The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac Page 5

  Instead of dying, she briefly lost her mind. Organ music played in her ears, a relentless, cheerful waltz that made her want to rise and dance until she dropped dead. Voices chattered at her. She fielded their remarks with a measured patience.

  What an intelligent, refined person you are, Mrs. Dr. Roebuck.

  “Oh, my darlings,” she would reply. “How very kind of you to say so.”

  Teach us, please, how to be as elegant as you are.

  “You are too kind. My poor darlings. How marvelous of you to notice.”

  Eli, sitting stiffly at her bedside, had once heard this and asked her, “Gladys, what are you saying? Who are you talking to?”

  His voice had shattered the waltz, the voices shrieking in alarm and then gone. Gladys had seen her bedridden, disheveled image in Eli’s broad red spectacles. It all came crashing down on her again.

  “Leave me alone,” she had moaned.

  She had remained inconsolable until they mercifully drugged her to sleep.

  Finally, inevitably, as the hormones and the drugs sloughed off, Gladys stabilized. Her mental health—always fragile, always a little shaky—was mostly restored.

  The doctor declared her barren, and Gladys begrudgingly accepted this as the truth. She told herself she didn’t want children, anyway, dirty, disgusting creatures that they were, and she refused to go to a friend’s house unless their children were safely away at school or with a nanny. She lived in this frozen state for nearly two years following Jonathan’s death, congratulating herself for being a modern woman, but the sight of a stroller on Main Street unsettled her and she averted her eyes from the baby even if it was a friend’s child.

  Rarely, only when Eli begged, she undressed for her marital duty and opened her legs to him, staring up at the ceiling while he grunted and stabbed. Silly, perverted men, she thought. Men would enjoy anything, as long as it was soft and wet and willing. At least her husband wasn’t as bad as some.

  He did annoy her sometimes, with his foot fetishes and his monster-tracking. His obsession with the outdoors, with hiking and camping and watching the trees and the sky, was incomprehensible to her. She enjoyed the smell of a rose or the vision of a pink sunset, just like any woman. But she far preferred the city and its tidy, cheerful shops to the dirt and shadow of the woods.

  Still, he provided for her and loved her, and she was grateful. And now she had so much more to be grateful for: To everyone’s surprise, she was pregnant. Even better, she was far along in the pregnancy, past the point of even Jonathan’s stillbirth. She feared for the baby’s life, but the doctors told her: All is well. Relax, think positively, drink orange juice. If possible, avoid cigarettes and alcohol and especially coffee. The baby would be “just nifty.” When the doctor had said the word nifty, Gladys had stiffened, but Eli had reached over and put a hand protectively on her back, and she knew that this gesture meant, No matter, I’m here for you; I will always be here for you, and all will be well.

  So when her husband called to her to come outside and join him, Gladys went willingly. It was ten-thirty in the morning. She had been polishing the silver at the dining room table, watching him with a droll expression, wondering what had captured his interest.

  Birds, apparently.

  Tedious, Gladys thought, but she looked up, anyway.

  And, admittedly, it was spectacular. Starlings were filthy little birds individually, Gladys thought, but as a collective unit they were magical.

  Hundreds—thousands?—of starlings thickened the sky, forming a dark funnel one moment, twisting into an hourglass the next. They swelled and fell like a black wave or like an impending pestilence. Watching them was spellbinding. It was as though they had tethered her painlessly through the chest and would soon tug her airborne.

  Gladys murmured her appreciation. She rested a palm on her belly and felt the baby surge, as though it, too, were bound to the flock. Eli stepped closer to her, never taking his eyes from the sky. He kissed her distractedly on the side of the head. Then he removed his glasses with their heavy lenses and began to polish them on his shirt.

  The starlings rose and fell, rose and fell. They reassembled themselves into a new shape. Gladys’s brow furrowed. It was as though they were spelling a word. She squinted. Yes, she thought. Yes, they were spelling a word.

  She read the black letters in the sky.

  DOOM.

  The starlings fell apart, the word dissolving. How silly of me, Gladys thought. The flock sharply returned to itself, hanging in the blue as though nailed to it:

  DOOM.

