On the Divinity of Second Chances (11 page)

After the kids were born, he had a daily goals list for me, too. That was insulting. Here I was raising three kids right in front of him and he still had no clue what it took to do that. He had no idea what it was like to go seven years without sleeping through the night once. No idea how much energy it took just to make sure all three kids were alive at the end of the day. That I accomplished keeping the kids alive
and
that I cooked, cleaned, did laundry, ironed, mowed the lawn, shopped, and made sure everyone was where they were supposed to be on schedule was something for which I would have liked a little recognition.

I remember a night when we actually hired a babysitter and went to a movie. I don’t remember the movie now, only that when it was over and everyone was filtering out of the theater, Phil bumped into a business associate and his wife. Phil made introductions, and after saying how it was nice to meet me, the business associate asked me if I worked. Before I could answer that yes, I worked very hard raising three kids and keeping a household running smoothly, Phil answered for me: “No, she doesn’t.” He might as well have slapped me across the face. I remember covering up my devastation with a smile and excusing myself. For a few minutes, I felt like the dam was about to burst, unleashing a flood of frustrations and tears I had been holding back for a long time. Then something in me snapped. Instead of getting depressed, I got angry. I left a note on his car that said “Since you don’t think what I do is work, I’m sure you won’t mind covering for me for the weekend.” Then I ran. I ran as far as I could and then called Fiona from a pay phone and asked her to pick me up at a nearby school. On my way, I plowed through the autumn leaves on the sidewalk, exhausted and heartbroken. I entered the schoolyard and sat on a swing. Angry tears fell. I laughed bitterly at myself for all my childhood idealism. I was so wrong about how wonderful it would be to be a mother and homemaker. After a while, Fiona came to pick me up. She took me to her house back in Rapid City, about a fifty-minute drive from our home in Summerville. At Fiona’s, I slept for two days. She woke me from time to time to feed me, and then left me to resume my sleep marathon. On the drive back to Summerville, she gave me the name of a divorce lawyer.

“What was that all about?” Phil asked when I opened the door.

“The next time you tell anyone I don’t work, I’m leaving you for good,” I said, looking him squarely in the eye. If he had chosen to apologize and acknowledge my work, I might still love him today, but he didn’t. As I watched his unapologetic expression, it hit me. I realized what I had committed my life to. It was in that exact moment I stopped loving him and began to find him utterly repulsive.

Now I sleep under the stars. I wish I had begun to do this a long time ago. I could have avoided feeling like there was something wrong with me for rejecting Phil’s insensitive advances. There is nothing wrong with me. That I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed sex with my cold husband isn’t proof of any fault of mine. I sleep out here because I should have told him to “make love” to himself a long time ago.

Jade on Her Reunion with Forrest and Massaging Businessmen
(June 11)

Aretha and I approach Forrest’s tree. Barefoot, I carry a canvas bag filled with a bag of carrot-raisin muffins, a couple nectarines, and the flip-flops I always bring to wear in the store so I don’t get kicked out. I only have one skirt long enough to hide my feet. When I wear anything else, I have to comply and wear shoes. Forrest lowers his “elevator,” a rope and harness, so that he can spot me while I climb. I unclip the harness and clip the canvas bag handles to the carabiner, then give the rope two tugs. Forrest pulls the rope through the pulley above him and raises the bag to his tree house. I put the harness on. Forrest lowers the rope again, and I clip myself in and begin to climb. My aversion to shoes makes me a great climber. Aretha waits at the bottom of the tree, watching me climb, concerned, but when I reach the tree house, she turns three circles in the fir needles and beds down for a short nap.

“Forrest!” I greet him, as I lift myself up onto the platform.

“Hey!” Forrest puts a hand on my shoulder, and we hug. He stinks. “Nice climbing.”

“Thanks!” I take a moment to study him. He looks older and lonely.

“How’s life?” he asks. “What’s new?”

“Olive and Matt broke up. She discovered she’s pregnant after they broke up. She’s not going to tell Matt.”

“What does Grace have to say about that?” he asks. He’s the only person I can talk to about Grace. Since Grace helped me find him when he first ran away, he acknowledges her and respects what she has to say.

