I came out of the bathroom suited up in my apron and button-down shirt, only to find Gretchen already napping on the trundle. Her shoes were off and her legs were scissored on top of the covers. Plus she was drooling on my pillow—the one with the snowshoeing bears pillowcase. She looked cold but too far gone to do anything about it.
I pulled an afghan up over her. As I did, her hand shot out from underneath the covers. I thought she might be stirring, but she merely scratched her scalp, ground her teeth loudly, and fell back to sleep faceup.
Poor Gretch. I knew lots of kids kept ridiculous hours and that she needed the money to go to Portland State, but still, Mom should’ve had some kind of relief baker so she could have more down time. Instead, the better Gretchen got at baguettes and brioche, the more Mom worked her. And what did Gretch get in return? A dollar an hour raise and a trundle bed in the Crow’s Nest.
There was a knock on my door. “Ronnie! You in there?”
I opened it a fraction of an inch. Brad Boyle was leaning on the wall, wearing his patriotic bandanna over his spiky peroxided hair. His nose was sunburned and his lips were white and waxy with Tiger Balm.
I came out and closed the door softly behind me. “Can you keep it down?” I whispered. “Gretchen’s asleep.”
He made an exaggerated shushing motion with his fingers. “Sorry, man. I just wanted to tell you that there’s someone downstairs to see you.”
I had no idea who that could be. The only people who ever came looking for me were Gretchen and Karen, and Gretchen was asleep.
“Who?”
“I don’t know, man. Some dude.”
“Thanks. I’ll be right down.”
He looked me over. I was still dripping. “You gonna do something about your hair?”
“Shut up,” I said. It was a sensitive issue. I’d inherited my brown curls from Mom, and when I tried to style them wound up with a hair helmet. About all I could do was run a ton of product through them so they didn’t frizz out.
He shrugged. Whatever.
I remembered something. “Hey, Brad,” I said. “Did Dad catch up with you? He was looking for you earlier.”
Brad didn’t blink, but a few seconds went by before he answered. “Yeah, yeah. We’re late on rent. I told him to charge it to a different card.”
“Rent,” I echoed, skeptical. Why did Karen’s mud pies remind him of that? The logic escaped me. But Brad didn’t seem to care if I believed him or not. He slouched off to his home down the hall, the Glacier Lily Suite.
I made my way to the stairwell and stood at the top, curious about who I needed to style my hair for. From my view on the landing I could see Sheriff McGarry and her deputy, the guy who probably wanted his Hefty bag raincoat back, chatting with my father. These guys weren’t some dude. Huh.
I was on my way down to find out more, when something occurred to me.
I caught up with Good Brad as he was about to open the door to the Glacier Lily Suite.
“Hold up,” I said in a whisper. “Did you see the sheriff?”
He turned around. He’d been talking on his cell and hung up quickly, folding his phone and shoving it in his pocket. It took him a second to compose his face. “Yeah, man. They’re trying to figure out what happened to your friend.”
“Have you flushed all your, you know, cigarettes?”
I hoped he caught my meaning. I never actually smelled wacky tabacky coming from the Glacier Lily Suite. I just assumed it was part of the whole ski bum package.
His smile was faint as February sun and about as vacant. “Don’t worry. We’ve got it covered.”
I exhaled. “Okay. Just checking.” I turned away. I’d done my part. Now I had a visitor to greet.
“Ronnie,” he called. I turned to face him, and was confronted with an expression that was not vacant—it was full of weariness and compassion. He took two steps toward me, looking at me so softly he reminded me of Thor the German shepherd. He put a hand on my shoulder, and for a moment the river stopped rushing, I didn’t hurt so much, and I realized that whatever else he was, Brad was a decent-looking guy.
He leaned in close and brushed my lips lightly with his own. “I’m sorry about Karen,” he said, running his fingers through my damp curls. He patted me once on the arm, opened the door to the Glacier Lily Suite, went in, and closed it behind him.
