Outside the Ordinary World (20 page)

“Oh, Bob,” Mom gasped, wiping her eyes. “The things you’ll do for a laugh. Thank goodness there’s no one else in this restaurant!”

“Poor old Chief Joseph,” Mr. Robert said, sipping his wine as if nothing odd had happened. “Loved this valley like his own flesh and blood. But how can you blame him?”

“
I
don’t blame him,” I commented, glancing at the dark lake through the lodge’s windows. “I would want to stay here, too.”

“I wouldn’t.” Ali twirled a strand of spaghetti around her fork. “It’s way too dead.”

“Well, now, that’s debatable. Isn’t it, twerp?” He looked at me and I stared into my plate, ashamed to be counted on. “Now, the kids up here who live on horse ranches have plenty to do,” he went on. “Just think, Alison dear, if you had crops to water and horses to tend.”

“Sounds like some nerdy idea of fun that went out of style a hundred years ago.”

“Maybe you couldn’t hang around the mall every weekend, but you’d have cleaner fun—more family-oriented fun.” Mom said
family-oriented
as if it were a strange, foreign dish that she was trying out before she ordered it. “I think families stay closer, living in the country.”

“Right, Mom.” Ali looked as if she were going to spit. “The only problem is, we’re not a family, are we?” She tossed her napkin in her plate, stormed off to the bathroom.
Just like Dad,
I thought. The three of us stared down at our half-eaten food.

“Well, I suppose she has something there.” Mr. Robert smiled sadly. “I suppose she does have something there, doesn’t she, sweetheart?” He pried Mom’s hand from its clutch on the table and pressed it to his lips, then he winked at me. In that instant, my affection for him took root, blossoming in my belly.

And it continued to blossom during the next week as Mr. Robert took me for early morning horseback rides, on trails that wound around alpine lakes and into pine groves. We talked on those rides, about his childhood in Walla Walla, his regrets about parenting. “I messed up with my own kids, don’t you know, twerp? But I sure would like another chance.”

We talked about Chief Joseph, too—a fierce warrior who didn’t want to fight. “‘I will fight no more, forever,’ that’s what he said, Sylvie. One of the greatest warriors in history.” Mr. Robert repeated the famous words, swaying atop his gelding. “But sometimes you have to fight for what you love, don’t you? Sometimes you just have to fight like hell, regardless of the consequences, or even whether it’s right.”

Later, Mom and I were sitting on the deck steps, tossing peanuts to the ground squirrels when she turned to me, placed her hand on my knee.

“So, Sylvie, I need your advice.”

“Okay.” I puffed myself to my full stature, smoothed the worry from my face. “What?”

“You’re growing up, Sylvie,” she went on. “And you must have opinions on things.”

“On most things, I guess.”

“Well then, do you think we should keep trying to work things out with Dad? Or should we live with Mr. Robert? What do you think?”

Then she stared at me hard. I could hear my own heart swishing in my ears, my mother’s heavy, expectant breathing. My cheeks blazed.

“I don’t know.” The words came out like a cough—dry and crumbly.

“No, of course you don’t, angel.” She rubbed my knee. “Of course not. But you must feel
some
way about it? You’re nearly thirteen—a teenager!” She said this as if it were a foregone conclusion that at thirteen I should be able to manage my destiny, all our destinies.

I couldn’t look at her, so I stared at the tumbling river, the pines creaking in the breeze, the horse stables winking between them. I caught the faint, earthy traces of someone’s campfire.

“I think we’d be happy with Mr. Robert,” I finally whispered, looking her in the eyes, which softened with some thick emotion—was it sorrow? Relief? Hope? Then she nodded and took my hand, lacing our fingers together and gripping so hard, I could no longer tell where her hand let off and mine began.

“So how ’bout a swim, ladies?” Mr. Robert had appeared on the deck behind us, wearing navy swim shorts, his eyes glittering with mischief. “You ready to cross that river?”

The next morning I had a stomachache and could barely bend my arm, which Mr. Robert had bandaged too tightly after I’d whacked it on a rock, attempting to cross the river. It turned out the Wallowa’s current and depth was greater than we’d bargained for. Though we’d tried for an hour, none of us had been able to make the crossing.

