Fishing With RayAnne

by Ava Finch

  “Nope. It’s DIY all the way.”

  “Well, you get to it, dear.”

  “I’ll send a pic once I’m done. Smooches.”

  After laying out the shelves and examining the little hexagonal tool that looks like it could snap like a twig, she gets the tools Big Rick bought and finds a more substantial version of the same diameter. She’s rather proud of how smoothly the operation is going. She can totally manage this. Just as she’s thinking it, her elbow jostles the utility knife set too close to the edge of the mantle. She fumbles in slow motion to catch it and does—the blade she’d forgot to retract plunges into the ham of her thumb, nearly to its hilt.

  “Mmmmotherfucker!” It happens in an instant. The knife wobbles an instant before the weight of it cranks her hand downward and it clatters to the floor, followed by an impressive spurt of blood. “Shitshitshitshitshit . . .” Rory is at her heels in a flash, sniffing the knife. Just as he’s about to lick the blade, she kicks it under the couch. Stepping over him, she rushes to the kitchen sink to run water over the cut to get a better look. It’s deep. The sight of muscle—of her own meat—contracts her stomach to a lump. Pain bolts up her wrist and arm. Stitches. It will definitely need stitches.

  Remembering the blade had a few rust spots, she moans, knowing she’s in for a tetanus shot as well. “Damndamndammit.” Once she’s fumbled open the first aid kit and starts ripping things open with her teeth, she realizes there aren’t enough gauze pads—each time she moves her thumb, more blood spurts. There’s no way she’ll be able to drive herself to the ER. After poking numbers into the cordless to order a taxi, she wads paper towels into her palm and makes a fist around them. Seeing the orange dog-poo bags on the counter, she’s inspired to shove her hand into one to hold everything in place and keep the blood from dripping. She scatters a few rawhide chews for Rory before shutting the front door on him. Waiting outside for the taxi, she holds her hand high, managing to look crazy.

  She’d imagined a late afternoon on a Sunday at the ER would be slow, but the halls of Hennepin County Medical Center are ablaze with light, noise, and all the chaos of a paycheck-Friday, full-moon midnight. She is categorized “priority” by the woman at admissions after she listlessly notes the amount of blood in RayAnne’s bag, now nearly enough to float a goldfish. RayAnne is given a number, pointed to a large waiting room, and told simply, “Wait.”

  Nearly every molded green and yellow chair is occupied. The sick and injured comprise a disparate mix of young and old, crisscrossing all strata. A seductively dressed, heavily made-up mother whispers to her pregnant teenage daughter, who stares straight ahead and only snaps gum in response; a rheumy-eyed Hispanic man is flanked by two younger men who could be his sons, all three dressed as if for church. At first RayAnne settles across from a young mother with two toddlers, but both commence croupy, barking coughs and ooze rivulets of green snot. She moves on, ostensibly looking for a magazine. A tanned fiftyish golfer-type with a gold watch and diamond ring holds a cold pack to his ankle. Passing a Vietnamese family, she notes all their eyes on the ER double door, as if waiting for someone to be wheeled out. She can assume the two teenage boys—one holding his arm, the other with ice on his knee—have been skateboarding, because one still has his foot planted on his board, toeing it in and out from under his chair. A graying pair of suburban lookalike sisters watch CNN on the corner TV. A teary-eyed, well-dressed blond holds her jaw and turns away from anyone looking at her. Beyond them are more rows, all full of hurting people, all waiting. Many stare into the screens of their phones.

  She’s forgotten hers, of course. In her rush to get out of the house, she’d only grabbed her wallet. She finds a table where there’s a pile of magazines and blinks at the incongruity of the titles: Dressage Digest, Wine Spectator, Cigar Aficionado, and Yacht, obvious rejects from the doctors’ lounge. Across from her, a tattooed, asthmatic-sounding hipster in a duffle coat holds his eyes closed, as if concentrating on teleporting himself to a better waiting room in a better hospital. Her hand hurts.

  Off to the side is a short corridor of vending machines. One is being repeatedly kicked by an angry little bald man. She’s got no book to read and only about three dollars in cash. The pay phone in the tiled hall looks broken, but even if she had quarters, who, besides Gran, would she bother with this?

