Screw the enchiladas. I have a point to prove. After Phil finishes a lengthy monologue about the merits and drawbacks of strawberry topping for Ozzie’s cake, I rush back to my desk with cheetah-like speed and whip open my laptop.
Dr. Kimber Nyiramacibiri, I type into the search bar, my fingers flying and my heart pounding. Despite that awful Kai Bridges’s insistence, I know I’m not wrong. I can’t be. I’ve read Majesty on the Mountain so many times that I almost know it by heart, and I distinctly remember Dr. Kimber’s description of her tenuous friendship with the Virunga Mountain locals.
“But through it all,” she wrote, recounting a spat with local tribesmen over their attempt to hunt deer near gorilla territory, “they never called me by my given name. They called me Nyiramacibiri, ‘the woman who lives alone in the forest.’ It amused me, for they know better than anyone that a person in the forest is never alone.”
I’m definitely not wrong. Right?
I skim the search results until I land on Dr. Kimber’s official website. The homepage features the same breathtaking photo that graces the cover of Majesty on the Mountain: a mid-thirties Charlotte Kimber sits cross-legged in front of lush vegetation, wearing a long-sleeved, pickle green button-up and jeans. Her raven hair, braided into her signature plait, hangs over one shoulder, and a notebook rests in her lap. Beside her, a young gorilla with thick black fur and wide eyes reaches for her pen with an outstretched hand while Dr. Kimber’s lips curl in amusement. She looks like the jungle version of Snow White, minus the woman-on-woman hate and Prince Charming bullshit.
I tried to re-create the image often as a kid, using my American Girl doll Molly as a stand-in for the gorilla. I’d beg Nona to snap Polaroids while I scribbled in my journal and giggled, pretending that the lifeless, glasses-wearing Molly was about to rip my mechanical pencil away. Looking back, it’s a wonder Nona didn’t get me professional help.
I speed-read the site, looking for evidence that I’m right and Kai Stupid-Face Bridges is wrong. Before I can find it, my phone buzzes, and I see a text from my grandmother: Squirrel emergency!!! Hurry home.
I roll my eyes. Nona hosts my half sister Mia’s Girl Scout troop meetings on Thursday afternoons, and she’s always coming up with bullshit reasons for me to attend. Once, she pretended she’d fallen and hurt her hip. Another time, she claimed I should rush home because her hot fireman neighbor was washing his car shirtless; he was not. And last month, she committed the unforgivable sin of threatening to feed my family-size box of birthday cake Oreos to the Scouts if I didn’t show up.
Nobody fucks with my Oreos.
Not falling for it, I text back, proud of myself for finally seeing through Nona’s dramatics. It’s not that I have anything against Girl Scouts or my ten-year-old half sister Mia. I love Thin Mints as much as the next girl, and Mia’s an okay kid, even if she does ask tons of questions and once accidentally let her Saint Bernard eat my favorite flip-flops. But even though Nona’s offered me free Starbucks for a month if I come to a Scout meeting and teach the girls about my job, I refuse to do it. Because wherever the Scouts go, Mia goes, and wherever Mia goes, my mother Karina goes.
And I’d rather get stung by a jellyfish than spend my free time with her.
I’m serious this time, Nona writes back. I need help.
I send her an eye roll emoji, along with a picture of a wolf. Seconds later, my phone rings, and I contemplate sending Nona to voice mail before thinking better of it. After all, she knows where I live.
“Nona,” I say, not bothering with niceties. “I’m working. I can’t come to the Brownie meeting. And no fake squirrel emergency will change my mind. Did you not understand the wolf pic I sent? Because, you know, you’re the lady who cried wolf—”
“I understand the reference, Lucille,” Nona says in a clipped tone. She has the raspy voice of a longtime smoker, even though I’ve never seen her touch a cigarette in my life. “I can assure you that I’m not, nor have I ever, cried wolf. And the girls are Juniors, not Brownies.”
I let out an indignant huff. “Really? What about the time you pretended to break your hip? Or the time you said Joey Macoroy was hosing down his Mustang without a shirt? Or when you threatened to give the Juniors my entire stash of Oreos?”
