Year of Lesser (17 page)

“Yes.”

“Hnnnh. When?”

“Late April.”

“Melody told me. She said you were happy.”

“I am.”

“It will be a change, won’t it?”

“Of course, but we’ll manage.”

“The father will help?”

“You mean Johnny?”

“I suppose. Is he?”

“He is.”

Mrs. Krahn doesn’t say much else, though it seems she wants to. Loraine thinks, just before hanging up, that if she could look into the other woman’s eyes, she would discover there the cold ashes of a fire long dead.

And then one day, upon Loraine’s suggestion, Johnny packs up his few belongings, says goodbye to his sister’s basement, and moves into the room connected to the barns at Loraine’s farm. It’s a place Jim built before he died; for the hired help who never materialized. It’s small but there is space for a single bed, a hotplate, a dresser, and a shelf. The shower and toilet are accessible via the refrigerator room so Johnny’s got all he needs.

When Loraine makes her offer she also says, “I would even consider letting you live with me if it weren’t for Chris.”

“Well, what’s he gonna think, I’m a boarder in this little shack?”

“He’s naive enough.”

“Marry me,” Johnny says. On this particular day they’re painting the little room bright yellow and when Johnny says this Loraine’s paintbrush stops moving. She waits for Johnny to speak. He has specks of yellow on his nose and forehead from painting the ceiling. He says again, “Marry me.”

“No.”

“So, some day then?”

“Sure, some day.”

Johnny eats his meals with Loraine and Chris. He uses the washer and dryer. He gathers eggs in the morning and cleans out the barn on schedule. He is like the hired hand. Chris accepts his presence grudgingly, Loraine loves knowing he’s near. Sometimes, late in the evening, she stands by the kitchen window and looks across at Johnny’s window and she gurgles and smiles, holds her belly and sighs.

Lately, she feels the baby pressing her pelvic floor. Her crotch itches, her vagina squirms. She scratches wildly at herself but this brings little relief. She thinks maybe it’s the hair of the baby’s head making her itchy. She believes, too, that she’s carrying a boy because her testosterone level is up: she’s horny. She felt this way when she was carrying Chris. There is nothing romantic about her feelings. Some days she feels she could rip a chicken from its cage and stick its head up inside her. She both loves and despises this lust. She asks Johnny if this is how he feels all the time and he smiles, shakes his head, and says, “Not all the time.”

She goes to him. Late at night, after she is sure Chris is sleeping, she
creeps from the bed, her body throbbing, and she scrambles into clothes—one time she throws a coat over her naked body—and flies through the winter into Johnny’s shed. She wakes him and wordlessly rides him, clutching at his shoulders, her head thrown back, a silent howl floating upwards. The little electric heater clicks. The room is musty and close.

Once, Loraine finds herself kneeling on the floor, her head resting on the linoleum, her belly nestled in her thighs, her bare bum in the air, and she says, “Come, Johnny. Do it.”

Johnny crawls up her back and blows in her ear. The linoleum is cold on her knees. Their bodies slap. When they are done she trudges back over the hard snow and she feels spent and a little embarrassed, though not sorry.

Loraine likes to sit by the kitchen window. Sometimes she remembers Charlene and how it was before Charlene died and Loraine allows herself the prick of pleasure in feeling guilty for being here, for holding this chipped mug and staring out across the fields.

Johnny no longer speaks of his dead wife. Once, he mentioned the life insurance, a fairly large sum, and said, “I really don’t need to work.”

He talked about selling his land, about leaving Lesser. Moving to the southern states, Florida.

“No,” Loraine said, “I couldn’t.”

“You love your chickens,” he said, and again he broached the subject of marriage, said it didn’t have to be a white wedding, in fact Phil Barkman could marry them in the barn.

“Really?” The idea, for a moment, appealed to Loraine. Then, she grew serious. “I don’t trust you Johnny. I like you. I love to have you close, but there’s something about us I don’t trust.”

“I can understand that,” Johnny said, too easily. Loraine took his hand and kissed it, saying, “My sister wants to have this party for me. A weird one. Some Indian custom thing. Navaho. That’s just like Claire. We’ll all sit around and eat millet.”

“Am I such a bad man?” Johnny asked.

“Sometimes. Sometimes.”

All her life Loraine thinks she’s been looking for something. It’s as if there is a slot inside her, like a keyhole, and ice and wind and dread and pain blow through that hole, and then Johnny comes along and he slides himself like a key into her and he opens her up, climbs in, curls his warm body up inside her, into that hole the size of Johnny.

This is why, these days, Loraine can sit at the kitchen table on a cold winter’s day in February, spin a mug in her hands, and wait. She’s planted geranium seeds in tiny humus trays and the little green shoots are appearing. She talks to them, pours water at their feet. The cat rubs against her legs. The baby knocks at the wall of the uterus. Last night she risked staying with Johnny till morning. At one point he held his head against her belly, exclaiming at each blow, each rubbery extension of the stomach wall. “Great,” he said, waking her in the morning blackness, dressing her under the blanket, first sliding on her panties, then sweater, then pants and socks. He slid his rough palms under her T-shirt and shaped her breasts. She took his head and tangled his hair in her hands and yanked fiercely, pulling his head to her mouth

“I could weep,” she said.

He stood her up and wrapped her parka around her. “Go,” he said, “back to your nest.”

Now, as she sits in the kitchen, talking to her plants, she remembers the smell of Johnny’s hair, the texture of it, like coarse string. Then he is there, stepping out of the barn, knocking a boot against the door, popping in the latch. He crosses the yard, smoking a cigarette, looking up at the sky and then down at his feet. He sees her in the window and smiles; doesn’t wave, just smiles and looks as he keeps coming. His exhaled breath rises and disappears above his head. Loraine thinks that if she were to fall, she’d want Johnny to catch her.

Loraine’s sister, Claire, has chased the kids out with their father for the afternoon and there’s a circle of women sitting on the floor, Loraine in the middle. Incense is burning, Loraine is holding a cup of scalding tea between her palms, and there’s a round-faced woman called Prue brushing Loraine’s hair. Prue brushes and hums a soft tune, over and over again. At one point she leans forward and whispers past Loraine’s ear, loud enough for all to hear, “You will have a beautiful baby.”

This is like a spiritual gathering, Loraine thinks. A meeting of witches. She loves the feel of the bristles in her hair, the pressure of Prue’s fingers on her shoulder. Meryl, a good friend of Claire’s, reads a poem and then plays a song on a recorder. While she plays the women look at their hands or their feet. A few watch Meryl’s wet lips on the mouthpiece. When the recorder is silent, the women do not speak. Finally, Claire says, “I have this for you,” and she hands Loraine a copper bowl, the size of her cupped palms.

“You made this?” Loraine asks.

“Yes.”

Loraine leans over and kisses Claire on the mouth. Claire is her younger sister. She has lived a happy life—three children, a husband who did not die; her life is organized, pulled together, easy. Her mouth is full and generous, like her life. She is more beautiful than Loraine. Tall like a tree, Loraine thinks. She smells something green and leafy. It is the incense.

These women who surround Loraine are practically strangers. Still, they are kind strangers. They do not care where Loraine comes from, who the father is, or why she is having this baby. They know nothing about Johnny or the fire or Charlene and the guilt that flows and ebbs, flows and ebbs. Even Claire has only a vague notion of Loraine and who she is. These women are present because Loraine is about to give birth. They are celebrating.

All afternoon people touch Loraine. She has her feet massaged. Kaye, a midwife with round oily eyes, asks if she can touch the stomach. She lifts Loraine’s shirt and places warm hands on Loraine’s skin. The baby’s head is found, a foot, an elbow. Kaye lays her ear on the bulge and rises, eyes shining. “You’re so tight,” she says to Loraine. “Like it’s your first.”

“It’s been fourteen years.”

Loraine closes her eyes, imagines herself a queen bee surrounded by drones. Kaye’s eyelashes are tiny wings brushing her navel. Like Charlene’s fingers; her kneeling before Loraine on that kitchen floor. Loraine shudders and starts.

“Easy,” Kaye says, pushing her backwards, one hand resting under her neck.

There is a difference, Loraine thinks, between a man and a woman. With Johnny a lot is external, as if when she finally gets close to him she needs to scrape her skin against his. With a woman like Kaye it’s as if they are together in a warm field that goes on forever and ever, no edge, and so there is never any fear of falling. Loraine opens her eyes. Kaye is eating date cake, there are crumbs on her lips. Claire is talking about having a baby at home.

“No doctors, no nurses, no intrusions,” she says. The women nod.

