He was hesitant at first. “They gonna think I knocked someone up,” he said, his breath filling the cold air with white puffs.
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Karen.
“I’m a gentleman,” he said. “And I can take a shit without no pills.”
“If you don’t do it, I won’t pay you,” she said, jiggling her legs to keep warm.
“Fine. Don’t let nobody touch my sign.” He propped the cardboard against the wall, plucked the bill from her hand with his gloved fingers, and trudged around the corner.
Snow was starting to flurry again. She tightened the hood of her long down coat and stood with her back to the street, turning when someone came out onto the loading dock behind the store to throw trash in the Dumpster. If she, one of America’s sweethearts, was seen doing back-alley dealings with a bum, it would cause a stir, especially the morning before her big performance, the one bound to seal her Olympic berth. Maybe she should have waited to get the test, she told herself. At least until after the program. But she wanted to know for sure. She didn’t want to be distracted by uncertainty. Even if she was going to freeze her butt off in the process.
The guy shuffled back with a green plastic bag. After she thanked him and started to walk away, she looked inside the bag and saw that there was a pack of chocolate calcium chews along with the two boxes.
“Hey, you forgot these.” She held out the foil-wrapped packet. Her face was so cold, it hurt to talk.
“No, ma’am,” he said, hoisting his sign under his arm. “Little bitty thing like you, baby’ll pull the calcium right out of your bones.”
SHE FOUND A coffeehouse restroom where she could take the test. It was a one-person bathroom, the only one there, and people pounded on the door or jiggled the knob every minute or so. She got used to saying “Sorry, I’m still in here,” trying to disguise her voice as much as she could. The small room was painted a deep burgundy, with ornate, gold-framed mirrors on every wall and a little vanity stool covered with matted gold velvet near the black pedestal sink. The white plastic wand in her hand looked so flimsy in the middle of the baroque trappings. She sat on the black toilet and stared at the front and back of her head all at once, a never-ending row of Karens stretching out in all directions. Soon her face would be covered in makeup, soon her hair would be yanked into a tight bun, lacquered smooth with hair spray, but for now she was pale and freckled, her bleached hair riddled with split ends. She looked in the mirrors and watched the pink line on the wand get darker and darker, endless pink lines surrounding her like a kaleidoscope.
MR. VIEIRA CAME INTO THE DISTILLERY THE NEXT morning, waving the Sacramento Bee. “You made the paper!” he said, looking amused. “Miss Keep-me-away-from-the-cameras.”
I snatched the paper from his hands. My profile was in the foreground of the photo, the right corner, as I gazed out at the whales. The wind was blowing my hair against my cheek, but it didn’t obscure my face. Danny’s beard and hair poofed out behind me. The top of Quinn’s head floated in front of me like an island at the bottom of the photo, split ends lifting. The caption read: A spectator enjoys watching the humpbacks at Vieira Pears on Comice Island.
“You’re famous!” said Quinn excitedly.
“It’s an AP photo, too,” said Mr. Vieira. “Gonna be picked up by other papers.”
“Oh my God.” I hadn’t signed a release for my photo to be used. At least they hadn’t printed my name.
“I wouldn’t let it get to your head none,” Mr. Vieira joked.
I was stunned. How could this happen? How could I have let this happen? Why didn’t I just run away when people with cameras showed up?
“It’s yesterday’s paper, too,” said Mr. Vieira. “Didn’t read it till today.”
“You look beautiful,” Ben said softly, and for the moment, all my worries dissolved.
THAT AFTERNOON, BEN asked if Quinn and I wanted to go for a walk. I was excited until he started talking about smelt, which is probably the most unromantic word in the English language. Mr. Vieira had mentioned smelt before; the governor had decided to cut off much of California’s water supply from the Delta that summer because opening dams would negatively impact the dwindling smelt population.
“I don’t get what the big deal is over such a little fish,” I said as we walked into the orchard.
“The smelt aren’t healthy, the Delta’s not healthy,” said Ben. “They’re like the canary in the coal mine.”
