The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving (34 page)

the longest haul yet

A
lready the chill is burning off as the sun beams just above the eastern horizon. It's 6:30 a.m. and we're a day behind schedule. Bob and Trev are wheel-to-wheel curbside, as I stuff the last of the bags willy-nilly in the back of the van and force the hatch shut so that Trev's big black duffel is pancaked against the rear window. God help us if somebody needs the Tums, because I haven't a clue where they are back there.

Bob and Trev are having a moment, or at least Bob is doing his best to make it a moment, while stuck to the heel of his outstretched cast, three squares of toilet paper stir gently in the desert breeze.

“You know,” he says gloomily. “Leaving was the biggest mistake of my life.”

“Would you just stop,” says Trev.

“I'm really sorry about everything.”

“Yeah, I get it, already. Stop,” he says with an edge of impatience. But when he sees Bob looking a little crestfallen, he softens up. “Look, just bring me some chicken, and we'll call it good.”

Bob brightens. “You're on,” he says.

Easing the van away from the curb, I watch Bob in the rearview mirror as he wheels to the middle of the dead lawn and attempts to right the listing reindeer. Look at you, Bob, setting your house in order at last.

Trev and I skirt the the reservoir in silence, speed across the flats for hours on end, over the border to Twin Falls wordlessly, until somewhere around Boise, I'm moved to speech.

“Seems like you let him off the hook easy,” I say.

“Yeah, well, it was time, I guess.”

And that's the last anybody says of it, about the last anybody says of anything, as we shoot through the high desert of northeastern Oregon—a landscape as scorched and ravaged as anything in the Mojave—past Baker City and La Grande with the sun burning fiercely at our backs. We've no desire to stop and, so far, no need. At the junction, we pick up the gorge and snake our way through Pendleton and
Th
e Dalles, with nothing but a quick stop for lunch at Biggs Cafe. We haven't got time for the Stonehenge replica at Maryhill, no time for the commemorative placard atop Sam Hill as we hurry west. And while I'm not sure what propels Trev onward, for the first time since we set out on this journey, I know where I'm going, and I wish I could say it were home.

a king

D
on't think for one minute that hitting a softball is like riding a bike. If you think you can succeed on muscle memory alone, you're wrong. You've got to stay within yourself. You've got to be in the moment. You've got to maintain your poise. You've got to resist temptation, no matter how slow it is moving. Sounds easy enough—if you're a monk. I'm willing to concede that when you're doing it right, hitting feels like riding a bike.

Back in those fat days when Forest scrawled my name mechanically in the three-hole—right in front of his own name—back when tattooing the sweet spot of a softball seemed effortless, before I began striding too early, before I started dropping my back elbow and lunging at bad pitches, before I started getting completely mental in the box, Janet used to bring the kids to my late games on Wednesdays.
Th
ey'd stand at the backstop as I strode to the plate clutching my bat. Jodi, at eleven months, in snug shorts and a bulging diaper, doddering on chubby legs as he clutched the chain-link fence for balance. Wide-eyed, no doubt, when I sent a frozen rope into the power alley or a screaming meanie past third.

“Go, Daddy!” Piper would shout as I darted down the line and rounded first.

And pulling into second base at an easy trot, I felt like a hero when I heard my teammates lauding me from the dugout with a chorus of cheers. I felt like a king when I peered back at my family behind home plate: Piper clashing famously in rubber boots and a leotard. Janet looking wholesome and relaxed in a pullover sweatshirt and flattering jeans. Jodi with drool streaming down his chin, flashing his new bottom teeth like a jack-o'-lantern as he garbled his approval.

A king, I tell you.

And maybe that seems sort of sad, sort of pathetic—the spectacle of some unemployable stay-at-home schlub whose wife gives him an allowance, standing astride second base with two bad knees as though it were Mount Everest. But it's not. What's sad is that I can't bring any of it back. What's pathetic is that after all this time, I'm still trying.

close enough

I
suppose it's a convenient place for a rendezvous, if not a little desolate. But after a 400-mile drive, with 180 miles to go, I'll take convenient.
Th
e Supercenter is in North Portland Harbor, right off the interstate, just shy of the bridge. What was once a mall is now vacant, its bleached walls and streaked awnings wearing the weather poorly.
Th
e shrubbery has gone to pot.
Th
e trash bins are heaping.
Th
e doors are chained shut. Somebody's tagged the glass with white spray paint. It's almost sad to think the place may be haunted. I'd hate to be a ghost floating around in there amid the gutted racks and the empty hangers.

Beyond the mall stretches a vast gray sea of vacant parking, maybe five hundred yards across, like a great concrete bay ringed with hulking superstores: Pier 1, Old Navy, Babies “R” Us. From a quarter mile away, I can see Janet's silver sedan, idling alone near the middle of the lot, her headlights spearing the gloomy dusk, a little cross-eyed. I park the van about eight spaces up the row from her and grab the manila envelope off the floor between Trev and me.

“You're okay with this? It might take a few minutes.”

“Just leave the window cracked,” he says. “I'll bark if I'm feeling needy.”

Leaving the van to idle in the gathering darkness, I crack the window, adjust the radio and heat to comfortable levels, and step out of the van into a mud puddle. It's spitting rain again, and cold—uncharacteristically cold for the season.

Walking the eight long spaces to Janet with my head down, I resolve myself not to dig up old bones, not to make any speeches, not to make her suffer any more than I already have. With a deep breath, I duck into the passenger's seat of the idling sedan.
Th
e heat is on full blast, the wipers squeak slowly.

