The women laughed, briefly, but neither moved. Sally sighed and shifted in her seat.
“Maybe the groovy and clinical answers aren’t that different,” she said. “Everything had been given to her, and little or nothing was asked of her in her life. Then, way too much was asked of her all at once when so much tragedy hit, one right after another. She lost her older brother to a car accident, her father to a tree branch in a thunderstorm, her mother to grief and strokes and dementia. She also lost the big coddling arms of lots of money when she realized that her father had wasted so much and owed so much. I think she yearned to make her own life, she wanted to find a way to do some good in the world and not just take on another life that was handed to her by her parents or by Dix on yet another silver platter. Sadly, ironically, but typically—because this is what we dumb-ass humans do—the Source turned out to be a repeat of the same pattern. She set out to find a new path and, psychologically speaking, ended up bumper hitching on someone else’s journey again.”
Another sigh escaped Sally’s lips.
“And she was depressed, Colden. Clinically. She’d suffered so many losses, one on top of another, and she never got the help she needed. Because poor little rich girls are too privileged to, you know, actually feel those pesky things called emotions. Even if she did feel them, she wouldn’t have been allowed to discuss them, share them, talk about them.”
Now, Colden sighed.
“It’s rule number 4b in the WASP handbook. Comes right before, ‘Wearing strangely mismatched clothes does not matter as long as they are from L.L. Bean or Brooks Brothers’ and right after, ‘As long as you don’t start drinking until after four, it doesn’t matter how much you drink.’”
“Does this mean I’m a WASP, too?” Colden asked.
“Seems to me that being a WASP is like being a Jew,” Sally said, somewhat comically. “There’s genetics, and then there’s culture. You have to have both to fully blossom into either. And truth be told,” she added, her voice growing more serious, “I guess your mom wasn’t even as much of a WASP as her parents pretended to be. Her father’s parents were strictly working-class. Part of why he was so incredibly snobby. Classic overcompensation.”
“I’ve been given everything, too,” Colden said.
“True, but things were expected of you. And you’re naturally a hard worker who needs little and wants mostly to make her own way in the world. Plus, some people, like you, seem to enter the world with more resiliency than others.”
“How old was she when she died?” Colden asked.
“Let me think,” Sally replied. “I guess, well, I’m not exactly sure, but around your age.”
“My age?”
Sally nodded.
“Thereabouts. Mid- to late twenties.”
Colden swore under her breath, and unwelcome tears sprang to her eyes. She swatted at them with the back of her hand.
“Your mother was a very tender and timid soul,” Sally said.
Your mother. The phrase sounded so strange to Colden, referring as it did in this instance to someone other than Sally, coming from Sally. She felt sadness swell inside her, a dry sponge suddenly soaked with rain.
“Did you ever want to have kids?” Colden asked.
It was a question that, as it came from her mouth, Colden realized she had long been wanting to ask. Sally shot her a look. Colden didn’t lift her eyes; she didn’t want to see Sally’s face.
“I do have kids,” Sally replied mildly.
“I mean, more than me. Other than me,” Colden said.
She couldn’t, wouldn’t, use the term your own kids.
“I wasn’t referring to you,” Sally said.
A small grin broke on Colden’s face. Sally was teasing her, making a veiled reference to what she called “OPCs,” her shorthand for other people’s children. Sally had helped, monitored, and mentored hundreds of OPCs. Colden felt a warm pride in Sally’s work suffuse her body. But she didn’t want to give in to Sally’s familiar and slightly snarky redirects of topics that veered toward the personal or sentimental. Colden understood these were the protective reflex of a woman who’d not had an easy upbringing, who understood the many varieties and shapes of financial, cultural, and social poverty, and whose best professional efforts on behalf of her clients were more often than not received with anger and frustration that she couldn’t or wouldn’t do more. Sally called this phenomenon the “unique sense of entitlement of those with nothing and therefore nothing to lose.”
