The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

  “Like what?”

  “Like I worked at a bookstore. And I worked for a place that painted parade floats. And I worked as a courier for a reprographics outfit. And I worked at a bakery for a long time.”

  “So, you were a baker?”

  “No, I worked behind the counter.”

  Trev considers this, as though contemplating my employment prospects. “Parade floats, huh?”

  “Yeah, the big inflatables.”

  “How come I don’t know any of this stuff?” he says.

  “You never asked.”

  Arriving at West Yellowstone is like arriving on the edge of the world. Squatting near the edge of a broad plateau stretching from horizon to horizon, the town itself, a collusion of local merchants straining to summon the western frontier with splintered storefronts and swinging doors, huddles around one wide thoroughfare running north to south. It’s not so different from a certain ghost town. For all its hokey frontier airs, West Yellowstone really is about as rugged an outpost as you’re likely to find in the West, hemmed in by a seemingly boundless wilderness, snowbound half the year, and eighty miles from anything else you could call a town.

  Though it’s late in the season, most of the hotels boast no vacancy. After three passes, we finally find a vacancy at the Roundup Motor Lodge on the edge of town. The room is sad but inexpensive, lit like an interrogation room. There’s no art on the walls, no Bible in the drawer. And maybe it’s me, but the ceilings feel low.

  I shower with Trev. He sits rigidly in his shower seat, clutching the handrail, as I sponge the ghostly white skin of his back and shampoo his hair. Afterward, Peaches redresses my wounds, while Trev sits in his wheelchair before the mirror with a towel wrapped around his waist, running an electric razor unevenly over his face. When he’s finished shaving, I put on his deodorant and carry him to the bed, where the girls look the other way as I dress him in clean cargoes and a black T-shirt.

  In spite of my insistence that she needs to eat, Peaches refuses to join us for dinner, claiming she’s not hungry. But I think she just wants to be alone. Dot makes one last attempt to persuade her while Trev and I wait in the parking lot under the huge night sky.

  “Dude,” he says to me. “Don’t take this the wrong way—but would you mind if like, uh, you know, I flew solo on this one or whatever? The dinner, I mean.”

  “Ahhh, right, gotcha. I’ll just grab a pizza and bring it back to the room. You have a key?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You need to go to the bathroom or anything?”

  “I’m cool.”

  “You warm enough?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Got your wallet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just call me if you need—”

  “Go,” he says, rolling his head back and waving me on with a little flipper motion.

  I pat my own pocket for my wallet and cell and turn to leave.

  “Are you really gonna wear that?” he says.

  “What, the shirt?”

  “The neck brace.”

  “Why, does it make me look fat?”

  “You don’t want the ladies feeling sorry for you.”

  “Sure I do.”

  “You don’t. Trust me.”

  But the truth is, I don’t care at this point what the ladies or anyone else thinks of me.

  The thin air of the plateau is unexpectedly chilly. I should have worn a sweatshirt. But at least my neck is warm as I angle across the lot toward the main drag. A quick check of my cell tells me it’s 8:35 p.m. Though my search for pizza needn’t take me far (I spot the Wild West Pizzeria right across the street, it’s red neon abuzz), I feel like stretching my legs. At Canyon, I veer south. Neither the glow of West Yellowstone nor the moon waxing yellow on the horizon is bright enough to wash out a smattering of cold white stars splashed across the night sky. A black pickup crawls past, trailing salsa music. A chorus of muffled laughter seeps out of the saloon up the street, where out front I can discern the glow of a cigarette cherry. Otherwise, the town huddles warily in darkness, one eye open against the silent, patient menace of the wilderness, pressing in from all sides.

  Stuffing my bandaged hands in my pockets, I walk past the darkened boutiques, past the hokey Trading Post, and the abandoned frankfurter stand, past the all-night retro diner, vacant save for a lone coffee drinker perched on a chrome stool at the end of the bar. Briskly, though I have no purpose, I stride past the desolate IMAX theater, past the visitor center, toward the far edge of town.

