I walked home to my parents’ house, sick, went into the backyard, and broke into tears. My mother, although usually reserved, came out and held me. “I had a feeling that something was wrong,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “You married Dad when you were twenty-one. You’ve never had your heart broken.”
“You don’t know everything about me,” she said. Her face was sad too. “I thought that you and he were going to make it,” she said. “I always knew that you were safe with him.”
A COUPLE OF days later, he called me and asked me to go for a walk. On our walk, he said, “I talked to my mom. She thinks that I’m just scared. She thinks that I made the wrong decision. I don’t want to make the wrong decision.”
We went back to his apartment and made love. It was intense, angry, and afterward, when he collapsed on top of me, I started sobbing. It was clear that I wasn’t worth loving.
“Oh, Kelly,” he said, rolling over and gathering me into his arms.
“I hate you,” I said.
“I know,” he replied.
A COUPLE OF years later, on the same cold night in Idaho City that Cory danced with Kelly M., Caleb played the guitar at a bar with a band called Last Man Standing. With the exception of Caleb, they were a group of men in their sixties who had chosen their band name because all but one had experienced a heart attack. Caleb was only twenty-four, but those men treated him with such respect. Everyone in his life adored him.
He played the guitar and sang directly to me. His blue eyes glowed, and so did mine.
Cory slid into a seat next to me. “I’ve never seen a woman look at Caleb like that,” he joked. “What’s wrong with you?”
I smiled at Cory. “I like him,” I said.
Cory leaned in closer, his eyes serious, “The other day, Caleb and I were driving around in the mountains, and we were listening to the mix CD that you made him for Christmas. He told me that he thinks he’s in love with you. He thinks you’re the person he wants to marry.”
I wasn’t surprised. Cory may have never seen a woman look at Caleb like that, but I’d also never seen a man look at me like Caleb looked at me.
That night, I curled up next to Caleb in his warm cabin. “Cory says that you think I’m the one,” I teased. I knew that Caleb would be annoyed—that the conversation had been private—and as usual, Cory had been drinking.
“Cory is stupid,” he said.
“So it’s not true?” I asked.
“I didn’t say that,” he said, leaning in to kiss me. His beard tickled my neck. I wrapped my arms and legs around him.
LESS THAN A year later, I was standing over the kitchen stove, crying. My pregnant belly butted up against the metal stove.
“What is wrong with you?” Caleb asked.
I pointed at the pan, an egg stuck to the metal, dried out and burned. “I don’t know how to cook with these pans,” I said.
“For fuck’s sake, Kelly! It’s just an egg.”
I was embarrassed at my reaction. “I know,” I said.
“Just get out of here,” he said. “I’ll make you an egg. I obviously have to do everything for you.” Then he screamed, “Stop crying!”
I cried louder.
I WENT TO the living room and sat numbly on the couch. I heard him crack an egg into the pan, then in a few moments, he shouted “F-u-u-u-c-k!” I jumped. My family had never used language like that.
I heard him scraping the egg into the trash, then another egg cracked into the pan. A few minutes later, he came out with a plate with an egg and toast. He was calm. “Here,” he said gently. “I’m sorry. Those pans are the worst.”
I started laughing. “They really are,” I said. Caleb started laughing, too, and soon we were both doubled over.
“I’ll go buy a cheap pan at a thrift store, just for eggs.”
I smiled at him, my face still red and puffy from tears. “Okay,” I replied. “That’s a good idea.”
WHEN THE BABY came, he split me in two. I screamed at the final moment, as the yellow line on the monitor reached its peak, and then my flesh ripped. Relief. The baby slipped onto the table, slick and red. And crying. Was I crying? I can’t remember. I remember Caleb crying. And smiling. The nurse brought the baby to my breast, laid his skin against mine. Caleb couldn’t stop crying.
Caleb later told me that when he saw the pain I was in, he couldn’t stand it. He knew things about himself that I didn’t know yet. He wanted to tell me. There was so much he wanted to tell me. He was so, so sorry.
But I didn’t know any of this while my baby rooted at my chest. I only knew Caleb’s eyes, so full of love and hope, and something that also looked like guilt, but I didn’t yet know what his guilt was about.
