Her first time, she will probably be mated with an animal expected to sire lighter offspring. Giving birth for the first time is hard enough without having to push out the equivalent of a baby elephant. As she grows in maturity and size, she will be paired with larger males.
And since a cow’s reproductive life can span more than a dozen years, while bulls often outlive their usefulness by the age of five, it’s highly possible that at some point she will be paired with a young male the same age as her grandson. There’s a May-December plotline for you.
There is movement in the show ring. The judge has been walking up and down the line, taking a closer look at the animals, leaning down to inspect teats, running a hand down a back leg.
Would I want a judge’s eye on my cleavage or his hand running down the length of my leg? It would depend on the judge.
The real judge, not the one in my daydreams, walks back towards my husband and speaks to him. Dave leads Heidi out of her third spot place and brings her up in front of Greg Wright’s animal. The judge then spends several minutes comparing the hind quarters of our heifer and the animal in first place. No matter how pretty a heifer is, it’s her business end that matters. At the judge’s nod, Dave moves Heidi into first place.
Our children are excited, but cautious. They know that a judge can change his mind several times before being ready to live with his decision.
Living with a decision is not a bad definition of marriage, I think now, looking at my husband. When I got back to our camper last night, I did not go inside immediately. Instead I sat on one of the lawn chairs, leaned back, and looked at the stars. I picked one randomly and claimed it as mine. I made a choice, I guess you could say. Then I remembered the biblical star that shone its way to the barn. Enough with Christmas in June, I thought, and went to bed.
The judge’s decision today is final. We are going to take home a trophy. Some prize money, too, although it will not cover the costs we have incurred. It’s a lot about prestige, this business, not so much about making a living.
“Mom?” It’s Sam, the thirteen-year-old.
“What?”
He mimes rather than speaks, cupping the fingers on his right hand as if he were holding something and pressing down with his forefinger.
“Oh, right,” I answer and dig in my bag for the digital camera. I stand up and walk closer towards my husband and the breed association representative who is presenting my husband with a big red ribbon and a trophy. At first I can see both the first and second place heifers through my lens, with Mr. Wright’s third-place arm intruding into the far corner. I zoom in, centre Dave and Heidi within the frame and press the shutter release.
~ Susan ~
Easter at Glen’s parents was tense. Neither Lynne nor Brian had much to say. The presence of children and grandparents prevented any rehashing of Lynne’s infidelity, but the air was heavy with what could not be said. The Triple As tried to make up for the unaccustomed silence by talking nonstop, interrupting each other, and tumbling over each other’s words.
“I tried to look up pregnancy on the cow in the classroom, but my teacher said it wasn’t appropriate,” Alleyne said. “I don’t know why; we’re studying about the life cycles of animals and spring is the season of babies.”
Grandpa Joe said that made perfect sense to him.
But then it turned out that the site Alleyne visited had more to do with fashionable ways to cover a baby bump than with biology or life science. The teacher had a point after all.
I was still wondering about the cow in the classroom. What was that?
“Computers on Wheels,” Lynne said. “Instead of going to a computer lab, they bring the computers into the classroom. That way what used to be a computer lab can be used for a classroom.”
“Auntie Susan, when is the baby coming?” six-year-old Adam asked.
“Just a few more weeks, I hope.”
“Why do you say I hope?”
“Because I am ready for the baby to come out and I think the baby is, too. He kicks me all the time, like he’s saying get a move on, lady.”
“Is he kicking now?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Can I feel him?”
“Sure you can.” I guided Adam’s hand over my belly. But the baby did not cooperate and Adam felt nothing.
“Maybe it’s because of your shirt,” he said. “Can you lift it up?”
“I guess.” I pulled my T-shirt up over the huge mound that my stomach had become, exposing its tight surface to his view.
“Whoa,” he said. “That’s a big gut.”
“Adam,” his dad cautioned.
“It’s OK. It is a big gut,” I told the boy.
When he placed his warm hand on my belly, the baby responded with a kick.
“Wow,” he said. “That’s neat.”
“Can I feel, too?” Brian asked. I hesitated, then said yes.
“I used to do this with Lynne,” he said. He kneeled in front of me, placing both hands on my stomach, the fingers splayed out and fingertips pressing gently into flesh. When the baby kicked, he looked up at me and smiled. I smiled back, suddenly breathless.
That’s why she married him, I thought. I hadn’t realized until then.
“What are you two doing?” Glen asked, coming into the living room from the kitchen.
Brian withdrew his hands.
“Touching miracles,” he said and walked out of the room.
“That was weird,” Glen said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Weird.”
I thought it had been rather wonderful, too, but I didn’t say so.
It’s hard to say what will happen with Lynne and Brian, but if I were asked to place a bet, I’d wager on a stitched-up marriage. For the sake of the children. For the farm. For appearances. Who knows?
I went to see her on Easter Monday in the afternoon, before her kids came home from school. When she opened the door, I could tell she was surprised to see me.
“I’ve come for coffee,” I said. “I hope that’s OK.”
“Of course it is, come in,” she said. “Don’t mind the mess, I’ve started spring housecleaning.”
