Fifty Acres and a Poodle

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  “Nothing like His and Hers broadcast spreaders!” I say to him.

  He smiles. “Actually, me and my wife both have broadcast spreaders,” he says.

  “There you go,” I say.

  “And actually,” he says, “we’re not using them. Why don’t you just borrow ours?”

  “But—”

  “I got them right here in the back because last week George was using them at his place.”

  “But, Jim, I am going to buy some from you,” I say. “How are you going to stay in business if you’re always lending stuff out?” He’s already lent us a snow shovel, a diesel fuel can, a hacksaw, and a set of wire cutters.

  “Why would I sell you something that I have right here I’m not using?” he says. “It just seems dumb.” He heads into the back room and emerges with the broadcast spreaders.

  “All right,” I say. “I think I’m going to take four hundred pounds of seed instead of three hundred.” I don’t know if we need four hundred, but I want the guy to make some money. Generosity begets generosity. That’s one thing I’ve learned in Scenery Hill, PA.

  “Well, pull your truck up,” Jim says, “and I’ll load up.”

  I thank Jim for his generosity, give Inga a pat, and head out.

  Back at the house, I startle all the snoozers with my arrival.

  “Hi, baby,” Alex says, opening his eyes. “What time is it?”

  “A little after three.”

  “My God,” he says. “I slept that long?”

  “You were drugged,” I say.

  “Whew. My head. What did they give me?”

  “I got you a present!” I say. I show him the broadcast spreaders.

  “Oh,” he says, unsure what he is looking at.

  “Broadcast spreaders!” I say. “His and Hers broadcast spreaders!”

  “Wow,” he says, through several yawns. “Why are they so dirty?”

  “I borrowed them from Jim, up at the hardware store.”

  “He wouldn’t sell you any?”

  “I tried,” I say.

  “How is that guy ever going to stay in business?”

  “That’s what I said. Anyway, I bought four hundred pounds of seed.”

  “Four hundred?” he says.

  “We’ll need it eventually. We’ll leave the extra hundred in the barn.”

  He yawns. “So should we try these babies out?” he asks, spinning the crank on the spreader.

  “I don’t think you’re quite up to it,” I say.

  “I’m fine. The air would do me good.”

  “Well, okay then.”

  We change into jeans, J. Crew flannel shirts, Eddie Bauer hiking boots, and head outside. We try on our broadcast spreaders. We look at each other.

  “We look like twins,” I say.

  “This is getting embarrassing,” he says.

  “It is,” I say, laughing. It feels like a great release, this little laugh. It feels like my head is a pressure cooker and somebody finally opened the lid.

  There is no tumor talk between us at all, and I am glad.

  We drive the pickup loaded with grass seed to the top of the hill. We strap on our broadcast spreaders. And we start spreading the seed on the western face of the hill, the part Billy has finished smoothing. We climb up and down that giant hill like goats, spinning our respective cranks, watching the seed fly. I notice that I am spreading the seed about a hundred times thicker than Alex is. His is sparse, little flecks here and there. He seems to trust the seed. He seems to believe in the seed.

  I am plopping mine in clumps.

  There is a pessimism in me. A thud of hopelessness.

  Soon it is dark, and we are still out here trying to get the seed down. It takes a long time to spread three hundred pounds of seed, even longer than we thought.

  “You know, it’s really light out here for being dark,” Alex points out.

  “It is.”

  We look up at the moon, the brightest moon. You don’t get moons like this in the city. The light is strange, flat, blue, almost fluorescent. It’s a glowing light, and it leaves a halo on everything it touches. I’ve never really done anything under the moonlight before, least of all planted grass seed.

  Alex points to the western sky. “Hale-Bopp,” he says. “The comet. Isn’t that the comet?”

  I suppose it is! That’s the comet everybody has been talking about on the news. A glowing white cloud in the night sky—with a tail. It hasn’t been visible for 4,200 years. It won’t be visible again for 2,380 years.

