by Ree Drummond
On the growing list of Undignified Moments of My Life, it assumed a very high position.
THE NAUSEA was so bad when I awoke the next morning, I could hardly get out of bed. Marlboro Man had already left the house; I hadn’t even heard him get up. I lifted my head off the pillow and immediately plopped it back down. I felt as green as I imagined I looked, and I was so afraid of throwing up again after the side-of-the-road upchuck the night before that I simply curled into a fetal position and lay there for another hour. I wished I had a nurse button so someone could bring me Froot Loops. It was, curiously, the only food on Earth that sounded remotely palatable.
I managed to work my way to a standing position by midmorning, shuffling my feet to the fridge in our tiny kitchen and sipping some cold orange juice. The blood sugar surge seemed to help immediately. I rifled through the cabinets for something, anything that would fill the gaping hole of nauseating hunger in my gut, but all options looked and sounded awful. I couldn’t bear the thought of a ham sandwich. Imagining milk trickling down my esophagus almost sent me over the edge. Even the saltines might as well have been covered in hair. This was bad. Really, really bad. I had to somehow make it to the shower, then see about getting a doctor’s appointment. I couldn’t go on like this.
The shower turned out to be glorious once I adjusted the water to a cool enough temperature so as not to produce any steam. I washed my hair, noticing that my favorite shampoo suddenly smelled like Hades—as did my trusty facial scrub, which had so loyally saved my face from looking like the back of a lizard on the day of my wedding. Just as I was rinsing the last of the suds from my hair, Marlboro Man suddenly burst through the door of the bathroom and yelled, “Hey!”
I screamed bloody murder from the startle, then screamed again because I was naked and feeling queasy and unattractive. Then I felt sick from the excitement. “Hi,” I managed, grabbing a towel from the rack and wrapping it around myself as quickly as I could.
“Gotcha,” he said, smiling the sexiest smile I’d ever seen while in such a sick state. Then he stopped and looked at me. “Are you okay?” He must have noticed the verdant glow of my skin.
“I’ll be honest,” I said, making my way back to our bedroom. “It’s pretty bad. I’m going to try to get in to the doctor today and see if there’s anything he can do about it.” I fell backward onto the bed. “My ears must have been permanently damaged or something.”
Marlboro Man moved toward me, looking like the cat that had just eaten the canary. “Scared you, didn’t I?” he chuckled as he wrapped his arms around my towel-cloaked body. I breathed him in, wrapping my arms around him, too.
Then I shot up and raced back to the bathroom so I could throw up again.
MARLBORO MAN went back to work—he and Tim were receiving a load of steers—and I drove over to my hometown to see the only doctor that could work me in on such short notice. I’d wanted to see an ear-nose-throat physician, since I already knew it was an inner ear issue, but they were all booked at least two weeks out. I couldn’t bear the thought of throwing up that long. After a battery of questions, a few palpations of my lymph nodes, and a peek inside my ears, the doctor leaned back against the counter, crossed his arms, and said, “Any chance you might be pregnant?”
I knew that wasn’t it. “Well, it wouldn’t be impossible,” I humored him. “But I know that’s not what it is. I got this same thing on our honeymoon, just as soon as we got to Australia. It’s definitely some kind of vertigo/inner ear thing.” I swallowed hard, wishing I’d brought along some Froot Loops.
“When was your wedding?” he asked, looking at the calendar on the wall of the exam room.
“September twenty-first,” I answered. “But again…I know it’s my ears.”
“Well, let’s just rule it out,” the doctor said. “I’ll send the nurse in here in a minute, okay?”
Waste of time, I thought. “Okay, but…do you think there’s anything we can do about my ears?” I really didn’t want to feel this way anymore.
“Marcy will be in here in just a second,” he repeated. He wasn’t acknowledging my self-diagnosis at all. What kind of doctor is this?
Marcy soon entered the room with a plastic cup with a bright green lid—the perfect reflection of my skin tone. “Do you think you can give us a urine sample, hon?” she asked.