“You and I have a different definition of mess,” I said, looking around the immaculate kitchen.
We talked about spring housecleaning and the baby and yesterday’s Easter dinner, avoiding the affair as long as we could.
“I never felt guilty until it was all over. Is that strange?” Lynne said.
“I guess you were feeling other things,” I said. “Like love, maybe?”
“No, I wasn’t in love. Although maybe I was close, I don’t know. I think it was just so different. Usually I keep my feet on the ground. But now I was floating. I laughed at silly things. I did silly things.”
“Sounds like you were having fun,” I said.
“That’s it exactly. I was having fun. For a few hours, I could pretend the real world didn’t exist. It was like finding an oasis in the desert and spending time there.”
“An oasis,” I said. “Does that mean the real world is the desert?”
“No, of course not. But it does have deadlines and work and worrying about the kids. It’s getting them on the school bus each morning before heading off to work, taking meals to the fields, manning the food booth at hockey tournaments, balancing the books at home and at work. There was none of that on the oasis. It was like a vacation.
“When I found out that Eric had left his wife, well, I did feel some guilt then. I thought I was the other woman. I had wrecked a marriage. And I thought, if Eric has made a choice, then maybe I should too. Even if that meant wrecking two marriages, not one. But a bigger part knew that it was way too soon for that. He didn’t know me, not really. I had been pretending to be someone else. And I didn’t know him either, obviously.”
“And then
he sent you the email,” I said.
“Yes, and then he sent me that email,” she said. “I should have guessed before then that there was something going on I didn’t know about. We hadn’t seen each other since he told me he left his wife. I was in the city a couple of times, but the timing was never right for him, he said. I never caught on. So when he finally told me the whole story, all I could do was cry. Well, you know … you saw me that day. And then I got angry. I could have spit at him, if he’d been within spitting distance.”
Even now, she could not bring herself to swear. Some things about Lynne would never change, I thought.
“I felt so humiliated. So stupid. I wasn’t a main event; I was half-time entertainment,” Lynne said. “And I never had a clue.”
“I never told anyone,” I said, which was true enough as far as it went. I did feel guilty about accidentally planting the seeds of gossip with my co-workers that day. That in itself was a form of betrayal.
“I know that,” Lynne said. “It was Brian, after I told him. I think he told everyone who would listen. I didn’t think he would do that. I knew that you would never tell. I was sorry that you found out, but I never worried about you telling. You’re too much like Mom to do that.”
“Me? Like your mom? Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m not kidding. You two are very much alike. Self-contained. You’re more direct than she is but neither one of you is open.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, dropping the words into the silence that fell.
“What for?” she wanted to know.
“For being like your mother,” I said. As a joke, it flopped badly. “I don’t mean that,” I added. Although maybe I did. “I guess I just meant that I’m sorry that it seems to have ended rather badly,” I said.
“I know you told me to keep quiet about it, but I was reading this newspaper column. A woman asked the same question I was asking myself. Should I come clean or not? The answer was ‘yes, you should. A secret like this is a tumour. Excise it before it becomes cancerous’. So that’s what I did. The columnist’s advice was like the straw that broke the camel’s back, if you know what I mean. Brian was angry at first, then he got all whiny. How could I do that to him, he asked. It wasn’t as if I consciously set out to hurt him. It wasn’t about him at all. It was about me and what I wanted. Or what I thought I wanted. What I didn’t know I wanted.”
She paused.
“Brian actually wanted to know what Eric was like in bed. Can you believe that?” she asked.
“Yep,” I said. “Boys have to know.”
“I refused to tell Brian anything. Why should I? So he can tell all his friends? So he can feel sorry for himself some more? No. I hated him for being so whiny and I hated him for asking all these questions. But then he brought the kids into it. ‘How could you do this to the kids?’ he asked. And that got me where it hurt. Having an affair was like running away from home and now I was back again and Brian was reminding me that not only had I run away from him, but from our children as well. How could I have done that?”
Lynne looked straight at me when she asked the question, but I had no answer for her.
I’m not a little kid. I know that the world does not revolve around me. Life is not one big circle with me at its centre. It is many circles, encroaching on each other like in those Venn diagrams in high school math class. So many black lines, crossing through white space, until all you see is grey. I was lost in the grey of it all. The messiness. And I mean messiness by my definition, not Lynne’s.
Jon, Andrea, and the boys dropped in after supper that same day to deliver a cradle that they were lending us. While the baby was small enough to fit inside, the cradle would go in our bedroom. Later we would move him to the crib in the yellow room.
“Want coffee?” I asked.
“Sure,” my brother said.
“Decaf,” my sister-in-law said.
The boys got juice.
“I suppose you have cows in your school, too?” I asked.
“Computers on wheels? Sure,” Jon said. So then I had to explain why I wanted to know.
“Isn’t it weird that you knew what I was talking about right away, because of an acronym that doesn’t have anything to do with a real cow?” I asked. “I’m not even 30 yet and I feel like I’ve lost touch.”
