Chapter 24 #2
There was a stilling in the room. My father-in-law was smiling at me in a strange way.
It was a transparent look; the kind of look my husband hadn’t given me since our wedding day.
The look a man gives a woman when he’s imagining her naked body.
Considering what he will do with it. The warmth of it, the softness. Fingers molding skin like clay.
A hotness pooled in my stomach, spreading down my legs. “What do you want from me?”
What I had known from the very first moment I met him: Doug was a real man.
Effortlessly masculine. He didn’t ask for power, or respect, or submission.
He demanded it. He was the kind of man to climb up a mountain of dead bodies in the name of touching the sky.
I hated him, I wanted him dead, and also: I sometimes imagined what it would feel like for a man like that to have me.
Biblically, I mean. Which is another way of saying: If Doug had asked me what I thought he was going to ask me, I might have given it to him.
I might even have liked it. Might even have asked, when everything was said and done, for more.
“I want you to have more babies with my son.”
The warm, liquid feeling in my stomach hardened and froze.
Doug was still looking at me, but his gaze had dropped from my face to my stomach.
As if the force of his own imagination might be enough to impregnate me on its own.
None of this felt erotic anymore. It felt cold and mechanical.
Impossibly sterile. The only way this man wanted to enter me was through a scheduled procedure.
Frigid silver tongs and a long bovine syringe.
“Amelia says you’re still breastfeeding,” he said. “It’s harder to get pregnant if you’re breastfeeding. You know that, right?”
Close your eyes, Natalie. Relax. You’re going to feel a small pinch in three, two, one … There we go. Nice and easy. Now, hold still—
“That’s the deal. I’ll pay for this little farm fantasy, and in return you’ll give my son a big American family.”
A terrifying thought: Did Doug know how cold my marital bed was?
Did he know that his son preferred to stare with pained focus at some point in the distance over my head whenever he found himself in the disappointing position of having to thrust over me?
Did he know that even that poor attempt at a performance happened so infrequently as to feel like a revelation whenever it finally did?
“I will!” I said, as brightly as I could. “That was always the plan.”
“Well,” Doug said, and reached for his phone.
“Just wanted to make sure. I’ll make the call to the accountant today.
” He was looking at a paper on his desk now, trying to make sense of his own handwriting.
“Thanks for coming in, sweetheart,” he said without looking up. And with that, I was dismissed.
I left Doug’s office and walked down the long hallway to the foyer in a daze.
It was just after five, a time of day that usually reminded me of my mother.
She hated that strange dusky hour when one could be sitting and reading a book with none of the lights on, only to look up and realize she was sitting in the pitch-black.
There was nothing my mother found more disturbing than a sudden wash of darkness.
But from now on, I knew, this time of day when the light left the world would remind me exclusively of Doug.
I reached the foot of the stairs. Across the hallway through the kitchen, Amelia was standing at the counter, humming “Für Elise” softly to herself, a large pork loin defrosting on a baking tray behind her.
I watched as she crushed one of her small white pills with the back of a spoon against the countertop, then swept the powder into her palm and sprinkled it into a small cup of fat-free pudding.
She took a big bite, closing her eyes in rapture.
Upstairs, Clementine was still in her crib, napping, and Caleb was at his desk, watching some YouTube video where a man with an absurdly gelled goatee was gesticulating wildly, the volume on low.
“Caleb, I told you that you have to wake her up by four.” I crossed the room and reached over into the crib, patting Clementine’s bum softly. “Now she’s going to go to sleep late.”
“Sorry,” he said. “My bad.”
I glanced over my shoulder as Clementine started to squeak awake. “Are you even listening to me? Or are you just used to saying ‘sorry’?”
“Yeah,” he said absentmindedly. “Hey. Did you know that there are teachers who vaccinate kids at school? Like, without even telling the parents?”
I picked Clementine up from her crib, then turned back to him. “I’ve never heard of that, no.”
“Unbelievable, right? And apparently, there’s this one school in Southern California that makes the kids crawl around on their hands and knees all day to make them feel like insignificant little worms.”
