Bob’s still clutching his spatula in the middle of the kitchen, an embarrassed grin tacked to his face. “Nice,” he says, loud enough that I can hear him over the squawking alarm. “That’s what I call grace under pressure.”
“You too, Bob.” I throw the kitchen window wide open, and the smoke begins funneling out into the overcast day.
“So much for country breakfast,” he says.
“What’s going on in there?” says Trev.
First I disarm the alarm. Then I dress Trev. Then I mop the kitchen floor and fan the room until the smoke clears. Following a breakfast of toast, I set Trev on the toilet and return to the kitchen to wash dishes as I await his call. When he beckons, I wipe him, lift him up, cradle him in my arms, hoist his pants, and set him in his chair, whereupon I give him two swipes of deodorant, set his electric razor out, squeeze a curlicue of toothpaste on his brush, and place it on the edge of the sink where he can reach it. Then I retire to the living room, where I begin wrestling with the hide-a-bed.
That’s when disaster strikes. After feeding Mr. Baxter (who still hasn’t touched his last measly flakes), Bob swings around abruptly.
“Oh, incidentally—” he says, grazing the fishbowl, which wobbles off the edge of the table, tips and shatters on the wood floor.
Mr. Baxter, whom I’ve sorely misjudged, is flopping furiously for his life on the nearby throw rug. For the second time this morning, I’m grace under pressure: I scoop Mr. Baxter up, hurdle one of Bob’s outstretched legs, and dash to the kitchen with Mr. Baxter wiggling crazily in my clutches. I snatch the mason jar out of the cupboard, drop Mr. Baxter in, and fill it with water. He remains perfectly still for a few seconds, as though he’s dead or in shock. I tap the glass.
“C’mon, Mr. Baxter. Move.”
Nothing.
I tap the glass again. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Lifting the jar to my face, I look Mr. Baxter square in the eye. He looks at once stately and constipated, like Winston Churchill. He doesn’t move, doesn’t open his mouth, doesn’t blink—but then he’s got no eyelids. He just stares wall-eyed through the glass right past me. I tap the jar again. Still nothing. I give it a little shake. Nothing. I’m about fifteen seconds from flushing Mr. Baxter when Bob rolls into the kitchen and peers over my shoulder.
“Is he . . .?”
“I don’t know.” I give the jar another shake, and Mr. Baxter splashes up against the side of the jar, lifelessly.
“Does he blink at all?”
“I don’t think he has any eyelids.”
Now Trev wheels in with his electric razor in hand.
“Is he . . .?”
“We’re not sure,” says Bob.
“It’s looking that way,” I say.
Though Mr. Baxter is showing no signs of life, he’s not floating yet. I jiggle him again.
“This is my fault,” says Bob. “Everything I touch turns to shit.”
“Or breaks,” adds Trev.
Suddenly Mr. Baxter stirs, swimming a slow circle, then stops, staring right at me. He opens his mouth and closes it. Opens it again, closes it.
“Whoa,” I say, breathing easy. “Gave me a scare there, Bax.”
When I set the jar on the counter, I set it right up against the back-splash so Bob can’t knock it over. Mr. Baxter is more active now, circling counterclockwise in a tight radius. But by the time he turns eight or nine circles in the mason jar, he looks disconsolate again, stops, and stares at the three of us grouped in the kitchen.
“I’m worried about Mr. Baxter,” I say.
“I think we can help him,” Bob says.
Within the hour, we’re off to Bingham Canyon. I’ve buckled Trev in the van and strapped Bob in the backseat with his broken leg propped on the cooler. Though Bob has already seen the Biggest Pit in the World, he’s nonetheless excited.
“That’s the beauty of it. It just gets bigger,” he says.
On our way out of town, Bob directs me to the Wal-Mart Supercenter in South Jordan. In the rear of the store, he selects a five-gallon hooded glass aquarium with fluorescent lights and a bio filter. He adds a two-pound bag of glowing blue gravel, a colorful array of lily bulbs, and an underwater plant. And to top things off, a sparkly white castle.