I can give you a vomit sample, I thought. “Sure,” I said, taking the cup and following Marcy to the restroom like a good little patient. And don’t call me hon, I thought. I was cranky. I needed something to eat, and I felt like bursting into tears.
A minute later, I exited the bathroom and handed Marcy the sample cup, which I’d wiped clean with a paper towel.
“Okay, hon,” she said. “You can just head back to the room and I’ll be back in a sec.”
Stop calling me hon.
I felt awful. Tingly and flushed and awful. If I moved my head too quickly in any direction, I’d gag. I suddenly felt a surge of sympathy for people who felt this way all the time, from chemotherapy treatments or gastrointestinal problems or other medical reasons. There’s no way I could function in this state for any length of time. I just prayed an effective treatment existed. I couldn’t predict what they’d need to do to my ears, but I was willing to try anything to achieve relief. I had things to do, after all. I needed to go be a wife.
My legs swung back and forth as I sat on the exam table and waited for Marcy or the doctor to return. A Wendy’s Frosty suddenly sounded delicious. At last, I thought. Something other than Froot Loops. Hurry up, Marcy! I’ve got to get to the drive-thru.
Moments later, Marcy and the doctor entered the room together. Marcy was smiling.
“You’re pregnant, my dear,” the doctor said.
My stomach lurched. “What?” I exclaimed. “But that can’t be why I’m sick…can it?”
After a series of uncomfortable questions from the doctor as to the various dates of this and that, Marcy giggled as the doctor walked me through—with his pencil—the dates on the wall calendar, dates that explained when I could have gotten pregnant and why now, over five weeks after our wedding day, I was barfing my ever-loving guts out and craving Froot Loops and Frosties.
Pregnant.
Pregnant?
What should I do?
Should I tell Marlboro Man?
Should I go lie down and put my feet up on pillows?
What will this mean for my figure?
I suddenly had a lot of things to figure out.
DRIVING BACK to the ranch, sucking down the last of the most delicious Wendy’s Frosty I’d ever ingested in my life, I instinctively clutched my abdomen, which felt flat as a pancake because of the lack of food I’d been able to eat over the previous forty-eight hours. Pregnant? Already? I knew it could happen. I knew it was possible. But I didn’t think it would happen this quickly.
Then my mind began to race. What had I had to drink over the past few weeks? What medications had I taken? What food? What did this mean for Marlboro Man and me? Was he ready? He said he wanted children, but did he really mean it? What would it mean for my body? My soul? My heart? Could I share myself with a baby? Did labor hurt?
I pulled up at home and saw Marlboro Man’s truck next to the house. When I walked in the door of our little white house, he was there, sitting on the bench, taking off his boots.
“Hey,” he said, leaning back against the wall. “How’re you doing?”
“Better,” I replied. “I had a Frosty.”
He pulled off his left boot. “What’d you find out?”
“Well,” I started. My lip began to quiver.
Marlboro Man stood up. “What’s wrong?” he said.
“I’m p…” My lip quivered even more, making it difficult to speak. “I’m pregnant!” I cried. The tears started rolling.
“What?” he exclaimed, moving toward me. “Really?”
All I could do was nod. The lump in my throat was too big for me to talk.
“Oh, wow.”
He moved in, hugging me close. I guess he hadn’t expected it either.
I just stood there and cried silently. For our past…for our future. For nausea and my fatigue. For receiving a diagnosis.
As for Marlboro Man, he just stood there and held me as he always had when I’d broken into unanticipated crying attacks, all the while trying his best not to explode with excitement over the fact that his baby was growing in my belly.
THAT NIGHT, after having lived with the news for mere hours, Marlboro Man couldn’t stand it anymore. He wanted to tell our families. Forget waiting until the end of the first trimester; forget sleeping on it a couple of nights. Something important had happened. He saw no need to keep it a secret.
“Hey,” he said when his mom answered the phone. I could hear her bright voice in the receiver. “Ree’s pregnant,” he blurted out, as open as he’d been in the first weeks of our relationship.
