Fishing With RayAnne (21 page)

But, just as Gran says, where there’s a bloom on the rose, there’s usually a pile of horseshit nearby.

RayAnne is working over Penelope’s bow with a tin of paste wax and a cloth diaper when Cassi finds her. Since this morning’s news, she’s been avoiding the crew and staff, most gone apoplectic since the final scheduled guest of the season canceled at the last minute—the math teacher with the nose transplant, something about sinuses and airplanes. Now they are frantically scrambling to find a replacement so the show can wrap. As it is, the Grouper is already wound like a spring with Big Rick ignoring her. The season wrap party is slated for that evening, and a bunch of sponsors are due to converge on Location.

RayAnne had been totally prepared for the math teacher and her newly constructed nose—had voraciously read the notes and drafted questions into the wee hours. Rebecca Standish had been hiking in the Badlands in a lesser canyon with a Milky Way bar in her shirt pocket. When something huge stepped into her path, she’d barely known what hit her. The next thing Rebecca knew, she was sitting in her bra, her shirt torn away save a single sleeve, watching the rump of a grizzly shambling up the trail—the rest of her shirt stuck to the bottom of his rear paw like toilet paper. In shock, she began laughing uncontrollably, slow to realize her nose had been clawed into sections until her mouth filled with blood. Her laughter drew the attentions of a troop of Eagle Scouts, who thankfully had cell phones with GPS. A medevac helicopter team was able to land and lift her out before she bled to death. But while Rebecca was being rescued, there would be no saving the supermodel on the lip of a canyon only a few miles away. The model (whose name is well known, but for her family’s sake will not be mentioned in the interview) had just plummeted to her death during a photo shoot after the photographer’s assistant asked her to take just
one
more step back into better light. The model had been a donor, but with the impact of her fall, most working organs had been rendered useless. She had landed on her back, though, sparing her face.

RayAnne is disappointed, having worked hard gathering both women’s stories. But not everything pans out, and she needs to learn to roll with such setbacks. So, no guest yet—but Cassi and others are working on it. She can either tend Penelope or pace, so she takes Dot’s advice and stays busy. Besides, there’s nothing to be done—she can hardly prepare for a last-minute replacement when she doesn’t know who it might be, or when they might come. Could be today, could be tomorrow . . .

A ghostly form appears as a reflection on the windscreen. RayAnne spins. Cassi.

“What. What is that look for?”

For a moment the girl just stands with a pained smile.

RayAnne sets down the wax. “Spit it.”

Cassi points through the trees to the parking area. “You saw that bus-thing?”

“Uh-huh.” A few minutes earlier, a luxury touring van with loaded luggage racks had pulled into Location. RayAnne assumed it was the shuttle of sponsors due from Minneapolis for the wrap party. “Great, so, they’re like five hours early?”

“Well, that’s just it. They’re not the sponsors.”

“Not them? Well then
who
?”

“You better come with me, Ray.”

Yam, lavender, and patchouli. She can smell her before even rounding the end of the van.

Bernadette spins. “RayAnne!”

“Mother?”

RayAnne is caught off balance, too dumbstruck to raise her arms. Bernadette catches her midsway in the embrace of a boxer stilling his training bag. Over her mother’s shoulder, she sees the troop of her mother’s Blood-Tide Questers milling, pointing, frilling their bejeweled fingers in little waves.
Toodles.

“And you’ve brought all your . . .”

“My girls, yes! Isn’t this fantastic? We’re just on our way to our retreat up at Sacajawea, you know, the sweat-lodge spa? And I realized how close we were, so I thought, why not stop by? See you in action? Get the tour!”

Her mother’s group could be extras in a film, dressed as they are in doe skin, moccasins, and ponchos, as if “indigenous” had been
it
during fashion week. Two have ill-advised beaded headbands binding their gray pageboys. One gives her the
how
hand motion from bad Westerns, and RayAnne’s focus shifts from the offending palm to the face just behind it: Jeanette Faring.

It’s quite enough having Big Rick loitering around Location—she’s only putting up with him because it all ends soon and everyone goes home, or, in his case, goes somewhere. But
both
parents on top of the crisis of the canceled guest? Not to mention the sponsors.

It all simply, suddenly exceeds RayAnne’s reserves. She cannot risk Bernadette getting a whiff of Big Rick, or vice versa, yet cannot fathom how such a collision can be prevented. Panic dampens her underarms. It’s possible none of the staff or crew have seen the bus yet—it’s lunchtime; those not in the catering tent are busy thumping laptops and iPhones, scrambling to replace Rebecca Standish.

Her mother’s sudden appearance leaves RayAnne mouthing empty air like a trout, completely lost for words. Bernadette must take her Ojibwa wannabes and retreat from Location as quickly as they materialized. As if reading her mind, Cassi attempts to herd several back to the bus, but a number seem to have quested off on various paths.

Just as she takes a breath to implore her mother to leave, RayAnne sees the Grouper bounding down the path. RayAnne grabs Bernadette’s caftan sleeve and yanks her behind the trunk of a large cedar. “Mom, listen, I’m really sorry, but this just isn’t a good—”

The Grouper, swift as a deer, suddenly appears on the path only yards away. Her nasal trill cuts RayAnne off. “I thought that was you!”

