Page 14

Palm Springs

January 3, 2023

3:00 P.M.

The third time Grant left, it was unequivocally my fault.

The girls were still young, maybe seven. Grant was on his way home from a week of teaching at the college. I’d been feeling agitated and insecure for days. It was silly—March had had her first soccer practice earlier that day. I’d brought her a Rice Krispies snack, and one of the mothers, Donna, acted as if I’d packed heat. “Friend, don’t you think your daughter should eat something healthy?” She pulled a bag of carrots out of her purse and offered it to March instead.

I looked around at the mothers intently watching their children run up and down the field, when I didn’t see why it was necessary to spectate at a practice—it wasn’t even a game. These women seemed so much better at parenting than I was. They arranged playdates, met at the Children’s Museum, watched jugglers at the capitol on weekends. Their children seemed perfect, while Dort was famous for her epic meltdowns, and March could behave like a real prima donna. I worried Dort was headed to the life of a criminal, and March would become a spoiled mean girl, and it would be all my fault.

Like Polly, I had a limited bandwidth for their emotional outbursts—I didn’t care to negotiate or have conversations about feelings. On top of everything that week, I’d also been passed up for a promo tion at the Veterans’ Aid Society, where I’d been doing the work of two people. I didn’t have time for exercise, and I worried my body would never bounce back. It was one of those days when it felt as if the universe were conspiring against me. I wanted a partner to offer comfort. I wanted Grant, but I was always afraid I’d burden him with my troubles or push him over the edge.

I went to our room to make the bed, and that’s when I did something I’d promised him I would never, ever do: I opened his nightstand drawer and pulled out his journal.

January 23, 2002

Fresh snowfall, big fat flakes. White lights on the Christmas tree. Kim in the next room making a scrapbook. Photos everywhere. Dort finally asleep after much protest. She insists on making everything difficult. Kim thinks she’s getting another ear infection, I think she’s just being Dort.

March 11, 2002

Marianne is up for full professor. Went to evaluate her class this morning and she didn’t show. Found her in her office, asleep at her desk. She told me she just started chemo—I had no idea she was even sick. Doesn’t look good, she said. I subbed her class. Wrote an evaluation and said she knocked it out of the park.

April 14, 2002

Forgot how draining but rewarding student conferences can be. Semester is fully kicked in. Happy I get to do what I do. Pinch me.

“What are you doing?” Grant asked. I hadn’t heard him come home.

I slammed the journal shut. Busted. “I was just—”

“Can I have that please?”

He grabbed the journal from me, turned around, and left without another word.

He wasn’t gone long that time, just four or five hours, although it felt as if he’d been gone forever. My stomach was in knots. I could hear him saying “Can I have that please?” over and over. I cleaned the house from top to bottom.

I called Polly, who sympathized with Grant this time. “Of course he’s upset. How would you feel? He’ll come back from Timbuktu or wherever it is he goes.”

I fell asleep feeling more alone than ever. When I woke up, he was in bed next to me. In the dark, I rolled over to face him. He was wide-awake. “I was wrong to read your journal. I just missed you, and I wanted to—”

“I refuse to hide it,” he said quietly. “It’s not like I write about things I don’t want you to see. It’s for me. I’ve kept it since I was a little boy. It helps me process. Do you understand? If I know you’re reading it, I’ll start writing like it’s for you, and what’s the point?”

My cheeks flamed red. “I’ll never do it again. It was the only time. I promise. I’m so sorry, I really am.”

“I’m always honest. If you want to know what I’m thinking, just ask.”

Now, in Palm Springs, I would have given anything to ask Grant what he was thinking—and where the hell he was.

He could have driven all the way back home by now, but he’d have needed gas. We shared a credit card, and I got an alert whenever he made a purchase; so far, he hadn’t charged a dime. The Grant I knew never carried cash. But how well did I actually know him anymore?

Instead, I googled “missing hiker” and discovered countless tragic headlines. The people who seemed to go missing were mostly day hikers like Grant. There was a couple who’d hiked the Cactus to Clouds Trail on one of their first dates and got lost, only to be saved by taking refuge in a dead hiker’s tent. Or the guy who’d fallen to his death after a cardiac event. A hiker who’d suffered alcohol withdrawal and never came home. One young man I read about didn’t answer his phone because he thought the rescuer’s call was spam. A dead tree fell on a woman who thought she’d found a good place to take shelter. There were stories of the victims of serial killers and deranged individuals. Bodies recovered, remains found—or, worse: remains never found.

I walked to the entrance of the trail and stood next to the sign that said EXTREME CAUTION: RATTLESNAKE HABITAT. I’d often overhear tourists talk about the desert the way Grant had at first, as though they were discussing a cilantro aversion. “It just isn’t my thing,” they’d say. I was convinced that the dramatic, almost unreal beauty of Palm Canyon would change any skeptic’s mind about that. There are fifteen miles of California fan palms growing along the trickle of a river, with the slumped shoulders of ancient mountains rising up on either side. According to Cahuilla legend, an elder named Maul, anticipating his death, stood still in this spot and turned himself into a palm tree in order to leave something his people would value.

Now, alone, I did what I’d wanted to do for days: I walked to the edge of the valley and screamed his name. The sound came out of the deepest part of me, the depths of which I hadn’t even known existed. I screamed so loudly that my voice ricocheted off all the stone surfaces, sank to the bottom of the gorge, swirled around the palm fronds, and rose to the tops of the mountains.

“Grant!” I hollered again, wishing he could hear me. “Come back! Come home!”

But where was our home anymore?