Gentry

My arms are flecked white above the elbow. It's sweat that's dried on me while I ride. My glasses are greasy and smeared from trying to clean them on old shirts. My helmet is baking my brain. Looking up, I can see a few hundred graves by the long sloping curve in the road. I'm only six miles from Gentry. This is my third state today. It's the only time I'll hit three states in one day on the whole trip, due to the triple point of Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The taqueria in Southwest City is closed on account of it's Sunday and all good Catholics are in church. I'm hungry. I've already devoured the cookies I purchased south of Joplin. I'm running out of granola bars, and besides: I'm tired of them. At this point, though, I'm eating everything that doesn't need my gas cooker. I'm about six miles from Gina's house, and it's three hours since lunch. I kick the pedals hard and hear my shoes clip in again. No time to lose.
The six miles feels like forever. I see the familiar water tower rising above the trees, and my phone reminds me to turn left. I'm only a mile away, now. I know the geography, now. I'm almost there. I'm just looking for the street name I'll recognize. I get to the stop sign and pull up my phone to check it. Dead. A bit of a wander left tells me that I'm not on the right street, yet. The plateau drops, yes, just like it does at Gina's, but her house isn't on this street. I'll just skirt the drop and go a little further east, and--there's the road name. There's the mysterious path through the woods. There's the new house going up. There's the driveway. I pull in and lean my bike up against the basketball hoop, take off my helmet, and tuck my safety glasses away. Time to face the Webbs.

The first time I came to the Webb's house, I parked entirely in the driveway. They have nice grass, and I have a big heavy SUV. Delight's head pushed forward in the way people do when they can't believe they have to say this, and she looked at me through narrowed eyes. "You have to put just two wheels on the pavement, otherwise how will anybody drive past you? It's not your driveway, Robby."
"Oh." I'm used to being chided, but how was I supposed to know how to park at someone else's house? The other car had all four wheels on the pavement.
"Obviously, that's Shelby's car. She lives here, and you don't."
I let it drop.
When we went inside, the house had more people inside than I expected, and more kept showing up. Katie and Emily and Anissa and Kat and Shelby and Nelson and Sylvia all seemed to live there with Gina and Danny. About half of them actually did, and I wasn't having an easy time keeping up with specifics. Add in Delight and me and Andy and Karissa and Winston, and around our feet the scurrying clatter of trimmed dog toenails, and the television always on, and I couldn't parse relationships or identities. This was a very high-stakes visit. Delight loves these people kept ringing through my head. Don't screw this up. People who know me don't think I get nervous. I was nervous like a mental patient in a Gothic romance, strung like a poorly-tuned piano.
Six months before my first visit, Delight and I had gone to have dinner at the Mellow Mushroom with Katie and her mother, Kat, Shelby, and Emily. They're almost all nursing students at this point, not actual nurses, and their lives are titrations and anatomies. I know what the xiphoid process is, but not how to spell it. I had no desire to make myself seem idiotic by blowing hot air about trivia I'd picked up, and the only thing else to do was ask questions. "Did she really?" "How should it be done, then?" "What is it like when they call a code? You haven't seen one? Do you want to?" But nobody was answering, even when I did find space to ask. I'm not trying to hide myself, but I don't want to tell you I just read a few articles about video games on my phone. It was the coward's way out. On the way back to Collegedale, Delight laid into me.
"These people are important to me, Robby!"
"I know that--you think I don't?"
"Then why do you treat them like you don't care?"
"I don't understand what I should have done. I don't know what or who they're talking about. I can't add anything to that conversation."
"I know it's about nursing. I get that. But you're around nurses, and that's what they'll talk about. Honestly, when your friends start talking about crap I don't care about, you don't see me pull out my phone like a lifeline. Oh, my god, you really don't get this!"
I signaled to pull over on Apison Pike. The crunch of gravel was loud, and sounded like grinding teeth.
"I didn't think about it. I just did it, but it wasn't meant to hurt you."