  We stand here a long time with our heads tilted back, looking at the comet. I can’t help but wonder what kind of rhythm it represents. There must be so many rhythms. There must be hundreds of them going on all at once. I think of drought and flood, of fire and wind, of tornadoes and meteor showers. And now Hale-Bopp. A rhythm spanning millennia. Who would ever be able to hear the beat of that gigantic song?

  THIRTEEN

  IT’S TUESDAY. THE DAY WE’RE SUPPOSED TO HEAR. Alex is in town, at work. I’m here in the big room with Bob, staring at Bob, watching Bob swat a paper clip with one paw, then swat it back with the other, as if trying to make that paper clip come alive. The clip makes an unexpected flip, and Bob goes in for the kill, rolling on it until he’s all confused in a surprise somersault.

  Bleeep. Bleeep. There’s the phone. Line One.

  Hello?

  It’s Dawn, a woman I’ve hired to come clean the house. She’s supposed to start today. She tells me she’s sorry, but she’s going to have to cancel and start next week instead.

  “A sheep emergency,” she says.

  “Oh?”

  “Three of my ladies just went into labor,” she says. “They need me.”

  “Oh,” I say. I tell her we’re thinking of getting sheep.

  “Sheep are stupid,” she says.

  “Yeah, well.” (Do people think I expect intellectual stimulation from my livestock?)

  “You know, sheep are so stupid that if they’re facing uphill, they get stuck,” she says.

  “Stuck?”

  “They think they’re laying down because their eyes are closer to the ground. And they can’t get up because they’re already up.”

  “Stuck,” I say.

  Dawn says she is getting sick of always having to go up and turn her sheep around.

  It is getting harder and harder to defend sheep.

  It is getting harder and harder to plan anything.

  Bleeep. Bleeep. Line One again. Why doesn’t anybody ever use Line Two?

  “Hello?”

  It’s Alex. There is news.

  “Well?” I say.

  “Inconclusive,” he says.

  “Huh?”

  “The doctor said the test was inconclusive.”

  “Oh, God. Well—did he have a guess?”

  “He said, ‘Inconclusive.’”

  “Did you tell him he’s torturing us?”

  “I don’t think I had to. He seemed concerned. I mean, for a doctor.”

  “Oh.”

  “He said I shouldn’t wait for another biopsy. He said I should call a surgeon right away and get it out.”

  “He thinks we have to move this fast?”

  “It was like he was trying to convince me it was … bad.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you want me to call the surgeon?”

  “I just did. They were waiting for my call. The doctor had already sent over the chart. They gave me an appointment for tomorrow.”

  “Wow.”

  “Everybody seems really on top of this,” he says.

  “That’s good,” I say.

  “Can you come with me?” he asks. There is fear in his voice. For the first time, fear.

  “Of course!” I say. “They’re going to take it out tomorrow?”

  “No, no, no. They’re going to do some tests, and schedule the surgery. I mean, I think it’s complicated. Oh, I don’t know what they have to do.”

  “It doesn’t mat
ter,” I say. “I’ll be there. Just hold on, baby. I’ll be there. I’ll pack you some clothes. I’ll pack me some clothes. I’ll meet you at the South Side house, and we’ll have a nice quiet dinner together.”

  “All right,” he says.

  “Just hang on, baby.”

  “I’m hanging,” he says. “Bye-bye.”

  I look at Bob. He’s scratching his ear, thump, thump, thump. He is starting to look more healthy, not less. But that could be because I have another patient to worry about. “You hang on, too, Bob,” I say as I push back my desk chair.

  I look at the birch tree outside. A cardinal on a branch, a pretty flash of red, is pecking feverishly. Everybody seems so busy. Time seems to have stopped for me, but not for anyone else. Not even Bob.

  I head back to the bedroom to get my suitcase out. All I can think, through my fear, are the stupidest thoughts. Stupider than sheep thoughts. I think maybe I should run out and get Alex another poodle. I think I should have bought him a set of dishes with poodles on them. I think of decorating the entire farmhouse in poodle art. I think of a poodle weathervane on the barn.

  Bob wanders back into the bedroom to watch me pack. After all these years, Bob knows.

