If you’d known she wouldn’t make it to thirty, you would have crammed a lifetime of loving into the brief window when you knew her. When you’re young, it’s easy to be arrogant and assume you have unlimited time, but it only takes one day to feel like you’ve aged sixty years. You wouldn’t have allowed her to waste so much energy dusting bookcases or searching for the right brand of high-fiber cereal or stressing about properly folding her work slacks, because that sort of stuff was unimportant even then, but now it seems tragic that she spent so much of her existence worried about things that had no bearing on the outcome of her life.
And you wouldn’t have wasted so much time staring blankly at the TV. You wouldn’t have sneaked in a half hour of playing video games while she showered; instead, you would have sat on a stool beside the shower chatting with her, followed her to the bedroom, helped her pick an outfit, or even told her forget the outfit, we’re staying in tonight, the sort of take-charge thing Paul Newman would have said to Joanne Woodward.
IF YOU’D ONLY KNOWN, you would never have allowed the Month of Being Romantic to expire, but one day you ran out of ideas and were tired and just wanted things to be easy again, so it was over. If you’d known, you would have continued giving her what she needed, which was an occasional Big Gesture, rather than relying on steady adequacy to keep you afloat.
If you’d known she would be dead by thirty, you wouldn’t have envied her successful life while yours was a ragged mess. You watched her getting ready for work and you were proud of her, knew you were lucky to have a wife who had figured things out and was making money and doing something useful, but also you had to admit there was a little kernel of bitterness in your reaction, because you wanted that self-assurance and accomplishment, but never knew how to find it.
You wouldn’t have burned any energy being angry about stupid things, like her tendency to pick at her teeth in public, or the way she sometimes talked over your favorite TV shows. You wouldn’t have compared her to other women you saw on the beach, or spent any time thinking that even though she was beautiful, she could look even better if only she lost three, four, five pounds, if she stopped with the white chocolate and the sweetened iced tea. You wouldn’t have watched the women on TV and thought, why can’t her arms be just a little more toned or why can’t her eyes be iridescent like the ones on that woman in the cell-phone commercials?
Instead of trying to improve her, you would have perfected yourself, would have devoted yourself to loving her better, giving her the life she deserved but never got, organized yourself and pursued an actual career so you could afford all the things she dreamed of owning and doing. Got into shape and paid for a trendy haircut and bought stylish new clothes. Tried a little harder to get along with her family instead of grimly enduring the gatherings and then insulting them on the drive home. Taken some personal agency and made an effort to be a better, more likable, friendlier person instead of who you are. Would have convinced her to work less overtime and instead go on spontaneous trips to romantic weekend resorts in Cape May and Virginia Beach. And you would have saved enough cash to help her see the whole world before she died, because the narrative of her life at this point is not a love story, but rather a tale of unfulfilled dreams.
The future is nothing but the steady unraveling of the order we try to impose on the present. If you had known this sooner, you would have stopped waiting for life to happen to you and taken control of it instead, would have made important decisions rather than avoiding them. When strangers asked you about children, because strangers universally seemed to believe that the status of your wife’s womb was their business, you danced around the answer, said you didn’t know about kids. Maybe eventually, someday. But kids! Yes, of course kids! Kids with freckles and braces. Kids with asthma and pointy elbows like their mother’s, kids with frequent ear infections and allergies to peanuts, kids whose noses curved upward at the tip, kids whose fat little fingers would charm you to no end even though you’ve never had a moment of interest in the fat little fingers of other people’s offspring. Kids with precocious ideas about religion, rebellious kids with bizarre piercings, loving kids, beautiful kids, homely kids, kids who broke the state record in 200-meter hurdles, kids who couldn’t walk, kids with bad hearts and kids with powerful lungs, kids with superpowers, kids who could read minds and could communicate telepathically with animals, kids who composed symphonies when they were five, kids who represented the entire world of possibilities, all the permutations of yourselves, from 99 percent of you to 99 percent of her, kids you would love regardless of what they looked like or how efficiently their bodies processed lactose or what talents they had, because in their postures and their expressions you would see her, and in their voices you would hear her, and in every movement there would be a century of her genetic history mapped onto them. Hundreds of kids, just to see what they’d look like. Just to hold them and smell them and dry their tears on your sleeve. To repopulate the earth with facsimiles of Kait.
EIGHTEEN
Austin and Hunter take five minutes to dress themselves in the morning, and Amber is ready soon after, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, her hair pulled into a ponytail. On days when Kait’s self-esteem was particularly low, it could take over an hour before she felt ready to leave the house, trying on a dozen different outfits in front of a full-length mirror and engaging in a complex series of tugs and wipes and corrective smoothing of hair and clothes and makeup such that she looked like a baseball manager signaling for a runner to steal second, a process which sometimes ended with half of her clothes balled up in a heap in the corner of the bedroom. Hunter had gotten in the habit of helping her dress, sitting in the bedroom and talking to her while she applied mascara, and laying potential outfits on the bed for her while she dried her hair. When she dressed and posed in front of the mirror he would stand behind her, arms wrapped around her waist, and before she had the chance to start thinking negative thoughts and insulting her body, he would say, “You look amazing in that,” which was true, but which didn’t always convince her, especially because his proclivity toward sarcasm made even his most sincere comments seem like they could be insults. But sometimes it did convince her, and on those occasions she would turn, kiss him on the lips and say, “You just scored yourself twenty points, Meatball.”
SINCE PAUL HAD CEDED control of the trip to Amber, the group has been visiting more traditional tourist venues—what Hunter keeps calling tourist traps, which comment doesn’t faze Amber, who says, “Well, we are tourists.” It was inevitable, then, that they would end up at a place like Wild Bill’s Wild West Outpost, about ten miles south of Flagstaff, Arizona. It is one of dozens of such places in this area of the country, theme parks designed to re-create the Old West experience, built on the graves of actual ghost towns. The whole park is centered on one dusty main street that runs through what is supposed to be the heart of a bustling western town. There are actors dressed in period costumeprostitutes, drunks, prospectors, sinister looking men in black, gallant and friendly deputies—moseying among the tourists. Unlike at the Renaissance Faire, most of the visitors here are not in costume, aside from little boys with plastic sheriff’s badges clipped to their shirts, but this place still reminds him of the Faire, in that it’s trying to help people relive a time that was probably actually not all that great a time to live in, especially if, like many of the patrons, one is not a white, land-owning Christian male. Everything is scrubbed a little too clean, everything is a little too nice.
Amber and Austin picked this place because they said they were tired of looking at random things, and they wanted to go somewhere they could do something. Paul grumbled that the only thing they would do here is pay attendance to look at different random things, but he obliged anyway, and so now he’s sitting in the saloon gulping from a mason jar full of root beer while the others investigate the town. Amber and Austin race from one building to the next, poking their heads into the doorway of the bank before turning away, taking one step in
to the sheriff’s office but refusing to progress any further, as if allergic to whatever lies inside. They want to be here, but they also want to fast-forward through it; they’re impatient and eager and youthful and they still have faith that something better is waiting for them down the road. Hunter is holding them back, because he walks into each building, reads the plaques and the descriptions of the exhibits, examines the guns, nodding knowingly at nearby men who look like gun aficionados. During the Month of Being a Man he went to the shooting range once, fired a Desert Eagle, handled a variety of other firearms, dipped his arms into a stockpile of ammo. He liked it, actually, felt the lightning strike of machismo when he fired, relished the tearing of the paper target’s shoulder, imagined himself keeping a gun under his pillow and defending his home from thieves, becoming a cable news hero for administering vigilante justice on home invaders, hauling a shotgun out into the woods, and dropping a moose big enough to feed him and Kait for months. Imagined sitting in his backyard cleaning his gun, telling Brutus about the mechanics of it, taking the brothers to the range with him to demonstrate his pulsing virility. Wanted to be able to say things like the Glock is a good piece and has cheaper mags, but I prefer the combat accuracy of a Walther. But Kait was never angrier than the day he told her he’d fired a gun. There was no fight or simmering rage, but a firm declaration: “If you buy a gun, you are moving out,” which marked the end of the Month of Being a Man.
Amber enters the sheriff’s office, tugs on Hunter’s sleeve, says, “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who read everything.”
“Someone spent a lot of time writing this.” People glance at paintings and valuable artifacts and race ahead, unconcerned about establishing anything like meaning or context, propelled by a desire to be done before they accidentally learned something.
“Me and Austin get souvenirs from every state we see,” she says in response to a question Hunter did not ask.
“I’m not holding you hostage here,” Hunter says, still eyeing the gun. Finally, she says, “Come find us when you’re done,” and then he’s alone again.
Probably the most authentic feature of the town is the dustiness, the swirling dirt, the choking particles in every breath. The boarded sidewalk groans beneath Hunter’s feet. The sun looks distant today, but it is boring into him as if pursuing a vendetta.
One of the actors—a miner type—shouts for help. A thief has shoved him to the ground and is running off with a sack of gold nuggets. The sheriff cuts him off on his horse, and the outlaw turns back the other way, but he’s hemmed in by a deputy. A crowd gathers along the perimeter, children in the front row catcalling the evildoer. The sheriff, his mustache perfectly trimmed, his outfit sinlessly clean, tells the thief to give it up. The outlaw reaches toward his hip and both sheriff and deputy fire their guns. The outlaw drops to his death. When the miner retrieves his sack, the crowd applauds. The sheriff jumps down from his horse and struts around the perimeter, shaking hands with the patrons. Having just witnessed a faux murder, most people disperse, returning to their picnics and stepping over the dead man as if he is a fallen branch.
Hunter visits a building called the Vault, and inside he finds five rows of wooden folding chairs aligned in front of a projection screen. Only one other person is in here, a wheelchair-bound grandfather who has fallen asleep in the front row. The movie mixes historical reenactments with staid shots of academics talking in front of bookshelves and continually cuts to stock footage of cupped hands sifting through a pile of gold nuggets. The voice-over is too high-pitched, the voice of an old man who probably works for the local historical society and can trace his lineage in this town back two hundred years. The narration deifies those who founded the settlement, calls them courageous and heroic, spending ten minutes on the owner of the park, a guy named Frank Frankmann (a direct descendant of an outlaw named Frankmann, famous for having survived a scuffle with Wild Bill Hickok), declaring him a visionary and a leader for our times and detailing the genius innovations he has pioneered in the historical recreation industry. Hunter remembers how awful these filmstrips at historic sites invariably are, how they are a poor substitute for actually interacting with a place, how bizarrely hagiographic they are concerning the owners, as if the visitors care that Frank Frankmann graduated cum laude from Arizona State. The video is dull like church, dull like watching football with the in-laws.
After the film, he finds Paul in the saloon watching a G-rated burlesque show, which mainly involves women in ankle-length skirts making terribly labored double entendres (i.e., “Whaddya call a cowboy that’s got no legs? An easy lay!”). But the old folks are laughing and the kids get French fries (aka fried taters) so they’re happy. The unfortunate thing about this show’s obvious low budget is that the women would all look much more attractive if they were just dressed in their regular clothes and makeup instead of the costumes. Hunter and Paul sit at the bar with their backs turned to the stage.
Paul offers Hunter a shot, throws one back himself. The shot is just corn syrup, which is about equally as disgusting as straight whiskey; Hunter holds it but does not drink it. “Can’t drink much more root beer before I get sick,” Paul says. Hunter orders a lemonade, which is served in a cup shaped like a barrel. “I know those two ain’t having any fun,” Paul says, pausing to do another shot.
“Why’d you come with them?”
“Just remembering is all. Out on the road again, like it was before.” The burlesque show reaches intermission and a piano player plinks through a version of “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain.” Children square-dance beside the stage.
“This goddamn song. Fifth goddamn time I’ve heard it,” he says, peering back over his shoulder. He grabs a handful of peanuts from a bowl on the bar and crunches into them.
“What would you say if you found your wife after so long?”
Paul inhales as if prepping for a deep-sea dive. “Look, I know I’m never gonna find her. It’s been six years. But you got to look everywhere,” he says. “And this is all I’ve got.”
“But if you did find her. I think I would make a joke. Like—Sorry I’ve been gone so long!” Paul clinks his wedding ring against the bar rail. Hunter says, “You know, like you’re the one who was missing. To lighten the mood.”
“I got to piss like nobody’s business,” Paul says. “Go and find them others so we can get on the road.”
IN THE CAR, TO fill a yawning chasm of silence—by midday they’ve run out of things to say to one another, and the two in the backseat are nodding off—Hunter announces he is going to call his wife. The silence is dangerous, an invitation to reflection and to questions. Silence is the greatest threat to the walls Hunter has been trying to erect around his sadness, a hungry wolf that will blow his defenses down in a single breath. He dials her cell phone and speaks to her voice mail. He has left her a half-dozen messages, and soon her mailbox will be full. He mimics a conversation. Says, “Hey, lover,” and laughs. Says, “How’s the dog?” because in this version of his life, he has a two-year-old Akita named Oliver. Says he can’t wait to see the new furniture she’s bought. Discusses the neighbors, Bob and Sandy, a nice couple even though they seem like gossips and Bob is a neat freak. Says he’ll cook her a gourmet meal when he gets home, she deserves a break after taking care of the house by herself. Tells her about the various stops he’s made and says he’ll be home soon. Says, “I miss you too.”
AUSTIN WANTS TO SEE the inside of a cave, so they’re all standing in line for a guided tour of a cave. “I hope we see bats,” he says. He is wearing a Batman T-shirt and plaid cargo shorts, both pockets stuffed with bags of peanuts that he’s been shelling on their walk, a trail leading back to the car. It’s hard to believe he is about to become an insurance agent. He grins constantly, not in a stupid way, but in a clever, quippy college-boy way. His laugh is hearty and strong, the laugh of a lumberjack, or the contractor at the neighborhood bar. Hunter does not remember if he ever looked or felt like that whe
n he was twenty-two. Amber walks with them, her arm hooked around Austin’s, but she won’t enter the cave because she’s claustrophobic.
A group of twenty people single-files behind a guide. Hunter is in the back of the line, so he can barely hear the guide, still does not understand the distinction between stalactites and stalagmites, does not know the origins of the water trickling in through the walls. Someone asks if there are bears in the cave, and the guide says, “No, they spend the day exploring people’s homes while we’re in here.” Hunter is the only one who laughs.
The walkways are narrow and uneven, the walls jutting out at odd angles. Now and then, they pass piles of ceramic bones meant to replicate fossils that were discovered here decades ago. Austin walks with head upturned like a child catching snowflakes on his tongue. He points toward a particularly dank corner of the cave and says he’s spotted a bat, but it is only a shadow. The walkways clank beneath their feet, metal girders that make it sound like a brigade of robots is on the march. Cameras flash like lightning. Some people are photographing every individual rock. A middle-aged man walks with a video camera extended in front of his face, and Hunter wonders under what circumstances this man will ever watch a video of motionless rock, wonders how many even duller videos the man probably keeps stored on his computer, wonders who is forced to watch these videos with him, or if he watches them alone.
The guide leads them down a small flight of stairs into a lower chamber of the cave, which he assures them is totally safe, an assurance that makes Hunter feel deeply unsafe. He says, “Down here, I’m going to let you experience something most people in the world never do—total darkness.” Even though he warns them he’s about to turn off the lights, someone still gasps when he flicks the switch.
A black curtain drops over their world.
The Young Widower's Handbook Page 19