“I’m a scientist, Sally,” Colden countered, pushing Sally to answer honestly and sincerely. “I know biology matters. Lots of animals kill their stepchildren.”
“Well, of course, there were times when I considered it,” Sally parried. “Killing my stepchild, that is.”
Colden snorted. Then Sally cleared her throat and changed her tone.
“Certainly, we thought about it, your dad and I. Talked about it. But in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not very maternal.”
Colden shot her a glance.
“What? C’mon. You are an awesome mom.”
“Easy to say when I’m the only one you’ve known,” Sally said.
Sally was teasing, but the remark stung Colden. Not because it was directed at her—Sally was being self-deprecating—but because it reminded Colden there was an important fact in her life that she had largely ignored. She did have two mothers. One here, present, available; the other opaque, mysterious, absent.
“Sorry, Colden,” Sally said. “I don’t mean to be dismissive. These are important questions, and I’m glad you’re asking. The truth is, your dad and I never actively tried to have kids, but we also didn’t try not to have kids. It just didn’t happen. Which is honestly fine with both of us. If we’d gotten pregnant, that would have been fine, too. We settled very quickly into being a tight and happy trio.”
“How did you two actually meet?”
Colden heard this question as if it had come from someone’s mouth other than her own. She squirmed in discomfort at the intrusion it seemed to represent. But when she looked over, Sally was smiling indulgently at her. She seemed almost relieved to be sharing this information, as if this was a conversation she’d been waiting for, wanting to have, but wasn’t sure how or when to initiate.
“Well, it certainly wasn’t a typical first date!” Sally said. “More like, ‘Hey, you don’t know me, but I’m here to tell you that the commune your ex-girlfriend left you for is housed in my dead grandmother’s house, and I’ve been living there, too, only because I am in a rough spot in my own life, not as part of the commune—just, you know, keeping an eye on things, even though it’s like watching a slow-mo train wreck—and oh, by the way, enough about me, what I really came here to say was that I just discovered that the woman who broke your heart died a few days after giving birth to a baby you didn’t even know was yours, and the commune leader is trying to hide the infant so that he can raise it in some freaky, back-to-nature way, and I want to help you with the legal fight that’s required to get you your daughter.’ Not exactly high romance.”
Colden exhaled, a harsh sound of spent air, and squirmed in her chair.
“Sorry, honey,” Sally said.
“It’s OK. I mean, I guess I knew that in a general sort of way. Just strange to have it all laid out like that. To think, ‘Wait, that’s actually me we’re talking about.’ It’s not just some story. It’s the way I came into the world.”
“Colden, I want you to know one thing above all others, and that is that you were always loved. Deeply. By Miranda and your dad and me and even that whack job, Darius, who ran the Source and by the women who cared for you out there after your mom died—and even by the foster family that kept you while we were proving Dix’s parental rights. You ended up with only two parents, but for the first months of your life, you had many, and they all adored you and cared for you.”
Colden considered this. She noticed changes in her physical sensations. It was as if Sally’s wor
ds had turned on some latent source of heat that was now gently warming her body fluids. Then the switch turned off, and she grew cold again. Maybe she had begun her life in love. But it was a love born of betrayal to her father. A love from people whose actions she found abhorrent. It was a love she didn’t want. She wouldn’t tell Sally this. Or her father. It would only make them sad for her, make them feel the heaviness of Miranda’s legacy. Which she was quite sure, and equally relieved, that she could neither remember nor feel within herself, no matter her biological connection to Miranda.
Colden realized that she’d never closely considered the impact another person could have on her. She’d certainly never considered how much impact Sally, in particular, had had on her. She always felt thankful for her life, but she’d never thought through how tenuous her good fortune actually was, how differently things might have turned out.
“Thank you, Sally,” Colden said. “Thank you for saving me from them. Thank you for helping my dad. Thank you for being my mother.”
