Fishing With RayAnne (18 page)

“That’s right. It looks fabulous on the website. And did I hear Bernadette is writing a book?”

“She might be.” A vague memory of a mention, her mother talking about taking a class at the Loft Literary Center . . .

“Oh, you should have her on the show!”

“My mom?” RayAnne laughs. “That would be . . . ah—”

“Fabulous, right?”

“Nepotism?” A wave of cheers and a thousand fans jumping to their feet disrupts their conversation. Jeanette sighs. “Oh, I suppose we’re winning?”

After the uproar settles, Big Rick commences doing what he does, reminding the Farings how fantastic they are, asking all the right questions while RayAnne wriggles through the third inning, toggling between watching the action on the field and politely answering Jeanette’s questions about the show. And while she does not look back at her father or Al, she is acutely aware of each bottle cap pried, every foamy pour and clink of a beer glass.

As empties accumulate, Al seems to remember more of the old days, prompted by Big Rick, whose versions are certainly embellished. By the fourth inning they are great buddies enjoying a reunion. To celebrate the eighth home run, Al pulls a liquor bottle from his personal stash while explaining, “Gift from a colleague. Can I interest you in a sip? It’s twenty-year.”

When he sees the label, Big Rick grins. “Talisker?”

At this, RayAnne swings around and glares. Big Rick composes himself, chuckles, and says, “Gosh, I dunno, Al, Miss Gestapo here keeps pretty tight reins on her old man.”

Mr. Faring clucks at her, “Ach, he’ll have just one, then.” Mr. Faring has begun sounding like he’s just off the boat from the Scottish Highlands.

“A course I will,” her father says loudly, in RayAnne’s direction, perfectly imitating Al’s accent. “But just one.”

Through her teeth, RayAnne mutters something unintelligible and turns back to Jeanette and the game. When the other team scores, the stadium erupts in boos, and RayAnne whispers, “Yes!”

Jeanette just laughs and pulls a fat paperback from her crocodile Prada purse. “I only endure these games to keep an eye on Al.” She lowers her voice and smiles wearily. “Usually I just sit here and read whatever’s on tap for book club. See?” She drops
Fifty Shades of Grey
back into her bag. “Thank God you’re here. A real person! And your show!
So
clever. We just love love love it.”

Big Rick is as good as his word and has only one Scotch, but since it is sloshing in a sea of beer, he is cheerfully loud all the way back to the parking ramp, where they argue over who will drive. He doesn’t relent until she refuses to get in the Lincoln, and he tosses her the keys, muttering, “Jaysus, RayAnne, such a schoolmarm.”

E
IGHT

The streets of Ivy Dales, Ky’s outer-ring suburb, are not streets; they are Trails, Places, Ways, or Lanes, all named for great institutions of higher learning, though Ky would wager few if any residents besides Ingrid have matriculated from schools like Oxford (Lane) or Trinity (Circle). The Dales are laid out in such a manner as to defeat anyone as directionally challenged as RayAnne. She’s forever finding herself on Wellesley Place when she should have turned on Wellesley Trail to reach Ky’s faux saltbox on Wellesley Way.

Unaccustomed to maneuvering a vehicle as large as Big Rick’s Lincoln, she ignores his colossal sighs while wrestling the wheel to turn around and drive back the way they came. Ivy Dales is a maze. The last time she was this turned around was a city walking tour she took with Dot during her college graduation trip to Prague, when their guide had wound them around the cobbled streets of Old Town, explaining that when the Germans marched in to occupy the city, wily residents took down all the street signs to confound and confuse the enemy troops.

The same afternoon, she and Gran had visited a museum of art made by children of the Holocaust. She remembers thinking she had never seen Gran so quiet for so long, probably thinking of her own little girl, Betsy, who, had she not drowned, would have been an older sister to Big Rick, an aunt to RayAnne. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have an aunt? RayAnne wonders if her father might have been a different person if he’d had a sister, a different childhood.

After that gray trip to Prague, RayAnne could have kicked herself for choosing the former Eastern Bloc when they might have done the Mediterranean. It had been her graduation gift from Gran, the destination left up to RayAnne, who had been reading Milan Kundera at the time, so of course they’d slogged through the history of Wenceslas Square, ate awful meals, and got scowled at by sour-faced
Putzfrauen
in the restrooms for never leaving the right amount of coins in exchange for the few sheets of rough toilet tissue. They could have gone to Italy, toured Naples and the Amalfi Coast with Dot as her guide. They
should
go now. Why not? She decided to bring up the idea at Thanksgiving.

“There!” Big Rick cranes his neck. “Jesus, Ray-Ban, you’ve passed it
again
!”

