Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights (2 page)

For my husband Wayne Fitzgerald.

A lit butt flew out of the car window in front of me and bounced red sparks before it disappeared with a last puff into the soft ash by the side of the road. Too late for that, numbskull. The foothills were already smoldering, already burned up. Traffic crawled and I was stuck crawling with it. I shouldn’t have skipped breakfast; it looked like I was going to miss lunch too. I was so hungry the bitter cold smoke that blew in the air conditioner reminded me of butterscotch pudding, well, scorched pudding.

My phone rang. I hit speaker and Mom started right in.

“Where are you, Hannah?” she asked.

“Driving,” I said. “Where are you?”

“We’re at the Anchor, we’re almost done with lunch.”

Her voice was going soft around the edges of her tongue. More like a snack with wine. My sister Bettina, aka Binky, was the designated driver. What a joke. It might be safer if Mom drove.

“Take your time,” I said. “I missed the exit. I’m heading back north now, stuck in fire slowdown. I’m not going anywhere fast.”

A burnt out San Diego back road at 1:00 in the afternoon isn’t green scenic; it’s more over lit moonscape. The Manzanita bushes, their smooth tangled limbs once a lush blood red, looked like ashen spirits with hot feet. They writhed across the charred hills. I imagined their voices as the ululations of distraught Moroccan women.

Fire fighters in day-glo yellow jackets dug at pockets of red-hot embers. They smothered the fire that native plants need to release the seeds that would repopulate the hillside.

Local Indians used to set fires. Their dusty feet moved quietly through the chaparral. No squawking walkie-talkies or whoop whoop warnings, just the sounds of dry rustling leaves and distant birdcalls. The Manzanita only plays dead. They would try again when conditions were more favorable. Memory roots, hidden deep in the earth, will let fly tender new leaves. The leaves will attract game while the fresh cover shelters nesting birds that will take flight and scatter the messages in the seeds. The Indians knew that.

Except for the stray firebug, the new locals don’t set fires intentionally; they fear them. Fire comes anyway and life presses on.

One life that had stopped pressing on was my grandmother’s. She had died a few days before. I was headed to meet Mom, Binky, and Mom’s sister Judith, aka Aunt Asp, at the funeral home to make arrangements for her viewing. Everyone in the family but me lived in San Diego. I had to drive down from the Hollywood Hills to participate in what my mother thought would be a bonding experience. Plus, she had some screwball idea that being a production designer meant I’d know how to set the scene for the viewing. Come on, Mom, I do a lot of research to develop the look of film projects. Except for an occasional winging it, I don’t just make it up as I go along.

Anyway, we were burying someone we knew. Everyone was bound to show up with their own storyline about Grandma already running through their head. The only ones missing from the exercise would be my brother Eric and his wife Anna. They could have driven up from La Jolla, but they were too smart for that.

I hoped the day would come when I could say no. I had a hard time refusing my family. I’d had that conversation with a therapist, many times. I said I couldn’t go home and visit friends without seeing my family; it would hurt their feelings. She said it was my hometown too. I’d said, “No I can’t.” She’d said, “Yes you can.” We bounced that ball back and forth. Every once in a while she’d stick her tongue in her cheek and shake her head like she was thinking,
this poor person
.

At least today we were meeting in Vista, halfway. I doubted I’d see any old friends there. I’d already stopped at the rest home and picked up my grandmother’s few belongings. I looked at the small wooden box on the passenger seat. The lid’s design had been wood-burned then painted. It was a spring scene rendered without the burden of perspective. At first glance you’d think it was Chinese crap, but it was an old box, a handmade gift from my father’s mother to my mother’s mother. It sounded so civilized. My ex-husband’s mother and my mother never exchanged gifts; they barely exchanged words.

The box held my grandmother’s dead canary. It was wrapped in an orange silk bag with a red drawstring. I’d left behind an old nap blanket and a few worn nightgowns. Her dentures and wire-rimmed glasses, both of which totally creeped me out, were in the trunk with her burial dress.

The little bird had been an unwilling hero. Grandma said he’d sung quite a bit on his days off. I don’t know why that thought made me so happy. He deserved to ride shotgun.

Grandma had had courage. As a young widow with small children she traveled from Minnesota to North Dakota and bought a coal mine. It was there that she met her second husband, my grandfather. They were still using canaries to warn about any buildup of mine gas. The birds either passed out or died when the gas got too dangerous. Grandma’s bird died, but he saved my grandfather who skedaddled before the mine exploded. He grabbed the birdcage on the way out. Grandpa said we could all use a canary in our lives.

Grandpa always talked about the mine like it was a chancy but generous lover. He used to chuckle that the explosion had been
close, but no cigar
, like he’d just survived her latest temper tantrum. It was her last. He loved that mine, but she burned underground for a couple of years and, unlike a real lover, it was no use to wait her out. So they packed up and moved to the city.

To show her gratitude for his sacrifice, Grandma had the bird preserved by a taxidermist. She didn’t want him brought back to life, so to speak, with tiny glass eyes and feet wired to a perch. He looked just like what he was, a dead bird. The eyes were squint shut and tiny translucent talons were curled at the ends of scaly legs tucked up close to the body. He felt even lighter than a feather with his life force gone. My grandfather said he got a kick out of the dead bird. He would. Thanks to the bird he was still around to get a kick out of Grandma, which produced two daughters.