What's Worth Keeping

by Kaya McLaren

  Immense compassion washed over her. “Oh Paul, good for you. No one should have to see all the things you’ve seen.”

  He looked at her with such gratitude, and she wondered what he had been expecting. How could he have expected anything else from her besides mercy? And then she dared to wonder how this might change him. He would never change back into exactly who he’d been decades ago. A person couldn’t undo their life experiences, but she wondered whether he might change into a truer version of himself, a version more alive, more aware, a version with a greater capacity for love.

  And so, she ordered dessert and when it arrived with a lit candle, she wished for the best for each of them, with no idea what that looked like, only knowing it involved profound healing. Already he had solved several of the problems he had talked about over dinner.

  Her mind began to race with all the things that needed figuring out now—how to ensure she continued to have health insurance, what his travel plans were, Carly’s college tuition if she chose to go … all of the things. She looked up and saw his mind racing with all of the things too. “I know,” he said, reading her mind. “But, one thing at a time.”

  He handed her a little gift-wrapped box, and she opened it. Inside was a necklace and earrings all made from small green stone beads and a silver ring with a stone that matched.

  “The lady I bought it from said it’s aventurine. I thought it was appropriate because it has the word ‘adventure’ in it and it’s green like the trees you love. She said it’s good for healing, growth, and renewal, but since I’m from Oklahoma and not California, I just thought it would bring out your beautiful green eyes.”

  She laughed and said thank you, hardly able to believe that he had, for the first time in their marriage, gotten her a thoughtful gift.

  As they walked out of the restaurant, she still hadn’t made up her mind about where she wanted to sleep.

  “I wrote you a song,” he said.

  She was stunned.

  “If you want to come back to my cabin and take a bath, I’ll play it for you. No pressure. No expectations. But if you’d let me, I’d love to hold you all night.”

  When she looked into his eyes, she saw glimmers of the man she married. She said yes.

  * * *

  Amy didn’t know why she felt so exposed sitting in a bath without bubbles. After all, Paul had changed her drains each day the week following her mastectomy. She had stood near the bathroom sink, unbuttoned her shirt, closed her eyes, and plugged her ears while Paul held one tube near where it was attached to her wound and, with the other hand, squeezed the tube and slid his fingers all the way down to a grenade-sized plastic bulb to prevent clots from building and clogging the drains. He lifted the bulb out of the flannel pouch she wore around her waist and emptied its contents in the sink, rinsed it, and reattached it. She was so grateful because all of it made her queasy—the tender wound, the goo that drained from it, the fact that a part of her had been amputated. And when she wanted to take a shower, he gently and ever so slowly removed her bandages and put new ones on after she was done. He had been so profoundly tender in those moments that she could not reconcile that in a desk drawer file sat divorce papers.

  Sitting in the bath, she had an acute understanding of how something could happen to a person that would leave them feeling so unlike themselves that their capacity to feel love was far away, like something that was in a storage unit instead of in the house, something a long drive away.

  Feeling awkward, she sat forward and embraced her knees to hide her chest, even though it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen her changed body, as if he hadn’t seen it up close and personal. This was different. This setting was romantic and the other setting had been clinical. As it turned out, it felt unbearably vulnerable to be seen with her changed body in a romantic setting. Unbearably. But if she was brave, if she was really, really brave, this moment could be an opportunity for another step—even if it could be only a baby step—toward acceptance, toward discovering a new way of being or an old way of being—she didn’t know. She released her legs and sat back.

  Paul walked in with a candle, but before he lit it and turned out the lights, she said, “I haven’t figured out what to call these. I’ve been calling them my boob stumps, but I don’t think that’s really good for me.”

  He looked at her chest, considered it, and said, “They still sort of look like boobs. Like here”—he pointed to an area near his armpit—“that still looks like your boob.”

  “But breast tissue and nipples are pretty defining features of breasts, you know? I don’t even qualify for indecent exposure anymore.”

  Looking at her as if it were no big deal, he said, “Yeah, still boobs.”

  After her oophore-hysterectomy, she’d had to stay out of the bath for eight weeks, and since she’d only taken one once it was okay to do so again, the experience was still novel.

  He lit the candle, turned down the lights, picked up his guitar, played, and sang. It was a song about how she was his home, his heart, and the only girl he’d ever loved. His voice shook at times, endearing him to her more. He was really laying it all out there—all of it, things inside his heart she didn’t know were there.

  When he finished, she said, “That was beautiful, Paul. The best birthday present you could have gotten me.”

  “I was nervous,” he confessed. “I haven’t done that in a long time.”

  “Welcome back, Paul Bergstrom.”

  “Would it…? Um, I don’t want to pressure you or anything or make you feel like I’m putting the moves on you and if you say yes it’s going to lead to something you’re not ready for, but I’d really like to slide into that tub with you, like we used to. Would that be okay?”

  She appreciated that. Although the surgeon who had done her oophore-hysterectomy had said it would be okay to have sex after eight weeks, she couldn’t imagine it. Her body still hurt. But she knew Paul meant what he said, so with a little smile, she nodded. “Yeah.”

