“What’d she say? You did tell her, didn’t you?”
Caleb adjusted the mirror, pulled it down, and pushed it just off center so he could see her eyes.
“God, Caleb,” she said. “What are you afraid of?”
* * *
In 1993 in Mogadishu, a truck full of Somali soldiers cut Caleb off from the rest of the 10th Mountain Division. Under heavy fire, he took cover in a nearby alley. The sun burned hot in the sky. His M-16 burned hot in his hands. He knelt, aimed for anything not in fatigues. Between bursts of gunfire, something moved behind him.
The boy couldn’t have been more than ten. He squinted dark eyes. He wore a blue shirt and yellow shorts, but no shoes. He looked just like one of the orphans Caleb played with a few months ago, but this boy was different. Instead of childish innocence, war-hardened malevolence marred his face. He pulled his lips tight, and flared his nostrils.
Caleb’s eyes moved from the boy’s face to his shoulders, shoulders to arms, arms to hands.
He had a grenade, a finger in the pin.
Caleb squeezed the trigger. A sharp pop, then a soft crumple as the boy’s body slumped to the dusty street.
He was afraid when the truck cut him off. He was afraid when he hid in the alley under heavy fire. He learned of a new fear when the boy’s body dropped. What was he, eight? Nine? Hands so tiny, feet so filthy. He bled a purple pool through his blue shirt, darkening a spot in the center of his chest. What was he doing with a grenade, anyway?
Then, he realized the boy had the pin in one hand, the grenade in the other.
The boy’s rasped breath, the last remnants of life, like a confused sigh, slipped past his lips. His hand slacked. No sound but the imagined tick of a lethargic clock. Then, another pop, a distant echo.
* * *
Twenty-three years later, that same feeling sat like a cancer in Caleb’s abdomen.
Natalie sighed. “You really haven’t told her, have you?”
“Look, it’s not that easy. She’s a difficult woman sometimes. Fragile, you know. I can’t just call her up.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you.”
Hundreds of cars crowded the dark freeway. The radio reported a downed motorcycle two exits ahead. He switched the radio off. “It’s not like I haven’t wanted to. What am I supposed to say?”
“What do I care? Say something. You owe me that much.” She shifted in her seat. “Seriously, what are you afraid of?”
What was he afraid of? Of Rebecca? Of the church? His job? Or something deeper, some innate panic that festered until it boiled over like milk on a hot stove. He remembered Rebecca’s car, the telephone pole smashed like a broken toothpick. The helicopter landing in an empty field of overgrown grass in the dead of night. The note left on the kitchen table in Rebecca’s handwriting. “You don’t know her, that’s all.”
* * *
Two years after they were married, Caleb held Rebecca’s hand in the ER. Blood flowed from her at alarming rates. The room smelled like iron. Caleb felt dizzy. He readjusted the wet white rag on her forehead and wished he had one for himself.
“I don’t feel so good,” she said.
He squeezed her hand. “I know.”
“I’m bleeding.”
“I know.”
“More. A lot. Something’s wrong.” She closed her eyes, and her flushed cheeks glistened with tears. She squeezed Caleb’s hand like she was fast-roping.
Caleb looked under the sheet draped over her knees. He’d not seen that much blood since Mogadishu. He stepped into the hall. “Help! My wife’s bleeding!”
A nurse with a boxer’s nose said, “This is the ER. Everyone’s bleeding.”
He wanted to flatten her nose even more. “There’s a ton of blood. She needs help, a doctor, something.”
In the closet of a room, Rebecca cried. The nurse looked in on her. “Sweetheart, the doctor’s on his way, okay? Busy night. Just hang in there.”
Rebecca said, “Please. I’m pregnant.”
The nurse waddled out. Caleb took Rebecca’s hand. Blood soaked through the towel and ran down the foot of the exam table. The little color in her cheeks fled. Her skin looked like skim milk.
