Bootstrapper

by Mardi Jo Link

  I don’t have a fancy job, there are two mortgages on the farm, one of which was supposed to pay for a stalled remodel. My bank account is practically uninhabited, and I had to borrow money from my parents just to hire a divorce attorney. My sons are confused and angry and sad.

  I crack open the last beer, hoist the bottle in Mr. Wonderful’s direction, and drink to this: I will not be attached. I will sever all outward and inward signs of attachment. I will detach right now from the houndstooth and the Naugahyde and the bong water. From the calluses on my estranged husband’s familiar hands, and the way he sometimes sings along with our favorite Neil Young songs.

  I’ll detach from the sound of my name in his mouth—“Mardi Jo!”—in happier times when he couldn’t wait to tell me something good.

  I’ll detach from how hard I once loved not only him with my whole being, but my fantasy of forever with him and our sons, all of us working together on our little farm.

  I’ll detach from the shock that a love like that can end.

  I set my jaw, white-knuckle the empty bottle, and heave it.

  And just for the record? I’m claiming my sons.

  I’m claiming my sons, the farm, the debt, the other debt, the horses, the dogs, and the land. I’m claiming our century-old farmhouse, the garden, the woods, the pasture, the barn, and the Quonset-hut garage.

  They’re all mine now, and this is how I will raise my boys: on cheerful summer days and well water and BB guns and horseback riding and dirt. Because I’m claiming our whole country life, the one I’ve been dreaming of and planning out and working for since I was a little girl.

  Last night the full moon hung low and close, like a glistening teardrop on the earth’s dark eye, threatening to spill. It didn’t, though, and neither did I. A month is a bill cycle, a mortgage cycle, and may become a child-support cycle, but a month is also a moon phase and a growing phase. Our financial lives, our emotional lives, and our cosmic lives are irrevocably intertwined.

  If I can follow the moon, if I can remember that both waxing and waning are only temporary, a natural cycle continually renewed and nothing to get too attached to, we’ll make it. I just have to stay solvent for thirty days at a time. And then another thirty. And another.

  I may not know which God to believe in, but I know that I can believe in us. In my sons and in me.

  1

  July 2005

  WOMAN IN THE MOON

  Everything is in perpetual motion; even including a certain young lady in the moon, who was seen with a telescope … [and] everything has considerably aged. She had a pretty good face, but her cheeks are now sunken, her nose is lengthened, her forehead and chin are now prominent to such an extent that all her charms have vanished and I fear for her days.

  —BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE,

  The Woman in the Moon

  Take my word for it, burning your wedding pictures in a bonfire in your front yard, then handing over your wedding dress to a snaggle-toothed felon, can take your mind off your man troubles. Oh, it surely can.

  But the feeling of euphoria you’ll get from this, no matter how glorious, will only last a couple days, or until your kids get home, whichever comes first. And then you’re going to have to listen to that come-to-Jesus voice in the back of your head. The one that’s been trying, ever so gently, to tell you this truth: that no matter how much bravado you’ve got, you are not the Lone Ranger, not the lone gunman, and not even the lone wolf; you are just one woman. And you are simply a-lone.

  Sitting at my writing desk, tucked into an unused corner by the front window, I’ve got a file folder marked “Bills—Due” open on my lap when my parents bring my boys home from the cottage. Out of the corner of my eye, the ash pile lurks, now surrounded by a black circle of once-green lawn. I can think of no better visual to illustrate my finances.

  “How come our yard got all burnt?” Will asks.

  It is not some gentle voice from within that I should be worried about, after all; it is just my youngest son’s.

  “Your mom had a little campfire while you guys were gone,” I tell him, enveloping his suntanned body in my arms.

  Just eight years old, Will is still one bright spark despite his youth. He frowns at my answer, about to call me out on my obvious fib, when Luke busts inside from the door off the porch, breathing hard, binoculars swinging from around his wiry neck.

  “Look at these!” he says, thrusting his arms toward Will. Gripped in each fist is an empty beer bottle. “Mom drank a whole buncha beer!”

