The House of Deep Water

by Jeni McFarland

  When Deborah was seventeen, when her father took ill, Deborah found any excuse she could not to be home. She couldn’t handle her father’s diminishment. She didn’t know it, not then, but when her father started chemo she was already pregnant for the first time. Her mother fell to pieces—tiny shards that were lost in the corners of the kitchen, swept under the refrigerator, ground into the carpet in the living room. Dinah had never been much of a housekeeper—preferred plowing fields and baling hay to cooking and cleaning—so as her husband got sicker, she retreated deeper into the fields, the barns, leaving the household maintenance to her children. Jared did what he could, but he didn’t have an eye for housework. He didn’t see dust on a shelf or crumbs on a counter. He’d wash dishes only when the sink was full. And Deborah would clean grudgingly: She wanted her own house to take care of, her own kitchen to cook in. She would make dinner for her family, meatloaf with too much oatmeal and not enough meat, and dream of the day when she moved out.

  “You’re going to have to do better than dry meatloaf, you want him to marry you,” Dinah would say. Even at eighteen, Deborah understood she hadn’t caused Dinah’s bitterness. She knew she should be patient with her mother, she should go to her and hug her, let her have a good cry, but she was also at an age when her mother’s grief, her raw need, was too much. She couldn’t take it all for her mother, and so she took none of it.

  Deborah’s cooking never improved, but Steve married her anyway. Eventually. After she ended her first pregnancy and he got her pregnant with Layne. Once they were married, Deb found Steve was just as happy with frozen pizza from the gas station as he was with a home-cooked meal.

  Now, in her mother’s kitchen, she feels overwhelmed. The spice rack has herbs Deborah has never heard of. And this damn potato peeler. Not the good one with the rubber grip; she could only find the peeler with the slick metal handle, its blade perpendicular. Deborah keeps scraping her knuckles as she pries tiny scraps of skin from the potatoes. It occurs to her, halfway through peeling the bag, that the goose should be in the oven already. She’s never cooked a goose. She goes into the living room and logs on to the computer. A Google search suggests she should start by removing the feathers. Her stomach turns watery at the thought. She’s never had to de-feather a bird.

  Back in the kitchen, she’s relieved to find the goose on a plate in the fridge, feather-free. Its organs have been removed and placed in a separate dish. This she can do. She can rub butter on the skin; she can salt and roast it.

  The back door opens, and Paige blusters in with that woman and their little boy. They stomp their boots in the doorway, knocking off the snow, and bring in shopping bags full of wrapped presents. Not a word passes between the two women. The little boy, Sage, lifts his arms to Diane and says, “Up,” and Diane hands Paige her shopping bag without looking at her, then stoops to lift him. Paige lugs the gifts into the living room. As unnatural as their relationship seems to Deborah, she has to admit, Diane’s child is a handsome little boy, with piles of black curly hair and cheeks as pink as a sunset.

  Neither woman bothers to acknowledge Deborah. Not a “Hello” or a “Merry Christmas.” Deborah returns to peeling potatoes, making short strokes with the dumb metal peeler. It occurs to Deborah that they’re not simply being rude; their silence is a lovers’ quarrel. (The word lover makes her a little uneasy here, but what else do you call it? A wives’ quarrel? A domestic dispute? Is it still a domestic dispute if it carries outside the home?) Paige and Diane have been together a long time, long enough for the initial shock of them to have worn off. Still, at times like these, Deborah can’t help but wonder, how do they decide which one of them should help here and which should be in the barn? She wonders, but doesn’t ask, who does the laundry, who mows the lawn. She guesses Paige is the one who should help cook. She stays home with the child while Diane goes to work. Although Diane works as a nurse. But then, so does Derek. It all seems unnecessarily confusing.

  Still, sometimes Deborah envies Paige. She wants her niece’s freedom. When Paige is restless, it’s not unusual for her to upend her life: quit her job, go back to school, take off on a road trip. There’s a wildness to Paige that a man like Steve would have stomped out. Deborah worked for a time ringing up groceries at the gas station, until Steve stopped in one day and saw her talking to a male coworker. They had an argument that night. Nothing that wouldn’t have blown over, except the next day, the coworker called Deborah at home. He’d only wanted to see if Deborah could cover his shift, but Steve wouldn’t hear it. That had been the end of Deborah working.

