Nowhere Ranch (22 page)
“You doing okay?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don't know. I feel like I'm in a dream. Like any second you're going to wake me up and tell me it's time to go start lambing. Like this all isn't real.”
He sighed and pressed his lips to my hair. “It's real.”
My fingers skimmed up his shirt and toyed idly with the buttons. “I don't know what I'm supposed to do tomorrow when we go over. Don't know what to say.”
His hand rubbed my back gently. “You'll work it out. From what you tell me, they won't make so much of a fuss with Haley and me there. And I won't leave your side unless you ask. And even then you might have to ask twice.”
I swallowed hard and let my finger slip between the gap of his shirt panels, touching the hair of his chest. “I love you.” It still stuck in my throat a little, but it was getting easier to say.
He kissed the top of my hair again. “Love you more.”
He surfed one-handed for a while, still rubbing my back until I fell asleep. Eventually he lay down too, turning me so we were spooned up together, my back to his front.
In the morning we got up, got dressed, hit the continental breakfast, and tried to ignore the eager looks and whispers from the day desk staff. I didn't know them, but they clearly knew me and all Missy had passed on. They weren't glaring at me, though. They acted like I was some kind of celebrity. They giggled and whispered and looked at one another like I was the damnedest thing they'd ever seen. In a good way. I think.
That wasn't the case when we got out to the farm.
Heading down that gravel road was the hardest part of the trip. I was sitting in the back seat, which I had done the whole trip because Haley needed the space unless she was trying to nap, but holy shit, it was good I was in the back now, because I think I would have tried to jump out the door.
I looked away at Coppit's Corner, but not in time. I saw the shattered concrete of the median, saw the wreath somebody had hung there, and I shut my eyes, shaking, not knowing how I was ever going to get through this.
Haley grabbed my hand.
I got a lot of hand-holdings and mumbled comforting words of nonsense over the next two days. From Travis, from Haley, and from people who knew me but who I couldn't remember well. It's all kind of silly, but there's nothing else to say or do, really. They don't mean that things will be good. They mean that things will go on. That you will too. Which, at that moment isn't what you want. You want things to stop. You want to take ten minutes or maybe ten days or even ten years and figure this out, but no, everything keeps going. And going. And going.
I went up the sidewalk to the house I had lived in from the time I was born until they'd kicked me out of it. I walked with my lover's hand on the small of my back and my pregnant Amazon warrior friend flanking me.
I walked up to my mom, who was standing in the doorway looking at me. Smiling. Crying. My heart soared up.
Then I realized she was looking at Haley too, and my heart crashed. She was doing what Missy Letts had done. She thought I wasn't just coming home but coming home straight and with a pregnant wife. I thought of the look of devastation that was about to cross her face, my heart dove into my feet, and the next thing I knew, I was turning around and heading back down the sidewalk again.
Travis stopped me, but I just shook my head. I couldn't stop.
“I can't. I can't, I can't do it. I can't. I can't watch her hate me again.” I shut my eyes and pressed my hand over my chest, because it hurt so bad.
“Haley's talking to her.” Travis had both hands on me now, one on my arm, one on my back. “Just keep breathing. We're both right here. Just take it easy.” He kept on rubbing, and I kept on breathing as best I could. And then he squeezed my arm. “Okay. Haley's motioning to us. Come on, Roe. You can do it.”
I was wearing my brown cowboy hat, and he tipped it forward a little as was his way, a little, playful nudge. He'd done it a thousand times in front of everybody, but all I could think was that my mom was watching. Was she seeing my lover, my partner taking care of me, or was she seeing me as an abomination? I didn't want to find out. But I had to.
I didn't look at her until I got all the way to the porch, until I was looking at her shoes, dirty, worn-out orthopedic white shoes with navy socks.
Holding my breath, I looked up.
I wish I could tell you that it was some magic moment. I wish I could tell you that Haley had worked it out, that Mom was just so glad to see me that she didn't care who I loved. I wish I could tell you I was welcomed like the prodigal son. But I can't tell you that and be honest.
Oh, she didn't yell. In fact, she was very polite. She smiled. And she cried a little more, and she hugged me. But Missy at the Super 8 had hugged me harder.
