They Only Eat Their Husbands

by Cara Lopez Lee

  When another twenty minutes proved we weren’t going to finish before pitch dark and extreme cold set in, I asked, “Do you want to stop?”

  “Not yet. Let’s keep going.”

  One of his friends set up a tent nearby and he stopped by to marvel at our masterpiece. Chance tossed off some proud puffery about our “humble little cave,” along with a few pointers about how to build one. Then he went back to digging. Another twenty minutes passed.

  After we’d been at it for two hours, I was shivering uncontrollably and my fingertips were numb. I said, in what I’m sure was a whining tone, “Chance, I can’t do this anymore. I’m cold. I’m tired. I’m hungry. Please! Can we stop?” I was down inside the hole that served as the cave’s entryway and he was standing above me. Without warning, he leapt down into the pit, grabbed me by the neck, and pushed my head downward. I shrieked in surprised fear. He leaned over me and growled into my ear between clenched teeth, “Stop . . . embarrassing me . . . in front . . . of my friends!” I assume he meant his friend in the nearby tent; there was no one else around. I said nothing, but cried icy tears as I doggedly resumed digging.

  He said, “I don’t know what you’re complaining about, anyway. I wanted to stop an hour ago. You’re the one who insisted on continuing.” That statement flabbergasted me, and I’ve puzzled over it ever since. But, fearing he would jump me again, I said nothing.

  A few minutes later he snatched my shovel from my hands and put his arms around me. “You look frozen. I’m sorry I worked you so hard. Let’s go to the lodge and get you some food.” I felt relieved the abominable snow ogre was gone, but never got over the uneasy feeling he might return at any time.

  When we returned to the snow cave, the sky was black. We turned on a flashlight inside the tiny cave so Chance could finish digging. The final task was to build a sleeping shelf out of snow. While he did that, I stood outside, above the cave. A preternatural aqua glow rose from the snow where the light shone through the semi-translucent ceiling.

  Inside the cave, the bluish-white ceiling was a series of geometric gashes and stumps, showing where blocks of snow had been removed. Chance lit a lantern, and its flame worked together with our warm breath and body-heat to coat the ceiling in a thin, glistening layer of slick ice. We lay our pads and sleeping bags atop the snow shelf, which kept us off the frozen ground and close to the ceiling, where we’d be more insulated. With four layers of clothing plus our sleeping bags, I convinced myself I was cozy and warm, although my nose was red and dripping. We were a lot warmer than we had been in the tent atop the car. It was probably thirty degrees inside the cave. That was warm enough for me. Any warmer and I wouldn’t have been able to sleep for fear of drowning as our shelter melted around us.

  The next day there were no paraglider-friendly winds to be found, so we drove to a rocky mountain with a sheer vertical drop to watch the Extreme Skiing Championships. A helicopter carried suicidal skiers to the top of the mountain where we followed their progress down the steep slopes with binoculars. One wrong move could easily spell death. It’s happened before.

  But that day, Chance and I exhaled in amazement as we watched skiers perform the impossible with brave style and athletic grace. There was a starting point and a finish line, but the route down was up to each contestant. They flew down narrow chutes between jagged boulders and jumped off rock ledges. The slope was more like a cliff, and I wondered just what was holding their skis to the mountainside—sheer force of will?

  Crowds watched with us from the highway. Like me, many of them were avid skiers who would never dream of facing such a murderous precipice. I smiled to myself as I realized that most of them would never spend the night in a snow cave either. For a moment I saw myself not as a victim, but a survivor. Then I turned my gaze to Chance and the feeling left me. I knew I should have let him go after the kayak trip.

  I was on a steep vertical cliff, holding on by sheer force of will. This was a scary ride, but I couldn’t give up the rush. I was addicted to Chance.

  ***

  After years of complaining about men who drink, on the Fourth of July, 1996, I took on an Alaskan challenge that started as a bar bet between two men. According to local tradition, back in 1915 one guy bet another guy that he could run up Seward’s Mount Marathon and back in less than an hour. He lost, but only by a few minutes. That was the first Mount Marathon run. This time I would be one of the three hundred runners in the women’s race.