I stood there looking at the closed door, listening to the low rumble of his voice on the other side. I ran my tongue over my lips. They tasted waxy but minty.
It wasn’t a bad kiss, light as a soufflé. And I knew that if I really tried, I could turn him into a knight in my imagination—a hero with no job and spiky hair. But I was short on imagination that morning, and try as I might, I couldn’t make the kiss into anything more than it was: a condolence kiss, sincere but meaningless.
So if that didn’t mean anything, what did?
We are walking along the riverbank. Karen is leading and I am following. It is a sunny day and the river is low, gentle, and gurgling. Karen is wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. She insists on traipsing through the shallow water in that footwear, arms out perpendicular, as though the slick rocks are a balance beam.
She still has a large bandage on her forehead from her major trampoline bonk.
I watch as she stumbles but quickly rights herself.
Do those shoes give you enough traction?
Don’t worry, Ronnie. I do this all the time. Hey, check this out.
She bends over to pick something up. A smooth river rock the color of granite, but round and flat like a pancake.
I lean closer. What is that? I ask. Thunderegg? Agate? Quartz?
Karen shrugs. Just a rock. But watch what it can do. She cocks her arm back and sends that pancake zinging across the water. And even though the river’s surface isn’t smooth and still like a pond, I can still count the skips easily. One, two, three…
Six! That’s impressive, I say. Then I add: Isn’t it?
About normal, she says. Why? What’s your record?
I hesitate.
You don’t have a record, she says.
I do so, I say, forgetting that I’m not eight years old.
Hasn’t anyone ever shown you how to skip rocks?
No. It’s not the kind of talent you can put on your college application.
Karen snickers again.
Could you teach me?
She is reluctant. I am older than she is after all. She leads me in everything, but in this, I have to draw her out. Would this be a good stone? How about this one? I pull a big hunk of something igneous from the riverbed. I toss it, plunk! Like a discus. I think I may have herniated something.
Karen cackles. No, silly, not like that.
She is a great teacher. She has lots of patience, and excellent ways for breaking a huge skill into little pieces: selecting the rock, the grip you need, how far back to cock your wrist, when to use force and when to let go. At the end of the afternoon I am able to squeeze a paltry two skips from a beige stone. Karen and I both squeal with delight.
Then she sends another one that gets eight skips—practically makes it to the other side.
There’s a rattling in the bushes over there as something large bounds away. Overhead, Fred the Eagle takes flight from his aerie. We are disturbing things.
I hope we didn’t nail any critters, I say.
I doubt it, she says.
Why? I want to say. What’s over there? And I know that now, if I ask her, she will ferry me across. But I am still new here and the current, low and gentle as it is, scares me, which is silly. It’s just a small river. You can see what’s on the bottom. Not like the huge and murky Willamette that runs through Portland. But that one seems different somehow. More predictable. You know you’ll get diphtheria if you fall in so there’s no mystery to it.
Go on, I think. Be brave. Ask her what’s over there.
Instead I suggest we go back for cream cheese brownies.
8
Do
wnstairs, I found the café empty. It was early afternoon so the lunch crowd had cleared out. Everyone was either on the slopes or upstairs in their suites. The living room was empty save some guy in a leg cast playing “Kum Ba Yah” on an acoustic guitar. He barely looked up when I came down. He wasn’t watching for me, so he couldn’t be my visitor, could he? I decided to go to information central, the kitchen, and see if someone there could reveal the identity and whereabouts of my mystery visitor.
Gloria Inez was doing the prep work for dinner, chopping shallots at the butcher block island.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you know who was looking for me?”
She glanced up, and I saw the family resemblance.
She was a lot shorter than Tomás, but she had the same lustrous lashes, same cliff-like cheekbones. Plus she had this long black hair that, even braided, snaked below her butt.