  Gladys shoved her knuckles into her eye sockets. There, too, on the backs of her eyelids, were the starlings, white this time in a black sky.

  DOOM.

  Gladys cried out. She began to shake.

  “What’s the matter?” Eli asked her.

  “The baby,” she sobbed. “The baby is going to die. Not again, Eli. Oh, no, not again!”

  He put a hand on her belly. It roiled under his palm. His eyebrows shot up.

  “Gladys,” he told her. “You’re in labor.”

  “Doom,” she bawled. “We’re doomed. The baby. Us. We’re all doomed.”

  Eli struggled with her into the house and then to the carport. Her bag was packed, ready, sitting in the foyer closet alongside their boots and shoes, and she managed in her terrible state to remind him to fetch it. He obeyed with a professional calm that irritated her. They drove to the hospital. Gladys bore her contractions silently now, but the tears fell in droves.

  The baby, Gladys was sure, was dead inside her. Lost. You dumb doomed baby. She could feel its death plowing through her, soaring toward her heart in one dark twisting line. The starlings were inside her now.

  In the sterile little room, the nurse gave her an enema. Gladys wept from the humiliation. They drugged her. She fell into a dreamless sleep.

  When she awoke, the baby was placed in her arms, not only alive but lovely, a perfectly defiant little being. Its eyes were lucid, skeptical, even, and it stared at her haughtily, as though it already saw her weakness.

  “But how can this be?” she asked.

  The nurse brought her a mug of ice chips. “As strong as a bear cub, this little girl. Born last night near midnight.”

  Gladys, speechless, cupped the baby’s soft pink head with one palm. The baby mewled and then shut her scowling eyes as though to sleep.

  “She wanted out, I tell you,” the nurse said cheerfully. “Would you like some broth?”

  Gladys thought again of the starlings.

  “Where is my husband?”

  “At home, maybe? Sleeping one off? I’m sure he had a drink or two after the good news.”

  Gladys had her baby now. She was exhausted, relieved, too tired for elation. She leaned back against the pillows and shut her eyes.

  “I’ll take her back to the nursery so you can rest,” the nurse said.

  In Gladys’s mind’s eye, the starlings unfurled. They were regrouping.

  “No,” Gladys said. “Leave her here. Just for a bit. Just for a moment.”

  But then the baby’s bright bruised eyes reopened. She began to cry. It was a small cry, but it bothered Gladys. It occurred to her that she had no idea how to take care of a baby. She had babysat children, her little sisters, but that was years ago, and she had always hated it. She didn’t remember how to feed a baby or bathe her or change her diaper. She wasn’t even sure how to kiss her or how to comfortably hold her. Even now, reclining with the baby on her chest, she felt as useless and rigid as a slab of petrified wood.

  Was this all that motherhood was? Perpetual, mutating fear? A fear that blackened first this perspective and then shifted and obscured another?

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Gladys said as the nurse turned to leave. “I’m tired, after all. Take her. Take her now, please.”

  The nurse obediently retrieved the baby, scooping her up and kissing her almost roughly on the cheek. The baby’s cries softened as the nurse bore
her into the hallway.

  Gladys listened to the cries fade. She’d feel better after some sleep, she told herself, but her heart, made of a thousand black wings, was flinging about in her chest, and she feared what she would see in her dreams.

  She fought to stay awake. She was fingering the pages of a ladies’ magazine when her husband ambled into the room. She could see that he was happy.

  “Camille’s a doll,” Eli said. “Well done, Gladys.”

  For a moment, Gladys was confused. Then she remembered: Camille. Her grandmother’s name. Also the name of her horse when she was a girl, that broad-rumped brown mare with the white star on her chest. The animal had been slow and patient, allowing Gladys to drape her in old tablecloths and braid her mane and tail. Gladys had always wanted a daughter named Camille, she’d told Eli, but the name sounded wrong now, fit for a different age and place. Camille was the name of a dead woman and a dead horse. How could she name her daughter after such things?

  Better the name of a missing person, someone lost but maybe, one day, found.

  “Amelia,” she said.

  Eli hesitated for a moment. “Okay, then.”

