Christmas morning, and Paula is up to her elbow in a cow’s vagina, feeling around for a head or a hoof, something to grab hold of. The calf is breech. Jared called this morning because the vet is out of town, and with Dinah beside herself, he could think of nobody else who’d have the stomach for this.
She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull a face. The woman has nerves of iron. Her whole body is made of iron. The heifer is lying on her side, she won’t stand, and Grandma Dinah fears she’s injured herself while thrashing. Jared and Steve squat to hold on to her legs, trying to still her kicking, to keep her from further harm. Derek sits with his legs folded, the cow’s head in his lap. Paula crouches behind her, her free hand braced on the ground. Jared watches that hand, focuses on it as if it will anchor him to this world. The back of her hand is very tan, the veins protruding. Even in the cold of the barn, Jared has worked up a sweat. It streams from his hairline into his eyes, but he doesn’t dare mop his brow.
“I’m going to have to turn the calf,” Paula says.
“All right,” Jared says.
“And mamma’s going to kick.”
“All right.”
“Hard,” she says, and both Jared and Steve brace themselves.
“Oh,” Linda says from behind them, turning her face away. She has her arms wrapped around her belly, not because she’s cold—she’s been hot ever since she got pregnant—but because she’s wondering whether her own baby is positioned right. At twenty-three weeks, she’s just beginning to feel the baby kick. Derek wishes he could cross the barn and hold her.
Most of the family has gathered in the barn, because that’s where Grandma Dinah is. Even the dogs are here, pacing back and forth outside the door. Dinah is in the barn because it’s where Maribel is, her prized cow, the one whose milk used to win ribbons at the county fair. She knows she should get in there and get her own hands dirty, but she’s too emotional. Inside this stall, Dinah feels the space press in on her. It isn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling. It comforts her, in fact, this closeness, her family gathered together.
In the kitchen, Christmas dinner prep has fallen to Deborah, the only one not outside. She thinks there must be a joke in there somewhere: How many idiots does it take to birth a calf?
Paula, she understands. The woman isn’t much of a homemaker. Hell, she’s really more man than woman. But where’s Linda? She isn’t needed out there. When Deborah was pregnant with each of her children, she never once slacked off like Linda does now. Worse yet is Paige, who hasn’t even shown up yet. No doubt she’ll arrive when supper is ready, and she’ll disappear soon after. Those girls are nothing but leeches, just like their mother. The longer Deborah thinks, the madder she gets. How pathetic that Jared is still hung up on Paula, that he’s put his life on hold for twenty years to raise another man’s kids, even after his wife up and left. The family could say whatever it wanted about Steve, but at least he’s still here.
Deborah visits her mother’s house maybe four times a year: Mother’s Day, Dinah’s birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas. But for years now, she’s been kept from handling the turkey, the beef roast. Ever since she married Steve, a man her mother disapproved of—loudly and often—Deborah has been cut out of holiday preparations.
Now, suddenly left to cook dinner for all these people, she feels another kind of exclusion. Deborah works slowly, peeling and chopping potatoes, in her head hearing her mother suggest—not tell, for she would never say it outright, but suggest—that Deborah is doing it wrong, and how could she, a grown woman, not know how to make a simple Christmas dinner?
When Deborah was seventeen, when her father took ill, Deborah found any excuse she could not to be home. She couldn’t handle her father’s diminishment. She didn’t know it, not then, but when her father started chemo she was already pregnant for the first time. Her mother fell to pieces—tiny shards that were lost in the corners of the kitchen, swept under the refrigerator, ground into the carpet in the living room. Dinah had never been much of a housekeeper—preferred plowing fields and baling hay to cooking and cleaning—so as her husband got sicker, she retreated deeper into the fields, the barns, leaving the household maintenance to her children. Jared did what he could, but he didn’t have an eye for housework. He didn’t see dust on a shelf or crumbs on a counter. He’d wash dishes only when the sink was full. And Deborah would clean grudgingly: She wanted her own house to take care of, her own kitchen to cook in. She would make dinner for her family, meatloaf with too much oatmeal and not enough meat, and dream of the day when she moved out.
“You’re going to have to do better than dry meatloaf, you want him to marry you,” Dinah would say. Even at eighteen, Deborah understood she hadn’t caused Dinah’s bitterness. She knew she should be patient with her mother, she should go to her and hug her, let her have a good cry, but she was also at an age when her mother’s grief, her raw need, was too much. She couldn’t take it all for her mother, and so she took none of it.
