I stretch out my legs and examine the toe of my flats, their paisley surface stained around the edges from dirt. I’ll have to throw them away. These jeans too. I shift in the dirt, finding a new spot to sit in, and look toward Mark. Between us, Mater shifts for the gazillionth time. She’s a very loud birther. Lots of wheezes and sighs, plenty of loud collapses onto the ground, then laborious struggles to her feet. The first four or five times, I was worried, my hands clenching into fists, body stiffening, as if I could will her into comfort. After a while, I followed Mark’s lead and relaxed. Mater, which is the dumbest name I’ve ever heard of for a cow, seems to be taking her time. At the moment, she is standing, her head down, her eyes closed.
“What if we miss it? When her water breaks?”
“You’re not gonna miss it.” His elbows rest on his knees, his butt on an upside-down bucket that’s already cracked along one edge. I watched when he sat on it, the plastic bowing a little under his weight, but the crack didn’t grow.
The silence returns, and it’s comfortable now, just the two of us here, Royce leaving fifteen minutes ago. Mater wheezes, and the sound joins the hum of crickets, the falling night interspersed with streaks of fireflies.
“You have a lot more fireflies here,” I say, watching one fade into the shadows. “We don’t have as many up north.”
“We got a lot of flying critters,” he drawls. “Stick around for summer and I’ll introduce you to a million and a half mosquitoes.”
“No thanks.” I won’t be alive in summer. I won’t ever feel the warmth of sunshine on my shoulder, or hear the sound of the ocean, feel the scratch of sand against my soles.
“Maggie always loved fireflies.” His head turns to the open door, and he waits, a chorus of them appearing, as if on stage.
“So did Bethany.” I smile sadly, remembering summer nights on our front porch, her feet darting across the front lawn, hands outstretched, swinging a jar through the air in an attempt to catch one as her prize.
“I got one.” She beamed at us, her tongue pushing the gap between her top and bottom teeth. “He was too slow, and I got him.” She held out the glass and I carefully took it, Simon and I moving apart, her tiny rump settling down on the step between us. “What should we name him?”
“Hmmm.” I wrinkled up my face, and soberly considered the small fly, which settled on the bottom of the glass. “What about Doug?” It’s a terrible name, intentionally picked. Bethany took the naming of items very seriously, and awarded extra attention to anything that ended in “y”.
“Doooouuuuug?” She stretched out the name like it was ridiculous, her eyebrows pinching together in the creation of an alarmed look. “That’s a terrible name!”
“Okay,” I allowed. “Then you pick one.”
“What about Lighty?” Simon interjected, and I tightened my hands on the glass, fighting the urge to reach over and smack him.
“Lighty!” Bethany cheered, and pulled the mason jar from my hands, raising it high in the air. “Great name, Daddy!”
It wasn’t a great name. It’s a terrible name, as bad as Doug, only not in an intentional, funny way. It was the most unimaginative name, supplied at a time when I was trying to grow Bethany’s creativity, and give her her own, original voice. ‘Lighty’ didn’t accomplish anything toward that goal. ‘Lighty’ was the personification of bland, average, uninspired normality.
I tried to smile, my lips pressed together in an attempt to fight a grimace from forming. “Do you know why the fireflies light up, Bethany?”
“Yep!” Her response had such confidence that I stalled, my eyes darting to Simon before returning to her. She didn’t know, not unless Simon told her.
“Tell me.” The request came out all wrong, hard and accusatory, as if Bethany was a defendant on the stand, and not a four-year-old with a Dora the Explorer Band-Aid on her elbow.
“It’s their mini flashlights,” she said solemnly. “It’s how they see in the dark.”
There is imagination, and then there was stupidity. I was a strong believer in the first, and a staunch disapprover of the second. It’s a point of contention between Simon and I, and I could see the stiffening of his spine as I shook my head. “No, Bethany.”
“Yes,” she insisted, stamping one of her shoes on the step. “Daddy said!”
“Bugs can see in the dark. They don’t need flashlights.”
“Then why do they have them?” she asked plaintively, as if I was old and stupid and she was humoring me. I hated that tone of her voice, the over-enunciated speech of an insolent child.
“It’s how they communicate. Mostly, it’s how they attract mates.” I pulled her onto my lap and lowered my voice, using the hushed whisper that she liked. “The males fly around, flashing their light and showing off. The females settle on branches or grasses and watch the males perform. If they see a male that they like, they’ll flash their light.” I pointed to the tree at the end of the drive, its branches silhouetted against the street light. “Watch the branches of that tree. See if you see any of the females flash their lights.”
She didn’t look. Instead, she examined her jar, her eye close to the glass. “So… Lighty is a boy?” She said the word as if it was offensive. “I wanted a girl firefly.”
