Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

30. Before

Before

We have a farm boy who wants nothing more than to be outside from dawn to dusk with his parents, his uncle, his grandpa. The glory of these first five years, did I appreciate it enough? Listening to Frank and Bobby crossing the yard to the dairy each morning, our son’s ceaseless, high-pitched chatter. The men back again for a cooked breakfast, Bobby sitting next to his grandpa, raised up on cushions, still talking. He and I weeding, the endless weeding. Bobby’s expert detection for rogue plants, small hands that clasp and tug at roots until there is a great pile beside him. Rewarding ourselves with hot chocolate before we venture out again. Sometimes sitting on the iron gate at the bottom of the sheep field while the valley echoes with ewes calling for their lambs and the air hums with insects, a breeze whipping our skin. Drinking it all in, like Frank once did, and David and his dad before him; my boy reaching back to his ancestors through these lumpy green fields, to the sounds and sights, the taste, the touch of a thousand years.

Already Bobby is turning out to be his own person. He can sometimes drive me mad, refusing to come in when he’s called. I have a little handbell I ring when he’s out playing in the garden—or at least that’s where he’s supposed to be—and I’ll ring it for several minutes before I accept he’s wandered off to find Frank or David. I can never stay cross with him for long, none of us can; one disarming grin from Bobby and all is forgiven.

All too soon Bobby begins at the primary school. He looks like someone else’s child in his shirt and tie, his shiny lace-up shoes.

“I look really weird,” he says, inspecting himself in the bathroom mirror as he cleans his teeth.

“Smart, not weird.”

“Hmm.” He looks unsure. “If you say so.”

At the school, my son’s confidence amazes me. Most of the new kindergarten children are clinging to their mothers, but Bobby saunters toward his classroom without a backward glance. At the last moment he remembers me, sprinting back to whisper in my ear, “Will you be all right without me?”

No, Bobby. Let’s go home. We’ll try this another day , I manage not to say.

“I’ll be fine. You go and have some fun.”

With Bobby gone during the day, I throw myself into working on the farm. David shows me all the things his sons absorbed from childhood. I learn to spot the early signs of mastitis in a heifer, where to look for abscesses in sheep, how to examine their eyes, hooves, the quality of their wool. I can press my hands to their bellies and haunches and know if they need a better grade of grass, if they are fat enough to be taken to market. I learn how to roll fields with the roller looped up to the tractor. David even teaches me to drive the combine harvester. There is something cocoon-like about being high up in the cab, the panorama of our fields stretched before us. I used to love spending time in the combine with Frank, traveling up and down the cornfields at its leisurely, unhurried pace. There was an intimacy, an aloneness that could be hard to find in the farmhouse, and we talked about everything in those long stretches while we reaped and threshed the family corn. I sometimes say, because it makes Frank laugh, we fell in love in a combine harvester.

Perhaps it’s for reasons of intimacy—the two of us looking straight ahead rather than at each other—when David asks: “Will you be having another little one soon? What with Bobby at school.”

I’m taken aback by the question. It is by far the most personal thing my father-in-law has ever asked me. “Are you trying to get rid of me already, David?” I say, teasing him.

He nods and says no more about it. Fair enough , the nod says. It’s your business, not mine.

It’s not that I haven’t thought about it. Part of me craves a newborn, that blissful, insular vacuum, coexistence in a sleep-deprived parallel universe, as closely connected as you were when the tiny creature was in your womb. The scent of them, the shape of them, the warm weight cradled in your arms, the delicate sound of their breathing. Second time around it would be different, of course. Now there is Bobby, who expects my full attention when he gets home from school. I picture myself nursing a baby, trapped in my chair for forty-five minutes while Bobby grows more and more impatient waiting for me to finish. But then, the baby needs changing. And now he is crying, and I must walk him up and down, soothing him, no option but to neglect my elder child. I feel Bobby’s shock and disappointment that his mother, who has walked each step of the last five years with him, is no longer available for his every whim, even for a few of them. And then his resignation as he accepts the new order of things. The way Bobby would change, the gradual loosening of the bond between us. I’m not ready for that.

Several days later, it’s apparent Frank has been talking to David. He gets into bed and asks: “Is your diaphragm in?”

The fact of his asking is unusual.

“Of course.”

We have sex most nights, almost without exception. Frank says it clears his head of the day and helps him get to sleep. For me it’s when I feel most connected to Frank, a closeness that is hard to find at any other time of day.

“Why do you ask?”

“I was thinking we could stop using it. Only if you wanted to.”

“You’ve been talking to your dad, haven’t you?”

“I have.”

“Do you want us to start trying for a baby?”

“It would be nice, wouldn’t it? A brother or sister for Bobby.”

“It would. It really would.”

I think I have injected the right amount of enthusiasm into my voice but I can never fool Frank.

“Why don’t you want to?”

I pause for a moment, trying to find the words to help him understand.

“I know it feels like the right time. But I’m not ready to cut ties with Bobby just yet. I’m sure I will be one day, but we’re still so young, you and I. And it’s different for mothers, so full-time and unrelenting. I wouldn’t be able to be with him in the way I am now. Does that make sense?”

This is the thing about Frank: He always gets it. He reaches out an arm and pulls me toward him until my face is pressed against his chest. “Perfect sense. We got the best one. Why risk it with another?”

It’s different the way we make love tonight. For a start we never break eye contact, not once. Frank presses himself very deeply inside me and he stays there, not moving, looking down at me, and I feel so turned on by him, running my hands up and down his chest, feeling the hardness of muscle under skin, his broadness, his strength, the heft of him and, also, how much I love him. When he finally starts to move in slow, deep circles, each one draws a gasp of pleasure from my throat, even though we always try to be quiet with the rest of the family just across the corridor. But I’m too taken to stop, my whole body starts to spiral and shake and I’m gripping on to him, crying his name, and he’s whispering in the darkness, “It’s OK,” and it feels violent and tender and like nothing on earth. And then Frank is moving hard and fast now, his breathing hectic and broken, but he still keeps looking at me, as he comes, as I do, and then, instantly, we are holding each other, laughing and laughing at the intensity, the raw madness of it.

Frank whispers: “Christ. What was that?”

And I’m half crying, half laughing, when I whisper back: “I know.”

We ease into our sleeping positions, his arm wrapped around me, and his voice is already slippery with drowsiness. “Why would we want to change a thing?”