Hurt Go Happy (18 page)

Joey hitched him under her arm and carried him to the car.

“Sit with me,” Luke shouted.

“No, we want to talk,” Ruth said.

“Bummer.” Luke snapped his fingers.

Ruth rolled her eyes. “I'm afraid this is only the beginning. He comes home from kindergarten with a new expression every day. How's Michelle?”

Michelle was Joey's roommate, and it was her family with whom Joey lived on weekends. What started as a once-a-month treat from having to travel all the way to Fort Bragg and back each weekend had become a permanent arrangement when Joey proved to be the more trustworthy babysitter for Michelle's little sister. “She's in love.”

“Who this week?”

Joey laughed. “I don't bother with their names anymore. It'll be really scary when her mother actually lets her date.”

“Don't think I haven't thought of that. She's so boy-crazy.”

Joey knew she shouldn't tell her mother about Michelle, but she felt compelled. Being open about her roommate might reassure her mother that she had better sense. At sixteen, Joey was six months older than her mother had been when she fell in love with her father.

They passed the old Willits barn. Three miles of small talk was enough. “So tell me about Sukari,” Joey said.

“Not now. The road's too twisty,” Ruth answered.

Route 20 was thirty-three miles of curves. It was the shortest way to the coast across the stretch where the two North Coast ranges shouldered each other, but it was not a piece of road to take your eyes off. “You're right.” Joey turned to talk to Luke but he was hypnotized by his Pac-Man game, leaving Joey to stare out the window, lost in memories of Sukari.

Ray came out of the house and waved as they pulled in. HOW SCHOOL? he signed, then grinned. RIGHT?

Joey laughed. YES. RIGHT. “School's fine. School's great. You're really clicking along.”

Ruth tapped her shoulder. “He's about a quarter of the way through the book Charlie gave you, and Luke's got the whole alphabet and a few words under his belt.”

“Oh, Ray, that's so nice of you.”

WANT US TALK, he signed.

Joey hugged him, quickly, then turned to take her overnight bag from the backseat. That's when she saw a familiar car parked under the fir tree.

“What's Lynn…?” She looked toward the house.

Lynn stood at the window, holding her baby, whose hand she lifted and waved at Joey.

The hand Joey lifted in return trembled. She turned to Ruth. “You said she wasn't dead. Is Sukari dead?”

“She's not, honey. I promise.”

Ruth set their meeting up like a conference on the deck off the upstairs bedroom. There was a notepad for Lynn to write on and glasses filled with iced tea and an ominous box of tissues.

As much as she loved babies, Joey couldn't even pretend interest in little Katie. She could think only of Sukari as she faced Lynn and her mother. If Sukari wasn't dead, how much worse could it be that Lynn had felt obliged to drive up here, probably passing Joey's bus on the way?

Lynn stuck a pacifier in Katie's mouth, and sat down, heaving a sigh so heavy that her long bangs fluttered. The look she gave Ruth was full of resignation and something else that it took Joey a second to recognize as thinly veiled hostility. Not at all what she'd expected. For some reason, she had assumed that they were in this together. Why she thought that, she didn't know. Perhaps because they were adults, who seemed to enter into conspiracies against kids even when they didn't like each other.

The day was bright and sunny. An Anna's hummingbird dived in and hovered near the baby's red cap, then zipped away. If the scene had been caught in a photograph it would be one of those shiny-postcard moments.

Ruth held a letter out, which Joey took. The return address was Lynn's and the postmark was four months old. It was still sealed but Joey was sure that her mother had either read it or knew what it was about. Why else would she have kept it from Joey? And was this the reason Lynn seemed hostile toward her mother?

Lynn avoided looking at her and reached instead to shift the baby so that she was sitting in a pool of sunlight. Her face, for that moment, was filled with affection, very different from how Joey remembered her with Sukari during her Fresno visit. With a sick feeling in her stomach, she got up and took her letter to the creek side of the deck. It opened easily.

Dear Joey, I am so sorry to have to tell you this, and I want you to know that I did everything I could to avoid it, but we had to give Sukari to a zoo.

After hours of dread, relief swept over her. A zoo. That was okay. It wasn't what she would have wanted for Sukari but she'd been on a field trip to the Oakland Zoo and seen the chimps there. They'd seemed happy, chasing each other, swinging on ropes, and spinning in tires. She'd much prefer to see Sukari there than on Lynn's cramped little porch. Joey looked up, almost smiling, but the expressions on their faces frightened her again. Her fingers tightened on the thin paper in her hands as she read on.

When I came home from the hospital, I wanted Sukari to understand that Katie was a permanent addition. I began by nursing her in a rocking chair near Sukari's cage so she could watch. I even moved close enough for her to poke a finger through the wire and touch the baby's cheek. I thought including her would keep her from becoming jealous.

I suppose, without knowing any better, I made things worse. I put Katie's bassinet in the living room so Sukari could see that she lived with us. Unfortunately, Sukari got so attached to her that if the baby cried, she would go nuts in her cage, banging and throwing her toys. Her devotion to Katie was scary and the racket was awful unless the baby was right where she could see her, day and night.

The final straw was all my fault. I had just given Sukari her lunch when the phone rang. The baby was asleep and I ran to answer it and didn't get the padlock locked tightly. She got out and took Katie from her crib. When I found them, Sukari had her up on her bed-board, six feet off the ground, and, bless her heart, was trying to nurse her. When I tried to get the baby away from her, she swung off the platform, ended up dangling by one hand from the wire roof of the cage, with Katie draped over her arm, the way she used to carry Hidey. I was terrified that she would drop her, though never afraid that she would hurt her intentionally. Charlie always said she'd sell her soul for raisins. I gave her two boxes to engage both hands so she had to put Katie down.

I keep telling myself she will be better off with her own kind. And that she'll become a mother herself someday. And I pray Charlie will forgive me, and that you will.

Lynn

Lynn had been writing on the pad as Joey finished the letter. “So she
is
in a zoo?”

Neither of them answered. When Ruth looked at Lynn, waiting for her to finish, Joey knew there was more news, and that it wasn't good. She closed her eyes. A chill swept over her as if a wind had come up. She began to shiver.

“You need a sweater,” Ruth said. She got up and went into her bedroom and came back with a sweatshirt for Joey.

When Joey finished pulling it over her head, she saw they'd said something that she'd missed and that Lynn, by the set of her jaw, was angry. She turned away and tucked Katie's blanket around her more snugly, then sat up and tried to smile. She took Joey's hand and held it tightly before sliding the pad across the table.

There's no way to soften this. Sukari didn't do well at the zoo. They told me that chimps that are raised by humans never accept themselves as chimpanzees, but I had hoped Sukari would be the exception. Instead she was as terrified of them as she is of dogs. She called them “black bugs.”

The staff eventually moved her to a cage by herself, but I think the isolation was worse. She spent the days rocking and signing to herself as if she'd lost her mind.

Joey pulled her hand free and flipped the page.

Lynn scooped Katie up and hugged her.

They didn't have the facilities nor the funds, nor the inclination, I suspect, to keep her isolated. When they were sure that she would never adjust, they said I had to take her back or find a rehab facility that would accept her.

Lynn rested her chin on the top of the baby's head. Tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped to form silver beads on Katie's red wool cap.

I called all over trying to find a place, but there are hundreds of chimps in need of a place to go, and they were especially uninterested in a chimp who can't be housed with other chimps.

Joey, shortly after Sukari went to the zoo, I went back to work and hired a full-time, live-in nanny to care for Katie. We've turned the porch into a sunroom. Even if I wanted to, we couldn't have taken Sukari back. Last month, she was sent to a facility in Norman, Oklahoma. It's a kind of clearinghouse for unwanted chimpanzees. Most eventually go to research labs.

The note ended there. Joey looked up, tears brimming in her eyes. “Where is she?”

Lynn bit her lip, took a deep breath, then handed Joey a letter.

