The Summer of No Regrets (7 page)

At 3:30 in the morning, blogging was getting me nowhere but halfway to sleep—where I couldn’t go because I had cubs to tend.

I had come home before noon, hoping to go directly to Google—and cougar care instructions—but Dad had waylaid me at the top of the stairs.

“There you are! I need all hands on deck, Brigitta. I can’t

“There you are! I need all hands on deck, Brigitta. I can’t have you running off. I’ve got fourteen people coming for the sweat lodge tonight, and we have no power.”

“No power?”

“Something’s wrong with the turbine. Clyde’s coming in an hour.”

Because Earthships are designed to be “off the grid,” we don’t use city power. Dad instaled a hydroelectric turbine in the stream that runs through our property. Usualy it works fine.

“No power means no Internet?”

Wrong question. Dad hates the Internet. He cals it “a purveyor of intolerance and corporate-culture bulshit.” He refuses to use a computer unless he absolutely has to. He shot a do-not-mess-with-me look. “Help your mother fold laundry, and then you and Malory clean the kitchen and sweep the dorms. I won’t have time. I should have started the fire already.” Malory came up the stairs and handed Dad a cluster of sage.

“Is this what you were looking for?”

“No, no,” he said impatiently. “I have sage. I need tobacco.

For the prayer ties.”

“What on earth are those?” said Malory.

“Prayer ties,” said Dad evenly, “are small bundles of tobacco.

We use them to summon help from the spirit world.”

“Of course,” said Malory. “I should have guessed.”

“I’ll get it.” I left and went downstairs. Why Malory was so intent on baiting Dad I didn’t know, but I wasn’t sticking around for it.

I knew Dad was especialy tense because Wise Crow was coming to the sweat lodge for the first time. Even though he wasn’t Dad’s teacher, Wise Crow had been a shaman for years.

I knew Dad wanted to impress him. For someone whose spirituality was mostly a solo act, Dad sure got nervous around people who knew more than he did. When Dad was planning The Center, Michael Reynolds, the guy who invented Earthships, came from Taos, New Mexico, to teach a workshop on our came from Taos, New Mexico, to teach a workshop on our property. Dad had yeled at us for a week before he arrived.

The rest of the day I ran stairs, scrubbed, and toted. Every hour or so, I stole out to Felix and Kalimar. It scared me to death that I didn’t know what to do with them. Should I call someone? A zoo or a wildlife refuge? But if I caled the wrong someone, it could be all over for them. So I filed water bowls and rubbed their furry bodies and checked for their warm breath. They drank and purred. For the first time in a while, I prayed. Not like when I hadn’t ever wanted to see Luke again—

that was more a wish than a real prayer. This was an “Oh, God” prayer, out loud, like Nonni’s. “Oh, God, I’m clueless. Help me keep them alive.” Just to be sure, I prayed the same thing to the four directions like Dad does and caled on the spirit of Onawa to help me tend her babies.

Luke had left after that first feeding, saying that he “had to go.” I squelched my disappointment. Every so often I’d start off in the direction of his house and then think better of it.

One of those times I returned by way of the stream. Dad and Clyde were packing up their tools, having set the turbine in motion again. I detoured around a falen fir I’d always caled the Grandfather Tree, whose roots made an earthen wall higher than my head. I had no intention of tangling with Dad again.

“Got to say this shamanism of yours has been a stretch for me, Paul,” Clyde was saying, “but it was worth it seeing the look on that Morgan woman’s face here the other day.” I peered through a net of moss.

Dad stuck the dead motor into a cardboard box. “You mean Rainbow?”

“God, yes. She’s one of those Bible ladies who keep showing up at board meetings.” Clyde was a teacher at the high school. I think he’d taught practicaly every subject.

“I can imagine,” said Dad.

Clyde rinsed a screwdriver with creek water and dried it. “It’s always something: they want abstinence education, or prayer at always something: they want abstinence education, or prayer at the football games, or a ban on Haloween. Jesus.” Dad chuckled. “I’m sure I alarmed her.
‘The devil prowls
like a ravening lion.’
I grew up with that crap.” He settled a wrench into his tool kit.

I winced. Why did he always make it sound like Nonni and Opa were stupid? They didn’t go around preaching about the devil. Nonni hadn’t been harassing the school board.

Clyde said something I didn’t hear and Dad laughed.

I crept away quietly and went to check on the kittens.

•••

I cruised for two hours, Googling “cougars,” “cougar kittens,”

“starving cougar kittens,” and “care and feeding of wild animals.” I hit cougars’ size, weight, range, hunting habits, but not “What to Do If You Find a Cougar.”