“Whoever smelta delta.” Quinn giggled, then ran off into the trees.
“But tons of people aren’t getting water.” I watched her red shirt flash between trunks, then disappear. “Tons of farmland won’t be irrigated.”
The Vieiras were lucky, not having to irrigate, water rising up through the peat soil on Comice Island, making it rich and moist, like chocolate cake. Most farmers weren’t so fortunate.
“We need all the little critters. Like the bees,” Ben said. “They’re disappearing all over the country.”
“Fine by me,” I said.
“You’d miss them more than you realize.”
“Quinn’s allergic.” The less bees, the better, as far as I was concerned. It would be wonderful to not have to worry about stings, to not have to carry an EpiPen, to not have to picture Quinn lying on the ground with her throat closing up whenever she got out of my sight. I whipped my head around until I could see her playing with one of the barn kittens.
“Every third bite you put in your mouth comes from a bee,” he said. “Pear trees don’t need them, but cherries do. Almonds. Avocados. Tons of crops.”
“Why don’t pears need them?”
“They pollinate themselves,” he said.
“No fun in that.” I immediately blushed.
Ben smiled without looking at me. “Have you ever smelled a pear blossom?”
I shook my head.
“They stink,” he said. “Like rotten meat.”
“Really?” I thought of the perfume of a Gravenstein apple blossom, the thick, dense sweetness of an orange grove in bloom.
“I imagine it tells the bees they’re not needed,” said Ben.
“I want to smell one,” I said.
“Trust me,” said Ben, “you don’t.”
He wrinkled his nose, but I liked knowing something stinky could lead to something delicious.
“What do you think happened to the bees?” I asked.
“No one knows,” he said. “Could be cellphones. Mites. Some sort of apian AIDS.”
“They should start using condoms.” I felt my face go red again. I wasn’t used to flirting, especially sexy flirting, but somehow Ben brought it out in me. I was glad to feel I could flirt with him again.
Ben grinned. “But we need bee babies.”
We walked for a while longer. Mosquitoes whined by. Some of the leaves on the pear trees had partly folded up, creased in the center like a book perched on someone’s lap. I wondered what it would take for them to open back all the way.
“Everything’s out of balance.” His face was serious again. “Bees disappearing, whales where they’re not supposed to be.”
“Do you think they’re connected?” I asked.
“Everything’s connected.” He twined his fingers in mine. He did it so simply, so easily, I wasn’t sure it was a conscious decision. He didn’t look at me, but his palm was warm and felt sweet and solid against my own. We were still holding hands when we met up with Quinn, a kitten perched on her shoulder. She hadn’t seen me hold hands with anyone her entire life, but she didn’t seem fazed by it. She took my other hand and we walked back to the distillery.
KAREN WAS SURPRISED NATHAN WASN’T WAITING FOR her in their hotel room, but he burst in shortly after she got back, the pregnancy test wrapped in toilet paper inside her purse.
“I did it.” Nathan swooped Karen up in his arms.
“You did what?”
He trembled against her. Her own heart started to pound with anticipation. He knelt be
fore her on the wildly patterned carpet and pressed his head against her belly, wobbling as he rummaged around in his pocket.
Was he about to propose? Karen’s blood flashed through her veins. She would say yes. How could she not? This was just like Nathan—spontaneous, romantic, given to grand gesture. They knew they belonged together—why not make it official? Especially with the baby. Now she could tell him about the baby. Now she could think about keeping the baby. She wouldn’t be showing by the time the Olympics started. They would win, go pro, take the baby with them on the road—it would be perfect.
He pulled his hand out of his pocket, but there was no plush velvet box there; no diamond studded with lint. Just a tiny zip-lock bag, the kind she used to hold spare beads, the microscopic seed ones, for her competition dresses. At the bottom lay a thin layer of white powder.
“It’s what you wanted.” He laughed wetly into her shirt.
“Drugs?” She jumped back and he folded to the ground. “I never said I wanted drugs! Are you crazy? They do random testing, Nathan!”
