Green Tea Won't Help You Now! (14 page)

We decided to take the route on the I-5 via Sacramento because of the weather conditions in the mountains. There had been some snowfalls near Topaz Lake already. Everything went smoothly and I enjoyed our road trip enormously. It is one of the greatest pleasures I know to drive an SUV through America. I cannot exactly pin it down, but it is the ultimate experience of personal freedom, I think.
 

We changed after two hours and a half and later we ate lunch in Sacramento, before continuing up into the Sierra Nevada. I insisted I wanted to drive because I wanted to feel badass and in charge again. We drove through places with names as idyllic as Eagle Springs and further uphill along the winding Lincoln highway, past Gold Run, Crystal Lake and Blue Canyon.
 

We turned a bend and the street began a rather steep descent along a sheer cliff face.
 

"Why'd the dude get out of his car?" Alex asked me without much interest. Then we both saw it. A rock the size of an armchair must have crashed down only moments before. We were shooting at it with a speed of eighty miles per hour.
 

As you will have figured out, this occasioned the brusque exchange expounded above. So let's get back into it.

"Fuck!" Alex cried.
 

"Holy shit!" I wailed and jerked the stirring wheel to the left.

"Fuck!" He repeated.
 

We flew past the rock with only an inch to spare. The car rolled precariously from side to side as I jerked the wheel back to the right to prevent us from going down across the shoulder on the other side

"That was tight..." Alex huffed, turning around to look behind us. The van following us was not as lucky as we were. I watched in the rear view mirror as it grazed the rock, lurched and came to a halt in the middle of the highway. I also saw the man who had got out of his car earlier—most likely because he had hit the bloody stone as well—hurry towards the standing vehicle. But very soon they were out of sight.

After two minutes I said, "Christ, we should have stopped, they needed help."

"Yes." Alex's eyes were glazed when he turned to look at me.
 

"Now it's too late." We could not turn. The lanes going back north lay on the other side of the valley.

"Just drive on. It's only forty miles. The other guy was there and it did not look too bad."

"Okay..."
 

"How did you manage not to hit it?"

"I don't know."

We sat in silence for the remainder of the trip, staring fixedly at the road.

The driveway to the Silverston's ranch was a winding pebble road leading up into a thick forest. After maybe five minutes of careful driving we reached a wide clearing. The ranch, a large wooden building with many alcoves, was framed by trees and mountains. Lake Tahoe lay maybe four hundred feet below, shimmering in the evening sun.

I stopped the car. Had I been worried about meeting Alex's parents before, now I was only relieved I had made it to their home alive.

We did not move. We just sat there, stunned.

Without a warning Alex wrenched his large frame around and took my head into his hands.

"I love you," he rasped and kissed me hard on the mouth.
 

Our fiery embrace was interrupted by a knock on the door.
 

I whisked around, all hot and bothered, to find a maybe five-year-old girl standing by the car.

"Uncle Alex, Granny says I have to fetch you because the eggnog will go cold."

"Hi, sweetie," Alex said sheepishly to the dark eyed creature. Her head was covered by a woollen hat and two blonde tresses peeped out of it. The child looked hauntingly exotic.
 

We both climbed out of the car. "Topsy, this is my friend Trixie."

"Hi Trixie," Topsy, (weirdest name I ever heard, could have belonged to the English aristocracy), pursed her lips and trotted away to the open door.

"Ah, there you are, son o' mine." A engagingly youthful woman came towards us in the hall. Her long blonde hair was braided into two plaits as well. She was clearly getting into the spirit of Thanksgiving. "Oh my, she really does look like Audrey Hepburn, who would have believed him. Hello Trixie, how are you, welcome to Tahoe." She shook my hand energetically. "I'm Sam, the mother."

"Oh, hullo, Sam. Thank you so very much for having me at this charming place. I can't tell you enough how grateful I am, it's such a pleasure to meet you. What a lovely jumper you're wearing, pullover, I mean." I held out a tastefully gift wrapped Japanese tea pot. Nothing makes for better gifts. You can always gift them along.

