"Mud skiing?" the guy says when he stops, nodding at our skis. A humorist.
Christy says, "We been up the mountain for a while."
"Whoa," said the guy. "Are you those two skiers vanished a month ago? You're alive?"
"Six weeks ago," said Christy, "but who's counting? I think we're alive."
"Rescue copters were over here for three days, combing the area. How do feel? Need water? Something to eat? You want me to drive you to a hospital?"
"I just want to get my car back, man. I need to get my girlfriend here to her mom's house. She's pregnant. My girlfriend, I mean."
"I think I better take you to the sheriff's office. They'll know what to do. Where you been, anyway?"
"Ripvanwinkleville," said Christy.
Great. The sheriff's office. I hope Christy's not packing out any of that homegrown.
-Christy-
When we got back, I figured I had to do something fast to support me and Andrea and the baby. I mean, Andrea wasn't going to be able to bring in much from waitressing after a few months.
I figured there should be a book in there somewhere, if I could just find somebody to write it. Any real writer would jump at the chance. So I got hold of this guy I knew at The Stranger. We'd talked about doing this Hunter Thompson thing once, over a pitcher or two of margaritas, but nothing ever came of it. He wasn't against the idea, but he said it would be easier to sell the book if it was a news story first. He said if the story had legs, it would walk, and then he'd write the book. First he had to finish a book on hiking in Peru, anyway. But he thought his friend Darla could help with the news story.
Darla was kind of a mistake—all she knew was the confession market. So the story broke in News of the World, and everybody thought it was a big joke. I guess I can't blame them. That headline wouldn't have been my first choice: He fathered a bigfoot baby . . . and became a deadbeat dad.
I got phone calls and email from all my old buddies, who basically figured I'd pulled off a scam of some kind. I mean, it's nice to be congratulated, but if it's your life and not a scam, it's a little embarrassing.
It wasn't my idea to contact Maury. That was Darla, came up with that. I had had my sights on Oprah, actually. A lovely woman, a bit matronly, but clearly someone who could converse on a higher plane, who would not judge me because I had left my little one behind with a loving parent. I could hear her: she would extend her generous hand to me, and she would say, "You sharing your story here with us today has brought us all a bit closer to an understanding of our relationship to the wilderness." That's how I wanted to tell my story.
But Darla couldn't get the Oprah people to even return her calls, so she went on this website and sent my story to The Maury Show. So we don't hear from them, and we don't hear from them, and we don't hear from them. They are really into deadbeat dads there, which isn't my story, in my opinion. But like Darla said, we didn't have time to wait for them to do a show on bigfoot babies. I had to fit into the story they were doing.
So, anyway, I went to the show, and they had a woman up there and three deadbeat dads. Maury talked for a while, and the woman cried, and then the deadbeat dads talked. And then I interrupted, and I took the dads to task for not taking better care of their kids. I really pitched into them. I was like, I'd give anything to get back to my kid and take care of him or her. And this was true, or it seems true when I think about it. Anyway, I did my stuff, and pretty soon I was sitting up there with the deadbeat dads, and we were all crying and Maury was comforting us.
The part I didn't understand was that not only did Mickey not want to spend any time with me, but neither did Andrea. She was into the whole idea of having a baby, but not into the idea of me anymore.
So then, Maury kind of jumped all over me, y'know? He asked how come if I was such a good dad I wasn't supporting my kid either?
Even the deadbeat dads joined in. I think this is the result of all those therapy programs at prisons. We've raised a whole generation of ex-cons who are in touch with their sensitive sides.
It was rough—Oprah, like I said, would have been a much better choice—but I stood up for myself, and Maury even said I was making a good case for parental responsibility in the abstract, if not in actuality. Eventually, we all hugged, and I got out of there alive.