“Yep,” he continued, answering his mom’s questions. “We’re pretty excited.” He and his mom continued chatting. I could hear her excitement, too.
When the call ended, he handed me the portable phone. “Do you want to call your folks?” he asked. He would have called the newspaper if it had been open.
More focused on my growing nausea than on making phone calls, I took the phone anyway and dialed my parents’ house. After several rings, my dad finally answered. “Hello,” the voice said quietly.
“Hi, Dad,” I announced.
“Hi, sweetie,” my dad said. His voice sounded strange. Something was wrong.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” I asked.
“Your mom…your mom left tonight,” he said. “She said she has an apartment and she’s leaving. She’s gone….” His voice trailed to a whisper.
My heart sank. I sat there on the sofa, unable to move.
I TOLD MARLBORO Man immediately—it was the second piece of stunning news we’d received that day—then headed back to my hometown by myself. I had to see my dad, to make sure he was okay, and I wanted to go by myself. I couldn’t subject Marlboro Man to that level of in-law strife this early in the game, and I wasn’t sure my dad would be comfortable talking freely in front of his new son-in-law.
“It won’t be too late,” I told him. “I just want to make sure he’s okay.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” Marlboro Man said, hugging me before I left.
Man. What a day.
I called my mom the second I got in my car.
“Mom,” I said. “What’s going on?”
She was quiet for a moment. “Ree,” she said. “It’s been coming for a long time.”
“What’s been coming?” I countered. “Throwing away a thirty-year marriage?” My crankiness had returned.
She paused for a long time. I crossed the cattle guard as I made my way toward the main highway. “It’s not that simple, Ree…,” she began. The line went quiet while we both tried to figure out something productive to say. I held back. Nothing could be gained by blurting out angrily what I was thinking: that my mom was about to demolish our family. That it was all so preventable…so unnecessary. That she was pulling the rug out from under us all.
That I was going to have a baby…that I needed her right now.
I hung up the phone. My mom—likely aware of the futility of trying to have a productive, meaningful conversation that night—didn’t call back.
When I arrived at the house—the house where I’d grown up—my dad opened the door and we hugged and cried, my dad’s cry more of a stunned whimper than a sob.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said, hugging him tightly.
He couldn’t answer.
I stayed with my dad for two hours, sitting and talking with him until his best friend, Jack, arrived. My brother Doug, in another city, had called Betsy and told her what was going on. Around town, I could already feel, the news was starting to spread.
On the ride back to the ranch that night, after I’d made sure my dad was psychologically stable, I called Mike.
“B-b-but where will Mom live?” Mike asked after I explained what was going on.
“Well…I think she has an apartment. But we don’t really know what’s going on yet,” I explained. “We’ll just wait and see, okay?”
“Wh-wh-wh-what is the apartment like?” he asked.
“Mikey, I just don’t know,” I answered. “I just…I don’t know right now. But don’t worry, okay? We’ll figure it all out.”
“Where will we have Christmas?” Mike asked.
I swallowed hard. “We’ll have it here, I’m sure…,” I began. My eyes started welling with tears.
“But dey are n-n-n-not going to get a diforce…are dey?” Mike asked.
It would take him a while to grasp this.
We talked for a few more minutes, said our good nights, and I hung up the phone and sobbed. I needed this not to be happening—not now. Please, please, please…not now.
I arrived back home just before midnight, and Marlboro Man met me at the car. I could hear nothing but cows and crickets when I climbed out of my car and into his arms, which were strong and warm and comforting. I was a wreck—sick to my stomach and even more sick in my heart—and Marlboro Man helped me to the house, as if I were crippled by a terminal illness. I was completely beat, hardly able to finish my shower before I fell into bed with Marlboro Man, who rubbed my back as I tried with all my might to keep from throwing up, breaking down, and completely saturating my red floral pillowcase with tears.
