The Blood Ballad (2 page)

“You what?” she asked.

“I have a stepfather who volunteered me. Hey, don't laugh. I didn't see you volunteering to help on this event. You weren't even there for the vote!”

“Sorry, I was in Vegas. You can hardly hold that against me. So, what exactly will you be doing?” she asked.

“I'm not really sure.”

“Will the birds be doing backflips and the butterfly stroke?” She was laughing again.

“No,” I said. “I think the birders split up into groups and everybody identifies all the species they see in a twenty-four-hour period. The group with the most species wins. Or something like that. I honestly don't know the details.”

“I thought we agreed not to let Eleanore host anything else to do with birds.”

“I know, I know, but the events committee voted. How was I supposed to know that three-fourths of the events committee members were birders? I figured, Oh, hell, they'll shoot this down right off the bat. But they didn't. I could have used your vote. You're not allowed to leave town again.”

“Is there anything I need to do to prepare the town?” she asked.

“Oh, well, Daisy Rickard might need some help with the coffee and cocoa runs. And the Porta Potti—”

“I am not doing anything that involves portable bodily secretions. I'll just tell you that right now. I love you, Torie, but not that much.”

“Well, considering you skipped town and weren't there to help nip this in the bud, I oughta put you in charge of Porta Potti duty and make you clean them!”

“Ooooh, vindictive, aren't we?”

“Desperate,” I said.

“Okay, so coffee and cocoa runs?”

“Yeah. I'll tell you more after I talk with Eleanore later.”

“You know, Torie, you manage to get yourself into more trouble than anybody I know.”

“Trouble? How is this trouble?”

“You're going to be in the woods with fifty birders. Something will happen.”

“Maybe I'll fall in a sinkhole.”

“There ya go. You can always hope,” she said.

I hung up with Helen and tried to find the bleach, but couldn't. So I found a big bottle of alcohol and went outside to find my son. When he was completely disinfected, I made dinner for my family. I had dinner on the table by six o'clock, and it wasn't even macaroni and cheese! I actually made chicken and dumplings. I had called my grandmother and asked her how to make them because I didn't want my mother to know that I was forty and didn't know how to make chicken and dumplings. It would have made her feel as though she'd failed as a parent. Believe me. It would. I know my mother.

When my husband, Rudy, came in and sat down, he was stunned at the spread of food on the table. “Wow, what's the occasion?” he asked. For the record, I like my husband. I don't just love him, and I don't just think he's sexy. I actually like him. He's one of the few people who can keep me laughing even when there's very little to laugh about, and he's probably the only person aside from my mother who can tell me when I'm overreacting and live to tell the tale. Now, I don't necessarily listen to him when he tells me I'm overreacting, but it sinks in eventually, and I don't behead him, like I would anybody else.

He cautiously sniffed the food and looked around the table to see if anybody else was going to take a bite first. I can't complain. I'm a lousy cook, and they've learned to be wary. When nobody else volunteered—they were waiting for big brave daddy to do the taste test—he took a very small bite. “Hey,” he said, “this is actually good.”

He smiled, and the kids dug in and ate.

“Fritz brought me a squirrel!” Matthew said.

“He's disgusting,” Mary said.

“Can we discuss dead things at a different time?” Rachel asked.

Rudy smiled. “Yeah, save the dead rodent stories for later, okay?”

“Okay,” Matthew said, and shrugged.

“Mom gave me the job!” Rachel said, exuding happiness.

“She did?” Rudy said. “Well … that was…”

“Yes?” I said.

“What were you thinking?” he asked.

“Hey! I can do this job.”

“She can do the job,” I said. “Leave it.”

“So, Mary, what's new with you?” Rudy asked.

“Don't ask,” she said from behind a mound of dumplings.

“Why not?” Rudy asked. It was an innocent-enough question. Rudy hadn't quite learned that you don't ask innocent questions of fourteen-year-olds whose angst level is higher than their hormones.