The Maury people liked how I handled it, and they did a follow-up show a few weeks later, where they had me working with this psychic who said she could lead me to the cave again, but she couldn't. We got a couple of TV shows out of it, including one where people who've been cheated by psychics confront the cheats. And then I met this guy that wanted to do a film script. When he finished it, he said, he was hoping they could get Ben Stiller or Luke Wilson to play me. I always liked Owen Wilson better than Luke, but apparently he wasn't available or something.
-Andrea-
Well, it's like I thought. Christy always lands on his feet.
We had a hard time getting along after we got back to Seattle. Before, we had mostly the same opinions about things, but now, it seemed like whatever he wanted to do was totally screwed. I don't know why, but I just didn't want to go along with his schemes. Me being pregnant made a difference, for sure. Christy was completely sure it's his baby, but how could he be so sure of that? I didn't rub his nose in it, but I think he knew there was something going on between me and Mickey. He would believe what he wanted to believe, just like he would tell the stories that get him the biggest reaction from other people, when you got right down to it, whether he believed them or not.
He wasn't a bad dad, though. He's very into the baby, and he doesn't seem to care whose it is. When I was pregnant, he was always bugging me to eat right, and exercise, and all this stuff. And once little Baker arrived, Christy was all over me with baby-care advice from the shopping channel.
But, give me a break, I knew how to take care of a baby. I used to be a babysitter. It's no big deal. Just keep them breathing and don't drop them.
And of course my mother was delighted. She certainly didn't think it was Christy's baby. When Baker was born, she took one look at him, and she said, "We've got to talk." And of course, when we sat down to talk, which was, with one thing and another, a month later, she wormed the whole story out of me, just as you have.
"I knew it," she said. "I knew it. I had a dream."
The thing that I wondered about was the story that Christy told—about him and the bigfoot baby. I mean, I'm the one that should have been on Oprah or something, technically. Mickey threw us out of the cave, after all—so didn't that make him the deadbeat dad? I mean, really, if Mickey is Baker's dad?
It's kind of soon to tell, but there's something about Baker that is so not like Christy.
So I watched The Maury Show. It's not something I'd ordinarily do, but I had to watch it, when he said he'd be on it.
It was a show on deadbeat dads, and while "deadbeat" probably does describe Christy pretty well, I didn't figure that he was completely aware of that. So I thought there would be some acknowledgement by Christy of just where he went wrong, you know?
So I tuned in, and it wasn't like Christy was actually on the show: Christy was in the audience. Why did I believe him? I thought. Had again.
And then, when he spoke up from the audience, and accused those young guest guys, I thought, what?! He wasn't telling this straight. What was going on? And then I realized that he was talking about Mickey.
He even mentioned his name: he even called him Mickey. But he was talking about him like he was a girl. This I didn't understand. Christy embroiders, you know, but he doesn't usually tell bald-faced lies. It's too easy to get caught, for one thing, telling bald-faced lies. Christy is smarter than that.
And he was crying like she broke his heart and stole his baby. Mickey? Hey! It's my heart that was broken. I'm the one who got seduced and abandoned. Mickey's the deadbeat dad, not you, I thought. And I've got the baby.
So after the show, I went to the Maury people. I told them Christy was tak
ing advantage of them. They weren't interested in that story. And why should they be? They had a good story already in Christy. But I said, you're on a roll here. If they kept it going, and maybe they could bring Mickey in, too.
They liked that idea. "Do you know where she is?" the guy asked.
"He's a he!" I said. "Mickey is a he. I ought to know. He got me pregnant. I don't know why Christy is pretending he's a girl. This is my story, and he swiped it!"
I would have thought they'd be surprised by this, but it turned out they're used to this kind of a story. If it's a love triangle, they can keep bringing people back until the cows come home. If it's got a bi angle, they love that too.
So I met with them again, with a story doctor. Very professional, very slick. They do this hundreds of times a season. Kind of creepy, actually.
I had little Baker with me, 'cause I was nursing him, and they glommed onto him. "So this is Bigfoot's baby?" they asked. For Pete's sake, he's just a baby, I said. Leave him out of this.