“Grace says it’s going to be okay.”

“Anything else?”

“Nah, she says it’s not mine to know. She says you’re starting to move in a different direction, though.”

“I wonder what that means,” he says.

“I suppose it could mean anything. What do you want it to mean?”

“I don’t know,” he answers.

“Hm. Maybe it means it’s time for you to leave your tree house.”

“I haven’t received a sign yet.”

“Forrest, I keep telling you, it wasn’t premeditated murder. Technically, it was manslaughter. Average sentence for that is four years.”

“Hey, what’s the sentence for arson?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I bet it’s longer than manslaughter.”

“That I don’t know,” I answer.

“I really hate that word ‘manslaughter.’ It’s a gross word. Makes it sound like I chopped somebody up.”

“Yeah. . . .” What do I say to that? “Hey, Dad’s learning to play bagpipes.”

“Bagpipes?”

“Bagpipes, my friend.” I pause for a moment and study the view. “How about you, Forrest? What’s new in your neck of the woods?”

“I’ve been eating lots of grouse. Saw a couple rattlers on my trip in. Sheep are making their way back up. Bad wind-storm last week. I thought I was going to get bucked off my tree.” Forrest sort of laughs.

“God, Forrest, doesn’t that freak you?”

“Better than living on a boat.”

“What if the top of your tree just snapped off?” I ask him.

He shrugs.

“My old best friend, Nisa, moved in next door. She’s a very hunky guy this time. I think she came back to marry me.”

“Interested?” Forrest asks.

“Oh, you know. On one hand, I’ve never been so attracted to anyone in my life, and on the other hand, it’s still hard to get past the part where I still think of him as a woman,” I answer, like this is a problem everyone has.

Forrest imitates Billy Joel singing a couple bars of “She’s Always a Woman to Me.”

“You’ve got to stop it with that honky music,” I tell him. “You know how I hate that crap.”

“Poor you,” he teases.

“Do you think it’s easy having all this mojo trapped inside this white girl body? You wouldn’t know anything about it, Whitey.” I look at my watch. “I’m going to be late for work.”

“I’ll walk you home,” he says, and belays me. I quickly rappel down the tree.

On the ground, I give the rope two tugs. Now Forrest weaves the rope around the figure eight attached to his harness, and clips the rope and the eight into the other harness. He gives the rope two tugs, so I know to hold it tight enough so that if he slips and starts to fall, I can take the slack out and stop him. He slides down without incident, as usual.

As he walks me home, I study Forrest through the eyes of someone other than his sister. “You know, Forrest, you’re lookin’ a little bit like the Unabomber. We may need to clean you up a little. Otherwise, you’re going to attract too much attention.”

He shrugs.

When we arrive at my place, I say, “Feel free to take a shower. Lock up when you go. The key’s under the white rock in the garden.” He heads off to the shower as I grab my stuff and my dog and go. I get an ugly flashback of the last time he used my shower. “Clean the shower really well when you’re done!”

He nods. “I’ll probably go watch over the parents’ place for a while today.”

“All right. Later, gator.”

“Later, gator.”

I massage Martin for the second time in the workout room of his enormous house. The house has huge timbers in the corners and in different places inside to make it look like post-and-beam construction; but really, it’s not. The timbers are purely for decorative purposes. In reality, the house is stick frame with OSB particleboard covering the framing. The logs, once trees hundreds of years old, were sacrificed purely for decorative purposes. It’s issues like these that make me feel very alone. I know I’m one of a handful of people in the world who truly understand that old trees are sentient beings. Killing trees for decorative timbers is no different, really, from killing a cow for leather pants. Maybe the timbers are worse. It took hundreds of years for the tree to grow, but as little as one for the cow.

I can’t imagine that he doesn’t feel lonely in this house, dwarfed by it. There are no family photos in Martin’s house, no ring on his finger, no toiletries in the bathroom to indicate the presence of another. His house lacks a woman’s touch, having instead the touch of an interior decorator I do not know, but whose work I recognize from other clients’ houses: lasso on the fireplace mantel, saddle over the loft railing, pillows with Southwest designs. I’ve seen it a hundred times—decoration for the man who wishes he had been a cowboy instead of an investment banker.

