Fishing With RayAnne (22 page)

When the answering machine kicks in, she leaves a message: “Okay, Gran. It’s only me. We’ll talk later?” After hanging up she repeats, “Okay,” as if things are.

RayAnne turns the ignition, and Penelope rumbles to life. RayAnne spins the wheel in the direction of the shore. She manages a quiet docking, and with the stealth of a Human Being, takes the lesser paths and shortcuts to her trailer. Once inside, she shouts into a bunched-up beach towel for two minutes, then does her best to compose herself. They tape in an hour; once that one single, final interview is in the can, the season will officially wrap, and Location will break down and pack up like a traveling carnival. There’s a twelve-week hiatus before it all starts up again, at least the planning stages—that’s months. Were Gran here, she’d be assuring RayAnne like she would before a dentist appointment.
You just get through this one next thing, then celebrate it being over. We’ll have ice cream!

Icing the carbuncle on her lip, she can only hope Darren down in makeup can work some sort of magic. She covers it as best she can with concealer, then changes into the same outfit worn the day before while interviewing the twins, because as far as the camera is concerned, it’s still yesterday.

If only.

She tucks Cassi’s notecards into a cargo pocket and steps out, inhaling the piney air and reminding herself to breathe. Halfway down the hill at the fork, she takes the steeper, more dangerous path.

T
EN

RayAnne can see her mother walking along on the path below, still wearing her paper makeup bib and following Amy to the dock. They are on the trail that eventually shortcuts through the picnic area. From her high vantage point, RayAnne can also see the picnic tables where Big Rick is holding court with three of Bernadette’s “girls,” his arm casually slung over the shoulder of one. Their giggles waft up the hill, sounding more like teens than card-carrying members of AARP. On the table next to them is an open bottle of wine and an empty one, tipped on its side.

When Bernadette and Amy emerge from the path to cross the clearing, Big Rick grins widely, dispatches wine into two fresh Dixie cups, and holds them aloft at their approach. RayAnne presses her foot to the ground as if it’s a brake that might stop time moving forward.

His greeting is expansive. “Ah, two more beauties come to join in our little bacchanalia!”

Amy practically skips forward. Bernadette blinks like she’s just stepped indoors from bright sunlight, taking in Big Rick’s unbuttoned shirt, the amount of wine left in the standing bottle, and the now-giddy trio of women who have strayed from her troop.

Big Rick booms, “C’mon, have a drink with me and the squaws here.”

RayAnne covers her mouth, praying her father will shut his.

Bernadette faces Big Rick. “Richard. You might get that mouth checked; it appears to be leaking.”

“Oh, right. I guess that wasn’t very P-frickin’-C of me. Sorry.” He cocks his head and offers, more formally, “’Dette, please join me and your
meno-pals
here for a glass of cheer. Whaddya say?”

She looks to the women, tipsy and grinning, then back to Big Rick. “Don’t you have a new model at home? Or has her freshness date expired?”

“Ah, the ex officio is irate!”

“Please. I doubt you even know what that means. Listen, Richard,” Bernadette tears off the makeup bib and crumples it. “You can go ahead and ruin this for me, but if you screw this up for RayAnne . . .”

“My, my, Miss Inner Quietude is sounding pretty hostile there, Bernie-dette.”

Bernadette’s voice is loud enough to travel, not just up the slope, but to everyone milling on the paths and the crew on the dock waiting for them. “Why don’t you just leave RayAnne be, leave us all be?”

He’s no longer grinning. “And why don’t
you
go get your ears candled, or your chakras rotated, or whatever the woo-woo hell you do.”

“Richard, so help me—”

“So help me what? So help me, Gandhi?”

The women abandon the picnic table one by one, no longer charmed, giving Bernadette apologetic looks for their temporary treason. Bernadette’s clenched fists fall from her hips. “You know what, Richard? You can just . . .” Words rarely fail Bernadette, but they do now. “Just kiss my ass.”

As she starts walking, Big Rick calls after her.

“Yeah? Maybe I should—might do you some good!”

When particularly nervous, RayAnne tries to imagine addressing viewers one at a time and so speaks as she would to a single person. She thinks about how she might engage some busy executive, distract her enough that she sets aside her papers to shift closer to the television, or entertain the mother of young children who is nabbing an hour to watch
Fishing
. Or get the attention of a college girl, tempt her to look up from her ramen at the sound of the theme music and give her chin a wipe. RayAnne speaks with an implied conspiracy because she knows busy women watching television have stolen the time to do so. When she says hello and winks at the beginning of every show, the takeaway is:
Forget the twenty things vying for your attention—for the next fifty minutes, it’s just us.
RayAnne has an abstract awareness of her audience, but as easily as she can imagine them as individuals, she can compact them like a zip file to stash neatly in the outline of Cassi, because Cassi always stands behind camera two for each taping, her silhouette the focus of RayAnne’s intentions—her
drishti
, in Bernadette-speak. When RayAnne hears “Roll!” she imagines dozens of women whooshing into Cassi like a colony of bats to a cave. She’d never realized how much she relied on that visual device until she notices the second pontoon puttering from its moorage, and Cassi’s not in it. She’s been left on the dock and is taking off her life vest.

“Whoa, Cassi! You’re missing your boat.”

“I got kicked off to make room for the guys from Laguna and Cast-Away.”

“No!” RayAnne swivels and shades her eyes. Indeed, the pontoon is loaded with sponsors. In Cassi’s usual place sits Hal, flanked by a rep from Mermaid Pilsner and the CEO of Jailbait. The other boat has even more, too far out on the lake to make out. She waves and whistles to the pontoon to no avail.

