by Ava Finch
“Ow. Ow.”
“Is that you, RayAnne?”
“Mom! This door’s unlocked again.”
Bernadette appears in a billow of caftan. “Hello to you too, dear. Bring that jacket inside.”
“No. Last time I was here I smelled like patchouli for the rest of the day—a janitor at the station and some slacker at Cinnabon both made peace fingers at me. You should at least ask who’s knocking.”
“You do realize that’s not even food, RayAnne. Besides, I like to be surprised.”
“And you will be someday. By some axe-murdering, dismembering mother-raper.”
Bernadette laughs. “I’ve survived carjackers in Caracas and armed bandits in Algeria, sweetie. I think I can handle Bloomington.” This attitude of safety last seems to be the sole trait her parents share.
“Mother, did you sticker Mr. Martin’s SUV?”
Bernadette pretends not to have heard. “You going to stand there? I’m making chai.”
“He was eyeing daggers at me.” RayAnne plucks a bumper sticker from a stack on the hall table. “You did! You can’t just alienate every . . . at least not the neighbors. Jeez, Mom, ‘I’m a Gasshole’!?”
Bernadette nearly claps. “I know! And he is, and the man deserves what he gets. You tell me how a healthy adult male—who runs several miles a day, mind you—can justify driving an Escalade three blocks to buy a quart of milk.”
“You’re gonna get in trouble. Please, just stick to your causes.”
“Skim, by the way. And outing carbon-footstompers is a cause. For a bright girl, RayAnne, you really are out of touch.”
Following as Bernadette sails to the kitchen, RayAnne ducks under hanging bouquets of herbs, which her mother pronounces with the h. While soy milk heats, RayAnne sinks to the breakfast nook, plucking lavender buds from her hair. The little gnarls of roots and twigs spread over newspaper will no doubt be for making teas or poultices or whatever else is being brewed up for the women on Bernadette’s Blood-Tide Quests. Her mother is a new-age aging coach—“Life-Passages Doula,” according to her website—and each month guides a different gaggle of pre-, peri-, and postmenopausal women to spiritual locations in Sedona, Burma, and remote Scottish islands, where she leads them through ritual cleansings and farewell-to-fertility rites for which they pay outrageous sums.
“Watch your elbows, RayAnne. Peony root isn’t easy to come by.”
“Good grief. Why don’t they just take hormones and sweat it out in Palm Springs or Lake Forest or wherever like everyone else?”
Bernadette bestows RayAnne her Look of Ultimate Patience. “And where would they get support, RayAnne? Do you suppose their husbands are going to repeat the goddess chants with them, or help them out of the Viparita Karani pose when they get stuck?”
“You got me there.” On the windowsill is an array of brochures touting natural remedies. RayAnne opens The Maturing Lily to a paragraph on personal lubricants derived from cactus plants. Disconcerted by the proximity of “cactus” and “vagina” in the same sentence, she slides the brochure away.
“Take that, Ray. There’s good information there.”
“Mom. I know how to take care of my own . . . stuff.”
“Vagina, honey. Can’t you just say ‘vagina’? You sound like your grandmother.”
“Vah-jiiy-nahh. And Gran calls hers ‘Jinny.’ Anyway, I prefer ‘kipper-mitt.’”
“Go ahead, make fun now.” Bernadette sets down the chai. “You’ll dry up yourself one day and then you’ll be grateful for things like yucca lube.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’m thirty-four.”
“Yes, a long way from old.”
“Yeah? The Irish matchmaker we had on last month didn’t seem to think so.”
Bernadette chirps, “Oh, I thought she was charming!”
“You saw the show?”
“Quite a few people saw it, RayAnne. It was on television.”
“But I thought you were in Timbuk-somewhere.”
“Oh, but I have TiVo! And I meant to tell you, after that show I got a call from that lovely boy you used to date, Richard—the one with the nice manners? He was a little upset—asking for your phone number.”
“You didn’t give it to him, though. Did you? Mother?”
“Richard? Why not? He was in touch with his latent female, wasn’t he? But really, RayAnne, you never have been able to not . . . blurt things. You should learn to restrain yourself, at least on television.”