"I don't care if you thought--listen to me. The problem is not that you hate my friends and don't care about what they like. The problem is exactly that you didn't think about it. You didn't think, Robby. You never think about me." She got out of the car, then, and slammed the door, hard. I jumped out to follow her, but my eye flicks away to red and blue lights over her shoulder. The cop car slid up, throwing gravel, and his window silently slid down.
"Do you need anything, ma'am?"
"No, thank you."
"Do you need any help?"
"No, we're fine."
Her eyes were puffy and red. My face was stormy and my cheeks were wet. We weren't fine.
A year and a half later, we visited the Webb's again for Karissa's wedding. I put my phone in the room. I left my computer in the bag. I was determined, for once, to make her proud of me. Emily and Anissa live with the Webbs, got it. (I'm still not sure if Emily is adopted formally, but it really doesn't matter.) Everyone disagrees with Nelson's opinions, but he seems to owe Gina a life debt and we all love him anyway, got it. You can make goofs with Danny, but not about him, got it. Mae (the dog) lives here because Danny would make any sacrifice (and it is a sacrifice) for Gina, got it. We cheer for Venesuela or Mexico, but you're sure to get on either Anissa or Nelson's nerves no matter which team you pick, got it. I do pretty well. I do read a book sometimes when everybody's gone to work or shopping, and I watch a few videos on my computer once when the girls are cooking in the kitchen. I'm writing plays, but even so, I catch myself and shut its lid. I want to pay attention; throwing myself into a group this complex and storied is nightmarish. Above it all hangs a stormcloud, threatening to break: Delight loves these people kept ringing through my head. Don't screw this up.
We all drove down to the lakeside bluff where Karissa was getting married. We were late. Everyone in the convoy was speeding. I hate being late. I hate speeding. I hate seeing such nervous stress wash over people I don't know how to comfort. When we arrived, everyone was seated and the marriage party was ready to march. When we went to sit down at the reception, it wasn't clear where we should go, and Delight wasn't around, so I just leaned on the railing and looked at the lake. I spent fifteen minutes without seeing Delight. Kat called to me and saved me. "Hey, Robby! I think this is your seat over here. It says Delight on it? But she's not here yet, so it's yours. Come sit with us!" Thank you, Kat. When the sun was going down, most everyone came outside onto the wide balcony below us, a woman I've never met before or since said some very moving things about the bride, and music swelled and thumped from an impromptu stereo system behind my chair.
"Hey--I wanna dance." Delight leaned in to my ear, her hand on my shoulder. She stood up and waited. She waited because I hadn't known it was a request, not a statement. She was asking. Oh. I stood up and followed her, but slow.
"I don't really dance, Delight. You know that."
"What do you do at weddings?"
"I talk to people. I watch things happen. I don't like dancing;  I'm not very good at it."
"It's not about being good! You just do, and . . . why am I even saying this? Why are we talking about this? Oh, my gosh."
She turned on her heel and left me at the top of the stairs.
I waited, hesitated, balked. I don't like to dance. Each step down the stairs was a renewed commitment. Delight loves these people kept ringing through my head. Don't screw this up. Don't screw this up. My feet finally met the deck boards that shook a little as people jumped near me. I pushed through, my eyes scanned the crowd. Red, black, brown. Shelby, Kat, and, ah. Delight. I pushed near.
"Listen, this is important to you, so it's important to me. I want to dance."
She nodded, and turned away. I danced near her for two songs. She danced away from me. There's a picture of that brief interstitial. My arms are flung out like awkward sticks that God attached with twine. My face is a parody of human emotion: I'm concentrating on how I must look, not feeling free. Friends are around in a circle, laughing, either at or with or for me. Delight looks happy. Maybe she is happy under this flashbulb, this moment. But her happiness doesn't keep; it spoils. I wasn't dancing with her, I danced for her, and she danced alone.
"You didn't even want to dance, Robby. You never want to do things I like."