“No . . .” she moans. Everyone else is bent to their tasks, oblivious to her plight. The gaffer is gaffing; the sound guy is clipping a wireless mic onto Bernadette. Darren is checking continuity by comparing RayAnne’s clothes and hair to iPhone shots of the previous day’s shoot.

“Don’t worry, Ray,” Cassi says, handing over RayAnne’s earpiece. “I’ll be right here. Got my monitor all plugged in, see?” Frowning, RayAnne screws in the earbud. Cassi presses the live button and says,
“Check, check,”
sounding gritty and tinny in RayAnne’s ear. People are waiting for her to get in the boat.

“Go,” Cassi says, directly into the mouthpiece. “Go, go,
go
.”

“Weren’t Kira and Kit just amazing? The twins are a true inspiration, especially for those of us that think
we
have challenges.” The camera zooms out to show the boat rocking and RayAnne sitting across from Bernadette, who sways a little like a Weeble on the bench seat, her face flushed nearly to the shade of Penelope. RayAnne hopes she’s not still fuming from her run-in with Big Rick.

“Our second guest”—RayAnne must maneuver each word past the sore on her lip, now raised like a lump of broiled cheese—“is life-passages doula Bernadette Mills.” She stutters on
dette
. “Thousands of you follow her blog
Blood Tides
, and over the years many have participated in her ritual Meno-Trek pilgrimages to spiritual destinations. One of our own staff has even been questing with Bernadette in the Nevada desert.”

Not sure which direction to turn, she pivots to camera two, which is wrong, so she’s signaled to turn back and does so, haltingly. “My own journey with Bernadette began over thirty years ago.” Resisting the impulse to tongue the cracking pancake makeup covering the cold sore, RayAnne mumbles, “Bernadette Mills is my m-mother.”

The ensuing pause is far too long.

Not once before has she had to rely on notes on camera, but as for what to say to her own mother, she’s at a loss. She awkwardly holds a number of index cards with questions Cassi has come up with. It doesn’t help that she’s stayed intentionally out of the loop of Bernadette’s career, remaining diligently neutral for fear of giving into her snarky side and scoffing at her mother’s new-agey-ness; what she and Ky refer to as her optimistyness.

Bernadette’s smile is pasted, as she waits for some cue or a question, casting uneasy glances far across the rough water to the dock, to land.

The prompts on the index cards are written in Cassi’s tight handwriting so that RayAnne must squint. She shuffles them out of order until one gives itself up to the breeze to blow into the water off the stern. They both watch it float for a second, then Bernadette pats RayAnne’s knee. “No matter, honey. We don’t need the cards. If it helps, I can just tell the audience a bit about the Blood-Tide Quests and you can ask me questions from there.”

“Mom.” RayAnne covers her mic and speaks without moving her lips. “Please don’t give me advice about my job while I’m doing it.” She looks to camera one. “You’ll edit that out? Sorry everyone, can we start over?”

And so they do. The notecards are useless. She falters through a few uninspired questions, and it all begins a slow slide downhill. Every time she looks to camera two expecting to see Cassi, her point of focus is filled with the disconcerting visage of Hal.

She should have insisted Cassi be on board. Why doesn’t she stand her ground?

To make things worse, it’s too windy to fish. Being so accustomed to holding a rod and reel, she doesn’t know quite what to do with her hands. She decides to sit on them, forgetting they might come in handy when needing balance. Penelope isn’t just rocking now; waves begin tugging the boat this way and that as if trying to unmoor them.

RayAnne’s frustration gives way to nervousness, and in her nervousness she keeps repeating her mantra of “Okay.” Bernadette does her best to salvage the interview by more or less asking herself questions and then answering. Inside five minutes—and they need an average of thirty to harvest a decent ten minutes for an interview—the interview seems to be going nowhere. They each make an effort to revive the conversation, which only results in them talking over one another.

“Okay, okay. Can you tell me about the rituals—”

“I thought I’d talk some about the rituals—”

“Okay, go on, Mom.” RayAnne cringes—she’d been determined not to say
mom
, meant to be professional and use
Bernadette
.

“No, you start.”

“No,
you
, okay?”

RayAnne’s desperation intensifies while swells under the boat lift it to a stomach-churning height. Over the next twelve minutes, the interview devolves into a rehash of ancient mother-daughter dysfunction, while those looking on watch it all. The camera operators keep making eye contact with Amy the Grouper, who signals for them to keep taping. In her feed, RayAnne can hear Cassi’s voice, quiet in a way it rarely is: “Stop now, Ray. Stop the interview.”

But RayAnne does not, at least not until one very surprising revelation is out of the bag. Sponsors and crew look on while the interview culminates in a grand finale that includes tears and ends with a flourish of vomit.

The last thing RayAnne barks at the camera is “
Please
turn that off! This isn’t some fucking reality show!”

Throughout the trip to shore, Bernadette keeps her eyes scrunched shut and clutches the gunnel. RayAnne speeds toward land to outrun the boats with sponsors and crew. Penelope’s bow ploughs over swells to crash down again and again, her stern bucking out of the waves so that the propellers whir uselessly in the air, like a plane in a tailspin.

Once docked, she yanks off her microphone and tosses it to the decking. In spite of repeating “Sorry, Mom,” she leaves her for someone else to take care of. She pounds across the boards and without a glance passes Cassi, who scurries to help Bernadette.

Striding through the picnic area, Big Rick catches up to her, but RayAnne twists away when he reaches for her arm. “Fuck off, Dad.”

Her mother is trying to catch up as well, but is still wobbling on her sea legs, looking quite green. When reaching Big Rick, she gives up the chase and pauses to catch a breath. “Indeed, Richard. Fuck off.” Her hands hang in their caftan sleeves and she gags a little on the words like she might throw up again, but after a woozy sway, she only sighs and plods forward. “Oh, RayBee.”