“Speaking of reading,” Mark sighs, leaning back, the bucket creaking under the weight. “Did you ever read my novel The Milk Maid?” He chuckles before I can respond. “Never mind. You did. I think you referred to it as ‘hick porn’.”
I glare at him. “I hope you’re not suggesting we spend this time—”
“I’m not.” He cuts in, almost sternly, with a look that warns me away from finishing the thought. In the novel, a farmhand and a lost socialite get stuck in a barn during a snowstorm. They spend the next five hours in a variety of sexual positions, most of which had me setting down the book—the scenes uncomfortably graphic. “I was just going to say…” He gives me a look of mild contempt, like I’m the one with the dirty mind, and he’s the picture of innocence. “I wrote that book right here in this barn. On a night like tonight. Waiting on a cow to birth.”
“Shocker.” I drawl, though the information does interest me. My ideas always come from the strangest places, the most random of situations. Bethany once cut her hand on the edge of her dollhouse, and I—while cleaning the cut—had the idea for a colony of blood-dwellers: minuscule people who live in our bloodstreams, their lives in continual upheaval, depending on tiny things that occur to our bodies—the flu for example, or a cut such as hers. The idea had been so strong, so visually there, that I stopped in the midst of the first aid, hurrying down the hall and to my office, a scene sketched out on paper—right then, before it slipped my mind. Simon had come home to find Bethany still standing on the stool by the sink, her sleeve soaked in blood, the water running, and had flipped out. He’d interrupted my scene, my entire thought process, with his yelling, face red and furious, as if she’d been dying or something. He always did that. Over-exaggerated the unimportant and under-focused on the things that had mattered. He’d told my mother about the instance, and a simple writing sprint had become another building block that was later used against me. So much drama, all over a book I had never ended up writing.
It’s funny, how book ideas often seem so brilliant when they first appear. It takes weeks of work to really discover the potential of a story, if there is any at all. Looking around this big barn, the privacy of it, the dusty smells in the air… it’s not a giant stretch to see what he had imagined. The door creaking open, a blonde head peeking in, worry across her face, her designer heels wobbly on the loose dirt. And then, around the corner comes a six foot tall, muscular man, his jeans dirty, t-shirt stretched tight across broad shoulders, a shy smile breaching that gorgeous face. Because, you know—all farmhands are undiscovered male models. And all super-hot blondes drive alone, cross-country, through snowstorms.
“So you wrote all of it?” I ask, glancing over at him. “The entire thing? While waiting on a cow to be born?”
“Not all of it. But the first six or seven chapters.” He stretches his neck to one side and yawns, his Adam’s apple bobbing amongst the stubble on his neck. “I keep some notebooks in the storage room. Just in case inspiration strikes. I can grab one now if you want to work a little.”
I consider it. “No, I’m good.” Right now, the thought of diving into the past and discussing it with him is exhausting. Maybe later tonight, if I don’t get sleepy—we can work. Already today, I’ve thought too much about the past.
Mater’s head suddenly lifts, and I watch her tail swing upward, a motion that has happened a dozen times in the last hour. My shoes jerk back when her hind legs flex, a volley of liquid spewing from her rear, and I scramble to my feet at the same time that Mark straightens. He smiles at me and raises his eyebrows. “Looks like the excitement is starting.”
I pull down on the edge of my shirt and examine the fresh pool of liquid, one quickly absorbed by the dirt. I move along the stall wall, my butt bumping against the wood as I edge around to stand beside him, my eye nervously fixed on Mater, who was sniffing her discharged water as if surprised by it. “Is it coming?” I ask.
“Soon. She’ll most likely lie back down to have it.”
Another change in position. My heart goes out to the big girl, one who seems so laborious in her movements, her joints creaking whenever she struggles into place. I steal the bucket from him and sit. “Does it always take so long?”
“I suppose you were faster?” he asks, and I don’t like the question. I wasn’t faster. I was a terrible birther. I prepared for every possibility and still came up short, all of my perfectly timed huffs and puffs and pushes—all inadequate. It was as if my body agreed with my heart and put up a roadblock against the oncoming child. After all, I’d never wanted a child. It had been Simon who had pushed. Pleaded. Begged. Threatened. I had merely, after two years of arguing, given up. One baby, I had made him promise. Just one. And, after that day in the hospital, after that emergency surgery… that promise hadn’t really mattered. One baby was the only possibility that remained.
“Helena?”
“I wasn’t faster.” The words nip off my lips, and anyone with any sense would leave it alone.
“Tell me the story.”
“No.”
“You’re going to have to tell me at some point. Might as well be now.”
He’s right. A few days ago, he wrote the wedding scene—the small church packed with strangers, all Simon’s guests, Simon’s friends, Simon’s family. My mother had been the lone face in the crowd that I had recognized, her face beaming, a handkerchief gripped in her hand as if there was a chance of tears. Two days ago, we wrapped up our first year of marriage, and covered much of the pregnancy. We are only a chapter or two away from Bethany’s birth. I tug on the end of my ponytail and a few strands come free.
“Helena?”
Mater has stopped her sniffing of the water, and I watch her back stiffen, muscles flexing in effort. I sigh. “We were at home when my contractions started. I was writing—working on Deeply Loved. We started to time the contractions, with a plan to go to the hospital when they were four minutes apart.”
He nods.
“It was on the way to the hospital that I realized something was wrong. I told Simon to stop, to pull over. I was cramping, and wanted to move to the backseat, where I could lie down. But he wouldn’t listen.” I swallow. “He was so intent on getting to the hospital. He screamed at me to shut up and breathe. That’s what he said. ‘Shut up Helena. For once, just shut up.’” And I had, one of the rare moments when I listened to him. “The pain—I remember closing my eyes and wondering if I would pass out from it.” I hadn’t. I’d been conscious when he’d slammed to a halt in front of the emergency room doors. My head had hit the window and I’d cursed at Simon. The baby, he had said. Don’t curse in front of the baby. His voice, when he said those words—I can still hear it now. The excitement, the happiness that had been in those syllables. They had sparked something in me, a flood of anger. I was there, in such agony, and he was happy. Happy over this thing that he had done, that he had wanted, that he had caused. Yet, he wasn’t the one whose back ached. He wasn’t the one who had leaked pee all over his panties. He wasn’t the one that wanted to die, the fat woman that had crammed her swollen feet into sneakers, the one being pulled out of the car by strangers. Even now, the memory of that voice infuriates me. It shouldn’t, but it does.
Mater moans, and I wish I could do something to help her.
Two hooves come out first, pinned together so tightly I thought they were fused. They travel slowly, like thick honey from a bottle, and then stop, right at the knees, the hooves sticking straight out as the cow appears to give up, her head dropping, her contractions ceasing.
“What’s happening?” I look to Mark, thinking about the baby calf, his tiny lungs struggling to breathe, squashed inside her body.
“Relax. Give her a moment.”