Steal the North: A Novel (27 page)

I haven’t always been a complete gentleman with women, so probably I deserve grief from Kate. Women have been in love with me before. Usually I called it off when I realized it or, worse, when they confessed. I had the perfect excuse: too busy with work, which I was, and still am, only Kate doesn’t seem to mind. There were a few women before Kate whom I kept sleeping with even after they confessed their unrequited love, kept letting them make me dinner or even take me to family get-togethers. I know for a fact I broke one heart in high school and one just a year before Kate. How many in between, I couldn’t say. For the most part I dated or simply fucked the kind of women who hang around bars. Nice bars. But bars nonetheless. I’ve definitely had feelings for women before, just nothing like what I feel for Kate. I dated a nurse. She was hardworking, ample-breasted, but she drank like a fish. I dated a real estate agent who, before she became too clingy, kept wanting me to invest. I dated a lady who worked PR for the Sacramento Kings. She had a great ass and got me great seats, a running joke between my brother and me, until I found out she was working OT in the bedroom with one of the bench players. I dated some good women, but none held a candle to Kate and her girl. End of story.

When Kate got that phone call from her sister, her past started to emerge. We’d been dating four years, but I didn’t even know she had a sister. Emmy didn’t know she had an aunt, for God’s sake. But that was nothing compared with the fact that Emmy’s dad
wasn’t
dead. He was alive in Washington, where suddenly Kate was sending Emmy—not to her dad but to her aunt. Not for a week or two but for the whole summer. Not just for a visit but to participate in some backwoods faith healing ceremony that could emotionally scar Emmy. The girl was terrified. “I don’t understand,” I told Kate.

“You don’t have to, Spencer.” She was grading papers in my bed, naked, which normally I loved. We still met at my place between her classes, and the sex was still fantastic. She had the key. She’d stop by even when I couldn’t: to take naps, use my gym equipment, catch up on grading. I always knew when she’d been there because of her perfume. Sometimes she’d leave a piece of fruit for me on the kitchen table or in my bed.

“I seriously
don’t
understand you, Kate. What the hell? You can’t make Emmy go.”

She looked at me with her defiant eyes. “Are you going to stop me?”

“She’s not prepared for this type of change.”

“She agreed to go.” She’d wrapped a sheet around herself, but it was slipping. Or she was letting it. “I’m not forcing her.”

“You’re bulldozing her, Kate, and you
know
it.” Just fifteen minutes ago, her breasts were all over me, so why was I so desperate now for a peek? Was this what love did to a man? “I’ve never disagreed with you more.”

“This doesn’t really have to do with you.”

I should’ve been immune to that comment by then, but it was like a knife. “How could you let Emmy think her dad was dead?”

“I was protecting her. And this conversation is over.”

Emmy called me the night before she left for Washington to ask me to come over and help her get her mom out of the bathtub. It was a disturbing sight, to say the least: Emmy sitting on the bathroom floor, crying, and Kate in an empty bathtub, naked and shivering and staring off. Jesus fucking Christ. Life didn’t have to be this way.

Kate had had a similar breakdown once, but Emmy, thank God, hadn’t witnessed it. She thought her mom just had the flu. And I tried to never think about it. Two years ago, when I first proposed to Kate, she shot me down so quickly I thought maybe she really didn’t love me, even though by then she was telling me she did. I broke it off officially and stayed completely away. What else could I do? If Kate still wanted me in her life, she’d have to come to me. And boy, did she. I hadn’t asked for my key back. I found her at my place in my bed, naked, and sound asleep. We hadn’t spoken in a full month. I didn’t undress, but I climbed under the covers beside her. Of course I peeked at her body, which I’d missed terribly. She had two large bruises on her back. My first thought was to find the motherfucker who had done this to her, and I had to give myself a few minutes to calm down before I gently shook her awake. She jumped, then clung to me so tightly I almost couldn’t breathe. Crying, she begged me to forgive her and to never leave her. She didn’t backtrack and accept my marriage proposal, though. Emmy slept on my couch the next few nights, thinking her mom had the flu in my bedroom. Kate not only had bruises on her back but also had one on the front of her hip—the memory of which still makes me cringe—and on the insides of both her upper arms. Finally she confessed to sleeping with not just one man, but a few of the worst kind. She refused to give me names or addresses. She took the blame for the bruises, not going so far as to say she deserved them, but that she’d a
llowed
them. Whatever the hell that meant. I felt utterly helpless for the first time in my life. And so fucking, fucking frustrated. All I could do was refuse to make love with her, and she kept trying, until the bruises went completely away.

