Chapter 52 #2
The anchorwoman paused, giving room for the gasps in living rooms all over the nation. Next to me, Caleb was sitting on the couch. As far as I understood, Doug had told him the bare minimum details about my altercation with Shannon. Caleb hadn’t said anything to me about it yet.
“Next week, our culture correspondent will sit down with this producer to talk about her time at Yesteryear Ranch. The conversation will revolve around her story of assault, but I hear it’s also going to feature some incredible behind-the-scenes footage on how Yesteryear Ranch is actually run—and from what I hear, things are not entirely as they seem.
That’s an interview you won’t want to miss.
” The male anchor organized his papers and said in the chummy, about-to-transition-to-a-lighter-topic voice, “I didn’t know they had people working for them on that farm, did you, Sarah? ”
“Sure didn’t!” she said cheerily back, and then the television screen went black.
Doug set down the clicker. “They gave her the full prime-time slot,” he said, a look of grudging admiration on his face. “That’s hard to get.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means that she’s going to be good.”
Natalie we totally believe u!!!
Holy shit lol u are totally fucked
Tradmommy and traddaddy behaving poorly? Color me shocked
THIWS ISA OBVIOUS MONEY GRAB THAT PRODUCER SHUD BE ASHAMED
The days leading up to Shannon’s interview were a blur of preparation.
Doug and the lawyers were staying at a hotel in town; each morning, at nine on the dot, I watched their large black Escalade roll slowly up the hill, and I steeled myself for another day of tense planning.
It felt like we were fortifying ourselves for a physical disaster: each time I walked into the kitchen, another twelve-pack of Gatorade had been stacked into the pantry, and the curtains in all the downstairs rooms were drawn shut, giving the house a boarded-up effect.
I don’t know why Doug insisted we keep the curtains that way.
Maybe he was afraid of photographers with the kind of zoom lenses that allowed them to see stars in outer space.
Maybe he, too, was acting on some animal instinct to disappear.
I understood the sentiment: whenever I had a free moment in the day, I walked into my bedroom and crawled under the covers until someone called my name.
Mama!
During those days, I found myself constantly stumbling upon new and unusual pairings of people congregating in new and unusual settings with each other.
This, too, felt storm-like, the way a zoo flamingo might be found floating in a swimming pool after a hurricane.
For example: Amelia sitting on Clementine’s bed with her, whispering quietly.
Grandma never spends time in the children’s bedrooms with them.
Or: two of the younger lawyers playing patty-cake on the floor with Jessa and Junebug.
Is this time going to be billed? Perhaps most concerningly: Doug talking quietly with Caleb by the pantry one evening, the two of them facing the wall and speaking in sideways murmurs, the way one might do facing a painting at a museum.
I got only a few phrases from their whispered conversation—Need to take care of things … think outside the box—and then Doug clapped his hand on Caleb’s shoulder and said, “I believe in you, son.”
“I think everyone is turning on me, Mama.”
I was in the pantry in the dark again. My new home office, these days.
It was late evening. The house was still.
Through the phone, I could hear the steady click, click, click of my mother’s sewing needles as she knitted.
I’d been relieved when she answered the phone, but not surprised.
She rarely went to sleep before one in the morning. “What do you mean, turning on you?”
“I—it’s hard to explain. But some—some stuff has happened. Some stuff you need to prepare for.”
The jars tittered from the shelf across from me. What an understatement!
My mother was only half listening. There was commotion behind her. “It’s Natalie,” I heard her say. “I’m talking to Natalie.” Then she was back with me, saying, “Sorry, dear: Brandon was just looking for the peanut butter. These preteens with their hunger pangs! Now tell me again what’s going on?”
I stared at the wall. “People are lying to me, Mama. Family members. I can feel it. I can—I can see it.”
There was silence.
“Well,” my mother said softly. “I certainly didn’t want you to find out this way.”
I paused. “What?”
“I’m not surprised you sensed this, Nattie. I’m sure I’ve been acting … different.”
