She closed the door, leaving me standing alone with my mouth open in surprise.
Chapter 11
Hanksville, Utah
Sunday, June 14, 2009
I stopped at the end of the basement hallway and listened for a moment at the door to Grandpère’s apartment. Then I knocked softly. “Mom says we’re leaving for church in about half an hour,” I called.
“You can come in, Danni,” he sang out. “Door’s open.”
I walked in, then stopped. I expected him to be getting ready for church, but he was already in a white shirt and tie and was sitting on the couch in the small alcove he used for his office. He had a book on his lap.
“Whatcha reading, Grandpère?”
“Whatcha? Is that French or English?”
I stuck out my tongue at him. “What are you reading, Grandpa?” I emphasized each word slowly and distinctly.
“Ah,” he said as moved over and I sat down beside him. He closed the book, marking his place with his finger, and showed me the cover: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The book was about four inches thick, and I noted that his finger held a place about two thirds of the way through.
“Oh,” I cried, “can I read that when you’re finished? I’ve heard it’s a marvelous book.”
His look made me laugh.
Leaning forward, he found a bookmark on the table beside him, inserted it in the book, then set it down. Only then did he look at me. “Petite maligne,” he said disdainfully.
I snuggled up against him. “What does that mean?”
“Smart mouth,” he growled.
“Yep,” I agreed cheerfully. “That’s me. Just ask your daughter.”
“You two fighting again?”
“Not since the last day of school. We’re kind of in Mexican standoff mode right now.”
He grunted, but said nothing. Then he put his arm around my shoulder. “Tell me about your party yesterday.”
I nudged him with my elbow. “Why didn’t you come? We had loads of fun.”
“I seriously considered it.”
“Why didn’t you, then?”
He sighed and scratched his goatee. “Well, I decided that if I put on a swimming suit and sat by the pool, it would simply be too much competition for all the other guys.”
“Yeah,” I retorted, trying not to laugh. “Besides, you would have had to furnish sunglasses for everyone so they wouldn’t be blinded by those white legs of yours.” Grandpère absolutely refused to wear shorts of any kind, even in the hottest part of the summer.
“You’re in high cheek today, aren’t you?” he said.
“Cheeky is my middle name,” I shot right back at him.
He just laughed. “So it was fun?”
“Yes. It was a great birthday.”
“Girl-boy ratio?” he asked with a straight face.
I counted quickly. “Three to one—girls to boys. That’s counting Cody.”
“Ah, no wonder Ricky had that silly grin pasted on his face when I saw him at the Chevron station last night. It was like he had been in hog heaven all day.”
“Did he say that?” I retorted, knowing Grandpère was trying to goad me into a reaction.
Mom’s voice floated downstairs. “Carruthers, will you make sure Grandpère’s ready?”
Cupping my hands, I shouted back. “We’re both ready. We’re waiting on the rest of you.”
She answered something unintelligible, so I assumed she heard me. I glanced at the clock on Grandpère’s fireplace mantel. It was only 8:20, and we didn’t have to leave until 8:40. “Grandpère? Can I discuss something with you?” Any lightness was gone from my face.
“Uh-oh,” he murmured. “Incoming artillery.”
I slapped his arm. “Stop it. I just want to ask you a question.”
“A question?” he exclaimed. “I’ll bet it’s more like forty, knowing you.”
“Okay, so forty questions.”
“This wouldn’t happen to be about the conversation you and your mother had a couple of weeks ago, would it?”
“No,” I shot right back. “Well, not directly.”
He chuckled. “You could have a promising career in politics. Go ahead, Danni. Fire away.”
There was no hesitation like I had felt with Mom the other night. I knew I could be totally open with Grandpère and that meant a lot to me.
“Do you think the Guardian pouch is enchanted, like your mother said it was?”
“Oh my, yes.”
That rocked me back. “You do? Before you said you didn’t.”
“Yes, but your mother let you go to Seven Peaks yesterday, which was the thirteenth day of the month. When I heard that, I assumed you and the pouch had put some kind of spell on her.”
“Oh, Grandpère! I’m serious.”
“All right. Go ahead. Ask me a question.”
“I just did.”
“Ask me a question I can answer.”
My shoulders lifted and fell. Sometimes he could be so maddening. “Okay. What’s the pouch supposed to do for me?”
“Do for you? You talk like it’s alive. Like it’s a person or something. Why would you think that?”
“Uh . . . I dunno. You made it sound like . . .” I stopped, not sure how to complete that sentence.
“You’ve had the pouch for a year now. Have you ever seen it do something for you? Like clean your room, or help you with your homework? Go to the store to get milk?”
“Come on, Grandpère,” I exclaimed. “I’m really serious.”
“So am I. Has it ever done any magic?” His eyes twinkled momentarily. “Other than enchanting your mother?”
I ignored that. “She thinks that because it’s called Le Gardien that somehow I have to have it with me every single moment of every single day. I feel like I’m being smothered.”
“And you told her that?”
“Yeah, kind of. Not in those exact words, but—” I jumped up and started pacing, too agitated to sit still anymore. “I looked up the synonyms for guardian on Google the other day: Protector. Caretaker. Keeper, as in zoo keeper. Custodian. Escort. Defender. One who safeguards something or someone.”
