Fishing With RayAnne (27 page)

“My motivation? That was self-preservation, RayAnne.”

“For your health, your psyche? Survival?”

“All of the above. My first husband, Jimmy, was a piece of work. When he’d come at me swinging, I used to have this fantasy. I’d close my eyes and imagine grabbing him before he could make a fist. I had a vision of lifting him off his feet and over my head to throw him, just chuck him . . . at a wall, the TV, his damn dog—anything, I just wanted to
throw
that man.”

A number of people laugh.

On screen, RayAnne chuckles. “And one day you . . .”

“One day I’d just had enough. I said to myself, ‘Leslie, stop being this man’s fool. Stop dreaming about things being better and
make
them better, and so I did. I started going to the gym that very day. I didn’t know how long it was gonna take, but I was gonna do it, I was gonna work out and train until I could lift two hundred and forty-seven pounds.”

“Jimmy’s weight? And did you ever get to—”

“Clean and jerk him? Nah, by the time I was snatching two hundred pounds I realized he wasn’t worth the breath it would take. He sure as hell wasn’t hitting me anymore.”

One of the ladies in the row in front of RayAnne hoots. A male voice from behind her says, “Go, Leslie.”

RayAnne sneaks a sidelong glance at the woman holding her jaw. She’s dry-eyed now and fastened to the screen. It’s not just women watching; it’s the younger Hispanic men, both the skateboarders, some guy in scrubs and surgical booties, and an old man nearby holding a urine sample.

The conversation between RayAnne and her guest continues over the short video of her visit to Leslie’s gym. The dubious look on RayAnne’s face when Leslie motions her down to the weight bench is funny, but when RayAnne tries lifting up the barbell with its pair of thirty-pound weights, the camera zooms to her face, eyes bugging while she mouths,
Help
.

Laughter ripples across the room.

RayAnne laughs too, because she remembers worrying she might fart on camera.

“See, RayAnne,” Leslie encourages her, changing the weights to twenties. “It’s easy—you just aim for impossible, then work your way up.”

In fact, earlier in the day when faced with heavy IKEA boxes, it had been the thought of Leslie that had inspired RayAnne to not give up. She smiles into the pages of
Golf Digest
—in a way, she has Leslie to thank for this trip to the ER.

When the underwriter slot commences, a few people mutter—they’d clearly been enjoying the show. RayAnne looks around. She wasn’t imagining that. And now several people are even talking about it.

“Number thirty-three? Number thirty-three? RayAnne Dahl?”

“Oh. Me.” RayAnne gets up too fast. She sways; the magazine slides to the floor. Her nearest neighbor, the guy with the urine sample, reaches over to steady her, but she rights herself and waves him off. “I’m good, thanks, just dizzy.”

He dips to grab the magazine and offers it, but she shakes her head, holding her bagged and bloodied hand. One skateboarder turns to the other. “Hey, man, that
is
her. I told you.”

Heads turns as the skateboarder points to the television, then to RayAnne. “It’s her. This lady here is that fishing lady.”

“No shit?” Urine guy gives her a wink. The woman who’d changed channels swivels from her front-row seat, saying, “Well, I’ll
be
.” Her sister gives a wave. “Great show, RayAnne.”

“What happened, some fish bite you?”

Blushing deeply, RayAnne approaches the nurse, now nodding. “You really are the fishing gal on that show?” A few people clap as she’s led away. “I guess you must be. You’re famous. You rich too? Is that funny?”

The nurse makes a big deal about telling the doctor, an impatient woman who looks as if she has more pressing matters than sewing up another DIY gone wrong. “Honestly.” The doctor shakes her head, looking at the wound. “Sundays are the worst.” The injection of a numbing agent into her hand hurts so much RayAnne thinks she might leave her body.

“I should have signed out an hour ago.” The doctor sounds peeved, but when she looks up, she’s grinning. “This is the second Sunday in a row I haven’t made it home in time to watch your show.”

My
show? Once her hand is an unfeeling lump, she turns away from the procedure of the cut being cleaned and stitched—just three sutures, the cut is deep, not wide.

“My father and I usually watch you together.” The doctor snips the suture. “He says it’s a nice break from
Antiques Roadshow
.” She flips up the magnifier clipped onto her glasses lens. “That should do it. You won’t be casting or reeling with that hand for a few weeks.”

“Thanks.”

After stripping off her rubber gloves, the doctor adds, “I’d ask for your autograph for my dad, but you won’t be writing much either.”

“I’m left-handed.”

“Ah,” she pulls a prescription pad and pen from her lab coat pocket. “In that case, his name is Norm.”

RayAnne smiles. “Spelled like it sounds?”

Once home, she calms Rory, who alternately whimpers and glares at her, sniffs the bandage, and sulks. When she opens the back door to let him out, he won’t cross the threshold.