“Because there's either nothing to tell you, or the stuff I do have to tell you, you don't want to hear anyway, so just drop it,” Mary replied.

“You are such a crabby witch!” Rachel spat at her sister.

“Yeah, well, being a crabby witch is part of my charm.”

“‘Charm'? Oh, I'm sorry, was that charming?” Rachel asked in the most condescending tone I'd ever heard. I mean, I couldn't have done it better myself.

“Stop!” I said. “Not now.”

“Whatever,” Mary said. She had recently taken to wearing as much hair as she could over one eye. I think she thought it was some sort of statement, and it was. It stated that she was a grouchy, hormonal teenager who had absolutely nothing to be unhappy about and was pissed off about it. I was actually more concerned that she'd run into something one of these days from lack of depth perception than I was about any statement that she was trying to make.

“There's a guy living in the woods,” Matthew said.

“Where?” I asked.

“Back there,” he said, and pointed in the direction of our back lot.

“It's probably a hunter,” Rudy said. “It's deer season, you know.”

“Oh, yeah, it's the let's-go-show-how-testosterone-can-make-us-act-like-idiots season,” Mary said.

“We've had this discussion before, Mary,” Rudy said. “Without the existence of any natural predators anymore, hunting is necessary, or else the deer will eat the forest down to the ground.”

“It's barbaric. It's lame. Guys just like to kill things.”

“No they don't,” Matthew said with big worried eyes. “Daddy, do you like to kill things?”

“Yes, he does,” Mary said. “He likes to kill nosy little brat boys like you!”

“Stop!” I said, and found myself standing. “Just stop. Now, I had to call my grandmother and admit to her that I was forty years old and didn't know how to make stupid chicken and dumplings, just so I could make this dinner for you guys and you wouldn't have to eat out of a box, or a take-out bag, or at a restaurant or what have you! And you guys
will
shut up and you
will eat
!”

Everybody just stared at me.

“Quietly. Pleasantly. End of discussion!” I added.

Everyone shut up, probably because I was waving my fork around like a madwoman, and I sat down and ate my dinner as quickly as I could. When I was finished, I said, “Rachel you've got dish duty. I'm going to my office.”

That's where I stayed until it was time for Matthew to do his homework. After I helped him, I went to bed and dreamed about a world where the only things I had to worry about were what type of massage oil I wanted and when my next infusion of chocolate would be.

Two

I sat in my office at the Kendall home, wondering who in the world ever told me that I should be a parent. As I recall, I wanted the job badly, but why hadn't anybody ever said to me, “Torie, there is no way in hell you can
do
this job”? Why were changing diapers, juggling feeding times, and getting through potty training easier than getting two teenagers to make it through a day without shaking open the entrance to hell? Well, regardless, it was too late now. It wasn't as if I could just stop the process and say, “Sorry, everybody out of the boat. I can't do this.”

I was deep in thought when my sister Stephanie knocked on my door. Stephanie is my half sister and we don't look that much alike, but we have the same eyes. We got those from our dad. But we're much more alike on the inside, and I can't express how scary that is. My father's genetics are not only overbearing but they're skewed beyond comprehension. Aside from that, I like Stephanie. She's the only person I know who will let me eat brownies for breakfast and not tell anyone.

“Okay, so what's going on?” she asked.

Telepathy. That's another cool thing about her.

“I have to participate in this birding Olympics tomorrow and I really don't want to.”

“That's causing all of this running around and being at the wrong office on the wrong day?”

“What?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

“You're supposed to be at your office at the Gaheimer House today, not here at the Kendall home.”

“What day is it?”

“It's Friday.”

“It's not Thursday?”

“If it were Thursday, would you be participating in a birding Olympics tomorrow?”

“Oh,” I said. “So it's not Thursday.”

“I'm assuming you're on autopilot and your autopilot thinks you're at the Gaheimer house, and that's why you keep bumping into walls.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Look, Torie, is there something you want to talk about?” Stephanie asked.