She hadn’t been, not at all—or if she had, I hadn’t noticed.
She went on. “I’ve been seeing a therapist, and she encouraged me to tell you girls …” She let out a fluttery, nervous breath. “Well. Listen. I only told Abigail first because she was in the house, we see each other so much!”
“Just tell me!” I said too loudly. My voice echoed in the pantry.
“It’s about your father.”
My heart rate quickened. I whispered, “What do you mean, my father?”
“Well, you know how he’s”—and here she lowered her voice to a whisper that matched mine—“not dead.”
I stared tensely at nothing. “Yes, Mother. I know how he’s not dead.”
“The thing is, Natalie,” she said, and paused again. Breathed in sharply through the phone, then spoke through a rushing exhale: “He didn’t leave because he cheated. He left because I cheated.”
I didn’t understand. She wasn’t making sense. “What are you saying?”
“I was bored, all right? That’s the God’s honest truth: I was bored.
I wish I had a better reason, but I don’t.
One of the lawyers in the office—his name was Dan, you wouldn’t ever have met him, he transferred to the Boise office after all the …
the mess—well, he knew how to salsa dance.
Salsa! You should’ve seen the way his feet moved, and his hands … ”
She was breathing heavily now, either from the effort of confession or the memory of Dan’s salsa hands.
“I cheated on your father,” she said again, “and when he found out, he wanted to stay, to work it out, and I told him to leave. And once he was gone, I realized I liked it better. Being alone. And so I figured if I told you girls I was technically still married, then you wouldn’t ever pressure me to get remarried. ”
I was speechless.
“I’ve held a lot of guilt over this,” she went on firmly, “and I’m terribly, terribly sorry for deceiving you girls.
It wasn’t right. But”—and here she took another deep swell of breath, as if shoring herself up for what was next—“I also don’t regret it.
Not at all. And I know how you’re probably feeling. But I spoke to Ben about it—”
“Ben, like Abigail’s boyfriend? Why?”
“Well, honey. He’s a pastor. He has the ear of God. And do you know what he did when I told him?”
“No.” It was becoming quite clear to me that I would hate Pastor Ben if I met him.
“He took my hands firmly in his, and he said God loves me anyways. And he thanked me for raising Abigail to be such a strong, loving woman. And I thought—well, I thought that was very nice of him to say.” She paused to clear her throat.
When she spoke again, her voice was lighter, more conversational.
“They’re going to Sun Valley next weekend, just the two of them.
A skiing weekend! How fun. Ben planned the whole thing.
I think he’s just about the nicest man I’ve ever met.
You should see Abigail when they’re together. She’s smitten.”
My eyes were unseeing in the darkness. As if my life could get any worse at this moment, it was now abundantly clear to me that a consortium of liars and scammers had conspired to brainwash my sister and mother.
A woman therapist, a modern pastor. Snake oil salesmen, both of them: encouraging divorce, sanewashing infidelity.
“These people are taking advantage of you, Mother,” I said quietly. “They’re mining your weaknesses. It’s so obvious. You’ve always been too nice.”
There was a long silence here.
I expected my mother to hem and haw, to say, Oh, Nattie, it’s nothing like that.
But then she did something altogether different.
She said slowly, and with obvious discomfort, “Do you know what, Natalie? I—I don’t think I am too nice.
In fact, I’m very proud of how nice I am.
I think it’s a good thing. And if I’m being honest, I’m very disappointed with how not nice you are. ”
“Mother! You have no idea how hard things are right now, and if you would just listen to me—”
And here is where the strangest moment of my entire life happened: my mother, that good Christian woman, snapped.
“No!” she shouted, so loudly that I held the phone away from my ear. “You listen to me, young lady. This is your problem! This has always been your problem! You think kindness is some silly frivolous side virtue, when it is in fact the whole damn thing!”
I’d never heard her say a curse word in my life. “Mother,” I sputtered again, “I just—”
She roared in return, her anger vibrating through the phone like some energetic hex: “WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR YOU TO BE KIND?”