The Pioneer Woman (13 page)

“Well, how come you didn't just have Carl drop you off there?” I asked. Mike didn't always take the most reasonable course.

“Because I t-t-t-told him my sister would be glad to take me!” Mike replied. Mike liked to sign me up for things without my consent.

I wasn't budging, though; I wasn't going to let Mike bully me. “Well, Mike,” I said, “I'll take you to the mall in a little bit, but I've got
to finish getting dressed. So just chill out, dude!” I loved telling Mike to chill out.

Marlboro Man had been watching the whole exchange, clearly amused by the Ping-Pong match between Mike and me. He'd met Mike several times before; he “got” what Mike was about. And though he hadn't quite figured out all the ins and outs of negotiating him, he seemed to enjoy his company.

Suddenly, Mike turned to Marlboro Man and put his hand on his shoulder. “C-c-c-can you please take me to the mall?”

Still grinning, Marlboro Man looked at me and nodded. “Sure, I'll take you, Mike.”

Mike was apoplectic.
“Oh my gosh!”
he said.
“You will? R-r-r-really?”
And with that he grabbed Marlboro Man in another warm embrace.

“Okeydoke, Mike,” Marlboro Man said, breaking loose of Mike's arms and shaking his hand instead. “One hug a day is enough for guys.”

“Oh, okay,” Mike said, shaking Marlboro Man's hand, apparently appreciating the tip. “I get it now.”

“No, no, no! You don't need to take him,” I intervened. “Mike, just hold your horses—I'll be ready in a little bit!”

But Marlboro Man continued. “I've gotta get back to the ranch anyway,” he said. “I don't mind dropping him off.”

“Yeah,
Ree
!” Mike said belligerently. He stood beside Marlboro Man in solidarity, as if he'd won some great battle. “M-m-m-mind your own beeswax!”

I gave Mike the evil eye as the three of us walked downstairs to the front door.
“Are we gonna take your white pickup?”
Mike asked. He was about to burst with excitement.

“Yep, Mike,” Marlboro Man answered. “Wanna go start it?” He dangled the keys in front of Mike's face.

“What?” Mike said, not even giving Marlboro Man a chance to answer. He snatched the keys from his hand and ran to the pickup, leaving Marlboro Man and me alone on our old familiar front step.

“Well, uh,” I said playfully. “Thanks for taking my brother to the mall.” Mike fired up the diesel engine.

“No problem,” Marlboro Man said, leaning in for a kiss. “I'll see you tonight.” We had a standing date.

“See you then.” Mike laid on the horn.

Marlboro Man headed toward his pickup, then stopped midway and turned toward me once again. “Oh, hey—by the way,” he said, walking back toward the front step. “You wanna get married?” His hand reached into the pocket of his Wranglers.

My heart skipped a beat.

 

H
E REMOVED
his hand from his worn, pleasantly snug jeans…and it held something small.
Holy Lord,
I said to myself.
What in the name of kingdom come is going on here?
His face wore a sweet, sweet smile.

I stood there completely frozen. “Um…what?” I asked. I could formulate no words but these.

He didn't respond immediately. Instead he took my left hand in his, opened up my fingers, and placed a diamond ring onto my palm, which was, by now, beginning to sweat.

“I said,” he closed my hand tightly around the ring. “I want you to marry me.” He paused for a moment. “If you need time to think about it, I'll understand.” His hands were still wrapped around my knuckles. He touched his forehead to mine, and the ligaments of my knees turned to spaghetti.

Marry you?
My mind raced a mile a minute. Ten miles a second. I had three million thoughts all at once, and my heart thumped wildly in my chest.

Marry you? But then I'd have to cut my hair short. Married women have short hair, and they get it fixed at the beauty shop.

Marry you? But then I'd have to make casseroles.

Marry you? But then I'd have to wear yellow rubber gloves to do the dishes.

Marry you? As in, move out to the country and actually live with you? In your house? In the country? But I…I…I don't live in the country. I don't know how. I can't ride a horse. I'm scared of spiders.

I forced myself to speak again. “Um…what?” I repeated, a touch of frantic urgency to my voice.