Kate and I will be flying north to Washington in a few hours, at dawn. Emmy has been there for two months now. Kate’s sister died yesterday while we were still en route from Europe to New York to Chicago to Sacramento. Kate kept calling frantically at every airport, but we didn’t make it in time. I watch Kate sleep. She wears my ring. She fell asleep reading a book, as usual, only this time she just pretended to read so I wouldn’t see her crying. Both utterly exhausted, we fought before going to bed. She decided at the last minute that she’d rather fly to Washington alone. But I knew if she did, she’d never return to me. She’d return to Sacramento with Emmy, but not to me. “We’re a family now, Kate.” She started to pull off the ring. “Don’t do that, baby. I worked too fucking hard to get that ring there.” We both had jet lag, and she had to be feeling a lot of guilt, not just sadness, about her sister. Not that she, the most stubborn woman on earth, talked to me about either. “I won’t let you go alone,” I said. “No way in hell.”

She’d confessed to me—during a previous argument, right after Emmy left—about being a truck stop hooker in Washington. The confession almost killed me, and it got me to thinking, instead of sleeping or eating. What had that time done to her? It made me sick. Her sexual complexity had intrigued me for four years. The dark side of it should’ve turned me off instead. A week after her confession, I asked her a second time to marry me. I told her about the house I was building us and the tickets to London.

We had a good time in Europe, after Kate quit being obstinate about money. She was like a kid at Disneyland seeing all the art, monuments, and writers’ houses. I was more thrilled by the continued sight of my ring on her finger. Put together, all those women before Kate weren’t as cultured—if that’s the right word—as she is. We made love a lot, during which she remained present, never detached, and still playful, even coy, and sexy as hell in the French lingerie she asked me to buy for her in Paris. It was the first thing she’d
ever
asked me to buy. I would’ve bought her the whole boutique if she had let me. I wondered if confessing her “dirty secret” to me had released her from it. I hoped so. She read me poems. She sometimes did this in Sac, but it felt more fitting in Europe. Every night I wanted to ask her if she would consider having my baby someday soon, after she let me pay to get her wisdom teeth extracted. I’m glad now, given her sister’s death, I waited. I didn’t even realize women in developed countries still died from having miscarriages. I haven’t slept all night. At first light we fly north into Kate’s past. I’m ready.

The Spokane airport is smaller than I expected. We rent a car. After a tussle with Kate, who wanted to pick an economy car with tiny tires, we end up with a Land Cruiser. She studies the complimentary map before we venture from the rental car parking lot. She doesn’t want to take I-90, the obvious route to her hometown. She shows me an alternative path. She says there’s a lake she wants to drive past. We’re briefly in pines, then in wheat fields for a while, until suddenly the landscape gets pretty damn desolate. Then even more so. “This area is called the scablands,” she says.

“No shit.”

There are cliffs and columns. Sagebrush and boulders. And an occasional lake. That’s it. No trees. Kate said eastern Washington looked different from western Washington—the Seattle of movies—but I didn’t picture this. Who would? We make it to her lake. She asks me to pull over. It’s a mineral lake, with suds and black mud. Ugly as hell. We get out of the car. It’s windy as hell and dusty as hell.

“My mom’s spirit departed from her body in this lake,” she says. “I saw it. I was nine.”

“What?” Is this the same woman who teaches rhetoric? She believes in visible spirits?

“My dad dragged her body home. I never forgave him.”

“Jesus, Kate.
What
?” I’m more than confused. Bewildered. She explains, or tries to, about the cultlike church of her childhood and her mom’s untreated cancer. I can’t even process it all. She says that Indians used to cure their wounded here. They believe the black mud is Coyote’s poop, which is the source of his power. When she was pregnant, she came here alone and smeared the mud on her belly to protect Emmy. I can’t picture Kate doing that.

