April 19
Ryan
"Get up. We're going fishing today." I walk through the living room toward the front door.
"Fishing?" Ana asks, her forehead wrinkling. She makes no effort to move from her spot on the couch, curled up in a blanket reading a book.
"Fishing. Our rods are on the porch. Let's go."
"Why?"
"I'm making fish for dinner. Come on." I open the door.
"Do I have to come?" she asks, looking longingly back at her book.
"Do you want to stay here alone?" I ask.
She frowns. "Can I bring a book?"
"Fine."
She hops off the couch and disappears into the bedroom. I've continued to let her sleep in my bedroom. After sleeping on the couch for a month now, I've become accustomed to it. I've even found that I prefer it. Being only a few steps away from the porch when I wake up from a nightmare feeling hot and panicked is a comfort. Even being able to stare at the auroras dancing through the stars outside the big picture window helps when the sounds of gunfire and explosions echo in my ears.
I'm not the only one having difficulty sleeping. Ana has woken me up with her screaming once in the week since I stopped wearing the ski mask and again last night with muffled sobs. In the years I've lived up here, I've discovered that fishing is a relaxing pastime. I'm hoping she'll find it calming too.
Ana emerges from the cabin a few minutes later. She looks like she's expecting to be caught in a blizzard.
"It's not that cold out today. Forecast says mid-forties."
She wrinkles her nose. "That's cold."
"Where is it you're from?"
"Arizona."
A laugh bursts out of me.
"Hey, aren't you from LA?"
That sobers me up.
"I haven't been to California in a long time." I hand her the fishing pole I bought for her. "Let's go." I retrieve my walking stick from the bottom of the porch steps and set off toward the trees. She adjusts the Glock she's shoved into her belt. In the past week, she's been practicing with the Glock almost religiously. At this rate, I'll need to resupply my stock of 9mm ammo much earlier than I expected. She's been outside so often, I think she's starting to get used to it. She still refuses to go outside alone, but it's a step in the right direction.
"Remind me to get you a real holster," I say over my shoulder.
"How far is it?" she asks.
"The river is pretty close. But the good fishing spots are a little further upriver."
"Should I bring my rifle too? Are there bears?"
I stop and turn around.
"You don't need to bring it, but you may if you like. You can try hitting some moving targets."
She turns and heads back inside for the gun. I'm a little surprised that she hasn't fought me on this. I'd expected her to show the same fear of the outdoors that she demonstrated the day of the delivery, but I suppose our frequent outings for target practice have eased her nerves.
I adjust the backpack holding my fishing gear and our lunch. This time when Ana emerges from the cabin, I set off into the woods at as brisk a pace as I can manage. I don't want any more delays.
"Ryan!" she calls, her voice edged with a little bit of fear. I stop. "Wait for me," she says.
I turn and watch her approach quickly. I debate offering her a hand to hold since she seems to find that comforting. But holding hands seems like such a couple-y thing to do and I definitely don't want to risk giving her that impression. She makes the decision for me when she latches on to my left arm.
"OK," she says, "let's go."
Twenty minutes later, I'm rolling out a tarp for us to sit on at the nearest fishing spot. I set the backpack, rifle, and fishing rod near the right corner and stretch out on my stomach next to them. I begin readying my rod while Ana sits to my left. I sneak a quick glance at her and see that her face is turned to the sky. I turn my eyes skyward and see the deep blue heavens above, a few puffy white clouds drifting by. As I set up my rod stand, Ana moves so that she's lying on her back, staring up at the sky.
"I get it now," she says quietly.
"Hmm?"
"Why you live here," she says. "It's so beautiful. And peaceful."
I cast a line into the water. "Yeah, it is." I set the rod up on the stand and look down at her.
"We should come here more often," Ana says, looking up into my eyes and smiling.
I smile back at her. It would seem my plan is working spectacularly.
After a few minutes of silence, save for the birds and the sound of rushing water, Ana speaks again. "Do you plan to live here forever?"
I look out at the mountains in the distance. "Yes."
"Sounds idyllic," Ana murmurs.
I frown a little. My life is decidedly not idyllic, as she puts it. She must be looking at my face, because she asks, "What's wrong?"
I look down at her and sigh. "It can get lonely up here," I say. That's an understatement. I don't want to be around people, but that doesn't mean I don't still long for companionship. It's so bad that I find myself pining after Saph, the one person in this world who has hurt me the most. I glare at the trees on the opposite shore. Maybe I should buy myself a dog.
"Well that's not a very happy face," Ana says. I look down at her with one eyebrow raised. She smiles widely at me and laughs. Begrudgingly, I feel my own mouth twist into a slight grin.
"Is something funny?" I ask, trying and failing to suppress my smile. She continues to grin up at me.
"Yes. You," she says. "I have never in my life seen a man glare down a tree the way you just did." Her words are punctuated by giggles.
Since I'm lying on my stomach, propped up on my elbows, and Ana is lying on her back next to me, we're closer to each other than we've ever been, save for a few times one of us has hugged the other for comfort. But now we're stretched out next to each other and I'm looking down into her laughing eyes as she gives me a dazzling smile.
What must a smile look like on what's left of my face?
I look back at the river, the grin on my face dying. I generally avoid looking at myself in the mirror whenever possible. I've had little reason to smile at anything over the last five years, let alone the reflection of my face. I don't know how the expression pans out on a face half-destroyed by fire and shrapnel, lacking full muscle control and functional nerve endings.
Ana yawns. "Besides. You can't be lonely anymore, you've got a house guest. And the worst kind of house guest at that - the kind with no plans to leave in the foreseeable future."
"How long do you intend to stay here?" I ask. My voice was a bit sharper than I intended.
