On the Divinity of Second Chances (16 page)

What am I going to say to Grandma? How am I going to explain this? Will she be ashamed of me? Will she cry? I don’t think I could handle it if she cried. Maybe she’ll understand. Probably not. Things are so different from how they were in her time. I don’t even understand my own generation and this time in history, so really, how could I expect her to?

At times in my drive, I feel a sinking in my stomach as the permanency and magnitude of my situation hit me. Sometimes I’m slammed by grief for the experience I always hoped pregnancy and motherhood would be, but which it’s not going to be. In my dream, I have a loving husband and a comfortable house. He likes to touch my belly and rest his ear to it to see if he can hear anything. In my dream, my husband holds my hand during labor and delivery. In my dream, the three of us snuggle in bed together. My husband and I stare at our baby in awe and amazement. What overwhelms me in real life now merely gives my husband and me a sense of wonder in my dream. But that’s all it was—a dream. It’s not going to be my life. It’s hard to let it go. I liked it. I liked how it looked and how it felt. I visualized it, and it didn’t materialize.

Pearl on Independence Day
(June 30)

I don’t know how Beatrice sleeps through Dean’s fireworks. God damn that Dean. I can’t sleep. It’s only June thirtieth, and clearly I can expect four more nights of this unless he runs out. I hope he runs out. I pace the house restlessly.

A light catches my eye. Has Dean lit his field on fire? I look out the window—headlights. Headlights in my driveway this time of night? I peek through a window and watch the car approach. Out-of-state plates. I see the silhouette of a slim woman with a ponytail getting out of the car as I step out on the front porch.

“Grandma Pearl?” she calls out.

“Olive!” I exclaim quietly enough not to wake Beatrice. “Come! Come sit a spell!” I give her a big hug first. Then we settle into the rockers on the front porch, and watch Dean’s fireworks. “Happy early Independence Day,” I wish her. I watch the flag on my front porch wave. “I love this country,” I say and sigh, and then ask, “What do you love most about this country?”

“The land,” she answers. “And you?”

“Guns.” Yes, I really love guns. Guns made this country great.

“Grandma, I drove out here to talk to you about something.”

“Oh?” I act as if I hadn’t considered this, when really, of course I had.

“I want to farm here with you,” she blurts out, and looks at me the way a drowning person looks at a life raft, an odd mix of desperation and hope. I wonder what has put her in this state.

I study her hard. “Why?” I finally ask.

“I’m at the bank,” she pauses, struggling for words, “and I’m looking around . . . and . . .” Her eyes begin to water some. “I’m going to have a baby. . . .” She shakes her head and looks down, then exhales and begins again. “I realized I didn’t have to participate in a system that keeps people in jobs they hate because they’re entrapped by debt. I don’t want to hand my child over to someone else to raise because I’m entrapped by debt and have to go to work. And I don’t really want to work entrapping other people in debt.” She waits just a few seconds for me to say something, but I don’t, so she continues. “I don’t want to spend my whole life running in circles. I want to live a good life. I want to raise my child.” I want to ask about the father, but decide her presence here is really all I need to know.

I rest my head on the back of my rocker and look off into the sky. “What do you want to grow?” I ask. If she says corn, she’s out.

“Minor oil seeds,” she replies. “Demand is high for minor oils. Canola, flax, and safflower . . . right now safflower is bringing in the most.”

“Yeah, lately sunflower is down around $4.90 per hundredweight, but since I can insure the crop with a loan covering $9.30 per hundredweight, I’ve been selling the crop and taking $4.40 loan deficiency payment. You’re right. Safflower is up around $12.50 now. Canola is around $9.50. You’ve done your research.” I take a moment and study her proudly. What a good girl. She might be one of the farmers who actually make it. “Okay,” I say with a nod and a smile. Oh, there goes Olive, crying like that, looking so relieved. What, did she think I was going to throw her to the dogs? Must be those pregnant hormones making her emotional.

Pregnant. It needs to be said I hated being pregnant. It was this time of year when I was almost nine months pregnant. God, I hated that, all hot, sitting right here and really sweating where my pregnant belly rested on my legs. Yes, I remember sitting here, shucking peas, and the smell of those peas nauseating me. I never knew peas had much of a smell until I was pregnant. Amazing what a woman can smell when she’s pregnant. You know, I still can’t eat peas to this day.

