Steal the North: A Novel

by Heather B Bergstrom

  Why is she not looking at her mom?

  “I guess we’ve both been keeping secrets,” Kate says.

  When it comes to Kate, that’s the understatement of the century.

  Kate stares at that poor boy so hard it makes me nervous for him.

  Emmy takes Reuben’s hand, and then she says rather flatly to her mom, “Uncle Matt is at the funeral home. They moved Aunt Beth’s body from Spokane early this morning.”

  Oh, Emmy. She’s blaming her mom for this one.

  “Would you like to come inside?” she asks us, as if—as if a hundred things. She’s been through a lot this summer. Too much. She’s bracing for more. Reuben holds the door for us, but he doesn’t come inside. Emmy goes to him. They whisper. He excuses himself to us and leaves. Kate looks around cautiously, as if afraid to take it all in at once. The trailer is even more ugly on the inside, but tidy, except for some stains on the carpet. “Just don’t go into the master bedroom,” Emmy says, voice shaking. Her new braveness seems to have walked out the door with Reuben. “It’s a wreck.” She swallows hard. “Uncle Matt’s brother tore up the carpet.”

  I go to her. “I’m sorry about your aunt, kid.” I take her into my arms. I’ve missed her. She cries, but not for long. Kate stares at us, and then, almost in a daze, she walks into the bedroom right by the front door. There is a strained silence between Emmy and Kate.

  Emmy glances out the window behind her, toward the trailer that she came from with Reuben. “I’ll be right back,” she says, and goes out the front door.

  I go in to see Kate. She’s sitting on a small bed, staring at a crib. On the wall above the crib are faded pink letters that spell EMMY.

  “This was my room,” Kate says with pride.

  “Growing up?” Jesus.

  “Oh, no,” she says. “I wish. I moved in here when I got far enough along with Emmy that my dad couldn’t stand the sight of me.” She explains how Matt and Beth got married and Matt’s parents bought them this trailer so they all three, soon to be four, could have a place to live. “Pretty amazing,” she says.

  “And Emmy’s dad?” I was going for broke. “Where the hell was he?”

  “A cocky farm boy, off at college. I waitressed.” She gets embarrassed, obviously forgetting for a minute that she has already told me she did far more than waitress. I sit down beside her on the small bed. “I can’t believe Beth kept Emmy’s crib up all these years,” she says. “Hoping to fill it, I guess.”

  I can’t believe Kate came from here. No wonder she loves her apartment in Sac. And I am so relieved there are no lies or secrets left. Given Kate’s past, which I didn’t know about at the time of my first marriage proposal and, to be honest, would not have been ready for, I’ll never judge her, no matter what. If she ever comes home with bruises again, however, I’ll hunt the fuckers down, as I should have last time. I haven’t touched another woman since Kate and I first had sex, not even the month we were officially broken up.

  I tell her the crib and letters are sweet, but they’re fucking sad. This whole place. It’s completely depressing. I feel a pang again for having mocked her secondhand furniture.

  “I wish you could’ve met Beth,” she says. “She would’ve liked you, Spencer Hensley.” She takes my wrist, feeling with her fingertips for my pulse. This is something she’s always done, usually in bed when she thinks I’m asleep. “Emmy’s different now,” she says. “You were so right about that.” She lets go of my wrist and starts to cry. “I was a monster never calling Beth all those years. She must’ve thought I didn’t love her or that I forgot about her. I thought about her every day. Even this summer when I didn’t call, I thought about her. Do you believe me?” I do. I nod. “Emmy’s different, like you said.”

  “Slow down, baby.” I put my arm around her shoulder. “Let’s take things one at a time.”

  “I’ve never really understood why you love me, Spencer. How can you? Why do you?”

  She’s never asked me that before. It catches me off guard. Has she actually been afraid all these years that I didn’t really love her, that I couldn’t possibly because Emmy’s dad didn’t or because of the way she left her sister? I’ve never loved her more than right now in this sad room. The fact that she had the strength to get herself and Emmy away from here. It moves me deeply and, frankly, impresses the hell out of me.

