The Bond

Chapter 4: Baby

Chapter 4: BabyMarriage made me a better man.

Suddenly, she was everywhere, and everything was her, wonderfully enriched and exciting. The farm blossomed. I incorporated landscaping services, expanded the farm’s storefront and brought the place into the modern world with farm-to-table events, Community Supported Agriculture boxes, and transforming one of the old barns into an event space. While at first reluctant, Lila came around once she saw the positive impact all the changes had on not only our finances, but the reputation of a business she loved and respected. She even started selling antiques out of the newly remodeled storefront.

The farm was a giving, bountiful partner. All it needed was attention, care, and my hands in the soil. I knew the truth, the same truth each member of my family understood: the land owned us. We owned the work.

The landscaping business took off before I’d fully understood what was happening. I hired a couple guys seasonally, one guy, Luke, stayed on full time. I’d kept him employed during a couple of stints in jail and through a rocky divorce. Between his man bun and super-manicured beard, you’d have thought he’d fallen out of a Hipsters R Us catalog. His cool attitude made him a favorite with customers, and his ability with machinery, a favorite with our larger accounts.

We raked lawns in the fall, plowed corporate driveways in the winter and planted flowers in gated communities.

Clara, who’d studied business and economics, went to town on our books, systems, and streamlined our antiquated methods, patiently explaining everything to both Lila and myself. Oddly, Lila took to the more efficient way of keeping records, inventory and receipts quicker than I did. Soon, Clara and Lila could be found laughing over bunches of sage or a stack of contracts with equal enjoyment.

It was quiet moments, seeing Clara bundling herbs into beautifully wild bouquets, or tucked into her favorite bench by a window, reading, the light catching her hair, the way she sighed when she smelled roses, or broke into dance every time she heard music when she thought no one was looking—though she wouldn’t have cared if anyone did. It made life joyous. Joyous—a word I didn’t understand until my wife taught me.

A kitchen garden—another culinary success of the farm, famous for its herbs, particularly rosemary, sage and pineapple mint—was planted next to the greenhouse, by Clara and Lila.

Numerous were the local kitchens decorated with wreaths crafted from our bay bushes. Chefs from all over took notice, and our produce popped up on their menus.

Clara delighted in making the old new again, transforming the derelict into beloved. A dilapidated old shed was turned into a place where shoppers could refresh themselves with herb-infused waters and buy bundles of dried or fresh sage, lavender, chamomile, thyme and dozens of other herbs grown on the property. If the mood struck, my mom and Clara handed out cold drinks spiked with honey and fruit. Sometimes Lila’s homemade shortbread or jam thumbprint cookies accompanied the drinks.

I loved watching people freak out when Clara’d be chatting and suddenly Jett would slither from her hair and wind around her neck, like a necklace. Clara would remove him, and hold him like he was a kitten, and kept talking as if it were all perfectly normal, which to her, it was.

Our preserves and maple syrup were as popular as ever, and with Clara boosting our online presence the stuff developed a cult following among foodies, and flew off the shelves faster than we could make restock.

Sorry…We do not offer a waiting list, could be heard on repeat once word got out that a fresh batch of preserves had hit the shelves.

“Social media is s**t,” I complained, but no one listened.

The major barn that housed the farm store had a hayloft, which Clara loved. She’d turned it into what she called a goddess getaway, adorned with her favorite plants—which were myriad—crystals, stones and various images and icons of female deities, especially those connected to fertility and motherhood. Her final touch had been the installation of an exquisite stained-glass window, which, when hit by the sun, swathed the room in rainbow-colored light.

“For the chakras,” she told me when she’d caught me marveling in the prismatic splendor.

I didn’t know about chakras, but the way she moved in the colored light was fascinating, arousing and mystical.

We’d had a lot of s*x in the loft—she believed our daughter had been conceived in the space. We’d smoked weed, hosted friends and drank too much tequila. She’d meditated in front of the stained-glass windows, bathed in jewel-toned sunlight. I found her sitting lotus, writing in her diary, lights and colors washing over her, shadows dancing over her pearlescent skin, her goddesses watching—some benevolent, some cruel. Beneath their gaze, we made love and lay entwined until dark.