We’re an hour late arriving in her hometown, which isn’t much of a town. The entire way she stared out the window and wiped her eyes. She directs me to the trailer park where Emmy has spent the summer. Kate’s been jealous of how close Emmy seemed to be getting with her aunt and uncle. I thought it was fantastic. Now I’m not so sure. How devastating for Emmy. I’ve never actually been
in
a trailer park before. We pull in front of her sister’s singlewide. What a long journey from the Mediterranean to here. Kate is shaken by the sight. And no wonder she argued that we didn’t need a high-class SUV. I should’ve listened. With Kate, unlike with most women I’ve dated, I have to worry about
not
impressing her with such things. The trailer has been well maintained structurally for what amounts to basically a plywood box, but it’s in no way attractive. Kate puts her head in her hands.

“I can’t do this,” she says. She looks back up at the trailer. “Oh, Beth.” Then she puts her head down in her lap.

I move her hair away from her neck and rest my hand there. She sits up. “I can’t do this, Spencer.” She looks at me. “Do you love me? I mean,
truly
love me?”

Insecurity is not a normal Kate emotion, or at least it’s not normal for Kate in California. It makes her seem years younger. “More than anything,” I say. “You know that.”

“No, I don’t.” Is she serious? Her eyes are huge with fear or maybe doubt. “You
shouldn’t
love me.”

“Why not? And too late.”

“I feel sick.” She holds her stomach. “I’m going to be sick. I can’t do this.”

She’s coming undone. I think of her in my bed with bruises. Or in the empty bathtub the night before Emmy left. She doesn’t break down in small ways or with much forewarning. If she breaks down here, she might not recover. It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to see how quickly this place is throwing Kate into turmoil.

“You can do this, baby.” I’m trying to assure myself as much as her. “We have to get Emmy.”

Her strength seems to return at the mention of her daughter. After taking a couple of deep breaths, she opens the vanity mirror on the visor and starts to fix her makeup.

Before she finishes, Emmy comes out of the not-so-well-maintained trailer next door. Kate doesn’t see her daughter. Emmy looks all grown up. Wow. And she holds the hand of a boy. Double wow. I point. Kate looks over. We both get out quickly to greet them. “Hey, kiddo,” I say, long before they make it to us. She lets go of the boy’s hand and runs toward me. Huge hug. Oh, Kate isn’t going to forgive her daughter for hugging me first.

“Mom,” Emmy says. She walks slowly toward her mom. I want to nudge her forward. She pulls away from her mom before Kate is ready to let her go. As Kate eyeballs the boy, her strength doubles. I wouldn’t want to be him. “Mom and Spencer,” Emmy says, “I want you to meet my best friend.” She motions for the boy to come closer. He looks scared, but he’s trying not to show it. He’s a good-looking kid. Mexican, maybe. Emmy takes his arm and brings him forward. “This is Reuben,” she says proudly. “My best friend
and
my boyfriend.”

To quote the youngest guy on our steady crew, “Oh, snap.”

I want to say, “Good for you, Emmy,” but I wouldn’t dare in front of Kate. When I saw Emmy off at the Sac airport, I told her to have an adventure this summer.

“Nice to meet you, Reuben.” I take the boy’s hand. He has a firm handshake, makes eye contact. It’s been my experience that Mexican kids, in general, not the gangbangers, are more respectful than white ones.

“And you, Spencer,” he says. “Kate.” He holds out his hand to her. She takes it.

“Mom, what is that?” Emmy points at my ring on Kate’s finger. But she doesn’t give her mom time to answer. “Oh, Spencer.
Really?
When? Why didn’t you call? Congratulations.”

Why is she not looking at her mom?

“I guess we’ve both been keeping secrets,” Kate says.

When it comes to Kate, that’s the understatement of the century.

Kate stares at that poor boy so hard it makes me nervous for him.

Emmy takes Reuben’s hand, and then she says rather flatly to her mom, “Uncle Matt is at the funeral home. They moved Aunt Beth’s body from Spokane early this morning.”

Oh, Emmy. She’s blaming her mom for this one.

“Would you like to come inside?” she asks us, as if—as if a hundred things. She’s been through a lot this summer. Too much. She’s bracing for more. Reuben holds the door for us, but he doesn’t come inside. Emmy goes to him. They whisper. He excuses himself to us and leaves. Kate looks around cautiously, as if afraid to take it all in at once. The trailer is even more ugly on the inside, but tidy, except for some stains on the carpet. “Just don’t go into the master bedroom,” Emmy says, voice shaking. Her new braveness seems to have walked out the door with Reuben. “It’s a wreck.” She swallows hard. “Uncle Matt’s brother tore up the carpet.”