We’re navigating our way toward the checkout with our oversized cart, through a wilderness of egg beaters and baby clothes, picture frames and garden hoes, camping stoves and dinette sets, greeting cards and coverlets, when I suddenly decide there is something I simply must have.
“I’ve gotta grab a few things real quick,” I say. “I’ll catch up with you guys at the van.”
Bob peels off three twenties. “For the aquarium,” he says.
When I arrive at the van, Trev and Bob are waiting at the foot of the ramp. I stow the aquarium in back. Thunderheads are stacking up on the western horizon. The air is sticky. My neck brace is beginning to stink. Lucky for me, you can smell Bob’s aftershave in Ogden, so I’m not likely to offend anyone.
Driving west through the thinning suburbs, we leave the valley behind and snake our way through the arid foothills, toward the Oquirrhs, broad-shouldered brown mountains, mottled with green like a skin rash. Bob tells us it won’t be long before they’re covered in snow. I can still see a narrow strip of the Salt Lake Valley in the rearview mirror.
What is now a pit was once a mountain, so arriving at the Bingham copper mine is something like arriving at the rim of a tremendous caldera. We pay our five bucks, park the van, and make our way across the dusty lot. We walk down the causeway toward the viewing area, where a placard informs us that at two and a half miles wide, and three quarters of a mile deep (and getting deeper by the day), the Bingham pit is the Biggest Pit in the World by a wide margin. Along with the Great Wall of China, the pit is one of only two feats of human engineering visible from outer space. If the Bingham pit were a stadium, the placard informs us, it would hold nine million people. Emerging from the causeway and rounding a corner, I catch my first glimpse of the copper mine, and indeed, the great yawning chasm resembles nothing more than a stupendous amphitheater, its striated walls descending steeply in countless rows toward the ever-deepening bottom, where even now the great loaders and crushers churn up a slow rising dust.
“Big hole,” says Trev.
“What did I tell you?” says Bob, wheeling closer to Trev. “It’s something, huh?”
“Kinda scary.”
Deep in the pit, running a dusty line along a terraced wall, a parade of giant trucks, minuscule from our vantage near the rim, belch and heave their way toward the crusher.
“Glad you came,” says Bob, patting Trev on the back with his good arm.
“Yeah,” says Trev. “The pictures don’t do it justice.”
“Out here, I mean. To see me.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. So, do you think they’ll just keep digging forever?”
“As long as there’s copper. Look, I know I haven’t been—”
“Dad, stop.”
“I was young. It really wasn’t about—”
“Dad, stop. It’s okay.”
“I’m gonna get a Coke,” I say.
I wander down past the visitor center, past the gift shop, past a line of viewfinders, and a gigantic truck tire with a placard. When I’ve left the crowd behind, I find a quiet stretch of rail, dig the hard pack out of my jean pocket, and strike it three times briskly against my palm. I twirl off the cellophane strip, remove the gold flap, and tap out a smoke.
Fuck it. I’m tired of wishing.
I light up, inhale, and lean on the rail. Exhaling slowly, I peer out over the ledge. There it is, so deep you probably can’t see out of it: the Biggest Pit in the World. It’s so goddamn deep it’s hard to fathom that there’s anything anywhere but just a great big hole in the ground. And for the first time in what feels like an eternity, I’m not in it.
I fish my phone out and dial Forest. He answers on the second ring.
“Hey, buddy
. It’s me,” I say.
“Benji boy.”
“Look, I’ve got a couple of favors to ask.”
the longest haul yet
Already the chill is burning off as the sun beams just above the eastern horizon. It’s 6:30 a.m. and we’re a day behind schedule. Bob and Trev are wheel-to-wheel curbside, as I stuff the last of the bags willy-nilly in the back of the van and force the hatch shut so that Trev’s big black duffel is pancaked against the rear window. God help us if somebody needs the Tums, because I haven’t a clue where they are back there.
Bob and Trev are having a moment, or at least Bob is doing his best to make it a moment, while stuck to the heel of his outstretched cast, three squares of toilet paper stir gently in the desert breeze.
“You know,” he says gloomily. “Leaving was the biggest mistake of my life.”
