Laugh

  This yes was what she wanted, what she had seen for herself in this man who indulged every impulse except those that fed him, nourished him.

  Yes, to indulging him.

  Yes, to feeding him.

  Yes, to time and hope and progress.

  Her toes gleamed at the end of her feet and she didn’t know who they belonged to.

  Not to a farmer.

  What did Sam see in her yes?

  She drew her feet up and ran her rough hand over them. They felt like one-day-old piglets. Soft.

  Sam was holding her heart, rubbing the calluses away from it, and it felt no less awkward and unnatural than when she was sitting in that nail salon.

  She went to the back of her closet and found a dress and slipped it on over her head.

  She put on a pair of open-toed heels she’d purchased a long time ago with Rachel and practiced walking from one end of the room to the other.

  She left her hair down.

  Then she stood in front of the narrow mirror on her closet door and looked at herself.

  She hadn’t worn the tangerine sundress in a few years, she hadn’t had the occasion to. She didn’t remember that it had pulled quite so tightly across the tops of her hips, but she guessed that’s where the fifteen pounds that had crept up since she started doing less farming and more administration and purchasing went.

  She thought of her mother, and how she bemoaned her hips and outer thighs, how she’d spend a day or two “watching it,” promising herself that this time she’d be able to fit back into whatever dress was her “skinny dress,” the dress that made her feel the most beautiful.

  And her dad would tell her she was beautiful already, so many times, that she’d never last, and make big, dripping tortas, everyone’s favorite, and it wasn’t until years later that Nina realized that it wasn’t so much that her mother worried about the inevitable and rounding creep of her hips, as it was that she worried that her husband no longer found her beautiful.

  It was never the dress or her body that made her feel beautiful, it was being loved and being told she was loved, and beautiful to him.

  Nina tugged at the dress, wondering what Sam thought of hips that would keep rounding and softening year by year, of the silvers gathering at her ears, just a few shooting strands now, but they were bright against her black hair. She traced her fingers over the crow’s feet and imagined them shadowed as they deepened, certain to deepen with all the time she’d spent in the sun, her whole life.

  She was strong, her arms and legs muscled from work.

  As she got older, she looked more and more like her father with his strong Maya features and complexion.

  Russ was a handsome boy, but there was a way she had always thought of him as boy. They had met as children and played together, and even as he grew up and his body filled out and his jaw sharpened, she still saw a boy, and she was certain he still saw a girl in her face.

  After Russ, she was glad for how different the bodies of men were. None of them had felt like Russ, or looked like him. She learned that her body was, in fact, separate from the love of her life and her childhood, and that different men responded to her differently, and that she responded differently to them.

  Even more than the sex, she found comfort in awareness that she was separate, that she was a person and a body to be learned. That she was a mystery to someone, that there were people who were a mystery to her.

  She wanted Sam but needed to be careful. She didn’t need an affirmation from him of her autonomy. She had hopes for this next part of her life. She wanted back some of the melding and attachment that she had severed after Russ died. She wanted her relationship with her parents, and with Russ’s, to finally heal. She wanted to provide for Rachel and Tay and the little band of people who worked with her, who believed in what she was trying to do. She had put her farm store in Sam’s southside neighborhood because it was well-known in the city to be tight-knit, and she wanted to capitalize on the built-in community and hope it would encompass her café, her farm store, her people.

  She’d built her urban farms there, and she was thinking of moving into the neighborhood, getting one of those small houses with their wide stoops and having neighbors like Lacey.

  Like Sam, of course.

  But she didn’t want to meld and mix up all those things with Sam. She had hopes for him, too, but she wanted those hopes to have some remove from the world and be just for her.

  She didn’t know the shape of those hopes but she looked at herself and saw how her parents shaped her. Remembered how love had shaped her.

  Watching Sam and his brother in the fields, she understood that Sam was shaped by love, too.

