The Lost Husband (6 page)

In the morning I found the kids at the kitchen table, dunking whole-wheat pancakes in the shapes of their initials into warm plum jam. Jean was frying bacon at the stove. The kids informed me it was a New Year’s feast. And everybody was acting as if they’d all done this a million times before.

“Bacon?” Jean asked, tilting the pan at me. “It’s homegrown.”

“Maybe just coffee,” I said. I was happy to notice a delightfully modern and high-tech coffeemaker. “Nice coffeemaker.”

“I don’t mess around with coffee,” Jean said.

“Mom,” Abby said, “come eat this jam.”

“Aunt Jean made it herself,” Tank added. He had a clown mouth of it.

I sat across from them at the table with my coffee and rested my hands around the warm mug. “You want to hear something amazing?”

“What?” they asked in unison.

“There are two children at this table, but zero children woke me up last night.”

Tank started to cackle.

“How is that possible?” I asked.

“Mom,” Abby said in her most informative voice, “Tank slept all the way through the night last night.”

Tank was proud. “Yup.”

I gave him a high five. “How on earth did you manage it?”

Tank stuffed a whole pancake into his mouth. “Well,” he said, all muffled, “I just really wanted to see the pirate treasure. So I pretended I was sleeping until I accidentally was.”

Jean set down a plate of bacon. “It’s a busy day today,” she said. “The children and I will dig for—and hopefully find—massive amounts of pirate treasure. And you’ll stay here and learn about the goats.”

“If you’re digging for treasure,” I said, “how do I learn about the goats?”

Jean smiled. “O’Connor.”

“Who’s O’Connor?”

“He’s kind of like my farm manager.” She stepped over to the kitchen window and pointed out. I followed her gaze to see the shaggiest man I’d ever laid eyes on. He was Muppet shaggy. Caveman shaggy. Bigfoot shaggy. His furry head seemed to overpower his entire body, and even his jeans and his work boots seemed shaggy. When he turned and I saw his face, it was all shag, too. Except for a pair of blue eyes and a vertical strip of nose, his beard had taken over his entire face.

“That’s not a farm manager,” I said. “That’s Chewbacca.”

“The beard is a shame,” Jean agreed. “And the lack of—”

“Hygiene?”

“Grooming,” she finished. “But he’s handsome underneath, I promise.”

I didn’t care if he was handsome or not. As long as he didn’t have fleas.

“He’s very handy,” Jean went on. “If there were an Olympics for handiness, he’d have a gold medal.”

“There
should
be an Olympics for handiness,” I said, still watching out the window. And I knew, in the way that sometimes you just know things, that I’d pleased her by saying so.

Jean went back to work, picking up breakfast dishes and submersing them in soapy water, but I continued to watch him for a minute as he filled the dogs’ water bowls. Then, as if he could feel my eyes on him, he turned, glanced at the window, and—to my horror, since I was wearing only a very thin cotton nightgown—started making his way up to the house.

I sent the kids to get dressed, but before I could scurry off myself, he was standing on the back porch by the open door, looking in at us in the kitchen. I could see up close that he had mud from his boots to his knees.

At that moment, I remembered something. I was wearing underpants with little strawberries on them. I knew for a fact—as Danny had pointed out many times—that a person could easily see, and even count, every single strawberry through this particular nightgown. I held absolutely still in the hopes of disappearing into the background.

“Gate’s fixed,” he said to Jean, as if nobody else were in the room.

“Thank you,” she said, moving toward the door and waving me over to join her. I crossed my arms over my chest and stepped forward. She opened the screen door so we could all see
one another better. “James O’Connor,” she said, “meet Libby Moran.”

“Happy New Year,” I said.

O’Connor seemed a little surprised that it was New Year’s Day and frowned a second before getting back to introductions.

O’Connor looked at Jean. “The long-lost niece,” he said, like I was part of some famous story. He held out his hand to shake.

“Yes,” I said, taking it. “Lost, but now, you know, found again.”