It took another hour for a tall man to saunter in. “How far along?” he asked.
Caleb said, “Six weeks.”
The doctor looked at the table and the blood and grimaced. “Doesn’t look good.”
“What do you mean?” Caleb said.
“Looks like a simple miscarriage.”
What about this, Caleb thought, looks simple?
* * *
An hour after their plane landed, Caleb and Natalie pulled into an all-night café in downtown Fontana. He’d put a call in to Rebecca to let her know he’d be getting a hotel instead of trying to make it all the way home. Natalie ordered eggs, over-easy, and bacon. Caleb ordered a Rueben sandwich.
In the booth, Caleb pressed the palm of his right hand into the left side of his chest, just beneath his shoulder. He grimaced. When he opened his eyes again, Natalie stared at him.
“So what’s with your shoulder?”
“Souvenir from Somalia.”
She broke the yoke of her egg and sopped it up with her wheat toast. “Mom said you’re some sort of war hero or something. You got a medal of honor?”
Pain seared his shoulder. When he pressed it, the pain dissipated to a dull burning rather than an intense branding iron behind his lung. At times, he felt something rattling around inside him, but the doctors assured him nothing was left of the grenade.
What did doctors know? “Your mom was fond of telling stories. It’s one thing I loved about her.”
“So no medal?”
Caleb shook his head while he finished a bite of his sandwich. He wiped the corners of his mouth and leaned back. “Not a medal of honor, but I do have a Purple Heart.”
Natalie yawned. “Like for people who get shot?”
“Or blown up with grenades, yeah.”
“Is that what happened to your face?”
The scars, she meant. Caleb was used to the question, just not to the tone it was asked in. She’d had a hard day, a hard week, a hard life. Life without a father wasn’t easy—Caleb knew that. And if he could have done something to keep Natalie from suffering his fate, he’d have done it. But his hands were tied. He couldn’t leave Rebecca—she was his responsibility. Tamara understood the situation, so Natalie should too, right?
“Yeah.” He prayed she wouldn’t ask any more, particularly who pulled the pin.
Natalie put her fork down and folded her hands in her lap. “Do I have any brothers or sisters?
* * *
After the second miscarriage, Rebecca and Caleb went to Doctor Goodwin in Knoxville to see if something was wrong. An aquarium behind the desk teemed with African Cichlids, electric yellow and blue. Must put patients at ease during Goodwin’s meticulous second read-through of medical charts. Rebecca might appreciate it. Nature girl through and through, she loved the snow, lakes, camping trips with friends.
Caleb loved the great indoors—sofas, running water, heavy comforters. He’d had more than a life’s worth of the outdoors in the Army. A fish on a plate was worth two in the tank.
Goodwin had slick hair and an Eddie Haskell grin. He steepled his index fingers and said, “Good news is, it’s probably treatable.”
“What’s treatable?” Caleb asked.
Rebecca looked pale. She took Caleb’s hand and said, “I knew it.”
“Long story short, Rebecca’s body sees the fetus as a virus, so her antibodies attack it.”
She paled even more. “I’m killing my babies?”
Caleb patted her hand. “It’s not like that at all.”
Goodwin sai
d, “We’ll give you an injection with some of Caleb’s white blood cells. It’s fifty-fifty after that.”
“I’m killing my babies?”
* * *
The phone rang at First Baptist Bloomington during Caleb’s weekly counseling session with Tamara. He took his hand out from underneath her shirt and cleared his throat.
Tamara kissed his ear. “Don’t answer.”
He sighed and closed his eyes. “I have to.”
She kissed his lips hard.
He laughed and pushed her back gently. “You’re bad.”
“Only as bad as you.” She bit his earlobe.
He cleared his throat and pulled back from her. “First Baptist Bloomington. This is Pastor Caleb.” He quieted for a minute, then patted Tamara on her bottom. His eyes shot around the room as she got up. He buttoned his shirt. “Where? Okay. I’ll be right there.”
