Everything (10 page)

Days like this he missed his father.

Betsy looked tired was all. She seemed much like herself otherwise. She stayed quiet all through town and on the interstate, but when they turned up the Blackfoot, when they left town behind, she seemed to lift and brighten.

Did you ever think I was hard of smelling? she asked.

Like you couldn’t smell as well as other people? I never gave it a minute’s thought. So, I guess, no.

Me neither, Betsy said. But since this whole business came up, I can smell like a bloodhound or something. Every little thing. It’s really more of a curse than a blessing.

I imagine, RL said. Especially in this truck.

I wasn’t going to say anything, she said. Ha! It’s actually not that bad. But, you know, it’s just really strange, everybody’s perfume and deodorant. I can tell a smoker from a mile off, too. It makes me wonder what-all else I’ve been missing. You ever think about that?

What?

* * *

How much of your brain is just shut off, she said. Too much information, I guess. Too hard to make sense of things if you have to think about everything.

RL drove for a while, thinking. Betsy was a little like a dude in the way she came up with curious conversations out of nowhere. He thought about smelling, which he couldn’t remember doing before. Did he have any opinions or ideas? Of course she was not dude-shaped or dude-smelling but there was something about her.

Sometimes I think, he said, the thing we call instinct, it’s just that sense of smell. Not like the thing that’s at the front of your brain, you know, where it smells like peppermint or something, but way down in the monkey brain, the reptile brain. Pheromones. You meet somebody and you fall in love, boom.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in love, she said.

RL didn’t know what to say so he kept on driving, up and over the hill where Lubrecht was and down into the valley where the old Lindbergh ranch lay, now a high-end dude ranch where you could spend three thousand dollars to stay in a tent. There was so much wrong with this that RL couldn’t even start to count. Fresh white snow already on the high peaks of the Bob Marshall, miles away, and RL felt his heart fly out of his chest at the sight of them and fly up into the high country, his true and secret home. He felt the presence of his shadow, that other life that was the opposite of the one he was leading, fresh and clean and out in the open.

As they passed the fiberglass bull at Clearwater Junction and headed for her home, RL said, There’s different kinds of love.

* * *

You love your rivers, she said.

I do.

I love my children, she said. I don’t have to tell you about that.

No, you don’t.

But that thing that just comes along and knocks you down, she said. The whirlwind. I’ve read about it but I don’t even know if I believe in it.

You used to be in love all the time, RL said. Back in college, I don’t think a week went by where you weren’t.

That wasn’t real love.

You seemed to think it was. At the time.

I didn’t know anything, she said bitterly.

I always thought it was like being hot or cold or scared of heights, RL said. If you thought you were, well, you pretty much were. It might mean something different to you now.

Listen to the expert, Betsy said, and that shut him up.

They drove in silence along the side of Placid Lake. Out in the middle sat a mansion that you could only get to by boat. A man—RL didn’t remember the name—had built it and then gone broke, according to the story, and then hung himself in it. Now it sat alone and haunted in the middle of the gray lake. That was the thing, RL
thought. Build your defenses strongly enough and they’ll keep everybody out, but they will keep you in as well.

I’m sorry, she said after a few miles.

That’s all right.

No, it isn’t. I’m mean to the people who are nice to me and nice to the people who are mean to me. You should see me with the oncology staff. They’re trying to save my life!

RL looked at the clock: four thirty. He was taking her back to her husband. He didn’t want to. He was going to miss her, the quiet afternoons, tea and oranges. Plus, she needed saving, from this life and from this death. RL felt he was the man for the job.

Do you want to stop for a drink?

I’m not supposed to drink, she said.

That’s not what I asked.

I could have a Shirley Temple or something. If you want to stop.

We can keep going if you want to.

That’s all right, she said.

But when they pulled into the parking lot of the Dirty Shame, she had changed her mind again. I’m tired, she said, and all that smoke! She should just head back up the hill.

* * *

RL said, Sure! as brightly as he could to hide his disappointment. He thought he had touched her. What she wanted and who she was. Maybe something deeper had gotten scrambled in the hospital.