“At last,” O’Connor said, just as the kids clomped down the stairs and froze in their tracks at the sight of him.

Abby stepped in front of Tank.

“You protecting your brother?” O’Connor asked.

“Yes,” Abby said.

“Why?” O’Connor asked.

“In case you are a beast.”

O’Connor tilted his head and looked at Abby with appreciation. Then he said, “You’re very brave, big sister.”

“She’s also very strong,” Tank piped up. “You do
not
want to make her angry.”

“Good tip,” O’Connor said, his eyes still squinted.

“Don’t worry,” Jean said to the kids. “He’s human under all that fur.”

Everyone was ready for the day but me, so I sent the kids out to the yard and promised to meet O’Connor by the milking barn in fifteen minutes. But first I had to stop by the kitchen sink and wash—with very hot water and dish detergent—the hand that had shaken O’Connor’s. And not just once, but a second time for good measure. Just in case he did have fleas after all.

Touring the farm, I got the feeling Jean had told O’Connor to start with the most basic of basics about farm life. When we walked past the barn, he said, “This is the barn.” When the goats gathered around us, he said, “These are the goats.”

“I know what goats are,” I said. Then, more politely, “Do they have names?”

“Depends on who you ask,” O’Connor said. “If you ask Aunt Jean, she’ll rattle off twenty names in twenty seconds.”

“And what if I ask you?”

“I’ll tell you they’re all named Goat.”

I paused for a second, then said, “Why do you call her Aunt Jean?”

O’Connor had bent down to inspect one of the goats’ ears.

“I mean, she’s not your aunt,” I went on. Then I frowned. “Is she?”

“No,” O’Connor said. “She’s not my aunt. But I’ve known her since I was a baby. She was friends with my mother.”

I noted the “was” but didn’t say anything.

“Plus,” he went on, “she’s my therapist.”

“You have a therapist?”

“Everybody in this town has a therapist,” he said, starting to walk me toward the back field. “And it’s Aunt Jean.”

“All twelve thousand and one people in this town are clients of Aunt Jean’s?”

“Well,” O’Connor said, “not all at the same time.”

“Somehow,” I said, following, “when I think ‘tiny Texas town,’ I don’t think ‘therapy.’ ”

“This town’s half hippies,” O’Connor said over his shoulder.

“It is?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “They came for the hot spring.”

I’d heard of the hot spring, but I’d never been there. It had billboards on the interstate and everything. Some people believed it had healing waters, and Jean was one of them. She went for a soak every morning between yoga and breakfast.

“The hippies came in the seventies,” he added, stopping to tie his shoe, “and started cross-breeding with the farmers.” When he looked up, there was a wry arch to his eyebrow—one of the only parts of his face I could see.

“Making farmer-hippie hybrids?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said, turning his attention to a chained gate. “Here’s the rule about gates on a farm,” he went on, suddenly all business. “Always leave them the way you find them. If they’re open, leave them open. If they’re closed, close them behind you.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Some of the latches are rusty,” he said, pointing one out for me to try. It was a simple metal clasp. But when I pressed on it, it didn’t give. He said, “Push on it before you slide it back.”

I pushed on it, but no luck.

“Push,” O’Connor said again, as if I needed clarification.

“I am,” I said.

“Harder,” he said.

“I am!” I said.

Finally his hands couldn’t stand it. He put one on top of mine and pressed down on my thumb with his thumb—so hard that the clasp slid right away.

“Ow!” I said.

He let go, and I shook out my hand.

“Sorry,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just replace that one.”

“No,” I said, following him through the gate and watching as he latched it again one-handed. “I’ll just do some”—I hesitated—
“some thumb exercises.” The words sounded even stupider out loud than they had in my head.

From the pond in the back field, we could see the whole farm—the heavy woods on the hill behind us, the pastures Jean leased to cattle ranchers down below, and the farmyard. It was lovely. Just green against green as far as I could see.

