Goodbye, Sweet Girl

by Kelly Sundberg

  The salmon sprang out of the water. They hit the rocks with loud thwacks. It must have been painful. Some of them found the right route—natural steps built into the falls that they could navigate—but some of them did not. One of them kept flopping back into the water, shocked for a moment, then sprang back up and jumped again. Hit the black rock again. Fell again. And again. And again. It couldn’t change its nature.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked Caleb. “The persistence?”

  “But aren’t they just returning to the place of their birth so they can die?”

  I stared at that fish, fighting for its right to die. “I guess so,” I said. I thought of Greg and the fish biologist, of how much it had hurt when those lovers left me, of how I hadn’t let go of that hurt until I met Caleb. I thought of how I’d hoped that when we married, it meant I would never have to hurt like that again. I looked at Caleb and felt that we wouldn’t be married forever.

  I held Reed in my arms. He smiled at me and reached his little hands out to touch my face. The water raged below us, and for a moment, I wanted to jump.

  I smiled at Reed, holding him up above the water, so that he, too, could see the salmon jumping, their silver and red bodies glinting like blades. Reed laughed. I held him tight. I couldn’t jump. I couldn’t let him be swept into those waves with me.

  THOSE WEEKS LATER, as I stood there in the middle of the highway—alone with Caleb—the thought flashed into my head again: I could jump. Caleb scrambled down the rocky hillside. He snatched up the keys as if he had known all along that he was going to find them. He came back to the car. “Look what you made me do,” he said.

  I was so tired, I had no more energy for fighting; I barely had enough energy to survive. I got back into the passenger seat, pressed my head to the window, and stared out the glass at the dry mountains of the river canyon rushing past me. My anger was gone. I felt only relief. It was the same lightening of my body that I had felt when Caleb gripped my legs and held me in that blue swimming pool. The feeling was oddly sweet. In some strange way, I even felt tender toward Caleb, as though the only person who could ever understand the flash of panic I felt when he threw those keys over the hillside was him. As though we were in it together.

  And after all, maybe it had been my fault. I had been angry. Maybe he did the only thing that he could to stop my anger; he replaced it with fear.

  WHEN WE MOVED into the little house in Boise, we were in a different part of town from our friends, and I grew lonely. I rode my bike through residential neighborhoods to a nearby river trail where I continued the three miles to campus. That bike ride along the calm Boise River was the highlight of my days. While I was on that bike, I felt a freedom that I didn’t feel at home. The heaviness lifted, and sunlight glittered on the water.

  By then, the heaviness had become a part of my body. Even sunlight felt heavy. Reed continued to be a joy, but beyond that, I felt so little. As the summer turned to autumn, the sunlight grew heavier and heavier. I could feel its weight on my skin. I did everything that I could to find more energy. I knew that exercise was important, so I would put Reed in the jogging stroller and jog or walk around our neighborhood. I always asked if Caleb wanted to go with me, and he almost always said no. The distance between us was growing, and I was lonelier in that marriage than I had ever been before. Sometimes I cried when he said no, and he would yell at me, “Quit crying. You want me to do everything with you. You don’t respect my writing time.”

  Sometimes I would lie in bed and cry for no reason at all, and he would stand in the door and scream at me, “Quit crying. What are you crying about?” I would only cry more, then, and say, “I don’t know why I’m crying. I just don’t know.”

  By then we were arguing more, and I was beginning to feel afraid of him. He would back me into corners while he yelled at me, and I felt so helpless. Once he pushed me against the wall and pinned me. I panicked, lashing out and hitting him in the face. The wire on his glasses broke, and the lens fell out. He pulled back, the lens in his hand, and I stared in horror. What had I done?

  I begged him to forgive me, and he did, scooping me into his arms and telling me that it was okay, that he understood. I was so grateful for his forgiveness. He taped his lens back into his glasses, then offered to go for a walk with me. We walked the stroller to the river and took Reed out. Reed toddled to the banks and threw rocks into the water, while Caleb held on to the back of his shirt to keep him from jumping in. As I watched the way that Caleb protected Reed, again, the heaviness lifted, replaced with tenderness. Caleb held my hand on the way home, and when we got home, he put Reed to bed, made me dinner, and then tucked my head into his chest. The loneliness abated. Neither of us was perfect, but we shared an intimacy. We were all that we had.

  OCTOBER CAME, AND the light continued to have this quality of intensity and dimness at the same time. I was no longer trying to be happy; I was only trying to be not-depressed. I took Reed for long walks, and felt myself teetering on a razor’s edge. On one side of that edge was beauty, and on the other side of that edge was despair.

  As Reed and I walked alongside the river, I could see into the yards of fancy homes. I wondered what their families were like. Did they, too, feel that something was missing? I finally went to the student health center and told the doctor that I had been feeling depressed. She gave me a depression screening, and after I finished answering the questions, she left the room and then came back. “We cannot let you go on like this,” she said. “Do you think about suicide?”

  “Yes,” I answered, “but I would never do it. I only fantasize about it.”

  “How often do you fantasize about it?” she asked.

  “Every day,” I said.