  “You don’t have to answer,” she says. “But I’m tired of being afraid that you’ll stop wanting me if I love you too much.”

  I had no fucking idea she was so afraid of that. Afraid of needing me, yes. Afraid of appearing weak or dependent, yes. Afraid of another rejection, I kind of figured. But I had no idea she was afraid of losing me if she slowed, let alone turned and gave up the chase.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” I kiss her forehead. “And as for why I love you, just know that I always will.” I hear a truck in the gravel driveway. The windows are thin. “I think your brother-in-law just pulled up.”

  We make it into the living room before he opens the screen door.

  “Kate, my God,” Matt says. They stare at each other for what seems minutes. He’s holding paperwork—on his wife’s body, no doubt.

  Finally Kate speaks. “Matt.” She goes to him. He hesitates but then takes Kate into his arms. They both sob. It’s gut-wrenching. He drops some of the paperwork. I pick it up. Kate has never sobbed quite like that in my arms.

  After Kate gains composure, she introduces me. Matt squares his shoulders and shakes my hand. I give him back the papers he dropped.

  “Emmy says nothing but good things about you,” he says to me. “Where is she?”

  “Next door,” I say.

  “Did you meet Reuben?” Matt asks. “He’s a great kid.”

  “Emmy introduced him to us as her boyfriend,” Kate says, getting back in defense mode.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Matt says, grinning a bit.

  “We can discuss that later, Kate,” I say. She looks at me. Then back at Matt. He offers us seats at the kitchen table. I try not to notice how the cabinets look like paneling—Christ, are they?—and how the laminated countertops look like crap and how faded the linoleum flooring is. Kitchens were my dad’s specialty. Matt gets us glasses of water straight from the tap, and it tastes great. Kate asks a few questions about the funeral. I’m just about to suggest I go get some cold beers at the gas station when Kate brings up Beth’s health over the years. Shit. She needs to slow down.

  “What do you want me to say, Kate?” Matt asks. “She suffered a lot of miscarriages. She was a scarred mess inside. She wouldn’t go to the doctor.”

  “How many, Matt?”

  “It’s painful. Let’s just say a lot.”

  This is unbelievable. More than backwoods.

  “But I don’t understand,” Kate says. “Why’d she keep getting pregnant then?”

  “Your sister wanted a baby more than anything.” Kate needs to back the hell down. “Do you want me to say she begged?”

  Christ. Fuck.

  “No,” Kate says. “Sorry. I just—I don’t understand.”

  “What don’t you understand, Mom?” It’s Emmy. She let the door slap shut behind her. “Aunt Beth missed you and me. You broke her heart when you abandoned her. She never recovered. Don’t blame Uncle Matt. He loved her. He always loved her.”

  “Emmy,” Matt says. “It’s okay, honey.”

  “It’s not okay,” Emmy says. “It’s never going to be okay. Mom needs to know what she did to her only sister.”

  “Emmy,” Matt says again, a little more firmly.

  “I just came to say I’m going for a drive with Reuben.”

  Kate starts to get up from the table, but I hold her arm.

  “Be back in an hour,” Matt says.

  “Okay, Uncle Matt. I love you.”

  “Sure, sweetie,” Matt says. �
��I love you too.” He doesn’t mean to hurt Kate, but he has to say it back to his niece. Emmy, on the other hand, means to hurt her mom. This is something new. This is something bigger than Emmy finally having a boyfriend and Kate having to let go a little. I expected this to happen sometime soon in Sacramento. I planned all along to be on Emmy’s side, to get her some slack from her mom to be a normal teenager, to do more than just read books and study. This is different, though. Emmy is biting to the bone.

  I fear the real heartache of this family is just beginning. I wasn’t there to meet Kate and Emmy when they got off that bus in Sacramento sixteen years ago. But I am damn sure here now.

  16

  Kate

  Thank you for finding me, Beth. I wanted to be found. Who doesn’t? When I picked up the phone that day in my office and it was your voice on the other end, my beloved sister’s voice, I can’t tell you how deeply I was shaken.

  “It’s me, sister,” you said.