“What’s wrong?” Tamara adjusted her black skirt and her ivory blouse. “You’re pale.”
He grimaced with each button, favoring his right shoulder.
Tamara came over and helped him.
“It’s Rebecca. She’s been in an accident.”
“Is she okay?”
“I don’t know.”
The helicopter touched down in an empty field next to the road where the hood of Rebecca’s car wrapped around a snapped telephone pole. The blades whirred and thumped, punched him like rumbling thunder. In the cold night, he remembered the searing heat of Mogadishu, the spinning of blades, the punching of air like a heartbeat.
Caleb moved toward the car, his knees weak. Luminous clouds blanketed the silver moon.
Frank Jamison, a deacon at First Baptist and the town Sheriff, wore his taupe uniform and a golden badge. He put a hand in Caleb’s chest, and pushed him back a few feet. “You don’t want to look too close, Reverend.”
Caleb didn’t resist. He let Frank walk him backward, his feet shuffling in the soft sand. “Rebecca?”
“They’re airlifting her to Knoxville. Better trauma center. She’s pretty bad off, Reverend. Wasn’t buckled up.”
Caleb stopped walking backward and stared at Frank like a curious puppy. “How bad off?”
* * *
When Caleb and Natalie pulled into the hotel, she said, “I want a lip ring. You’re cool with that, right? Mom was cool with it before … you know.”
Somehow, Caleb doubted Tamara would have approved a lip ring, even on her death bed. But he didn’t want to bring that up now. It’d be the worst thing he could say. Instead, he said, “I know.”
He opened the door to their room and followed her in. He, undoubtedly, wasn’t cool with a lip ring. “Why mess with perfection?” He smiled.
She rolled her eyes. “What a line.”
He put their suitcases down and searched the table between the two beds for the remote.
“How about we take a week or so before we talk lip rings? Rebecca may have something to say about it.”
“She’s not my mom. Don’t make it like she is.”
Now Caleb rolled his eyes. He found the remote, but left it alone. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“What are you saying?”
“Look, this isn’t easy for me either, you know.”
“Easier for you than for me.”
She was right. Between the two, he had the easier job—swallow his pride, admit his sin, ask for forgiveness. Natalie had learned to live without her father in her life, and now she must learn to live with her father, and without her mother.
“Before you meet Rebecca, there’s something you should know.”
Natalie lay down on the other bed. She put her hands behind her head and crossed her ankles. She closed her eyes. “She’s a man?”
“What? No. Natalie—”
“I was joking, Dad.”
Caleb wanted to say something, but breath left his lungs. She’d not called him “Dad” before. Couldn’t blame her. He’d never been a dad to her, but he would do the best he could now. When he could breathe again, he said, “I know. I get it. It’s tough.”
“We’ve been through this. What’s so bad?”
Caleb rolled his sleeves up and put his elbows on his knees. His shoulder ached, and he wanted to roll over and sleep. But this was important. This was family.
“It wasn’t that we didn’t try to have kids.” He felt like he was beginning in the middle of a very long and complex story. It was like summarizing the Old Testament, but starting in Proverbs.
“We tried hard, but it didn’t happen,” Caleb said, “Five miscarriages before we gave up.”
“My God.” Natalie rolled over on her side and propped her head up.
“That changes a woman. She used to be very attentive, supportive. Simple things, you know? She’d have these elaborate meals ready for me after I got home from the church.”
He slipped his loafers off, lay back on the bed, crossed his ankles. He wiggled his toes. Cold air stabbed through his argyle socks.
“She’d surprise me at work often, a little something special for lunch wrapped up in a white box. We’d eat together and talk. Now, I can’t remember the last meal we ate together. More like roommates than spouses.”
“Sorry.” Natalie sat up and pulled her feet into her lap. “She doesn’t sound all that bad.” Natalie’s voice softened. Her accent rolled off her tongue. She sounded exactly like Tamara. “Is that why you and Mom, you know?”