  Owen is the last to come inside, and he tucks a pair of white iPod headphones into the khaki messenger bag slung over his shoulder and then takes in the scene, unable to suppress a smirk. “Bird-watching party?” he asks.

  All three boys look at me with a combination of disappointment and shock, awaiting an explanation. In their absence I’ve been irresponsible with fire, consumed alcohol to excess, neglected to put a valuable item—the binoculars—away when I was finished using them, and, perhaps worst of all, littered.

  “Busted,” I say, hanging my head, a gesture that actually seems to appease.

  My theory on the savvy-beyond-their-years of my sons is this: because they spend their free time building tree forts, sleeping in tents, shooting the BB gun, catching praying mantises and snakes, going to the library, grooming the horses, and planting sweet corn, they are acutely attuned to their world, and no new detail escapes their notice. Maybe this trait will prove useful in the coming months. I hope so.

  At least my own tendency to grudge-hold is not a characteristic I’ve passed to them. They are of the forgive-and-forget tribe and toss off my bad behavior as if it were just another duffel bag of swim trunks and beach towels they slide toward the washing machine.

  Then they relax into home and are swarmed by our wiggling dogs. Friday, the Welsh corgi, who barks and hops up and down over Luke’s knees; and Super, the Akita, who swings her wide tail in a circle, puts her paws on Owen’s shoulders, and sneaks licks in between his waving hands.

  My parents come inside, eye this canine commotion, say “Hi” and “Bye,” tell me how much fun the boys were at the cottage, how well behaved, ask if I’m okay, accept my answer, and then they are back in their car and heading for their home downstate.

  I wrap my arms around all three of my sons again, force them into a group hug, kiss the tops of their heads, and they don’t try to fend me off. Not even Owen, who, at fifteen, often acts as if he’s too old for this kind of affection.

  “I missed you guys!” I choke out, and the tears well before I can blink them away.

  They hug me back and I take hold of their faces, their hands, and inspect them from all angles. They’ve got sand in their hair, their cheeks have new freckles, and they smell like the beach. They are home and they are happy and there’s not a single sign that their father and I split up only weeks ago.

  What fine boys they are, I think, in spite of their father and me.

  They are the fight in me, they are the chapped hands that plant the seeds, the caution that closes the pasture gates, the determination that primes the well-water pump. They are my pack. And I am, and will be, forever attached.

  This feeling of family security is so right, so strong, that I know absolutely nothing, not even a divorce, can break it. And I’m closing my eyes and feeling the love when Will delivers a gut check.

  “Does ‘divorce’ mean we can’t go to the Cherry Festival?”

  Leave it to him to just come right on out with it. Because while I’m floating along in my motherhood reverie, thinking about family and resilience and love, Will is thinking more along the lines of a parade, marching bands, an ice-cream social, and wagon rides through local cherry orchards.

  “No, honey, of course it doesn’t mean that,” I say. “Everything is still exactly the same, it’s just that your Dad won’t be living here anymore.”

  I really believe that. I really believe that a family of five can subtract one of its members and
then, after the briefest of pauses—say, for a bonfire and a few beers, or a long weekend enjoying the marital harmony of their grandparents—just continue on down their familiar path at home, the four of them skipping through the woods of their lives together, unscathed.

  And I’m positive that this will be our fate, as long as I can figure out the financial part of divorce.

  In anticipation of filing, I’ve stashed cash in a friend’s safe-deposit box. This is the take from my occasional writing and editing assignments, tips from a part-time waitressing job that just ended, and the prize money I won last month in the Michigan Women’s 8-Ball Tournament. Once the divorce papers are filed, it will be illegal not to reveal the existence of this money to Mr. Wonderful, so I might as well use it all up now. And as soon as the boys are off doing their back-home boy things, I return to the bill file.

  I thought I was being so clever by putting money aside like this, but it’s pretty clear that no one is going to mistake me for a criminal mastermind. Because after I pay the bills for July and part of August, a total of $122 remains. Financial genius I am not.