  A half hour into the wait, the only patients called up so far are the woman and her leaking children. One of the identical sisters gets up on a chair to change the television channel from CNN. When she skips past the Vikings half-time show, a few men moan, one imploring, “C’mon, lady . . .” They are rewarded with the final minutes of a documentary about wolves. No one complains, but no one is enthused either. The television is a place to aim their eyes, something to blink at besides their phones or each other.

  RayAnne lifts her bloody bag. The bleeding has slowed, maybe even stopped. She’s wondering how Rory is handling her sudden absence when she realizes the tune emitting from the television is the theme song for Fishing.

  She freezes. Her eyes swivel to see who looks up at the TV before she dares to. There she is, welcoming the entire waiting room to climb aboard Penelope. The pregnant girl’s mother stops badgering her long enough to turn to the screen. One of the sisters says “Shhh,” though no one is talking.

  “Today on Fishing we’ll go to the gym with Leslie Jordache.” A photo fills the screen, showing an obese, pretty, caramel-skinned young woman sprawled on a lawn chair that looks like it might snap. “At thirty years old, the only thing Leslie Jordache was lifting regularly was the two-gallon ice cream bucket from her freezer.” The picture changes to one of Leslie looming large in an altogether different way, braced under a set of huge barbells, a silver medal over the spandex singlet covering her muscular chest, much of her great weight shed, the rest shifted and muscled more tightly to her frame, owning it. “Today, a hundred pounds and ten years later, Leslie is the reigning Canadian women’s weightlifting champ. We’ll talk to Leslie about her journey from couch potato to Olympian.” She looks to the other camera. “Later in the show we’ll fish with Captain Angie Jones from the tall ship program, High Seas, where she helps chemically dependent teens literally sail through recovery. Captain Angie teaches seafaring and nautical skills on a floating rehab ship.” RayAnne looks directly at her audience, adding, “Blimey.”

  There is a mild shuffling in the waiting room as a few people adjust their chairs for better angles. RayAnne picks up a Golf Digest to watch from behind the cover of an article titled “Is Tiger Grrrreat?”

  Leslie Jordache is seated in the usual guest spot, the bench seat, but the gaffer had had to place several sandbags across from her to level Penelope in the water. Even before RayAnne can ask Leslie what her inspiration and motivation was to get up off the couch, Leslie is leaning forward ready to bust with all she has to say—another of those guests who can carry the show, RayAnne’s presence barely needed.

  “My motivation? That was self-preservation, RayAnne.”

  “For your health, your psyche? Survival?”

  “All of the above. My first husband, Jimmy, was a piece of work. When he’d come at me swinging, I used to have this fantasy. I’d close my eyes and imagine grabbing him before he could make a fist. I had a vision of lifting him off his feet and over my head to throw him, just chuck him . . . at a wall, the TV, his damn dog—anything, I just wanted to throw that man.”

  A number of people laugh.

  On screen, RayAnne chuckles. “And one day you . . .”

  “One day I’d just had enough. I said to myself, ‘Leslie, stop being this man’s fool. Stop dreaming about things being better and make them better, and so I did. I started going to the gym that very day. I didn’t know how long it was gonna take, but I was gonna do it, I was gonna work out and train until I could lift two hundred and forty-seven pounds.”

  “Jimmy’s weight? And did you ever get to—”
>
  “Clean and jerk him? Nah, by the time I was snatching two hundred pounds I realized he wasn’t worth the breath it would take. He sure as hell wasn’t hitting me anymore.”

  One of the ladies in the row in front of RayAnne hoots. A male voice from behind her says, “Go, Leslie.”

  RayAnne sneaks a sidelong glance at the woman holding her jaw. She’s dry-eyed now and fastened to the screen. It’s not just women watching; it’s the younger Hispanic men, both the skateboarders, some guy in scrubs and surgical booties, and an old man nearby holding a urine sample.

  The conversation between RayAnne and her guest continues over the short video of her visit to Leslie’s gym. The dubious look on RayAnne’s face when Leslie motions her down to the weight bench is funny, but when RayAnne tries lifting up the barbell with its pair of thirty-pound weights, the camera zooms to her face, eyes bugging while she mouths, Help.