  I left her office with a prescription for Prozac. I wasn’t particularly interested in saving myself, but I hoped that I had finally found the way to save my marriage.

  I CONTINUED TO see my therapist and continued to tell her about how unhappy I was in my marriage. The Prozac had only achieved a manageable state of numbness for me. I wanted her to teach me how to be happy. Occasionally I would bring Caleb in to see her with me, and he would always talk about how critical I was of him, and how frustrated he felt living with me. After one session she gave us an activity: we were to take a week off from criticism. No matter what, we could not criticize each other. The first couple of days were wonderful. I enjoyed not criticizing him. I enjoyed letting things slide.

  Soon, though, he was criticizing me. “That’s criticism,” I would say. “Oh wow, you’re right,” he would say, and then we would both laugh. It had become a game for us, but at the end of the week, we both realized that I was not the one in the marriage who was prone to criticism. We went back in to my therapist’s office and sat side by side on the couch. “What did you realize this week?” she asked.

  Caleb didn’t pause. “I realized that I am actually very critical of Kelly,” he said, “and that I am too hard on her.” I was so proud of him for being honest with her. I reached over and squeezed his hand.

  She seemed surprised. “Wow,” she said. “I hadn’t expected that. How did that make you feel, Kelly?”

  I paused, and then said, “I was surprised, too, but I feel better now. I think that we’re better now.”

  Caleb and I went home that day and congratulated ourselves. We had done what needed to be done. We had gotten therapy. I had started taking medication. We were working on not arguing so much. We were going to be okay. I knew it.

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK, we fought again, and again I went to see my therapist. She was obviously disappointed to hear that we were still struggling. “When things get that tense,” she said, “you need to go somewhere. You need to exit the situation.”

  “But I can’t,” I said. “He won’t let me.”

  “What do you mean, he won’t let you?”

  “I mean, he will get in front of me, or back me into the corner. Once he even held me to the wall. I panicked and hit him in the face, so
that he would let me leave.”

  She sat back, her face concerned. “Kelly, that is domestic violence. What he is doing to you is domestic violence.”

  I was confused. “But he has never hit me,” I said. “I’m the one who hit him.”

  “Yes,” she said, “but hitting someone to escape is not the same thing as hitting someone to control them, and when he is pinning you to the wall or backing you into a corner, then that is physical intimidation, and that is a method of control. It is part of a pattern of violence.” She reached into her filing cabinet. “I am going to give you this flyer,” she said. “It is for the domestic violence shelter, and I want you to keep it for if you need it.” She pulled out a purple paper and handed it to me.

  I stared at the paper. I had no idea what to think. I knew that I wasn’t being abused. He had never hit me, and I was strong. I was independent. I was the girl who had run away from Danny, and who had escaped that man in the truck. I was not someone who would be abused.

  I tucked the paper into my bag and then rode my bike home. I decided to tell Caleb what the therapist had said. I didn’t think that he was abusing me, but I did want him to stop intimidating me. I knew that when he heard that my therapist thought he was abusing me, he would realize what he had been doing. His honesty about the criticism had shown me that he was willing to be self-reflective. This was only going to improve things.

  At home, he asked me how it went, and I motioned for him to sit next to me on the couch. I pulled out the flyer. “She thinks that you are being abusive,” I said, then waited for him to respond with compassion.

  He flew into a rage. “Are you saying that I’m a domestic abuser?” he yelled. “Are you kidding me?”

  I shrank. “No, I’m not saying that,” I said. “She’s saying that. I just thought that it might make you realize that what you’ve been doing is wrong.” I put my hand on his arm.

  “Fuck that,” he said, shaking my hand off. “This is bullshit. I do everything for you, and you don’t even appreciate it.”

  “No, I do,” I said. “I do appreciate all that you do for me.”

  “Then why don’t you respect me? Why would you believe someone who says such awful things about me?”

  I was drowning again—in the same way that I had been drowning in the car. There was no way out, nothing I could say that would make him believe me, and I no longer even knew if I was right. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was wrong, and my therapist was wrong, and the real problem was my lack of respect for him.

  The water closed over my head. I couldn’t breathe. I gave in.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Of course you’re right. I’m sorry.”

  THE NEXT DAY I took Reed for our walk, and we walked by an irrigation ditch instead of the river. The ditch was deep, the water so swift. A fence surrounded the water, marked with “Danger” and “Keep Away” signs. I knew that people had drowned in that ditch, but there was still an attraction to the water, a beauty in its swiftness.

  Reed and I walked above our neighborhood and stopped at one particular home, my breath gathering in my chest. In the middle of striped green grass was a swimming pool—blue and clean and clear—surrounded by reclining chairs on a patio. I wanted so badly to live in that home, to dip myself into the clean depths of that pool, to fill those chairs with Reed, and with Caleb, and with the other children that we might have. There would be so much love there. I would find a way to create that home. I wasn’t ready to give up on that hope yet.