"I did dance, Delight. I didn't want to at first, you're right. But I danced because it was important to you."
"That's not enough."
I was mystified that she could manage to throw even this back in my face. The brief liminal space between dancing for her and dancing alone evaporated and left only a thin oily residue.

Another year and a half has gone. Our anniversary drifted by us without incident, fanfare, or recognition. Something kept us from celebrating. She wasn't excited about my suggestions. "I have to study for class, Robby." It's August now, and we've driven south again, to G's house, to Yorktown Bay. At the camp, one of the staff turned to the group and asked "You guys wanna go out on the boats?"
"Um, yes!?"
"Sweet! We'll be down there at one, and we'll go out during siesta."
Matt and Nelson were hell-bent on going cliff-jumping. Six of us were littered on or near the docks, waiting for the two staff to get the boat down from the lift, fueled and ready. I stood a little away, feeling strange. Delight didn't want to talk to me. She hadn't all day, not really. The little she talked in the car on the way down was clipped and unfriendly. I decided to not put my foot in it. Play it safe. A man in a truck rumbled down the hill to the docks, had a brief talk with the staff at the boat, and grumbled away again. We put in, and away we flew. I put my arm in the warm water and felt it rip through my fingers. I thought about what the bottom must have looked like before it was a bottom, before there was a dam. I thought about Delight, who was sitting a few seats away, talking to Kat and the driver.
Rising up from the cloudy water, a cliff glowered large above us, fifteen minutes from camp. The boys jumped in to swim over and climb up. The driver, his friend, Matt, Nelson, me. The girls stayed to watch, to laugh, to cheer, to tan. The driver showed us all where to climb up, and I came last. Nelson nearly ripped a plant from the cliff face. The other boys yelled things at each other, psyching themselves up for a good thirty foot plunge. Our pilot flew first. He hung in the air a dreadfully long time before his body disappeared in the green-brown depths. The other staff member cannon-balled right after. Matt and Nelson waited. A cat-call from the boat was met with "You come up here and try it!" from Nelson. I stepped up. "You go, Robby. It's your turn. This is a white boy thing, anyway." I laughed, a short sharp bark. I looked over, stepped back, launched.
My arms always fly out like I'm trying to stop the water from hitting my face. I start with my arms clutching my chest and, given enough time to fall, I flap like a chicken. My hands always sting, and people always crunch up their eyebrows and think "I could do better than that." This time was no different.
I swam around and climbed the cliff again, only to find Nelson and Matt still at the top. The driver is in the boat with his girl. The other staff member is treading water, waiting to lever himself onto the ledge at the stern. I didn't realize I was the only one jumping twice.
"Hey. Where'd you put your feet when you jumped?"
I'm not going to make fun of them. The girls might, but I don't see them up here with us. "I started right here, pushed off of this one, and just jumped normally. You don't have to try very hard to clear the rocks; it's a very good cliff. I think this rock over here looks good, too, and I'm going to try it this time."
"Thanks, man."
I didn't tell him anything he didn't already know. He had watched all three of the other guys jump already. He was just freaking out.
I jumped again. I flapped again. Delight insisted I looked like a skinny bird. My muscles didn't remember flapping, and I protested. It was a stupid technicality; No matter what I did, it wasn't memorable. I didn't flip or twist or pose. Matt and Nelson went off together, holding hands. The girls in the boat went mad. Nobody gave a damn whether I had jumped twice or a thousand times. I really started feeling alone. Since I got in the boat, only Nelson and Matt had treated me like a human, and only that on the top of the cliff.
"I'm so glad we came anyway!" The driver is her boyfriend, and she's blonde and very tan for a blonde girl. "It's so nice to have you all as an excuse."
"I know. I just wish we could come down and save you more often."
I fired the fatal question. "Came anyway? Was there something else to do?"
"Oh, the assistant director came down and tried to get us to stay, but because we had some old staff, we got to go out anyway."
