Samson and Sunset (17 page)

  Then she said, “Okay, husbands, you
can give your wives their gifts now.”

  Katie and I looked at each other, as
each of our husbands handed us a box.

  I unwrapped mine excitedly and inside
was the most beautiful, soft, baby-blue silk spaghetti-strap
nightgown. I looked at Shay, beaming. He nodded towards the
bathroom.

  “Try it on,” he said.

  Katie had gotten a gauzy peach-pink
dressing gown, and she went with Jim to another bathroom to
change.

  Shay helped me to the shower, where he
steadied me with his strong arms. Then he dried me and helped me
get into the gown. I sat down on a chair and he towel dried my hair
and brushed it out, then took his fingers and made little wet
curls. He put on fresh lotions and I sat at the vanity and did my
makeup. I really didn’t know what was happening for sure, but I was
pretty sure I liked it.

  “Shay, what’s going on?” I asked.
“Tell me.”

  “No,” he said, “but the nurse will,”
and he called the nurse’s station.

  Minutes later, a little nun appeared
in our room.

  “Ladies,” she said, “you are spending
New Year’s Eve with your husbands.” She put her hand on Shay’s
shoulder. “Your Shay here made arrangements for this room to be a
private room tonight, so the four of you can bring in the New Year
with each other! This is your night, ladies.” She looked from Shay
to Jim. “Husbands, you have till 1 a.m. and then you’re out of
here!”

  Shay winked at the little nun, who was
about sixty years old, and said, “Sister, please have one drink
with us before you leave.”

  She willingly agreed. I sat in my bed
looking on as Shay got three stemmed glasses, filled them from the
spiked punch jar, and handed one to Jim, one to the sister and
picked the last one up himself. They toasted to a wonderful New
Year for the new babies, the mothers and the all people in the
world; then drank up.

  My eyes widened as I saw the little
nun thoroughly enjoy her drink. She winked at Shay and said,
“That’s just what I needed.”

  Then she looked at me and said, “You
have one fantastic guy here, Kathrine. If I was forty years younger
and not married to God, I’d keep this one for myself!”

  We all grinned.

  "You all have fun this evening,” she
said as she backed towards the door. “But I don’t want to find you
two ladies back here in nine months!”

  We all laughed. I felt a flood of
relief as Shay smiled at me over his glass. We had a wonderful
night; our husbands lay in bed with us while we laughed and talked
and drank Cookie’s punch. At midnight, Shay gave me a long, gentle
kiss in his usual sensuous way—one arm around my back, the other
hand cradling my neck, his fingers partially in my hair.

  “You make my world, Callie,” he said
as 1966 began. “I love you more than life.”

  I had worried all day for nothing.
Shay could be so trying at times, but then he could do things like
this that were just magical.

  ***

Wessy and I were discharged from the hospital
on Monday morning. I was anxious to go to Mom and Dad’s. When we
got there, Shay opened the car door for me and took the baby as I
crawled out slowly. Thank goodness he took Wessy, because Kelly
came running out and jumped up into my arms. Behind her, our dear
friend Marge came dashing towards me.

  Marge lived next door and only had one
arm, but that lady could do anything. She had made my five-tier
wedding cake in white and Wedgewood blue, with pillars and swans; a
fantastic cake that everyone had marveled at.

  “For the baby!” she grinned, and
handed me a box. I took it, smiling, thanking her, as Kelly clung
to my neck.

  Mom asked if I wanted to stay a few
days so she could help me, and before I could answer, Shay said,
“Thank you for your offer, Marie, but she’s going home with me.
She’ll have plenty of help, and I’ll take care of them.”

  “Mom, maybe Kelly should stay a few
extra days,” I began.

  “No,” Shay said, “she’s been gone four
days and it’s time for her to go home and sleep in her own
bed.”

  Well, he didn’t leave much room for
debate, so off to Westover we went; our little family with its one
new member.

  When we got there everyone was
grinning from ear to ear. They had put up a banner that said:
“Welcome Home Kathrine, Kelly and Wesley!!” That was sweet, I
thought; bet Cookie had a hand in that one.

