The Pioneer Woman (27 page)

N
OVEMBER ROLLED
around and brought with it a new hope: I woke up one cold, windy morning, and just as suddenly as it had arrived, the evil spell of nausea was gone. I could raise my head without chomping on Cocoa Puffs first. The smell of air didn't make me hurl. I could move without shuddering; shower without gagging. Marlboro Man was still working his fingers to the bone, but I was suddenly more equipped to be there for him in a way I hadn't been in the weeks before. I took pride in sorting our laundry into piles, in working to remove the mud and manure and blood from his jeans, in folding his socks and underwear and placing them in the second drawer of our small pine dresser, which barely fit inside our tiny bedroom.

The small window of time—a mere month—had made all the difference in the world. My parents were still separated, but somehow, with my renewed physical strength, I was able to put it in a place where it didn't poke me in the heart over and over. Finally, I could get through an entire day without crying.

No longer repelled by the smell of onions or raw meat, I was able to cook dinner again. I taught myself how to make things like pot roast and Salisbury steak and stew. I slowly learned, through trial and error, that some cuts of meat are tough because of their higher concentration of connec
tive tissues, and that those cuts must be slowly cooked for hours and hours before they become tender. I went crazy with this new knowledge, cooking briskets and short ribs and arm, shoulder, and rump roasts, convinced I'd uncovered some kind of holy grail of culinary knowledge. I slow-cooked meat practically every day, and with the nausea gone, I inhaled it. I was eating for two, after all. I owed it to our growing baby.

With the nausea gone, evenings with Marlboro Man slowly began resembling the way they'd been before. We watched movies on the couch together—his head on one end, my head on the other, our legs in a tangled mess of coziness. He'd play with my toes. I'd rub his calves, which were rock hard and tough from day after day on horseback. After the purgatory of the previous weeks, things were officially delicious again.

Marlboro Man
was delicious again. After a love-drenched honeymoon in Australia, we'd returned home to a bitter reality that had put a screeching halt to what should have been the most romantic days of our lives together. Since my nausea had been so bad that the mere smell of skin made me sick, it had been difficult for me to lie in bed with him some nights—let alone entertain any other thoughts. It had been a cold, frigid autumn in more ways than one. If Marlboro Man hadn't been so happy about his child developing in my body, I imagined he might have taken me back for a refund. I was so glad that this time had finally passed.

 

T
HE AIR
turned colder and Thanksgiving Day arrived, marked by an enormous, warm lunchtime feast at my in-laws' house…and a sad postdinner evening at my dad's. It was the first time my siblings and I had been together since my parents had split, and the absence of my mother from our home left a gaping hole that was visible. It was awful and uncomfortable, a searing pain you'd give anything not to feel. My dad's eyes were gray; his face drawn; his mood morose. Betsy and I tried our best
to combine our efforts in order to create the illusion of having our mother there, but it was forced and futile. I wished I could fast-forward through Christmas; I didn't want to have to feel those feelings again anytime soon.

My brother Doug had completely estranged himself from our mom. He and my sister-in-law were expecting their first baby any day, and he was understandably irked that we all had to negotiate this new family development when we should be enjoying one another's company, talking about baby names, and passing out in a turkey-induced tryptophan coma. He didn't feel like playing happy family by spending Thanksgiving at separate homes of our mother and father…and frankly, neither did I. It was such an avoidable death that had transpired—what about all the families who'd lost their mother to a car accident or cancer? And we lost ours…to marital ambivalence? Our collective anger was a bitter side dish.

My mother, well aware of how raw all of our emotions were, spent a quiet Thanksgiving at Ga-Ga's house. She called me after Marlboro Man and I returned home that night.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Ree Ree,” she said in her subdued—but still sing-songy—voice.

“Thank you,” I said, polite and cold. I couldn't let myself go there. I was just feeling strong again.

“Did you have a good day?” she continued.

“Yes,” I replied. “We had a good meal here on the ranch, then went over to…to Dad's.” I felt like I was talking to a stranger.

