by Ava Finch
“Well, Lefty’s has wagered, haven’t they?”
“Um, true.” He turns back to the wheel, smiling.
She certainly has wondered why anyone would sink money into such an untested premise as an all-women fishing talk show on public television.
Growing pensive, she watches the tendril of a curl bat against the nape of Hal’s neck until they near the dock.
When RayAnne breezes into the RV, Cassi barely looks up from her laptop at the booth that doubles as the world’s tiniest shared office space. “Catch anything?”
“Three bass, a ton of sunnies, and two big walleye.” She sees her bed has been made and sighs. No sooner has RayAnne set something down than Cassi has either filed it, tidied it, folded it, tossed it, or eaten it herself. As a defense, RayAnne has unconsciously adapted strategies a sibling might: hiding things, gobbling.
Rinata has sent the wardrobe from Minneapolis. Identical clear garment bags hang on the rack—sets of two of everything in case she out-sweats a shirt or spills in her lap, occurrences of which are all too frequent. Rather than bare her muffin top to Cassi, RayAnne ducks behind the rack to shed her clothes, humming while sausaging into her Spanx.
Cassi stops pecking her keypad. “Someone is in a good mood. I heard you laughing out there.”
RayAnne pops her head up over the rack. “What do you know about Hal? He seems okay.”
“I told you about him. You were supposed to go meet him at the Lefty’s booth during that Shoot & Kill Expo.”
“Rod & Gun Expo.”
“Whatever. You looked pretty cozy out there in the boat. I thought you never crossed that line.”
“What line?” RayAnne sucks in her middle and snaps the waistband into place, wondering if Spanx’s motto is breathing is overrated. She pulls garments from hangers.
“The sponsor line.”
“So Hal is with Lefty’s. Big deal.”
“He’s not with Lefty’s.” Cassi gives her a curious look. “Ray, Hal is Lefty.”
“What?” RayAnne’s words are muffled under the stripes of the boatneck shirt she’s wrestling into. She yanks it over her nose. “Hal is Lefty?” She falls to the couch as if shoved.
“Duh, you haven’t noticed his right hand?”
“But that’s his right hand, why would that . . .” She smacks her forehead. “Gawd, how stupid.”
“Yup, right hand. Which is how Lefty’s got started—insurance money from his accident. It was kind of a big story around here, but I guess you missed a lot being out on the circuit?”
“Sawmill accident?”
“Yeah. It got cut off, and a dog found it in the snow and brought it home nearly frozen, which is apparently a good thing, cuz he was able to get it sewn ba—”
“Jeeeez. Cut off?”
“And sewn back on.” Cassi holds up her own hand. “Imagine how many nerves and stringy things are in a wrist.”
“I got it.” RayAnne holds up her own hand and grimaces. “Sponsor?” She hoists herself to standing to finish dressing, jabbing her arms into a khaki overshirt, which, according to the instructions pinned to it, is to be worn over the striped shirt but with only the middle two buttons buttoned. Then the pants, also with a note in Rinata’s scratchy handwriting, casually rolled to just below knob of knee.
Every day, RayAnne wears clothes that belong to no one and is instructed how to wear them. At least the hat is hers. She straightens in the mirror, assessing herself with her most stoic Mrs. Pendrake face, jaw set. The day has taken a turn, and so has the breeze. She sniffs, as if smelling rotting chum. “Well, I guess that’s that.”
Cassi shrugs. “I don’t get it. All sponsors can’t be evil.”
“Not evil, off-limits. They have agendas.” She thinks of smarmy Roger Lyndon. “They literally float the boat, and they can just as easily sink it.”
“Shame. You looked sorta right together.”
RayAnne pauses before swiveling away. “Dammit.”
“Exactly.”
The interview with the author of Why Does Jennifer Kill? goes about as well as RayAnne expects, her own dark remarks lending an unintentionally flippant tone to the segment with such comments as “Why didn’t she just disguise the poison in yogurt?” and “Maybe he deserved it?”
