Catch & Release (7 page)

But that isn't even the strangest thing about antelope. They are bloody little murderers before they are born.

Antelope start out as part of a litter. Up to eight eggs are fertilized and find a spot in the mom antelope's generous, two-room womb. Ferocious competition between the siblings begins within days—in fact, they start strangling each other while they are only threads of cells. That thins the unborn herd a little, but it doesn't stop there. As the antelope fawns grow, they basically kick, knock, push, jab any remaining brothers or sisters right out the door a long time before they are ready for that adventure. Little pink antelope fetuses drop to the frozen ground under the sagebrush. It's not like they dot the landscape like wads of bubble-gum at a bus stop. They are sort of a rare find. I have never found one myself, but my dad brought one home to show me once. Being a big-animal vet gives him an interesting angle on what children ought to know.

Suddenly, Odd snaps off the radio.

“You got any brothers or sisters, Polly? Don't look like you got any.”

“There's just me. I'm my parents' one and only.”

“I'm number three. It took them three tries to achieve perfection.” He pauses to zap a smile like there is someone to impress with his dazzely-brights. “My sister Thea was beautiful, but she's dead to us. My brother Buck is—not perfect. Why'd your parents stop with you?”

“I don't know, Odd.”

But I do know.

My mom told me when we had our first convos about sex. Bam! Sandwiched between tampons and cramps, she segued into in vitro fertilization and how it isn't always easy to have babies. I don't know how common it is to include that type of information in “the talk,” but my guess is not very. At least, when I talked to my friends at school they had all heard the deets about tampons, cramps, and how babies are made—but the cells mixed in a lab dish, not so much. My news was interesting, but way less interesting than what girls with brothers had to say about penises with mushroom tops and penises with turtleneck sweaters, which is all a girl person ought to need to know about circumcision.

I think maybe my mom would love it if I had screwed up and had a baby. She could have had another one that way. But she isn't the kind of person who would plan out whatever would make her happy like a bunch of chess moves. She wouldn't let me be a pawn no matter what she had to gain. So I was well informed.

I understood how I came to be.

I wasn't cooked up the good old-fashioned way.

My parents tried. Nothing came of it.

Then the tests started.

It was an escalating war on the lack of baby.

How did my dad feel when my mom got on the plane and flew to California to get a baby?

He never said.

How did my mom look?

My guess is she looked determined.

They had come to some sort of agreement, those two. And I am the result.

There were four. That was too many. Two went away. That meant twins.

Twins are perfect.

It was going to be twins.

It was going to be twins until my brother? sister? stopped growing. Failure to thrive. That's a nice way to say I hogged the best spot. I refused to share. And the other one shriveled up like a balloon with a slow leak. One week there were two heartbeats. And then there was only one. I was a bloody little murderer before I was born.

I am an only child.

“D'Elegance needs gas,” says Odd when we wind down and out of the hills and get near the interstate. So he turns in the opposite direction from home.

“What kind of mileage does the Elephant get?” I ask. The name fits the ridiculous, lumbering car. Bridger called his truck Buffy.

“D'Elegance,”
says Odd, “D'Elegance.” He points at a curlicue of letters on the wooden dash of the car. “D'Elegance gets ten miles to the gallon, and she's worth every drop.”

“I'm sorry. I just wanted . . . look, I'll pay for the gas. OK?”

“Sure,” says Odd. “I'm hungry,” he says, which explains why we pull into the parking lot of a gas-casinoeat-truck plaza. I'm down with it. I was hungry when I crawled out of my sleeping bag, and a couple of pastel marshmallows are a crappy breakfast.

A few minutes later I'm sitting in a booth with my ruined side leaned up against the window. Odd slides out to head for the casino-and-souvenirs side of the place. He needs aspirin, he says. He has a headache from the reflection on the water. It happens. He'd be better off buying some sunglasses. The sun is not that high yet, and it's going to be glaring while we drive back home. Or maybe he's going to wear the pair of glasses I noticed neatly clipped to the passenger's side sun visor. Sure they are huge as Chihuahua eyeballs, and the frames are a swirly pink that probably looks very fancy on an elderly lady with a lavender updo. But who, exactly, is going to notice that Odd is wearing granny sunglasses? Except me, that is. I'm going to notice and I'm going to enjoy it.