Deborah’s cooking never improved, but Steve married her anyway. Eventually. After she ended her first pregnancy and he got her pregnant with Layne. Once they were married, Deb found Steve was just as happy with frozen pizza from the gas station as he was with a home-cooked meal.
Now, in her mother’s kitchen, she feels overwhelmed. The spice rack has herbs Deborah has never heard of. And this damn potato peeler. Not the good one with the rubber grip; she could only find the peeler with the slick metal handle, its blade perpendicular. Deborah keeps scraping her knuckles as she pries tiny scraps of skin from the potatoes. It occurs to her, halfway through peeling the bag, that the goose should be in the oven already. She’s never cooked a goose. She goes into the living room and logs on to the computer. A Google search suggests she should start by removing the feathers. Her stomach turns watery at the thought. She’s never had to de-feather a bird.
Back in the kitchen, she’s relieved to find the goose on a plate in the fridge, feather-free. Its organs have been removed and placed in a separate dish. This she can do. She can rub butter on the skin; she can salt and roast it.
The back door opens, and Paige blusters in with that woman and their little boy. They stomp their boots in the doorway, knocking off the snow, and bring in shopping bags full of wrapped presents. Not a word passes between the two women. The little boy, Sage, lifts his arms to Diane and says, “Up,” and Diane hands Paige her shopping bag without looking at her, then stoops to lift him. Paige lugs the gifts into the living room. As unnatural as their relationship seems to Deborah, she has to admit, Diane’s child is a handsome little boy, with piles of black curly hair and cheeks as pink as a sunset.
Neither woman bothers to acknowledge Deborah. Not a “Hello” or a “Merry Christmas.” Deborah returns to peeling potatoes, making short strokes with the dumb metal peeler. It occurs to Deborah that they’re not simply being rude; their silence is a lovers’ quarrel. (The word lover makes her a little uneasy here, but what else do you call it? A wives’ quarrel? A domestic dispute? Is it still a domestic dispute if it carries outside the home?) Paige and Diane have been together a long time, long enough for the initial shock of them to have worn off. Still, at times like these, Deborah can’t help but wonder, how do they decide which one of them should help here and which should be in the barn? She wonders, but doesn’t ask, who does the laundry, who mows the lawn. She guesses Paige is the one who should help cook. She stays home with the child while Diane goes to work. Although Diane works as a nurse. But then, so does Derek. It all seems unnecessarily confusing.
Still, sometimes Deborah envies Paige. She wants her niece’s freedom. When Paige is restless, it’s not unusual for her to upend her life: quit her job, go back to school, take off on a road trip. There’s a wildness to Paige that a man like Steve would have stomped out. Deborah worked for a time ringing up groceries at the gas station, until Steve stopped in one day and saw her talking to a male coworker. They had an argument that night. Nothing that wouldn’t have blown over, except the next day, the coworker called Deborah at home. He’d only wanted to see if Deborah could cover his shift, but Steve wouldn’t hear it. That had been the end of Deborah working.
Now Skyla wafts into the kitchen, bringing the cold in with her. She’s in one of her rare feminine moods, and her body shows it. She somehow manages to glide as she walks, her limbs long and lean even under so many clothes: jeans, tee shirt, sweater, winter coat, wool socks, mittens, hat, scarf. She pulls off her outerwear in the doorway, and when she removes her hat, Deborah sees that she’s cut her hair boy-short. Her first thought is that Jared must not know—no way any decent father would let his daughter out like that—and that Deborah is the first person in the family to see it. But, no, there’s no way she can be the first, no way Dinah hasn’t already seen it. This is a professional haircut, not something Skyla did to herself in the middle of the night, standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a pair of kitchen shears. She spent money on this haircut, which somehow makes it seem worse.
“Your hair,” Deborah says. “It’s different.”
“Thanks,” Skyla says, sidling up to her aunt and giving her a sideways hug. “And Merry Christmas.” She rummages in kitchen drawers until she finds the potato peeler with the rubber handle. She takes over peeling where Deborah has left off, humming “We Three Kings” as she works.
The goose, Deborah sees, is still sitting on the counter. “You’re in a good mood,” she says, rubbing butter on its skin.
