David stared at his wife. “Surely, you don’t believe that.”
Heart shrugged and turned to me. “You were the only one who was never afraid.”
“I begged Tum to let me see it. It was a big secret, and I was a curious kid. But when I touched it . . .”
Heart’s eyes widened. “You touched it?”
“It was warm. Like it was alive.”
“Alive?” Heart’s hand went to her chest.
“But now it feels different.”
“How?” Evie asked.
“It feels familiar yet foreign.” I thought of the ever-changing scents. “Uncontrollable somehow.”
Evie shook her head. “James would never give you something that would harm you.”
I knew she was right. Still . . .
“It spooked me. My first thought was to do a cleansing ceremony. I did one. David was there.”
“What?” His head came up.
“Remember, after yoga class we burned the papers containing our worries and/or our wishes? And after everyone left, I got out my smudge stick and did another cleansing throughout the house and studio.”
David stared at me, and comprehension dawned. “The ceremony. Oh no.”
Heart crossed to the table and knelt by her husband’s side. “What did you write?”
David paled. “I was worried about the business. Last year was a tough one. I just wanted to wipe it out and have something ‘spectacular’ happen.”
“Oh, David.” Heart slumped back on her heels.
“I didn’t know.” David looked at his wife in horror, then shook his head. “I don’t believe in all this stuff. Cleansing ceremonies, magic diaries, cherry trees that bloom in the dead of winter.”
At that moment, Sadie shuffled in, her footie pajamas slapping the linoleum floor. She gave a big yawn and crawled into David’s lap, curling up her long, eight-year-old legs. She dropped her head on his chest and said, “Nice tree, Daddy.”
THE CROWD IN THE front yard grew, and it wasn’t long before Peter Jorn sniffed out a story and came knocking at the door. I let him in. “I can’t wait to hear this one,” he said, as if every weird thing he had to report on in Gabriel’s Garden was my fault.
Evie welcomed Jorn with a warm smile and offered him some decaf oolong tea. My mother radiates serenity from the tips of her spiky gray hair to the toes of her old-style penny loafers. It is nearly impossible to growl at Evie.
Jorn politely turned down the tea then glanced around the kitchen. I knew immediately he was looking for the coffee pot. “Caffeine tenses up your shoulders,” I told him.
Eyeing the heavy mug on the table near David’s hand, Jorn replied, “I’ll risk it.”
Larry, ever the peacemaker, jumped up from the table with his usual energy and poured Jorn a cup of coffee. Nodding his thanks to Larry, Jorn sat down in a chair next to David.
“So what’s with the tree?”
“It looks like cotton candy,” Sadie said.
Jorn leaned closer to David and lowered his voice. “I’m no expert, but should it be doing that—in March? Is it some weird horticultural experiment?”
Heart objected. “He’s a businessman, not some mad scientist.”
“Then what’s the deal?”
“I honestly don’t know!” David said. “Yesterday, it was completely dormant, not a bud in sight, and today it’s blooming like springtime on the Washington Freaking Mall.”
“David!” Heart rolled her eyes toward Sadie. “Young ears.”
“It’s okay, Mommy, I didn’t freaking hear it.”
Heart sighed.
I glanced at Larry, who was deep in thought. While Evie favored simple white button-down blouses and trim slacks, Larry was seldom seen out of flannel, jeans, and tennis shoes and could slip into geekdom before your very eyes. When he got that far-off look, he was working some software issue or geek problem and you might as well come back later. That was one of the reasons he and Evie left Whispering Spirit, the community they had helped found—not enough power outlets for Larry’s technology needs.
The instant Larry snapped back from the labyrinthine corridors of his thoughts, his eyes widened, and he cleared his throat. “Maybe we need to be worrying about other ramifications.”
“Other ramifications?” Jorn and David asked at the same time.
Larry spread his hands. “We really can’t do much about the tree. It is what it is. It’s bloomed, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We can call it a freak of nature.”
Jorn raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t we call it a freak a nature? That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
Ignoring Jorn, Larry turned to me, “Have you checked with your other students?”