"Yeah, the director tried to make some rule about going out on the boats on Sabbath, but as long as we put the boards away and promised to drive out where we couldn't be seen, he couldn't really stop us."
That explained the man in the grumbly truck. That explains why they took so long fiddling with the boat. That explains why Delight was so cagey with me when we set out. Her eyes met mine as he said this. I folded my arms and slumped back in my seat.
I'm not exactly a rulebreaker.
Back in the room, Delight went on the attack.
"You don't even like these people, do you?"
"What are you talking about?" I'm so confused about how she can turn this on me. "I had a great time! You saw me jumping, swimming. What's wrong?"
"You went, alright, but you don't like them. Why are you so down on them, on going on the boats? We got permission."
"It just sucks that we were treated specially. You get that, right? I don't want to break rules just because I know we can get away with it."
"We're rulebreakers? You think we're rulebreakers, now? Oh my God! You've always hated my friends. Robby, I know you didn't like the popular kids in high school, but you haven't gotten over it. My friends were popular, and you still hate them because of it."
"I did not--"
"You can't just deny it, Robby. You weren't in their crowd. You were different, and you hate them."
She left me with that hanging in the air. The sun was going down soon, and I was tired of fielding her accusations. I unstrapped my canoe from the car and carried it down to the lake. I had my own life jacket, my own paddles. I had already asked the director for permission, and he didn't care. I paddled out maybe a quarter mile, around the point and back again. I wasn't looking for anything, just trying to get centered again. I needed to do something for myself after spending nearly a week thinking through all my actions, all my motivations, just so I wouldn't impinge on her expectations. I wanted some time away from her friends, not because I disliked them, but because I disliked how she treated me around them.
I did go back that evening. I talked with Matt about a disagreement we had over a Biblical idea. He's a pastor; he does this for a living. His answers were institutional, expected. We didn't find consensus.
The gang played a game. I remember playing, but I expect it's just a memory. I doubt very much I was in a mood to play a game that night. I do remember that only one person had a problem with me being there. By the time Delight turned and hissed at me the fifth time, I stood up. I was sitting at the back of the Gina's examination room, and between me and the door was a jungle of legs and bags. "Sorry," I said, over and over. "Excuse me, just trying to get out." I brushed knees and stepped over feet and repeated "Yeah, I'll be back. Don't wait up. I'm just going out."
The night was calm and warm. There were just enough stars overhead to remind me that I was in the country, but the muggy air blotted out so many that it almost wasn't worth looking up. I paced outside the nurse's quarters for five minutes, feeling bad. Why?
The stairs from Gina's to the lake are long and low, and I took huge hurtling strides back to my canoe. It wasn't worth waiting for her to come outside. Ambush wasn't going to solve my heartache. So I chose escape. I lifted the canoe back into the water and pushed the canoe out a few feet from shore. I pushed off with a smooth, practiced glide. All I could hear was the soft slap of water on the bow and the rapid tap tap tap of dripping from my legs. I just lay there, drifting a hundred feet from shore. I didn't move for an hour.

I haven't seen the Webbs since that day. About a week ago, I texted Gina to let her know I was riding through town, to check if I could visit. She was on a trip with students from Ozark, but she said I could definitely stay the night when I got there. So I left my bicycle at the basketball hoop and walked toward the front door. Someone is always at the Webb's. Someone would be able to let me in. Just as I round the corner of the house, Danny and Shelby walk out the front door.
"Robby? Oh, my gosh! What are you doing here?" Shelby throws her arms out for a hug.
"Hey, Shelby. It's been too long--didn't Gina tell you guys . . . didn't she say I was coming?"
"She didn't say anything!"
Danny reaches out to shake my hand. "Robby, it's good to see you. We were just going to a birthday party for Shelby's grandma. What are you doing here?"
"I came through to see you guys. I know Gina's coming in tomorrow, late. She really didn't text you guys?"
"It's a surprise to us." Danny starts to laugh to himself. "I wonder how the girls will react. Come on, let's go inside and surprise them." He turns around and unlocks the door. As the door opens, I can hear someone call from inside.
"That was fast."
"We just had something we forgot. Wanna help us look for it?"
We three walked in. Emily and Anissa jump up from the kitchen table. "What!? Robby!"
Danny and Shelby left with a promise to come back, and I stayed and told my story to the girls. "About fifty miles every day." Mae, the dog, sits on my feet while I scratch her ears. "I left on the thirteenth of August, so . . . two and a half months, now?" Anissa kindly offers me a burrito. It is delicious and more than makes up for the closed-down taqueria. "I sleep a lot in cemeteries and state parks, you know. It's cheaper that way. A week ago, I was on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River." Nelson shows up, and I begin to repeat myself. "Only about two and a half months." Anissa has to go to work. Nelson leaves for a basketball game. The story tapers off and I fall asleep on the couch. I hope I don't snore. When I wake up, Sylvia walks in with Danny and Shelby, and the story starts all over again. "August 13th, I left. That first day was all downhill, and I made a glorious thirty miles without barely trying. The next three thousand haven't been so kind."
The next day, Shelby takes me to the post office to buy stamps and post my mail. Sylvia shows up again with a handful of postcards, all Arkansas-themed. Nelson exhausts my limited knowledge of current sports. I write a blog post on my phone in-between people. Where before I set myself a conscious goal of staying off my phone, this trip I don't worry about it and I'm on it less. Or maybe I just feel less guilty about my time using it because nobody cares. Either way, the effect is the same: I'm much more natural, much more friendly because Delight isn't there making me feel like an outsider. Gina and Danny's clan in Gentry are my friends now.

When Gina finally gets home from a two-week trip on a tour bus, she's exhausted. I can tell she's dying to go to sleep, but she still spends a half hour with Nelson and Emily and I. The questions are similar at first. "The thirteenth of August," but they change quickly. "I don't know exactly what I'll do when I finish. I want to go to school again." Where everyone else danced around our common heartache, Gina addresses it up front. "I'm doing better, I think. I feel better. You know, it's been a year?"
That brings me up short, saying that. It's been a year. All these people are so kind to me, so welcoming, and it's been a year since last we saw each other. My presence isn't the visit of an old friend, either, but a five-visit acquaintance. And Gina's reaction makes it clear that nothing is quite as innocuous as everyone makes it seem. She's still not okay. Her stare is very intense.
"Robby, do you know what she did?" I shake my head. "She hasn't talked to any of us for a year and last May she texted Sylvia. 'Happy birthday! Couldn't forget my birthday twin!' Can you imagine that? Just like nothing has happened?" Honestly, I can imagine it. Better than Gina thinks, actually. I didn't know Delight, I guess, or perhaps she changed. But she's never been good at facing up against things that are difficult. And here in this moment, with the house dark but for the lights in the kitchen, with all her friends asleep in rooms around me, with a woman she called her second mom--I'm forced to admit that I'm just as terrible. I haven't been to see them since Delight left. I've been putting it off because I know they're the last piece of my marriage to face. I haven't wanted to admit that things have obviously changed between us all.
After Gina and Nelson go to bed, I lay sideways in my borrowed bed, on top of the covers, thinking. I think I could have understood everything if Delight had just left me, but she left everyone and everything. She rattles through my imagination: her eyebrows all knit together, her sharp face unafraid, unashamed, angry, slicing through me with the intensity of her emotion. "I feel so alone here, Robby." I can't be everything for her, and I know that. And this distance from her friends sort of happened without planning. Alone in the dark room, I bounce between past and present. I pull my shirt up over my eyes and try not to worry about breakfast. Gina said we would finish talking.

Eventually, Gina gets us to a Waffle House. Nelson is along, for emotional support and free breakfast. The waitress puts us in a back corner of the packed house, and after we order a couple waffles and a breakfast hash bowl for Nelson, she leaves us alone. The noise in the place is very different from the cavernous dark of the house last night, and the sharp sunlight glazes the scene with an intensity very unlike before. We laugh and talk very little before we get down to it. Gina sits across from me again, and her eyes meet mine even when I can't stand to look at her.
