Biting the Moon (10 page)

There was a silence as Andi seemed to be digesting this information. Then she said, “What was his business in Santa Fe?”

“Now that I really don't know, dear. He didn't say a thing about that.”

Andi just looked at her. She stood with her hands shoved into the pockets of the leather jacket, slowly blinking, like a cat, looking at Patsy Orr. There was nothing hostile in the look, merely interested, curious. Or perhaps not even seeing the Orr woman but, instead, watching her own internal landscape.

The silence was almost as disturbing as Andi's mildly threatening manner had been. Then she said, “He mentioned some other places he—or we—had been along the way. He couldn't have got here all the way from Idaho without stopping.”

“Well . . . I believe I told you he mentioned Cripple Creek. They have a lot of casinos there now. I got the definite impression he liked to gamble. He struck me that way, you know. A man of chance.” She smiled as if she supposed both of them would have been struck the same way.

“That's the place in Colorado, I told you before,” Mary said to Andi. It seemed odd to her that Patsy Orr wasn't asking questions herself. Then she thought, no, she wouldn't want to know about Andi and “Daddy.” It was an issue she'd sooner stay away from.

“Oh!” Patsy Orr exclaimed. And “Oh!” again. “That was it.” She held out a can, silver and red: Red River Sockeye Salmon.

“Red River?”

“That's in Colorado too,” said Mary.

“No, no, dear. Salmon. It's a river in Idaho and your—he definitely mentioned that. That was the one I was trying to remember. And the town, it's called Salmon too.”

“What did he say about it?”

She put the can down, her palm over the top of it. “Well . . . I can't recall exactly. I know he put down Idaho Falls as the address, but somehow I got the impression one of you might have been from someplace else. Boise or Salmon, maybe.” She shrugged. “Or even someplace in Colorado.”

“Colorado,” said Andi, with a sigh. The spectrum of places that she hoped had been narrowed only widened out again. Abruptly, she thanked Mrs. Orr and said they had to get going. They had not sat down, so they did not have to get up. They thanked her again and left.

•   •   •

“How long is Rosella going to be gone?”

Mary shrugged. “Ten days, I think, maybe long—” She stopped suddenly on the pavement and looked at Andi skeptically. “You don't mean what I think you mean, I hope.”

“You said the car was yours.”

“It belonged to my sister. Forget it, I don't have a license.”

“You drove all the way to Mesa Verde, you said.”

“I drove there because I wanted to. Because I felt I had to; it was one of Angela's favorite places. We used to go there all the time.”

Andi started walking backward so as to keep Mary's face in view, as if staring her down would get her to agree. “You said Mesa Verde was over three hundred miles. So how much farther can Idaho be?”

“Another one, two thousand.”

“Come
on,
you know it isn't. Listen: if you won't drive, I can. I'm I over sixteen.”

“You don't have a license, either.”

“I just don't have it with me.”

Mary rolled her eyes skyward. “Oh, sure. You probably can't drive.” Mary knew this was a weak argument. If Andi was over sixteen, she knew how to drive, all right. It was the only reason for turning sixteen in the first place.

“There's one way to find out.”

“Dr. Anders is right. You shouldn't be allowed out by yourself.”

Determinedly, Andi said, “I'm going to find him, Mary. One way or another, I'm going to find him and make him tell me what happened.”

Another car was moving toward them, and Mary stuck out her thumb.

“If you don't go with me, I'll just hitch rides.”

“All the way to Idaho?”

“All the way to Idaho.”

The more she thought about it, the more Mary wanted to go. The thought of such a trip was exciting; all she needed to do was work up the nerve for it. (Andi had enough nerve for several people; still, it was awfully daring.)

They were talking in bed again that night. Andi was describing her imaginary family. “Their—I mean
our
—name is Olivier. I have two brothers. The younger one is Marcus; he's two years older than me. Then there's the much older one”—she stopped—“Swan. Swan Olivier.”

Mary turned her head, frowning. “Swan? I never heard of such a name.”

With a self-satisfied smile, Andi said, “It sounds foreign, doesn't it?”

“Uh-huh.” Mary yawned. “Don't you have any sisters?”