When the baby came, I was twenty-seven years old, and Caleb was twenty-five. Only a few weeks before, Caleb had come home from drinking with Cory at a nearby bar. He crawled into bed with me, then began to shake. “Caleb,” I said, pushing him on the shoulder. He shook more, but didn’t say anything. “Caleb,” I begged, my voice growing panicked. He turned and vomited on the bed. I heaved myself out of bed, my belly so large, then dragged him up and to the bathroom. He vomited into the toilet while I stood in the doorway and watched.
When he was finished, he stumbled into the bedroom and stared at the bed, still too drunk to understand what he had done. I walked him to the couch, where he curled into a ball, then went back to the bedroom, bundled up the dirty sheets, and walked them to the basement of our apartment building, where I threw them into the washer. I took a rag and some dish soap and scrubbed the mattress. I gagged. The baby kicked in response to my gagging, and I held my hand to the shape of his outstretched foot.
I went to the living room, turned Caleb on his side, and felt his chest to make sure that he was breathing. He whimpered like a child, and I smoothed my hand over his forehead. I slept on the hardwood floor that night.
THE NEXT DAY, Caleb was more apologetic than I had ever seen him. He told me that Cory had kept ordering pitchers of beer, and that Caleb hadn’t known how to say no. Cory had dropped Caleb off at our house, then driven all the way home to Idaho City. Years later, Cory would get his fourth or fifth DUI and go to prison for a year. When he was released from prison, he would write Caleb and apologize. He would tell Caleb that he was sorry, and that he knew that he, Cory, hadn’t treated me right, but I didn’t know any of that when the baby came.
I only knew that I had already loved an alcoholic once, and that I couldn’t do it again. Caleb promised me that he wouldn’t drink like that again, but it was difficult for me to believe him. Greg hadn’t been able to change for me, and even if he had, I don’t think that he had loved me enough to try. Still, I had to believe that Caleb was different.
A WEEK LATER, Caleb’s friend who had helped us move came over and made us dinner. He set up a table in the yard and cooked lamb and spring pea soup. I was happy to be included. None of our close friends had children, and I had been feeling excluded. Caleb’s friend had bought an expensive bottle of wine, and I had a sip from Caleb’s glass. I told his friend the story of Caleb coming home the week before and vomiting in the bed. I laughed. “Can you believe that?” I said.
The friend put his wine down, got quiet. “I don’t think that story is very funny,” he said.
I thought about it for a moment. I thought about how terrible and scared I had felt when Caleb had shaken in our bed. I thought about how it had only taken me a week to turn the story into a joke.
“You’re right,” I said quietly. “It’s not very funny.”
WHEN THE BABY came, my mother was in the delivery room with us. My blood pressure had crashed after an epidural. Caleb held my hand, and I saw him receding into the distance. “I feel funny,” I heard myself whisper before sinking into darkness. I came back to consciousness when the anesthesiologist stuck a needle of ephedrine in me.
When I woke, my mother’s face was at the foot of the bed. She,
too, looked ready to pass out.
“I’m sorry,” I whimpered. I apologized to the nurse, to my mother, to Caleb. I thought that I was failing at childbirth, just as I had failed at everything else.
The ephedrine made my heart race. The nurse said that my heart rate was so fast that I might as well have been running a marathon, and I was sweating, so I shed my hospital gown. The nurse brought in a big fan. Caleb had his coat and snow hat on, shivering from the cold blast.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered again.
He smoothed my damp hair back from my head. “You’re doing great,” he said. “You’re amazing.” He started to cry. “I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” I said through my tears.
WHEN THE BABY came, the nurse brought him to my chest. He latched on to my breast, and my toes curled from the pain. No one had told me that it would hurt like that. The baby started sucking, and his little hand, which had been curled into a fist, relaxed.
We named him Reed after Caleb’s grandfather. I looked up at Caleb and smiled, “In the ultrasound, I thought that he looked like you, but he looks just like me,” I said.
Caleb laughed, face still teary. “That’s a good thing,” he said. “He’s beautiful just like his mama.”
