Chapter 21

Lena’s turn:

I consider it proof of God’s sense of humor that I can remember a few unfortunate girls in high school who swear that they got pregnant the first week they started having sex. Oh sure, some of that could be pure lying to cover the fact that unprotected sex is stupid in so many ways both physical and moral, but still – Jay and I have been banging away happily for three months and – nothing.

I’ve been checked out. So has Jay. We’ve done it in every conceivable (HAH!) position, multiple times. And here I am, buying feminine hygiene products for my fourth period since I got off the Pill.

I’m thinking that maybe a bottle of cheap wine and the sofa at a buddy’s apartment might be the key to enhanced fertility.

That conversation happened two weeks ago. Fact One: I’d never been drunk before in my life. Fact Two: Boone’s Farm wine tastes like bad Koolaid. Fact Three: We giggle a lot more during sex. Fact Four: Hangovers are BAD. My mouth tasted bad. My head hurt. My stomach was queasy, and not the good kind of queasy, like ‘morning sickness’, no it was the bad kind, like ‘burrito from a scantsy food truck’ queasy.

And I didn’t get pregnant. And it’s period time.

“Baby, sometimes it takes a while,” Jay says. He’s good at soothing and comforting. I’m not worried. Doctors say we’re good, we’ll just keep practicing. But period ... Shower.

Oh, since we’re gonna take a shower anyway, I tease the poor guy until he’s hard and rape him. With my butt on a towel, because I know that we’re making a mess but he gets his and I get mine and the washing machine works and so does the shower and I’m leaned back against him, letting the hot water wash over the two of us...

“You’re something, baby girl,” he says. “Really something.”

His arms are still strong and they wrap around me and love me.

Then it’s sipping herbal tea on the screened patio in the dark, listening to the sounds of nature. It’s a wonderful way to end that part of the day that exists outside our bed. That part, too ... We already DID it once, so going to sleep is just the matter of two bodies fitting together, contact in a manner that affirms comfort and love.

So the next few days are like much of our life together now. We seldom march to somebody else’s orders, unless you count the orders put into place long ago, the ones that have us up early on Sundays, getting dressed for church. Same thing Wednesday night, you know. Being Baptists, that’s the mid-week service. It’s our life, our beliefs and our closer community. Life in one place, like we’re doing, is a system of circles, you know.

There’s the little circle that encompasses our land. That tiniest of them, the epicenter, is me and Jay, with room for an undetermined third and maybe a fourth.

Slightly larger is the one that wraps up Bill and his family. I like to say that he came with the land. It’s almost true. It’s a very fortunate thing for us. Bill’s good people, as they say. His knowledge of farming and of the local area, including a lot of the people, has been worth its weight in gold.

Outside that circle sometimes, inside it sometimes, are the families of me and Jay. Since we got the house finished, we’ve had everybody up here.

Mom and Dad ... I saw Dad’s face when he and Jay walked the land. Dad started out life as a country boy, moved to town (yes, it’s a SMALL town, but it’s still a town) when he was a young teen. I think that seeing where his daughter ended up brought back a wave of nostalgia. Mom loved the house.

I know why. I had a lot to say about how the house was to be built, and right in the middle of my design process was a lifetime of helping Mom with housekeeping. I remembered all the little complaints and all our work-arounds and when Jay and I built ours, we tried to eliminate all of them. Jay heard much of that.

When Mom and Dad left, Jay and I curled up in the aftermath for what he calls an ‘after-action report’.

“Your dad loved the place.”

“Mom did, too. She said she’d love for Dad to have a place to putter around. His little garden at home, his time, just like your dad’s...”

“Why don’t we build ‘em a little place right down the hill?” Jay asked me. “Would they move here?”

Inwardly I squealed. Outwardly, “I dunno. They’ve been there since I was a baby.”

“It’s an old neighborhood. They didn’t change. The neighborhood changed around them.”

“I know. I worry. Used to be full of people like your parents and mine. Now...”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s a matter of time before somebody decides that those old people might have something worth stealing.”

