Deep in the Valley (8 page)

Another year, he thought, and Tanya can do her own driving around. In fact, she can drive the younger kids to all their stuff. And pick up a few things at the store, and run a few errands, and fill up the tank, and get Grandma to Rockport for her American Women meeting, and… He frowned.
And drive around the back roads too fast, park and make out, stay out too late, go to those secret teen drinking parties in the woods….
He said to himself, “Don’t borrow trouble. She’s a good girl, just growing up beautiful and making Daddy nervous.” He felt the beginning of a smile…that froze.

He saw the bright red of Tanya’s sweatshirt just peeking out from behind one of the school’s pillars at the side exit to the parking lot. He let the Range Rover silently move forward until she came into view, and he saw that she was covered by a lanky boy who had her pressed against the pillar while they kissed. It was Tanya’s sweatshirted arm holding the boy that Tom could see. And some of her long, silky black hair, which hung almost to her waist.

It wasn’t just any boy, it was Tom’s worst nightmare. Frank Craven. Abused and poor and angry Frank.

Tom laid on the horn with a solid long blast, startling the kids apart. Frank composed himself quickly and glared at the police chief in the Range Rover. Tanya
gave her dad a wave, then put the hand against Frank’s cheek, turned his face back to her and gave him a quick peck on the lips before grabbing her backpack and heading for the car.

“Well, that was pretty embarrassing, Daddy,” she said when she jumped in.

“Tell me about it,” he replied. “I’m glad I was alone.”

“I
thought
we were alone!”

Tom drove a little. He was comfortable with quiet, but he knew he’d better not indulge too much of that. “How long, Tan?”

“What?”

“How long has Frank been your boyfriend?”

“I don’t know. Awhile.”

“In weeks or months, please.”

“Since Christmas or so. Or I guess since Homecoming.”

“Jesus.”

“You praying over us?”

“Tanya, why didn’t you tell anyone? Why is it a secret?”

“It’s not, Daddy. Not really. It’s just that the only time we could ever be together was at school. And Frank wasn’t allowed to make phone calls. You know why. Because of that monster of a father he has.”

“Who is now locked up,” Tom reflected. “But not forever, you know.”

“Oh, we know.”

“Tanya, Frank is troubled.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” she shot back.

“It isn’t good, him being your boyfriend.”

“It’s too late, he already is. We like each other, Daddy. He’s a good guy.”

“He’s got issues that go back generations.”

She laughed, but not really in amusement. Not meanly, either, but hollowly, as though in surprise. “Well hell, like the Cherokee have no issues! Or the Navajo!”

“I’m talking about domestic issues, Tanya, not cultural ones. I’ve seen the angry spark in that boy’s eyes and I’m afraid of what he’ll become, if he hasn’t become violent already. I’m afraid he’ll hurt you.”

“He won’t hurt me, Dad.”

“You can’t know that for sure.”

“I do know it. I do. And if he ever acted mean to me, that would be it. It would be over forever.”

“He’s in counseling for fighting.”

“I know. That’s a good thing, don’t you think?”

“Have you talked to your mother about this? About Frank?”

“No, but I think I will now. Because you obviously can’t
wait
to tell her.”

I dread to tell her.

“Just don’t get any ideas,” she said. “You know, about restricting me or telling me I can’t like him or anything like that.”

He sighed. “Tanya, I am filled with ideas.”

“Well, you know how that works. You put the clamps down, I want him more. Right? So don’t try any of that stuff. Just leave me alone about it. It’s my business.”

“Oh brother.”

“And don’t get Grandma and Grandpa all worked up
about this, because you
know
how they are. Grandma’s secretly working on my arranged marriage, and I don’t think it’s to a blond-haired Craven.”

“Tanya…”

“If you weren’t so nosey—”

“Tan…”

“Honestly! Sneaking around the parking—”

Tom slammed on the brakes and skidded quite a ways down the country road. Tanya was flung hard into her seat belt, and when she turned to look at her father, her eyes were large and round with surprise. He turned in the driver’s seat and leaned over the console that separated them. He appeared to be a little larger than usual and she was reminded that, although Tom Toopeek seemed stoic, methodical and mostly gentle, he did have another side. A rarely seen side.

“Be sure your tone is respectful, Tanya. You were cavorting in public, that’s how I saw you. It was shameful. Your mother would have been appalled. You should be punished for that behavior, but I’ll let it go. This time. And I will tell you this, Frank Craven has serious problems and he needs help to sort them out. If, during this time that he’s trying to redirect his life, he hurts you in any way, he will have to answer to
me!
”

Tanya’s eyes became moist and she touched his arm. “Daddy…” she squeaked.

