Push

chapter Seventeen

Elizabeth

I am standing on this bridge fully aware that Shep Calgaro is watching me from the bushes. He’s hunkered down in the honeysuckle at the end of the bridge. I don’t know why he thinks he’s being so stealthy—he’s drunk off his ass again, and anything but quiet. The moment I got out of my car and started walking across the bridge, I knew he was there. I could hear him moving around, and I could smell the Scotch and sawdust on him from across the street.
He knows that it was David. He must have overheard our conversation in his office yesterday, and now I have to do this in front of both of them. And that sucks.
I started working for Shep three years ago, when David was still in high school. I never aspired to be a contractor’s secretary, but the pay was decent, and when Mark left me for that strung-out hussy, I had to start paying the bills somehow. What I didn’t plan on was falling for Shep. Yes, he’s a bit of an a*shole when he’s drunk, but when he’s sober, he’s sweet as pie. Buying me flowers and jewelry and taking me dancing down at Peyton’s nearly every Friday night. When you date an older man they work harder to impress you, and Shep did a fine job of that.
His relationship with David, though, isn’t nearly as sugary. I have seen how raw they are together. How they can spend an entire day working side by side, building some rich woman a gorgeous kitchen, and not say a single word to each other. There is so much bitterness between them, and I don’t think it will ever go away. And now, somehow, I have managed to make it so much worse. But, in all honesty, if I could go back, I wouldn’t change a thing. I complicated things for sure, and I know there will be a price to pay, but now that I am here, I am going to be honest with David and ask him to forgive me. To move on. I want all this bullshit to be over.
David walks toward me now, carrying a duffel bag. I am beginning to think he is going to call it quits. I have a sudden and sinking feeling that he isn’t going to listen to me; he isn’t going to forgive me. He is next to me now, asking me what the hell I was thinking. Asking me why I thought it was all right for me to do this to him. I tell him that I don’t know, and that sometimes life is complicated. I didn’t know all this would happen. I didn’t know it would be like this. I didn’t mean to hurt him.
When Shep and I first got together, David was dating Kelsey. I thought they were going to get married someday. Shep and I would sit at Peyton’s drinking beer and Scotch, and he would go on and on about how Kelsey was too good for David and how one of these days she’d figure it out and dump him like the loser he is. But I always thought they were sweet together. They were an unconventional pair, for sure, but sometimes there is balance in those kinds of relationships. They were together for nearly a year when Kelsey ran. That’s when it started for David and me. He came to me for help when he found out she was pregnant. David was sure that Kelsey’s parents would disown her, that they would make her life miserable, and that he would be to blame. He didn’t know what to do. Kelsey would not terminate the pregnancy, that he was sure of, because she was so Jesus-y. He told me that he begged her to run away with him, begged her to let him take care of her and the baby somewhere far away from this town. But she refused. She said she didn’t want to be with him anymore because this whole mess was his fault. She was going to do this on her own, and God would take care of her and the baby. David was devastated. He wept in my arms.
David made me promise not to tell anyone that Kelsey was pregnant. And three days later, she was gone. It was the day of Beth Lanko’s funeral. Kelsey never showed up to work, and within hours, everyone was frantically looking for her, the police included. David came to my house that night. He was so composed, so cold. I think he was in shock. He said he didn’t want to talk about it. I had to drag the words out of him one by one. He couldn’t believe she actually did it. She left him, left her family, left everything. He asked me what he should do. I told him that he had to go to the police, but that he needed to go to her parents first, to explain what had happened, to explain why she left. To apologize. He walked out my door that night and did exactly what I told him to do.
He must have lost a bit of himself that night, because after that, David was different. He withdrew from everything. I think he was mad. Mad at Kelsey, mad at the police for not finding her, mad at her parents for choosing their religion over their daughter. They were furious with her, just as David had suspected they would be. They refused to forgive her, or David, for the mess the two of them had gotten themselves into. Within two days of learning that Kelsey was pregnant, they told the police to stop looking for her. They said that wherever she was, God would take care of her. God would help her find her way. She would come back when, and if, she was ready. And they would be waiting for her—praying to find a way to forgive her.
Shep was furious at David. He said that David had ruined Kelsey. That Kelsey deserved better, and that he, too, would never forgive his son for knocking up such a nice young lady. David was a disgrace, Shep said, and he should be kissing his father’s feet for permission to continue to work for the company.
A few weeks later, David started regularly showing up at my house. I think he just needed someone to talk to. He needed someone to listen. We would talk for hours. About his mother, about my ex-husband, about life. I was connecting to David in a way I never had connected with Shep. Shep was fun, but David was deep. Then one night, he told me about when his mother was sick and about how his father refused to get her the help she needed. But she never asked for it either, he said. David didn’t think she wanted to be helped. It was hard, he said, especially because he was so young. He loved her, and he thinks she might have loved him back, in her own strange way. But he was never certain of it. His mother’s illness and Shep’s alcoholism clearly put David at the mercy of their diseases, rather than providing him with the stability every child craves. I can’t imagine how it would make a child feel to have to deal with such unpredictability. For things to always be so out of their control. It must have been hard for David. It would be hard for anyone.
To make matters worse, David told me that shortly after his mother died, in a drunken stupor Shep told David that he’d been an accident. That he was never supposed to “be.” That he was responsible for his mother’s death because their life would have been different had he not been born. She wouldn’t have gotten sick, Shep said, and she wouldn’t have died.
The night he told me all this was the first night we slept together.