  She had time before Sam would pick her up and so she called Tay, who was enjoying her last weekend before surgery. Her cancer was staged at IIA, which Rachel and Nina learned meant that she had an invasive type of cervical cancer, but that the cancer hadn’t spread into the tissues beyond the vaginal, cervical, and uterine walls into the pelvic walls or abdomen.

  Nina tried not to think about its 60 percent survival rate, because that wasn’t enough. Sixty percent wasn’t a big enough number no matter how Sam had tried to explain it to her.

  But Monday, Tay would have a radical hysterectomy. Sometime later she would undergo radiation and chemotherapy.

  Battles.

  Thinking about Tay seemed to summon her. Nina picked up her buzzing phone, which was lit up with a picture of Tay on a tractor.

  “Hey Nina, you getting ready for your big date?” Tay sounded like Tay. Interested and mellow. She was probably sitting in her hammock chair on an evening like this, windy and hot but with a break in the humidity, reading about cover crops or companion planting or soap-making.

  “I’m ready.” Nina sat back down on her bed and slipped the heels off. She had no idea how she was going to walk in those all night.

  “Yeah? Where you going? I tried to get Adam to take me to this contra dance going on at Sunny Michaelson’s place, but he seems to think I should rest. But man, I am so not tired.”

  Nina couldn’t help but think what Adam must be thinking: Tay should rest and prepare for this first trial. Maybe it wasn’t fair that she miss a dance and that it would be a long time before the next one, but resting seemed safer; Tay in bed early seemed like the least possibility of letting anything go wrong.

  She made a fist and held it against her belly.

  “You should go, for sure.”

  “Right? I won’t be able to do anything like that for so long after the surgery. And if I’m going to miss this whole harvest season, I at least want to go to some of the early partying.”

  Nina mimicked the excitement in Tay’s voice. “Just go. Rachel likes those, call her and have her take you if Adam won’t.” She didn’t want Tay alone.

  “Yeah, good. You’re right. Sounds nice. Where’s the good doctor taking you?”

  “Dinner, then something else he won’t tell me about.”

  “Oooh, mystery. That’s pretty cool. And cute. He preplanned for you.”

  “I think so.”

  “I called Lacey and had her answer a whole bunch of last-minute questions I had today. I could’ve called the surgeon’s office, I guess, but I just like her. And she’s been a nurse for people after surgeries like mine and I just wanted to know what that was like.”

  “What what was like?”

  “After. I just want to know what after will look like. I’m sitting here reading about self-catheterization and I have to tell you, it doesn’t look like a cake at a picnic.”

  “Tay.” How could Nina be going to dinner in heels when Tay was talking about self-catheterization?

  “Yeah, dude. Also, I’ve been trying to get Adam to give me some kind of a last hurrah for my ladyparts, you know, take ’em out for one last party before some of them have to leave the show, but he keeps freaking out.”

  Nina wiped away a tear and cleared her throat. “So tell him you’re asking Rachel to tak
e you to that contra dance so you can pick up someone who will get the job done.”

  She hoped Tay didn’t hear the flatness in her voice.

  “Yeah, baby. Some nice hippie boy wearing a Utilikilt.”

  “How’s he doing?” Nina hadn’t talked to Adam about anything other than the farm, lately, getting ready for Tay’s leave. She felt guilty and wondered who he had to talk to.

  “Shitty, man. He’s fine with the reorg’ed duties we came up with and really, this time of year, labor is the most important thing, but I’m worried about him being distracted.” Tay went quiet. “He asked me to marry him.”

  “Dios!”

  “That’s what I said, except what I said sounded more like holy fuck.”

  Nina didn’t even bother to wipe the tears, they were coming so fast, and she didn’t know where they were coming from. Reflexively, she wanted to tell Tay that they couldn’t, but she didn’t know why. She couldn’t think why, except that she resisted this acknowledgment that the present had to be lived—it suggested there wasn’t a future.

  She was a farmer, she wanted to assume the future. Plan for it. Put a wedding in the future so the future would happen, if it was the wedding that was wanted.

