Laugh (15 page)

At all.

Nothing about her
yes
was stern or reasonable.

At all.

Because,
Dios
, Sam could see that
yes
in her eyes, she was certain, and chased after it, leaned close to her where she sat on the end of the trailer, letting her smell the sun and the work on him, letting her see the want in his eyes, the clean, untroubled want, and so he didn’t have to chase that
yes
very far even when what he asked for wasn’t her body, laid out between the rows, open and ready, and instead was worse and impossible.

A date.

Yes
, she’d answered and he’d predictably taken her
yes
with a saunter befitting a lordling, and by the time he’d disappeared over the rise, and she’d driven the truck and trailer to be unloaded at cold storage, and she’d showered and eaten and opened a beer to enjoy in the breeze racing over her back stoop, it was much too late, and this was when she had noticed her bare feet, ragged with calluses and topped with the farmer’s tan that ringed her ankle from her sturdy boots.

She wanted to be proud of herself. A date was evidence of progress, evidence of time passing away from points of grief, evidence of her own fucking hope, even.

This
yes
was what she wanted, what she had seen for herself in this man who indulged every impulse except those that fed him, nourished him.

Yes, to indulging him.

Yes, to feeding him.

Yes, to time and hope and progress.

Her toes gleamed at the end of her feet and she didn’t know who they belonged to.

Not to a farmer.

What did Sam see in her
yes
?

She drew her feet up and ran her rough hand over them. They felt like one-day-old piglets. Soft.

Sam was holding her heart, rubbing the calluses away from it, and it felt no less awkward and unnatural than when she was sitting in that nail salon.

She went to the back of her closet and found a dress and slipped it on over her head.

She put on a pair of open-toed heels she’d purchased a long time ago with Rachel and practiced walking from one end of the room to the other.

She left her hair down.

Then she stood in front of the narrow mirror on her closet door and looked at herself.

She hadn’t worn the tangerine sundress in a few years, she hadn’t had the occasion to. She didn’t remember that it had pulled quite so tightly across the tops of her hips, but she guessed that’s where the fifteen
pounds that had crept up since she started doing less farming and more administration and purchasing went.

She thought of her mother, and how she bemoaned her hips and outer thighs, how she’d spend a day or two “watching it,” promising herself that this time she’d be able to fit back into whatever dress was her “skinny dress,” the dress that made her feel the most beautiful.

And her dad would tell her she was beautiful already, so many times, that she’d never last, and make big, dripping
tortas
, everyone’s favorite, and it wasn’t until years later that Nina realized that it wasn’t so much that her mother worried about the inevitable and rounding creep of her hips, as it was that she worried that her husband no longer found her beautiful.

It was never the dress or her body that made her feel beautiful, it was being loved and being told she was loved, and beautiful to him.

Nina tugged at the dress, wondering what Sam thought of hips that would keep rounding and softening year by year, of the silvers gathering at her ears, just a few shooting strands now, but they were bright against her black hair. She traced her fingers over the crow’s feet and imagined them shadowed as they deepened, certain to deepen with all the time she’d spent in the sun, her whole life.

She was strong, her arms and legs muscled from work.

As she got older, she looked more and more like her father with his strong Maya features and complexion.

Russ was a handsome boy, but there was a way she had always thought of him as boy. They had met as children and played together, and even as he grew up and his body filled out and his jaw sharpened, she still saw a boy, and she was certain he still saw a girl in her face.

After Russ, she was glad for how different the bodies of men were. None of them had felt like Russ, or looked like him. She learned that her body was, in fact, separate from the love of her life and her childhood, and that different men responded to her differently, and that she responded differently to them.

Even more than the sex, she found comfort in awareness that she was separate, that she was a person and a body to be learned. That she was a mystery to someone, that there were people who were a mystery to her.