  But I write the checks, stamp and seal the envelopes, drive to the post office, and drop the stack into the big blue mailbox. The garden is mostly planted, there is food in the refrigerator, gas in the car, a good supply of hay and grain in the barn, plenty of dog food too, so I think the four of us, plus the two horses and the two dogs, can live on what’s left over for three weeks if we’re careful.

  That should be plenty of time to figure something out.

  This assumes that nothing breaks and needs repair, nothing wears out and needs replacement, no one gets sick or hurt, and nothing unforeseen happens.

  Back at my desk, the bill folder is satisfyingly empty. The boys and I will do this by ourselves. We will live off the farm, I will find more work, and they will grow up happy. Despite confronting our dire economics, I actually feel pretty good. Knowing how bad things are is better than not knowing, I suppose, even when that reality turns out to be a little worse than you’d imagined.

  Together, we’ll plant the last root crops of the season tomorrow, in the morning light of the waning moon when the soil is damp and the air is still cool. Then I’ll take the three of them to the Cherry Festival, just like I promised. Just like always.

  And that is my goal. To have their childhoods continue as normal. To give them everything by myself that they would have received if their father and I had stayed married. That “everything” is going to mean keeping our farm, and it’s going to mean observing family traditions like the Cherry Festival, and it’s going to mean holding tight to everything in between, too.

  Whatever that “in between” turns out to be.

  By eleven the next morning the boys have finished in the garden and I’ve mucked out the horse stalls, scattered fresh straw, filled the water tank, and checked the pasture fence. After lunch, I cut the schedule of the day’s festival activities out of the newspaper and circle the ones that sound fun. To me.

  These include a tour of the demonstration orchard via horse-pulled wagon, then a walk through a cherry-processing plant. Live cherry pie judging, then the marching band competition. Maybe I’ll even splurge on the pancake breakfast. I show my newspaper circles to the boys.

  Their initial reaction is silence, then universal protest.

  “Aww, Mom!”

  Translation: marching band music is lame, cherry processing is boring, and cherry glop on pancakes is sickening, Mom, just totally sickening. Why do I try to get them to eat it every year?

  “We want to pick what we do this year,” Owen, a.k.a. Official Spokesteen, says. “Not you.”

  When I ask what it is that they do want to do, the earth shifts on its axis and now there’s actually universal agreement: bumper cars, corn dogs, elephant ears, the Zipper, and cotton candy.

  Northern Michigan, and specifically the Traverse City area, where we live, is the largest producer of tart cherries in the country. Maybe even in the world. And so to me, the Cherry Festival is an annual celebration of local agriculture. An opportunity to talk to farmers, see their orchards in operation, try innovative cherry-infused food, and learn more about our area’s proud farming history. I have always just assumed that this was true for my sons as well.

  Some time in the past year, and completely unbeknownst to me, a seismic shift has occurred. This jolt has caused my sons to rotate their allegiance from me and from appreciating local agriculture, to worshipping deep-fried dough and greasy carnival rides.

  Debate on this activity begins, and their primary points are these: they’re not babies, they’re not farmers, and I’m mental if I think I can force them back into the former or turn them into the latter.

  Which makes me wonder. After feeding them organic vegetables and teaching them how to grow them; after demonstrating how to stake pole beans and plant tomato seedlings sideways to get a good root system going; after reading them classic literature in the evenings and playing board games with them on rainy days instead of letting them watch TV, are they just turning out like any old boys, raised any old way, by any old mom?

  “I’ve got to tell you boys, I’m a little disappointed,” I lecture from the front seat as we drive into town. “Where’s your interest in your native region? Where’s your support of Michigan’s agriculture?”

  Because it’s just after the Fourth of July, I’ve put on a CD of patriotic marching band music and turned up the volume. I hope this little speech will be stirring. That hope, and my sound track, are in vain.

  “We don’t want to be all historic and stuff, Mom,” the Spokesteen says. “We’re kids. Duh.”

