Fishing With RayAnne (26 page)

There’s been a message from Hal. “It occurs to me you don’t have my number, so here it is. Things to talk about, right? So, whenever . . . wait, scratch that,
not
whenever. Call soon. Please.”

She stares at the phone, unable to imagine what “things” might be.

T
WELVE

The weekend blows in with an early northeaster, hurling leaves across the window planters to plaster themselves on the screens of the porch where RayAnne sits reading, wearing something that is neither a sleeping bag nor a onesie, as the Koucharoo infomercial insists, but both! It has a hood, and when laid flat it looks like a sleeping bag for a human-sized starfish. It has pouches designed to hold chip bags and television remotes. Ky must have trolled late-night cable to come up with this hit on his parade of most hideous Christmas gifts—a contest he’s won every year since childhood by virtue of being its sole competitor. Perhaps if he knew RayAnne actually wears her Koucharoo, it might put a stop to the beer-can hats, antigravity shoes, the rubber Big Mouth Billy Bass on a plaque singing “Take Me to the River,” and the cape embroidered with scenes from “The Twelve Days of Christmas” with blinking LED lights—the sort of crap that clutters a closet until pitched into the Goodwill box.

After hearing the mail slot clang, RayAnne puffles down the hall to find a few pieces of mail for Big Rick on the tile amid the junk mail. The envelopes are forwarded from Arizona by Number Six. RayAnne wedges them behind the lamp on the hall table. If he does show up, she’ll shove it back through the slot, unable to imagine opening the door to her father anytime soon—especially since hearing via Ky, who’d heard from Gran, to whom Bernadette had confided that when she and her mavens were leaving Location, Big Rick stood in front of the van, blocking the road, and mooned them all. This was witnessed by half the crew, a number of sponsors, and Hal.

She hasn’t erased Hal’s messages but will. That morning he had left another: “It’s me. Again. I’m, ah, just wondering if you’re still—what does your e-mail responder say?
Gone fishin’?
But season’s over, so . . .”

Replaying it, she stands outside watching Rory rove his small domain, peeing along its perimeters. Finished with that, he herds oak leaves swirling on the patio, pawing at those falling in midair. Should she call Hal back or not? She lets Rory decide, holding out the phone for him to sniff. When he only drops to the flagstones and covers his snout with both paws, she retreats to the porch to resume thumbing her paperback. Maybe later, after their walk, she and Rory will drive down to the storage facility at the marina where Penelope is parked, just to check on her.

After three pages, the book she’s trying to read falls limply to her lap.

Such are the days,
she thinks.

Shadowed by shame for her laziness, Sunday morning RayAnne vows to do something constructive. After traipsing around IKEA for two hours, she has not only justified her meatball lunch, but now has a
project
.

A burly, helpful IKEA guy had loaded the cartons into her hatchback. Once home and eager to get started, she realizes there is no burly, helpful guy on this end, where the boxes are too heavy to wrangle from the car herself. No small problem. She momentarily considers calling Ky then decides against it, knowing Ingrid’s weekend hours at home will be dwindling. She tries lifting again, then wonders about Rani and Patak, the Pakistani brothers next door. But having shied away from all her neighbors this long, it would seem entirely too rude to ask for help now. She stands looking dumbly down the street, deserted in the middle of the afternoon—people are out doing Sunday things, off to museums, to the mall, dinner at the in-laws’, choosing paint at Home Depot, at home watching a Vikings game, whatever.

The unmovable boxes pose a pickle, but not huge—one Gran would call a gherkin.

After poking around the garage, RayAnne returns to the car with a utility knife, climbs in to straddle the console, and slices open the short ends of the boxes. She repeats the attack from the hatchback end and wrangles individual shelves out a few at a time, cursing like a longshoreman. The more manageable loads are then dragged inside. An hour later, the curb looks like a cardboard truck has tipped over. Fighting the wind, she retrieves the pieces along with the dozen flying instruction sheets with the mute little
show-don’t-tell
IKEA man. Once all is in the living room and brown paper is peeled from the shelves, she hears Gran’s ringtone and scrabbles around to find the phone.

“Hey, Gran. Guess what I’m doing?”

“Knitting?”

“Building bookcases! Well, not
building
, but IKEA, so, same-same. What are you up to?”

“No good, as usual. Say, I’m looking at my calendar and wondering about that road trip; did you settle on a date?”

“I’ll get to your place the day before Thanksgiving. And stay for three weeks?”

“You think that’s a good idea so late in the season? You don’t want to be driving through snow. You could come earlier.”

RayAnne laughs, “I
can
drive through snow, Gran. Why, you eloping with Mr. D or something?”

“Ha. No reason.” Dot chuckles. “Just . . . the driving. You know me, worrywart. Get your brother to help you with those shelves.”

“Nope. It’s DIY all the way.”

“Well, you get to it, dear.”

“I’ll send a pic once I’m done. Smooches.”

After laying out the shelves and examining the little hexagonal tool that looks like it could snap like a twig, she gets the tools Big Rick bought and finds a more substantial version of the same diameter. She’s rather proud of how smoothly the operation is going. She can totally manage this. Just as she’s thinking it, her elbow jostles the utility knife set too close to the edge of the mantle. She fumbles in slow motion to catch it and does—the blade she’d forgot to retract plunges into the ham of her thumb, nearly to its hilt.

“Mmmmotherfucker!”
It happens in an instant. The knife wobbles an instant before the weight of it cranks her hand downward and it clatters to the floor, followed by an impressive spurt of blood. “Shitshitshitshitshit . . .” Rory is at her heels in a flash, sniffing the knife. Just as he’s about to lick the blade, she kicks it under the couch. Stepping over him, she rushes to the kitchen sink to run water over the cut to get a better look. It’s deep. The sight of muscle—of her own meat—contracts her stomach to a lump. Pain bolts up her wrist and arm. Stitches. It will definitely need stitches.

