The Summer of No Regrets (5 page)

chapter
eight

After four days, I was beginning to wonder if I’d dreamed Luke Geoffrey and the cougar. But Thursday the
Kwahnesum
Chronicle
came out with Felicity’s front-page photo: the cat limp and heavy in the bag.

Luke had not reappeared, except in my imagination. Had he realy looked at me that way? Had I realy been in his arms? The Hansen place seemed deserted, and I couldn’t bring myself to knock on the door.

I pinned the clipping on the tree house wal. The cougar’s eyes were huge, blank marbles. I sat on an orange crate and stared back. Where had she gone?

Mom talks about past lives and karma. When Dad was an atheist, he talked about how the body’s decay feeds the planet.

Now he talks about the spirit world. I don’t like to think about any of that. Even if you go somewhere, everything familiar ends: no more birthday parties, no more brushing your hair. I shivered.

The cougar’s vacant face gazed from the photo. She’d been so alive. And in that moment of her aliveness, I’d been about to die.

How could death and life be sisters like that?

•••

When Opa died we stayed at Cherrywood for a week. We’d planned to come for Nonni and Opa’s fiftieth anniversary. Dad and I had adapted portions of Josquin’s Mass
Pange
Lingua
for flute and violin. We’d practiced together for months. “We’ll tour it, Gidget,” Dad had joked, “and we’ll make a mint. I’ll pay my parents back for all those flute lessons they forced on me.” But no one was joking now. Dad and Mom hid in Dad’s old room. Malory rummaged through the attic. And Nonni sang.

Nonni had always sung. Every night she tucked me into bed with the Shepherd’s Psalm. Even when I was fourteen I didn’t mind.

But this was different. Nonni sang hymns as she dusted, hymns as she salted the snow on the front steps. Opa was dead.

And all she could do was smile and sing.

Dad avoided her. “Give your mother time,” I heard Mom say.

“She’s in shock. We all are.”

On the third day I stepped out to fill the bird feeder while Nonni sorted fabric scraps at the kitchen table, singing “Crown Him with Many Crowns.” Stop! I wanted to say. Instead I flung the scoop hard into the wooden seed bucket. It rattled over, the closest I’d come to defying her.

closest I’d come to defying her.

Nonni looked at my face and was back for a moment. “Oh, Brigitta-Lamb,” she said. “Don’t you see? He made it! Opa made it! He’s dancing on the wals of heaven! How can I not be happy for him?”

Two months later, she had her first stroke.

•••

Mom taught us early to listen to animal language. Dad taught us to track, but Mom taught us to listen. We’d sit for ten minutes, completely still. Eventualy I worked up to an hour. A few times birds landed on my head. Once, a hummingbird had perched on the back of my hand, like a small jade fairy. Some days I’d track deer, holding my head alert like they did, sniffing the air, leaping.

When you assume the deer’s rhythms, they accept you. You’re one of them. But somewhere along the line I’d stopped listening.

Sometimes animals still came to me, like the cougar maybe had.

But I’d closed the door. Now I wasn’t sure I could open it.

I lit a candle in front of the clipping. The cougar needed a name. I stroked the picture. “Onawa.” It’s a native name from one of Dad’s drum books—not sure which tribe. It means “wide awake.” “Onawa.” I circled Eve’s trunk, trailing my hand over her bark. Could Onawa hear me? Somehow she didn’t seem angry anymore. I said it again. “Onawa.”

A thrush and two flickers flew past suddenly, letting me know someone was here. I peered down. Yesterday the Shivat Eiden group had left and was replaced with nine Buddhist poets who were regulars at The Center. Peter, my favorite of the Buddhists, stroled the path, bowing. He’d go all the way down, his head drooping almost to his feet. Peter always reminded me of an elf

—with a baseball cap and a trimmed gray beard.

Buddhists don’t kill things. Did he know about Onawa? That she’d been kiled on my behalf? That was a load of karma.

Maybe I’d reincarnate as a mosquito. I knew I should slip away Maybe I’d reincarnate as a mosquito. I knew I should slip away while he was bowing. Ritual’s a private thing.

Peter tipped his head back and smiled up at me, completely unsurprised. He bowed to me. All the way down, then up.

“Hi.” I descended awkwardly. “Good weather for bowing?” Gaa! Why do I say things like that?

“It’s always good weather for bowing.” A red-tailed hawk landed on a northern pine. “Would you like to try?”

“Okay.” I felt shy.

He brought his hands together. I did too. It felt complete, like I was connected to myself.

“What do you see?” he asked. “One small thing.”

“That frond of bracken fern?”

“Ah,” said Peter. He bowed, his head almost touching the dirt.

I decided not to feel sily. I bowed, too.

“Am I bowing to the fern?”

Peter straightened. “To the fern, or to the ant, or to the ground that supports you. To your loved ones, to your enemies.” To Onawa?

“When you bow,” he said, “you give your whole self away.

You breathe out. You die.”

“I’m tired of death.” I blushed.

Peter nodded. “Death is the great teacher, Brigitta.” After he left, I practiced bowing. I bowed to a beetle, a slug, a clod of dirt. I wanted to bow but not do the dying part.

A ways from the path I noticed something: scratch marks—

cougar marks—on the trunk of a maple. The grooves were smooth under my fingers—the power of those claws: a message from Onawa? I bowed low.

A sudden crashing-through-the-brush sound and Natalie emerged, breathless, from the foliage, twigs tangled in her hair.

She stopped abruptly. “What are you doing, Brigitta?” Swiftly, I became vertical. “Hard to explain.” She wasn’t interested in an answer. “Hey, I’m back from boring Aunt Jo Ann’s.” Natalie’s boring aunt was legendary. She boring Aunt Jo Ann’s.” Natalie’s boring aunt was legendary. She lived in New York and, according to Natalie, spent all her time discussing bargains she’d gotten at Macy’s and decorating her bathrooms.