  They had Wessy’s bassinet set up in
the family room, and after everyone had taken turns holding him and
making baby talk, I finally got him settled in back in his
bassinet. I didn’t want to make a hotbox out of him—I had read that
if a baby is exposed to cooler air they get colds less—so I covered
him with a light receiving blanket.

  Well, every time I left the room, when
I came back he had his heavy knitted blanket covering him. Finally,
I said, “Who is covering Wessy with this heavy blanket?” and
everyone started laughing. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Well,” said Maggie, “every time you
leave the room Shay gets up and goes over and checks the baby and
covers him with the heavy blanket.”

  Sterling added, “He says, ‘Damn, poor
baby, that woman is going to let you freeze, but Daddy’s
here.’”

  I laughed too, now that I was in on
the joke. They had all watched the new daddy in action and were
totally cracking up.

  We were kind of a comic team, as a
couple, I guess. I remember one night before Wessy was born, Shay
and I ran into Sterling and Maggie and their best friends at the
club. Of course, Shay had had several drinks. They said they were
going to The Village Inn for an early breakfast, and they asked us
to join them. So we met them there and I ordered a pork chop and
hash browns. When it came, I took my fork, lifted the pork chop up
and looked under it.

  “What the hell are you looking for
under there, woman?” Shay had remarked. “Why are you looking under
the damn pork? What do you think is under there? I just want to
know, I just want to know who picks up their damn pork chop and
looks under it. Did you find anything under there?” Shay sat there
just shaking his head with a ‘what the hell?’ look on his face.

  By now everyone at the table was
laughing hard, even the waitresses. He kept a serious face and I
kept a straight face with my head sort of down, because I was being
scolded about my pork chop, but laughing on the inside.

  The Westovers could be really fun
sometimes. It seemed to take liquor to make them funny, but I took
the laughs where they came.

  ***

Wessy woke twice a night for a bottle, and
Shay said if I set the bottles out for him at room temperature,
he’d do the second feed, if I did the first. This was great, and it
went on for about two weeks. Then one particular night I was so
tired that when Wessy started crying for his first bottle, I nudged
Shay and said, “Wessy needs his bottle.”

  “Already? Seems like I just went to
sleep.”

  “Yeah, well he’s fussing and it’s your
turn,” I said, and, without further coaxing, Shay got up and went
into the nursery.

  “Sneaky. Real sneaky, princess,” he
said when he got back into bed. “There were two bottles in there,
and you know what that means! Trying to pass your feeding onto me.
Real nice. Maybe now you can just have all the feedings. Up, woman,
go feed the baby.”

  Damn! I thought. How stupid of me not
to have hidden the other bottle. After that, nightly feedings
became all mine.

  1966

  The Tanning of The Shrew

  We didn’t get much snow that winter,
just the one blizzard when I slipped and fell on my back. January
and February where very cold, I stayed home most of that time. Mom
and Dad came out to see us and play with the kids. Friends came
over to play cards, but I didn't like playing cards and usually got
my way, so we’d play board games. Shay went out about three nights
every month by himself to relax with the guys and have a few—well,
anyway that was his story. Sex had resumed in our lives four days
after I got home from the hospital. I wanted to use birth control
but Shay said he had his own method of birth control; he called it
“the pull-out method.” I’m thinking: we were practicing your
“pull-out” method when I got pregnant with Wessy. Oh well.

  We were getting back into lovemaking
and it was great, only one thing was wrong; Shay wasn't pulling out
like he said he would.

  “Shay,” I said. “Don't get me
pregnant, I need to rest. I have two babies, two years apart.”
Well, that fell on deaf ears, as Shay was in control and, as the
song goes, he did it his way.

  We were able to take Samson and Sunset
for a ride almost every evening. Cookie or Maggie would watch the
kids, and Lucas, who managed the stable, usually saddled the horses
up for us around 3:30 in the afternoon. Shay would come to the
house for an afternoon delight, and a horseback ride would
follow.

  I will remember this one particular
day for the rest of my life.

  Shay had showered and was dressing to
go riding, when he told me casually that Sterling had hired a new
hand. He said they had three kids, so they were moving into the
three-bedroom house Shay had said he would remodel for us.

