Cloven Hooves. Megan Lindholm

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СКАЧАТЬ now as he bends over slightly to tug his T-shirt off over his head. He is tall and well muscled and he bends gracefully, the muscles of his back delineated along his spine. He straightens, and his soft blond hair falls back into place, almost brushing his shoulders. I love his hair. When we are making love, it falls forward and brushes my cheek. I like to reach up and grasp the nape of his neck, feeling the muscles beneath my hand and his hair soft against my fingers, like the mane of a stallion. Dick Potter hates his son’s soft hair. Goddam Hippie Hairdo, he calls it, all in caps. But I feel a small victory in that Tom has not given in to his demands for a haircut.

      He has been going shirtless for this last week or so, and the skin of his back is golden. When he straightens and looks at me, he is all tawny colors, golden skin, soft blond hair, and gentle brown eyes. Lion colors. He knows I have been watching him and he smiles, anticipating pleasure. He is so incredibly beautiful to me that an aching swells inside me. Not of desire, but of love thwarted. I love him so. And I am about to start a quarrel.

      “Tom, honey, when are we going home?”

      He stops in the act of lowering his pants and actually sits down on the bed in surprise. He turns to face me, his boyish face wrinkled with perplexity. He has been thinking of sex, not of neglected cabins and gardens going to weed. His fine lion hair is rumpled where he has drawn his T-shirt off over his head. His amber eyes, now the color of sunlight on beer bottles, go wide. “When are we what, Lyn?”

      “When are we going home?” I repeat doggedly, patiently. “We were only going to spend a month here, remember? Just a pleasant spring interlude on the old family farm, camping out in the guest cottage, get Teddy out of Alaska for a while, let him see what a real spring planting time is like. Then somehow it became a month or so. Okay, May is fine, even though there’s a lot of stuff I wanted to get done on our own place. Teddy’s had a great time with the piglets and the chicks and the ducklings and all. But, honey, we’re in to June now, and I was thinking we’d be headed home any day now. Then, at dinner tonight, all of a sudden your dad starts talking as if we’re staying here the rest of the summer, and this winter, too.” I hear the stridency in my voice, take a deep breath. I stop ripping the brush through my hair as I realize my scalp is sore. Carefully, I soften my voice. “Babe, can you tell me what’s going on?”

      Tom heaves the long-suffering sigh of the nagged husband. It is a new trick of his, one I don’t particularly care for. “Lyn. Honey. Don’t jump to conclusions. You’ve gotten so touchy lately. Yes, Dad did ask me if I would consider staying out the summer and part of the winter. You know Bix hurt his shoulder. Well, it’s going to lay him up for longer than we thought. So that leaves Dad trying to run the place and the business. And this is the busy time of year. Not only the farm to tend, but this is the time of year when folks are buying equipment. Being a man short around here is no joke anytime, so Dad invited us to stay on. That’s all. Just until Bix gets back on his feet. And between you and me, I don’t think that’s going to take as long as Dad thinks it will. Probably only another month or so. That’s all. And I didn’t give him a definite answer, because I wanted to talk to you about it first. But you know how my folks are. They think that if they just act like something is going to happen, it will.”

      And it usually does, where we’re concerned, I think. No, I have said the foolish words aloud, I can tell by the sparks that light suddenly in Tom’s eyes. He finishes undressing in silence, kicking his pants away into a heap on the floor. He pushes the covers aside and swings his long pale legs into bed. His posture tells me I won’t be getting any tonight. He pulls up the covers before he speaks again.

      His voice is a lie and a deception, reasonable and sweet. “If you want to take that attitude, then I suppose there’s no point to our discussing it at all.” You idiot, you spoiled brat, you cowering, narrow-minded little wretch, his attitude says to me. Refusing without even hearing me out. Heartless bitch. He hunches his shoulder under the white sheet and blue blanket. His soft hair fans out over the pillowcases. The pillowcases are white, but the cuffs feature Mother Maurie’s cross-stitch embroidery. A gaudy rooster on Tom’s, a plump little hen for me. The cross-stitched motto on Tom’s proclaims that he’s “all set to strut and crow,” while my hen petulantly affirms that she’d rather “set awhile.” They match a set we were given for a wedding gift. Steffie thinks they are adorable. They make me want to retch. Tom’s voice draws me back to our argument. “I’ll just tell them you didn’t like the idea, and that will be that.”

      Oh, goody. You do that. I’d love to see their faces. I take a deep breath, put pettiness aside. “Tom. Don’t snap at me. You know what I’m thinking about, or at least you should. There’s our house. It’s been sitting empty since March, and we’re just asking for vandalism. God knows it’s probably full of mice and red squirrels already.”

      “Pete and Beth said they’d keep an eye on it.”

      “Pete and Beth both work, honey. Driving into our place twice a week only means they can let us know after the windows get broken. We’re not as isolated as we once were out there. Last summer I saw hikers and backpackers almost every day. And poor Bruno will be wondering what happened to us. I know they’ll feed him, but he’s only a pup. He’ll be half wild when we get back there as it is. And there’s Teddy’s school. He starts kindergarten this fall. I don’t want to have him start here, and then pull him out halfway through the year. Starting school is tough enough on a kid without doing that. And, last but not least, there’s the small matter of my job.”

      In spite of my best effort, my voice was getting cold and rocky. Don’t make this a fight, I beg myself. Make it a discussion. He has to see the logic of what you’re saying, you don’t have to be a bitch about it. Just tell him. Lay it all out for him. I pause a moment, hoping he’ll say something. He doesn’t. I take a breath and go on.

      “It took a lot of nerve for me to ask for this much time off. If Annie weren’t my friend as well as my boss, she’d never have said yes. But she can’t keep running the store on her own. She’s got some kid in there for the summer, but come winter the kid has to be back in school and she’ll be on her own. She’ll have to hire someone to take my place, and there won’t be a job for me to go back to.”

      I pause and gather the reins of my self-control. Tom will see. He’s a reasonable man, one who has always treated me as an equal, as a person to be considered. But the silence lengthens and it looks as if he is having to struggle to control himself before he speaks. Neither of us are good at this, at quarreling. We do it very seldom, most things are settled conversationally, or one or the other of us will demur to the other’s area of expertise. I let Tom select the used truck we bought, he let me choose the insulation for the attic, we recognize there are areas where one of us is more knowledgeable than the other. But this is a different thing, an area of opinion based on emotions. And we are both experts on our own emotions.

      “Jesus Christ, Lyn,” he sighs at last. “You make it sound like I’m contemplating murder. All we’re thinking about is spending a winter here with my folks and giving them a hand over a hard spot. I mean, hell, they paid for my college, they brought me up … I feel I owe them. And I have thought about all the stuff you mentioned. There’s a good school for Teddy just down the road from here. The school bus stops right by the gate. And I bet Pete and Beth could rent our place out for us in only a couple of weeks, if we let them know the kind of tenants we want. Taking care of Bruno would be part of the deal. And, hey, Dad said that if we were staying the winter, he saw no reason why Teddy couldn’t have that little pony that Red has up for sale. You know how he drools over that little pinto every time we drive past there. His eyes practically popped out when Dad mentioned it.”

      “You discussed that in front of him? Tom, that’s not fair! You get his hopes all set up, and when Mommy wants to go home, that makes her the bad guy. And you still haven’t mentioned anything about my job.”

      I am honestly angry СКАЧАТЬ