Who can blame him? She’d slammed him on the wrong side of the door already once today, leaving him for hours. Stepping out into the dark yard herself, she goes to the horseradish plant, where she cradles her hand and waits for him, humming like Elmer Fudd. He comes along warily, and pees, refusing to look at her.

There’s dried blood streaking the IKEA cardboard and the kitchen counter, but any that had dripped on the hall and kitchen floors had all been lapped up by Rory. While filling his bowl, she eyes him. He’s tasted her blood. She has read that a team of sled dogs will eat their master if he falls ill or is injured to the point of defenselessness. While Rory crunches kibble, she takes two of the painkillers she’s stood in line at the hospital pharmacy for. Reading the bottle while the second capsule snails down her gullet, she realizes the dose was only one.

Surveying the shelves and hardware strewn across the living room floor, the scope of her little DIY project dawns. She couldn’t put the shelves up now if she wanted to. But there’s more—sunk into the upholstery of the nearest chair while the painkillers kick in, she realizes she hadn’t considered the uneven floors. Does she own a drill bit large enough to make holes in the plaster for the butterfly bolts? No. Had she measured correctly? Probably not. What she’d optimistically thought might take up an afternoon—assembling a simple wall of bookshelves—has already necessitated a trip to the hospital and suddenly looks like a life’s work. Nothing she’ll accomplish anytime soon.

She slides from the chair to the carpet. Rory whimpers and lays his head on her knee. Sniffling, she considers him. As awesome as Rory is, some days a dog just isn’t enough. As she drifts into a buzzy unease, she wants Gran. Wants her mother. Mostly she doesn’t want to be alone.

But getting up to find the phone is too colossal an effort. Besides, a call won’t cut it this time. She could use a face-to-face dose of her mother, or an hour with Gran, who would whip up some antidote—one of her favorites, like the lemon zest bars with a dusting of powdered sugar, the crust mined with crystalized ginger; those hazelnut meringue cookies with chewy centers. Normally RayAnne would salivate at the thought of Dot’s two-bite cherry turnovers, flaky and oozy at the same time, but the painkillers have dried her mouth like a wind sock.

Bernadette would suggest she meditate on something, a smooth pebble, a cloud, one of those serenity fountains that make her want to pee. Or, she might suggest RayAnne teleport herself to a safe zone, a happy place that is
not
in bed under the duvet, hugging her body pillow.

Where is her happy place these days, besides Penelope? This house? It’s close, but somehow not quite. Do people ever really find their happy place?

A minute goes by, then two. The narcotics thicken her thoughts until she muses aloud to Rory, “What was I looking for again?”

T
HIRTEEN

It was as if she were right there, on the day of the final shoot. The camera panned from Penelope’s rocking bow to the captain’s seat. Smiling tightly, RayAnne asked Bernadette, “So, you created the Blood-Tide Quests because . . . ?”

Since settling in the boat across from her mother, RayAnne kept thinking back to the months after her thirteenth birthday when her parents separated and the postdivorce fallout hit the height of family dysfunction. She was supposed to be thinking of questions a host would ask, but what she really wanted to know is what her mother could possibly have been thinking—what sort of perimenopausal state incited Bernadette to round up other fever-pitched middle-aged women to tromp the new-age spiritual landscape of sacred wells, shamans, yogis, and homeopaths just when she and Ky had needed her most? Weekends they were left in the care of Big Rick and his bimbo-of-the-month or their bug-eyed neighbor Mrs. Leeper, who parked her impressive backside at the dining room table with gluey scrapbooking projects, only occasionally rousing herself to open a can of soup or scorch some Hamburger Helper.

“Why did I create the quests?” Bernadette cleared her throat. “Twenty years ago, we didn’t talk much about menopause, at least not publicly. We do now, thank Goddess, but before
The Silent Passage
came out, menopause
was
mostly silent. Bringing it out of the closet, gathering women to embrace their life changes? To break the cycle of shame society imposes on women’s bodies? That just seemed like a cause to get behind.”

Facing her mother, RayAnne chomped a sharp incisor into the sore on her lip, the pain like voltage—her eyes welled instantly. On either side of Penelope, attentive sponsors bobbed in all-too-close proximity. Why couldn’t they have shown up the day before, when the Birkett twins had been so compelling?

A question better swallowed fell from her lips: “Weren’t your children a cause?” After a half second she pivoted to the camera boat. “Scrap that.” Back to Bernadette, she scrabbled. “I mean . . . wasn’t it difficult to sacrifice so much family time?”

Bernadette looked affronted. “Meaning?”

“Meaning going off, doing all that questing . . .” Her inner idiot prompted her to add, “Like, all the time.”

“Oh, honey, I wasn’t gone all that much.”