“What’s wrong with boy fireflies?” Simon interrupted, scooting into the place that Bethany left, his leg brushing against mine in the most annoying way.
I tightened my grip on Bethany, and leaned forward, hugging her with my arms. “And did you know that some species of fireflies are cannibals?”
“What does that mean?” She turned, and the soft skin of her cheek brushed my neck.
“It means that they eat—”
“Ice cream!” Simon interrupted, in the jolly voice of a town idiot, his body springing off the porch step and landing gracefully on one of the stepping stones.
“Fireflies eat ice cream?” Bethany asked with suspicion.
“I’m not sure,” he said grandly, as if being ignorant was fun and exciting, and fury exploded in me at the same time that Bethany pulled out of my arms. “But I do! And I think I’ll get some right now!” He reached out and snagged her, the mason jar swinging through the air as he picked her up and spun, giving the poor firefly a carnival ride from hell.
I closed my eyes, my skin prickling from the cool night air, and counted to five, each number releasing the tension from a different part of my core. He will ruin her. He will fill her head with fluffy and false information. He will rot her teeth on junk food and ruin her grammar. I opened my eyes and, from across the dark lawn, a firefly glowed at me from the thick of the tree.
I closed my eyes and counted again.
“Did you know that some species of fireflies are cannibals?” I speak quickly, before Mark changes the subject, before this final opportunity to share this information—probably the last of my life—passes by. “They are very sneaky about it. They replicate the female mating flashes of a different species of firefly and—when the males come closer to investigate, they swoop in for the kill.”
“Very interesting.” Mark drawls.
I hesitate, watching him, unsure if he is being sarcastic. He seems fairly genuine, and I soldier on. “Also, some species are aquatic—they have little gills, just like a fish. But most are like these.” I wave my hand toward the streaks of light. “And when fireflies are attacked, they shed little drops of blood that are really bitter and poisonous to some animals.” I relax my shoulders against the back of the post. “It’s their defense mechanism. Because of it, most animals or opposing insects, learn to stay away from them. They have very few natural predators,” I finish.
“You know a lot about fireflies,” Mark says, the words carefully delivered, in the same way someone might politely broach a terrible subject, like bad breath or a rip in someone’s pants.
“I read.” I say flatly. “You should try it sometime.” That summer, I had read an entire book about night insects, for the sole purpose of educating Bethany about the caterpillars we might encounter, or the fruit flies that always ended up inside, no matter how often I emptied the garbage disposal, or examined our fruit. I had had the perfect educational opportunity that night on the porch. Simon had ruined it, as he so often did, waving his arms about and distracting her with words like ice cream. I don’t know how any kids in his class ever learned anything, as fanatical as he seemed to be about education disruption. Then again, he was probably just that way with us.
“Speaking of reading,” Mark sighs, leaning back, the bucket creaking under the weight. “Did you ever read my novel The Milk Maid?” He chuckles before I can respond. “Never mind. You did. I think you referred to it as ‘hick porn’.”
I glare at him. “I hope you’re not suggesting we spend this time—”
“I’m not.” He cuts in, almost sternly, with a look that warns me away from finishing the thought. In the novel, a farmhand and a lost socialite get stuck in a barn during a snowstorm. They spend the next five hours in a variety of sexual positions, most of which had me setting down the book—the scenes uncomfortably graphic. “I was just going to say…” He gives me a look of mild contempt, like I’m the one with the dirty mind, and he’s the picture of innocence. “I wrote that book right here in this barn. On a night like tonight. Waiting on a cow to birth.”
“Shocker.” I drawl, though the information does interest me. My ideas always come from the strangest places, the most random of situations. Bethany once cut her hand on the edge of her dollhouse, and I—while cleaning the cut—had the idea for a colony of blood-dwellers: minuscule people who live in our bloodstreams, their lives in continual upheaval, depending on tiny things that occur to our bodies—the flu for example, or a cut such as hers. The idea had been so strong, so visually there, that I stopped in the midst of the first aid, hurrying down the hall and to my office, a scene sketched out on paper—right then, before it slipped my mind. Simon had come home to find Bethany still standing on the stool by the sink, her sleeve soaked in blood, the water running, and had flipped out. He’d interrupted my scene, my entire thought process, with his yelling, face red and furious, as if she’d been dying or something. He always did that. Over-exaggerated the unimportant and under-focused on the things that had mattered. He’d told my mother about the instance, and a simple writing sprint had become another building block that was later used against me. So much drama, all over a book I had never ended up writing.