She shook her head. “Are you hungry, m’hija?” She spoke Spanglish with me, ninety-nine percent English, endearments and swear words in Spanish. Tomás spoke the same blend, although he used more swear words.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Are you sure?” She gestured with a huge knife to the warmer where this morning’s baked goods had grown cool. “There are Monster Cookies.” I looked where she was pointing. A few brioche, a square or two of far pruneau, and ah, yes… Monster Cookies, big and round as Frisbees. Those were Gretchen’s and my contribution to the Patchworks menu, a brainchild from a late night when we were feeling silly and threw everything in the mixing bowl that a cookie could contain: M&M’s, oatmeal, butterscotch chips, raisins.
And then I remembered that Gretchen and I weren’t the only inventors of Monster Cookies. We had help.
It is Saturday morning. Gretchen and I have been able to grab a few hours’ sleep after a late night acting silly in the kitchen. Those giant cookies are sitting on the warmer. We didn’t sample them last night, and now we’re afraid. We almost don’t want to know what we’ve done.
Go on, she urges. They look like a great big mess. Mom definitely wouldn’t approve because, whether or not they taste all right, they aren’t camera-friendly.
You’re the baker, I say. You go first.
Tomás comes through the kitchen doors. He staggers with sleep blindness and he’s got bedhead so ghastly he looks like a mad scientist. Hey, Gretch says. Feel like guinea pigging for us?
He shrugs and curls his lips. He has a famously bottomless appetite.
I hand him a cookie. He pinches off a corner and chews. This is where we’ll find out if these are good or if we should feed them to the Insinkerator, piece by piece.
Well? I ask. Whaddaya think?
He seems to consider. He swallows. He breaks one open and examines the contents.
Needs shredded zucchini, he says. And he has such a straight face that it takes me a while to understand that he’s made a joke, and that the cookies are edible.
Gretchen harrumphs. I don’t sink so, she says in a fake French accent.
And then a rarity. Tomás smiles. His teeth are blindingly white. If we could just coax him out of the baseball hat, he might be dateable. To someone else, that is. Not us. He has seen us without makeup. We have smelled his atrocious morning breath. He is family.
The swinging doors open with a what what what sound.
Morning, slackers, Karen says, taking off her blue whale coat. Where’s my croissant?
Gretchen offers her a fragment of a monster cookie. Here, she says. What do you think?
Karen tastes, considers.
Tomás says they need shredded zucchini, I suggest.
He’s an idiot, she says. She nibbles again, regards the rest of the cookie Frisbee. Chocolate frosting and gummy worms, she finally says.
Gretchen and I look at each other, and Tomás’ smile is blindingly white. Of course. The problem isn’t the taste but the presentation, which is Karen’s specialty. Dirt-colored frosting and gummy worms are exactly what these cookies need.
Genius, Gretchen says, and breaks out the Baker’s chocolate.
I must’ve been staring a little too long at the Monster cookies oozing gummies, because Gloria Inez sealed the deal. “Please. Take some out. Maybe your father would like one?” She practically worshipped my dad for getting her out of trouble with INS.
I took out a platter and transferred three to them, careful to avoid breaking them. Gretchen must’ve cooked them after she heard about Karen’s death. The gummy worms were out far enough that they flopped whenever they moved, like the real thing. A perfect tribute.
I still needed to find out who my visitor was, and since there was no one else, I approached Kum Ba Yah guy. “Monster Cookie?” I offered.
“Thanks. Maybe later,” he said, then went back to strumming. This guy hadn’t been expecting me. So who was?
I looked out on the front porch. Evil Brad was crouched over Karen’s mud pies. Studying them.
Shouldering the tray, I pushed outside. Evil Brad stood up from his crouch.
I don’t know why I thought of him as Evil Brad. He was almost the same as Good Brad—same bandanna around the neck, sunburned nose, spiky hair, joblessness. But where Good Brad didn’t mind spending time with us in the kitchen, watching Gretch and me lob raisins into each other’s mouths—even joining us on occasion and showing us how to play quarters with a glass of pomegranate soda (“Dudes, you’ll thank me when you get to college”), Evil Brad just came home from the slopes and, after feeding, skulked to the Astro Lounge for a microbrew. He treated those of us who didn’t drink with contempt.
