Chapter 48
The night Caleb told me what happened with Shannon, I was six months pregnant with our sixth child, and I didn’t sleep a wink.
I lay there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling while my husband snored peacefully next to me.
The sound made smoke pour out of my ears.
But of course he slept peacefully. As soon as Caleb told me what was going on, what was happening under my nose, he had effectively handed the problem over to me.
That was, after all, how all good marriages worked.
My husband moved instinctually through the world, he did the things he wanted to do and didn’t do the things he didn’t want to do, and I—happy wife, happy life—trailed beatifically in front of and behind him, sweeping the ground clean for him to walk forward, and then just as quickly sweeping his messy footprints away.
That’s what they’d told me to do, right? All those women who came before me? Be a mother, be a wife, and keep the household clean.
Liars. Every Christian woman I ever met had been a big fat lying bastard. Lord have mercy on their big fat lying bastard souls.
At five, Caleb got up and left to milk the cows.
At six, I got out of bed and went to the kitchen, ignoring the children and the nannies at the table.
I made an espresso and walked out to the front porch and sat on a rocking chair while the dark sky slowly lightened.
The espresso went cold while I sat there, rocking away, a wool blanket draped around my shoulders.
Wondered where my family might have ended up, if not here on this ranch.
Those options weren’t satisfying, though, not even for a daydream, and so I moved farther back and wondered where I might have ended up, if not with Caleb.
A series of silent films played out in front of me.
I watched them with vague disappointment.
If I didn’t marry Caleb, I would’ve married someone else.
Caleb was in love with Shannon. That’s what he had told me the night before.
He was in love, truly in love, for the first time in his life.
At that moment in his little monologue, I did flinch, I’ll admit that.
Not like he noticed. He was too busy landing the final blow.
“I’m moving to New York,” he said in the darkness, practically breathless with excitement.
“I’m starting a new life. She really challenges me, you know?
She pushes me on my ideas. Our conversations are incredible.
Did you know, Natalie, that the rat thing isn’t true? ”
“Yes,” I said softly. “I know that the rat thing isn’t true.”
He paused. “Why didn’t you say anything, then?”
I didn’t answer.
“I’m sorry,” Caleb said. “I know this will be hard. But it’s for the best, Natalie. I really believe that. You and me—we were never meant to be together. You know that, right? I think you’ve always known that.”
Moving to New York. Starting a new life. With Shannon.
I didn’t believe it. No way. Not a chance.
Caleb wouldn’t get more than three miles away from this ranch before a girl like Shannon got sick of him.
My husband was like a farm animal, or a very expensive suede couch.
Constant work. Diminishing returns. It required relentless sacrifice and impeccable discipline to give your life over to the care and management of a man like that. Shannon was not that kind of woman.
I said, “Is she pregnant?”
Caleb was silent. It was too dark to see his expression, but I could imagine it perfectly, his brow furrowed in contemplation. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “But if she is, I’d like to keep it.”
My husband, everyone! What a prince.
At seven on the dot, I knocked on Shannon’s bedroom door and heard a muffled Come in. I opened the door to find Shannon standing by her closet in a T-shirt and underwear, hanging a dress in the shared closet. “Oh,” she said. “Sorry, I thought you were one of the nannies.”
I waited, my eyes averted, while she rooted around the clothes in her hamper, found a pair of jeans, and quickly put them on. “What’s up? Is everything okay?”
I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. I smiled softly. “I’m sure you can imagine why I came up here.”
There it was: a whole world spinning in her expression. A long moment passed, and then she sat down on her bed. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I can.”
“He said you’re moving to New York together.”
“Christ,” Shannon muttered. “That is—yikes.”
“My husband is,” I said, and paused. Took a moment to collect myself.
Smooth the wrinkles of my fury into place.
“He can be gullible. So if there was, at any point—” I paused again.
I needed to be careful. Maybe she was recording the conversation.
Not likely, but not impossible. “I’m aware that it’s inappropriate.
