It was the second morning after the dreadful picnic. I came down into the kitchen early, hoping to scarf down a bowl of cereal and go running before anyone else was up.
Instead I found my mom sitting at the kitchen table, talking on the phone. The cord that hooked the receiver to the phone base was ridiculously stretched, and my mom was curling a little section of it around her finger as she listened.
She looked up and caught my eyes, and I knew all was not well.
“Speak of the devil,” she said. Into the phone, as far as I could tell. “I’ll have to call you back, Marilyn.”
She got up to hang up the phone.
“I’m going running,” I said, and tried to break for the door.
“The hell you are,” she barked. “Sit.”
I did as I’d been told. She rarely if ever used that voice with me, though she used it with my father all the time. I found it best to freeze like a deer in the headlights at times like that. Say nothing, do nothing. Almost like playing dead. My father had a different set of theories.
“How do you know Zoe Dinsmore?” she asked, sitting across the table from me.
“She has these two really nice dogs,” I said. I had an angle. I was going to play on her guilt over the fact that I’d always wanted another dog and she’d always refused to get me one. “And you know how I feel about dogs. I got sort of attached to them. They go running with me in the morning.”
Then I stopped talking, and realized my mistake. If I’d left the dogs out of it, I could’ve pretended I somehow knew Mrs. Dinsmore from town. That I kept bumping into her at the library or something. But I had tipped my hand regarding my life up in the forbidden woods.
“I thought I told you never to go in those woods.”
“Yes, ma’am. I guess you did.”
“And do you want to tell me why you went and defied me?”
What I said next might have been another angle. In the back of my mind, I might have been trying to play the guilt card to get myself off the hook. But it was also the damn truth. Why go further into motives when somebody asks you for the truth and you give it?
“I think because it’s so quiet up there. It really gets to me when you and Dad fight.”
I waited for her reaction. I guess I was assuming she would take that into herself in some way. Feel the pain I had just described and understand that she had caused it. I didn’t get what I was waiting for.
“I told you, you could get lost up there.”
“But I never do. I know it like the back of my hand.”
I waited again. Nothing happened.
“You really can’t get lost,” I added. “I don’t know why you think so. The whole place is only about two or three miles wide. On one side you can see town, and on the other side you can see the river. I don’t know what you think the problem is.”
“The problem is,” she began, her voice booming, “your little cousin got lost up there, and it scared the hell out of everybody. He was gone overnight. He was only nine. We thought he might’ve been kidnapped. We thought he might be dead. And when the search party finally found him, he had hypothermia. He had to be in the hospital for a day. It was terrible. I never want to go through a thing like that again.”
My cousin—well, I had three, but only one was a “he”—was five years older than me. So this must’ve happened when I was four. Which explains why I didn’t remember.
“But he lives in Oregon,” I said.
“They were here for a visit. You were too little to remember. I felt totally responsible, because they were staying with us. If they hadn’t found him, I don’t know what I would’ve done. I’d have never gotten over it, I can tell you that right now.”
We sat quietly for a few seconds. In my head, I was going over what I had learned. Not in words, exactly, but I felt it.
Here are the words I have for it now.
When somebody holds a view that seems to make no sense, know that it makes sense to them, but for reasons you don’t know anything about yet. And I guess in a lot of cases, you never will.
I wanted to answer her, but I wasn’t sure what to say. So in my head I went to Mrs. Dinsmore’s cabin. I just thought to myself, What would the lady tell me to do?
“I’m really sorry you had to go through that,” I said. “It sounds scary and terrible.”
“It was.”
“But I’m not nine. And I really know my way around in there. And I promise I’ll be fine.”
I got up from the table, thinking I could make my break.
“Wait,” she said. “There’s more.”
I didn’t sit down again. I didn’t want to commit to much more listening. I just hovered over her, feeling tall. Too tall.
“What?”
“I don’t want you anywhere near that Dinsmore woman.”
“Why not?”
“She’s just not a suitable friend for you.”
“I wouldn’t say we were friends,” I said. But it was a lie. I would say it. Only, not to my mother. “I just really like those two dogs.”
“She’s not a good influence on you. On anyone. I don’t want any more phone calls from people telling me you’re spending time with a person like that. It’s not appropriate.”
“I don’t understand how you can say that. Just because she had a bad accident?”
“Oh, honey. That’s not all. There’s a lot you don’t know about that lady. She drank, and she took tons of drugs. Showed up different places in town out of her mind. They say it started after the accident, but
