Everywhere She Goes

She managed a nod, her usual social skills having totally deserted her. This man had been her mother’s lover. Of course, she hadn’t known the truth until years later. Back then, she’d thought he was a nice man who Mommy and she happened to run into really often. He’d bought them lunch several times.

“I’ll bet you remember me best for the handprints I left in your concrete slab,” she blurted.

He stared at her. “What?”

“You didn’t know it was me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Suddenly he was as brusque as Mayor Noah Chandler at his most impatient. He looked over her shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m meeting someone.”

“Of course.” She wouldn’t lie and say, Great to see you. It wasn’t, even if she wasn’t being fair. After all, Mom was the one who’d been married.

Unless he had been, too?

She didn’t care.

I am angry at her. Had been, still was. She had been only sixteen—and an already confused sixteen, at that—when she’d found out her mother had had an affair.

An affair? Who knew? Maybe she’d been screwing around on Dad for years. Cait wanted to think the betrayal explained his rage.

She didn’t look back as Nell pushed open the door and the two of them exited.

* * *

DINNER STARTED WITH them all clinking wineglasses in a toast to her new job. Cait was still feeling the glow, if also a whole lot of trepidation, when Nell glanced at her.

“So, who was that guy we ran into at the restaurant?” She transferred her gaze from Cait to her husband. “Please pass the butter.”

He did so automatically, but he was looking at Cait. “I didn’t think you’d remember anyone from that long ago.”

Here was where she could say, He wasn’t anyone important. But Colin likely knew him, she realized. Her brother had been enough older than her to be aware of relationships and undercurrents to which she’d been oblivious. In fact, she’d nursed some anger at him, too, for leaving her in ignorance even though, all grown-up now, she could see why he hadn’t said anything to his little sister.

“Jerry Hegland.”

He frowned. “Who?”

She set her fork down. “You don’t know him?”

“The name is vaguely familiar.” He seemed to be searching his memory. “Wait. Something to do with the airport?”

“I don’t actually know.” But, yes, once Mom and she had gone out there to watch planes take off and land. Angel Butte Regional Airport wasn’t all that exciting, of course; at least in those days, aside from privately owned small planes, traffic had consisted of no more than a couple of flights a day to Portland and Seattle using turboprop commuter planes that carried something like fifteen or twenty passengers. Still, she remembered standing beside the runway as one of those planes tore by, gaining momentum and then lifting into the air. She had been amazed. Her family had never flown anywhere.

That had been one of the occasions when the nice man bought lunch for her and Mom, at the café in the airport terminal.

“Then how do you know him?” Colin asked.

“Mom.” She sounded like a crow. Harsh. “He and Mom...”

Her brother’s expression gradually changed with dawning horror. “He and Mom what?” he asked in a hard voice.

Cait was distantly aware that Nell’s mouth hung open. She’d had no idea what she was starting.

“They had an affair. Didn’t you know?” she begged.

“Hell, no!” He gave his head a shake. “I can’t believe— How did you know?”

“I always assumed... Wow.”

“Cait.”

“Don’t snap at me!”

Now they were glaring at each other.

Well, what difference did it make? she reasoned. Colin and Mom never talked anyway.

“I had no idea back then. I thought he was a friend of Mom’s. But when I was sixteen, I was rooting in her closet looking for something.” She’d been snotty, and Mom had taken away her cell phone in punishment. The minute Mom left for work the next day, Cait in a fury had dug through all of her mother’s dresser drawers, looked inside coat pockets in her closet, then taken down every box on the closet shelf. In the second one, she’d found a couple of photo albums and letters and been distracted from her search. She remembered sitting on the bed turning pages in the albums. Already her memories of her dad and her brother were fading. But here were Colin’s and her school photos, as well as lots of family snapshots. Mostly those weren’t all that great—people were squinting against the sun or looked posed and uncomfortable. There were first-day-of-school pictures, when Colin or she were stiff in their new clothes. And some of Dad laughing with his arm around one of them. She’d felt strange, seeing those.

She hadn’t paid much attention to the letters, beyond dumping them out on the bed so she could look at the loose photos. There had been a bundle tied in ribbon with handwriting she’d recognized as Nanna’s. But then she saw that a picture of a man she had recognized was bundled with a few notes that weren’t in envelopes.

“I found some notes he’d written Mom,” she said. “They were...um, kind of explicit. And then in one he was pleading with her to leave Dad. He said he’d take us, too. In the last one, he said, ‘Why won’t you call me? You’re wrong, whatever you think.’” She remembered it word for word. “It freaked me out. I guess Mom slept with him, but then she ditched him when he got serious about her. Which made me wonder if there hadn’t been other men, too.”

Colin hadn’t moved. “Mom?” he finally said in a low, dark voice.

Cait bobbed her head. “I always thought...”

His eyes focused on her.

“That you must know. I mean, you were older—”

“No. I had no idea. What does he look like?”

She did her best to describe the Jerry she remembered from back then and the one she’d encountered today.

“That son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“Maybe,” she said. “But it’s still mostly Mom I stumble over. I mean, she was married. She had us to think about.”

“You mean, she had you to think about,” he said, with less emotion than she suspected he really felt about being deserted by his own mother. But then his eyes narrowed. “Why would she have introduced you to him?”

“I guess sometimes they wanted to get together and she didn’t have any place to leave me. Or maybe they were playing family. I don’t know. I was a kid. I thought we ran into him by accident.” She told him about having lunch with the man, and the treat of getting to go practically out onto the runway to watch planes take off and land. “One time we had a picnic. I don’t remember where. We swam. I remember the water being really cold, but it was fun.” She shrugged. “All innocent, until I found out it wasn’t.”

“Goddamn it,” her brother said bitterly.

“Do you think Dad knew?”

Colin’s face was transformed by anger, his eyes the color of storm clouds. “I have no idea. I tried not to listen when they were screaming at each other.”

She nodded her understanding; sometimes she’d run to her room and pulled her pillow over her head. The yelling so often ended in crashes and grunts and sobbing. She hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near her parents then.