“Why don’t you like it here?” she’d asked, biting one of my n*****s.

“Who said I don’t?” I retorted, wincing.

“But you don’t,” she insisted.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.

“I can see it in your face, every time you climb the ladder,” she continued.

“What do you see?”

“Fear, sadness…you look anxious,” she replied.

“Forget it.” I tried getting up, but she tackled me.

“Tell me,” she said.

Seeing the worry on her face and the concern in her voice, I relented. “My first dog died here.”

“How?” She asked.

“Wasps,” I said. “We disturbed a nest and they swarmed.”

She stroked my cheek. “It was an accident,” she said, “a long time ago.”

“I hate anything with a f*****g stinger.”

She got to her feet, lit incense. “You’d be out of business without the pollinators, most of which have stingers.” She blew on the incense and watched the scented smoke waft into the loft.

“Waft into the loft,” I’d laughed.

“What?” She waved the stick.

“Nothing.”

“What was the puppy doing up here?”

“I’d carried him up,” I sighed. “One hand around the dog, the other around a bologna sandwich we’d intended to share.”

“Bologna?” She made a gagging sound.

“Hey, I used to love a fried bologna sandwich.”

“I’m going to puke.” She placed the incense in a wooden holder.

“Come over here,” I said.

She joined me, joining the best word to describe our mutual need for our bodies to be as close as possible, each vessel needy, wanting to mesh.

“I remember when my first pet snake died,” she said. “His name was Abas.”

“Abas?” I laughed.

“I was a Greek mythology nerd,” she said, elbowing me.

“You are anything but a nerd,” I said.

“Hey, what do you have against nerds?” She grabbed my balls.

I winced. “Nothing!”

“You sure?” Her grip tightened.

“Yes! Jesus. Uncle!”

She let go. “I cried when that snake died.”

“Why didn’t you get another one?” I asked, rubbing my sore crotch.

“My grandmother wasn’t a fan. She told me I could, but I knew it would bother her, so I didn’t.”

“What was she like?”

“Evvie?” Clara sighed, rested her chin on my chest. “Fabulous. Truly, I know everyone uses that word, but she truly was…fabulous. One of those old ladies everyone hopes to be.”

“Not like Lila?”

“Lila is a good mother.”

“I know.”

“But Evvie,” Clara sighed. “Evvie was…”

“Fabulous?”

Clara looked at me and laughed. “You saying fabulous, is either gross or a total turn on.” She covered my mouth when I started saying it again.

“Why?” I asked, nibbling her fingers.

“Because,” she couldn’t stop smiling, “it’s like hearing a bulldozer purr like a kitten.”

“Snake loving nerd,” I whispered before kissing her.

She got up, collected a journal and sat in her rocking chair. I stretched, lazy, savoring our nakedness in the warm loft.

“Come over here,” I said.

“No.”

“Come on…”

“Later.”

Reluctantly, I forced myself up and put my shorts on. “It’s a date.”

“You didn’t have to get dressed,” she said, eyeing me over her journal.

“If I don’t, I won’t get s**t done.”

“So?”

“What are you reading?” I asked coming over and touching the velvet-covered book.

“An old journal.”

“Diary?”

She shrugged. “I wish you knew her.”

“Who?”

She closed the book. “Evvie. She would have adored you.”

“You think?”

“Oh yeah, she loved men.” Clara pulled her hair back, then let it drop. “Men, a good frozen cocktail and anyone who could make her laugh.”

“Your grandmother was a drinker?”

“She knew her way around a blender, and was not unfamiliar with a martini shaker.” Clara said. “Some of my favorite memories are of us sharing a blender full of strawberry daiquiri’s watching a summer thunderstorm from the garage. Mine were virgin, of course.”

“You sure?” I joked.

“Mostly,” she smiled.

