THE NEXT MORNING was a disaster. We were both cold, and Greg was hungover. It rained all night, the makeshift tent was a failure, and our stuff was soaked. Greg was giving me the silent treatment for reasons that I didn’t fully understand, but I thought might have had something to do with his feelings of inadequacy as an outdoorsman. We drove down the mountain in silence.
Greg wanted to save the world. He felt so passionately about equality and socialism that he had dedicated his life to making the world better for the working class, and I loved him for this. I loved him for his big heart. Yet somehow his heart wasn’t big enough for me. I always felt like a pet when I was around him, begging for love.
GREG’S SADNESS OVERWHELMED me at times, and he could be bitter or mean. Once, when he was drunk, he told me that my friends use me for the “ugly girl,” and my breath caught in my throat. I didn’t know what to say. “You think I’m ugly?” I asked quietly. He laughed, patting me on my shoulder.
“Oh no,” he said, “but your friends are beautiful in the more mainstream way, and every group of women has to have the woman they think makes them look better. They think that’s you, but the irony is that you’re far prettier than them—just in a different way.” He continued talking, but I didn’t hear the words that followed. I was sitting on his couch, stunned, not sure if I had just heard a compliment or an insult. I felt sick at his cruelty, though I knew that it was the alcohol talking.
In the dark nights, when I stretched out awake beside him, I always knew that I couldn’t compete with alcohol.
THE LAST SUMMER that Greg and I were together was the summer the fires started. They began at the end of June, and by July, millions of acres of forest had exploded into flame. The sky was so dark during the middle of the day that I could almost convince myself to crawl back into bed. I was beginning to feel more and more like a victim. The mood in town was bleak, and people were uncharacteristically irritable. I was reminded of the long, cold winters when the cabin fever would get so bad that fights would erupt all over town—especially bar fights. I could be sitting in a warm, cozy bar while it was ten below zero outside, and in the corner would be a mess of fists and Wrangler jeans while every cowboy within a fifty-foot radius fought to get a piece.
STILL, IN THE summer, life was usually good. The weather was warm, the skies sunny. Everybody was making money, and these same cowboys would be slapping each other on the back and sharing dips from their cans of Skoal.
But that particular summer felt more like winter. The sunlight couldn’t even penetrate the layer of smoke. One day I walked to the restaurant where I worked in a white shirt, and by the time I arrived, the crisp cotton had tiny black streaks like tears streaking down it from the ash. Later, while filling salt and pepper shakers, I looked out the restaurant window. It’s snowing, I thought, giddy. I started laughing and cried out for Kent, the owner, to come out from the kitchen. “Look, it’s snowing. It’s like a miracle.”
“Well, I’ll be . . . ,” he said. He opened the door and stepped outside with his hands outstretched, as if in supplication. But when he stepped back into the restaurant, he was shaking his head. “It’s not snow,” he said. “It’s ash.” He held out his upturned hands, and his palms were black.
The next day at work, I was talking to Kent in the kitchen. He was chopping carrots into the shape of flowers, drinking a beer, and giving me advice while I sat on a stainless-steel cooler.
“Why would you be with someone like that?” he asked, his knife slicing through the carrots. “You’re young and smart. Look, I’m just going to say it. Guys are dicks. You aren’t going to change them. He isn’t going to quit drinking for you. You deserve more.”
I knew that Kent was right, but I didn’t want to end things with Greg. I believed that love was hard work; it required sacrifice.
GREG AND I had planned to spend a weekend away together before he headed south for school. He needed to do some research at the university library in Moscow, Idaho. I had planned the trip in my head. He would go through the Frank Church Wilderness and International Workers of the World archives at the University of Idaho, while I would sit at a café and read and drink coffee. Later, we would explore the countryside and long blazing patchwork fields, tiny agricultural communities with nothing more than a grain elevator and some quiet buildings. In my head, the weekend had already happened a thousand times over.