She wanted Sam but needed to be careful. She didn’t need an affirmation from him of her autonomy. She had hopes for this next part of her life. She wanted back some of the melding and attachment that she had severed after Russ died. She wanted her relationship with her parents, and with Russ’s, to finally heal. She wanted to provide for Rachel and Tay and the little band of people who worked with her, who believed in what she was trying to do. She had put her farm store in Sam’s southside neighborhood because it was well-known in the city to be tight-knit, and she wanted to capitalize on the built-in community and hope it would encompass her café, her farm store, her people.

She’d built her urban farms there, and she was thinking of moving into the neighborhood, getting one of
those small houses with their wide stoops and having neighbors like Lacey.

Like Sam, of course.

But she didn’t want to meld and mix up all those things with Sam. She had hopes for him, too, but she wanted those hopes to have some remove from the world and be just for her.

She didn’t know the shape of those hopes but she looked at herself and saw how her parents shaped her. Remembered how love had shaped her.

Watching Sam and his brother in the fields, she understood that Sam was shaped by love, too.

She had time before Sam would pick her up and so she called Tay, who was enjoying her last weekend before surgery. Her cancer was staged at IIA, which Rachel and Nina learned meant that she had an invasive type of cervical cancer, but that the cancer hadn’t spread into the tissues beyond the vaginal, cervical, and uterine walls into the pelvic walls or abdomen.

Nina tried not to think about its 60 percent survival rate, because that wasn’t enough. Sixty percent wasn’t a big enough number no matter how Sam had tried to explain it to her.

But Monday, Tay would have a radical hysterectomy. Sometime later she would undergo radiation and chemotherapy.

Battles.

Thinking about Tay seemed to summon her. Nina picked up her buzzing phone, which was lit up with a picture of Tay on a tractor.

“Hey Nina, you getting ready for your big date?” Tay sounded like Tay. Interested and mellow. She was probably sitting in her hammock chair on an evening like this, windy and hot but with a break in the humidity, reading about cover crops or companion planting or soap-making.

“I’m ready.” Nina sat back down on her bed and slipped the heels off. She had no idea how she was going to walk in those all night.

“Yeah? Where you going? I tried to get Adam to take me to this contra dance going on at Sunny Michaelson’s place, but he seems to think I should rest. But man, I am so not tired.”

Nina couldn’t help but think what Adam must be thinking: Tay should rest and prepare for this first trial. Maybe it wasn’t fair that she miss a dance and that it would be a long time before the next one, but resting seemed safer; Tay in bed early seemed like the least possibility of letting anything go wrong.

She made a fist and held it against her belly.

“You should go, for sure.”

“Right? I won’t be able to do anything like that for so long after the surgery. And if I’m going to miss this whole harvest season, I at least want to go to some of the early partying.”

Nina mimicked the excitement in Tay’s voice. “Just go. Rachel likes those, call her and have her take
you if Adam won’t.” She didn’t want Tay alone.

“Yeah, good. You’re right. Sounds nice. Where’s the good doctor taking you?”

“Dinner, then something else he won’t tell me about.”

“Oooh, mystery. That’s pretty cool. And cute. He preplanned for you.”

“I think so.”

“I called Lacey and had her answer a whole bunch of last-minute questions I had today. I could’ve called the surgeon’s office, I guess, but I just like her. And she’s been a nurse for people after surgeries like mine and I just wanted to know what that was like.”

“What what was like?”

“After. I just want to know what
after
will look like. I’m sitting here reading about self-catheterization and I have to tell you, it doesn’t look like a cake at a picnic.”

“Tay.”
How could Nina be going to dinner in heels when Tay was talking about self-catheterization?

“Yeah, dude. Also, I’ve been trying to get Adam to give me some kind of a last hurrah for my ladyparts, you know, take ’em out for one last party before some of them have to leave the show, but he keeps freaking out.”

Nina wiped away a tear and cleared her throat. “So tell him you’re asking Rachel to take you to that contra dance so you can pick up someone who will get the job done.”

She hoped Tay didn’t hear the flatness in her voice.

“Yeah, baby. Some nice hippie boy wearing a Utilikilt.”