  In the weeks and months following the disaster, those nights when I was courageous enough to stay sober but still too cowardly to end my life decisively, I used to walk like there was no tomorrow, no matter the weather nor the hour. Some nights I’d walk all the way down Agatewood, around the bend to Highway 305. I’d walk along the road’s shoulder with the headlights at my back, north to the bridge, where I’d stand in the trade winds and peer between trusses out over the rail at the mutinous water seventy feet below. As if. As if seventy feet would even do the job. As if deep down I weren’t too self- indulgent to ever remove myself from the corporeal realm, deny myself the fleeting luxuries of living on earth—the cheeseburgers, the sunsets, the bitter spoils of self-pity. As if I didn’t deserve to die.

  At the south end of Canyon, the town peters out, and the road ends abruptly in a wide tract of weeds and gravel. From there, the darkened plateau seems to stretch forever beneath the stars, studded with pines in the pale moonlight. Surely it is among the loneliest sights I’ve ever seen and somehow all the lonelier knowing that the little town is at my back. I venture a few crunchy steps off the sidewalk into the gravel, then a few more. After about thirty or forty steps, I stop and listen to the distant buzz of crickets. I turn and look back at the town. Even at 150 yards, it seems far away. I wouldn’t have guessed it would have such a pull on me, this little postcard hamlet in the middle of nowhere, that it would call me back like this. Why should it? What promise awaits me there? On the other hand, the prospect of pushing farther into the darkness is at once thrilling and paralyzing. Obviously, I don’t have the guts to go farther; maybe someday. Still, I force myself to linger, crossing my bare arms for warmth, digging my toe into the gravel and wishing I still smoked cigarettes. Suddenly a rustling in the weeds sets my neck hairs on end. All at once, the crickets stop. I spin around and peer into the void. Nothing.

  Without further hesitation, I retreat hastily in the direction from which I came, as though something might be gaining on me. When I rejoin the sidewalk, I slacken my pace and begin doubling back through town toward the pizza joint. Passing the diner on the opposite side of the street, I see Trev and Dot in the window looking at menus, and I’m grateful, though I can’t shake the feeling that I’m losing them both somehow.

  When I return to the room, I find Peaches roosting on the edge of the bed with her head bowed, crying softly into a hand towel. Setting the pizza aside, I lower myself beside her and drape an arm over her shoulder, then begin to rock her gently back and forth as she clutches the towel. For a few minutes, we rock in silence. She sniffles and wipes her eyes.

  Even in grief, puffy and ringed with red, her hazel eyes are lively, as she peers up into my face. “I don’t want to be alone,” she says.

  I squeeze her tighter and clear the stray hairs from her face. “You won’t be.”

  “But what about Elton?”

  “Shhh,” I say. “Don’t worry about Elton. Elton will be back.”

  “But what if—”

  “Shhh.”

  Sniffling, she searches me hopefully with her bright eyes. “What if I’m too—”

  “Shhh,” I say. “Trust me, kid. You’ll be ready. Everything will change.”

  She sniffles once more, leaning into my assurances, but the fear hasn’t left her, I can tell.

  “There’s nothing like it, Peach. Nothing even close.”

  And suddenly, it’s not Peaches but me weeping. She unpins her arm and wraps i
t around my shoulders and gives me a squeeze.

  “Shhh,” she says.

  promise

  We’re past the dogleg at Dolphin now, past the cedar snag and the doddering split-rail fence, easing down that final narrow stretch of Agatewood as Piper’s voice washes over me. Just past the Birkland place, we hit the tract of potholes that act as our neighborhood speed bumps. Bob Williamson is out mowing his lawn on the rider, an iPod strapped to his thick waist. The Worths are apparently still down in Cannon Beach, because the Cartwright kid from down the road is there feeding the dogs, his blue bike sprawled in the driveway.

  I glance in the rearview mirror. “Show me the booger,” I say.

  Piper brandishes her finger obediently. “Daddy, you’re not listening,” she complains as we pull up the driveway.

  “I heard you, honey.”

  “What did I say, then?”

  “You were talking about the octopus.”

  I pull to a stop in front of the garage and park on the sloping driveway.