Remembering the blade had a few rust spots, she moans, knowing she’s in for a tetanus shot as well. “Damndamndammit.” Once she’s fumbled open the first aid kit and starts ripping things open with her teeth, she realizes there aren’t enough gauze pads—each time she moves her thumb, more blood spurts. There’s no way she’ll be able to drive herself to the ER. After poking numbers into the cordless to order a taxi, she wads paper towels into her palm and makes a fist around them. Seeing the orange dog-poo bags on the counter, she’s inspired to shove her hand into one to hold everything in place and keep the blood from dripping. She scatters a few rawhide chews for Rory before shutting the front door on him. Waiting outside for the taxi, she holds her hand high, managing to look crazy.

She’d imagined a late afternoon on a Sunday at the ER would be slow, but the halls of Hennepin County Medical Center are ablaze with light, noise, and all the chaos of a paycheck-Friday, full-moon midnight. She is categorized “priority” by the woman at admissions after she listlessly notes the amount of blood in RayAnne’s bag, now nearly enough to float a goldfish. RayAnne is given a number, pointed to a large waiting room, and told simply, “Wait.”

Nearly every molded green and yellow chair is occupied. The sick and injured comprise a disparate mix of young and old, crisscrossing all strata. A seductively dressed, heavily made-up mother whispers to her pregnant teenage daughter, who stares straight ahead and only snaps gum in response; a rheumy-eyed Hispanic man is flanked by two younger men who could be his sons, all three dressed as if for church. At first RayAnne settles across from a young mother with two toddlers, but both commence croupy, barking coughs and ooze rivulets of green snot. She moves on, ostensibly looking for a magazine. A tanned fiftyish golfer-type with a gold watch and diamond ring holds a cold pack to his ankle. Passing a Vietnamese family, she notes all their eyes on the ER double door, as if waiting for someone to be wheeled out. She can assume the two teenage boys—one holding his arm, the other with ice on his knee—have been skateboarding, because one still has his foot planted on his board, toeing it in and out from under his chair. A graying pair of suburban lookalike sisters watch CNN on the corner TV. A teary-eyed, well-dressed blond holds her jaw and turns away from anyone looking at her. Beyond them are more rows, all full of hurting people, all waiting. Many stare into the screens of their phones.

She’s forgotten hers, of course. In her rush to get out of the house, she’d only grabbed her wallet. She finds a table where there’s a pile of magazines and blinks at the incongruity of the titles:
Dressage Digest
,
Wine Spectator
,
Cigar Aficionado
, and
Yacht
, obvious rejects from the doctors’ lounge. Across from her, a tattooed, asthmatic-sounding hipster in a duffle coat holds his eyes closed, as if concentrating on teleporting himself to a better waiting room in a better hospital. Her hand hurts.

Off to the side is a short corridor of vending machines. One is being repeatedly kicked by an angry little bald man. She’s got no book to read and only about three dollars in cash. The pay phone in the tiled hall looks broken, but even if she had quarters, who, besides Gran, would she bother with this?

A half hour into the wait, the only patients called up so far are the woman and her leaking children. One of the identical sisters gets up on a chair to change the television channel from CNN. When she skips past the Vikings half-time show, a few men moan, one imploring, “C’
mon
, lady . . .” They are rewarded with the final minutes of a documentary about wolves. No one complains, but no one is enthused either. The television is a place to aim their eyes, something to blink at besides their phones or each other.

RayAnne lifts her bloody bag. The bleeding has slowed, maybe even stopped. She’s wondering how Rory is handling her sudden absence when she realizes the tune emitting from the television is the theme song for
Fishing
.

She freezes. Her eyes swivel to see who looks up at the TV before she dares to. There she is, welcoming the entire waiting room to climb aboard Penelope. The pregnant girl’s mother stops badgering her long enough to turn to the screen. One of the sisters says “Shhh,” though no one is talking.

“Today on
Fishing
we’ll go to the gym with Leslie Jordache.” A photo fills the screen, showing an obese, pretty, caramel-skinned young woman sprawled on a lawn chair that looks like it might snap. “At thirty years old, the only thing Leslie Jordache was lifting regularly was the two-gallon ice cream bucket from her freezer.” The picture changes to one of Leslie looming large in an altogether different way, braced under a set of huge barbells, a silver medal over the spandex singlet covering her muscular chest, much of her great weight shed, the rest shifted and muscled more tightly to her frame, owning it. “Today, a hundred pounds and ten years later, Leslie is the reigning Canadian women’s weightlifting champ. We’ll talk to Leslie about her journey from couch potato to Olympian.” She looks to the other camera. “Later in the show we’ll fish with Captain Angie Jones from the tall ship program, High Seas, where she helps chemically dependent teens literally sail through recovery. Captain Angie teaches seafaring and nautical skills on a floating rehab ship.” RayAnne looks directly at her audience, adding, “Blimey.”

There is a mild shuffling in the waiting room as a few people adjust their chairs for better angles. RayAnne picks up a
Golf Digest
to watch from behind the cover of an article titled “Is Tiger Grrrreat?”

Leslie Jordache is seated in the usual guest spot, the bench seat, but the gaffer had had to place several sandbags across from her to level Penelope in the water. Even before RayAnne can ask Leslie what her inspiration and motivation was to get up off the couch, Leslie is leaning forward ready to bust with all she has to say—another of those guests who can carry the show, RayAnne’s presence barely needed.