Beyond Deserving (42 page)

Katie raises her chin. “I don't have any trouble with him,” she says. “The trouble was with the creeps who haven't left our house.”

“Listen, kid,” Maureen says. “I think the trouble may be with you.”

Katie turns on one heel and returns to her apartment. It's two or three minutes before she realizes what she should have said. She should have said, “I didn't leave her by a lake, did I?” but now it's too late, the moment is past.

Besides, she can hear what Maureen could say. Maybe you didn't leave her by the lake, but you sure were in the bushes, weren't you?

57

Ursula comes home from the parade before the last float has made its torturous way down the boulevard. The others will go down to the park to the booths, and eat lunch there, but she wants to get the food ready for the afternoon, before the day grows hotter.

She tells herself hot weather beats rain on the Fourth of July. She wonders if Michael minds turning forty-five. Probably not. It's Fish who might ponder what it means.

Gully and Geneva will come later to join the family, and Ursula has invited Angela and her husband, a couple of teachers from Michael's school, Teresa and Teresa's brother, who is visiting from New York. The yard looks good; Michael must have leaned hard on Carter to get all the brush and trash picked up and hauled off. Ursula bought eight metal lawn chairs, some white, some black, on sale at Bi-Mart, and the pleasant shade on the deck will be a blessing. Michael has cleaned out the two barbecue grills and set them up, and Ursula has set several pots of flowers on the deck, for color.

She makes herself a large glass of iced tea, cuts open a cantaloupe, and begins scooping out balls. She will wrap them with lengths of prosciutto, as Carter reminded her not so long ago. Last night she made cream puffs. She has vegetables to trim and slice, a dip to make, four kinds of cheeses, hamburger to which she'll add teriyaki sauce and a lot of garlic, chicken to marinate in her lemon glaze, and loaves of French bread she brought from Safeway on the way home.

She is upstairs changing into shorts when she hears a car at the curb. She hears voices in the basement, and then the door down there slam, then the car again. It sounds like Fish's truck. Maybe he and Katie have something to do before they come back, she thinks.

It isn't until a couple of hours later, when Katie, Michael, and the kids arrive, that they realize Rhea and Fish have gone off without telling anyone where they are going or for how long. Ursula asks Michael, “Could he have gone to get your folks?” but a phone call confirms that Gully is planning to drive out about four.

“It could be anything,” Katie says impatiently. “What's everybody so uptight about? It's not like Fish can't drive. It's not like they're strangers, is it?” Two hours later she says, “He got some feather up his ass to do something and couldn't bother to tell us.” By six, she's threatening to call the police. Michael says if they're not back by dark, he'll start looking. Katie sits in the breakfast nook, drinking one beer after another, slowly. Ursula goes through the motions of the afternoon, uneasy and bitter, but determinedly cheerful; her guests don't have to know that something is wrong. They can think Katie is sullen. They can think she likes to drink alone.

Fish leaves the freeway and drives fast past two shopping centers, car lots and warehouses, fast food places, and then fields of grass and scrub, with stands of huge trees around old farmhouses. On a rise someone has built a new log house, the color of cinnamon, and here and there trailers sit on bare ground, looking hot and lonely. Fish doesn't slow down or talk until the road narrows to two lanes and takes them through little towns along the river. Rhea is admiring the shimmer of light on the water, and the places where the water ripples and foams white when Fish says, “We're almost at the folks' house, see, up around that curve.” He points.

“Are we going to their house?” Rhea asks, disappointed. Fish said at the parade, “Want to get out of here? Want to go somewhere cooler, away from all these people?” Rhea was eager to go down to the park to see what the booths were; that's what Juliette was going to do. But she didn't want to turn down a chance to be with her father, either. If they went somewhere in his truck, just the two of them, maybe she could get him to talk about boats. She wants to know where he will go when he has one. She wants to know what she needs to learn if she wants to go, too. She'll be older then. She can learn to sail. She can imagine the sea breathing under her, out on deep water. She can imagine the three of them, her father and her mother and her, brown as berries and strong, landing on an island that is very beautiful and staying there a long time.

“We'll stop on the way back,” Fish says. “I want to pick up my fishing stuff, and my gun. I'll bet my ma's got my gun under the trailer. She can't stand guns in the house. Fifty years with Pop, and two sons, too, and she still hates guns.”

