“Are you okay?” I ask.
It’s now two A.M. And he’s standing here staring at me. “Maybe we should turn in for the night?” I suggest.
“Wait here,” he says.
And he darts away again.
I lean my head back on the couch, close my eyes.
“Ahem.” I open my eyes. He’s back. He’s standing there holding a tiny black box.
Oh.
He hands it to me, gets on one knee.
Oh.
“Okay,” he says. “So. Um. Will you marry me?”
Oh!
Much to my delight, I do not go into full cardiac arrest.
Will I marry him? But … he’s already tried the M-thing. He doesn’t want to do it again. I’ve been walking around assuming he’d never do it again. But he knows I want to. And he staged this whole event.
Soon I am in tears, holding him, clinging to him. I cry the same tears I cried when I was Juliet, only not those tears at all.
NINE
THE RING IS PLATINUM, A CHANNEL SETTING WITH seven small diamonds. It’s too big, which is perfect. Because engaged? This is big. Really big. This is so not me. Isn’t it? Hell, I hardly ever even had boyfriends.
I call Nancy, one of the babes, to tell her about the ring because I know that of all the babes, she loves this sort of thing. It’s good to have a girly girlfriend. It gives you permission.
“Weeee! Woooo!” Nancy squeals on the phone. She wants details. She wants to know how he did it, what he said, where we were sitting. I tell her about the ballet and the roses, which she loves. I tell her about the vacuuming and the satellite dish, which makes her laugh. She thinks Alex is perfect for me.
“So when is it happening?” she asks.
“What?”
“The date?” she says.
“For what?”
“The wedding!” she says.
Oh. A wedding? Well, now. Isn’t it enough that Alex and I have gotten the courage to use the E-word? And even the M-word? Now she’s talking the W-word?
“Where will you have it?” she says. “Do you think you’ll wear a gown? I’m definitely wearing a gown. I don’t care if it doesn’t happen to me until I’m sixty, I’m wearing a gown.”
Nancy and I are around the same age, but we are in somewhat different stages. Nancy has a long history of unsatisfying relationships, a series of men she longed for and with whom she rarely made it past the bait-and-switch trick. She thought there was something wrong with her. It never occurred to her it was the men. She went for dangerous men, only the dangerous ones. Over and over again.
About a year and a half ago, Nancy’s mother got sick. Really sick. “Bone cancer,” the doctors finally said. Then within a few months, her father got sick. Really sick. “Bone marrow cancer,” they said. It was the most hideous coincidence imaginable. Both of her parents, one in one bed, one in the other, dying. Nancy would trade off which bed she would curl up in. Nancy’s friend Jack started hanging around. He’d lost his parents already, so he had an inkling of what Nancy was going through. He stayed with her. He walked the parental death march with her. Jack was a friend. Not Nancy’s type, in that there was nothing particularly dangerous about him, but none of that mattered. He wanted to help her. She needed help. Nancy’s father died on a Monday. Her mother died Tuesday of the next week.
And Nancy and Jack fell in love.
It seemed so unfair and yet so oddly and cruelly fair. It seemed like Nancy had to suffer the ultimate sacrifice—losing her parents—before she could find love.
It made me think my friend Mark was right.
Nancy and Jack have been a couple for about a year now. We all know he’s going to pop the question any second; it’s obvious. I suspect that Alex’s little surprise might be just the spark Jack needs.
And we’re all going to be so happy for Nancy. We are going to squeal like baby pigs and eat bonbons and make a fuss. Because this is what you do for Nancy; this is what Nancy loves.
“So what are you two going to do today to celebrate?” she asks.
Um. Celebrate? I hadn’t actually thought of that. And anyway, wasn’t it kind of dangerous to call the attention of the universe to my happiness? I mean, if we go with the Mark theory. Perhaps I should keep a low profile with my joy so as not to call in the agony patrol to even things out.
I tell Nancy that, rather than celebrate, we’re thinking of calling Billy today.
“Billy?”
“The guy with the bulldozer.”
“Bulldozer,” she says.