He barely looked up when I came out on the porch. “Hey, man,” he said, scratching his chin, looking at the mud pies. I looked over his shoulder. Why was he interested in those things?
“Monster cookie?” I offered.
He took one from me and bit it absentmindedly. Crumbs scattered all over Karen’s volcanoes.
“Dude,” I said. “Would you mind not getting crumbs on the evidence?”
“They’re not evidence,” he said quietly, without a trace of that frat boy accent.
“How would you know?”
His eyes grew wide, then narrowed. It was just an instant, but I thought I could read his expression: he’d betrayed something. I didn’t yet know what, and he wasn’t about to betray anything else.
He scowled silently. It’s none of your business how I know or why I care.
I scowled back. “Okay, then, if they’re not evidence, what are they?”
And then he stared at me uncomprehendingly, as though I were some kind of primate—interesting but not quite human. “A gift,” he said.
And that undid me. Of course they were. A final gift.
I was going to puke again. I was definitely going to bawl and I didn’t want to do it in front of him. He didn’t seem the comforting type. He wasn’t a plier of baked goods or a shelterer of injured wildlife or even a consolation kisser.
But I had underestimated him, too. “Hold up,” he said, putting a hand on my arm.
“I gotta go,” I said, trying to wrench free.
He wheeled me around. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I was forced to stand there with my eyes watering, thinking: This is so unfair. Leave me in peace. He bent over Karen’s art. He plucked the blossoms from each. “The mud won’t keep, but here, you should press these in a book somewhere.” He stuck them in my apron pocket. “I know it’s hard right now, Ronnie, but you’ll be glad you did later.”
And it was such a kind gesture from such a patronizing swine, that I started crying again.
He pulled the arm of his ski jacket over his wrist and used it to wipe my face.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll pay for dry cleaning.”
“No need,” he said. He wasn’t comforting but he wasn’t snide, either. It was just something that needed saying so he said it.
I snuffled once. “I’d better get back inside. You weren’t looking for me, were you?”
“Nah, man. He’s in the sun porch.”
The frat boy accent came back.
“Who?”
“How should I know?” he said sharply. “Some dude.”
We’d had a moment, but now it was gone, swept down from the mountains and out to sea.
9
At least now I had a place, but no identity. Curiouser and curiouser. No one ever went on the sun porch. People couldn’t have avoided it more if it were haunted, which was definitely not part of the remodel.
The idea, when we remodeled, was to screen in the existing veranda and make it a place where guests could go to appreciate nature without drowning in it. That was the theory, anyway. There was wicker furniture all around, low shelves stocked with ancient Nancy Drews, and an antique Monopoly set, complete with real silver shoe and cannon.
Alas, we’d neglected to insulate, so it wasn’t long before rot and mold worked their way into everything. The ceiling was sprouting black spots that looked like melanomas, the banana slugs oozed in from who knew what crevices, and the smell was atrocious, like rotting fish guts. And no surprise, since guests went there only long enough to strip off their waders or gut their bullhead catfish.
Who could be waiting for me on the sun porch?
I crept up on the threshold and peered inside. I only caught a backpack slung casually over a shoulder, the top of a chestnut-colored head of hair, and I knew.
Oh no, not him. Dread closed in on me quickly, like mold. Good Brad had been warning me about my hair for a reason.
The boy in the sunroom was Keith Spady, my chem partner, who had a very distinctive top of the head. He was the only guy in town with a faux hawk, and he wore it well.
I hung back, peering around the threshold, and took him in. He was examining a sepia picture casually, as though perusing something at a gallery opening. His scratchy army-green Eisenhower jacket was wet, and his Doc Martens were caked with mud.
I had thought, after this morning, that I’d lost my ability to be excited by anything, but seeing Keith Spady on the sun porch sent shivers all over my body, and I liked the feeling. He was braving the smell to see me. As far as I was concerned, that made him a hero.
The River Page 5