“You heard me,” Marlboro Man said, still smiling. He knew this would catch me by surprise.

Just then my brother Mike laid on the horn again. He leaned out of the window and yelled at the top of his lungs,
“C'mon! I am gonna b-b-be late for lunch!”
Mike didn't like being late.

Marlboro Man laughed. “Be right there, Mike!” I would have laughed, d too, at the hilarious scene playing out before my eyes. A ring. A proposal. My developmentally disabled and highly impatient brother Mike, waiting for Marlboro Man to drive him to the mall. The horn of the diesel pickup. Normally, I would have laughed. But this time I was way, way too stunned.

“I'd better go,” Marlboro Man said, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. I still grasped the diamond ring in my warm, sweaty hand. “I don't want Mike to burst a blood vessel.” He laughed out loud, clearly enjoying it all.

I tried to speak but couldn't. I'd been rendered totally mute. Nothing could have prepared me for those ten minutes of my life. The last thing I remember, I'd awakened at eleven. Moments later, I was hiding in my bathroom, trying, in all my early-morning ugliness, to avoid being seen by Marlboro Man, who'd dropped by unexpectedly. Now I was standing on the front porch, a diamond ring in my hand. It was all completely surreal.

Marlboro Man turned to leave. “You can give me your answer later,” he said, grinning, his Wranglers waving good-bye to me in the bright noonday sun.

But then it all came flashing across my line of sight. The boots in the bar, the icy blue-green eyes, the starched shirt, the Wranglers…the first
date, the long talks, my breakdown in his kitchen, the movies, the nights on his porch, the kisses, the long drives, the hugs…the all-encompassing, mind-numbing passion I felt. It played frame by frame in my mind in a steady stream.

“Hey,” I said, walking toward him and effortlessly sliding the ring on my finger. I wrapped my arms around his neck as his arms, instinctively, wrapped around my waist and raised me off the ground in our all-too-familiar pose. “Yep,” I said effortlessly. He smiled and hugged me tightly. Mike, once again, laid on the horn, oblivious to what had just happened. Marlboro Man said nothing more. He simply kissed me, smiled, then drove my brother to the mall.

As for me, I went inside, walked up to my bedroom, and fell on the floor.
What…just happened?
Staring at the ceiling, I tried to take it all in. My mind began to race, trying to figure out what it all meant.
Do I need to learn how to whittle? Cook fried chicken? Ride a horse? Use a scythe?
My face began to feel flushed.
And children? Oh, Lord. That means we might have children! What will we name them? Travis and Dolly? Oh my gosh. I have children in my future.
I could see it plainly in front of me.
They'll be little redheaded children with green eyes just like mine, and they'll have lots of freckles, too. I'll have ten of them, maybe eleven. I'll have to squat in the garden and give birth while picking my okra.
Every stereotype of domestic country life came rushing to the surface. A lot of them involved bearing children.

Then my whole body relaxed in a mushy, contented heap as I remembered all the times I'd walked back into that very room after being with Marlboro Man, my cowboy, my savior. I remembered all the times I'd fallen onto my bed in a fizzy state of euphoria, sighing and smelling my shirt to try to get one last whiff. All the times I'd picked up the phone early in the morning and heard his sexy voice on the other end. All the times I'd longed to see him again, two minutes after he'd dropped me off. This was right, this was oh, so right. If I couldn't go a day without seeing him, I certainly couldn't go a lifetime….

Just then my phone rang, startling me. It was Betsy, my younger sister.

“Yo, what up?” she asked. She was driving home from college for a visit.

I twirled my hair on my finger, not the least bit prepared to answer frankly.

“Oh, nothin',” I answered as my thumb played with the new engagement ring around my finger.

We spent the next five minutes in sisterly small talk, and we hung up without my sharing the news. I wanted to wait awhile before telling anyone. I still needed to grasp it myself. Still lying on the floor of my bedroom, I took a deep breath and looked at my hand. I felt strange and tingly, almost separated from my body. I wasn't really here, I told myself. I was in Chicago, and I was watching all of this happen to someone else. It was a movie, maybe on the big screen, maybe cable. But it couldn't be my life…could it?

My phone rang again. It was Marlboro Man.