“The best time to push briars is winter,” I say. “And it’s already the middle of February.”
“Uh-huh.”
But I can tell I’ve lost her. She starts talking about ice-skating.
She’s lost me.
Maybe the idea Alex and I have of attacking the multiflora now is bigger than February. Maybe it’s a way for Alex and me to prepare the farm for our future together, a way of cleansing our hearts of the thickets of the past.
Or maybe it’s one big itchy vacuuming project needed to calm our nerves.
Before I call Billy, I call my mother to tell her the E-news. I just blurt it out. I am not good at talking to my mother about such things. My mother is sort of the anti-Nancy. No squealing. None of that girly crap. My mother wanted to be a Chaucer scholar before she met my father. My mother had no intention of ever marrying, especially if it took her away from Chaucer. My parents have been married for fifty-two years, and it is the happiest marriage I have ever seen.
My mom and dad are thrilled with the news that Alex and I are getting married. The phone starts ringing off the hook. My sisters, my brother. Everybody is thrilled. First of all, because they all love Alex. They know he’s good for me. But I also think they’re relieved. I think they’re sick of the way I’ve always been so mysterious, so private, about matters of romance. I rarely brought guys home—except the ones from foreign countries whom no one could actually converse with.
I don’t know why I held the truth of my love life so close to my heart. My sisters did not do this. The whole family lived through Claire’s divorce. And Kristin had a new boyfriend around every few months. But I was embarrassed by love. I was embarrassed to admit I wanted it or needed it. I’d get prickly if anyone asked.
Perhaps this was the unintended fallout of some of my mother’s guidance. She seemed to harp on me, more than she did on the others, about being independent. Learning to live your own life, that was the most important thing. Not a life in the shadow of some man. My mother would never actually call herself a feminist. But that’s what she is. She’s a feminist in the same way a nun is a feminist: someone who hears the call to do something, become something, and who does it without worrying about what anybody has to say about it. For my mother, the call was to be a wife and mother. It was something she never expected, never wanted. It was completely out of whack with her plan. But that’s what it was, so that’s what she became.
She didn’t let us play with Barbie dolls. That was no role model for a little girl. She didn’t let us watch the Miss America pageant. (And yes, I told her about the Miss Delaware comment. She said, “You?” Now perhaps you can see why she and Alex get along so well.)
Beauty queens, Barbie dolls, these were no role models for women. “Don’t depend on your looks because your looks won’t last,” she would say. She was not big on makeup or jewelry. I waited months and months for her to help me bridge the gap between childhood and adolescence by telling me when to start shaving my legs. She never did tell me, so I just started doing it. The same way with dating. I figured she would say something. Something like, “Okay, it’s time to start.” But she never did. So I went ahead and did it. But somewhere along the line, I got the idea that it was wrong. Like shaving my legs was wrong. Because she never actually gave me permission for any of this.
And she talked over and over again to me about independence, about being independent. Why did she pick me to give these lectures to?
Because I was the youngest? The last one? The public school experiment? Because she saw something of herself in me? I have no idea. But it stuck. I would not allow myself to get too attached to men, because attachment itself was a threat.
So maybe this is why I rarely brought boyfriends home. I don’t know. I am only figuring this out now, when it doesn’t matter. But it does matter, because this is who I am, or this is who I was. How much of who you were do you have to take into who you will be?
I finish the call with my mother. Alex calls his kids. First Amy, then Peter. They both say the same thing everybody else has said so far: “Hooray!” and then, “When is the wedding?”
I wish everybody would just stop at the hooray part.
Eventually, I call Billy. It feels good to talk about something else. Who knew bulldozer talk could be a breath of fresh air?
Billy says, “You got coffee on?”
“I’ll put it on,” I say.
“Me and Tom will be right over,” he says.
And all I can think is: They’re going to come inside? But where will they spit? I wonder if I’m supposed to have some kind of spitting thing here in my house for these people.
THE THERMOMETER HAS NOT HIT FIFTEEN DEGREES today. When Billy and Tom come over, they take off layers and layers of clothing, draping them by the fireplace. There is no spitting at all. We have a good time. They tell me stories of Billy’s life. Some great moments in bulldozing, including the many times Billy nearly died.
