What's Worth Keeping

by Kaya McLaren

  “Oh, brother, you’ve been carrying that around all these years?”

  Yes, he could feel it like a brick in his chest. “I suppose I have.”

  “Well, you can lay that burden down. I lived. I turned out okay. I’ve got a good life.”

  “Jen and the kids are all good?”

  “All good. Emma’s at volleyball camp. Riley’s flipping burgers. Jen’s been rowing a dragon boat with some other teachers this summer. Work’s been busy.” He was a civil engineer who specialized in earthquake resistance in architectural plans. Paul worried about the big one a lot—the nine-point-something earthquake that was going to rock the Northwest at some point in the future, maybe in his brother’s lifetime or maybe in his niece and nephew’s lifetime. They were all so in denial. They didn’t understand that it actually could happen to them. He desperately wished he could make them move but knew better than to try. “How about you? How’s Amy?”

  “Amy’s good. Carly graduated a week ago. Lots of changes, you know.”

  “Yeah? What are Carly’s plans?”

  “I don’t think she knows. This summer she’s helping Amy’s aunt with horse outfitting in New Mexico.”

  “Oh, that sounds like fun.”

  “Yeah.” For a moment, Paul wondered what it would be like to be completely honest, to say it felt as if everything were wrong, that his daughter wasn’t making good choices and not speaking to him, that Amy had left him for trees and he wasn’t sure she was coming back, that he was on administrative leave at work and his whole world might be crumbling. He didn’t want to tell all of those stories, though, and he didn’t want his apology to get lost in all of that. “Well, listen. I know you’ve got things to do so I won’t keep you. It was great to hear your voice. I need to get up there for a visit sometime this year.” John had vowed never to return to Oklahoma, so it was all up to Paul.

  “That would be great. And remember, I would gladly meet you somewhere in between, too. A weekend in Vegas. A Utah adventure odyssey. Or even California. Maybe after you retire, we can do something big … take a trip somewhere.”

  “That would be great.” And then, in a moment of courage and honesty, he said, “I love you, brother,” and his brother said it back.

  Carly

  After the guests left on Saturday, there had been plenty of work still to be done—unpacking, bathing horses, feeding horses, hosing the sweat off saddle blankets so they didn’t get crusty and cause sores, taking saddle soap or oil to the tack so it didn’t crack. There were dish towels and red bandannas that served as cloth napkins to launder. When Great-Aunt Rae asked her whether she wanted to go to the grocery store with her, Carly declined because her favorite part of the whole weekend was next on her list—the shower she had been looking forward to taking all week.

  After her shower, she dressed and went outside to sit near the horses. T. Rex was lying on his side in the sun. Carly could not resist. She slid between the first and second rails on the fence, then talked to him softly as she approached his head so she wouldn’t startle him. “Do you remember the time a little girl took a nap on you?” she asked him as she stroked his enormous face. “Do you remember how you held so still?” Squatting behind him, she slid her hands down his neck to his back and then up on his side. There, she rested her head on him, thinking about how it was that so incredibly much had changed since the last time she had done this and at the same time, nothing had changed. Trusting him more, she dropped to her knees.

  The world around her seemed to hold still, as if time itself had stopped, and it was just such a relief—just such a blessed relief. She didn’t need to react or respond to anything. She let her fingers burrow into T. Rex’s fur as she had so long ago, feeling the warmth from his body and the warmth from the sun, wondering where one kind of warmth stopped and the other began. She watched a small purple butterfly land on a solitary buttercup nearby and stay there, still, supporting her idea that everything in the world had just stopped for a glorious time-out.

  But then the sound of tires on gravel caused T. Rex to lift his head. Carly wasted no time moving out of the way. He rolled onto his back once, twice, and then with the momentum of that got his feet under him and stood.

  When Great-Aunt Rae honked, all the horses made their way to the fence. It was part of her training, she explained, so that they wouldn’t ever be afraid of any cars or trucks that honked at them, and if they ever got loose, she could call them back by honking and collect them easily.

  Great-Aunt Rae was full of clever thoughts like that and some quirky ones as well. Earlier that day, she had taught Carly the finer points of trapping mice a number of different ways. The big takeaway had been that in most cases, it was best to put the mousetrap in a box, like one that had contained crackers or packets of oatmeal, so that if the trap failed to finish the job, a woman could take the box outside and bludgeon the mouse with the flat-nosed shovel she should always keep by her door. After all, a person never knew when she might need to grab it quickly and behead a rattlesnake. Yes, Great-Aunt Rae had used the word “bludgeoned” and had said it as if it were no big deal, though she had added that it was okay to cry and apologize while a person did this, so she wasn’t totally heartless.

  Carly walked over to the pickup to help Great-Aunt Rae unload groceries, but before she could pick up her first canvas grocery bag (Great-Aunt Rae had already explained it was important to use grocery bags that wouldn’t break in her driveway because she didn’t have the time or money to replace anything), Great-Aunt Rae handed Carly several postcards, all from her mom.

  Carly wanted to pretend that she didn’t care about them, but the pictures sparked her curiosity. “Mom and Dad just left me and went on a trip?”

