Fishing With RayAnne (35 page)

In the morning she gets up early, determined to be out before her father gets up. After jamming her few things into a market bag, she changes the motel reservation for Bernadette from a single room to a double, then, remembering the food Dot prepared, changes it to a kitchenette. When the clerk mentions the price, which normally she would balk at, she says, “Fine.” Back in the murky world of life—somewhere on a different planet—there is a job awaiting her, with a contract, and she can now afford such expenses as a motel in which to mourn the death of a loved one. She upgrades her upgrade to a double oceanside kitchenette with a sitting area and balcony. Bag slung over her shoulder, she heads for the kitchen to pack up some of Gran’s edible farewells when her gaze is pulled to the dining room table and the
My Funeral!
folder.

She runs her finger across the words, trying but failing to imagine what it might have been like to write them. Within the folder is a preplanned funeral packet from a mortuary called Chesney’s, which sounds to RayAnne more like a bar and grill than a funeral home. Dot had taken care of everything in advance: listed the crematorium, chosen and circled an urn in Chesney’s catalog—a nonfussy raku ginger jar with an engraved brass label. There’s a mix CD of the songs Dot had chosen and a request that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the wetlands conservancy and a nonprofit group supporting sustainable fisheries. The church and the minister’s phone numbers are listed along with the time for Saturday, booked at the Unitarian church down the road.

Dot had not only planned her own funeral; she’d chosen the date and time—had done everything save write her own obituary. A delivery slip for rental folding chairs and linens confuses RayAnne until she realizes they are to be delivered for the reception—one of those awful cake and coffee hours to mark the stretch of limbo between Dot’s funeral and life without her.

RayAnne lets the folder, the script of Dot’s final days, fall to the table.

Atop the pile of papers her father has been working through is a business card over which she does a double take, blinking along the embossed letters of “Hal Bergen.” On the backside is
Hawthornden
, and another number,
private line
, all in Hal’s handwriting. Without pausing, she snatches up the phone and paces while punching the numbers. When he picks up on the third ring, she does not bother saying hello.

“Hal, why does my father have your business card with
Hawthornden
written on it? What’s that about?”

“RayAnne.” There’s a silence on the other end as Hal collects himself. It’s an hour earlier in Minnesota; he’d have been asleep. “First, please just let me say . . . Cassi called. I’m so sorry about your grandmother.”

“Later, okay?”

He inhales. “Right. What do you want to know?”

“
What
is my father doing with this card?”

“I gave it to him. Listen, I know you must be—”

“When?”

“The morning after the wrap party. You were already gone; he was sobering up in my trailer, and the more he remembered from the day before, the more upset he got. I told him I have a friend at Hawthornden that might help.”

“Treatment was your idea?”

“No. Yes. Ray, maybe you should ask him about this?”

“So, the night you came over to build shelves, you knew he was at Hawthornden? You
knew
that?”

“Well, I assumed he’d checked in. I’d
hoped
he would, but figured—”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I figured it was for him to tell you.”

She’s silent.

“RayAnne, I wanted to tell you. Anyway, I didn’t get the chance, did I?”

It’s as if she’s in a tunnel. Any emotion that is not grief feels invasive, to be deflected. Staring out the window, she wonders what else Hal might be withholding.

“Ray, are you there? Are you okay?”

The welling anger is almost a welcome respite. “You weren’t kidding when you said you have my back, were you? How did I really get that contract, Hal? Was that you too?”

“Absolutely not. I was just looking out for you.”

“What was your plan? Get Big Rick fixed? Then fix my career? Fix
me
?”

“No. I—”

“Well, I’m not your project!” After slamming the receiver to its cradle she blinks several times in the dusty morning light before quietly exhaling. “Shit.”

She’s halfway to the kitchen when the phone rings. Clearing her throat, she waits a few rings before picking up. “Sorry, but just let me tell you what I
don’t
need—”

“RayAnne?” Bernadette sounds alarmed. “What’s going on?”

At the sound of her mother’s voice, she bursts into tears. “Mom!”

“I’m here, sweetie. I’m here, at the airport.”

Bernadette, rumpled after traveling forty sleepless hours, is wrecked, but RayAnne falls onto her as though she’s a beanbag. Through an hour of blubbering, RayAnne can only half register her mother’s words of comfort. All that matters is that she is here.

After both are bawled to exhaustion, RayAnne helps her mother unpack, and Bernadette shoves the beds closer to make room for her yoga mat and settles into
Shavasana
pose.

RayAnne goes to wash her face, and before she can pat her chin dry, Bernadette’s rhythmic
Pranayama
breathing has morphed into an adenoidal snore. RayAnne covers her mother with a shawl and watches her sleep awhile before finding a pad and pencil and retreating to the balcony, where she’ll try to wring out a few thoughts on the obituary and eulogy.

After an hour of doodling and pencil tapping, the pad on her knee still hasn’t got more than a few words on it. She hears her name called from below and leans over the railing to see Ky on the sand, shaking Dot’s handbag. “Guess what’s in here?”

