Crybaby Ranch (23 page)

“D
arling Suzannah.”

“There's our dear girl.”

Oh, not the aunts in the bookstore, not today. I'm frazzled, trying to get my projects done so I can leave for Florida early tomorrow morning.

“We're terribly sorry to hear about your mother, dear. Bo told us everything.” Violet pats my shoulder.

“This is a sad time for your family,” Maizie says.

“Thank you.” I smile and turn slightly so I can still slip a book from the pile in my arms into the M-N-O-P row of natural history authors.

“We did hear some good news, though.” Violet smiles coyly and plucks the top book off my listing stack.

“What's that?”

“Why, the plans you and Bo have for marriage.” Violet bends down to place the book on a lower shelf while she speaks, so I am left staring at her curved back. “What?”

Maizie says, “See, sister, it didn't work. I told you she wouldn't fall for it.”

Violet apparently feels it is safe to stand upright again. She scans my face, looking apologetic.

“Fall for what?” I wonder if I have ever spoken to the aunts except in the form of questions. Often with a startled look on my face, as I have now.

Violet says, “Sister and I can't get a thing out of Bo, and we thought we'd try you.”

Maizie shifted her embossed leather purse to her other shoulder. “Can't you just give us the teeniest hint?”

“Sister and I always wanted a daughter, but we couldn't bring ourselves to upset Pop again. His ears turned purple when sister surprised him with Bo.” Violet lifts three more books out of my arms and scans the shelves for the proper place to put them.

Maizie watches my face.

“Oh,” I say stunned. “Oh.”

“Yes,” Maizie says. “Bo believed we should all tell each other the truth. Though Pop covered his ears and said he wouldn't talk about the foolishness, we just kept it up till he gave in.” Maizie continues talking while Violet roams the shelves placing books she lifts from my arms. “We just hope you'll love our Bartholomew,” she says, then ducks beneath Violet's arm to finish, “and come be our little girl. Don't we, sister?”

Violet says, “We would be honored if you'd consider joining our family.”

“Is this a proposal?” I joke. Being someone's little girl sounds appealing right now.

“Well, I guess it is,” Violet says.

“I guess it is,” Maizie agrees.

The two sisters nod to each other. “It is,” they say.

“There is no other family I'd enjoy more,” I say. “But,” I hurry to add, “Bo and I need lots of discussion before making any plans. It will be a long time.”

“Oh, darling, don't let talk hold you up,” Violet says. She lifts the remaining four books out of my arms and proceeds to find their placement. “Men are frightened of talk.”

“My, yes,” Maizie agrees. “If the military used women's words instead of guns, we'd have ourselves armies of men cowering in their foxholes.”

“Sister, it's not fashionable to talk like that anymore. We women are supposed to show kindness, now that our superiority is out in the open.” Violet dusts off her hands. “Now I've finished my job. I think we need to let Suzannah get back to work.” She leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “You and Bo have as much pleasure as you can manage on your trip to Florida.”

“Yes. Sister and I will be thinking of the two of you.” Maizie hugs me.

From the shop doorway, Violet calls back, “I shelved your books by title, Suzannah, dear. Hope that helps.”

I groan and turn toward the shelves to look for a dozen misplaced books.

Though it's her day off, Tessa pops into the bookstore. She has some news.

“You won't believe what the universe has sent me. He's a triple Sag—all in the twelfth house. Physically gorgeous. But this is a person so leery of commitment he refuses to use turn signals when he's driving. Should I ask him out, if he doesn't call soon?”

I say, using a lazy Mae West voice, “Tell him to put a pickle in his pocket and come see you sometime.”

Tessa laughs. I tell her about Florida.

She says, “Luck to us both. Stories when you get home.” A quick kiss and a strong hug and she's gone.

I forgot how I hate leaving on trips. I always look forward to them until they get close. Then I wonder why anyone would try to stuff her life into a suitcase and leave such nice people. I check my watch; it's way past lunchtime, but I have a stack of SPOs—special orders—I want to clean up.

“My boy's been looking kind of gant.”

I jump under my clothes and turn from the microfiche I'm scanning, toward the surprise of O.C.'s voice. “Oh.” I smile as if he drops in to see me at work every day.
“Gant?”

“Lost himself some weight.”

“Oh,” I say again. Does he mean
gaunt
?

“Well?” O.C. demands, leaning with both hands on his ski pole for support.

“You want me to fatten him up?” I hope no one is listening to this exchange. I'm afraid to look.

“Wouldn't hurt none.” Like an owl, O.C. turns his head in a half circle without moving his shoulders, checking out the bookstore. “The girls tell me I'll scare you off if I say what I think about all these books and the people that waste good time reading and writing them. So you just tell your folks I'm sorry to hear about their hard times.”

“Well, thank you.” O.C. nods. Then as if an afterthought and not the reason he came, he says, “I sent them girls to find out some things and all they do is come home with some wee notions about working in this store someday. Say they learned how.”

I say, “No plans for now.”

“Well, it's okay by me if you want to go ahead with some.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I'll let you know.”

O.C. nods again. “Me and my boy are making new creations full-time now. Maybe we'll work up something together for your yard.”

“That would be nice,” I say, and though I can't picture how that would turn out, I'm pleased about this truce between Bo and O.C.

“You come back home real soon.”

 

A crack forms between the earth and sky and the yolky glow of sun spreads brokenly beneath low, thick clouds. We load our suitcases into Bo's Suburban. In the bare cottonwoods above us, three ravens sit big as Labrador puppies.