In Moscow, Greg began to drink gin and tonics at 10:00 a.m. By 8:00 p.m., I was holding him while he cried. He was watching Sometimes a Great Notion. The beautiful scenes of timber and logging and men with strong forearms and sweet homemaker wives brought him to tears, great rolling sobs, and I began to feel myself cry, and looked down and realized that my shirt was wet.
“Tell me how much you love me,” I said.
“I love you a lot,” he said, “because you understand me.” He was quiet then, and I really did understand. I curled up in his lap, and he kissed my head while I mourned and understood that we were over.
I headed home alone, feeling sad, yet somehow relieved. The fires were still burning, but I knew the snow was coming soon.
Later that week, he came to see me before returning to his home. There was a dry, windy storm raging. We drove up a winding road until we hit the top of a hill and then stood in the wind looking up at the looming black cliffs. In front us, we saw a lightning strike and then a tree blow up like a firecracker. Trees were igniting in front of us like sparklers. The fire was raging, and a swell of smoke hit my face and caught in my throat. I laid my head on Greg’s shoulder as we stood on that hill and watched the trees burn. I felt that it was the last time that we would be together, but it wasn’t. He broke my heart, and then he broke my heart again, and I let him. I simply did not know how to let someone go.
FINALLY, A FEW years later, I received a letter from Greg, telling me that he had quit drinking. He wrote that when he was drinking, he had been unable to appreciate my love. He wanted another chance, and I wanted to give him one. By then he lived in the midwest, and I was in Boise, but we flew to see each other. Still, although he was no longer drinking, there was a darkness inside him. I didn’t know what demons he was wrestling, or how to help him, and after so many years without him, I no longer had the determination to try. When I returned to Boise, I called him and told him that I didn’t want to be involved with him anymore, that my continued ties to him were keeping me from finding happiness with someone else. I didn’t want to be a person who gave up on someone I had once loved, and I didn’t know if I was making the right decision, but I knew that we couldn’t continue. When I ended things with Greg, I felt proud—liberated. I had finally become the independent woman that I wanted to be.
I met Caleb five months after ending my tumultuous relationship with Greg. Caleb seemed so different from Greg—quieter, funnier, and kinder. As Caleb and I drove through those mountains, I thought of how Greg had pushed me to read books that I didn’t want to read, made suggestions on how I should dress, encouraged me to lose weight. I knew that Caleb accepted me as I was. I knew that never—even in his darkest moments—would he call me the “ugly girl.”
I SMILED AT Caleb, and we drove farther into the mountains. Dusk was falling, and we had left the main road. By then, we were farther from Atlanta and closer to the ridgeline where, only months earlier, Caleb had offered a proposal. We were already engaged, had bought the ring even, but he had said that he wanted to do the proposal right, and so he kneeled at my feet, a green, tree-dotted valley spread out behind him, and I knew that we were going to spend our lives together.
SOON CALEB TOOK a right at a fork in the road, and I grew nervous. It was a forest service road, and I could tell that it was not well traveled. “I think we should turn around,” I said. “I think that we’re getting lost.”
“It’s okay,” Caleb said. “We’ll just drive this road until we come out on the highway.”
I looked at him, eyes widening. “It doesn’t work that way with forest service road
s,” I said. “They don’t all find their way back to the highway.”
“Sure they do,” he said.
I knew that he was wrong, and I could see the road ahead of us. Grass was growing in the tire ruts. “Really, Caleb, that’s not the way roads work here. Maybe they’re like that in West Virginia, but not in the national forest.”
He slammed on the brakes. “Quit telling me what to do. I know what I’m doing!”
I shut my mouth, heart racing. My eyes teared up. I was eight months pregnant. I didn’t want to get lost in the mountains. “I’m scared of getting lost,” I said.
“We’re not going to get lost!”
I shrunk back into my seat. “Okay,” I said, my voice small.
“Quit doing that! Quit acting like you’re afraid of me.”
