by Cathy Lamb
Detective Zadora asked me the same questions as she had before, in different ways.
And then, “Natalie, can I see your phone?” Detective Zadora asked.
“What?”
“Can I see your phone?”
“Sure.”
“What’s the number to unlock it?”
I told her. She looked through it. She listened to voice messages. It felt invasive, but being targeted by a sicko felt invasive, too.
“Someone might be mad at your husband,” Shea Zogg said, watching me closely, when the detective and she were done with my phone.
I nodded. I felt dizzy. Ill. I knew it was Zack. Someone was after Zack through me. I am a jumbled mess, but I am not stupid.
“Maybe a former employee?” Detective Zadora also watched me carefully. They were both looking for any clues, said and unsaid. This question had been asked before.
I nodded. That’s what Zack had told me. “It could be. He said you all have been working on it.”
“We have been,” Detective Zadora said.
Should I now, finally, tell them about the phone calls Zack received when I was in my coma that had made him so furious? I wanted to protect Zack. I knew that Zack was not guilty of doing this. He had not paid someone to hit me with a van, he had not sent a scraped-up Barbie to my room, he had not sent the headless bird. It wasn’t Zack, and I didn’t want the police to think it was.
Detective Zadora and Shea Zogg were still studying me, analyzing me.
“Anything else you want to tell us?” Detective Zadora said to me.
“No,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Shea asked.
“No.” I paused. “Yes. No, there is nothing else I have to tell you.”
Silence.
“Help us help you,” Detective Zadora said.
“I will.”
“We need to catch this person before you or Zack is hurt.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Are you sure there’s no one you can think of who would do this?”
“No one.”
More silence.
They knew I was hiding something.
* * *
Detective Zadora, the police, and Shea Zogg talked to Zack alone downstairs. I wobbled back to my room, with the help of a nurse and Soldier, who insisted on “helping my buddy,” and lay down on my bed, my head throbbing as if an elf were in there with a sledgehammer. Zack came in later and hugged me close. I was nauseated. He rubbed my temples, nice and slow, like I like it.
“I am so sorry, Natalie.”
“Who would send me a dead, headless bird?”
“I don’t know, honey.”
I pulled back and studied his expression and caught my breath like a cape of truth: Zack knows exactly who sent the dead bird. “I think you know.” My voice was hesitant.
“I told you, it’s probably one of my employees, in the past, who I fired or a supplier who’s angry he lost a job with me. The police are going to figure all of this out.”
I was freezing cold with fear. Someone was gunning for me, and Zack, and his answers did not add up.
“But—”
“Natalie, I’m taking care of it.”
“But—”
“I’ve got it, Natalie. The police have it. You rest.”
My head was slammed with pain. The intense fatigue struck. I would figure this out . . . after I slept.
* * *
Before we were married, Zack and I took a drive into the country, coffee in hand. We saw a crumbling red barn. It tilted to the left.
He stopped and we both stared at it.
“I wonder who built that,” I said.
“It’s got to be a hundred years old.”
“I wonder what the family was like who owned it.”
“Many families. Ton of history there.”
“You could use the wood in your homes.”
“How?”
“Wrapped around the kitchen island. Shelving. The mantle. A cool design on the wall where they could hang pictures. Flooring in the den. The barn doors could be doors in a home.” I had more ideas. Living with my dad taught me that wood could, and should, be reused.
He turned to stare at me. “You’re a smart one, Natalie.”
I gave him a kiss. Zack was brilliant. No one becomes a construction engineer unless they’re super ridiculous smart.
And that was it. We went to talk to the owner.
The home owner was eighty-five. We had dinner with him. He told us the barn was a hazard and said we could take the wood. Zack had a warehouse, and his crew put it in there.
Now he repurposes all kinds of wood for his homes—old gym floors, demolished bowling alleys, a roller rink once, barns, old homes, old schoolhouses, churches, interesting doors, bleachers, a bread factory, a bar from a saloon—anything that was coming down that had a history, we would collect wood from it.
