At the end of each crushing love affair I went to Georgia, and each time she told me, “Honey, you’re always wantin’ to make yourself indispensable. You figure if you help them with their worst problems, they’ll never leave. Since you can’t figure out exactly what their worst problems are, you help them with all their problems. Any girl who will let you do that is pretty sick. Healthy people want to solve their own problems, which, by the way, you have plenty of. Best way to be healthy in any relationship is to take care of yourself and let the other person do the same.” She asked did I understand her.
I said I did, and to prove it I went right out and fell in love with Carly Hudson. I mean facedown in the soup in love; head-banging, eye-popping, short-of-breath, plead-with-the-universe-till-your-voice-box-is-raw kind of love. The kind of love so deep that, when it’s not going the way you want it to, your ancestors moan. She’s a jock, which appeals to me out of the chute. Dark hair, dark eyes, makeup applied with a subtle artist’s eye and hand. There is no butt-twitching or flirtatious glancing or any of the symptoms that usually rocket me to Hormone City, but her natural sexuality is jarring.
I’m one of those guys who’s loquacious in love. Our first real date was for a Coke on a study break, and by the time it was over, I had already told her she took my breath away. She was quiet a few minutes, then proceeded to say that was the fastest way she could think of to get her to change her phone number. If Georgia had been going to pick one girl out of the billions inhabiting the planet, this is the one she would have picked, the one least likely to ever let me fix her life.
I met her on the river. It was the end of summer between my sophomore and junior years, one of those dry, hot days when everyone is at the river the minute they finish whatever they had to do for the day, which for most of us is before ten o’clock in the morning. That was the summer I’d decided to become a championship water skier and wake-boarder. I’d get up at four in the morning as the sun peeked over the mountains to the east, pick up a couple of buddies, get the boat on the water while it was smooth as an ice-skating rink, and ski until the winds came up, then hang out on the dock or the beach until evening when the water calmed again to the point that you could see the reflection of the mountains as clearly as you could see the mountains themselves, and ski or wake-board until dark. I was in my Speedo about eighteen hours a day.
Carly was new that year. Her dad is this big-time builder from over in northern Idaho and had contracted to build a fancy resort hotel on the river, then develop a couple of high-rent subdivisions. Between all the new high-tech industries and resort developments, Cutter is one of the faster-growing towns in the state. At any rate, I was pretty popular that summer because of the boat, and for the price of a few gallons of gas I’d take almost anyone for a spin on the skis. In return, they had to drive while I skied. I was working my way through this makeshift slalom course a few of us had rigged up when I spotted Carly and a couple of girls from my class walking onto the city dock, and I signaled Mike Morrow to take me in. I glided toward the dock, turned around as I reached it and sat, perfectly dry above the knees, very cool.
Carly walked over, failed to mention my studly landing, but struck up a conversation. Before I knew it, I was showing her the sights up where the river narrows, in the wilder, faster water. I pulled close to shore, out of the current near water that swirled deep beneath shady pine trees. I can’t even remember what we talked about, but all of a sudden two hours were gone and I was pretty much thunderstruck.
I was cool, didn’t ask her to the Legion Hall dance that night, figuring she’d show up with friends and I’d nab her away. Only the friend she showed up with was Mike Barbour. The deer incident, my cultural heritage, and the fact that I wouldn’t turn out for sports had already locked Barbour and me into Christian-gladiator status.
Barbour has always been popular in that loud, conquering-hero sort of way. Since middle school he was ahead of his time: first guy to shave, first to throw back a six-pack. On the dance floor he showed pelvic action worthy of Elvis. Carly kept him at a distance, but it was killing me that she walked in with him, or that she danced with him at all. Old stirrings of not being chosen welled up, and my first instinct was to get out of there because that particular feeling has historically resulted in bad behavior. On the other hand, I was majorly pissed at myself for not asking her to the dance earlier; the window that had opened seemed about to close and lock. So when Barbour went to take a leak, I asked her to dance. She smiled and said she thought that was me standing over there by myself.
I thought, Right. In the middle of a part of the United States so white that every fourth year some group of survivalist assholes formally petitions Congress to create a fifty-first state from the land between here and Missoula, Montana, for whites only, she thinks she sees the same Kung Fu Jackie Robinson she spent two hours on the river with this afternoon. I didn’t have the words for that, so I said, “Yeah, I’m hard to miss. How do you ladies do it?”
“What?”
“You’ve been in town two days and already found the biggest asshole we’ve got.”
She smiled. “Guess he reminds me of my father.”
“Is that good or bad?” I was being haunted by the feeling that goes with the knowledge that something you really want is going to the very worst possible place. God, where in the rule book does it say that the good guy, the guy that’s easy to talk to, the guy who unties the damsel from the railroad tracks seconds before the train would cut her into thirds, gets to be the friend, while the asshole gets the good stuff? That’s how my mind gets going when I expect the worst.
“It’s bad. But I always have to check those guys out. You know, to be sure of my instincts.”
Instant relief. I don’t totally understand it. Some people will have asshole parents and turn out just like them, like Barbour or Rich Marshall. Others see through it and turn out the opposite. I discovered later that night Carly hadn’t had it easy. Ol’ man Hudson’s a hard-drinking hardass who’s never satisfied, and he used to knock his wife around in a minute if she got out of line. When Carly was a freshman, back in Idaho, her dad talked her into turning out for the J.V. cheerleading squad instead of basketball and volleyball because he thought being a jock was “unfeminine.” “I hated the idea, but I was a cutie,” she told me. “When the student votes were in, I had more than there were students. And remember I said Dad talked me into it.”
As I found out later, when Carly’s involved with something, she’s gotta have her hands on every part of it, so she helped design the outfits, worked up new yells, and even choreographed some dances. At halftime of the first J.V. basketball game the cheerleaders joined the drill team in a song-and-dance thing Carly had worked up. The grand finale required the three cheerleaders to bend over and flip up their skirts so people could read THS. The small crowd cheered wildly, even the players pointed and clapped, and old man Hudson came out of the bleachers like he was nuclear powered, grabbed Carly by the elbow, and jerked her toward the door, screaming that she was a whore and a bitch, and the next time he caught her showing her ass he’d beat her half to death.
“The crowd sat stunned until we were out the door. A couple of other parents told me later they tried to follow, but by the time they recovered from their shock, we were driving out of the parking lot. That night I got a beer opener from the kitchen and a ball peen hammer from the garage and redecorated his brand-new Lexus; smashed all the glass and ran the beer opener down each side, fender to fender. Then I went back into the house, threw my tools of destruction at his feet, and told him for every mark he put on me or my mom, I’d put another one on the car, and if he wanted to start right now, go right ahead, but be prepared to explain himself to the newspaper and the TV station.”