It’s funny, how book ideas often seem so brilliant when they first appear. It takes weeks of work to really discover the potential of a story, if there is any at all. Looking around this big barn, the privacy of it, the dusty smells in the air… it’s not a giant stretch to see what he had imagined. The door creaking open, a blonde head peeking in, worry across her face, her designer heels wobbly on the loose dirt. And then, around the corner comes a six foot tall, muscular man, his jeans dirty, t-shirt stretched tight across broad shoulders, a shy smile breaching that gorgeous face. Because, you know—all farmhands are undiscovered male models. And all super-hot blondes drive alone, cross-country, through snowstorms.
“So you wrote all of it?” I ask, glancing over at him. “The entire thing? While waiting on a cow to be born?”
“Not all of it. But the first six or seven chapters.” He stretches his neck to one side and yawns, his Adam’s apple bobbing amongst the stubble on his neck. “I keep some notebooks in the storage room. Just in case inspiration strikes. I can grab one now if you want to work a little.”
I consider it. “No, I’m good.” Right now, the thought of diving into the past and discussing it with him is exhausting. Maybe later tonight, if I don’t get sleepy—we can work. Already today, I’ve thought too much about the past.
Mater’s head suddenly lifts, and I watch her tail swing upward, a motion that has happened a dozen times in the last hour. My shoes jerk back when her hind legs flex, a volley of liquid spewing from her rear, and I scramble to my feet at the same time that Mark straightens. He smiles at me and raises his eyebrows. “Looks like the excitement is starting.”
I pull down on the edge of my shirt and examine the fresh pool of liquid, one quickly absorbed by the dirt. I move along the stall wall, my butt bumping against the wood as I edge around to stand beside him, my eye nervously fixed on Mater, who was sniffing her discharged water as if surprised by it. “Is it coming?” I ask.
“Soon. She’ll most likely lie back down to have it.”
Another change in position. My heart goes out to the big girl, one who seems so laborious in her movements, her joints creaking whenever she struggles into place. I steal the bucket from him and sit. “Does it always take so long?”
“I suppose you were faster?” he asks, and I don’t like the question. I wasn’t faster. I was a terrible birther. I prepared for every possibility and still came up short, all of my perfectly timed huffs and puffs and pushes—all inadequate. It was as if my body agreed with my heart and put up a roadblock against the oncoming child. After all, I’d never wanted a child. It had been Simon who had pushed. Pleaded. Begged. Threatened. I had merely, after two years of arguing, given up. One baby, I had made him promise. Just one. And, after that day in the hospital, after that emergency surgery… that promise hadn’t really mattered. One baby was the only possibility that remained.
“Helena?”
“I wasn’t faster.” The words nip off my lips, and anyone with any sense would leave it alone.
“Tell me the story.”
“No.”
“You’re going to have to tell me at some point. Might as well be now.”
He’s right. A few days ago, he wrote the wedding scene—the small church packed with strangers, all Simon’s guests, Simon’s friends, Simon’s family. My mother had been the lone face in the crowd that I had recognized, her face beaming, a handkerchief gripped in her hand as if there was a chance of tears. Two days ago, we wrapped up our first year of marriage, and covered much of the pregnancy. We are only a chapter or two away from Bethany’s birth. I tug on the end of my ponytail and a few strands come free.
“Helena?”
Mater has stopped her sniffing of the water, and I watch her back stiffen, muscles flexing in effort. I sigh. “We were at home when my contractions started. I was writing—working on Deeply Loved. We started to time the contractions, with a plan to go to the hospital when they were four minutes apart.”
He nods.
“It was on the way to the hospital that I realized something was wrong. I told Simon to stop, to pull over. I was cramping, and wanted to move to the backseat, where I could lie down. But he wouldn’t listen.” I swallow. “He was so intent on getting to the hospital. He screamed at me to shut up and breathe. That’s what he said. ‘Shut up Helena. For once, just shut up.’” And I had, one of the rare moments when I listened to him. “The pain—I remember closing my eyes and wondering if I would pass out from it.” I hadn’t. I’d been conscious when he’d slammed to a halt in front of the emergency room doors. My head had hit the window and I’d cursed at Simon. The baby, he had said. Don’t curse in front of the baby. His voice, when he said those words—I can still hear it now. The excitement, the happiness that had been in those syllables. They had sparked something in me, a flood of anger. I was there, in such agony, and he was happy. Happy over this thing that he had done, that he had wanted, that he had caused. Yet, he wasn’t the one whose back ached. He wasn’t the one who had leaked pee all over his panties. He wasn’t the one that wanted to die, the fat woman that had crammed her swollen feet into sneakers, the one being pulled out of the car by strangers. Even now, the memory of that voice infuriates me. It shouldn’t, but it does.
Mater moans, and I wish I could do something to help her.