No Hiding in Boise Read online

  I’M THE FIRST one at Ray’s tonight. As I take a seat at what’s become Our Table, I get a little choked up thinking about not coming here every Thursday. The guys always give me grief for being the softy. It’s nice to be old, to not give a shit what people think. I’m no longer a man who’s ashamed of his occasional tears.

  Cliff and Randy show up at the same time. They are talking about how Cliff’s son just got a big finance job in Manhattan. All of us are dumbfounded by the successes of our children. We’ve all been spared major problems. The teenage years were challenging—that’s when we started these guys’ nights—but nothing abnormal. Somehow, everyone has turned out okay. We are in the clear now. We can breathe sighs of relief, drink beers, enjoy the golden years. I’d dare to say this is the happiest time of my life—even with the Parkinson’s. I’d say the same for Cliff and Randy. Bob’s having a hard time since he lost Marilyn. Sherry and I were set to list the house right before Marilyn died, actually. When that happened, I told her we needed to give it time. Bob would never admit that my moving would be hard for him, but I knew it would, and he’d had enough “hard” for a while. He still doesn’t seem quite like himself, but he’s better. Maybe he’ll never be quite like himself again. Maybe that’s just what happens. In a way, I’m comforted by the fact that I’ll die before Sherry. If she went first, I’d be lost.

  Cliff goes to the bar to buy our first round. We take big first sips—gulps, really. We don’t gulp because of hard days anymore; we gulp because we can, because we don’t have jobs to go to in the morning.

  I see Bob walk in. He’s been looking thinner lately, but none of us have mentioned anything yet. We are stereotypical men in this way; we don’t talk about things like weight loss because we are uncomfortable delving into the likely emotional reasons for that weight loss. As Sherry said once, “Men are emotionally inept.”

  Just seeing him makes me nervous to tell the guys about the move. Maybe I’ll wait until next week. Even if the house sells in a few days—a realistic proposition in this real estate market— we won’t actually move for a month or two, at the earliest.

  Bob gives us his usual smile when he sees us. I stand, give him a good clap on the back.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” I say.

  ANGIE

  “CALE?” I WHISPER.

  I do this every time I visit—attempt to talk to him. I feel like if he hears my voice, his brain will register, “Oh, Angie’s here,” and he will wake up. I know that’s not how it works. I know he’s on medications that keep him comatose. And, even if he wasn’t, even if his eyes did open right now, it’s possible he wouldn’t even know who I am. But, still, I whisper his name.

  I listen to the rhythmic sound of the ventilator, bringing predictability and order to the chaos of all this.

  “Cale, tell me about Tessa,” I say.

  I try to sound kind, understanding. I don’t want him to sense my anger. I don’t want him to stay where he is, in this limbo, because of my anger.

  I stare at his eyes. They’re less swollen, more normal-looking. In the movie version of this, they would flutter open and he would explain everything. There would be an extraordinary explanation—he is a secret CIA agent and Tessa is a Russian spy he was investigating.

  But, of course, that’s ridiculous. And this isn’t a movie.

  BEFORE THE SHOOTING, when Sahana and I talked about the problems Cale and I were having, I told her how Cale seemed like a different person. Sahana said, “When did he change?” and I said, “The day Evie was born.” Sahana had laughed, but I was being serious. It was exactly that day when something shifted.

  I had a long labor. My contractions started at seven o’clock on a Tuesday evening. I wasn’t even sure they were contractions. My water didn’t break. I just started to feel tightening, cramping every so often. I retrieved a notepad from the junk drawer in the kitchen and wrote down the times the cramps occurred and how long they lasted. When an obvious pattern developed, Aria was the first person I called: “I think I’m in labor.”

  It was eight days before Evie’s due date.

  “I can’t believe we get to meet her today,” I told Cale.