He nodded thoughtfully, but said nothing.
“Mom makes me feel like I’m three years old again. Like I can’t step out the door without someone hovering over me. I’m fourteen, Grandpère. I don’t need a caretaker. I don’t need an escort or a bodyguard or a keeper. Why can’t she see that?”
“Maybe because you sometimes give her cause for worry.”
I didn’t want to go there. “Do you think I need to take the pouch to school every day?”
“No.”
I stopped pacing. “Really?”
“When I gave you the pouch, I charged you to take good care of it, to keep it safe. That involves as much an attitude about it as it does behavior.”
I winced, thinking of when I had to tell him that I had left it on the bus.
“We’re talking about more than just putting it in a safe place. I never said you had to always have it right with you. But you are the keeper of the pouch. I was for many years, but that responsibility has passed to you now.”
“So what exactly does that mean?”
He had a faraway look in his eye. “I would never leave it alone in the house if there wasn’t going to be anyone home for longer than an hour or two.” He paused. “Actually, I put it in a drawer until I was seventeen, and I only took it out every few months.”
“Really?”
“Yes. But that’s not a recommendation. My father was disappointed that I didn’t take it seriously enough. And the reason I took it out when I did was because there came I time when I desperately wished I had had it with me.”
“Really? What happened?”
“That’s a story for another time.”
I wanted to push him on that, but he continued before I could.
“Danni, the biggest thing about being the keeper of the pouch is how you view your respo
nsibility. If you’re casual about it, then even keeping the pouch with you every minute of every day won’t be enough.”
Ouch!
“But if you take it seriously, then I think you can use your best judgment about what is required. If another responsible person is at home, I think you’d be all right to leave it here.”
“So will you tell Mom all that?” I cried eagerly.
He slowly shook his head.
“Why not?” I wailed. “She’ll listen to you.”
“First, because she already knows all of this. Second, because I’m not going to be enlisted in the battle with your mother on either side. You two need to work it out.”
“But she won’t listen to me, Grandpère.”
“Strange. That was exactly what she said about you.”
I made a sound of high frustration. “Why does she think I need a nanny?”
“A nanny?”
“Yeah, that’s what it feels like. Like I’m taking a nanny to school with me every day.”
“Interesting choice of words.”
“What do you mean?”
“Unfortunately, television and the movies have turned the concept of a nanny into empty silliness, almost like they’re a big joke. But in my day, being a nanny was an honorable and important occupation.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
He pressed his lips together and a warning flashed in his eyes. “I had a good friend in graduate school who was from England. His family was part of the British nobility—very rich, very upper-class. He talked about his nanny all the time. She was there when he and his brother were born. She lived in the mansion with them; she was with them virtually every day of their lives. He told me once that when he was little, he sometimes hated her because she was always correcting him or making him do things he didn’t want to do. But he also said that by the time he was ready to leave for college, he felt closer to his nanny than he did to his own mother. Whenever he had a problem, he would confide in her and ask her counsel before he talked to his parents.”
“Okay, so I used the wrong word. But that doesn’t change—”
“Danni,” he cut in, “you asked me a question. Do you want the answer or not?”
My face was flaming. “Sorry, Grandpère.” I sat back down beside him. “Go on.”
“In ancient Greece, the families of the very wealthy often had a manservant who had the responsibility for the children, in much the same way as a nanny did in England. The Greek word for those men, which roughly translated into English, is schoolmaster, teacher, or tutor. But no English word really captures the full essence of what a tutor was. The same is true in French, for that matter. Gardien is the closest word in French.”
“Oh,” I said softly. The image of the ornate letters so cleverly embroidered into the pouch came to my mind.
He faced me. “The responsibility of the tutor was much more than just educating the child. He was charged to protect them physically, intellectually, and morally. His task was to bring the children to full maturity and prepare them to become responsible adults and contributing citizens of society.”
“And that’s what the pouch is supposed to do for me?”
“The pouch can do no more than you will let it do. But I would hope that eventually you’ll come to see it as a gift rather than an obligation, as a blessing rather than a burden.”
“I understand, Grandpère. Sorry for being such a brat.” But inside, I was thinking that, tutor or not, Gardien or not, I didn’t need a nanny right now. And I wasn’t going to become the laughing stock of Wayne County High School next year either.
To my surprise, Grandpère reached over and patted my hand. “I’ll take it up with your mother,” he said. “I’ll talk with her.”
“Really?” I cried. I threw my arms around him. “Thank you, Grandpère. Thank you.”
He lifted a finger and pointed it at me. “I’m not promising anything. Your mother feels very strongly about this too for reasons that perhaps she will some day explain to you.”
I gave him a sharp look. “Like what?”
He brushed it aside. “You’re fourteen, Danni. You are moving rapidly toward becoming a mature and responsible young woman. But there are still things you can learn. And your mother is still the best one who can teach them to you.”
“I know, I know.”
“Remember that old parable about the oak and the willow?”