He left a calling card, so to speak, in all of his houses: old wood, historical wood, special wood that held a story. When he listed his houses, he included the information of where the wood came from. People loved it. The homes were new, but they had personality and history and character.
Zack took the highest bid for his homes—usually. When a widowed single mother of five kids, one with autism, bid on one, he took her offer. When a twenty-six-year-old, stressed-out, and grief-stricken uncle who had adopted his four nephews after their parents died in a car accident didn’t come in with the highest bid, Zack still let him buy it. He let two grandparents buy a house when they were raising their three granddaughters because their own daughter was in jail. None of them had the highest bid.
“I couldn’t say no,” he told me. “I just couldn’t.”
And that’s one of the reasons I love Zack: He does not turn his eyes away from people who are struggling.
Like me.
His homes attracted attention at the state level, then at the national level. He was often asked for interviews. He did only print interviews, no on-camera interviews. He would not allow a photo of himself in any magazine, in a newspaper, or on his website; only the homes were allowed to be photographed or his foremen or employees. He said he was private.
The one time that his face was on the cover of US Home Building, he was furious. “I specifically told them that there was to be no photos of me. Only the homes, or my employees.”
I was stunned at how angry he was. “But, Zack, you own the company. You build beautiful homes. People want to see the face of the builder.”
He wasn’t even listening. He stalked to the windows of our home and glared into the night. It was clear he did not want to talk. I didn’t understand it, at all. I knew he was private but to be that ticked off?
That night I went to bed alone. I woke up at three and he was still in the family room, in a chair, staring into the night, his jaw tight.
“Zack?”
“Baby, go back to bed.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes. It’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine. His anger over this was beyond incomprehensible, but he shut down all talk on the subject, and I let it go.
I kept thinking about his simmering anger that day.
* * *
Zack told my dad about the dead bird.
My dad insisted on seeing the president of the hospital when he came to see me the next day. Amazingly, the president made time for him. He also insisted on seeing the doctor in charge of my unit. And the second in command. I was to receive no more packages. Security had already told everyone in the Brain Bang Unit that all of my packages were to be opened first, after the Barbie incident, but Stelly, the CNA, had simply not gotten the message. There were a lot of people who worked on the floor; it was a communication issue. The doctors apologized for allowing a package to get to me, and said it would not happen again.
Later, after my dad left, a doctor said to me, patting her hair, “How long has your father been married to your mother? Oh, they’re divorced? I
s he currently married?”
* * *
In my nightmare that night the bald man chased after me, stuck a live bird without a head into my mouth, then duct-taped my mouth shut. I couldn’t breathe. The bird clawed my mouth and throat, then it died. Then I died because I choked on the bird. The bald man laughed.
* * *
The Moonshine and Milky Way Maverick Girls came to visit me again. Justine snuck in peppermint ice cream and pickles in a cooler.
“We should do the Naked Bike Ride in Portland.” Chick pointed at me with a pickle. “It will be a celebration of Natalie getting better and all of us grabbing our inner wild and crazy selves and riding off with them.”
“I need to be wild and crazy,” Justine said. “To shake things up. To feel young again. To feel free. Geez. I sound like a cliché. I’m pathetic, aren’t I? I know I’m pathetic.”
“You’re talking about getting naked. In Portland. On a bike.” My speech was slow still, plodding, but it was coming along. I ate the peppermint ice cream without the pickle. “That means no clothes.”
Yes, we have an annual Naked Bike Ride here in Portland. People do ride buck naked. Some paste artificial flowers to their nipples. Some cover up their bottoms with thongs or bikini bottoms. Many don’t. There are funny hats and wigs, no doubt for disguise, and others are riding happily along, not a stitch on.
“We’ll get you one of those three-wheeled bikes,” Justine said. “So you don’t fall over on your naked bottom and bop your head.”