  Now Skyla wafts into the kitchen, bringing the cold in with her. She’s in one of her rare feminine moods, and her body shows it. She somehow manages to glide as she walks, her limbs long and lean even under so many clothes: jeans, tee shirt, sweater, winter coat, wool socks, mittens, hat, scarf. She pulls off her outerwear in the doorway, and when she removes her hat, Deborah sees that she’s cut her hair boy-short. Her first thought is that Jared must not know—no way any decent father would let his daughter out like that—and that Deborah is the first person in the family to see it. But, no, there’s no way she can be the first, no way Dinah hasn’t already seen it. This is a professional haircut, not something Skyla did to herself in the middle of the night, standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a pair of kitchen shears. She spent money on this haircut, which somehow makes it seem worse.

  “Your hair,” Deborah says. “It’s different.”

  “Thanks,” Skyla says, sidling up to her aunt and giving her a sideways hug. “And Merry Christmas.” She rummages in kitchen drawers until she finds the potato peeler with the rubber handle. She takes over peeling where Deborah has left off, humming “We Three Kings” as she works.

  The goose, Deborah sees, is still sitting on the counter. “You’re in a good mood,” she says, rubbing butter on its skin.

  “’Tis the season,” Skyla says. She’s working slowly, dreamily, peeling potatoes at about half of Deborah’s speed, even though she’s got the good peeler. Soon, Linda shows up, rubbing the cold from her forearms and cheeks, and takes over as if the kitchen were hers, as if she’d never left this place. She’s not even blood, Deborah thinks. Linda is another problem. That baby she’s growing outside of wedlock. With Ernest bedridden, there’s no way Linda can get him to marry her now. It isn’t that Deborah’s own family is spotless—yes, she knows about Steve, but he’s been bewitched by a woman you’d expect to act the hussy. And Deborah knew about Beth before she married him. It’s just what you did, though. You married the father of your child.

  Linda’s whole generation seems to make themselves at home wherever they are. These millennials, they have no qualms about taking, feel none of Deborah’s debilitating self-doubt. Their efforts scream, “Look at me! Look what I’ve done! See how clever?” And they get by with it, too. Deborah can’t recall Dinah ever scolding Linda or Paige for failing to live up to her standards.

  When Paige finally returns to help, Deborah takes it as a sign she’s no longer needed. The sisters work with their own rhythm, perfectly in sync with each other. Deborah feels suddenly old, an outsider. She finishes the goose and slides it into the oven before she leaves. On her way into the living room, she sees Linda turn the oven on. Stupid, stupid.

  * * *

  • • •

  Hannah plays up in the hayloft, jumping around like it’s a playground, and Mandy and Kelli join in to distract their sister from the situation below. Steve feels grateful to his oldest daughters for keeping Hannah occupied. He’d tried to get the girls to stay in the house, to help their mother, but not ten minutes after he got to the barn, the girls showed up, peeking their heads into the stall. Hannah immediately started asking questions he wasn’t ready to answer. Let her stay ignorant, innocent, a little longer.

  He’d started drinking early today. He’d needed it after turning on the news this morning and seeing Gilmer Thurber again, wi
th his pansy-ass mustache. Thurber has been sentenced to life in prison. When Steve was younger, when he and Beth were first dating and she told him about a man who hurt her, it had all seemed so distant. Steve never even thought about who had done it and whether the man still lived in town. Without even asking Beth, though, he’d put it together in the wake of the arrest: It was Gilmer.

  Who else in this town had Gilmer hurt? Steve watches his girls up in the hayloft, and for a moment he’s filled with so much rage he’s shaking. He feels dizzy with fury.

  Paula is up to her shoulder in Maribel now, her whole body rigid, every muscle tense as she tries to turn the calf. Even with two men steadying her legs, the cow kicks, and Steve loses his balance. With her front legs free, Maribel tries to scramble to her feet, her right leg buckling under her weight. Paula’s arm is twisted around inside the cow.

  “God dammit, Steve.” Paula should have guessed he was already drunk. “Derek, you want to step in?”

