26
Sienna
I text Tyson right before I leave my bedroom, with Beck carrying my duffel bag for me. I packed light. He should have been back in London for several hours by that time, but he doesn’t return my call until I’m well into Nebraska and five chapters into the Liane Moriarty audiobook Beck said I would just love. My Prius connects his call to my stereo via Bluetooth, so I don’t have to try and hold the phone and drive at the same time.
“There is no way you can make that drive by yourself, Sienna.” I imagine him pacing.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’ve got the sling, and I’m taking the pain pills only at night.”
“That you’re taking the pain pills at all is reason enough for you not to do this.”
“I’ve already left.”
He swears.
“I’ll stay in Omaha tonight and then finish up tomorrow. I’ll be going to the storage unit to see if my long-form birth certificate is there first. Can you send me the gate code and the lock combination for our unit?”
“You can’t go pawing around in the storage unit.” His voice is getting louder.
I raise my voice too. “The filing cabinet is right there toward the front. Remember how you said we’d want it there in case we needed to get anything?”
“This is crazy.”
“This is what I’m doing. I’ll pay back whatever I use from the joint account.”
“How?”
I’m taken aback by both the heat in his voice and the accusation, but he doesn’t give me a chance to respond. “You’re not getting paid to work the ranch, and I’ll be surprised if you have more than a hundred dollars left in your personal account from your last paycheck.”
I’m actually down to eighty-seven dollars, but I’m not about to tell him that. “I’ll figure it out.”
“No, Sienna, you won’t figure it out, because you can’t figure it out. You’ll do whatever the hell you want to do and not give a damn what I think.” The line goes quiet, and I blink at the windshield and endless ribbon of highway ahead of me. My phone beeps to indicate that the call is ended. For a second I think I simply lost signal and then realize he hung up on me. Tyson?
I wait for him to text me an apology or explanation or something. He texts me the address, gate code, and combination for number 348 instead. I wonder if he filled out the divorce worksheets on the flight. I wonder if he spent those twelve hours listing all the reasons why he was done with me and I just handed him the final straw he’d been looking for. I don’t let myself mourn our marriage and instead adjust my position and start my book up again. When I unfold myself from the car in Omaha, I feel the way I imagine an eighty-year-old woman feels. My joints are stiff, my head hurts, and my shoulder is almost immovable. I’ve limbered up enough by the time I’m in my room to pull off a phone call to Beck.
“What did Tyson say about using the credit card?”
“He’s mad and . . . sick of this, I think.” But I know he’s sick of this. Sick of us. Sick of me.
“This as in . . . the two of you?”
Funny how it’s easier to divulge the truth over the phone than it is face-to-face. I stare at the ceiling. “Neither of us have gotten what we wanted or expected from this marriage. It’s been a long descent.” The swirling plaster of the ceiling begins to turn into shapes. An elephant, a man’s face that’s melted on one side.
“It’s only been five years.”
Only? Five years feels like forever. “He wants this corporate life where he travels and makes big things happen.” I don’t mean to sound like I’m blaming him, but I don’t take back my words either.
“And what do you want? The ranch?”
I think about that as though I haven’t thought about it so many times before. “I honestly don’t know what I want, Beck. Especially now. Maybe I just want . . . life.”
“Yeah.” The word is hard and dry.
“I always thought I would live my mom’s life, or the life she didn’t get to live, ya know? Fall in love, have a family, build a future. I imagined anniversary trips and grandkids and, well, everything’s different and I don’t know how to envision my future anymore, but I’m okay if I have to do it alone.”
“Oh, don’t say that.” Beck sniffed, betraying that she is crying on her end of the phone. “You deserve to be loved, Sienna. Wanted and adored.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But Tyson deserves that too, and neither of us has been doing a very good job of it for each other.” I push myself up from the bed, wincing at the effort it takes, and brighten my voice to take the edge off. “Anyway, it will all work out, right? My doctor says I have an excellent prognosis. I just need to get this Mom stuff taken care of so that I know where to put my feet.”
“Foundation.” Her tone is reverent.
I nod even though she can’t see me. “For so many years I have been living in the future, then I was trying to keep my balance in the present, and now the past is pulling me in. Maybe I’ll find a piece of myself in each place and come out with a wholeness I haven’t had before. That’s what I’m hoping for, but there’s work to do before I can get there. Does that make sense?”
“It does,” Beck says. “And I’m praying for you, Sienna. To find that wholeness, to find your . . . place.”
I imagine her prayers going to heaven and God turning to look down on the person Beck is petitioning for. I wonder if He knows me, if He knows my story, if He’ll help me put it together. Or maybe I’m just one person in a sea of faces and I don’t warrant any special treatment. I’ve never been sure, but I know Beck is sure and that means something.
When I wake up the next morning, gritty and sore, there’s a text from Tyson.
Tyson: At least fly to Toronto from Chicago.