Tom shifted and began to drive again. “I think maybe you’d better tell Frank that,” he said, his voice much more controlled. His rages were rare, and they were always quickly spent.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said softly. “I’ll be careful.”

“And from now on, more honest than you have been. Careful and honest.”

“Yes, Daddy. I will.”

“That is all your mother and I have asked of you.”

The rest of the way to the Granger farm there was no more talking, only occasional sniffing from Tanya’s side of the car. When Tom pulled up to the farmhouse, Tanya started to reach for her backpack, but he grabbed her wrist. This time his voice was gentler. “Tanya, you are my pride and your mother’s jewel. You must respect yourself as much as we love you.”

She nodded her head solemnly and left him alone in the car, alone with the burden of his fears for her. If she thought he was nosey before, she hadn’t seen anything yet.

“S
omething serious is bothering the good doctor,” said Corsica Rios.

“A woman carries her troubles in her hands,” Birdie Forrest explained to Jessica.

Ursula Toopeek whispered to Jessica, “Not in her palms, but in her fingers. More specifically, her fingertips.” Ursula’s mother-in-law, Philana Toopeek, nodded vigorously. Philana was a woman of very few and always carefully chosen words.

The hardest place ever to be with a secret was the quilting circle. As the women worked the needles and tugged on the fabric, pulling at the edges of the quilt, they could feel the tension in each other’s stitches and hands. Almost everyone in the circle was expected to use some sort of job-related discretion. But among these longtime, trusted friends, it was hard to keep quiet about a personal issue that was
longing
to be freed, to be shared.

It was an odd and fabulous quilting circle, the Graceful Women. June’s mother, Marilyn, had been in
it all her married years till her death of heart failure nine years ago. The oldest member now—the grande dame—was Birdie Forrest, Judge’s wife. Birdie had been Marilyn’s best friend and was June’s godmother. The next in line of seniority was Philana Toopeek, Tom’s mother. Marilyn and Birdie had brought her in about thirty years ago. Corsica Rios had joined them over twenty years ago, when she was a single mother and student. She was now a county social worker. It was June who had invited Tom’s wife, Ursula, a teacher. And then, as an experiment, Jessica—an experiment that had worked.

It wouldn’t have occurred to most people to invite a twenty-year-old Goth into a quilting circle of older women. But one day at the clinic, after modeling the latest in her fashion craze—a floor-length black skirt with a slit to the thigh, black sweater, black hose and Doc Martens—Jessica had admitted she’d sewn the skirt. But of course, June had thought. The girl would have to sew to come up with her many avant-garde outfits. She was motherless, and would have had to figure it all out on her own. So June brought her to the circle, where five women pitched in on the nurturing of Jessica, and Jessica stitched on something that was not quite so bizarre for a change.

Jessica had a rather special loyalty to June, and said in her defense, “It’s been a very busy week in the clinic.”

“It has been. But actually, I was missing my mother,” June said.

Philana cleared her throat, but didn’t look up from the quilt. “A woman misses her mother when she has problems with a man or a child.”

“That’s simple,” Ursula interjected. “The handsome new doctor is drawing women patients from three counties.”

“He’s a strange one,” Birdie said.

June had to concentrate to keep her head from snapping up at attention.

“Strange how?” Ursula asked.

“He has this oblivious nature. Always positive, always devastatingly gay.”

Jessica laughed so loudly and suddenly, that her colorful Mohawk wobbled.

“He’s a huge phony, don’t you think, June?” Birdie asked.

“I hadn’t thought
that,
really….”

“I’m sure he’s a very good doctor just the same, but the way he’s always so charmed by everything… It’s nonsense. Maybe he’s covering something.”

“Oh please, as though it isn’t possible for a man to be amused and charmed? He has a very developed feminine side,” Corsica argued.

“No, Birdie is right,” Jessica said. “He’s covering something. It makes him come off very dorky.”

They all stopped stitching and stared at her.

“Really,” she said. “You think you have Robert Redford or Brad Pitt or something, until he opens his mouth. Birdie says it better, but what I mean is, he’s a dork. He’s not very with it. His wife, Susan? Now, she gets it. She’s totally sharp. But John? He’s pretending not to notice or take seriously the fuss all the women are making, and it makes him look stupid, but he’s not. He’s, like, way too positive. Oh, and Birdie, I’ve told you before, stop calling things that are happy ‘gay.’”

