Caleb + Kate

by Cindy Martinusen-Coloma

  “Dad, I don’t want to go back.”

  “He needs us. And you need to know this: he may need us for a long time.”

  KATE

  I walk up to the stage and turn to face my classmates. Monica watches me closely with a look of extreme intrigue on her face. The other girls settle into their seats for the latest installment of poems. Today is my turn.

  I hold a paper in my hand, and my eyes settle on Elaine’s face for a moment. She actually smiles slightly, with her black– lipsticked lips, and I smile back.

  “It was really difficult writing this poem. I wrote it many different ways, and from different points of view. Then Elaine told me I should ask myself what love is, if it isn’t death. So this turned out very different from how I started.”

  Taking a deep breath, I raise my paper and read:

  Love Was

  Love Will Be

  But most of all,

  Love Is.

  Life cannot be without it

  It is found in the womb

  In the woods

  In the stars.

  To be or not to be

  To love, or not to love

  They are equal.

  My soul whispers into the spaces.

  Yes.

  My eyes raise and focus on Elaine. There is a slight nod of her head. Monica has leaned forward, and I think her eyes are gathering tears. The other girls are about as excited as they always are.

  Ms. Landreth has her usual contemplative gaze fixed on me.

  “That’s it,” I say with a shrug. “You probably won’t believe how long it took me to write that.”

  “Simple and poignant. Very nice. Ladies, questions for Kate about her poem.”

  Hurry, I type into the phone and wait anxiously for Caleb to arrive. We’ve hardly seen each other lately with my shopping trip, his work schedule, and preoccupations with his grandfather. There was no time to talk at school. I know there is more he needs to tell me, and I want to read him my completed poem, but mainly I just want hours with him instead of the torturous moments we’ve had the last few days.

  “Where’s Allie the Wonderdog?” Caleb asks after I open the door. He looks completely worn out.

  “I’m sure she’ll be coming but . . .” Just then I hear Allie’s feet padding down the staircase toward the door. When she sees me, she stops and there’s something in her mouth. It’s one of my bras—white with tiny polka dots.

  “Oh, no,” I say and reach for Allie as she zips by. She trips over my bra, dropping it for a moment and then turns sharply to grab it back up. We reach it at the same time and have a short, mortifying tug of war with Caleb laughing in the background. Then Jake’s laugh joins in from the staircase.

  “She’s always stealing my clothes,” I exclaim, just as Allie pulls it from my fingers. My purse falls off my arm, spilling a few things onto the floor.

  “She must like how you smell,” Caleb says with a grin. “Can’t blame her for that.”

  I grab for Allie or the bra or both, but she thinks we’re playing tag now, racing back and forth with her ears laid back for speed. I use the stern voice: “Allie, drop it. Give me that. Come here,” but it doesn’t work. “I think Jake trains her to do this.”

  “Do not! That’s disgusting,” Jake yells from upstairs. “But it is funny!”

  Caleb steps in and calls Allie as Jake’s feet finally pound down the stairs to help me. Allie walks right up to Caleb and drops the bra, then she wags her tail and jumps all over Caleb as he bends on his knees to pet her, rubbing her fur with two hands. He sneaks the bra out from under her and I have another awkward moment taking it from him.

  Allie spots me with my bra and jumps high in the air with a little twirl like a circus dog. But I crumple the bra in my hands.

  “One second.” I hurry to the laundry room down the back hallway, tossing my bra into a laundry hamper.

  Caleb is cleaning up the spillage from my purse, crumpling up old gum wrappers and a crumpled napkin. He picks up a receipt off the floor. “Do you need this?”

  I read the store name across the top. “Yeah, Dad has me turn in all receipts to his accountant. That’s from my shopping trip with the girls.”

  He glances at the amount as he hands it to me. “Spendy little shopping trip. What did you buy?”

  I hesitate. “Um, these heels.”

  “Nice,” he says with a smile, then the smile fades. “Is that all you bought?”

  I nod. “At that store.”

  He stares at the shoes again. “Those cost over five hundred dollars?”

  I open my mouth to respond, then say apologetically, “They’re Manolo Blahnik.”

  Caleb makes a little whistling sound. “I always heard women like shoes and that wealthy women like expensive shoes, but . . . is that normal for you?”

  I shrug. “Um . . .”

  He stares at me a moment. “Yes, it is normal for you. Let me guess—usually you’d spend more.”

  I shake my head. “No. I don’t spend that much on shoes all the time. Only once in a while. My clothes are expensive, but not always. I’m actually not as into shopping and designer labels as most of the people I’m around. You should hear my sister, or some of my friends.”

  Caleb watches me with a growing expression of discomfort.

  “It’s just a very different world from what I’m used to. Even the rich Hawaiians aren’t really that into clothes. Maybe cars, houses, and surf boards.”

  I shrug and it’s strange to feel guilty about this.

  “You bought some chrome thingie and it was, like, three hundred dollars.”

  He’s defensive suddenly, and so am I. “But that’s for the Camaro.”

  “And these are for my feet.”

  “But that chrome thingie is going to be on the Camaro for the next fifty years, probably.”

  “And these are for my feet.”