Sally met Colden’s eyes. Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes dampened. Colden’s did the same. Neither of them was accustomed to tears, so they each looked away, but the moment between them held.
Colden left for Albany the next day. She crashed at her condo and then went to the office early the following morning. It was dark and empty when she arrived, just as she liked it. Larry’s office, she noted with relief, was unoccupied. She flicked on a light switch, and the fluorescent fixture over her area flickered and then illuminated. She went to her desk and got to work. Eventually, more lights came on, voices entered the space, and people began rustling papers, coffee cups, and chairs.
Colden sensed someone coming up behind her. She froze. Then a familiar voice said, “Hey, stranger.”
She relaxed and turned her chair to see Jack, a cup of coffee in hand.
“Same back ’atcha,” she said, smiling.
Another passing colleague, Sam, stopped at her desk. Colden introduced him to Jack. They gave each other quick rundowns on their research. Sam, who studied songbirds and their population decline, asked for some details on the work they’d been doing. There wasn’t anything revelatory to report, but Colden pulled up the maps that showed the patterns of moose activity. She overlaid these with maps of known beaver ponds. They saw how the moose were spending increasing amounts of time near these marshy areas as the season warmed and the waters thawed. Interesting, but not unexpected.
The dull grind of science, Colden thought silently.
As she clicked through images, some of the initial collaring work popped up. Sam leaned in toward the pictures of downed moose with their stark eye coverings. He straightened up to a photo of the entire team posing in front of the helicopter: Colden, Jack, Darryl, Larry, and Liam, who stood almost a full head taller than the rest of them.
“So, that must be Sasquatch,” Sam said.
Colden’s skin tingled as if a spider had just run over her arms.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, her voice scratching against her suddenly dry throat.
“The big dude. What’s he, an Aussie? Larry talked about him when he got back. Kept referring to him as Sasquatch. Said he was a real asshole who tried to keep him off the project.”
Colden felt Jack go very still. She was afraid to speak. She hoped he would.
“Nope, not an asshole,” Jack finally said, quietly. “Real pro. Nice guy. Fun, too.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Sam said. “Larry’s always complaining about someone. Well, thanks for the show-and-tell.”
He started to walk away.
“Sam?” Jack said.
“Yeah?”
“His name is Liam. A very high-quality person. I’ve worked with him for years. Can’t recommend him highly enough.”
“Cool. Good to know,” Sam said, then disappeared around a corner.
Colden wanted to ask Jack what he meant by a “high-quality person.” She also wanted to ask him if Liam was married. She didn’t do either.
“Fucking Larry,” Jack muttered under his breath. “Keep up the good work,” he told Colden and then walked away.
Colden kept working. It was the only way to keep her emotions at bay until she was ready to deal with them. But thoughts and questions swirled in her mind like garbage against a curb during a rainstorm. Larry. The Sasquatch e-mails. Could all this be a strange vortex of coincidence? She collected and connected the data she had. Larry called Liam Sasquatch, accused him a being a philanderer, and gave her a hard time for being with him. Did this mean that Larry was sending the e-mails as part of some harassment strategy toward her? But why?
Animals do things for reasons, she told herself—to eat, to help their family members succeed, to breed. They repeat behaviors that are rewarding in some way. Everything else is a waste of precious and hard-won energy.
Humans thought they were above the petty survival squabbles of other animals. Colden knew better. She tried to imagine what reward Larry was getting for his behavior toward her. In many species, low-ranking males often used sneaky strategies to get mating rights or to obtain status. Larry seemed a low-ranking male—unattractive, awkward, marginally successful, and even that seemed to come with significant baggage. He certainly wasn’t trying to breed with her, and she was not in the way of his status. Or was he? Or was she? There were only so many seats at any research and funding table. Academia was wildly, if often passive-aggressively, competitive. She didn’t like to admit it so blatantly, but she knew her colleagues liked her, respected her, and enjoyed working with her. She was always a first pick for a team. Larry must see her as a threat, she realized. It was incomprehensible to her how or why she would represent a threat, and yet, that was the conclusion the evidence was leading her to.