“’Tis the season,” Skyla says. She’s working slowly, dreamily, peeling potatoes at about half of Deborah’s speed, even though she’s got the good peeler. Soon, Linda shows up, rubbing the cold from her forearms and cheeks, and takes over as if the kitchen were hers, as if she’d never left this place. She’s not even blood, Deborah thinks. Linda is another problem. That baby she’s growing outside of wedlock. With Ernest bedridden, there’s no way Linda can get him to marry her now. It isn’t that Deborah’s own family is spotless—yes, she knows about Steve, but he’s been bewitched by a woman you’d expect to act the hussy. And Deborah knew about Beth before she married him. It’s just what you did, though. You married the father of your child.
Linda’s whole generation seems to make themselves at home wherever they are. These millennials, they have no qualms about taking, feel none of Deborah’s debilitating self-doubt. Their efforts scream, “Look at me! Look what I’ve done! See how clever?” And they get by with it, too. Deborah can’t recall Dinah ever scolding Linda or Paige for failing to live up to her standards.
When Paige finally returns to help, Deborah takes it as a sign she’s no longer needed. The sisters work with their own rhythm, perfectly in sync with each other. Deborah feels suddenly old, an outsider. She finishes the goose and slides it into the oven before she leaves. On her way into the living room, she sees Linda turn the oven on. Stupid, stupid.
Hannah plays up in the hayloft, jumping around like it’s a playground, and Mandy and Kelli join in to distract their sister from the situation below. Steve feels grateful to his oldest daughters for keeping Hannah occupied. He’d tried to get the girls to stay in the house, to help their mother, but not ten minutes after he got to the barn, the girls showed up, peeking their heads into the stall. Hannah immediately started asking questions he wasn’t ready to answer. Let her stay ignorant, innocent, a little longer.
He’d started drinking early today. He’d needed it after turning on the news this morning and seeing Gilmer Thurber again, with his pansy-ass mustache. Thurber has been sentenced to life in prison. When Steve was younger, when he and Beth were first dating and she told him about a man who hurt her, it had all seemed so distant. Steve never even thought about who had done it and whether the man still lived in town. Without even asking Beth, though, he’d put it together in the wake of the arrest: It was Gilmer.
Who else in this town had Gilmer hurt? Steve watches his girls up in the hayloft, and for a moment he’s filled with so much rage he’s shaking. He feels dizzy with fury.
Paula is up to her shoulder in Maribel now, her whole body rigid, every muscle tense as she tries to turn the calf. Even with two men steadying her legs, the cow kicks, and Steve loses his balance. With her front legs free, Maribel tries to scramble to her feet, her right leg buckling under her weight. Paula’s arm is twisted around inside the cow.
“God dammit, Steve.” Paula should have guessed he was already drunk. “Derek, you want to step in?”
“I got this,” Steve says.
“Move,” Dinah says.
Steve stumbles to his feet and slaps the cold from his arms, as if to blame his lack of balance on the weather.
“You hold her head,” Dinah tells Steve. “Just lay it in your lap, make sure she doesn’t knock herself out.”
Sitting, Steve is much more stable. Derek takes hold of the forelegs, averting his eyes from his stepmom’s business. He’s a nurse, so he shouldn’t be squeamish, but the whole thing—Paula with her arm up a cow’s backside, her face way too close, as if she wanted to crawl inside—makes Derek nauseous. There’s something that clicks in his brain when he’s at work that keeps him from feeling this way, but watching someone else, he wants to throw up. Maribel twitches, grunting, trying to pull herself up or push the calf out, Derek can’t tell which. He half wonders whether he might break the cow’s legs if she kicks—he’s holding on so tight—or whether the cow’s legs might break him. Uncle Steve is holding Maribel’s head in his lap with both hands, and when the cow is still, he strokes the sides of her face, damp with saliva. Steve is humming softly, and Derek thinks this can’t be the same man who gave him shit last week as he changed the valve on Derek’s water heater.
“Almost there,” Paula says. The straining muscles in her back are visible through her shirt, and her free arm is bulging, tense. She has her eyes closed, and Derek realizes his dad is staring at his stepmother.
“There,” Paula says, and withdraws her arm. God, the gore that coats her. Jared tries not to look, but he can’t help seeing the thick mucousy fluid, wet enough to plaster down the hairs on Paula’s arm. Once Paula has fully extracted herself, she searches around for a towel. The best she can do is a saddle blanket, and she cleans her arm as well as she can before rolling her sleeve back down.
