Chapter Fifteen
SO,” MARLBORO Man began over dinner one night. “How many kids do you want to have?” I almost choked on my medium-rare T-bone, the one he’d grilled for me so expertly with his own two hands.
“Oh my word,” I replied, swallowing hard. I didn’t feel so hungry anymore. “I don’t know…how many kids do you want to have?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a mischievous grin. “Six or so. Maybe seven.”
I felt downright nauseated. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, my body preparing me for the dreaded morning sickness that, I didn’t know at the time, awaited me. Six or seven kids? Righty-oh, Marlboro Man.
Righty…no.
“Ha-ha ha-ha ha. Ha.” I laughed, tossing my long hair over my shoulder and acting like he’d made a big joke. “Yeah, right! Ha-ha. Six kids…can you imagine? Ha-ha. Ha. Ha.” The laughter was part humor, part nervousness, part terror. We’d never had a serious discussion about children before.
“Why?” He looked a little more serious this time. “How many kids do you think we should have?”
I smeared my mashed potatoes around on my plate and felt my ovaries leap inside my body. This was not a positive development. Stop that! I ordered, silently. Settle down! Go back to sleep!
I blinked and took a swig of the wine Marlboro Man had bought me earlier in the day. “Let’s see…,” I answered, drumming my fingernails on the table. “How ’bout one? Or maybe…one and a half?” I sucked in my stomach—another defensive move in an attempt to deny what I didn’t realize at the time was an inevitable, and jiggly, future.
“One?” he replied. “Aw, that’s not nearly enough of a work crew for me. I’ll need a lot more help than that!” Then he chuckled, standing up to clear our plates as I sat there in a daze, having no idea whether or not he was kidding.
It was the strangest conversation I’d ever had. I felt like the roller coaster had just pulled away from the gate, and the entire amusement park was pitch-black. I had no idea what was in front of me; I was entering a foreign land. My ovaries, on the other hand, were doing backflips, as if they’d been wandering, parched, in a barren wasteland and finally, miraculously, happened upon a roaring waterfall. And that waterfall was about six feet tall, with gray hair and bulging biceps. They never knew they could experience such hope.
After dinner, as we had so many times during our months and months together, Marlboro Man and I adjourned to his porch. It was dark—we’d eaten late—and despite my silent five-minute battle with the reality of my reproductive system, there was definitely something special about the night. I stood at the railing, breathing in the dewy night air and taking in all the sounds of the countryside that would one day be my home. The pumping of a distant oil well, the symphony of crickets, the occasional moo of a mama cow, the manic yipping of coyotes…the din of country life was as present and reassuring as the cacophony of car horns, traffic sounds, and sirens had been in L.A. I loved everything about it.
He appeared behind me; his strong arms wrapped around my waist. Oh, it was real, all right—he was real. As I touched his forearms and ran the palms of my hands from his elbows down to his wrists, I’d never been more sure of how very real he was. Here, grasping me in his arms, was the Adonis of all the romance-novel fantasies I clearly never realized I’d been having; they’d been playing themselves out in steamy detail under the surface of my consciousness, and I never even knew I’d been missing it. I closed my eyes and rested my head back on his chest, just as his impossibly soft lips and subtle whiskers rested on my neck. Romancewise, it was perfection—the night air was still—almost imperceptible. Physically, viscerally, it was almost more than I could stand. Six babies? Sure. How ’bout seven? Is that enough? Standing there that night, I would have said eight, nine, ten. And I could have gotten started right away.
But getting started would have to wait. There’d be plenty of time for that. For that night, that dark, perfect night, we simply stayed on the porch and locked ourselves in kiss after beautiful, steamy kiss. And before too long, it was impossible to tell where his arms ended and where my body began.
SOON WE found the place where we would one day live, the perfect spot on earth to start our lives together. It was an old yellow brick “Indian Home,” as everyone called it, on a separate, newer area of the family ranch. It had been built in the 1920s by a Native American who’d reaped the windfall of a recent oil boom, and after changing hands a few times through the years, the inside of the house was a mess of seven-foot ceilings, avocado appliances, and shag carpeting that had long since been inhabited by every kind of creature on earth. Smaller remodeling projects throughout the house had never been finished, and the stench of mouse urine was strong.