The office was quieting. People heading out for lunch and afternoon classes. She felt rattled. She should go get some lunch. Maybe she could get a nap in before her dinner with Drew. She was embarrassed that she hadn’t done much on Drew’s behalf; the only “asking around” she’d done was of her father. She would take some time this afternoon to think of a more directed plan, and she’d share that with him tonight.
One last quick check of e-mail before she left. And there it was. A response from Liam. How strange and coincidental the timing. Her hands trembled slightly as she clicked it open.
Colden,
I’m sorry. You should have heard it from me. I am married. Technically. However, we have lived apart for a couple of years. My traveling so much was hard on her. She asked for a divorce so she could have a full-time partner. We agreed on an amicable settlement. Then she got sick. Very sick. We stayed married so I could keep her insured. I assume you heard something from Jack? You can ask him for confirmation of my story, if you want. He knows my wife. She’s in hospice now. So yes, I’m married. But it looks like I won’t be for much longer. Be well. I have nothing but fond memories of you and know you will do great things.
Liam
P.S. I remembered, finally, how I knew Larry. I hate to speak ill of a colleague, but please be cautious around him, my friend.
Colden read the e-mail several times, her insides growing more still and quiet with each perusal. She was embarrassed that she’d attacked Liam without understanding the full story. She was mad at Larry for telling her things that led her to take actions she regretted. She felt manipulated and outmaneuvered. The sensation was familiar. This was how she had felt when a sparring match went against her. It was time to calm down, stop reacting, think, plan, and decide on a fresh or different approach to the person she saw as clearly an opponent. Even though she still wasn’t clear what they were fighting for or over. She reminded herself that the best approach was not to attempt to beat the other person, but better protect and better maneuver yourself.
Still. She felt in vague yet real danger.
She didn’t respond to Liam’s note. This time, she’d think before she typed and hit “Send.” She turned off the computer and left her office. On her
way out, she noticed that her mailbox, the real one, the physical one, was stuffed with papers and envelopes. She always forgot to check and clean it out. She flipped quickly through the memos and magazines, the junk mail and university correspondence. Most got jammed into her pack to be read more carefully later.
As she turned to go, she noticed her name on a plain brown box on the counter. It was a regular box from Amazon, about the size and heft of a large book. She thought carefully. She hadn’t ordered anything from Amazon, and if she had, it would have been delivered to her home. But there it was, addressed to her. The date on the label showed the box had been sitting there for three weeks. Of course, it had. She hadn’t been expecting anything.
A door opened and closed in the hallway. Someone laughed. A car alarm went off in the parking lot and was quickly silenced. The brown package seemed a living, dangerous thing, poised, waiting to strike.
Colden’s keys were in her hand. She used them to stab at the tape and release the cardboard flaps. Inside, she found three small paperbacks: Bigfoot, My Love; Sasquatch and Me; Take Me to the Woods. Subtitles told her that each was an installment in the seven-book Sasquatch Erotica series. She quickly covered the books with the packing paper and closed the flaps.
Larry had just made things a lot easier for her, Colden thought. Larry had just given her evidence.
14.
Brayden had dreams not of what his father had done to him, but of his own rage and escape from unseen tormentors. They were not nightmares but live-action sequences from a movie where he was the star scaling walls, leaping across an abyss, scrambling up and down ladders and fire escapes and in and out of windows. There were also dreams where he screamed at someone whose face he could never see, dreams from which he woke sore and hoarse, as if, indeed, in his sleep, his voice had ricocheted from his throat to the walls of his cave.
Lying there in the damp darkness, trying to rouse himself from the fog of an unrestful night, thoughts of his sister always came to him. Memories of her played in his mind like a ribbon in the wind, twisting, turning in on themselves, pausing just within reach and then dashing away.
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