Girls Don't Fly Page 9

  She grabs my hand and squeezes the blood out of it. “Are you honest?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you organized?”

  “Yes.”

  “On a scale of one to ten, how reliable are you?”

  “Nine.”

  “Really? How did you like my handshake?”

  I look her right in the freckles. “It hurt.”

  She smiles. “You’ll do.”

  “I’ll do what?” I ask.

  Ranger Bobbie hands me a bright orange piece of paper. “You’re hired.”

  I look at the paper. It’s an employment application. “I don’t even know what the job is.”

  “Well, sure. I’m sorry I’m in a bit of a rush today so I’ll make this quick. Some joker tried to get his boat out of the dock when the water was too low in the launch and now we’re going to have to tow him. Anyway, your end of it is I need this whole place organized. Files, supplies, everything. Answer the phone. Tell people to go to the Web site for prices on boat slips, that kind of thing. We’re closed at five every day. Mainly I want you to clean this place up. We’re a year-round facility, but in the wintertime everything goes to pot.” Her face is tight and worn. She sighs. “I cover everything from the west desert, the whole stinking lake, all the way to the city limits. I barely have time to overeat.” She pats her well-padded waist.

  I stand there looking stupid, but I like her.

  “Anyway, this is a poorly paid part-time position. But Peter says you’re desperate.”

  “I am.” Pete thinks I’m desperate? I hand her a list of the times I can work if I drop out of sewing and get early release. “But these are the only hours I can work while I’m still in school.”

  She reads over my sheet. “This will be fine for a few months.”

  “Don’t you want to see my résumé?”

  “Your dad hired a nephew of mine at the plant. My nephew says he’s never seen a man who is more fair and hardworking. Does the apple fall far from that tree?”

  “Which apple?”

  “Are you a hard worker, like your dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “I trust you can file in alphabetical order and run a computer better than I can.”

  I nod, trying to keep up.

  “Are you good on a computer?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Fine. This desk is your first item of business. The guy running this office right now is a total slob. And there he is now.” She stands to go.

  Pete walks toward us. “That’s a little harsh.”

  Ranger Bobbie says, “Good grief, Pete. Can’t you even throw junk mail away? This place is a disgrace.”

  “I was getting around to it.”

  She points a long finger at my job description. “Okay, enough. So here are the things I want you to do. Here’s the filing cabinet. Here’s the computer. Pete can tell you the passwords. Every once in a while they’ll need you as a spare body for some search-and-rescue stuff.”

  “Search and rescue?”

  “Oh, people are always falling in the icy water at the most inconvenient times and places. But don’t worry. We have Pete and a few other crusty types to help us with that.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “We’ll start you at minimum and begrudgingly give you a raise about the time you find something better to do with your life. If you do a good job for us, you can work more after you graduate. Summer gets busy. You have any questions?”

  “What am I doing again?”

  “You’ll figure it out. Don’t let Pete con you into doing his laundry, if he has any. Don’t be a doormat to him. He’ll just walk all over you, if you know what I mean?”

  I nod. Doormat. Sheez. Do I have WELCOME written on my forehead?

  “One more thing,” says Ranger Bobbie. “Nobody eats the mocha almond fudge out of the freezer.” She glares at Pete. I almost laugh, but she looks serious.

  “I don’t know who’d do that,” says Pete.

  “I mean it,” says Bobbie. “Things have been known to happen out on that lake to employees caught stealing.”

  “Aye, aye, cap’n,” says Pete.

  19

  Incubation:

  Sitting on an egg so the bird inside stays warm enough to keep growing.

  When I get home I hear the cement mixer in the backyard. My mother’s concrete dreams are coming true. Who said there isn’t fun after forty?

  My brothers are waiting at the door. “You gotta get us to hoops right now. Mom’s mad.”

  I walk into the backyard. Dad and Mom are hard at work pouring. Danny is off getting covered in mud in the corner of the yard.

  Dad is lost in a world of perfect measurements and standards of engineering excellence. Mom straightens up her back slowly and comes over, away from the mixer. She has a glob of wet cement in her hair that blends with her gray. She yells over the noise, “Where’ve you been?”

  I yell back, “I got a new job.”

  “I thought you were studying for a test.”

  I yell, “I’m going to be a secretary at the marina.”

  “The marina?” Mom motions me farther away from the cement mixer so we can talk normally, or as normally as my mother and I ever talk. She says, “You got a job at the lake? They found a woman who’d been set on fire down there two weeks ago.”

  “They did?” I say. “I didn’t hear about that.”

  “There are a lot of things you don’t hear about when you’re in high school. I’m glad you got a job, but how are you going to be a secretary when you’re in class all day?”

  Across the muddy lawn, Danny is crawling on his knees to get a ball that has gone into a bush. He’s going to rip those jeans for sure, and probably rip up his knees while he’s at it. All Dad would have to do is look up and tell Danny to stand over the bush to get the ball.

  I look back at Mom. “I’m going to take work release instead of sewing. I can work every other day and weekends until five.”

