The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

  “That Elton’s on the ball.”

  She lowers her voice again. “Well, by God, he’s tryin’, he really is. Better than I can say for most. Better than that no good brother of his.” She glances sidelong at Elton to make sure he’s sleeping before taking her voice down another notch. “His daddy beat him up pretty regular. Beat him up bad. It was no secret in Henderson. Never laid a hand on that brother. It got so poor Elton lived in a friend’s garage senior year, on account he was afraid he might start fightin’ back. Elton ain’t ever laid a hand on me.”

  “That’s good.”

  “So far, he’s always done right by me. So I got no choice but to believe in him.”

  Just as Missoula appears on the horizon, Elton wakes up, as though to testify on his own behalf. “Hot damn,” he says, snapping his fingers. “I been thinkin’ in my sleep again, and I think I saw what you was drivin’ at regardin’ my box. You was trying to say, ‘Well, why not use your real TV, ’cause it’d be more realistic,’ am I right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It came to me that you was right. It would be more realistic. Not because what you said about keepin’ it away from the door, though, but because of somethin’ else even more realistic.” Here Elton leans in conspiratorially and rests a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. The lights! Don’tcha see? My box has gotta have flashin’ lights, so it’ll look like a TV—you know, bouncin’ off the curtains and the walls and whatnot!”

  “But . . .”

  Elton bowls right over me. “ ’Course, it’ll cost a little more to produce. But then we’ll make that up on the other end, so margins reckon out roughly the same, maybe better, since it’s fancier. Now, with the lights, we can call it an antitheft system, see? ’Cause it’s got more than one part.”

  “But Elton, if . . .”

  “Hell, colored LED lights oughta do the trick. Can’t be that expensive. Makes the whole system more, I don’t know, ingenious, I guess.”

  Once I’m sure Elton is going to pause, I fill the breach. “But Elton, if it looks and sounds like a TV, and you’re gonna set it by the TV, to act like the TV, well then, I guess what I’m trying to say is, why not . . .” But I just don’t have the heart and wave it off at the last second. “You know, I think you’re right, the lights really take it up a notch. I think people will feel safer.”

  “They will be safer,” he says with conviction.

  Peaches gives his leg a proud little squeeze and keeps smiling. She believes in him, with all her heart she believes, and nobody’s going to talk her out of it. For that, I love her. Suddenly she grabs Elton’s wrist excitedly and sets his hand on her belly.

  “He’s kickin’,” she says. “Feel it? You feel it, hon?”

  Elton’s face lights up in recognition. “Well, I’ll be damned. The hell if he ain’t!”

  Peaches is all aglow, and I think: He’s a lucky sonofabitch, that Elton.

  That’s when I spot the Skylark in the rearview mirror, hovering just above Peaches’s right shoulder, and my blood begins to boil.

  and many more

  What’s the big rush, anyway? Jim Sunderland’s not going anywhere, the little prick. Anyone who listens to that much NPR can’t be in a hurry. If Janet thinks she can bully me into her stupid divorce, if she thinks she can hunt me down and physically coerce me into signing those papers, she’s sorely mistaken. It’s gonna take a lot more than some guy in a shit brown Skylark to persuade me.

  It’s three in the afternoon. We’re on mountain time now. Neither Trev nor I are in a hurry to lose Peaches and Dot, even if it means waiting for Elton in front of every bar in Missoula. Presently, we’re parked in front of Red’s, where Elton has convinced us to make a business stop before final drop-off. He’s been in there for twenty minutes already while Trev, Peaches, and I wait in the van. Dot’s at the curb, smoking her second cigarette.

  The Skylark is parked down the block on the opposite side of the street. I’ve been monitoring it in the side mirror, quietly seething. I still don’t know how Janet managed this. How dare she try to force my hand. How dare she leave me holding the groceries and walk away. She owes me all the time I need, the way I see it. To send some loser in a Skylark all over the western United States to do her dirty work for her—that’s weak. What barrel did she dredge to find that guy?

  Miraculously, even as my bitterness is rising to a slow boil, a text arrives from Janet: “Met with my lawyer today . . . We need to talk . . .”

  By the time I make my move, I can feel the certainty of violence welling up in me.