“Shhh. Mom’s asleep. What are you doing with Gran’s purse?”

“Looking for extra house keys. C’mon. Guess.”

“I don’t know, Ky.” Though she can guess: the same essentials that have always been in Dot’s handbags tucked into their proper pockets. When Gran would say, “Get Gran’s purse, RayBee,” she always knew she was in for some small gift—anything from a single wrapped peppermint to a found agate, a shiny fifty-cent piece or crisp five-dollar bill. The handbags were always the clasping kind, never zippers (they only break) or buckles (who has
that
kind of time?). The contents invariably included a hankie, Life Savers that tasted like perfume, a coin purse, plastic rain hat, and Rolaids that smelled like perfume—odd since Gran never wore any.

“Note?” RayAnne bolts forward and leans over the rail. “Is it a note?”

Ky makes a face. “No. Sorry. Not even close.” He snaps it open to show a large baggie, tightly packed with a mossy green herb. Even from the balcony the smell is unmistakable.

“
Weed?
You’re kidding me.”

“Medicinal, I s’pose.”

“Oh.” RayAnne frowns. “For what? Nausea, you think?”

“Maybe. Or not. It hardly matters now, does it?” He’s got Gran’s picnic hamper and a blanket folded over his arm as well. “C’mon, I’ve packed munchies and rented a dune buggy. It’s out front.”

“I have to write the eulogy.”

“Bring it.” Ky points to the yellow legal pad. “We’ll do it together.”

Empty Tupperware containers litter the beach blanket. Ky’s index finger plows through the contents of one.

“What was that again?” RayAnne licks her lips.

“Chive and cheddar mashed potatoes.” He transfers a glob from his finger to hers and she plugs her mouth with it.

“I can feel my underpants getting tighter.”

“Some suicide note, huh?”

“Leave it to Gran.” RayAnne peers into a container. “I think I know exactly what she meant by this mango chutney.”

They both find this hilarious. An old man walking his dog looks over and smiles. “
Some
thing must be funny.”

“Our grandmother.” RayAnne swallows a giggle and blurts, “Just
died
.” She and Ky both crack up with laughter.

After the old man walks on, she feels bad and would chase him down to explain, but she could not get up if she wanted to.

Ky looks to the almond toffee biscotti in his hand and says, “You think
you’re
baked?”

Managing not to sob, she tells her brother everything that’s happened over the last three long days, from the first phone call to walking away from Dot on the hospital terrace. She relays it all in disorder, all the while digging a large hole in the sand with a plastic spoon still sticky from a dessert called “ambrosia.” After finishing, she looks up to Ky’s face, flat with grief.

She’s thought of no one and nothing but Gran or herself all this time, just now realizing how frustrating it must have been for Ky, held captive by the blizzard. She takes his sandy hand. “Guess it’s sucked for you too.”

“Not the best of snow days.”

“Remember before you could spell and you wrote that letter to the Ab
dominal
Snowman, begging him to send a blizzard to Edina? Gran kept it. I saw it in one of her scrapbooks. And that rain dance you’d modified for snow, when we were powwowing for school to close?”

“Yeah, well, we finally got the mother of all blizzards, didn’t we?”

When he’d gotten RayAnne’s message, he recruited a neighbor to watch the twins in exchange for his seats at the first NHL playoff. Once at the airport, he watched as flight after flight was canceled. Ingrid barely made it home on the last flight from Newark, but he wouldn’t go home with her in case some flight going to anywhere might take off. When his phone battery quit, he’d begged strangers to use their phones, but having never memorized RayAnne’s number, stood in the middle of the concourse holding a stranger’s phone and uselessly repeating “call RayAnne” at it until the person eased it from his hand and backed away.

He had found a pay phone and tried to track down Big Rick, who obviously had not gone back to Arizona. When Ky reached Rita, she had been boiling. “If he shows up here, you’ll know about it, because the headlines will read ‘Lying Bastard Slapped to Death.’”

He’d discovered their father was at Hawthornden after actually listening to his older phone messages from Big Rick; one was a week old, asking him to come to some event called Family Day. He’d been checked in since the day after the debacle on Location. On the day of the blizzard, he was just gearing up to sign himself out and embark on the ninety meetings in ninety days routine.

“Apparently that Hal guy picked him up from rehab and drove him to the airport.”

RayAnne dropped her sandy spoon. “He did
what
?”

“And Dad made him promise not to tell you, by the way. He’s been calling the cottage; you’re going to have to listen to the messages.”

“
Drove
him . . . ?” Ray grows quiet, prying her sandy toes apart with the plastic spoon.

Down the beach they can see their father wading in the shallow surf, his pants rolled up, Trinket under his arm.

Ky takes the spoon from her. “Dad promised Gran he’d go to Hawthornden. After she heard about the blowup on Location, she put her foot down and made him promise to quit drinking for good.”