Split by Lisa Michaels Read Free Book Online

she had once been.
    Now Franny, who credited my mother with having cut through some of her rich-girl puffery when they had been roommates, made my mother buoyant. Their watchwords were
Why not?
And in the face of that simple question, nothing seemed out of bounds. Not skinny-dipping, or eating pie for breakfast, or refusing to comb your hair until it matted into a burr at the back of your head. Once I caught their mood, I flew all sorts of test balloons. In the mail truck, tucked into a wooden chest, was a floor-length chiffon dress that I had worn as the flower girl in my aunt's wedding back east. I could tell from the way Grandma Kate had fussed over me on the wedding day, telling me not to sit anywhere dusty, that it was a dress reserved for special occasions. Now I asked my mother if I could wear it into the woods.
    I still recall the exhilaration I felt running wild in that dress. I dashed into a clearing where a shaft of light cut down through the redwoods, stopped short by the sunlight on my sleeves. When I squatted down, the dress puffed around me like a pincushion, so I practiced that a few times: jumping up to catch air under my skirt, then curtsying and saying, "Yes, my lady." I hadn't found myself nearly so fetching at the wedding, when my tights had cut into my belly and my white patent-leather shoes made me skid unexpectedly across the church floor. I ran back to the house, where mother and Franny sat chewing on candied ginger, their feet propped up on the porch rail. They laughed at the sight of me, my tangled hair and dirty feet, the hem of that custom-fitted dress already ripped into a muddy fringe.
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    Life was cheap at Franny's place on Zayante Road, but we had been traveling for more than a year, and our funds were starting to run thin. I was nearly five and about to start kindergarten. Mother and Jim were ready to spend the last of their savings on a piece of land—"our pie in the sky," as Jim called it. Mother browsed through Franny's copy of
Mother Earth News
and saw a classified ad that looked promising: "Wonderful mountain parcel with springs and a good road." She located the town, population two thousand, which was marked with the tiniest speck the map allowed, and we drove up through San Francisco into the coastal mountains headed for that dot.
    The parcel that lured us north was at the shoulder of a mountain, set above a narrow valley.
Road
was a generous term for the rutted dirt track that snaked up the hillside. The mail truck barely made it. Our books strained at their bungee cords. The kettle flew off the wood stove and hit the back door. At the top of the grade, the owner waited in his pickup truck to show us around. He was a wiry old man in overalls and a feed cap. As for the land, there wasn't much to show: only acres and acres of dry grass, with a few live oaks scattered here and there. Below us, the irrigated fields and vineyards spread out like a patchwork quilt. We could see the town's main drag, which we had passed on the way up, the post office and butcher shop and country store lined up like sugar cubes. We wouldn't be walking to the corner for a quart of milk.
    "The ad mentioned springs," Jim ventured. "It seems pretty dry around here."
    "You worried about water? No problem," the man said. He tipped his hat toward one of the oaks. "You see that tree there? It uses four hundred gallons of water a day, just to stay alive. You chop one of those down, put a draw right there, and you'll have four hundred gallons of pristine drinking water."
    "Is that so?" Jim said. He was too polite to call anybody a liar. He kicked the dust and gave the tree a careful once-over. "Well, we're just city folks, so maybe we should go talk to people a bit more before we settle on a parcel."
    Down at the general store, he and my mother ran the story by the shopkeeper. "That place is bone-dry," he told them. "Nate's been waiting for some city slickers to fall for the view."
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    Despite our brush with