“You look … terrific. I mean, I always knew you were pretty, but I didn’t realize …” He gestured at the whole of me. “I mean, beautiful.”
I was wearing a shapeless oversize Carhartt canvas jacket, jeans, and mucking-out boots, and I’d tied my hair back severely to keep it out of my face.
“Where were you?”
“I went to some strange places. I’ll tell you all about it, but not right now, okay? I gotta just … try to catch my breath.”
I was surfing alternating waves of joy and resentment. “Did you know you were hurting me?”
“I don’t know about that, but I thought about you an awful lot.”
Silence. I wanted to cry again. I had so much to tell, so much to ask, that it all dammed up and jammed up. I managed: “You here for a while?”
“As long as I’m welcome.”
“I ask because we’ve got a bull coming tomorrow and there’s still prep to do for that. And then I’ve got cows to milk. And other stuff that can’t wait. You’ll have to come help out or sit here with Cat or something. That is, if you’re not leaving in the next ten minutes.” I was trying to be hurtful.
He dipped his chin. “Sure. But I have a question for you. Personal question.”
“What’s that?”
“Are you happy here?”
I actually thought about it for a few seconds. “Sometimes.”
“So … How many options, life options, do you have right now?”
“What? Oh, Christ! I know what Cat thinks about—”
“No, I mean it. Nothing to do with Cat. I really want to know. Me.”
I thought of a lot of things to say, mostly ways to defend myself or say it was only temporary or turn it around in a way that would punish him. But I said, “What you see amounts to the sum total. For a variety of reasons.”
“I ask because I’m pretty low on options myself. Lots of … reasons at my end, too.”
I was moved. He was approaching intimacy by telling me we had to take each other’s existential temperature first, no beating around the bush. I remembered now that his quick intuition and candor had often pissed off his insecure teenage sister and had not improved his popularity at school, except among the smart-ass crowd.
“Yeah, I’ve got exactly one iron in the fire.” Then he added, brightening, “But it’s a good one!”
Before I could answer, the phone rang. It was Jack Pelletier, Brassard’s friend and the owner of the bull, calling to remind us he was coming by with Maximillian in the morning. We joked about how the ladies would have to hold out for another day. Then Will’s car pulled up in the driveway, and there came Brassard driving the Deere around the far side of the barn, returning from the joys of manure spreading. A moment later, Will stamped his feet in the mudroom. Then I saw the Agri-Mark truck turning into the bulk tank access drive on the far side of the old barn.
“I gotta go see to the Agri-Mark guy,” I told Erik. “The milk pickup people. This is how it goes around here.”
Chapter 34
Sept. 16
Erik has what is for me a disconcerting way of meeting people. He smiles, shakes hands, says the requisite polite and blandly positive things, but then tips his head back and watches, still holding a small smile, eyes ever so slightly lidded. It’s not supercilious, not at all, not judgmental, but you can almost hear his synapses sizzling. He’s just observing. He’s letting the other person show their hand first. It only lasts a couple of seconds, and I doubt anyone notices.
He did that momentary assessment when I introduced him to Earnest, standing in the front yard: Earnest who was radiant with pleasure, truly happy to discover who this unknown visitor turned out to be, shaking Erik’s hand and squeezing his shoulder hard.
Erik did it again when Will got back, as Will more reservedly shook hands, remarked on our family resemblance, and told him how much the Brassards had enjoyed having his sister “join the team here.” When Will asked, the way one does, what Erik did for a living, Erik chuckled or coughed and said, “It’s kind of an overused answer, but I guess I’ve gotta say ‘a little of this and a little of that.’” Will was courteous enough not to push him for more. I have the same question.
Brassard had towed the manure spreader around to the far side of the barn, to its home near the other really stinky things, and when he joined us and learned who Erik was, his eyebrows popped above the rim of his glasses. A weather-front odor of manure had arrived with him, so he mimed shaking hands, made a small grin, and left us, saying he had something of a hankering for a shower and a change of clothes.
I took Erik on a tour of the farm, with Earnest and Cat tagging along tactfully well behind us: The dog’s name is Bob. Here’s the old barn, here’s the milking parlor, here’s the skid-steer, that over there’s the manure stack, and that’s the manure spreader, I had a hard time back in Boston, I really felt I had destroyed my whole life, this is my special buddy the old Ford, that’s Brassard’s Deere, there’s the tedder and that’s the roll baler and that’s the feed mixer thing, it got so I missed you and worried about you so much that I learned to cut you out of my thoughts, do you even get that? This big shed is where the cows will live come cold weather, here are the workers’ quarters where