WE SPENT THE next two days in the hospital, and my mother was there the entire time. With her help, I didn’t feel scared, but when the nurse wheeled me out of the hospital, I held Reed bundled up in my arms, and while he slept peacefully, tears dripped down my cheeks. I didn’t understand where they were coming from. I felt nothing. No sadness, and no fear.
My mother looked at me with a gentleness that seemed to understand.
“It looks like someone has the baby blues,” she said.
WE WENT HOME, and my father came to join us. I didn’t want my parents to ever leave, but they couldn’t stay. Their departure overlapped with my in-laws’ arrival, which made me miss my own parents even more. Joanne was so happy to see and hold Reed, and she was equally happy to see Caleb, but the tension between the two of us was palpable. I didn’t want to be one of those mothers who didn’t let other people hold her baby, but when Reed was happy, she always wanted to hold him. She only let me have him when he cried. She and Charles were uncomfortable watching me nurse, so at least I could escape with Reed to the nursery, where I spent most of my time cloistered away with my very hungry baby.
When Kelly M. and her younger sister came over to visit, they came with me to the other room to nurse. I self-consciously pulled out my breast. Kelly M.’s sister looked on curiously. “Can I watch?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“That is so cool,” she said. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“It is pretty cool,” I said, looking down at Reed’s peaceful face. With my friends, I felt free of the shame.
AFTER A WEEK had passed, my in-laws left, and Caleb, Reed, and I were alone. Reed slept in a little basket on the floor by the bed, and when he cried, Caleb would pick him up and lay him next to me to nurse. Once, so that Caleb could sleep, I took Reed into his nursery to nurse him in the rocking chair.
I rocked back and forth, and felt my milk let down, my toes uncurl. It no longer hurt as much. I smoothed my hand over Reed’s hair. He was a redhead like me. He was already such a good baby. I had worried that I wouldn’t like being a mother, but in that moment, I didn’t want anything else. I looked around that room trying to memorize all the details. I focused on the tick-tock of that monkey clock, the little tail swinging back and forth. I focused on Reed’s weight in my arms. I wanted to remember that moment forever so when I felt as though I had made the wrong decision in marrying Caleb, I would have it to return to. I leaned down and touched my lips to Reed’s warm forehead, his soft hair. “I love you,” I whispered.
8
Demolition
WHEN SUMMER CAME around, Reed was a happy, chubby six-month-old, and Caleb and I were out of work. I was still trying to finish my undergraduate degree, and Caleb would be entering the third year of his MFA program that fall. In the meantime, we needed to pay the rent. We decided to move to Salmon, where we could live in my parents’ basement and work for the forest service while my mom watched our son.
The intense scrutiny in the small town where I had grown up rattled us both. We both worked in the same office as my father, and our public and private lives merged. We fought that summer in the claustrophobic wood-paneled basement—painful, drawn-out fights in hushed voices.
Caleb worked on a timber-marking crew, and I worked sampling streams. Timber marking was relatively easy work—hiking and spray-painting X’s on trees that would need to be cut down—but stream sampling was hard. I had to sit in the middle of cold mountain streams and dig buckets of rocks out of the hard creek beds. At the beginning of the season my arms were so sore that when I got home in the evenings to find Reed’s little arms outstretched toward mine, I could barely lift him. Caleb always rushed to the basement when we got to the house, leaving me upstairs alone with my parents with Reed’s tender weight in my heavy arms.
Still, being at my parents’ house meant that we had consistent babysitters, which was something we hadn’t had in Boise, and I was determined to enjoy that. Having babysitters meant that we could go to events like the demolition derby, the biggest event of the year in Salmon.
The derby took place during Salmon River Days, a four-day festival of sidewalk sales, parades, and what passed in my town for pageantry. The 4-H kids led their animals down Main Street, and the cheerleaders rode on the backs of trucks, but the rodeo queens were the stars. They rode their horses with draping satin banners, bedazzled in pinks and blues, tall cowboy hats perched on their heads. The horses ambled and swung while the rodeo queens, with coiffed hair and perfect teeth, smiled and waved. Behind them, an adolescent boy rode a four-wheeler, quickly cleaning up the horseshit by efficiently sweeping it into a bucket.