“One with a pretty flowered basket in front,” Chick said.
“It’s like truth or dare, but it’ll be a dare,” Justine said. She was eating the peppermint ice cream straight out of the carton.
We had done so many daring things when we were younger. We had jumped off The Rocks over the lake holding hands. We had drag raced. We had skied fast and devised creative pranks and teased a bull and strung up the bras of all the girls in our high school on a flag pole to protest that yet another principal was a man, and not a woman. The man left, a woman was hired.
Then we all grew up and had to display a modicum of normalness to maintain our reputations and so we did, and it has been dreary in the wild and crazy department ever since.
“It’s so boring being boring,” Justine said.
“It’s so dull being dull,” Chick said. “But look at me.” She pointed to herself. “I own a hardware store with leaf blowers and pillows and drills and curtains. Who would have thought I’d grow up and do something like that? Hit me in the head with a hammer, I never would have thought it. I have six kids running around.” She scrunched her nose up. “They’re all so odd, too, totally odd. Oh, my gosh.” She smacked her forehead. “Ellie built a huge volcano on the football field and blew it up with a firework for science class. She taped it. She was suspended. Hudson ordered worms in bulk because he wants a worm-selling business. Three boxes of worms. Joshua only wants to wear pink pants and sing Broadway songs. He might as well wear a T-shirt that says, ‘I’m Gay.’ Ally had a ballet recital with those mongo-sized feet of hers and fell twice, and Timmy and Tessie escaped again on their trikes and made it into town. They were both wearing black capes and black Batman masks.”
Justine and I laughed.
“I want to do Portland’s Naked Bike Ride because I want to get myself back,” Chick said. “I want to be who I used to be before I got married and became a mother and had a herd of odd kids.”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “I could go for some wild and crazy. I have bars on my toilet and I tilt to the left when I walk. I sound like I’m a slow drunk when I talk. I want to be who I was before the accident. Actually, I want to be who I was in Lake Joseph, when we were teenagers.”
“I’ll do it,” Justine said. “I want to add laughs to my life. I’ll ride in costume.”
“Oh, definitely in costume,” I said. “Wigs. Hats. Big glasses. I need to be totally unrecognizable while I’m going wild and crazy.”
“I’m covering my butt,” Chick said. “With this honkin’ thing people will think my butt has swallowed the bike seat when they see me.”
“Cheers to that,” Justine said.
We grabbed our pickles and whacked them one against the others.
“I’ll invite Jed so he can see what he’s missing out on with you, Justine,” I said.
She grinned. “You’re a true pal.”
Chick and Justine had known about the Barbie in my hospital room. I told them about the headless bird, which explained the guard. They both leaned back in their seats for once, silent.
“You’re being stalked,” Chick finally said.
“Someone’s trying to take you out,” Justine said.
“Seems like it,” I said.
“Or Zack,” Chick said.
“Yes,” I said. “Or Zack, through me.”
More silence.
They reached out and held my hands.
* * *
When I was younger, while other girls, except for my fearless Moonshine and Milky Way Maverick girlfriends, were poring over fashion and movie star magazines, I was poring over home décor articles in magazines at the library. My dad bought me a subscription to two of them on my eleventh birthday and I jumped up and down. That’s how well my dad knew me.
Our house was small, with two bedrooms, on twenty acres outside of town. My grandma’s dad built it himself, and she grew up in that house. She insisted on giving it to my dad when I was born and moved to a brand-new double-wide trailer about a half mile away.
Grandma Dixie didn’t like my mother any more than she would like a grizzly bear in her kitchen, because she didn’t think she was kind to me or her son but, looking back, I realize there was another emotion my grandma held toward my mother . . . pity. I don’t understand it, but that’s what it was.
Pity or not, Grandma Dixie would not live with “Princess Jocelyn,” and her generous heart wanted to provide a home for her young son and his family, so we got the house.