“Not drugs,” he said, but when he lifted his face, his eyes looked glassy and bloodshot, stoned.
“What the hell?!”
“It’s what you wanted.” He crawled over to the end table and grabbed the remote. The TV hummed to life. Karen recognized the front of the hotel. An ambulance was parked on the U-shaped driveway by the revolving doors. SKATER COLLAPSES read the caption at the bottom of the screen.
“What skater?” Karen felt a wave of vertigo. She had the strange sensation that she was the skater, that she was the one who collapsed, that she was having an out-of-body experience, her mind floating in the hotel room while her body was strapped to a gurney downstairs. She watched the ambulance pull away from the curb on TV. She watched a picture of Lance appear in its place. She ran to the window. The ambulance was racing down the street, followed by news vans.
“Your wish is my command.” Nathan knelt before her again, then put his face in his hands.
THE BUILDINGS WERE EMPTY WHEN WE GOT BACK, BUT we could hear a clamor on the other side of the island, so we piled into Ben’s truck to check it out. A big crowd was gathered at the levee. Ben waved to his father and went to talk to him, and Quinn and I walked toward the crowd. Maybe it was because my hand was still vibrating from Ben’s, but my edges felt porous, open. I didn’t feel separate from the group of spectators, scared of the group of spectators, as Quinn and I entered it.
The whales had responded so well to treatment—or, who knows, maybe to the pan flute and the whale whispering, as skeptical as I was of both—they were breaching, jumping out of the water, showing us their beautiful ridged bellies, landing with such a splash that some of us got wet, even twenty feet above the slough. I was grateful that I had closed all the windows in the houseboat that morning. I was grateful to bear witness to the most beautiful twisting duet I had ever seen, the two whales leaping in tandem, their bodies full of joy.
We stood at the edge of the berm, a breathing mass of people, an orchard of us, a singular organism. Our identifying characteristics melted away—we were pears before the sorting, a unified field. We stood and waited, all our hearts knocking. The whales’ hearts booming beneath ours, a slow bass note to our clattering snares.
We wanted to see them leap again, to see something monumental. That’s what we do, we humans. We slow down at accidents. We buy outrageously priced tickets to watch athletes, singers, dancers in their prime. We fly to exotic locales. We squint at museum paintings. We move toward majesty, toward anything that makes us feel big. Anything that makes us feel small. Anything that reminds us we’re alive. We humans flock toward awe.
THE WHALES FINISHED their show and swam off, and the crowd dispersed, each of us still ringing with amazement but ourselves again now, aware of the places where our skin met the air, aware of the spaces between us. I kept holding Quinn’s hand as I looked across the slough, trying to hold on to that sense of wider connection.
I had come to recognize certain people who camped on Roberts’s land. They were too far away for me to see their faces clearly, but close enough that through body language and shape, I could tell that the woman who wore the Mickey Mouse shirt had been the one wearing the Pokemon shirt the day before, could tell the shirtless paunchy guy in Hawaiian print shorts had been the one with the large video camera all week. So when I saw a wiry guy in a tight black T-shirt and jeans, at first I thought he looked familiar because he had been there every day, rooting for the whales. But there was a different quality to his movements—while everyone else had looked excited, concerned, hopeful, he looked frantic. Desperate. Bobbing his head around, bouncing on the balls of his feet like some sort of addict. His energy made me nervous. Then he turned his face and the sun caught his jawline and my heart stopped. All my blood seemed to pool in my neck, ready to explode. I looked down to catch my breath; when I looked up again, he was gone.
KAREN STAYED GLUED TO THE TV SCREEN. A SOMBER-LOOKING anchor appeared. “Terrible news to report,” he said. “We just received word that rising sixteen-year-old figure skater Lance Finkel died en route to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. We will keep you updated as we receive more information about this tragic situation.”
Karen was dizzy. There had to be some mistake. Lance wasn’t dead. Reporters were wrong all the time. It had to be some other boy. Some other Lance.
“I bought him a Shirley Temple, down at the open bar,” Nathan said. “Stirred some powder in before I brought it over. Told him it was a peace offering.”