Motoring Professor Hawley back to the dock, she sees Hal milling just beyond the crew. He gives her a smile and a wave, which she unconvincingly pretends to have missed. He might have been more forthright in the boat, might have offered something less ambiguous than that he was “with” Lefty’s.
Once the professor is safely out of the boat and handed off to Cassi, RayAnne shifts into reverse and spins the steering wheel, shifts and roars away with the throttle open—her version of door-slamming. She speeds around a promontory that defines the bay until she is out of sight of Location. After dropping anchor in the middle of a small bay, she sits rocking for several minutes. She doesn’t feel like fishing but doesn’t have enough gas to just tool around. There is something just out of reach that she’s hankering for but doesn’t know what. When this happens, it’s never good to be near food, especially the product placement cooler. She mindlessly eats a little of everything before realizing her hankering has nothing to do with food. Three caramels into the Godiva assortment, she is officially disgusted with herself.
Who is she to grouse? Hosting this show is a dream job. As Hal pointed out, it’s not a bad place to punch a clock. Getting paid to fish? Interviewing women who are, for the most part, exceptional and, as often, inspirational? Still, there are days it seems like there should be more of something.
But what?
It’s hard to find the door out of such moods. Of course Ky would just say she’s pricklier than usual; Big Rick would be more blunt and ask if she were on the rag, and her mother would encourage her to feel her feelings, good or bad. Advice flows unbidden from the part of her conscience Dot occupies, and she can nearly hear her voice: “You do know, RayAnne, that the only person in the world that can make you happy is you.”
The last squashed caramel is melting in her fist. Shuddering, she leans over the gunnel and swishes her hands in the lake. The sun beating down reminds her of the warning from Darren the makeup guy about squinting and crow’s-feet, so she sets about pulling Penelope’s vinyl canopy up, then snaps it into place. A book would be nice, but she’s not about to go back to shore to get one. Once Penelope’s hood is up, RayAnne curls up on the bench seat, rocking in her floating den.
After ten minutes of flopping this way and that, she gives up on the idea of a nap. There’s a full hour before they watch the dailies. The one thing she does have out on the lake is cell reception. She speed-dials Dot, and after five rings nearly hangs up, but suddenly Gran’s voice is there, sounding out of breath.
“Hello?”
“Gran.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s me; isn’t your caller ID on?”
“Oh? What is it, RayBee?”
“Nothing, Gran, just thought I’d call.”
“You never call during the day. Is something wrong?”
“No. Yes. Not really. I’m just a little bummed. There’s been another mosquito hatch, and everything wardrobe sends is a half size too small . . . can you hear me okay?”
“Where are you? Sounds like you’re in a blender.”
“That was just a Jet Ski. I have to be out here on the lake to get a signal.”
“You’re not driving, are you?” Dot seems to be mumbling around some obstruction.
“No. You sound weird too.”
“Dentist. I’ve been to the dentist; you should feel the side of my face. Now, what is it?”
“What is what?”
“Whatever you called about.”
“Nothing, I just called to say hi.”
“Well, hi to you too. Did you sign
up with RiverDate yet? You said you would.”
She said no such thing. “Gran, I nev—”
“It’s a perfectly acceptable way to meet men these days.”
“I do meet men. All the time.”
“I’m sure you do. But you are such a picky girl, always complaining there’s something missing or wrong with them. You never seem to see what’s right.”
“As it happens, Gran, I did meet a guy with a lot that is right.”
Dot sighs, “And the wrong part?”
“He’s a sponsor.”
“Oh, dear.”
“See?”
“Remember what that nice Irish lady on the show said? ‘We can’t always be trusted to know for ourselves what’s best for us.’”
She’s a little sorry she called at all. “Gran, can we please talk about something else?”
“If you’re blue, RayAnne, just stay busy.”
After watching dailies with the crew, RayAnne skirts the clearing where cars are parked. When she doesn’t see Hal’s red Wagoneer, she decides he’s gone and ducks into the catering tent. Absently, she helps herself to a Rice Krispies bar the size of a paving brick and picks up an abandoned copy of Men’s Health.
