“But what does that mean?” My voice strains. If we never marry, will we just continue to play house? I’ve also known people who live together, never marrying for whatever reason, but I don’t understand it. I know it’s only a legal document. It doesn’t mean a couple is any less committed to one another, but maybe I am old—old-fashioned. I want to be married to him. Not just—
“We’re partners.”
Ugh. I want to scream, but instead, I struggle to sit forward, forcing him to move back. He nimbly stands, and I curse him even more at the ease of his large body while I have to scoot forward and press at the cushions to lift myself upright. Bull holds out a hand to help me, but I swat it away, irritated with everything.
“Where are you going?” Bull asks once I eventually stand and walk away from him.
“I need to call Audrey or Zara.” Or just anyone who will listen.
“I think you made the right decision,” Rita says once I call her after I’ve given my two weeks’ notice to Zara over the phone. “This is the next great thing in your life, Scarlett. Embrace it as a gift.”
As Rita doesn’t have children, and it does not look as if that will be a possibility on her horizon, I should be more grateful for my position. Bull is telling me I don’t need to work for financial means, and I still have savings if I feel a need to contribute. He’d never accept it, but I feel better knowing I have it.
Zara was sympathetic to my pregnancy issues. She reminded me how she needed to work out scheduling and eventually daycare as a new and single mother plus being a business partner to the birth of the Bean.
“We never have it easy as women. We want to work but feel guilty about leaving our children. When we’re with our children, we worry about things at work.”
“Does it go away? All that mom pressure?” I asked of her, finding sympathy from another mother with young children.
“Never,” Zara teased. “It’s just a part of the territory, and I never appreciated my mother more than when I became a single mother myself.”
It’s strange to think I’m technically a single mother as Bull and I are committed as parents but not a couple. We’re unofficially official, I guess, but I don’t like the sound of that label.
“I don’t think I can stop working forever,” I tell Rita.
“No one says you have to, but also no one is saying you need to return to a job outside your home.”
“I don’t know that I’ll be good at being just a mom,” I whisper. I consider my own mother and her lack of involvement in my life while placing overwhelming pressure on me. I haven’t spoken to my parents since their betraying phone call. If my own mother could not be happy for me and support me, I didn’t feel the need to include them in my future child’s life. I’d heard stories of poor parents being excellent grandparents, but I wasn’t taking the risk with mine. I had faith Harland would be all the grandparent Sprout would need. Plus, Sprout wouldn’t lack love from uncles and a cousin who has already offered babysitting services.
“Honey, you’ll be the wonderful person I know you to be. It’s just a change. Change is difficult, but sometimes it’s also for the best.” Rita knows. She’s having her own midlife crisis as she calls it. “Your life is never going to be the same again, though. So, I’d get used to constant change, my friend.”
She’s right in many ways. Every day will no longer be my own but the development of my child. The thought brings new tears, but this time they are a mix of fear and elation.
I’m going to be a mom soon.
It’s a job I never knew I wanted until suddenly it was mine.
24
Birthday Wishes
Bull
As fall blooms into a kaleidoscope of colors, I point out the Engagement Tree to Scarlett one afternoon in October. We are two months out from her due date. The brilliant red color isn’t lost among the autumn spectacular. The heart of this land beats bright as does my heart for Scarlett.
“We should have a picnic up there one afternoon,” Scarlett suggests, but I shrug off the idea. It isn’t that I don’t want to eat under the tree and spend a lazy day with her, but I don’t trust myself near that tree. Each passing day with Scarlett digs deeper into my feelings for her. I want to marry her. I want the statement of making her mine, but it’s the last thing I can ask of her, and Scarlett’s made no hint of marrying again.
After her ex-husband's adultery and the disloyalty added to the wound with her parents, marriage seems like the furthest thing from Scarlett’s mind. She’s grappling enough with motherhood—a job she’s determined to do well now that she’s left the Busy Bean. She’s also taken a more vested interest in the dairy.
“So what’s on the docket today?” she asks.
“Insemination,” I reply without a thought. Scarlett sputters her coffee as we stand near the counter. I try to ignore how she looks barefoot in my kitchen. The suggestion of her being here all the time would toss me back in the 1950s, but she does look good, all sleepy and hair mussed up in another pair of flannel pajamas tucked under her belly and one of my T-shirts covering her. She wasn’t wearing more than that shirt this morning in the bed we share, but it’s chilly down here first thing.
“Excuse me?” Her eyes rapidly blink as she lowers her coffee mug. “Are we talking cow sex?”
“Sort of. We have an insemination technician coming today to impregnate a few of those ready to birth again.”
“What is an insemination technician? Like a superhero bull?”
I laugh at Scarlett’s imagination. “Well, technically speaking, an excited bull could perform up to twenty times a day, which does seem like superhero status.”
Her mouth falls open. “I don’t know whether to applaud him or cringe. How does he even get it up twenty times a day?”
“Stroke up the inside of his thigh.” Her eyes narrow in disbelief, and I reach forward, stroking my hand along the inside of her leg. Those dark eyes of hers widen, and I see I’ve made my point. “Ideally, we’d put a bull out to pasture and let him go at it, but we need to be selective and organized with a schedule, so the technician comes and injects those ready with semen instead.”
“Uhm, and how exactly do you collect bull semen? Giant paper cups?” Scarlett laughs at her own joke, and I chuckle with her.
“No, it’s like a giant cow condom used as he mounts a cow or an old bull.”
“Gay cow sex?” Her brow lifts.
“It’s a thing.” I chuckle as she still doesn’t believe me. “You can actually order a variety of semen specimens from a catalog. It gets expensive, like up to fifty dollars a tube.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Her face is incredulous, doubting everything I say. “That’s like golden semen.”
“Yep.”
Scarlett’s thoughtful a second. “So if I came up behind you—” She circles around me and places her hand between my legs. “And stroke up like this.” Her fingers drag up the inside of my thigh, but the added pressure does the trick. “Does that get you ready?”