She had to back up to the cul-de-sac. In Ky’s driveway the town car settles low when coming to a stop, like a boat.

Not everything on Wellesley Way is as it seems. The reason the split-rail fence surrounding Ky’s yard looks perfectly weathered but in an oddly repetitive way is because it’s made of wood-grained composite. Upon closer inspection, the fieldstone foundation is a little too glossy for real stone and has seams. And while the shingled house is designed to look New England–old, its interior is as beige and new as the suburb itself. Ky has grown to hate it all—the fakeness, the isolation, his riding mower, the homogenous skin tones of every neighbor. Ivy Dales is a wooded, more expensive version of the suburb Big Rick lived in after their mother kicked him out.

Ky is particularly rankled at being the object of curiosity and good-natured ribbing as the only stay-at-home dad in their neighborhood. He laments moving from the cramped inner city duplex he and Ingrid started out in, where junkies sometimes peed into the mailbox, but at least there was a coffee shop within a few blocks, a decent bowl of Vietnamese pho, and a sidewalk to walk to it on.

Ivy Dales may feel like Ky’s purgatory, but to Ingrid it’s a haven. After her arduous workdays spent working in DC or Manhattan, weekends at home are spent soaking up the chlorophyll green and the rambunctious silliness of her sons, so refreshingly real compared to the mind-numbingly predictable and seemingly soulless investment bankers she deals with.

Because it is Sunday evening, Ingrid is gearing up to catch a red-eye after the boys are in bed. RayAnne finds her sister-in-law in the master bedroom, folding fine washables still warm from the dryer into her garment bag. Ingrid’s everyday married-lady underwear is sexier and nicer than RayAnne’s best lace demi-bra and thong that she only wears on third dates.

Her sister-in-law is tall, beautiful, and weirdly smart in all the ways RayAnne isn’t. Terribly accomplished and professional, she is also endlessly and genuinely amused by the entire Dahl family, doling out warm indulgences for even their most asinine behaviors. “You guys are something
else
” is often her take. She adores them as unconditionally as she does her unruly litter of two. “Wow,” she will say, giggling. “Nobody has to guess what anyone in
this
family is thinking!” Her parents were born in the Faroe Islands, where to smile showing teeth or to frown enlisting an eyebrow is considered losing it. Ingrid’s veneer is equally composed, but not at all chilly—when she breaks reserve, it is to cry, “You guys!”

RayAnne had thought the fishing circuit was misogynistic, but Ingrid has told stories about big banking that could curl her hair—the richer they are, Ingrid claims of the investment executives she investigates, the more engorged their senses of entitlement, the bigger their boners for owning everything, even everyone, in their sightlines, whether they actually want them or not. Ingrid reckons there are as many sex addicts and acquisition-alcoholics in banking as there are steroid abusers in the
Tour de France
. She claims most men she encounters actually despise females, uttering the word “woman” in the same tone they reserve for “Democrat.”

“Trust me,” Ingrid will say, shrugging. “The same thing that makes these guys desire a woman is the same thing that makes them hate one. I mean, they’ll get women, they’ll
own
them, but somewhere in their psyche is probably some little boy with a horrid mother who used to slap his peepee when he wet the bed or locked him in a cupboard if he touched himself.”

Ingrid can seem a little world-weary to RayAnne.

When Ingrid’s firm steps in to evaluate a bank or investment group, those under investigation expect big guns in power suits girded by troops of number-crunchers and assistants. When they see the emissary is a mere woman without even an assistant at her slender side, they breathe a sigh of relief—their first mistake. Their second is misreading her Scandinavian reserve for shyness, assuming this winsome blond with a disarming Faroe accent is what she appears.

There is an entire staff poised behind Ingrid’s back. She’s a strategist—and like those she’s paid to take down, holds a Harvard MBA and has
The Art of War
down pat. But her résumé also includes degrees in economics and philosophy. She’s considered an expert in statistical analysis and is in a pool of talking heads sought out for think tanks and comments by the press. Her resolve to see Citizens United abolished is downright ferocious; Ingrid does not want her sons to grow up in an America puppeteered by corporations. There’s been talk of her teaming up with Elizabeth Warren for the fight, but whenever the subject of moving to Washington is broached, Ky sticks fingers in his ears and hums. He loves Minneapolis as fiercely as he dislikes its suburbs.

Ingrid’s work wardrobe—components of it laid out on the bed RayAnne lounges on—appears utterly feminine but has a strategy as serious as a heart attack. All skirt hems land one inch above her knee, revealing precisely the amount of leg that incites a desire to view more. She’d never “go in” wearing pants: “So Hillary! And oh, does the boys’ club hate
her
.”

