by Nancy Werlin
His lips touched hers. They were cold, at first. But then warm.
First soft. Then firm.
Finally he leaned away. Slowly he let her down, but kept her close with one arm.
He said, "Do you want to see the house? Get the grand tour?"
Lucy didn't remember having to think or decide. She just knew. There was no guarantee of anything, up ahead, but they had this time. This place. She would not waste another second of it.
She leaned into Zach. "Let's go see our room."
CHAPTER 47
"Oh, wife?" said Zach, late the next morning.
"What is it, husband?" said Lucy. She giggled.
They were in bed, where they had been for the last sixteen hours, or something like that. Zach wasn't sure exactly how long it had been. His watch had to be around here someplace, though. Oh, there it was. On the floor. He grabbed for it. He needed to know exactly what time it was because at some point soon he and Lucy would have been married for exactly twenty-four hours. They had to have some kind of anniversary celebration.
He blew gently into Lucy's ear, and took a moment to give her rounded belly a pat. "Did you notice that there was a giant shower in the bathroom?"
"Why, yes, husband. Also that the shower has two of those whatever-they-are things."
"Shower heads."
"Right. Quite a coincidence. Two of them. Two of us."
"I'm glad," said Zach, "that you brought it to my attention."
Lucy took the end of her hair and brushed it over his nose. "Do you mention the shower because you're feeling, um, a little dirty? I could scrub your back. Assuming you're willing to scrub mine, of course."
"Well, now you bring that to my attention," Zach began. Then he stopped speaking, looking thoughtful.
"Zach?" Lucy got up on an elbow. She reached out to trace his frown with an index finger. "What is it?"
He took her hand away, turned it over in his, and pressed a kiss into the exact center. "I'm actually not feeling dirty," he said seriously. "Not even a little."
Lucy blinked. "Oh." A little awkwardly, she turned so that she faced Zach more fully. "Me neither," she whispered. And then: "I was joking. What I meant was—"
"Oh, I know. It's okay. It's that—I just realized, Luce. Right this second I realized that I can't joke about it. About us. You. Me. Our wedding. Sex. At least, not right now, I can't joke. I feel—I feel …" Zach stopped. "I don't have the right words. I just …"
And finally Zach said, seemingly at random, "Did you notice all those extra people at our wedding? All the clergy."
"Let's see. There was a Catholic priest and a Greek Orthodox priest. A rabbi. An imam. Also, a swami. And then the two Protestants. I wasn't clear what churches they came from, though."
"One was Unitarian, the other Congregational. I think."
Lucy tilted her head. "Did you mind? I didn't. Soledad got superstitious and called in the troops. God's blessing and everything. If the living room were bigger, she'd have had a dozen more. Or maybe it wasn't all Soledad."
"No, it was just partially her. And Leo too. And my parents were responsible for one of them."
Lucy nodded. "I know we'd talked about only having people there that we knew. And it was a little odd, I guess. But after all, I didn't mind them being there. It felt okay. It felt—" Now she was the one to fall silent.
"It felt good, having them there," said Zach. "I was surprised, but I didn't mind either. I looked around after the ceremony and I saw them, and I was glad."
Lucy said, "It was a blessing. That was how it felt to me. It's okay to have people praying with—for—you, even if you don't believe."
Zach was still holding Lucy's hand as she leaned over him. With the other, he reached up to cup her face. "It felt that way to me too. A blessing."
Lucy said, "But you don't believe in religion, Zach."
"No. But it was still good. It felt right." Zach shifted, pulling Lucy down so that he could hold her tucked against him, his chin on her head, his arms cradling her stomach. "I don't know what I believe. Except—well. I believe in us. And …"
"What?"
"It seemed to me that something happened when we got married, Luce. I felt it when we got engaged too. Something changed. I felt like—like what we were doing was holy, somehow."
"Well, it is holy matrimony," Lucy said, half flippantly, half seriously. She twisted around so that she could look into Zach's eyes.