  Laughter ripples across the room.

  RayAnne laughs too, because she remembers worrying she might fart on camera.

  “See, RayAnne,” Leslie encourages her, changing the weights to twenties. “It’s easy—you just aim for impossible, then work your way up.”

  In fact, earlier in the day when faced with heavy IKEA boxes, it had been the thought of Leslie that had inspired RayAnne to not give up. She smiles into the pages of Golf Digest—in a way, she has Leslie to thank for this trip to the ER.

  When the underwriter slot commences, a few people mutter—they’d clearly been enjoying the show. RayAnne looks around. She wasn’t imagining that. And now several people are even talking about it.

  “Number thirty-three? Number thirty-three? RayAnne Dahl?”

  “Oh. Me.” RayAnne gets up too fast. She sways; the magazine slides to the floor. Her nearest neighbor, the guy with the urine sample, reaches over to steady her, but she rights herself and waves him off. “I’m good, thanks, just dizzy.”

  He dips to grab the magazine and offers it, but she shakes her head, holding her bagged and bloodied hand. One skateboarder turns to the other. “Hey, man, that is her. I told you.”

  Heads turns as the skateboarder points to the television, then to RayAnne. “It’s her. This lady here is that fishing lady.”

  “No shit?” Urine guy gives her a wink. The woman who’d changed channels swivels from her front-row seat, saying, “Well, I’ll be.” Her sister gives a wave. “Great show, RayAnne.”

  “What happened, some fish bite you?”

  Blushing deeply, RayAnne approaches the nurse, now nodding. “You really are the fishing gal on that show?” A few people clap as she’s led away. “I guess you must be. You’re famous. You rich too? Is that funny?”

  The nurse makes a big deal about telling the doctor, an impatient woman who looks as if she has more pressing matters than sewing up another DIY gone wrong. “Honestly.” The doctor shakes her head, looking at the wound. “Sundays are the worst.” The injection of a numbing agent into her hand hurts so much RayAnne thinks she might leave her body.

  “I should have signed out an hour ago.” The doctor sounds peeved, but when she looks up, she’s grinning. “This is the second Sunday in a row I haven’t made it home in time to watch your show.”

  My show? Once her hand is an unfeeling lump, she turns away from the procedure of the cut being cleaned and stitched—just three sutures, the cut is deep, not wide.

  “My father and I usually watch you together.” The doctor snips the suture. “He says it’s a nice break from Antiques Roadshow.” She flips up the magnifier clipped onto her glasses lens. “That should do it. You won’t be casting or reeling with that hand for a few weeks.”

  “Thanks.”

  After stripping off her rubber gloves, the doctor adds, “I’d ask for your autograph for my dad, but you won’t be writing much either.”

  “I’m left-handed.”

  “Ah,” she pulls a prescription pad and pen from her lab coat pocket. “In that case, his name is Norm.”

  RayAnne smiles. “Spelled like it sounds?”

  Once home, she calms Rory, who alternately whimpers and glares at her, sniffs the bandage, and sulks. When she opens the back door to let him out, he won’t cross the threshold.

  Who can blame him? She’d slammed him on the wrong side of the door already once today, leaving him for hours. Stepping out into the dark yard herself, she goes to the horseradish plant, where she cradles her hand and waits for him, humming like Elmer Fudd. He comes along warily, and pees, refusing to look at her.

  There’s dried blood streaking the IKEA cardboard and the kitchen counter, but any that had dripped on the hall and kitchen floors had all been lapped up by Rory. While filling his bowl, she eyes him. He’s tasted her blood. She has read that a team of sled dogs will eat their master if he falls ill or is injured to the point of defenselessness. While Rory crunches kibble, she takes two of the painkillers she’s stood in line at the hospital pharmacy for. Reading the bottle while the second capsule snails down her gullet, she realizes the dose was only one.

  Surveying the shelves and hardware strewn across the living room floor, the scope of her little DIY project dawns. She couldn’t put the shelves up now if she wanted to. But there’s more—sunk into the upholstery of the nearest chair while the painkillers kick in, she realizes she hadn’t considered the uneven floors. Does she own a drill bit large enough to make holes in the plaster for the butterfly bolts? No. Had she measured correctly? Probably not. What she’d optimistically thought might take up an afternoon—assembling a simple wall of bookshelves—has already necessitated a trip to the hospital and suddenly looks like a life’s work. Nothing she’ll accomplish anytime soon.

