Fishing With RayAnne (12 page)

Nearing the gatehouse parking lot, she spots Ky restraining Wilt by one arm. “No more calling her Grandma Dotty. Do you hear?”

“But
you
do!”

“Never mind what I do. Where’s your brother?”

Wilt points to the entrance, where Michael Jordan is peeing into the fountain, mimicking the arc of the water spewing from the mouth of the bronze frog.

“Jesus Christ Almighty.”

“Jesus
fucking
christalmighty, Daddy,” Wilt corrects him.

RayAnne is almost upon them before Ky sees her. “Finally, a Human Being.”

It’s something they’ve called each other since grade school. During the peak year of their parents’ battles and the divorce,
Little Big Man
wasn’t just a film—it was their alternate universe. Letters to Santa could have been a props list for a Western. Luckily, Big Rick’s absentee-parent guilt was so great he filled their toy boxes and closets with enough arrows, feathers, suede fringe, tom-toms, tomahawks, and striped blankets to outfit an entire tribe of Human Beings. RayAnne wore moccasins and braids to school for the duration of eighth grade. Their tents and makeshift teepees were their territories, too small and inconvenient for their father to wriggle into when he would suddenly show up at the house all hugs and whiskey-cheer during custody visits. Kyle and RayAnne stubbornly played on their own, backs turned on Big Rick, who would pout until they reluctantly cast him as their Custer, a role for which he was unintentionally perfect, griping just like the general when they refused to follow his orders or play his way. The few times they allowed him to be an Indian, he was always a Pawnee named Talks Big.

After the divorce Big Rick bought a place of his own, a suburban townhouse furnished like a hotel, down to the wall art. Suddenly, he had legal custody for full weekends and RayAnne and Kyle were dragged from school Friday afternoons to Apple Valley. They hated his suburb of culs-de-sac with no sidewalks or stores to walk to, no trees large enough to climb. The visitations spanned infinity, with only the portal of the television screen and
Little Big Man
on the VCR for escape. When not watching Jack Crabb croak out his story, they played tricks on Big Rick, creeping silently along his colorless carpet to rearrange the contents of his desk drawers, his files, the kitchen cupboards, medicine chest, toolbox, closet, the trunk of his car. They shuffled sections of his Sunday paper and refolded it to appear unread. In their boredom they concocted a dozen ways to irk him. Too late, RayAnne realized the annoyance they incited only triggered an inclination to drink more.

They avoided any references to his drinking after Ky’s badly aimed suction-cup arrow hit Big Rick’s highball glass, spilling it into his lap. Ky defended himself by saying Big Rick drank too much anyway. Kyle was punished for his back talk by being made to stand out on the cold deck while RayAnne and Big Rick ate Chinese takeout from Ky’s favorite restaurant. His portions were set in plain sight of the window and later given to the dog while he watched. He’d been sent to bed with nothing to eat save the cold eggroll and two fortune cookies RayAnne was able to squirrel into her pockets.

They were barely civil to Big Rick’s girlfriends, referring to their visits as “casting calls” and dubbing them with Indian names like False Claw for the one with fake nails, or Perch Face, whose eyes were set wide like Jackie O’s. Brown Root was a bottle blond, and Swamp Lash was prone to leaky tears. All Pawnee. Less than six months after the divorce, their father began marrying such women, one after another.

Kyle and RayAnne eventually grew out of their
Little Big Man
phase, and the headdresses and chamois leggings and bows were shunted upstairs to the attic. But even now, the first question they pose to each other after they have dated or befriended someone new is “Are they a Human Being?” It a question that nearly always gives RayAnne pause.

Ky has a pleading look. “I was coming over to ask if you’d watch them for like twenty minutes.”

“Another run?” The boys begin circling the trike.

“I just wanna talk to Ingrid, uninterrupted . . .” He glances at a text on his phone. “She’s between flights at LaGuardia.”

“Why not. I’m surrounded anyway.”