There’s a long pause before my grandmother speaks again. “I never claimed to have broken my hip. I simply said I injured it, which I did. I had a bruise the size of a softball! And it’s not my fault you didn’t get home in time to see Joey wash his car. We both know you drive at the pace of a convalescent turtle.”
I don’t point out that if Nona drove more like a turtle and less like a total psycho, she’d have a lot fewer speeding tickets.
“And the Oreos?” I ask.
She sighs. “I’ll give you that one. Threatening to give your cookies away was a dick move.”
I hear a gasp in the background. Clearly some of the Juniors—or their parents—aren’t accustomed to my seventy-three-year-old grandmother’s colorful use of language.
“My apologies, ladies,” I hear Nona whisper, followed by the sound of a door opening and closing shut.
“You’d think I was leading a Puritan girls’ club,” she grumbles. “I had to walk outside so I can curse without Avery Thompson’s moms looking at me like I’m an ax murderer.”
I don’t blame Avery’s moms for their reaction. Nona’s pretty much my favorite person in the whole world, but she’s a lot to handle.
“Anyway,” she continues, “I need your help. I’m serious about the squirrel emergency. Dynamite caught one in the backyard. Mia got him to drop it, but I think he broke the squirrel’s leg or something. There’s a lot of missing fur and a lot of crying ten-year-olds.”
I picture Mia’s 170-pound Saint Bernard trotting up to a bunch of preteens with a half-dead squirrel wriggling around in his mouth. Then I glance at my mini fridge, wishing I had a nice cold bottle of something stronger than Diet Coke.
“I’m not a vet, Nona. Sorry, but I don’t know how to fix squirrel legs.”
“You’re a zookeeper, Lucille! I bet you know more about squirrel legs than I do.”
I drum my fingertips on my desk, praying for patience. “I’m a primate keeper. You need a vet who sees rodents.”
A wailing sound pierces my eardrum from the other end of the line, and I hold the phone away from my ear, wincing.
“Do you hear what I’m dealing with?” Nona asks, her tone turning frantic. “Half the girls are in hysterics, and poor Ava Walker got so upset, she had to use her inhaler. And don’t get me started on Penelope Rocht. She tried to do CPR on the squirrel, Lucy. He wasn’t even unconscious!”
“Nona,” I protest, “I really don’t—”
“Can you call Nick?” Nona interrupts. “I know it might be a little awkward, but I bet he could help.”
I sigh and lean back in my chair, bumping my head against the door. “Ow. No, I cannot call Nick. I refuse.”
Working at the same zoo as my veterinarian ex-boyfriend already presents plenty of awkward moments. It’s been five months since our breakup, but I still found myself diving behind a Dippin’ Dots stand last week to avoid crossing paths with him. I’m certainly not about to contact him for nonprofessional reasons.
“You sure?” Nona asks. “I bet he’d be happy to help. He still carries a torch for you, and—”
“Whatever torches Nick carries are none of my business. Besides, he’s dating Margo from Guest Relations now.”
A surge of annoyance washes over me. I’m supposed to be proving that I’m right and Kai Bridges is wrong, not thinking about my ex and his budding relationship with the perpetually smiley Margo.
“Anyway, Nona—”
“Penelope! Get your mouth away from that squirrel, I swear to God!”
I wince, regretting my decision to answer the phone.
“Sorry,” Nona says after muttering an impressive stream of curses. She sighs, and I can hear the weariness in her voice. “I don’t mean to bother you. I know how busy you are. It’s just that Mia’s worried sick over the squirrel, and Karina’s not answering her phone. Anyway, I’ll figure something out. Maybe Joey Macoroy can help. Firefighters rescue kittens sometimes, right? Squirrels can’t be that different.”
Her resigned tone pokes at my resolve, and I fish a piece of hay out of my ponytail. Nothing upsets Nona more than seeing either of her granddaughters cry, and few things upset me more than Nona being upset. It’s also no surprise that Karina isn’t answering her phone—my grandmother and I have a long history of showing up for each other when my mother fails to do so.
