Lance’s hairy right hand crept up to the top of his head. Though I couldn’t see it from my own height of barely over five feet, I knew he was scratching his bald spot. His left thumb started drumming on the dial of his two-way radio, and he hunched in what I called his gorilla pose. “Bub got in,” he finally said.
“What?” My sympathy for his stress faded fast. “I thought your brother wasn’t coming!” I thumped down the chow again, primates temporarily forgotten in light of this new personal crisis. “What are we going to do with him?”
“I don’t know,” Lance said. But he did know. We both knew. His right hand moved down to the back of his neck, and he looked at the bucket of food like maybe the answer was fermenting in the mangos and bananas.
Around us, the din of primate chatter edged up a notch. The animals were restless, perhaps keying off of their caretakers’ moods, or maybe reacting to the distant racket of mall construction. In one enclosure, chimpanzees emitted their characteristic high-pitched screeches with lower huffing-hooting accompaniment. In another, the red-ruffed lemurs’ chatter periodically erupted into chirps and croaks. In front of me, the rhesus macaque screamed bloody murder. It didn’t seem at all repentant about throwing its excrement at my fiancé.
Above the animal ruckus, a car honked. The animals increased their volume. “Wonder who that is,” Lance said. “We’re not expecting anybody at the visitors’ gate, are we?”
“No.”
We looked at each other. I said, “That better not be your brother.”
Simultaneously, Lance said, “If that’s Bub, I swear I’ll kill him.”
“Tell me you didn’t invite him to stay with us.”
“No, no!” Lance held out his arms, palms open. “I told him you and I would have to discuss it.”
“Making me, of course, the bad guy if we say no.” I trained my glower over his shoulder and tried not to be angry. The anger boiled down to stress and the fact that we should have listened and taken the entire day before our wedding off work.
The horn blared again. I looked towards the barn. “Art will get it,” Lance said. “He was sitting up there fiddling with paperwork when I left him. Give him something to do.”
Thinking about Lance’s brother again, I said, “I love you.” But I was thinking Perspective, perspective, perspective to keep myself from shouting.
“Good thing,” Lance replied. He lowered his eyes to the bucket between us.
Since Lance was taken up with scrutinizing the meal, I turned my attention to the monkey. Although he looked starved, his real problem was an inappropriate diet. He smelled better now that we had regulated his insulin levels and gotten his kidneys under control, but his body still showed signs of his former circumstances. Most of all, the neglect could be seen in his face, where his prominent nose seemed too close to his sunken eyes.
This knowledge didn’t fix the problem of my future brother-in-law. At forty-two, I was far from the typical first-time bride. It was difficult enough getting around the fact that Lance’s brother Alex was very much a volatile ex-boyfriend of mine, without dealing with the landmine of my future mother-in-law’s fury should she feel I had denied Alex hospitality. She already considered me monstrous for leaving one brother for the other, never mind that it happened ten years ago and I had good reason.
Sophia’s willingness to make herself comfortable in Lance’s and my guest room in the days leading up to the wedding had initially given me hopes for a less tense relationship. But my hopes of her acceptance faded considerably when the first words out of her mouth off the plane last week were, “He’s finally gotten you to change your name, has he?” Nor had she been happy to learn that even after my title became “Mrs.”, my name would still be Noel Rue. I had not reached middle age without becoming firmly attached to my own identity, and I didn’t plan to change the paperwork on everything from my driver’s license to a bevy of graduate degrees.
Lance clearly hadn’t thought of who would be portrayed how and in whose eyes, should Alex be consigned to a hotel. In fact, it was doubtful he had thought of seriously turning his brother down at all. More than likely, he had said anything to get his younger, more athletic, more financially successful sibling off the phone so he could come break the news of the arrival to me.
“Where is he now?” I asked. “How long do we have to come up with something?” It was always possible he had flown in at the more distant Dayton, or even Cincinnati, airport, not up the road in Columbus.