“He’s got scars on his legs that are tire tracks,” Tom says. There is a softness to Tom, a padding on his face that lends him innocence. His eyes don’t line up right. Or no, there’s something about the two sides of his face that don’t quite match. There is an awkwardness to Tom.
“I’ve been shot at,” Billy says. An ex-con came after him with a .22. The bullet hit a can of Skoal in Billy’s breast pocket, diverted, then skimmed across his chest before lodging in. It lodges there still.
“So now we only chew Skoal,” Tom says.
Everything is beginning to make an uncomfortable amount of sense.
We talk about snow. We’ve been so lucky this year with snow.
“I can remember Fran, the lady who used to live here, getting snowed in for a week once,” Billy says. He says he used to plow the driveway for her. “Because that tractor you got, you can’t really drive that on this property.”
We can’t? But I love that tractor, that giant skinny rooster standing in the barn.
“You’ll kill yourself on these hills,” he says. “It’s a good tractor, but it’s for if you got smooth land, like in Ohio. With your property, you need four-wheel drive, and you need a roll bar. And a seat belt. You’ll kill yourself without four-wheel drive and a roll bar.”
I look at Alex.
“Oh,” he says.
“You sell that tractor,” he says, “and I’ll find you a new one.”
But exactly how does one go about selling a tractor?
“You want me to, I’ll sell it for you,” he says. “I’ll find you a new one.” It is, he says, the neighborly thing to do. “Meantime, you get snow here, you call me. I’ll plow it. Don’t you do it on that tractor. I’d hate to see new neighbors ending up dead.”
One thing you have to say about country life versus city life is, there are a lot more things that can kill you in the country.
We work out a deal with Billy. He says if he can keep his bulldozer parked here for the rest of the winter, and if he can work on our briars when the weather is okay and when he’s got a free day, then he’ll reduce his sixty-five-dollars-per-hour rate to fifty dollars.
“Sounds good,” Alex says, having no real basis for comparison.
Billy and Tom start putting all their clothes back on so they can go outside and get started. Betty and Marley come over to sniff them and their clothes.
“What kind of dog is that?” Billy says, looking at Marley.
“That there’s a poodle,” Alex says.
That there?
“A poodle?” Billy says. “I never seen one like that.”
“A standard poodle,” Alex says. “Not one of those yappy things.”
“You don’t see a lot of poodles around here,” Tom points out.
“He’s a great dog,” I say. “Really, um, smart. Poodles were used as sentry dogs in Vietnam, you know.”
“I flew a helicopter upside down in Vietnam,” Billy says.
“Upside down,” Tom says.
They head out into the bitter air. Soon they are heave-hoing with a lot of heavy chains, moving the bulldozer off the trailer. Then they drive away in their big red truck, leaving the bulldozer an ominous presence in our yard.
They start the next morning at dawn. I know this because the low rumble of the machine wakes me up. I climb out of bed, following the sound to my office window, the one with the birch tree outside it and the scanner underneath it, which is still Bob’s bed. Alex follows, and so do the dogs.
Through the dim morning light, I can see Billy driving the mighty yellow machine. It is spewing black smoke. Tom walks ahead of it, breathing white clouds, and he makes a lot of hand motions, like a coach in a baseball game. The roar of the bulldozer rattles the windows. Bob has been interrupted from his slumber and is sitting on the windowsill, watching. I am watching. Betty is here, watching, and Marley and Alex, too. All of us, a unit.
The blade of the bulldozer comes down, and Tom motions for it to come forward. As it does, the huge thicket starts moving, too. First a little jostle, and then, with virtually no oomph on the part of the bulldozer, the giant evil bush is on its side like some pathetic little tumbleweed. Billy keeps driving forward, pushing the bush into a ravine.
Behind him, nothing. Just space, glorious space. A blank canvas for nature to fill.
