Fighting for Anna

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  I piddled around for the next half hour, serving oatmeal in paper bowls for both of us since there was no dishwasher in the trailer. I’d pick up dog supplies later. After tidying up and showering, I still had half an hour to kill before my seven a.m. Skype call with my boss. Before I even consciously decided, nerves prickled my skin. I wanted to look for my brother.

  Ever since Papa told me about him, I’d been curious. I’d been hurt about the secret my parents kept from me. I’d been scared of this brother’s reaction, and scared of mine. Papa had filled me in on a few more details, and I’d done some research. Enough to know that I could put my search out there on the Texas Adoption Registry. I just hadn’t done it yet. I stalled, loading one more pod in the mini-Keurig. Madalyn’s Backyard Pecan, which was bigger on aroma than flavor. My kind of coffee. Then I opened my browser, prayed for courage, sent up a quick “I love you” to my mother, and dove in. I’d prepared what I wanted to say in advance, over and over. I filled in blanks on autopilot, hurrying so I didn’t have to think.

  I’m looking for my brother, as was my mother before she died. Click, type, enter. I added details about my parents, our heritage, his birthdate, what we all looked like, and where he was born. Please contact me. Click, type, enter. I was done with five minutes to spare before my call. Now it was out of my hands, and all I could do was wait. I let my head fall back against the seat cushion and felt the first flicker of excitement. I had a brother out there somewhere. Someone who shared my DNA and might look like me.

  The Skype tones sounded on my laptop, and a posed picture of my boss, Brian, filled the screen. I picked up on the first ring and the screen pixelated then settled upon a video image of his smiling, ruddy face and thinning red hair.

  “Good morning,” I said to him.

  “There’s nothing like an early tee time,” he said. He unzipped his puffy blue Texans Starter jacket two inches. Never mind that it was summer. Brian was a year-round fan. That and a user of sports analogies and expressions whether they made sense or not. I’d learned to interpret him with a straight face.

  “Tell me about it. I had an eventful last twenty-four hours, and getting up early was tough.”

  We’d scheduled my calls deliberately on my rest days. Brian knew all about my triathlon training. In fact, Juniper Media was the company that Adrian had written for, and the publisher of our best-selling triathlon training/relationship book—whether or not those two subjects usually went together, it seemed to work—My Pace or Yours: Triathlon Training for Couples. Juniper’s Multisport Magazine prospered based almost entirely on advertising and subscription income in the two months leading up to the triathlon world championships in Kona, Hawaii, each October. When Adrian died, there was never a question in Brian’s mind whether I would continue in my husband’s honor and compete in the race (and document it every step of the way). The race had been big for the magazine, for the book, and for me, mostly because it helped me along in the stages of my grief and recovery.

  “I admit I’d expected you to postpone our call.”

  I laughed. “Well, you’ve got me with wet hair and barely awake instead.”

  “Care to share your tumultuous experiences with your coach and mentor?”

  “My neighbor died yesterday, and the kids and I were the ones to find her.”

  “I’d expect you to be down for the count today,” Brian said. He frowned and pulled at his chin.

  “Yeah. Brought back a lot of unpleasant memories, for sure. It also brought the neighbor’s dog.”

  I turned to Gertrude. “Here, girl.” I patted the seat next to me. She backed away a few steps. “Come on, Gertrude.” I patted again. When she didn’t respond, I hefted her up beside me, then lifted the front half of her body so she was in the frame. I heard a release of air from her back end as I waved a paw at Brian.

  “Meet Gertrude, an early riser.” A rotten egg scent made me add, “And a little stinker.” I waved a hand in front of my nose as I squeezed her with the other arm. She made a little “oomph” sound.

  Brian snorted. “That’s one ugly dog. Looks like she took one to the kisser.”

  I hugged Gertrude to me. “You’re going to hurt her feelings.”

  The dog squirmed, and I set her down.

  “Are you going the distance with her?” Brian’s eyebrows went up, as did the pitch of his voice.

  “Don’t know yet. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’ve got to shoehorn taking care of her into my overloaded social calendar.” I kept a straight face.

  “Ha! If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that you aren’t a heavy hitter on the social scene.”