As we drive to the airport, the sky brightens. A rounded cloud, hanging low, floats along the ridge of a butte like a benign whale swallowing up scrub pine and boulders as it moves past. I hear myself transferring my thoughts to Florida, conjuring beach images in the clouds, the same way I set my watch to a different time zone, in preparation for the change. The two places are so different. Wyoming is made up of spires: the Tetons, the slender, tapering pines, antlers, prairie grasses. Florida shapes resemble fans: palm fronds, the crescent ripples of a wave, scallop shells, fish fins, the curve of beach itself.

On the plane from Jackson to Salt Lake City, Bo and I sip coffee and read the old magazines I stuffed into my backpack in hopes of catching up with them. I notice Bo chose an old issue of
Time
.

I say, “I wonder how many men would pick up the special women's issue of
Time
and read it like you're doing.” I sound full of admiration.

With feigned surprise, Bo flips to the cover. “I thought this was the swimsuit issue.”

I'm not used to laughing before breakfast. But no use putting off any fun. It's barely eight o'clock now, and we have three more planes to catch before we finally land at six o'clock this evening in West Palm Beach. Then we rent a car for the drive up the coast, another hour. Dad was surprisingly gracious about Bo coming along. “Never been to Florida, eh?” he said last night on the phone. “Guess I'll have to show him how we fish the big water.”

The Dallas-to-Atlanta run is the longest leg of the trip. A man sitting across the aisle from me has his boarding pass stuck under the latch holding the table up against the seatback in front of him, as if a train conductor will soon come along and punch his ticket. And the lady two rows in front of him has her special-meal sticker stuck to her hair. It's a pink Post-it that is supposed to be on top of her seat back.

Last night, Bo took me to the barn he uses as a studio and showed me his new work. Spirit Posts, he called them. Tall as I am, these figures were made of thick, rectangular metal tubing. Head shapes were cut out and designs etched into the metal bodies. One post sprouted horns wrapped in long streamers of red trade cloth with feathers. Spikes haloed the head of another with extravagant details cut and bent into the metal body. Horsehair hung down the shoulders in beaded strands on my favorite and each of them sat on an old cultivator disk. That place behind the bridge of my nose stung and made my eyes water when I saw them. They stirred me deeply. If I could see one of these Spirit Posts every day, I might not forget my interdependence with all living things.

I ask Bo now, “How did you get started working again?”

He looks past me, sitting in the middle seat, and out the plane window for a long moment. “I felt like such a goddamn coward.”

An attendant interrupts to ask for our drink orders and puts our trays down, laying a napkin and bag of peanuts on each one. I order Bloody Mary mix without the vodka. Bo gets the same.

“A coward?”

“I didn't have the courage to get on with my art, and I threw up roadblocks when it came to you. I never even asked who my real mother was. I spent forty years just glancing off my life.” An arm reaches across to set down our two glasses of juice. “I said to myself that if I couldn't grab ahold of these things, I would start to die. I'd start leaking.”

“Leaking what?”

“Life force or energy or whatever your friend Tessa might call it. I'd leak until I got so weak that problems would gang up on me and illnesses would cut me down. Soon I'd have so few resources, I would have every reason in the world not to do anything.”

I sip my juice and think about the enormity of Bo's experience. I try on the new idea he has suggested. “Like there is a balance of something similar to red and white corpuscles in the activity of life. Is that what you mean? A kind of immune system in the energy field?”

“I don't know. Maybe.” He looks past me, out the window again. “I just figured it was like when I was a kid on the playground and got scared on top of the high slide. If I backed down the steps, I wouldn't grow up like the rest of the guys. I'd be left behind, still scared.”

“And they'd make fun of you.”

“In this case I'd have plenty of company. A lot of people don't follow their dreams. But you'd go on without me.”

My heart soars when I hear these words. We kiss softly, barely touching, our heads lying back against the airplane seats.

“Don't cry,” Bo whispers. He smiles. “The stewardess will blame me.” He wipes his thumb under each of my eyes. “She'll think I stole your peanuts.”

The man sitting behind the lady with the Post-it in her hair tries to pluck it off. His hand surreptitiously moves closer; his arm shoots out and back in false starts before he gives up.

Something that's been helpful to me comes to mind. “Your friend Mick Farlow told a story at your barbecue last fall. Maybe you've heard it. He said in boot camp he was taught to think FIDO: Fuck it, drive on. I use it now when I get stuck. The idea is to just keep the flow going.”

My mind imagines five years down the road when I might rant to Bo about how tired I am that he just fucks it and drives on whenever we have trouble. I look out the window and smile to myself. I hope I have that problem.

Bo says, “What are you thinking?”

I say, “Maybe one of the best deals in life is getting the problems you love to solve.”

“Maybe.”

“You promised we'd get to argue on the plane,” I tease. “You keep agreeing with me.”

The man ahead leans up in his seat, preparing to make a surprise charge on the pink Post-it. I alert Bo to the drama. Slowly, the man aims his index finger and thumb toward the bobbing sticker. He's practically there. He's so close. Abruptly, the lady swings her head to the side, and the man jumps in surprise.

Bo and I laugh.

As we talk more, I realize Bo has given a lot of thought to who I am, who he is and how our differences will come together. He says to me now, “Not everybody thinks life is to be lived the
right
way, like you do.”

“Of course they do. People try to live the most right way they can,” I say. “And if they are not successful, they feel horrible about it.”

“That's how
you
run
your
life. And why, incidentally, you grind your teeth in your sleep.”