Bittersweet (7 page)

“Perfectly okay,” I said. I'm not exactly crazy about Harry Potter, but anytime one of my kids wants to read a book, any book, I'm all for it. I flicked on the radio and found some country music—an old Waylon Jennings song, “Ladies Love Outlaws.” It seemed to fit the territory.

A little later, we were turning off the highway, Route 187 south of the village of Utopia, and onto the ranch road. The turnoff was marked by a large painted sign that said “Bittersweet Nature Sanctuary on the Sabinal River—A Birder's Paradise.” Beneath that:
Fishing, Swimming, Hiking. Come for the day or for a long stay
, with the address of the ranch website and a phone number. A paper banner announced:
Opens January 1!
I was surprised by the sign, and especially by the announced opening date. Together, they gave the project a worrisome reality. If Sam couldn't help, how was Leatha going to manage all this?

The gravel lane was lined with the brightly festive autumn foliage of
Carolina buckthorn and yaupon holly. As we drove up, I saw that Leatha—already back from the hospital—was standing on the porch of the old ranch house that she and Sam had remodeled when they were first married. The house stood at the top of a long slope that led down to the Sabinal River. Off to the right was another long, low structure: the guest lodge that Sam's father built when he ran the place as a game ranch. Leatha and Sam had remodeled it in the past few months in preparation for their birder guests.

Leatha held out her arms as Caitie jumped out of the car and raced toward her.

“Gramma!” Caitie cried excitedly. “We're here, Gramma!”

“My little girl,” she said, burying her face in Caitie's hair. “My dear, sweet little girl. How very glad I am to see you, baby.”

I walked toward the porch slowly, feeling the tears come to my eyes, although you have to know some of the story in order to appreciate why. It's rather like a soap opera, I'm afraid, but families are messy and real life is often chaotic, with love and lust and old dishonesties and deceptions all tangled together. Caitie is the daughter of my half brother, Miles, the illegitimate son of our father, attorney Robert Bayles, and Laura Danforth, his legal secretary and longtime mistress. Both are now dead.

My mother hadn't known about Laura or her son. In fact, she hadn't known any of this story until Miles brought to light the old, dark mysteries around my father's murder. Then Miles was murdered, too, leaving Caitie both fatherless and motherless. The little girl came to us, to McQuaid and Brian and me. We're now a family.

I hadn't known how Leatha would react to Caitie. If you'd asked me, I would have said that she was likely to reject the daughter of her husband's illegitimate son, or at least, not to welcome her—and I suppose I wouldn't
have blamed her if she had. My father had rejected her for another woman. Rejecting his granddaughter would be tit for tat, an extra fillip of sweet posthumous revenge.

But that isn't what happened. How she did it is a mystery to me, but Leatha found it in her heart to embrace Caitie exactly as she would her very own granddaughter. And I'm grateful, for Caitie's sake and for my own, especially at family holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. These are bittersweet holidays because so much has happened to divide us, and yet so much has brought us together.

Now, Leatha raised her head, her eyes filled with tears. One arm around Caitie, she held the other hand out to me. “I'm so glad you could come, China,” she said, in that soft Southern honey voice of hers. “I needed to see you.”

I noticed that she was wearing corduroy slacks, a blue plaid shirt, and loafers, and that she hadn't had her hair done recently or paid much attention to her makeup or her manicure. In fact, her nails looked as if she'd been doing the outdoor work on her own for the past week. She was no longer the carefully groomed socialite I had known growing up. She looked drawn and weary.

I kissed her cheek. “How's Sam?” I asked. “What about those complications?”

“It looks like he's out of the woods for now.” Leatha put on a bright smile. “I stayed all night at the hospital and only got home a little bit ago. He's doing fairly well, the doctor says. In fact, he sent me home. He knew I was just dyin' to see the two of you.” She cuddled Caitie against her. “Especially this one.” She lifted her eyes to mine. “Let's go inside, dear. I've made some chili for our supper, and you can put a salad together for
us. And then, if you want, we can get started on those pies for tomorrow's dinner. Pumpkin, of course. Mincemeat, too—and there's one jar left of the Fredericksburg peaches I canned last summer. I was saving it for Brian. He always says he loves my peach pie.”