  He laughs, but I see the worry in his expression.

  “I don’t need shoes that cost that much.” I kick them off.

  “Hey, I’m sorry. It’s not my business. Leave them on, they look good, really good.” His expression makes me believe him. “Okay,” I say, but there’s a strain between us.

  Later we’re sitting in a coffee house, finishing up our evaluation on trust. It’s pretty much a dud, padded with other studies and university findings that will get us at least a B. I still notice Caleb is off.

  “You know,” he says. “I want to make you happy. If I can’t do that, I want you happy without me.”

  I stare at him, shaking my head. “That’s impossible now. I won’t be happy without you.”

  He smiles but it’s laced with sadness. “The selfish me wants to believe you and wants it to be true.”

  “Believe it, believe it.” I kiss him on the forehead and then on that little space between his thick black eyebrows. An older couple glances our way, but I don’t care. “You have a unibrow right now from all that heavy thinking. Let it go.”

  “We need to talk about something.”

  “What?” But I really want to cover my ears.

  “There are some business dealings between our families that I’m not involved with but I’m worried about.”

  “So tell me.”

  “I can’t really talk about that part of it.”

  I nod slowly. “You’re in a tough spot there. Let’s keep business away from us as much as possible. What else?”

  “My grandfather wants me to move back to Hawaii.”

  What does that mean? “Are you going to?”

  “I think I have to,” he says, and I’m lost in a sea of foreboding.

  CALEB

  I keep going over this.

  First Grandfather drops his bomb. You’d think cancer might soften the old man a bit.

  And for some reason, that shoe receipt nags at me. When Kate tells me about her shopping trip, I think about my mother—a woman who bought all of her clothes on sale at JCPenney, Target, and Walmart. My grandfather lives t
he rich lifestyle, but my parents never did.

  Do I have the right to take Kate from everything she’s ever known? The transition from Sak’s Fifth Avenue to Walmart would be staggering for anyone. Grandfather will never graciously change his mind. So if Kate and I want to be together, I’ll start with nothing. What will her life be like then? I’ll still go to college, I can get a decent job. She can too.

  I don’t care about struggling or working two or more jobs. But it would be agonizing to watch her. She’d put on a brave face around her friends and family.

  Would it wear her down?

  How long would she hang on?

  Would she eventually resent loving me?

  “Nothing matters but this,” she says, sensing my worries. But I’ve hurt her too. She can’t understand why I’d consider going back—it’s more than just my grandfather’s wish and his cancer; maybe I should sacrifice what I feel for her so she can have a better life. We pull into her driveway and I get out to walk her to the door.

  “I have to think about what’s best for everyone.”

  She shakes her head. Her eyes fill with tears and an ocean of sadness spills over and down her cheeks.

  I grab her arms, pulling her against me.

  There’s no imagining life without this person now. I do not know how I will make my feet walk away.

  KATE

  I don’t know how to live without him now. The realization hits me like a cold, hard slap. Even my musings about God being love and all that, they don’t feel enough right now.

  Does he need me? I need him as I’ve never needed anyone. It’s one thing to say that we love one another. But need, that’s something altogether different. All the girl power stuff is out the window beneath this love. I need God more, I know this. In reality, people survive such losses every day. I would live without him, my head knows, but my heart can’t bear even the hint of it. But I truly believe that if our love ends, a part of me will be destroyed forever.

  We take a nighttime drive, riding in Finn’s jeep again because the Camaro is getting new upholstery. The progress on the Camaro should comfort me—it’s a sign he plans to stay here. But we are driving somewhere to talk, and that’s nothing but a sign pointing one way in my mind.

  The evening is warm until we get close to the water. I pull on my sweatshirt as we cross the bridge at Astoria and drive up toward the lighthouse at Cape Disappointment—another omen of how this night could end. I hear the sound of a foghorn in the distance. The water looks like the ocean, though it’s really the mouth of the Columbia. We barely talk the entire night, even when we stop at our favorite café and eat heaping plates of fish and chips with malt vinegar. It’s as if there is so much to say that it’s all clogged up and we’re afraid the dam will devastate us.

  But when we get back to my house later, I feel desperate to not let him leave.

  “I don’t know how to be without you.”

  “I don’t know how to be without you, either.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Caleb sighs and leans his head against the steering wheel. “We’re too young. I wish this all could have waited until a few years from now.”

  “Have you ever felt this way before?” I ask, and I’m aware of this sudden insecurity again, aware that I should hide it, but my emotions overwhelm my mind.

  “You know I haven’t. And I believe this is once in a lifetime.”

  “Why did you and Laina break up again?” I know what he told me already, but I want to hear it again, and I want him to give the same answer he gave me before.

  “It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Tell me. She’s still in Hawaii, right?” My mind envisions his return home and her being there. Will they see each other? What if they are attracted to each other again? What if . . . ?

  He turns his head toward me, reaching out to brush a strand of hair away from my cheek. “We started going out during a time I felt really alone. She was there for me, but it didn’t take long to know we didn’t have a future. Actually, she’s the one who ended it, because I didn’t know how to without hurting her.”