“How’s he doing?” Nina hadn’t talked to Adam about anything other than the farm, lately, getting ready for Tay’s leave. She felt guilty and wondered who he had to talk to.

“Shitty, man. He’s fine with the reorg’ed duties we came up with and really, this time of year, labor is the most important thing, but I’m worried about him being distracted.” Tay went quiet. “He asked me to marry him.”

“Dios!”

“That’s what I said, except what I said sounded more like
holy fuck.
”

Nina didn’t even bother to wipe the tears, they were coming so fast, and she didn’t know where they were coming from. Reflexively, she wanted to tell Tay that they couldn’t, but she didn’t know why. She couldn’t think why, except that she resisted this acknowledgment that the present had to be
lived
—it suggested there wasn’t a future.

She was a farmer, she wanted to assume the future. Plan for it. Put a wedding in the future so the future would happen, if it was the wedding that was wanted.

It made her realize how uncomfortable she still was with just living. Right now. Accepting the life in the
middle of her past and some uncertainty.

Tay and Adam had been on and off again for years, always friends, and they fit, in their way. Except when they didn’t. Adam was taciturn and grumpy where Tay was serene and sought out ways to amplify joy.

Nina’d always thought that Tay had been waiting for Adam to understand the joy, but maybe she had just been waiting for
him
, and enjoying what they had.

Nina kept brushing away tears, hoping Tay couldn’t tell she was crying, ready to tell her, if she did figure it out, that she was crying from joy.

Even if she wasn’t sure it was true.

“What did you say?”

“Yes.”

“Holy fuck!”

“That’s what I said. Before and after the yes.”

“Are you—”

“Soon. I mean, he finally said his piece because I might be dying, right? No need to drag out the particulars. We’re thinking whenever I feel good enough during my surgery recovery and before my treatment starts.”

Nina went silent, letting Tay tell her everything, her happiness obvious—this woman who would dance before she went to battle and get married on the other side of it.

“Yeah. We were always going to orbit each other, anyway. Might as well make it official. Also, this is kind of awkward, but it would mean I could get on his insurance plan, and since he opted in to the higher coverage level it would be better. I’d be able to take advantage of the new thing that means I can’t be denied for a preexisting, but I do feel awkward because I think this move will be less expensive for me, but more expensive for the Paz Farms.”

“De nada.”

“I know, honey, but Paz Farms is as important to me as anything.”

“Look, Tay, I’ve already talked to Alan at the bank about how best to liquidate some of the farm assets in case you need them for—”

“Nina, no. No, honey, don’t do that.”

“I will. If you need them I will. You’re my family. It’s just dirt. If I can trade dirt for any ease or better chance for your life, I will. The farm isn’t the land or equipment; it’s you. It’s Adam. It’s Rachel. That was true as soon as you wrote me that letter, all those years ago. All of you saved me because you believed in me. All the farm, it’s ours. It just is.”

“Nina—” Tay started, but there were tears in her voice.

“Just shush, okay? Where are you getting married? Have you—”

“We wanted to get married out at the fields. I know John Lake’s back from his tour but I was wondering if you thought he’d maybe let us use his house for a small reception?”

“I’ll call him. I’m sure it’s fine. Let Rachel and me take care of it.”

“Thanks, Nina. I just want something simple, with all of us. Good food, and some music, maybe.”

“That sounds perfect. Perfect for you and Adam.”

“You should go, and finish getting ready for your mysterious date. I’ll call Rachel and we’ll go dance. See you later, baby.”

“I love you, Tay.”

“Love you, too, Neens.”

Nina put her phone down and walked to the mirror to look at what damage tears had done. Her eyelids were puffy, her cheeks flushed.

She jumped with the noise of the lobby buzzer.

Oh well.

It was best that Sam saw her how she was. Her hips a little big for her dress, her stride unused to heels and pedicures, her face drying with tears for friends.

She suspected he’d find a way to make her laugh anyway. Find a way to touch her, and to kiss her. Find his way—find her.

Even when
she
didn’t know where she was, not yet.