“Well…” Her voice trailed off. “I really missed seeing you.”

I tried to speak but couldn't. I couldn't purport to know everything about my parents' marriage, who did what to whom and when. But my parents had been happy. We'd been a family. My dad had worked hard, my mom had raised four children, and at a time when they should have been reveling in the good work they'd done and really enjoying each other, my mom decided she was through.

Deep down, I knew that nothing in life was black or white. I knew that
if you weighed one side against the other throughout the whole course of their marriage, it would probably come out a wash. But that first Thanksgiving, my emotions so close to the surface and raw, my mom was the villain who'd dropped a bomb on our family. And the rest of us were wandering around in the smoldering aftermath.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Mom,” I said, before hanging up the phone.

I was so mad at her, I couldn't see straight.

I went to bed and sucked on Rolaids.

 

M
ARLBORO MAN
had to spend the rest of Thanksgiving weekend weaning the calves that had been born the previous spring, and since I was clearly feeling better, I no longer had a get-out-of-jail (or sleep-in-till-nine) card to use. He woke me up that Saturday morning by poking my ribs with his index finger.

A groan was all I could manage. I pulled the covers over my head.

“Time to make the doughnuts,” he said, peeling back the covers.

I blinked my eyes. The room was still dark. The world was still dark. It wasn't time for me to get up yet. “Doughnuts…huh?” I groaned, trying to lie as still as I could so Marlboro Man would forget I was there. “I don't know how.”

“It's a figure of speech,” he said, lying down next to me. Make the doughnuts? What? Where was I? Who was I? I was disoriented. Confused.

“C'mon,” he said. “Come wean calves with me.”

I opened my eyes and looked at him. My strapping husband was fully clothed, wearing Wranglers and a lightly starched blue plaid shirt. He was rubbing my slightly chubby belly, something I'd gotten used to in the previous few weeks. He liked touching my belly.

“I can't,” I said, sounding wimpy. “I'm…I'm pregnant.” I was pulling out all the stops.

“Yep, I know,” he said, his gentle rub turning back into a poke again.

I writhed and wriggled and squealed, then finally relented, getting dressed and heading out the door with my strapping cowboy.

We drove a couple of miles to a pasture near his parents' house and met up with the other early risers. I rode along with one of the older cowboys in the feed truck while the rest of the crew followed the herd on horseback, all the while enjoying the perfect view of Marlboro Man out the passenger-side window. I watched as he darted and weaved in the herd, shifting his body weight and posture to nonverbally communicate to his loyal horse, Blue, how far to move from the left or to the right. I breathed in slowly, feeling a sudden burst of inexplicable pride. There was something about watching my husband—the man I was crazy in love with—riding his horse across the tallgrass prairie. It was more than the physical appeal, more than the sexiness of his chaps-cloaked body in the saddle. It was seeing him do something he loved, something he was so good at doing.

I took a hundred photos in my mind. I never wanted to forget it as long as I lived.

Back in the pens, once the herd was gathered, the men gingerly and methodically guided the calves into a separate gated area. The cows mooed and their babies bawled once they realized the extent of the physical distance between them, and my bottom lip began to tremble in sympathy. Before that moment, I had no hands-on experience of the tug of motherhood and the tangible connection between the hearts of a mother and child, whether it be bovine, equine, or human. And while I knew that what I was witnessing was a rite of passage, a normal part of agriculture, I realized for the first time that this enormous thing that would be happening in a few short months—this motherhood thing—was serious business.

It took a morning among cows for me to understand.

 

I
GREW STRONGER
and more stable, and by Christmastime, I was wonder woman. Completely over any semblance of morning sickness, I felt like I could do anything. I bought a Christmas tree for our house, decorating it with crocheted snowflakes given to me years earlier, ironically, by my ex J's sweet mother. my jeans, which had been pretty tight by Thanksgiving weekend, could no longer be buttoned. Desperate for a solution, I'd rigged a Goody ponytail holder through the buttonhole and stretched it across the button. It worked like a charm. I figured I'd just keep adding more ponytail holder extensions as my belly grew larger and larger. I decided I could probably get away with just wearing my regular clothes if I minded my p's and q's and didn't gain too much weight.