  “Just your mom. Your dad went home.”

  “Did she go with Aunt Alicia?”

  “No, by herself.”

  Carly’s brow furrowed. “That’s not like her.”

  “I think cancer really shook her up.”

  Carly stared at the ground for a moment, then put the postcards in her back pocket and reached for a bag, but before she picked it up, Great-Aunt Rae asked, “How come you’re so mad at her?”

  Picking up the groceries, she replied, “I wasn’t mad at her. I was just mad,” and then walked away. She had never intended for it all to turn into something so big or so permanent. At the time, she hadn’t known how to apologize to her mom for saying such awful things; she’d only known how to avoid her. She still didn’t know how to apologize. But it never occurred to her that she would be abducted by her dad and dropped in the mountains of New Mexico and then her mom would take off and the whole situation would harden like concrete as time passed and that there would be no way to fix it. Anger had been draining out of her here with the horses, so she was rational enough for the first time in almost three months to see it all more clearly, and what she felt was immense regret. She didn’t know when she’d have the chance to say anything to her mom now. It could be weeks. And what would she say then? “I’m sorry” would be way too small for that kind of damage.

  Carly set the groceries down on the counter and pulled the cards out of her pocket and read them. Each of them said the same thing.

  Dear Carly,

  I love you.

  Mom

  Great-Aunt Rae was just a few steps behind her and set more bags down next to the others.

  “All she said is that she loves me,” Carly said, disappointed that there wasn’t more information about what was really going on.

  “Well, that’s the right thing to say when you don’t know what to say. Just distill it down to the part so pure that no bullshit can stick to it,” Great-Aunt Rae replied. Then she walked back out to retrieve more groceries.

  * * *

  Later, when they were picking up the saddle blankets that had dried in the sun, Great-Aunt Rae said, “Your mom was only a couple years older than you when her mom died. Pancreatic cancer. My sister wanted to keep it a secret until the end so her gi
rls would not drop out of college and everyone would remember her as she was, but in her final days she changed her mind and wanted to see us all one more time. It was such a shock to see her so frail and thin … dark circles under her eyes, you know.… My parents were there, and even though it had been twenty years, they were still mad at me for leaving like I had, but we met in an unspoken truce. Losing Catherine dwarfed the other bullshit. We simply hugged and said ‘I love you.’ We all took turns sitting with Catherine, saying everything we wanted to say while she was still mostly conscious, but after a couple days we were all out of words and Catherine was mostly unconscious, waking with thirst but not the ability to drink much water. I got a squirt gun so we could shoot little bits of water into her mouth. Kind of messed up, but we chose not to overthink it. She would wake up and say, ‘I’m still here?’ as if that was a surprise even to her. Your mom and Alicia would lay on the bed near her and sometimes I squeezed in behind one of them, reaching over to hold Catherine’s hand. Amy had been the little spoon in front of me when Catherine passed and I held on to that girl as if I was holding her here in the land of the living. I sat next to her at Catherine’s funeral, too, and I thought of all the milestones these girls would have to go through without their mother, trying to think of practical ways I could fill in—do, say, teach all the things my sister would have wanted to do. The day after the service, everyone scattered. Jack put the camper on his pickup and drove to the national parks of California and Alicia returned to the University of Oklahoma. Your mom supposedly returned to Oklahoma State University, only she didn’t. She drove to Chama with me and we rode horses bareback in spring snow … flakes falling all around us as if we were in a snow globe, isolated from the rest of the world but together. Grief can be so isolating. We made stews and chili … foods that could sit in a Crock-Pot and be picked at in manageable amounts when you didn’t want to eat but knew you should try. And we made cornbread, which I cut into tiny pieces, tiny enough to slip into the tiny, tiny spaces not taken up by grief in our bellies. Your mom used to write her mom long letters every night. She’d put them in envelopes and address them ‘Mom, Heaven,’ and I’d put stamps on them and mail them for her. After five days, she packed up and returned to college to take her quarter finals or try to get them postponed. I remember watching her drive away, just feeling this severing.

  “So, know that. Know that about your mom. If you want to talk to her, we can make that happen tonight. If you’d prefer to write to her, we can send it to general delivery up in Packwood and I can let her know it will be there. Just let me know how I can support you. Your mom is pretty special to me, and I know she’d love to hear that you love her.”

  Carly only nodded, not even looking Great-Aunt Rae in the eyes. It had been so close, such a close call. She’d almost lost her. She couldn’t imagine what she would’ve done without her mother or would do if the cancer came back. It was always there—this uncertainty she could not unknow, leaving her just a tiny girl under a big, dark sky that was about to fall.

  Great-Aunt Rae went back inside, with Violet trotting along behind her.

  T. Rex nickered just then, as if answering the desperate cry in her heart. Carly crawled through the fence and walked quickly out to him, threw her arms around him, buried her face in his fuzzy neck, and cried the kind of tears that racked her whole body on their way out. She was just a girl. Just a girl.

  * * *

  That night, when Carly brought a basket of laundry into her room to fold on her bed, she noticed that on top of the stack of books were two packages of stationery from the Family Dollar store judging from the big one dollar printed at the top of the package. One set was pink with spirals and the other set blue with pictures of picnic tables and umbrellas at the beach.