I'm always surprised when my mother reveals her domestic talents. When I was growing up, she never cooked a single meal. She didn't have to. She had plenty of household help in our large home in the affluent Houston suburb of River Oaks—and anyway, from the cocktail hour on, she was always so soused she wouldn't have been able to scramble eggs. I was left to eat my suppers alone, since my father invariably worked late—or, as I now knew, spent the evening with Miles' mother. He hated Leatha's drinking as much as I did, which was probably why she did it.

“Oh, let's make a peach pie,” Caitie said excitedly. “But I have to get Mr. P out of the car first. He wants to have some supper, too. You don't need to worry about what to feed him, though, Gramma. I brought his food. Oh, and I brought you some eggs from the girls. Two whole dozen!”

“Fresh eggs? Oh, that's wonderful, Caitie!” my mother said, beaming. “What a treat! You can put Mr. P's dishes and litter pan in the laundry room. I'm sure he'll want to sleep with you, though. You're in the room at the end of the hall, where you slept last time you were here.”

As Caitie raced off to the car, she shook her head. “What a lovely, lovely child,” she said softly. “I hate what your father did, but I just have to love that child
.
” She smiled. “Enough of that. We've got a lot of catching up to do, China. I don't want to waste a single minute. Come on!”

She opened the screen door and led the way into the house. Nestled beside a clump of sheltering live oaks, it's a comfortable old place, low and sprawling, with oak floors throughout, a native stone fireplace in the
living room, and a kitchen roomy enough to feed not just the family but all the ranch hands.

“I want to hear about Sam,” I said. “How did you find out about his heart problem? And how long has it be going on?”

He'd been experiencing chest pains for several months, she told me as we went down the hall to the kitchen. The doctor had warned him to slow down and take things easy. But Sam was used to setting his own pace. With all the work and planning for the sanctuary, he had plenty on his plate and wasn't inclined to follow orders. The first attack had come in early September.

“September!” I exclaimed. “But this is the first I've heard of it.”

“We didn't tell you,” Leatha said, “because we didn't want you to worry.”

The second attack had come on Sunday night. He was rushed to the hospital, where the surgeon put in a stent. But the abdominal artery was compromised, they said, and there was more repair work to be done—soon, they thought. When he recovered, he would have to take better care of himself and “substantially moderate” his activity.

“Which won't be even a little bit easy,” Leatha admitted, standing in front of the wide, ceiling-high window at one end of the kitchen. Her hands were clasped, her knuckles white. “That man is as stubborn as a Mississippi mule.” She smiled, but I guessed that she was trying to hide her fear behind that sweet Southern smile. When she grew up, women were taught to control themselves, whatever they felt or feared: “A real lady always stays calm and cool, even when that mean ol' General Sherman is burnin' her house to the ground right in front of her.” Then she turned, pointing. “Look at the deer! They're lovely, aren't they?” She sighed. “Oh, I do love this place, China. I thought I would never love
another place after Jordan's Crossing, but I was wrong. I'm at home here at Bittersweet, at last, and loving it.”

Joining her at the window, I could see why. The view opened out onto an expanse of meadow, bordered on one side by Bittersweet Creek and on the other by junipers, mesquite, and several large live oaks. The late-afternoon shadows embraced a pair of white-tailed does, each with twin yearling fawns, grazing without fear.

“They're beautiful,” I said, and then did a double take. “Whoa! What are
those
guys? They're huge!”

Those guys
were a half-dozen large deer with orange coats and a generous spattering of white spots. They had drifted out of the shadows to join the white-tails. The single male had large-tined antlers; the five females were smaller. They were gorgeous, muscular animals, significantly larger than the deer they were grazing with. The male must have weighed well over two hundred pounds, and the females were twice the weight of the white-tailed does.

Leatha gave a heavy sigh. “They're axis deer, escaped from the exotic game ranches in the area.” A sober look crossed her face, and she turned down her mouth. “They're beautiful, yes, but I'm afraid they're a terrible nuisance—worse than that, really. They compete for forage with the native white-tails. And they're more prolific, so there are more of them every year. The ranchers and farmers around here just hate them.”