"Yeah," said Zach. "I guess it's that simple. I didn't—you see, I thought it was just a ceremony. But now that we're married, it feels like more than that. It really does feel holy, or—or—or—" He searched hard for a word and then found it. "Miraculous. Being with you, Lucy … it's like a miracle."
She had never before appreciated how beautiful were the colors in Zach's eyes. You had to be really close to see them all. There was blue and gray, yes, but also amber. She reached out and, with her fingertips, touched his eyelids gently. "Yes," she said. "Me too. Bight now, this is a miracle."
She meant it. But as she felt her husband's arms tighten around her, as she reached in turn for him, Lucy thought: Maybe it's not the miracle I first prayed for. Not the miracle that will save my sanity as well as my baby. But it's the one I got. And it is real. And astounding. And weird and hilarious and sweeter than I ever dreamed. And I am going to be grateful for every last second of it.
Also, she couldn't wait to talk to Sarah.
CHAPTER 48
Later, when Zach looked back on the three months after his wedding, the time in which he and Lucy lived together in the borrowed Victorian house in Newton while the baby finished growing, it seemed to him as if the days flashed by in an instant; a frantic, desperate free fall of sand through a particularly fragile hourglass.
But the day-to-day living did not at the time feel rushed. Zach went to his job and to his classes, and did the work involved in keeping up with both. He went grocery shopping and made meals for Lucy, or relaxed and enjoyed those times when she fussed and took care of him.
Meanwhile, Lucy grew the baby and did her schoolwork. Also, mindful of the fact that, if she was going to plow and sow an acre of land, it would be physically grueling, she was working out daily. Hard. She focused on strength and endurance training. Zach often worked out with her, but he marveled at Lucy's focus and determination even as she got heavier, clumsier, and slower. He had read somewhere that, while men were of course generally stronger than women, women had an innate ability to endure more. Watching Lucy work out, he believed it. Often, when he was ready to stop, she could somehow push it out a little longer. And that pushed him further too, because, if nothing else, Zach was competitive.
Together, and with Soledad and Leo, they continued strategizing about impossible tasks two and three, trying to generate ideas and make progress on various lines of research while concealing from each other—not always successfully—any sense of panic or discouragement.
Most precious of all, for both Zach and Lucy, was the time they spent together in bed, making love, talking, laughing, thumb wrestling, and feeling the baby kick and move. Sometimes, as if they were an ordinary couple planning for an ordinary birth, they spent hours proposing possible names for her. Natasha. Serena. Claire.
"What about Frederica?" Lucy mused. "There'd be so many nicknames to choose from. Freddy. Ricky. Reka. Don't you think it's pretty? Frederica! It's so unusual."
"Who says unusual is good?" Zach said. "Plus, it's too long. How about Jenny or Annie? That way, she wouldn't have the same trouble learning to write her name as, oh, you did. You wrote the letter 'd' backward through half of kindergarten. Lucinba."
Lucy hit him with a pillow. Zach hit her with another. Things deteriorated from there, and they came no closer, that night, to deciding on a name for the baby, or even to agreeing on a possibility or two.
For Zach, a pulse of joy underlay each second of marriage. But at the same time, he had a strong sense that the clouds of hopelessness were drawing closer and
darkening. Zach began resenting the necessity for sleep, and doing as little of it as he could. If this was all the time he would get with Lucy, he wanted to be awake for each second.
Zach had known before the marriage that Lucy's pregnancy had somehow increased his love for her. Although the why of it remained mysterious, he wanted to take care of her; to make everything all right. Maybe his father had even been correct when he said that Zach was suffering from a hero complex.
But Zach didn't really see, either now or when he had talked with his parents before the wedding, what was wrong with that. Why shouldn't you want to save somebody, if you loved them? Why wouldn't you do everything you could for them?