“I love it,” I exclaimed as Marlboro Man showed me around, raising up boards so I could walk down hallways and holding my hand so I wouldn’t hurt myself. And I really did—I loved it. The house was old, very old. It told many, many stories.
“You do?” he asked, smiling. “You like it?”
“Oh, yeah,” I repeated, looking around. “It’s really something!”
“Well, we obviously couldn’t live here till we fixed a few things,” he said. “But I’ve always loved this old house.” He looked around with an obvious regard for the place in which we stood.
Remnants of the most recent owner—an aged area rancher who’d owned the land before selling it to Marlboro Man and his brother in recent years—peppered the dusty areas of the house. An ancient, polished urn-shaped trophy sat toppled over in a corner. I picked it up, wiping away the grime. Upperclassman of the Year, 1936. The rancher’s name was etched below. A box of unused ranch letterhead sat beside it—old, yellowed letterhead with a watercolor image of the old man, not so old at the time, standing next to a herd of Hereford cattle, wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Khaki trousers were tucked into his big, brown boots. The stationery was from the 1950s, I estimated. I held it in my hands and smelled the paper.
There was dust and grime, cobwebs, and memories…on the floor, on the ceiling, and floating in the air. It was strange, almost haunting, that amidst the avocado appliances and layers of dirt, I felt so instantly connected to this old yellow brick house. Maybe it was because I sensed immediately that Marlboro Man loved it; maybe it was the uniqueness of the old house itself; maybe it was the fact that I knew it would be ours, the first thing of ours, together; or maybe it was just a sense of knowing that I was standing exactly where I belonged.
“Watch that step.” Marlboro Man pointed as we walked up the rickety staircase to look around. A spacious landing awaited us, a white iron-framed mirror still hanging on the wall. Marlboro Man led me down a short passageway to the master bedroom, which was brilliantly lit by wall-to-wall windows around the room. Through them I could see at least a mile or two to the east, over a woodsy creek that wound its way through the property. Through the bathroom door I noticed old hexagonal tile, dingy and dirty; and a hole in the floor where a toilet once had been. And in the closet across the room, I spied a rickety, faded yellow dresser—the same golden shade of the bricks outside. Why has it been left here? I wondered. What’s inside the drawers?
“Well…what do you think?” Marlboro Man asked, looking around.
“Oh my gosh…I love it,” I said, hugging him tightly around the neck. The fact was, I had no idea how we’d ever make this house habitable again, or how long it would even take. It might be a several-year process; it might suck us into an evil, hairy money pit of doom. I’d seen The Money Pit; I knew how quickly things could spiral downhill. But for some reason, I wasn’t worried; it just felt so right, standing in the bedroom of the house where Marlboro Man and I would start our life together. Where we’d wake up together in the morning; or where, if it was before 8:00 A.M., I’d pull the covers over my head and stay in bed while Marlboro Man woke up and went to work. It was where we’d eventually put a bed, and a nightstand, and a lamp or two…and probably, knowing us, a TV so we could watch submarine movies and Schwarzenegger flicks and Gone With the Wind without ever leaving the sanctity of our sheets.
As I pictured it all, Marlboro Man led me back down the hallway, past the landing again, and toward the other bedrooms in the house.
“There are two other bedrooms,” Marlboro Man said, stepping over a pile of debris. “They’re in pretty good shape, too.”
I couldn’t help but grin. As I walked into one of the two bedrooms and looked around, I snickered and teased, “So much for that whole ‘seven kids’ thing, huh?” I giggled smugly and kept looking around at the empty spaces of the room.
Undeterred, Marlboro Man looked at me slyly. “Ever heard of bunk beds?”
I gulped and braced myself, even as my ovaries cheered triumphantly.
BEFORE I knew it, demolition work had begun on the interior of our yellow brick home even as plans for a six-hundred-guest wedding moved ahead at full steam. It happens, even if you’ve never in your life thought about your ideal wedding day, even if, not long before, you were ready to elope. When faced with hundreds of choices and hundreds of thousands of permutations and combinations relating to everything from the wedding date to invitations to food choices to flowers, you convince yourself that if all these choices even exist, they must be really important. And you set about the business of making sure all your choices are the only right choices on earth.
For me, though, becoming obsessed with planning my wedding to Marlboro Man served a much higher purpose. Aside from ensuring that the wedding machine would keep moving forward and that our eventual celebration would accommodate our ever-growing list of guests—a large chunk of which was Marlboro Man’s extended family—drowning myself in wedding plans became the Great Distraction for me, the perfect escape from the black, nasty cloud that loomed over my formerly happy, normal family. The problems in my parents’ marriage hadn’t been helped by the prospect of a happy family celebration; in fact, they’d gotten worse. After making the decision not to run away and elope, I’d tried to think positively. Maybe by the time the wedding date rolls around, they’ll be back on track, I told myself.
I didn’t realize at the time that my mom already had one foot out the door. And not just out the door—running down the driveway, sprinting down the street. And her other foot wasn’t far behind. That I didn’t see it clearly at the time is a testament to the power of wishful thinking. Wishful thinking wrapped in a cloak of denial.
“We’re thinking September,” I told my mom when she pressed me for the wedding date.
“Oh…,” she replied, hesitating. “Really? September?” She seemed surprised; it was many months away. “Wouldn’t you rather do…May or June?” I could sense where she was headed with this. But that only made me dig in my heels further.
“Well, summer’s busy on the ranch,” I said. “And we want to be able to go on a honeymoon. And besides, it’ll be much cooler by then.”
“Okay…” Her voice trailed off. I knew what she wanted to say. She didn’t want to hold it together that long. She didn’t want my wedding to prolong the inevitable. I wouldn’t fully know this until much later, but I wouldn’t have had the guts to do anything about it even if I had known. The wedding plans were in full swing, and rather than digging deeper to find out the gravity of what was happening, I simply batted the fly away and began registering for china. With all the patterns and details and flowers and butterflies and blue transferware, it kept my brain wonderfully busy.
Of course, no china—however intricate and inviting—was as seductive as my fiancé, my future husband, who continued to eat me alive with one glance from his icy-blue eyes. Who greeted me not at the door of his house when I arrived almost every night of the week, but at my car. Who welcomed me not with a pat on the arm or even a hug but with an all-enveloping, all-encompassing embrace. Whose good-night kisses began the moment I arrived, not hours later when it was time to go home.
We were already playing house, what with my almost daily trips to the ranch and our five o’clock suppers and our lazy movie nights on his thirty-year-old leather couch, the same one his parents had bought when they were a newly married couple. We’d already watched enough movies together to last a lifetime. Giant with James Dean, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Reservoir Dogs, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, All Quiet on the Western Front, and, more than a handful of times, Gone With the Wind. I was continually surprised by the assortment of movies Marlboro Man loved to watch—his taste was surprisingly eclectic—and I loved discovering more and more about him through the VHS collection in his living room. He actually owned The Philadelphia Story. With Marlboro Man, surprises lurked around every corner.
We were already a married couple—well, except for the whole “sleepover thing” and the fact that we hadn’t actually gotten hitched yet. We stayed in, like any married couple over the age of sixty, and continued to get to know everything about each other completely outside the realm of parties, dates, and gatherings. All of that was way too far away, anyway—a minimum hour-and-a-half drive to the nearest big city—and besides that, Marlboro Man was a fish out of water in a busy, crowded bar. As for me, I’d been there, done that—a thousand and one times. Going out and painting the town red was unnecessary and completely out of context for the kind of life we’d be building together.
This was what we brought each other, I realized. He showed me a slower pace, and permission to be comfortable in the absence of exciting plans on the horizon. I gave him, I realized, something different. Different from the girls he’d dated before—girls who actually knew a thing or two about country life. Different from his mom, who’d also grown up on a ranch. Different from all of his female cousins, who knew how to saddle and ride and who were born with their boots on. As the youngest son in a family of three boys, maybe he looked forward to experiencing life with someone who’d see the country with fresh eyes. Someone who’d appreciate how miraculously countercultural, how strange and set apart it all really is. Someone who couldn’t ride to save her life. Who didn’t know north from south, or east from west.
If that defined his criteria for a life partner, I was definitely the woman for the job.