As soon as Paula moves away from Maribel, Dinah is on her knees, her palms flat on the cow’s side. She leans down to kiss her fur, a rare tender moment. Maribel is still working, still trying to give birth, her flanks pulsing irregularly, her breath making short puffs in the cold air. There’s steam rising off her body, and Paula wonders whether she should fetch a blanket, make the poor thing more comfortable. Sickness and blood don’t bother Paula, not when it seems likely to pass, but Maribel’s labored breathing, her quivering haunches, all scream Death at Paula. The rest of the family has been in and out of the barn all morning—Deborah brought them hot coffee—and while they were concerned for the cow, none of them seem alarmed. None of them seem to hear Death, to recognize the stench of it. Only Paula hears it, Paula and the dogs, who whimper from the doorway but won’t enter.
“Christ,” Paula says. “The feet should be out by now.” She rolls her sleeve back up, kneels by the cow. She feels around inside for the legs again. “Do you have obstetrical chains?”
“We don’t normally calf them anymore,” Dinah says, “but that Hudson bull got in our field—”
“Any thin chain will do,” Paula says. “Or a leash? A choke chain?”
Dinah sends Derek off, tells him where to find a leash. He’s a good boy, Dinah thinks. He would have made a good veterinarian. When he returns, Paula slips the leash into the cow and uses it to hold on to the calf’s legs. She pulls, gently, trying to time her tugs with Maribel’s pulsing flanks. A stream of fluid shoots out of Maribel, and for a moment, Derek is certain he will throw up. He’s always thought, but now he’s sure, that he would make a terrible OB-GYN. He looks around to compare how his dad and uncle are doing, and finds they both have their eyes averted. Behind the cow, the straw is damp. The calf’s legs are now poking out, the fur matted and wet, the leash darkened. Paula tugs like it’s nothing. When the legs are far enough out, Paula removes the leash, the cow still working at the calf, until the dark wet mound of fur—Derek can’t yet think of it as a living thing, since it doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe—is spat out onto the straw.
“Jesus,” Derek says.
Paula pokes a piece of straw up the calf’s nose, again and again, until the calf coughs, and breathes. Dinah watches, morbidly anxious. Steve’s head nods; he’s falling asleep with the cow’s head in his lap. Even the kids have stopped playing, peeking down from the hayloft to bear witness.
“It’s a Jesus Cow,” Derek says.
Nobody but Steve laughs.
After the birth, after the calf has been cleaned and dried—Derek does this, for cleaning and drying are all normal parts of his job—Derek returns to the house. He wants to take up residence here, in this kitchen, with Linda. He hasn’t seen the sisters all together in years, and he watches for a moment. How comfy, how in-her-element Linda seems. She and Paige cooking together almost looks like choreography. Linda stretches for the spice rack, and Paige hands her the rosemary. Paige carries chopped onions to the stove, and, without looking up, Linda leans aside so her sister can dump them in the frying pan. They’re talking, but not about the task at hand. It isn’t until Skyla speaks up that they start arguing, amiably, as only grown women can do. Skyla loves this, thrives on the chaos.
Linda stirs a pan of gravy while the potatoes boil over. The Brodys’ dogs, in and hungry from the cold, wrestle on the floor over raw goose organs. They’re all snarls and wagging tails. The dogs each claim a bit of offal and carry it off to separate corners.
Paula arrives, strips down to her bra, and scrubs her arm in the sink. She leaves her flannel shirt on the floor. Jared brings out a clean tee.
“Thank you for coming,” Jared says, his hand going to his beard.
“No worries.”
“I would have said it before, but you seemed preoccupied.”
Paula laughs. Her laugh is the only distinctly feminine thing about her. It’s always reminded Jared of wind chimes.
“What’s the word?” Paige says. She keeps sneaking glances at her mother while rummaging in the fridge. She and Paula had coffee a couple of weeks back, and something about sitting at a table across from her mother made it feel like Paige couldn’t really study her. It was too close, too intimate. Here, though, she feels free to look. Paige finds that Linda’s assessment is accurate: Paula hasn’t aged. She’s still as hard and pretty as ever.
“We had a cow,” Derek says. “A Jesus Cow.”
