Must Love Otters (6 page)

Ryan snickers into the phone. “You’re in good hands. No Yorkies here. The coyotes would probably get them.”

“You have coyotes?”

“We have a few who live on the island. They keep the rodents under control.”

“I feel good about this, Ryan. You’re a good man.”

“We aim to please.”

“And you’re sure you’re straight?”

“Miss Porter, it’s been a pleasure talking to you this evening. We’ll look forward to seeing you on Monday evening.”

I disconnect and give Ridley a shaky thumbs up. The drunk is starting to morph into that queasy, spinny feeling. He slides a cup of coffee in front of me. “Mmm, that smells nice.”

“Brewed it just for you, Hols.” He stirs in cream and sugar.

“It’s the same color as you now,” I say, sipping, sighing loudly. Ridley is so pretty. He’s always so clean and he always smells nice and he has gorgeous teeth and his tattoos are tasteful and not too much and he is never mean to anyone and he always listens to me when I’m talking, which I tend to do a lot when I’m here with Keith because my boyfriend—
ex
-boyfriend—always invites his friends so I get bored and Ridley entertains me.

“Ridley, I think I might be in love with you.”

“You might not be in the morning, though. How you getting home tonight, sweetness?”

“My very lovely size-eight feet.” I attempt to stretch one leg over the bar. Almost fall on my ass.

“Honey, no way those are size eight. I’ve seen elephants with smaller feet.”

“Fine. Size ten. Bully.”
Slurp. Slurp slurp
.

“Ballerina, I’m going on break at 11:30.” He looks at his watch. “I’ll walk you home.”

“You don’t have to do that.” The bobble head on my shoulders feels heavy.

“Yup, I do. Finish your coffee.”

“It’ll make me have to pee.” Ridley raises one eyebrow. “Too much info, I know. But …”

“Finish your coffee. We’ll go in a few minutes.”

My phone chimes. A text from Kevin. Keith. Whatever his name is. “I’ll come back for the TV Sunday.”

Good. I never wanted a TV that big. I was fine with the nineteen-year-old Magnavox my dad gave us. I don’t care about TVs. I just want one night of sleep in
my
bed without the Yorkies.

Ridley, as promised, walks—supports—me home. That schnapps—sneaky bastard. Rid helps me up to my crappy second-floor apartment and offers a brotherly peck on the cheek, even though I beg him to be straight, if only for a night. “You’re so beautiful, Ridley.”

“Sorry, Hol, but you don’t have the right equipment.” He pats my cheek, eyes sparkling under the muted porch light. Why is he a bartender and not a male model … what do his parents look like … what stories are you hiding under those muscles, dear Ridley … does he have a brother. That thought makes it out of the chamber.

“Do you have a brother?”

“Good night, my friend.”

“Wait—” I cup one hand around my ear, listening, the other hand clamped onto his meaty bicep.

“What?”

“No Yorkies!” I throw a rubbery arm into the air for a high five. His return is lukewarm. Ooh, my stomach is not happy. I should go inside. “Yeah. Okay, thanks. For everything. I’ll just … go to bed now.”

“You gonna be okay? In there by yourself?”

“Jesus, now that you put it that way …” I sniff but I don’t dare cry. Where did empowered Hollie go? Where did the
I can do any fucking thing I want
run off to?

Oh, right. I drank it.

The apartment door closed behind me, Ridley gone, I realize how very alone I am. Sure, no Yorkies. That’s delightful, I ain’t gonna lie. And my beautiful foyer bench beams at me. If the wood could talk, she’d tell me she’s happy the jump kit is gone. She’s free of its suffocating weight. The very ugly coffee table is absent, only dents from its metal legs punched into the stained berber carpet. He took some of the IKEA “art,” dirty silhouettes left behind on the apartment-issue eggshell wall. The TV’s still here, as he said in his text, but only the dust outline hints that an Xbox once occupied the lower shelf.

The bedroom is cluttered. He clearly packed in a hurry. Some of the drawers are still open. Half the closet is empty. He’s forgotten some of his shoes.

But the bed … he’s taken the duvet. Probably for the best. It smelled like dog. But I don’t know if I have any other blankets in the apartment.

I’m so tired. I have to lie down before I puke. I will never drink anything peachy again. Put the schnapps up on the shelf with the Cheetos. Only this time, there was no ceramic rainbow pin to win. Just me and the tsunami that is now my life. No rainbows in tsunamis.

I consider taking a hot bath but I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep and either drown or die of hypothermia. Then again, if I don’t lie down, I’ll barf and they’ll find me face down in a puddle of my own sick. Wouldn’t that just make Les’s day? He gets the call reporting my dead, fetid body three weeks after everyone notices I’ve gone missing. I wonder if he’ll write that in his Black Book of Death. “Hollie Porter, demented and pathetic, died in her own vomit because a wire came loose in her brain and she pooped on everything she had going in her life.”

