They Almost Always Come Home

by Cynthia Ruchti

  “They may have to, eventually. If we find—” A body. If we find a body. The stuff of nightmares.

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  CYNTHIA RUCHTI

  A bloated, gray body floating to the surface of crystal

  Canadian waters or careening like a log in a flume all the way to Lake Superior. No, wait. Hudson Bay, probably. A gap- toothed, cowlicked boy and his grandpa hook what they think is a trophy Arctic char only to discover it’s my husband.

  How much therapy would it take to get over a fishing trip

  like that?

  Would I rather find Greg in a too-cheap-for-good-ad-copy

  motel in Saskatchewan? With a roommate named Trixie, a towel draped over the eyes of the Gideon Bible, and a smile on his face?

  Yes.

  No.

  I don’t know. I want to leave my husband, but I have to find

  him first.

  The phone rings. I check the caller ID screen, expecting to

  see the French words for “No Tell Motel.” Isn’t the word morgue French already?

  It’s one of the other coordinators on the prayer chain. Lord,

  this better be more significant than Myrna’s cat’s digestive problems again or I may have to develop a swear language.

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  Apparently, I’m in the guilt stage. I try the bedroom armchair again, but it might as well be upholstered with razor blades. This is all my fault. I’m not taking the blame for Greg’s inat- tention or his failure to make me happy. I’m not ready to issue a pardon for his role in what happened to Lacey. But I do take responsibility for letting him go off without a companion. Not me, of course. A guy friend.

  “I’d like to try it alone this time, Lib.” That’s what he said. At the time, I hadn’t noticed any twitch in the corner of his eye, any throbbing vein in his neck. I had no suspicions—no misgivings. But I do remember thinking, I’d like to try it alone, too, Greg. And I don’t mean a vacation.

  I can’t even count how many of these trips he’s taken in the past. At least one a year. Sometimes two—spring and fall—if he can swing time off from work. But always with someone else—another crazed fisherman who finds warped satisfaction in surviving for a week or two without the conveniences that make life worth living.

  Frank serves as a companion paddler as often as he can. Greg’s enlisted every male friend or potential friend from here to the Mississippi over the years. Old college buddies. Guys

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  CYNTHIA RUCHTI

  from church. His sons, the adventurers. Everyone but me. He couldn’t sell me on the concept that the scenery and experi- ence make up for the inconveniences. He’s not that good of a salesman, which is why he’s in the purchasing department at Greene’s Grocery chain rather than sales.

  The chair’s not working. I cross the empty room, pull open

  a dresser drawer, grab the socks I came to the bedroom for in the first place, and sit on the edge of the bed. Gingerly. As if Greg is napping on the far side. I hope that’s not prophetic. Napping on the “far side.”

  He’s never gone on a solo trip. Never seemed to want to.

  Until now. What does that tell me?

  I don’t remember folding these socks without turning them

  right side out. I never skip that. As I look at the bumpy ridge of a seam that should be invisible, internal, I’m sympathetic to its plight.

  “Poor thing. You don’t get any respect, do you? Today, you

  will be visible.”

  I pull them onto my feet—left, then right, as always—proud

  of liberating an overlooked seam. If only life were that simple. What if I could redo the last three years but live them inside out?

  What if I could push past whatever bony protrusion kept

  me from giving full birth to my grief over Lacey? What if I could do it again and presume—for the sake of argument— that Greg was on my side? What if I allowed him the grace I depend on?

  What was I thinking, staying silent about Greg’s solo trip? Of

  all times for me to clam up! Brilliant, Libby. Simply brilliant.

  About as wise as having our boys fourteen months apart

  and teaching them self-reliance. Now not only are they so glo- riously independent that their college experience is thousands

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  They Almost Always Come Home

  of miles from Mommy, they’re also not in need of a live-in dad. They’ll be okay. Greg didn’t leave them. He left me.