  “That was before! What was I telling you right now?”

  Turning off the motor, I sigh. “Piper, honey,” I say, passing her a piece of junk mail from the passenger’s wheel well. “Please just wipe your finger on this envelope and unbuckle your brother, okay? Once we get the groceries in the house you can tell me whatever you want.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  nothing

  In the morning, while the girls are in the bathroom with the water running, doing whatever it is girls do in the bathroom together, I pull Trev’s covers back and begin to lay his clothing out on the foot of the bed—clean boxers, black T-shirt, khaki cargoes. Today we’ll wind our way south through Yellowstone to the Tetons and make Jackson before dusk, where we’ll deliver Peaches to her mother’s house. By nightfall, we’ll reach our terminus at Salt Lake and put Dot on a bus for Denver.

  Trev remains conspicuously silent, watching the muted Weather Channel unfold over my shoulder as I finesse his arms through the shirt sleeves. By the time I slip the second gold-toed sock over his foot, it’s readily apparent that he has no intention of volunteering any information about last night. I’ve no alternative but to fish.

  “You guys were out late.”

  “Yeah,” is all he says.

  “So how’d it go?”

  “Good.”

  “That’s good. What did you guys do?”

  “Talked.”

  “Just talked, huh?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Scooping him off the bed, I could swear I catch a whiff of Dot’s citrus-scented perfume on him.

  “For five hours?” I say, nesting him in his wheelchair.

  “Yeah, I guess. If that’s how long it was.”

  “So, then, what’d you guys talk about?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Pretty much. Just stuff.”

  I decide to wait him out, turning my attention to the television. Fifty-one degrees in Fairbanks. Sixty-three in Tacoma. Eighty-six in Redding. Without the interrogation, Trev settles into silence. Seventy-four in San Diego. Ninety-one in Phoenix. Sixty-eight in Denver. And it is in this silence that Trev finally reveals himself. Monitoring him out of the corner of my eye, I see contentment written plainly on his face as he settles deep into the silence and seems to gaze right through the television screen. And maybe it’s the low ceilings or just the way he’s sitting with his shoulders reared back and his chin held high, but he looks less frail somehow, bigger, and I suddenly know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he kissed her and that he doesn’t want to talk about it—because like all young lovers, he wants to hoard the memory, hold it so close and contained that it can never escape him. I only hope she doesn’t hurt him too badly.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you,” he says, at last. “He’s here.”

  “Who?”

  “The dude in the brown beater.”

  old faithful

  Indeed, the Skylark has returned, less like a malignant shadow, and more like a ticket scalper that won’t take no for an answer. Our pursuer picked us up in the tollbooth queue and holds steady two cars behind us, where he has little choice but to remain in the line of traffic as we crawl through the western fringe of Yellowstone, along the Madison River through dense pinewood flats. Within miles, the forest yields to rolling pasturelands, spangled with vast bison herds, strung out along the river to graze.

  “What’s the difference between a bison and a buffalo?” Trev says.

  “Is this a joke?” says Dot.

  “No, really. Is there a difference?”

  “Beats me,” I say. “Aren’t they the same thing?”

  “I think so,” says Dot

  “Elton would know,” Peaches says.

  I don’t doubt that Elton would have an answer for just about anything. And who am I to decide what’s best for anybody? Maybe it’s better that Peaches just keep ennobling Elton in his absence. Maybe he’ll pull through. Stranger things have happened. Let her believe.

  We begin to veer south and detour through canyon country, where the Firehole River roars through narrow channels of crumbling rock, and scorched pines cling to the basin walls for purchase. Peaches is asleep by the time we pull over on the shoulder to watch the falls rumble down their craggy chute and splash down forty feet below. Just as I kill the ignition, the Skylark eases past us, and rounds the bend. Immediately, Dot jumps out to smoke.

  “You wanna get out?” I say to Trev.

  “Nah, I’ve got a good view right here.”

  “I’m gonna have a look.”

  I climb out of the van, ducking my stiff neck gingerly under the door frame. Dot’s standing at the rail, smoking, as she stares out over the river. I station myself beside her, and take in the view.