Ky walks back to the fountain, phone to his ear. RayAnne lets the boys climb into the cargo well in the back and proceeds to struggle to wheel them around the parking lot. After three times around she’s red and sweating, but at least has burnt off a few of the morning’s French toast calories.

By the time she returns to the cottage with the groceries, Dot is fast asleep in her lounger wearing an oven mitt.

The hours before the party are humid, and RayAnne feels sticky before her dress is even zipped. As the house begins to fill, it grows even warmer, so that after each round circling with her tray of crudités, she stands in front of the open fridge. Each time the doorbell rings and it is not Big Rick, she flushes another degree. He hasn’t even called with an excuse.

Dot looks sweet in her new outfit, which she’s elegantly topped off with a rope of tied pearls. When complimented on her melon-colored silk scarf, she quips, “When I’m old I shall not wear purple. Ever.”

“Gran, you look beautiful.” RayAnne fluffs Dot’s pixie.

“With this bird wattle? I’m prehistoric.”

“Eighty isn’t that old.”

“If you say eighty is the new sixty, I’ll smack you.
I’m
so old”—she nods at the iPhone RayAnne is clutching, her fingers itching to speed-dial Big Rick’s number—“that when I was a girl and needed to talk to someone, I had to get on a horse.” This claim is actually true. Dot was raised in rural Wisconsin on an orchard she called “Apple-achia.”

Looking around, RayAnne sees two dozen bobbing gray heads, their cumulative years of life on Earth numbering in the thousands. Many are Dot’s neighbors; a few are friends.

Others are fellow volunteers from the shelter where Dot cooks on Thursdays—they brag that Dot packs the center with overflow diners with her gnocchi in marinara and crusty baguettes. On her day to cook, certain suspiciously un-homeless-looking men shuffle from the direction of the marina still wearing their Ferragamo loafers, Breitling watches shoved out of sight up their sleeves. But Dot serves them anyway, then serves up her donation box, sweetly suggesting they part with bills of large denominations.

A retired butcher, Sid, corners RayAnne and urges her to always buy kosher—it doesn’t matter if she’s Jewish or not. She promises, if only to stop him describing the correct and incorrect methods of slaughtering a chicken. “Even halal, sweetheart, just promise you won’t buy any of that filthy Tyson or Perdue crap. And don’t get me started on the ground beef.
Pink slime.
” He winks.

Old Mrs. Cruz and even older half-blind Mr. Cruz were pastry chefs “when God was a boy” and have baked a lopsided cake decorated with icing roses that look as if they were pitched from a distance. The frosting letters are piped in a telltale Parkinson’s hand:
Haffy Birtnday DoT
.

Not all the party guests are old. Later arrivals include young vendors from the open-air market where Dot gets her produce and fish, a gay couple RayAnne recognizes from the beach, and the guy from the fish-taco truck Pescado Loco. Looking at the gathering, it registers that nearly all Dot’s guests either grow, produce, or serve some manner of food: the turkey-sausage lady, the pair of citrus farmers, the chocolatier and her shrimper husband, and the many retirees that worked in the business. RayAnne has to smile. Dot’s social circle could staff some great prep kitchen serving the commonweal of the table. The past is the last harvest, the present is what’s in season, and the future is the next meal. Simple.

Mr. D seems to be hosting the event, which is fine with RayAnne and Kyle, who is happy to “let someone who speaks codger answer the door.” Dot tries to fuss over her guests, but no one will have it, making her sit as if she’s holding court, insisting she open their presents as they arrive. Most congregate at the buffet table, where there is more food than can possibly be eaten, but Dot has had the foresight to provide little takeout containers which no one seems shy about loading.

Kyle serves drinks alongside one of the tanned cruisers from the beach—a former bartender who cleverly fashions a tiara from bent straws and swizzle sticks for Dot, tickling her to her core when she’s crowned with it. The twins are nearly behaving, having been repeatedly warned they will lose the Xbox Kyle was forced to buy them so he can threaten to take it away.

Ky and RayAnne light the eighty candles, the song gets sung, and Dot gets lots of help blowing out the candles from Mr. D, seemingly plastered to her side.