With sticky fingers, she’s chewing her way through an article entitled “Is She Faking?” when a shadow falls over the page. She jolts to see Cassi perched on the adjacent table as if beamed there.
“Jeez! You pop up like a prairie dog.”
Cassi holds up a sheaf of clippings. “We’re being watched! We made the O list!”
“O list?”
“Oprah’s Favorite Things. Listen: ‘Dig out your life vests and sun hats—you’ll want to go Fishing with RayAnne and her new friends. No big names on this floating talk show, just real women saying real things.’”
“No kidding?”
“And there’s more. Vogue—this one’s short—says, ‘Tune in, sit back, and tune out.’” Cassi hands over a few.
“Entertainment Weekly.” RayAnne clears her throat and skims down the column. “What? ‘Is Fishing the new book club?’ They’re not serious?”
They both ponder this a moment before Cassi continues, “Money Magazine: ‘Heads up on possible boom market niche to outfit this high- to mid-female demographic in sport-fishing gear.’ We should get some champagne.”
RayAnne blinks at the photocopied clip from More. “This one titled ‘Rod and Real’ says, ‘Women are settling down in front of the screen on Sundays to do what men have been doing for ages—go fishing.’ Where does one find champagne in Hatchetville?”
“Hatchet Inlet.”
“Right.” RayAnne reaches absently for the Rice Krispies brick. Remembering her manners, she holds it out, offering, “Sustenance?”
Cassi slam-dunks it into the nearest trash bin.
SEVEN
Her neck kinked from the long drive, RayAnne leans against the kitchen counter; the thought of sitting is unbearable. Home for less than an hour, she’s separating junk mail from the bills, lobbing flyers and envelopes toward the recycle bin without looking up, hitting it about half the time. Near the basement door, her empty roller bag is clammed open next to a mound of dirty clothes that smell like Location.
She tears open bills and stacks them next to her laptop, determined that this time she will set up accounts online. Amid the detritus of advertisements and campaign flyers is a fat manila envelope forwarded from the station. Inside are a dozen envelopes, handwritten with return addresses and names she doesn’t recognize, likely more snail mail versions of the many e-mails Cassi’s continuously scrolling through: requests for certain guests RayAnne should want to have on the show as much as they do—Pink! Snookie! Some mail has been downright weird, like the marriage proposal to RayAnne from the survivalist who could barely spell but had offered as a dowry one fenced, off-the-grid, two-hundred-acre compound where they would “not be bothured” and a well-stocked arsenal. Obviously in touch with his inner romantic, the man had added that RayAnne was “beutifull enuff” and that he “wuld like a wife that can catch and gut her own diner.” She crams the unopened envelopes back into the mailer and stuffs it away in a drawer, reminding herself to ask the mailroom to stop forwarding them.
Checking the house phone for messages, she’s informed by Ms. Sprint that she has forty-six messages, and RayAnne grows suddenly warm, as if just handed a math test. Instinctively, she rolls the cordless phone from her palm into the junk drawer. For good measure she tosses in her cell phone and shuts it with her hip.
Messages can wait. These days off for the long Labor Day weekend are the only real free time she’s had all month. She’s itching to do nothing—soak in the tub, read a few books, spruce up her yard. She and Cassi have worked their tails off to produce eight decent episodes so far this summer, taping twenty-four segments, interviewing twenty-four women. Of those, at least a third were great, most very interesting, and only a few duds. There’s just one more session of taping—a mere two episodes to go.
RayAnne has to admit, since the thumbs-up from Oprah, she’s dared to let herself think her career might actually go somewhere. If nothing else, it’s beginning to feel a little like security—that this house might remain hers as long as she’s pulling in a couple decent checks a month. Still, she need only surf cable channels to be reminded that a show being good doesn’t always translate to it being renewed.
