The Marsh King's Daughter(5)

“Do we have any cookies?” Iris calls from the kitchen. She’s waiting patiently at the table with her back straight and her hands folded while her sister scavenges crumbs on the floor. Iris’s teacher must love her, but wait till she meets Mari. Not for the first time, I wonder how two such different people can come from the same set of parents. If Mari is fire, Iris is water. A follower and not a leader; a quiet, overly sensitive child who prefers reading to running and loves her imaginary friends as much as I once did mine, and takes the slightest rebuke far too much to heart. I hate that I caused her that moment of panic. Iris the Largehearted has already forgiven and forgotten, but I haven’t. I never forget.

I go into the pantry and take a bag of cookies from the top shelf. No doubt my little Viking raider will one day attempt the climb, but Iris the Obedient would never think to. I put four cookies on a plate and pour two glasses of milk and head for the bathroom. Turn on the tap and splash a handful of water on my face. Seeing my expression in the mirror, I realize I’ve got to hold it together. As soon as Stephen gets home, I’ll confess everything. Meanwhile, I can’t let my girls see that anything is wrong.

After they finish their milk and cookies I send them to their room so I can follow the news without their listening in. Mari is too young to understand the import of terms like “prison escape” or “manhunt” or “armed and dangerous,” but Iris might.

CNN is showing a long shot of a helicopter skimming the trees. We’re so close to the search area, I could practically go outside and stand on our front porch and see the same helicopter. A warning from the state police scrolling across the bottom of the screen urges everyone to stay inside. Pictures of the murdered guards, pictures of the empty prison van, interviews with the grieving families. A recent photograph of my father. Prison life has not been kind. Photos of my mother as a girl and as a hollow-cheeked woman. Pictures of our cabin. Pictures of twelve-year-old me. No mention of Helena Pelletier yet, but give it time.

Iris and Mari come pattering down the hallway. I mute the set.

“We want to play outside,” Iris says.

“’Side,” Mari echoes. “Out.”

I consider. There’s no logical reason to make the girls stay inside. Their play yard is surrounded by a six-foot-high chain-link fence, and I can see the entire area from the kitchen window. Stephen had the fence installed after the bear incident. “Girls in, animals out,” he said with satisfaction when the contractors finished, dusting his hands on the seat of his pants as if he’d set the posts himself. As if keeping your children safe was that simple.

“Okay,” I say. “But just for a few minutes.”

I open the back door and turn them loose, then take a box of mac and cheese from the cupboard and pull a head of lettuce and a cucumber from the fridge. Stephen texted an hour ago to say he’s running late and he’ll grab a bite to eat on the road, so it’s boxed macaroni and cheese for the girls and a salad for me. I really don’t like to cook. People might think that’s strange considering the way I make my living, but a person has to work with what they have. Blueberries and strawberries grew on our ridge. I learned how to make jelly and jam. End of story. There aren’t a lot of jobs that list ice fishing or beaver skinning as qualifications. I’d go so far as to say I hate to cook, but I can still hear my father’s gentle scolding: “Hate is a strong word, Helena.”

I dump the box of noodles into the pot of salted water boiling on the stove and move to the window to check on the girls. The quantity of Barbies and My Little Ponies and Disney princesses littering the play yard makes me ill. How will Iris and Mari develop qualities like patience and self-control if Stephen gives them everything they want? When I was a child, I didn’t have so much as a ball. I made my own toys. Pulling apart horsetails and fitting the sections together again was every bit as educational as those toys where babies are supposed to match shapes to holes. And after a meal of young cattail spikes, we were left with a pile of what my mother always said looked like plastic knitting needles on your plate, but to me, they looked like swords. I’d stick them in the sand outside our back door like the palisades of a fort, where my pinecone warriors had many epic battles.

Before I dropped off the supermarket tabloid grid, people used to ask me what was the most incredible/amazing/unexpected thing I discovered after I joined civilization. As if their world was so much better than mine. Or that it was indeed civilized. I could easily make a case against the legitimate use of that word to describe the world I discovered at the age of twelve: war, pollution, greed, crime, starving children, racial hatred, ethnic violence—and that’s just for starters. Is it the Internet? (Incomprehensible.) Fast food? (A taste easily acquired.) Airplanes? (Please—my knowledge of technology was solid through the 1950s, and do people really think airplanes never flew over our cabin? Or that we thought they were some kind of giant silver bird when they did?) Space travel? (I’ll admit I’m still having trouble with that one. The idea that twelve men have walked on the moon is inconceivable to me, even though I’ve seen the footage.)

I always wanted to turn the question around. Can you tell the difference between a grass and a rush and a sedge? Do you know which wild plants are safe to eat and how to fix them? Can you hit a deer in that patch of brown hide low behind its shoulder so it drops where it stands and you don’t have to spend the rest of the day tracking it? Can you set a snare for a rabbit? Can you skin and clean the rabbit after you catch it? Can you roast it over an open fire so the meat is done in the middle while the outside is deliciously black and crusty? For that matter, can you build a fire without matches in the first place?