  The entire course, from downtown and back again, is only about three miles. But one third of that distance is straight up: the mountain rises from nearly sea level to 3022 feet in just one mile, one of the many hulks gathered around Resurrection Bay. A few years earlier, when I saw the event for the first time, I was shocked to see the front runners coming off the mountain caked not only in a cement-thick layer of mud, but also in their own blood and gore. I realized the story of the bar bet must be true; it would take a couple of drunk people to come up with a race like this.

  I spent the night before the race aboard a friend’s boat in the harbor, waiting for Chance to drive in from Anchorage to join me. He showed up just before midnight, threw down his duffle, gave me a quick kiss, and immediately took off for the bars. Sometime after two a.m. I heard him fumble his way down the galley stairs, flop down on the opposite bunk, and start snoring. I clenched my jaw and rolled over.

  In the morning, while I checked in, Chance hiked up the mountain ahead of me to cheer me on and videotape my run. This time he would be the reporter watching from the sidelines, recording an event in which I would fully take part.

  At the starting line I looked around and noticed that three hundred women make a very small group, as footraces go. In all the races I’d run before, there had been at least a thousand participants, usually more. I saw a woman I knew and, though we weren’t close friends, I gave her a hug. She seemed embarrassed, but I didn’t care. I felt connected to these women by a cheerful insanity of purpose. We weren’t only about to hike up a mountain, we were about to rush up a mountain as fast as we could.

  When the man giving us our countdown reached “3-2-1!” I tore off down the street as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast. When I hit the bottom of the mountain I was behind a bottleneck of fidgeting women, all waiting their turn to head up the narrow trail through the trees, single-file. At least the wait gave me a chance to catch my breath.

  As we scurried up the path, it quickly became apparent that no one runs up Mount Marathon. They might run down, but on the way up, the best even the fastest runners can do is a slow jog. The best I could do was a fast walk as excruciating pain shot through my calves and fire filled my lungs. My mind kept repeating, “Just keep going. Just don’t stop. If you stop, you’ll never start again. Just keep going . . . ”

  It was a perfect day, warm and growing warmer as the morning clouds burned off. Early in the race, we passed a group of three men who’d climbed up a tree to watch. They sang a song about beautiful ladies climbing a mountain.

  The sound of labored breathing drifted to me from ahead and behind, and to my amazement, the sound of talking! One woman was talking about her wedding plans. She was going to marry one of the men set to run the men’s race in the afternoon. Smiling, I said, “This is so great! I bet the men don’t talk like this during their race.”

  The young bride replied, “Don’t you believe it! My fiancé talks with his friends all the way up the mountain. He says it helps pass the time.”

  As we rose higher, the conversations took on a note of light-hearted complaining:

  “Remind me why we’re doing this again?”

  “Are we crazy?”

  “Boy, I can’t wait to have a beer.”

  I discovered that speed isn’t everything. One woman had stayed well ahead of me for a long time, but I passed her when she pulled over to the side of the trail for a fit of dry heaves.

  Soon the
mountain was so steep I was forced to scramble on my hands. I was wearing bicycle gloves in anticipation of this and I didn’t miss a beat . . . until I heard a familiar voice.

  “Hi, Cara!”

  I looked up to see Chance standing above me with his video camera rolling. “So, you didn’t beat me to the top after all,” I said, grinning at him as I passed.

  Then I broke out of the trees into a field of rock and scree. We passed an official timer who told us we’d been going for close to forty-five minutes.

  Someone said to me, “You’re still smiling!”

  “Yeah, it looks like a smile doesn’t it?” It was a grimace, of both pain and determination.

  Now that we were in the open, there was more room to pass. When I pulled almost even with the racer just ahead of me, she turned and said, “You’re doing great!”

  “Thanks. It doesn’t feel like it.”