  “I got this,” Steve says.

  “Move,” Dinah says.

  Steve stumbles to his feet and slaps the cold from his arms, as if to blame his lack of balance on the weather.

  “You hold her head,” Dinah tells Steve. “Just lay it in your lap, make sure she doesn’t knock herself out.”

  Sitting, Steve is much more stable. Derek takes hold of the forelegs, averting his eyes from his stepmom’s business. He’s a nurse, so he shouldn’t be squeamish, but the whole thing—Paula with her arm up a cow’s backside, her face way too close, as if she wanted to crawl inside—makes Derek nauseous. There’s something that clicks in his brain when he’s at work that keeps him from feeling this way, but watching someone else, he wants to throw up. Maribel twitches, grunting, trying to pull herself up or push the calf out, Derek can’t tell which. He half wonders whether he might break the cow’s legs if she kicks—he’s holding on so tight—or whether the cow’s legs might break him. Uncle Steve is holding Maribel’s head in his lap with both hands, and when the cow is still, he strokes the sides of her face, damp with saliva. Steve is humming softly, and Derek thinks this can’t be the same man who gave him shit last week as he changed the valve on Derek’s water heater.

  “Almost there,” Paula says. The straining muscles in her back are visible through her shirt, and her free arm is bulging, tense. She has her eyes closed, and Derek realizes his dad is staring at his stepmother.

  “There,” Paula says, and withdraws her arm. God, the gore that coats her. Jared tries not to look, but he can’t help seeing the thick mucousy fluid, wet enough to plaster down the hairs on Paula’s arm. Once Paula has fully extracted herself, she searches around for a towel. The best she can do is a saddle blanket, and she cleans her arm as well as she can before rolling her sleeve back down.

  As soon as Paula moves away from Maribel, Dinah is on her knees, her palms flat on the cow’s side. She leans down to kiss her fur, a rare tender moment. Maribel is still working, still trying to give birth, her flanks pulsing irregularly, her breath making short puffs in the cold air. There’s steam rising off her body, and Paula wonders whether she should fetch a blanket, make the poor thing more comfortable. Sickness and blood don’t bother Paula, not when it seems likely to pass, but Maribel’s labored breathing, her quivering haunches, all scream Death at Paula. The rest of the family has been in and out of the barn all morning—Deborah brought them hot coffee—and while they were concerned for the cow, none of them seem alarmed. None of them seem to hear Death, to recognize the stench of it. Only Paula hears it, Paula and the dogs, who whimper from the doorway but won’t enter.

  “Christ,” Paula says. “The feet should be out by now.” She rolls her sleeve back up, kneels by the cow. She feels around inside for the legs again. “Do you have obstetrical chains?”

  “We don’t normally calf them anymore,” Dinah says, “but that Hudson bull got in our field—”

  “Any thin chain will do,” Paula says. “Or a leash? A choke chain?”

  Dinah sends Derek off, tells him where to find a leash. He’s a good boy, Dinah thinks. He would have made a good veterinarian. When he returns, Paula slips the leash into the cow and uses it to hold on to the calf’s legs. She pulls, gently, trying to time her tugs with Maribel’s pulsing flanks. A stream of fluid shoots out of Maribel, and for a moment, Derek is certain he will throw up. He’s always thought, but now he’s sure, that he would make a terrible OB-GYN. He looks around to compare how his dad and uncle are doing, and finds they both have their eyes averted. Behind the cow, the straw is damp. The calf’s legs are now poking out, the fur matted and wet, the leash darkened. Paula tugs like it’s nothing. When the legs are far enough out, Paula removes the leash, the cow still working at the calf, until the dark wet mound of fur—Derek can’t yet think of it as a living thing, since it doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe—is spat out onto the straw.

  “Jesus,” Derek says.

  Paula pokes a piece of straw up the calf’s nose, again and again, until the calf coughs, and breathes. Dinah watches, morbidly anxious. Steve’s head nods; he’s falling asleep with the cow’s head in his lap. Even the kids have stopped playing, peeking down from the hayloft to bear witness.

  “It’s a Jesus Cow,” Derek says.

  Nobody but Steve laughs.

