Saving Fish From Drowning (62 page)

Wendy admired Phil as her mentor so much she slept with him, in fact, enough times for them to qualify as lovers. Hard bodies, she decided, were not that important anymore. He was smart and articulate, and that was a form of seduction. She liked it that Phil worried she didn’t care enough for him—which was the opposite of how things were with Wyatt. Actually, she noticed that Phil could even be somewhat clingy. He asked little test questions, like, “I was thinking about your tush today. Were you thinking about mine?” Sometimes he came across as desperate. She wished he were as confident in bed as he was with the press.

Every now and then, when she did think of Wyatt, which was

“hardly ever,” she told herself she was “so totally over him.” He was a brief infatuation, and she convinced herself it was a hypomanic side effect induced by a change in her medication. Wyatt was a loser, and not very smart. Plus he had no idea what responsibility to others was. He didn’t ever think about having a real job or having a goal in life beyond mooching off people so he could take off on his next adventure. He would never do anything to distinguish himself, just as he hadn’t when they were stuck in No Name Place. There was nothing much to him, she concluded several times a day when he sprang to mind, besides his cute butt and a certain jackhammer talent of the pelvis.

WYATT DID indeed return to Mayville, which held another parade and a grand banquet in his honor. For weeks, he was invited to one luncheon after another. His high school held a victory dance in the auditorium, and there he ran into a woman who laughingly said,

“Don’cha know it’s me?” It was the ditzy woman with heavy black 4 5 0

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eyeliner who had been interviewed on Global News Network, the one who called herself his girlfriend.

He said, “Ma’am, I have
no
idea who you are.”

She shrugged and said with a friendly smile, “That’s how time is, isn’t it, it just goes away before you know it, and in between, people grow older and some get old. I guess I look like nobody you ever woulda knowed.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Don’t matter. Like everybody, I just wanted to say, Glad you’re back.”

He knew that laugh. Sherleen, the woman who introduced him to sex. At the time, he was sixteen, half the age he was now, and she was thirty-one, younger than he was now. She had worked at the ranch where his mother boarded his horse, the gift he received from his father shortly before he died of emphysema. He was the rich kid, and she was the gal who described herself as “rich in heart and heartaches.” She had been his secret haven, somewhere between comfort and escape. When he was twenty, he left to take a car trip to the Southwest. He sent her postcards, but she had no way to write back, and when he returned, he heard she had moved.

He was embarrassed to remember this. “What you been up to,

Sherleen?”

“Kind of the usual,” she said, “which is not a whole lot.” And he knew it was hard times by the number of times she said “Oh, well”

as she talked about all the “usual” things. He could see it in his mind, her getting bucked and kicked while breaking in horses, her hooking up with the seasonal ranch hands, this “bad-ass” and that “mean sucker,” who kicked the shit out of her after they rode her like a bucking horse in bed. That was back when she could still work. Not anymore. She had a scrunched-up back, miserable pain eased by bottles of whatever was cheap. She had come to town when she heard that he was missing in Burma. For old times’ sake, she had worried a lot.

Sherleen was also the mother of his eleven-year-old son. He immediately recognized that fact when he saw the boy come up to them 4 5 1

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holding a plate piled high with turkey and mashed potatoes. It was like seeing himself at that age, down to his facial expressions and loping walk. So those get inherited, too, he thought. And just as he expected, the boy said, “Wyatt,” when asked his name.

After that day, he knew he had to do what was necessary to make amends and be a dad. How he dealt with Sherleen was another matter. He talked to his mom and her new husband, Gus Larsen. A family’s got to take care of its own, Dot said, and the Fletchers knew how to do right by other people. She told him they would send Sherleen to a county rehab program—they’d pay, of course—and while she was drying out, they’d go to court and file papers saying she was an unfit mother, so they could get custody of the boy. That was best for the boy’s sake, the mother’s, too.