“Then you think...”

“Right over there, right before that big oak. Extend the driveway ... Two bedrooms – your sister can finish high school here.”

“You’re serious, baby?”

“Not like money’s a problem.”

“How do we tell Mom and Dad that we paid for it?”

“We don’t. We say we used some good investments to get started, down payment, so to speak, then when they move in, we sell their old house, use that money to help pay this one off...”

“Uh, I think Dad’s gonna see through that,” I said.

“Prob’ly so,” Jay conceded. “But he’s gonna have something he can sort of hide behind. Plausible deniability, sort of...”

“Yeah. I’ll call ‘em, see what they think.”

He got an extra-enthusiastic bit of excitement that evening, I think. It’s difficult to say, though. I have never held back anything when making love with Jay. He seems to bring out the kitten in me. Or the tiger. Or whatever. But when I had him throbbing in my mouth, I was feeling particularly partnerish.

Jay’s sister and her family came to visit, too. There’s something about kids and farms. Jay fired up the tractor, rode the two kids around, each perched entirely too precariously alongside him, leaving me there with Cathy in full combat-mode fret while her husband laughed.

“Oh, yeah, Cat,” he laughed. “They have trucks going up and down the road hauling off the bodies of kids who die on their uncle’s tractor.”

“I don’t care. They’re MY kids...”

I understand some of her trepidation.

Of course, our farm is also a petting zoo. The bull stood at the fence and got a week’s worth of scratching attention. The goats saw these two little humans as their equals, and when, over Cathy’s protests, we turned the kids (goat and human) loose in the pasture, the goats followed them around.

“Paradise, Jay,” Sam said.

“Yeah,” Cathy added. “Dad’s looking down at this, smiling. And that picture of Mom in the kitchen ... Lena, she loved you when you were little. I’m sure she sees you in your kitchen.”

“I like to think that. We’re lucky. We both have parents worth honoring. This place is for Jay and me, and we’re this way because of them.”

They stayed overnight. The kids did the old-fashioned sprawling on living room furniture. I can’t help but think that Sammy wanted to sleep on the patio. We need a couple of folding cots for that.

We did breakfast all the way. Our charcuterie business is doing well and we’ve worked up some good procedures for real bacon and sausage. Our hams are not going to be ready for another six months, minimum. Good hams take time to cure.

“Mom, this egg’s ORANGE!” Chloe exclaimed.

“That egg comes from Aunt Lena’s chickens, baby. It’s a lot fresher than the ones from the store. And the color is because she feeds hers a lot better.”

I’m thinking that Cathy learned something somewhere, but later, Jay explained that Mom and Dad, his, used to keep chickens before the city ‘civilized’ them out of it.

I’m glad our pork comes from the guy up the road. I have a feeling that by the end of the week, Chloe would’ve given names to every farm animal on the place, and roasting a chunk of a pig named Bert would’ve been unacceptable for a little city girl. I’m glad we got away with the eggs.

When Jay’s bunch left, they did so with promises that if the kids wanted to come up for a week or two when school was out, they were going to be welcome. And I’m trying to figure out how to keep Sammy from regarding the cattle’s watering trough as a small swimming pool.

So here I am, having a period when I don’t WANT a period, and I can look out the kitchen window and see Jay over there overseeing a bunch of builders putting stakes in the ground for Mom and Dad’s place.

My sister Alyssa and I had several long talks about the idea of Mom and Dad moving here. She had the expected ‘but I’ll leave all my friends behind’ and ‘that’s soooo out in the sticks’ moments.

“Liss,” I said, “you’re gonna do this most of your life – move on from one place to another. It’s the norm today. Mom and Dad, being in the same place for all those years, that’s getting less and less common. And the neighborhood...”

“I knowwww,” she conceded. “Used to be different. There’s stuff goin’ on up and down the street. I get scared if I come home after dark.”

“This is beautiful...”

“Yeah, but you’re married. Jay treats you like a princess...”

“He does that. But you ... Guys are different around here. The high school ... We know some of ‘em from church. Know their parents.”