She looked aghast for a moment. "You sound like Kate Middleton."

"Her grace and I do share the same nationality after all."
 

I can sound very much like my mother, the Lady Frederica, I confess. Especially when I am nervous.
 

"Wonderful." Her smile was back. "Did you have a good trip?"

"No," Alex rumbled. "Where's the eggnog? I need it. We almost hit a rock on the Lincoln by Emigrants Gap."

"Oh my, that sounds dreadful! Are you hurt at all?"

"We're fine. Just a little on the edge."

"The eggnog's ready. Oh right, Trixie, Alex tells me you don't drink because of your yoga. I made one specially for you." She leaned closer. "I tell my daughter her kids will get the same, but I doped theirs with brandy. I want them in bed as soon as possible." Her voice rose again. "Here comes Magnus! He's my husband, not the dog. The dog's called Brody, but he's outside guarding the turkey. They both react to either name."

Magnus Silverston was tall and broad shouldered and as soft tempered as a puppy. He beamed, muttered a shy, "hi, how are you, nice to meet you", and hugged his son without saying anything at all.
 

Meeting the parents is always an enlightening experience. I realised how his parents' different characters must be at constant warfare within my Alex.

I was ushered into the spacious, but extremely plush living room. It was held mostly in warm reds and maroons. The colours of the Indian Summer. There we met Amy, who was a more graceful, female version of Alex, meaning she was a Nordic shield maiden. She held a toddler named, "Quanah" on her lap who bore the same exotic features as the older child.
 

It clicked. "Quanah and Topsannah. Just like in the book."

A waterfall of love washed over Amy. "You read it too?"

"Yes, it was my favourite book. We all read it in school. Because of the detailed historical descriptions, of course."

"So did we... As you can see it had a great impact on me."

"Oh yes, I can see
that
."

We were talking, as probably every woman of sense will have deducted, about the epic novel "Ride the Wind" by Lucia St. Clair Robson, which tells the true story of the Texan girl, Cynthia Ann Parker, who was abducted by a Comanche tribe. She grows up as an Comanche girl, falls in love with a mega-hot chieftain, marries him, has two children named, "Quanah" and "Topsannah", and a third one I do not remember, gets abducted by the white men again, is returned to her Texan family and dies of despair. In between the relevant scenes, there are hundreds and hundreds of gripping descriptions of gravely important and dramatic historical events. I skipped them all to get to the steamy stuff.

Amy had obviously been far more impacted by the book than I had, because the genetic provider of her offspring's alluring looks presently walked in through a back door and declared, "The bird's on time."
 

"This is my husband, Randolph."

"Randolph?" I blurted.

"He
is
a Comanche medicine man," Amy stressed. "Watch out, he can look into your soul."

"Hi, you must be Titia."
 

I was shocked dumb.

 
"Her name's Trixie," Alex explained. "Hi, Randolph. I'm glad the bird's on time."

"Oh, really? Somehow I must have remembered it wrong." He eyed me strangely. "Hi... Trixie."

"Hi."

"Sorry about my name, but we Comanche also like to give our children exotic appellation." He grinned. "I wanted to call ours John and Mary, but Amy has a thing for the tribes."

Sam carried a tray and distributed the eggnog. After the terror of hearing my real name, I longed for one with brandy in it.
 

Well, the sugar helped too.

Everybody was laughing, Alex was secretly fidgeting with my
jumper
and I was at my smiling best.
 

As much as I repudiate my mother these days, she had trained me well. I would be a pleasant guest in any social sphere. You see,
noblesse oblige...

"I'm sure you two want to freshen up," Sam suggested once the eggnog was consumed. "Alex will show you to your room."

"Good idea, Mom. When's dinner?"

"In one hour exactly." She gave him a poignant look. "The bird's on time."

"The bird's on time. Come along, Trixie."

We walked through a maze of hallways. Finally, we walked up a staircase, walked through another hallway and stopped by a door painted green.

"You have the green door."

"I see."

A second later, I was pinned against that same green door and ruthlessly kissed, as they say in the romances.

"Not here!" I protested, not too vehemently.

His breath came hard against my ear. "God, I'm going to explode..."
 

"Please don't. I only just saved your life. Hang on."

He let me go. "You're right. As always."

I placed a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth. "I'm glad you came to terms with the fact."

"Go in or I'll carry you. Lock the door."

I flitted through the door and rapidly closed the door. I was glowing inside and out.

"God bless America," I declared when I looked around. The room was a study in quilt and pink. A small, half circular window opened onto the lake and the meadows below. I had entered Candyland.

My little suitcase had already made its way to the room, probably carried there by the dutiful Magnus. A fluffy bathrobe and two matching fluffy towels lay prettily set out on the queen sized bed and they were crowned by a tiny, paper wrapped soap.
 

Between you and me: The thing I like best about the United States of America are the en suite bathrooms. Not having to cross the hall to go to the loo or to have a shower is a step ahead in the human evolution.
This
bathroom was small, but delightful, with tiles covered by ornamental flowers.
 

Places for enticing intercourse: zero. Not even in the bedroom. I could never sleep with a woman's son on her best rose-coloured quilt!

Eighteen

An hour later I made my way back through the maze of hallways in the general direction of where I suspected the living room to be.
 

I heard a crashing noise coming from the kitchen, followed by the bickering of female voices. A door slammed.

"Sorry I'm not an Olympic champion!" Amy shouted over her shoulder. She saw me. "Sorry."

I smiled reassuringly. "Holidays..."

"Yes. Mom's not happy with my pumpkin pie. It's not yellow enough."

"Disastrous."

"Isn't it? Come along, I'll show you to the dining room. We better hurry, the bird's on time, you know."

"Has the bird ever not been on time?"

She laughed. "We have a long history of untimely birds. In the recent past we've had two major dramas. Five years ago, we didn't eat it before 2 am and two years, ago it burned to ashes. Every year, Randolph builds an oven from pecan wood by hand and the turkey roasts in there for one night and one day. When Topsy was a baby, the fire went out and nobody noticed because she was teething and screamed all day long. Two years ago, Brody got so excited he jumped against the oven and the thing went up in flames."

We passed through an open double wing door into the dining room. The table was covered to the brink with dishes. A smaller side table waited to receive the turkey.

Alex and his father stood silently by the French doors leading out to a veranda. They both held whiskey glasses in their hands and gazed intently into the forest.

"Gotta cut the pines down by Angel Creek next week," Magnus mumbled.

"Yeah," his son agreed and they continued to gaze.
 

"New truck any good?" Alex asked, perhaps a minute later.

"Yep."
 

And on they gazed.

"Wow, you're so talkative today," Amy teased. "Must be the liquor."

Magnus nodded slowly and so did Alex.

A soft gong chimed somewhere in another room. Sam bustled in, carrying a bottle of wine.

"Everybody sit, the bird's on time."

"The bird's on time," Magnus said gravely and armed himself with the carving knife.

Amy hurried to the French door and held it open. She had seen her husband approaching with the timely bird. He entered and marched straight to the side table. The two kids and a brown Labrador were hard on his heels, shrieking "the bird's on time, the bird's on time!"
 

The children shrieked, that is. Brody the dog barked, but what else should he have barked other than, "the bird's on time"?

The next several hours went past me like a film. I was watching the all-American family at their Thanksgiving feast, as they ate and drank themselves into a glorious stupor. Sam provided the kids with more eggnog, hence by nine o'clock they threatened to slide off their chairs and were carried to bed by their parents, who swiftly returned to attack the booze with far more vigour than before.
 

Not being able to drink, I ensconced myself with the food. I could not get enough of the turkey, especially in combination with the cranberry sauce.

"You can eat a lot for such a slim girl," Sam asserted with a slur.

"She can eat more meat than all of us put together," Alex explained, also in broader accents. "Her father's from Argentina. They eat
asado
there."

"What's
asado
?"