  The muscles around my stomach spasm. Did he tell them? Did he take his sons into his confidence before he left? “Here, guys.”

  “What’s that, Dad?”

  “My new address. Do me a favor, will you? Keep this just between us until I have a chance to tell your mom.” “When will that be?”

  “I don’t know. Soon.”

  Why wouldn’t one of them snitch? I’ve kept their little- boy and hooky-playing-teen secrets and they know it. This is unfair. I should have a daughter with whom to share my own secrets. I should have a daughter.

  I lift my body off the bed, groaning like a woman twice my age. Now that my feet are clad, it occurs to me I should shower. I skipped that phase earlier when the sun blinded me.

  It’s the Jeep. That’s the thing. I’ve heard of cars careening off a steep mountain hairpin, staying lost in the brush for days before discovery. But there are no mountains between here and—what was that spot? Beaverhouse. With the highway patrols of two states and a Canadian province on the lookout, someone would have found it—him—if there’d been an acci- dent. And neither of the typical border crossings have a record of his reentering the United States.

  He’s still in Canada . . . somewhere. Doesn’t matter where. He’s not with me. He’s not here in this house: The House of Grief and Guilt.

  I strip off the socks, undecided about seams and scars that show.

  I can’t even shower without guilt. Guilt pokes at the cellulite on my thighs and tells me that’s the reason Greg’s gone. It traces the spider veins on my legs and says, “Well, no wonder.”

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  I’ll wear jeans the rest of the day. It’s too hot for jeans, but

  they cover more. Chambray shirt? No. Greg’s favorite. Hardly seems appropriate. I’ll wear the white tee with the hyacinth screen print. Or maybe not. I bought that in Ashland the year we celebrated our twentieth anniversary.

  Our anniversary trip. Hope showed new buds on that trip

  to Lake Superior’s southern shore. How had Greg found that particular bed-and-breakfast for us? Second Wind Country Inn’s rustic charm was perfect for us.

  I hadn’t expected awe. I’d long since retired awe from

  my vocabulary. But perched on a high point overlooking Chequamegon Bay, the inn rose like an impressive log castle at the end of a long driveway meandering through close-cropped hayfields and long stretches of lawn.

  The isolation of the inn offered a sense of safety. Was that it?

  Was that the reason I allowed myself to feel something other than pain that weekend?

  As I towel-dry my shower-damp hair, noting that before

  long I’ll have to make friends with Miss Clairol, I wonder why I let down my guard on that trip. Was I starved for beauty? Is that why my heart relaxed into something akin to peace in that place?

  Our room—our suite of rooms—lay at the top of a long

  flight of stairs. I questioned the location as we hauled our overnight bags up the steps. The questions ceased when the innkeeper opened the door and welcomed us into the sitting area. She pointed out the comfortable couch and fat, downy chairs. Who could pay attention with that breathtaking view staring us full in the face through a wall of twelve-foot-tall windows?

  So much sky.

  I pick up my wide-toothed comb and tackle the tangles in

  my hair. Working at them little by little, from the bottom up,

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  They Almos
t Always Come Home

  the knots soon turn to wet but smooth silk. Where can I find a wide-toothed comb for marital tangles?

  Was the inn and what it offered us an answer to that question?

  We ate that night at a little bistro. Great ambiance. Not your typical franchise fare. Greg ordered brown sugar-smoked lake trout with wild mushrooms and dried cranberries over basmati rice. I had the grilled salmon with mango salsa and cilantro puree on a bed of fiddlehead ferns. Somehow the menu itself invited conversation. We talked as if we believed the map of our marriage led us into a quiet cove where we could lie naked on the beach and no one would know. We knew each other’s warts and fleshy pockets well. That night, they seemed endearing.

  I remember Greg waking me at three in the morning. He dragged my resistant body out of bed and invited me to join him in front of the castle windows.

  “Isn’t that something?” he breathed into space. His warm arm cupped my back at the waist.