“Hey,” he said. I heard the diesel engine rattling in the background. “I just dropped Mike at the mall.”

“Hi,” I said, smiling. “Thanks for doing that.”

“I just wanted to tell you that…I'm happy,” he said. My heart leapt out of my chest and shot through the roof.

“I am, too,” I said. “Surprised…and happy.”

“Oh,” he continued. “I told Mike the news. But he promised he wouldn't tell anybody.”

Oh, Lord,
I thought.
Marlboro Man obviously has no idea who he's dealing with.

I
WAS CERTAIN
that by now Mike had told half the shopping mall in my hometown that “M-m-m-my sister is gonna get m-m-m-m-
married
!” This would mean that within an hour or two, the entire state would probably know. It would all be very real in no time. The guy behind the Subway counter would hear the news first, followed by the sweet high school girl at Candy Craze, who probably knew my sister from high school, so she'd call her mom, who'd probably been a patient of my dad's at some point, and who likely knew my mom. And the gal at the cosmetics counter in Dillards, who sold my grandmother Estée Lauder foundation once a month—she'd soon know, too. And so would all the security guards and janitors on-site—they would all hear the news within the hour, though very few of them would likely care. But everyone would know: this was a fact. To Mike, news—any news at all—was meant to be shared. And if he could be the first person to spread the word, the happier he'd be. Thank God he didn't have a cell phone, or he would have already called the local radio station and asked that they announce it during the rush hour drive.

That was one of Mike's tactics. He loved being the bearer of any kind of news.

But I couldn't allow myself to worry about that. Still lying on the ground, half tingly, half stunned, I held my left hand in front of my face
and lightly spread my fingers, examining what Marlboro Man had given me that morning. I couldn't have chosen a more beautiful ring, or a ring that was a more fitting symbol of my relationship with Marlboro Man. It was unadorned, uncontrived, consisting only of a delicate gold band and a lovely diamond that stood up high—almost proudly—on its supportive prongs. It was a ring chosen by a man who, from day one, had always let me know exactly how he felt. The ring was a perfect extension of that: strong, straightforward, solid, direct. I liked seeing it on my finger. I felt good knowing it was there.

My stomach, though, was in knots. I was engaged.
Engaged
. I was ill-prepared for how weird it felt. Why hadn't I ever heard of this strange sensation before? Why hadn't anyone told me? I felt simultaneously grown up, excited, shocked, scared, matronly, weird, and happy—a strange combination for a weekday morning. I was engaged—holy moly. My other hand picked up the receiver of the phone, and without thinking, I dialed my little sister.

“Hi,” I said when Betsy picked up the phone. It hadn't been ten minutes since we'd hung up from our last conversation.

“Hey,” she replied.

“Uh, I just wanted to tell you”—my heart began to race—“that I'm, like…engaged.”

What seemed like hours of silence passed.

“Bullcrap,” Betsy finally exclaimed. Then she repeated: “Bull
crap
.”

“Not bullcrap,” I answered. “He just asked me to marry him. I'm
engaged,
Bets!”

“What?”
Betsy shrieked. “Oh my God…” Her voice began to crack. Seconds later, she was crying.

A lump formed in my throat, too. I immediately understood where her tears were coming from. I felt it all, too. It was bittersweet. Things would change. Tears welled up in my eyes. My nose began to sting.

“Don't cry, you butthead.” I laughed through my tears.

She laughed it off, too, sobbing harder, totally unable to suppress the tears. “Can I be your maid of honor?”

This was too much for me. “I can't talk anymore,” I managed to squeak through my lips. I hung up on Betsy and lay there, blubbering on my floor.

The phone rang again almost immediately. It was Mike, calling from a pay phone in the mall.
Oh Lord,
I thought.
He probably has a whole roll of quarters.

“Hey!” Mike shouted. I heard shoppers in the background.

“Hey, Mike,” I answered, wiping tears from my face.

His voice was playful. “I heard s-s-s-somethin' about s-s-s-someone today….” He burst out in mischievous laughter.

I played along. “Oh yeah, Mike? What's that?”

