The Understory (30 page)

“Think of me as one giant checkbook,” Story said, arms folded, “here to motivate you to reschedule your trip.”

The two women moved closer to each other, beginning what looked like a standoff in the center of the Ross family patio. “Look, I’m sorry you have some sort of dilemma,” Rachel said, “but if you knew us, you’d know we can’t be bought. We value lots of things—the Lord’s grace, time spent together, education.” She pointed to the white metal patio table beneath a giant stack of Socra-Tots® books—the
Right At Home
series, designed for families who home-school.

“That’s a great series,” Story said, looking at the stack of Socra-Tots® merchandise in a positive way for once. It was, after all, funding her trip, and funding her life. “You know, they have a whole geography collection that focuses on—”

“Yes, we have it!” Rachel said, suddenly feeling friendlier as she walked over to the stack and pulled out
Brazil: Can You Spell Rio De Janeiro?
“That’s why we’re going on this trip. The kids and I were studying Brazil, and by using some appropriate question-asking strategies, I learned that the kids really wanted to go.”

My mother, the genius. Just put it in the form of a question, and they will buy it.
Story laughed out loud, thinking of what a kid would say yes to.
Should we eat Twinkies for breakfast? Should we put the cat in the microwave? Should we visit Brazil?

“Are you familiar with the Socratic Method?” Rachel asked, her face covered with ash and condescension as she invited Story to join her at the patio table.

Story sat down in the chair next to her, and just for fun, answered, “Are you?”

“Yes, and we can’t wait to apply it to our travels—”

“Right. About that. How about if I give you a whole lot of money to go to Brazil on a different flight?”

“I thought I made myself clear, my dear. We can’t be bou—”

“Have you heard about the horrible kidnapping problem in South America?” Story said, scowling. “Literally,
kid
-napping, and they
love
the little blonde ones.” She stared at the very blonde Hannah and Kaleb, still jumping on the trampoline.

Rachel remained unfazed. “We’ve studied how to avoid being a target for that kind of thing,” she said with a scrunched-up nose. “Besides, most of the time we’ll be with other people of our kind, spreading The Word. And God watches over us.”

Story, now feeling like the pagan whom God would not protect, began to panic.
Okay. Start with a question. Always start with a question.
“How long have you lived in Scottsdale?”

“Forever,” she said, smiling, taking in her perfect children, her perfect rose bushes, and her Norman Rockwell backyard scene.

“Then you must be familiar with what an actual phoenix is,” Story said, tapping her fingers on the table now, impatient. “Did you know that according to the Greek myth, only one phoenix can exist at any given time?”

“And it’s always male,” Luke Ross quietly interjected through the open kitchen window that overlooked the patio, but Rachel dismissed him with an audible scoff.

Story continued. “Only one true phoenix can be on that flight tomorrow morning. Only one person at a time can experience rebirth, and rise out of the ashes.” Story stared at ash-covered Rachel, and said, “You’ve already risen. All of you . . . are already born again.”

Rachel nodded and whispered in a heavenly tone, “You’re right.”

“But there is a person,” said Story, trying to muster a little faith, “a child, who needs to be on that flight, who needs more than anything to be reborn, to reconnect with a more innocent time.”

Rachel continued her nodding, her eyes growing misty. “Yes, every one of God’s children deserves the chance to reconnect.”

Sure she’d made a breakthrough, Story said, “I’m so glad you under—”

“I hear your cry, my sweet child.
You
will be reborn!” Rachel announced, as she took Story’s head in her hands, smudging her with ash. “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” Rachel said, using ash from her index finger to wipe the shape of a cross on Story’s forehead.

Expecting some sort of ceremony to follow, Story closed her eyes and said, “So, what do I have to do?”
I need a miracle. I need magic. I need you, fairy godmother, if you exist, to lift your wand for me just this once and cut me some damn slack.

Rachel smiled. “Nothing, my dear. You’ve already done it . . . You let the Lord into your heart. You are reborn.”

I did? I am?
“That’s it?” Story said with raised eyebrows, glancing at her watch and thinking of Cooper, his unexpected green umbrella, and the magic treasure that would save him.

“And you’ll have to complete your mission, of course,” Rachel said, as if that were implied.

For a moment, Story put her mocking aside, and wondered if God was actually there. How else could she know about Cooper’s mission?

Rachel raised her own skeptical brows. “You
are
here about the Brazil mission, right? Pastor Reynolds sent you, right?”

“Yes?” Story said, trying to sound confident. And saved.

A dubious Rachel Ross cocked an eyebrow and applied her holy sixth sense. “You’re not!” she gasped, as she got up from the table and raised a finger in Story’s face. “What do you want from us?”

“Your seats,” Story said with resolve, as she reached into her purse, took out her checkbook, and made out a check to Rachel Ross. “I’m offering this,” she said, handing Rachel the check, “plus every single product Socra-Tots® has to offer.”

When Rachel saw the amount on the check, she made the sign of the cross over her head and heart as she whispered, “Grace be to God. You must be an angel!” She shut her eyes and wobbled for a moment, as if she was going to faint, but then regained her footing and sounded as calm as a miracle. “And you’ll include the new
The Sun and You
outer space series?” she asked, opening one eye just enough to see Story’s face.

Story nodded, summoning celestial stars in her eyes, and thinking of millions of different people under one uniting sun.

Mumbling, Rachel said, “It’s just that we don’t normally . . . I mean, in the past . . .”

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,” Story whispered.

Rachel looked in Story’s eyes. “I guess God would want me to. For the kids,” she said, dreaming of salvation and the American Dream.

“Yes, for the kids,” Story said, waiting for the word.

