Catch & Release (10 page)

 

I have three hope chests at home, waiting for when I get married. It's bizarre. It was even bizarre before I was a monster. Nobody does hope chests anymore. People just register for what they want. But I have three hope chests because they are part of my mom's plan for my happy future. One hope chest belonged to my grandmother. It is full of family albums and baby clothes I wore and things that belonged to my grandmother—even her wedding band. She took it off before she died and said it wasn't right to bury a promise. That's the legend: “It isn't right to bury a promise.”

The second box holds a kitchen-full of five-ingredientcook-from-fresh cookbooks and heart-shaped muffin pans. I have a whisk and a ricer and pepper mill. I have an entire set of everyday dishes. I have a stand mixer and an espresso maker. I have lots of things my mother never uses when she cooks, but I have them because my happy future might require that sort of thing.

The third box is the oldest one. My mom looked for the right chest for years before she settled on an antique with hand-sawed dovetail joints and cheerful painted hearts and joined hands and flowers in an emblem on the front. This one is mine, although it probably used to belong to some other pioneer bride who is deader than dust and doesn't need it anymore. It holds bedding mostly. Star quilts made on the reservation, a down comforter from France, pillowcases with hand-tatted lace. Only the best. Because that's what my happy future is all about: only the best.

My mom keeps the keys to the hope chests in her jewelry box. I can get them anytime I want, but she wants to make sure they don't get lost, and I might lose them. What would happen to my happy future then? What?

 

I see Odd high above me, climbing the stairs to the top of the terrace. He's waving his arms around. It's some sort of performance for a knot of Asian tourists. I doubt they asked for it. I doubt that matters to Odd. I jam my hat on my head and put on the disgusting glasses. My plan is to buy a fishing permit. My plan is good. It's the right thing to do. I turn toward the store and go to do the right thing.

The line to get into the store is so long that Odd catches up with me before I get to the counter to buy our fishing licenses. I ought to feel good that he's going to have a permit, but I just feel irritated that he will spend no time waiting. I did all the waiting. I'm scowling, but it is pretty ineffective. Even if I took off the hat and glasses, the change in expression would be pretty subtle. And then there is the fact that Odd, who ought to get the message, is as sensitive to the rights of others as a rockslide. He's just going where he's going, doing what he's doing, and a scowl isn't going to put the brakes on that.

When we get out of the store, there's a circle of people with cameras hovering like a respectful bubble around a badger waddling across the grass. The badger seems unconcerned. He is used to life in the people zoo.

 

“You sing, Polly?”

“No.”

“Never? Not even in church?”

“Never. Unless you count ‘Itsy-Bitsy Spider' or ‘Clean-Up Time' or ‘Washing Hands Is Fun To Do' at the Kid-O-Korral. Did you know small children respond better to singing than raising your voice? It's a nice thing to know.”

“Great. So you're used to an audience. Check. So, now, let's hear you sing.”

“Sing what?”

“Whatever you want. But not ‘Itsy-Bitsy Spider'— something a little more interesting.”

“Couldn't you just turn the radio back on?”

“Do you want to do it karaoke sing-along? OK. That could work.”

“No. I meant, why not just listen to the radio? The people singing on the radio are fine, right?” I'm more than happy to lie about my opinion of Odd's musical taste, if it means I don't have to talk—or sing.

“No. I want you to audition for the band,” says Odd.

“What band?”

“The band that will be our new job.”

He is certifiable. I am also trapped in a motionless car while we wait for some yahoo to get tired of seeing real live bison. OK. He asked for it.

 

“Come away, human child

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in . . .”

 

“OK,” says Odd, “not so much of that. Do you think you could cover some Chainsaw Percussion? ‘Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer!'” Odd's growling scream just might spook the bison and get traffic moving again. Despite that upside, it's not what a person might call singing. He sounds like the soundtrack for a movie about a pissed-off mutant alcoholic bear.

“That's a song?” It's a legitimate question. I'm not just being a bitch.

“Well, Polly, the genre's gotta fit the look, and the look ain't changing.” The words drive Odd's point right through the numb scar tissue to the me underneath. It hurts.

“So maybe no vocals for you,” he goes on, “You play an instrument?”

“Clarinet in middle school,” I say.

“Clarinet. You, me, and everybody else. There will be no band,” Odd crumples up that idea like an empty beer can. Conversation over, he clicks on the radio. It's a relief—a horrible, twangfest relief—to listen to some bighat from Alabama crow about how cool it is to be him. Country music is all about how great it is to be country. It's like a nonstop party—which might be true, I guess, for people who get paid to sing about how great it is to get paid to sing. According to Odd, I'm unlikely to find out how cool that is for myself.

 

People think being nice is easy, and maybe it is for some people. But for me it took effort. It was
work
. It meant doing a lot of things I didn't want to do. Smiling and asking Mrs. Morehead if she wanted more cookies during the Ladies Day Tea when she was a mean old biddy who pretended being rude was encouragement—that was hard work. And when my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Carver, said my letter
a
's looked like little, shriveled-up peas, I worked on my penmanship until the pencil put a groove in my finger. People still ask me to address their wedding invitations so they don't have to expose their own sloppy true selves. But I think this whole being nice thing started with Mom.

Now that I've got an actual brain in my head, I know Mom was probably going to love me no matter what. She went to a lot of trouble to get me in the first place, what with the in vitro and the fertility treatments and all the money I cost. And she actually gave birth to me. But there's more. When she was shopping for donor eggs, she went out of her way to match my dad's genotype. It's like she was shopping for one of those just-like-me dolls, only, for whatever reason—because she loves him? because she hates the way she looks?—the “me” she matched was my dad. I am the result: pale eyelashes like a bald-face cow, red hair, pale eyes, pale skin that sunburns during a TV commercial for a Hawaii vacation. My mom went out of her way, as far as medically possible, to design me so she would find me adorable.

None of that matters to a little kid—at least it didn't to the little kid that was me.

All that mattered was that I wanted my mom to love me, and being nice made her happy. It's very hard to tell the difference between a happy parent and a loving parent. So I had good manners and smiled at the people in the grocery store. I said thank you. I said excuse me. I was always happy to help—even if I really wasn't. I was nice.

And then there was Bridger. Bridger loved me because I was nice. I'm not talking about purity-ring, madeup-swear-words–nice. Bridger was fine with sex, for one thing. But he was a nice guy himself. He volunteered, he got good grades, he had plans for the future. And that's the kind of nice I was, too, when I believed it was worth it, because it was all part of The Plan. I was part of the plan, he was part of the plan, and it was a nice plan.

Then something happened that was not so nice.

No matter how hard I try, I'll never, ever be nice enough to be part of the plan now. I'll never, ever be nice enough for Bridger to love me. I used to be a very nice thing, but now I'm ruined. This is my new condition.

 

We are stopped again, waiting for giant cows to decide to get off the road. If I reach out the window I could touch a bison with short, straight horns. It was a little red calf last year. It survived its first winter when a lot of others didn't. Now it's all grass and sunshine, baby. Life is good. It is jogging along past D'Elegance, and there is nothing graceful about it. Jolt. Jolt. Jolt. Then it turns. For one minute I'm staring right at it. I see the black, wet nostrils. I see the string of clear slobber spinning out of its mouth. I see the eye that was hidden from my sight, the eye that has been gouged out. The place is still bloody. If that bison weren't running, there would be flies all over that raw meat. One way or another, this animal will be dead. One way or another, all of these animals will be dead.