He’s your employer, and so if there was any pressure on your part, or if he promised you any money—”
“He didn’t pressure me.” Her pants were still unbuttoned, a pink bud on the lace of her underwear staring out at me like an evil eye.
“Look. It’s …” She exhaled slowly. Tried again.
“Okay. Here’s the thing. I was angry after that day at the rally.
I just felt so—helpless. And so I kind of made this bet with myself to see if I could make some tiny difference in my own life.
Something practical. Something small. And I realized I could try to debunk some of the insanely stupid shit Caleb believes.
” Pause. “And then, I don’t know. Things—” Longer pause. “They developed.”
“Developed,” I echoed. “Is that how you would describe it?”
She looked at me. “He said you wouldn’t care.”
I felt sick. I hoped it didn’t show. “And you believed him.”
“Yes,” she said simply. Just: yes.
There was a distortion to the scene that wasn’t making sense to me, a great black spot in the center of the lens.
From some objective standpoint, it was obvious that I was driving this conversation, but it didn’t feel that way, not at all.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t believe this is happening right now.
I can’t believe I’m talking to a woman who admitted to seducing my husband, and who refuses to show a drop of remorse for it. ”
“Seduced.” Shannon looked genuinely surprised. “You think I seduced him?”
“You think you didn’t?”
Shannon brought a hand to her face. She seemed to be having a lot of trouble composing herself.
When she spoke, her voice was shaking. “You know, Natalie, I watch the way you treat Caleb. You act like he’s dumb.
Like he’s a little kid who needs to be protected or something.
” She looked at me. “He’s not as dumb as you think.
In fact, I think he’s pretty smart. Look at this.
” She made an impatient gesture around the room, but I knew she was referencing the range in its entirety, the barn and the chickens and the cows and the rivers and the mountains and the fences.
“He figured out a way for you to create a wet dream for him to live inside, and he found a way for you to do it so that you thought it was your idea. And now he just gets to … exist, in this psychotic little snow globe you built just for him. And in spite of all that, you somehow go on thinking that this was your idea. That you’re the one who’s in control. ”
“This was my idea.”
“Do you know why Caleb likes me so much? It’s because I’m the only person on this farm who treats him like a person, not a project.
I listen when he speaks. I ask questions.
I call him on his bullshit. I talk to him like I’m a real person.
Like he is a real person—and if he takes that experience and assumes it to mean we’re in love, then all that proves to me is how bad his understanding of relationships really is. ”
I felt a firm awareness that I was standing in the most wondrous moment of my own life. “You don’t feel bad at all. You’re a whore. A homewrecker. And you don’t even care.”
Shannon raised her eyebrows. It was the only part of her expression that moved.
“Actually,” she said quietly, “I’m not. This is what I’m trying to say to you, Natalie.
In order for me to be a homewrecker, you would have to have a home for me to wreck, and you don’t.
You don’t even have a family. What you have is a business.
Your nannies know it. Your farmhands know it.
Your husband knows it. And someday your kids will know it, too.
And do you know what? I think they’re going to hate you for it. I think they’ll never forgive you.”
Lord, God, help me.
“Bitch,” I whispered, almost worshipfully.
I felt wild. I didn’t know what to do, how to act, what to say.
Online, offline. Neither version of myself was prepared for this moment.
My head felt dizzy, out of control, like a spinning top.
I heard myself say, like some terrible impersonation of a woman I didn’t know, “Was it fun, Shannon? Was it fun getting fucked by a man who can’t even maintain an erection? ”
She was supposed to look horrified, or maybe ashamed. Instead, she looked concerned. “Oh God, Natalie—is he not hard when he has sex with you?”
Whoosh.
What’s a lady to do when the floor falls out from under her?
Easy answer: She closes her eyes. Imagines a floor where there isn’t one. Pretends that the twitch in her eye is from lack of sleep.
Worry. Women worry.
Up all night worrying, I suppose!
Good Christian women were great at worrying. They were not, however, good at confrontation. But good Christian men? Born for it.