“Yes. Sue. She does charity work. We have a dog, too. His name is Jules, and he likes to watch us play badminton, so he can chase the badminton birds. When one goes outside the fence, he retrieves it.”

They went on to discuss the Oliviers for a while, with both of them embellishing the lives of the family. How Marcus loved to paint and how Swan was a pianist. And how Jules would sit on the line of the net, his head going back and forth, back and forth, watching the badminton bird rise and descend. They piled on details until the vague and airy outline of the Oliviers threatened to collapse. And then they stopped.

After a silence, Mary said, “To make this trip, we'd need money. A lot.”

“I still have almost three hundred dollars.”

“We'd need more than that. We'd be gone a few days. We'd have to pay for gas and food and motels. I'd have to go to the bank and get some of my own money. It's not that I mind, it's just that sometimes it's hard to convince the bank person that I need it.” But when was the last time she'd had to? Not in months, for she needed nothing beyond what the trustee would send her every month for food and clothes and spending money. He himself paid Rosella's salary out of his trustee's account.

“I'll pay you back.”

Mary frowned. The
would
of this discussion had turned to
will,
as if it were decided, and Mary wasn't sure she liked this being taken for granted. “I'll think about it.”

“Okay.”

Mary was left then to think about it. She would much prefer to argue about it. She lay with her hands behind her head.

“I can go in the bank with you,” said Andi.

“No. You'd tell him I need triple-bypass surgery. Good night.” Mary turned over on her side and watched the pale night beyond the window. She could see the small blooms of cactus, the shapes of rocks. It might be, she thought, what the landscape of the moon looks like. Sleepily, she thought of driving and driving and driving through it. Idaho.
Idaho.
She formed the word soundlessly, thinking it must be Indian.

As they sat eating blue-corn pancakes, Rosella said, “Tomkin's car is busted. I thought maybe we could drive into the city and Tomkin could drive you back in our car.” Rosella turned another pancake on the grill.

“But then how would Tomkin get back?” He was Rosella's friend and was to have picked her up this morning. Driving into the city was exactly what Mary wanted. She exchanged a look with Andi.

“Him? Easy, he's got a lot of friends with cars.” Rosella plopped another pancake on Mary's plate. “Just don't let me catch
you
driving that car, miss. I know what you get up to, don't think I don't.”

“
Me
? I'm only
fourteen,
for heaven's sakes!”

Rosella grunted. “You're only fourteen when it suits you. Rest of the time you're a hundred fourteen.”

Mary poured a thick band of syrup over her pancake. “Andi can drive. Legally.” Mary looked across the table at Andi, who smiled—who
beamed
—at Rosella.

Rosella looked at Andi with deep suspicion. “Who says?”

“Rosella, I'm seventeen. Do you know
anyone
who doesn't learn to drive by then?”

“Yes, plenty. Zuni don't think driving cars is what life's all about.”

Andi ignored this. “Learning to drive, it's like being baptized; it's like a Vision Quest.”

Rosella raised her eyebrows over her coffee cup. “What do you know about Vision Quests, eh?”

Andi started in on a long description, little of which was authentic, most of it a litter of specifics tossed out so carelessly that it was hard to separate fact from fancy. There was a detailed accounting of eagle-feathered headdresses and the summer solstice “when you go back for the Kok . . . Kokok . . . well, it sounds like Coca-Cola—and all dress up like turtles.” Mary had to marvel at the nerve of her, trying to get all of this past Rosella.

“Coca-Cola? You mean Kok'okshi? You are a—what do they say?—you are a mine of misinformation.” But Rosella seemed impressed by any non-Indian going into such detail, misinformed or not. Mary
could tell by the way Rosella listened. Rosella finally said, “First of all, Vision Quest and baptism are not the same; they are not alike. Vision Quest is not to wipe away sin, it's to make your spirit stronger. And where'd you ever hear that about dressing up like turtles? That is one of the craziest things I ever heard. It is the ancestors coming back to the pueblo in turtle
form.
This is not Halloween, young lady. Where did you get this crazy information, anyway?”

Andi thought for a moment, as she ate her pancake. “From a seer.”

“What seer? You mean shaman? Wherever would you come across one?”

Andi shrugged. “He was sitting beside his RV at the side of the road. We just started in talking. He said I should go on one. A Vision Quest.”

Mary just shook her head. Apparently, for Andi, there was no such thing as getting in too deep; she simply got in deeper. She would have all three of them caught here for days in this intricate saga, this web of bogus details.

But one thing Rosella would have to admit: Andi was as good a storyteller as any Zuni.

“We need maps,” said Andi, after Rosella and Tomkin had left with a friend of Tomkin. They had managed to convince Rosella that they would be fine, that Andi could indeed drive back and forth to Santa Fe if they needed something. Andi had done such a masterly job of convincing the two of them, Rosella and Tomkin, she had almost convinced the three of them—Mary included—until Mary suddenly realized that she herself would have to drive the car back to Tesuque.

Mary had been to the bank and done an equally masterly job of convincing the bank officer—a pleasant man who had been Angela's trustee and now was Mary's—that she needed a few hundred dollars for a trip. “Five hundred should be enough.” It was, after all, her
money, her parents' legacy. What she should have done, probably, was ask for small amounts from time to time and saved up for just such an emergency.

She had a hard time thinking of this as an emergency, especially after they'd bought some maps. Mary realized with a small shock that she'd never been anywhere, not that she could remember, outside of New Mexico, except for Mesa Verde in Colorado. She and Angela had come here from New York years before because an uncle had lived here. He was the only relative left, her mother's brother, now dead.

Idaho.
Up there next to Wyoming and Montana. My God, it was miles and miles! The excitement was compounded by the anxiety of driving all that distance. She shook herself out of a sort of trance induced by staring at lines and highways and place names.

“Here it is,” said Andi, nearly ripping Idaho in two, she brought her finger down on the map so hard. “Idaho Falls. And here's Salmon.”

They stood looking at the tiny black dot for some time, as if the little town would suddenly mushroom up from the map, its residents going about their business, going in and coming out of its stores and schools and tiny houses.

All that distance, thought Mary. All that
illegal
distance. She had never thought herself particularly timid before, but now, looking at the determined set of Andi's face, as she stood reading a book, Mary felt her own resolve weaken, trickle away like one of those distant winding rivers, those black and wavering lines.

What she felt in her veins was water, not blood. She looked from the map to Andi again. “You be careful of her, she's tricky. Like Coyote.” But Rosella hadn't been able to suppress a smile when she'd said it. So the trickiness was, perhaps, not all bad.

Andi had two other paperbacks beneath the one she was reading. When Mary came up to her, she shut it, smiled. “I'm buying these; they're about Idaho and Colorado. Come on, let's go home and see if I know how to drive.”

“
That's
going to be a treat.” But Mary was secretly pleased that Andi was already thinking of it as home. “I guess we better stop in Tesuque on the way and see Isabel.”

•   •   •

Mary always thought Isabel Woodlawn had taken a wrong turning on her way to a Jane Austen novel, one of those fussy, vapid, hysterical types who really meant the heroine no harm and usually ended up causing nothing but.

Isabel Woodlawn came to the door looking fraught with problems and impossibilities she would never have life to deal with, not even if she had, like the cat she carried, nine of them. Isabel had a vague, unfinished prettiness as if she hadn't waited around long enough for the hands of fate (or God, or the lady behind the Clinique counter) to put the finishing touches to, to fix the illusion that the space between the eyes was wider or the tilt of the nose perkier or the cheekbones higher. Today she was wearing another of her broomstick skirts, loose blouses, and a scarf twined about her forehead and falling down her back. Chunky silver earrings jingled when she turned her head.

Mary introduced Andi and Isabel introduced her cat, Cranky. The cat was spoiled to death, to the point it got its mistress to carry it around thrown over her shoulder like a fur piece. Mary was perfectly happy to have her act in loco parentis, a phrase Mary loved in relationship to Isabel. Mary had never been able to understand how Rosella, who certainly had good sense, thought Isabel a good bet as a caretaker. Maybe it was because Isabel talked so fast and at such length that one took this word storm to have an object, a target, when actually the words were a shower of arrows falling somewhere but never on the mark.