  All our long years apart dissipated for a moment and we were young again and I was standing behind you, brushing the tangles from your hair with Mom’s brush and asking, “If you could travel to any country in the world, Beth, where would you go?”

  “I like it here,” you said. It always freaked you out when I talked about traveling as a missionary to Africa or Bangladesh. Maybe you knew my real intent to disappear with the natives.

  “Bor-ing. If you could wish for only one thing, what would it be?”

  “A baby.”

  “That’s a stupid answer. Pick something else. Anyone can have a baby.”

  I was walking back into the trailer the morning after I let a trucker cut off my hair. You and Matt were eating breakfast at the table as if you’d been doing it for years, as if you weren’t a young teenage couple just beginning. Emmy was in the high chair between you, as if. And Matt was feeding her, though she was barely old enough.

  “No, Kate. Oh, no, Kate.” You jumped up. You ran to me. “Who did this to you?”

  “I did it,” I replied, but not very convincingly.

  Matt got to his feet. “Who fucking did it?”

  Emmy started wailing.

  “I didn’t get his name.” I was hung over, sore between my legs, and desperate to take off my waitress uniform. I backed away from Matt so he wouldn’t smell the sex on me.

  “Well, my brother and I will get the bastard’s name.” Matt grabbed his jacket.

  Emmy kept wailing.

  “Please, Matt, get Emmy,” you said.

  You ran me a bath and washed what was left of my hair. You got scissors and tried to even the jagged edges.

  I was at that Greyhound bus station. We were walking through crunchy gravel toward the waiting bus and its stinking fumes and rumbling engine. I was carrying a suitcase, and you were holding Emmy. We were just kids.

  “I’m off to Africa to save souls.” My voice shook like my hands with fear.

  “Your soul and Emmy’s,” you said. “That’s all you have to worry about. That’s all that matters, Kate. That’s your job. Your only job.”

  Emmy wouldn’t come to me. She’d been leery of my short hair for weeks. She wouldn’t let go of you. We had to pry her little fingers, untangle them from your hair. I took a final glance backward, first at the parking lot for Jamie’s truck and then at you, my sister.

  Every mile marker, every highway sign, every river, every town and city the bus rumbled through. Until that day we had spent our lives only an arm’s reach apart.

  I remember back before boys, before Matt and Jamie, before Emmy, when it was just you and me. Remember, Beth?

  You claimed you didn’t know I’d never return or ever be in touch. But I tried telling you as much before I left. You didn’t believe me. There was just no way for you to fathom how absolute would be my abandonment of you. Had I known how you suffered. Your loss. Had I known you had no children of your own, I would’ve come back. Please believe me. If only you had gone to a doctor. If I’d been here, I would’ve dragged you. Matt should’ve forced his hand. But he loved you too much to be a heavy like Dad. He held you closer, I am sure, after each loss.

  I’m in a hotel room in our hometown, but I can’t sleep. I’ve been to Europe, sister. Who would have thought—a girl from Moses Lake, from the scablands? Had I not gone, I could’ve been at your bedside when you left this world. Why is life like that? I wish I could’ve had you and California. I didn’t know how to do both. Like the hymn says, “The world behind me, the cross before me. No turning back.” Jamie wasn’t the reason I didn’t return. Maybe at first. But it became larger than him. California is a large place. I am still trying to take it all in.

  “You’re beautiful, Kate,” you kept telling me as you trimmed my uneven hair. “You’ll find love again.”

  And I have, sister. I didn’t realize how deeply I loved him until bringing him here. He sleeps beside me now in this hotel room.

  I didn’t realize how much Emmy loved you until seeing her in your house today, and especially in your garden, which was dying but must’ve been beautiful. She was trying to save it. I had no right to keep you two apart. No right. It was my life’s mistake. Forgive me, Beth.

  I know you already have.

  There is so much I want to tell you about now that I am back here: things I learned in college, the different fruits I tasted in California, the art and ancient ruins I saw in Europe. It doesn’t seem to amount to much now that I can never tell you. If it could just be you in bed beside me, just one more time. I want to hear you say the names of each of the babies you lost. I want to say the names and cry over each one with you.