  She could tell he wasn’t crazy about the name. Gladys didn’t care.

  “Amelia Grace,” she continued.

  Eli perched on the edge of her bed and patted her knee with a touch more friendly than intimate. He wore a dapper suit and a crisp bow tie. He was dressed to see patients.

  “You’re not going in today, are you?” Gladys pressed.

  “No. Maybe. What would you like me to do?”

  Gladys turned and looked out the window, her tone flat. “Do what you must.”

  Outside, the white pines shook lightly in a fine summer breeze. The day was so clear it felt ominous. There was nothing for that bright sky to do but blacken and wound.

  The bed creaked. Eli was leaving. He kissed her head and bade her goodbye. “I’ll come by tonight,” he said at the door. “Rest well.”

  Theirs was a good marriage, Gladys reminded herself. But she suddenly wished she had a view of the parking lot. She wanted to see him get into his car. She wanted to see which way he turned, if he chose the scenic route by the river or the more direct route through town. To the left or to the right. She guessed to the left. She would like to be sure, if only to regain a little confidence.

  She rested her head against the pillows and put aside her magazine. Sleep still frightened her. Regardless, it came.

  Hours later, the room dark and cool, Gladys awoke. She did not feel well, only light-headed and weak. At the window were tiny strips of bright, glimmering light through the darkness, like holes punched into a sheet. For a moment she thought the drapes had been pulled. They were ravaged, moth-eaten. Gladys wrinkled her nose, disgusted. How could a hospital hang such shabby fabric?

  But then the window moved. It moved like a living being. Light flickered, darkness fell away. There were no drapes, no torn fabric. The window had been covered not with curtains but with living things.

  Birds.

  Light split into the room and Gladys heard the starlings chattering evilly as they soared past, some of them in their excitement striking the window, drilling into it as if they meant to come inside and race down her throat.

  Gladys screamed. The nurses came and clutched at her, securing her arms.

  “Calm yourself,” the prettier nurse hissed. “Calm yourself, Mrs. Dr. Roebuck.”

  Gladys shrieked and kicked. She wanted to see the baby. She wanted to walk. Her bladder was full of piss and blood, and she released it; the bed grew warm and sticky. They had wrapped her breasts, but they, too, flowed with milk. The room smelled wet and fecund, like a diseased swamp.

  “You people,” Gladys said hatefully to the nurses, her fear flowing to liquid anger. “You peons. Let go. Where is my daughter? Let go of me! What’s happened to my Amelia?”

  The nurses eyeballed each other like frightened horses. Gladys stopped thrashing and took a deep breath. The prettier nurse, noting Gladys’s cooperation, nodded at her colleague, and the other released an arm and walked quickly out of the room. The prettier nurse released her grip, too, and stroked Gladys’s shoulder soothingly, but Gladys could hear in her voice a thick dislike.

  The other nurse returned with Amelia. She tried to hand her to Gladys, but Gladys demurred.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want to hold her. Just to see her. To make sure she’s all right.”

  The baby was well, satisfied from a recent bottle and sleepy from the trials of being born. She kept her little eyes fastened tightly shut, as though refusing to look at her mother. Gladys pestered the nurses with questions about every wrinkle and discoloration and coo, but the nurses were steadfast: The baby was well; there was nothing wrong with her; she was perfect. Redness, bruising, gurgling—all of that was to be expected. Gladys half-listened, eyes and fingers roving wildly over the baby, seeking imperfections. The nurse holding the baby grew tired of supporting the child at such an awkward angle and asked Gladys again if she wanted to hold the baby herself.

  “No,” Gladys said. “No, I’m fine. Please. Just. Take care of her. My Amelia. Take care of her, please.”

  The ugly nurse straightened, bringing the baby against her shoulder, and clucked reassuringly. She was the kinder of the nurses, filled with pity. She was dowdy, fat, and a little too pale, but at least she was kind.

  The other nurse—slim, pretty, skeptical—said she would ring for a doctor. She glared at Gladys with little concern, only rancor.

  Gladys supplicated the kinder nurse. “The birds, you see. They’re scaring me. The way they gathered at the window. Like an army. An evil army. You see?”