For the moment, the hard work has earned her a break and time—time to get excited over such mundane tasks as choosing blinds for her bedroom, finding a planter for her front stoop, or assembling the patio furniture still boxed in her garage stall. Most people go north and fish to relax. But to her a weekend in the city and a trip to Home Depot for mousetraps and oven cleaner sounds like vacation. On the drive home she’d daydreamed of puttering in her garden, and while not entirely sure what that entails exactly, she imagines one must need a hose to hold while doing it, so she’ll buy one of those too. RayAnne gazes out the window to her tiny yard, much of it taken up by the trunk of a stately oak, its branches spanning over the fence to shade several neighboring porches. Given the lack of sun in her yard, she can’t consider flowers—perhaps she’ll plant ferns? Does one plant ferns? Do they start out as frondlings? All things to learn.
There’s nothing to eat or drink in the house, but the very idea of getting back into the car makes her lower back ache. Movement is what she needs. Eyeing the wheels on her suitcase, she decides to pull it to the co-op and roll her groceries home like the neighborhood widows do with their old-lady carts. She makes a list, empties sand from the suitcase, and grabs her wallet.
At the front door, her hand is nearly to the knob when someone jabs the doorbell, making her jump back a yard. The bell is the old buzzer type, raspy and jarring enough, but standing right under it is like being bellowed at. She’s about to squint out the peephole when a muffled, tuneless, familiar whistling commences.
No. Can’t be! She looks to make sure, holding her breath. Sure enough, there’s his forehead, shiny with perspiration and big as a melon in the fisheye lens. They haven’t seen each other since Dot’s birthday. She hasn’t heard boo from her father—unless he’s left a message or three among the forty-six on her phone. Covering her mouth, she turns into the house and yells into her palm, “Coming!” When she looks down at her suitcase, the idea comes to her and she counts to five, waiting for the next jab of the bell, when she swings the door wide.
“Dad?”
“Ray-Ban!”
His red Lincoln is parked at the curb, dull with the dust of several midwestern states. “You drove here?”
“On the road since Wednesday. Aren’t you gonna invite your old man in?”
“Dad, I didn’t even know you were coming to town.”
“You don’t check your voice mail?”
“Well . . . I just got back.”
He nods at her ro
ller bag. “Looks like you’re just leaving.”
“Yes! I am. Just this minute, actually.”
For a moment each looks at the other’s suitcase, tight to their sides like dogs at heel. She bites her lip. Showing up in Minneapolis is one thing; had he expected to stay?
Big Rick clears his throat. “Where you headed?”
“I, uh . . .” She hadn’t thought that far. Before she has a chance to come up with something, he nods. “No problemo, RayAnne. I should be heading over to Ky’s anyway. Here, at least let me help you with that.” He grabs her suitcase to hoist it over the doorjamb. Nearly weightless, it almost sails from his grasp.
“Dad.” The jig up, she sighs, “I was only going to the grocery store.”
He sits at the kitchen table while she makes him lunch from the contents of the wrinkled Super America bag he’d dragged in from his car—bologna, white bread, Doritos, and nearly expired milk. He hasn’t said how long he might be staying. She clinks a knife around the bottom of the mayonnaise jar. “So how’s . . . what’s the animal I’m s’posed to remember? Beaver?”
“Badger.”
“Right.” RayAnne nods. “How is Rita?”
“Meh. A little strict these days. Laying down laws, no this, no that.”
“No what?”
“Oh, you know, no red meat, low sodium, no Sean Hannity in the car, no Glenn Beck on the TV.”
“Sounds like it’s for your own good.” She turns back to the breadboard and catches a flash of action in the reflection of the microwave window—he’s pulled a flask from his pocket and is dashing a shot into his milk. She inhales and forces herself to finish cleaning the knife. In the time it takes to turn and face him, the flask is hidden.
He leans back. “How’s your mother? Still pied-piping those rich prunes through Timbuktu and Southeast Asshole?”
“Yes, Dad.” Still clutching the butter knife, she plants fists on hips. “Why are you really here?”
“I told you. Felt like a road trip. Can’t a father get a hair up his ass to visit his own daughter?”