Steve cracks open a beer.
“Shit’s never going to come off,” Paula says, still scrubbing her arm in the sink.
As hard and pretty and potty-mouthed as ever.
Paige edges around her mother to fill a pot with water. She keeps staring at her. Up close, her mother’s face has a few sun spots and more lines, mostly around her eyes and on her forehead, not so much around her mouth. Her eyes are brown. Paige couldn’t remember, but they are, they’re brown, like her own.
“I’m not an alien, you know,” Paula says.
“I’m not convinced,” Paige says.
“Out with it.”
“Out with what?” Paige asks, her eyes narrowing.
“Whatever it is you want to say.”
But Paige has nothing. Her confidence is shaken.
Diane comes to the doorway now, watching both Paula and Paige. Paige looks to Diane for help, and for the first time in months, Diane’s face softens. Paige wants to go to Diane, wants to bury her face in her wife’s neck, her skin so different from Paula’s, as smooth and pale as the moonlight. Paige wants to cry into her, wants to weep like an exhausted child. Instead, she opens the oven, checks the goose. “You’re letting the damn potatoes boil over,” she calls over her shoulder good-naturedly. Diane slips back into the living room.
“Hell, they’re barely hissing,” Linda says. Even though they’re swearing, they’re both smiling. Skyla stands on the opposite side of the kitchen island, away from the heat. “I can only take so many hours of these women bickering,” she says to Derek, but she’s smiling, too.
Paige nudges Linda aside with her hip and takes up stirring the gravy.
“You let it clump,” Paige says. “You must have learned to cook from Ma.”
“I can hear you,” Paula says.
“Why isn’t Skyla helping?” Linda says.
“I’m waiting to carve,” Skyla says.
“You’re going to be waiting a long time,” Paige says.
Skyla gives Derek a wink.
“You want to grab these potatoes?” Linda says. She’s taken the gravy back from Paige, stirs it furiously as if she could beat the lumps out of it.
“I would, but I don’t want to leave these knives unattended,” Skyla says.
“Diane’s watching the kids,” Paige says.
When Skyla still doesn’t move, Derek goes over, grabs the hot pads, and pulls the potatoes from the stove. He drains them and leaves them in the sink. Linda barely looks at him as she mumbles a “thanks.”
This is too much for him. Linda’s awkwardness. She’s been like this for months.
He escapes to the living room, seats himself near the Christmas tree, pretends he’s ventured into the forest to watch these strange creatures in their natural habitat. What he finds is confusing. Steve is in the middle of the living room letting Hannah climb him like a jungle gym. Sage sits on the floor nearby, clapping his hands and squealing. He crawls over to Steve, raises his arms, and says, “Up,” and Steve lifts the child, standing with Sage in his arms and Hannah clinging to his back like a monkey. He tosses Sage in the air. Diane is clearly uncomfortable, watching closely for any falter in Steve’s balance.
On his way back to the kitchen, Derek stumbles upon Paula and his dad, standing in a doorway, kissing. She doesn’t belong here, never did. Their kiss looks halfhearted, obligatory, as they stand in the hallway underneath the pointy leaves and red berries of the mistletoe. There’s a sadness to it, a chasteness. It makes Derek turn away even faster than if it had been passionate. These are the men he holds himself up to, the men he compares himself to, always finding himself lacking. They are his How to Be a Man template. He wonders now whether he has ever really seen them clearly. He’s always blamed his stepmother for leaving, for breaking his dad’s heart. But now, after seeing his dad with Paula, his arms draped loosely around her body, with enough space between them to see daylight from the window, kissing under the mistletoe—which isn’t even mistletoe, he realizes; those pointy leaves and berries are holly—Derek wonders whether he shouldn’t make a new template.
After goose and fixings, after pie and coffee, Hannah begs them to finally, finally open presents. The family crowds into the living room, the children on the floor.
“I’m not a kid anymore,” Mandy mutters, but she seats herself next to her sisters on the hardwood. She motions for Skyla to join them, but Skyla shakes her head, lingering near the doorway like she wants to make a fast break.
Steve also hovers in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, where the drinks are.
Diane is shivering in her seat by the drafty window. Paige goes to the fireplace to light a fire, as if her attentiveness, the anticipation of her wife’s needs, could erase the fight they’re having. See how sweet I am? See how caring?
