Catch & Release (23 page)

“So your mom sold her eggs?”

“Nope. My mom
bought
the eggs from a student who needed tuition money. That's the story. My mom bought eggs from a red-haired girl who was really smart and needed money for graduate school. Mom put an ad in university papers and she offered extra money for high SAT scores. Then those eggs got fertilized and I was one of them and I was born. And after a while my mom read about how people wanted to adopt “snowflakes”—these frozen embryos—so she put them up for adoption. We had a family meeting about it, but it was basically Mom's deal.”

“So these frozen babies, they're like your clones? That is fucked up nine ways from Sunday, Polly.”

“What's so fucked up about it?”

“You could meet some guy and marry him and never know he was your brother. That's one fucked-up thing, marrying your own clone,” says Odd.

“I can think of a few reasons why that won't happen. And they aren't clones—they are more like brothers and sisters—we'll be similar, but not exactly alike. Like you and Buck.”

“I'm nothing like Buck,” says Odd.

“And those snowflake babies are probably nothing like me,” I say. “They're just out there, maybe, even though I don't know where.”

“My sister Thea's like that,” says Odd. “She left for Reno three years ago because she was tired of Dad and Buck ragging on her. She was going to learn how to deal poker, but the last time she called she told my mom she was working as a security guard in the Meadowood Mall.”

“Her plans changed. She just adapted to her new condition,” I say.

“I miss her sometimes,” says Odd.

“I don't miss my brothers and sisters,” I say, “I don't know how to miss them.”

“I'm going to bed—I mean, I'm going to car,” says Odd. “You want me to turn on the headlights so you can pitch your tent?”

“I think I'll just sleep in the other seat. I'll come to bed in a while.”

My eye can see the sky, empty and full of stars. My eye is cryogenically frozen and sees nothing, not even the dark. I am an only child who has lots of brothers and sisters. My mother is in the kitchen back home, wiping the sink until it shines just like she does every night. My mother is an egg donor I have never seen. My mother loves me so much it drives both of us crazy. My mother sold me to pay bills.

 

“F is for frozen

Much colder than snow,

Seeds of little monsters

Are waiting to grow.

 

“And I did a new one for C,” I say. “Like you said, ‘C is for creatures' was really not my best work.”

 

“C is for cephalopod,

A nightmare-soaked squid

In the folds of your brain

Where it always stays hid.”

 

“You know, Polly, I would maybe like not to have monsters in my brain before I go to sleep. Know what I mean? Like, couldn't you just say goodnight?”

“Goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite . . .”

“No bugs, Polly. And don't say one word about snakes while you're at it. I don't want snakes in my head.”

“You're the one who brought up snakes. What do you want? Unicorns?”

“Blowjobs are good.”

“OK. Dream about blowjobs and unicorns.”

“That'll work. I think maybe that goth girl is gonna be riding on that unicorn. G'night, Polly.”

“G'night.”

 

 

G is for Gothasol

To keep out the light,

Riding a unicorn:

You hope she won't bite.

Here they put the trees in straitjackets. Here the clouds are stacked like mountains and drag their black shadows over the green fields. This bridge is called the Blue Bridge. It is almost but not quite the color of the sky I can see between the beams of the . . .

“Fuck!” Odd jerks the steering wheel and moves us away just before the driver's-side mirror and the curving silver mirrored tank of the semi are in the same place at the same time. “Fuck, Polly! Fuck! Fuck!”

My hands are tight on the steering wheel now. My eye is trying to see everything dangerous at once. There is no sky. There is cement and metal and huge black tires that could eat D'Elegance whole. The trailer fishtails a little and then it moves in front of us. It is very shiny. The winking cow. Got Milk. No BHT. We are off the bridge. Traffic lights. Merging lanes. Parked cars.

“Pull over, Polly, now!”

I do it. Suddenly D'Elegance is parked halfway on a sidewalk, but at least the world isn't flying at me so fast.

“I'll drive now,” says Odd. He isn't angry. He isn't even scared anymore. He is just matter-of-fact.

I nod and fumble with the seat belt.

“Alrighty then,” says Odd, and he adjusts the rearview mirror before he backs out into a gap in the traffic.

 

We stop for gas at the edge of town. I clean every window on D'Elegance twice—dripping sponge, squeegee, dripping sponge, squeegee. I wash the big, square headlamps.

Odd stands and watches. I'm pretty sure he doesn't see the point. I just don't know how else to apologize to the car. I put D'Elegance in harm's way. She's been good to me, and I shouldn't have treated her like that.

 

Odd's side of the world is made of cliffs. My side of the world is made of river. Both sides of the world are dotted in the distance with white towers and the pinwheel blades of wind turbines.

The radio is on and I'm half listening to it, “. . . very large mountain lion sitting in a tree in the backyard . . . dispatched the cougar without injury to any humans or pets in the area . . . probably means that the cougar was destroyed . . . my wife has told to me quit admitting when I make mistakes . . . I am not anti-yard sale . . . an underground economy . . .that's not derogatory . . . in 1910 William Howard Taft signed the White Slave Traffic Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for immoral purposes . . .”

“Why exactly am I transporting you across state lines, Polly?”

Sometimes the best thing to say to Odd is to punch him, so I do.

 

“Bridge of the Gods, Polly. Guy at the gas station said to make sure to see the Bridge of the Gods. Said if you run on it, there's an optical illusion and the bridge disappears. Said it works best if a person gets in the right frame of mind.”

This is why we are sitting in a parking lot, staring at the impressive pile of cement needed to defy gravity and hold up a two-lane bridge across the Columbia River. It's Odd's plan. We are fulfilling step one: get in the right frame of mind. His prescription, as it turns out, is part of the plan. And the last little bit of the vodka in the red aluminum flask. Also helpful.

There is a mural painted on the cement. A picture of the once-upon-a-time Bridge of the Gods, which was a natural bridge that reached from Oregon to Washington—at least, that's what the mural shows. The rock bridge fell down, and now there is this replacement bridge made of metal and cement.

“Come on Polly, let's go take a look,” says Odd, and he climbs out to D'Elegance like closer inspection of the faded, scabby painting is worth it. I follow because maybe it is. Can't get disappointed if I don't give it a try.

They say there was a land bridge and humans followed the wooly mammoths over from Siberia, so I suppose it's possible that there could have been a stone arch that reached all the way across this river. I got my doubts. I always have my doubts.

“Hey Polly, it's Lewis and Clark,” Odd has gone round to one of the side of the cement wall. When I follow him, I see them. Lewis and Clark. There are standing on top of a pile of transportation options—steamboats, trains, a car—which is kind of funny since they didn't have access to any of that when they hauled their sorry asses to the Pacific and back. Maybe the paint is just faded, but they look like statues instead of people. It's all about the heroic pose. Odd can spend more time staring than I can, so I wander around to the other side. This side is devoted to wildlife. Eagle, bear, wolf, mountain lion with crazy eyes: it's a stack of predators with nothing to eat.

“Where's the fish?” I ask. “Did you see fish? There are no fish in this picture.”