“Okay,” I said again.
He started the car up again and drove forward. We were both silent. Soon the road was overtaken with grass, and it ended in a field. Caleb banged his hand on the steering wheel, then said to me—his voice hard—“Don’t even say it. I don’t want to hear it.” He turned the car around and headed back the way we had come. We rode in silence, and I was relieved when we came back onto the main road. He stopped along the way, obviously still angry with me. He opened his door. “You stay here,” he said, “I have to shoot my gun. It’s loaded.”
“Okay,” I said, staring out the window.
He went around to the back of the car, but then came to my side of the car and knocked on my door. I opened it, and he took my hand in his. His eyes were gentle, almost frightened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If anything happens to me, I want you to know that I love you.”
“Why would anything happen to you?” I asked.
“It’s my muzzle-loader,” he said. “It’s jammed.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. “Is it going to backfire on you? Wait, are you afraid that you’re going to die?”
He patted my hand, but I could tell that he was nervous. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you that I love you.”
He went to the back of the vehicle, and soon I heard the loud crack of the muzzle-loader. I jumped, involuntarily squinting my eyes shut. I didn’t open them again until the driver’s door opened; then my muscles relaxed, and I leaned over to rest my head on Caleb’s shoulder. He hugged me tightly. “That was close,” he said.
I was scared, and also furious that he had brought a loaded weapon into the car with him, particularly when it was a weapon that hadn’t been cleaned and might have misfired. Still, more than that, I was relieved that he was okay. “I’m sorry that I told you what to do,” I said.
“It’s okay. You’re pregnant, and you’re scared. That’s what I love about you. I love how much you care about our baby.” He squeezed me tighter, then let go and started the car.
I was relieved that he was alive. Maybe even more than that, I was relieved that he was no longer angry at me. I could breathe again. As we drove through the dark forest, then pulled out onto the highway, I realized that my expressions of concern had felt like criticism to him. I knew that I could be overly critical; Greg had said the same thing about me, and he, too, had so often been angry with me. As we headed home, winding up a mountain pass that would then dip us back into the Boise Valley, I held Caleb’s hand, grateful for his forgiveness.
7
I Love You
WHEN THE BABY came, the moon was high and full in the dark night sky. My due date had come and gone ten days earlier, and after following an old wives’ tale and drinking as much red raspberry leaf tea as my stomach could hold, my water broke. I took a shower and let the water run over me—watched the shampoo suds mix with my amniotic fluid and circle the drain. I pictured myself as an egg that had cracked.
I wasn’t scared.
MY PARENTS HAD come to help, but when my due date came and went, my father had to return home to work. My mother stayed on with Caleb and me, and she cleaned our house, organized our shelves, bought us food to have in the fridge. She took me to the store and purchased a rug for the baby’s room, bright yellow, along with a wall-hanging clock of a cheery-looking monkey whose tail swung in a tick-tock, tick-tock.
My in-laws had offered to buy bedding for Reed’s crib, and I had struggled to find something that I liked. I didn’t want a crib set. The expense seemed excessive to me when we only had a small amount of money in our bank account. I would rather have had something practical, but my mother-in-law pushed me. “Surely you want something cute for the baby’s room?” she said. “Surely the baby deserves that?” There was a hint of criticism in her voice. It was a criticism that I had become accustomed to in the brief time that I had known her.
WHEN I WAS around my mother-in-law, Joanne, I drowned in her kindness—it was a kindness that I didn’t ask for, and a kindness that asked for much in return. When I tried to explain it to Kelly M., she told me, “Oh honey, I had a southern grandma. You will never outnice a southern woman.” It seemed that Kelly M. was right, so I usually bit my tongue and went along with Joanne’s desires, but I grew to resent her.
When I expressed my frustration to Caleb, his response was always exasperated. I think that he, too, was fatigued by her. I think that he had moved across the country as a way of asserting his independence from his mother.