  I drank a protein shake and ate toast with peanut butter, then lay in bed. I’d made Cale take prenatal classes with me, and in the classes they said not to go to the hospital until you have to grab onto furniture when a contraction comes. For several hours, I just felt like I had bad menstrual cramps. I couldn’t sleep, even though I knew I should. I was too excited. Cale slept, deeply enough that he snored.

  The next morning, I was in more pain. The contractions were a few minutes apart, each one about a minute long. In our classes, we learned all kinds of techniques for Cale to use to help alleviate my pain. Several involved me on all fours, him standing over me, holding a blanket around my belly, pulling up. We didn’t use any of the techniques though. Cale just stared at me, dumbstruck. At nine o’clock, I told him we should just go to the hospital.

  When we got to Saint Al’s, I was only one centimeter dilated. The nurse was a bitch. She didn’t believe I’d been having contractions for fourteen hours. She said I should go home, take a bath, that the baby probably wasn’t going to come for a week or so. A week! I told the nurse there was no way in hell I was going back home.

  I walked through the hospital parking lot, a spectacle, I’m sure. Cale seemed more concerned about people staring than he was about my pain. This only bothered me in retrospect; in the moment, I wasn’t thinking about him at all. I was thinking only of what was happening to my body.

  A few hours later, I was five centimeters dilated and they admitted me. I’d loosely committed to a “natural birth” (no epidural, no pain medications), but any woman who says she “loosely commits” to such a thing will surely ask for drugs. Cale stood in the corner of the room, as if he were afraid to touch me, as if I were a wild animal. I guess I was, in a way.

  By the time I was eight centimeters dilated, I was begging for an epidural. My contractions were coupling—coming in twos, no break or rest in between. When the anesthesiologist came and stuck the needle in my back, I didn’t feel a thing. Whatever pain was caused by that sharp instrument in my spine was nothing compared to the contractions.

  Once I was sufficiently numbed, I opened my eyes for the first time since I’d been admitted. I didn’t even realize they’d been squeezed shut until the nurse said, “I can actually see you now. What pretty eyes.” I laughed. That’s the joy of an epidural—while your body endures a horrendous pain, you feel nothing, you laugh. I wondered why I’d waited for it, why I’d attempted this “natural birth” to begin with.

  “Cale, I’m starving,” I said to him.

  They don’t let you eat while you’re in labor. They don’t want you to have anything in your system in case they have to rush you in for an emergency C-section.

  “When I have this baby, I’m going to need you to get me a breakfast burrito from Goldy’s,” I told him.

  The nurse said, “That’s the easiest push present I’ve ever heard of.”

  I’d told Cale about push presents—gifts husbands get their wives for going through labor. I’d made fun of them, made a show of rolling my eyes when telling him about the friends I had who had requested them. But, secretly, I hoped he would get me something—a necklace, flowers, something to show he was proud of me, grateful for my effort in bringing our child into the world.

  Evie was born just after ten o’clock—twenty-seven hours after my first contraction. I cried when they put her in my arms. Cale stood next to the bed. I don’t remember him kissing my cheek or gazing at the baby. He was just standing there, looking lost, as if he’d wandered into some other woman’s delivery room. After Evie was cleaned and warmed and swaddled, they placed her in Cale’s arms and his shoulders went straight to his ears. He looked so uncomfortable, so hesitant. I remembered something the teacher in our prenatal classes had said—“Most men have never held a baby until they have their ow
n.”

  I told Cale to go home, get some rest. I applauded myself for being such a nice wife, still attentive to his needs, unlike all those other wives who forgot their husbands existed the moment they had a child. The next morning, they brought me breakfast from the cafeteria: dry eggs, rubbery pancakes, syrupy fruit from a can, a juice box. I left my tray untouched, waiting for Cale, for my burrito.

  He came just after nine, bags under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept at all, even though I’d sent him home so he could do just that. It was like I’d given him a gift and he’d thrown it out the window. Again, it was only in retrospect that I was annoyed. At the time, I was too enamored with our daughter, all six-and-a-half pounds of her.