You might want to turn the hubs, she said, as they turned off the highway onto the Forest Service road. It looks like it’s been raining.

All the modern conveniences, RL said, switching the transfer case into four high. Automatic everything.

Nice, she said.

But she didn’t look nice or feel nice. She looked distracted, sick and scared. Let me help you, RL thought. Let me help you, please. They crossed a one-lane bridge across a creek and then they turned off the main gravel road onto a jeep track that branched off into the brush. Tag alder painted the sides of his truck with rainwater. They turned off twice more; and each time the road got worse, the tire tracks rutted with mud, the center grassy hump brushing against the underside of the truck. It felt unbelievable that they were not lost but Betsy clearly knew where she was going. It felt like the road was closing up behind them, like the wilderness was taking them in—a wild country that ran from here to Augusta, to Canada, north as far as north went, all dripping with rain and green.

You might want to gun it, Betsy said. This last piece is a little steep.

RL did as he was told, shoved it down into second gear and revved it up high and held on as the road twisted and bucked beneath him, a high steep washed-out gravel hillslope. He got to
the top and wondered how exactly he had done so, Betsy laughing at him politely in the seat beside him.

Damn, he said, partly in having survived the ride but also in wonder at the place he found himself. It was a clearing of mud and tangled brush, nearly flat, above the forest and below the mountains. In front of him, across the wooded valley, stretched the Mission Range, jagged and white, while behind them raised the first peaks of the Swan Range and the wilderness beyond. This was not country for people, he thought. This was country for rock, snow, bears. He thought of how he had emptied out at the sight of the mountains on the drive up and now here he was in the very heart.

It started to rain again as they sat in the truck, and woodsmoke drifted across the clearing.

A garage or shed stood at the near end of the clearing, mostly finished-looking, two stories tall. A man from the Civil War stood on the second-floor porch looking down at them without expression, in a gray wool shirt-jacket and gray beard and ponytail. This was Roy. The last time RL had seen him was at their wedding, and he looked considerably different then. Across the clearing was a foundation for a house covered in several blue and gray and green plastic tarps. The plastic was dirty and leaf-stained, all but one corner, which looked to be new this year.

Out of the open doorway to the garage peered the white faces of her children.

My God, Betsy said, and started to weep, although from joy or fear or sudden sorrow RL could not tell. Her mouth was pursed into a rictus of emotion.

* * *

Across the clearing were scattered several woodpiles and several cars, among them an overgrown International Travelall and a Dodge Dart wagon with no glass in the empty sockets. Many projects had been half-started and abandoned: a log splitter, a cider press, an arbor. What was it like to be her? What was it like to call this home? Even if he had the nerve to ask, she was in no shape to answer.

Roy disappeared back into the house and then in a moment came out the ground-floor entrance and walked toward the truck. He didn’t notice it was raining or at least it didn’t show. He moved unhurriedly with a little hitch in his walk, some old injury.

Welcome back, he said.

Betsy stopped crying right away and tried to hide it.

He said, We missed you.

I missed you, too.

How are you?

I’ve been better, she said. I’m all right.

You look good, Roy said, then leaned into the open window to look at RL. Thanks for giving her the ride up, he said. I’ve just been kind of wrapped up here. The kids and all.

No problem, RL said.

* * *

Well, I do appreciate it, Roy said. He opened the door from the outside and held it for Betsy to get out.

She turned to RL. Aren’t you going to come in? she asked. Come have a beer or a cup of coffee.

Over her shoulder RL saw the momentary flash of anger on Roy’s face, no more than annoyance, really, but it sparked an answering glimmer in himself.

Sure, he said. I’ll stick around. Take a little break before the drive home. Take a look around. I’ve never been up here before.

You’re kidding.

Never.

We’ve been here almost twenty years, she said.

She got out of the truck and into the rain, and the children came running then and the look on her face was something RL couldn’t stand to see as she hugged them close to her, standing in the pouring rain. The girl was almost as tall as her mother but long and thin, all elbows and neck, and the boy was a couple of years younger and much shorter with an unformed blank face. He looked like he was about to be born but still not ready.