When the presents are all doled out, after the children have littered the floor with torn wrapping paper from their gifts, Paige makes sure Linda sees the package from her and Diane first. “For baby,” Paige says, handing over the gift, and when Linda opens it, Paige watches her sister’s face go soft with tears.
“Cute, right?” She’d gotten a doll with springy curls in her hair, a stiffly starched dress.
“Oh, Paige,” Linda says.
“It was nothing,” Paige says.
“You know I’m having a boy.”
“Ah, shit,” Paige says.
“It’s fine,” Linda says, holding the box with white knuckles. “Did you get a receipt?”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Paige says.
“That’s my daughter,” Paula mutters. Jared laughs and pats her knee.
“Maybe your son will be gender nonconforming,” Paige says.
“Let’s hope,” Diane says.
“I hate Christmas,” Paige admits.
“Everyone hates Christmas,” Derek says.
“At its essence it’s good, right? I mean the bastard child, the idea of extending hospitality to those in need, no matter how mangy or Arab they might look.” Paige bounces on the balls of her feet. “But what does that have to do with gift giving in the name of a morbidly obese old guy? Like, what the fuck, America?”
Paige looks to her wife, hoping her little rant has at least amused her. It has not. When Paige went on like this, Diane used to kiss her forehead and call her her Little Radical. Now Diane gets up, picks her way through the family, and goes to the bathroom. Paige listens for the toilet flush, but even after the door opens again, Diane does not come back.
“I was reading about Finland, I think,” Paige says, “where they just give each other a new book and a chocolate bar on Christmas Eve, and maybe a new pair of pajamas. You go to bed early in your new fleece and eat chocolate and read. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
Those two are doomed, Derek thinks.
Steve gulps from a coffee mug.
Give it a rest already, Paula thinks. Part of her is still in the barn with the calf, its skinny, slick legs, its nostrils twitching when she tickled them with the straw. The newborn was much smaller than a calf should be. When they left, it had yet to stand, hadn’t even tried stretching its legs. How certain she had been that it was dead, that it would never breathe. But it had breathed, Paula reminds herself. She had done all she could.
Her daughters are bickering now, still opening presents. Linda and Paige—those two were never close in the way Paula thought sisters would be. Yet in a lot of ways, they were much closer, and Paula wonders whether there is something about age proximity that drives sisters apart, each one struggling to outgrow the other, to shoot above them like a sapling trying to break through the canopy. Maybe they are close, just in their own way.
For a moment, just a moment, Paula thinks she could stay here and pick up her old life. She had felt something earlier when she kissed Jared, and even though it wasn’t exactly sexual, it was familiar. Familial.
Nobody notices Skyla sneaking into the kitchen to answer her phone. When Steve goes in for a refill, he finds Skyla waiting by the window.
“You know Santa already came,” he says, and Skyla rolls her eyes so hard, he worries she might detach a retina. He looks a little sheepish as he pours whiskey into a coffee mug. “Our little secret,” he says, as if anyone in the living room were fooled. Her uncle makes her sad, and she doesn’t like to feel sad. She doesn’t really like to feel in general, so she usually lets him know, nonverbally, how incredibly lame he is. When the eye roll doesn’t work, she realizes she’s going to have to say something before he’ll leave her alone.
“I invited someone. He should be here any minute.”
“Attagirl,” Steve says, raising his newly refreshed mug. She’s not his daughter, so he can condone such acts.
He doesn’t get it, but then he never does. Rumor has it he’s sleeping with Dan Hansen’s mom—and how can Aunt Deb stand it? At sixteen, Skyla’s already done with romance. She’d chased after Dan along with her cousins, but he didn’t even notice her. It seemed like such a pointless pursuit.
No, her guest isn’t for her, but for her mother.
When the rental car pulls up in the driveway, Skyla goes outside to greet Jorge. This is her gift: She’s spent the last month talking to Jorge, convincing him to come here. She knows her mother will be angry, and that her father will be heartbroken. But she also knows her parents are becoming too chummy again; all throughout dinner, she watched them sneak glances at each other. In a sense, bringing Jorge here is really a gift for her father.
Jorge pulls into the driveway and turns off his GPS. The farm, built up on a hill and covered in snow, looks to him like a Christmas card. Season’s Greetings, Warm Wishes, and all that. For a moment, he wonders if he’s made a mistake. He didn’t expect a full-on farm, with barns and a silo, and he realizes how seldom Paula talks of her old life, how few details she’s provided.