“I bet,” I said, searching for my jeans.

“What happened after?” She’d begun rocking in the chair, her eyes closed.

“After?” I struggled into my T-shirt.

“The wasps and the puppy.”

“The loft was locked,” I replied.

“It’s open now,” she said.

“Because of you,” I said.

The following summer, wasps invaded the goddess getaway.

“Decco, let me handle it,” Clara said.

“Are you kidding? If they swarm, you could get stung to death and I’d never know.”

“You’d know,” she said.

I don’t know how she’d gotten rid of them, but they’d vanished. She kept the nest, saying that as long as she had it, they wouldn’t return.

And they didn’t.

When Clara announced she was pregnant, my world, our world, the entirety of the universe exploded with warmth, light and the stings, the pains, anything even remotely shadow-kissed vanished in the goddess-like glow of her.

I immediately became one of those annoying dudes obsessed with the miracle of pregnancy. Clara, my wife, was carrying our child. I laugh now, because she wasn’t mine, no matter how much I wanted to believe it, because I was, am, mostly a man…though now I am something more…but then, in the blush of our marriage, I saw, felt, needed the future to be perfectly laid out in my mind.

We were having a child. We belonged to each other.

Mundane became miraculous, flowers bloomed like I’d never remembered, the honey was sweeter, the farm busier, the air gentler, and people kinder…I was in expectant ecstasy and demanded the world bask in my surreal pleasure.

Of course, I still sold fertilizer.

But even that made me smile.

“You’re beaming,” Lila said when she caught Clara and I gazing into each other’s eyes while eating a massive bowl of strawberries splashed with balsamic vinegar. Clara’s cravings swung from sweet to sour and sometimes wanted, needed, both at once.

“More vinegar?” My mother squawked, tasting a piece of drenched fruit.

“I know,” Clara said sheepishly. “I can’t get enough.” She sipped a glass of bubbly water, tinged ruby with raspberry vinegar.

“Leave her alone,” I said, kissing her hands.

“You two,” my mother snorted, though secretly I knew she was as delighted as we were.

Most the time we stared into each other’s eyes. Even when I was working and she passed, greeting customers, our eyes would meet, and I’d blush with her attention, her desire to be a mother and my wife. I couldn’t have felt luckier, or more alive.

“My sweet tooth is out of control,” she’d warned when she’d wrestled the better half of a shared candy bar from my grip.

“A sweet tooth? I think you’re a chocoholic.”

She shrugged. “I’ve always been, but now it’s crazy.”

“Vinegar and chocolate…weirdo.” I joked.

She stroked her belly. “I think we’re having a sweet and sour sugar cube.”

Clara’s cravings often led us driving all over creation for various and expensive Belgian chocolate, which was a particular favorite.

“I knew a guy once, when I was kid, who turned me onto Belgian chocolate.”

“That sounds ominous,” I half-joked while trying to pry a piece from a bar she’d nearly annihilated.

“Maybe,” she said. She opened her hand, let me take the chocolate and coaxed me into her lap, where I rested my head eating the candy, hoping to feel our baby kicking.

“So?” I asked coming out of the dreamy trance I’d melted into, thinking about our future.

Clara looked at me. “So?”

“The creep with the chocolate?”

“He wasn’t, just an old man, lonely, kind. He worked at the cemetery.”

I sat up, looking at her. “What?”

She laughed. “Nothing…I was a weird kid.” She kissed me and snatched back the bar.

One lazy, humid summer evening we were walking in the empty fields, holding hands, not in any hurry toward anything, savoring the sunset.

“I love this wildness.” Clara said, surveying the fields.

“My family made a commitment to leave part of the land wild.”

“Commitment to who?” Clara asked.

I couldn’t answer, but pulled her close.

“There’s so much space,” she said, tugging, leading me farther into the golden, insect-buzzing depths.

“It owns us,” I said, allowing myself to be led.

“It?”

“Nature, I guess…the land.”

She sighed and leaned on my arm. “I love you.”

“I love you,” I replied.