  “You need to sleep,” the pretty nurse said. “Sleep will help with the mania, with the hormones…”

  Gladys knit her brow. Why wouldn’t this woman go away?

  “… and,” the pretty nurse continued, “a tranquilizer. You’ll need another tranquilizer. I’ll ring the doctor straightaway.”

  “Young lady,” Gladys said, “I would like to see the head nurse, please. This is an outrage.”

  The pretty woman raised her chin. “I’m the head nurse, Mrs. Dr. Roebuck.”

  “Then you should be fired. I’ll see to it that you are.”

  The kind nurse looked as if she was about to cry.

  “Take the baby back to the nursery,” the pretty nurse said, and the kind nurse obeyed quickly.

  “Childbirth,” the nurse said pedantically to Gladys, “can be very trying. A woman under duress may see things or hear things, but they aren’t really there. A woman under duress—”

  “I will see to it that you’re demoted immediately,” Gladys interrupted. “I’m a powerful woman. A doctor’s wife.”

  “A podiatrist’s wife,” the nurse corrected.

  Gladys hated her weak limbs then. In a better state, she would have leapt from the bed and smacked this pretty little brunette chicken senseless.

  “Get me the doctor,” Gladys ordered. “Right now.”

  The woman bowed her head with fake reverence, turned sharply, and hurried out of the room, her white shoes squeaking miserably against the floor.

  I’ll teach this rude young woman a lesson, Gladys thought. Having such a task at hand made her feel better. It gave her control.

  And sure enough, as promised, Gladys worked on the woman’s demotion throughout her week’s stay in the hospital. She was kept on as a nurse but was forced into the night shift. Gladys took pleasure in bettering things and saw to it that the kind fat nurse took up the vacated position, despite the hospital’s reluctance regarding her leadership skills.

  The key to being powerful, Gladys knew, was telling people you were powerful. Eli stood at her side, lips pressed, as she ranted and raved to anyone who would listen. She leaned on them all, wronged, tearful, until they had no choice but to give in to her.

  When it was time to return home, Gladys was glad for it. She left with a feeling of triumph. She had h
er daughter now. The pretty nurse had received her just deserts. The black starlings had dispersed. Perhaps she had imagined them after all? She could hold Amelia now, almost confidently. The baby regarded her with a hesitant trust, snuggling into her but starting at the smallest movement or sound.

  I love you, Gladys thought but did not say. She didn’t want to jinx things. She didn’t want to spoil the girl too much. I love you and we will be all right.

  On the day Eli drove Gladys home from the hospital, the starlings had gathered in the front yard. They blanketed the grass like a shifting black sea. Gladys clutched the baby close to her, shrinking back against the passenger seat, holding her breath.

  “These damn birds,” Eli said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  I have, Gladys thought.

  The baby jumped against her. The birds, too, jumped, rising into the sky as the wheels bore down on them, flocking with a panic that alerted Gladys to a changing of the tides. She was in charge now. Doom was hers alone to gift. Only one starling remained, frantically beating its wounded wing against the edge of the lawn in a futile attempt to follow its sisters heavenward.

  With one arm supporting the baby, Gladys reached across Eli to the steering wheel.

  Her husband released his own tight grip and allowed Gladys to draw them toward what briefness remained of that dark fluttering life.

  1970

  THE PATCHWORK CAP

  It was a dreary Wednesday in early October when Eli informed Gladys that he planned to give up his flourishing podiatry practice and pursue, full-time, the region’s elusive Sasquatch.

  The good doctor was down on one knee as he spoke. He held her hand with both of his, as though proposing to her, and she stared obliquely into his face from where she sat in her ebony Windsor chair.

  “Sasquatch,” Gladys parroted. “I see.”

  She was taken aback by his passion. Eli was an exact man, precise to the point of agony, never a movement or word wasted; he was the sort of man who wore his glasses during sex. Now, to Gladys’s astonishment, his eyes watered with emotion. He clasped her hand and then her legs, his palms hot and dry. He reminded her of their dogs, sitting by the tableside, begging for scraps. His tone was both a plea and a firm declaration.