  She slides from the chair to the carpet. Rory whimpers and lays his head on her knee. Sniffling, she considers him. As awesome as Rory is, some days a dog just isn’t enough. As she drifts into a buzzy unease, she wants Gran. Wants her mother. Mostly she doesn’t want to be alone.

  But getting up to find the phone is too colossal an effort. Besides, a call won’t cut it this time. She could use a face-to-face dose of her mother, or an hour with Gran, who would whip up some antidote—one of her favorites, like the lemon zest bars with a dusting of powdered sugar, the crust mined with crystalized ginger; those hazelnut meringue cookies with chewy centers. Normally RayAnne would salivate at the thought of Dot’s two-bite cherry turnovers, flaky and oozy at the same time, but the painkillers have dried her mouth like a wind sock.

  Bernadette would suggest she meditate on something, a smooth pebble, a cloud, one of those serenity fountains that make her want to pee. Or, she might suggest RayAnne teleport herself to a safe zone, a happy place that is not in bed under the duvet, hugging her body pillow.

  Where is her happy place these days, besides Penelope? This house? It’s close, but somehow not quite. Do people ever really find their happy place?

  A minute goes by, then two. The narcotics thicken her thoughts until she muses aloud to Rory, “What was I looking for again?”

  THIRTEEN

  It was as if she were right there, on the day of the final shoot. The camera panned from Penelope’s rocking bow to the captain’s seat. Smiling tightly, RayAnne asked Bernadette, “So, you created the Blood-Tide Quests because . . . ?”

  Since settling in the boat across from her mother, RayAnne kept thinking back to the months after her thirteenth birthday when her parents separated and the postdivorce fallout hit the height of family dysfunction. She was supposed to be thinking of questions a host would ask, but what she really wanted to know is what her mother could possibly have been thinking—what sort of perimenopausal state incited Bernadette to round up other fever-pitched middle-aged women to tromp the new-age spiritual landscape of sacred wells, shamans, yogis, and homeopaths just when she and Ky had needed her most? Weekends they were left in the care of Big Rick and his bimbo-of-the-month or their bug-eyed neighbor Mrs. Leeper, wh
o parked her impressive backside at the dining room table with gluey scrapbooking projects, only occasionally rousing herself to open a can of soup or scorch some Hamburger Helper.

  “Why did I create the quests?” Bernadette cleared her throat. “Twenty years ago, we didn’t talk much about menopause, at least not publicly. We do now, thank Goddess, but before The Silent Passage came out, menopause was mostly silent. Bringing it out of the closet, gathering women to embrace their life changes? To break the cycle of shame society imposes on women’s bodies? That just seemed like a cause to get behind.”

  Facing her mother, RayAnne chomped a sharp incisor into the sore on her lip, the pain like voltage—her eyes welled instantly. On either side of Penelope, attentive sponsors bobbed in all-too-close proximity. Why couldn’t they have shown up the day before, when the Birkett twins had been so compelling?

  A question better swallowed fell from her lips: “Weren’t your children a cause?” After a half second she pivoted to the camera boat. “Scrap that.” Back to Bernadette, she scrabbled. “I mean . . . wasn’t it difficult to sacrifice so much family time?”

  Bernadette looked affronted. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning going off, doing all that questing . . .” Her inner idiot prompted her to add, “Like, all the time.”

  “Oh, honey, I wasn’t gone all that much.”

  RayAnne leaned in. “Every weekend?” It was as if she couldn’t stop herself. She fought a sudden desire to jump ship.

  Invoking her Tone of Ultimate Patience, Bernadette frowned. “RayAnne, these women needed me even more than you did.”

  “More? Mom. Seriously.”

  A wave passed over her mother’s features, and when she continued her voice wobbled. “I was a stay-at-home mother for twelve years!”

  “Sure, but . . .” RayAnne caught the sudden look of panic in her mother’s eye. “Mom? You okay?”