This time, Lance didn’t say anything. He looked around me. Then his hands went down to his sides and our eyes finally met.
“He called you from our house, didn’t he?” I asked.
Lance nodded once, an infinitesimal slump of the head, and then he resumed his examination of the food bucket.
“Which means,” I went on, “it’s a good bet that whatever we say, your mother has already counteracted it.” We’d invited Alex to the wedding as a courtesy to Lance’s parents, and now that he had accepted our grudging offer at the last possible moment, I wanted to move back in time and rescind the invitation.
Now, Lance put his hands in his pockets and nodded.
I blew out a loud breath, trying to decide if anything could be done. Nothing came quickly to mind, and instead I looked over at the monkey I was trying to socialize. Maybe he had some ideas.
Darting glances at the humans, the rhesus crept over to the food I had so recently delivered to his bowl. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as he slid a hand into the mix. He checked again to make sure neither of us planned to snatch his selection back. Lance assumed the same nonchalant pose that I had suddenly adopted, pretending to look at everything but the monkey. It scurried over to the cage’s far corner to eat, and I tried to think rationally about my future in-laws.
“If Alex contributed to this guy’s normalization, I might be willing to forgive him quite a lot,” I finally said. “Maybe I could stay the night with my folks.”
Lance sagged in total defeat. “Maybe that would be best,” he said quietly. Then his shoulders came up again. He said, “If you do, I think I’ll come with you.” It was the first time since I’d seen him coming down from the barn that he’d looked even remotely happy.
“Seriously?” I asked.
I had hoped my question contained a hint of are you crazy? But Lance missed my tone or chose not to hear it. “It’s perfect!” he said. “Mom hasn’t spent a night in the same house as Bub since he left for college. We’ll leave the two of them alone and see who comes out alive.”
I hissed, then picked up my bucket and headed towards the other cages, where hungry primates hooted and warbled in anticipation of their meals.
Behind me, Lance continued, “Maybe she’ll . . . .” He trailed off, seeming to realize I’d walked away.
I called back, “Great. That’s going to fix everything.”
The squirrel monkeys twittered and scolded while I filled their bowls and shook some crickets on top. If we didn’t mix their diet up on a regular basis, they would get bored and stop eating.
Lance caught up to me and said, “It’s not like he’d seriously hurt his own mother. Bub isn’t the same guy we used to know.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Don’t you dare tell me how fabulous he suddenly is.” Now I felt as frustrated as Lance had looked when he first arrived beside the rhesus’ cage.
We stared at each other across the squirrel monkey feed for a few more moments. I picked the bucket up, but Lance took it out of my hand. He set it down behind him, out of my reach. “It’s all going to be finished tomorrow,” he said. And then he kissed me.
I had seen the kiss coming, but I still nearly lost my balance when he pulled me towards him. He’s quite a bit taller than I am, and his arms encircled my shoulders as he drew me in close. I wrapped my own arms around his waist and felt my initial flush of surprise turn into one of desire. A lot of our friends seemed startled when we opted for a ceremony to formalize the union we had known w
as permanent for a very long time. But when I imagined kissing Lance like this, in front of our assembled relatives, colleagues, and comrades, I knew it was exactly the right thing for us.
When we finally broke apart, Lance said, “Allow me, madam,” as he bowed down to collect my bucket for me.
“Oh!” we both said.
Lance had put the bucket entirely too close to the spider monkey enclosure. Although none of them could reach it with their arms or legs, a very determined tail had crept down to wind around the bucket’s handle. The little animal was now straining mightily to lift the prize it felt it had won. Lance deftly unwound the tail and pulled the food out of reach. I rewarded the intrepid explorer by feeding that group next. Then, Lance still carrying my bucket, we headed over to the colobus area.
Before we could deliver to that group of primates, Art came on the radio. “Sally, Lance, Noel, Trudy, Gary, Janie, Allen, Pat, Linda, all of you, whoever’s here today, get up to the entrance fast.”