  “Who’s going to watch the kids between four-thirty and five-thirty when I leave and you get home?”

  I knew this would make her mad. “Andrew knows how to babysit.”

  Mom looks at me skeptically. “He’s eleven.”

  “I was taking care of the boys at nine. And Mel will be here. It’s only for an hour, every other day, and I’ll put the food for dinner together the night before so all I’ll have to do when I get home is put it in the oven.”

  “Who’s going to bring the kids home from school on those days?”

  I give her a pleading look.

  “So I’m going to have to drive the carpool when I’m trying to get things together here before work.” She sighs. “Is it a good job at least?”

  “Mostly I’m organizing things right now, during the slow season. But they might bring me on full-time and then I’d make more. I could borrow Melyssa’s car to take the kids in the morning on the days I work, so you’d have Moby and ... I’d be back before you left. And I’d still do dinner and clean up every night.”

  “Oh, fine. I don’t have anything else to do right before I go to work all night, right?” She smiles. I know she’s not happy, but at least she’s willing to try it out. “If this doesn’t work you’ll quit, right?”

  “Right.” I hug her stiffly. It really is cool of her.

  Brett and Andrew stand close by. “Could we stop the hugging and start the driving?” Andrew asks.

  “Like yesterday,” says Brett.

  A yell erupts from the center of the yard. It’s not Danny. It’s Dad. Danny has thrown a basketball in the middle of Dad’s perfectly level cement. Dad looks like someone just stepped on his birthday cake. Andrew and Brett crack up. Okay, I do too.

  Dad throws his hands in the air at us. “That was perfectly good cement. What is wrong with this family?”

  “There’s a list,” Mom mutters.

  By nightfall, I’ve been to two basketball games, cleaned the house, made brownies, and redecorated the basement
in the shabby-no-seriously-shabby look. It’s amazing what a shelf, an old rug, a heating lamp, and a door propped up on food storage containers can do to spruce up a dungeon.

  I sit in the light of my lamp and pore over my books on the Galápagos Islands and cormorants. It doesn’t feel like homework. It’s more like torture. I wonder what I’m doing. I can fake my way through a test if I need to. But my idea of creativity is putting sour cream in the frosting. There is no way I can come up with a proposal better than Erik’s or those other brains’. And then there’s that whole issue of the thousand dollars.

  I open the book Pete has given me. The turquoise eyes of the cormorant, matching the turquoise sky, look back at me.

  With fewer than fifteen hundred currently in existence, the exquisite flightless cormorant is a rare jewel indeed, perhaps one of the rarest birds in the world. Found only off the shores of Isabela and Fernandina islands, the flightless cormorant has evolved into a lovely example of natural peculiarity.

  Although one might at first pity the creature for its puny wings, the birds are well suited to their particular biological niche. Heavy and powerful, these birds dive into the turbulent coastal waters like feather-lined torpedoes. Their small wings carry fewer water bubbles than those of their flying relatives, thus creating less resistance.

  They are also quite fertile when necessary. This pliability preserves the species in times of disease or environmental calamity. For obvious reasons, they rarely travel far from where they are born.

  I like this bird less and less the more I read about it. What is Pete thinking?

  My brothers all come rumbling down the stairs. Since it’s Saturday night they’re all up late looking to break some heads or at least toilet paper something. “Hey!” yells Andrew. “What are you doing?”

  “Studying,” I say.

  They all four climb on my sleeping bag, with me in it, to get warm. It kind of hurts, but I love being buried in brothers.

  “It’s creepy down here,” says Brett.

  “I know,” says Andrew. “Can I move down here when you move out?”

  “Why should you get it all to yourself?” says Brett.

  I wiggle free and sit up. “Did the TV upstairs break or something?”

  “We want to know what happens to the pirates,” says Danny.

  “And the prince,” says Carson.

  “What about the scullery maid?” I say.

  They all look at me blankly.

  “Okay. When last we saw the sad inhabitants of Deadendia, they were listening to the pirate king tell his wild tales of the island of Isabela, with the promise that this faraway place held a jewel so magical that it could stop evil trolls in their tracks.”

  “And some of them wanted to go get it,” says Carson.

  “Only two would have the honor and the curse to travel to Isabela. The competition to sail would be as fierce as the honor would be great. First they would have to win a wrestling match. The rules were simple: The last man standing was the winner. The competition was more complicated: The wrestling match was against a pirate that was half donkey.”

  “Which half?” says Andrew.

  “He looked mostly like a man, but he had the brain and strength of a donkey. He wore a magically strong red bandanna over his donkey ears, and he won all his fights by knocking people down when they weren’t looking. One by one, six would-be travelers fell to his brutal head butts, until at last it was a scullery maid’s turn. All the other fair maidens had chickened out, but not this one. She had chickened in.”

  “What?” say the boys.

  “It just so happened that the scullery maid had fried some chicken the night before, and it smelled delicious. When it was her turn she simply went to her rucksack and unwrapped the chicken in front of the famished donkey man. He sat right down and began eating before he realized he had left her standing and victorious.”