"Because people always go and break your heart," his mother had said instantly, almost fiercely. "I want you to look out for yourself first." This had caused Zach to look at her thoughtfully. But he had not asked if Carrie really, truly, believed this, and if so, why then did she herself go through life taking care of people the way she did? Then his father had said wearily, "All right. Whatever. We love Lucy too, you know that. You do what you have to do. We'll be there. It's not the baby's fault anyway." At which point his mother had said, "I think this is the wrong thing to do. But I—I'm proud of you, Zach. You know how to love."
Zach had thought she was right. He did know how to love. Lucy anyway.
So how it felt to be married to her was not a surprise, even if the intensity and specificity of it was. He loved being with her. He loved knowing that his presence was vitally important to her, and he even loved the very thing that most troubled his parents—the knowledge that he had leaped over the terrain between youth and adulthood, taking on responsibilities that would normally have come into his life many years and many experiences later. He did not regret what he had given up, because he so craved what he had gotten, most of which came down to a feeling between him and Lucy that could not easily be described. He felt animal. He felt mated.
For a long time, Lucy had carried her pregnancy lightly, and it had hardly been noticeable. But now it was unmistakable, and yet still she was Lucy, and Zach discovered he felt even more intensely about her. When she was in the room, Zach could not look away. When she came near, he had to touch her. In bed, he could hardly bear for her to be even a few inches away.
He slept only in short naps, and that seemed like all his body needed right now. It was more important that Lucy sleep—which, incredibly, she had discovered she could more easily do if he was present—and that he hold her while she did it. Sometimes, especially as she got bigger, she'd sit on his lap in a big chair in the living room and drift off, as if nowhere in the world could be safer for her.
And that was when, not sleeping himself, he had no recourse but to think.
Zach's problem was a hero complex, his father had said. Well, maybe. But he wasn't a hero. Day by day, Zach realized this. He could do everything that needed doing in the real world for Lucy, especially as they did have such solid support from their parents.
However, they also inhabited the surreal world of Lucy's family curse. And in that world, there were things Zach couldn't fix. Couldn't control. Couldn't change. The weeks ticked by, and they made no more progress, except that it turned out goats' horns were easily acquired on eBay. Zach bought seven and Soledad twelve. Zach worked with Leo on a little handle that would grasp a horn and make it easier to use. Then he'd had an even better idea: a plowing device made from a small wheelbarrow, with the horn suspended beside the front wheel at a height so that it could furrow the earth. Using this, Lucy could plow at a fairly speedy rate and not have to lean over.
There had been some discussion as to whether this might be cheating, but Lucy, who was of course the one who counted, said she'd risk it. "So long as it's the goat's horn that's connecting with the ground and doing the plowing," she said. "I think that fits the letter of the curse."
"Well, then, what about adding a motor?" Zach asked. "Maybe we could adapt, I don't know, a lawn mower? Even one of those sit-down mowers!"
But this Lucy felt was going too far. "Just the wheelbarrow. And I'll practice with it in the backyard when the temperature is above freezing. That will give me an idea of how fast I can go."
Zach had also found himself wondering if he should fill a horn or two with concrete, just as an experiment. Would that make the horns stronger, better tools? Or would the concrete be too much stronger than the surrounding bone, and make it shatter? The horn might be fine by itself too. It seemed sturdy, and it wasn't like you heard of goats having problems with their horns breaking in daily use. On the other hand, Zach wasn't sure exactly what goats used their horns for. Did they fight with them? Or was that bighorn sheep? In any event, he would buy various kinds of soil at the nursery and test the horns and the concrete idea. There would be nothing but the best goat horn equipment for Lucy.
Sometimes this felt like progress. But there was still no land for Lucy to plow, and that problem loomed large. Where in any world, real or fantasy, would there be farmland between the sea and the strand? Also, it was now winter, and there could be no plowing and sowing in winter, surely?
And then six weeks had passed, and Lucy would sometimes become still, hand on belly, with an internal look on her face and a tense line to her mouth. When he showed her the goat's horn handles, and explained that it was probably best to skip the concrete, she smiled at him. But then she began talking about dinner.
Was she giving up?