I never intended to be in this position. Caring for a father and son in two very different ways. When David and I started sleeping together, I thought he knew about me and Shep. I thought he must have seen us together. I thought that, at some point, his dad would have mentioned it. But then, when I realized that David didn’t know, I made the conscious decision not to tell him. But it all got so complicated, and I couldn’t manage the secret, emotionally or physically. My guilt was drowning me. Drowning David every time he opened his mouth. I decided I needed to end my relationship with Shep, find another job, and continue life. With David.
But before I could do it, David saw us together. He came into Peyton’s yesterday afternoon when he was supposed to be on a job. Ken was with him, and the pair of them stopped dead in their tracks when they walked in the door and saw Shep and me snug against each other on the same side of the booth. David’s eyes settled on mine, his face blank, his body frozen. I thought he was gonna lose it. I thought David’s calm was going to unfurl into rage. I waited for him to splinter. But he didn’t. He didn’t go ballistic; he just stood there breathing. Shep was looking at his menu, and before he could look up, Ken pulled David back out the door. He knew they would be in trouble if Shep saw them drinking when they were supposed to be working. I told Shep I needed to go out to the truck to get something I had forgotten. But when I got outside, David and Ken were already driving away. I stood outside Peyton’s trying to collect my thoughts. Deciding if I should get in Shep’s truck and follow them. I didn’t, though, because I realized that I needed time to think about how to fix this. And I was sure that David needed time, too. Time to fume.
After a few minutes, I went back inside. I told Shep that I couldn’t do this anymore. That we were done. He balked, told me he loved me. I can’t work for you anymore either, I told him. I need this to be done. I’m sorry. He asked me if there was someone else. If I was screwing someone else. At first I didn’t answer. I stood next to the table looking at him. I wanted to calculate my words very, very carefully. I told him that, no, there was no one else. Then I made up some bullshit excuse about our age difference. I turned on my heels and walked out the door.
I figured that Shep would stay at Peyton’s, drinking until he couldn’t stand. But he didn’t stay at the bar because he is here now, hunkered down in the bushes.
I wanted Shep to know immediately that it was over between us, so I walked back to the office to clean out my desk. When I got there, David was standing in his dad’s office with his hands on his head. He was so calm. I could see it on his face. I was expecting seething anger. But it wasn’t there. I told him I was sorry, that I would do whatever it takes to make it better. I want to be with you, David, I said. I ended it with Shep. It’s over and I’m sorry and I love you. He sighed and stood staring at me for a long time before opening his mouth. He said he didn’t know if he could get over this. Knowing that he had made love to the same woman his father had made love to disgusted him. Filled him with contempt. Contempt for himself. Contempt for me. He told me all of this without a trace of anger in his voice.
We stood in his father’s office for a long time, looking at each other, breathing and thinking. Finally, he told me that if I want to try to make this better, I need to prove how much I care about him. I need to prove to him that I am choosing him and not his father. I need to show him that I am serious about wanting to make this work, about wanting his forgiveness, about loving him. I told him that, yes, I will prove it. I will do whatever it takes to prove that I love him.
He told me to meet him here, on Clawsen’s bridge. And so here I am, standing next to David and listening to myself tell him about how complicated life is. Apologizing again and again for my dishonesty. Telling him that I love him and that I will do whatever he needs me to do so that maybe, just maybe, we can move on. I don’t know if Shep can hear us from his place in the honeysuckles, but if he can, I hope he is sober enough to understand what is happening. I hope he doesn’t hate me. But more than that, I hope he doesn’t blame David.
David puts down his duffel bag and tells me that he forgives me. I am relieved, and I want to kiss him, to wrap myself around him and say thank you. As I lean forward, he reaches into his pocket, and in a second I am turned around and he’s wrapping something around my wrists. By the time it registers that he is tying my hands together, he is done. What the hell, David? What the hell are you doing? He tells me that before we start things over again, he needs to know that I am serious about not wanting to be with his father anymore. He bends down, places the duffel bag on top of my feet, and begins to tie it there. It’s heavy. I am in a complete state of confusion.
When he is finished, he stands up and looks at me. He tells me I am going to jump. I am going to jump off this bridge because if I don’t, then I might as well have chosen his father. It is all or nothing, he says. I don’t understand. Is this for real? It can’t be. He must be bluffing. This has to be a joke. If I jump, I tell him, then you’ll know I love you, but I’ll be dead and that’s not good for either one of us. But if you don’t jump, he says, I’ll know you never cared about us in the first place. Jump, he says, serious as stone. Jump.
Fine, I tell him, hoping to call his bluff. Fine. I will jump. I will jump because I love you—but you are a sick motherf*cker, David.
I am laughing now because I don’t know what else to do. Peels of nervous laughter pour from my throat, and when I look at David, he is smiling. A huge, face-splitting grin. Thank God. It was a joke. I look down at the ground and tell him he can untie me now, take this bag off my feet. I am his. But when I look back up, he is still smiling. Only it is different now, more twisted. Power-hungry. But also controlled. I stop laughing and I know. I know this isn’t going to end the way I thought it would.
And then I hear something coming from the honeysuckles. It’s Shep. But he isn’t coming to help me. He isn’t coming to stop David. He is snoring, loud and deep, because he is passed out in the bushes, drunk to hell. I deserve this, I tell myself with a bitter chuckle of resignation. I deserve this, because somehow I have managed to align myself with an alcoholic and a psychopath. Apparently, I’m a goddamned genius.
I start to scream at David to let me go, not to change his mind but because I want Shep to wake up. I want him to come flying out of the honeysuckle and stop all this craziness. Please, David, I yell, please, let me go. I will walk away, I tell him. I will not tell anyone about any of this. We can pretend it never happened. I try to pull away, try to run. But the duffel is heavy, and my legs are bound together.
I get no answer from David, and his smiling, powerful silence brings on another fit of nervous laughter. I can’t help myself. I am laughing at my own idiocy. David shoves me forward, and I spiral off Clawsen’s Bridge in a fit of giggles. I cannot believe this is happening. And I cannot believe that Shep is still asleep.