Bill was inside, as was his wife. He hugged me, stiff and awkward, then looked at Haley with his eyebrows up. Funny how the rumor was probably all over town, but everybody would have worked hard not to mention it to my family. Either they already knew or telling them first would shame them further. She told the story again. She was getting good at it. I just wished she would leave off the “Roe's partner” bit, because I never looked away in time.
Though I will say that I enjoyed watching Bill and Travis get puffed up around each other. Probably I shouldn't have, but I did. Talk about a pissing contest. Bill was clearly trying to look down at this sleazy bastard having dirty gay sex with his little brother, and Travis, who had ten years, five inches, and fifteen hundred acres on Bill, didn't so much as flinch, just looked down right back at his lover's homophobic brother.
We sat around the table in the kitchen. Bill's wife served everybody coffee and some of the food people had brought by, and we played nice. Bill and Travis talked cattle, about the difference between Iowa and Nebraska land management, and then they dragged me into some talk about sheep. For a while it was almost like we were normal. Bill wanted to know about the Merino wool market and how that worked out, and Travis talked about the profit margin, and I talked about the dos and don'ts of organic wool regulation. And just like that, I was back home. At the kitchen table, with my family.
Mom wiped at her eyes every now and again and avoided my gaze. She acted like Travis wasn't even there. But she kept looking at Haley, especially at her belly. I had never seen her look so hungry, and it was a little unnerving to see her looking at Haley like that. I wondered if Bill had ‘fessed up about not being able to have his own kids yet. I wondered if she were looking at that baby in Haley's belly and thinking about all that she wasn't going to have. I wondered if she was blaming me for taking it away from her by being gay.
We finished lunch, and after that a few people stopped by, mostly from the church with more food. You could kill yourself on the food in the house already, but it kept coming, because that was the way it was. Half of it would have to be thrown out. Sarah packed up as much as she could with us when we left.
Haley made me sit in the front seat, and she rubbed my shoulders all the way back into town.
“You did good, Roe,” she said. “You did real good.”
Back at the hotel, Haley took a nap, and even though I told Travis I wasn't tired, I did too. And then it was five, and we had to head over to the funeral parlor for the visitation.
The director gave us all a few moments alone with Dad's body, and without anybody arranging it out loud, Mom and Bill and Sarah went in first, and then Travis and Haley and I went in after on our own.
It was not going to be an open casket because of the accident, but it was open now. It was pretty grim, but even though everybody pointed out that I didn't need to do this, I did it anyway, because yes, I did. In my mind Dad wasn't all the way dead yet. I kept thinking he would come through the door and correct me on something or tell Travis to get the fuck away from his son. Something. Anything. I couldn't make my brain believe. I needed to see it for myself.
It was bad. He had a big, crazy, stitched-up scar down the center of his face, and part of it was just out-and-out covered up, because it wasn't there. His skin was white. Paper white. His lips looked wrong too. Everything was wrong about him. I mean, everything. It wasn't him. This wasn't the man whose strides I tried to match when we went out to do chores. This wasn't the man who'd hefted me up on his shoulders so I could see the Fourth of July parade. This wasn't the man who'd tanned my backside for hiding my report card in the bottom of the wastebasket. This wasn't a man at all. It was just a body.
And yet it's funny how there's things you just have to do. You have to go up and touch his hand. You have to bend down and kiss his forehead, even if you're scared to death that drape is going to slide and you're going to see something that will make you throw up. You have to take your lover's hand and hold it tight while you say, “I love you, Dad.” You have to feel like when you turn away, a part of you has died too, the part of you that was sure, absolutely sure that this could not be right, that your dad had not kicked you out without a word and not spoken to you for years and then died without saying you were okay as who you were. You had to do it.
Kayla was there when we came out from viewing Dad, and Pastor Tim was with her.
We stayed away from each other during the wake. Haley and Travis were still flanking me, though everybody kept making Haley sit down. I think I shook three hundred people's hands. I said “Thank you for coming” over and over and over and over again. Every now and again somebody looked at Travis and then back at me expectantly, wanting the story, but I was so numb that I never gave it. Haley didn't say anything either, though sometimes Travis did. He doesn't like talking about feelings, but he gossips like an old biddy, and he fit right in once he got warmed up. He yammered on about ranching, about teaching math at college, and when Harold Yomer came through, he even got on his Libertarian spiel.