  She scooted forward so he could sit in the back and then she laid back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her. “Either bathtubs have gotten smaller or I’ve gotten larger,” he said, and laughed.

  “Must be the bathtubs,” Amy said.

  He rested his hands at the base of her ribs. “Are my hands all right here, or do you want them somewhere else?” he asked. “I mean, I don’t know the right thing to do. If I’ve always put them here before”—he lifted them up to her scars—“I don’t want you to feel like I’m avoiding any part of you, but I don’t want you to think I have attachment to what is no longer there either. And I sure don’t want to hurt you or cause you any discomfort. So, just tell me what would feel good to you.”

  That was sweet, she thought. It was vulnerable. She could appreciate vulnerable. And she definitely appreciated listening.

  “Where they were is good. My chest is a little nervy sometimes. Kind of electrical. That will probably change one day, but for now…”

  He rested his hands on her lower ribs and leaned his head back against the wall. She rested her hands on his. Feeling his ribs rise and fall with each breath, she breathed with him, the space between them getting smaller with each breath.

  Paul

  It had been so nice waking up with Amy in his arms, feeling her stir and then lift her head off his chest. “Good morning,” he said, kissing the top of her head.

  “Good morning,” she replied.

  “So, listen. I have something I want you to think about. I have to return the rental car today. Then there’s a choice. I can fly back to Chama and work on the house, or I can get in your car, let you show me your favorite spots, and then have an adventure with you driving back south. Or, if that’s too big of a commitment, I could stay for a couple more days, let you show me your favorite places, and then you drive me back to the airport and I fly back.”

  “I have a lot of places I want to see after this…,” she said. “I’m not sure whether you really under
stand what you’re asking to be a part of.”

  “If you need more time alone, Amy, that’s okay. You can say so. I really didn’t mean to barge in.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just … well, do you even enjoy this kind of thing? I’m worried you won’t have a good time and then I’ll feel like I should cut my great adventure short when I really don’t want to. That’s my hesitation. I mean, it’s not like you’ve been begging me to go hiking with you for the last twenty-six years, you know? And you once said that since you spend all day driving around in a patrol car, the very last thing you wanted to do was drive for vacation.…”

  “Fair enough. How about I spend a few days with you here and then we decide?”

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  * * *

  After they dropped the rental car off at Yakima Airport, they drove back up the pass in her car. They stopped in Packwood to see whether there was anything for Amy at the post office, and she was thrilled when the postal worker returned with a blue letter. She gave Paul a big smile and walked outside to read it.

  Dear Mom,

  I am so sorry. I said some terrible things and I wish I could take them all back—every last one of them. The one that haunts me the most is that I didn’t want to be like you. You are so deeply loving, so kind to everyone … and you are so brave and so strong … of course I want to be like you. How could I not? I just was so scared, Mom. Scared I would have to go through what you went through. Scared you might get it again. And I was just so mad that of all the people in the world, it had happened to you, and that it could happen to me. There are all these bad people out there running around and they’re fine, but us…? It’s wrong. You know? It’s wrong. You didn’t deserve it. I don’t deserve it. Up until last April, I always tried to do everything right and I just felt like it bought me a whole bunch of nothing. I wasn’t mad at you. I was just mad. And I’m so sorry that I took it out on you like that … took it out on you when you’d already been through so much and were about to go through more. I was just so mad. And now I’m just so sorry. I hope you can forgive me even though I’m sure you will never be able to forget those horrible words I said.

  Love, Carly

  Amy handed Paul the letter. “She came around. Aunt Rae is magic.”

  Paul put his arm around her as he read it and squeezed her shoulder when he was done. “Thank goodness.”

  Carly

  This week’s guests were a crack-up—four brothers whose mother had named them alphabetically from oldest to youngest in the event she had so many children that she lost track. She’d stopped at four—Andy, Ben, Caleb, and Dale. Joking between them was nonstop. Carly’s sides hurt from laughing at the things she had overheard in the last twenty-four hours.

  They had grown up on a ranch in Texas together—that is, until it was foreclosed, and that was one thing they didn’t joke about. Whenever that came up, the tone was somber. Anyone could tell that it was as if their hearts had been yanked out when they’d had to leave. Their parents had made them promise to not make the same mistake—to get city jobs. And so they had, but it seemed to Carly that Andy and Ben in particular regretted it. Usually, they met once a year for a dude ranch experience with all of their kids, but this year their kids were old enough to not want to go and their wives were pretty much over it as well, so the brothers had chosen something different—tents and wilderness and mammoth horses.

  Black Tea had thrown a shoe and they had stopped so Great-Aunt Rae could nail it on.

  “I should have done that—been a blacksmith,” Ben said, watching Great-Aunt Rae nailing the shoe. “You don’t have to own land to live the life. I could have worked with horses.”

  “What do you do now?” Great-Aunt Rae asked.

  “I’m an electrician at Dell in Austin.”

  “That sounds interesting!”

  “Yeah, I like it. I do. But I miss being out in all of this.”

  Andy chimed in, “If you’d been a farrier, your back would be so messed up by now. Can you imagine spending your days bent over like that? Trust me. My back is on its way out.”

  “He’s got his own concrete company,” said Ben.

  “That’s hard work,” said Great-Aunt Rae.

  “I’ll say. Caleb and Dale got it right when they got desk jobs as far as I’m concerned. Caleb’s a bank manager, and Dale’s an engineer at HP. Great benefits.”

  “But bro, that’s why they don’t have all of this,” Ben said, flexing his muscle and prompting all four brothers to get into a flexing contest and exchange insults.

  Later, when they were back at camp and Ben had come to the chuck wagon for a lemonade refill, Carly asked Ben, “Did you mean it—when you said you wished you had become a farrier instead of an electrician? Because I’m trying to pick a career path.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve really enjoyed being an electrician. If you’re at all inclined, I’d sure encourage it. The thing about the trades is that they can’t be outsourced. Dale’s job could be sent to India. Mine won’t be. Even if Dell went there, there’s plenty of electrical work people need done here. It’s a union job, so pay and benefits are good. I don’t know what life as a farrier would have been like. I’m sure I’d make less money, but farriers get to visit with several nice people a day while they work on horses. There was one guy who used to shoe our horses that went to Alaska in the summer and shod the horses that pulled the wagon rides in Denali National Park. That would have been some gig. I guess I just miss that life. That’s all. Once you’ve had it, it’s hard to settle for anything less. I would have loved to have grown up and worked the family ranch, but … you know … that’s gone now. And it’s not like ordinary people can buy ranches. How long have you been here?”

  “It’s only my fourth week. Rae is my mom’s aunt. I grew up in Oklahoma City.”

  “So, you’re wrecked now.” He laughed. “Yeah, just try going back to the city after this. You’ll go nuts. You’ll think what good is money compared to this?” He gestured all around with his hands.

  “I could be a farrier,” she said.

  “Some people apprentice, but there are farrier schools. Some community colleges even offer farrier programs. Sure, why not? Do it for a while and if you find you want to do something else, change. You don’t have to stick with one thing your whole life. There’s no rule that says you have to. Life shouldn’t be nothing more than a race to retirement.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” And with that, he joined his brothers for a raucous game of cards, where the bets became outrageous dares.

  * * *

  That night when Great-Aunt Rae settled into her sleeping bag on her cot, Carly said, “I think I want to be a farrier.”

  “Huh,” Great-Aunt Rae replied. “I suppose I should have seen that coming, but I didn’t.”

  “I want to work with horses.”

  “Well, that’s a sensible choice then. Most young people think of becoming a vet, but that’s a lot of school and a lot of student debt. Plus, farriers don’t have to put horses down. I hate putting horses down. I could never be a vet.”

  “I thought the same thing,” said Carly.

  “The vet that does Drake’s corrective shoeing went to Mesa Community College in Tucumcari. Corrective shoeing is quite a science. Anyway, you might want to look into that program.”

  Carly nodded. She liked this plan. Getting to work with horses while she went to college sounded all right. For the first time in months, she had an inkling of looking forward to her future.

  “Carly, I don’t know whether it’s a disservice to you to float this possibility. A day is going to come when I can’t do this anymore. Most of these old boys will be ready to retire when I do. I could sell Frank and Drake. So, there are a lot of ways to let this operation wind down. But if you decided to become a farrier and if you were interested in this business, there might be a way we could transition it to you so that it worked for both of us.”

  “Wow!” sai
d Carly. This was a possibility that made her heart sing.

  “Let’s just chew on that for a while. You’ve got a lot of options in your life to consider.”

  Something else had been on Carly’s mind for the last two days too. “Great-Aunt Rae? I’ve been thinking about it. I’d like to take you up on your offer to get genetically tested with me. I don’t want to waste my life worrying about something that might not be.”

  “Right on, kid.”

  “And if I have it, well, you’re right—I don’t have to run out and have surgery. I could just make sure I get my checkups.”

  “That’s right. You don’t have to change your body or your life. You could simply take the opportunity to make sure any problems are found nice and early.”

  Carly nodded. “Yeah. And I don’t have to figure out the whole thing with kids now either. Maybe I’ll just have foals.”

  “Always an option, but not your only option, and you’re right—you don’t have to figure out any of that now.”

  “Thanks, Great-Aunt Rae … for understanding.” Carly snuggled into her sleeping bag.

  “You bet, kid. We’re in this together. I sure love you.”

  “I sure love you, too.”

  Great-Aunt Rae turned out her battery-powered lantern, leaving Carly alone with her thoughts. And mostly those thoughts were that things were going to be okay. They might not always be easy, but they would probably be okay.

  Paul

  Paul had seen pictures of mountains before, but he had never quite conceived that someone had stood there to take them. Of course they had, he knew, but still, the mountain before him seemed like something he would see on a calendar instead of in real life.

  Stepping out after Amy parked the car, he said, “I don’t think I understood until right now why you had to come here.”