The Secrets She Keeps (39 page)

There are some trips a person needs to make alone, though, and she hopes the four of them will turn back after a few miles, when they are reassured that she is all right.

She is all right. It is all coming back to her. Not only the road and the feel of the wheels beneath her and the steering wheel under her hand, but his sweet scrunched face and wrinkled feet and his warm curved head with the thin, pulsing skin of his fontanel. That’s what Ellen told her it was called, and Nash had thought it a very beautiful word, a gentle, delicate word for the way the small bony plates moved and shifted, the fault lines between them fusing and growing whole.

She cannot imagine whom this tiny baby she has loved her whole life long will have turned out to be. Before her search, the last she’d heard of him was when Stuart Marcel’s sister tried to claim the infant shortly after he was born. Eve Ellings had stepped in on Lilly’s behalf. The father was a quick fling when Stuart was out of town, and Eve—a true friend, as Lilly had said—made that clear. Now it seems he landed all right, into the loving home of Doris and Ned McKinley of Missoula, Montana. What the years brought the child, though, Nash can scarcely imagine. She only knows that on the phone, Michael McKinley’s voice was deep and curious and kind, maybe kind enough to even forgive her. She knows that the time is right to ask, anyway. Time to forgive herself, too, for her part in the events of those days. The horses came back, and, just as Jack promised so long ago, she saw their beauty again, when she was up to her elbows in soapsuds. She has been changed, and been changed again. Her story,
the
story, is a perfect, perfectly tumultuous, intended circle.

On the seat beside Nash is the photo she will bring Michael McKinley, the only photo of his mother she could find, beautiful Lilly in her hotel scene in
The Changelings
. It’s as if Lilly is riding with her. Nash turns on the radio but can’t get any station out here in the desert, not even the one with that silly Dr. Yabba Yabba Love, who thinks she has answers to the human heart. If Nash knows anything, it’s this: You could pile up every book and every article and every radio show by every know-it-all who claims to have love figured out, and you could dump them all in the Truckee River. No one knows how to do it, only that we must do it. Love has always been a mystery and it will always be a mystery. It is wild and thundering, a beast of nature. You could try to capture it and sort it and tame it, but it would just keep on being wild and thundering, a beast of nature, through each and every hard and glorious eon, until the very last one.

Nash decides the silence is fitting. The silence is reverence for that very fact.

Still, a person can take silence for only so long. And reverence, too, for that matter. Life is too beautiful and too terrible and too damn short not to celebrate every moment you can. As soon as she sees Thomas’s car pull back and then turn away, going back down its own road, she pops in that CD, the one that poor Deke Donaldson didn’t know was still in the player when he sold her this car. She chuckles at what she got away with. She turns it up. The bass thumps, and so does Nash’s old heart, and the road goes on, and the story continues.

For my sister

Acknowledgments

I owe a debt of gratitude to Bill and Sandra McGee’s wonderful book
The Divorce Seekers,
which was an invaluable resource for information about the Nevada divorce ranches. Bill was the head dude wrangler at The Flying W, and his book is a treasure if only for the photos alone—images of cowboys, the ranch, old Reno, and mule-sipping socialites in the midst of their six-week cure. Steve Yurich, a regional forester and my father-in-law, also served as inspiration for the bureau men in the book. While he wasn’t here to advise, I hope he would have appreciated their portrayal.

Much thanks and appreciation, too, to my long-time agent and friend, Ben Camardi, and to my editor, Shauna Summers—editor, ally, and lovely human being. Thank you, as well, to the fabulous Random House team, especially Jennifer Hershey, Marietta Anastassatos, Nancy Delia, Virginia Norey, Kristin Fassler, Maggie Oberrender, Michelle Jasmine, and Sarah Murphy.

Love and gratitude, as ever, to my family—my parents, and the larger clan. Special love, love, and love to my sweeties—my daughter, Sam Bannon; my son, Nick Bannon; and my husband, John Yurich. Thanks for bringing the joy, guys.

by Deb Caletti

He’s Gone

The Secrets She Keeps

About the Author

D
EB
C
ALETTI
is an award-winning author and National Book Award finalist. Her many books for young adults include
The Nature of Jade,
Stay
,
The Last Forever
, and
Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
, winner of the Washington State Book Award, the PNBA Best Book Award, and a finalist for the California Young Reader Medal and the PEN USA Award. Her first book for adults,
He’s Gone,
was released by Random House in 2013, followed by
The Secrets She Keeps.
Deb lives with her family in Seattle.

A Conversation with Deb Caletti

Random House Reader’s Circle:
What gave you the idea to write a story centered on the “Reno cure” and divorce ranches of the mid-twentieth century? Your portrayal of Tamarosa Ranch and the women who stayed there is so vivid, dazzling, and authentic. How did you go about bringing this place and this era to life, and from where did you draw your inspiration? Did you do anything specific to transport yourself into that world?

Deb Caletti:
A few years ago, I came across a single line in a book that mentioned a “divorce ranch.” I’d never heard the term before, and out of curiosity, I looked it up. When I learned what they were, and understood the transformative experiences that were had there, I was intrigued. But when I realized how little there was about them in the popular culture, I had one of those writer-moments where your heart beats fast and you think:
This.
Here was all of my favorite stuff in one beautiful, dusty, desert locale: marriage, heartbreak, women of varying ages supporting one another, and attempting to understand themselves and their relationships.

Bringing it to life, though, was trickier than I’d anticipated because of exactly what I’d found so thrilling—how little there was out there about the ranches. Luckily, I discovered
The Divorce Seekers
, a stunning coffee table volume of photos and memories by a former dude wrangler at the famed Flying M. E. Ranch, Bill McGee. The images—with their smoky, black-and-white, retro allure—are what brought the time and place alive for me so that I could bring them to life in the novel. Not only was it an invaluable resource for information on day-to-day life on a divorce ranch, it also set the mood. I’d open the book to an image of two sleepy roommates in the middle of their Reno cure, wearing silky chemises, drinks in hand, or to a photo of one of “the gals” in her party-night finery, and I’d be just where I needed to be. Music of the time occasionally helped, too. As well, I researched the bestsellers of those years written by women, so I could get a feel for the female voices of the time. Sometimes I’d read a page or two in order to “get into character” so to speak.

RHRC:
What’s the most surprising thing you learned about life on a divorce ranch?

D.C.:
I was surprised how wild it all got on the ranches. When you think of that time period, you imagine a (literally) more buttoned-up experience, but no. The sex with cowboys, the drinking, the letting loose—it all sounds a bit film-version-cliché but was very much the truth. Each generation thinks they’ve invented sex and rebellion, but we seem like over-sharing novices in comparison. Their experiences were not splayed out on every television and computer screen, and the language around it was discreet and even somewhat coy, but these were no trips to the convent.

What also surprised me—and what became extraordinarily important thematically to the book—was how timeless our struggles are in terms of love. I could see the story lines repeating over the generations. We battle the same old things they did—bad choices, infidelity, abuse, career-versus-marriage conflicts, intruding parents. We move on too fast after a breakup; they’d go from the courthouse to the marriage chapel. We’re intrigued and tempted by a life not like ours; they’d buy ranch wear and try to bring home a cowboy. We’ve been taken (or we take); we’re endlessly hopeful (or fed up and jaded); we fall for the wrong person (or, finally, the right one). And so it was then. It was this baseline that led me, in part, to using the mirror images that begin and end each chapter. Hopefully, those brief repetitions underscore the idea that here we are, all over again.

RHRC:
The Secrets She Keeps
stars a true ensemble cast of women, each startlingly unique but all equally real. Was it difficult to create so many different, dynamic personalities and have them all sharing space, or did they come to you and interact with one another naturally?

D.C.:
Ensemble casts are something I like to do as a writer. It’s a challenge, and I think the varying perspectives bring layers to a story. I had an ensemble cast in two of my young-adult novels,
Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
(in which a young girl and her mother go on a road trip with a group of old people to reunite a pair of geriatric lovers) and
The Secret Life of Prince Charming
(in which a young woman and her sisters return objects their father has stolen to every woman he’s ever been in love with). So I’ve had experience managing those numbers before. Essentially, a character must sound like him- or herself, and this is true whether you’re writing one or twenty. I don’t find this to be particularly difficult. If you think about your extended family all sitting around a dinner table, you realize how different each individual sounds. In addition to what they say and how they say it, Mom and Aunt So-and-so dress like opposites, and while the uncles are both hardheaded, one still wears his class ring, and the other has that weird beard and bad habit of interrupting.

RHRC:
Can you speak to the experience of writing a dual narrative that has one foot in the past and one in the present? What were the most challenging and rewarding aspects of that process? Was it ever hard to switch gears from one story line to the next?

D.C.:
The switching itself was rewarding—going back and forth brings a freshness and energy to the work. It’s similar to the experience of
reading
alternating chapters, where you’re disappointed to leave the first set of characters but are eager to see what’s happened with the others since you last left off. I write chronologically, so sometimes that means waiting to write a big scene I’m looking forward to, or, in this case, waiting to get back to that exciting event in the past or present. Switching can provide tension and momentum for a reader, but it can do the same for a writer. And natural momentum makes a book a joy to write.

In terms of challenge, the past/present switching made for a
ton
of research. It was akin to writing a research-heavy contemporary novel
and
a historical one. When you go back into the past,
every little thing
must be considered and checked—each item of clothing, every phrase, every piece of furniture and automobile. Kitchen supplies! Hair products! Restaurants in a city! Music! What kind of gun would they have had at the ranch then? When did cars first get radios? Was a certain slang expression used yet? Which hat did a man wear for work and which for dress? This brings us back to the rewards, though, because I learned about divorce laws through time, and obstetric practices, and the fact that ambulances were still not commonplace in rural areas then. I played virtual dress-up with the many beautiful outfits I discovered and drooled (or cringed) over the food of the time period. I am still seriously curious about those greengage plums packed in sugar-sweetened brandy.

RHRC:
The mustangs play a huge role in the book, not only in terms of their sheer majesty but also their plight and the need to preserve and protect the land they inhabit. Are these larger issues something you already had a vested interest in exploring when you set out to write this book, or did that interest develop as you dug deeper into your research? Have you ever seen the mustangs running, yourself?

D.C.:
This may sound hugely disappointing and unromantic, but like Callie, I have no experience with horses. I’ve never really ridden one and, prior to this book, knew little about them. I’ve never been to a ranch and have only been to Nevada once, in the backseat of the car with my parents when I was seven. As a writer, I often think about Lilly Tuck’s speech at the National Book Awards the year she won (and the year I was a finalist for
Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
). Her book was
The News from Paraguay,
and she began her speech by saying that she had never been to Paraguay, didn’t know much about Paraguay, and didn’t even really care to visit Paraguay. While I’d love to spend time on a ranch and was fascinated by all I learned, I understand what she meant. The adage urges writers to “Write what you know,” but if we did, there’d be many novels about us sitting home alone, pecking at the keyboard. Or else reading online reviews and becoming crippled with self-doubt.