Steal the North: A Novel (10 page)

“It won’t be the same. I hope you realize that.”

“Please leave.”

“As soon as you tell me one thing about your childhood. One day. One moment. Let me in, Kate.” I don’t respond. I’m tired and afraid what I might confess. “One detail about Emmy’s dad then,” he says. “At least his name, so I can despise all men with that dickhead’s name.”

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll let you in a bit. But remember
you
asked for it.” I hesitate because I am about to tell him everything, not just one thing, and it will probably be the end of us. I should shut the windows for privacy, but the cool breeze from the delta will help me not pass out. I press on my jaw once more to stall and to call forth my courage. I begin. “After Emmy’s dad—name of Jamie Kagen—took my virginity, then knocked me up, he dumped me. I was shunned, condemned as a
whore
from the church pulpit and by my father at home.” Spencer reaches for me. “Wait.” I put up my hand. I’m sweating despite the breeze on the back of my knees. “After I gave birth to Emmy, I waitressed at a truck stop café, where I also slept around for money.” His face flinches. “With nasty old men in their stinky truck cabs.” I’ve never told anyone other than Beth my secret. “It turns out I
was
a whore after all.” He closes his eyes. When he opens them, I continue. “I was only a few years older than Emmy. I let one bastard cut off my hair.” I tug at the ends of my bobbed hair. “And I’ve never grown it back out. I hocked my mother’s wedding ring to buy gas. I left my sister, who had turned her life upside down for us, and I wasn’t there when she lost baby after baby.” Spencer makes a noise in his throat. “Now leave,” I whisper. He doesn’t, so I turn away. “Please, Spencer. I want to be alone. Please go.”

He seems unable to move or speak.

Just as I have been unable to clear from my head, no matter how much literature I read, a certain Bible verse damning a harlot: “.
 . .
days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, struggling in
your blood
.”
There are plenty such verses. Biblical prophets blame harlots—not overzealous men, corrupt kings, jealous family members, or warring tribes—for the downfall of Israel.

Finally Spencer speaks. “I love you more,” he says, then turns to leave.

What does he mean, “more”? More than he did before I told him about being a hooker?

More than I love him? Maybe I don’t love Spencer. Maybe it’s all been a game and I’m just trying to overcompensate for my father’s and Jamie’s rejections. Yeah, right. I’ve loved Spencer from the start, even if it took a long time to admit it to myself and longer to admit it to him. He would be too hard to get over, harder even than Jamie, because of the way he loves Emmy. And let’s face it, the way he loves me. This I have also known from the start: another reason I’ve kept myself back, except in bed. Airman Hector and I had fun in bed, we were young, he made me laugh, I’d wear his fatigues. But Spencer and I have grown-up fun and we have serious sex and we have pissed-off sex and we have slow, slow lovemaking, during which I dissolve for moments into him. An aware woman should probably never fully render herself, but I can’t help it when it comes to Spencer. I’d let that man do anything he wanted to me in bed. It is he who draws the lines we don’t cross, and I suppose I love him for that as well. I think all along Spencer has sensed my dark secret in the way my body sometimes responds oddly during sex, and it’s kept him intrigued or at least off-kilter. It’s kept him coming back.

He doesn’t slam the apartment door behind him, but for some reason the gentle click sends a shiver through me as if he had.

“Emmy,” I say into the phone, “I’m sorry I made you go there.” It’s Sunday morning. I usually call when I know Beth and Matt will be gone at church so we can talk openly. “I’m sorry that I sent you away.” I know better than to add, “Please don’t look for your dad
.”

As for
my
dad, I was almost relieved to hear from Beth that he’d passed away. It would’ve been too confusing for Emmy if her grandfather still didn’t want to meet her.

“It’s okay.” Emmy sounds cheery. “I sort of like it here.”

“What?”

“I like it here.”

She’s been there two weeks. Two long weeks. I thought, or rather hoped by now that she’d be phoning every time Beth and Matt left for church and asking to come home. At least then I’d be sure she didn’t hate me. Albeit Emmy does have more of a knack than I do for making the best of things. I want her to come home early—after the healing, obviously, but before the physical distance between us turns into an emotional abyss. For now, I ask, “Are you bored, honey? Is Beth always witnessing to you?”

“She is, but I don’t really mind. She gave me your old Bible.”

I used to record stuff in my Bible about Jamie, which is probably why I didn’t toss it, but, luckily, only in the margins of books like Zephaniah and Nahum that even the most faithful, or, as I see it, deluded, don’t read. “I wish she hadn’t.”