Of course she should. It tops her list of self-improvement projects. She blurts. She’s a blurter. The chai is too hot, and she dribbles a searing mouthful out onto her saucer.
“Awgh!”
“See? Impulsive.” Bernadette picks up the remote, and before RayAnne can protest, she zaps the huge widescreen to life and cues up the show. “I do love my TiVo.”
“And I do loathe this episode.”
“Frankenman,” as it has come to be known at the station, is the episode that most makes her want to grab the nearest anchor and jump. Her frozen profile blossoms hugely onto the screen, mouth half-open, one eye half-closed, each nostril as deep as a sleeve and each tooth the size of a wallet.
“What, a little fumbling? It was funny.” Bernadette presses “Play” and RayAnne’s megaphone-sized mouth erupts:
“Maeve O’Donnell is descended from a long line of matchmakers back in County Clare, but these days her Irish dating service has gone online. Today is the American debut of RiverDate.”
RayAnne turns back to the brochure and an illustrated page of manual methods to reduce discomfort during postmenopausal intercourse.
The program started well enough with a discussion of Internet dating protocol, Maeve suggesting the word “date” not be used until a first meeting leads to a second. RayAnne asked all the pertinent questions about online safety and keeping identities private. They discussed tactics for gracefully cutting short a nonstarter “meeting” and how to assure a promising “first contact” led to a “date.” Maeve cautioned viewers, “Employ sincerity and modesty when creating a profile. Portray yourself as is.”
RayAnne was unable to suppress a snort. Maeve eyed her before leaning to the camera. “RayAnne, for instance, wouldn’t claim to be busty.”
Maeve warned of using Photoshopped or out-of-date photos. “Face it, ladies, if you’re pushing forty and posting a picture of yourself at twenty-nine, the jig, as you say here in America, is up.” As RayAnne quelled the urge to cross her arms over her chest, they moved on to ideas for public places to meet.
RayAnne offered, “A zoo?”
Maeve sighed, “Too . . . animal.” To RayAnne’s look of puzzlement, she explained, “Suggestive. We’ve all seen the back end of a baboon. Would that make a nice backdrop for a first meeting?”
RayAnne swiveled a look to the camera and back to Maeve. “The farmers’ market?”
Maeve nearly tittered. “Oh, dear. And smell like a sheep? Or a cow?”
“Actually, farmers’ markets here don’t sell—”
“A public garden or busy park, yes.” Maeve was still chuckling. “A museum, certainly . . .”
When RayAnne began twisting a hank of hair, Cassi’s voice squeaked interference. She dropped it as if it were ignited and listened to the next directive: “Announce an underwriter slot in fifteen seconds.” Which she did, cheerfully.
“All good advice, Maeve,” RayAnne said, turning to camera two, “and I’m sure we’ll hear plenty more of it after we drop anchor!”
RayAnne took the wheel, at first easing Penelope away, then suddenly opening the throttle, pasting Maeve back in her seat. The shot faded as the boat sped out of frame with Maeve clutching her hat.
Bernadette fast-forwards to the section where they are settled in and actually fishing, Maeve holding forth with a bit she’d obviously rehearsed about how catch-a
nd-release principles might apply to dating, then asking RayAnne who her dream dates might be, if she could pick anyone in the world, like George Clooney.
RayAnne chewed her lip—her list wasn’t that predictable. “Um, some of my dream dates are dead.”
“Dead?”
“Uh-huh, like Ed Ricketts.”
Maeve cocked her head. “And he is, or was . . . ?”
“Steinbeck’s marine biologist? Ed Ricketts. Dead. Hot, but dead. Nikola Tesla for sure. Maybe Orson Welles before he ballooned. Dylan Thomas without the bottle . . .” She shrugged at the camera.
“Right. Let’s stick to the living for now. What traits would make a keeper? For you?”
RayAnne’s technique for stalling is to simply rehash the question: “What would make a keeper . . . for me? Traits? You mean like the ‘best-of’ from failed relationships?”
“Let’s avoid words like ‘failed,’ shall we? How about . . . ‘previous’ or ‘prior.’ Just start with bits of one fellow’s this and another’s that to construct a sort of ideal mate.”