Karen’s mouth filled with something sickly sweet. She swallowed hard so she wouldn’t be sick. “What kind of powder?” she asked.
“Just some pills ground up. Downers. Just to knock him out awhile.” Nathan looked dead himself, all the color drained from his face. “Make him too sleepy to skate.”
“Nathan!”
“You told me to poison him,” he said, and she could feel the wheels turning in his head, foisting the blame in her direction.
“I was kidding when I said that.” Her whole body was suddenly numb. “I would never …”
“You told me to do it, Karen.” His voice filled with steel. So did his eyes. “You told me, and I have it on tape.”
BEN WALKED UP TO ME.
“That was incredible, wasn’t it?” I asked, still looking across the slough. There was no sign of the wiry guy. He must have been an illusion, just a figment of my imagination. I tried to quiet my racing heart.
“I only saw a little,” he said. “My dad had to show me something.”
“What?” I couldn’t imagine anything else worth seeing when a whale was leaping in your backyard.
Ben grabbed my hand—this time with intention, with a firm, sure grip—and I grabbed Quinn’s. He ferried us into his truck and drove us to the cold-storage house. When he rolled the door open, the smell of ice hit me like tear gas.
“The pipes burst,” he said. “Lucky we already shipped out most of the pears. Only lost a few boxes.”
The concrete floor of the wooden building was covered with a rime of ice. It glittered in the shaft of sunlight that came through the open door, wet and slick.
“We keep this room at thirty degrees,” he said. “The pears don’t freeze because of all the sugar. But water sure does.”
I felt light-headed as I stepped through the doorway. The ice gently sucked the tread of my work boot, but with my next step, I slid a few inches and felt a giddy zing up my spine. The air was cool and sweet; I inhaled deeply as I took another sliding step, then another, until I was slipping all over the small warehouse, the wood beams bent over me protectively, like a rib cage. Ten years. How could I have been off the ice for ten years?
“Come here, Quinn.” My eyes stung; I told myself it was from the cold, from the wind I created by rushing around.
Quinn tentatively stepped onto the ice. She had never seen snow, had seen ice only in glasses.
“Don’t worry.” I held out my hand,
and Quinn walked toward me in tentative steps. “Just let yourself move with the ice.” Maybe we could go up to the mountains that winter, rent a cabin somewhere near a good sledding hill. Maybe an outdoor rink, one that wouldn’t be too crowded. Maybe I could pick up a pair of skates—not rentals with their floppy ankles and dull blades. Something with a spongy tongue, sharp edges. My work boots felt way too clumsy with their thick rubber soles.
Quinn and I stumbled and slid across the surface, Quinn shrieking, face lit up, whenever she lost her balance. Ben grinned, leaning against the doorway.
“Why don’t you join us?” I called to him.
“Maybe in a little,” he said.
“Hold both my hands,” I told Quinn. “Keep your arms nice and tight.”
I bent my knees, then hoisted her all the way up over my head, her legs stretched out behind her in the air.
Quinn shouted, “Mom! Put me down!” but I started to spin—nothing too fast, just a slow rotation, step by step, until Quinn started to wobble, legs flailing, and I set her back onto the ground.
“Jesus, you’re strong,” said Ben.
“I told you—it’s picking pears.” I shook out my aching wrists. Quinn was a lot heavier than a bag of pears; I hadn’t lifted her that high since she was a toddler.
Quinn lost her footing and crashed onto the melting ice, reddening her palms. Ben ventured out to help her and fell, too, drenching his entire side, sending his khaki baseball cap flying.
“Cold, huh?” Quinn laughed.
“Soaked to the bone.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest to keep warm. “We better go change before we catch pneumonia or something.”
“I think I still have some stuff at the house,” said Quinn.
“You start on ahead,” I said. “I’ll close everything up.”
Ben and Quinn slipped a couple of times as they struggled to get upright, then helped each other over to the door with stiff, careful steps, their clothes splotched dark from the cold water.
Delta Girls Page 21
