Owen's Daughter (2 page)

I do forgive you, Daddy, when it comes to you bailing out on Mama. I understand why you left. But the part I have trouble forgiving is that you left
me
, too. Mama’s no easier to put up with these days. When Howie, the real estate baron with the blond toupee, fled Colorado, Mama bought a plane ticket to Phoenix, pounded a “For Sale” sign into the lawn, left me ten thousand dollars, the keys to the Mercedes, and a note that said, “This ought to get you through school. Try not to get pregnant.”

She headed for the airport, and adios, childhood.

Which is my way of telling you that you’re a grandpa, and that Mama made up all those updates about me being in college because she never could face the truth. My daughter Gracie is nearly four years old now. I haven’t seen her for some time. I’m going to miss her birthday. No family visits are allowed at Cottonwoods, plus Rocky (her dad) is on the pro rodeo circuit, so he’s always traveling. All my life I was good at things. I broke barrel racing records in my age division. I got an A in chemistry. My science teachers all told me I should go to medical school. I chose early acceptance to Stanford. I could have been a large animal vet.

But I had hormones, and those eggs that drop like a lottery ball every month. I got pregnant.

Rocky and I did the “right” thing and got married. I tried to make dinners with the four food groups, and learn to clean house and be a good mom. Life in a doublewide just wasn’t for me. At first it was pain pills for my broken elbow. Then it was a glass of vodka for me, because that makes a colicky baby totally tolerable. Rocky drank all the time, so why shouldn’t I? Then it was a countdown to five P.M. before I hauled out the vodka, mixed with Gracie’s grape juice, not a bad taste, really. From time to time I worked a waitress job. All that free alcohol made me a better waitress. Fifty-dollar-bill tips, and once I got a free ski weekend, even. Other times my tips were a handful of oxy, which from the start made me feel like a better version of me. Like I could do figure eights on ice cubes. Pretty soon I was snorting it three times a day and powering down the drinks. Rocky loved me partying with him. When we weren’t partying, though, marriage wasn’t much of anything. I moved out and took Gracie with me. Everything seemed manageable, and we’d even started sharing custody. Then I got in a wreck with Gracie in the car. She was fine, but I got arrested for DWI and a bunch of other stuff, old news in New Mexico. The judge was up for reappointment and wanted to make an example out of me. He said he’d drop the felony child endangerment if I went to rehab. Otherwise, it was straight to jail, but that wasn’t the worst thing.

He gave Rocky full custody. No matter what I said, he wouldn’t budge.

Getting sober is way harder than I imagined. Not even three months in, this cook who had a crush on me smuggled in a twelve-ounce bottle of Mexican vanilla extract filled with Jack Daniel’s. I chugged the whole thing and ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning, where I had a seizure and had to be put on dialysis. I was afraid I’d get kicked out of rehab. Never occurred to me
I could’ve died
until I was back in the world. Are you sober, Daddy? Living under some freeway overpass? Down in Florida working on a fishing boat? I haven’t seen or heard from you in ten years, but I feel closer to you than ever, now that we have common ground beyond our love for horses, namely drinking. Speaking of Lightning, he is fourteen. Sometimes I think I should sell him, but what if he missed me as much as I’d miss him? Every night here I shut my eyes and see him so clear. I smell alfalfa, hear his deep, whispery nicker. I feel his warm breath against my neck and tears run down my face like one of those chains that make music just from rain and I want to be out of this place so bad.

You I can’t picture at all.

They’re big on religion here. I ask questions nobody can answer. If God created humans in his image, why are humans such fuck-ups? Does that mean God is also a drunk, a bad parent, and an idiot?

When I think about Step Five, admitting to our wrongdoings, et cetera, I wonder about you, Daddy. Maybe you’re the one who needs to work that step. I was a spoiled rotten child, and I used that to my advantage, playing you and Mama against each other because it helped me get my way, whether it meant overpriced movie theater candy or an electric guitar I played twice and then abandoned. But I was a
child
. Things got worse after you left, and I’m positive that’s where I started going downhill. I am working hard on changing my life. It’s taking
a while
. Duncan says that every day is just one day to get through, and worrying how long it’ll take is “stinkin’ thinkin’.” Yeah, but when you’re a hundred miles from a Walgreens and sitting in group therapy with people you wouldn’t otherwise give the time of day, it’s hard not to dwell on the past. Daddy, I apologize for using passive-aggressive behavior on you. Maybe I learned it from Mama, but I’m the one who did it. I guess I thought getting whatever I wanted would make up for all the fighting you two did. I was mad at Mama for kicking you out.

But I was furious
at you leaving
me
.

You could be in Timbuktu for all I know. Maybe you have another family, with better kids. Life goes on. But even when I was hammered drunk or high on the pill
du jour
, not one day went by I didn’t think of you. And miss you. I don’t care why you disappeared on me. I love you anyway. Wherever you are, I hope you are doing all right, staying sober, and won’t think too poorly of me for turning out like this. I hope you got that sheep ranch you always talked about, and that you are flush with friends. Out riding fences at sunrise, your favorite time of day. I hope that sometimes you think about me. Even all messed up I am still your little girl. Remember me sitting in front of you on your horse? You reciting cowboy poetry? I loved those times.

The future’s up for grabs, but nothing will ever change the past.

Love,

Sara Kay

P.S. I go by Skye now.

P.P.S. I still love you, Daddy.

P.P.P.S. Gracie is adorable.

Chapter 1

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Seven
a.m.,
59 degrees

People say there is nothing more romantic than a New Mexico sunset. Clearly those people have never witnessed a New Mexico sunrise. The sky starts out purple and then is streaked with gold and pink before blue starts to sneak in. The colors of the sky thread through tent rocks, fairy chimneys, and hoodoos. The rock formations could only be the work of a drunken, celestial hand. Skye will never forget them rising out of the desert floor. Or the lake-blue sky overhead with the cottony clouds lined up like soldiers. When she’s back in the world, gainfully employed and reunited with Gracie, this place will haunt her dreams.

For the last nine months as she tried to get sober, the rocks were the first things she saw every morning. In high school her science teacher taught that the rocks near the Four Corners were made up of volcanic ash, earthquakes, and time. Some, like Shiprock, which is miles away from Cottonwoods Rehab but visible in all kinds of weather, loom taller than skyscrapers. Minerals and weather can’t explain everything. Over and over she listened to Duncan tell her the story of how his people—the Anasazi/Navajo/Diné—came to earth:

A long time ago, Anasazi people lived here, growing the three sisters: beans, corn, and squash. They collected their water from the rivers and plucked piñon nuts from trees by the thousands. Life was good for the People. They prospered. But there came a day when enemies arrived, and surrounded the Anasazi. Having no understanding of war, and no weapons, the People prayed to the gods for safety. And they prayed so intensely that the gods pushed Shiprock up out of the earth, and the women and children, the old men, too, were safe on top of the seven-thousand-foot tall mountain.
Ah-sheh-heh’!
Thank you! The enemies, seeing they’d angered the gods, fled.

But once a war has begun, there is no going back to peace.

Life on the mountain returned to normal. Every day the young men of the tribe climbed down a rocky path to tend crops and fetch water. One day,
aieee
!
Ne-ol
, a storm came. Lightning struck the dry piñon trees below. One cannot eat fruit from a lightning-struck tree without getting sick. The lightning caught a tree on fire. The fire spread to the crops,
aieee
! And lightning struck again, destroying the path the men climbed up and down every day. The men were down below, watching as lightning sheared off the hoodoo, trapping the women, children, and elders atop the peak.
Ah-ho-tai
, they said. This is how it is. There was no time to be sad.
Be-ke-a-ti
, the men talked it over. Only a shaman is allowed to touch rock struck by lightning. The men,
ta-bilh
, began the arduous process of creating another path. Cutting rock takes time, so long that
those ones
, the women, children, and elders waiting atop, starved to death. The People were heartbroken. They forbade anyone to climb the mountain for fear of disturbing the
ch’iid.i
, ghosts.

All Skye had to do was catch sight of Shiprock and the story went right through her heart. Maybe it’s a fable. Maybe like all of Duncan’s stories he was speaking figuratively, but she feels a kinship with the Anasazi on the morning she’s leaving Cottonwoods for the larger world. For months her known path has been cut off deliberately, but if she stays here, she’s locking herself away from everything. Isn’t that a kind of starvation?

A month ago, March, with snow still on the ground, Duncan told her, “It’s time. Go out into the world now.”

Skye shook her head, no. She was sure he was wrong.

“You have to try someday,” Duncan said.

Today might not be the best day, either, but she has to try.

Since dawn, she’s stood in the shade of the porch waiting on her ride, arranged three weeks ago via text messages and e-mails. Rocky Elliot, her soon-to-be ex-husband, also the father of her daughter, Gracie, isn’t due until ten
a.m.
,
but she can’t go back inside Cottonwoods because what if she decides she can’t leave after all? So she’s waiting here on the
portal
,
which is what folks call patios here. She’s slathered on sunscreen and is wearing her Ed Hardy hoodie with the
Love Kills
tattoo design on the front that doesn’t seem funny anymore. Yesterday in her last group, Duncan said, “Skye, this is the beginning of the story that you get to write.”

“Yeah, right,” she said. “Once upon a time there was this twenty-two-year-old alcoholic, pill-popping mother who turned into a sober, princess-perfect mother and lived the greatest life ever without alcohol or drugs. Then, one day, relief arrived like a bus that got her through the roughest day: six OxyContin and a greyhound, vodka and grapefruit juice on the rocks.”

Duncan, the dark skin over his Indian cheekbones, the white teeth in the wide, generous mouth, smiled. “A story can start in the ugliest place on earth. Where it goes from there is up to you.”

The world is a sharp-edged place filled with temptation. Without drinking or pills, there’s nothing between her tender skin and the world.

Skye was delivered to Cottonwoods with a blood alcohol level of 0.29, which is a hair from unconscious. At the time it felt like the only way she could cross that boundary from the world she knew to what had to be. Today she’s walking out purely under the power of her plain self, with the help of her so-called Higher Power. She will not drink. She will not take so much as an aspirin.

So
One Day at a Time
says.

Skye had this idea that rehab would restore her to the girl she was at seventeen, but that person was
vamanos
, gone, as out of reach as Shiprock. After the morning hike one day, she started walking toward Shiprock, just to see the mountain closer up, but the path was like running in a dream. No number of steps seemed to close the distance between that mountain and her. Once upon a time, she was Sara Kay Sampson, the smartest girl in the class. While the rest of the kids went to parties, got drunk, and hooked up, Skye took the long view—veterinary school—and earned all A’s, maintaining perfect attendance. Other than riding horses, she didn’t mingle or make friends. There would be plenty of time for partying after college.

On her application essay to Stanford, she listed all her hard-earned accomplishments: 4.5 GPA. Captain of the debate team. Add in her 13.8-second barrel race win in girls twelve and under, Miss Colorado Rodeo Queen, junior counselor at YWCA horse camp. They couldn’t say no. They said yes.

Right before her seventeenth birthday, she met Rocky.

Pre-Rocky, Sara loved only her leopard Appaloosa gelding, Lightning, the spotted horse she had trained from a colt. Maybe Lightning was her first addiction, when her dad left. The intoxicating smell of horse sweat, learning to trick ride—moves like spin-the-horn and the hippodrome—breaking records fearlessly. She couldn’t get enough of the thrill. As a child her heart was big enough to hold only two men, her gelding and her dad. For a while after Dad bailed, the horse filled the void. Then Mama began marrying whatever man could keep her in style. The first one was the nicest, Klaus Krieger. He loved how smart Sara was and gave her a hundred-dollar bill for every A she brought home. He was stunned at his luck marrying Mama. When he died it hurt so much that Sara took one of the painkillers Lightning needed when he came up lame, just to see if it might erase the heartache. She was amazed at how well bute canceled the pain. Funny jokes became fall-down hilarious. Getting bucked off was nothing. Sara figured that was the moment she turned into a substance abuser, when that numbing blur became the goal.