So the deal was, they were not going to tell Christy that I was going to be on the show, or Mickey, if they could find him. They kept calling Mickey "she."
-Christy-
What did I look like? I wondered. Wardrobe had tried to spiff me up a bit, with a haircut and some clothes that weren't too bad. They even shaved me, sort of, with a razor that left me with a nice even stubble.
I wasn't expecting Andrea. They had made her up to look very wholesome and earth-mother-y, with a peasant skirt and embroidered blouse, like some sort of old-country woman headed for the market. Her hair was wound into a braid, and the braid was curled into a large round bun at the back. I felt like I'd been set up. Where was the hot babe with the welding gun who had won my heart at Burning Man? This was a mom!
They brought us out like the contestants in some old game show, sitting on chairs in front of the audience.
Then Maury came out and he introduced us, and he started asking us questions about where we live and how we met. Pretty soon we started talking, and I didn't think it would amount to all that, or that we could talk about it in public.
Then they started showing the videos of the kid. I mean, babies are babies, and we're hardwired to find them cute. But gee whiz, the audience went a little wild at the baby video. I admit, Baker is a cute kid. I looked a lot like that when I was a toddler. I can show you the photos.
And then they said they had photos of the other baby, but they ran videos of some bear cub instead. The audience was confused, but game. It was a tease, I thought. They don't have any photos, because they've never been able to find Mickey, because I've never been able to find Mickey. Cute little cub, though.
And then they brought out Andrea's mother.
-Andrea-
So my mother was on the show, which I wouldn't have agreed to if anybody had asked me. And she and Maury, I swear, they tag-teamed me, and pretty soon I was telling the unexpurgated version.
I said, which I had never said out loud to anyone, even Christy, that I didn't think the baby is Christy's. My mom said, basically, that she certainly hoped not, and that Christy was an aimless good-for-nothing.
Christy acted like he was outraged, and he threw himself off the chair and onto the floor and kicked his heels a lot and yelled. Since he knows perfectly well how my mother feels about him, I felt this was a little stagy, but I think it's something that men have to do on The Maury Show.
I said that I was just a bit annoyed that my own mother would rather see me with a fatherless kid from some hookup with a grizzly halfway up a volcano, than for me to have a baby with Christy.
But my mom just looked at me and said, "That's the way it is."
Maury was still in control, though, whatever my mother thought, and he started talking to my mom about her entirely misspent youth. And she told this perfect stranger—she doesn't even watch his show—stuff she had never told me in my entire life. My mother told Maury that she used to hike on Mt. Baker, and that she, in fact, had had her own fling with the sasquatches, way back before I was born.
She made it sound like a picnic of some kind. No long weeks in a cave. It was summer, and the weather was warm and sunny. It was like some fantasy romance. The love sasquatches. I don't know why I got so angry about that.
But I was pretty incensed by it all. My mom had always been so tight with the details about my dad that I assumed he was some kind of criminal. And now I find out he's a sasquatch, and on network television. If I were a typical Maury guest, I'd be jumping up and down and crying.
But I know that doesn't work with my mom. So I just ask her: Was Mickey my father?
She said, "Honey, I don't know. It was a long time ago. Life was different then, before I took the accounting course. I didn't always keep track of stuff."
There was a lot of yelling from the audience, some of them laughing and some scolding her.
And then they brought out Mickey.
-Christy-
I don't know how they do this stuff. I certainly didn't have anything to do with it. They didn't ask me for any advice or help. But somehow they found Mickey, or maybe Mickey just decided to allow herself to be found.
Either way, she walked out onto the stage at The Maury Show and paused. She looked great. Elegant, all spiffed up in some kind of classy New York clothes. She looked like Candice Bergen, maybe, or that woman who lives in Connecticut and does the magazine—Martha Stewart. Older, you know, and maybe a little authoritative, but still pretty great-looking. I guess I hadn't thought about it, but maybe Mickey does that craft stuff too, like Martha—that's how she gets all those hats and bowls and coffee cups and stuff.
They told me later that, to the studio audience, Mickey looked like a sasquatch. Some people screamed, other people laughed. But I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the audience reaction at the time.
Of course, I wanted to run to Mickey, but Maury gestured to me and Andrea to stay in our seats. He went over to her, rather cautiously, I thought, and guided her to a seat next to Andrea's mother, who looked at Mickey speculatively.
Andrea looked at Mickey too. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she said to me and the studio audience, "He's lost weight."
I swear, I thought at the time, "She's not even seeing the same person I'm seeing." I said, "Looks to me like she gained about ten pounds, but I figure, she had a baby, she's going to gain a little weight."
Andrea looked at me intently for the first time, like she was actually listening to me. "What are you talking about?"
I said, "Well, you gained weight."
Andrea gave me the evil eye. I said, "I'm talking about Mickey, that's who. She had the baby, and she's still carrying a few extra pounds. But it's nothing to me. She looks great. You look great. Jeez."
Then Andrea said to me, right on camera in front of the TV audience, "Mickey is a man, you idiot."
I was surprised, but I was not going to put up with being treated that way. Idiot. Huh. I said, "I understand how you could have thought that, but the fact is that she's a girl. I found out for myself in the traditional manner."
Of course by now, there were more people in the audience screaming and laughing. I've done some street theater, and this happens—people act out, and certainly on The Maury Show the audience is encouraged to act out. I've found that the best way to deal with it is to ignore it.
And then Maury turned to me and Andrea, and he looked sort of sad. "Christy and Andrea," he said. "Is this your friend Mickey?" We each nodded. "And you each say you've slept with Mickey?" We each nodded. Andrea's mother just shrugged, and then she nodded too.
"Well, you've shown us here today that not everyone is seduced by Hollywood's ideal of beauty . . ." I was about to object to that statement, when I saw Mickey sort of focus on Maury. He did kind of a double-take, then said, " . . .though of course you . . . you would carry it to a . . . new standard." He shook his head a little, like there was something wrong with his eyes.
Then Maury pulled himself together and held
up a manila envelope. "I've got the tests right here," he said. The Maury Show is very supportive with the paternity test thing, and I was looking forward to the results. Maury tore the envelope open and pulled out the lab report.
At that point, Mickey stood up and said, "I don't think we need to hear this." She gestured with one hand, and an opening appeared in the floor of the stage right in front of us. It looked like it led into a cave, and it sure was dark down there.
Then people started coming out of it, people with tall hats and clothing that looked like it was made from dead oak leaves. They were carrying bittersweet vines and two babies, neither of whom looked to me like a bear cub, though I've been told that, to the audience, they both looked like bear cubs.
The people in hats danced with Mickey and Maury and Andrea's mother, and they handed the babies about while they danced. Maury danced, but Andrea and I did not dance. We watched, slightly paralyzed, while Mickey and Andrea's mother entangled themselves in the bittersweet, and then entangled Maury. Then they all danced down into the trapdoor with the babies, even Maury.
But Maury looked a little worried, just a tiny bit. As he descended down into the floor, he looked right at the cameraman and said, "Keep it rolling, Anthony." He disappeared into the cave, wrapped in bittersweet. Maury was a pro, I thought, and I respected that.
Andrea and I were left sitting on the sound stage, looking at the audience. I'm sure you've seen the clip on YouTube.
IN THE FOREST OF THE QUEEN
Gwyneth Jones
Aymon Bock was not taken with the Montsec American Monument. It seemed inflated: a Doughboys' monster donut, dominating a landscape that really didn't need any more reminders of war and death. Surely the hectares of white crosses, another thick-sown field of them every time you turned a bend, were sufficient? The only way to escape the thing was to drive up there, which Aymon and his wife Viola duly did. They left the car, climbed a momentous flight of steps and walked around the circuit of massive fluted columns. Built in 1930, damaged in WWII, restored in 1948.
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