  It made her realize how uncomfortable she still was with just living. Right now. Accepting the life in the middle of her past and some uncertainty.

  Tay and Adam had been on and off again for years, always friends, and they fit, in their way. Except when they didn’t. Adam was taciturn and grumpy where Tay was serene and sought out ways to amplify joy.

  Nina’d always thought that Tay had been waiting for Adam to understand the joy, but maybe she had just been waiting for him, and enjoying what they had.

  Nina kept brushing away tears, hoping Tay couldn’t tell she was crying, ready to tell her, if she did figure it out, that she was crying from joy.

  Even if she wasn’t sure it was true.

  “What did you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Holy fuck!”

  “That’s what I said. Before and after the yes.”

  “Are you—”

  “Soon. I mean, he finally said his piece because I might be dying, right? No need to drag out the particulars. We’re thinking whenever I feel good enough during my surgery recovery and before my treatment starts.”

  Nina went silent, letting Tay tell her everything, her happiness obvious—this woman who would dance before she went to battle and get married on the other side of it.

  “Yeah. We were always going to orbit each other, anyway. Might as well make it official. Also, this is kind of awkward, but it would mean I could get on his insurance plan, and since he opted in to the higher coverage level it would be better. I’d be able to take advantage of the new thing that means I can’t be denied for a preexisting, but I do feel awkward because I think this move will be less expensive for me, but more expensive for the Paz Farms.”

  “De nada.”

  “I know, honey, but Paz Farms is as important to me as anything.”

  “Look, Tay, I’ve already talked to Alan at the bank about how best to liquidate some of the farm assets in case you need them for—”

  “Nina, no. No, honey, don’t do that.”

  “I will. If you need them I will. You’re my family. It’s just dirt. If I can trade dirt for any ease or better chance for your life, I will. The farm isn’t the land or equipment; it’s you. It’s Adam. It’s Rachel. That was true as soon as you wrote me that letter, all those years ago. All of you saved me because you believed in me. All the farm, it’s ours. It just is.”

  “Nina—” Tay started, but there were tears in her voice.

  “Just shush, okay? Where are you getting married? Have you—”

  “We wanted to get married out at the fields. I know John Lake’s back from his tour but I was wondering if you thought he’d maybe let us use his house for a small reception?”

  “I’ll call him. I’m sure it’s fine. Let Rachel and me take care of it.”

  “Thanks, Nina. I just want something simple, with all of us. Good food, and some music, maybe.”

  “That sounds perfect. Perfect for you and Adam.”

  “You should go, and finish getting ready for your mysterious date. I’ll call Rachel and we’ll go dance. See you later, baby.”

  “I love you, Tay.”

  “Love you, too, Neens.”

  Nina put her phone down and walked to the mirror to look at what damage tears had done. Her eyelids were puffy, her cheeks flushed.

  She jumped with the noise of the lobby buzzer.

  Oh well.

  It was best that Sam saw her how she was. Her hips a little big for her dress, her stride unused to heels and pedicures, her face drying with tears for friends.

  She suspected he’d find a way to make her laugh anyway. Find a way to touch her, and to kiss her. Find his way—find her.

  Even when she didn’t know where she was, not yet.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sam hoped he had enough room in his pants for dinner. PJ had taken him to freshen up his wardrobe for his date and they had gone to a shop in Greek Village, near the university. The shop was inexplicably called TORSO and instead of the clothes being displayed on racks, they were hung in discreet closets lined in canvas, or hung from tree branches made from some kind of all-white ceramic. Sam had understood it not at all, while PJ went from nook to nook, somehow gathering clothes, and then shoved him into a dressing room that had, of all things, bookshelves lining the walls.

  PJ had talked him into a pair of dark jeans much, much tighter than he usually wore and a short-sleeved button-down that Sam immediately thought was totally dorky, but PJ said was swank. The shirt was a rough gray linen, and Sam had spent what seemed like forever ironing it, horrified to discover that over the entire back yoke of the shirt was a large swirl of metallic printing with letters that looked like graffiti. It took him forever to make out that it spelled DEEPER.