Finally, at the end of the parade, we got what we were waiting for: the line of demolition-derby cars. They had been painted by amateurs, but the brightly colored doors and animal-print backgrounds had character. Each car was covered in advertisements for local businesses, such as the Savage Circle, a fast-food stand. On the side of their squat building, underneath the picture of an Indian chief (the same as the high school mascot), in large black letters, the Savage Circle motto read: “We Use 100% Beef (Except for the Chicken).” There were no corporate chains in Salmon except for the Subway sandwich shop, which had opened when I was in high school.
I thrilled at the sight of the loud derby cars, the roar of the engines, and the ladies perched on the hoods. It quickly became my favorite yearly event—an affirmation of the culture I had been raised in. There was a tension in Salmon—an undercurrent of despair fueled by boredom and poverty. This underbelly was inescapable, written in the faces of my classmates, in the subtext of every conversation. Always, it was most evident in the reunion that took place at the derby, when the residents of Salmon—both past and present—came together to celebrate the smashing of cars.
Spectators packed the bleachers; bare legs vied for space with plastic cushions that farted out the smell of old closets. On the horizon loomed the Beaverhead Mountains, a row of jagged peaks, still snowcapped in July. Salmon is a town of contradictions, of hippies and back-to-landers living next to ranchers and loggers. Still, the vast open space creates an inescapable loneliness in most, and the demolition derby becomes a cathartic ritual of violence and destruction.
Just as the cars began to rev their engines, I caught a glimpse of Jeannie, Jay, and Bud, and waved them over. Caleb gave me a quick smile, relieved to see someone he knew. Whenever we went out in Salmon, he was forced to endure small talk with strangers. A trip to the grocery store involved five or six conversations in which I introduced Caleb, talked about the baby, and issued general updates on my life. Once, after a particularly grueling grocery-store visit, Caleb let out a sigh of relief in the car and said, “You could be the mayor of Salmo
n. You know everyone.”
Caleb was nervous at the derby. He had spent time with Jeannie and Jay, so he was comfortable with them, but Jeannie was bringing along her father, Bud, who could be a difficult man. They all climbed the bleacher steps and came to sit next to us. I scooted over to make room. I introduced Caleb to Bud, then turned to give Jeannie a hug. She pulled me close and whispered in my ear that Bud’s wife had left him, moved to Montana, and become a lesbian.
I looked back at Bud. It was over a hundred degrees, and he was still wearing wool, a plaid shirt. His beard was dark and full. He caught me looking at him and glowered. “What are you looking at, Red?” He had called me Red since I was a child, a nickname I didn’t appreciate.
I turned back to Jeannie and said, “Pretty ironic.”
SHORTLY AFTER JEANNIE and I became friends, fifteen years earlier, she had invited me to her house for a barbecue. Bud opened the door. Unlike my father, a gentle, sober churchgoing man, Bud was a logger who loved to go to bars and get rowdy with the guys. He wore red plaid shirts and suspenders, and had a long though neatly trimmed beard. He was a walking parody of a lumberjack—big and brawny—and when he occasionally strutted around the house shirtless, his shoulders and chest were covered in black hair. When I grew older, I jokingly called him a yeti behind his back.
That night, as he accompanied me through the den toward the backyard, the eyes of a mountain lion followed me from a stone perch mounted on the wall. The den had rough-hewn log walls, and in addition to the mountain lion, there was a stuffed musk ox, a wolverine, various elk and deer heads, and a polar-bear skin proudly hanging over the full bar. Bud was an avid trophy hunter, and the house was like an animal mausoleum, where the faint smell of turpentine and death mingled with the smell of vodka and Bud Light.
Bud was a smart man—with a good heart at his core—but he was a “man’s man,” whatever that meant to him.
THE ANNOUNCER SCREAMED out over the loudspeaker, “Aaaall right, Salmon. Are you ready to git ’er done?” We swiveled to watch the action as the cars began pulling out into the mud. The engines growled as the tires spun. Each car paraded around the course, spewing as much mud into the air as possible.
Goodbye, Sweet Girl Page 8