From the driveway, he can see into the picture window in the kitchen, straight through to the living room, where Paula sits in a chair next to a man with a full beard and glasses, a heap of wrapping paper at their feet. Jorge has no doubt the man is Jared. Watching her framed in the doorway like this, it’s almost like watching her on a movie screen, and Jorge finds himself wondering how the scene will play out, waiting for Paula’s body language to tell him what’s really going on. She holds a mug in her lap and smiles, presumably watching the rest of the family unwrap presents.
Part of him wants to head back to the airport, but then the back door opens and out steps a teenaged girl who’s the spitting image of Paula, wearing an oversized sweater, leggings, and unlaced men’s boots. She clomps toward him with a smile, her arms wrapped around herself to stave off the cold.
“You coming in or what?”
She doesn’t bother introducing herself or asking who he is. He can still see through the window behind her; Paula is leaning toward Jared, who says something in her ear and then laughs, his fingers buried in his beard.
When Paula left, Jorge spent the first month trying not to call her, trying to give her space. He’d imagined going with her to Michigan, meeting her daughters, her old friends, convincing her husband it was time to let her go. When Paula said no, this was something she had to do herself, it sounded sensible because it was a line so often used on TV. Of course he understood.
But then, despair set in. She wasn’t coming back. And even though he felt certain of this, he found himself unable to let go. He called daily, they argued daily, they made up—as well as a couple can make up while fifteen hundred miles apart.
When he was beginning to come to terms with the loss—about the same time Lola had stopped whimpering in the evenings, stopped staring at the spot in the drive where Paula usually parked her truck—when he was beginning to find other things to occupy his mind (nights out with friends, remodeling the bathroom, finishing the porch, having the neighbors over for brisket), when he was starting to feel like he might be okay, he got a call from Skyla. She sounded eerily like her mother, the tone and timbre of her voice. The cadence, though, was distinctly teenaged.
“She misses you, you know,” she told him after minimal small talk.
“She sure doesn’t act like it,” Jorge said. He was outside when she called, up on a ladder, painting the eaves, and he hadn’t bothered to climb down when his phone rang. He clung to the ladder awkwardly, his phone held with his shoulder while his paintbrush bristles stiffened with paint.
“You should come for Christmas.” Skyla said it so casually he found himself agreeing without really thinking it through.
Standing in the snowy driveway, though, watching Paula through the window—Jorge decides he’s not leaving here without a fight.
Derek’s gift for Linda is cheap, he realizes now. Questions of gender aside, Paige’s gift is thoughtful, tuned in to Linda’s future in a way that Derek’s gift is not. He got her a pound of coffee, ordered online. He imagines Paige spending hours looking for a doll, the perfect doll, a doll that reminds her of her sister. All he did was click some buttons on the computer, the whole time remembering a trip they took in high school. They drove with some friends to Seattle, where the family of one of the friends lived. Derek remembers being crowded into the backseat with Linda and arguing over what to listen to on the radio, taking shifts driving through the night, eating at fast food restaurants because they’d all pooled their money for gas. And after days in the car, when they finally arrived in Seattle, the first thing they did was find a coffee shop. He remembers the look on Linda’s face when she took her first sip, the contentment. He was hoping to see that on her face again when she opened his present.
But she’s pregnant. As much as he doesn’t want to think about that, doesn’t want to acknowledge that she’s having another man’s baby, it’s undeniable. She can’t even drink coffee right now. God, he’s so stupid.
He won’t give it to her, he decides, and steals his own gift from her stack when nobody’s looking. But before he can make it out of the living room, he finds the doorway blocked by a man he’s never met before.
Jorge enters to find Paula with her hand on Jared’s knee, her eyes trained on his face, her laugh quiet, meant only for her husband. He barely has time to compose himself before Paula sees him.
“Surprise,” Skyla says from behind Jorge.
“Baby,” Paula says. “What are you doing here?” She presses her hands to her mouth, not quite obscuring her awkward smile.
His appearance has the desired effect: She leaves Jared sitting alone and goes to hug Jorge.
“Merry Christmas,” Jorge says.