  Yes, Bob. I am packing again. What are you looking at? It’s no big deal, Bob. Just one night. I’m going to town for one night. You’ll be okay here. I’m going to leave you a big bowl of dry, and I have another can of Fancy Feast I’ll put out. That’s a treat, isn’t it? I got you the kind with liver….

  Bob jumps up on the bed, sits. Soon he is washing his feet. He’s going nibble, nibble, nibble on his paw. Thank God Bob is still here. That’s all I can say.

  That is all I can say, Bob. Thank God I still have you, Bob. And I mean thank God. Thank God you are not dying. That’s all I can say.

  If he were a dying cat, he would be dead by now. I mean, obviously that vet got it wrong. That vet didn’t know what he was talking about. It’s been, what, nearly a year since the vet said, “Bob is dying.” When you say someone or something is “dying,” what does that mean? How much time do you get? Because, I mean, obviously, Bob is not dying.

  Dying is just a word, Bob. A word. You are not dying, Bob. Thank God we finally got that straight. Because if you were “dying” a year ago, then technically you would already have died. Right? And you haven’t. So there’s no reason to keep using the D-word.

  I feel better about Bob. I feel so much better. I can hear Betty scratching at the back door.

  “All right, girly girl,” I shout, and go to let her in. “Come on,” I say to her. “But only for a few minutes. Because I have to leave again. You and Marley are going to sleep outside tonight. Just for one night.” If it were more than one night, I’d bring the dogs. But these long car rides are really tough on Marley, so it’s best to leave him home. “Aw, I know, Betty. But Marley needs you here. You two did okay last time, didn’t you? Of course you did. It was like camping. Wasn’t it? Did you roast marshmallows? Or did you and Marley sneak in that liquor cabinet? Not that we have a liquor cabinet. Not that you know this….”

  I am babbling. Betty is looking at me, trying to comprehend. She has her ears perked up. She is the most alert dog. When you talk to her, she looks as if she’s trying, really trying to understand. I half-expect that one day she is going to open her mouth and “Mama” is going to come out in a tiny little voice.

  Now Marley is at the door. He has something in his mouth. Something green. I open the door. “Marley, drop it!” I say. He is, if nothing else, obedient.

  He drops the green thing. It’s long and skinny. It’s … a piece of asparagus. A piece of asparagus with dog teeth marks in it.

  “Marley, where in the hell did you get this?”

  He looks at me. There is nothing whatsoever alert about his eyes.

  IN THE MORNING, ALEX AND I ARRIVE AT THE SURgeon’s office. We’re holding hands. We’re not looking at each other. We’re not talking to each other. We’re holding hands. They take him away from me. They take him back to the examination room. My hand feels empty. Cold.

  Another waiting room. But no fish pictures. I sit here feeling sick, feeling as if I have no right to feel sick, since Alex is the one who is sick. Or supposedly sick. Or sick even though he doesn’t feel sick. Or not sick at all. It could be nothing.

  The surgeon comes out.

  “You’re his fiancée?” he says.

  I nod. It is the first time anyone has ever used that word to describe me in public. I am starting to fear that word in a whole new way.

  “Why don’t you come back here and we’ll … talk.”

  Great. Super. I’d love to.

  He takes me into the examination room where Alex is sitting, looking down. Alex can’t even seem to make eye contact with me.

  “Okay, this tumor,” the surgeon says to me, picking up a piece of paper. He has drawn a picture of the tumor for Alex to see, a picture Alex is apparently now processing in his head. “This tumor is not on a stalk as we suspected,” the surgeon says. We had been told by the first doctor that it was on a stalk. We were told the stalk kind was the good kind, the kind least likely to be malignant. I had been clinging to that stalk information as my ray of hope.

  The surgeon says no, this tumor is embedded flat as a pancake in the walls of Alex’s intestine. And yes, it is huge. Larger than a golf ball. He says from the size and the shape and the way it’s embedded, he says yes, it is most probably cancerous.

  “But it could be early,” he says. “We won’t know anything for sure until we get it out of there and do the biopsy.” He starts drawing pictures of intestines, showing where he’ll cut, what he’ll do, what he hopes for, what he fears.

  Great. Super. Fine. Uh-huh.

