The Understory (17 page)

The toucan shrieked. “I didn’t ask you what you needed. That is for the forest to decide. I asked you what you want.”

This was one fastidious (picky) bird. I gave him the answer I thought he wanted. “Uh, I want to see this beautiful forest, and all of the animals who live here, and—”

“Nonsense!” The toucan slowed down, and the others followed suit, circling above a small, meandering creek full of floating water lilies. “Let me refresh your memory,” he said. And when he spoke next, he imitated my voice. “I’m sick of being eight! I want to be eleven so I can get my ears pierced!”

So this bird was not only picky, but also psychic. How could he have known I’d said that?

The birds began flying again, but the toucan continued his clairvoyant (telepathic) diagnosis. “And what about the time you told your dad you wished you weren’t afraid of the dark?”

“Hey, that was a moment of weakness!”

“Or when you said you wished you could fly?” the toucan screeched.

“I meant on my own.” Realizing they could drop me any second, I added, “No offense.”

We kept flying for a long time, and then suddenly, they picked up speed and my peaceful flight turned into some sort of death race. We weaved in and out of large, unforgiving branches, and when a dragonfly splattered in my face, I decided to close my eyes and pray I didn’t have a mid-air collision with a squirrel monkey.

“First the treasure box,” the toucan yelped at top speed, his words disappearing behind us as we soared faster and faster.

“Then the moonflower,” squawked the toucanet.

With my eyes still closed, I felt an abrupt stop, then a quick descent, and finally, I heard no more birds, but beneath me I felt the ground—furry and moving.

H
ans Turner loved George Harrison because he was a man of his word. Every morning, when he sang “Here Comes the Sun,” the big, bold Phoenix sun streamed through Hans’s bedroom window, defiantly sneaking through the blinds. When a stubborn ray reached in and touched his face, Hans soaked it up.

Like a good conjurer, Hans had spent many years growing skilled in the art of distraction, training both his hands and his mind to forget the past. But each day, Hans did allow himself to remember one thing—a song. Every morning, at exactly 7 a.m., “Here Comes the Sun” played on Hans’s clock-radio/tape-deck. And this Wednesday morning was no exception. This morning, when the clock read seven o’clock, the guitar intro began and Hans swung his legs toward the floor. By the time George Harrison sang, “Little darling, it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter,” Hans felt ready to begin a new day. Even though he would begin his Wednesday with George Harrison’s hopeful sun on his mind, if you looked closely, you could see he was still hanging on to a yesterday when the sun was brighter.

On that Wednesday morning, the day after meeting Story Easton and blackmailing her into taking him to the Amazon, Hans sat up in his bed, scratched his head, and thought about what he’d done. As he pondered the scenario—accompanying a strange female with an affinity for breaking and entering, maybe even with a past in kiddie-porn, into a dangerous jungle—the whole thing seemed preposterous. Absurd and preposterous.

And he couldn’t wait for it to begin.

Deep down, Hans knew waiting for anything was a sign of weakness. Waiting until you retire (or expire) for life to begin was his definition of an oxymoron, yet without admitting it, he had one thing in common with inert observers of life—like them, Hans only pretended to live, because under his solid oak exterior was a diseased center, a sick core fed by regret that polluted his mind into thinking he could avoid the very thing that was rotting him from the inside out.

So instead of confronting the demon from his past, Hans focused on safe, secret mantras in his life.
Measure twice, cut once. Putty and paint, make it what it ain’t. Always sand with the grain.
And he’d thrown away emotionally charged objects that reminded him of his childhood—his worn baseball glove that smelled like leather oil and reminded him of sunny, carefree days, and a delicate, orange-blossomed poppy flattened into a book and into his memory, given him by someone he’d loved very much.

But there was one thing in his home that did remind him of his past. In fact, it represented the one thing in his past that made him who he was, twenty-seven years later. Unlike the other things in his house, this one was not simple, and in it lived the story of Hans’s life. This object, a yellowed and cracked photograph that Hans hadn’t looked at in years, was tucked away in a box on the top shelf of his bedroom closet, and when he dug out his passport for his upcoming trip, there it was, underneath, and he was forced to come face-to-face with the thing he tried to avoid—but the thing he’d kept just the same.

The very second it came into view, he picked it up without thinking, rescuing it from its dark, lonely box. And as soon as he looked at it, as soon as he looked at
her
, with her strawberry blonde pigtails and apple-green T-shirt, the day started all over again for him. Twenty-seven years earlier.

That Sunday, the whole family had eaten chorizo and eggs before church, and ended up enjoying a sunny day at their home in the small town of Crystal River, Florida, a town whose motto boasted of a snowflake-like uniqueness:
Crystal River, no other town like it!
Hans’s father chopped wood in the backyard, while his mother husked a basket of sweet corn on their porch, all the while singing along to the blare of the radio coming from the kitchen window. “Here comes the sun,” she wailed, her enthusiasm so infectious that soon, the whole family was singing. Violet was a quirky woman who fabricated the world around her into an enchanting romp, designing her home and her life to be one giant gingerbread house complete with polka-dots, lemon drops, and infinite possibilities of mystery.