Wow, Olive is pregnant.

Yeah, when I think about being pregnant, I think about peas.

My God, I’m going to be a great-grandmother. I’ll have to ask Beatrice if I look old enough to be a great-grandmother.

Jade on the Entity of Marriage
(July 1)

After I run into Forrest, I ride five blocks out of my way and stop by the parental units’ house. Instead of going in the door, Aretha and I walk around to the backyard. I find Mom lying on her back in the grass, wearing black running pants with three small white stripes up the sides, and a black shortsleeved T-shirt. I take a moment to assess whether Mom is unconscious or dozing, but figure the position she’s in indicates she did not fall, rather planted herself there on purpose. I lie down next to her, while Aretha sniffs her, then lies down between Mom and me. Mom opens one eye and looks over. “Hi, sweet pea.”

“Hi, Mom. Hey, I know what goes on between you and Dad is none of my business. I just want to offer this. One of my clients says there’s a woman down valley named Martina who has helped several couples there.”

“Jade, dear, I don’t think counseling is going to solve our problems.”

“She helped the Cromwells, Mom. You know we were all sure their marriage was doomed.”

“The Cromwells?”

“The Cromwells,” I affirm.

“What does this woman down valley do?” Mom asks.

“I don’t know, Mom. All my client told me is that she knows the ways of love.” Then I dig into my pocket. “She gave me her phone number.” I reach over and set the crumpled piece of paper on Mom’s belly.

Mom does nothing with the paper. “Every time I hear someone use the phrase ‘save my marriage,’ I always picture a sinking ship,” she states. “S.O.S. ! Save our ship!”

“Yeah, that phrase makes me think that person is much more in love with the idea of being married than with their spouse.” I study the aspen and cottonwood leaves shimmering in the breeze above us. “And there’s something about people talking about their marriage in that way that I find creepy, like their marriage is a third entity. I guess it is. I always picture this big ugly ghost standing between them, only it’s a ghost they created, if that makes sense.”

“I picture bars, like a self-imposed imprisonment,” Mom blurts out. “I probably shouldn’t have said that. Is it appropriate to share this kind of thing with a daughter?” She tries to make a joke out of it. “You know, like if I was just dating your dad, I would leave when he started in with the graphs.”

I give a courtesy laugh, but I know Mom was serious about feeling trapped.

“If I ever get married, I just hope that it can always be about me and him. I hope that I always care about whether he’s happy instead of caring about whether my marriage is good. Likewise, I hope he offers me the same courtesy. I wonder if two people can have a marriage without creating the big ugly ghost. I mean, sure, the ghost is euphoric in the beginning, so the couple keeps feeding it and feeding it. But like everything, it has a light side and a dark side. One day it rears its ugly head and by then it’s bigger than the both of them. I wonder if a couple can kill the ghost after they’ve created it. Energetically, can you starve it and still be nice to the other person?”
Because, you see, I already have enough entities following me around
, I want to continue, but I don’t.

“Years of calling someone ‘my husband’ or ‘my wife’ . . . interesting to ponder how calling someone ‘my’ anything affects your sense of entitlement. Frankly, I don’t want to be anyone’s anything anymore. I want to be my own whatever-I-am.”

“I think about it, about how marriage was originally a contract that helped each person survive better than when they were on their own, but now survival is easier, at least here, and I wonder what the purpose is. In this time and space, is there a more appropriate way to live with one you love?”

“I was thinking about the part where your father and I said, ‘ ’til death do us part.’ You know, life expectancy was about half of what it is today when that ceremony was invented,” Mom says.

I say, “True. People’s teeth would wear out, or they would get a bad infection, maybe have a little childbirth trouble, and like that, checkout time is thirty-five, forty years.”

Mom says, “We have three, four more decades added to our contract than the ones who came before us.”

“Yeah, you guys got the shaft,” I say.

“I heard that in some Eastern culture, when women hit sixty, they leave their homes and go off to be nuns. That sounds really good to me,” says Mom.