But Wyatt was reluctant to do anything backhanded. The woman was a mess, that’s for sure, but she still laughed an honest laugh, and at one time in his life he had thought she was beautiful, the sweetest angel on earth. So many afternoons, he had told her, “I love you. I promise, Sherleen, I’ll always love you.” That counted for something, didn’t it?

He could offer to set her up in an apartment near his mom’s

house. That way he could drop by and take his son fishing, to a ball game, or even on one of his expeditions when the boy was older. To Sherleen, Wyatt would say he’d like to be her friend. He knew she would understand it would be only that. He knew her well. She would say what she had always said, “Anything you want.”

ROXANNE AND DWIGHT were still together, but not in the way you might think. Even before she reached home, she started to justify why she should end the marriage. All those weeks in No Name Place should have strengthened them as a couple, but instead they magnified her loneliness at being with him. His insecurity kept him apart 4 5 2

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from her. His abrasiveness drove others away. She could not share her successes with him, because he reacted only with terse comments—

“Another one for the trophy case”—and that angered her and made her think that all they shared were different disappointments.

Dwight sensed what Roxanne was thinking. The thought of his

marriage’s ending both scared and saddened him, but he could not tell her that. Early in their relationship, he had wanted to protect her—emotionally—and he knew she needed that, even though she appeared strong to others. But she had rebuffed his efforts, maybe unknowingly, and he felt useless, then a stranger, alone. She wanted so little of him. He wasn’t as smart as she was, not as strong, not even as athletic. Her disdain had been evident on this trip. She never wanted his help or suggestions. If she didn’t reject his ideas outright, she was quietly unsupportive. He could see it in her eyes. She was tender only when he was weak, when he was sick.

After their rescue, neither of them spoke about the inevitable, yet they felt it sharply, the lack of jubilation in at last being alone together. They made separate arrangements: she caught a plane back to San Francisco, and he went to Mandalay to explore the areas around the Irrawaddy. That was what he had come to see. Along those shores his great-great-grandfather had been killed.

He pictured his ancestor looking much like himself, around his age, his same coloring, having a similar feeling of being displaced, alienated from his disappointed wife, squeezed by the tyranny of a society that would give him nothing by which he could distinguish himself. He was just another cog. He had come to Burma to work with a timber company, to see what his chances were, if his soul was still alive. He looked at the river and its broad expanse. And then came shouts, and he was surprised that death was happening so fast.

Crossbow arrows rained down and sharp knives went through him with surprising ease, as if he had no muscle or bone. And then he was lying in his mess, his face close to the water, not feeling his body, 4 5 3

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but his thoughts still rushing out. He was going to die a stranger on these shores. And as the fiery sparks filled his vision, he had a startling thought—that long after he was dead, this river would still flow and so would he. He pictured a young man, who looked very much like him, about his age, his same coloring. He marveled that his blood would run through this young man, that perhaps it would draw the young man to this wild and beautiful place. And later the young man would have these same thoughts, that one day there would be another and another, with their same coloring and thoughts, who understood them both. And when that happened, neither of them would feel he was alone. They would live on together in the flow of this endless river. He died in peace believing it. And this peace would have been Dwight’s, but for the fact that he had no children.

When he returned to San Francisco, he and Roxanne agreed to a divorce. There was no fight leading up to it. They agreed without tears or argument that the marriage was over. Two weeks after he moved out and a week after they filed the papers, he learned that Roxanne was three months pregnant. He knew she had wanted a girl.

But the sonogram revealed it was a boy. She hadn’t said anything before, she explained, because she felt it shouldn’t enter into their decision whether to divorce. He wanted to cry over this sad irony. But he nodded.

Fate kept changing course. Roxanne nearly lost the baby and had to take drastic measures. Her doctor sewed up her cervix, ordered complete bed rest, and advised she avoid stress. Without being asked, Dwight returned home. He cooked and brought her meals, cleaned up after she finished, and washed the dishes. He collected the mail, sorted out the junk, paid the bills, answered the phone and took messages when she was sleeping. He helped her bathe and pushed her in a wheelchair the short distance to the bathroom. These were the menial things they had never done for each other.