That’s what I see. I don’t know what Bob or Betty or Marley or Alex sees. We all stand here a long time watching. There’s something soothing about watching the brambles get scraped off the surface of your life. It’s like going to confession, getting all those black spots wiped off your soul. It’s like starting a new life, one free and clear of all the thick nonsense that used to strangle you. All the things you used to believe about yourself that weren’t true, not really, they were just good ideas gone crazy.
I find myself transfixed, but not by the machine. Not by the briars in motion. I find myself transfixed by … nothing. After the briars are gone—once cover to deer, rabbits, and other timid creatures—nothing. Nothing never looked so beautiful. Nothing is something. Nothing is a patch of rich, beautiful topsoil. What’s going to happen when the sun reaches this unclaimed place? What’s going to happen now that the prickly cover has been stripped away?
TEN
SHEEP, I AM TOLD, ARE STUPID. I’M NOT SURE WHY this matters. But every time we tell someone around here that we’re thinking of putting sheep on these fields, we get the same response: Sheep are stupid.
Sheep are so stupid, one neighbor told me, that if they get scared, they’ll keep running and running and running, headlong into a fence, and die of strangulation.
I don’t know why he didn’t blame the fence instead of the sheep, but that is neither here nor there. The main thing is, we’re soon going to have about fifteen acres of multiflora-free land, and we need to decide what to do with it—before Mother Nature does.
It’s April, and Billy has been out there pushing briars for two months. The sound of the bulldozer has been good company. The roar of the diesel reminds me I’m not alone here. Sometimes when it’s close, it even makes the kitchen sink vibrate. When I worked in the city, I remember, there were guys renovating a parking lot outside my office window. How I cursed those workers and their jack-hammers. How strange to find myself embracing bulldozer noise.
Every afternoon at about four, Billy knocks on my door. He’ll say, “Well, come on out and see what we did.” And so we’ll wander together over the mounds and mounds of clumpy earth and broken trees. Betty and Marley race ahe
ad, sniffing several generations of recently unearthed sniffs. Billy likes to tell me which areas were the toughest to negotiate and where the surprises were. He’s buried a lot of the uprooted briars in ravines, while the rest have been pushed into enormous piles that are set on fire with a combination of diesel, gasoline, and old tires. The tires, apparently, are the key to making briars burn. Some of these piles have been smoldering for weeks now. It’s quite stunning to see how many new views we have now that a lot of the briars are gone. We can even see the pond now from the top of the hill. “It’s gorgeous!” I’ll say to Billy, when we’re out there looking around.
“Thank you,” he’ll say. “I’m glad you like it.”
It’s something we have in common, seeing the beauty in the briar-free hills. It’s something I have come to value. Because I have invited several of the babes down to see how the land looks now that the briars are gone. “Isn’t it gorgeous?” I’ll say, as we hike over the mud, and they hold on to branches to keep their balance on the slippery surface. “Um, gorgeous,” the babes say, unconvincingly. The babes curl their lips. The babes tend to focus on the thirty-foot-high piles everywhere with stinky smoke coming out. “This is sort of how I imagine Germany just after the war,” one said.
Billy’s son, Tom, comes to work with his dad most days. He’s a senior in high school—which doesn’t get in the way of his work schedule too badly. Schools around here still let kids out to help with family farms and family businesses. Schools around here consider it a service to the community, which is still reeling from the loss of coal mines; to the family, which has more work to do than anyone can do alone; and to the kid, who is learning a trade. Tom never drives the bulldozer, though. He stays on the ground and directs traffic. When Tom is not needed in this way, he often sits in the mud and pets Marley. Tom has taken to Marley; in a way, I think he feels sorry for him. Like Marley is the village idiot or something. A lot of workers who stop by to help Billy, they’ll make poodle jokes. Dumb jokes, like Marley would get eaten by a sheep if we got sheep, or Marley better watch out lest a giant groundhog fetch him. Well, I didn’t say they were funny jokes or even clever jokes, just Marley-is-a-wuss-dog jokes. But Tom always defends Marley. He’ll say, “Stop picking on him. He’s a good dog.”
Fifty Acres and a Poodle Page 13