  “I’m gonna get some air,” I say, at last.

  Gritting my teeth, I march straight down the middle of the street. Halfway there, I angle toward the Skylark at the opposite curb, heart thumping, fists clenched. I can make out the driver at the wheel with his baseball cap, one tan arm dangling out the window, clutching a Mountain Dew. I can feel the bile rising in my throat. My anger is way out of proportion—I’m aware of that. I can smell it like an electrical fire raging inside my skull. I’m dangerously close to careening out of control. And you know what? Let the careening begin! I’m gonna throttle this guy. I’m gonna send Janet a message, and I couldn’t give two shits about the consequences.

  Skylark sees me coming now and drops his Mountain Dew. I’m only about a hundred feet away, when the car suddenly revs to life with a squealing fan belt and a cloud of exhaust. Before I know it, I’m charging the car at a dead sprint, with no idea what I’m going to do, whether I’m going to beat the car back with my bare fists or pull this guy out of the driver’s seat and pulverize him in the street. I’m close enough to see real panic in his eyes as he screeches away from the curb and speeds straight for me. I stop in my tracks and square off like a matador as the hurtling Skylark bears down on me. I can see the driver clearly, now, but I can’t tell how big he is. He looks about my age, tan with some gray stubble, and a loose-fitting shirt. Ruggedly handsome, in an aging beach bum kind of way. Or that’s just my impression as he speeds straight for me at twenty miles per hour. The panic in his eyes turns to unmitigated terror the instant he realizes that I have no intention of moving. He’s saucer-eyed as he swerves to elude me, mouth wide open.

  My attempt to tackle the car, while bold and completely unexpected, is by no means effective. After a knee-crushing impact, I manage for a fleeting interval to ride the hood, arms and legs splayed, face pressed to the glass. But the Skylark bucks me, the antenna snaps off in my hand, and I roll off the side. I scramble to my feet in time to pound the hood of the trunk as he speeds past. I’m still clutching the antenna as I sprint down Ryman after him. He’s got too much steam. No way I’m catching him. I pull up short and wing the antenna after the retreating Skylark just as the glass door to Red’s flies open, and out comes Elton, reeling backward, tripping over his own feet and landing on his ass. He’s quickly followed by a huge bearded dude in a flannel shirt even dirtier than Elton’s. He must be three hundred pounds, with a big shock of kinky hair. This guy is a Yeti. He descends on Elton, who tries to sidle away like a hermit crab. But the Yeti snatches him up by the shirt with one hand, yanks him up, spins him, and slams him against the brick wall of Red’s.

  “You’re either brave or stupid to show your face around here,” says the Yeti, upon delivering a crushing blow to the chest.

  Elton doubles over and covers his head. Suddenly I’m sprinting again, my heart beating triplets, adrenals pounding, my field of vision a washed-out blur. Before I know it, I’m climbing the Yeti, literally climbing the guy. I’m halfway up his back, scrambling higher, as I clutch him with both arms around the neck from behind. Elton is back on his heels. He looks like he wants to run. But the Yeti catches him with a right cross, and Elton is on his ass again as I try to get a better purchase on the Yeti.

  “Always knew you was a snitch, Elton,” he says, trying to shake me off his back.

  Peaches is out of the car in a flash, charging the Yeti with her swolle
n belly out in front of her. She lands on him with a flurry of fists, which he fends off with a forearm as he simultaneously tries to extract me with the other arm. I’ve got a fistful of beard when he finally manages to shake me off. I’m momentarily weightless until I hit the pavement with a flash of lightning. The wind rushes out of me in an instant. But I’m still rabid. Foaming at the mouth, I scrabble forward on my elbows and clutch the Yeti desperately by the leg of his jeans with both arms. He struggles to tear himself free, but I’ve all but wound myself around his leg. Peaches is still assaulting him like a cloud of insects as Elton straightens up and looses a haymaker, which grazes the Yeti’s massive shoulder.