I don’t have a boyfriend anymore to revive my convulsing, frozen body.

Maybe I’m not drunk enough. Maybe the sobers are making me remember everything that sucks.

Or maybe I’m
too
drunk and the tipsies are reminding me of how much I messed up today.

If I fall asleep soon, I won’t start crying. Because if I start crying, I might not be able to stop. I might fill the bathtub with my tears and bathe in my own salty misery instead of emptying the hot water tank we share with the neighbors.

Like any drunk worth her salt, masochism is the next dish on the menu. I plop into the squeaky desk chair in front of my laptop. Click on the folder that holds the letter.

The one from the private investigator. The one that cost me last semester’s tuition and yet brought me no closer to knowing anything that would bring about a happy, Hallmark-Channel-daisy-and-rainbow-filled reunion.

My mother. Lucy M. Collins. Last known address, Los Angeles. Divorced twice. One child, not in her custody. Spent time in jail for fraud, money laundering, vandalism over $5000. Associate of activism groups involved in illegal and/or destructive activities. No surviving family on record except for one daughter. Employment history unavailable due to multiple aliases.

Current location: unknown.

I find a checkered tablecloth in the hall cupboard and pull a winter hat on. It’s May, so it’s not
that
cold, but I’m drunk, and I’m tired, and I’m alone. Hence, cold.

What the hell have I done.

We’re not going to talk about Saturday. Let’s just pretend Saturday didn’t exist. Even though it did. The pounding in my head, the ferocious slamdance my eyeballs did in their sockets, the vomit I produced while on the phone with my dad because I wasn’t going to be able to come out to shuffle his boxes about.

Because he’s a nurse, he thinks I’m dying of a brain-eating amoeba, that vomiting and severe headache is likely caused by something awful and terrible and deadly.

“Death by peach schnapps, Dad. That’s all this is.”

“You’ve got to get yourself together, Hollie. Union jobs are hard to come by. If you’re not going back to school, you can’t blow it at 911. Wait until you get your full pension.”

“DAD, it’s Saturday. I have the day off.”

“Right. Still …”

Then the Inquisition really began. “No, I’m not pregnant. No, I’m not getting married. Yes, Dad, Keith and I broke up. Yes, I’m fine. No, I don’t need to come to your house. No, I definitely don’t need you to come to my house. No, I’m not seeing anyone else. Yes, Dad, I am really hungover. No, I don’t need money. Yet. No, I’m not joining a cult. Yeah, Daddy, I think it might be a premature midlife crisis.”

He relented. I slept. By Sunday morning, my humanity returned. When I could stand without wanting to die, I cleaned the shit out of the apartment. Erased all traces of pint-sized pocket pups. Sat, yellow-gloved, skin reeking of Pine-Sol, and second-guessed my choice to leave for Canada so suddenly, which, in hindsight, probably isn’t the best course of action with my wimpy bank balance and especially now that the whole rent is going to fall on my shoulders.

When nothing else was left to clean, it was time to face my father. Especially knowing that Keith was due imminently to retrieve the 60-inch.

Dad’s house is in the boonies, on the very edge of the city limits. For a smart man, he’s really dumb. He sold the 108-year-old house in town, all three bedrooms and two baths with its honeyed hardwoods on a corner lot, the one I probably would’ve inherited, and instead invested in the boat he and his then-new bride moved into. Briefly. Until they both realized neither were mariners, and the Columbia River doesn’t play nice in the winter, no matter how solidly your big dumb boat is moored to the wood thingie along the shore. The boat was not covered by insurance because genius Aurora had my father convinced that the insurance companies are run by the Greys (yes—the aliens with the big black eyes) and so they shouldn’t risk it. Thus, when the storm hit, I had to go rushing down to the docks at Hayden Island and watch my inheritance sink to the bottom of the harbor.

Fun times.

They then bought this rundown house, but when the remodel started, the marriage deconstructed with every nail sunk. Aurora’s plans for an underground grow op freaked out my law-abiding father. Thank heavens. And yet, they still co-own this house (sans grow op), not out of love but rather because Aurora doesn’t trust our nation’s legal system, and thus doesn’t want to get divorced. Something about Masons controlling the judges and a direct connection to the NSA and the KGB, which is actually not defunct. Don’t ask. I have no idea. I stopped listening a long time ago.

But it means Dad won’t lose his shirt and have to pay out fifty percent of the house. If he doesn’t care, neither do I.

Getting from my car to the front door can be tricky. Mangala might be in the yard. What the hell is a Mangala? The Hindu god of war. A leftover from the days of Aurora.

It’s a goat. An evil, blood-sucking vampiric demon of the night.

If I step in his territory and he hears me, he’ll give chase until he’s able to ram his goddamned pointy devil horns into my ass. The bruises
just
healed from Easter.