Today was foggy, and Alison and I gave up our ritual teenage parade to the lake. I wanted to forgo adventures for a while, to sit in a warm corner with a book. It was a new feeling, this quiet waiting, this deep desire for solitude, and I fed it all morning, sitting in a rocker on the porch.

Around midday, I went to the bathroom and discovered a reddish-brown stain on my underpants. I stared at it, mortified and relieved. Could it be? Was it really? I inserted a finger, just to make sure, drew it out coated with blood. Then sat stunned and elated for a few minutes. Ali was having her period, too, so I helped myself to one of her pads, deciding that I would keep this to myself, for the time being. I didn’t want my mother and Mr. Robert to have it.

Later, I was sitting at the kitchen table, making my way through Mr. Robert’s stack of horse books, when he came rushing into the cabin, slapping a sheath of white papers against his thigh. “Come on, everybody; I’ve got something to show you!”

“Well, show us, then,” Mom said. For hours, she’d been removing green plastic dishes from the cupboards, stacking them on the counter, sweeping the shelf paper with a damp sponge. “What is it?”

“Can’t show you here,” he announced. “You’ll just have to come with me if you want the surprise.” He stood behind Mom, trickled his stubby fingers down her spine and landed on her right buttock, which he squeezed. My own stomach squeezed in turn.

“Alison’s not here,” I said.

“Well, then.” Spinning around, he arched his eyebrows. “Why don’t you just go and find her?” The edge of impatience in his voice made my heart stumble.

“But I don’t even know where she is. I haven’t seen her since breakfast.”

“It could take Sylvie all day to find her, Robert!”

“She must be at one of your old hangouts, right? She must be out there somewhere.” He opened the door, indicating, with a mock-chivalrous bow, that I should exit.

“Okay, okay,” I said as I trudged into the foggy day. “This surprise better be good.”

“Believe me, it will be.”

I walked down Main Street, irritated and exiled, kicking rocks in the mist. There were a few cars cruising the street, despite the bad weather, but none slowed or honked. I tried to walk like Ali, leaning into my hips, swinging my shoulders, head high and flirty, but I just felt gawky and exposed. Then a voice behind me was crooning, saying, “Hey, baby. Hey, cute thing—what happened to your arm?” I looked back long enough to see the cream-colored Jeep, the blond head and rusty-colored forearm out the side window, the white glint of a smile. I whipped back around, excited and full in my new body.

The Jeep sped up and passed. A second later I heard Ali’s rough laughter behind the old hamburger stand. I steered myself toward it, hearing other voices now, boys’ voices, jagged as metal slicing through my sister’s giggle. They sat in a circle on old crates in a clearing a few yards away. Three boys and Alison. What was she doing? And then I smelled the familiar musky burn, saw the joint they were passing, my sister’s bare shoulders, her cardigan in a heap at her feet. I stood there until Ali spotted me. “Hey, weirdly. What’s up?”

“Mr. Robert has a surprise. You’re supposed to come home. Like, soon.” My voice sounded so thin and young I wanted to cut it out of me. The boys’ eyes all scanning me for trouble or possibility. They looked older than Ali, arms tense with new muscle, faces shadowed with stubble. One of them, a lanky black-haired boy, had his hand on Alison’s thigh and was running his fingers down her leg, around her kneecap and back up.

“They want me
home,
huh?” Ali’s voice was mocking and lazy.

“Is she cool?” the blond stocky one wanted to know.

“She’s a cutie,” the black-haired one added. “Maybe she wants to play with us, huh? You wanna party, little sister?”

“She’s too young,” Alison snapped as if she were angry, or jealous. I felt a brand-new thrill race through me. “She doesn’t smoke, but she won’t tell, either. Will you, Sylvie?”

“What do you think I am, some kind of nerd?” I cocked my hand on my hip. The boys snorted and guffawed. “Come on, Ali.” I was starting to feel weak-kneed. “Just come on home, please?”

“Go on yourself, Sylvie,” Ali demanded, but her voice cracked. “Say I’ll be back for dinner, okay? Tell them I met some girlfriends at the lake.”

I turned and hurried back up the street, holding my bandaged elbow, stumbling hard into the divide that had opened before me. I didn’t want to follow Alison into the place she was heading, but I no longer knew what to turn to.