  “What!” I yelled, and I yelled it
loud. “You promised me we could move into our own house within a
year! What a damn lie that was. Screw you, Shay!”

  He wasn’t getting away with that. I
ran down the stairs to sit out on the front porch and cool
down.

  I was wearing very tight blue jeans
with bell-bottom legs (back to my regular 102 pounds, no baby
weight,) western boots, a western shirt with a navy blue sweatshirt
over a western plaid shirt with the collar out. Shay and I usually
wore similar outfits when we went riding, but not matching clothes.
Some people did that back then, but we didn't. We always put a
western hanky scarf around our necks so if the wind picked up we
could cover part of our face.

  Shay came out and he was a little
miffed, himself.

  "Well, spoiled brat, I don’t like you
calling me a liar and what did I tell you about swearing and
yelling like that? And with the kids down for their naps; you had
just better straighten your little spoiled self up, missy, or I'll
straighten you out!”

  "Oh, you’re such a tough guy, you
really scare me.” I said sarcastically. “I want to know. Are we or
aren’t we moving to that three bedroom house this summer?"

  “I don't know,” he said, looking
down.

  At this moment Lucas pulled up the
circle drive in his pickup and said, "Hey, the horses are saddled
and ready to go.”

  Shay walked up to the pickup to talk
to Lucas. Oh, I was still so pissed, I took off running to the
stable—and that was quite a jaunt! I heard Shay yelling after me,
"You wait for me, Callie!"

  Screw him, I thought, and kept
running. The big stable door was open and I got Sunset out of her
stall, mounted up and off we went. I started running her down the
little straight road at a very fast pace, then around the curve
toward the lake. I was actually riding too fast for my abilities,
but I was on an adrenaline high. I must have gone at least a mile,
maybe two, when I turned around and saw Shay gaining on me with
Samson. How the hell did he get behind me so fast? Lucas must have
given him a ride to the barn.

  Before long, Shay was beside me on my
right side. He grabbed Sunset's halter and slowly brought us both
to a stop. Now, these were two wonderful horses, Samson and Sunset,
because if you got off them, they stayed right where they were.
They were trained to never run off. Samson even came when Shay
whistled for him; he’d come right to Shay and Sunset would follow
Samson.

  Well, Shay threw his leg across his
saddle and jumped off Samson real fast. I’d already jumped off
Sunset and started running toward an old tree that had fallen years
ago, when I felt Shay’s hand grab my arm. He pulled me over to the
old tree trunk, sat down, flipped me over his knee and wacked my
bottom with his hand about five or six times. The whacks were loud
because my jeans were so tight. Then he stood me up, got up and
started walking back toward the horses. 

"Get over here—" he started to say, but I
interrupted him with a snide laugh.

  “Ha ha ha! That didn't even hurt! I
didn't even feel that," I boasted.

  Gosh, what a smart mouth. But really,
it hadn’t. It was just like clapping your hands; doesn't hurt, just
makes noise. But how embarrassing! I had never been spanked in my
life and I wasn't going to let Shay think he'd won. How dare he do
that to me, I thought to myself.

  Right as I finished my little “Ha ha
ha, that didn't even hurt,” Shay whirled around and said, "Well, I
think I can fix that, princess."

  He grabbed me, sat down on the tree,
unbuttoned my jeans, pulled them down, pulled me over his knee, and
proceeded to spank my bare bottom.

  Well, now let me tell you, this was a
little different. I was starting to feel these swats. I tried to
shield my bottom with my hands, at which time Shay stopped spanking
me, gathered my hands together behind my back, and continued the
swats.

  "Ouch, ouch, stop it, stop it you
bastard!" I yelled.

  That was another mistake, calling Shay
a bastard. Now there were some additional swats for that swear
word, and these swats had some sting to them.

  Finally, I relented, saying, "I'm
sorry, I'm sorry, I won't do it again."

  When I said that Shay quit swatting my
bottom. Guess he was waiting for the ‘I'm sorry.’ I stood up
slowly, rubbing my bottom.

  "Pull your jeans up, get over here and
walk this horse, you've got to cool her out,” Shay ordered. “Walk
her a bit, then let her drink a little water, then walk her some
more."