Zigzag (12 page)

“Iris, calm down now,” Dory said.

“She's not just doing this to
you,
you know,” Marshall put in from his post outside the door.

“Keep the bag on the bites,” Dory said, but her voice sounded . . . oh no, like she was ready to cry, too.

“Marsh, put the ice bag on your bites,” I said, running mine up and down my burning arm.

“Mine aren't that bad.”

“Well then,
shut up,
” I said. He glared at my face, and then, remarkably, said nothing else. I took the bag from him and handed it inside the tent to Dory so Iris could have one for each eye. “Marsh doesn't need his.”

Quiet tears were cascading from Dory's eyes, too. “Thank you, Robin. I'm sorry about this. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have made you sleep outside when you didn't want to. And then with the broken zipper . . .”

“Don't worry about me,” I said. “I'm fine.”

“I have to pee,” Iris whined. “Do they have bathrooms out here in Sherwood Forest?”

Dory sighed and struggled to her knees. “There's a public rest room just a little way up the path.”

“I'll take her,” I said. “I need to go, too.”

“Oh, good,” Dory said, wiping away the tears and trying to sound normal as she and Iris came out into the sunlight. “Marsh can help me take the tent down, and then we'll go back to Wall Drug and get some calamine lotion. And breakfast.”

I could tell Marshall was about to start complaining about having to help his mother, but I gave him a look I hoped was terrifying and he only frowned. I took Iris's arm to lead her to the bathroom.

“You don't have to
grab
me,” she said.

I waited until we were out of earshot of Dory and then I said, “You don't have to be a bitch either. Ever thought of that?”

She pulled her arm away from me. “I can see the ground well enough to walk by myself. Just make sure I'm going in the right direction.”

Yes, your Exalted Crabbiness. I let her stumble a little on the step up to the bathroom, then grabbed her arm tightly. “Whoops!” I said, and maneuvered her in the door. She felt her way into the stall and banged the door behind her. I used the stall next to her, then waited for her by the row of sinks.

“Your right eye is opening a little bit,” I said when she emerged. “If you keep the ice on them, they'll both open up soon. My friend Franny got badly bitten once when we camped at Thunder Lake, and we . . .”

Iris banged out of the stall and felt her way over to the sinks. “You know everything, don't you? You win the Good Camper Award.”

A young woman with two small boys came out of another stall and washed her hands and theirs at the sink next to us. She glanced up at Iris who was looking into the mirror out of the thin slits of her eyes, trying to get some idea what she looked like.

“Wow! I guess you forgot the bug spray!” the woman said.

“My
mother
forgot the bug spray.
And
broke the tent zipper.”

“Well, those things happen,” the woman said, shrugging. “It's all part of camping. Don't let it ruin your day.” She chased her little boys outside.

“Is she kidding? Where do all these perky people come from? Is that a farmer trait, or something?
Don't let it gitcha down, yuk, yuk!
I wouldn't live in these backward boondocks if you paid me. Just because she grew up here, Mom thinks she has to
expose
us to it. I'd rather be exposed to pneumonia.”

Suddenly I'd just had it with all her insults and nastiness. “You are such a brat, Iris! Just because your mother treats you like royalty doesn't mean you
are.
This is a
vacation,
even though you and your brother are doing your best to turn it into a death march.”

She put her head back and tried to look at me from underneath her lids. “What do you know . . . ?”

But I didn't let her talk. “For God's sake, you've got some mosquito bites, and you're acting like it's malaria! Get over yourself! If you and Marshall intend to spend the whole summer bitching and moaning about every single thing, I swear I'm going to find a bus station and go back home. Because being around the two of you really sucks!”

She continued to squint at me for another minute and then turned back to the mirror. “The right eye
is
going down a little, isn't it?”

I didn't answer her.

“I'm ready to go back,” she said finally, offering me her arm as if I was her escort to the ball. I wondered if she'd even heard me.