  “Pretty,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  She takes a drag, exhales. “So, how come you’re always leaning into my cigarette smoke?”

  “What do you mean ‘leaning’?”

  “Like right now. You’re sorta drifting closer and closer every time I take a puff.”

  “Hmph. Didn’t realize. Miss it, I guess.”

  “Then why’d you quit?”

  “Wife made me. Before we got married.”

  “That’s lame,” she says.

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “Isn’t that totally lame?” she says to Trev.

  “I’m gonna stretch my legs,” I say.

  I trudge up the road a ways. I can hear Dot’s voice as she talks to Trev through the open window, but soon the roar of the falls swallows it. About fifty yards upriver from the van, I stop to take in the view, sidling to the very edge of the precipice. Above the chute, the river runs braided around moldering snags, and the crumbling hillside rises toward the ridge at twenty degrees, stubbled with dead pines. I’m almost certainly going to need Forest to wire me some money in Jackson. At least a couple hundred to get me home. What I’m going to do with my life when I get back is still a complete mystery. I’ll have two weeks to make rent. I’ve got an eBay account, the Subaru, a lot of plastic containers. I’ve got this neck brace, these tight shorts, a headache, and a few Cortázar poems committed to memory. So I’ve got that going for me.

  Part of me just wants to stop right here. What’s calling me back, anyway? Why not get a job in West Yellowstone selling buffalo turds? I could make clocks out of them. I could lease that vacant kiosk three doors down from the liquor store—maybe we could barter! I could rent a cellar somewhere and forget I ever was. Or why not just drop out altogether, ford that river, scramble up that hillside, and disappear over the ridge? But who am I kidding? Backing away from the ledge, I thrust my bandaged hands in my shorts pockets and amble downhill toward the others.

  Dot is back in the van by the time I return, kneeling in her new station behind Trev. Peaches is still sleeping, her head slumped against the window, both hands flat on her belly for protection. I ought to wake he
r so that she doesn’t miss the sights, but I figure she needs the rest. We continue to weave our way south through the canyon, past lava flows and nameless cascades, past colonnades of jagged rock pillars clinging like stalagmites to tapered ledges. The Skylark picks up our tail again where the loop rejoins the main road, easing in one car behind us. The scenery flattens out as we drop into the Lower Geyser Basin, and the otherworldly Yellowstone of postcards begins to reveal itself in the cracked and steaming flats. As far as the eye can see, the whitewashed earth is venting, burping, bubbling up from within. A giant caldera. A supervolcano. Somewhere a tour guide is saying something about the dawn of the world. But someday this belching cauldron may end the world.

  “Holy crap,” says Trev. “This is as almost as cool as the water tower in George.”

  “Pretty close,” I say.

  Dot is on her knees now, clutching the back of Trev’s chair as she peers over his shoulder out the windshield. I’ve never seen her face like this, wide open in wonderment. For once, the world has exceeded her expectations.

  The traffic slows as we approach Old Faithful. The gigantic parking lot is a clusterfuck of crisscrossing corridors, all of them full to bursting with cars of every conceivable make, from every conceivable locale. Even the handicapped spots are occupied. Crawling down a single line, I spot plates from Oregon, Arizona, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Alberta, Rhode Island, New Brunswick, New Jersey, New York, and Florida. Somehow the Skylark manages to stick with us through the congestion, even finds a spot in the same row on the outer-outer fringe of the sprawl.

  Dot begins unbuckling Trev as I lower the ramp.

  Peaches finally awakens. “Where are we?” she says.

  “Old Faithful,” says Trev.

  “Why didn’t anyone wake me?”

  “You guys go on ahead,” I say. “I’ve got a few calls to make first. Meet you front and center.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” says Trev, who proceeds to execute a tight three-point turn in reverse, piloting himself onto the ramp, where he gives me the nod to lower him.

  Once he’s on the ground, the girls pile out after him, and together they make for the geyser. Watching them go, Trev rolling slowly down the center of the lane, shoulders back, head high, flanked by a girl on each shoulder, I don’t have to see his face to know he’s smiling.