A horse was the answer to everything, I decided as we walked around the one-thousand-acre ranch, peering into outbuildings and watching the palomino foals nod over the fence.
A horse is the answer,
I thought, walking between Mom and Mr. Robert in the hazy light. I wasn’t sure what it was the answer to, but I could imagine myself riding hard over that land, the animal moving beneath me, my love for it making me strong. A horse would make me real, I thought, while Barbara, the real estate agent, bubbled over about the condition of the barns, the freshwater well, the historic farmhouse, which she was saving for last.

“Just wait ’til you see the house,” she kept saying to Mom, winking as if at some joke only for women. “I want you to get the full impact of this place from the outside in.”

“Well, I think I’m getting it,” Mom chirped, dodging a pile of manure. “I’m just about ready to see the house, actually. I’m ruining my shoes.”

“Oh, goodness, why didn’t you say so?” Barbara stared down at Mom’s white leather sandals. “Didn’t your husband warn you we’d be walking around the property?”

My mother looked void, and I winced, dreading the next sentence:
Oh, no, this isn’t really my husband. My husband is on a sailing trip….
I desperately wanted the real estate agent to believe in us as a family, so I held my breath, waiting for the words that would expose us as liars and frauds. But Mom just cleared her throat and hooked her arm through Mr. Robert’s.

“No, he didn’t warn me about any of this,” she said as we climbed onto the porch. “It was a surprise.”

“How romantic! I wish my husband was more that way.” Barbara led us into the spacious farmhouse kitchen.

“I like to keep her on her toes.” Mr. Robert grinned and I felt glad, just then, that Alison hadn’t joined us; she surely would have given us away with some sarcastic, well-timed comment.

Ali would just have to get used to all this, I thought as the three of us drove back to the cabin. She’d come around, once she saw the farmhouse, the big corner bedroom upstairs that would be hers, the four-poster beds and the game room in the cellar complete with pool tables and air hockey. She would just have to love it, I told myself, as my mother and Mr. Robert talked quietly in the front seat about oil heat and well water.

“But you haven’t told me what you really think, Elaine.”

“It’s amazing. Obviously, it’s gorgeous, Robert, but a bit premature, don’t you think?”

“Imagine, though, darling. All I’m asking you to do right now is to imagine how it could be. What we
could
have. That’s all. I didn’t mean anything else by it.”

“Do the horses come with it?” I asked, leaning over the seat.

“The horses, the furniture, the cattle, even the kitchen utensils. The owners are moving to their penthouse in Seattle, giving up the country life for good, I gather.”

“That’s stupid of them. I’d never leave if I lived on that ranch,” I vowed.

“Well, we can’t even afford
that
ranch, so just get it out of your head,” Mom said.

“Of course we can afford it, Lainie. We can afford anything we want.”

“We’re not a
we
yet, Robert. And no, we can’t afford to talk this way.”

He was quiet, staring at the road ahead, though he did reach over and place his big hand on the nape of her neck, as if to massage the doubt right out of her. I sat back in my corner, feeling a longing so sharp and confused, it was as if an insatiable, toothy mouth had birthed itself inside. Or maybe it was just cramps.

“Can we go out to eat tonight?” I whined.

“We’ll see, angel. We’ll see.”

But we didn’t go out that night—our last one in Wallowa—because the concierge from the lodge came to the cabin with an urgent message: Sammy had called. There was no phone at the cabin and she’d been trying to reach us for seven hours, apparently, to tell Mom that Dad had capsized
Allegiance
off the coast and was in a San Diego hospital, being treated for hypothermia. We needed to come home.

A week after my father’s accident, we gathered around the piano to sing Sabbath hymns. I was shaken by his transformation: he’d dropped fifteen pounds and seemed as pale and transparent as a sheet of typing paper beneath his sailor’s tan. His beard was full, speckled with silver, and he clutched Mom’s shoulder as if still finding his legs. He shut his eyes as he sang—“Shall We Gather at the River?,” “Standing on the Promises,” “Revive Us Again”—his tremulous tenor wavering beneath her clear melodies. He’d always been self-conscious about his difficulty carrying a tune, so Ali joined in the harmonies and their voices created a unified front.

I tried parroting my mother’s part but my own voice broke with emotion. It was too much—everything, too much. Finally overcome, I crawled under the Steinway and lay on my back, looking up at the inner workings of the instrument, watching my mother’s long pale toes hover over the pedals. I couldn’t recall when we’d last done this—all four of us singing, all of us gathered for a unifying purpose.