Whatever It Takes

Dad looks at me across the table Tuesday morning, a turkey sausage link speared on his fork and paused halfway to his mouth. He lowers it and blinks. “You’re going out of town now?”

“I know the timing isn’t great,” I say, peppering my eggs and not looking at him. My stomach is in knots. “But I called Manny, and he’s able to come back early with a cousin of his in tow, and the heifers are doing great.” The calving had started Sunday. We have eight baby cows so far.

Manny has helped us on the ranch here and there for ten years, but he works the orange groves in Florida for the winters. It had been a gamble whether he could accommodate coming to us a month early, but it seems his contract there only had a week left and he was able to make adjustments. He’ll be here tomorrow morning and stay through the September stock sales. His cousin can stay only until his position in Montana is ready for him next month, but the two of them will make up for my being gone. If I still believed in fate, I would think all this was meant to be. But accepting Manny’s availability as a blessing means having to see something of value in the cancer and my marriage ending and my dad’s evasions. I can’t follow the line that far.

“We’ve still got, what, twenty heifers and then the seventy cows that need to deliver?” Dad asks, not doing a very good job of hiding his concern about my leaving.

Twenty-three heifers and sixty-two cows, I correct in my mind but don’t say out loud. “It’s probably my last chance to make this thing with Tyson work, Dad. He’s coming from London.”

He continues to look at me, and I don’t break eye contact even though I’m terrified he can see the lies twisting me up inside. Telling Tyson about the cancer makes it feel more possible to tell Dad, but at the very least he’ll be upset I didn’t tell him sooner and want to come with me. Dad can’t work the herd much, but he’s a priceless resource for Manny and the new hand. We both can’t leave the ranch this time of year, and I can’t really address all the Mom stuff until the cancer is out of the way. My secrets need to stay secrets a little bit longer just like his do.

“Do you want this thing with Tyson to work, honey? I’ve kind of gotten the impression that you aren’t missing him too much.”

I trail my fork through the puddle of syrup on my plate, the grooves filling almost immediately. “I don’t know what I want to happen with Tyson, but I feel like I need this time with him right now. Maybe it will push me over the fence and I can finally move on.” More lies—I’m clearer on where I stand with my husband than I have been in a very long time, though. I keep thinking of him with a lovely English rose who has an unblemished past and a bright future. I want that for him. Tyson has become part of that other life, the fantasy one. I’ve scheduled a meeting with a divorce attorney in Cheyenne before my preoperative appointment on Thursday. I haven’t told Tyson, because he’ll insist on not doing it, but why not kill two birds with one stone? Divorce and lumpectomy, bing, bam, boom.

Dad bites off one end of his sausage. I suspect that he’s upset with me for making all these plans without him. I’m going over his head. It’s emasculating and inconsiderate, as he’s the official owner of the ranch and my father. But working as hard as I have for all these months has earned me a weekend off when my husband comes from the UK to see me, and we both know Dad won’t argue. I see the change when he pushes aside his frustration and accepts things as they are.

“So, you’ll leave Thursday, then?” Dad asks when he finishes chewing.

“Yeah, Tyson flies into Cheyenne that afternoon. I’ll have the cabin ready for the hands by tomorrow and all the schedules up-to-date before I go.”

Dad reaches his hand across the table, palm up. I hesitate a minute before I put my hand on his. He wraps his big, strong fingers around my smaller but just as strong ones. He has hands like Great-Grandpa—Grandma Dee always said so—while my hands are more like Grandma Dee’s. Delicate, almost, but strong. I wonder what my mom’s hands were like.

I try to absorb Dad’s strength and optimism and goodness, and I hope he can’t feel my fear and guilt and weakness. “If you need to go, CC, then go. We’ll make it work here. I . . . I just don’t want you to be more hurt than you already have been. That’s my concern, not the ranch.”

“Tyson didn’t hurt me, Dad.” Truth.

He gives my hand a squeeze and lets go so both of us can finish eating. When we’re done, he takes the plates to the sink. “Sorry I questioned you, sweetie. This weekend must be pretty important for you to have gone to all the trouble of making the arrangements. You’ve also been working like two men these last months. I wish I could pay for you and Tyson to go to the Bahamas for a week to show my thanks.”

“I don’t want to go to the Bahamas.” I don’t want to go to Cheyenne, either. “I’ll be working with the guys until I leave, but they know what they’re doing, and when I get back we can talk about how we’ll figure out the new budget to work in paying them a few extra weeks—I’m really sorry about that part.”

“Don’t be,” Dad says while he rinses off his plate. “We’ll figure it out. If the guys are doing the heavy stuff, I can at the very least bark out some instructions. It’ll be good for me to dig in a little. I’ve left way too much of the work up to you.”

Dad still naps most days and takes the side-by-side when he has to get around the ranch—he only managed an hour on horseback during roundup. When he was receiving his treatments, he picked up some bug every other week, and it sent him flat to bed every time. Even after the treatments were over and his hair grew back steely gray instead of the salt-and-pepper it had been before, he never seemed fully recovered. He doesn’t know that I know about the adult diapers he’s bought online and hides in his room. Dad refuses to admit he’s ever been sweet on the choir director at church, but I suspect the reason he hasn’t pursued a romantic relationship isn’t the kind of thing he’d talk to his daughter about. It’s one more thing I’ll never ask.

“Just promise me you won’t overdo it,” I say.

“I’ll mostly just drive out with them so I stay in the know and can update the schedule,” Dad says, then raises his hand as though he’s in a court of law. “I promise I won’t overdo it.”

“Cross your heart?” I run my fingers through hair still wet from the shower I took before we sat down to eat.

“And eat your pie,” Dad finishes for me with an added wink at the end.

I hadn’t known until I was nine that the real idiom ended with “hope to die.” I like our version better. Especially now.

I braid my hair to keep it out of my face and secure it with the hairband I have on my wrist. Grandma Dee would tell me I’d catch cold going outside with my hair wet, but there isn’t time to pull out a hair dryer. “All right, I’m out to play with the baby cows for a little while.” Thank goodness I have things to keep me busy for the next couple of days. The ranch. The calves. Purpose and responsibility.

Invasive ductal carcinoma.

Meeting Tyson to start divorce proceedings as though we’re just selling a car together.