"I don't know." Ana's voice has lost the humorous overtones and has shifted to something darker.
She pulls the book out of her little bag and opens it. I return my attention to the fishing rod. After a few minutes of silence, I look over to see that she has fallen asleep, the book open and resting on her stomach. I pick it up and place it back in her bag to keep it safe from water.
~~~
Around lunchtime, Ana rolls toward me in her sleep. Her head comes to rest near my left arm. I look down at her and see her eyes blink open. She looks straight up at me and squints. Again I'm struck by her proximity.
"How long was I out?"
"A few hours," I say.
She yawns. "I didn't sleep well last night."
"I heard."
"I didn't wake you up, did I?" she asks, sitting up.
"It's fine."
"I'm sorry," Ana says, sounding sad.
"Hungry?" I ask, hoping to distract her.
"Sure," she says.
I sit up too and pull out the sandwiches I packed.
After a few minutes of eating in silence, she asks, "Other than to spite your parents, why did you enlist?"
I look out over the river. "My father wanted me to go to Harvard, become a lawyer, and work for his firm."
"You didn't want to be a lawyer?"
"Not particularly. I mostly didn't want to work for my dad. He'd originally planned for Joe to follow in his footsteps, but when it became clear to everyone that he wouldn't be able to cut it, Dad moved to his second choice." I look over at her and raise my eyebrows.
Ana's lips are pressed together and her expression is one of annoyance. "So you didn't like your dad trying to force his plans on you?"
"He wasn't the only one with plans for me. During my senior year of high school, my mother was focusing all her attention on getting a network to sign us. She wanted me to stay near home and participate in her wild media stunt ideas."
Ana's expression has changed from mild annoyance to anger. She's probably assuming it was my mother's plan to use my disfigurement for media attention. I continue talking to draw her away from that thought and from asking questions about it.
"Both of my parents had decided my future for me and I felt trapped. I wanted out, but I didn't want to go to college. I didn't think they'd fund me if I just moved out, so I killed two birds with one stone by enlisting. I prevented them from controlling my life and got away from them. Plus I pissed them off pretty good too. Guess that makes three birds."
"Why didn't you want to go to college?"
"I was burned out on school. My dad was always pushing me to get good grades and do things that would look good on my college application. He'd never shown much interest in me before he got it in his head that I could be the one to carry on his legacy, so having him suddenly all up in my business was... weird. I put off the applications as long as I could. My father ended up writing the essays himself and submitting the application for me. I was certain I'd get rejected."
"But you didn't, did you," Ana says.
"Nope. They decided to let me in. So I made a fake rejection letter and gave it to my dad."
Ana laughs. "You didn't."
"I did. He'd said he'd never been more disappointed in me in his life. I was very smug about it. Told him maybe his essay wasn't good enough. He really appreciated that comment."
Ana snickers.
"Maybe it was my father being overbearing when it came to academics. Maybe it was something else. All I know is, I wanted to be done with school. I wanted to go out and do something with my life that wasn't what someone else had planned for me."
"And so you joined the Army? You do see the irony there, right?"
"Yeah. Unfortunately, I didn't then. I had some trouble with authority at first."
I stuff the trash from our lunch back into the backpack.
"Why'd you go to college?" I ask.
Ana pauses for a moment, looking at the river and thinking.
"Pretty much the exact opposite of your reason for avoiding college. I want to be like my mother."
Her expression becomes subdued and her gaze falls.
"Why's that?" I ask. I suppose I'm adopting Ana's technique from last week, trying to make her focus on the good memories.
"Because she's accomplished so much. She grew up in the 60s in a poor Hispanic community in Phoenix. She's one of five kids, her parents were immigrants, and her father worked as a laborer while my grandmother was a maid. Her brothers joined a street gang, which eventually led to the death of the youngest two. After her father died in a workplace accident when she was sixteen, she had to start working to help my abuela pay the bills.
"When she graduated high school, she wasn't able to go to college. She didn't have the money for tuition and there were no scholarships for Latina women in finance in the early 80s. But she was smart, incredibly good at math, and was fascinated by the world of finance. So she started working as a janitor at bank because that's the only job she could get. After a while, she managed to convince the bank manager to take her on as a teller, and slowly worked her way up the ladder. She had to prove herself over and over and over again. She had to be smarter than everyone else around her to be taken seriously.
"Then she married my father, a güero. He was also from a poor family who lived near her. He'd worked with my abuelo before he died and was friends with my mom's brothers. He helped her family out a little after the loss of her father and brothers. My mother's family wasn't very fond of güeros. Even though Dad was white, they all loved him."
"Her big break in her career finally came just as she found out she was pregnant with me. She was so scared that she'd get fired from her new position when they found out she was pregnant. She and my father had just moved across town to a safer neighborhood close to her new job when I came along. She took the shortest maternity leave in history and my dad stayed home to raise me, then my sister later. Even though she had to go to work all day, she was still a great mom. She was always there when I needed her and somehow made time for me and my sister despite her busy schedule."
"She kept working her way up until she eventually made it to the executive level at the bank where she'd started as a janitor. She did all of that with only a high school education."
Ana stops staring at the river and finally looks at me for the first time since she began speaking. "So yeah. That's why I want to be like my mom."
"She sounds amazing."
"She was," Ana says, and turns her gaze away from me.
I study Ana. So that explains her olive skin, dark hair, and delirious words in Spanish. She's half-Latina. Ana's face begins to take on the sad look I'd managed to stave off by asking her about her mom.
"Want to fish now?" I ask, hoping maybe with will serve a better distraction.
"Ok," Ana says. "But you're going to have to teach me how."