  “That’s cheating,” Andrew says.

  “No,” I say, “it’s adapting.”

  “Is that the only test?” says Brett.

  “No, there are two more. The second test was that they had to give up ten gold coins.”

  “Why?”

  “Pirates like treasure.”

  “So what did the scullery maid do for that?” says Andrew.

  “She lost. The prince and a really tall court jester were better financed.”

  “What was the third test?” says Brett. He looks bored.

  “The ghost chest. Haunted by spirits of birds that die alone and miserable at sea, its glittering, gory loot can only be recovered if the chest is unlocked with bird language. If the travelers couldn’t speak to the cormorants, there would be no point in going.”

  “Bird language?” says Andrew. “What is it with you and birds?”

  “Like, who’s going to know that?” says Brett, shaking his head.

  “Most pirates speak bird,” says Carson.

  Danny asks, “So who wins?”

  “None of them. They all had to learn.”

  “Why not just get the pirates to do it for them?” says Danny.

  We all look at Danny.

  “Good question,” I say. “But only the true seeker of the magic stone can command it.”

  “Whatever,” says Brett.

  20

  Cavity Nests:

  Nests in trees or holes. Safer but stuffy.

  My first day of work is Monday after school. When I get to the marina office, it’s locked. I step back from the window, wondering what I should do. I walk outside and look around. The masts of the boats tip in the wind. The state flag flaps hard. A storm must be on its way. A gull passes over me. I wave. It squawks.

  I stand on the sidewalk. I mumble to myself, “Doesn’t anybody keep track of things around here?”

  Pete comes out of the women’s restroom, holding a wrench and a pipe that is dripping something. “Hey, you’re here.”

  “Yeah,” I say, trying not to look at the pipe.

  He laughs and twirls the pipe once, but it falls out of his hand and lands on the ground with a clank. After he picks it up he laughs again. “Pretty much do everything around here, whether I know what I’m doing or not.”

  “Yeah,” I say profoundly. I’m suddenly a bag of nerves being alone with Pete. He’s someplace weird in my head. Not my age. Not a grown-up. Not ugly enough. But with really germy hands.

  After he unlocks the office, we go inside and survey the mess. Let’s say it’s impressive.

  Pete says, “So I have to go up to school now. The university, I mean. You have any questions?”

  “You’re leaving?” I say. I try to override my panic button. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Just kind of organize things. Make Bobbie happy. Answer the phone if it rings.”

  “What do I say?”

  “Hello?” he says, walking toward a camper.

  “What if they ask me something?”

  “Bobbie left you a sheet. It’s on my desk somewhere. It has the hours and the rules. You could probably read that.”

  Why is it that adults are always giving me a job and then walking off before they explain what I’m supposed to do?

  He keeps talking like I’m following him, which I’m not. “And put up a sign, would you? Restroom is closed for today.”

  “I’ll do a better job if you show me where to put things.”

  He says, “That’s assuming I know where things go.”

  When I open the first file-cabinet drawer in the office I find ten pounds of paper, a squeaky dog toy, and a half-eaten bag of Tootsie Rolls. There are receipts, invoices, and Victoria’s Secret catalogs all mixed together. I burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” says Pete.

  I startle. “You’re still here?”

  “I thought I’d better show you the trash heap and all.”

  “How do you know where anything is?”

  “I just find it when I need it,” says Pete.

  “But what about the bill
s getting paid?”

  “We had someone doing that. But she quit.”

  “How do you do all your stuff for school and work here?”

  “I’m researching my dissertation right now, so I only have to teach one class this semester. I live here, so it doesn’t take up that much extra time some days.”

  “You live here?”

  “I live in the camper. Weird, huh?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I live in my parents’ unfinished basement in a sleeping bag.”

  “Sounds like me at your age.”

  Except for the beard, Pete looks like he could be my age. I say, “Is getting your PhD a killer?”

  “School’s easy. It’s jumping through all their hoops that slows me down. Arrested development, I guess. Do you need anything before I go?”

  I lift the lid on a prehistoric box of donuts poking out from under a stack of newspapers. I may have found the epicenter of the mold. “Because you know where it is?”

  “Good point,” says Pete.

  I stack and sort and chuck for two hours. At four o’clock I get a call on my cell. It’s Andrew.

  “I’m not sure where Danny is!”

  I remind myself to breathe. “What? How long has he been missing?”

  “I’m not sure. He was playing hide-and-seek with Carson and then Carson couldn’t find him.”

  “Where’s Melyssa?”

  “Asleep. Mom told me not to wake her up unless it was an emergency.”

  “Okay. Let’s try something first. Were they playing inside or out?”

  “In.”

  “Okay. Did you look in all the hampers and the cupboards? Start with the hamper in their room.”

  Andrew leaves the phone and comes back. “Got him.”

  I say, “Just hold on to him until Dad shows up.”

  There’s no sign of Ranger Bobbie. When the marina phone rings, I read the info sheet Bobbie left for me. At one point an old guy shuffles in to ask for Pete and then scowls at me. He says, “You doing this permanent?”