“Construct. Oh, like Mary Shelley?” Before she knew it, RayAnne was revealing the best and worst of her priors on national television. First names only, but still, their real first names. She led with the talent of Lyle, the guitar player with too many substance habits for her comfort. “Talented, and so . . . out of it.”
She tacked on the torso of Paul, the cyclist she never tired of watching undress. “Very rude—but ripped.”
“And . . .” Maeve urged. “Personality?”
“Um, Richard. He was so charming and sweet, except I kept expecting him to come out of the closet wearing something of mine.” She tapped her lip. “But my Frankenman would have to be a bit smarter . . .”
There’d been Zack, the smart one who was going to do great things, had a bunch of PhDs. Sex with him had been above average, that she remembers. “This one guy, Zack? He spoke maybe five languages.” As RayAnne recalled him, she frowned. “So you’d think he’d know better words for breasts than ‘titties.’ So ‘smarter’ isn’t exactly the wor—” She looked straight at camera one, which fed directly to Cassi’s monitor. “Wait, can I say ‘titties’ on air?”
From the breakfast nook, watching her own dunderheadedness courtesy of TiVo, RayAnne groans. Postproduction had promised to cut that and didn’t, yet they would edit out the removal of a barbless hook.
Bernadette chortles, then recovers. “Oh, wait, did I tell you that Zack called too?”
“No! Tell me you didn’t give him—”
“Your number? Why not?”
“Mom, you can’t just do that!”
“Wasn’t he going to be a doctor?”
RayAnne pivots her attention back to a drawing in the brochure, turning it this way and that until realizing it is a tutorial for perineal self-massage. On-screen, she’s busy topping off her woman-made man with the perfect face of Larry, who’d been “about as lively as the marble his jaw was chiseled from.” When the camera drew nearer to RayAnne, the slow realization of what she’d just done on national television appeared like a rash. If that hadn’t been bad enough, Maeve then pulled out a dating profile she’d written for RayAnne and proceeded to read the teaser to the camera in her lovely lilt.
“Successful . . .”
RayAnne frowns across the kitchen toward the television, piping up with her own commentary, countering, “For the moment . . .”
“. . . and dynamic,”
“Caffeinated.”
“. . . thirty-something,”
“Clock-ticking.”
“. . . independent professional,”
“Loner.”
“. . . loves the outdoors,”
“Claustrophobic.”
“. . . fishing in particular.”
“Dweeb.”
“Height and weight more or less balanced,”
“Diet Sprite and laxatives.”
“. . . is open to life’s possibilities,”
“Indecisive.”
“An incredible catch!”
“Ha!”
Bernadette turns. “Really, you should hear yourself. And laxatives? You never did use that gift certificate for the colonic, did you?”
The camera panned to RayAnne’s plastered smile, but just as she opened her massive on-screen mouth to sputter a response, she was saved by a tug on her line. Though the fish was a runt, she made a great show of struggling and reeling as if a muskie had her hook. When she held up the skinny pike, the cameraman had trouble focusing on it, slender as it was, so RayAnne leaned out over the gunnel and held it to the lens, making it loom large. “Okay! Now that we’ve caught something, ladies, here’s one to ponder while we break for a word from Lefty’s Bait. Does size matter?”
RayAnne makes a horsey snort as the screen goes black.
“I thought it was funny.” Bernadette breezes past, bustles around the kitchen, and returns with a bowl of chips. “It was cute, aside from the tattling parts.”
“Mom.”
Bernadette squeezes RayAnne’s shoulder. “Oh, honey. Would it kill you to lighten up? It’s just a show.”
“Just my career.”
So, Zack called? She’d wondered where he might end up. What was it again about their split? She’d chalked it up to the usual—being out on the circuit three weeks each month hadn’t been great for maintaining any relationship. She absently chews a handful of chips, then spits the gummy mess into her palm. “Gah! Mom! These taste like cheesy seaweed!”
“Well, I should hope so.”
In spite of the “Frankenman” episode being perhaps her most embarrassing performance yet, responses had been overwhelmingly positive. Still, television is hardly the place to practice. She simply has to do better—she talks too much when nervous, compulsively digs in the product-placement packages of Gummy Trout and Choco-Fish. She chews her nails, slumps, squints, and the only time she’s truly at ease is when the guest is actually interesting.