Loraine sits up, adjusts her top, and says, “I couldn’t do it. I’d be thinking about my chickens.”

Kaye laughs. “Arrange all that beforehand.”

Meryl says, “I was tortured in the hospital. They pinned me down and tore the baby out. I swore, never again.”

Loraine doesn’t remember it being so awful with Chris. Just fast. She says this. “With my boy it wasn’t bad. He was quick but the doctor was great. And I like hospital food and they keep your baby for you at night. What can I say?”

The women smile. Claire takes her hand and squeezes it. “I’m going to be with Loraine. We’ll be fine.”

Loraine feels as if she’s erred in some way, said something wrong. The women are still warm but it’s as if messages are being passed to and fro and Loraine is missing them. She holds Claire’s hand and takes a piece of cake. She is disappointed. Not terribly, but still there’s a small twinge in her throat. At least with Johnny the pain is massive and she knows what’s happening. Not here. She doesn’t get it.

The day ends well though, with Kaye promising to drive out and see her
on the farm. They all kiss and Loraine generously accepts these intimacies. Gifts are also given: canned apples, home-baked buns, the copper bowl, and two books,
Natural Ways of Childbirth
and
The Prophet
.

Claire says she will attend the refresher course with Loraine. Her children have returned and she’s standing in the foyer hipping her two-year-old. Looking at Claire, Loraine feels huge, like a holstein.

“You look great, Claire,” she says. She kisses her nephew, who ducks and bobs. “So thin.”

“
You
look great. I love a pregnant woman.”

“So does Johnny. He’s living on the farm now. Not in the house, I was worried about Chris, but in that little room Jim built next to the barn.” Loraine says this quickly, wanting to give Claire some glimpse into her life. She never visits. Rarely asks about Chris.

“You like him then?” Claire sounds surprised. She’s met Johnny once, by accident, when Loraine and Johnny were having dinner together in the city and Claire was in the same restaurant. That was four years ago, back when Loraine and Johnny were tenuous, still gaping at each other from a distance.

“Yes,” Loraine says. “We’re going to marry.”

“No.” This is a squeal, a bark of amazement and disbelief. “Well.” Claire shifts the baby to the other hip, pushes back her hair. Her elbows are dry. The winter air has done her some damage. This is comforting to Loraine. Elbows and knees, they’re hard to keep looking young.

“Well, we’re not gonna marry right away,” Loraine says. “Johnny was devastated, you know, by Charlene’s death. It sounds kind of screwy, I know, but we’re good together.” Loraine wants to leave now. She’s sounding all wrong and the impression is one of desperation. She is not desperate. She doesn’t know why she talked about marrying Johnny, although now that the words have rolled around in her mouth she almost likes their taste and feel. She grins. Leans once again into Claire and kisses her jaw, just below the ear. “Bye, thanks,” she says.

Johnny is amused by the two books. “Oh, my,” he says, “Gibran. We had a high school teacher who liked to read this to us. Put us all to sleep. And, what’s this?” He picks up the birth book and cracks it open. “Pretty graphic,” he says. He flips pages and Loraine watches him. He is impish tonight; his ears are red and he has a looseness to his body as if he were a puppet or rag doll. Loraine comes up behind him, leans over his shoulder, and lays her cheek on his.

“You smell good,” she says.

“Really?”

She touches his hair. “You showered?”

“Just finished in the barn.”

Loraine breathes deeply. “See that,” she says, pointing, “In a tub. France. It figures.”

Johnny says, “These women are pretty easygoing with their bodies.”

“European,” Loraine says. “It’s not supposed to be a turn-on.”

Surprisingly, Johnny is embarrassed. “I know that,” he says. “It’s curious. That’s all.”

Loraine punches him. Sucks on his earlobe. “My feet are swollen tonight. I gotta sit down.”

“Here.” Johnny pats his lap and pulls Loraine around and plunks her down. “Elephant,” he says. He slips his hand inside her top and plays with her belly.

“Claire was talking about this massage I should do,” Loraine says. “The perineum. She gave me a bottle of vitamin A liquid and said to try it.”

“Perineum?”

“Hmm, like at the base of the vagina. Claire says if you massage, you won’t need an episiotomy.”

“I could do it for you,” Johnny says.

“Sure you could. But I think I’ll handle that. Did you see Chris today?” she asks.

“He was around and then Melody came by with her dad’s car. Picked him up.”