I text him back to tell him thanks, and he doesn’t reply. I think about his suggestion over breakfast with my arm in a sling and my lower back aching and decide to take his advice. Before I check out of the hotel, I’ve booked a flight for that night at four o’clock. It gives me butterflies when I read the confirmation e-mail. I’m going to Canada!
The drive to Chicago seems twice as long as the drive to Omaha, even though the distance is about the same. I can’t find a comfortable position for my shoulder and have to stop for a Coke twice because I’m so tired, my vision blurs. The road is long and boring, and my anxiety is increasing with every mile, making it hard to focus on the book. I finally trade it out for a classic rock station that thumps through my car speakers.
It’s a relief when I can get off the 80 and wind my way to the storage unit located on the outskirts of the city. I try to remember why we decided to store everything there—it makes no sense now that neither of us has a connection to the city—but I suppose we thought at some point we would come back together and what better place for that than the city we’d lived in? Chicago had been so exciting when I first came—strolling Navy Pier and Millennium Park in that unhurried way a local can do. We found a Vietnamese restaurant in West Ridge that became “our place” and went salsa dancing once with friends where we both laughed ourselves silly over our complete lack of coordination. We were treated to baseball games at Wrigley Field by Tyson’s boss, visited the lighthouse in the harbor, took a camping trip to Kankakee—we had some happy times. But daring to remember the good memories brings the bad ones too. Throwing up on the L after my first round of hormone treatments, sitting on a bench in Maggie Daley Park and envying the innumerable families who walked past me while the ice in my drink melted in the staggering heat and humidity of summer. Fighting with Tyson over money while on our way to a wedding reception in Archer Heights. Tyson telling me over dinner in Little Italy that he wanted to take a job in London and put off our fertility treatments. “We’ve got to have a reset, Sienna. Otherwise what is this all for?”
What is this all for?
I feel as though I wasted all those years, wanting what I couldn’t have—babies—while turning my back on what I did have—Tyson—and now I have neither one. Nor do I have the faith in my dad or knowledge of my mom or confidence in Grandma Dee that I took for granted. And now I’m missing part of my breast too. Have I gained anything? Cynicism, maybe. But strength too, I suppose. Empathy for the hard things people face that I’ll never know about because, like me, they’ll keep it under the surface and smile in all the right places and do their makeup every day without a hint of the vise tightening around their neck.
The radio announces that it’s Easter Sunday. Growing up we always went to church on Easter and had a family dinner. After Tyson and I got married, we were either at the ranch or Tyson’s parents’. Easter always felt different from other Sundays, and I would think about Jesus and what He taught and what I believed about His role in this life of mine. I don’t know what to think about Him now, but I send up a little prayer—Help me find my mother.
No one answers, and Bon Jovi comes on the radio.
I stop the car at the gate to the storage unit and toggle to the text Tyson sent with the codes. The metal creaks as the gate raises. I pull forward and go up and down the aisles until I find number 348. Five minutes later, with the garage style door up and using my phone as a flashlight, I find my birth certificate—the exact same one Dad had. Not the long form. No answers.
I don’t waste any emotion on it as I close everything up—not an easy feat with one arm and no strength left in the rest of me.
“So, did you get it?” Beck asks when I call her on my way to the airport. I’m early, but where else will I go?
I look at the birth certificate on the passenger seat. “It’s another short form, just like the one in Dad’s file.” I now have both copies with me, having made sure to get Dad’s before I left the ranch.
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish.” My arm is killing me, throbbing and burning with equal intensity—worse than it’s ever been. I change the position of the sling to ease it, but the improvement is minimal. I’m worried I’ve done something to my armpit incision. But maybe I’m just so tired that anything that hurts a little, hurts a lot.
“But you would have needed a long form for both your driver’s license and your passport.”
Beck had looked that up Saturday morning while I packed my duffel bag.
“Which means Dad has a long form somewhere.” Beck had learned that every child born in Ontario got both a short form and long form, so Dad would have had to order an additional short form to give to me when I moved to Chicago and then stored the long form somewhere other than his files where he stores every other legal document. So much energy put into hiding information.
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired.”
“I wish I could have come with you, even if I’d stayed on the States side of the border. I should have done that, huh?”
Yes, I think. It had seemed silly for her to come on only part of the trip and miss Easter with her kids. But I regretted not finding a way for her to have come. This driving was too much. “Of course not,” I say out loud, trying to sound less tired so that Beck will be less worried. “I’m flying into Ontario tonight instead of driving.”
“Oh, I’m glad to hear that,” Beck said. “I didn’t suggest it because of money and all that.”
“Tyson suggested it.”
“You guys talked, then?”
I love her for having so much hope in her voice. “No, he texted.”
“He still cares about you.”
I say nothing. Caring isn’t enough. Love isn’t even enough. I wish I knew what would be enough. “Thanks for all your support, Beck. I’ll call you tomorrow.”