“There's this girl in my class, Vicky Anne? Her brother shot their parents last year with a shotgun. He's seventeen. I guess he really hated them. Vicky wasn't home, so you don't know if he would have shot her, too.” Fish gives Rhea such a look, it makes her wary. She doesn't mean she thinks he'll do something bad. She doesn't mean to complain about his gun. He made her think of Vicky, that's all.

“No shit,” Fish says.

“They put him in a hospital, Granny says. He was sixteen when he did it, and Granny says he'll probably get out.”

“What about the girl? Becky?”

“Oh, Vicky. She lives with her aunt. She lives close to me now. I could play with her after school but Granny hardly ever lets me.”

They come around a curve, and the river seems to split for a moment, around a chunk of land, and then it comes together again. Rhea thinks it would be more fun to drive the other way. It is confusing, going against the river. She can see that it runs fast, but she can't get a feeling for its flow.

“I never saw a river like this before,” she says. She wants to ask her father what he thought about the parade, but she thinks he didn't like it, and she's afraid he'll say it was silly.

“You ever see any rivers?”

“Once, when we went to Piano to see a cousin of Granny's. The cousin died, it was her funeral. My grandmother grew up with her. Coming and going, we had to cross a river. It was brown and wide and slow. Granny said there are snakes in rivers. You can't go in them just anyplace.”

“Not in the Rogue. There are rattlers, though, along the banks, when it's hot. In rocky places. Sometimes a hiker gets bit, but it's because he's stupid. You have to pay attention to what you're doing.”

Rhea wants to talk about the river and not snakes. “It's pretty, the river. It's so blue.”

“You wait. You haven't seen blue yet,” Fish says. They are driving between high trees, like a ribbon blowing through a canyon. The trees stretch on and on now. After a while the thick firs and pines give way to skinny, bare trees. “Those are lodgepole pines,” Fish tells her. “The Indians used them for the frames of their teepees.” Rhea is fascinated by this, though she isn't completely sure he isn't teasing her. Everything about Oregon is new. She expected more hills and trees than at home; everybody knows West Texas is flat as anyplace on earth. But she didn't realize, when she was looking forward to the trip, that there would be so many trees and hills that sometimes they would fill the eyes and block the sky.

Strips of sun fall through the trees across the pavement, like slats on a window. Rhea closes her eyes. Still she sees bright stripes. She sleeps.

“We're getting close,” Fish says, to wake her. The drive is exciting now, as they climb higher. There is snow in patches, on banks above the lake. They pull into the parking lot at the rim, and Fish complains hoarsely. “Look at this. Goddamned Fourth of July here, too.” Rhea thinks it is exciting to be where there are so many people. All around, people in shorts or jeans or wraparound skirts are looking at brochures, checking their cameras, pointing at the lake and talking Everyone seems about to do something; they are all enjoying getting ready.

She remembers it's Fish's birthday but it doesn't seem the right time to bring it up. She wishes she had a present for him. She asked Katie about it, and Katie said they always had the barbecue for Michael and Fish, and that was all they wanted. It sounded like presents are something for kids, something you outgrow. She wishes she thought to buy a kit and make him a boat for his birthday. Uncle Michael would have helped her.

A lot of people are milling around the cars, between the rim of the lake and the big lodge with the cafeteria and gift shops. Rhea follows Fish down to the stone wall at the edge of the lot and stands staring at the lake. She squeezes her fists as hard as she can to keep from crying. It is more beautiful than anything she has ever imagined, and at the same time it is the most terrible disappointment. There is no beach, no water in which to wade. It isn't anything like a lake; it's much more like Fish said, a hole in the ground. The lake fills the crater of an extinct volcano. Its sides are sheer and high. It is far away from where they are standing.

“Can you get down by the water?” she asks. She remembers seeing a pretty lake on the way, where there were fishermen on boats. She thinks she would like that lake better.

“If you fall down the side, it's so steep, you plunge so deep you can't come up again.”

Rhea bursts into tears.

“Shit.” Fish kicks the stone of the little wall. He sits down and puts his head in his hands. “Shit.”