  It took me a moment to notice that he had nothing with him. His car keys and wallet were in his pockets, as usual. There was no takeout bag, no burrito. It’s a small thing. Maybe the birth of his daughter had been so momentous that he’d forgotten about the stupid burrito. Maybe it was silly of me to remember such a thing. But, I don’t know, there was something foreshadowing about that burrito. The burrito was the beginning of him distancing himself, pushing away from our life as a family. The burrito was the beginning of something that culminated with him going to a bar in the middle of the night in pursuit of a girl.

  TESSA

  RYAN AND I SIT on the couch, watching one of those survival shows where the contestants are naked and left in some remote location without food or water. He is deeply involved in the episode, and I pretend to be as long as I can, then reach for my phone on the coffee table.

  There are several new posts since I last checked the message board. I scroll back to the beginning of the new-to-me posts.

  Boyseeeee:

  Latest intel says Ketcher’s funeral is gonna be in Caldwell tomorrow. Parsons Funeral Home.

  That was posted on Wednesday night. So this is how people found out about the service. I wish I’d checked the message board before the funeral. Maybe I could have arrived early, tried to talk sense into the angry people, spared Joyce the pain of seeing them there.

  JJ1356:

  At least they were smart enough not to do it in Boise. Anyone going?

  Mags4Ever:

  I’ll be there. Five people had to die terrible deaths at the hands of this man. Doesn’t feel right for him to have a peaceful send-off.

  JJ1356:

  Srsly. Why even do a service? Just asking for trouble.

  I can’t help but type a response.

  TessWasHere:

  He’s still someone’s kid. I mean, what he did was awful. But his mother should be able to say goodbye.

  Mags4Ever:

  Why tho? None of us who lost loved ones got to say goodbye.

  JJ1356:

  @TessWasHere, u actually defending this asshole?

  TessWasHere:

  Not defending. Just saying his mother knew him for 28 years. I doubt he was all bad for all those years.

  Mags4Ever:

  Wow. U crazy. I bet u would feel different if he’d killed someone u loved.

  JJ1356:

  Ya. I didn’t even know the victims and I think u crazy, @ TessWasHere. His mother raised a killer. She’s basically a killer in my mind.

  LvAll21:

  Anyone read that book by Dylan Klebold’s mom?

  JJ1356:

  The Columbine kid?

  LvAll21:

  Ya, his mom wrote a book.

  JJ1356:

  Is it titled “I Raised a Killer”?

  Mags4Ever:

  Lol. Should be.

  “Whatcha doing?” Ryan asks.

  He’s fast-forwarding through the commercials—the benefits of DVR recordings.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Instagram.”

  “You are always on that phone,” he says.

  He resumes the show. The female contestant has banana leaves over her boobs. I make a comment about the woman’s fashion sense. Ryan laughs. I’ve done it again—convinced him I’m fine, we’re fine, everything is going back to normal.

  I can’t stop thinking about Jed though. Those photos, the ones Joyce had at the service, I can’t stop seeing them. It’s hard for me to imagine that the man firing shots while I hid in that storage closet was once a boy with his two front teeth missing, blowing out candles on a birthday cake. That was my favorite photo—the one of him with the cake. He looked so happy. He looked like a person who would never not be happy.

  After the service, Joyce invited me to lunch with her and Gary. I declined, didn’t feel like it was my place. But I didn’t want her to think I declined because I’d figured out who Jed was, so I sent her a text message later:

  I can see how much you loved your son. I will be thinking of you.

  She hasn’t responded yet. Maybe she is embarrassed that I know. I want her to know it doesn’t change anything. I want her to be comfortable enough with me to tell me what he was like. I still feel this intense need to understand—why he shot those people, why I survived.

  “Tess? You hear me?” Ryan says.

  I hear him now, but it’s clear I’ve completely missed another question.

  “What? Yeah?” I say.

  “You want to try that new Thai place this weekend?”