  “Yeah, duh!” his brothers add.

  I’m the one who made a silent promise to keep our lives going as normal. If this is the new normal, then so be it, and I offer a compromise. I’ll take them to the carnival and give them each ten dollars for rides and snacks. When that is spent, we’ll all go on a wagon ride together through the demonstration orchard. They’ll listen politely to the farmer’s talk during the tour and will each remember one important fact about cherry growing in northern Michigan. Then, they’ll share that fact with the rest of us on our drive home. An educational discussion will naturally ensue.

  “C’mon, Mom!” says Owen.

  “Final offer. Take it or leave it.”

  They take it.

  We arrive at the carnival, and a sign on the ticket booth reveals a lucky break. Today is Kids’ Day: twenty tickets for ten dollars. The rides require three or four tickets each, so if the boys spend all their money on tickets and none on corn dogs they will have enough for five or six rides.

  “Tell you what,” I say, handing them each a ten-dollar bill. “You guys buy your tickets out of this, and I’ll get you a snack later at the farmers’ market.”

  They agree, and after barely an hour, Owen and Will are out of tickets but Luke still has all of his. He’s figured out that he isn’t going to be able to go on all the rides, and he can’t decide which ones he wants to go on the most, so he hasn’t gone on any—not one.

  “Honey, you have to choose now,” I tell him. “Your brothers are all out of tickets.”

  “Can we just walk around and look one more time?” he asks.

  We walk past the Ferris wheel and the haunted pirate ship, past the potato-sack slide, the Zipper and the Twister, and then Luke leads us over to the games. He eyes an old woman smoking a cigarette and holding a BB gun, standing expressionless underneath a rack of stuffed snakes, looking like some kind of Annie Oakley of the undead.

  “Five tickets, cowboy,” she says in a monotone. “Five tickets and win this here snake for your girl.”

  Can she not see that Luke is only twelve years old? A slight and young twelve years old? But he hands over five of his tickets. And she tacks up a piece of white paper with a red star printed in the middle to the back of her booth, loads a plastic rifle with BBs, and passes it to him.

  “Shoot out all the red,” she expla
ins. “That’s how ya win.”

  Luke takes aim just like I’ve seen him do at home with his bow and arrows and his own BB gun and starts shooting. This cheap rifle is locked on automatic, though, and shoots like a toy AK-47, wasting a lot of the BBs as soon as he pulls the trigger.

  Ah, I think. So that’s the trick.

  This is exactly why I didn’t want to come here. And I’m just about to intercede, to tell the old woman that this is a rip-off and my son wants his tickets back, when I change my mind. The past couple of days have reminded me that life is full of rip-offs. Luke might as well learn that now as later.

  “Better luck next time, cowboy,” she says, reaching for the gun.

  Before I can stop him, Luke tears off five more tickets, holds them out to her, and jams the remainder into his back pocket. She snatches them from his hand with surprising speed.

  “Okay,” she drones. “We got a shooter here. Shooter.” A few people drift over. She tacks up another paper target with another red star.

  And then I watch my middle son spread his slim legs apart a little, steadying himself, and take a few deep breaths. He exhales, holds the rifle up to his cheek, and stands there for what seems like a really long time. Someone in the crowd coughs and the old woman rolls her eyes and sighs.

  “Come on, Luke,” Owen whispers from behind him, irritated. “I mean, jeeze.”

  Luke takes another breath, exhales again, stands as still as if he were frozen to the spot even in this July heat, and pulls the trigger. A thin circular line quickly appears around the outside of the red star. Seconds later, the star drops out of the target like a dead duck, flutters, and lands on the ground. All that remains tacked to the back of the booth is a white rectangle with a jagged hole in the center. Not one speck of red.

  Luke figured out the trick all on his own and beat it. You don’t start inside the star and try to remove it piece by piece, because there will never be enough ammo for that, no matter how good of a shot you are. No, you conserve your ammunition and make every shot count.