What's Worth Keeping

by Kaya McLaren

  But here in the shower stall at the campground, she was quite happy. There were no mirrors at all, no signs that anything was wrong. If she looked at the spider in the corner of the ceiling, she could sometimes believe that she was simply in some alternative reality, one where her body was still whole.

  The warm water rinsed off days’ worth of sunblock and dirt, splattering the concrete under the flip-flops that she wore in the public shower. It was easy to shampoo and condition her short hair in very little time, leaving extra time to just enjoy the water beating on her shoulders before her five minutes ended and the coin-operated shower automatically turned off. Scanning the ceiling for more spiders, she actually felt happy.

  No mirrors in the spaces where she was naked. No magazines or television telling her what she should look like or how important boobs were. None of that. Just big trees and wide-open spaces. Just a sleeping bag that felt like a hug or maybe being wrapped tightly as a baby. No one to consider. No one to let down. No one to scare. Just anonymity and friendly strangers.

  She put on her warmest pajamas and then brushed her teeth at the sink where there was a mirror. Looking in it, she noticed her eyebrows growing back.

  After she’d lost them, Alicia tried convincing her the answer was to have fun with eyebrow pencils, as if it were possible to have fun at all when she felt that sick. “Think Mr. Potato Head!” she said, having no idea that for the next three months, that’s exactly what Amy would see when she looked in the mirror—just a head that looked like a plain potato. When Amy didn’t respond, Alicia called her on the phone to tell her how she had found eyebrow wigs online.

  “Stop,” Amy said. “Please just stop. I’m begging you to stop. Look at my skin. Look at the rashes all over my skin. You have no idea how much it hurts. Putting anything on this skin is not the answer, but putting glue on this skin is definitely not the answer. I know you’re trying to make my world kinder by helping me to conform to all the societal norms and expectations, but stop. Make my world kinder by telling me none of that bullshit matters, because right now it doesn’t.” Anger rose up and came out as tears. “Tell me you still see me in here somewhere, that you look in my eyes and you still see me. That’s the kindest thing you could say. For the love of God, don’t mention Mr. Potato Head because I know I look just like him. You know? Just…” Amy clenched her fists as she started to shake in that way she did when she felt she was surely going to explode.

  “I’m sorry, Amy. I was just trying to make you laugh.”

  “Don’t. Just stop that too. There is nothing funny about this. Nothing. This is terrifying. This is miserable. This is not some fucking joke, so please stop acting like it is. It doesn’t make me feel better.”

  “I’m sorry, Amy. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just sit with me. Read a book or something. Don’t feel like you have to say anything. I like it when you’re quiet. I can’t listen to all of the words in my head and listen to you at the same time too. It’s too much. But I like it when you sit with me because I’m so scared and I don’t want to be alone. If you absolutely have to say something, just tell me you love me and that you’re here for me. That’s all I want to hear.” She sobbed and Alicia was silent for a moment before she said she loved her and was here for her.

  A woman walked into the campground restroom and said hi as she took out her toothbrush.

  Amy was grateful for the distraction because she really did hate getting sucked into memories like that.

  Back at her car, she crawled into her sleeping bag. Then her scalp began to prickle, and she felt an acute pang of ambiguous anxiety. Finally catching on to the new patterns of her body, she knew what was coming next. She unzipped the sleeping bag, then opened the car door and sprang out into the cool evening air, hoping she would sweat less and stay drier. She thought about this feeling, this uneasy feeling she had so much of the time now. It was a feeling she used to know each month in the three days before her period. She found herself wondering how to untangle what feelings were in her soul and what feelings were actually her body reeling from suddenly having its estrogen supply cut off. There is nothing wrong. There is nothing to fix, she told herself. My body is finding balance. That thought calmed her somewhat and made her more patient with the emotional discomfort as her sweat dried.

  Once back in her sleeping bag, she turned her attention to the crisp mountain air. In her body, it felt almost effervescent, like the air equivalent of sparkling water, chilled, and infused with the sweet fragrance of alpine firs, a scent so distinct from other conifers, she could pick it out anywhere. She breathed it in and out, in and out, calming herself until at last she slept.

  Paul

  The next morning, Carly prepared breakfast for the three of them and then sat next to him as if everything were normal again. He could see that she didn’t know what to say. He really didn’t either. It was enough, he supposed, that she simply said that things were going well. After all, that had been his greatest hope at this point. It was more important than remorse and apologies. When they were all done eating, he said good-bye, and she gave him a really big hug, a hug that seemed to say all the things she could not.

  Carly stayed behind to do dishes and farm chores while Rae drove him back to the house with the intention of staying to hold the ladder while he tarped the roof—something he needed to do before he left.

  When they reached the house, though, it turned out the worst of the work had been done by the power company in his absence. It appeared that to get the power lines off the ground, they’d had to cut the elm a little bit and, fearing their cuts would damage his house more, had taken care to cut the branch that pierced his roof before doing the rest. They still left him large segments of log in his front yard to deal with, and the branch that pierced the second floor of his house had fallen all the way through.

  He didn’t like it up there on the roof, looking down into the hole. He hated holes. But he listened to Rae and Cleo visit from down below and their conversation kept him in the here and now.

  Once done, he profusely thanked her for everything and then started on home. After checking the time, he thought it unlikely that he would make it all the way home tonight.

  Hours later, when he was out of the mountains and back on the plains, his phone rang. Not wanting to miss a call from Amy, he pulled over. It wasn’t her. It was his boss.

  “Lieutenant Bergstrom, Captain Lopez here. Look, uh, I’m sorry to ask anything of you while you’re enduring your own poop storm. I understand Green cleared your name yesterday and now we just have a little paperwork to do to reverse your suspension. So, this isn’t a professional call. It’s a personal one. We have a bit of a situation here. One of your sergeants—Robinson—fell off the wagon last night, beat up his wife and teenage son, and then fled the scene in his car when his wife called 911. There ensued a high-speed chase through town, ending with a fiery crash in front of a vacant elementary school.”

  With one hand, Paul rubbed his forehead. Robinson. Dammit. Robinson had been there after the bombing too and turned to the bottle to help him sleep at night. He’d about lost his job on the force not six months later, but Paul had intervened back then, getting Robinson to agree to let Paul take him to a residence program for twenty-one days. Paul had never known him to be violent with anyone. What happened?

  “Oh, no,” Paul said, assuming the worst. Fiery crashes usually didn’t have survivors. And Annie. Paul had met Annie, Robinson’s wife, a few times over the years, and she always struck him as pure goodness. She had hung in there with him through all of the rough times. Paul felt sick and winced, imagining her and their son being savagely attacked. They would never be the same. Something was broken now that could never be fixed—at least not by Robinson. Well, if Robinson had lived, his whole life would be more or less ruined—family, career, probably health … all of the things that offered a man the opportunity to be happy.

  The choice of words in his own mind did not go unnoticed by Pa
ul. Offered a man the opportunity to be happy. Family, career … in that order.

  “Remarkably, Robinson survived. He’s in the Trauma One Center at OU Hospital and is in critical condition. Looks like he’ll make it, but it’s not a given. Plenty of internal injuries.”

  “Okay,” Paul simply said matter-of-factly, because what was the appropriate response? Both he and the captain knew this man’s life as he had known it was over.

  “I thought you might want to check in on him.”

  “Yeah,” Paul agreed.

  They discussed the details of Paul returning to work, then Paul drove farther away from the mountains and farther out into the vast, flat land. He passed a deserted house, a solitary tree by its side, a windmill just a little farther away, and then he drove on into the void, closer and closer back to hell. He didn’t want to return, but it wasn’t as though people had stopped committing crimes or ever would. Sometimes he imagined himself as a sheepdog, keeping wolves at bay but never really making a difference in their population. There would always be wolves. And there would always be sheep—defenseless innocents who couldn’t save themselves if and when their lives depended on it. Being a sheepdog wasn’t glorious, but it was better than being a wolf or a sheep.

  Hours later, as the evening turned to night and Paul’s own eyes became heavy, he considered the markings above the eyes of many sheepdogs, light spots meant to look like eyes open when a sheepdog slept. Humans didn’t have that advantage. They just had to sleep and hope other sheepdogs would cover them.

  He found a dumpy motel in a tiny town and pulled over.

  Soon thereafter, he lay in bed with the blue light from the TV news flickering on his face as he caught up on all the terrible things human beings had done to one another just that very day. The noise of the news dominated the quiet memory of Mr. Martinez’s music. Paul took note of this but did not change it. It was part of the process of deadening himself like the calloused bottom of a foot in summertime.

  After turning off the television, he rolled over onto his side and faced an empty pillow. Old motels like this one reminded him of his honeymoon with Amy, a trip they took on a shoestring down to the Gulf Coast. He peeled one layer of white lace off of her to find another. She stood before him, trying not to act as awkward as she felt, but he already could read her too well, and somehow, he knew to just hold her … just hold her and wait until she took a deep breath and her tense muscles softened. He knew to simply tell her that she was beautiful, and he loved her so much and was so happy that she was his wife forever. She peeled her face off of his shoulder, looked up into his eyes, and said, “God, I love you,” more emphatically than anyone before or anyone since. When he tried to remember feeling joy, that was one of his most recent memories. It was a memory like a worn-out nine-millimeter movie, something that became a little scratchier each time he played it back, until he could see it but not really feel it as he had the first time. He looked at the empty pillow and tried to remember how Amy had looked lying in bed when he woke up the next morning. But then the other memories slipped in through the wall like rats or raccoons into a secret garden, and instead of seeing Amy lying on the pillow, he saw four different homicide victims in motels after housekeeping staff had found them and called the police. Three of them had been raped first. Another time, he had seen a woman in a wedding gown, stabbed by a new husband who had gotten drunk and jealous at their wedding reception when she had danced with his brother. She lived, though Paul had not thought she would. Other disturbing images resurfaced in his mind … pictures that a sexual predator had posted online just prior to Paul arresting him, photographs of twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls in white lace lingerie. This world was so ugly, so inconceivably ugly.