Ingrid’s gabardine and pinstripe Hugo Bossy underwire creations are a collaborative effort between her and an effeminate tailor in Saint Paul named Tran. Tran and Ingrid meet twice a year to cut up
Vogue
and
Esquire
fashion spreads, pairing one image of a stunning dress with another of a man’s Italian cashmere suit, or a herringbone number with razor pleats. Despite the language barrier, Tran seems to understand Ingrid’s mission perfectly, shaping various elements into designs and adding his own dragon-lady flair. The end result is sexually charged yet utterly untouchable, the power broker’s wet dream, detonating their instinct to either pursue Ingrid or resist her, both win-wins for her team.

“My armor,” she calls the wardrobe, keeping it all in a separate closet. “I’m rarely manrrupted wearing Tran’s creations.”

“Manrrupted?” RayAnne is examining a suit jacket; its tailoring reminds her of Helga the Bra Viking’s Valkyries.

“Interrupted by a man.” At home, Ingrid manages to look elegant in yoga togs and scuffed ballet slippers.

RayAnne catches herself in the mirror; her own weekend ensemble is plaid cutoffs and a tank top not quite covering the shoulder straps of her jogging bra. If clothes announce an agenda, hers would be
don’t mind me
.

After Ingrid’s garment bag is locked and loaded, RayAnne glances out the window to the house across the street, which looks like an afterthought to the four-car garage that dominates it. She drops the diaphanous underpants she’d been unconsciously fondling and falls back onto the pillows. “Come back to the city, Ingrid.” RayAnne pleads, “Come back and live closer to the Human Beings.” Meaning her, of course.

“Ky’s always saying the same thing; so is Bernadette,” Ingrid laughs. “You guys!”

Big Rick takes the twins out back with the walkie-talkies, and RayAnne follows Ingrid to the boys’ room, where Danny Boy is happily reclining in his cage among candy wrappers. The boys have been hamster-sitting and have been promised that if Danny Boy makes it to the end of September, they will be given a pet of their own. After two months, Danny Boy is fatter and probably diabetic, but beggars can’t be choosers, and she’d begged Ky to take care of him while she was working at Location for the summer.

“Sorry, Danny.”

In the kitchen, they watch Big Rick and the twins through the vast windows. The back of the saltbox is nearly all glass. “Like a dollhouse,” RayAnne muses, prompting Ky to shift in midstep to become a stiff-legged Ken doll. The kitchen is larger than the entire first floor of her row house, and many times brighter, with lighting that seemingly glows from nowhere and bounces off an institutional amount of stainless steel.

They crack pistachios and rehash the plan they will pose to Big Rick over dinner—that he go back to Arizona and make up with Rita. Ky suggests reverse psychology.

“You know, challenge the old ego, maybe suggest Rita
won’t
take him back?”

Ingrid calculates this risk in her actuary’s brain and shakes her head. “Wrong approach.”

“We could . . .” RayAnne ventures. “We could encourage him to go back to her like we’re concerned for his well-being, you know, his happiness.”

When Ky and Ingrid both blink at her, she surrenders her palms. “Well, I don’t know.”

“He can stay here for four days.” Ky leans back, crossing his arms. “Max.”

Ingrid frowns. “Why not till next weekend? That way I can see him again.”

They look at Ingrid as if she has special needs, then back to each other.

“Do you think he’ll really go back?” Ky looks dubious.

RayAnne shrugs. She has to feel sorry for number six. Rita, like the others, is younger than Big Rick by decades. “I wonder what they have in common to even fight about.”

“And that’s probably the problem.” Ky is tossing pistachios and catching them in his mouth. “I doubt he invests much in husbanding, anyway. So what’s to fight about?”

“Point. Maybe he yelled himself out with Mom.”

RayAnne and Kyle grow quiet, as if beamed back to the past when Big Rick would arrive at the house after a trip like a train pulling in, when he and Bernadette would roar and screech so loudly that RayAnne and Ky would crawl under their beds or creep like a
Little Big Man
Pawnee to the top of the stairs. Given their mother’s lousy aim, the glassware and pottery pitched at their father’s head rarely hit the mark, and though Big Rick never struck Bernadette, there always seemed to be the possibility, the threat that one of them would win one day on some level, meaning the other would lose. They sometimes feared their mother might drop the pottery and pick up a knife. For the year or so before the divorce, RayAnne mused that at least a slap would be specific; blood would be a definite something.

Ky had once tried to explain the family dynamic for Ingrid, but she hadn’t grasped the notion, responding rationally, “But Kyle, alcoholism is a disease. Surely your father didn’t mean to be horrid.”

He may not have meant to be, but he was. At the time, the word “disease” would have meant nothing to a couple kids clinging to a stair bannister in the middle of the night, pajama sleeves wet with tears and snot.