“Hello, Ben.”

“Hey.”

She looks tired and doubtful as I hand her the papers. She sets the envelope in her lap without inspecting its contents.

“Is this for real?” she says.

“It's for real.”

We agree that this exchange warrants a short silence. We both gaze straight ahead, across the empty lot, toward the distant lights of Babies “R” Us. We used to drive all the way to Tacoma for Babies “R” Us. Our old lives were all but made of colored plastic.

“
Th
ank you, Ben,” she says at last.

“Sorry about the wait. I just needed some—”

“No need to explain,” she says, more like an entreaty than a free pass. “What happened to your neck?”

“I sprained it, I think. Or pulled it. Whatever you do to a neck.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Not yet.”

“What about your hands?”

“I fell.”

She shakes her head.
Th
e same woeful head shake I've seen a thousand times. “Oh, Ben, what's going to happen to you? You need to take care of yourself.”

“I just took a vacation, didn't I?”

“Ben, really.”

I look over at the idling van, its exhaust plume steaming in the cold air. It's getting dark. I should have left a dome light on for Trev.

“You smell like cigarettes,” she says.

“Yeah, I started again.”

“
Th
at's too bad.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

She smoothes the envelope in her lap and turns to me. “Ben. You know, this is really about me, okay, not you. I've tried to tell you this right from the start.
Th
ings only got nasty because . . .”

“Janet, I get it.”

“You do?”

“Not really. But I'm ready to live with it.”

And the truth is, I do get it, or I'm starting to. Janet needs a new context. Janet can no longer live in relation to me or what's left of me. She can no longer navigate a world with no signposts, no living landmarks, only colored plastic ruins. She cannot live on a borrowed light that only grows weaker with each passing day, cannot walk among the lengthening shadows of her dead.

She turns from me and looks out the side window toward Pier 1. “I've said some horrible things, Ben.
Th
ings I didn't mean.”

“Welcome to the club.”

“I mean about what happened.”

“I know. Fuck, I know. So have I. I'm so sorry.”

“You don't owe me any apologies.”

“But I do.”

“You don't.”

“Goddamnit, it was my fault. I was there. I caused it.”

“It happened. It was an accident,” she says decisively, clutching my knee. And as she does, an old grief wells up under my ribs, as though for the first time, rumbling up my chest like a herd of buffalo.

“Shhh,” she says.

But that only makes it worse.

“Ben, it's okay.”

“You know what kills me?” I say, wiping my face and choking down my lump of grief. “What really kills me is the thought that if I'd been more successful at something
—
Christ, at anything—I never would've been a stay-at-home dad in the first place.
Th
is never would've happened.”

“And if I were a more successful mom, I would've been at home with the kids, is that it? No, Ben, you can't think like that anymore. We're way past the if stage here—past the why stage, and the how stage. We're in the
is
stage, Ben. Best that we both look straight ahead for a while.”

She releases her grip on my leg and pats the manila envelope. “I realize how hard this is for you, and I'm sorry I left. I didn't mean to, I tried not to, but I did, and I'm sorry. I had to, Ben. I'm not asking you to forgive me.”

But I do.
Th
e truth is that suddenly I feel lighter, I feel like I can breathe deeper than I've breathed in years. Maybe all I wanted was an apology. I wipe my face dry and give a throaty sniffle, swallowing the last of my grief—at least for now.

“Ain't no thang,” I say.

She smiles sadly and pats my knee. Without unbuckling, she leans in for an awkward embrace. I breathe deeply of her, fill my lungs greedily with the scent of her. I could hold her forever, long enough for her stiff body to slacken, to melt into mine. Even with my screwy neck, I could hold her forever. But Janet doesn't have that kind of time.

“Good-bye, Ben,” she says, easing away from me. “Take care of yourself.”

“I'm gonna be okay,” I say. “Don't worry about me.”

Buoyed somewhat by the suspicion that I actually might be okay, that like Janet, I might find a new context for myself, I duck out of the car and take a deep breath of the cold wet air.
Th
e daylight has faded completely now.
Th
e lights of the stores look almost inviting.

“I still think that Sunderland guy is a putz,” I say, and close the door.

Janet smiles apologetically through the glass.

I'm smiling, too, as I cover the eight spaces in long, brisk strides and hop back into the van. I find Trev with his chair angled back slightly, working clumsily away at his tiny keypad in the dark.

“Sorry about the wait, bro.”

“No worries,” he says, without looking up. “How'd it go?”

“Not bad.”

“
Th
at's good, right?”

“Close enough.”

Janet is inspecting the papers beneath the dome light. It kills me to know her heart is beating fast. But I'm also glad for her. I wing a wide one eighty and angle across the lot toward the access road, looking everywhere but behind me. It's troubling how big and dead this place is. Suddenly, I want to run from it. I hang a right at the exit and barely beat the signal.

I ease the van onto the interstate headed north, listening to the thrum of the wipers and the swish of the tires, knowing with every molecule of my being that I love Janet, that I still want to be with her, that in spite of everything, I still want to make it work. Because I still care deeply—about Janet, about my kids, about Forest and Trev and Elsa and Bob and Dot and Peaches and Little Elton and even about Big Elton. I'll never stop caring. But the thing about caring is, it's inconvenient. Sometimes you've got to give when it makes no sense at all. Sometimes you've got to give until it hurts. It's not easy, and it can be downright thankless, but if you can do it, and you don't mind working for squat, they're still offering classes at the Abundant Life Foursquare Church right behind the Howard Johnson in Bremerton. Tell them Ben sent you.