The clerk at Wall Drug advised
us to use the old-fashioned bug bite cure of baking soda and water. “Stops the itching better than calamine lotion, I think,” she said. She got us a box and showed Dory how to mix up a paste with water. We got calamine lotion too because Iris didn't want to put baking soda on her eyelids. By the time we'd slathered ourselves up with white paste and pink goo, Iris could actually get her right eye almost all the way open and the left one was better, too.

We were all starving after our morning of high adventure and ordered big breakfasts. All except Iris. I couldn't figure out her
eating habits; she either ate everything in sight or nothing at all.

Marshall looked at her delicately spooning up a small yogurt. “That's all you're eating? Your eyes are swollen shut, not your mouth.”

Iris looked at him, but, for a change, said nothing. Maybe my little speech had had an effect after all.

Dory gave Iris a worried look, but I didn't know if it was about the yogurt or the mosquito bites. When Marsh and Iris went back for one more tour of the gift shop, I decided I'd ask her.

“Dory, do you think Iris eats strangely? I mean, sometimes she eats almost nothing, and other times she eats like a horse.”

Dory's head bobbed up from the map she was looking at. “Oh, well . . . I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I mean, she's a teenager. A
young
teenager. Don't you remember being worried about your weight sometimes?”

“Sure. I just don't remember being so extreme about it.”

Dory sighed and circled her neck on her shoulders. “Well, don't worry about it, Robin. I'm sure she's fine.” She turned her attention to my arm. “How's that doing? I feel so bad about you girls getting bitten to pieces.”

I sighed. “It's not a big deal. When you go camping, you get mosquito bites.”

She smiled and ran her hand over my hair, a thing adults do that I hate. “You're a great kid, you know that? I hope your mother appreciates you.”

I didn't know about that, but I was certainly beginning to appreciate
her
after a few days with the Tewksburys.

By late morning Iris's eyes were open far enough for us to take a hike in the Badlands. Dory filled a thermos with lemonade and I carried a backpack with our lunch in it: a loaf of bread, cheese, apples, and cookies. Marshall's backpack held several liters of water and the rest of the sun lotion that we'd applied heavily over
the top of the baking soda paste scabs. Iris, of course, had only herself to think about as we headed out from the visitor's center looking like a band of badly glued action figures.

As soon as we started on the trail, though, I felt more like an extraterrestrial than a toy. The landscape became suddenly stark and bizarre and it was hard to believe we hadn't left earth. That this was South Dakota, no less. Rows of sharp pinnacles rose up and dropped away in ridges up and down a valley. The colors fascinated me: Shades of red, white, black, and brown ran in bands from pinnacle to pinnacle and across the ravines. It reminded me of the glass bottles of colored sand Franny and I used to make when we were little, the green layer over the blue over the red.

Marshall read from the guidebook. “The landforms known as badlands are sculptures made by wind and water. The accumulation of sediment began 75 million years ago when the Rocky Mountains rose up in the West, and sand, silt, clay, and volcanic ash were stacked layer upon layer, thousands of feet deep.”

He looked up from the book. “Seventy-five million years.
God.
”

“Exactly,” Dory said.

“It says that many mammals died here in floods 40 to 25 million years ago. And there are still many fossils found here all the time, but if you find one you can't pick it up—you have to remember where it was and report it to one of the park rangers. Wouldn't that be neat? I want to find a fossil!”

“I'm sure ten-year-olds find them all the time,” Iris said as she tied a straw hat on her head and covered her poor eyes with sunglasses.

“It's possible!” Marshall said. “You never think I can do anything!”

I got my baseball cap out of my backpack, and then placed
myself in the line of fire between my cousins so that when Iris turned to level her brother again, she found me staring at her instead.

Her grin was like a dog baring its teeth before it bites. “That's probably your boyfriend's hat, right? That he hit home runs in or something.”

“It's
my
hat, that
I
hit home runs in,” I said, running my hand over the carefully curved brim and wishing my home runs had been more numerous. Diamond dust had dulled the bright yellow, but the hat fit me like it was born for the job.

“You play baseball?” Marshall asked.

“Softball. I'm a shortstop.”

“Hmm. Good hat,” he said. “If you don't mind looking like Big Bird.”