  As soul-igniting as had been the daytime view through those mammoth windows, it could not rival the night sky. “Peppered with stars,” he said, his voice low and reverent. A simple moment of moonlit camaraderie led to some of the most authentic intimacy in recent history for us. He wanted to share the sky with me. And I let him.

  When we finally peeled our bodies out of the luxurious log bed mid-morning, a divine Hand had changed the scene again. The windows revealed low-lying fog hovering in the brushy gullies and ravines.

  Greg stood at the windows, nursing a cup of coffee left on a tray outside the suite door by a silent, no-missed-details hostess.

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  CYNTHIA RUCHTI

  I hesitated to break whatever spell he was in. “Do you want

  to go down for breakfast, honey?” I’d asked, as best as I can remember. I think I called him honey.

  “In a minute,” he said.

  I watched him move his head slowly, like a surveillance

  camera commissioned to take in the whole scene over the course of time.

  “Fascinating,” he said. “The world is shrouded in mist-ry.

  Wish I had my camera.”

  This from a man who spends his day swinging deals on

  potato chips and paper towels for Greene’s. A man with a cal- culator, a laptop, and what I thought was no imagination.

  Twenty years of marriage. In that moment, I feared I knew

  less about my husband than I ever had.

  I vowed to pay more attention to the man who shared my

  marriage bed.

  A few months later, Lacey died.

  The hyacinth T-shirt? No.

  Is there nothing in this closet that doesn’t reek with

  memories?

  ********

  I drain an ink cartridge printing out MapQuest’s version

  of the distance between where I am in an empty house in the heart of Wisconsin and where my husband was supposed to be three or four days ago. With the maps spread on the kitchen table around which we were once a family, I follow the main highway with my finger.

  West or east? After he drove back to the Queen’s Highway

  from the Quetico Provincial Park, did he turn toward Toronto or Winnipeg? Odds are he wouldn’t have ventured farther

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  They Almost Always Come Home

  north. Then again, who would have given odds he’d bail on his marriage and his career?

  “Nice blouse. Is that new?” Jen may have knocked before entering. I can’t swear to anything these days. “You like it?”

  “Great color,” she says. “For me. Not so much for you.” “Oh, you flatter me.”

  “I’m just saying that it’s not your best color,” she comments as she deposits something foil-covered into my fridge. “Unless you were hoping to look even more tired and washed out than you are.”

  Remind me again why I love this person?

  “It was supposed to be your birthday present, Jen.”

  “Well, thanks for test-driving it for me.” The lilt in her voice is a blessing. How lousy would I have to be to offend this woman?

  I run my hands over the fabric where it covers my middle. “I just couldn’t . . . I had to have . . . the closet was full of . . .” Jen grabs a mug from the cupboard next to the sink and helps herself to a tea bag from the canister on the counter. “Don’t explain. Nobody expects you to think rationally every minute of this thing, Libby.”

  “What did you sneak into my fridge?”

  “Supper,” she says.

  “I’m still not hungry.”

  “Two things. Number one, so what? You have to eat or you’ll be in worse shape than you are already. Number two, by sup- pertime, I will be.”

  “You’re staying that long?”

  “I’m staying until, Lib. Until.”

  I turn away from the table. I don’t have a spare ink car- tridge, so I can’t afford tear-stains on these maps.

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  A tissue floats over my shoulder, as do Jen’s next words.

  “Get a grip, woman. We have work to do.” “Work?”

  “The way I figure it, I’m the one to tackle the Internet

  because, truth be told, I’m better at it than you are.” “Sweet talker.”

  She doesn’t skip a beat. “And if you man the phone, we can

  call every Best Western, Super 8, and Holiday Inn between here and Calgary before nightfall.”

  “Do they have Best Westerns in Canada?”

  Jen slides into the chair across from me, the one Greg likes,

  and drops her head as if the hinge of her neck let go. Slowly, she raises up to look me in the eye. “Welcome to the computer age, Miss Little House on the Prairie. We will find out on the Internet, thanks to Al Gore.”