“Would you just stop,” says Trev.
“I’m really sorry about everything.”
“Yeah, I get it, already. Stop,” he says with an edge of impatience. But when he sees Bob looking a little crestfallen, he softens up. “Look, just bring me some chicken, and we’ll call it good.”
Bob brightens. “You’re on,” he says.
Easing the van away from the curb, I watch Bob in the rearview mirror as he wheels to the middle of the dead lawn and attempts to right the listing reindeer. Look at you, Bob, setting your house in order at last.
Trev and I skirt the the reservoir in silence, speed across the flats for hours on end, over the border to Twin Falls wordlessly, until somewhere around Boise, I’m moved to speech.
“Seems like you let him off the hook easy,” I say.
“Yeah, well, it was time, I guess.”
And that’s the last anybody says of it, about the last anybody says of anything, as we shoot through the high desert of northeastern Oregon—a landscape as scorched and ravaged as anything in the Mojave—past Baker City and La Grande with the sun burning fiercely at our backs. We’ve no desire to stop and, so far, no need. At the junction, we pick up the gorge and snake our way through Pendleton and The Dalles, with nothing but a quick stop for lunch at Biggs Cafe. We haven’t got time for the Stonehenge replica at Maryhill, no time for the commemorative placard atop Sam Hill as we hurry west. And while I’m not sure what propels Trev onward, for the first time since we set out on this journey, I know where I’m going, and I wish I could say it were home.
a king
Don’t think for one minute that hitting a softball is like riding a bike. If you think you can succeed on muscle memory alone, you’re wrong. You’ve got to stay within yourself. You’ve got to be in the moment. You’ve got to maintain your poise. You’ve got to resist temptation, no matter how slow it is moving. Sounds easy enough—if you’re a monk. I’m willing to concede that when you’re doing it right, hitting feels like riding a bike.
Back in those fat days when Forest scrawled my name mechanically in the three-hole—right in front of his own name—back when tattooing the sweet spot of a softball seemed effortless, before I began striding too early, before I started dropping my back elbow and lunging at bad pitches, before I started getting completely mental in the box, Janet used to bring the kids to my late games on Wednesdays. They’d stand at the backstop as I strode to the plate clutching my bat. Jodi, at eleven months, in snug shorts and a bulging diaper, doddering on chubby legs as he clutched the chain-link fence for balance. Wide-eyed, no doubt, when I sent a frozen rope into the power alley or a screaming meanie past third.
“Go, Daddy!” Piper would shout as I darted down the line and rounded first.
And pulling into second base at an easy trot, I felt like a hero when I heard my teammates lauding me from the dugout with a chorus of cheers. I felt like a king when I peered back at my family behind home plate: Piper clashing famously in rubber boots and a leotard. Janet looking wholesome and relaxed in a pullover sweatshirt and flattering jeans. Jodi with drool streaming down his chin, flashing his new bottom teeth like a jack-o’-lantern as he garbled his approval.
A king, I tell you.
And maybe that seems sort of sad, sort of pathetic—the spectacle of some unemployable stay-at-home schlub whose wife gives him an allowance, standing astride second base with two bad knees as though it were Mount Everest. But it’s not. What’s sad is that I can’t bring any of it back. What’s pathetic is that after all this time, I’m still trying.
close enough
I suppose it’s a convenient place for a rendezvous, if not a little desolate. But after a 400-mile drive, with 180 miles to go, I’ll take convenient. The Supercenter is in North Portland Harbor, right off the interstate, just shy of the bridge. What was once a mall is now vacant, its bleached walls and streaked awnings wearing the weather poorly. The shrubbery has gone to pot. The trash bins are heaping. The doors are chained shut. Somebody’s tagged the glass with white spray paint. It’s almost sad to think the place may be haunted. I’d hate to be a ghost floating around in there amid the gutted racks and the empty hangers.
Beyond the mall stretches a vast gray sea of vacant parking, maybe five hundred yards across, like a great concrete bay ringed with hulking superstores: Pier 1, Old Navy, Babies “R” Us. From a quarter mile away, I can see Janet’s silver sedan, idling alone near the middle of the lot, her headlights spearing the gloomy dusk, a little cross-eyed. I park the van about eight spaces up the row from her and grab the manila envelope off the floor between Trev and me.
“You’re okay with this? It might take a few minutes.”
“Just leave the window cracked,” he says. “I’ll bark if I’m feeling needy.”
Leaving the van to idle in the gathering darkness, I crack the window, adjust the radio and heat to comfortable levels, and step out of the van into a mud puddle. It’s spitting rain again, and cold—uncharacteristically cold for the season.
Walking the eight long spaces to Janet with my head down, I resolve myself not to dig up old bones, not to make any speeches, not to make her suffer any more than I already have. With a deep breath, I duck into the passenger’s seat of the idling sedan. The heat is on full blast, the wipers squeak slowly.
“Hello, Ben.”
“Hey.”
She looks tired and doubtful as I hand her the papers. She sets the envelope in her lap without inspecting its contents.
“Is this for real?” she says.
“It’s for real.”
We agree that this exchange warrants a short silence. We both gaze straight ahead, across the empty lot, toward the distant lights of Babies “R” Us. We used to drive all the way to Tacoma for Babies “R” Us. Our old lives were all but made of colored plastic.
“Thank you, Ben,” she says at last.
“Sorry about the wait. I just needed some—”
“No need to explain,” she says, more like an entreaty than a free pass. “What happened to your neck?”
“I sprained it, I think. Or pulled it. Whatever you do to a neck.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“Not yet.”
“What about your hands?”
“I fell.”
She shakes her head. The same woeful head shake I’ve seen a thousand times. “Oh, Ben, what’s going to happen to you? You need to take care of yourself.”
“I just took a vacation, didn’t I?”
“Ben, really.”
I look over at the idling van, its exhaust plume steaming in the cold air. It’s getting dark. I should have left a dome light on for Trev.
“You smell like cigarettes,” she says.
“Yeah, I started again.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
She smoothes the envelope in her lap and turns to me. “Ben. You know, this is really about me, okay, not you. I’ve tried to tell you this right from the start. Things only got nasty because . . .”
“Janet, I get it.”
“You do?”
“Not really. But I’m ready to li
ve with it.”
And the truth is, I do get it, or I’m starting to. Janet needs a new context. Janet can no longer live in relation to me or what’s left of me. She can no longer navigate a world with no signposts, no living landmarks, only colored plastic ruins. She cannot live on a borrowed light that only grows weaker with each passing day, cannot walk among the lengthening shadows of her dead.
She turns from me and looks out the side window toward Pier 1. “I’ve said some horrible things, Ben. Things I didn’t mean.”
“Welcome to the club.”
“I mean about what happened.”
“I know. Fuck, I know. So have I. I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t owe me any apologies.”
“But I do.”
“You don’t.”
“Goddamnit, it was my fault. I was there. I caused it.”
“It happened. It was an accident,” she says decisively, clutching my knee. And as she does, an old grief wells up under my ribs, as though for the first time, rumbling up my chest like a herd of buffalo.
“Shhh,” she says.
But that only makes it worse.
“Ben, it’s okay.”
“You know what kills me?” I say, wiping my face and choking down my lump of grief. “What really kills me is the thought that if I’d been more successful at something—Christ, at anything—I never would’ve been a stay-at-home dad in the first place. This never would’ve happened.”
“And if I were a more successful mom, I would’ve been at home with the kids, is that it? No, Ben, you can’t think like that anymore. We’re way past the if stage here—past the why stage, and the how stage. We’re in the is stage, Ben. Best that we both look straight ahead for a while.”
She releases her grip on my leg and pats the manila envelope. “I realize how hard this is for you, and I’m sorry I left. I didn’t mean to, I tried not to, but I did, and I’m sorry. I had to, Ben. I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
But I do. The truth is that suddenly I feel lighter, I feel like I can breathe deeper than I’ve breathed in years. Maybe all I wanted was an apology. I wipe my face dry and give a throaty sniffle, swallowing the last of my grief—at least for now.
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving Page 25