RayAnne drops her mother’s sleeve, unable to form any coherent explanation as to why Location should suddenly be overrun not only with both of her parents, but a menopausal tribe of elders.

Bernadette leans from behind the tree. “Amy? Amy Harris!”

“I was
right
! Oh. My. God. Bernadette! I haven’t seen you since Burning Man!”

RayAnne looks confoundedly from one to the other. “You know each other?”

Amy smile-scowls at RayAnne while giving her mother a squeeze. “RayAnne, you never mentioned Bernadette Mills is your
mother
!”

“Well, no. I wouldn’t have . . .” RayAnne blinks upward to a low scudding cloud as if it might offer some explanation for the turn her day is taking. Her mother and Amy commence catching up, yammering, hugging.

Cassi, halfway to the van, turns and drops the fringed elbows of two of the mavens to watch a moment before calling to RayAnne, “Should I take them on a tour?”

RayAnne closes her eyes. “Yes.”

A diversion might at least keep them out of the way until the next thing that will invariably go wrong.

But there is no waiting. A chortle of a particular baritone booms from the path leading to the catering tent. Lunch is over. Bernadette’s ears prick up, and she swivels her head like an owl without moving her shoulders. Her eyes grow round at RayAnne and her normally soothing tone of voice climbs to a raptor’s pitch. “That
cannot
be who I think it is.”

“Actually.” RayAnne feels the burning buzz on her lip that usually forewarns the eruption of a cold sore. “It is.” In addition, the talons of a headache have begun squeezing the base of her skull. It’s not even noon. Both parents are here, she has no guest, and Location is about to be inundated with show sponsors and the higher-ups in NPT, the people who will decide if
Fishing
is worth the risk.

Backing away, she fights the urge to run. “I’ll be. In my trailer. Going to. Lie down.”

Of course she can’t lie still. She paces Tiffany end to end, the length of which is exactly—surprise—thirteen strides. When someone opens the door unannounced, she freezes.

Cassi sticks her head in. “Ray?”

“Are they gone? Tell me they’re gone. You got my text? Did you find anything for my lip? Was there any trouble?”

“Yes. And yes.” Cassi hands over a tube of Carmex, saying, “As far as trouble? Your parents only saw each other long enough to fling some nasty looks. In other news, we’re on for three o’clock. Amy’s found a guest to replace Nose Job.”

“Thank God.” RayAnne turns to the mirror and dabs at the glowing bump on her lip. “At least something’s going right. Who is it?”

“Hang on to your bobbers.”

“Who . . .” RayAnne catches Cassi’s eye in the mirror and pivots. “
Who
is the guest?”

“Bernadette Mills. New-age aging coach to the menopausal rich.”

RayAnne is aboard Penelope and far out on the water when the expected van from the station arrives loaded with sponsors. Everyone on Location is to be at peak performance, ready to answer questions, make nice with those who have come to inspect the operation, and meet the people behind the scenes, check out the bang they’re getting for their bucks. The Wallets—Big Rick’s name for sponsors—are expecting a catered petting zoo with an open bar. She aims her binoculars through the windscreen, zeroing in on the steep slope where paths zag down the hill. Staffers are leading sponsors on a tour to the dock, the beach, the picnic area. Bernadette’s ten little Indians crawl the place like it’s an ant farm. Up on the plateau, she can make out a party rental van and a delivery truck. Some workers string lights under a large temporary canopy while others bang together a small stage for the band. One guy tries unsuccessfully to poke tiki torches into the stony ground leading to the parking lot, his obscenities carrying across the water.

RayAnne’s been given a pass for the moment—she needs to prepare for her impromptu guest, after all. Out on the lake in Penelope, she stares at the water while gingerly tapping the growing bump on her lip. The boat rocks in the wake of fishermen zipping around from one bass hole to the next. She thinks idly of the song “Mad Dogs and Englishmen.” No fish worth its scales would bite in the noonday sun. Abstractly, RayAnne feels like pounding these fishermen for their stupidity and for disturbing her concentration.

But as Bernadette says, there’s no man more hopeful than one holding his pole.

She can’t stay out here much longer—as tempted as she is to fire up Penelope and defect to Canada, she’s going to have to go back, buck up, and interview her mother.

Interview my mother.

Gran will know what to do. RayAnne speed-dials, but Gran isn’t answering—probably out watching the sweaty cadets jogging in packs, or has her Vitamix set to epic and can’t hear the phone.

When RayAnne was young and things went badly and she’d fall headlong into one of her yellow funks, Gran would pull her close, insisting, “Tell Gran
all
about it,” then patiently listen to RayAnne’s whimpers and petty grievances as if they were the most important and vexing problems facing the world. RayAnne cannot recall what sort of dramas she’d have played out at age six, or ten, or seventeen—but Gran’s response was always the same, patting the place on the couch next to her, coaxing, “Tell.” Then she would stroke the nape of RayAnne’s neck and smooth her hair while RayAnne gnashed and gnarled and eventually talked herself out, exhausted. She’d finally roll her head back across the pleats of Gran’s skirt to blink up at the woman who made it all better by saying practically nothing.