Dear Dr. Mansell: In response to your query, dated October 10, our records show that chimpanzee #1029, formerly known as Sukari, has been sent to the Clarke Foundation in Alamogordo, New Mexico. She will be used in their pesticide testing program. If you require further …

Joey closed her eyes and swallowed over and over, trying not to throw up. She staggered to her feet, knocking the chair over and scaring Katie, who began to wail. The leg of the chair tripped her and she stumbled but batted her mother away when she tried to help her up. When she got her footing, she lurched across the bedroom and out the door to the carport. She ran the trail toward Charlie's, beating her way through the ferns and huckleberries that grabbed at her legs. The tree that had toppled during the earthquake was still across the trail. She climbed over it and stepped into the icy stream. She ran with the rush of the creek. The next tree to block her path was Charlie's alder, covered with oyster mushrooms, fresh and abundant. She stopped when she saw them and looked up at his house. “Charlie,” she cried.

The woman who was sitting on the deck got up, came to the railing, and looked down at her. She shouted something. Joey saw her hands frame her mouth, before she turned and called to someone in the house. A man came out, ran down the steps and down the trail toward her.

Joey dropped to the bank and folded over her knees, sobbing with the smell of mud and pine needles in her nose. Her heart burned like a broken blister.

When the man tried to lift her, Joey jerked free and crawled away. He grabbed her and wrapped his arms around her and held tightly until she began to shiver.

The woman came with a blanket and together they helped Joey up the hill toward the house. About halfway up, they met her mother, Lynn, and the baby, coming down.

At the bottom of the steps, Joey looked up. The sunlight played with the wind-stirred shadows on the deck, rolling and flickering. She squinted, praying for one small shadow to scramble toward her, and for the sun to light the white hair of an old man. But the jungle gym was gone, French doors replaced the sliding glass ones, and the house had been painted beige with trim the color of dried blood. She couldn't remember what color it had been. She sank down to sit on the bottom step. Her mother sat with her and held her while she cried. The couple who lived in Charlie's house went inside and closed their doors.

It was dark out when she woke, and for a moment Joey hoped it had all been a nightmare and now it was over. She knew it wasn't; everything Charlie had feared for Sukari had come true. She remembered Ruth and Lynn driving her home and that they'd been openly mad at each other when they helped her into the house and into her room. Lynn sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing her hair, but when she tried to tell her something, Ruth stepped in, saying that it could wait. Joey didn't fight back. She didn't think she could stand more details.

She'd sobbed herself into total numbness, pretending to be asleep when her mother came to cover her with a blanket. She wasn't sure how long she'd lain there, trying not to imagine the horrors Sukari was suffering, before she really did fall asleep.

Joey rolled over and looked at her clock. It was after one. She got up and, with her hands jammed in her armpits for warmth, went out and into the bathroom. She pressed a wet, cold washcloth against her swollen eyes for a few minutes, then brushed her teeth, wondering all the time what it was her mother was keeping from her. Maybe Sukari had already died, and Ruth was saving that news for after Joey adjusted to this loss.

When Lynn came by early the next morning to say goodbye, Ray insisted she stay for breakfast, but she came in only for coffee and didn't stay long enough to finish a full cup. Outside, with Ruth making an obvious effort to ensure that she and Joey weren't alone together, she turned from strapping Katie into her car seat and took Joey's hands, pressing something into one of her palms. “There's still hope. Don't think that this is over.” Lynn hugged her, looked at Ruth, got into the car, and drove up the driveway.

Joey jammed her hands into her pockets. A few minutes later, in the bathroom, she read the note:
Remember what Charlie said. She's yours. Call Bryan McCully.

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

Joey arrived back at school late Sunday afternoon. First thing Monday morning, she went to the office and used the TTY to call Mr. McCully's office. His secretary took the message. He was in Los Angeles, trying a case, and wouldn't be back for at least a week.

For the next few days she went from class to class, meal to meal in a daze. The weekend came, and though she loved football, she begged off going to the game with Michelle and Jenny, claiming to have cramps and a raging headache. She needed to be alone, away from Michelle's buoyancy and the spirited pre-game enthusiasm.