“At least it was only three days. I caled a bunch of times, Brigitta.”

I had meant to answer. But every time her number came up, I’d let it ring through. She could always call Cheryl, couldn’t she? “I’m sorry.”

Natalie hugged me. “No worries. It wasn’t all bad. I saw Kirsten Dunst at MoMA.”

“Oh?”

“Realy, Brigitta. She got into a cab, and I went charging out there—four photographers on the sidewalk! Aunt Jo Ann was al, ‘Natty, Natty! Come back!’”

“So how’d she seem? Kirsten, I mean.” A mosquito landed on my arm.

“Truthfuly? Tired. Like she wished everyone would go away.” She leaned against Eve. “Guess what I TiVoed for you?”

“No teling.” I tried blowing on the mosquito.

“Trent! On
Letterman
! Oh my God, Brigitta, you have to see it! That boy is so ripped.”

“One of the many things he offers the world.” I sent the mosquito onto its next life and felt immediately guilty.

“Come on, Brigitta. How can he not make your mouth water?”

The thought of Trent made my head hurt. “Not hungry, I guess.”

She pushed off from the tree and made her mission clear.

“I’ve driven past the Hansen place like ten times. But you know I wouldn’t go visit Trent without you.”

“Luke Geoffrey is not Trent Yves.” It came out meaner than I meant it to, but Natalie only smiled and wiggled her eyebrows.

“Ah,” she said, “you remember his fake name.” She took off,

“Ah,” she said, “you remember his fake name.” She took off, squishing the bracken fern.

My mind formed a horrible image of her on Luke’s porch whipping out her cell phone camera. He’d see me cringing by the fountain. It wasn’t funny. “Natty! Natty, come back!” I tried my best Aunt Jo Ann voice.

Natalie laughed. “Come on, girlfriend.” She took off running.

When Natalie and I were younger, we used to roam these woods, becoming different things: flower fairies, elves, girl pirates, and finaly sixteenth-century mercenaries. Maybe Natalie can still play because she has her little sister Bekah to entertain.

Me, I don’t frolic in the woods anymore.

But I did folow her, arriving where the trees thinned to a row of maples and we were looking out at Luke’s house. During our pirate stage, Natalie and I had spied on Hansen Manor fund-raisers for things like the vanishing western mole rat. We’d watch people promenading the terrace in black tails sipping vintage Ste.

Michele.

Now the place had an empty feel. An overturned lawn chair lay in the scraggly grass. “Wel,” said Natalie. “Let’s knock.” In a way I wanted to knock, though my courage had failed me every day before this. Maybe Luke would be there. He’d smile at me the way he had in the woods—his Trent Yves smile.

Natalie started across the lawn. “What are you waiting for, Brigitta?”

I shook my head. “I’m going.” I turned back toward the tree house. Let her knock. At least she’d be making a fool of herself instead of me. I twisted off a thimbleberry vine.
Smack!
I hit a hemlock.
Smack!
An alder.

Six alders and two spruces in, Natalie caught up with me.

“Brigitta, what’s going on?”

“Let’s just not bother him.”

“Oh, come on,” Natalie teased. “Someone’s got to welcome him to town.”

“I already have.”

“I already have.”

Her smile faded. I couldn’t believe I was playing the I-saw-him-first game with Natalie, who knew all my crushes from age ten on. Natalie, who smuggled me Cheetos.

“It was just for fun, Brigitta. Don’t you remember fun?” Her usual kidding was gone. “Geez,” she said. “Don’t you remember when we used to serenade all the neighbor houses every May Day? At six o’clock in the morning? Don’t you remember when we did plays out here? Don’t you remember convincing everybody at Camp Eagle’s Nest we were sisters? From a remote island off New Zealand?”

“We were twelve!”

“So? Who said you couldn’t act goofy anymore? Who said you had to go all grim reaper? Who said you had to spend all your time up in a tree house studying the mystical whatever-it-is you’re after? We’re sixteen, Brigitta. We don’t have to be dead.”

“I’m not dead.”

“Yeah, wel”—Natalie made a zombie face—“you’re doing a pretty good imitation.” She pushed through some branches and headed for the road. Burrs stuck to her shirt. She was so clueless if she thought stroling up to Luke’s front door was like May Day serenading.

A woodpecker drummed an oak snag. I dropped the thimbleberry vine and folowed a deer path back to the property line. Inside Luke’s house a thin-faced woman moved a lamp.

Her hair was long and wavy. Brown, like Luke’s. She turned toward the window. I puled back behind the maple. When I peeked out again, the drapes were closed.

July 5

Who Knew?

Starlet’s hoping Trent Yves will show up on her doorstep with a dozen roses and serenade her.

Meanwhile, I have an admission to make. I have seen
Rocket
. All of it.

And I may have misjudged Trent, just a little. It’s surprising what he can do with a decent script. (Yes, I’ll even admit the script was good.) I think that—at least this time—he can act.

Aquarius0210
responds:

Mystic, you’ve finally seen the light! The fight scene at the end? It was done in one take. I saw him on
Good
Morning
America
,
Leno,
and
Ellen
. Every time someone asks him about that scene he just says, “It was pretty intense,” and changes the subject.

Cindylou
responds:

Denzel was amazing as Theo. So sad when he got shot.

Trentsbabe
responds:

i hav seen it 9x. i cry and cry at the end. best trent movie EVAR!!!!!!!!

Pandapriestess
responds:

denzel’s a classy ex-hit man. & trent…wow! i was surprised b/c the only other good thing he’s done was imlandria. the scene betw. rocket & his evil father @ the end blew me away.

Cindylou
responds: