The Wild Truth (25 page)

One summer day I arrived at Shawna’s house in Denver for a visit. Her six-year-old daughter, Hunter, had crafted and strung a colorful banner along the iron rail on the front porch that read,
WELCOME, AUNT CARINE!
A chorus of chatter was coming from the backyard, and as I approached, I could pick out the various tenors and altos of almost all my siblings and their families. I had not traveled to Colorado for any specific family occasion, and as I rounded the corner to see the most siblings together in one place at one time since Chris’s wake, I realized that I was the occasion. I was deeply touched.

Everyone had taken time from their busy lives to gather together for the impromptu reception—the Denver pack didn’t need to do things with a lot of notice or formal planning. My sisters in particular were eager to talk about the new man in my life. I’d kept my distance from any serious relationships in the years since my divorce from Fish, but Shawna and Shelly had deduced from my periodic phone calls that this one was different. And it was.

Robert was not my usual type. Despite his adequate mechanical abilities, as a self-employed masonry contractor he worked nowhere within the automotive industry. And he was my first blond. He also had a romantic sense of humor I found irresistible. Not long after we’d started dating, he sent me his “résumé” to pass along to my father. In addition to citing his weight, height, occupation, education, and references (one of which was his mom), the résumé covered his “Current Intentions” which were “to see Carine McCandless. I have found she is an extraordinary woman who is very independent. I hope she will share her free time with me . . . If anyone cares to discuss this matter with me, I can be contacted at the following numbers.”

I was definitely in love but hesitant about thinking too far ahead. I had already told Robert that although I felt comfortable committing to him for the rest of my life, I had no intention of ever getting married again.

As the sun lingered low in the west and Marcia played with the kids, my brothers and sisters and I gathered on the front porch. We lazed in comfy chairs and spoke about work and hobbies and the Broncos versus the Redskins. Chat amongst those who already had children led to inevitable jokes about various embarrassments we had all either caused or earned in our own adolescence. And just as certain, the discussion found its way to The Show, as it always did.

The Show was also in Denver during this visit, staying at the upscale condo they’d bought a few years earlier. My parents knew I was spending the day at Shawna’s. They also knew they were not invited. I planned to have dinner and stay the night with them, knowing it would be easier than the repercussions of refusing their invitation.

I began to vent about the things Walt and Billie were doing in Virginia, and we all joked about their various idiosyncrasies. I brought up their obsession with having a sparkling toilet to return to after their travels. Before they got home from a trip, they’d call me and ask me to go over to their house and “swishy” the toilets so that they wouldn’t have to see an ugly ring. Shawna cracked up, because she’d been the “swishy” point person in Denver once upon a time. We all agreed the worst thing to do was “poke the bear,” which is what we had termed responding to one of our dad’s email missives. We tallied who was in the lead for the most times written out of his will. I was pretty sure it was me, but Sam made a compelling argument that he was the front-runner. We also talked seriously about everything that we had yet to discuss together in person, like why Chris had left in the first place and what he had shared with me about the mysteries of our childhood. I spoke about the lies and manipulations, the violence and bullying. I acknowledged my awareness that they had all experienced the same thing growing up. I recognized their mother’s willingness to put an end to it as well as the pain that my mother’s acceptance had caused for us all. I told them how Chris had tried to salvage a relationship with Mom and Dad with his long emotional letter and their rejection that had caused him to leave in the manner he did. We talked about
Into the Wild,
the success of which they found as surreal as I did. We were all upset that Mom and Dad were giving people the wrong impression about Chris.

Surrounded by the warmth and support of my siblings, I was reluctant to continue on to my parents’ place, and I pondered aloud the various excuses I could use to stay at Shawna’s instead.
Too tired?
That wouldn’t work; their condo was only ten minutes away.
I’ve had too much to drink to make the drive over?
We decided that there were two major flaws with that one. First, everyone knew I rarely drank, and when I did indulge, it was never in excess. Second, what if they insisted on coming to pick me up? That would be a most unwelcome but very plausible result of my trying to get out of my commitment.

“I’m a little surprised to finally hear you talk like this,” Sam said, looking at me thoughtfully. “I honestly was concerned that you might be coming here tonight to be their mouthpiece—to try to convince all of us to give them another chance.”

I sighed deeply. “I think I’ve just grown so weary from trying to promote peace throughout an endless war.”

All my siblings had taken this path before me. Some of them had completely cut off my parents, while others had intermittent contact that was strained at best. Shelly, Shawna, and Stacy hadn’t seen them much since the trip to France. But they all understood I had to make that decision for myself, on my own terms and at my own pace. While they had always remained open to talk about things I needed to discuss as I cautiously navigated my way through my own minefield of trials and tribulations with my parents, none had ever tried to deter me from maintaining a relationship with them.

I ARRIVED AT MY PARENTS
’
CONDO
to find my dad in a jovial mood. He was standing in the kitchen whipping up a four-course meal, wearing his new chef’s coat, his black and gray hair tied back in a short ponytail. Dad and I shared a tongue-in-cheek humor about his culinary ego. He had asked for a real chef’s coat for his birthday, complete with an embroidered insignia:
GREATEST CHEF IN THE WORLD.
I, in turn, had ordered him a casual apron with an iron-on that read:
I
THINK I’
M THE GREATEST CHEF IN THE WORLD!
He would wear it in good humor for a fun picture—maybe while barbecuing a chicken—but not for the impressive spread we would share that night. He’d been on one of his health kicks lately—fish this time—and the smell permeated the air.

“Look at what Hunter made for me. Wasn’t that so sweet of her?” I said as I walked over and spread the banner across the counter.

“Hey, wow! Those are great!” Dad agreed without looking up from the intense action taking place on the stovetop.

Mom glanced at the banner. She looked away quickly, but her eyes rolled as she turned her face. One look at the empty wine bottles on the table told me what she’d been doing during my reunion with my siblings.

I hadn’t even removed my purse from my shoulder before she floated by me with one hand in the air, as if conducting a symphony only she could hear. “Carine, come with me.”

She led me into their bedroom and proceeded to show me a beautiful and very large panoramic print of horses in a snow-covered field. “See this, Carine? See this? Your father and I picked this up at a gallery in Utah. It cost eight hundred dollars.” Then she pointed out two other pieces of artwork and told me how much each of them had cost. Her alcohol-infused tour took me through every room, up to every item sitting upon a shelf or hanging on a wall, telling me where they had been traveling when they found it and how expensive it had been. I had always admired my mom for her keen bargain shopping—she was never one to shy away from advertising that the great dress she was wearing was a significant find at a consignment shop—but that wasn’t the mood of tonight’s performance. I recognized the mammoth crystal bowl from the Annandale house—the peace offering Dad had brought home from Germany to squelch the threat of divorce during the infamous Shelly debacle. Mom reminded me, again, of how valuable it was and how I was on track to inherit it one day. She was, I realized, presenting me all that she could offer.

Dad called us to dinner. As we sat passing the sautéed fish, the steamed vegetables and rice, the gourmet greens with Dad’s always-delicious homemade dressing, I felt cold. I wanted to be at Shawna’s, where the air was warm and the food less discriminating. Dad hinted for compliments about the spices used on the bluefin fillets. Mom excitedly asked how things were going with the shop and with Robert. They didn’t ask a single question about my siblings or their grandchildren.

My parents couldn’t conceptualize that they were ten minutes away from the richest bounty they could have ever hoped for.

I looked at my mother’s tired eyes, the sag of age that was starting to come into her chin. She struggled every day with my father’s hot-and-cold temperament and with her own constant, barely concealed bitterness. I wanted to take her by the hand and lead her out of her lavish confines. But I reminded myself, as I had done so many times before, that she chose to stay. Marcia had left. It had taken years, and it had been difficult, but Marcia had left for good, and her kids were better for it. Mom had opted for what she thought was a fair trade, allowing harm to come to children in exchange for a more comfortable life . . . until she herself became an abuser.

Unconditional Love

He was right in saying that the only certain
happiness in life is to live for others.

—Leo Tolstoy,
Family Happiness,
passage highlighted by Chris

Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the

meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those

sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently

so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding

labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human

understanding rendered speechless by emotion!

—Boris Pasternak,
Doctor Zhivago,
passage highlighted by Chris

O
N ROBERT
’
S AND MY
first Christmas morning together, he had a very large and heavy gift under the tree for me, wrapped in a hodgepodge of inharmonious papers and tape that one might expect from a man who works in construction. It was a new toolbox—just what I needed. As I opened the easy-glide drawers in delight, examining the new home for my various screwdrivers and ratchet sets, a small red velvet box slid out across the smooth, cold metal. I jumped back at the sight of it as my hand released the drawer. I looked at Robert.

“What was that?” he asked, failing to seem surprised.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “What
was
that?”

“I guess the Craftsman quality inspector must have left it in there,” he continued with a smile. “Better check it out and see if it’s a problem.”

Around our fifth date, Robert and I took a long walk down the beach and I tried to talk him out of seeing me again. As much as I enjoyed being with him, my growing feelings made me nervous. He could already tell I was falling, and he teased me politely as I presented my case against being in love. At twenty-eight, I already had two failed marriages, and I’d made it clear on more than one occasion that two was enough. I was happily independent, was financially self-sufficient, and had a successful business, a new condo, and a couple of canine kids—too much to risk losing within the drama of a serious relationship.

But my argument wasn’t convincing enough for him, or for myself. A container plant bursting with fragrant blooms of blue and white hyacinths arrived at my shop the following week. Attached was a card from Robert: