by Meghan Daum
“No,” she said.
I heard the back door open and slam shut. Mason came upstairs, looking relatively put together. He’d taken a liter bottle of Pepsi out of the refrigerator and was drinking straight out of it.
“Can I have some pop?” Erin whined.
“Why don’t you watch your movie?” Mason said.
“I don’t want to,” she said.
“Well, then go play outside. Or read a book.”
“I can’t read,” she said.
“Then look at the pictures,” Mason said.
“I’ll watch the movie,” she said.
I went downstairs to the kitchen. I wanted very much to have a glass of wine. But it was 9:45 in the morning. Mason came down and began sobbing again.
“I’m a terrible person,” he said. He hugged me, his body shaking.
“You’re a good person,” I said. I could hear the theme music of The Little Mermaid coming from the bedroom.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you left me,” he said.
“I’m not going to leave you.”
“I’m going to stop,” he said. “I’ll just stop. I have to. I have no more money.”
“That’s a good reason.”
“Peter almost caught me once,” he said. “Last weekend. You know how he always follows me around. I thought he was in the front yard. I thought he was playing with Erin. He was in the barn. He was messing around with the lawn mower. He must have smelled the smoke. Jesus Christ.”
“What smoke?” I asked. I pulled away from him. There was only so much conversation that could take place, outside of a soap opera, while hugging a crying person.
He looked at me, his eyebrows raised, like I was some kind of imbecile.
“What do you think?” he said.
“What smoke?”
“How do you think I was doing the stuff?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Snorting it.”
“The first few times, maybe,” he said. “But then it doesn’t work as well. You have to smoke it.” He wet down a sponge and began wiping the counter.
Interesting, the prescriptive nature of this. You have to smoke it.
“And no, I never injected the stuff,” Mason said. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. I hadn’t been thinking it. But now that he mentioned it, the ramifications piled up in my mind. A junkie. Needle sharing. AIDS.
“Jesus, what do you think I am?” he asked.
For the moment, he was wiping the side of the toaster with Windex. I recalled one of the women from the Up Early segment. I tweaked so hard I scraped the pattern off the kitchen counter. And all this time I’d just thought he was an enlightened male. Now I’d have to do my share of housework. I truly hated to clean.
The next day, the day after I didn’t kick Mason out but told him I would if he ever did meth again, he came home with a present for me. He told me to stand in the yard with my eyes closed.
“Hold out your arms,” he said. “Don’t drop it.”
It was warm and furry. It looked like something out of a Disney movie. It was a wonder he hadn’t put a bow around its neck. It was brown with white markings and exceptionally fuzzy. Blue eyes. The pinkest little tongue and the whitest, pointiest little teeth. There is no way to describe a puppy without sounding like you’re talking baby talk. Which is what I did.
“Hello!” I cooed. “Sweet little thing!”
“You can’t have a farm without a dog,” Mason said.
“Where did you get him?” I asked. “Is it a him?”
“There was a farm outside of town with a litter,” Mason said. “It was in the paper. He was the nicest one in the bunch. His mom was a Samoyed. His dad was an Australian shepherd.”
All I could do was hold him to my cheek, smell his puppy scent, and pet his impossibly soft fur. All I could think was that now Mason had me. He might as well have tied me to the fence post with a rope. He might as well have gotten me pregnant with twins.
I immediately went out to PetSmart and bought a three-hundred-dollar wooden dog house in the shape of a Victorian mansion. The store had cheaper ones but I didn’t want anything tacky in the yard. Mason said he’d grow to be at least seventy-five pounds, so I got the extra-large dog house. I put it in the yard and the puppy began chewing the side of it.
“What are we going to name him?” Mason asked. “Nothing too silly. A dog needs his dignity.”
We were sitting in the yard in the very spot we’d been in when he’d told me about his meth addiction. It seemed like ages ago, though it had only been two days.
“Max?” I said.
“Too typical,” Mason said.
“Jack?”
“Too boring.”
“Spiro Agnew?” I said.
“Huh?”
“Faye Figaro? Rudy Giuliani? Lex Luthor? Martin Luther? Martin Amis? Famous Amos?”
“Neil?” Mason said.
I looked at the dog. Even at eight weeks, he was handsome. He had the blue eyes of a seducer. Half Samoyed, half Australian shepherd. Suddenly his name was clear to me.
“Sam Shepard,” I said.
“Oh Jesus,” said Mason.
“That’s his name,” I said. “It’s perfect.”
“No.”
“He’s my dog,” I said. “You said he was my dog.”
“Why don’t you just name him Fabio?”
“You’re not really in a position to tell me what to name my dog,” I said.
And that was how I came to live out my original fantasy. That’s how I came to live on a farm with Sam Shepard.
To: Lucinda Trout
From: Carol and Richard Trout
Re: We’ve Got E-mail!
Dear Lucinda,
It’s Mom and Dad. We have electronic mail now and will be able to communicate with you in this very modern way. Your sister said that since we finally got an answering machine we can take another step forward and join the information freeway. Please write back if you got this. Also, did you say you were living on a farm? Do you have crops?
Love,
Mom and Dad
Mason said sugar helped him get through the meth cravings. I bought bags of Hershey’s kisses, candy corn, Jolly Ranchers. They sat in a bowl on the dining-room table like treats at a grandmother’s house. Erin tried to grab a handful everytime she passed and Mason would yell at her like he did at me for just about anything, including not having anything ready for dinner when he came home from work, which was usually around 4:30.
It was difficult to devote a lot of time to developing “Quality of Life Report” projects because I had been seized by a sudden urge to improve my appearance. I went to the YMCA every morning and when I discovered that a full set of remarkably natural-looking artificial nails could be obtained for twenty-one dollars I went to Happy Nails in the Kmart plaza at least twice a week for a fill. While making the twenty-five-minute drive into town, I’d marvel at my hands on the steering wheel. They’d always looked so shabby before. Now they rivaled Bonnie Crawley’s. I tried new shades of polish every time, Tahitian Twilight, Tinsel Town Taupe, Not So Innocent Pink.
I also began taking the cure for depression as it was most commonly dispensed in Prairie City. I went to a tanning salon. As winter began to seep through the cracks of autumn and the clocks were set back and twilight came at 4:30 the citizens of Prairie City hit the tanning capsules as though they were treadmills, the artificial UV rays pumping serotonin into their bodies like hot Zoloft. It was what they did instead of psychotherapy. The tanning beds were their Freudian couches. But true to Prairie City form, you got so much more bang for your buck. Just as a house that would have sold for half a million dollars in the tristate area went for a mere eighty thousand dollars in Prairie City, eighteen minutes in a bed at Hollywood Tan on Prairie Boulevard would do more for one’s general outlook and ability to cope than any fifty-minute hour in the office of an Upper East Side shrink. And as the temperature dropped,
the epidermal hue of the average Prairie Cityite became a deeper and deeper shade of orange.
I myself tanned three or four times a week. Once I got started, it was hard to bring myself to let it fade even slightly. It was as if the tan, deep and shiny and scented with the brown-sugary smell of the Volcanic Tanning Mud lotion I’d purchased at the salon for thirty-five dollars, protected me from the mounting blankness of the days. Even when faced with the nothingness of the morning, the flatness of the land, the ranch-house-flanked highway that led to County Road F, I could bring my forearm to my face and smell my tan. I could look at my manicure, tap my plastic nails on my desk, throw my gym clothes in the washer, and feel a sense of, if not exactly accomplishment, at least maintenance. Even as the days ran into each other, even as I left in the morning and returned six hours later after going to the gym, the nail salon, the tanning salon, and then the Hinky Dinky to pick up the ingredients for one of my increasingly complicated dinners, I could at least rest on the notion that I was fit and well groomed. Even as Mason stormed through the door with a frozen TV dinner for Erin and prodded her into eating the mushy french fries before she could return to her video, I could distract myself with the preparation of veal cutlets with red wine sauce and scalloped potatoes. We went to bed earlier and earlier. First 9:30, then 9:00, then 8:30. Mason kept chocolates by the bed to stave off nighttime cravings and I allowed myself one or two in the mornings as an incentive to get out of bed and start the gym routine all over again.
It was during the preparation of shrimp with feta cheese, scallions, and two teaspoons of vermouth that Sue called and told me I had been elected to the board of directors for the Prairie City Coalition of Women.
“It’s a fabulous group of women,” she said. “I think you’ll really like them. And Christine’s going to be on the board, too.”
“I’m honored,” I said, licking a dab of vermouth off my finger.
“It’s nice because everytime I try to organize a group of women at my house men end up coming,” said Sue. “It starts with Leonard and then it just snowballs.”
A shadow appeared outside the kitchen window, as if someone were standing outside. I looked up and gasped as a huge white object knocked itself against the glass, producing a tremendous thud. Lucky the horse was standing right outside the window, stamping his gigantic hooves and rearing on his hind legs.
“Oh my God,” I said. “The horse escaped.”
“What?” said Sue.
“The stallion. He got out.”
“Don’t go outside,” Sue said. “Stay inside the house. He could be dangerous.”
“But the puppy is outside,” I said. “What if he steps on him?”
I ran to the back door and found Sam Shepard curled up on the stoop surrounded by shrapnellike pieces of a beer can that he must have pulled from the recycling bin and gnawed on until he became exhausted. I let him in and he toddled right to the oriental rug and urinated on it. I looked out the window and saw Lucky running in circles around the yard as if it were a show ring. He’d lost his bridle, so there was nothing to grab on to. I dialed the number of the grain elevator.
“Mason took the rest of the day off,” Frank said.
“What do you mean he took the rest of the day off?” I said. “I need him right now. The horse escaped!”
“He said he had an appointment.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, Lucinda,” Frank said. “The important thing to do is think positively. Channel your energy in a positive direction. Try to imagine what the horse is thinking.”
I hung up with Frank and dug up the number of Lucky’s owner. The woman who answered told me he was at work at the Firestone plant. She said she wasn’t getting involved with “no horse.” A baby was crying in the background. Lucky was now prancing around in the prairie grass west of the house. All he’d need now was to get in the road and cause an accident. I called the landlord.
“He’s out harvesting,” said the landlord’s wife. “I’ll try him on his cell phone but sometimes he doesn’t hear it ring.”
I watched through the window as the horse wandered farther and farther into the pasture. I prayed he wouldn’t get inside the other pasture, the one where the elderly, gelded Cupid stayed. Lucky would fight him to the death.
An hour passed and finally the landlord’s truck came up the driveway. He gave a little wave with the hand that was missing a finger. Mason pulled up right behind him. I went into the house while they wrangled the horse, which involved not so much wrangling as luring him back to the corral with several ears of corn. From the kitchen window I watched them talk in the driveway. They were laughing, each resting a foot on the bumpers of their trucks. Congenial as pie. It had been fifty-three days since Mason kicked the meth, fifty days since getting Sam Shepard. I put the dog outside the front door and let him run around to the back so Mason wouldn’t notice he’d been inside. Mason called the dog Sam. He was nearly too big for me to lift now and I watched Mason scoop him up like a baby, clutch him to his chest, and then hold him out to show the landlord. Mason’s photo albums were filled with pictures of him holding his children in precisely that way, their tiny legs dangling at eye level, Mason’s face seen in profile with a smile wider than he’d had occasion for since.
He came in a while later, the bottom of his plaid flannel shirt flapping in the wind. There’d been frost on the grass that morning but he still wore his flip-flops.
“It’s getting cold out there,” he said.
“How the hell did that happen?” I said.
“Oh, must be a little hole in the fence,” he said. “I’ll have to walk the fence line and see.”
“That’s it?” I said. “We could have been sued, you know. If that horse did any damage.”
“Oh he just wanted to take a little stroll,” Mason said. “Who’d blame him? Being cooped up in there.”
“Where were you when I called Frank?”
“Just swung by to see a friend,” he said.
“What would I have done if I couldn’t get ahold of anyone?”
“Oh he would’ve come back eventually,” Mason said. He came up behind me and pinched my butt. “It’s no biggie, boots.”
Mason spent the rest of the afternoon puttering around in the barn and fixing the hole in the fence. I wrote a memo to Faye Figaro pitching a segment called “Tanning Salons: Bad for the Skin But Good for the Soul.” It was Mason’s turn to prepare dinner so he made tuna helper and a salad and we sat down to eat at 5:30 and were in bed by 9:00. The coyotes shrieked all night. I got up twice to check on Sam Shepard. He’d chewed his dog house to bits in the first two weeks and now he slept in a horse stall in the barn. In my robe, flashlight in hand, I navigated through the darkness. At night, the flip of the light sent things scurrying into the hay bales. The swallows would stir in their nests. Lucky would shift his bulk in my direction. And Sam Shepard, growing gawkier and furrier by the day, would open his eyes without moving any other muscle of his body and, upon registering my face, leap from his straw bed and run to the gate. I couldn’t keep myself from going into the stall to tuck him back in. The second time I checked him that night, when dawn was just a few hours away and the coyotes had seemed to stop howling the moment I stepped outside, I sat with the puppy on my lap for a good twenty minutes. He needed me. There would be no leaving now.
* * *
BOARD MEETINGS for the Prairie City Coalition of Women were held at the home of its president, Brenda Schwan. Brenda’s house was located in an expensive real estate development on the edge of Prairie City called Pioneer Hill, a neighborhood that wasn’t so much a hill but about 50 acres of what had been natural prairie grasses until they had been cleared to make room for approximately 150 gigantic and nearly identical-looking houses designed to be reminiscent of medieval castles. The final product was a maze of winding streets and cul-de-sacs with names like Shamrock Court and Ophelia Drive, all lined with homes that looked like miniature versions of the Excalibur Hotel
in Las Vegas. Every house had a two- or three-car garage and an SUV parked in the driveway. The only way I could find Brenda’s house was by looking for her SUV, which had a Gore/Lieberman campaign bumper sticker on it.
Brenda, like most members of the Prairie City Coalition of Women, was in her early fifties. Divorced some seven years earlier from a corporate lawyer with whom she had two grown children, Brenda had channeled most of her single-woman energy into home decor. A glass-enclosed, two-sided fireplace divided the cathedral-ceilinged, sunken living room and the wooden-raftered dining room. In the living room, where coalition meetings took place, a lime-green modular sofa snaked around a glass coffee table in a U shape. It sat twelve. Tall, cylindrical wicker baskets filled with cattails and peacock feathers sat in the corners of the room. White carpet covered every square inch of the house, even the three steps leading down to the living room; for this reason, only white wine was served. Chrome-framed prints by the graphic artist Patrick Nagel adorned three of the walls and over the glass fireplace, on the living-room side, hung a colossal oil portrait of Brenda’s son and daughter in their preteen years. Smooth jazz played on the stereo.
“Lucinda, we are so glad to have you aboard,” Brenda said, kissing me on the cheek. Smoke from a Virginia Slims 100 curled around her fingers, which, I noticed, were nicely manicured. I recognized the Wyatt Erple Purple polish. “I think your input is going to be really interesting for us.”
Valdette Svoboda-Lipinsky, the board secretary, had already arrived. She blew me a kiss from across the sofa. The spread on the coffee table included deviled eggs, carrot sticks, pigs-in-blankets, and Rice Krispies treats. I sat down and took a deviled egg.
“So what kind of wine can I get you, Lucinda?” said Brenda. “White or white?”
“You know Christine’s coming tonight, right?” Valdette said to me.
The other women began trailing in, all carrying bottles of white wine. It was November now, 36 degrees at noon that day. They wore parkas over their denim jumper dresses and corduroy pants, dangling earrings sticking out at odd angles under wool hats. One woman looked familiar. She wore an Indian print tent dress and had salt-and-pepper hair tied into two braids. Then I remembered. Estrogen Therapy. She was the guitar player, composer of “Jane at the Register.” Her partner trailed behind her carrying a Tupperware container.
