Owen's Daughter (15 page)

The first time was right here, at the small desk in her front room. It was her first Christmas in Ellie’s place, sans Ellie. Margaret had pared down considerably when she left California, but in those couple of years in Blue Dog she’d acquired more stuff. Now that she was living in Ellie’s smaller house, she decided another paring down was in order. Nobody was going to come to a winter garage sale. Whatever wasn’t essential would go to Look What the Cat Dragged In, a thrift store that benefited shelter animals.

So there she was, by herself on Christmas Eve, culling shoes she hadn’t worn in years and old boot-cut jeans that weren’t in style anymore into a trash sack. There was no one to prepare an elaborate meal for; Bonnie and Peter were spending the holidays in D.C. and Margaret had sent out their presents a month ago. Her sister, Nori, was in London, working, and Margaret, usually just fine on her own, wondered where the tears were coming from. She sat at the computer to check her e-mail before she went to bed. Nori had sent her a link to a YouTube video, a cat climbing a Christmas tree or something. Nori was the cat person. Of course, once Margaret watched it all the way through, up popped a slew of video suggestions she might enjoy. Christmas carols, home movies, cats and dogs decorated with bows. Echo II sat at her feet, agreeable to whatever Margaret suggested. “Why not watch other people’s lives if you have none of your own?” she asked the dog, who beat her tail happily against the old wood floors. From Christmas carols to reenactments of Joseph and Mary’s trek to Bethlehem, she landed on a video of Welsh sheepherders who’d rigged their flock with LED lights. When they whistled, their border collies moved the sheep, creating a green Christmas tree with a white star on the top. The star wavered side to side, because the sheep wearing the white lights apparently did not relish their position at the top of the tree, and that made her laugh. Margaret thought about Owen Garrett on horseback. That three-legged heeler dog of his was responsible for knocking up Echo I. To allow the dog to run off his energy, Owen would saddle up his horse and whistle to the dog—his name was Hope—to move twenty sheep around the pasture until he was tired. She must have watched the video fifteen times that night. Outside it was blizzarding and everyone had hunkered down for the holidays.

It wasn’t as if her loneliness were self-imposed. She’d tried to make friends here. She’d joined a bookstore reading group, but the members of that group didn’t really talk about the books so much as they gossiped about whoever hadn’t made it to the meeting. She met a nice woman—also an artist—while waiting in line to pay taxes. They struck up a conversation and seemed to have a great deal in common, so Margaret impulsively offered her phone number, inviting her to have coffee sometime. The look the woman gave her in return was searing. Did she think Margaret was trying to hit on her? Anything Margaret said made the situation worse. She didn’t want to lose her place in line, so she spent the rest of the time pretending to check messages on her phone. Such awkwardness. It brought back the embarrassment she’d felt in junior high when she’d tried to befriend one of the popular girls. For a week, they’d pointedly shunned her, and even though it had happened long ago, she never forgot the unbearable feeling of being deliberately excluded.

Margaret attended a women’s networking luncheon at the Hotel Santa Fe, a lovely place with kiva fireplaces, soft leather armchairs, and excellent food. They also had a free parking lot, which was scarce in the downtown area. There was chicken salad for lunch, followed by panna cotta for dessert. During coffee, the various businesswomen introduced themselves to the group. This took over an hour, and by the time it ended, Margaret was dizzy. How many acupuncturists, massage therapists, caterers, professional organizers, and therapists who specialized in color therapy, the way of the whale, the dolphin mind, the wolf path, and phases of the moon she hadn’t known existed could there be in this town? Not to mention more yoga instructors, shamans (shawomen?), poets, novelists, biographers, ghostwriters, and filmmakers of every sort than she could imagine. There were twice as many artists as the rest of the women added together. Every single one of them had a story like hers. They sold their work at the flea market, but you had to get on a waiting list to join and pay a fee. The farmer’s market also allowed an opportunity for art, but the percentage they took made it not worth the effort. Become a museum docent or work in an art gallery, they suggested. Press your business card on every person you meet.