Close car door quietly. Phone on silent. Strain ears to listen for Mangala.

Tiptoe, tiptoe.

Front gate creaks.
Shit
. Pause. Distant jingle of a bell.

One step, two steps. I might make it. The porch is only twelve, maybe fifteen steps away. I can do it in half as many if I pretend I’m eight and running on lava.

The bell sounds again. Closer. Just around the overgrown hedge.

Bleeeeeeeeeat.
The bell—it hears everything.

RUN!

“Dad, open the door! Mangalaaaaa! Bad goat,
bad goat
!” I alternate feet in front of me, blocking his attempted head-butts. He knocks me off balance, shoves my knee into my gut. Bastard is strong. “Open the goddamned door!” I fall through the front door and look up at my father from the floor, wide-eyed. “Dad! Seriously! Curry!”

Dad laughs, his eyeballs magnified to hilarious proportions from his glasses. Nothing but blue staring back at me, a silver spatula in his right hand. “You say that, but this house hasn’t been broken into since that goat showed up.” I stand and lock the screen door. Mangala snorts. A line of snot oozes from his snout.

“Can’t you lock him up? How the hell do you get your mail?”

“P.O. box. He can sense your fear. Animals know when a human doesn’t like ’em.” I hate it when he says stuff like that. He sounds like Aurora. And I like all the animals. (Except weird dogs.) I was the kid at the zoo and aquarium with her head squeezed between the bars or face pressed against the glass trying to get the babies to understand that I love them, that I want to be their friend, not like all these other dumb people who yell, “Hey, monkeyyyyy!” at the gorillas (they’re apes) or say, “Here fishy fishy fish” to a dolphin (mammal, not fish).
I
am the one who wanted to take care of the otters and the seabirds stuck in fishing nets and ride the back of an orca like that lucky kid in
Free Willy
. Instead, I’m the one who lives with incestuous Yorkies and who has to run from a goat with demon blood coursing through his veins.

Mmmm, curry.

Dad is wearing his fancy fishing vest atop his usual bluish-green scrub pants. “You hitting the river today?” I ask.

“Nah. Just tying flies.” The one thing my father hasn’t given up—his love of tying flies for fishing. A perfect day for Dad involves throwing the dingy in the lake in pursuit of the perfect trout or standing on the shore cast-cast-casting into the smooth river, his flies attracting the fattest Chinook. Once word got around at work, the orders piled in from coworkers and their husbands.

“You can’t lift the boat out of the truck if your hernia is acting up.”

“Follow, child. Griddle’s on,” he says, turning toward the kitchen. “And don’t nag me.”

“If I don’t, who will?”

He pushed his glasses atop his head. “You look skinny.”

“Thank you?”

“Are you eating?”

I don’t have a mother who worries about my diet—my dad frets enough for two parents. “You taking your cholesterol medication?”

“No changing the subject, Hollie Cat.”

In the kitchen, he has a plate of fresh pancakes. “Well, are you?”

“Yes, Dr. Porter. I’m taking it.”

I slide onto the dining bench. We’ve had this dinette set forever. Dad built it when I was five, and no matter how outdated, it still says home to me. He places a stack before me and my mouth waters so viciously, I’m afraid I’ll slobber down my front. My dad’s pancakes are legendary. In fact, pretty much everything my dad cooks is damn good. Not sure what the hell happened—the cooking gene must’ve skipped a generation. Which means maybe my possible future children that I probably won’t have would’ve been excellent cooks.

We eat, I deflect questions about what’s going on with Keith. Dad tells me about the latest carnage going on with Aurora and her non-daughter Moonstar, how the union elections are coming up again, about a great new wire the guys at the Gresham fly shop sent over.

Inevitably, Revelation Cove comes up. And it’s just as I expected. “I was hoping that Keith would get the hint,” he says. “I suppose now, that won’t be happening.”

“Tell me straight—had Keith given you
any
indication that he was going to propose?”

He stares at me. I know my father well enough to know when he’s lying. “No indication, Hols. I was just thinking …”

“Just as well. I would’ve turned him down.”

Dad takes his glasses off and looks at me with those searching eyes, the ones that used to see right through me when I came home drunk from a party I wasn’t supposed to be at, or noticed when my shirt was misbuttoned after a night out “with the girls” that involved nothing but a boy and sweaty fumblings in the backseat of a subcompact. It wasn’t my idea to give up the V Card in the back seat of a Tercel, but these things happen.

“You can do better. You know that, or you wouldn’t have dumped him. I’m sure you could find a nice doctor out there …”

“Like you did, Pops?”

He laughs and pushes his glasses back onto his nose, picking up his fork. “I’m just saying—the gals at work, there are a lot of single sons around your age. Manjit’s son is in his residency. He’s a little skinny, but a nice boy. Going into cardiology.”