  He got out of bed and walked to his car just outside the door and retrieved his guitar. If only he could erase those ugly things and save only the beautiful—tucking in his daughter, teaching her to throw a ball and play catch, leaning over for a good-bye kiss from Amy before he left for work early in the morning or a hello kiss when he came home so late that Amy had already gone to bed. She had kissed him pretty much every single morning, and she had greeted him with a kiss pretty much every single day he had come home. While tuning the guitar, he tried to remember one of the songs he used to play for her. It took him a few tries, but eventually he did.

  God, I love you so much, she said in his memory again, and this time it was Amy that was brighter and louder than all of the ugliness. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  * * *

  He woke in the morning after having a police dream, the one where he runs through city streets knowing he must find a killer on the loose, panicking at each intersection where he has only a one-in-three chance of guessing correctly. He runs circles around blocks, listening for screams. Sometimes it’s night and sometimes it’s day. He yells at innocent bystanders to go inside and lock the door because a killer is on the loose, but they don’t hear him. They keep walking, often visiting in pairs or small groups as they do, and he doesn’t know how he will ever keep all of these people safe from harm. As he always did when waking from these dreams, he put his hand on his heart as if to tell it to slow down and waited then while it did.

  Stepping into the shower, he remembered three dead people he documented who were found hanging in motel showers just like this one and wondered whether anyone had ever hung himself in this particular shower or in this particular room. Sometimes it seemed like the whole damn world was haunted. His career had been long and he had seen so much … too much. Far too much. Far more than a human brain was ever meant to hold, he was sure.

  * * *

  He waited until the next morning to visit Robinson. Although conscious now and out of critical condition, Robinson was understandably despondent when Paul took a seat next to his bed. He turned his head so as not to make eye contact.

  Paul sat in silence for a bit because he suspected just being there counted. “I care about you, buddy,” he finally said. “We’ve been through a lot together. We’ve had experiences most people don’t understand.”

  Looking over, Paul could see Robinson purse his lips and shut his eyes, as if he were determined to keep words and emotions hidden behind his face … as if his face were a dam.

  “I want to say that I’m glad you’re still with us here on earth because I know you still have good deeds to do. You had a really bad, really destructive day. But you’ve had thousands and thousands of good days, days where you did so much good in this world, and they still count. I just … I just want you to know I haven’t forgotten that. And even though your way forward right now is not clear, I want you to know that I do believe it exists, and I do believe you’ll find it, and I do believe you will experience some degree of redemption that will bring the intensity of this memory down to something tolerable. When you find your way out of this very low place you’re in now, I have no doubt you will help others out of their low places as well, because that’s what you were born to do, Robinson—help others.”

  These were perhaps the most words Paul had ever strung together, and he sat in amazement of how they had all tumbled out of his mouth. They were kinder words than Paul had ever said to himself.

  Robinson turned his head and looked up at the ceiling. “Last week, I was sent out to respond to the tornado in Verden. I stopped to check on this couple that were sifting through the wreckage of their house. Their daughter’s doll was poking out of some debris. I tried not to look at it. I tried to stay focused on the people. But I couldn’t stop looking at it.”

  “I always hated Carly’s dolls,” Paul said. “They looked like dead babies. I used to have nightmares about them sometimes. And I used to wish she had been a boy so I wouldn’t have had to have those dolls in my house.”

  Some degree of relief showed on Robinson’s face.

  “A tree landed on my house in New Mexico three days ago. Roofing was hanging down.” Paul didn’t need to say more. Robinson understood.

  Paul sat
with Robinson for another half hour, a half hour of silence, a half hour of self-reflection. He thought about his own father, his anger, his edginess, the way he teetered between harsh and abusive. Surely his father had perceived himself as strong—stronger than most men. And even though Paul had acted differently than his dad, perhaps he perceived this about himself as well. Robinson was evidence that they weren’t. They hadn’t gotten tougher and better able to handle trauma; they had only gotten closer to the breaking point. Robinson was evidence that pieces of glass stuck in the bottom of a foot might stay there for decades before finally abscessing, but things that went in eventually came out. It could be fast and clean or slow and messy, but harmful things eventually came out.

  “If a miracle is offered to you, receive it,” Paul said in a moment of uncharacteristic faith. “Don’t think you don’t deserve it and turn your back on it. You’ve done a lot of good in this world.”

  Paul stood, looked at his friend, who shut his eyes instead of looking back, and walked out the door.

  Amy

  As Amy reached the end of the long, winding road to the second place in the park she had called home, she found herself stunned again at the sheer size of Mt. Rainier as it completely dwarfed the massive Sunrise Lodge. How many things were actually bigger than a person remembered them as a kid? Off to the left a little way from the mountain’s mostly round top was a small sharp peak called Little Tahoma that pointed up in the same way her grandfather’s index finger had next to his face when he had an idea. That was what the whole mountain seemed to say—I have an idea! These ideas included run around for the pure joy of it, carve channels for snow runoff to follow, watch a bird, a chipmunk, a marmot, or an elk … climb to the top of the ridge and let the clouds caress you as they whip by, imitate birdsongs, or simply find a soft place and take a nap.