  She packed her clothes for the week into a bag and tossed two books, the blue package of stationery, and a pen on top.

  Paul

  The following Monday morning after his interview with the independent panel, Captain Lopez called him on the phone and cut right to the chase. “Bergstrom, the department is suspending you for a month.”

  “A month. Wow.” He let that sink in. “So, they believed a woman that was lying about why she had a bloody nose over an officer with twenty-five years on the force and a good record.”

  “I don’t think that’s it, Bergstrom. I think they’re just covering their asses.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Captain.”

  Hanging up, Paul felt demoralized. Day after day, he showed up and did his best. And despite his best efforts, all of the crime never stopped. People didn’t stop hurting one another. People didn’t stop stealing from one another. He kept trying to make the world a better place, and it never became one. Between meth and the internet, it had arguably gotten worse.

  He held the phone in his hand, wondering whether to call Amy. On the one hand, that would be appropriate. News of this magnitude was widely expected to be shared with a spouse. On the other hand, if Amy could take one more thing, she wouldn’t have left. And even though getting suspended from work for a month was big news, it wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t months of chemo. It wasn’t amputation and then even more surgery. It wasn’t of that magnitude. Compassion for her swelled in his heart, and in the spirit of wanting to protect her from his ugly world, he decided not to call her. If she called him, he wouldn’t lie, but he didn’t need to intrude on her healing. He could handle it. Even the loss of pay for a month after all the unexpected medical bills of the last year and with a kid he hoped would go to college—he would handle it.

  Bergstrom, the department is suspending you for a month. Unbelievable. Screw it, he thought, not wasting one more minute before packing his tools into the trunk of his car along with some work clothes and work gloves. Even with a stop at Home Depot, he could still make it to Rae’s by midnight. He had put his key in the ignition before he remembered that he hadn’t packed his old work shoes. When he went back for them, he noticed the guitar case that had become so much simply part of the landscape of his closet that he usually didn’t even see it anymore. He reached in and took it too.

  * * *

  “When I don’t have mammary glands, will I still be a mammal?” Amy had asked him as they waited in an exam room for her presurgical consultation.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Fur is another defining characteristic of mammals. I don’t have that either.”

  “You were born live—not from an egg. And you’re warm-blooded.”

  She nodded. Silence followed. Then she asked, “When I don’t have breasts, ovaries, fallopian tubes, and a uterus, will I still be a woman, or will I be an androgynous being with a vagina?”

  “Oh, Amy, of course you will still be a woman.” He reached over and took her delicate hand.

  “I suppose. I mean, if you were castrated, you would still be a man.”

  Whether it was the same thing or not, he did not know. He just knew his wife felt like she was being castrated. “All that matters is that you’re going to live.”

  “Live longer,” she corrected, looking down at her shoes. “Sometimes people phrase it like you either live or die, but it turns out we’re all going to die. It’s just some people live longer.” She was quiet a little longer and then she said, “I get to live longer, but there are children at St. Jude’s that won’t. That makes no sense to me … why some people get miracles and others don’t. I mean why would an innocent, deserving child not get a miracle?”

  “I stopped believing in an intervening God a long time ago,” he answered. Seventeen years ago, to be exact, he thought.

  “I wonder how it all works … like, is our homecoming to heaven a predestined date? I mean, people talk about it being someone’s ‘time,’ you know? What if this is the time God and I agreed I would come home? Am I messing anything up by living longer? Or is this like a ‘buy one, get one free’ deal on life? Like everything after this health crisis is my super-bonus lifetime? Or was this medical intervention part of my des
tiny? I mean, if it wasn’t a part of my DNA, I could see it more as something that just happened to me, but what if DNA contains our very agreements with God—because so much of what we experience here is dictated by DNA. Did God and I agree that I would have cancer before I came here and so that agreement was put into my DNA? Is that what happened? Is this the lifetime where I pay for something I did in a previous lifetime? Is that what this is about? I’m just trying to figure out what happened. I’m just trying to make sense of this.”

  “Oh, Amy, don’t do that to yourself. Those are harmful stories. If stories comfort a person and don’t hurt anyone else, that’s one thing. I don’t want to take comfort from anyone. But if stories are harmful, stop telling them. One day when this life is over, all of it might make sense, but until then, all we’ve got is stories. I don’t believe in destiny.” His mind flashed back to a particular child he had uncovered, one with no breath and no pulse. He had put his mouth over the child’s and forced some of his breath into the child’s body in case there was any chance at all of reviving him, and then he gently handed the little body to be carried down the line so he could keep digging. There was no way he could believe that was that child’s destiny. “This is an extremely imperfect world. Sometimes our will is effective, and sometimes we’re at the mercy of luck. Life is an imperfect experience.”

  They sat in silence until the surgeon entered, Paul pondering how all of these words could tumble out of Amy, all of her deepest thoughts, and still she felt so far away, so deep inside of herself that he could hold her hand and not touch her at all … how they could sit right next to each other and still be so alone.