This was too much to see, the look on Betsy’s face and the two children wrapped around her, and RL made himself look away. Then made himself look back. She saw it, too, that moment of recognition. You do love, he thought. You do, too.

* * *

Inside was curiously dark despite big windows which let in big views of the Mission Range. It was all one long room upstairs and RL waited for his eyes to clear into the half dark. Now that they had touched her, the children would not let Betsy go. Roy stayed behind them in the barn downstairs on some errand of his own, and when RL could see the upstairs he understood why: it looked like the aftermath of a frat party in there, clothes and sweatshirts, empty bottles and dirty dishes. He sent a thought out to his daughter, then, to Layla far away, to say,
Not for you, not this, let you be spared this
. It was not just dirt and disorder that he saw here but concentrated misery, the answer to the question
What would happen if I just let go?
This, RL thought. This is what happens.

Momma’s fine, Betsy whispered. Momma’s going to be just fine.

The children clung to her. Betsy was in her space now, her corner of the kitchen: a soft space. Fabric all around and scraps of cotton wool, a soft light from the big window, a big worktable and a drawer full of scissors, needles, skeins of wool. Everything in reach, everything in control. The chair itself was oak with woven, Mexican-looking cushions, worn threadbare to white in places and the wood scarred and stained. Everything within reach had been worn smooth with touch, and RL wondered if that was what had happened to her son, too, that half-formed, half-finished look …. In the soft light from the window they all looked beautiful but unreal, like somebody’s idea or a scene from a movie. Betsy was weeping but trying to stop. The girl looked angry. The boy looked like nothing at all, like water.

Betsy said, There’s a beer in the refrigerator, I bet.

RL just wanted to leave. This whole business—bringing her here, this whole trip—was a mistake. Abandoned to her own life.
But somebody needed to bring her here; she couldn’t drive herself.

Thanks, he said, and opened the refrigerator door: mustard, celery, some half-empty jars of jam and a half-gallon of milk that RL was certain was empty. And beer, plenty of beer, at least half of a case left in the bottom. Milwaukee’s Best. RL took one anyway, opened it and took the first rank draft.

Do you want anything?

No, no, she said. I’m fine.

RL went to the window and looked out upon the sweeping vista, miles of sky and aching white peaks. This was what he meant to do, anyway, but found himself looking instead at the collection of streaks and smears on the inside of the window, remembering the essential grubbiness of kids, the mysterious ability Layla had always had to get filthy in no time at all in a clean house, doing nothing in particular. Here it would be easier. When did it change? Again he thought of his daughter, somewhere out there on the tundra, alone …. Now she was neat as anything, three days on the river and she still could look pretty and put together. He was lonely without her.

When he turned away from the window, Betsy had composed herself and was pushing her children at him. This is Adam, she said, and this is Ann. Say hello to Robert.

The boy mumbled a greeting but the girl spoke clearly, long-necked, her face open and curious. She was not yet a beauty but she was on the verge, still a child but not for long. She didn’t know
what to do with her hands. Suddenly one of them darted out, and RL took it and shook hands with her in an oddly formal businesslike way.

Thank you for taking care of my mother, she said.

Suddenly in the half-light he saw Ann and her mother’s faces next to each other, and he saw the length of her and the fineness of her bones, her long soft girl’s hair, and in the two of them he saw Betsy as she had been at nineteen when he had first met her, at twenty when he had slept with her: long, delicate, pretty. Looking back from Ann to her mother, he saw—an optical illusion, it felt like, some kind of trick—the girl’s face and the woman’s at the same time, Betsy at nineteen, the annihilating work of time, some furious sandstorm blowing through and obliterating everything in its path. The features blunted, then erased. The Sphinx. The sadness that rushed through him was not just feeling sorry for himself, for her, for all of them but a certainty that she should have been with RL all along. He would have taken better care of her, would have been a father to this lovely girl. He knew this was wrong, even as he thought it, but he felt it solidly.