The art scene was so competitive that the other artists only seemed to be seeking valuable contacts and connections. No one else seemed to be interested in trying to build true friendships, and Margaret couldn’t imagine trusting any of these women with her innermost secrets. They weren’t the give-you-a-hug, be-there-for-those-times-when-you-need-an-ear type. Those kinds of friendships had seemed gone forever, until she met Glory, two years ago, when her family moved next door. And Glory was nearly a decade younger than her.

Margaret learned if you were a single woman in your fifties, either you had massages at Ten Thousand Waves, ate lunch out every day, or shopped your way into finding friends. That wasn’t Margaret’s scene. At the training schools in town, she took advantage of low-cost massages. The students needed someone to practice on, and Margaret felt starved for touch. She needed to tend to her body, remind it that kind touches existed, even if there were no soul-deep kisses or passion. She shared laughter with Glory, but Glory’s hectic life meant that sometimes weeks would go by where they said nothing more than hi and bye to each other. The thing she really missed—and there wasn’t a friend on earth who could provide it—was sex. At age fifty, how did you explain that to someone without sounding like a pervert? She was forced to rely on her memories of what it was like to make love with Owen Garrett ten years ago, on his creaky-spring twin bed in a bunkhouse that was so often visited by mice that in their afterglow they’d inevitably hear a snap when a trap went off. “Reckon I’m fighting a losing battle,” Owen often said in his bass voice. “The best I can hope for is reducing their numbers.” That was what she missed the most: being held in a man’s arms, satisfied, and happily discussing mice in the grain bin.

After the sheep video ended, she tried to come back to earth, but it was easier to let herself fall gently into memory. Her sheepherder may have been rough around the edges in appearance, and in trouble with the law, but he knew how to coax Margaret out of her head and lead her into her body. He didn’t have any tantric moves or engage in fancy tricks with his tongue. He made love the way he laughed, with a deep, rumbling pleasure that seemed to emanate from his belly and resound through his entire body, pouring joy into hers. Passion was different for every woman. She’d had her share of we-can’t-wait-let’s-tear-our-clothes-off-immediately encounters with her ex-husband, Ray, and even with the sheepherder at the beginning of their affair. But after that, she and Owen had settled into the comforting, routine, missionary-position type of lovemaking. When he ran his fingers through her hair, it was as if he ignited some hidden erogenous zone. They had always begun there. Then he’d kiss her, sharply, hungrily at first, almost crushing his mouth into hers, and move his hands down her body, so softly, his fingertips barely brushing her breasts. He teased her into a kind of fever with those slow touches everywhere. He’d take hold of her inner thighs, gently prying her legs apart and using his thumb to make circles where they met. And once he was inside her, he moved agonizingly slowly, the exact opposite of her ex, Ray, who rushed the whole encounter, wanted it over with in as little time as possible. How did men learn all that? she often wondered. Porn?
Penthouse
? Did they shut their eyes, picturing that perfect fantasy-woman’s body? What happened when they touched the ordinary one in their bed?

She pressed replay on the sheep video and paused it on the close-up of the Welshman on horseback. She could see his hands holding the reins gently, how he leaned forward to tell his horse which way to turn. That was the part that reminded her of Owen. They’d gone riding together only a handful of times, but she’d noticed the way he held his reins with the lightest grip, as if he carried on a constant conversation with his horse’s mouth. He listened and adjusted, probably could have let go and the horse would have continued on the way Owen wanted to go. That was what she missed, being touched by someone who was entirely in tune with her needs.

“Mom?” Peter said, yawning in front of her. “What are you thinking about? You were like a million miles away.”

She quickly turned off the screen, smiling at the sight of her grown-up boy in sweat pants and a Gallaudet T-shirt that had seen better days. “What to make for breakfast.”