  11

  Broken Things

  THE FIRST THING I broke was an orange Fiestaware plate. I was in the kitchen, taking the dishes out of the dishwasher, and Caleb was angry about something. I attempted to ignore him but he loomed over me and pushed my back up to the sink, his anger trapping me. When I tried to move around him, he moved with me. A frustration like I had never felt before rose in me. Without any consciousness of what I was doing, I threw the plate I was holding to the ground with such force that it shattered.

  Caleb and I both looked at the broken plate—a cheerful orange—on the beige linoleum. His face was smug. Now look what you’ve done, it said.

  I stared at the shattered ceramic. What was wrong with me?

  I got out the broom and swept the shards into the dustpan. I had no idea then that sweeping up broken things would become the new normal.

  AT THAT TIME, Megan was in graduate school in Moscow, Idaho, and engaged to be married. Because Megan’s mother had died, her mother’s friends—including my mother—threw her a bridal shower. They decided to host it in Boise, which was where most of Megan’s friends lived, and I was looking forward to an escape from my loneliness.

  MEGAN HAD BEEN the maid of honor in my wedding, and had hosted a “Silly Dress” party at my bridal shower. I wore a dress festooned with pictures of playing cards. Megan wore a dress with flowers and a large collar that looked like something the Mormon churchgoers would have worn when we were kids. Everyone was joyful, and at that party, surrounded by my friends, I first met Joanne and my sister-in-law, and Caleb’s grandmother and his aunt. I was four months pregnant and had slept in the car the night before, so despite the festiveness of the event, my eyes were dark circles.

  THE DAY BEFORE, my mother and I had driven six hours round-trip over a 7,000-foot mountain pass on the Continental Divide to buy supplies at the Costco in Missoula for the wedding. It was a long day of shopping, and on our drive home the car suddenly made a loud scraping noise and shuddered to a stop. We were still about twenty miles from town. We got out of the car and walked alongside the river to the nearest farmhouse, where we banged on the doors. “I know them from the hospital,” Mom said. “They are old and not going to hear us.”

  We turned around and walked back to the car. We both knew that there weren’t homes for at least a mile or two down the road, but what were we supposed to do? We started walking, headed toward a dark section of the river canyon called Red Rock where, when I was in high school, students would jump off a huge red boulder into deep water. It was the place where I had taken swigs of cheap Idaho Silver vodka in a car with two boys and my best friend. While she made out with one of the boys in the front seat, I sat uncomfortably in the back seat with the other. At that time, I was always the girl in the back seat the boys didn’t want to make out with.

  MY MOTHER AND I entered the dark canyon. The cottonwood trees loomed above us, and no moon peeked through the trembling leaves. Suddenly a wolf howled, and then another, and soon the howls of the wolves ricocheted off the river walls. My mother stopped. She put her hand on my arm. I was unsteady, but she was firm. “Let’s turn around,” she said, guiding me, and walked briskly back the other way. I let myself be pulled along beside her. My mother was strong. She always knew what to do. We slept in the car until a vehicle drove by at 6:00 a.m., and a woman who knew us gave us a ride. My father went to retrieve the car and took it to a mechanic, but the mechanic never found anything wrong with it.

  AT MY BRIDAL shower, I set my fatigue aside and greeted my new family. I liked all of them immediately, except Joanne. There was a frozen look on her face. Perhaps she was as scared as I was, but I already felt that I would never win her approval. Later everyone sat in a circle and told stories about me. My first boss, Karen, told of how I had gone into her bookstore when I was only fifteen and said that I thought she should employ me because I read a book a day. She described me as being spunky and smart, and said that she had always thought of me as a little sister. My friend Sadie told how I used to play the kazoo as a party trick. She described me as being one of the funniest people she knew. Sadie looked directly at Joanne and said, “Kelly is really special. You are so lucky to have her joining your family.” I had never felt more loved.

  After the party, my new grandmother-in-law hugged me. She said, “It was so wonderful to hear the stories about you. You are going to be so good for Caleb. You will find that our family has secrets. We have skeletons in our closet, but you will be good for him.”


  Caleb’s best female friend from West Virginia, who had also attended the shower, said, “You are perfect. Caleb needs someone like you.”

  It seemed to be a theme—Caleb needs someone like you.

  I didn’t question it. I liked being needed. It never occurred to me to ask myself if I needed someone like Caleb.

  LATER, WHEN I asked Caleb about those skeletons, he said, “She had a stroke. She has never been the same. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  I PLANNED THE wedding within three months, and everything about it felt rushed. Caleb and I had only known each other for eight months. The night before my wedding, when my father was sleeping and I was alone in the kitchen, I broke into sobs. My mother came in and hugged me for the first time in a long time. She looked at me and said, “Listen to me. It is never too late. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said.

  Just then, Kelly M. and another friend burst in through the door. They had been out at the Owl Club with Caleb and his friends and family. While I had been crying in the kitchen with my mother, Caleb had been singing a song he wrote called “The Porta-John Song,” while his friends laughed and cheered him on. He was so funny, but no matter how many times I asked, he would never sing that song to me—not through eight years of marriage. There was a lot about Caleb that he would never let me see.

  Kelly M. saw my puffy face, my tears. “Oh, hon,” she said, putting her arm around my shoulder and leading me to my bedroom. “Let’s go to bed.”