“Who’re you?” Dinah says from her seat by the tree. It isn’t that she means to be rude, but she’s had a very long day, and his arrival surprises her. She’d been so focused on Christmas, and Maribel, that she’d failed to hear the car pull into her driveway. She scolds herself. You can’t be too careful, especially in this day and age. Why, just this week, that Thurber man was in the news again. It’s getting to the point where you can’t even trust the people you’ve known your whole life.
“Everyone, this is Jorge. Mom’s fiancé,” Skyla says. The look on her father’s face breaks her heart. She can tell that seeing Jorge in his home has made the man real for the first time. He takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes, his beard. He looks so old to Skyla. She had thought that bringing Jorge here—that getting her mother to leave—was the best thing she could do for her father, but now she’s not so sure.
Dinah is sure, though. She looks from Jared to Skyla, and when she realizes Skyla’s plan, she whispers a silent thank-you to her granddaughter. “Goodness, you’ve come a long way,” she says, putting an arm around Jorge. “You must be exhausted. Can I get you a plate? Cup of coffee? I’m Dinah. The kitchen’s this way.” And she steers him away from her son.
“I’m not really hungry,” Jorge says.
“Nonsense. It’s Christmas, and you’re family.” She pulls leftovers from the refrigerator, fixes him a plate.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Paula says, retrieving coffee mugs from the cupboard. She’s more shocked than surprised, and it occurs to her how long she’s been here, how easily she’s lost track of time. What was it about River Bend that bred such complacency?
“I should have come sooner,” Jorge says as Dinah pushes a plate into his hands.
“You’re here now,” Dinah says. “We’ll give you two some time to catch up.” She stares pointedly at her grandchildren. Skyla hovers behind her mother and Derek, who’s trying to hide a gift in his coat. She lets him finish, then shoos him back into the living room.
Jorge sets to work on his food, while Paula pours them each a cup of coffee.
“You’ve had a nice little reunion, I see,” he says when she sits down with him at the table. It’s out of his mouth before he can stop himself.
“Is that what this is? You came to take back what’s yours?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says.
“Then what did you mean?” She blows on her coffee, even though it’s old, almost room temperature.
“It just seems like you and your family have gotten close.”
She can hear the jealousy in his voice, not only jealousy over Jared, but over the roast goose and the farmhouse, the wood-burning fireplace, the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the snow-covered hills and gray sky, the harsh Michigan winter that has forced the family to huddle together for warmth. She knows this scene would appeal to Jorge, and there’s no way she can tell him everything else that goes along with it: the lack of privacy; the judgments made about how you run your business, how you raise your children, how you feed your family, how you love your spouse. Taking his hand, she decides she’s ready to be done with all of it. She nods, smiles, and says, “Let’s go home tomorrow.”
The Jesus Cow dies two days later. Of course Grandma Dinah is sad, but she’s mostly concerned for Maribel, who Linda found in the barn, licking the ice from the stiff calf’s coat. Linda shows up at Derek’s house to share the news.
“I can’t stand any more death,” Linda says. She wants to say more, but her voice has gone too thick to speak. When she has recovered, all she says is, “That coffee smells amazing.”
“Want some? I just brewed it.”
“No. I mean, yes, but no. It’s bad for the baby.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid, Derek thinks.
“Well,” she says, “maybe half a cup.” Her stepbrother has been awful sweet these days, and when she thinks about it, she realizes he’s always been sweet. They’ve been best friends since before their parents even married. She’s closer to him than she is even to Paige. Wouldn’t it be great if she could make herself feel even a tiny bit of the love he feels for her?
Derek goes to pour her a cup of coffee, adding just cream. And what now? he thinks when he hands it to her. She’s here, in his house, and how can he get her to stay? He wonders whether this is a family trait, the inability to get women to stick around. He heard from his dad yesterday that Paula is gone. No goodbyes, she just skipped town three days before the divorce became final. Linda drove up this morning in Paula’s truck. Not that his dad had expected Paula to stay forever—they knew she was getting remarried—but something about the kiss Derek had seen made him wonder. Because his dad was a different man, a more present man, with Paula around.
“I see you got her truck,” Derek says, nodding to the window where it sits in his driveway.
She shrugs. “Whoopie. The damn thing’s running on borrowed time.”
Linda takes a sip of coffee, and her face brightens. This is how Derek gets Linda to take off her shoes. This is how he gets Linda to stay awhile in the house he bought three years ago, the house that just now, today, starts to feel like home.