I crept out to them at 12:30 and again at 2:30. The air smeled of Dad’s wood smoke. My stomach hurt. I was afraid to give the cubs meat or milk, but how long could they live on plain water? Would they die because of me?

Malory was out again. Our room seemed especialy empty.

Strangely, I wanted her here. I wanted to tell her about the kittens. And then I didn’t want to tell her. She was the one who’d caled in the Death Squad.

At 3:00 a.m. I put my head on my desk. What was the magic Google Cougar-Rescue Code? I tried once more with “cougar cubs eat” and got a big, fat nothing.

The screen blurred. I let myself think about Luke. Why had he said that about girls throwing themselves at him? Was he toying with me? What if he realy was Trent? Would he fly me to Paris, where we would watch the sun set over the Seine while sipping where we would watch the sun set over the Seine while sipping expensive wine and evading journalists? Next week would the tabloids say, “Who Is Brigitta Schopenhauer?” Would I be discovered by Trent’s agent and star with him in his next blockbuster, where we would have to do a nude scene? Aak!

Cancel that thought! I was turning into Natalie.

I typed “Trent Yves” into the search engine.

There were eight milion results. EIGHT MILLION. I should have kept searching on cougars, but I was so brain-dead. Trent Yves stared out at me with long hair, with short hair, blond, brown, in a Mohawk. Trent with a shirt, Trent without a shirt, Trent without much on at al. Sad Trent, happy Trent, sexy Trent. Trent looking dodgy in
Rocket
, heroic in
Imlandria
, smart-alecky in
Presto!
, resilient in
Sparrowtree,
even small, cute, and triumphing-over-evil in
Laser
Boy
.

And the more I studied him, the more he wasn’t Luke. Trent had perfect teeth, perfect pecs, perfect everything; he was made of plastic. Luke had zits (quite a few), a crooked smile, and he was shorter than Trent. It was neurotic to compare them, but at 3:00 in the morning lots of things seem logical.

What was ilogical was that I was faling for him. After only two days with him. Without even knowing him. This was nothing like crushing on Devon. This was new and wild, and even though it was insane, I didn’t want it to stop.

•••

“Gita! What are you doing up at this hour?”

I looked at her. What was
she
doing up?

She turned away and stripped off her denim jacket.

“Where were you?”

“Out.”

“By yourself?”

She toed off her shoes. “Gita, I’m nineteen. And you’re not She toed off her shoes. “Gita, I’m nineteen. And you’re not my mother, dear.” She disappeared into the bathroom.

When Malory got that “decisive” tone to her voice, you didn’t argue.

We were both in our beds with the lights off when Malory sighed and roled over. “Gita?”

“What.”

“I’m not trying to be a bitch.”

I was quiet, processing this. Malory wasn’t the apologizing type. But she was different tonight. Subdued.

She propped herself up on her elbow. “Everything’s changed.

You go away to colege and your family mutates.” Her voice got softer. “I’m not used to it.”

In the darkness, I could make out my guitar and Malory’s old telescope. When she started the Tree House Club (for me, she always points out), we’d go out on clear nights and find Jupiter.

Malory would be there, adjusting the focus. We don’t do that anymore. But I don’t play guitar anymore, either. Some things you outgrow.

“You are so rude to Dad.” My voice was unintentionaly shril.

Why was it Dad I was upset about? But I couldn’t talk about the cougars or Luke. Not now.

“Brigitta, honestly.” Now she was her old self. “Bear has been talking to him?”

“Wel, maybe he has.”

“Good grief, Gita. Has he been tutoring
you
in this dysfunctional grandiosity?”

No. Dad hadn’t been tutoring me in anything. He was too busy running The Center to even teach me Pacific Northwest history like he’d promised. I wasn’t sure why I was defending him. “Mom believes in fairies. You don’t seem worried about her.”

“Dad and I have always worried about Mom.” Malory puled up her sheet. “Don’t you see? Dad was the balancing force in this family. He needs to return to the real world.” this family. He needs to return to the real world.” I picked at some fuzz on my blanket. “And that would be?”

“Wel, Webster says, ‘Those who make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’”

“Atrocities? You think Dad’s committing atrocities?”

“I didn’t say that, Gita. Just that absurd beliefs can lead to dangerous things.”

Malory came right out and said things. I’d never have said Dad’s shaman thing was absurd. Just different. Before, Dad had considered himself a “freethinker”—which never included thinking freely about religion. He’d warned me against

“abandoning my intelect” (particularly when I’d just returned from Cherrywood). He’d said you didn’t need God to have beauty. The earth itself and all its functions were beautiful—in part because life was fleeting.

