Their grandmother Renee had finally gone to her dubious reward and, with typical spite, had loaded her will with codicils guaranteed to confound her descendants. Chiefly, by granting Merry’s mother complete authority to bestow—or withhold—the nearly ludicrous fortune her family had amassed over centuries of sticking it to the peasants. As her mother’s executrix, Gwendolyn Hollingsworth Manning was now sole arbiter of what constituted the type of behavior of which Lady Renee Hollingsworth, scion of a long line of singularly unpleasant Hollingsworths, would have approved.

  Which meant that if Merry wanted to claim her inheritance, she’d have to return to the familial fold—in whatever way suited her mother’s sensibilities.

  “I know this is a great privilege and responsibility, Mother,” she told Gwendolyn. “And I’m not ungrateful. I just…” Need time to figure out how to politely tell you to shove it, she thought. If I can afford to.

  Marcus read the consternation in her expression far better than her mother did. What’s the problem, Sasquatch? he texted. You allergic to money?

  Merry’s fingers flew as she replied. No. I’m allergic to the strings that come attached to it.

  Well, consider me strung up, her brother replied, and she saw him shrug philosophically. If it requires a little ass-kissery, I’ll pucker with the best of them.

  Merry rolled her eyes. Marcus often found himself a tad light in the wallet. It was tough work supporting an endless series of dubiously legal parties with swimming pools full of supermodels and celebs, controlled substances, backroom poker tables, and officials of various principalities who required hefty bribes to look the other way. “The life of a male model,” as Marcus put it, “is fraught with back-end expenses.”

  I bet you don’t even have to practice, she typed back, considering your whole job is to make Zoolander faces anyway.

  Marcus staggered back, clutching his chest and pretending to be struck to the heart.

  “Children, are you up to something?” Gwendolyn peered into the camera. “Meredith, are you tormenting your brother?”

  Merry’s tummy tickled, and it wasn’t solely from Cleese’s tiny claws as he trekked the distance from her belly to her breastbone. Sure, assume it’s me, she thought. Precious Marcus never instigates.

  “Good lord, Meredith,” Gwendolyn gasped, “what is that thing? You haven’t got some sort of pest problem in that ghetto of yours, I hope.”

  Merry glanced at the screen, then had to laugh as she realized her pet turtle must appear the size of a stegosaurus on the webcam as he trundled into frame. It grounded her a bit, reminding her that her family’s dysfunction—as well as their ever-so-tempting money—was on the other side of a very wide ocean. At the summer cottage on the shores of Lake Como this time of year, if she remembered rightly. A far cry from downtown Chicago, perhaps, but the little apartment she’d leased with the last of her endorsement cash—partly because it was a great jumping-off point for travel, and partly because it was about a million miles from the nearest mountain—was hardly a ghetto.

  “It’s just Cleese,” she said, stroking his little head gently with the tip of one finger before moving him out of camera range. “He hasn’t seen me for a while so he’s being extra lovey-dovey.”

  “Well, Meredith, we haven’t seen you in quite a while either,”
Gwendolyn said. “And considering the substantial inheritance that’s at stake, I should think you’d be a bit more accommodating with us than your…reptile.”

  Bzzzz, went her phone.

  …And there’s the stick.

  Merry saw Marcus shrug sympathetically from across seven time zones.

  “I’ll try, Mother,” she said. “I really just can’t break away right now.” She sighed, avoiding her father’s eye, which wasn’t hard over Skype. “And, Dad, I appreciate that I have to make a decision about Grandmother’s bequest—”

  “The paperwork has to be signed and witnessed within six months, or you forfeit everything, Merry,” he reminded pointedly.

  “I understand. And I will take care of it. I promise. I’ll come to you, or maybe we can meet in DC this fall if you’re in conference with the State Department. Certainly by Thanksgiving at the latest. I’ll have made my decision by then.”

  “What is there to decide?” Gwendolyn asked sharply. “Of course you’ll accept. And of course you’ll come home. What else is there for you now?”

  Penury.

  Freedom.

  Merry looked at the stack of bills at her bedside, the corners of which Cleese was currently attempting to ingest. If only it were that easy to make her debts disappear. I really can’t afford to say no this time, can I?

  C’mon, come hang with us, her brother texted. I’ll introduce you to some Abercrombie & Fitch models. Marcus made the Zoolander face again. With all that Granny-money, you can stuff twenties in their low-slung jeans all day long.

  And what would I do when that got old? Merry wondered with a tinge of bitterness. Spend my days attending charity luncheons and getting my hair done with Mother? Host state dinners for my father’s diplomatic colleagues? Watch Marcus strut his stuff down the runways of Paris while I pretend I’m not his loser, half-crippled baby sister?