The Wild Truth: The secrets that drove Chris McCandless into the wild. Carine McCandless
Marian kindly offers.
I glance at the eruption of glass and stoneware that flows from the kitchen sink onto the countertop, clean but chaotic. “No—no, thank you. I’m fine.” I suppose the conditions outside the house should have prepared me for what might lie within. Still, I am humbled that Marian has invited me into her home. Her smile is comfortable and enticing, and even Charlie yips and spins in his excitement to begin the tour.
“Excuse the mess,” she apologizes as she leans against the table. “I’ve just been so incredibly busy!” The excessive piles of paper and mail have been carefully organized, leading me to believe that she has a specific identity for each stack. Ashtrays occupy every horizontal surface. Almost everything around me, aside from the clutter, appears just as it did when I stood here as a child: the layout, the cabinets, the counters and backsplash, even the appliances are the same.
“I remember making drop cookies on this stove with my friend Denise,” I reminisce.
Marian seems pleased as I travel back in time. I recall a photo of Buck and me sprawled on this floor, fast asleep, taken on the first day we brought him home. Nestled in my yellow sweatshirt, he was just a puppy. I was in pigtails.
Marian takes me across the main floor of the split-level house. The blue floral wallpaper I remember from childhood has been replaced with a coat of adobe beige and Navajo sandpaintings. We continue down two flights of stairs to the basement, where my parents kept their office. This is where Mom spent most of her time—often in pajamas, a down vest, and slippers—hard and fast to the day’s work as soon as she was awake. She had traded her own career aspirations for the promise of a brighter future by helping Dad start User Systems, Incorporated, an aerospace engineering and consulting firm specializing in airborne and space-based radar design. The long hours they put in made them wealthy. But not happy.
Mom was constantly typing and editing documents, making copies, preparing and binding presentations. Before we left for school, she was on her fourth cup of coffee. In addition to her office work, she was obligated to do infinite loads of laundry, keep the house spotless, maintain a beautiful yard, and serve dinner punctually. By the time Chris and I returned home from sports practice and band rehearsals, she had replaced the pots of java with bottles of red wine, to begin numbing herself before Dad got home. During the workday he was meeting with prestigious scientists at NASA; acquiring contracts with companies like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin; or giving lectures at the Naval Academy.
Sometimes, if Dad was away on an extended trip, we were blessed with a few days of calm. Most days, though, as soon as we heard his Cadillac pull into the carport, Chris and I ran and hid. He yelled out names and barked orders as soon as he opened the front door. He often complained to our mother that she should be fully dressed for his arrival: short skirt, three-inch heels, hair and makeup immaculate.
Chris and I did plenty of chores and became more useful as we got older, but Mom’s workload was copious and challenging. She eventually reined in her “I can do it all” determination and hired a part-time maid to help with the housework. This resulted in the boss telling her she was getting lazy and now had no excuse not to fulfill the sexy secretary role.
In actuality, she played an equally important role in their business. He never acknowledged how valuable she was to their company, but his awareness of it is likely why he constantly bullied her. “You’re nothing without me, woman!” he would scream at any indication of her insurgence. “You have no college education! I’m a fucking genius! I put the first American spacecraft on the moon! You’ve never done anything important!”
If our mom had been willing to rely on her own resourcefulness, she could have accomplished just about anything—even mutiny. Regardless of his scientific degrees and expertise, our father stepped on her to attain each level of his success. I learned at a very young age how to identify a narcissistic, chauvinistic asshole and vowed that I would never put up with one. Just as soon as I was old enough to have a choice.
Mom always appeared beautiful and well composed on the evenings Dad brought home business associates for dinner. Chris and I were also expected to perform at our highest level. This usually included a piano, violin, or French horn recital, along with the touting of our most recent academic and athletic awards. I remember right before one such evening, when I was nine years old, lying at the foot of Mom’s desk, writhing in pain. There was so much movement inside my gut I thought my intestines might explode at any moment. “Shhhhh! Quiet!” Mom hissed. “I have to get this done before your father gets home!” She was half dressed, with curlers in her hair and dinner in the oven. When I expressed an opinion about the cause of my agony, she shouted, “I said be quiet, Carine! Go to your room and lie on your stomach! It’s probably just gas!” Fortunately, she was right about the gas. Unfortunately, I learned to just lie down and keep quiet.
Marian leads me back up one flight into what was our family room, where Chris and I demonstrated our architectural prowess with elaborate fort making. We stripped our beds and emptied our shelves, stacked books onto table corners to secure sheets for ceilings and blankets for walls. There wasn’t a pillow spared; we needed them all for hallways and doors. Sometimes Mom and Dad would let us sleep inside the fort overnight. Chris carefully removed one precarious anchor and read to me by the glow of his camping lamp. There was usually popcorn involved closer to bedtime, especially if the television was being utilized as an interior fixture.
Today, next to a large couch sits a pedestal antique smoking stand. Traces of ammonia linger with the ashes. The carpeting has been pulled up, no doubt from too many times ole Charlie didn’t make it outside. The tack strips remain unattended along the edges of the baseboards.
“Watch your step,” Marian warns. “I’ve got to replace the carpet soon.” She dodges the rows of sharp nails as she leads me down the hallway to a bedroom and half bath. “I just use this room for storage now,” she says as she opens the door, and I take a quick peek at what was my bedroom for a short stint as an emerging teenager.
“You still get camel crickets?” I ask.
“Whoa, do I!” exclaims Marian, and we exchange a wince of revulsion.
The fact that our house was always neat and clean did not keep these nasty insects from invading the half-sunken ground floor and basement below. What appeared to be the result of a demonic union between a spider and a common field cricket, these fearless creatures blended perfectly with the plush brown carpeting and attacked—rather than avoided—any larger moving target. Every morning I had to hunt and kill four to five of these disgusting bastards before I could safely get ready for school.
Marian and I continue to the sizable laundry room, which served as another avenue to flee outdoors. I am once more amazed by the muscle of seventies-era appliances when she points out the same washer and dryer that Mom taught me to use. A new fridge sits where our deep freezer held extra meats for Mom’s dinners and extra bottles of Dad’s gin.
As we walk back through the hall, we pass a closet that provided access to a crawl space beneath the stairs. Chris and I used to hide in there, I think, and I am completely unaware that I’ve said it out loud until I notice the disquieted expression on Marian’s face.
Up the stairs and back on the kitchen level, Marian ascends another flight to the bedrooms. Suddenly my leather boots become lead. I look away as an excess of emotion quickly collects, then falls, smooth and fluid, down my cheek.
“Why did he hate them so much?” Marian asks gently. “I read the book about your brother, and I saw the movie. Why did he have to leave like that? Were your parents really so bad?”
I sigh at the innocence of her question, one that I have been asked too many times, by too many people—an ignorance based on a lie that I helped to sustain, a lie that I once believed to be necessary. “Honestly”—my voice cracks—“compared to our reality, the book and film were extremely kind to them.”
ON THE DAYS WE DID NOT PICK UP on signals of slamming doors and elevated voices fast enough, Chris and I were damned to bear the brunt of our parents’ latest battle. Their dispute would begin with a