Megan Lindholm - Cloven Hooves

“I, uh, I want to stop at the music store and look at the tapes.” Suddenly it seems like a very juvenile errand. As well to say I was stopping by the candy store, to get red and green suckers and a handful of Double Bubble. I am embarrassed, and they know it.

“You and your music!” Mother Maurie gives a condescending snort of laughter. “All right, but you’ll have to do it while we’re in the drugstore picking up Tommy’s prescription. Did you remember to bring it?”

She goes right on talking as I dig through my purse, finally coming up with the small empty pill bottle for Tom’s allergy medication in my coat pocket. It is sticky, Teddy must have played with it, and I surreptitiously wipe it on my napkin before I hand it over. I try to find the threads of the conversation again, only to realize no one is talking, they are all waiting expectantly.

The men are here, and I don’t know how or when they’ve arrived. Grandpa Potter, stooped but daunting still, rests his big hands on the edge of our table. His eyes scan the table, feasting on his wife and perfect daughter. He is given to saying things like “The Potter men have always been proud to say that their women dressed well, no matter how bad the harvest has been. We take care of our women.” His eyes skid over me, roll briefly toward heaven. He is a strange old man, I think, proud of his wife’s and daughter’s gentility and polish, but equally proud of his own rough edges and crude ways. He never minces words, never worries about giving offense. Of all Tom’s family, Grandpa is the one who never bothers to hide that he does not understand me, does not believe I will ever quite fit. He scares me, and I wish I could hide that from him. Right now, I want to sink under the table to escape that sharp stare. But suddenly Tom pushes into the seat beside me, his thigh warming against mine, and instantly all is well, no price is too great to pay for possessing him. Tall and golden he is, blond hair, brown eyes, big hands, and one big hand surreptitiously strokes my thigh before coming to settle demurely on the tabletop. He smells of Old Spice tinged with diesel oil, the mechanic’s smell that never quite leaves his skin. The hostess has followed them to the table, and I feel her eyes move from Tom to me and back again. She does not understand it any more than I do, why does this man who looks like a cigarette billboard cowboy, this gorgeous perfect man, sit down beside a woman like me? I move closer to him, and set my hand atop his on the table. The hostess looks away, moves away. I take a breath. I am safe now. My Tom is with me.

My Teddy is with him, clinging to his grandpa’s hand, his small head looking defenseless, his hair newly shorn and slicked. I don’t like it, and for a moment my anger flares, who does that old man think he is, always carrying out his compulsion to “keep those boys looking like boys” upon my little son? No one asked me if he needed a haircut. I love his dandelion tuft of fine hair, I don’t care if it covers the tops of his small pink ears. But Teddy is looking at me, his brown eyes big and round. He has been brave this time, not flinching when the buzzing razor nibbled down the back of his unprotected neck. I smile at him and try to put my approval in it, try not to remember how, when we first arrived in Washington, Grandpa took him to the barber, without my knowledge or consent, and brought him back, red-eyed and disgraced. “Momma’s little tit cried when the barber tried to shave the back of his neck and over his ears. Well, no grandson of mine is going to run around looking like a goddamned hippie. You wanna be like that, you stay with your mommy, baby boy. I’ll tell you, no son of mine ever behaved like that in public! Five years old, and he acts like a goddamned baby.”

And I had watched Teddy shrink with each contemptuous statement, and had foolishly made it worse by putting my arm around my little son, hoping to shield him from his grandfather’s disgust. And Teddy, my Teddy, had flung my arm aside and pushed me away, run out of the little house and into the fields to cry, newly ashamed of being afraid of something unfamiliar, newly ashamed of letting his mother hold and comfort him. And that wicked old man had glared at me and said, “You coddle that boy too much. Gonna ruin him. Time he was with men more often, instead of hanging around your skirts like Momma’s little tit.”

And I, too cold with anger to speak, had stared him down, driven him from the little house with my frozen green eyes.

But that was in another time and another place, and I cannot afford to think about it now. Instead, I make my mouth smile, and reach past Tom to hold out a hand to my Teddy. But my little son only smiles, a smile that is at once secretive and begging. He slides into the other end of the circular booth, forcing everyone to scoot over and sending Steffie up against me on the other side. Grandpa has missed none of this. “He’s Grandpa’s big boy today, Mommy. He’s gonna sit over here with me.”

Grandpa’s eyes are black, like little bits of anthracite coal set into his pale, soggy face. He was a big man once, had stood tall and had tanned, weathered skin. Maybe then the lines around his eyes had been laugh lines. Now he looks bleached, like something found under a pile of old trash, a soup label with the colors gone all wrong, the green beans turned blue, a farmer turned entrepreneur, a corned and blistered foot crammed into a pointed Florsheim shoe. I could have pitied him if he hadn’t been so hateful. Our eyes don’t meet, I don’t let him have the victory. I squeeze Tom’s hand and look into his eyes instead.

“Did you find the part?” Mother Maurie demands.

Tom nods. “Junkyard had it.” He turns to me. “You eat already?”

“Yeah, but if you …”

“How much was it?” Mother Maurie cuts in irritably. This is business, and Tom has no sense, mixing it up with a conversation with his little wife. Mother Maurie has shifted gears, is no longer the chic shopper but is now the shrewd businesswoman, versed in every facet of the family’s farm equipment dealership.

“Seventeen-fifty. New one is twenty-two, but if old man Cooper wants his tractor back in the fields by Tuesday, he’s gonna have to be happy with secondhand parts.” Tom goes back to scanning the menu hungrily, fielding Mother Maurie’s agitated questions easily.

She is upset with the parts supplier and doesn’t care who knows it. Wants everyone to know it, as a matter of fact. If they think they can get away with treating Potter’s Equipment this way, they are in for a surprise, she’ll go right to the factory for parts after this, just cut them out entirely, and let them eat that. Why, she must order two or three thousand dollars’ worth of parts a year from them, and for them to let us down like this just isn’t good business, as they’ll soon find out. Her own ruthlessness is giving her great satisfaction. She speaks clearly and almost loudly, so that other people at other tables hear and know just how hard-nosed a little businesswoman she is. She is proud of her savvy, and so is Grandpa Potter, for he nods sagely as she carries on.

Tom’s fingers close over mine and hold me fast. The others at the table are talking, and he is replying to them, but his fingers against mine are a different conversation, and a different man is speaking to me from the one who they know. I listen to him alone, letting the other voices fade into a background hum like summer bees. I know I do not belong in their world. What matters to me is that somehow, Tom’s world and mine have intersected, and that in that brief crossing, we can be together.