“Art,” Lance said, “what’s wrong? You’re paging last spring’s interns. And Sally and Gary both graduated!”
“Never mind that!” Art shouted. His voice breathy, and urgent, he went on, “There’s an orangutan up here!”
EXCERPT
The Case of the Red-handed Rhesus
The Case of the Red-handed Rhesus leaves you
"expecting either a family drama or a whimsical whodunit" —Kirkus Reviews
Chapter 1
Natasha’s cell vibrated on the counter, but I ignored it. She often forgot to turn it off when she surrendered it to my care at 10 pm. It was well past midnight now, and I was busy unpacking. The move into Ironweed had been sudden, though anything but impulsive, and my husband and I were busy with the kitchen boxes tonight.
Tasha’s phone stopped buzzing as Lance lifted a stack of plates and set them on the counter. “I hate all this waste,” he complained, unwrapping the dishes and putting them in the cabinet above the sink. “Will you be able to reach these if I put them on the lowest shelf, Noel?”
“Try not to think about the waste.” I sliced open a box, revealing our stemware, then stretched my arms into the cabinet. Since I top out at at five feet, day to day items are best stored in easy reach. “As long as the plates are in front, I should be okay.”
The phone buzzed again. Lance groaned. Since she came to live with us, our fifteen-year-old foster daughter had blossomed socially. So much so that we found it necessary to place limits on everything from the internet, to outings with friends, to the aforementioned cell.
We had also been forced to adapt our views of what it meant to be a teen, which had heretofore been shaped by our contact with my sister’s children. Natasha was nothing like the college bound Rachel or Rachel’s fifteen-year-old sister, Brenda. For that matter, I doubted Tasha would have much resembled ten-year-old Poppy at the same age. Perhaps when she was eight. Maybe when she was my nephew Bryce’s age, she had seemed like a child. But right now, she was more like a badly confused adult in an underage body.
In fact, Natasha was a large part of the reason for this move. Lance and I used to pride ourselves on our economical lives in our small house, but that home had what Natasha called “one bedroom and one room with a bed.” It was all we could afford while trying to run the financially strapped Midwest Primate Sanctuary that was our passion as well as our profession.
Natasha’s grandfather Stan, a wealthy man who donated to all of Ironweed’s foundations, had made three bedside calls and purchased this home behind our backs. Then he sold it to us for a dollar. When I told him, “You can’t buy us a house like that, Stan!” he smiled and went mute, as if the pneumonia he had developed in the hospital had suddenly stolen his vocal cords.
What I wanted to tell him, “You can’t buy back Natasha’s mental health,” didn’t need to be spoken. He knew it. And it hurt him as badly as his broken bones.
On the way home from the hospital, Natasha wept, “This is my fault. I told him I got scared at night out there.” She took a veritable pharmacy of anti–anxiety medications to get through each day. And our old backyard had too many dark shadows.
“None of this is your fault, Tasha,” I told her. “He’s He’s assuaging guilt. , He also blames himself for Art’s death and everything you’ve been through.” It didn’t matter to Stan that until he and Gert finalized her adoption, Stan had been her step-grandfather. She was his only grandchild, and he and Gert were her only grandparents She was the most precious thing in their worlds. Art wasn’t only dear to Stan. He was our good friend, too. He had been killed by Natasha’s cousin, the same man who injured Stan, Gert, and Natasha herself.
When we realized how badly injured Gert and Stan were, and that Natasha had nowhere to go with her grandparents disabled, we impulsively invited her to stay with us. I had no doubt that even from what had nearly been his deathbed, Natasha’s grandfather had greased the social services wheel to speed the foster-care process. Somehow, our home study was already in progress while we completed the six weeks of parenting classes, even though the classes should have come first.
Thus, what should have been a three- to six-month delay to formalize Natasha’s durability as our guest wound up only taking eight weeks. We might not have needed to go through the formality at all if our connection to Stan and Gert hadn’t been so tangential or if Natasha’s former situation hadn’t been so dire.