The next day, though, he found her browsing the Internet, looking at information about farming. She was unwilling to say what she was searching for, just that she would tell him if it panned out. Still, it reassured him. She hadn't given up.
In the seventh week of their marriage, with five weeks of Lucy's pregnancy remaining, Zach sat Lucy down to talk. Though they were in frequent contact and discussion with Lucy's parents, he wanted to go over the current status with Lucy alone. He wanted reassurance that she was still wanting and planning to fight, even as the baby's due date came closer. Desperate measures would soon be necessary.
The problem was that he wasn't quite sure what those desperate measures would be.
Lucy had much earlier mentioned her theory about a peninsula, and before the wedding, Zach had begun scanning real estate listings in South and Central America, Australia, and New Zealand, with an eye toward locating a small, cheap piece of land that jutted into the ocean. Any ocean. He'd been thinking that it was summer halfway around the world, and planting would at least be possible there. At first, Lucy had often asked him how the search was going. But lately, she had stopped. And he had said nothing, partly because he'd had no luck. It was not like doing an eBay search for goats' horns. In fact, it was amazing how few real estate listings mentioned an acre of land on an ocean peninsula, suitable for farming.
Like, none.
He was now also checking Mexico, and Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Southern California, and some other U.S. states where the climate would potentially permit plowing and sowing in the winter months.
He told Lucy all this now. "The curse doesn't say the corn actually has to grow," he pointed out. "I figure as long as the ground isn't frozen solid, so that the plowing can happen, the land could be anywhere. And there'd be far fewer legal problems buying land here in the U.S. than abroad."
"Yes," Lucy said. "I know." There had been a lengthy, headache-inducing discussion one night with Leo and Soledad about the legalities of real estate purchases, along with conversations about mortgages and other related issues. With so few weeks now remaining of Lucy's pregnancy, even if they could find the land, it was no longer likely that they could buy it fast enough. A mortgage was not a realistic option; a bank or mortgage company wouldn't move that fast even if they'd approve the mortgage, which was unlikely unless Soledad and Leo cosigned. Which, Lucy said, would mean that she wasn't buying the land, they were, which would also mean that she wasn't herself fulfilling the task.
Zach was now hoping, then, for a place he could buy outrigh
t, with the fifty thousand dollars his grandparents had left him for college money.
"That's still you buying it, not me," Lucy pointed out now. Her voice was neutral.
"I'm your husband. Legally, what's mine is yours."
Lucy rubbed her forehead.
"You see that, right?" Zach insisted.
Lucy nodded.
He said, "I will find this land, Lucy. Maybe in Georgia."
She nodded again.
"Do you believe me? Really?"
"Yes." But her voice was still neutral.
"If it costs too much, I was thinking, Leo and Soledad could give us the money. If it's a gift, not a loan, then it's yours, and—"
"I know they would. But I think it's still cheating. Also, they haven't got that much cash to give away, Zach."
"We can discuss if it's cheating later. Hear me out. Soledad mentioned getting a second mortgage on the house. Leo is all right with that. She said she could pull out some equity, which would be over a hundred thousand dollars. I have some listings in Mississippi for less than that. I worry that it's swampy, but that might be good—a finger of solid-enough land in the swamp is almost like a peninsula."
Lucy got up from her chair and took a few steps around the room. She had one hand supporting the small of her back. "Zach, do you remember when you proposed to me? And you asked me to be practical, to be logical?"
Zach scowled. "Yes."
"So let's have a practical moment. Okay, I managed to make a seamless shirt. A vest, really. And we have the goats' horns, and I bet I could drag one over some land if the land was fairly soft. Say your swampy Mississippi land. I have to admit, I like that wheelbarrow plow thing you made. And also, you know what? I've been thinking and researching and as of today, I have this idea for task number three, sowing that single grain of corn over an entire field. There is a way to do that, sort of. But that doesn't matter, because the land problem in task number two seems like—"
"Wait! Wait right there." Zach grabbed Lucy's hands and made her sit down on top of his lap. "What was it you just said? You know how to do task number three?"