“Well, you know, Mom, no one is stopping you from becoming a nun. We’d come and visit you from time to time if you wanted us to.”

“Thanks, honey, I’ll consider that,” she says, but she won’t. For starters, she’s not Catholic. “Good talk, Jade,” Mom says to close the topic.

“Good talk, Mom,” I say as I stand up.

Aretha sniffs Mom’s ear, which makes Mom laugh. Mom pets her and pushes her head away at the same time. Then Aretha turns and trots to catch up with me.

When I arrive home to get ready for work, there’s a note on my door: “Movie Friday?—Josh.” I take the note inside and do a little dance. I write a note to leave on his door since I’ll be working when he comes home: “You bet.—Jade.”

Olive on Fathers and the Power of Understanding
(July 1)

“Hey, Olive,” Beatrice says as she joins me on the porch.

“Hey, Beatrice,” I reply as she sits in the rocker next to me, straightens out her knitting, and starts up. Her knitting needles click against each other in a soothing rhythm.

“Your grandma tells me you’re going to be staying here.” She smiles, and I feel welcomed.

“Yep,” I nod. I don’t know what else to say to that.

“And she tells me you’re going to have a baby. . . .”

I pause because it feels strange to hear it. I take a deep breath. “Yep,” I say and nod. Not much else to say about that either.

“You know I’m the last person to insist that every woman needs a man, but I’m just curious—what about the father?”

“I don’t think this baby has a father.”

“Oh, really? Immaculate conception?” I can’t tell if she’s joking or mocking.

“No. It boils down to how you define ‘father,’ ” I explain.

Beatrice is quiet while she considers this. I continue to wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t, so I continue. “To me, a father is a man in a child’s life who’s totally dedicated to that child. He’s part of a family, and actively contributes to it. He’s someone the child can count on. This kind of father is an incredible person—a true father. A true father deserves the rights he has by law, but the problem I see when I look around is that countless men are calling themselves fathers, when in truth, they’re not, you know? They don’t deserve the title of ‘father’ and they don’t deserve the rights entitled to them by law.”

“So what do you call the man that contributed to the creation of a child?” Beatrice asks, curious.

“I don’t know . . . I haven’t figured that one out yet. . . . All I know right now is that the man who donated one cell to this child isn’t someone I’d want to hand my child over to on weekends or holidays—it would kill me, Beatrice. I could never trust him to know or care about the baby’s needs. He doesn’t appear to be a stable force. Frankly, I don’t see a lot of father potential. Am I supposed to ignore that and just hope he’ll eventually come around? And in the meantime entrust my baby’s life to him just because the law wants to give him those rights? I can’t do that, Beatrice—I can’t take that chance. How would that possibly be fair to the baby?”

Beatrice looks sadly at her knitting. “These are complicated times.”

Beatrice’s understanding means more to me than she’ll ever know.

Anna on Olive’s Call Home
(July 1)

“Mom? I’m at Grandma’s.”

“Grandma’s?” I didn’t see that coming.

“I just sort of freaked out going to work yesterday. I got back in my car and kept driving. I realized I wanted to be a farmer.”

“A farmer?” I really didn’t see that coming.

“Yes, I’m going to grow minor seed oil like safflower.”

“Safflower?”

“And I’m going to build a cob house on Grandma’s land. Cob is clay, sand, concrete, and straw. Mud.”

“Mud?” Fascinating. One day she leaves for work in a suit, and the next day, she’s building a house of mud. Forgive me for not seeing that one coming either.

“I wanted to thank you and Dad for offering to take me in and keep me from slipping through the cracks.”

“Of course. . . .”

“Grandma wants to talk to you,” Olive tells me.

My mother never talks on the phone. She still thinks long distance is the equivalent of five dollars a minute instead of five cents. This must be important.

“Anna?”

“Yes.”

“Anna? I can’t talk long. I think you should come out here for your birthday.” Something in her voice tells me there’s more to it than that. Her suggestion sounds like an order.

South Dakota . . . “I suppose I could come.” Really, what am I going to miss here? Receiving a Shop-Vac from Phil? “Okay,” I agree.