  “How did you know you didn’t have a future?” I wonder if he’s afraid of hurting me too. What if he is starting to doubt us, but he doesn’t know how to tell me?

  “I just knew, just like you knew Ted wasn’t your future. Listen—I love you, Kate. You and only you. I’ve never experienced this before and I never will again.”

  His words both elate and crush me. “So you are leaving?”

  He lifts his head and hops out of the jeep, coming around to my side. I slide out, following him as he walks toward the house. A few lights glow softly from inside. I want to be alone with him, so I pull away and walk back toward the jeep.

  “What are you doing?”

  He catches my arm and turns me around. The moon and stars make it nearly as visible as daytime but with a soft, muted quality.

  “Maybe I should be the one who leaves you,” I say harshly. “Don’t say that.” He puts his hand up as if to stop such words, and I take it, kiss his palm and then each of his fingers. He stares at me the entire time.

  “Please stop,” he whispers. “My level of control is at an all-time low right now.”

  This makes me want to kiss more of him until he loses all control. I don’t want him to leave without being with me. But then the fear overwhelms me again. “Caleb. What are we going to do?”

  He opens the small tailgate of the jeep and sits me there. As he bends down, for one second I picture him proposing to me. Instead, he lays his head onto my knees as if it’s too heavy for him to stand.

  “I never expected this to happen, you know that, right? I didn’t know I could love someone like this,” he says into my knees. “Even with all my big talk, I didn’t know what it felt like.”

  “Do you regret it? Do you regret me?”

  He lifts his head and hops up on the tailgate beside me.

  “Of course not,” he says earnestly. “I fear you will regret it one day.”

  “Then, why are you doing this?”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “It sounds like you’re breaking up with me.”

  He closes his eyes. “How could I ever break up with you? You are . . . everything.”

  That last word is water soaked up in a dry creek bed. But the look on his face cuts another wound into my heart.

  “I don’t have a definitive plan. But it will be all right. I’ve been praying about it constantly. It will be all right, Kate. It will.”

  “Do you promise me?”

  “As much as I can promise, I do.” He takes my hands. “Listen to me. This is when our faith becomes real. Faith is nothing until you have to rely on it and live by it. We have to believe that we will get through this. We can decide to make this work. A decision doesn’t just mean choosing something. It is making a choice and cutting off all other options. So we live by our faith and decide to trust and believe, and to cut off other alternatives.”

  “But why . . . ?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you leaving me?”

  “It might not be for very long.”

  I’m shaking my head as a panic rises in my chest. “Caleb, I don’t care about money. If you are doing this because you’re worried I won’t be able to buy five hundred–dollar shoes—the shoes mean nothing to me. But if it’s because it will ruin your life, you have to be honest about that.”

  “It’s not about the company or the money. Grandfather has cancer, and he has no one else except my father. He practically disowned my father, so mostly, it’s all me.”

  There’s no way I can compete with that, which feels so unfair. That bitter man has no one because he’s chased everyone away, and now I’m losing Caleb because of it. I don’t care that he has cancer—but as soon as I think that, I’m immediately ashamed and furious at the same time.

  I hold Caleb’s shirt with two hands.

  “Did you ev
en believe in all that?”

  His face is contorted with anguish. “All what?”

  “The two volcanoes and everything.”

  He looks confused, then I think he may actually be hiding a smile. “Well . . . maybe not that the two volcanoes actually started out as people . . .”

  I think back to before I met Caleb. So maybe I was bored, but at least I wasn’t in agony, like now.

  “How could you tell me all of this—make me believe in a love like this only to take it all away?”

  “I’m not taking it all away.”

  “Yes. You. Are.”

  “No, Kate, listen to me. I promise you, I’m not taking it all away.”

  “I don’t even care that your grandfather has cancer. I mean, I do care. But I’m so selfish. I can’t imagine you gone.”

  “I have to go.”

  “No. Don’t go.”

  “I have to. I’ll be back. I can’t promise when.”

  I turn my back to him. Resolute. He will not leave me; if he does, he won’t return. So I’ll take a risk and hope it works.

  “If you go, don’t come back. Don’t ever come back.”

  Then I walk to the house without saying good-bye.

  There’s no banging on the door. Nothing on my phone.

  I hear the jeep fire up a while after I storm inside.

  Dad is gone on business again, and Mom is sound asleep.

  I can’t sleep and finally pick up my keys. The moon has disappeared within a wall of gray curtaining the dark sky.

  Driving by Caleb’s house, the lights are off. He doesn’t respond when I send him a text, and then I remember his phone was run over by the tractor earlier today. His old dinosaur didn’t survive this disaster.

  I’ve become completely unhinged. Now sitting in my car in a parking lot, the rain pours down so hard that I can’t hear anything, not even the cars that dare brave the downpour. The streetlight is a blurred stream against my windshield. I can’t cry, but I’m shaking uncontrollably.

  I don’t know what to do. Time moves slowly or quickly, I don’t know how much passes, but the sky remains deep in the night when I reach again for my phone.

  “Love, is that you?” The sound of Oliver’s groggy voice crumbles my emptiness.

  “Ol-iver?” Then I can’t speak as I sob, leaning my head on the steering wheel.