  I raised my hands in front of my chest. “Guilty as charged, your honor. The weird thing is I felt a real connection to the woman. My neighbor. I’d planned to help her write her memoirs.”

  Brian shook his head. “I’m hoping you’ll write your Kona memoirs instead.”

  I ignored his jab. “She was all alone, Brian. Kind of like me now.” I grimaced. “And she was a Houstonite with a really great story.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Gidget Becker. She owned an art gallery in Montrose.”

  “Gidget Becker? I know exactly who she is.”

  Gertrude chuffed at me from in front of the door, and I shook my head at her. “How?”

  “Oh, twenty-five or thirty years ago, early days at Juniper, we used to do an annual Who’s Who in Houston Sports. One year we showed up at an honoree’s house for pictures. A player for the Oilers. He was with his girlfriend, a hottie named Gidget Becker, both of them stoned out of their heads.”

  My mind flashed big eighties hair and shoulder pads, a wide waist belt and bright-colored leggings, and lines of cocaine on a mirrored table. “Wow. Well, she was something else. Her death has hit me harder than I would’ve imagined, and it would have been an interesting book to write.”

  When I was still a wife and was also a recently published coauthor, I had dreamed of writing books on my own. In fact, my mind had been whirling with ideas for a time-traveling romantic fantasy cozy mystery. If such a thing even existed. Writing took me by surprise, because Adrian had brought out words in me. Words that I’d never known were there. Words that when combined with my overactive imagination—as my mother called it—could maybe do great things. That was heady stuff for an editor. We were usually just the grammar nazis or punctuation police. But when Adrian died, so did my words. I’d hoped to overcome my internal word block with Gidget and her story.

  “It’s been a tough season for you.” Brian nodded. “And I’m serious about those memoirs.”

  There would be no triathlon memoir, but I kept it to myself. That topic was too personal, too painful. “So what do you have for me this week, boss?” I leaned toward him and steepled my fingers, resting my chin on them.

  He clicked with his mouse. “I just sent you an email. In addition to your regular work on the subscription website and the blog posts, I’ve sent you an article on ‘sports in the wake of the same-sex marriage ruling.’”

  I sat up straight again. “How edgy of you. But the Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on it yet.”

  “We need to be ready to lead with the chin if they pass it.”

  “When, you mean,” I said, nodding. “Not if.”

  I thought about my triathlon buddy, Wallace, and his partner, Ethan. They wanted to marry. When the Supreme Court passed same-sex marriage, I’d be standing by their side if they’d have me.

  “You know,” I added. “The HERO ordinance and the coalition opposing it are bound to come to some kind of resolution in the next few months as well. Last I heard it, the Texas Supreme Court had ordered the city council to put it on the November ballot.” I was referring to the city council’s hotly contested amendment to add gender identity to the categories protected under the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.

  Brian cleared his throat. “That has everyone in town up in arms. The religious Right has taken their gloves off.”

  “
I’ve seen.” A commercial was running on Houston stations warning parents of young girls about the dangers of men-identifying-as-women using women’s restrooms as an excuse to harm kids. My suspicion was that people had probably been using the restroom of their choice regardless of what junk they had in their trunks, and that the law would make little practical difference. But it could make a big difference in people feeling less different and more respected.

  “Its impact is limited to Houston, though, and we’re international.”

  “Sort of,” I said, and pushed some hair off my forehead and behind my ear. I should’ve gotten it cut before I left the city. “But it’s happening elsewhere, too. I think we should be ready.”

  Brian nodded. “Okay. I’ll find someone interested in taking a swing at it. But I worry we’ll lose subscribers on the Right if we don’t oppose it.”

  I shook my head at him. “Journalistic integrity. We’ve got to stay in the middle.”

  “Oh, she hits below the belt.” He sighed. “But I agree with you about journalistic integrity, as you’ll see in the article I emailed.”

  “Great.” I put my hands on the table, then slid my forearms down and rested my weight. Dang dog and her early rising.

  “Keep me updated out there in Godforsaken Nowhere.”

  I rolled my eyes. “How about we call it Nowheresville? That other might offend your religious Right readers.” Nowheresville. I liked it.