“No worries,” Andrea said. “Once that baby is born, you’ll be in the thick of things again.”
TEN
I am now fully dilated. Ten centimetres is the diameter of a soup can apparently, A regular can or one of the larger ones for chunky soup? I don’t know. The math is beyond me. It’s almost over, the nurse says. I’m not sure whether I believe her. It might be a con job, a way of leading me on, keeping me within sight of the finish line. You can do this. You’re almost there.
My mother lied. She must have. There is absolutely no way that I could ever forget this.
Things that come in tens. The Ten Commandments. Ten Little Indians. Ten lords a-leaping. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Ten pin bowling. Cents in a dime. Years in a decade. Top Ten. Number 10 Downing Street. The perfect ten. Why wasn’t I invited to the party ten doors down?
Just a week ago, I was trying to clean the bathtub. My belly made it impossible to reach the far side and I had to climb into the tub to get the job done.
“Can I have a maid?” I called out to Glen who was sitting at the kitchen table reading a paper.
“You’ve got it made?” he called back.
“No. I don’t.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Mom had called to see how I was doing. A week into my maternity leave with another week remaining before my due date.
“I’m OK,” I told her. “Want it to be over. I feel like a great big bloody cow.”
“Just one more exam to write and I’ll be home,” she said. “Can’t wait.”
As it turned out, I did get a maid, after all. Joan offered to put in a couple of days washing walls and giving the main floor of the house a good spring cleaning. I wasn’t all that concerned about the state of the walls, I confess. I certainly wasn’t staying up nights worrying about it. The only reason I was losing any sleep these days was my frequent need to visit the bathroom during the night.
But I wasn’t about to turn Joan down.
It wouldn’t be correct to say that Joan attacks dirt, more that she forces it into submission. It retreated from her determination.
“Just leave me to it,” she said, and I obeyed.
While she began the task of moving furniture away from the walls in the main living area, I withdrew to the kitchen and washed the breakfast dishes. I had brought up two pounds of hamburger the day before and left the meat to thaw overnight in the fridge. I began to make a batch of spaghetti sauce, first browning the hamburger, then adding the vegetable sauce I had made and frozen last fall. Tomatoes, carrots, onions, and peppers, simmering in a stew of Italian spices. It had made me nauseated last September. Now it smelled so good I couldn’t wait for dinner. Comfort food.
~ Joan ~
The wainscoting and plate rail that run the length of two walls in the dining room are a dark oak. Sandra has often told Susan that she should paint it white. It would open up the room, she says, and make it brighter. She is probably right, but I would miss the dark wood I lived with for so many years. Susan has so far held her mother off; Sandra would be here the next day with the paint, if given the slightest encouragement; that’s the kind of person she is. But I think Susan is just as reluctant as I am to cover the wood’s natural grain with white enamel. I am grateful for that, even though I remind myself that it would be none of my business. It is her house now. Well, hers and Glen’s, but I would be surprised if my son showed any interest in its interior decoration.
The room is a mixture of “something old, something new:” heavy dark furniture left be
hind when Joe and I moved to town, splashes of colour here and there. Susan has married modern and antique in a surprisingly attractive union. Unfortunately all of it seems to be covered in pet hair as far as I can see.
Washing the walls in this house is not an easy task because of the twelve-foot ceilings. I used to complain when it was my job to do on a regular basis. But lately the larger the task the better. The more time it takes, the less time I have to think about other things.
So I shall spend a few days washing walls and windows in my old house, pretend that any resulting aches and pains are due to the size of the house and not to my own aging, and hold at bay as well as I can thoughts about the mess my daughter has got herself in.
People tell me that marriages fail all the time and the sky never falls because of it. I understand that men and women and their children, too, survive marital breakups and go on with their lives. But I don’t want that for my children or for my grandchildren. If one more person tells me that it would not be the end of the world, I just may scream.
Lynne has risked everything she has for good sex. She’s not the first; she won’t be the last. When will women realize how foolish that is? It is easy to find good sex. Finding someone you can stand to live with is a lot harder.
If I’m honest with myself, though, I could have seen it coming, although I might have guessed that it would be Brian who would be caught straying first. He likes to flirt. They’re both too caught up with “things,” my daughter and son-in-law. Things like that big house and vehicles and hot-weather vacations.
Lynne has often told me that she is glad that Brian’s family have never raised cattle because it ties you down so much. She doesn’t know yet, or won’t admit it if she does, that the desire to have the best of everything can tie you down, too. And there’s a difference between being tied to living things—people, animals, plants—and inanimate objects. Living things give back. They grow under your care.
Only up to a point, of course. We might care about the land, but it does not care about us. We are irrelevant really. I understand my daughter’s frustration with farm life because I have sometimes shared that frustration. Being a farmer is like getting on a train with designated stops at each season. A spring stop for seeding, summer for haying, autumn for the harvest, winter for the chores. You are carried along by the demands of the seasons and getting the train to stop for any other reason is difficult. Unless there is a breakdown and it’s a side trip to town for repair parts. And the track is round; you do everything over and over again.
The Waiting Place Page 12