“One of the reasons. And believe you me, there were days where I wanted to pack up and call a good lawyer.”
“Why didn’t you? The church?”
“No. I could probably find another job.”
“Then why?”
Caleb thought he’d rather let Natalie get her lip pierced than tell her the rest, but he owed her. He owed her a lot. He took a deep breath and felt his back pop between his shoulders. A ripple of pain waved through him.
“About a week before I heard Tamara was pregnant with you, Rebecca was in a pretty bad accident. She’d crashed into a telephone pole and didn’t bother buckling up.”
Natalie covered her mouth with her hand. She wore the same crimson polish Tamara used to wear.
“When I went home that night, I found a note on the kitchen table. I thought for sure Rebecca had found out about me and your mom, but it wasn’t that. The note said, ‘I’m sorry Caleb. For the babies. For our whole miserable existence.’”
Caleb took a deep breath. “She had more surgeries than me, but had better doctors. Only has one long scar, forehead down her nose and over to her cheek. That’s why I never left. She’s my responsibility.”
“But isn’t love more than an obligation?”
“It should be.”
* * *
They pulled into Caleb’s garage at ten the next morning. Caleb told Natalie to leave the luggage for later and follow him in. Inside, Rebecca folded laundry on the couch in the living room. She paid little attention to the muted TV. She looked up, white panties in hand. “Hi,” she said, her eyes fixed on Natalie. “How was your trip?”
“Good. Everything went well.”
Rebecca’s eyes, the color of beach sand, narrowed and accented the creases at the corners. Her scar, now just a whitish-pink line, dribbled down her forehead to her left cheek. Her other scars, pale lines like veins, circled her forearms up to her elbows.
“Who’s your friend?”
Caleb turned to Natalie. “Your room is upstairs, first door on the right.”
“Yes, sir.” She raced up the stairs.
“Come sit down.” He motioned to the couch not covered in neat piles of clothes.
“I’d rather fold.”
“Fine, okay.” He crossed his arms. He didn’t want to tell her this way. He
didn’t want to tell her at all. But, since he couldn’t avoid it any longer, he reasoned it’d be better to tell her in person, to keep her from going for a drive.
A flash of indignation erupted within him. She hoarded the sorrow. With her sulking, he never had time to hurt, could never share his pain with her, or anyone other than Tamara. The miscarriages had killed something in him, too, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
The white walls of his home, in the dim light and the soft glow of the television, felt like the hospital so many years ago. He prayed for the words, the right words, to disarm the situation.
“You remember Tamara?”
Rebecca nodded.
Of course. Stupid question. He’d flown back to Tennessee to perform her funeral. “I never told you. She had a daughter. We had a daughter. This is her. This is Natalie.”
“You and Tamara?” She folded one of Caleb’s old T-shirts and put it in the pile nearest the arm of the couch. Her eyes cut to the television as if something interesting had caught her attention. She sounded disinterested, a little confused.
He nodded.
“Is she staying with us?”
“Yes. She’s my daughter, and I thought, since she has no family, she could stay with us.”
She shouldn’t take this so easily. Her eyebrows slouched toward her nose. She scrunched her eyes from time to time, quiet for a minute as she folded holey underwear and matched dingy socks.
“Say something.”
“I think I’ll make lunch,” she said.
He wouldn’t let her avoid the issue. She had to face it no matter how much it hurt. No more running. “It’s too early for lunch.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. Have you eaten?”
“We drove through in Victorville.”
“I had leftovers.” She folded three more shirts, a pair of jeans.
Caleb shook his head. Like reasoning with cardboard. She should yell or scream, maybe throw something at him. This dispassionate response irritated him more deeply than a deep dive into depression. Any reaction would be better than none.
“All right. We’ll talk about it later. I’m getting her things and setting up the guest room.”
The Bargain - One man stands between a destitute town and total destruction. Page 12