They Almost Always Come Home (3 page)

No, I think I’ll spend the day wringing my hands over my AWOL husband.

Did he even dip his canoe paddle into his beloved Canadian waters? The park rangers say he checked in or logged in or whatever wilderness adventurers do. He didn’t log out. That’s not required, apparently. Maybe someone should rethink that detail.

The view from our bedroom window is of a normal world. It stings my eyes. The neighborhood, green and flourishing, sounds noisy already with lawn mowers and kids on skate- boards. I clamp one hand over my mouth to suppress my rant against normal.

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CYNTHIA RUCHTI

Greg’s Cherokee is gone from the remote lot near the

Beaverhouse put-in point, according to reports. What does that mean?

Can’t be a good sign.

I think it would be smart to make people check back in

with the ranger station just to say, “Great trip. Caught lots of fish. Nasty portage on Half Mile Point, isn’t it? Say, if the wife calls, tell her I’m on my way home.”

I can’t be the first woman to wonder.

If signing out were a requirement, would Greg have stopped

to do so? Or would he have been in such a hurry he’d forget? What or who would make him neglect a thing like that?

Who? I should wash out my mouth with soap for voicing

such slander. Greg Holden and another woman? Ridiculous. Not on his radar screen. He’s the poster boy for faithfulness. Why is that not enough for me?

I wander from bedroom to kitchen to family room, then

open the sliding doors and slip out to the only place where I can breathe these days—the screen porch. Don’t ask me why. Maybe I think this little slice of suburban nature anchors me closer to answers. Maybe I’m drawing some kind of warped comfort from the fact that if Greg’s still alive but lost, he’s look- ing into the same stratosphere. He’s breathing this same mix of oxygen and carbon dioxide and whatever.

I drop into one of the swivel-rocker patio chairs and lean

back as though I’m about to undergo a root canal.
If he’s still
alive
. Somebody stop me from thinking that line again.

It’s not that I haven’t prayed. I’m one of the prayer chain

coordinators at church, for Pete’s sake. I believe in the power of prayer. Well, you know what I mean. I believe God is powerful and moves mountains when we pray.

But this is different.

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They Almost Always Come Home

I can’t put two sentences together that sound at all prayer- like. For three days now, all I’ve managed is
Oh, Lord God!
or
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!
or
What am I going to do? What am I going to
do?
repeated
ad nauseam
.

Mylanta helps the
nauseam
part. I’m smart enough to know that buckets of coffee on an empty stomach form an invitation for trouble. I don’t want to know my blood pressure readings. The pounding at my temples and the ache in the back of my skull tell me the numbers aren’t pretty.

A bird sings from one of the trees in the backyard. I want to shoot it from its sassy perch.

How does one go about inducing a therapeutic coma? Is it so wrong to want to sleep through this? I’ll deal with it eventu- ally, whatever the outcome. But could I skip this middle part? The not knowing. The wait-torture. The imagination that is so wildly fertile right now, Miracle-Gro has nothing on me. I’m halfway out of my skin before I realize the apparition standing in the doorway from the family room to the screen porch is Jenika.

“Thought I might find you here,” she says. I can’t even find me here. How can she?

She drops into the companion chair to mine, the one Greg prefers. “Any word?”

If she weren’t more sister than friend, I’d shove those words back down her throat. She must read my nonanswer as a clear response. She’s good at that. Without waiting for me to elabo- rate, Jenika slips out of her chair and kneels at my feet. Taking my worthless hands in hers, she rubs the back of them with her thumbs. Does she know some secret pressure point lodged under the skin? Will this ease the cramping in my belly that has nothing to do with coffee? Will it relieve the pain digging its claws into the mangled flesh of my heart?

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CYNTHIA RUCHTI

A pressure point? Of sorts. It’s the trigger for the tears that

haven’t fallen until now.

Jen could teach Greg a thing or two about friendship. I

wanted him to be a friend. All he knew how to be was a lov- ing, tenacious husband. And father. A prince of a guy . . . in everyone else’s eyes.

Long ago I learned to hide my tears from Greg. They made

his frustration meter peak. He wanted to fix the tears, or me.

“I’m crying for you, you big, dumb jerk!”

Jen looks up. “For me?”

The first words I produce in Jen’s presence are harsh and

ugly and not even directed to her. “Sorry.” “You okay, Libby?”

“Never . . . better.” I hiccup the words.

She collects the tear-soaked tissues from my lap—now that’s

a true friend—deposits them on the pine TV tray disguised as a lamp table, and hands me a bottle of water. Where’d she get that? And where’d the tissues come from?

I take a sip of the icy water, surprised I remember how to

swallow, then hold the bottle against my forehead between my eyes. Jen waits.

I’m a wounded toddler, my normal breathing interrupted

by sporadic sniff-sniffs. I may have ruined my sinuses forever. My eyes are hot hockey pucks stuck to the front of my face. Still, Jen waits.

“Sorry about the waterworks.”

“Are you kidding?” She scoots closer in the chair she’s

reclaimed. Our knees almost touch. “You needed to do that. It was an honor to be present when it happened.”

I hold a degree from Self-Pity U. She’s working on her mas-

ter’s from, well, the Master.

“Can I get you something to eat?” she asks. “I brought

chicken salad in cream puff shells. Nothing too heavy.” She

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They Almost Always Come Home

digs into the soft-sided cooler she must have carried in with her. “And melon cubes.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“And my chocolate pudding cake.”

“Okay.” The speed with which I deliver that single word makes us both giggle. Just a little. Nothing dishonoring to the crisis.

Enough to take some pressure off the aneurysm forming in my brain.

“Jen?”

“What, hon?”

“Did Greg . . . did he say anything to you . . . or to Brent . . . about . . . about leaving me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I mean, it’s possible that he—”

“Are you out of your mind?” That’s my Jen. Warm-hearted comforter one minute. Truth-teller the next. “I told the cops the same thing. It’s a ridiculous notion from the pit of—” “Wait a minute. You talked to the police?”

She stops uncovering plastic containers of food. “You didn’t know that? Standard procedure, I suppose, to take statements from friends and neighbors.”

“My neighbors?”

“That bothers you? Aren’t you grateful the police are
work- ing on this?”

Since when does chocolate smell like handcuffs? “Jen, they questioned you?”

“Well, not
questioned
as in
interrogated
.” She’s back to plating food as if her news is of no more consequence than the results of the local spelling bee.

I lick a smear of fudge frosting from the edge of the offered paper plate before I remember I’m not hungry and may never be hungry again. “What, then?”

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CYNTHIA RUCHTI

“Libby, it’s no big deal. They’re trying to get all the details

they can and follow up on any leads.”

“What leads?”

“They don’t have any. That’s what’s so frustrating for

everybody.”

Grinding between my back teeth are the words you-and-

the-whole-blessed-rest-of-the-world-have-no-idea-what-it- means-to-be-frustrated. I swallow that sour sentence and ask, “What kind of questions?”

“They asked, ‘Did you notice anything unusual with Greg’s

demeanor before he left for his trip? How long have you known the two of them as a couple?’ ”

“How have they been getting along?” I offer.

“That too.”

“What did you say?”

She sighs and turns from tending the food to face me. “I

told the officer it wouldn’t be fair to paint you as the perfect couple.”

“That’s a bit of an understatement.”

Jen hands me a fork, as if I’ll use it. “But I also told him that

your troubles were survivable. Nothing serious.”

Am I grateful or disturbed by that answer? Can a person

be both? I wouldn’t call our differences nothing serious. I’m having a hard time liking the man I’m supposed to love. I’m angry that he left me when I was about to leave him. That’s not serious?

“So, I’m no longer a suspect?”

“ ‘Person of interest’ is what they call it now.”

When I drop my chin and throw my shoulders back, she

adds, “Kidding, Libby! I’m just kidding. Sorry if that was tasteless.”

“I’m not amused.”

“I see that.”

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They Almost Always Come Home

Neither of us speaks for a while. She takes a bite of chicken salad. I worry my cake into a puddle of moist crumbs. “Are Zack and Alex coming home, Lib?” “They just started their remote trek.”

“Oh, no.” She drops her hands into her lap, jostling the plate resting there.

“My sons couldn’t have gotten summer jobs at the local Dairy Queen and Wal-Mart. Not my boys. The remote mountains of Chile. ‘Great opportunity, Mom. Imagine how impressive this gig will look on our résumés. You can’t beat an international experience, Mom.’ And their dad and I said yes. What were we thinking?”

“You were thinking of affording your children opportuni- ties of a lifetime.”

I put down the cake plate. What’s the point? “Now they’re a trillion miles from home. And for the next week, they’ll be so deep in the Chilean outback—”

“That’s Australia.”

“Whatever. They’re beyond contact of any kind.” “Even for an emergency?”

“That was part of the allure. ‘Cool, Mom. Research assis- tants so far from civilization, we have to cut our own trails. Ultimate adventure and college credit too. Sweet!’ ”

“Can we ask to have someone sent out to get them? Or at least get word to them?”

“What word? That their dad figured out a way to leave me and still save face? That Greg took a permanent detour on his way home? We don’t know anything to tell them except that we don’t know anything.”

“Won’t they want to come home?”

“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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A
pparently, 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.