“How’s business?” he asks. Not how are you, or isn’t it beautiful outside, no, just how’s business. This one is in pretty deep.

“Grace!” I call in my head, and sure enough, Grace appears.

Grace struts around Martin, who lies facedown on the massage table, his face in the face cradle, which one of my clients thinks looks like a little toilet seat. “Mmm-mmmmmm-
mmm
!” Grace hums. I know what that means: Ohhh, we got trouble here!

“Picking up again, now that people are back in town,” I answer out of courtesy.

Grace rests her hands on Martin’s head while I work his lower back. Grace, consumed by her own concentration, does not talk to me.

“I prefer a consistent business,” Martin grumbles.

“I don’t worry about it too much,” I reply.

“What do you mean you don’t worry about it too much?” Martin’s disapproval is evident in his tone.

“Stress kills,” I answer.

Martin doesn’t respond.

I work the back of his legs and then tell him, “Flip over and scoot down so that your head is out of the face cradle.” I work the front of his legs while Grace places her hands on his heart.

Although his eyes are closed, his face looks very sad.

I work his arms, and Grace moves to his abdomen. Martin remains quiet.

While I finish with his neck, Grace begins to sing African songs of prayer for healing. I close my eyes and drink up Grace’s beautiful songs. At the end of the song, I place my hands on Martin’s head and say, “Bless you.”

Martin keeps his eyes closed. “Thank you.”

Forrest on Going Home
( June 11)

How small Mom looks from up here.

People who stay on the ground never look down and get this perspective on their little world. I watch her in her fenced-in backyard, like a mouse in a maze. I wish I could reach down and lift her out. It’s so easy to get trapped when two dimensions is all you know.

Mom, dressed in her usual black, looks sad, and I sense resignation in her movements.

I feel bad about the way I deserted them, the way I just dropped off the face of the earth. I know I contributed to the burden I see her carry now, and wish I could have done things differently, but I couldn’t.

I know it wasn’t Mom’s fault what happened to Moose. Moose chewed through ropes, broke chains, and dug his way out from under fences when he couldn’t jump over them, and he could jump over most.

I remember getting off the bus just as the sheriff pulled up. As Moose ran to greet me, the sheriff shot him, dead in his tracks. “I had a report from one Willa Meyer regarding a vicious dog” was all the sheriff said. And something in me died.

That’s what I remember—darkness, silence—a black hole into which my spirit was sucked. I watched in horror as my best friend tumbled, fell, and bled. I remember covering Moose, sheltering him with my own body, only too late, and I remember that hole in his chest, which I could not remove or undo. I remember Mom squatting next to me, her arms around me, the weight of her head resting on my back. I remember a few of her words, “. . . killed another of her chickens . . . asked her to shoot him with rock salt instead . . . told her you would pay her with money or with work . . . wouldn’t listen . . .” I remember her trying to lift me off Moose, but I wouldn’t let go.

I didn’t let go as dusk turned to night and my best friend grew very cold. I loosened my grip sometime in the middle of the night to pet his belly.

I didn’t sleep. Moose was the only thing that kept my recurring fire nightmares away, the one where I’m burning, but can’t move, the one where I can’t do anything but burn.

I remember the next morning, digging a hole just as the sky became a little lighter. Digging, digging, digging—it seemed like forever. I dug so that my body would hurt, so that the pain in my heart might transform into a pain I could better deal with. The sun was partway up its arc by the time I finished.

The school bus had come and gone. I’m sure all the kids were staring, but I didn’t look at them.

I brought the wheelbarrow over, but couldn’t lift him up. Moose was at least twice my weight. Mom appeared out of nowhere and lifted most of Moose’s body while I supported his head. I remember how the ground was stained with blood. I wheeled Moose to the hole in the field. Mom walked next to me. She helped me lift my giant dog out of the wheelbarrow and gently place him in the hole.

“Go now,” I told Mom. This funeral was private. She squeezed my shoulder and walked away. I remember looking at my dog in the hole, wondering how you tell a dog what he meant to you when the language you share is unspoken. And then I remember how the dirt bounced and scattered as it hit his side, and how my dog, my friend, disappeared through this veil of dirt.