After the crazy fall we'd had, Marlboro Man and I chose to spend Christmas Eve alone. I didn't want to subject myself to my parental turf wars, and Marlboro Man just wanted to stay home and relax, watch movies, and enjoy life on one of the few days of the year that markets and cattle can be put on the back burner. I played a Johnny Mathis CD and made dinner for us: steaks, foil-wrapped baked potatoes, and salad with Hidden Valley Ranch dressing. I poured Dr Pepper in wine goblets and lit two tapered candles on our small farm table in our tiny kitchen.

“It's so weird that it's Christmas Eve,” I said, clinking my glass to his. It was the first time I'd spent the occasion apart from my parents.

“I know,” he said. “I was just thinking that.” We both dug into our steaks. I wished I'd made myself two. The meat was tender and flavorful, and perfectly medium-rare. I felt like Mia Farrow in
Rosemary's Baby,
when she barely seared a steak in the middle of the afternoon and devoured it like a wolf. Except I didn't have a pixie cut. And I wasn't harboring Satan's spawn.

“Hey,” I began, looking into his eyes. “I'm sorry I've been so…so pathetic since, like, the day we got married.”

He smiled and took a swig of Dr Pepper. “You haven't been pathetic,” he said. He was a terrible liar.

“I haven't?” I asked, incredulous, savoring the scrumptious red meat.

“No,” he answered, taking another bite of steak and looking me squarely in the eye. “You haven't.”

I was feeling argumentative. “Have you forgotten about my inner ear disturbance, which caused me to vomit all across Australia?”

He paused, then countered, “Have you forgotten about the car I rented us?”

I laughed, then struck back. “Have you forgotten about the poisonous lobster I ordered us?”

Then he pulled out all the stops. “Have you forgotten all the money we lost?”

I refused to be thwarted.

“Have you forgotten that I found out I was pregnant after we got back from our honeymoon and I called my parents to tell them and I didn't get a chance because my mom left my dad and I went on to have a nervous breakdown and had morning sickness for six weeks and now my jeans don't fit?” I was the clear winner here.

“Have you forgotten that I got you pregnant?” he said, grinning.

I smiled and took the last bite of my steak.

Marlboro Man looked down at my plate. “Want some of mine?” he asked. He'd only eaten half of his.

“Sure,” I said, ravenously and unabashedly sticking my fork into a big chunk of his rib eye. I was so grateful for so many things: Marlboro Man, his outward displays of love, the new life we shared together, the child growing inside my body. But at that moment, at that meal, I was so grateful to be a carnivore again.

I took a shower after dinner and changed into comfortable Christmas Eve pajamas, ready to settle in for a couple of movies on the couch. I remembered all the Christmas Eves throughout my life—the dinners and wrapping presents and midnight mass at my Episcopal church. It all seemed so very long ago.

Walking into the living room, I noticed a stack of beautifully wrapped rectangular boxes next to the tiny evergreen tree, which glowed with little white lights. Boxes that hadn't been there minutes before.

“What…,” I said. We'd promised we wouldn't get each other any gifts that year.
“What?”
I demanded.

Marlboro Man smiled, taking pleasure in the surprise.

“You're in trouble,” I said, glaring at him as I sat down on the beige Berber carpet next to the tree. “I didn't get you anything…you told me not to.”

“I know,” he said, sitting down next to me. “But I don't really want anything…except a backhoe.”

I cracked up. I didn't even know what a backhoe was.

I ran my hand over the box on the top of the stack. It was wrapped in brown paper and twine—so unadorned, so simple, I imagined that Marlboro Man could have wrapped it himself. Untying the twine, I opened the first package. Inside was a pair of boot-cut jeans. The wide navy elastic waistband was a dead giveaway: they were made especially for pregnancy.

“Oh my,” I said, removing the jeans from the box and laying them out on the floor in front of me. “I love them.”