"Delight's mom called to let me know . . . Delight is looking to file for divorce."
"You haven't? Robby, what are you doing?"
"I didn't think she had it in her, honestly. And I thought maybe I . . . well, this bike trip. I want to finish it and that's when I'll be able to, you know, decide."
"So why haven't you divorced her?"
I don't say because I love her still, as it would ring like a bell when struck, it's so hollow. It's an armor plating I wear around my neck, suspended by a thin sterling chain. A bronze barrier cast by a broken hearted founder. I don't say because I can't, since there's no legal impediment, only my conscience, bound by an curse as ancient as my religion. I don't say because I don't want to, not that I do, but because I'm afraid of what Gina will think of me. This is the question of the trip. Why haven't I divorced her?
"I'm not ready."
"I can understand that, but don't let it stop you. You know that if you wait long enough, there'll be a moment when you wish you had, and you'll fall in love and still be married." This suggestion seems impossible. "You need to move on, Robby. She has. We have."
I don't believe it. I don't believe that any of us are fully recovered. But then, Gina keeps talking.
"I had a friend who went through something like this. She left her husband and was living on her own. I tried to talk to her, Robby. But she said something I couldn't believe. She said: 'God wouldn't want me to be unhappy like this.' Can you believe that? As if her unhappiness was God's fault somehow, and divorce was the way he designed to fix it? So I told her: 'Divorce was never part of God's plan. If you need to leave your husband, that's your business, but don't try to make your selfishness part of God's plan. You need to seek forgiveness.' And you know what? She won't. She thinks she's doing His will by breaking up a marriage. I'm not sure I can be friends with her anymore, not if she's going to put her sin on God's plate."
Now I know what Gina thinks of Delight. Damn. I finish eating my waffle as Gina talks. I've got so much crammed up in my head it's hard to split it all out and verbalize it. I came here to see friends, I guess, but I had an ulterior motive. I came as an ambassador for Delight, to soothe the pain with reassurances and to bridge the gap. Even if I couldn't do that, I wanted to at least assess the distance between them. Now, Gina has all but spelled out the arbitration. Delight doesn't need to be married to me if she wants to reconnect with Arkansas. But there is a price to pay, and her pride, stubbornness, or fear may stop her. I try to empathize, try to imagine myself from Delight's perspective, and I can't see any way she'll ever talk to Gina again. The cost is precisely the one idea she must refuse to think: it's her fault, this divorce, separation, loss--deep loss of a kind only experienced by social outcasts and pariahs, once the belle and now the beast, smothered by friends and now cleft schist split, upthrust and pitted one against God, the pinnacle of a lonely peak weathering ageless millennia alone. The only sort of solace she can feel is if she smothers those worries and feels a sort of biting indignation. Loneliness is its own armor, if you create it to castigate doubt. Woe is me. I'm the victim. How dare they abuse me this way.
But maybe I'm projecting. Suddenly, the house I've built of imagined cards collapses. I think I'm the victim. Gina, Danny, all my friends--they all took my side, buoyed me up, attacked Delight or expressed despair for me. We ganged up on her.
Gina slides half a waffle away. "Do you want it?" she asks. Of course I want it. I could eat five thousand calories a day and still not gain weight. Some days, I do. She shakes her head. "I hope you don't get sick. How do you eat all that?"
There are no easy answers here.

Epilogue: Flash forward to January 10th, 2017. I haven't finished writing this blog post. The first time I didn't write a post within a week was after I learned Delight was moving to file. Even that delay can't match this month-long gap. I've written the ending from this point three times on my phone, deleting what I've written each time. I've forgotten nearly everything but Gina's expression of intensity, the tone of her voice, how sure she was that she was in the right. I wish I had her conviction.