Something about the houses and fences and buildings in the city must kill off the wind. Because that was the thing I noticed most about being out in the country—the constant sweep of wind against your skin. It rustled tree leaves and clanked windmills. It swept over the long grass. It was a force, something alive, something more than just air.

I closed my eyes, but when I opened them, O’Connor was halfway back to the farmyard, on the other side of the relatched gate. I trotted after him, but rather than try to work the latch again, I just climbed over.

Back at the barn, the goats nudged their heads up under our hands until we petted them like dogs while O’Connor showed me what I needed to know. The old barn with the rusty tin roof had been a speakeasy in the 1920s. Now it housed hay and chicken roosts and barn cats. The new barn was sharp and clean, powder-coated a rain-cloud gray. One side was surrounded by a pen, and as we walked, O’Connor said, “That’s where the goats wait to be milked.”

“Do they like being milked?” I asked.

“They don’t
dislike
being milked,” he said.

Inside, he showed me the platform the goats stood on, the metal bars that closed around their necks to hold them in place, the buckets of treats they got, and the milking machine.

I was a little disappointed to see the machine. It wasn’t quite as Heidi-esque as I’d been expecting. “We don’t milk them by hand?”

“Hell, no,” O’Connor said. “That would take all day.”

The milking machine had long plastic tubes with suction cups and a motor like a vacuum cleaner. O’Connor had already done the milking that morning, so he didn’t demonstrate, but he did show me what things were for. When we got to the suction cups, I said, “And this part goes on their …” but then I faltered. “Their, um … nipples?”

O’Connor put his hands over his eyes. “Animals don’t have nipples,” he said. “They have teats.”

“Same idea, though,” I said. “Right?”

“Same idea,” he conceded. “Wrong word.”

I noticed a little radio on a shelf, but then I wondered how anyone could possibly hear it over the noise of the milking machine.

O’Connor saw me looking. “It’s broken,” he said. “We just make our own music.”

I looked over. “How?”

He tilted his head at me. “By singing.”

“You sing?” I asked. He seemed too cranky to sing.

“Sure,” he said. “The goats love it. Sometimes they join in.”

Our next stop was the cheese kitchen, the room next door in the milking barn. We had to change shoes on the way in—into the Crocs that were piled up just inside the doorway—because this room, unlike the milking side, was scrubbed down and squeaky-clean, with stainless counters and restaurant-grade cooking equipment: big sinks and sprayers, a work island, tubs and pots hanging from a rack on the ceiling, and, over in the corner, a walk-in fridge.

“Be careful of this thing,” O’Connor said, gesturing at the fridge. “Something’s wrong with the door latch, and it gets stuck sometimes. Don’t ever go in without propping it open.” Then, sizing me up, he changed his mind. “Actually, just don’t ever go in, period. Call me if you need something.”

I looked around the fridge. It seemed to do double duty as a storage closet, housing tubs of cheese as well as boxes of supplies and even a couple of folded wool blankets.

“Seems like a lot of fridge for not very much cheese,” I said.

“We’re low right now, but it’s never full,” O’Connor said. “Frank installed it when they thought they were going to expand. But then he got sick, and they never did.”

“What did he get sick with?”

“Parkinson’s,” O’Connor said.

“Oh,” I said. “And now Jean’s got arthritis.”

He nodded. “So you’ll do her jobs now—mostly milking and making cheese.”

“What do you do?” I asked.

“Everything else,” O’Connor said. “And I help with the milking. It’s faster with two.”

“And then what do we do with the cheese?”

“We sell it.”

I smiled at him instead of rolling my eyes. “Where do we sell it?”

“At the farmers’ markets in Houston and Austin.” He gave me an evaluative look. “But you’re not ready for that yet. We need to get the basics down first.”

Back outside, we crossed the farmyard toward the house.

“So, that’s pretty much the day,” O’Connor said, a few steps ahead of me. “Milk in the morning, do farm chores, make cheese in the afternoon, milk again in the evening.”