Oh, some people skipped right over us, pretending we weren't even there. I didn't mind at all. Less talking for me.
When we finally got through the whole line and it was time to go, Kayla tried to come over, dragging Pastor Tim and looking purposeful, but Haley herded us toward the door, and when Kayla tried to stop us, Haley said she wasn't feeling well and touched her belly. The grandmother brigade started to cluck and fuss, and we were out the door in minutes.
Once we were back at the hotel, I lay awake on the bed staring at the ceiling in the dark.
Travis was lying on his side beside me, and he touched my shoulder. “Still doing okay?”
I kept my eyes on the ceiling. “It's weird, how Kayla and Haley are so much the same. And so different at the same time. I mean, they even look alike.”
“Haley smiles more.”
I grabbed his hand in the dark. “I'm glad you both came.”
“Wouldn't be anywhere else.”
“I just hope she doesn't have a baby during the funeral.”
“From your mouth to God's ears.” He kissed my cheek, then turned my face so he could get to my lips. “It's going to be okay, Roe.”
I nodded, and I kissed him again. And again.
And then it was morning, and then it was the funeral.
It was the same as the visitation, except it felt heavier. I shook a lot of hands and got hugs from old ladies. I sat in a lot of pews and listened to a lot of prayers and Bible verses and people blowing their noses.
I stood at the front left corner of my father's casket, and I carried it down the aisle of the church, down the stairs to the hearse, and then I rode to the cemetery. At two thirty in the afternoon on April 21, I helped work the cinch and put my father's body in the ground.
We went back to the farm after. There were fewer people there than at the funeral, but it was still pretty full, and while Haley chatted up my aunt Carol, and Travis stood like a sentry against the kitchen wall, I slipped up the stairs to my old room.
Everything was still there.
It was a relief, but it was creepy too, because it was really, really all just exactly as it had been when I left. Someone came in regularly and vacuumed and dusted, but everything I had left behind was still here. The ribbon from a demo derby I'd entered and won was still on the bulletin board. The magazines—the clean ones, about stereo speakers—were still in the bookcase in my headboard. My CDs were still lined up neat along the top of my desk, propped up by the Pink Floyd mirror I had won at the state fair when I was ten. The clothes I hadn't taken with me were hanging in the closet. It was all here, like I had been gone five minutes, not five years.
“They still love you, Roe.”
I turned around like I'd been caught, but Pastor Tim just gave me his patient smile and held out his hands.
“They love you, Roe. They always have. All you have to do is turn away from the darkness and come back into their loving arms, into the light of Christ.”
Kayla appeared beside him. She wasn't smiling. “Don't put them through any more, Roe. Don't hurt them any more than they already are.”
I stood there frozen, but I wasn't scared. I was just tired. So tired. I didn't want this anymore. I couldn't be scared or upset, because I didn't have anything left in me. I hated them, but I didn't even have the energy for that. I figured I would just stand there and suck it up until they were done, and then I'd kiss my mom and shake my brother's hand and go home.
I had forgotten to figure about Haley.
One minute Kayla was several paragraphs into a lecture about the state of my soul and how unfair I was to my mom and my brother, and the next minute I saw Haley appear behind her, looking at the back of Kayla's head like she was really looking forward to ripping it off. I opened my mouth and started forward in alarm.
Kayla held up a hand. “I'm not finished.”
“Oh yes you are, bitch,” Haley said, and she pushed Kayla into the room.
Chapter Twelve
“Ladies!” Pastor Tim cried out, but Haley turned on him, and he shut up fast.
“All right,” she said, her index finger aimed and pointing alternately at the two of them. “I'm assuming you're Kayla the cousin and Tim the pastor. That right?” She waited for murmurs of acknowledgment, and once she had them, she nodded and cut them off again. “Got it. Just wanted to be sure. I came a long way to see the two of you. Wanted to make sure I was shouting at the right people.”