I could see where my father was going with this. Larry was worried that other unusual instances from our cleansing ceremony were about to manifest in Gabriel’s Garden. I filled Jorn in: on Tum, the diary, and how we suspected that the cherry tree’s early blooming was related to the cleansing ceremony, which was related to the shaman’s diary that I now owned.
“I don’t believe it.” Jorn sat back and looked around the group.
I turned to my parents. “I’ll fix this,” I said.
Evie stood and came to me, placing her hand on my shoulder. “Maya, you don’t have to always save the world.”
I nodded, but just then, my phone chimed in my pocket. I jumped. It was Mary, Merlin Huus’s daughter. “Can you stop by? I’ve got a problem.”
Chapter 3
Michelin Man Gets His Wish
MY PARENTS LOVE TO tell the story of my conception amid the ruins of an ancient culture while the sea crashed against the shore below them. They’d left Heart, who was about two, at home in New Mexico with a multitude of mommies and daddies and hitched a ride to the Mexican Yucatán. It was the autumnal equinox, and there was a helluva party planned at Tulum, the Maya ruins.
Evie always gets that soft, dreamy look when she recounts the event. “The Mayas built their temples to enhance their rituals and human sacrifices. It is deliciously mathematical. On the equinox, the sun’s rays shoot through two stone structures built in a keyhole shape. The light is directed across the ceremonial city of Tulum to the entrance. The sea is bashing at the bottom of the cliffs below. The birds are wheeling and calling, the iguanas scampering. The breeze rustles the palms. You can practically breathe the romance. Larry and I made it right in the ruins when the sun was coming up. It was so spiritual. That’s why Maya is the creature she is. She was conceived right there in the vortex of centuries of passion and lust. The vibes knocked us off our feet.”
I have heard this story many times. The drama of my beginnings is in my soul. Maybe it’s why I never see a kung fu movie I don’t like or why I’m fascinated by math despite the fact that I can’t balance my checkbook. Maybe it was why I followed a scream into a New York alley one night and came out a changed woman.
As I left Heart’s house and drove to the home of Merlin’s daughter on Elm Street, that old feeling settled on me. If Merlin was in trouble, I had to help. As I got out of my Subaru in front of the Huus house and slammed the door, Peter Jorn pulled up behind me. With his sore hip, he took his time climbing out of his old Jeep.
“What are you doing here?”
“As much as I hate to admit it, this is a story. So where you go, I go. We’re going to put an end to this diary nonsense so I can go home and hit the Internet for articles on cherry trees. There has to be a logical explanation for this.”
I shrugged.
Merlin’s granddaughter answered the front doorbell and directed us to the backyard.
“What’s Merlin doing? Shoveling?” I asked.
“No, he’s bouncing.” The girl, about four, began jumping up and down. “My mom says Grandpa’s going to break his neck. As soon as I get my snow pants on, I’m going
out to break my neck, too.”
We circled the house, crunching through the snow, following a thump thump thump and Merlin’s hooting and hollering as he flung his bony seventy-nine-year-old body into the air. He was having the time of his life on his granddaughter’s trampoline, which he had cleared of snow with a broom. There were little piles of snow that he’d missed, that shifted with each thump and leaped into the air with Merlin. The trampoline was one of those big round affairs, at least sixteen feet in diameter, with poles supporting net walls to keep the children—and now Merlin—from bouncing out and landing on the family dog. As we rounded the corner of the house, Merlin cried out, “Hot damn, Maya, look at me. I can do a flip. You wanna see?”
Merlin Huus, who’d learned the fine art of cabinetmaking from his Danish father and flips from watching his granddaughter, was bundled up against the March cold in puffy quilted coveralls and brightly striped socks, hat, and scarf. He nursed a constant sore back and stiff joints from a lifetime of bending over and squatting while coaxing life into wood. In the last yoga class, when he bent at the waist, he could barely reach mid-shin with his fingertips. Today he was doing front somersaults on a trampoline like the Michelin man in Cirque du Soleil.