“I'm sorry,” Rhea says. Her nose is clogged and her face is all wet. She thinks people must be looking at her. They're probably saying, what's wrong with that little girl. She takes a step closer to Fish, but she doesn't know what to do next, so she sits down, pulls up her tee shirt and wipes her face and nose. “You know what I used to think your name was?” she says. She holds her breath until Fish looks up at her.

He grins at her. “Tell me,” he says, and he looks like he would really like to know. As suddenly as she was sad, Rhea is happy.

“I thought your name was Fisher Fisher. Granny told me Fish was short for Fisher, and I knew your last name was Fisher, because so is mine.” She doesn't think she has done a very good job of explaining the mistake. Out loud, there isn't anything funny about it. She used to think there was magic in saying it over and over, Fisher Fisher, that it might make him appear. Maybe it did work, another way. Maybe it made Granny give in and let her come to Oregon.

“You're a kid with a lot of spunk,” Fish says. Rhea has seen that word in books, spunk, but she has never actually heard someone say it. “My name is Gulsvig Fisher, just like my pop. Gulsvig used to be his last name, but they changed it to his stepfather's name, Fisher. So he kept both names, see? And then he gave me the old name, and gave Michael
his
name.” He shakes his head and laughs. “Pretty confusing, huh? Pop used to call me Gully, like him, but by the time I started school everybody called me Fish.”

“Because you liked to!” Rhea guesses. “Like Grandpa. He told me he'd rather fish than eat. I've never been fishing. He said maybe we could go sometime, but I go home in a few days. And we didn't go to the beach yet, either. But I liked what we did do! I love Mr. Melroy's dogs. Do you like Bounder? Grandpa asked me which dog I liked best, and I said Bounder.”

“Are you hungry?” Fish asks. She wishes he would say something to show he was listening, but what could he say. She didn't mean to make him feel bad about the beach. Ursula said sometime when she comes they should rent a house at the beach and they can all go stay for a week. Everyone seems to assume she'll come back next summer. Granny didn't talk about that. She said, We'll see how it goes. She should be here, to see Rhea at the rim of a giant lake. She should see it herself.

“I am hungry,” she says. “I really am.”

Fish leads her to the cafeteria inside the huge stone building. He doesn't watch to see if she keeps up with him. She likes that. While they stand in line he checks his wallet and counts his change. “We're in good shape,” he says. “What looks good?”

She studies his face. “Macaroni and cheese?”

“Macaroni and cheese for the Texan,” he says to the boy behind the food line. He takes a bowl of chili. “I hate macaroni and cheese,” he says when they have sat down and Rhea is eating. She stops, mid-bite. “My ma made it every week, sometimes twice. And I had it about a thousand times in the navy.” He notices that she has stopped eating. “I'm not having it, you are,” he says, and she takes another bite. “You have to know what you like,” he tells her. “You have to not care what somebody else thinks you ought to like.”

He finishes his chili and smokes a cigarette. Rhea feels content in the bustle of the cafeteria. If she calls her grandmother tonight, she'll tell her, you wouldn't believe all the people who came to see a lake. Coming up in the car, Fish told her the lake is as deep as from Michael's house to the Safeway store. She tries to lay her mind on its side, to see how far that would be. She wants to walk it when she gets back. Suddenly she has an image of her crayon box from last year, the one with crayons in tiers, like a choir. All the blues: cobalt, robin's egg, turquoise, azure. All those colors, in one lake.

“Did you ever wonder what I looked like?” she asks. He doesn't quite look at her. He draws deeply on his cigarette and blows it out slowly. He always smells like smoke. It worries her. When he smokes, he takes it deep inside and lets it out in a slow stream. She can see how much he likes it. She knows smoking kills you, though, and she wants to warn him. She wants to tell him about smoking and cancer, and about the food groups, about how not to get struck by lightning, and not to put butter on a burn. She has never assumed, when she learned something, that everyone else already knows it. She has always considered the possibility that she might be paying more attention. Granny says someday Rhea will know more than she does, that this is natural. She says children get smarter than their parents, but Rhea doesn't think Granny would say that about Katie. Whenever Rhea asks about Fish or Katie, Granny takes a while to think before she answers. Even simple questions. It makes Rhea think that anything you ask about them has more than one answer, and Granny needs a little time to choose the one that suits her best.