The door opens, then slams. RayAnne hears Big Rick’s booming voice before she sees him. He’s made it after all—barely, just as the party is beginning to wind down and the early-to-bed crowd have started shaking their pill dispensers and poking themselves into cardigans. Those who had indulged had been slightly loopy after one cocktail and smashed after two. One fellow on his way to the bathroom got a funny look on his face and wondered aloud to RayAnne, “Was that audible?” She stepped quickly out of his range.

Big Rick is toting a giant stuffed giraffe, as if he’s passed through some carnival on his way from the airport. RayAnne watches from behind the louvered kitchen door as he makes a big deal of giving his mother this ridiculous present.

She slips out the sliding doors to the deck. For a while the party will be his—Big Rick’s presence demands that kind of attention, and she’d rather not watch people fall under his thrall—what Bernadette calls “the Ponzi”—his charm is always most effective on those who don’t yet know him. RayAnne can only hope he remembers that it is Dot’s night.

She can avoid him only so long, and eventually he spots her through the sliding glass doors and sets down the squirming twins he’s been holding like two footballs, shouting, “Hey, Baby Ray!” He sweeps his big paw to motion her in. When she doesn’t, he makes his way outside. Before he can speak, she holds up a hand. “Some timing, Dad. You were supposed to be here yesterday.”

“My flight was canceled.”

“Was it? Gran was expecting you. She even made you beef Wellington.”

“That steak baked in a crust?”

“Yeah. It was amazing. Ky gave yours to Trinket.”

“C’mon, RayAnne, I just got here.”

“And I’m leaving bright and early, so that works out kinda perfect.”

She is so used to his broken promises by now they shouldn’t come as any surprise. There’d been countless no-shows besides her sixteenth birthday. Her tonsillectomy, piano recitals, school plays, and the track meets where she’d be the only girl without a parent cheering at the finish line—her mother too busy “questing” and Big Rick missing in action as usual. Years later, out on the circuit, where she’d set out to prove herself in a place where he’d
have
to take note, he was nearly as elusive; even during the photo ops during which she’d be given the trophy or handed the check, he’d usually already have sidled off into the marina bar or lodge lounge, depending where they were, to “celebrate.” It’s one thing to stand
her
up—she can take it. But Gran?

“Your mother, in case you hadn’t noticed, turned eighty yesterday. And you’re just now showing up?”

Big Rick breaks from her glare. “RayBee, my flight was
canceled
; you can call the airline. I was on the first one out this morning, then I had to wait for a rental car . . .”

“Whatever, Dad.”

“Cross my heart.”

“If you can find it.”

She leaves him on the deck and retreats to the bar, which is really just a credenza pulled far enough away from the wall so Kyle can stand behind it and mix drinks. She pours her own gin, adding ice and tonic like afterthoughts. Kyle plunks in a garnish of lime, lamenting, “I wouldn’t mind getting shitfaced myself, but Gran says I can only drink beer while on duty.”

“For the best. Gin just makes you more idiotic.”

“And makes you a gnarly pissant.”

“Do you know I have been called that twice in two days?”

“It’s a Dot-ism. The boys think she’s made up nicknames for them, Piss and Ant.”

Dot sidles up and asks for a glass of ice she doesn’t need and pulls RayAnne through the door into the kitchen, scolding, “RayAnne, I heard you.”

“Heard what?”

“You can be awfully hard on your father.”

“And you can be awfully soft.”

“Our expectations are different. Mine are low, so—”

“So you’re rarely disappointed, I know. You forgive him
every
thing.”

Dot looks at her hard. “It’s what parents do.” She steers RayAnne out to the deck and takes a deep draught of air. “Besides, he left a voice mail. I got it before bed last night.”

“Why didn’t you say?”

She points to the ocean, rippled with moonlight. “Remember when you stayed with me summers and we’d watch the sun rise?”

“Yeah . . .”

“You were a neurotic little thing then too. Waking me at all hours like that.”

“Neurotic?”