I'm lost in imagining Odd in his granny glasses. The waitress comes up and puts a couple of menus on the table and says, “Coffee, honey?”

I forget myself and I look at her to say, “Yeah, thanks, and milk . . .” but, before I get the words out she sees me, all of me, the real me, and she drops the coffee pot. The glass pot doesn't break, but the hot coffee splashes out when it smacks onto the floor. Some of it must have hit her feet because she yelps and squats down.

“I'm sorry,” I say to the top of her head. “I'm so sorry.”

Then Odd is beside her and he holds her hand while she gets to her feet. She's flustered but working on it.

He looks her straight in the eyes and says, “Thank you, Vonnie.” Maybe he didn't look her straight in the eyes every second. He had time to read her nametag while he was checking out her boobs. “Are you OK?”

She pulls a wobbly smile together and says, “Silly me. We'll get that cleaned up.” She never takes her eyes off of Odd's face.

When the busboy comes with a mop he looks at me long enough to prove he can, but mostly he just mops up the mess. He's as skinny as his mop handle. The place is buzzing with customers. There is stuff to do.

Vonnie returns with more coffee. “Ready to order?”

“Sure,” says Odd, “Biscuits and gravy—for both of us.”

“Sure thing,” says Vonnie. The coffee cups are full. She moves Odd's closer to him. Mine she leaves where it is. She's forgotten the milk. And I don't like biscuits and gravy, either.

 

“I figure,” says Odd while he fiddles with the side-view mirror, “We're this close to the park, it seems like a waste not to go.”

It seems to me that it's always a waste to go to Yellowstone in the summer. It's crowded and there is too much traffic—and the animals with any sense are chilling up and away from the roads and the swarms of tourists. I'd like to consider myself an animal with sense, so I'm inclined to vote no.

“We can go back over the pass,” says Odd.

The pass means high country, above the tree line, banks of deep snow that look blue in shadows. That actually sounds good. That is persuasive.

“You think this fine car can make it?”

“D'Elegance will purr right up the Beartooth.”

I'm not sure there is any justification for such a ringing endorsement of our wheels. But what's the downside? Worst case, the brakes go out and we plunge, probably not more than a couple hundred vertical feet, from one switchback to the next and die a horrible death. No, worst case is we get a flat and have to change the tire where there isn't any shoulder to pull over to do it—while being eaten by mosquitoes the size of bats and reviled by motor-home drivers. Because the worst, as I've discovered, never actually kills you. It just humiliates you.

“Sure. We can still be home by dinner tomorrow.”

“Alrighty then,” says Odd, “Yellowstone it is.”

 

I get my phone. There's reception here, so I touch base with my dad, “Im ok today in ynp.”

I have thirteen messages. They are all from my mom. The first one says, “You forgot lunch.” I delete the rest without reading them. Then I turn the phone off and put it back in the waterproof box.

 

Odd removes the clown-size pink granny sunglasses from the visor, but he doesn't put them on. “Here,” he says, holding them out in my general direction. “It might be better if you wear these—kind of cover up some of that mess you got there. We need to go in and pick up some groceries before we go in the park. How much you got on you?”

“This.” I pull my debit card out of my pocket.

“Alrighty then,” says Odd, “and how much is that?”

His question catches me off guard. It isn't nice to talk about money, but I answer before I realize I should tell him that's rude. “Thousands. My college tuition money. Every cent I earned at the Kid-O-Korral plus money my parents have been putting in since I was born.”

“Alrighty then,” says Odd. “Money is no object.”

I don't say no to that, because he's right. Money is no object. What do I need tuition money for now? I'm not exactly really graduated. I never took my AP tests. I'm not going to be registering or paying fees in the fall. What difference does it make how that money gets spent? It doesn't make any difference at all.