Chapter Five

Nightly supper on the ranch used to be an occasion. Not in the same way a dinner party is back in California where it’s more about the age of the French wine and the popularity of the caterers, but an occasion to sit and rest, to be together, and most importantly after a long day, to eat. On the ranch, you work up an authentic, organic hunger unlike any pangs I’d had in the California.

“All that fresh air, kid. Hard work builds up an appetite,” Dad would say, patting my tiny back like I was a ranch hand as he strutted through the door at the end of the day. Face flushed with hard sunlight, hands crusted with dirt, he’d lift his hat off his brown cowboy head, set it on the porch swing, and wipe dusty sweat off his brow. I’d pluck a piece of straw off his jeans, and he’d know just what that meant. “I’ll be sure to wash up before supper.”

Mom didn’t like the smell of horses, which was unfortunate since we lived among a thousand head of them. He’d wash. I’d wash. And we’d share a steak. Tender and juicy and marinated to perfection, black grill-lines melted on my tongue, fresh corn on the cob dripped with real butter made from the barn cow’s milk, and the biscuits—warm and fluffy and soaked with gravy—were a culinary piece of heaven.

Now he sits beside me at that same weathered farm table, eating blended food through a straw, and I know I’ll get nothing down tonight. Jake sits across from me, which at turns flusters and confuses me. Does he always eat with my dad?

Then Dad makes a noise, little more than a moan, and Jake stands up and adjusts the straw in my father’s mouth. My father lets out another sigh-like noise, and Jake says, “My pleasure, Chief.”

My father’s lips turn up in a tiny smile, a quiver really, and I can tell it’s a major effort to move at all. I poke at my fried chicken, my mashed potatoes, and my green beans, only taking tiny bites when Jake raises an eyebrow at me.

Anna, the woman who helps my father, comes in from the kitchen wearing a waist-length apron over tight blue jeans. I welcome the distraction. The red nail polish on her fingertips is chipped and worn and matches the hand-embroidered strawberries on her apron. I watch the way her hand curves on my father’s shoulder, once so broad and mighty skimming the side of his front door after a day on the ranch, now so frail and bony it looks more like a bird’s wing. “You’ve hardly eaten a thing! Don’t you like my cooking?”

“No. I like it.” It’s just that eating makes me sick.

“We need to fatten you up, Paige, don’t we, Gus? You’re as skinny as a wild mustang. How do you even have the energy to get from there to here?”

Her hands perch on her ample hips, waiting for an answer. I want to disappear under the table. At home we just pretend I’m eating. Can’t we just pretend I’m eating here, too?

“I think she looks fine,” Jake says.

Anna grins at him. “You know what they say about California?” she asks mischievously.

“No. What?” Jake asks.

“It’s full of nuts and berries.”

“I’ve never heard that,” I snap. This Anna person is annoying as shit.

She scratches her nose. “Maybe it’s nuts and fruits. Anyway, your old man says it all the time—” She glances at him. “Used to anyway. Now he uses his computer to do his silly talking.”

Dad’s hand rests on the keyboard. He’s talking.

“What did he say?” I lean over to look.

Can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip, nor can you squeeze water out of a rock.

Anna laughs. A loud, genuine bellow. “Lot a truth in there, Gus!”

Where there’s a will there’s a way, he types after.

She laughs again.

To shut her up, I scoop up some potatoes and manage to swallow the spoonful down with a glass of milk. I’m grateful to Jake for sticking up for me, even though it’s a total lie. She’s paying too close attention to me, this Anna.

For the first time, I legitimately miss my mom. At least she pretends the not-normal is okay and doesn’t grill me or put me on the spot. That’s what I’m used to—a world of secrets and denial—but here it seems like they are facing Dad’s illness head-on, everyone accepting it with grace, even my dad. It’s not something I’m used to, and I squirm under the flashlight-in-my-face discomfort.

After I’ve poked around at the dinner and made sufficient small talk, I excuse myself and do what I do best: I run.

Angry, frustrated tears slip into the wind as I run. I hope I can count on nobody following me. Cowboys have a code: When someone needs a moment, they take a moment. If they want to talk it over later, they’re welcome to, but if what you need is quiet, quiet is what you get. At least that’s how it used to be. Anna, though? She seems to be all up in my business. Dad, too, with that computer of his, telling Anna this and that. Making jokes about California’s nuts and berries? What even was that? Anger over Mom leaving, probably, and taking me. He was always a good ole’ boy anyway. So Dad thought I was a nut, a fruit, a berry—a skinny, malnourished one at that. Did they know about my Xanax? Probably. I dig into my pocket and take a half.

When my body calms, so does my brain, and I slow down and watch as dusk settles on the ranch like an encore. I walk and I walk and I notice a sunset explosion of beauty, of reds and gold. A couple of older wranglers setting the horses to hay is a second standing ovation for another perfect day off the grid. The hungry equines snort satisfied noises, scuffing dust into the air with their hooves as I walk past them, past yards of fencing begging for repair, tumbles of scratchy brush, ground critters scrambling to their holes seeking protection against the night, until I come to the red barn. This will do. Actually, this is exactly where I want to be.

I scurry up the ladder to the hayloft, and after blowing away spider webs and moving rusty rakes and boxes, I reveal the trapdoor—the place where I hid my childhood secrets. I fondle the handle on the door, and it creaks open. Inside is a wooden box. I lift its lid, exposing the treasures of my childhood summers, and watch as those treasures of innocence, of an intact girl from a mostly intact family, roll out before me like not a moment has passed.

A blue velvet pouch full of gemstones tumbles into my palm: tigereye, moonstone, and the one I called fire-heart with jade and orange veins, my worry rock moonstone. My faux leather headdress, now dulled with age, beckons me to touch it, and I do, at first with trepidation, its blue, red, yellow feathers now molted, only a few threads on each stem remaining.

Dad and I were in this Girl Scout-esque club together called Indian Princesses when I was little. I was Little Dove and my big, strong, capable father was Chief Big Bear, and it was cheesy in retrospect, yeah, but fun. On those campouts, I ate Pop-Tarts for breakfast, Cheetos for dinner, and didn’t have to brush my teeth. Those were the surface things I loved. But the memories that stayed deeply lodged in my chest were the campfires at night, each Little Princess tucked in the strong cavity of their Chief’s chest as we rocked back and forth singing old country favorites like “Kumbayah” and “Country Roads,” and watched sparks fly up into the darkness. Later, Mom told me my dad was so drunk on that trip that he was howling at the moon, picked a fight, and some of the other dads had to restrain him. I liked my truth better.

I gently set my childhood memories back into the box, worried if they stayed out in the world too long, they’d be crushed. What I’m really looking for I find next. Under the mini treasure chest of fool’s gold I panned from the Snake, is my diary.

My therapist back home was always telling me to write it down. If I write it on paper, it may pop the cork off the bottle my chest is holding so tightly closed. If I write it on paper, I might be able to breathe again.

Under the worn velveteen cover, after pages and pages of familiar childhood words, I find a place to finally confess the secrets that have threatened to bubble up since I landed in Wyoming. My California home, the horror stories from there, seem both so very far away and as close as if I were facing them in a cracked mirror. I’m not sure how to date it, to title it. I just know if I don’t write them down they’ll continue to fester in my gut, slowly poisoning me. And if I’m going to have any chance of starting over—if I have a chance of simply surviving—I have to start distancing myself.

So I simply write Then.