“Yes, dear, you must remind me, mustn’t you? By the way, I love what you’re doing with your hair these days. Must have Charlotte positively out of her wits.”

“She’s coping very well, actually. I’m going to shave it off soon. Maybe next week. That should put ten pounds on her.”

“Wicked, wicked girl!”

“If she wouldn’t pick on me so relentlessly, I wouldn’t do nearly as many artful things with my hair. Doesn’t she understand? My father is an
artist!
It’s not likely I’ll run out of avant-garde ideas! She has a nerve, too. She must never look in the mirror.”

“I know I shouldn’t be tacky and mean, but I’ve always wondered how she manages that dye job of hers,” Ursula said. “The color is rather extraordinary, but that half inch of gray at the hairline is simply remarkable. It always looks as though she did it three weeks ago.”

Philana reached across Corsica to touch the top of June’s hand. “Is that what makes your fingers tight tonight, June? The handsome new doctor?”

It was maddening, she thought, how everyone referred to him as the Handsome New Doctor. She wished her challenges with John Stone were limited to his good looks or dull personality. Even though she had trusted friends in whom she could confide, and could most often trust Elmer’s discretion if the subject was vital enough, she was keeping her own council for the time being. At least until she had a sense of whether John was worse than dorky, or whether her pregnant young patient was either a troublemaker or hysterical or both. At the moment she had utterly no idea.

“You were almost right, Philana,” June said. “I was wishing I could talk to my mother about something…about not having a child. I’m feeling such regret.”

There, she thought. That will get them off the scent.

All fingers went still and all eyes focused on her face.

“What?” June said. “I’m thirty-seven. Did you think I hadn’t noticed?”

Ursula swallowed. “Who do you regret not having a child
with?
”

“Just because I haven’t had a date in about a hundred years doesn’t mean it was my choice! There’s no one here to date, for goodness sake!”

“There are plenty of handsome young men around.”

“Oh really? They must all be healthy as horses because I don’t know any of them.”

“They happen to be, and that’s the good news,” Ursula said with a laugh. “You wouldn’t want a sick one, would you? Now let’s see, there’s Larry Richards, the vet. He’s a great guy. And so handsome.”

“He’s fifty!”

“True, he might find you too old. And how about Bill Sanderson at the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department? We’re all crazy about him at my house. He’s available.”

“I had this teacher in high school, Mr. Larkin,” Jessica added. “What a hunk.”

“Lou Larkin’s married.”

“Not anymore. And there’s always Greg Silva.”

“He doesn’t live here anymore.”

“He visits his father every week and would probably
move back in a second if he had the slightest reason to. But Jessie, what about your father? Is he seeing anyone?”

“Believe me, June wouldn’t want to get involved with my father. His art comes before everything. Sometimes it’s like talking to a brick.”

“Really? I never thought that of your dad,” Ursula said. “He always seems so articulate and funny and—”

“When he’s out in public, he can do that, but at home he’s a whole other—”

“Wait a minute,” June protested. “We’re off the subject here. I’m not having any regrets about not dating. It’s not having a child I’m lamenting!”

“Oh mercy, forgive us,” said Birdie. “Here we were thinking you’d have to do that with a
man.
”

“To tell the truth, I don’t think I’d want to do it that way,” June said.

“What was that?” Birdie asked, cupping a hand over her ear and staring off into the distance. “Ah,” she said. She looked back at June. “That was your mother. Shrieking.”

Jessica howled joyously. “Oh Birdie, I love you. What did my dead mother say about my Mohawk? Did you ask her?”

“She said you were just going through a little stage, darling. Now, June—”

“I haven’t done anything, Birdie, but I’ve given it some thought. If I were to meet a man I liked, it would probably be years and years before we got to the parenting stage. Wouldn’t you suppose? And I’m not saying I wouldn’t be interested in meeting, dating and
marrying someone. That would be lovely. But I don’t have to do that to be a mother. I could be a single mother. Women do it all the time. Actresses, particularly.”

“Would you want to, you know, have a pregnancy? Or would you adopt a child?” Ursula asked.

“Selfishly, I think I’d like to be pregnant, to give birth.”

“Have you run this by Elmer?” Corsica inquired.

“Not exactly,” June admitted. “But you remember when Julianna—”

“Ahh,” all the older women said, and looked back at their stitching without even letting June finish. Because of her youth and inexperience, Jessica didn’t know what had transpired, so she continued to stare at June, puzzled. But June knew what had happened. Philana, Ursula, Corsica and Birdie were all mothers, and knew the magic of holding a newborn. Added to that, the Dicksons were a storybook family—young, beautiful, strong, healthy, happy. They lived in the midst of their voluptuous orchard in their large Victorian home, nurturing each other and the children. Their lovely country home smelled of lemon polish and apple pies. They grew their own food, home schooled the kids. Grandma Dickson lived with them; Grandpa Holmes lived next door. A couple of hours in their home and all you wanted from life was to have children and polish furniture and bake.

“I think it’s a great idea, June,” Jessica said protectively. “And if you go through with it, I’ll be happy to baby-sit.”

The quilting circle always met at Birdie’s house because she and the judge lived in town and the others lived in a wide circle around Grace Valley. Also, Birdie was the senior member and was privileged to choose. As she got older, seventy now, she chose not to do too much night driving or fussing, so she picked her house and provided only the coffee; the others all brought plastic-wrapped and Tupperware-encased goodies. Afterward, it was not uncommon for June to stop by the clinic, a mere two blocks away. She’d check the messages, maybe look at charts, do a little paperwork, jot out a to-do list for the next day. Or maybe just sit peacefully in her office.

She was so proud of the place. She’d dreamed of it her whole time away at med school and during her residency. When she got back to Grace Valley she’d begun hounding Elmer. There were doctors’ offices and clinics and hospitals up and down the coast, but not much inland where they were. There were easily a dozen small towns around them, not to mention rural farms, orchards and mountain homes whose residents would find the trip to the valley more expedient than going all the way to one of the coastal towns.

These were her people; she was their doctor. She’d grown up in their homes, just as they had come to hers in times of need. She was committed to giving her life to them, so the clinic was a capital idea. Elmer thought so, too, but he didn’t think the town could shoulder the cost, and he knew the doctors couldn’t; they might take vegetables and eggs for payment, but building contractors liked real money.

It was Myrna Claypool who’d come to the fore. She’d built the clinic and paid for it. With cash. June wanted to call it the Claypool Clinic, but Myrna refused. She said too many people already thought she was dead; it wouldn’t help things to go naming buildings after her.

Myrna might wear funny hats and write graphically violent novels, but she was from the old school and thought it vulgar to discuss money. No one had any idea how much she was worth, not even Elmer, or whether she had boundless bundles of money and chose to drive a thirty-five-year-old vehicle, or had shot her whole retirement fund on the clinic. As to that, no one knew whether her money had come from the Hudson legacy or from her books, which seemed to enjoy widespread popularity. Perhaps she had done business with one of the San Francisco banks and mortgaged the clinic; her house and land had to be valuable. Whatever her means, the clinic—ten rooms—and its accoutrements cost one-and-a-half million dollars. She had hardly blinked an eye, and she would not even discuss repayment from June and Elmer. “The town’s been good to me,” she had said, her final word on the subject.

June sat at her desk. The folder she looked down at was John Stone’s employee packet and contract. If he had compromised the integrity of the clinic or any of the patients, he would live to regret it. This was her silent oath.

She closed the file before she got too stirred up. When she looked up, she almost jumped out of her skin.

A bearded man stood in her office doorway. He leaned on a gun that was almost his height, as if it were a staff.

“Jesus, Cliff,” she hissed. She fell back into her chair to catch her breath. It was only Cliff Bender, a farmer and woodsman she’d known her entire life—which might be the same length of time he’d grown that matted beard and worn those filthy overalls.

“Little jumpy tonight, Doc?”

“You better not have tracked dirt in here, Cliff. I don’t get the floor washed again till Friday night.”

His boots were a sight, but he turned one foot up and peered at the bottom. “I reckon I wiped ’em good enough.”

“What’s the problem?”

“It’s the toe. Again.”

“Shoot. I thought we had it licked.”

“I’m thinkin’ about loppin’ it off, save us both some time and trouble.”

June laughed. “Don’t get drastic, I still have a little fight left in me. Go on, you know what to do.”

He gave a nod, turned and went to the treatment room down the hall, where he would soak his infected toe. June had told him on previous nocturnal visits that she wasn’t about to touch that filthy foot. He would take off the old boot and sodden sock, roll up the crusty pant leg and soak his foot in a basin of soapy water—just as he’d done before.
Then
she would deal with the toe.

Cliff was diabetic, and just getting him on an insulin schedule had been challenge enough. Helping him take care of his body’s special needs was going to be the end
of everyone in the clinic. He’d smashed his toe uprooting a stump a few months ago and he just couldn’t beat the infection. Lopping it off might indeed be the final answer.