  “Oh, sure,” I say.

  It’s the end of the episode, when they reveal how much weight each contestant lost. We always like to guess; winner gets a back massage.

  Ryan pauses it before they reveal and says, “Eighteen pounds for the woman, thirty-three for the man. So, total of fifty-one.”

  “Good guess,” I say, playing along. “I’ll say fifteen for the woman, twenty-eight for the man.”

  “So, total of forty-three.”

  He hits play, and the announcer says that the woman lost seventeen pounds and the man lost twenty-five—a total of forty-two.

  “I win,” I say, trying to look happy, though I couldn’t care less. Ryan makes a show of his disappointment.

  “I guess massaging you isn’t the worst thing,” he says with a smirk.

  He is going to want to have sex later. I am going to have to deny him, again.

  “You want any ice cream?” he asks as he gets up and heads toward the kitchen.

  I shake my head. “No, thanks.”

  He stops. “You okay, Tess?”

  I give him a smile that doesn’t show teeth. “Uh huh.”

  He doesn’t seem to believe me, but he goes to the kitchen anyway. While he’s gone, my phone buzzes with a text message.

  Thank you for the message, Tessa. And thank you for coming today. It means so much to me.

  My heart bangs in my chest, as if I’m a teenager who’s just received a text from her longtime crush.

  I am so glad I was there. Let me know if you want to meet for coffee again soon.

  I start biting at my thumbnail nervously, awaiting her reply.

  How about this weekend?

  I can’t help but write back, too quickly, too eagerly.

  Yes! Tell me when and where.

  Ryan returns with a bowl of chocolate chip. I resent that I have to look up at him, interact with him, when I really want to text Joyce. It occurs to me, in this moment, that maybe Ryan and I can’t survive this. Maybe we can’t be together. Maybe he will go to law school five hours upstate and I will stay here, and we will pretend that works for a while until we both get tired. It’s not you, it’s me. That’s what I would say, because it’s the truth, but those words have been so overused that they would do nothing but aggravate him.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Ryan says, sitting next to me.

  He offers me a spoonful of ice cream, and I eat it.

  I nod.

  “You sure we’re okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  As I say it, I know it’s a lie. And the knowledge of that lie makes my throat tighten and my eyes well up.

  “Hey,” he says, setting his bowl on the coffee table.

  He pulls me into him. He’s a good guy. It real
ly isn’t him; it really is me. It’s not his fault that I was alone in that storage closet, that he wasn’t there. It’s not his fault that he can’t possibly understand.

  My phone buzzes again, and I pull away from Ryan.

  It’s Joyce, suggesting we meet at the same coffee shop on Saturday at 10:00 a.m.

  Ryan eyes me as I text back to say I’ll be there.

  “Who you texting?” he asks.

  He seems suspicious. Maybe he thinks it’s another guy. That would be an easier story to tell his friends—Oh, she was cheating on me. The reality will be harder to explain.

  “A friend of mine,” I say.

  He nods, doesn’t ask which friend. And as he sits back into the couch, slumping against the back cushion, there is a look of defeat on his face that says he knows what I know—we are at the beginning of our end.

  JOYCE

  I WAKE UP TO the two urns on my nightstand, seemingly staring at me. Jed’s is a graphite gray color; Ed’s is navy blue. Jed’s is slightly smaller than Ed’s, which seems fitting—father and son. I think of the stick figure family decals people put on the back windows of their cars—the father figure the tallest, then the mother, then the children. When Ed and I got married, we thought we would have two children. I always pictured a son and daughter, a little bit of the American dream, a real-life Norman Rockwell painting. Jed wasn’t an easy baby though. I thought, We can try for another one when he’s a little older. But then he wasn’t an easy toddler either. When he was five, we decided the time was right (or as right as it would ever be). A few months passed with no luck. Then Ed was diagnosed with cancer.

  “You awake?”

  This voice startles me. I turn over, face him.