The Road to Grace (The Walk) (8 page)

McKale climbed down from the tree. “If you must know, it’s my mom.”

“I thought you said you threw away all her pictures,” I said, naïvely pleased to have caught McKale in a lie.

Her eyes welled up with tears. “You are so dumb,” she said. She ran into her house leaving me alone in her backyard holding the picture of Pamela and wondering what I’d done wrong.

With that memory replaying in my mind, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

I woke with a start. I hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but after three nights of sleeping on hard ground, I was out before I knew it. I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost a quarter to nine. I groaned. “Pamela.”

I went to the bathroom and washed my face, then went outside and knocked on Pamela’s door. She answered immediately. “I wondered if you’d changed your mind.”

“No. Sorry, I fell asleep. Are you ready?”

She had probably been waiting for several hours, but she only nodded. “I’m ready.” She stepped out, shutting the door behind her. “Thank you.”

Wall Drug is not the single store it started as—it’s now a long row of buildings that look like a cross between a strip mall and a movie studio’s back lot western town. Wall Drug’s restaurant was located near the middle of the complex.

I held the door for Pamela as we walked into a large dining room separated into two eating areas by an open kitchen and a long row of cafeteria-style tray rails.

The seating area closest to the street had an ice cream bar and pastry counter with pie, brownies, and other confections, including a platter of their famous “free for veterans” cake doughnuts.

The wood-panel walls were hung with cowboy art: paintings of cowboys, horses, and Native Americans. They were all for sale, which was true of pretty much everything in the building.

There was only one couple in the dining room. Pamela followed me over to a table in the southwest corner of the room—opposite the other diners.

“We can sit here,” I said. “What do you want to eat?”

“Whatever you get is fine,” Pamela replied.

After looking over the hand-scrawled menu board, I ordered a couple of Cokes, two cups of chicken noodle soup, and French dip sandwiches. I paid for the meal and went back to the table where Pamela was sitting quietly. For a moment we just looked at each other, then I clasped my hands on the table in front of me. “What did you want to talk about?”

Pamela took a deep breath. “I’m not sure where to begin.”

After a moment I said, “Why don’t you begin by telling me why you abandoned your daughter?” My words sounded harsher than I had intended.

She nodded. “All right.” She looked down for a long time. When she looked back up at me, her eyes had a dark sadness to them. “I want you to understand something. What I’m going to tell you isn’t an excuse. It’s a reason. If I could do things differently, I would.” She looked into my eyes to see if I understood.

“Okay,” I said.

She settled a little into her chair. “I should start at the beginning.” She took another deep breath. “I was too young when I married Sam. I was only eighteen. Way too young. My life at home was so terrible, and I suppose I was just looking for a way to get out. My parents were always fighting. They were always screaming and shouting at each other. Sometimes their fights would turn violent. Once the neighbors called the police, but when they arrived, my parents just yelled at them. The police left shaking their heads. It was madness.”

“Were they ever violent with you?” I asked.

“My mother hit me a few times. But seeing them hurt each other was worse. I used to hide in my closet with
my hands over my ears so I wouldn’t hear them. But of course I heard every word. I always thought it was my fault. I know that’s not rational, but children aren’t terribly rational.

“This pattern went on my whole childhood. I don’t know why they didn’t get counseling or just leave each other. They were just sick, I guess. Or their relationship was. It was their cycle. But I never got used to it.

“When I was old enough, I got a job waitressing at a pancake house. I worked as much as I could, and when I wasn’t working I’d hang out with my friends. We would stay out really late, and I would sleep over at their houses. For months I barely went home. I hadn’t really run away from home, I just stopped going there.

“The first time I went home after I’d been away for more than a week, I thought my parents would be upset and worried about me. But it was more like I had never been gone. My father wasn’t there, and my mom didn’t even ask where I’d been.

“Once I graduated from high school, I stopped going home at all. I spent most of my time with one of the other waitresses at the restaurant. Her name was Claire. She was a friend from school and had helped get me the job in the first place. We’d work until closing, then we’d go out to parties, then sleep at her place. Eventually I just moved in with her.

“That’s where I met Sam. He was Claire’s cousin. Sam was a lot older than me. Eight years older.” She shook her head. “He was only twenty-six, but he seemed so old back then. I guess compared to me, he was. I had only known him a few weeks when he asked me out.

“He was different than the boys I’d been hanging out with. They were still kids. Sam was older. More mature.
On our third date, he asked me to marry him. I said yes. I wasn’t sure if it was right, but it’s like they say—a drowning person isn’t picky about which lifeboat she climbs into. I wasn’t really sure about anything at the time except that I liked him. And if I was going to get married, I thought that marrying someone older would be safer.

“I didn’t know until two days before our wedding that Sam had already been married once before. I guess his ex was a pretty strong-willed woman, and he couldn’t take it, so he had the marriage annulled six weeks after their wedding. I found out later that he’d told Claire that his next wife would be someone younger. Someone who would obey him. I guess that’s why he married me. I was pretty submissive. I did whatever he told me to do.

“So we got married. Our wedding day was the happiest day of my life. I was so hopeful. Then, on our honeymoon, Sam told me to stop using birth control. He said he wanted a baby right away. He didn’t so much tell me he wanted one, as he demanded one—as if my feelings on the matter were irrelevant. We had never even discussed children before then. I told him that I didn’t think I was old enough to have a baby. I still felt like a kid myself. The truth is, I didn’t even know if I wanted one. I didn’t want anyone to have to live a life like mine.

“But Sam was older than me and he said he didn’t want to be an old man when his kids were in high school. I knew in my heart that I wasn’t ready. But Sam didn’t care what I thought. He had this stupid line he’d heard somewhere—‘they’re not your feelings, they’re your failings.’ He just got meaner every time I refused. We started fighting about it almost all the time. I couldn’t stand it. It was like we had become my parents.

“Then everything came to a climax. After months of
fighting, Sam gave me an ultimatum. He said if I wouldn’t have his baby, he would find someone who would. He gave me until his birthday to make up my mind.”

As Pamela spoke I realized that in spite of all the times I’d seen McKale’s father, I really didn’t know him. To me he was a laid-back, easygoing guy, who worked a lot and listened to vinyl records when he wasn’t working, which was partially why McKale had always been with me. I wasn’t sure that I believed everything that Pamela was saying, but it was clear to me that she did.

“Sam said that he would leave you?” I asked.

Pamela’s eyes teared up. She nodded. “More than once. I was devastated. I don’t even think it was about the baby anymore; it was about controlling me. He was good at punishing me. At first he was passive-aggressive. He would go days without speaking to me. I was always more needy than him, so after a day I would be begging him to talk to me—to love me. Then he began treating me like a child. One night he said he was going to spank me. I thought he was joking. But he wasn’t. He made me go over his knee and he spanked me until I cried. It was so humiliating. I felt like a child again.”

Pamela suddenly started crying and I noticed that the diners at the other table were looking at us. I waited for Pamela to gain her composure. As we sat there, the counter bell rang. The woman at the counter said in a bright voice, “Your order’s up.”

Pamela was dabbing her eyes with a paper napkin. “I’ll get that,” I said. I walked up to the counter, got our tray, and brought it back to the table.

By the time I was seated, Pamela had settled some. “Do you want to eat or go on?” she asked.

“Go on,” I said. “So why didn’t you just leave him?”

“Would you have left your wife?” she asked.

“McKale wasn’t abusive.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know why. I didn’t really think of him as abusive. At least not then. To me, abuse was when you had bruises and broken bones, not just a broken heart.” She looked at me. “I don’t know. I guess you just have to go through it to understand. When people are in abusive situations, they measure things in contrasts. As much as Sam hurt me, leaving him would be even more painful. Besides, part of me always felt that I deserved to be treated poorly. It’s what I knew. I was always trying to earn somebody’s love.

“The thing is, I knew he would win. I knew, in the end, I would have to do what he said.

“I spent the next few days talking myself into it—telling myself what a good idea it was to have a baby and how great it would be to have a family. Or I’d tell myself, maybe once the baby came I’d feel differently, or what if I couldn’t even get pregnant and all this pain was for nothing? I finally decided that giving in would be my birthday present to him.

“I knew that it was wrong—that I wasn’t even close to being ready to be a mother. But there was nowhere else to go.

“On Sam’s birthday I got up and made him breakfast and brought it out on a tray. Underneath his coffee cup I put a note that said, ‘YES.’

“He looked up at me with this triumphant smile and said, ‘Then let’s get started.’”

Pamela was shaking her head. “Of course I got pregnant right away with McKale. I don’t get it. People pray and beg God for a baby and never have one, and here I am hoping I won’t get pregnant and I’m pregnant immediately.

“I was terrified. Sam just kept telling me that everything would be fine—that being a mother was a natural part of womanhood.” Pamela grimaced. “As if he knew anything about being a woman.” She looked into my eyes. “No matter what they say, it’s not always a natural thing—at least not for everyone. After she was born I remember sitting in bed holding this beautiful little baby and thinking that I was supposed to be feeling something magical and wondering what was wrong with me. I never should have had a baby until I was ready. It wasn’t fair to McKale. It wasn’t fair to me.”

Pamela wiped her eyes. “I felt insanely guilty that I didn’t connect with her. Truthfully, I resented her. And I hated myself for resenting her.

“Of course, I couldn’t tell Sam any of this. I tried once and he turned on me so fiercely, I was afraid he was going to hurt me.” Growing up, I had seen Sam blow up a few times so I knew he was capable of extreme rage. “He told me that I was just selfish.”

“What did you say to that?”

Pamela bowed her head a little. “I told him he was right.”

Neither of us spoke for a while. She was spent, and I wasn’t sure what to say. After a while she said, “Do you mind if I eat something?”

I realized that she probably hadn’t eaten much for several days. “No. Of course not.”

We both ate. Pamela wolfed down her sandwich, looking slightly embarrassed to be eating so quickly. When she’d finished the sandwich, she started on the soup, first with a spoon, then lifting the bowl.
She must have been starving
, I thought.

When she had finished everything she apologized. “I’m sorry. I haven’t eaten for a while.”

“No, I’m sorry, I should have let you eat. Would you like something else? Some pie?”