“She won’t let me ignore her,” I said. “I already have a controlling mother. I don’t really enjoy having another one.”
“I know,” he said, and he did, but still, he didn’t know what to do about it. I was tired at that point and had developed pregnancy-induced hypertension. My ob-gyn had put me on a modified bed rest. “You’re too stressed,” she said. “Maybe you should try drinking a beer every night to relax. This kind of stress isn’t good for the baby.”
I tried to relax, but the phone rang multiple times a day. I usually let the answering machine pick up, but there would be a hang-up, and then it would ring again, the caller ID always Joanne’s.
I asked Caleb to tell his mother to stop calling if we didn’t answer the first time, but I think he was afraid of her. He said that she punished him when he asked for things. I sometimes wondered if he had moved into Idaho City, where he had no cell service, just to escape his mother’s constant calls. The phone kept ringing, and my fatigue and exasperation increased.
The first time Joanne and I spoke on the phone, I had not yet met her in person, but I was already engaged to Caleb. She and my father-in-law, Charles, had offered to buy us a set of pots and pans as our wedding gift. I loved to cook and was excited about the gift. Caleb had sent his mother a link to the set of pots and pans that I wanted.
“Oh no,” Joanne said to me on the phone. “We’re going to buy you the same pots and pans that we have. They’re very good.”
I hesitated. “I don’t really know how to cook on stainless-steel pots and pans,” I said. “And they’re the same price as the other ones, so . . .”
She was silent, then said firmly, “You’ll like the ones we’re ordering for you. Charles and I love ours.”
She was warm and kind, but I had already been overwhelmed by her demands for our wedding. I felt that I was being pulled along on a current I couldn’t resist.
“Okay,” I conceded. After all, how could I object to a gift? What kind of terrible person would that make me?
At the end of our phone conversation, she said, “I love you,” and I faltered.
I didn’t know how to say it back.
“Thank you,” I replied. I heard silence on her end. I could hear her hurt feelings in that silence. I hung up the phone. Why had I been so stingy with that phrase? Why was it so difficult for me to say it? I remembered the first time I heard Caleb tell his mother on the phone that he loved her, and how that had endeared him to me by proving that he wasn’t ice but all warmth. I remembered how I had craved that kind of warmth with my own family, where we never said “I love you” to each other.
I REMEMBERED HOW, when I told Greg that I loved him, it mean
t we would be together forever. I remembered how safe those words had felt to me then, how liberally our conversations were peppered with the word love.
I remembered how naive I was.
AFTER GREG, I had told myself that I would never say those words first to a man again, and then I dated the fish biologist. He was kinder to me than any man had ever been. I loved him, and his kindness made me feel that he loved me too. Still, he didn’t say the words. I waited. Finally, I started pushing. “I feel like I want to have more of a commitment,” I said.
He looked at me, then said, “Are you talking about the l-word?” I didn’t reply, but the answer was obvious. “I’m not going to say that until I want to marry someone,” he said.
A couple of months later he turned to me, just as I was falling asleep, “I love you,” he whispered in my ear. I jerked awake, unsure of what to say.
“What did you say?” I asked. I wanted to be sure.
He tensed up. “Nothing.”
“No, tell me what you said,” I begged.
“It was nothing,” he said again. I gave up and rolled over.
I returned to Boise for school, and soon a card arrived in my mailbox. In it, he had written, “I know that being in a long-distance relationship is hard, but I also know that it will be worth it in the end. I love you.”
I stood there in the street reading that card. He loved me.
I was worth loving.
A COUPLE OF weeks later, I returned to Salmon for the summer. I was so excited to see him, but also a little nervous about the turn that our relationship had taken. I went to his house, where he made me dinner. We watched television and cuddled on the couch, but then, without warning, he told me that he didn’t think we could see each other anymore. “I was looking at you tonight, and I kept thinking to myself, Do I love her? And I don’t think that I do,” he said.
Goodbye, Sweet Girl Page 7