Dory led the way up a series of stairs built into a hillside and then we walked along a high ledge. The hike felt good after sitting in the car the past two days. Even my cousins seemed to be enjoying themselves—at least they'd stopped bickering for a while. Everybody was quiet for a change, thinking their own thoughts, I guess. Personally, I was thinking about the letter I'd written to Chris—was it too needy? Was I nice enough? Would he be happy to get it, or would it just remind him of what a drag it was to have this clingy girlfriend back home?

But then, I suddenly realized where I was—on vacation and, apparently, on the moon—and I just decided to stop thinking about my problems for a while. Maybe there would be something to worry about when Chris got back from Italy and I got back from California, but right now I was in an amazing place and I just wanted to
be
here.

We stopped for lunch at a beautiful spot with views out over the whole valley. Dory and I each got out our Swiss Army knives and started cutting off chunks of cheese and bread and passing
them around. Amazingly, Iris poured glasses of lemonade for all of us, not just herself. Marshall immediately pulled out a small drawing pad and some colored pencils and got to work. I didn't blame him for thinking art was more important than lunch; being here made me wish I could draw, too. I took some pictures, but I had a feeling Marshall's drawings would capture the place better, his crumbly pencils so similar to the crumbling stone. Unless, of course, he was drawing the three of us with arrows buried in our chests.

Dory seemed sad again, looking at the gorgeous landscape around her. She watched Iris grab a handful of cookies and said, “I wish Daddy could be here to see this.” Neither of her children responded. Instead they looked away as though the feeling embarrassed them. Iris stuck the cookies back in the bag.

I didn't think we should all ignore Dory when she seemed to want to talk. “Did Uncle Allen like to take trips like this?” I asked.

“I don't really know,” Dory said. “He was always so busy—the only vacations we took coincided with his work. We went to London once when he had to give a speech at a conference there. And last year we spent a week in Paris while Allen went to all sorts of meetings. That was fun, wasn't it?” She looked eagerly at Iris and Marshall.

Iris shrugged. “Shopping was fun.”

But Marshall was enthusiastic. “I liked going to the museums. Paris has the
best
museums.”

“Yes, it does,” Dory agreed.

“It's too hard when you can't talk to people,” Iris said.

“So learn French,” Marshall said. “That's what I'm going to do.”

Iris sniffed. “Not if they don't let you back into school.” One step forward—two steps back.

Marshall looked away, then folded up his drawing pad and stuffed it back into his backpack. Dory gave the dirty look to Iris
this time, but she didn't say anything. We packed up our garbage and got back on the trail.

This time Marsh took the lead, running ahead and even detouring off the path to walk around some of the big rocks. Suddenly he disappeared from sight altogether.

“Marsh,” Dory called. “Don't get too far ahead. I don't want to lose you.”

There was no answer.

“Marshall! Where did he go? Did you see which direction?” Dory asked.

“He's okay,” Iris said. “He's over there someplace.”

“
Marsh
!” Dory shouted again, this time with panic in her voice. “Where are you?”

Then he shouted back. “I
found
something! Come here!”

Sure enough. When we wound our way through the rock maze, we found Marsh crouched over a small boulder. “It's a fish,” he said, pointing to a fossilized skeleton imbedded in the side of the stone.

Dory knelt down and gave him a hug. “I was worried when I couldn't see you.”

He shrugged. “Why? There wasn't anything dangerous going on.”

“You could have gotten lost or . . .”

I interrupted her. “Dory, look at this . . . what Marsh found.”

Reluctantly, she looked away from her son. Her eyes widened. “Marsh, oh, my God!”

“You
did
find a fossil!” I said.

“Told ya.” He glared at his sister who was silent.

He got out his drawing pad again and did a quick sketch of the fish caught in the rock, the scales, the eye, the fins . . . an entire fish. Dory and I did our best to help him memorize the exact location of the fossil find: off the trail to the left as you come down
from the ridge, below a pinkish pinnacle, an oblong rock about two feet across. Marshall just about flew back to the visitor's center. By the time we arrived he was already busy drawing a map for the ranger while the man looked at his sketch.