  Sister, remember when it was just us—just us in all the world?

  17

  Reuben

  Okay, Dad. Okay. I’m beginning to understand your warning. Last night Emmy asked me to get her pregnant, so we can stay together. The thought of my child in her belly, of her and me starting a family—there is nothing I want more. But not yet. Not yet. Right, Dad? I want to do right. You didn’t do right by Mom, not often enough. I am going to try harder than my old man to do right by those I love, and I love this girl the most.

  Before Emmy’s mom arrives this afternoon, she and I make a plan to talk with Kate and Matt together and see if we can persuade them to let Emmy stay here in Moses Lake and finish high school. But we’ll wait until after the funeral.

  Her mom and Spencer pull up in the smoothest ride I’ve seen in this trailer park. Emmy says the metallic beige Land Cruiser is just a rental and that her mom would never drive an SUV. But still. She holds my hand as we walk toward them. I try to notice Spencer first, but my eyes are drawn to Kate’s hair like fire. Emmy didn’t mention her mom isn’t a blonde. Both Kate and Spencer are stylish. They don’t look like country clubbers: no sun visors or polo shirts. Neither do they look like outdoorsy tourists from Seattle in expensive fleece. She looks artsy. He wears jeans but not tennis shoes. They’re both in shape. They look so different from Beth and Matt. Emmy’s uncle is in decent shape, but thin and shorter than Spencer, and he always wears a faded ball cap, except to church. I shake Spencer’s hand firmly. Surprisingly, it’s as calloused as Matt’s. Emmy hugged him first—she ran to him—and the longest. Her mom’s eyes are too much. It’s obvious she’s been crying. She’s about to enter her dead sister’s house for the first time. I excuse myself.

  I sleep without Emmy. I try to sleep without Emmy. Fuck, I slept without her for seventeen years. Now suddenly I can’t. It’s Matt’s first night in that trailer without Beth. I can’t imagine. Emmy stays with her mom and Spencer at a hotel in town by the lake. She wasn’t happy with the arrangement. I told her not to make a scene because it might hurt our chances later. I keep peeking through the blinds during the night. I want to go next door and say something to Matt, but what? The master bedroom light never goes off.

  Teresa finds me sitting on the couch at 6:00
a.m. She wears Scooby-Doo scrubs—well, just the shirt, thank God. No one needs images of that dipshit dog and his always-stoned-and-raiding-the-refrigerator owner on their ass. “Leave the kids here today, sis.”

  “I think you got your hands full enough.”

  “Emmy doesn’t mean to be so much work.”

  After starting the coffee, Teresa sits close beside me in the early light. It’s a chilly morning—hinting of change, and moons to come without Emmy. I used to lean my head on Teresa’s shoulder as a kid. I’m too tall now. We keep sitting there even after the coffee’s done brewing. “Don’t lose your way,” she finally says. “Chasing after a girl who’s lost.”

  I’m glad she didn’t say “white girl.” But Emmy’s not lost, not yet. She’s just confused. She’s not homeless or on drugs or being abused. Shit, Teresa.

  “I just want to help her,” I say.

  “She needs to find her own way first. Take it from me.”

  “Yeah, but—” I choke. Teresa always thinks she knows everything.

  “I know.” She squeezes my hand. “I know.” Case in point. “But you may have to let her go.”

  I almost tell her how Emmy asked me to get her pregnant and how I refused. I’m not as naive as she thinks.

  “Remember Audrey?” she asks.

  “Of course.” But I don’t want to think about her right now.

  “She told me once that you loved her—my twelve-year-old brother. I laughed at her because it scared me. She watched you while she danced.”

  I always wondered if I’d just imagined it.

  “Be careful, baby brother.”

  She gets up and brings us both a cup of coffee. I know she means well. “I’m sorry I haven’t been much help this summer,” I say as she sits back down.

  “Oh, bull. My kids love their uncle Reuben.” She reaches back and peeks through the blinds at Matt’s trailer. “The nurses in ER keep asking me about Matt.” She takes a sip. “They were so touched by the way he broke down when they had to cut off Beth’s hair.”