“Awesome, Merlin,” I laughed. He was so busy grinning at me he turned a flip into a flop. I held my breath, but he bounced back up all smiles.
“This is ridiculous,” Jorn muttered. “His old bones can’t take this kind of punishment. Get him out of there.”
“Party pooper,” I said to Jorn. I turned to Merlin. “Ah, Merlin, can you take a break?”
“I don’t know. I wanna practice one of those jumps the Russian fellas do.”
“Please, Merlin. It’s sort of important.”
“Okey-dokey.” Merlin bounced to the trampoline door in his stocking feet. He slipped on his boots and jumped to the ground.
In the Huus kitchen, Merlin’s daughter Mary hovered, making sure everyone had hot chocolate. She pushed a plate of fresh-baked ginger snaps toward us and cast a worried glance at her father, who, oblivious to us all, was chasing marshmallows in his hot chocolate with a spoon. “Maya, maybe as his yoga teacher and all, you can tell him to cool it on the trampoline?” Mary asked.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
As Mary bustled her daughter out of the kitchen, I turned to Merlin. Before I could speak, Merlin gushed, “Maya, I feel like a man of forty. No aches, no pains, no creaks. God, it feels so good to just walk, to just move. This yoga is some powerful stuff.”
Jorn and I exchanged looks.
“You think it’s the yoga, Merlin?” Jorn asked.
“What else can it be? It sure ain’t my vitamins.” He leaned toward Jorn. “Man, I’m feeling frisky, if you know what I mean?”
I cleared my throat. “Merlin, about your new-found energy, I don’t think it’s entirely from yoga.”
“No?”
“Remember last week when we did the cleansing ceremony after class? What did you write down?”
Merlin didn’t hesitate. “Take these old aches away. That’s what I wrote. And it came true. I’m tired of feeling old, Maya. I want to feel young again.”
“Did this just come on all of a sudden, this new vitality, Merlin?” Jorn asked.
“All week I’ve been sleepin’ damn good, which is, in itself, a miracle,” Merlin said. “I usually get up three or four times a night. But lately, I’m sleepin’ through, and I got all this energy. Today I flung the covers off and, when I got to my feet, I bent over and tried to touch my toes, like I always do, first thing.” He snapped his fingers. “And just like that—I felt like somebody had taken an oil can to my joints. After breakfast, I stood at the kitchen window, sipping my coffee, and staring at the trampoline. I knew I could take on that sucker today; I just felt it in my bones.”
Without the puffy suit, Merlin was a gaunt figure, more scarecrow than Michelin Man. Bushy eyebrows and wispy white hair stuck out at all angles. His nose and cheeks were rough and red. I laid my hand on his cold cheek and looked into his eyes, blue as the clear winter sky, hopeful as a child’s.
“Maya, how long is this going to last?” Merlin asked.
“I wish I knew, Merlin,” I said. “I wish I knew.”
Chapter 4
No Diary for You
JORN TOLD ME IT was going to happen. Merlin Huus broke his arm two days ago on his granddaughter’s trampoline. Jorn’s not psychic; he’s just irritatingly logical—his mind automatically leaps from old bones to dangerous toy to emergency room. Me, I shoot for the creative and crazy every time. I prefer to think of Merlin bouncing higher and higher, filling with joy like a balloon until he drifts away to a place where old joints never complain and cranky backs are kind.
The Monday class was over. I cast a sad glance toward the spot where Merlin’s mat usually was. As the rest of the students stepped out into the darkening night, Jorn hung back. He’d pulled on a University of Missouri sweatshirt and not bothered to smooth down his shaggy hair. Hands stuffed into his pockets, he trailed behind me, up the spiral stairs to the second floor of the fire station, to my home. “Can I see this diary?”
I crossed to the kitchen area and filled a tea kettle with water. “No.”
“It’s part of the story, according to you.”
“There is no story.”