I sighed. The conversation with Doug had left me drained, almost physically sore. It felt like my father-in-law had handled me roughly—squeezing me, rolling me around in his palm—and now my brain and my uterus felt equally tender, like a pair of bruised fruits. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s true! I was doing research on what you said to me the other day, about what schools do to kids? And you were right, Nattie—only it’s worse, so much worse.”
I crossed the room and peered down at the paused screen while Clementine drowsily patted my cheek with her tiny fingers. The title read, in all caps, THE HIDDEN TRUTH OF AMERICA’S PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM!!!!
“This guy looks like a whacko,” I said finally.
“He’s a doctor, Natalie. Show him some respect.
And anyways: he’s the one who helped me realize how ridiculous it was for me to want to be a kindergarten teacher.
Do you know, Natalie, why I’ve been struggling so much lately?
Why I can’t seem to find my purpose? It’s not my fault, actually.
It’s the people in charge of this country who are trying to feminize men. ”
“Isn’t your father one of the people in charge of this country?”
Caleb sighed. “Yeah, but like, only in an institutional way.”
“And he’s trying to … feminize you?”
“No.” He seemed frustrated that I wasn’t understanding. “Everyone is. Think about it: in the olden days, I’d have been a soldier by now. Or a blacksmith.”
“Since when do you want to be a blacksmith?”
“I don’t. My point is just—I wasn’t meant to live this way.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
If there was one thing I knew for sure, it’s that Caleb would’ve been the worst soldier on the planet.
It was ironic: we were close to alignment—I couldn’t agree more that my husband had been behaving, as of late, like a silly little girl—and yet also I’d never felt more lost in a conversation.
Clearly it had been a mistake to send him down a public-school-curriculum rabbit hole.
I made a mental note to circle back on that soon.
But now was not the moment for that. Now was showtime; the single biggest presentation of my life.
“Listen,” I said, “speaking of your purpose. I found something that might interest you.”
I showed him the listing. Clementine played with my hair while I stood by his chair, watching as he flipped through the slideshow, each picture reflected neatly in the whites of his eyes.
Rolling fields. Click. Big red barn. Click.
House buffeted by distant mountains. Click.
When Caleb finished the slideshow, he looked at me with a gaping, almost lustful expression.
Checkmate. “You’ll do this?” he asked. “For me?”
“I will do this for you, with one condition. We need to have sex more often.”
Caleb looked pained. “Natalie, I—”
“I don’t need you to say anything,” I said. “I just need you to agree. Once a week, minimum, and at least three times in my fertile window.” I paused, then said meaningfully, “For Clementine.”
A basic tenet of Christian life: to deny your child the gift of siblings was the cruelest act of child abuse imaginable. “For Clementine,” he repeated. “And we can homeschool them out there on our farm. Keep them away from the pedophiles in the school system.”
I hadn’t planned on homeschooling the kids. At first, a flare of panic lit up in me at the thought of another role to fail at—mother, wife, homemaker, teacher—but then I remembered the money and relaxed. Teachers were cheap. We’d find room for one in the budget.
“Fine,” I said. “We can hire a teacher. I’m sure there’s some sort of curriculum package online that we can order.”
He considered this. “Can I choose the curriculum package?”
“Sure. You can choose the curriculum package.” So this was how it felt: marital compromise in action.
“Oh,” Caleb added, “And also: no cattle.”
“But it’s a cattle farm.”
He shook his head firmly. “We’ll grow vegetables.”
“Vegetables?”
“Do you know how cows feel when they die, Nattie? Terrified. So what do you think you’re eating when you eat beef?” Meaningful pause. “Terror. You’re eating terror.”
I stared at my husband. I couldn’t even begin to think of a coherent yet gentle rebuttal to that claim; I wasn’t even sure if I needed one. Wasn’t this the man who had happily eaten a hamburger three days ago? How many videos had he watched today, anyways?
Caleb nodded decisively. “That’s what we’ll be known for. Nutritious, organic, non-terrified sustenance. And also, all good ranches have some sort of name. We’ll have to think about what we name ours.”
“Actually,” I said sweetly, “I already have a name in mind.”