In hindsight, he wished he’d come to the Andes a year earlier, instead of wasting his time in cities. And yet maybe it was for the best. Maybe he’d needed to serve a term of hard labor, to work off the shame of his mistake with the draft board, to punish himself for the pain he’d pointlessly inflicted on Sharon and his parents, in order to earn his reward in the highlands. The labor here was even harder, but he felt restored to a self he’d misplaced for so long that he’d forgotten it, restored to a world of earth and plants and animals, restored to his curiosity and his ambition to do something with it. The excitement of returning to school and pursuing a career in science propelled him through his days and kept him awake at night. It was a very long time since he’d wanted something larger than his next meal.
The afternoon he got Becky’s letter in Tres Fuentes, the page of the postal clerk’s calendar was gravid with x’s. It was the twenty-seventh of March. Clem went out to the dry fountain and tore open the envelope eagerly.
Dear Clem,
Thank you for your apology, thank you for bringing me “up to speed” on your travels （it all sounds very interesting）， but please don’t tell me what to do. You made a choice not to be here, and it’s pretty late in the day to suddenly play the peacemaker. You were off on your adventure, you don’t know what M & D did to me, you don’t know how obsessed they are with Perry （I know he’s sick but he’s unbelievably selfish and deceitful and has cost them well over ten thousand dollars, no end in sight）， you have no idea how unbearable they are, you haven’t had your stomach turned. I’ve forgiven their financial debt to me, I don’t want or expect anything from them, and whatever Mom tells you, I’m always friendly to them. I don’t wish them ill, I just don’t enjoy being around them. The Bible doesn’t tell us to like our neighbor, because a person can’t control who she likes. I do struggle with honoring one’s parents, but in fairness they don’t give me much to work with. Dad is more grotesquely insecure than ever, the whole church knows about his affair with a church member （did Mom happen to mention he nearly got fired for that?）， he’s grown a goatee that looks like pubic hair, and Mom acts like he’s God’s special gift to the world. Try honoring that. I’m perfectly cordial to them, but no, I don’t invite them over and no, I don’t go there for holidays, because A, I’m part of Tanner’s family too, and B, I want Grace to grow up in a house of peace and harmony and I’m afraid of what would happen if I spent more than fifteen minutes with them. I’m married to a wonderful, talented, generous man and I have the most beautiful baby, I’m really overwhelmed with what God has given me, I wake up every morning with a song in my heart, and I would ask you not to blame me for trying to keep it that way. Some people are lucky enough to like their parents, but I’m not one of them.
I owe you an apology in turn for saying hateful things when you couldn’t go to Vietnam. It was wrong, and I apologize, but there was something weird about the way we used to be together and maybe we needed to grow apart and become our own people with separate identities. I used to love talking to you about everything under the sun, and I do sometimes miss having a brother to look up to and tell things to. If you ever come home, maybe we can give it a try again. The second you meet Gracie, you’ll understand why I’m so crazy about her, and I want you to get to know Tanner as he really is. You never gave him a chance, but if you care about me you should care about the person in my life who’s best to me, best for me, best everything. I don’t mean to make rules, but if you want to be in my life again I guess there are some rules. Number one is respect my feelings about M & D. That one is nonnegotiable. But also, when you see the situation with Perry and what the two of them are like these days, you might understand better why I feel the way I do. I’m sorry they’re unhappy, but I can’t make it better, even if I wanted to, because I don’t matter to them enough. They made their choices, you made yours, I made mine. At least one of us is happy with her choices.
Love, Becky
The letter was like a match struck in the dark. In the light of it, he saw his old bedroom at the parsonage. It was there that Becky had come to him late at night, offered up stories, and, more than once, in her straightforwardness, fallen asleep on his bed. Why hadn’t he woken her up? Told her to sleep in her own room? It was because she’d meant too much to him. To know that she preferred his room, preferred him to anyone else in the family, was worth the discomfort of sleeping on the floor. And if she’d been embarrassed to wake up and see him on the rug, had apologized for appropriating his bed, or if it had happened only once, it wouldn’t have been weird. But when she’d done it again, and again—let him sleep on the floor without embarrassment or apology—the terms of their arrangement had been clear: he would do anything for her, and she would let him. To anyone else, it might have looked like she was being selfish. Only he understood the love in her consenting to be so loved.