  He says our best hope is that it is “early.” He says colorectal cancer, if caught early, is curable. Especially if there is no family history of it.

  Alex is still not looking at me. Alex is looking down at the floor. Alex’s father died of colorectal cancer, and so did several cousins.

  There is talk of lymph nodes and liver involvement, of blood levels and CT scans, of chemo and radiation.

  Finally, Alex looks up, peers at me with glazed eyes. “I think I should call the kids,” he says. “I have to tell Amy and Peter.”

  WE DRIVE BACK TO THE FARM IN SILENCE AGAIN. The deadest silence. We make no mention of the rolling vermilion hills coming toward us, the hills you expect to see depicted on canvases in museums. We make no mention of the amusement ride, the great adventure in sight-seeing. We make no mention of the most adorably stupid-looking donkey standing on an overturned wheelbarrow, as if posing for a surrealist painting. We make no mention of the desolation in our hearts that seems to color everything.

  “I’m sorry,” Alex says, finally.

  It’s as if his only worry is me. But really, there is nothing to worry about. The sadness that is filling me will surely find its way out. How much can one person contain?

  I think of those cows and what a relief it must have been to get popped.

  FOURTEEN

  THE LADYBUG IS GONE. I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS. I can’t find it anywhere. It’s not in the sink, and it’s not in the spider plant, and it’s not in the ceramic frog sponge holder either.

  It’s mid-April, and the surgery is scheduled for next Thursday at Shadyside Hospital, a stone’s throw away from Alex’s old house. We have a whole week to wait. They said Alex will then be spending at least a week in the hospital recovering. Amy and Peter are coming to town. We called Riva, Alex’s cousin, who lives in Israel, and we asked her to pray. Alex has no other family. His sister, Marina, who was a sickly person most of her life, died five years ago. We called my family. We called the babes and other friends. We’ve asked everybody to pray, even if they don’t believe in prayer.

  And now the ladybug is gone.

  The good luck ladybug. The ladybug that held my loneliness for me. The ladybug that was supposed to carry me toward or through or beyond or swirling
in and around some joyful solitude ride.

  Yeah, well.

  Solitude schmolitude.

  That’s what I’m thinking. Solitude is a luxury for the lucky. For people who don’t have sick cats and lost ladybugs and very possibly dying loved ones to worry about. For people who don’t have to worry about getting their hands dirty with the everyday goo of ordinary suffering.

  I couldn’t care less about achieving whatever it was that solitude was supposed to help me achieve. It all seems like a juvenile indulgence now.

  I am home alone, sitting at my desk, trying to work, trying to pretend nothing has happened. Because it still could be nothing. But now all I seem able to do is Internet searches for colorectal cancer. Wow. You can learn too much. You can read too much. You can read only so many times how quickly that cancer can spread if it’s caught too late. You can read only so many times that polyp leads to tumor leads to bigger tumor leads to cancer leads to death if it’s caught too late, especially if there’s a family history of the disease. You can read only so many times that the man you are in love with has every bad indicator possible.

  Yesterday I got some Joe Crowley news that, at a minimum, took my mind off my news.

  What happened was, Joe Crowley—the first Joe Crowley, the mechanic Joe Crowley—one day he collapsed. It turns out he needs quadruple bypass surgery, or, as he calls it, “a real serious valve job.” But, like so many other people around here, Joe doesn’t have health insurance. So he has to get in line. He has to wait for a bed to become available at the VA hospital. They said the wait might be six weeks or more and Joe’s doctor, well, he’s not at all convinced that Joe’s clogged heart can keep pumping that long.

  You never know what’s going to happen next. I mean, Joe? He seemed the picture of health, back when he was smacking his lips from those pineapple pancakes that the wife made. And if he’s only charging people $16 for a state inspection, how in the world is he supposed to afford health insurance? Now I wish he charged us a lot more.

  I feel bad for Joe. Which actually is good. Because sometimes, when things are going wrong in your life, it can feel good to hear that things are going wrong in someone else’s life, too. But this doesn’t feel that way. And that’s good. I feel good that I feel bad for Joe. But I feel bad that I feel good for feeling bad about Joe.