Violet Turner lived inside a story, and on a daily basis she invited her family to live in this fairy tale world by maintaining a running dialogue of storytelling. At breakfast, while placing shiny-silver serving spoons in each bowl, she’d welcome in the day with a
Once upon a time there lived a magic cloud who lived in a magic ocean of a sky
, and Hans and his sister sat on their seats’ edges, anticipating Cloud-love or Cloud-anarchy, depending on their mother’s mood. During chores, Violet taught her children to tell each other stories in which they’d change the mundane parts of their day into extraordinary events, thus rewriting what they knew to be true into what they wanted to be true.

Her two children embraced her eccentricity because it was all they knew. She was their mother—the one who dyed all of her aprons violet to match her name, the one who used her flair for language to make up new words for ordinary objects, and the one who named her twins Hansel and Gretel, to ensure they’d take care of each other for life, or at least always leave a trail of pebbles to guide the other out of any dark forest.

Around noon that day, Hans and Greta, as they called themselves, went for a walk on the riverbank of the Crystal River, which ran straight down the center of their state and skimmed the outskirts of their home.

“Be careful—take care of each other,” Violet said to her nine-year-old twins, who had made this journey together many times before. They knew to watch for cars across Peters Street, they knew not to talk to strangers, and they knew to be careful by the water, especially because, swollen from excessive rains, it was higher than normal.

They took turns singing, “Here comes the sun, doo-doo-doo-doo.” With full bellies under clear skies, they skipped along the trail to the riverbank, and when they got there, they played games all their own, acting out several different fairy tales at once, layering one story atop another until it was impossible to tell where one began and another ended. Greta, chatty and sassy, found it difficult to stay quiet as she pretended to be a slumbering princess asleep on a pea-sized pebble, while Hans, the designated quiet prince, spun gold from the straw-like riverside weeds.

Sprawled out on the grassy riverbank, Greta, eyes still closed, lifted her head and whispered, “See if the shoe fits. It’s part of the story.”

Hans said, “The one you’re wearing?”

Greta scoffed. “Take it off, and then put it back on. If it fits, it means I’m queen of Crystal River!”

“We know it fits, so—”

She dramatically laid her forearm on her forehead. “Please, I’m not well,” she said. “Put the slipper on fast. I must leave here in my magic coach and escape my evil stepmother.”

“I’m telling Mom you said that, and I’m done playing the princess and the prince. I wanna go look for frogs,” Hans said. “Or cool stuff like this!” he said, as he leaned over a bird’s nest hiding in the brush to see one perfect speckled-blue robin’s egg. Hans reached out to touch the beautiful egg, and hold it in his hand, but then stopped, because it wasn’t his job. Greta, his only sister, was his family; the egg had its own.

As he looked back, his sister stood up and stomped her foot in protest, and Hans laughed. But right as he began walking away, he heard her gasp, then shriek. When he turned around, he saw Greta fall backward, tumble down the embankment, and plunge into the water.

At first, he howled with laughter, holding his belly while he thought about the wet walk home, but then, as she slipped farther into the engorged river, he realized she really couldn’t get out, stopped laughing, and ran toward her, down the steep decline of rocks and sand.

“Greta! Grab my hand!” he yelled, extending his right hand as he ran. When he reached the water, he ran parallel with it, following Greta, now bobbing up and down, arms thrashing in-between gasps.

Hans sprinted as fast as his nine-year-old legs could carry him, moving a few yards ahead of Greta, and leaped out onto a small rock, then onto a larger one. Perched and poised for her to float by, he knew this would be his only chance to grab her. Just a few paces ahead, the already deep water swelled even more, white rapids emerging in mean swirls. Hans stretched out his hand, caught Greta’s eyes in his, and leaned his whole body over the rock, waiting for her.

Greta, still flailing, now mustered up the strength to keep her head above water, and extended her hand as the current hurled her toward Hans.

“Grab on, Greta!” Hans cried, drowning in his words. “Grab on!” And it must have worked, because when her hand reached his, he grabbed hold tight and felt her squeeze back. Using his other hand to grab her forearm, he pulled hard, and thought he’d done enough to help her onto the rock, but then the unthinkable happened.

His hand gave out.

Not entirely, and only for a second, but by the time he regained his strength, he’d lost his grip. One knuckle—slipped through. Another—gone. And finally, one tiny pinky finger with a pink-painted nail slid through his grasp, leaving his hand empty.

With his other hand, he clung to her little wrist, but it, too, slipped away. His hand seemed so big next to hers, and even before it was over, even before anyone else in the world beside Hans and Greta knew what had happened, Hans felt betrayed by his hands. He was supposed to take care of his only sister, but he’d failed her. His hands had failed her. And now, as she looked back at him one last time, he thought he saw a tired but contented smile, as if she were grateful and satisfied for their time as prince and princess.

She disappeared under the water, and he dove in, struggling to find her and bring her back up, but the water tried to suck him under, too. When he surfaced, choking and exhausted, he realized she was gone, sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness with no pebble trail, no guide, to lead her out of the shadows.

That was the end of that story, and for Hans, the end of all stories.

Hans lay breathless on the riverbank and, within moments, his hands began to throb with pain—not with sharp, shooting pains, but dull, deep aches. And when Greta’s face flashed through his mind, the aching intensified and stayed with him all that day and the next, and the day after, when his twin sister’s funeral was held, and the pain would return to him throughout his life every time he thought of her. And though that was every day—when he looked at his hands, when he looked at his own reflection—her picture was something he rarely had the courage to view.