  * * *

  • • •

  After the birth, after the calf has been cleaned and dried—Derek does this, for cleaning and drying are all normal parts of his job—Derek returns to the house. He wants to take up residence here, in this kitchen, with Linda. He hasn’t seen the sisters all together in years, and he watches for a moment. How comfy, how in-her-element Linda seems. She and Paige cooking together almost looks like choreography. Linda stretches for the spice rack, and Paige hands her the rosemary. Paige carries chopped onions to the stove, and, without looking up, Linda leans aside so her sister can dump them in the frying pan. They’re talking, but not about the task at hand. It isn’t until Skyla speaks up that they start arguing, amiably, as only grown women can do. Skyla loves this, thrives on the chaos.

  Linda stirs a pan of gravy while the potatoes boil over. The Brodys’ dogs, in and hungry from the cold, wrestle on the floor over raw goose organs. They’re all snarls and wagging tails. The dogs each claim a bit of offal and carry it off to separate corners.

  Paula arrives, strips down to her bra, and scrubs her arm in the sink. She leaves her flannel shirt on the floor. Jared brings out a clean tee.

  “Thank you for coming,” Jared says, his hand going to his beard.

  “No worries.”

  “I would have said it before, but you seemed preoccupied.”

  Paula laughs. Her laugh is the only distinctly feminine thing about her. It’s always reminded Jared of wind chimes.

  “What’s the word?” Paige says. She keeps sneaking glances at her mother while rummaging in the fridge. She and Paula had coffee a couple of weeks back, and something about sitting at a table across from her mother made it feel like Paige couldn’t really study her. It was too close, too intimate. Here, though, she feels free to look. Paige finds that Linda’s assessment is accurate: Paula hasn’t aged. She’s still as hard and pretty as ever.

  “We had a cow,” Derek says. “A Jesus Cow.”

  Steve cracks open a beer.

  “Shit’s never going to come off,” Paula says, still scrubbing her arm in the sink.

  As hard and pretty and potty-mouthed as ever.

  Paige edges around her mother to fill a pot with water. She keeps staring at her. Up close, her mother’s face has a few sun spots and more lines, mostly around her eyes and on her forehead, not so much around her mouth. Her eyes are brown. Paige couldn’t remember, but they are, they’re brown, like her own.

  “I’m not an alien, you know,” Paula says.

  “I’m not convinced,” Paige says.

  “Out with it.”

  �
��Out with what?” Paige asks, her eyes narrowing.

  “Whatever it is you want to say.”

  But Paige has nothing. Her confidence is shaken.

  Diane comes to the doorway now, watching both Paula and Paige. Paige looks to Diane for help, and for the first time in months, Diane’s face softens. Paige wants to go to Diane, wants to bury her face in her wife’s neck, her skin so different from Paula’s, as smooth and pale as the moonlight. Paige wants to cry into her, wants to weep like an exhausted child. Instead, she opens the oven, checks the goose. “You’re letting the damn potatoes boil over,” she calls over her shoulder good-naturedly. Diane slips back into the living room.

  “Hell, they’re barely hissing,” Linda says. Even though they’re swearing, they’re both smiling. Skyla stands on the opposite side of the kitchen island, away from the heat. “I can only take so many hours of these women bickering,” she says to Derek, but she’s smiling, too.

  Paige nudges Linda aside with her hip and takes up stirring the gravy.

  “You let it clump,” Paige says. “You must have learned to cook from Ma.”

  “I can hear you,” Paula says.

  “Why isn’t Skyla helping?” Linda says.

  “I’m waiting to carve,” Skyla says.

  “You’re going to be waiting a long time,” Paige says.

  Skyla gives Derek a wink.

  “You want to grab these potatoes?” Linda says. She’s taken the gravy back from Paige, stirs it furiously as if she could beat the lumps out of it.

  “I would, but I don’t want to leave these knives unattended,” Skyla says.

  “Diane’s watching the kids,” Paige says.

  When Skyla still doesn’t move, Derek goes over, grabs the hot pads, and pulls the potatoes from the stove. He drains them and leaves them in the sink. Linda barely looks at him as she mumbles a “thanks.”

  This is too much for him. Linda’s awkwardness. She’s been like this for months.