She often wonders why the director doesn’t coach her, give more direction.
Her mother narrows an eye in her direction. “You look pale, RayAnne; you getting enough sleep? Bags. Under your eyes.” Bernadette bustles again and pulls something from the fridge that looks like sod and plugs in her Vitamix. Just as RayAnne is about to protest, the machine roars. She won’t bother arguing because the more she resists, the more Bernadette will push, so she merely sits with her eyes shut until her mother floats back to the table with a glass of neon-green liquid.
“Here. Wheatgrass. Neutralizes toxins.”
“Now I’m toxic.” RayAnne frowns at the acid green, but knocks it back, cringing at the taste, like licking the blades of a lawn mower. Bernadette hands over a glass of water to wash it down.
“Good?” Bernadette takes the glass.
“Perfect pairing with these underpants chips.”
“Pish. Oh, I forgot.” Bernadette pulls a tightly tied bundle of twiggy herbs from somewhere in her caftan. “Sage to smudge your trailer with.”
On location, RayAnne will be staying in a newly leased motor home, one assigned just to her, after having shared with Cassi last season, which was a little like bunking with Casper, her white face lit all hours by the glow of her iPad until RayAnne took to wearing a sleep mask. She tries handing back the sage. “It’s a brand-new RV.”
“Take it. Bad juju can come factory direct. How long will they keep you up there?”
“We’ve got twelve shows to tape, so probably two sessions. I can be home on the weekends in between.”
“You know, I met this woman you should consider, an intimacy yogini.”
“Yo-what?”
“Yogini, female yogi. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that.” Bernadette paws around in a Guatemalan patchwork duffel the size of a body bag and pulls out a business card.
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Gumani Bali, PhD, Ayurverotic Yogini.
The card has a photograph of a diminutive, dark woman with a crooked grin. “Dr. Ruth in a sari?” RayAnne slides the card back.
Her mother sips her own wheatgrass juice as if it is Bordeaux. “Gumani is amazing. She’s enlightened me to a few things . . .”
“Please.” RayAnne holds up a hand.
All too often, Bernadette offers up intimate minutiae of her own sex life, most of them dalliances, flings that require no more commitment than a drop-in Zumba class. Most recently she’d hooked up with a raw-foods chef half her age, sharing details as if RayAnne might want to know what anyone might have tattooed across their scrotum. She breathes the image away. Bernadette claims to be completely free in her own body, using a tone that suggests RayAnne might be a hostage in hers.
“Thanks, Mom, but I don’t really have that much say in what guests are chosen. Besides, it’s a family show.”
“Not for the show, honey, for you.” Bernadette leans close as if they are not alone. “I’ve made an appointment for you. For your birthday!”
“You are kidding me.” RayAnne unfolds, slowly rising. “Say you are kidding me.”
“Oh, the look on your face! Of course I’m kidding.”
When Bernadette laughs hard, this hard, it’s easy to imagine her young. She’d been born a literal flower child, having grown up on a sunflower farm in Iowa and headed for a life of hippiedom until sidetracked by marriage to Big Rick—her one great mistake and possibly the driving impetus that now compels her to help other women over their own rough pasts and steer them toward happier lives, her own happiness having been derailed by a man.
When RayAnne was twelve, during one of the defining moments of Dahl family history, Bernadette asserted herself over the carcass of a roast turkey on Thanksgiving afternoon. There was Before The Turkey, The Turkey, and Après The Turkey.
Sometime during The Turkey, the valve subduing Bernadette’s true nature simply blew under the pressures of the holiday when the strain of domesticity, the demands of motherhood, and an unhappy union played out on a midwestern suburban stage proved too much. Emboldened by a number of gin gimlets, Bernadette loudly revealed to all gathered that before she had met Big Rick, she’d been engaged to a mostly forgotten folk singer named Rupert Rutherford, with whom she planned to live on an Oregon commune and raise weed and naked babies. Alas, Rupert was arrested for dealing and sentenced just a week before they were to be married on a beach by a barefoot Rastafarian.