  “Do I want to find him?”

  “Greg or Al Gore?”

  I roll my eyes, surprised I have energy for it.

  “You tell me,” Jen says.

  I want to know the answers, not have to figure them out.

  “Why would I want to fall at his feet and beg him to come home? He chose to leave me.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “What else could it be? He’s not much of a target for

  kidnappers, with his Swiss cheese bank account and lack of connections to anyone who does have money.”

  Neither one of us married for money. We have that going

  for us. Seems a pathetic tribute.

  Jen teases the tag on her tea bag. “Another possibility is that

  he’s hurt.”

  “You don’t think I know that? And for how long? What if he

  fell and broke his leg two days into the trip?” “Libby.”

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  They Almost Always Come Home

  “That would mean he’s been lying in pain for more than two weeks by now! Out of his mind, maybe. I’ve seen the documentaries. He might have had to use his fillet knife to amputate an arm.”

  Jen sips her tea.

  “Or what if he’s had a stroke?” I add. “I know he’s too young, but it happens. Or a heart attack. There’s heart disease all over his mom’s side of the family. His cholesterol’s been creeping up these last couple of years. Or if a tree fell on him or he some- how passed out and tumbled out of the canoe or tried to make it through a rapids and hit his head on a rock and he’s been unconscious all this time or—”

  “Are you done?” Jen purses her lips like a school principal overseeing detention.

  It may be time to advertise for a new best friend. “Any one of those scenes is a very real possibility.”

  “I know, hon. I’ve made a list of my own. But here’s the deal. Dwelling on those what-ifs will drive us crazy.” “I’m halfway there. It’ll be a short trip.”

  “What do we know for sure?” Jen asks, her face a portrait of concern.

  “My life is over.”

  “Besides that.” Concern morphs to chagrin.

  “Look
, Jen, if you’re expecting me to say something trite like ‘God is good all the time,’ it might come out sounding slightly fake at the moment.”

  With both hands planted on the table, she pushes herself to standing, then paces the length of one counter. “We know God knows where Greg is.”

  “That much we can agree on.”

  She switches directions. “And we know that if Greg is intentionally AWOL, God is a much better seeker, finder, and avenger than we are.”

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  “I’d like to take a stab at it.”

  Jen crosses her arms over her chest. “Sorry. Not your job.”

  She’s sensible to a fault sometimes. “And if Greg’s injured or sick—”

  “If not, he will be when I’m through with him.”

  She stops pacing and launches a balled-up paper towel at

  my head. “If . . . he’s . . . sick . . . ”

  I fill in the blank she’s left for me. “The Lord also knows

  that.” It comes out sounding like a sing-song Sunday school recitation, one I want with all my heart to believe.

  Jen uncrosses her arms and reaches across the distance

  between us to lay a consoling hand on my arm. “Is Greg alone?”

  “I sure hope so.”

  “No, I mean, if he’s stranded in the wilderness somewhere,

  is he alone?”

  “How can he still be alive? If he couldn’t get word out to us,

  maybe he can’t feed himself. Maybe he can’t drink anything. And a person can only survive a couple of days without water. Maybe he’s lying in a pool of—”

  “Libby.”

  “Or at the bottom of—”

  “I know you need to vent. And I know you might as well say

  these things out loud because the Lord knows your thoughts anyway. But it isn’t helping to sit here paralyzed by fear about what may or may not have happened to your husband. I think God’s given us a job to do.”

  “A job? I can’t remember to brush my teeth.”

  She crouches at my feet again. Takes my worthless hands

  again. “Besides focusing on survival, Lib, I think God wants us to find Greg.”

  “Yeah, right.” She must be sleep deprived too.

  “I’ve been praying about this.”

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  They Almost Always Come Home

  “Congratulations. I’m locked in a prayer cemetery. Ghosts and shadows but nothing that touches heaven.”