Chapter Twenty-six
DARK CANYON
I WOKE UP the next morning feeling drained…but, magically, a bit better on the nausea front. Maybe, I reasoned, I’d have the shortest bout of morning sickness in the history of pregnancy. I stood up from my bed and waited for the nausea to kick in, but it didn’t. Feeling hopeful, I washed my face and got dressed; Marlboro Man was gone, of course, having gotten up and gone to work while it was still dark. I put on my makeup, wondering if I’d ever get up at the same time as Marlboro Man. Wondering if anyone ever did.
Around eleven, after calling my dad to check on him, I scoured the kitchen for lunch ideas and finally settled on chili. It would be okay for several hours, I figured, so whenever Marlboro Man came home it would be ready. Wives made chili for lunch, right? I still hadn’t figured out the flow of things. I diced up some onion and garlic, breathing through my mouth to avoid making myself sick again, and threw it into a pot with a two-pound package of ground beef, which I’d thawed in the fridge earlier in the week. I didn’t have packets of chili seasoning in my pantry—I hadn’t put that item into my grocery shopping loop yet—so I improvised, sprinkling in chili powder, paprika, cayenne, cumin…whatever spice smelled remotely like I always remembered chili smelling. By the time it really started bubbling, the smell of chili had taken over the universe and the queasiness had returned with a vengeance. It was the worst smell I’d ever experienced—pungent garlic, the horrible, overwhelming aroma of cumin…the stench of cooking flesh.
By the time Marlboro Man walked in the door, I was stirring in the canned kidney beans and minutes away from throwing up.
“Mmmm…smells good,” he said. He walked over to the stove and wrapped his arms around my waist, resting his palms on my belly. “How are you, Mama?” he asked. Butterflies went crazy in my stomach. He did it for me, even when cumin was making me sick.
I’m better today,” I said, focusing on my physical condition. “How are you?”
“I’m good,” he said. “I’m worried about you, though.” His hands caressed my ribs, my arms, my sides.
He touched me all the time; physical indifference was never a problem with Marlboro Man.
The phone rang suddenly, and I continued stirring the chili as he walked into the living room and picked it up. He talked for a while as I added the last dash of salt, then came back into the kitchen.
“Marie’s only got a few hours,” he said. “They’re telling all the family it’s time to come down.”
I turned off the stove.
“Oh no,” I said. “No.” It was all I could say.
“If you’re not feeling up to it, you don’t have to come,” Marlboro Man said. “Everyone will understand.”
But I wanted to. Her fight was ending. Even though I was the newest member of the family, I couldn’t possibly not go.
But when we walked through the door of Marie and Uncle Tom’s house, I wanted to be anywhere in the world but there. Family was huddled around, hugging one another and crying. Food was being served, but no one was eating. I didn’t know how to greet people. Whether to smile. Whether to hug. Whether to cry. I thought of my parents. I felt oppressed. I couldn’t breathe.
Matthew met us at the door and tried to smile as he hugged us both, then led us to the back bedroom where his mother lay in her bed, unconscious and breathing laboriously. Marie’s brother sat at her side and held her hand in his, bringing it to his face affectionately and speaking to her in a gentle voice. Her parents stood close by, consoling each other in an embrace. Matthew joined his sister, Jennifer, on the bed, touching their mother’s legs…her arms…anything to maintain the physical connection they knew would soon no longer be possible. And her husband, Tom, sat on a chair, presiding sadly over the whole gathering of friends and family. It was so heavy with grief, so horribly sad—I couldn’t bear to be in the room. My mother-in-law was in the kitchen helping with the food and dishes; I slipped backward out of the bedroom to be with her instead. Marlboro Man followed close behind me. After enduring the death of his brother Todd years earlier, he’d had about enough of this kind of mourning to last him a lifetime.
Just as we arrived in the kitchen, sobs came from the bedroom. Marie had taken her last breath. I heard Jennifer crying out loud for her mother; Marie’s parents saying “No…no…” over and over. I heard the tears of Marie’s closest friends, who were also huddled around her bedside. I felt myself breaking and excused myself to a guest bathroom on the other side of the house. I was crumbling.