Little Black Book

Bettie Gravel opens her hall closet and stares at the skis lurking in the back corner, taunting her. When she took up skiing at age seventy, she devoted two days a week from mid-November through early April, religiously, to her new hobby. Now, at age eighty-eight and three-quarters, her ski days are well behind her. She sighs, closes the closet, then turns back to it and mutters, “Time to get rid of yet another reminder of something I can no longer do.”

Bettie drags the skis out, one at a time, and props them against the pale blue wall of her foyer. One falls over, narrowly missing her foot. As she tries to stoop down to retrieve it, a sharp pang shoots up her back. She remains doubled over in pain for a moment. She stands up as close to straight as she can manage and runs her gnarled hands over the still-standing K-2s’ shiny gray and silver surface and thinks of her first time on skis. The twenty-year-old ski instructor, Van, had ridden with her on the chairlift, singing, “Here we go off into the wild, blue yonder. Here we go off onto our skis.” Bettie smiled so much that first time that, by the end of the day, her face ached more than her legs.

That day, Van had managed to make her feel as if she was not just born to ski, but born to take up skiing at age seventy. She’d invited Van and a young woman who lived in her apartment building for Thanksgiving that year, hoping she was brushing off her match-making skills. But Van showed up with his girlfriend and the neighbor had canceled last minute so she could serve meals to Santa Fe’s economically disadvantaged. Van and his girlfriend, both vegans, brought baked Tofurkey. Too self-conscious to eat the beautiful turkey she’d roasted, Bettie ended up taking it down to the Basilica and joining the volunteers serving dinner to the poor.

Bettie shakes her head, her wiry white curls poking around the bald spots. She shuffles into the kitchen to grab her iPhone, snaps a photo of the skis, and uploads it to Facebook with a “for sale” post. She scrolls through her Facebook feed—videos of panda cubs harassing their nannies in China’s Guangzhou Zoo, the Sloth of the Day hanging lazily from a cecropia tree in Costa Rica, herds of special needs goats tearing around in wheelchairs that are harnessed to their torsos in a New Jersey woman’s backyard. The significance of letting go of the skis weighs heavily on Bettie, so much so that even Alfie the Alpaca in Adelaide can’t cheer her up.

Bettie’s about to put her phone down and try to do something useful—rinse out her tea mug, vacuum her bedroom, put the recyclables in a paper bag—when Ashlee’s Acres Animal Sanctuary goes live. Bettie watches the minipigs emerge from a pile of blankets as they follow Ashlee to the food bowls filled with pig pellets and zucchini. She’s never seen anyone react so enthusiastically to squash. She is captivated by her favorite pig, Wendell, whose thick brindle fur looks lush and whose tusks stick straight out from under his snout. Wendell gobbles his food and scampers outside, rooting through the snow, which clings to his face like a mustache. Betty feels her face curl into a smile and a warming sensation spread through her chest. From Facebook, Wendell beams back at her.

Later that night, Van visits, sitting beside her in the paneled living room. A striking man in his mid-thirties, Van was the son Bettie wished she’d had. She thought he could easily have become an actor or a very handsome doctor, rather than a ski instructor, but Van wanted to spend his days outdoors, in nature. Her bond with Van deepened after his actual mother died, and Bettie liked to think she’d filled that emptiness for him as much as he’d done for her.

“Let me show you my Wendell.” Bettie places her mug on a crochet cat coaster. She fishes her phone out of the pile of throw pillows and tries to open the app, but the phone slips out of her hand. Van scoops it up and cradles it absently, gazing at Bettie.

“How ya feelin’, Bettie?”

“I know, I know. I’m a mess.”

“You are beautiful.”

“I am not. I’m ugly,” Bettie sighs and takes the phone back from Van with shaking hands. “I was thinking—Babies are ugly when they’re born. Squished faces, bald. And people are ugly when they get old. Born ugly, die ugly. It’s a cycle.”

“You are beautiful,” Van says again and turns his head away, probably so that Bettie can’t see the tears brimming in the corner of his wide-set hazel eyes. But mothers know everything.

Even after his girlfriend left him and he’d been furloughed from the resort, Van had continued to call on Bettie almost daily for months. He’d confided that he felt the less he had to do, the less he was able to do, and Betty worried for his mental health when he hadn’t dropped by in weeks.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Van says dismissively.

“Good,” Bettie says even though she doesn’t believe him. Nicole was never good enough for Van and he needs to get over her already. “Anyone new catch your eye?”

“I’m waiting until I meet a woman just like you.”

Bettie pats Van on the knee. “Don’t wait too long for love. The longer you’re alone, the harder it is to love someone else. Find yourself someone who is as wonderful as you are. It’s not as hard as you might think.”

Van nods, but Bettie, who does not fail to notice how hard he is trying not to cry, suspects he doesn’t believe her.

Van rolls his car to a stop in front of the farmhouse and double checks the address from Bettie’s small black notebook. With summer mere weeks away and his furlough not likely to end any time soon—the younger resort workers cost less and don’t care about health insurance—he’s scampered to find a new career path. He’s taken IT and graphic design courses. He even toyed with the idea of becoming a court reporter. Lawsuits are recession and COVID-proof. But he couldn’t muster enthusiasm for anything until he stumbled upon the drawing class on Udemy. He’s filled notebooks—the same type in which Picasso sketched and Hemingway scrawled—with drawings. He’s even started a business, Sketch-a-Pet.

Now, he studies the old farmhouse and doodles the porch, which lists to one side, like a skateboard ramp. It reminds him of the house in The Wizard of Oz, post tornado.

Bettie had left Van nearly everything she had—a 2006 Toyota Corolla, a collection of Hummel’s, shares of cryptocurrency worth tens of thousands of dollars one day, but half that amount a week later when some unknown force causes the value to crash. Up and down the value of his inheritance goes and Van mostly ignores its shenanigans, focusing his energy instead on his Sketch-a-Pet business and carrying out Bettie’s last wishes.

Now, as Van studies the home of the only other recipient of Bettie’s bequests, he remembers the last time he saw Bettie and her delight at watching the videos of Wendell, the minipig. Bettie’s little black notebook, containing her handwritten will and every detail of her “estate” scrawled in purple pen, expressly directed that Van visit Ashlee’s Acres in person.

Van eases out of the Toyota, tromps across the creaking front porch of the house, and rings the doorbell. He waits, then heads around the back, towards the largest of the weathered barns. Although the buildings and sheds look to be in need of serious repair, the land itself is already thick with grass and stretches of wildflowers. Van’s gait quickens and sweat beads around his beanie when he hears, mixed in with the joyous sounds of pigs and goats and sheep, Ashlee’s unmistakable voice singing to the animals.

Van enters the barn as Ashlee finishes adding vegetables to the pigs’ trough. “Hi,” she says, through a weary smile.

“I’m Van. Bettie Gravel’s friend? You know, Wendell’s trustee,” Van chuckles, thinking he sounds cute, charming. He extends his hand, then pulls it back, remembering people no longer shake hands.

“Wendell has a trustee?”

“Well, not a trustee, so much as a— Bettie wanted me to make sure—” A pig rushes up to Van, startling him.

“You’re checking in on me?” Ashlee’s nostrils flare. Several sheep crowd around her, as if to protect her from Van. “You’re checking up on how I’m spending the twenty thousand dollars Ms. Gravel left the Sanctuary?”

Van fails to read Ashlee’s face, still thinking he’s making a great impression. “Well— My understanding is Bettie didn’t really leave the money to the Sanctuary. She left twenty grand specifically to Wendell and—”

Ashlee raises her hand to stop Van. “Take a look around,” she barks. “As you can see, I’ve spent every penny frivolously on myself, living in the lap of luxury. Obviously, I’m a woman who can’t be trusted with twenty thousand dollars, despite the fact that I care for over two hundred farm animals who I rescued from abuse and neglect and—” Spittle flies out of Ashlee’s mouth. “Obviously, I run a sanctuary by myself because it’s an easy way to make money.”

Van realizes this introduction has gone terribly wrong. He’d meant to be funny. He doesn’t understand how this happens to him with women, how he continuously messes up and inspires wrath.

Ashlee bends to soothe a lamb, lowers her voice and continues. “Did you notice my car out there? Twenty-year-old Subaru Forester, stick shift, bald tires, Check Engine Light perpetually lit.”

She swivels her head to show Van her back. “See these split ends? I haven’t had a trim in years. I cut my bangs myself. I don’t even buy shampoo. I use Dr. Bronner’s All-in-One soap for everything, hair, body, clothes, dishes. Every penny I have goes to the animals.”

Van is stumped. “I was kidding—,” his voice trails off. He stares at his feet in silence for what seems like an eternity.

Ashlee plops down in a pile of hay and puts her tear-stained face in her hands. A small brindle-colored pig waddles over and nudges his snout under her arm. She smiles down at him and Van thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“I’m sorry,” Ashlee says. “I know I sound ungrateful and that twenty thousand will take care of Wendell for seven years. But I need that money now. For the vet and hay. The mortgage, so I can keep a roof over all our heads. The truth is, I’ve started calling other sanctuaries to see if they can take these beloveds in. Without a miracle, I’ll have to shut down within a month.”

Van joins Ashlee in the hay. He, too, rubs the pig’s pot belly and Ashlee’s voice lightens as she tells Van the story of Wendell’s rescue.

“Would you mind showing me around?”

Ashlee walks Van through the goat stables and out to the far pasture where two giant Holsteins are playing with Pilates balls. Three white horses frolic in the next pasture. Beyond the field of wildflowers, a pine forest stretches to the horizon.

“This place is gorgeous,” Van says. “Just like you,” he adds, murmuring too low for Ashlee to hear.

“You want to buy it? I’m sure the bank would consider any reasonable offer.”

“Only if you let me help you run it.”

“Deal,” Ashlee says. Her smiles sends waves of excitement through Van.

Van thinks of Bettie’s words to him the last time he saw her alive. He pulls out his phone and looks up the current sale price of Bitcoin.

“Deal,” Van repeats realizing the brilliance of Bettie’s final wishes.