“Invasive exotic species,” I said, shaking my head. “I know plenty about that where plants are concerned—kudzu, for instance, and Oriental bittersweet, vines that can smother everything. Trees, too, like chinaberries.” The chinaberry tree, which was brought to Mexico and the American Southwest in the 1840s, certainly has its uses. Mashed, the fruits produce a cleansing lather—in Mexico, it's called the “soap tree.” In its native Asia,
the toxic seeds were pulverized and used to stun fish for an easy catch. In Chinese medicine, the seeds are used to treat liver and intestinal ailments. But the tree, introduced as an ornamental in the 1830s, is on the Texas Forestry Association's “dirty dozen” list of exotic pests because it forms dense clumps that outcompete native species. I added, “I hadn't thought about invasives in terms of animals.”

Leatha turned away from the window. “We think a lot about that around here, I'm afraid. The ranchers shoot the axis deer and net them, and those who can't use the meat donate it to Hunters for the Hungry. If we could get rid of them totally, we would. It was a terrible mistake to introduce them. They don't belong here.”

I went back to the subject. “You mentioned that Sam would have to ‘substantially moderate' his activity. What does that mean in practical terms?”

She turned away from the window and went to the fridge, taking out a large container of homemade venison chili. “Well, I imagine it means he won't be able to do as much, physically,” she said cheerily, and got out some lettuce, a couple of tomatoes, an avocado, a cucumber, and some green onions. “Here are the salad fixings, China. The bowl is in the cupboard beside the sink. We could have an oil-and-vinegar dressing with some of that delicious herbal vinegar you sent for my birthday.”

Obediently, I opened the cupboard and got out the salad bowl. But I wasn't going to let it go. “Will he be able to work around the ranch?”

Leatha was spooning the chili into a pan. Reluctantly, and in a more cautious tone, she said, “I suppose it means he'll have to slow down some. Which he won't.”

I began tearing lettuce into bite-size pieces. I knew that Leatha didn't want to discuss this—she probably didn't even want to
think
about it. But
she needed to look ahead. I didn't want to borrow trouble or worry her unnecessarily, but what would she do if he wasn't able to do very much—or, worst case, if he wasn't around?

“I'm asking,” I said carefully, “because I'm wondering how you'll manage. I saw your new sign beside the main highway, and I know you're planning to open January first. You've renovated the old guest lodge. And Sam told me he was putting in new trails and observation points. He even mentioned building a tower or something.”

“Oh, yes,” she said brightly. “I can't wait to show you the new observation tower, China. It has two platforms, one at fifteen feet, the other at forty, with a great view of the Sabinal River. You walk up to it on a two-hundred-foot-long ramp that takes you up through the trees.” She put the pan of venison chili on the stove and turned on the burner. “It was a big job, and we didn't get it finished as quick as he wanted because . . .” She sighed. “Because of the attack he had in September. But I found somebody who could help him with the heavy work—the things I couldn't manage. And I posted the photos on the website just last week. I'm sure it's going to be a big attraction for our guests.”

I began chopping tomatoes. “So you and Sam are going ahead with your project—in spite of his heart surgery?”

“Of course we're going ahead. Actually, we're counting on the income. It's been . . . well, a little rough lately. You know, hard times.”

I was startled. I'd never inquired deeply into my mother's financial business. My father left her well-off, and Sam had plenty, as well as this ranch. But of course things change, and the economy wasn't in the best shape. Had their situation changed, too? Did they actually
need
the money this venture would bring in?

She was going on. “When I checked the computer this morning, I
found another January reservation—four people, two guest rooms, for a full week. Sam will be thrilled to hear it. He says he expects the lodge to be fully booked before the birding season gets under way. The spring migration doesn't start until late March, but there are plenty of resident birds that people will be thrilled to see. Why, just yesterday, I saw a vermillion flycatcher and a beautiful belted kingfisher. I hope you and Caitie brought your binoculars so you can—”