“Obviously you were not wearing the wig.”
“No.”
“Can you?”
“Why can’t I call Joni to come and get me?”
“Because they’re sniffing around. It won’t be long before they show up at her mom’s place. You know how it is now. Put the wig on. Say you’re a sister, cousin, any relative.”
“So now I can’t even be myself while not being myself. I am trying to not think about how ridiculous this whole…never mind. Tank?”
“Nothing. The amputation of Tamara’s limb was the dumbest thing he could have done because now it’s total outrage. Far more people here now.”
“Have you heard from Joni?”
“No. You?”
“No. Isn’t Roberta’s report supposed to come soon? She tracked down the last piece of the puzzle, found it in a box in the basement of the county historical society. No word yet?”
“She isn’t even returning my calls, Mom.”
“I don’t totally understand what’s going on with you two.”
“That makes two of us,” Oak admitted. “She’s always mad at me lately.”
“Do you love her?”
“Of course I love her.”
“Have you told her, say, recently?”
“When, how do you suggest…logistically?”
“Oak, you can come down from my tree any time. Please. Any time, especially if you—”
Maybelline heard Oak yell something in her voice.
“There’s a reporter climbing the tree. He interviewed me when I wasn’t you. He’s two branches away. We could be fucked. Love ya’. Gotta’ go.”
The call ended. It could soon be all over. She had to stay incognito—it was more important than ever. She would go some place else, call a taxi. It was the land of the perpetual tourist—hotels out the bottle. She had about $200 left; but it was Napa in the summer and a weekend. In calling a slew of places, there was no room under $150, plus the taxi. She was stuck. Oh well. She would hide out in her room until Joni showed up, with one bottle of crappy wine. Not a great plan. She left a message for Joni about what happened, not expecting a call back.
********************
Chapter 20
“I’m not obligated to call you. I’m not your goddamned secretary.”
“I know you’re not, Joni. I just wanted to know if you got the docs from Roberta,” Oak said into his cell phone after fending off a reporter who thankfully, was too fat to make it to him but it was only a matter of time before someone did. He was changing positions, putting his hands around his face whenever he saw a lens pointed at him.
“Yes, I got something from Roberta but I still need to read it and of course I’ll be there after I pick up Maybelline. I took her to a health and wellness retreat I saw on the way. Looked legit. Quicker than the wine train, probably good for her with all this—”
“I know. She left me a message. Someone recognized her, blasted her name out.”
“Oh my God.”
“Somebody from Santa Barbara she walks with.”
“What are the chances? She has the wig, thank God.”
“Pretty damn low. I think it’ll be okay. She’ll figure it out. We talked about it. Please call her Joni.”
“California is a small town.”
“True,” he paused, “I miss you.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon. In glancing through it, this is it Michael, what she sent us. We’ll be done soon.”
“I’m hoping all you mean is done with our latest sit. Some moron is trying to get up here again. I’ve got to go. Hey.”
“What?”
“I love you,” Oak said in Maybelline’s voice.
“See you tomorrow,” she answered, hanging up.
********************
Maybelline spent the rest of the day in her room, showering, primping in the wig for the mixer she knew she wasn’t going to. She was beset with how good she looked in it, thinking maybe she should pass her last days wearing a wide variety of them. “Look at me Jay,” she said to the ceiling. “Like it?” Fully wigged out, she opened the door of her room to hang the “do not disturb” hanger on the handle. She was intrigued to see a couple service carts loaded up with food and wine, likely for the mixer, sitting in the hall, all alone. Apparently the room for the mixer was at the end of the hall based on voices she heard—somebody was yelling they needed two more tables…Peering at the cart, she determined she could easily take a bottle, right there and then, nobody would know the difference. She closed the door to her room and stood behind it a minute. What in the hell was she thinking? STEALING? She was seriously thinking of STEALING a bottle of wine? Was this the criminal life and how fast she was careening down it’s wretched path!!!!!! Fingering the key card in her pocket (she wasn’t going to do that again), she opened the door and smiled as two servers whizzed passed her, one carrying a floral display, the other a tray of hors d’oeuvres. The carts remained. After insuring everyone had disappeared, she grabbed one, two (hell, why not (?!!!!), one red, one white) bottles. “Dare to be Daring!!!!!” she thought (with five exclamation points). Inspecting the brand, quality of the wine (of course from Napa), she did well. Now she could definitely get through the weekend.
********************
Chapter 21
After everyone left, around 11:00 p.m., Oak pulled off the wig, replacing it with a light stocking cap. Under the light of the moon, he boiled water on his backpacking stove, made up a pan of mac and cheese, positioned himself in his camp chair, and gobbled it down after which he ate a perfectly delicious dumpster apple and popped open one of the high end craft brews Maybelline had stocked him up with. He picked Old Bastard Ale in honor of Tank. Lying on his sleeping bag, looking through the boughs of his friend, to the stars, a black shape landed on the very highest bough, an owl. From the size and silhouette, he figured it was a great horned. Comforted and reassured by its presence, he fell asleep. Later when it would call to another owl, he would wake, listen, smile, and go back to sleep.