Our kitchen was galley style, with dark brown cabinets, and closed off. We had a family room and dining area. To me it was home, it was what I knew, it was where my parents and I lived and then, after my mother left us, driving away with a cheery wave, it was where my dad and I lived.
But even I knew, because I had been to other kids’ houses, that it was dark, cluttered, and depressing, despite the 360-degree view of both sunsets and sunrises.
Some of my mother’s stuff was still there, too. Her clothes, her coats, her knickknacks, etc. All stuck in closets. It had been five years, and I knew she was gone. I didn’t know why my dad didn’t get rid of it. Maybe he was simply overwhelmed by raising a daughter alone, with both a roofing and a metalworks business, and didn’t want to deal with it.
I wanted it out.
“We need to get rid of Mom’s stuff. She doesn’t want it,” I told my dad at breakfast one day. We were having buttermilk pancakes. He made the best pancakes.
He paused, pancakes halfway to his mouth. He put his fork down. “You’re right, Hummingbird. We do need to get rid of it.”
I teared up.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?”
I nodded, and he ran a hand over my curls, caught up in a ponytail.
“She’s not coming back and I know it, but . . .”
“This seems final. Done. Door’s shut.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Hummingbird.”
I wiped my hands over my teary face. “Me too, Daddy.”
“I love you.”
We grabbed black plastic bags and filled them with her stuff and piled it all into his truck for Goodwill. My dad even lifted up his bed and dumped the mattresses and frame into the back of his truck. I heard him mutter something about “Getting rid of the woman in bed, too.”
We then decided to attack the rest of the house. We threw out everything we didn’t need or want. We filled one black trash bag after another.
We went through the kitchen and threw out broken d
ishes and cups, piles of plastic containers, old food in the fridge and pantries, and we ripped broken blinds off the windows. We threw out furniture that didn’t work: two wood chairs that wouldn’t balance, a lounge chair, a couch, a small table that wobbled.
I looked at some of the pictures on the walls. “They’re all ugly.”
“They are.”
We took them all down and threw them out.
Within a few hours, drawers opened smoothly because they weren’t crammed. Nothing fell out of the kitchen cabinets. In fact, some of the cabinets had hardly anything in them. The bathroom cabinet doors closed, too, as we’d cleared out my mother’s hoard of shampoos and cream rinses and makeup. My closet shut, and I realized how few clothes I actually had that fit. There was nothing under my bed.
“Now we need to clean, Daddy.”
My dad’s head dropped. Cleaning? Not so fun. Perfect day out, too, for fishing, steelhead jumping in the river. Clearing out most of the house helped, but it also exposed how dusty and dirty everything was, from the floors to the walls.
“How about if we clean and then we go to the Deschutes tomorrow?” I said.
His head perked up. He held up a hand and I slapped it. “Deal, Hummingbird.”
We dusted, we swept, we mopped, we vacuumed. We cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom. We washed all the sheets and blankets and towels and opened all the windows. We took several trips to the dump and Goodwill with our trailer, then fished on the Deschutes the next afternoon when we were finally done.
I caught two steelhead at dusk, and my dad caught three.
When we came home, my mother’s ghost was gone.
* * *
That night my grandma Dixie brought us her apple pie. She drove it over on her motorcycle. It was even more delicious than usual. When she walked in and saw the house, for once Grandma Dixie was speechless.
* * *
Cleaning our small home got rid of the cloying, scraping sadness of my mother leaving, as if we opened the windows and the bad memories of her flew out. For me, an organized, clean, pretty home means that I have control over where I live and my life and my mother’s desertion is nowhere near it.
It was why I so carefully decorated my dorm and my apartment in college, it was why I decorated my studio in Portland, it was why I decorated the house I shared with Zack. We painted walls, we bought comfortable furniture, we hung up Grenadine Scotch Wild’s paintings and my hummingbirds. I packed our bookshelves with my china teacups; collections of white ceramic vases; and my plants, books, candles, and pictures.