  The last thing I remember before coming totally unglued is the smell of burned circuitry and a throbbing behind my eyeballs. The next thing I know the Yeti is howling like a jackal with a fire poker up his ass. Wrapped around his right leg with a death clutch, I’ve forced his pant leg up past his boot top and sunk my teeth deep into the fat of his calf. I’m locked on him like a bull terrier, my mouth’s filling with blood, maybe his, maybe my own, as he kicks me repeatedly in the ribs with his other foot, screaming horrifically. But I just keep biting like it’s the last thing I’ll ever do, until everything is a wash of hot crimson. All I remember after that is I came out the other side feeling great.

  But for the mustache, the county sheriff looks like he could be Elton’s father—same weak chin, same skinned weasel composure. He wears his wide-brimmed sheriff hat low over his beady eyes. He likes his job, but he doesn’t want you to know it. He’s not a talker. His name tag says SCRUGGS. He’s got a chubby older wife somewhere, in a manufactured home. Her name is Bev. She can shoot skeet. She can bowl the lights out. They have a fifth wheel they take up to Flathead Lake on weekends. Bev makes a great Waldorf salad. They have matching green vests and an overweight corgi. Strangely, these are the thoughts, calm and bemused, which presently occupy my mind, even as a medic tends earnestly to the Yeti’s calf, and I see the fear written plainly on Peaches’s face as she watches Elton being escorted to one of the three cruisers. As Scruggs cuffs me, I wink at the Yeti, who is quickly restrained by two EMTs and a cop. Then two cops. Soon a third cop is forced to join the scrum. They might need an elephant gun to get him down. Everywhere lights flash. There’s a small crowd gathered on the sidewalk outside of Red’s. Trev is among them, with Dot close beside him. She’s got her hand resting on the back of his chair. They both look stunned and disappointed.

  “No worries,” I tell them as Scruggs shepherds me past. “It’s all good.”

  I wonder if Scruggs and his wife still have sex. I’ll bet they do on their anniversary, when Bev is a little flush with wine.

  “Keep movin’,” he says, pushing me forward.

  “Fucking cannibal,” somebody mutters from the crowd.

  As Scruggs pushes me the last stretch to the cruiser, I feel strangely euphoric, awash in the pulsing lights. I nod to Peaches as I’m ducking into the car, just to let her know that everything is going to be okay. Because suddenly I’ve come to see that, indeed, no matter what shit storm blows in my face, everything really is going to be okay.

  And as Scruggs pilots us at a crawl past the scene of the crime, I find myself smiling stupidly out the window.

  “Thanks for the lift,” I say.

  Scruggs just grunts, checks me in the mirror, and shakes his head, frowning.

  “This thing is quiet,” I venture, about two blocks down Ryman. “Is this real leather?”

  But the art of conversation continues to elude Scruggs, who doesn’t say a word until we’ve rolled into the sally port, where he opens my door and stands at his post like a disgruntled chauffeur.

  “Up,” he says.

  The fluorescent light of the corridor only enhances my sense of well-being, though my reception is not quite all that I hoped for. Only one clerk looks up from his work as Scruggs conducts me across the office to his desk.

  “Sit,” he says.

  I sit.

  Scruggs is living in the Bronze Age. His work station is hopelessly outdated. The guy’s got a typewriter. A Rolodex. An actual telephone. He has not one but two bottles of Liquid Paper. I scan the desktop for the flint scraper, the copper ingot. The desk is cluttered but orderly, like Bernard’s workbench. The lone personal touch is a framed photograph of his daughter on horseback, decked out in jodhpurs, helmet, chaps, and a really tight sweater. She’s maybe thirty years old, dark-eyed, luxurious, and stacked to the nines. She’s clutching a leather crop in one hand suggestively—to me, anyway.

  “Your daughter?” I say, though my last five attempts at small talk have met with stony silence.

  “Wife,” he says, without looking up from the typewriter. “Last name?”

  “Benjamin.”

  “First name?”

  “Benjamin.”

  Scruggs looks up at me doubtfully, two fingers poised above the keys. “Middle name?”

  “None.”

  He shakes his head woefully. “Date of birth?”

  “Nine nine sixty-nine.”

  Squinting, Scruggs enters the numbers with opposing fingers, slowly, powerfully—he types like a blacksmith.