********************
Finishing off the first bottle of wine, the cheap stuff from the gas station, pouring it into one of the plastic cups that came with the room, Maybelline wondered for a minute if she was drinking too much. She answered her question with a “fuck it”. She wasn’t drinking too much. She wasn’t drinking enough! Alcohol was always some kind of big deal in her marriage, or maybe it was just the times they lived in but getting a bottle of wine when she was with Jay was almost like buying a car, or perhaps like buying contraband. It would start with Jay saying early in the week, “whatdaya’ say we get a good bottle of wine for Friday night?” The rest of the week was spent in anticipation, planning…“a red or white, something fruity, dry?” Or maybe this was just the way they marked the ritual of being together, away from the stress of the business. It was this way when she and Jay and Millicent and Ted planned their picnics and walks, talk of a bottle of wine, to mark the ritual, not to get drunk, escape, because that’s not what they were doing then. They all stopped at two glasses. Now she would stop at three, maybe four (oops, that bottle’s empty). Now it was about coping…with what, she wasn’t quite sure. She lied down on the bed.
Around 9:00, she woke up in the dark, still in her wig and party clothes. She had to get out of the room. Removing the wig, her head kind of itchy from it, and the party clothes she never wore to any party, she pulled on her sweat pants and put on a T-shirt. She popped Jay’s Padres (San Diego) baseball cap on her head and pushed her hair up under it. Assuming the room key-card would also get her back into the building, just in case, she turned around and grabbed the wig. Both of them headed outside into the beautiful moonlit night.
She saw few people and things were quiet; it appeared the mixer was over. Who ends a 7:00 mixer at 9 p.m.(?), she wondered, but now people just wanted to get back to their screens, spending time with actual humans more bother than delight these days. M
aybe this is why Oak and Joni got so little help the past few years. This is what they said. After the “social” media and “petition” sites were created, the number of people that showed up to help them went down as if “signing” your name to an online “petition” abrogated you of any more responsibility, energy. It was lazy is what it was, social media, after all, the human species is all about being lazy. Laziness is the motivation behind nearly every societal decision the human primate makes—only to be trapped by the boredom it causes, and the modern human primate hates to be bored.
“This night, I walk through a forest in my head.”
John Heath-Stubbs
Not only were the white adobe buildings tasteful, attractive, they were surrounded by large oaks. Maybelline noticed what looked like a trail. She took it. After a few minutes, she heard voices, a man and woman talking softly. She worked her way to them. They were sitting together on a bench. She slipped behind a large oak. She couldn’t help listening. The man was teasing the woman about something and she was quietly laughing. Maybelline recalled when she and Jay would sit outside in the evenings and talk; how she missed the simplicity of those times in comparison to…What a lovely sound, she thought, the sound of a couple talking softly in the moonlight, like the soft tinkling of bells. The man’s voice resembled Jay’s. Looking down at the wig in her hand, she wondered what Jay would think of her now. Most likely he would be amused, not take her seriously…Stealing another long look at them, she felt guilty about her voyeurism, innocent as it was. She turned around and took a trail that went off in another direction. The moonlight was dappled through the oaks and madrones, the plants looking worn and tired from lack of rain; it was nearing the end of summer, tough for every Californian. The trail opened into a meadow. She smiled when she spotted the silhouette of a giant old round oak with sprawling boughs. It had to be a valley oak like Millibelle. She headed for it. After confirming it was a valley oak, she wrapped her arms around it, her arms not reaching all the way being that it was about 15 feet around. “Old friend,” she said looking up through its boughs to the moon above. She sat down at its base when some kind of large bird landed in the crown of the tree, what she determined to be an owl. Pleased for the company, she closed her eyes and felt a cool summer night’s breeze blow over her…She imagined it was Jay, no perhaps Millicent, finding some way to touch her again, stir her soul. She wasn’t particularly religious but sent up a prayer. What did the next few days hold? How was Oak doing? Would Joni come for her tomorrow? Who were these strange people in her life now? Would Roberta Robsen solve the riddle of the timber rights soon? What if she did own the tree? What—she stopped herself and shook her head briskly as if to stop the cascade of thoughts crowding her mind. After embracing the tree again and rubbing her cheek against its 100+ year old bark, she pressed her lips to it, this miracle that keeps everything on earth alive. What was wrong with humans? Saying goodbye to her new “old friend”, she turned back. She was relived the old goat didn’t appear when she re-entered the building. Once her head hit the pillow, the cascade of thoughts started again. What would happen this next week? She turned the light off and tried to go to sleep.
The moonlight reflected off the wig, creating a sheen, much like one off water.
********************
Chapter 22
Joni gasped just as her mother set another large mug of coffee on the table in front of her. Unlike interior California, the rain had started in the Bay area.
“Good? Bad? What?”
She looked at her mother.
“What?”
“We owe that woman a case of whatever she drinks,” Joni said.
“You guys saved another one, my druid daughter?”
Joni bit her lip and stared at her mother. “Maybe. There is one thing for sure. It’s all going to come to a head this week.”
Later that morning, Joni listened to her messages, four from Oak telling her what to do, how to do it, when to do it…She deleted the last message without listening to all of it. Staring out the window at the drizzle…She had done her part and now that they had the answer…The tree would be saved, legally, if they played it out a certain way. She resolved something else was going to come to an end in the next week as well.
“I can’t take her back yet,” Joni reported to her mother. “She has to still be up a tree,” she laughed. “Can I bring her here Mom?”
********************
“Two, Sunday,” was the only message Maybelline received from Joni, far too long to wait as far as Maybelline was concerned. It was about 9 a.m. She could still make one of the morning workshops, definitely not the ‘dare to be daring’ one as she had this down. There was the one about grief. Then again, who wants to sit around with a bunch of people and grieve? Shouldn’t the name of this workshop be “group wallowing”? Or perhaps she was healed, had moved on. She decided to walk the trails again, see the valley oak in the daytime. How would it look compared to Millibelle? Just in case she would have to wear the wig but where was it? She knew where it was. After clenching her fists coupled with chastising herself yet again, she put on Jay’s baseball cap, shoved most of her hair up under it again, and set out on her mandatory mission to rescue a wig.
She opened the door and after scanning the hallway, made a quick sprint through the lobby. There was no old goat and no Karen though people were looking at her; she could feel them noticing her, most likely for her non-participation. Hitting the exit bar of the door a little too hard (loud!), she made it out, quickly crossing the parking lot to the trail. There were more people on it now, of course, but she plowed right past them. “Get the hell out of my way, I have a wig to find,” crossed her mind. She took the trail to the old oak only to see a few people standing beneath it, one of them, a man, holding the wig in his hands and laughing. “Put it on, put it on,” someone was saying. “Shit,” left her lips. Without thinking about it, she marched up to him and grabbed it out of his hands, explaining to them she was undergoing chemo treatments and left it there on a walk the day before. She was hot so took it off and they really should watch it, joking about wigs lying around; sometimes there was a damn good reason.
********************
Because it was Sunday, there were a lot more people at the tree when Oakelline woke up. This included more reporters and television cameras. Someone from the Society for the Empowerment of Senior Citizens was climbing up to interview Oakelline. Oakelline had planned for this and with some regret, because they really did need the media to save the tree, dumped a bucket full of water down the tree, hitting the poor soul. Screeching down to the guy it was “urine in the bucket from the night before” (maybe playing up the little old lady thing a little too much), Oaklline screeched she was ‘really sorry’. (This had kept them all away so far). Utterly repulsed, the representative from the Society for the Empowerment of Senior Citizens climbed back down and left. “Did you just dump urine on that poor guy?” followed from one of the reporters yelling up to Oakelline to which she yelled back, “well, I am an older woman. I was just emptying the bucket. I fill it up fast. You can’t just barge up here.” Oakelline could then count on, “that’s disgusting”, “that’s gross”, etc., filling the air/cyber waves for the next few hours or so, the information spreading so no one would try it again. No doubt someone from the health department would show up…whatever works. So far, he hadn’t run into anybody (say, a reporter) on his 3 a.m. visits to the Jeep (as Oakelline) to resupply but for every night he did it, he knew there was more risk of it happening. He was counting the minutes when Joni would arrive.
********************
“Are you Margaret?” a pleasant-faced 50-something woman with a brown braid down her back, little curls framing her face, asked Maybelline who fully ‘wigged-out’, was standing away from the rest of the group. Even without ever seeing her, Maybelline recognized the woman immediately as Joni’s mother. She was driving an older model Ford pick-up truck.
“Yes,” Maybelline answered. “You must be Maggie, Joni’s mother. Joni looks just like you. You’re both beautiful.”
“My gosh, well thank you,” Maggie said as Maybelline climbed into the truck.
“I hope you don’t mind but my daughter, eco-strategist and savior, said it’s not a good idea to bring you to our place in Berkeley. We’ve been getting some calls, one visit from a reporter. I’ve been promising these poor people a visit for months to look at their dining room set and the right time seems to have presented itself. We’re staying at my friend’s house in Petaluma afterwards. She’s got a pet sitter who stops by but we’re giving her a break, plus the cat’s lonely. You’re not allergic to cats are you?” Maybelline attempted a “no” as Maggie continued talking.
“I will be honest. I can’t follow all that’s been happening but I was dying to meet you anyway. Why aren’t there more 74-year-olds like you? I think you’re wonderful, not to mention adept at being two places at the same time.” She winked at Maybelline and smiled.
“I’m not an environmentalist,” Maybelline replied, buckling her seat belt. “I don’t even really get what the word means. I mean, who can be against the environment? I’ve never done anything like this before and I know this upsets Joni. I think you are the one to be thanked, not me.”
“Well, thank you. It’s pretty crazy, our families.” She laughed. “I understand from Joni you enjoy a good glass of wine? Especially lately?”
Maybelline laughed.
“But I have to tell you, when we’re out and about, you have to wear the wig! Joni’s orders!”
********************
Treed Page 15