  Sweet Jesus.

  Now he was standing in the lobby of Nina’s condo in his too-tight jeans, and his swank shirt that was already wrinkling across his belly and under his arms, and his feet were killing him, as PJ had insisted on new shoes and the ones he approved were black and pointed and had both a zipper and a buckle, though Sam thought they could probably hold on to his feet by pressure alone.

  He just wanted to look nice.

  Then he saw Nina.

  And if stuffing his nut sack into these pants and killing his feet and looking like a dork were what it took to have her, he’d do it a hundred times over. She was wearing an orange dress that her insane body was practically bursting out of. Her hair was everywhere, down like it had been in the hospital, spilling over her shoulders and back. He wanted to sink his face into it and inhale.

  She was walking kind of slow, and then his heart stopped when he saw her legs in heels.

  “Fuck Nina, you look good.”

  She gave him a half smile, and he realized she looked a little tired. “You always know just what to say, Sam.”

  He wasn’t sure what she meant, then he wanted to smack himself in the head. Sam’d brought Mike to the Paz Farms cold storage center this morning to help him sort the Community Share boxes and Mike had used the time while they filled them with cucumbers, tomatoes, and corn to coach him on how to handle himself with Nina.

  “Thing is, Sammy, this Nina? She’s done all this herself, and it’s fuckin’ impressive. She’s like a goddamned baroness. Smart woman like that, you hafta let her make all the decisions, like I do with my DeeDee. You’ll just be happier.” He’d crisscrossed the flaps on another box then picked up an ear of corn, pointing it at Sam’s chest.

  “Watch your mouth, and in your case try not to act anything like yourself. You have an impulse? Can it. For once. Bite your tongue, snap a rubber band on your wrist, whatever, your first guess is wrong. I love you, Sam, baby, but that’s ’cause I don’t remember otherwise. This Nina, you’re going to have to polish yo
ur chrome and hope she doesn’t look under the hood.”

  “Fuck,” Sam’d said, but he didn’t have any reason to think Mike wasn’t right. And here, already, confronted with Nina looking beautiful in her dress and heels, he’d hit her with the F-bomb and leered at her like he’d never seen a beautiful woman before.

  Actually though, until Nina, he never had.

  He picked up her hand. “Sorry. It’s just that you do. Look good.”

  She looked at him, tilted her head. When she did, her hair sort of slithered over one shoulder and Sam fisted his hands to keep them off her hair. She tilted her head the other way. “You look … nice?”

  “Yeah?” He smoothed his hands over the front of the shirt, and was pissed to see that it was even more wrinkled than when he got out of his car. Also, wasn’t linen supposed to be cool, or something? The shirt was feeling damp under his arms, and like he’d get chafed. Maybe it was the tight jeans making him feel so warm.

  “Very … hip?”

  She had her lips pressed together and she wasn’t quite meeting him in his eyes, or not for long. He squinted at her face as a shaft of sunlight highbeamed through the lobby windows.

  “You’ve been crying.” He stepped closer. Her eyelids were a little swollen and it made her crow’s feet spread into the skin under her eyes, which looked purplish. He reached out a finger and brushed underneath one eye.

  She slapped his hand away.

  “Who dressed you?”

  Sam sighed. “PJ.”

  Nina grinned and it was contagious and perfect and familiar. “Can you breathe, baby?”

  Sam tried to pretend his heart didn’t tenderize into a useless pulp when Nina called him baby. “No. Also, I can’t breathe because you take my breath away. Not just because my pants are too tight.”

  Nina really laughed then, and took his hand. “Where are we going?”

  “To this Ethiopian restaurant.”

  “Have you been there before?”

  “No, but CityPages says it’s really good and a good place for a date.”

  “And it’s where you want to go?”