RayAnne leaned in. “Every weekend?” It was as if she couldn’t stop herself. She fought a sudden desire to jump ship.

Invoking her Tone of Ultimate Patience, Bernadette frowned. “RayAnne, these women needed me even more than you did.”

“More? Mom. Seriously.”

A wave passed over her mother’s features, and when she continued her voice wobbled. “I was a stay-at-home mother for twelve years!”

“Sure, but . . .” RayAnne caught the sudden look of panic in her mother’s eye. “Mom? You okay?”

“No!” Bernadette gulped, an edge of hysteria in her voice. “I’m seasick.”

“What? You don’t get seasick!”

“How would you know? You’ve never seen me in a buh-
boat
.” Bernadette grasped both armrests and tilted as if set to launch.

“I have so.” Could it be she’d never seen her mother in a boat?

Bernadette exhaled. “Now,
there’s
an omen I didn’t heed. Why would a woman who is afraid of water marry a man that spent half his life on boats?”

“Why didn’t you ever mentio—”

“A lot of good it would’ve done!” Bernadette’s cheeks sucked in and huffed out, Lamaze-style. “You three were always out fishing, sailing, swimming, or whatever. You all love the water. I . . . just
don’t
. I never said anything because I didn’t want to be the killjoy.”

RayAnne shook her head. “But I’m your daughter! How could I not know you’re afraid of water?”

“Maybe because you never paid attention!” Bernadette’s eyes darted, as if seeking some escape, but everywhere was water, pontoons bobbing, and cameras aimed at them like cannons.

Amy made frantic hand gestures they both ignored. RayAnne suddenly yanked free her earpiece, and Cassi’s distant voice fell to her lap, squawking like some tiny mouse.

“But then why?” RayAnne cast a Vanna White palm to showcase the great expanse of water now frothing with whitecaps. “Why are you out here
now
?”

“To help you!” The pitch in her mother’s voice climbed as Penelope lifted on a sizable swell. “You needed a guest! Here I am!” Bernadette looked then like she might vomit. When RayAnne realized her mother indeed would, she quickly scanned the boat for some receptacle, but there was only her tackle box.

Next came the moment, recorded for posterity from two different camera angles, when she had formed a bowl with cupped hands so that her mother, the shade of pale lettuce by then, could vomit into them. Not only did Bernadette vomit, it kept coming—her breakfast had been a kelp-and-kale Green Monster smoothie, which upon coming out, looked and smelled remarkably like it had going in. RayAnne had to gulp back her own meal of Special K and soy milk to keep from joining the revelry.

And there, cast in HD digital vividness, was the triumphal, final moment of RayAnne’s last interview on
Fishing
.

If only it had been a dream. It’s dark when she stirs on the living room floor, hand throbbing, stomach growling, and Rory snoring lightly next to her. She peels her cheek from the bubble wrap she’d been using as a pillow and gets to her feet, shaking the leg that’s asleep, mumbling to herself in a Jack Crabb rasp, “Pick it up, girl. Git it together.”

And she will. At the moment she will get it together with another painkiller and something to eat. Turning her back on the living room mess, she pulls the pocket doors closed and follows Rory to his bowl in the kitchen, where the only light is the microwave blinking its perpetual 12:00, never having been reset after the last blown fuse. Not that time much matters—she eats when hungry and sleeps when tired. She downs a pill and with some difficulty unwraps a Lean Cuisine pizza and slides it in the microwave. She plows her good hand through kitchen drawers in search of the corkscrew, and when she pulls, it snags a fat manila envelope that falls from the drawer to the linoleum to spill its contents, a dozen handwritten envelopes. Those viewer letters she’d meant to give to Cassi weeks and weeks ago.

As RayAnne scoops them up to toss them back in the drawer, the microwave dings a distraction and she sets them on the table. Cutting the pizza will be a problem, but why bother with silly refinements when she intends to eat the whole thing? She cannot manage the corkscrew either, so gives up and locates a cheaper bottle with a twist-off cap.

Dinner served, she finds the dog-eared page in her current paperback and holds it open with her elbow, keeping her hand elevated while eating.

Reading during meals was never allowed at Dot’s house—a book on the table was a crime against civility. Gran claimed mealtime was sacrosanct, family time, and also, she wanted the meal to be the center of attention, fishing for all the compliments her dishes deserved.

Defying the rule in her own home usually makes RayAnne feel like an adult, each splat of tomato sauce on a page a mark of independence. But now, snarfing through a tasteless Frisbee of pizza and leaving greasy prints on the pages of a mediocre story, she wishes for someone to press her book aside and demand to talk. It’s a silly book, chick lit with sappy characters, and exclamation points!, and the font seems suddenly too small. Rory follows her every movement until the pizza is nearly gone and he noses in, hoping for crust. She caves. “Fine.”