“There is always a story,” Jorn said and, without an invitation, began exploring my home. He wandered around the living area, leaning close to study the framed photos on the fireplace mantel: images of Sadie and me, laughing, doing yoga on a log; Heart, David, and Sadie crowded into a porch swing; a younger Evie and Larry in hiking boots and backpacks. He turned toward the rest of the room.
“You like color,” he said, as if shocked.
I tended to dress in neutrals, a remnant from my year in New York. And I wanted no jarring colors in the yoga studio. It was a place of calm, natural shades; plants, candles, Buddha altar; music sprinkled with chimes, bells, and monks chanting. There you could close your eyes and hear running streams and the wind rushing through the pines along with your own slow, steady breath.
My home was a different matter. It was orange pillows on a red sofa. It was where head-banging tunes and bass-heavy dance jams from the radio replaced subdued Tibetan bells and my well-used dvd collection was evenly split between kung fu movies and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the tv show, not the movie).
The walls were exposed brick, the floor hardwood. In the long, open room, rugs separated the kitchen and dining area from the living room—a chili red Oriental rug defined the kitchen, while a handmade curry gold one framed the living room.
“Cushy furniture, large-screen tv, it’s all so . . . normal.”
“What did you expect?” I said. “A bed of nails?”
As Jorn sat down at the kitchen table and peered into his cup of tea with disgust, he said, “You know, ever since that day at David’s house, I’ve been doing some investigating.” He studied my kitchen as if he were memorizing it. “The usual stuff. Internet searches on black cherry trees, shamans, James Tumblethorne, your family.”
“Find anything interesting?”
His gaze settled on me. “Your parents are millionaires, and they still grow their own food and repair their own cars.”
“Evie hates preservatives. And Larry likes to tinker.”
“Evie’s the creative mind behind the stories and characters of Skyes the Limit.”
“She’s an artist.”
“Larry’s the wizard behind the curtain; he writes the code for the games. Heart’s the business brain.”
“And who am I?” I asked with a smile.
“You’re glaringly missing from Google. Hell, I don’t even think you pay taxes.”
You had to give Larry credit. When you asked to go off the grid, he really wiped you.
“Oh,” I said, “I
’m sure I’m in there somewhere.”
“If you’ve gone to college . . .”
“Several of them, as a matter of fact.”
“Obviously, you didn’t get a degree from any of them.”
I motioned to the teapot, but Jorn waved away a refill. “And what did you find about Tum?”
He exhaled and leaned back. “Hell’s Angel. Liked to booze and brawl. Partial to guns. Quite familiar with the authorities in several states.”
“Popular guy.”
“Then one day he quits. Rides away from the gang and into your commune. Doesn’t leave. Becomes a reformed man. Saw the light, apparently, after joining your merry band. No more fighting. No more weapons charges.”
“We can’t take all the credit. Tum did some of the work.”
“You said he was your nanny?”
“Everyone has a job at Whispering Spirit, something they’re good at, and Tum was good with kids.”
“Makes sense.”
“Why?”
“He practically raised his kid sister.”
“I didn’t know that.” Tum had never spoken of his family. Just his biker days, gory stories to scare us kids and keep us in line, but never the time before that.
“She was a cop, killed during a drug bust, only thirty-three years old. Happened shortly before Tum left the gang.”
When Tum joined us, he gave up guns and beer. He even quit smoking, cold turkey. There had been a wildness in him that drew me, but I felt safe with him. Tum came to Whispering Spirit seeking redemption, and, in the end, I think he found it. Still, history cannot be erased. Tum called upon the wounds of his past in doing his shamanic work. He understood weakness and dependency and fear. And that made him a brilliant healer.
I sighed. “I bet Tum was a good brother. He was as loyal and protective as the family dog, but he wouldn’t let you get away with stuff. When I was being a brat, complaining about something Heart said to me or how my day had gone all wrong, he would take me up to the meadow to look at the stars. We’d sit there, him as quiet as can be and me talking, talking. Finally, he would turn to me and say, ‘Maya, listen to the stars.’ And I would look up and forget everything—but just being.”
Down Dog Diary Page 3