  He laughed, and we chatted a little before signing off. By then, Gertrude was snoring beside me, her warm furry body pressed against my bare thigh. I felt a tug at my heartstrings. Time to get her squared away.

  Work could wait.

  ***

  Gertrude and I walked out to my Jetta. I had nearly sold it last year after Adrian passed away, but instead had gotten it fixed and spiffed up. It reminded me of him. Everything reminded me of him, really. I sighed and set Gertrude up in the back seat. Then I hopped into the front to find her sitting primly beside me in the passenger seat.

  “Gertrude . . .”

  She kept her eyes averted from me. Poor thing had lost Gidget and suffered an eye trauma and was stuck with a stranger. I decided to overlook it. I put the car in Drive and swung it around onto the dirt driveway from my trailer, past our idyllic pond with its reeds, lily pads, and sunning turtles. On either side was heavy forest of oak, cedar, and yaupon, like the rest of the countryside, except for the parts that had been cleared for fields and pastures. My property—my Nowheresville—was especially dense because it was a parcel of land that had never been worked before. Or at least not in the last fifty years, given the size and density of the trees. Black-eyed Susans brightened the tree line, and a few other springtime stragglers butted up to the road with pops of pink, purple, red, and white.

  I liked the forest and the privacy it provided me, but I did want to thin the yaupon and brush around the Quacker for more breeze and visibility. The skinny-trunked yaupon with its little green leaves and red seasonal berries tended to choke off all other plant life, too, and was harder to chop down than a sequoia—plus it had roots with a death grip on the center of the earth. Figuring out a way to eradicate them would go on my long list of summer projects.

  From the driveway, I turned onto a gravel lane, then a few minutes and a handful of cattle guards later, I headed north toward Giddings on pavement. That’s where we passed a run-down farm that always caught my eye. I’d never met the owners, but the place was a real eyesore, and worse, it was a nose-sore. The long, narrow barn structure reeked of caca del pollo. The chickens weren’t exactly quiet, either. Gertrude jumped up onto her hind legs and put her front paws on the door so as to get a better look and whiff of them. I tugged her collar gently.

  “Down, girl.”

  She ignored me.

  “Down.” I pulled harder.

  She still ignored me.

  “Down!” I said in a tougher voice, and forcibly pulled her back onto her bottom. She shot me a dirty look. “Good girl.”

  My cell phone rang. Nobody called me except my kids or my boss, so I picked up on speaker without looking at the caller ID. “Hello,” I said.

  “Michele?” A man’s island accent enveloped the interior of the car. It was so thick I could almost hear steel pans playing in accompaniment. Gertrude eyed me quizzically.

  “Yes,” I answered, and my heart started pounding like runaway hoofbeats. I only knew one man with an island accent, and that was Rashidi John. It was his voice lilting in my ear now. Apparently ignoring his texts didn’t work.

  “Ah, Michele. It Rashidi. How you doing?”

  Small talk. I didn’t know how to make small talk. I’d never been any good at it, and since Adrian died, any ability I once had was gone altogether. “Ummm, I’m fine?”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like Rashidi, or that he was hard on the eyes. He wasn’t. Very, very easy on them, as a matter of fact. He had dreadlocks just past his shoulders that Gertrude would die for, and skin the color of buttery, melted chocolate. He had twinkling eyes a shade darker than his skin and . . . I stopped myself. What the hell am I doing? I was sitting here all but drooling, when I wanted him to leave me alone.

  “I so glad to hear it,” he said, his accent wafting over me like silk. “I text you, but I not hear back, so I calling to tell you I coming to Texas. For an interview.”

  “Oh,” I stammered. “Congratulations.”

  He went on, his accent growing thicker. “Yah, mon, it a big deal.”

  I couldn’t even remember what it was that Rashidi did. I bit a fingernail and tried to think of a graceful way to get off the call as my heart thundered on traitorously.

  “Well, I hope your interview goes great,” I said in a bright voice.

  Rashidi didn’t take the hint, but he did start to talk without his accent. When we met in Amarillo, he’d called it “Yanking”—to talk like a Yankee. “Texas A&M. Is that close to Houston?”

  “Oh no,” I said. “It’s a good hour and forty-five minutes away from Houston.”

  I crossed my fingers, not wanting to admit to him that I was only an hour away at my summer place.

  “Wait, Katie told me you were living elsewhere this summer?”

  He was referring to my Baylor Law School roommate, a mutual friend of ours. One I was going to kill. “Um, yes, I am.”

  “How far’s that from A&M?”

  “About an hour,” I admitted.

  “Great! I’ll come see you. Maybe you can give me a tour.”

  “Goodness. Wow.” My hands started sweating on the steering wheel. I bit another fingernail.

  He slipped back into his island accent. “I comin’ Friday night. I drive out Saturday morning to your place, a’ight?”

  Think fast! Think fast! If he came to Nowheresville, I’d have a harder time getting rid of him. In College Station, I could leave on my schedule.

  “How about I come to you instead, and we can have dinner?”

  “Or meet halfway,” Rashidi said. “I’ll text you Friday. We’ll plan then.”

  “Okay,” I said, my voice weak.

  At a stop sign, a truck pulled up next to us with a big yellow Lab in the back. It looked at Gertrude and away again, dismissing her. Gertrude barked hysterically and threw herself against the window. I accelerated and Gertrude pawed the window and howled.

  “What’s that?” Rashidi asked.

  “That’s a Gertrude,” I said. “Long story.”

  “You can tell me Saturday.”

  “Okaaaay,” I said.

  And we ended the call.

  My brain immediately started spinning. What had I done? Had I really just committed to an evening with a man who was interested in me? What would Adrian think? Not that I really believed my dead husband was watching me, literally. But right after he died, he’d visited me. Or I thought he had. It was hard to be sure, but it had felt completely real. I could hear his voice and see his face and even feel his touch. Then it had just stopped, and it was like he died
all over again. I didn’t want to fill the empty place he’d left behind with anyone but him, and, yeah, a part of me hoped he would fill it again someday. Maybe this qualified me for a 5150 pickup, but what else would you expect from a woman who’d been convinced she was a knife-winged butterfly and saw things she knew were nothing but a figment of her imagination?

  But I wasn’t going down that mental rabbit hole. I had to come up with an excuse before Saturday that Rashidi couldn’t talk me out of. I could do that. I would do it. It would be okay.

  The Giddings Country Vet Hospital appeared on my left. It was a yellow house converted to a clinic. As I pulled around to the side, I discovered that what looked like a small house from the front had been expanded with the same yellow siding. Metal kennels honeycombed along the side and back of the extension. Dogs of every shape and size barked at us as I pulled to a stop and parked the car. Gertrude was giving lip back to them with everything she had.

  “Hush, Gertrude,” I said to her. It was like spitting in the wind.

  I gathered up my handbag, a worn-out zebra print that I’d been vowing to replace for months, and picked up Gertrude’s clothesline leash. She clambered out of the car with swagger, still barking ferociously. Her white dreadlocks stood up a little on the rough of her neck. The mutt pulled off small and ugly with a lot of attitude, and I admired her for it.

  We walked around to the front of the clinic, Gertrude straining against the leash to get back to the kennel area. There was a sign in the window by the front door: SEEKING PART-TIME VET. It was 7:59 a.m. and the clinic opened at eight, so I tried the door. It was unlocked.

  I dragged Gertrude through the empty waiting area, her toenails surely leaving scratch marks as she dug in, and up to a long, broad counter. No one was manning it yet. The reception area was in what had probably been the parlor and dining area before the remodel. There were upholstered chairs and leather benches scattered around the exterior of the room and a bookshelf displaying dog food, leashes, toys, chews to clean dogs’ teeth, pill pockets to help them swallow medicine, and other standard veterinary clinic fare. But the shelves also held cross-stitch samplers of Bible quotations and a needlework rendition of Noah’s Ark. The space smelled antiseptically clean, which was amazing considering the animals and their bodily fluids. Bodily solids, for that matter. My father’s large animal clinic had smelled nearly this good, and I knew it took a Herculean effort from him and his staff to keep it that way.