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Surprisingly, they got along well. Without expectations, they no longer had to face disappointment. Without disappointment, they were often surprised at finding what they had failed to find in the past. But it was too late, and they knew it. Dwight didn’t hope for reconciliation, and neither did Roxanne. They continued to meet with lawyers to divide up the community property and had determined that they would share equal custody of the boy.

Roxanne was grateful to Dwight for the help, and that was enough for him, just thank you, I needed your help. And she knew that was enough, and also that he wasn’t doing this for her. It was for the baby.

He was protecting the baby. The baby was a kind of hope for him—

she could see that in the expression on his face, not of love for her, but of a sense of peace, of ease. He had abandoned the fight against himself. She didn’t know what the fight was; it had always been part of their problem together. If she had asked why he felt so serene, he wouldn’t have been able to tell her. It was a vague yet satisfying feeling, a strong memory that would last to the end of his life.

In that future memory that he is yet to have, his child is a man who is very much like himself. He has come to a point in life where he feels lost and rudderless. He has been pulled to a place where he is the stranger. He stands on the shore of the Irrawaddy and thinks about who went before him and who will come after and how together but in separate times they will watch the same flow and feel it in their blood. They were never strangers.

WHEN LUCAS WAS BORN, Roxanne had sudden attacks of fear

several times a day. She was afraid that she would forget to do something critical, like feed the baby, change his diapers, or recognize that he had a fever or was not breathing. She worried she would absentmindedly walk into a room and leave the baby there, forgetting 4 5 5

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where she had last put him, as she did often with keys. The baby was so demanding, and it was draining to keep track of all his needs—so many of them in such a tiny person.

Roxanne’s research project demanded her attention as well, but she was too tired to keep herself and her graduate students organized and focused. She had an ocean of data from various expeditions that needed to be documented and analyzed, research from her students that she had to review, grant proposals to write, an article for a journal she had promised her coauthor she would finish and submit promptly. On top of all this, her office had to be boxed up for a move to another building. She vacillated between tending to her baby and her work. She refused to give up working, yet she did nothing with her work except fret over it. She had never felt so ambivalent about her priorities, and when she could no longer decide, she became depressed. Whenever Dwight picked up the baby to take him to his place or to the doctor’s for a checkup, she felt relief. Freed of responsibility, she went to bed, but she could not sleep.

“What’s wrong with me?” she wondered to herself. “I wanted this baby so much. A billion women have babies. It can’t be that difficult to raise one.” She attributed her problem to hormonal changes, and blamed her trepidations on her confinement in the jungle. Why else would she feel so helpless now?

Yet she could not accept help when offered. That was proof she was failing her son and always would. Accepting help was like taking drugs. It would be addictive and in the end leave her worse off than before, she believed. Yet everyone could see that she would soon collapse.

Dwight moved back in. He had to insist and ignore her protests, her fury that he was implying she could not handle things. Although it had cost him a new romantic relationship with a woman, how could he not help when his son was at stake? Later, when Roxanne apologized and thanked him, he said, “Don’t worry about it,” and she cried. Dwight set up the routines and the schedule. She watched 4 5 6

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how relaxed he was while feeding and changing Lucas. Dwight had no worries. He sang made-up songs to him about his nose and toes.

Roxanne saw how easily Dwight organized the baby supplies. He did not coddle his son, or her. He let her feed and change the baby, and when it was his turn, Roxanne saw his look of wonder and adoration. He had shown her the same expression when she first met him as her graduate student. He had worshipped her. She had unconsciously expected that he always would.

It gradually occurred to her that she had never known how to put herself second and defer to anyone else. All her life, from toddlerhood on, everyone had catered to her, had lavished praise and encouragement. To her parents and teachers, she was a genius, who required special attention to ensure that her full potential bloomed.