  The encouraging young woman, whose name was Hanna, was doing my pace just one step better, so I decided to make her my rabbit, sticking with her for the rest of the race. Each time she said, “Hey Cara, it’s easier over here,” I followed. As we neared the top, most of the women grew quiet, but Hanna continued to chatter.

  When I pointed out that she seemed more upbeat and talkative than any of us, she said, “That’s because I sing when I run.”

  “You what?”

  “I sing when I run. It keeps me motivated, and it helps my breathing. If you want to make sure you’re getting enough oxygen while you’re running, you should run at a pace that allows you to speak. If you can’t speak, your lungs aren’t getting enough oxygen. Well, I don’t always have someone to talk to . . . so I sing.”

  When a couple of other women started talking about the finishing time they were shooting for, Hanna said, “I just want to finish before the parade starts. Last year I took so long to finish I got stuck running behind the fire engine. I already felt like throwing up and then I was stuck behind that engine blowing exhaust in my face—blechhh!”

  We were still a long way from the top when star Alaska runner Nina Kempel came flying down the mountain. And we were still a long way from the top when the sirens went off in town, announcing that Nina had crossed the finish line. Her winning time was 55:08. I arrived at the top about seventeen minutes later.

  Then I started running down toward the “chute,” deliberately bypassing firm terrain and heading straight for the slipperiest part of the scree slope. At this point the loose scree became my friend, as I tried to pick up time. I took Neil Armstrong leaps, my feet sinking into soft dirt and deep piles of tiny rocks. I was grateful for the duct tape I’d wound around my ankles, closing the gap between my shoes and socks; without it, my shoes would have filled with stones. When I felt as if I were going to pitch forward on the steep slope, I threw myself backward onto my butt and slid. When my legs got tired, I fell on my butt and slid. Just for fun, I fell on my butt and slid. Gravity was doing the work now and I was having an absolute blast.

  On the way down, I spotted Chance again. He cheered me on and I threw my arms in the air in a corny victory sign.

  I snatched a peripheral glimpse of Resurrection Bay below, blue interrupted by flashes of sunlight and tiny white fishing boats. Then several women in front of me started kicking up great clouds of dust, turning my contact lenses into sandpaper. So for the rest of the way down the rocky slope, I ran with my eyes shut, tears streaming down my dirty face.

  Blinded, I was concerned I’d miss an important turn: one experienced Mount Marathoner had instructed me to keep to the left to avoid coming down above the Killer Cliff. Each year some runners leap off the cliff on purpose as a fast route to the bottom, but some people end up there by terrible mistake. I knew that at least one woman was once carted away from the bottom of the cliff in an ambulance. But how could I keep to the left if I couldn’t see? I decided the best way to avoid the Killer Cliff was to keep following the blinding cloud of dust kicked up by the runners in front of me. The dust ended when I reached the stream. I splashed through it several times, squishing through mud and slipping across slick stones as I followed its course. One wrong move and I’d fall. But, high on adrenaline, I didn’t slow my pace. I scrambled down a series of steep rocks and came careening off the mountain, along with Hanna and another woman.

  The three of us emerged into a crowd of hundreds of spectators who greeted us with a rousing cheer. Inspired, I picked up speed, passing first Hanna, then the other woman. All along the streets, hordes of people applauded each of us as we passed, one by one. In the final block, a woman flew by out of nowhere and lapped me. My strength spent, I mentally cheered her on.

  I surged through the finish line at 1:45:55. Hanna came in seconds later. We threw our grimy arms around each other in congratulations. I thanked her and said, “I don’t think I would have done so well if it hadn’t been for you.”

  I was caked in sweat and mud. I was not first, or tenth, or twentieth. I came in 155th. But during my final sprint through town, I’d overheard a couple of spectators say, “Look, she’s still smiling!” And this time I was. I began to believe I might be an amazing person.

  Afterward, as I walked the packed sidewalks of downtown, shaking off adrenaline and gulping down water, I spotted Scott, my smelly ex-boyfriend from Kenai. There was no avoiding him. He was walking toward me and he saw that I’d seen him. I was in an excellent mood, and I figured what could be more harmless than a brief chat on a crowded street with an old lover about whom I could no longer even summon a mild fantasy? So I stopped to say hello.

  While Scott and I talked about the footrace we now had in common, Autumn floated into view. Even she couldn’t ruin my high good humor that day. I smiled and said hello. She gave me a weak smile, said, “Hi,” and sidled away. For a moment I wondered if she would run into Chance and report that she’d seen me talking to a good-looking guy.

  So what if she did? For the first time, I didn’t give a shit what Chance thought. I was no longer listening to Scott. Instead, I was imagining what it might be like to live my life without considering what anyone thought.

  ***

  Chance’s moods began to swing in a wider and wider arc. It was impossible to guess ahead of time which kind of night it might be. I began to learn that when he was drunk he was loving and generous and “Can we snuggle all night like two spoons?” When he sobered up, he was bitter and sarcastic and “You’re not my girlfriend! I told you I never wanted a girlfriend!”

  I often provoked him at the early, lighthearted stage, anticipating the rage to come and unable to bear the tension of waiting. These arguments made little sense, and he didn’t understand why I started them. All he knew was that he’d been in a good mood until I’d brought him down.

  The nights he asked me to stay with him, after he fell asleep, I kept my body as far away from his as possible. If one of my limbs touched him in the middle of the night he’d whine and kick. I lay there gritting my teeth and slept only intermittently. One night a loud voice startled me from sleep: “What are you, nuts?!” I was surprised to recognize my own voice actually berating me.

  My jaw grew increasingly sore until it was so swollen and feverish I went to a doctor. The doctor told me I had TMJ, Temporo-Mandibular Joint disorder, from clenching my jaw.

  I fantasized that alcohol was the root of our problems and that its removal from the equation would equal “happily ever after.” I knew that the decision to quit had to come from him. But, never doubting he would make that decision, I decided to ride out the storm. I started going to Alanon meetings so I wouldn’t have to ride it out alone. That only made him angrier.

  “You think I’m a drunk! You think I’m a loser!”

  “This isn’t just about you. I’m going to those meetings because I keep ending up with the same problems.”

  “That’s just another way of saying I’m not the first loser you’ve ever gone out with.”<
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  He had me there. But so what? For a long time I’d blamed myself for our problems, believing that if I’d been easier to get along with he would have been too happy to drink. But I was tired of blaming myself and tempted to blame someone else for a while.

  I did leave him. Several times I walked away, with the heel-clicking, tire-screeching drama of a woman who would never return. Each time, I returned.

  One night I called ahead to check the emotional weather. “So, should I come by?”

  “Cara, it’s over. Can’t you take a hint?”

  “What hint? You invited me over just last night. You said you loved me.”

  “You should know by now not to pay attention to what I say when I’m in a blackout.”

  “But, you made love with me.”

  “Don’t give me that. You aren’t some innocent victim. You wanted it as much as I did.”

  “Yes, I did. But it meant something to me.” I felt like a duped high school girl instead of a thirty-three-year-old woman who should know better.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m only going to say this one more time. I don’t want to see you any more, and I want you to stop calling me.”

  “I want you to say that to my face. I’m coming over.” I hung up, and fifteen minutes later I was standing outside his house, repeating the same questions. “How could you use me like that?”

  “You and I are close—I couldn’t have sex with someone I didn’t care about. But that doesn’t mean we’re a couple. And if you keep going on about it, well, I’m starting to regret that we did it at all.”

  “But you said you loved me!”

  “Do you think if you keep repeating that, it’s going to change anything? Cara, I like you, okay?—when you’re not acting like a Fatal Attraction psycho bitch from hell. But . . . ”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.” He repeated it slowly, over-enunciating each word: “Fatal . . . Attraction . . . psycho . . . bitch . . . from hell.”