Six months later Clara was bed-bound. She’d lost her color, wept, and held my hands as though clinging to something other than my body.

“If something happens…”

I shook my head, but didn’t speak. The words were gone, too trite for what I prayed, begged nightly wouldn’t happen.

“Decco, if something does, don’t worry.”

One afternoon, I came in from the fields sweating, filthy. It was hot. I poured two glasses of lemonade, went to our bedroom and found my wife bleeding. The glasses dropped. There was so much blood. In the madness I spotted Jett wriggling in the crimson pool.

She looked at me, hair plastered to her face.

“If something…” She lost consciousness.

Her blood was on my hands, in my hair. I tasted it, smelled it, and every time I blinked, I saw the snake writhing in the red pool of her blood.

“Clara!”

The delivery was sudden, early, and in a hospital, not at home as she’d hoped, as we’d both planned. I wasn’t by her side.

I stared at the hospital doors, waiting for them to open, praying my wife and child would emerge and the radiance I’d known would return.

But when the doors opened, only my daughter Antonia came home.

Home.

The day after Clara died, I went into the fields, threw the chains of the plow over my shoulders and pulled until I was numb. My shoulders became permanently scarred from where the chains broke flesh.

Lila found me straining like an ox against the weight. I could smell the blood, the dirt. I’d pissed myself at some point but hadn’t realized it, and I’d kept going, inch by inch, fighting the constraints of my body, fueled by rage and grief.

Seeing my mother holding my daughter at the edge of the field brought me back from the animal to the human. I dropped the chains.

“You’re bleeding,” Lila said.

“Yeah?” I covered the wounds with the freshly churned earth.

“Honey, don’t, you’ll get infected.”

“It’s in my blood,” I said.

Always dirt.

“Declan, come inside,” Lila begged. “Please.”

“Inside?” I looked at my baby, the sleeping innocence, and my chest heaved harder than it did under the burden of the plow. “Is she real?”

Lila nodded. “Come inside.”

“Decco?” Chester, one of my best friends, had joined Lila. I’d forgotten he’d come over. Manic anguish left me oblivious and blind to anything beyond fury.

“What will I do without her?” I asked, not sure who or where the question was directed.

Chester came, put his arms around me. “You’ll go on, because that little life,” he gestured at Lila and Antonia, “needs you, the land needs you. Clara would expect you to give her the amazing life you’d both dreamed of giving her.” He leaned closer and whispered, “after all the months I’ve worked on fixing your back, this is how you repay me?” He smiled. “You’re a bastard.”

I don’t know how or why, but he made me laugh.

“Time to get up,” he’d said. “Time to be a father.”

So I did, and was, because Antonia was real, and the heartbeat of new life shattered the heartache of death.

Chester had become a touchstone and helped me, along with my mother, care for my infant daughter. Ivan had taken an extended trip to Europe, and while we’d kept in regular communication, it’d been Chester’s kind resilience that had anchored me.

Work became scripture, a way forward, a thing to do, and I needed to do everything to stay sane for my newborn daughter. I existed for everything, everyone else. Labor and the struggle were paramount to my sanity. While raking leaves, tapping maples, pruning, chopping and selling the farm’s bounty—always selling—my grandfather’s voice repeated in my head: Trees are in our blood. Land is in our blood.

I killed every errant wasp around the place until my hands were swollen with stings. Each time I was stung, the grip of grief lessened, only to return once the physical pain faded.

Jett disappeared.

No matter how many times I’d tried climbing the ladder, my feet would slip or I’d get a splinter. I never made it back to the loft.

It’s funny. Memory. Glossy with time the darkness is almost a lie, something made up to douse the true joy of a moment, but it’d happened, the blood, the snake, her death. I know it did because despite the halo-glow of memory, I feel it like my own pulse, and see it in my daughter’s eyes.

Thinking of Clara makes my brain melt with longing-loss, and emptiness.

I want her.

I listen for her voice; sniff the air for lavender, Neroli, lemon, and always chocolate.