  “Happy birthday,” he grumbles.

  before agatewood

  Before the Agatewood house, before we had any equity, back when I was painting parade floats in Kingston, and Janet worked as a vet tech at the Animal Wellness Center, we lived in a little rental cabin on the bay in Lemolo. The place was all of about six hundred square feet. Charming. Rickety. Cold as hell in winter—but cheap. None of the window frames matched. The front door creaked on its hinges. The oil stove didn’t vent well or even heat, for that matter. The kitchen sink was too small, the toilet ran, there was no bathtub, and for a few months we had a rodent problem. But we loved that place. We had barbecues in spring, planted a vegetable garden, played badminton naked. And ultimately, we grew up in that cabin.

  We lived in Lemolo when Piper was born. We stayed at home the night of our anniversary. I made enchiladas. We ate side by side on the sofa. Piper slept right under our noses, swaddled in the pink and yellow quilt that Ruth knit. I remember looking down into that bassinet and being both profoundly enamored and completely terrified of the pinched little face sleeping there.

  I remember Janet saying that she felt ugly, and I remember telling her she was more beautiful than ever.

  “You’re just saying that,” she said.

  “But I’m not.” And I wasn’t.

  We said a lot of nice things back then.

  I remember us saying that we liked small houses, that proximity engendered closeness in a family. That nobody should be an only child. That nobody should be raised by a nanny or in day care. I remember us saying that time, not money, was the greatest resource. That everything would be all right. That the universe would provide. That belief was a force more powerful than gravity itself.

  a year and a day

  Sprung on a $762 bond, I’m free by 6:00 p.m. (at least until my court appearance next month). Elton, however, is not so fortunate. In violation of his parole, he’s being held without bond, awaiting extradition to Mineral County, where according to Scruggs, he’ll get a year and a day, if he’s lucky. Getting that much information out of Scruggs wasn’t easy.

  Poor Peaches is beside herself with grief and worry. I’ve assured her that everything is going to be okay. I’ve promised her a ride to her mother’s in Jackson, a detour that Trev has approved. All things considered—the fact that she’s currently beholden to the kindness of strangers, one of whom has recently exhibited cannibalistic tendencies, while her fiancé, whose child she’s due to deliver in three weeks, is at large in the Montana penal system—Peaches is taking it like a champ and doing her best to smile.

  We’ve squeezed into a booth in the rear of Pita Pit, where I’m buying everybody dinner to commemorate my birthday. My optimism is seemingly boundless in this dark hour.

  “Don’t you see?” I tell Peaches. “
You’re going to be a mother—a mother. It’s going to be the single most profound thing that ever happened to you. Seriously, everything will fall into place.”

  While arguably not the most comforting advice from a forty-year-old soon-to-be divorcé with no job and a nearly maxed-out credit card, Peaches leans into my assurances from across the table.

  Dot sits close to Trev at the end of the bench near the head of the table. She buckled him in on the way here. She jockeyed chairs around to accommodate his passage when we arrived. Together, they flip through pictures on Dot’s phone while Dot offers personal commentary at every turn. Trev is as giddy as I am. He still needs a shower, but he’s looking good. His hair is falling just right.

  I’m feeling extravagant in spite of my financial woes, triumphant in spite of my aching ribs. And why not? Today I climbed a man. Today I’ve known the glory of battle. I’ve tasted human flesh. And tonight I gather my ragged tribe around me for a celebration: gyros, club wraps, how about some hummus? Supersize that Coke! And how about a veggie platter, no, two veggie platters, and throw in four of those Otis Spunkmeyers! Tonight my appetites are huge. My senses are heightened. The whole world pulses with the heartbeat of possibility. Every thought is a revelation. Around every corner is a reason to hope. I am expansive. I am inexorable. I am loquacious. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was high on something.

  Peaches, I say, take heart, my mountain wildflower! There is life beyond Henderson! There are pleasures and mysteries unfathomable to your young heart! Do not measure out your life with coffee spoons nor lay waste your powers—live, I say! Invent yourself! Let your reach exceed your grasp! And pass the hummus while you’re at it!

  When there’s nothing left of the feast but the crinkled paper ravages, we pile into the handi-van in search of lodging. Downtown Missoula yields an array of inexpensive vacancies, promising value and comfort and savings. But tonight, I’m in the mood for something grander. Tonight, we will have luxury, tonight, we will have opulence—wooden hangers and a minifridge!