“She also gave me an old cassette tape of yours—Emmylou Harris.” My daughter’s voice gets less cheery as she asks, “Why didn’t you tell me I was named after a singer?”

“You’re not. Not really. I just liked the name. I still do. I miss you.”

“But Aunt Beth said you listened to the tape all the time while you were pregnant.”

I rebought that exact tape, and I still listen to Emmylou in the car, but only when I’m driving alone and feeling particularly down and in need of sympathy, which Emmylou’s aching voice gives me. The religious nature of her lyrics also comforts me, which I would be ashamed to admit to my daughter. She thinks Bruce Springsteen and Chopin are my favorites. I’d also be embarrassed to admit to Emmy how when I used to take her on drives through the rice fields north of Sac, it was because they reminded me of her dad’s wheat fields and I liked to pretend, for an hour or so, that he’d summoned us at last.

Eager to change the subject, I ask when and where the faith healing is to take place. Her tone turns somber real quickly. She says at a lake in ten days at Dry Falls State Park. Beth showed her on a map.

I’m thankful the ceremony isn’t being held at the mineral lake. I returned there once when I was about five months pregnant. Dad hadn’t noticed my belly yet because of my baggy dresses. But he soon would. Jamie had already dumped me, but I still had hope he’d come around after I gave birth. I didn’t swim. I took off my dress—no one was there—and rubbed the black mud on my cantaloupe belly. I believed in the healing powers of that lake. I knew Dad had waited too long to take Mom there. What he should’ve done was driven her to the fucking hospital, where a doctor could’ve given her some morphine and thus some dignity and reprieve her last week on earth. Amen. Mom had been impressed, as had her logger father, with Dad’s skill and fearlessness as a feller. Even on the steepest incline, Dad could get a tree to fall onto the face of the hill instead of rolling down it. Mom’s family wasn’t as impressed with the fearless way Dad stole their daughter away. But to be perfectly honest, it was Mom, the mess hall waitress and foreman’s daughter, who started the flirtation by putting extra apples into Dad’s lunch pail before the crews left in the morning. I inherited some of my dad’s tenacity, which scared him, I’ve come to realize. Why couldn’t he have driven Mom boldly to the hospital? She bobbed away from him that day in the lake. I cheered silently from the shore. He almost drowned trying to reach her. Then he made me help drag her, moaning in agony, from the water.

“I’m really scared, Mom,” Emmy says now. “What if the ceremony doesn’t work because I’m not a Christian?”

“Did you tell Beth you
were
?”

“Sort of.”

Just as my inherited tenacity scared my dad, Emmy’s spiritual longing has always worried me, and reminded me painfully of my little sister. I don’t know how many times I’ve found my daughter in the religious and New Age sections of used bookstores. Because I want her firmly rooted in this world, I never offer to buy her spiritual guidebooks. And Emmy, being Emmy, under my scowl, has never asked. She faithfully spends her allowance in the snake oil shop below our apartment.

“Beth wasn’t supposed to ask you.”

“She couldn’t help it. So much depends”—she lowers her voice as if someone might hear her—“on this healing.”

“Well, at least you’re a virgin. Not that it matters. Don’t be scared.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what, honey?”

She doesn’t respond.

“Maybe you can come home early,” I suggest. “Right after the ceremony.” I’d promised myself for Beth’s sake that I wouldn’t suggest this, that I’d wait for Emmy to ask.

“Hold on, Mom.” She puts her hand over the receiver, and it sounds like she’s talking to someone. I don’t think she heard my suggestion. I swear I hear a muffled male voice.

“Is someone there?” I ask.

“Who? Aunt Beth and Uncle Matt are at church.” Emmy suddenly tries to stifle a giggle. What the heck is going on? “I have to go,” she says. I don’t want to hang up yet, but Emmy says she’s making a cake for Beth and doesn’t want it to burn. “Today’s her birthday, remember?”

I swallow. Actually I’d forgotten. How alarming. I mean, if Emmy had asked me Beth’s birth date, I could’ve named the month, day, and year, but I’d long ago quit associating the calendar date with Beth. It was too upsetting. “That’s why I called,” I lie, “to remind you.”

“Will you be calling back later, then, to talk to her?”

I’ve talked to Beth on the phone six or seven times since that initial phone call that shook me to my core. Seven times: that’s not even once for every two years we went without speaking. I’m scared of the number of miscarriages she’s suffered. I didn’t ask specifics after she told me she has never seen a doctor, and won’t. Although it made my knees weak, I had to change the subject so I wouldn’t inadvertently belittle her beliefs. I also didn’t ask specifics about Dad’s death. I’d sensed it years ago. Why hadn’t I sensed Beth’s losses? Maybe I had. Maybe my wisdom teeth shifted and tried to emerge each time she was pregnant, as they had shifted for the very first time while I was pregnant with Emmy. I regret asking my sister if Jamie ever came looking for me. The fact that he never did makes me feel worthless, despite my degrees. It also makes me feel overly protective of Emmy and all around more defensive. Same old shit. In the shorter phone calls that followed, Beth’s voice often faltered. Her sadness is palpable. The guilt could swallow me, if I let it. Bethany has Matt. I’ve reminded myself of that fact often over the years. And now, despite her devastating losses, she still has Matt.

“Maybe I’ll call,” I say to Emmy.

“
Maybe
? She’s your only sister.”

Oh, my sister
.

I start sleeping in Emmy’s bed, regardless of the back pain it gives me. Emmy’s mattress is a piece of crap. I purchased it years ago at a Punjabi furniture store that used to be a gas station and is now a sari boutique. Emmy’s never complained about her mattress. I’ll price new ones. I washed all the bedding in my bedroom because it smelled like Spencer’s soap and cologne, also a trace of sawdust. Now it just smells lonely. Spencer and I haven’t spoken since our fight. I fear my confession got to him and he’s never going to call. I wouldn’t blame him. Although I keep myself in shape, he could get far younger women than me, and less fucked up.

The origami mobiles and chains of paper animals and birds hanging in Emmy’s room also make me lonely. Worse, they force me to realize, not for the first time but never so poignantly, just how lonesome—safe but lonesome—Emmy’s childhood has been. I think of Laura Wingfield and her glass menagerie, which, maybe not so ironically, is one of Emmy’s favorite plays. But Emmy isn’t crippled like Laura, at least not physically. Not emotionally either. Maybe a little. Have I oversheltered her? When I left Moses Lake, Beth begged me to keep Emmy close under my wing. At least I buy her cute clothes—too much, in a lame attempt to make up for Beth and me having to wear those hideous dresses as teenagers. Baptists are obsessed with women not wearing “that which pertaineth unto a man.” They’d be mortified by
Twelfth Night
, which must be why it’s
my
favorite play. Actually it’s the melancholy tone and the siblings tragically separated by the sea. “I had a sister,” Sebastian laments.

I wish Spencer would call. I miss him. I keep checking my answering machine. I’ve spent most of my life missing loved ones. Half my childhood I missed my mom. Then Jamie. Then Beth. Now Emmy and Spencer. I feel tired and restless at the same time. The last three nights I’ve had to force myself to stay put in Emmy’s bed—not get up, dress up, and go visit a honky-tonk bar, or maybe drop by one of those sports bars Spencer likes. I need a man for a night who won’t hesitate to punish me a bit for having been a hooker, a bitch, a female. No, I don’t.
I don’t
. Why is Spencer so fucking kind? Sexy
and
kind? He’d be more than willing to buy Emmy a new bed. But I’ve never let him spend much money on us, other than the two times he put my car in the shop, for which I tried to reimburse him with checks he never cashed. I don’t want to feel obliged to a man, as I did with the married professor, or to become financially dependent in the least. Spencer even offered me a job once, as the secretary for his company: health insurance, steady hours. I told him that I love teaching too much to give it up, and I do. By teaching junior college, I help kids and adults who, like me, screwed up but are trying again. A giant stuffed dog, with a name tag “Tangles,
”
keeps watch over Emmy’s room. Spencer bought it for her on her thirteenth birthday. Why, why,
why
didn’t I accept that man’s marriage proposal two years ago? On top of wanting to play hard to get, I was terrified. Like Tess, I knew I couldn’t marry a man who didn’t know my past, and I wasn’t ready yet to divulge it.

I planned to get out of the apartment today, nice and early, take a weekend drive by myself into the Sierras, get away from my silent phone, the city, and the valley heat for a day. But I just don’t have the ambition. I’m in my car too much during the week, and I don’t mind the heat, even without air conditioning. It melts the memories of my last winter up north. And I like Sacramento—not necessarily downtown with the capitol, windowless government buildings, married lobbyists, and convention centers, but midtown, with its sycamore-lined streets, funky shops, and the diverse restaurants that Emmy and I rarely have the funds to eat in. I walk to Emmy’s favorite coffee shop with a stack of student papers. I’ve never fallen so far behind with grading. I’ll hit one of the many farmers’ markets on my way home. I’ve lived in California now for almost as many years as I lived in Washington, but I’m still amazed by the variety of produce available. And by the mixed ethnicities of the people selling them and of my students.