“I'm having a midlife crisis and there's not enough chocolate in the world.”

“You're having a midlife crisis because there's not enough chocolate in the world, or was that last part just an observation?” Stephanie asked, trying desperately to keep up with me.

“Both.”

“Look…”

“No, I'm being serious,” I said. I glanced around my office. The Kendall home was a new acquisition to my holdings in town. I'd inherited the Gaheimer House from Sylvia and Wilma Pershing when they passed away; it houses the historical society. I had worked for Sylvia for over ten years and had grown up in her shadow, wanting to be just like her. Well, except for the lonely, hateful, spiteful part. She had lived in New Kassel her entire life, and it had meant everything to her. She and her sister had established the Gaheimer House as a tourist attraction and had founded the historical society. She was sort of a big sister to me, what Rachel is to Mary. A big shadow that, although I loved, I sort of wanted out from under.

Enter the Kendall home. I bought it last year and have gone about turning it into a museum for women's textile arts. I actually get more traffic from the World War I enthusiasts, because one of the upstairs bedrooms has a painfully horrific mural, sketched by a talented—albeit disturbed—hand, depicting the trenches during the war. It's been photographed and studied, and you can even find details of it online, but I refuse to paint over it. I'd never ruin the original.

“I'm having a real midlife crisis,” I said.

“As opposed to…?”

“People throw that phrase around, and I think I've thrown it around myself in the past. It's like when people say they're depressed, only they really aren't. Then one day when they really are depressed, they're like, ‘Oh, hey, so this is what depression feels like.'”

Stephanie's hazel eyes were sort of blank.

“Well, that's what's happening here. I'm like, ‘Oh, hey, so this is what a midlife crisis really feels like.'”

My sister tucked her hair behind her ears and sat on the edge of my desk. “What gives?”

“My daughter graduates this year.”

“So? Isn't that a good thing? I mean, the alternative would be that she didn't graduate. Which would mean that she had either flunked, quit, or … worse. In which case, you'd have a lot more to worry about than the world's shortage of chocolate.”

“Oh my gosh,” I said. “What if the world did run out of chocolate?”

“Torie. Focus. What is going on?”

“Well, I knew when I had my kids that they were going to grow up.”

“So?”

“So, I just didn't think they were going to grow up.”

Stephanie laughed at me then.

“No, I mean, in my mind's eye it was going to happen. Like a long time down the road. I just didn't think that I'd be…”

“You'd be what?”

“I don't know. I feel the same as I did seventeen years ago. I thought I'd be old, or feel old, or that I'd just naturally be ready for her to graduate and leave home—and I'm not. Mentally, on the inside, I'm still that twenty-three-year-old girl who struggled for sixteen hours to bring Rachel into the world. I'm just not ready.”

“Well, she is ready,” Stephanie said. “So you're going to have to deal with it.”

It was the exact same thing I would have said to her or anybody else, but I didn't want to hear it. I shrugged. “I dunno, there's more to it than that. I can't put it in words.”

“Torie, the world doesn't end when she graduates.”

“No, hers is just beginning. But it changes everything. Everything I've ever wanted and everything I've ever been just changes.”

“Oh boy,” she said, and reached for the phone.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm calling Helen. We need serious chocolate.”

“Joke all you want.”

She hung the phone up and then she reached over and squeezed my hand. “You've got the Olympics to get ready for.”

“Right, I know. What do I need?”

“Binoculars.”

“Yeah, I've got those. Do I need bug spray? Because I hate mosquitoes.”

“It's December. We may not have actual deep-freeze winters here anymore, but we don't have any mosquitoes in December. At least I hope not, because that would be … well, it would have to mean something globally bad.”

“I'm taking some just in case,” I said.

“Good,” she said, and laughed. “You do that.”

“So what else?”

“Comfy shoes, warm socks, and dress in layers, because it will get cold at night. Sleeping bag—are you allowed to sleep?” she asked. “Oh, and you have to have a notebook and pencil to write down all the birds you see.”