It dawns on her that wine and painkillers might not be a great combo, because she feels woozy. Picking up one of the letters, she focuses and reads the return address and name aloud to Rory. When his ears prick up, she pulls a few more close and opens them with a fork and her teeth.

Dear Miss Dahl,

My name is Eleanor. Your show with the grandmother lost in the blizzard really got to me. I read her book twice. It occurred to me that my grown daughters and granddaughters might like to hear something of my history as a Rockette and a mobster’s mistress, so I wrote a few stories and had them bound into books—they said it was the best gift ever. Thanks for the inspiration and keep having great women on your show!

E.B.

“Exactly,” she says to Rory. “
That
is the type of viewer Cassi and I were hoping for—women that could relate to the guests, with stories of their own, right?”

Dear RayAnne,

We don’t see much TV with real people (unless you count reality shows that have real
awful
people), but your guests seem so interesting, and real, like you. I kept telling my friends to watch, but the show was on the same night as our Zumba class, so we convinced our instructor to change it. Now we all watch you. Keep it real!

Jenny, Chris, Kelsey, Mark, Jennifer, Jenna & Meg

Included is a picture of a smiling thirty-something group in workout togs, all giving a thumbs-up.

“Rory, we have fans.”

There are more letters with the same bent of “keep it up and keep it real” accolades.

Those people in the ER liked it. She looks to Rory. “The ER
was
yesterday, right?” she says and offers another bit of crust. The letters are packed with the sort of praise and encouragement that staff and producers have been so stingy with. Still, it might not be too late for her to salvage the host’s seat at WYOY. Maybe she should march down there and apologize for the unprofessional meltdown with her mother and her father’s drunken behavior and ask for a second chance. She’s just not so sure that going back to being the fishing consultant will be enough—like that song Gran sings, “How you gonna keep ’em on the farm once they’ve seen Par-ee?” The fact is she wants to host the show. And if not this show, another one. Uncle Roger had offered her a shot, hadn’t he? That might not be so terrible—if she could talk Cassi into going along with her. But every time she thinks of Roger, she finds herself drifting to the nearest sink to wash her hands.

She picks up the last envelope. It’s thicker than the others, containing an unsigned card and a stamped envelope—the letter is written on a page torn from a spiral notebook, the handwriting reminding her of Ky’s teenaged scrawl.

Dear Fishing RayAnne,

I’m in ninth grade and live in Madison. I have two sisters. My mom likes your show and I’m hoping you would sign this card for her—I’ve included a stamp and put our address on the envelope. Mail really cheers Mom up—she has ALS and was in the hospital a lot but now we have a hospice lady come to our house. My mom’s name is Maggie.

Yours truly,

Ryan Edward Olson

She’d been about to take a sip of wine but sets her tumbler down. Looking at the date, she swallows and slowly pulls out the enclosed card—the sort she would normally laugh at—a photo of a kitten looking mischievous, posed next to a spilled pot of geraniums.

Ryan Edward Olson.
This boy couldn’t be more than thirteen. He’s gone to the trouble of searching out the address of the station and writing to her—a total stranger—in a bid to lift his dying mother’s spirits. She knuckles away a tear, then another, then lets herself go, shoulders shaking, until she’s honking into her napkin. Here she’s been feeling sorry for herself—wallowing, just as Gran said—while out in the real world others carry on with all manner of hardships. Boys try to cheer dying mothers.

RayAnne catches her red-eyed reflection in the kitchen window and shakes her head, muttering, “Pissant.”

Ryan mentioned hospice. Hoping it’s not too late, she reaches for a pen, lays open the card to the blank space—the field of white.
Her name is Maggie.

Dear Maggie,

Your son Ryan took the time to write and let me know you are a fan of our show
Fishing
. I’m so glad you enjoy it. It’s been thrilling to meet the inspiring women we have as guests, I feel so lucky to be able to interview them, and to share their stories with you.

RayAnne taps the pen.

Ryan seems like a wonderful boy, but I imagine you already know that. I don’t have children myself, but if I ever have a son, I hope he’d be as thoughtful as Ryan. He tells me you are ill, and I’m so very sorry to hear that.

The pen stops. She is out of her league here, wholly inconsequential in the scheme of things—as if anything she could say might make the merest dent in the suffering of a family three hundred miles away in a house with a hospital bed and medical equipment and death waiting at the center of it. She stares at the half-written card and remembers one of Gran’s well-worn mantras:
When in doubt, grab the nearest truth.
Gran is right, of course. Always is.

I understand you and your family must be going through very difficult times, but I also imagine you are all very brave. Ryan’s note reminded me just how precious family is, and that we need to pull close those we love. It was so sweet of him to write on your behalf.