“
Dad
.”

“The girls are always asking if you’ve found a man yet.”

“Maybe I don’t need a man.”

“No ticking biological clock for you?”

“
Your
clock is ticking louder than mine.”

“You gotta understand, my darling daughter—I work with a lot of women. The young ones—the nurses your age—they’re having or have had their first babies. The ladies my age are bringing in pictures of their new grandbabies. I can’t help it.” I laugh through a bite of maple and vanilla. Like I said, my dad is two parents wrapped in one. He reaches out and places a soft hand on my forearm. “I’m just saying … grandchildren would be nice. Someday.”

Our eyes meet. I can’t bear to tell him that I have zero intention of reproducing. Even someday.

“Thanks for that gift certificate, though. It’s very generous.”

“I know your birthday’s coming up …”

“In, like, four months.” I slide out and collect our sticky plates.

“Still. Can’t a father treat his daughter? I figured you could use some time away.”

“Your timing is perfect.” I kiss the top of his head. His thinning hair smells like the hospital.

“When you thinking about going?”

“Actually … tomorrow.”

“Yeah?” He beams.

“Yeah,” I say. An excited giggle escapes as the bubbles froth in the dishwater.

“Wonderful!” Dad smooches my cheek before burying his hands in the suds. He washes; I dry and stack. “Any more thought about going back to school?”

This is the only problem with coming to see my father. The questions. So. Many. Questions. “I’m not going to become a nurse.”

“You get over the sight-of-blood thing, Hols.”

“No. I won’t.”

“Listen to me,” he says, using the soapy sponge like a magic wand he can use to transform his daughter into something better. “Without a union or an MBA, and now without Keith to help with the rent … You don’t have an endless amount of years to think about this stuff. You could go back, finish your degree. If you get into hospice care, the wages are incredible and our union is strong, great benefits, paid holidays—”

“DAD.” The remnants of the hangover headache pops a button in my head.

“Right.” He flops the wet towel over the oven handle.

“Show me the boxes.”

“Nah, it’s all right. I already moved them.”

“You’re not supposed to be lifting.”

“I had the neighbor kid help me. He’s saving for a video game player. Was more than happy to take my fifty bucks. Come here, though. I found this.”

I follow him into the dining room and he slides a box to me. It’s full of my stuff. Soccer trophies, my scrapbooks from the trips we used to take to the Oregon Coast every summer, a dried-out, crumbling Dungeness crab claw, a framed photo under broken glass of me feeding an otter at the Monterey Bay Aquarium infirmary on my tenth birthday, a paper bag of unfocused, fading photos from the year I went to summer camp for children from single-parent homes (thanks, YMCA, for reminding us that more than half will end up pregnant before graduation and the other half will likely become drug dealers or worse, insurance salesmen). A pink hospital-issued
Baby’s Book
with only a few entries in it. How much I weighed. The date and time I was born. A single curl trimmed from my goldilocks under aged scotch tape.

Mother Dear left us pretty soon after I was born—as in, bought a Greyhound ticket and left, not
she left us too soon to go to the big all-night kegger in the sky
. As my dad always says, “Some fish just aren’t meant to be caught.”

The blankness of the lines next to “Baby’s Firsts” tell me that Dad was probably too busy learning how to bottle-feed and diaper-change and still hold down a job on three hours’ sleep. Man, I never even thought about it, how much of himself he gave just to be there for me. Never missed a game, never missed a school play or awards ceremony, never missed an opportunity to chaperone a school dance just to make sure wandering prepubescent hands didn’t find their way onto my ass. Makes the best oatmeal chocolate chip cookies but says he will only share his secret ingredient once I give him his first grandchild. He might die before that happens. Refer to aforementioned conversation.

Wow. My childhood is in this box.

“Thanks, Daddy.”

He hugs me. “You will always be my best girl, you know …”

God, I do not want to get emotional right now.
No tears no tears no tears
.

Dad clears his throat and chunks his hand down on my shoulder a few times. We’re manly men. No time for blubbering.

I suck back the moisture and excuse myself into the bathroom in search of ibuprofen. Inside the medicine cabinet, I find his cholesterol pills that, of course, I have to count to make sure he has indeed been taking them. Judging by the remaining pills and date on the prescription, he’s compliant. Good Dad. I spin the other bottles—there are many. I know these drugs. Tylenol-3. Two depression meds. A muscle relaxant. Some Cialis. (I dropped that bottle immediately.) A bottle of Ativan with three refills.

My dad is depressed? Anxietal? I knew he’d been a little blue after losing the boat and everything with Aurora and then losing the nomination for nursing union president. I wish he’d talk to me. But he won’t. Because he’s the dad and I’m the kid and that’s the way it is. So I have to pretend like I didn’t see all these bottles and keep looking for something to stop the bluster in my brain.