“I heard…that…s-s-s-someone I know is gettin' m-m-m-m-
married
!” He shrieked and cackled as only Mike can.

“Now, Mike,” I began. “You haven't
told
anyone…have you?”

He didn't respond.

“Mike?” I pressed.

Finally, he replied, “I…don't…think so.”

“Mike
…
,”
I teased. “Remember, you promised you wouldn't tell anyone!”

“I h-h-h-have to go,” Mike said. And with that, he hung up and went about his business.

Yep, it was sure to be in that evening's paper…figuratively speaking.

I spent the next couple of hours preemptively informing the rest of my immediate family that I, their daughter/sister/granddaughter, would be marrying a cowboy from the next county. I was met with very little resistance—other than a couple of
“Oh, Jesus”
remarks from my oldest brother, who, as I once had, believed that life outside a big city wasn't worth living. By and large, my family approved. They obviously knew how crazy I was about Marlboro Man; they'd hardly seen me since we'd gotten together. The glaring precariousness of my own parents' marriage loomed large.
It was a nasty, dark thundercloud, threatening to move in on my perfect spring day. But I tried to ignore it, at least for now, and enjoy this moment.

This beautiful, extraordinary moment.

 

E
ARLY THE
next morning, I was driving westward toward the ranch. Marlboro Man had called the night before—a rare evening we'd spent apart—and had asked me to come out early.

I'd just turned onto the highway that led out of my hometown when my car phone rang. It was dewy outside, foggy. “Hurry up,” Marlboro Man's voice playfully commanded. “I want to see my future wife.” My stomach lurched. Wife. It would take me a while to get used to that word.

“I'm coming,” I announced. “Hold your horses!” We hung up, and I giggled. Hold your horses. Heh-heh. I had a lifetime of these jokes ahead. This was going to be loads of fun.

He met me at my car, wearing jeans, boots, and a soft, worn denim shirt. I climbed out of the car and stepped right into his arms. It was just after 8:00
A.M
., and within seconds we were leaning against my car, sharing a passionate, steamy kiss. Leave it to Marlboro Man to make 8:00
A.M
. an acceptable time to make out. I never would have known this if I hadn't met him.

“So…what are we gonna do today?” I asked, trying to remember what day it was.

“Oh, I thought we'd drive around for a while…,” he said, his arms still grasping my waist, “and talk about where we might want to live.” I'd heard him mention before, in passing, that someday he wanted to move to a different spot on the ranch, but I'd never paid much attention to it. I'd never really cared much where he lived, just as long as he took his Wranglers with me. “I want it to be your decision, too.”

We spent the morning driving, my Marlboro Man and me. We drove
around the hidden places and the far reaches of his family's ranch: through rippling creeks, across innumerable cattle guards, over this hill, past that thicket of trees—all of this in search of the ideal spot for us to start our life together. Marlboro Man liked the house in which he'd been living, but it was far removed from the heart of the ranch, and he'd always planned to set up a more permanent spot somewhere. That we were now engaged to be married made it the perfect time to make the transition.

I'd always liked his house; it was rustic and unadorned, yet beautiful in its simplicity. I could live there. Or I could live in another house. Or I could live in his pickup, or in his barn, or in a teepee in a pasture…as long as he was there. But he wanted to drive and look together, so we drove. And we looked. And we held hands. And we talked. And somewhere along the way, in the bright morning sunshine, Marlboro Man stopped his pickup under the shade of a tree, crossed the great divide between our leather bucket seats, and grabbed me in a sexy, warm embrace. And we sat there and kissed, like two teenagers parked at a drive-in. A 1958 drive-in, though. Before the sexual revolution. Before Cinemax, though my mind remained very much in the 1990s. It was hard to practice restraint in the pickup that morning. There was nobody around to see us.

We did practice restraint, though, ending our make-out fest within minutes instead of hours, which would have been my choice. But we had a lifetime ahead. Things to do. Cattle guards to cross. So we continued our drive, checking out some of the more obvious locations we might one day call our home. We started at the Home Place—the quaint, modest homestead where his grandfather used to live back when he was a newly married rancher just beginning to raise a family. The well-maintained road on which we drove wasn't always there, Marlboro Man told me, and when any amount of rain would fall, his grandmother would find herself trapped at the Home Place for days because of the roaring, impassable creek. His grandmother had been a town girl much like me, Marlboro Man said, and had resisted living on the ranch at the beginning. But because she wanted to marry his grandfather, she'd bitten the bullet and made the move.