It was rare she got the chance to cook for anyone besides Glory’s tribe, who seemed to live on Frito pie and spaghetti. She had a few Meyer lemons in the fruit bowl, so why not use them to make pancakes for Peter? While he read the paper, she grated the lemon rind and removed all the seeds, then squeezed juice into the mix and the remainder into an ice tray to save for another time. She rinsed blueberries, chopped pecans for the batter, and browned MorningStar Farms vegetarian sausages in a frying pan. The smell had always been what caught Peter’s attention, but now he could hear the cooking sounds along with the aroma. It was close to eleven o’clock when she set the plate down in front of him. He set aside the newspaper. Echo was parked under his chair.

“You sleep okay?” she asked.

“Like a rock.”

“Do you take your implant out, or do you sleep with it?”

“Out. It has to recharge all night. Plus, sleeping in silence makes for a better night’s sleep.”

“That makes perfect sense.” She took a pancake from the stack for herself and spread it with butter. “What time is it in D.C.?”

He handed her a napkin. “I don’t know, lunchtime?” He picked up his fork.

“Did you want to check in with Bonnie?”

He frowned at his pancakes. “Do you have any maple syrup?”

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “They’re so sweet, I usually just have them with butter. Sometimes Devon cream.”

“Have me arrested for liking maple syrup,” he said.

The comment surprised her. Was it meant as a joke, or was it as hostile as it sounded? She got up from her chair to go to the fridge. “It’s no problem,” she said, trying to distance herself from the tone in his voice. The fridge seemed to always be on the brink of empty when her son was around. She fetched the tin of Canadian maple syrup she kept on the lowest shelf. It was pricey stuff, but she splurged, because it would last her a year. Peter, however, would go through the tin in a week, especially if she cooked like this every morning. “Here you go.” Sure enough, he poured a rather large puddle over the stack of pancakes, drowning out the subtle taste of lemon and the tart blueberries. She watched him inhale the food and sipped her coffee. “What’s it like?” she asked. “Or are you already so used to it that you don’t think about it?”

He chewed and swallowed. “What’s what like?”

She pointed to her ear.

“Oh, hearing.” He smiled. “It’s incredible. When they turned the cochlear implant on, I bawled like a baby.”

Margaret warmed her hands on her coffee cup. “I wish I’d been there. I also wish you’d let me know you were going under anesthesia. You know, things can go wrong.”

“Mom!” he exclaimed. “For crying out loud, am I not an adult?”

“Of course you are, Peter, but it was a general anesthesia, right?”

“And you knowing that would have helped how?”

Echo whined beneath the table. Peter reached down to give her a neck rub. “Sorry. I just, you know, wanted to do it on my own.”

“I respect that,” she said. But it still bothered her. “Why now? Why not years ago when the doctors said—”

His nostrils flared and Margaret knew she’d asked too many questions.

He set his fork down. “I didn’t tell you because what if it didn’t work? If I’d gotten your hopes up, and then wrecked them all over again, I wouldn’t be able to take it.”

She could see the tears in his eyes. “I see. I’m sorry for pecking at you, Peter. Everything turned out fine. Let’s not argue while you’re here, okay?”

There were a million things she wanted to say, but she chose to be quiet rather than be honest and get her head bitten off.

Peter sniffled and the tears retreated. “That first night, I couldn’t bear to go to sleep. I was up until four
a.m.
on iTunes, listening to all the music I missed. And eating potato chips, listening to the crunch.”

She smiled. “I can imagine.”

“Yeah, but who knows if it will last? That’s why I signed up for the Stanford medical trial for my right ear. I know, I know. It’s a crapshoot, but what do I have to lose, really?”

Margaret set down her coffee cup and reached for the pot, to refill it. “What are you talking about, Stanford?” Had he told her already, and she’d forgotten? Was it the MS?

“I told you last night.”

“So tell me again.”

“Stanford’s got a stem cell program trial coming up. They’re already using the treatment in South America. It’s amazing, Mom. They harvest cells from your forearm, where the hair grows. They tweak them in the lab, and get this—they regenerate a
pluripotent
hair cell for the inner ear. I’m on their list for my right ear. There’s too much damage for a cochlear implant, and while the tooth cap helps, this could work all on its own.”