“Okay,” Rachel said.

And the word was good.

Already behind schedule, Story left the Ross household, allowing the extra-bright sun to warm her. Its rays shot down to earth, speaking to her with strength and authority while she ran down the sidewalk holding four plane tickets tightly in her hands. The official trip was not yet underway, but she was sure someone, something, had deemed it charmed. She alone could not have done the job—she never had before. So to show her gratitude, Story stopped running for a moment, looked up, and whispered “Thank you” to the fairy godmother in the sky.

I
t was the night before Cooper’s big journey to the Amazon and, too excited to entertain sleep, he found himself in his dad’s office.

“Hey,” Cooper said to Sonny, who didn’t respond, but sat perched in silence on his little yellow trapeze.

Cooper stared at the blank wall before him—a wall made bare when his mother took down three photos that made her cry. But Cooper remembered them. Frozen in his mind, they still hung in their happy, walnut-framed trio. The one on the left had been a black-and-white of his parents on their wedding day—not one of those posed, hand-touching-hand shots, but one taken when they didn’t know anyone was looking. Those are usually the best kind. He remembered his mom’s face in that picture. She was all bright and shimmering, looking sort of surprised, even astounded, at her own happiness. But Cooper remembered his dad flashing this one special smile he always saved for his mom. Cooper had seen his dad give his mom this smile when they didn’t think he was watching. But he was.

The photo on the right, another black-and-white, had been a family shot of the three of them in front of a giant pyramid in Egypt. Cooper remembered his dad asking a stranger to take the camera. In a funny accent, the stranger had kept repeating that they were a beautiful family, and he kept backing up, trying to get the whole pyramid in the shot. But Cooper remembered his dad laughing, telling the stranger not to worry about getting the
massive wonder that we traveled around the world to see
in the sh
ot. Just get us,
he’d said.
Just get us. Thanks.

The biggest of the three, a color photo that had been in the middle, was the one Cooper remembered in the most detail. It was one of those stick-out-your-arm self-portraits that his dad had taken of the two of them. The photo wasn’t taken in Egypt, or at Disneyland, or at a World Series game, but on the couch in their living room. Cooper wore his gray and white baseball uniform and red cap, muddied from a good game, and his dad wore the soft navy button-down sweater his mom said he looked handsome in. Neither Cooper nor his dad looked straight at the camera, but more at each other, because his dad had been talking about Cooper catching his first fly ball. Cooper used to look at this photo for long stretches at a time, even before
it
all happened, and after staring at it long enough, his dad became animated.

But he wasn’t animated now, and as Cooper stared at the picture in his mind, one second turning into several minutes, a horrible ache settled in his belly. At that moment, Cooper Payne realized that his dad would not be joining him on this trip, or any trip. Ever.

And even then, fully understanding for the first time that magic was for naïve little boys, he looked again at Sonny. “Hey.”

Silence.

Needing some warmth and maybe even a little light, Cooper thought of Hope. He looked at the blank wall before him, and imagined her floating near the ceiling where the sky would be if they were in the rainforest. Hope knew to follow the sun.
That must be where people go when they leave
, he thought.
That must be what they need.
He imagined Hope dancing on the forest floor, and then flying through the air, and he even imagined creating her out of paper, right then and there, and adding her to the wall—but that would be silly. If she was made of something real, she would eventually break down, rip, disintegrate. If she stayed in his imagination, no one could ever take that away.

But was that true of the treasure box, too?
What if the real magic treasure box isn’t magical at all? If it isn’t magical, then it can’t give people what they really need.
At that moment, he hated Martin Baxter. He hated him for making him believe in the unbelievable.

In his mind, he heard his dad making the case for magic, for having faith that things always work out, but Cooper felt as if everything he’d ever believed in might have been a lie. All of it. And in the darkest, most faithless corners of himself, he dared to wonder if he’d even imagined his dad, larger than life, flying through his dreams. Cooper stood alone, looking at his own olive skin, running his fingers through his dark, coarse hair, all of it evidence of his undeniable connection to the ghost of a hero he longed to see one last time.

Go toward the sun
, he imagined Hope saying, but the sun had long set, and there was only night.

“Coop?” Claire said, entering the room to see Cooper standing alone, looking at the blank wall.

“Hey, Mom,” he said, in a voice that fell somewhere between a boy and a man.

She joined him, and the two of them were now fixed on the wall before them, turning their backs on David’s desk.

“I can’t ever remember telling him,” Cooper said.

“Tell who . . . what?” Claire said.

He hesitated. “I don’t think I told Dad I loved him.”

Unable to look in Cooper’s eyes, Claire stared straight ahead, looking at nothing and everything. “Sure you did, Coop, lots of times,” she said.

“When?” Cooper asked, focusing his gaze on a sun that wasn’t there.

Claire fumbled her way through tired, painful memories. “At night, Coop, you used to tell him before you went to bed.”

“No!” he said, sounding adamant and much older. “The last time he . . .” And then he said, “All I said was
goodnight
.” And then the boy came back. “If I could talk to him just one more time, not even for very long, just enough for him to maybe tell me stuff, and I could make sure he knew . . .” He paused for a moment, starting to cry.

Claire turned to him, looking deep into familiar brown eyes, and whispered, “He knew, Coop. He knew.” And then, without her permission, Claire’s left eye released one giant teardrop, slowly turning end over end until it finally landed on the floor with a gentle splash.

In Cooper’s imagination, though, it wasn’t a teardrop, but a rain-fresh droplet from one of the Amazon’s many waterfalls, and he wanted to bathe in it while he waited for Hope to come and tell him how to stop looking backwards.