“How sweet,” I remarked. “Did she eventually wind up liking it?”

“Well, she tried to,” he said. “But the first time she got on a horse my grandpa made the mistake of laughing at her,” Marlboro Man explained. “She got off and said that was the last time she was ever riding a horse.” Marlboro Man chuckled his signature chuckle.

“Oh,” I said, smiling nervously. “Well, how long did it take her to get used to it?”

“Well, she never really did,” Marlboro Man said. “They eventually bought a house and moved to town.” He chuckled again.

I looked out the window, twirling my hair. Something about the Home Place didn't seem like the best fit.

We continued our drive, not making any permanent decisions that day about where we'd live. We'd been engaged less than twenty-four hours, after all; there was no huge rush. When we finally returned to his house, we curled up on his couch and watched a movie.
Gone With the Wind,
of all things. He was a fan. And as I lay there that afternoon and watched the South crumble around Scarlett O'Hara's knees for what had to have been the 304th time in my life, I touched the arms that held me so sweetly and securely…and I sighed contentedly, wondering how on earth I'd ever found this person.

When he walked me to my car late that afternoon, minutes after Scarlett had declared that tomorrow is another day, Marlboro Man rested his hands lightly on my waist. He caressed my rib cage up and down, touching his forehead to mine and closing his eyes—as if he were recording the moment in his memory. And it tickled like crazy, his fingertips on my ribs, but I didn't care; I was engaged to this man, I told myself, and there'll likely be much rib caressing in the future. I needed to toughen up, to be able to withstand such displays of romance without my knees buckling beneath me and without my forgetting my mother's maiden name and who my first grade teacher had been. Otherwise I had lots of years of trouble—and decreased productivity—ahead. So I stood there and took it, closing my eyes as well
and trying with all my might to will away the ticklish sensations. They had no place here. Begone, Satan! Ree, hold strong.

My mind won, and we stood there and continued to thumb our nose at the reality that we were two separate bodies…and the western sun behind us changed from yellow to orange to pink to a brilliant, impossible red—the same color as the ever-burning fire between us.

On the drive home, my whole torso felt warm. Like when you've awakened from the most glorious dream you've ever had, and you're still half-in, half-out, and you still feel the dream and it's still real. I forced myself to think, to look around me, to take it all in. One day, I told myself as I drove down that rural county road, I'm going to be driving down a road like this to run to the grocery store in town…or pick up the mail on the highway…or take my kids to cello lessons.

Cello lessons? That would be possible, right? Or ballet? Surely there was an academy nearby.

We'd casually thrown some wedding dates around: August? September? October? After next summer, when the weather was cool again. When shipping season was over. When we could relax and celebrate and enjoy a nice, long honeymoon without the pressures of cattle work. Our wedding would likely be months and months away, which was fine with me. It would take me that long to address enough invitations for his side of the family, what with the cousins and uncles and aunts and extended relatives, who all seemed to live within a fifty-mile radius, who all would want to celebrate the first wedding in Marlboro Man's immediate family—a family that had been rocked by the tragic death of the oldest son some ten years before. And it would take me that long to break away from my old life, to cut the cord between my former and future selves.

Meanwhile, word of our engagement had begun to spread through my hometown of 35,000, thanks in no small part to my brother Mike and his patented Bullhorn Policy of announcing our engagement at the mall—or over the telephone lines—the day before. My return to my hometown after
living in Los Angeles had been somewhat noteworthy, since I'd always given off the air—sometimes obnoxiously so—of someone who thought she belonged in a larger, more cosmopolitan locale. The fact that I would now be hanging up my L.A.-acquired black pumps to move to an isolated ranch in the middle of nowhere was enough to raise a few eyebrows. I could almost hear the whispers through the grapevine.

“Ree? Is getting married?”

“Seriously? Ree's marrying…a rancher?”

“She's going to live in the
country
?”