I thought for a moment, then shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
“When the wind blows strong, the willow bends. When the wind blows strong, the oak breaks because it will not bend.” He smiled, getting to his feet. “Unfortunately, you’re both French and Irish so you’ve got a lot of oak in your nature.” He pulled me to my feet and gave me a quick hug. “We’d better get upstairs.”
As we left his apartment and started for the stairs, I stopped. “Grandpère?”
“Oui?”
“Do you think there could be other pouches out there, other Gardiens?”
His lips pursed momentarily. “I have no idea. I wouldn’t be surprised, though. Maybe not actual pouches, but I believe there is something that helps us from time to time, a higher power that that intervenes in our behalf.”
“Like what?”
“Like seeing your unborn son as you are preparing to die, and then finding the will to amputate your arm so you can live to see him some day. Like maybe having an ancestor who watches over us and is allowed to intervene in our behalf from time to time.”
“But those aren’t the same as having a nanny,” I suggested.
He laughed. “Oh, Danni. Like I said, there’s a lot of oak inside of you, girl. A lot of oak.”
I laughed back. “And I wonder where I get that from.”
That night, after everyone was asleep, I laid awake in my bed, my cheek resting against Le Gardien. Over and over, I thought about Grandpère’s words. Over and over, I remembered my heated conversation with Mom. And over and over, I thought about walking into high school on the first day of school with the pouch in my backpack.
And finally, I came to a decision. I got up, went to my dressing table, and hung the pouch back on its nail. I sighed, tired of it all. I wasn’t going to put it away in a drawer like Grandpère had done, but neither was I going to carry it around like some fabric crutch I couldn’t do without.
Maybe when I was seventeen or eighteen I’d take it down again. But until then, it was going to just hang around and wait for me to grow up. That’s just the way it was going to be for now.
Part Three: Rhodium
Chapter 12
Monday, June 13, 2011
Happy birthday to me! Today, I turn sixteen years old. Oh, and FYI, that’s SWEET sixteen, and never been kissed. Ooh. TMI. WTMI.
Once again I’m not having a birthday party on my birthday. But this year, it’s not because of Mom. Since agreeing to let me have my fourteenth birthday party on my actual birthday, she’s kind of loosened up on the whole bad luck thing. No, this time it was Dad’s fault, but I’m not complaining.
Dad and Grandpère have some mining clients coming in from Canada next weekend to look at a mine. Dad said we have to go up and check things out today, birthday or no birthday. So we’re leaving later today and going up in the mountains for two days. That’s cool with me. Way cool.
But before we do that, something else happens first. Ta-dah! Dad’s taking me to Price to get my driver’s license. Yep, that’s right. Keep your kids off the sidewalk, folks—after today, I’m driving on my own. No more learner’s permit. No more having to have an adult in the car with me. SWEET!!!!
Mom and Cody aren’t coming with us today. No big surprise. Since we’re going into the high country and will be covering some pretty rugged terrain on the ATVs, Mom didn’t want Code to go. Dad agreed. So she and Code are going to Denver with Beth Armitage, Mom’s best friend. Mom’s taking several of her latest paintings to a gallery over there. Cody’s all bummed out and mad, but Mom promised to
take him to that big aquarium in Denver, so he’ll be okay.
Mom did her part for my birthday last week. In addition to throwing me a party on Saturday, on Friday she took me shopping in Salt Lake. Guess what I got? That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. I am now the proud owner of a new iPhone. WITH INTERNET ACCESS! About time. I was the only kid in the whole Intermountain West with a clunky old dinosaur of a phone and no Internet access. (I have to pay the $30 monthly fee for data access, but it’s worth it.)
I gotta go. Dad and I are leaving early for Price so we can be the first ones at the driver’s license place. Then we’ll come back here, pick up the four-wheelers, Grandpère, and Rick, and then head for the Henry Mountains. Yep. That’s right. Rick’s going with us, which is no small miracle. I was sure his dad would say no when Dad asked if Rick could go with us. But Rick’s been working part time for Dad since March—not just here on the ranch, but helping with the mining stuff too. When Dad told Charlie we were going up to check out some claims for a client and needed Rick’s help, Charlie reluctantly said yes. (I’m doing a little dance right now.)
Oh yeah. And if you’re one of those that Lisa and Angie have been telling that Rick and I are into big-time making out now, let me set the record straight. Not true. Absolutely not true. He hasn’t even held my hand yet. Which is fine by me. Really. Well, I wouldn’t fight him if he did, but that’s not the point. The point is that we’re just friends. Making out with him would be seriously weird.
Well, enough of that. Gotta get going.
Five minutes later, as I was spreading out the stuff I was going to take with me on the bed, there was a soft knock on my door.
“You awake, lazy bones?” It was Cody.
“Ha! I’ve been up for an hour.” Or maybe half that. “Come in.”
Cody isn’t a morning person, so to see him fully dressed with his hair combed at this hour was a bit of a shock. I glanced at the clock on my dresser: 5:49. Stifling a yawn, I said, “I thought you and Mom were leaving way early.”
Suddenly Mom was standing behind him. “We are. We’re here to say good-bye.” She came in and gave me a hug. “Have a great birthday today, Carruthers.”