“Night, Timber,” I said.
Timber slammed the lid shut on the garbage can. “You take care,” he said.
Up above I could see the Milky Way. Inside, my husband rubbed his fingers against the lids of his eyes until he saw stars.
DURING THE COMMERCIAL BREAK we watched an advertisement for the Helping Hand Centers, a chain of plastic surgery hospitals expanding that very moment to a city near you. Rio DeCarlo was their national spokesperson. I did not like the way the name made it sound like a charity. I was sure there was nothing free about it.
“That Rio DeCarlo will do anything for a quick buck,” I said.
At the end of the commercial a list of new branches flashed on the screen. “Please don’t let it be Omaha, please don’t let it be Omaha,” I silently prayed.
“Moonie, look! Omaha!”
It was a good thing we did not have any money, I thought. I worked part-time afternoons as a bookkeeper at a welding company with a sinking business supplying various parts to farms across the states. A lot of bigger farms had gobbled up the littler ones, so there was less need for the small-time parts companies. There was almost no point in the job—I made just enough to pay our rent—except I needed the benefits and could keep Thomas on my plan while he figured out what he wanted to do next. He had been working with his father on his farm but they had fallen out the previous year. Thomas’s father was a difficult man, neither a saint nor a sinner, just a crank who was never satisfied with anything his son did. Thomas worked the fields and worked them just as he was raised, but somehow it was never fast enough. Farmers were always rushing in the spring when it was time to plant, to make sure they got the crops in before the rain. And rushing in the fall during harvest, bringing in their crops to make their money for the year. I always laughed when I saw how fast Thomas drove during those seasons, and how he slowed down to a crawl during summer and winter. It was like he was two different men during the year, or two different drivers anyway. You could tell what time of year it was by how fast the cars moved on the road. I swear Thomas dropped forty miles an hour off his internal speed limit come November.
That past September, something happened in the field between them. Thomas never gave me the full details. He just brushed me away when I asked him, like I was a mosquito dive-bombing him at dusk, and then stalked off to the balcony to have a chew. “Same bullshit as usual, Moonie!” is all he said later on in bed—but I think it had something to do with what time he got to work. And I was in charge of the wake-up calls in our household. I had been sliding lately when it happened. I had my own seasons, too, as a farmer’s wife, and it was always like that at the end of summer with me. I wanted to sleep in, snuggle up next to my husband. Thomas said he did not mind, he never blamed me for a thing, he liked being close to me in the mornings, too. Still, I was afraid to push him as to the whys and what-fors of the fight. We squeezed as much as we could out of his savings and I let my mother slip me some cash here and there, until he figured out his next move. “All’s I know is, I never want to work another farm again,” he said. But what else do you know how to do? I thought. His unemployment killed any notion of having a baby, but Thomas was in no rush to have kids anyway. He saw all our high school classmates getting married and stacking up babies like pancakes in the morning. Filling themselves up with these new lives, is what I thought. Thomas said they were giving up their free time, giving up their peace and quiet. “I don’t want to share you with anyone,” is what he would tell me. I would not have minded a little one running around the house, but I could not argue when we did not have much money anyway. There were a few months in there I was hoping he would start college, like Timber, but I was not going to push. For now, we lived our unconventional life, me supporting my man.