I thought Lance was motivated purely by sympathy. But it was more personal for me. I knew a little more about what she had been through, having been once sucked into an abusive relationship myself, and I hoped I could reach her where another might not be able to do so.
In the end, Lance and I rented a truck, packed up our things, and moved into the town of Ironweed. However, now that we had done it and were preparing to rent out the old place, I felt less sure of the decision. I wanted my small home back.
As we placed the last of the plates and silverware, the phone once again ceased to rattle. Lance picked up another box. “That thing makes the whole counter shake.”
“It doesn’t.” I started working on the pots and pans.
Yet again, the cell on the counter vibrated. “Gah! If that thing goes off again, I’m turning it off.” Lance banged the spice box too hard, and I was momentarily grateful for the wasted paper and over-packing.
“If it rings again, I’m answering it. These kids can’t keep calling here at all hours.” In fact, I was delighted to have those kids calling late at night. Not that I was planning to let Natasha stay on the phone after ten, but it meant she had friends to call.
When she came to us in June, she was friendless. Partially, this was because she was still grieving for her mother. Partially, it was because she had finally passed the seventh grade the day after her fifteenth birthday. But much of Natasha’s condition resulted from her inability to accept that she was a victim rather than a perpetrator. She still apologized out loud to her grandparents in her sleep and took responsibility for everything that went wrong in her vicinity.
Her therapist had been helping to ease her fears of socialization with amazing speed. She wanted friends, after all, and her sweet personality made it easy for her to keep them. But she hadn’t known how to make them.
Again, the phone stopped. “Dr. Rue,” Lance said to me, “I believe we are moved in.”
“Dr. Lakeland, I think you’re right.” Other than the detritus of boxes scattered around the living room and the trash can full of pizza boxes and paper plates, we had now unpacked everything. It helped to live so economically.
“A celebration!” He reached for the stemware I’d so recently put away and I went for the bottle of champagne that was the only alcohol in the house.
“A toast!” I held up my glass and looked around our new home, with its four bedrooms and basement of unseemly proportions. “To excess and holding down two jobs to achieve the American Dream.” Not that we were technically carrying a mortgage, but we had agreed between ourselves to set asid
e money as if we were, so we could argue appropriateness with Stan at a more suitable time.
“May our return to teaching this semester be as simple as hiring graduate students to move our boxes proved to be.” We toasted and drank, but didn’t get to enjoy so much as an entire glass of the bubbly.
On the counter, the phone buzzed again. “Really?” I sipped my champagne and picked up the offending device.
“Turn it off.” Lance flopped on the couch with an arm crooked for me to sit in. “Her friends need to learn to call at reasonable hours.”
No name displayed with the number on the caller ID panel. “It’s not in her contacts list. And it’s a Columbus number. Six-one-four area code.”
“Lance sat up and lowered his arm. Columbus could mean bad things for Tasha’s grandparents or bad things from her past. If it were the grandparents, someone would have been trying to reach us, not her. Which meant this might be the other.
“Hello?” I used my ‘Dr. Rue’ voice, the one I had been practicing to use on undergraduates. The one I used setting limits with my foster teen.
“I thought I was calling Natasha Oeschle.” It was a woman on the other end of the line. An adult, not a kid, and she sounded breathless.
I kept my tone professorial. “Who’s calling, please?”
“You must be her foster mother. I’m Nelly Penobscott. Tasha fostered with me when she was twelve, and we’ve always kept in touch.”
“I see.” When she was twelve, Natasha had been making skin flicks for two years. Her mother’s drug issues meant she had briefly been in the care of the state, but I didn’t trust this caller. Lance had moved to stand behind me, and I twisted the phone so he could hear, too.
“Yes. I don’t have much time. I know what she’s been through, and I’m glad you’re protective of her. I have a message, and you can deliver it or not.”
“And what message is that?” I had dropped from professor to ice queen.
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