I glance at my smartwatch. I’ve been at the zoo for eleven hours, and it’s Jack’s turn to hose down the exhibits. I guess it won’t be the end of the world if I leave before dinnertime just this once.
“I’ll come home,” I relent. “But if I get there and there’s no squirrel, I’ll change your Netflix password to something you wouldn’t guess in a million billion years. I mean it.”
“There’s a squirrel,” Nona promises. “Scout’s honor.”
She hangs up, perhaps to stop Penelope from trying to resuscitate the already-conscious squirrel again, and I put my phone down and press my forehead against my desk.
If I get the senior keeper position, maybe Nona will finally respect my schedule and stop strong-arming me into attending Mia’s events. When I get the senior keeper position, I mean. Nobody wants it more than me, and I’m gonna keep working my ass off until it’s mine.
You can bet all the birthday cake Oreos in the world on that.
I didn’t always live with my grandma. Once upon a time, I was a responsible adult with my own Netflix account and a charming town house I shared with Nick. But when he broke up with me, leaving me and my vast khaki pants collection with nowhere to go, I accepted Nona’s offer to move back into my childhood bedroom. After all, my pittance of a salary made living on my own a less viable option, and if I had to have a roommate, one who baked mouthwatering cherry pie and loved me enough to put up with my after-work gorilla odor sounded tolerable enough.
That’s why, for the past five months, I’ve stayed in the same pink-wallpapered bedroom where I lived from ages ten to eighteen. So yes, I’m a thirty-year-old professional who sleeps in a canopied bed with a forty-inch poster of Titanic’s Jack and Rose on the ceiling. For now. Once I land the promotion and the accompanying salary bump, that will change.
I turn out of the parking lot, joining the army of SUVs heading from the zoo toward Riverside Drive. Unlike the sleek Range Rovers and BMWs inhabiting the driveways of Nona’s neighborhood, my decade-old Chevy is not living its best life. The overhead mirror fell into my lap last week, and a yellow maintenance light on the dashboard’s been begging for attention for months. But unlike Nona’s neighbors, most of whom are surgeons or executives or lawyers who make bank suing the surgeons, I’m not rolling in cash. Nobody goes into zookeeping for the money.
Luckily, I don’t have to stare at the maintenance light for long. Nona lives a half mile from the zoo, close enough that if I listen hard, I can hear the gibbons’ calls from my bedroom window. Her house, an egg white Spanish revival, sticks out from her neighbors’ Cape Cods and Dutch Colonials like a sore thumb. With its stucco exterior, red tile roof, and arched corridors, it looks like a movie star’s home in sunny California. I throw the car into park and jog through the front courtyard, passing rows of lavender bushes and apricot-toned Marilyn Monroe roses. As if on cue, the lawn sprinklers switch on, and I pick up the pace to avoid getting soaked.
“Finally!” Nona says when I step inside, shaking water droplets out of my hair.
I see my grandmother every day, but somehow I’m still struck by her air of effortless glamour. A semi-retired cardiologist, she once posed for the cover of Columbus Monthly magazine wearing a red sheath dress that, according to Elle, “probably inspired a thousand new Viagra prescriptions.” This afternoon, she’s wearing a peach chiffon blouse with a deep V-neck tucked into palazzo pants. The silk scarf knotted around her neck and gold bangle on her wrist only add to her elegance.
If I wore those pants, I’d look less like a Hollywood star and more like a hired party clown. It’s weird having a grandma who’s hotter than you.
“How do you always look like you’re on the set of a Nancy Meyers movie?” I ask, marveling at her. “And why didn’t I inherit that gene?”
Instead of answering, she grabs my arm and pulls me across the foyer. She doesn’t give me a chance to slip off my work boots, so I leave a trail of dirt on the Saltillo tile floor. When I was a kid, we spent a lot of time sliding across that floor in our socks, imitating Tom Cruise’s famous scene from Risky Business. We still do it on occasion, after we’ve had a few too many cocktails.
“Damn,” I say, impressed by Nona’s strength. “Somebody’s been keeping up with her Pilates.”
She shoots me a look as we practically sprint toward the living room, and it doesn’t take me long to figure out why. Before we’re even halfway down the hallway, I hear the wracked sobs of a dozen ten-year-olds.
“It’s Herbert,” Nona whispers. “Things aren’t looking good.”
She thrusts me into the living room, where a small army of girls clad in green vests gather around the fireplace, crouching over a shoebox.
“Lucy!” my half sister Mia cries, leaping up to grab my hand.
Unfortunately for Mia, the effortless-beauty gene that blessed our grandmother and mother Karina seems to have skipped both of us. Instead of their silky blond tresses, she’s got a headful of unruly dark curls that she refuses to let Karina straighten. Where Nona and Karina are long and lithe with perfect, gleaming teeth, Mia’s got the small potbelly and before-braces tooth gap of prepubescent girlhood.
In other words, she looks like a perfectly normal kid. Karina must hate it.
“Dynamite hurt him.” She points toward the shoebox on the floor, where a brown squirrel rests on the tie-dyed Zoo Camp shirt I wore as a teenager.
“Sorry,” she whispers. “I borrowed your shirt.”
Beside her, a redheaded girl with French braids holds a smartphone on a selfie stick, recording a video. “We didn’t know Herbert long,” the girl says in a somber, choked-up voice, “but he was a special squirrel. He taught us so much about life and death, and—”
“He’s definitely still alive,” I interrupt, watching as the squirrel wriggles around in the box.
The redheaded girl lowers her phone and narrows her eyes at me. “I’ll get more likes on TikTok if I pretend he’s dead,” she says, all the mourning gone from her tone. “It’s more dramatic.”
“Olivia has six thousand followers,” Mia whispers. “She’s an influencer.”
“She’s ten!” I protest, fishing a pair of gloves from my backpack.
The pint-sized influencer juts her chin out in my direction. “I’m ten and a half. And how many followers do you have?”
Mia glares at Olivia like she just might cut a bitch. “My sister is too busy to care about followers. She has an important job, and she’s gonna be on a TV show.”
The mention of a possible brush with fame piques Olivia’s interest, but Mia’s comment reminds me of how rudely Kai Bridges treated me. Enraged all over again, I take a deep breath and focus.
“Looks like his leg got fractured,” I say, peering at the squirrel. I don’t find any blood, but his hind right leg is bent at an awkward angle.
Mia and her fellow Juniors watch with wide eyes as I fish around in my backpack for a container of seeds and berries that I borrowed from the Ape House kitchen. I set the container in the shoebox with Herbert, and he perks his head up for an instant before lowering it again.
“What are we gonna do with him?” Mia asks, her arm touching mine as she peers at Herbert.
I glance at my watch, frowning. It’s after six, which means the local wildlife center is closed for the evening. “We’ll just have to keep him comfortable until morning. Then we can take him to the wildlife rescue in Powell.”
Red-haired Olivia hoists her phone into the air and beams for her followers. “Time to place your vote, guys: Will Herbert cross the Rainbow Bridge tonight? Share your guesses in the comments below!”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Mia whispers. I start to laugh at her mortified expression, but a familiar voice sucks all the humor from the room.
“Mia?” Karina asks. “What’s going on?”
I turn to see my mother standing in the arched doorway to the living room, her forehead furrowed in confusion. With her pink button-down, linen pants, and suede loafers, she looks like every pretty, suburban forty-something on her way to Whole Foods. The formfitting dresses and waist-length hair she wore when I was a kid have been traded in for Talbots blouses and a smooth blond bob, and if you stood behind her in line at Starbucks, you’d never guess that she once dated Tim Allen and had a starring role on a popular TV show.
These days, she looks like a mom, and it still catches me off guard.
“Hi, Luce.” Her silver Pandora bracelet jingles when she waves at me.
I nod and give her a brief smile before turning back to the squirrel. This is why I don’t come to Mia’s meetings.
I place a towel over Herbert to keep him warm, trying to stay busy as Karina listens with rapt attention to Mia’s narration of events. It’s been more than a year since Karina, her husband Alfie, and their daughter Mia moved from California to a slate gray Craftsman home five blocks from Nona’s. You’d think I’d be used to this version of Karina by now—the sober, Peloton-riding woman who buys organic produce and reads every title in Reese Witherspoon’s book club—but I’m not.
I might never be.
“Come on, buddy,” I whisper to the squirrel, lifting the shoebox off the ground. “Let’s get you someplace quiet.”
While the Scouts dry their tears, I carry the box to my bedroom. My desk is cluttered with half-empty Diet Coke cans and old editions of the Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research, and I push them aside to make room for Herbert. Before I can text Elle and Sam to ask about their plans for the evening, someone raps lightly on my bedroom door. “Luce?”
I turn to see Karina standing in the hallway, one hand perched on the doorknob.
“I wanted to say thanks for helping Mia with the squirrel. I know you’ve got your hands full with work.”
I nod but don’t say what I’m really thinking: that there’s no need to thank me, because I’m not doing anything for her. I’m not even doing it for Mia, really. I’m doing it for Nona.
“I also wanted to mention,” she continues, her voice wavering a little, “that we’re going to dinner for Alfie’s birthday tomorrow. Nona and Mia are coming, too, of course, and I made the reservation for five in case you’re able to join. We’d love it if you came.”
She’s too polite to mention that she’s already texted me twice about attending, and I’m not bitchy enough to point out that I ignored both messages. It’s not that I have anything against her husband Alfie, even if he is named Alfie and pronounces gyro with a hard g. He seems like a good dad to Mia and once helped me fix my laptop when it crashed. It’s just that I can’t force myself to wear a fake smile while Karina sings “Happy Birthday” and cajoles Alfie and Mia into taking another sweet family photo for Facebook. I can’t watch her run a loving hand over Mia’s hair or plant a kiss on Alfie’s cheek without thinking of all the birthdays she missed. All the times I sat in Nona’s kitchen, a chocolate fondant cake with pink flowers and candles in front of me, wishing for my mom to show up.
It’s not that I don’t want to try. It’s that I can’t.
I smooth the corner of a decades-old *NSYNC poster plastered next to my vanity mirror, making intense eye contact with Joey Fatone instead of Karina.
“I have a fundraiser on Saturday,” I tell her. “And tons of work to do before filming starts next week.” I’m sure Mia, who’s never missed an episode of On the Wild Side with Kai Bridges, told Karina all about the upcoming docuseries.
“I understand,” she replies. “But if you get done early, there’ll be a lettuce wrap appetizer with your name on it.”
I half expect the poster version of Justin Timberlake to roll his eyes. If a lettuce wrap appetizer is the carrot she’s dangling, it’s no wonder my mom and I haven’t made peace. She could at least offer spicy buffalo wings or a goddamn Bavarian pretzel.
“Anyway,” I say, peering into Herbert’s shoebox, “I better see what I can do here.”
Karina nods. “I’ll leave you to it,” she says, her shoes clacking against the hardwood as she heads downstairs.
Relieved that she’s gone, I head for my bookshelf. On the top row, tucked between my middle school yearbook and a Kamala Harris biography, is my dog-eared copy of Majesty on the Mountain. I grab it and flop onto my bed, my pulse quickening as I flip through pages and pages of Dr. Kimber’s witty observations, detailed data logs, and family tree diagrams of the gorilla troops.
Finally, on page 182, I find the evidence I’m looking for.
“They called me Nyiramacibiri,” Dr. Kimber wrote. “ ‘The woman who lives alone in the forest.’ ”
Aha! I snap the book shut so hard that Herbert pops his head up from the shoebox. I knew I was right. I knew I was right and Kai Bridges was wrong, and I’m annoyed that I ever doubted myself. There are lots of things I don’t know: Why my grandmother can pull off hotpants but they turn me into a walking billboard for camel toe. Why Nick changed his mind about everything I thought we wanted in life. Why Karina, who abandoned me at Nona’s when I was ten so she could play a sexpot PI on the soapy Guilty Pleasures without having to drag me along with her, transformed into Super Mom the second Mia was born.
But work stuff, gorilla stuff, Dr. Charlotte Kimber stuff—that I know like the back of my hand.
And I’ll make sure Kai Bridges knows it, too.