But now he went out every day and waited for an unseen world to come to him.

I don’t know what Nonni and Opa would have said about his shamanism. It didn’t have Jesus in it, and they were all about Jesus. So he was still making sure he wasn’t like them. And I was still caught between his world and theirs—only now neither would let me in.

I gazed at Malory blearily across the room. She thought all religions were absurd.

“You found that quote in
Webster’s
?” I yawned. “I thought I was the only one who read dictionaries.”

She shifted. “Webster. Dr. Lampson. A friend of mine.”

“A ‘friend.’”

“Yes,” said Malory. She roled over. “A friend.”

Kalimar was glad to see me. She put her nose into my hand and chewed my finger. I’d slept until ten and missed their seven o’clock watering. I’d barely escaped making herbed zucchini hash with Mom, who was getting ready for the Parents of Indigo Children. Malory had rushed to assist her. It made me wonder.

Felix lapped from the bowl, and I lifted Kalimar to my shoulder. Sun filtered through the maples warming the forest floor. Kalimar dug her claws into my arm. I’d have to search my closet for combat wear. She purred, a sound I was beginning to relish. It was more rumbly than the purr of a house cat. Her ears twitched as I rubbed my fingers over the silky spot between them. Her eyes were shinier. Yesterday they’d been sunken. She blinked at me. Had she been able to do that yesterday? I swayed and sang to her—my own version of a sea chantey Opa used to sing us:

What do ya do with a spotted kitty

What do ya do with a spotted kitty

What do ya do with a spotted kitty

Earl-eye in the mornin’?

“You’re a good mama.”

Luke. I was embarrassed to my toes.

He wore a black T-shirt that said “Murphy’s Pub.” He unhooked a blackberry cane from the hem of his jeans. “But it’s not so earl-eye in the mornin’.”

“Yeah?” I found my voice. “So where have you been?” He scooped up Felix. “Patience, my dear, patience.” He smiled that slow smile, and I wanted to throw something at him.

Or kiss him.

I got busy with Kalimar’s water bowl. Why did just standing I got busy with Kalimar’s water bowl. Why did just standing near Luke turn me into a blithering idiot? “I’ve been giving them water all night.” It sounded as if I was asking for congratulations.

His smile faded to surprise. “All night? You must be exhausted, Brigitta.”

I nodded. “And I’m not any nearer to figuring out what to feed them.” I hadn’t wanted to admit this.

The smile came back. “Pedialyte,” he said. “That clear stuff you feed babies when they’re dehydrated? It restores their electrolytes. You can get it at the grocery.”

“You know this how? I’ve been Googling for hours.” He looked smug. “You have to know what to search on. For sick animals, you give them Pedialyte.”

So he did care. How many hours had he Googled? If I’d Googled more on cougars and less on Trent Yves, would I have figured it out for myself?

Luke sat down on a log and cradled Felix. “How’s it going, cat?”

What would he look like with long, blond hair? I’ll admit to loving
Imlandria
from the start: Felix, the peasant boy, who is secretly a prince; the quest through the magical forest; the horses. Even with Trent Yves in it, I was a sucker for a good fantasy. And since I’d seen
Rocket
, Trent hadn’t seemed so bad.

Luke caught me watching him. “What?”

“Oh. Nothing.” I am definitely a sucker for a good fantasy.

When would my Holywood-clouded brain return to the real world? I checked Kalimar’s neck for fleas and tried to regain my composure. “Why don’t we go to town for the Pedialyte?” Unbidden, images of stroling down Main with the beautiful Luke Geoffrey paraded through my senses. If people thought he was Trent, I wouldn’t disabuse them. Trent Yves, Tinseltown playboy, found me irresistible. He couldn’t even go to the grocery store without me. We’d pass Devon on the street, and he would regret ever passing on me. And right in the middle of Main and Cherry, with 18-wheelers stopped at the crosswalk, Trent would sweep me up in his arms, his lips would find mine.

Who cared if anybody saw? Good-bye, Gwendolyn Melier, bon voyage, Randi Marchietti—Brigitta Schopenhauer is on scene and ready for action.

“Actualy.” Luke stood and settled Felix back in his den. “I’ve got to shove off. Promised Mum I’d do some stuff.” He reached into his pocket and extracted his walet. “Here.” He held out a twenty. “Buy as much as you can.” He put the money in my hand and sauntered away without another word.

I watched him disappear down the path, arms swinging, moving branches out of his way. I almost went after him, but Kalimar was still nestled against my neck. I deposited her in the tree with her brother and slid the twenty into my pocket, feeling slimy.