Free Crybaby Ranch by Tina Welling

his heritage, or maybe it’s the dark side of my euphoric scrubbing binge of the past couple days, but I am so caught up in his story, I relax and even become argumentative. My next words imply he can’t be in the best mental health with a family life based on a lie.
    He falls right in with my familiar manner. He says, “Suzannah, everybody is messed up. It’s a matter of degree. They were terrific mothers. They’re nuts, but very loving. All during my childhood, I had two mothers telling me I was the best little guy in the world. That goes far.”
    He’s right, of course. It was my own saving grace. My mother borrowed my mind, my ears, my patience from the time I was a toddler, yet she was always right there building me up. It wasn’t entirely to strengthen me as a pillar for her own support. And even if it often was, I believed her and I grew to feel capable and loved. Still, the trouble I’m having suspecting she is not well-minded…everything has to be reevaluated.
    I take over putting the groceries away, and Bo doctors up a can of black beans with lots of cumin, garlic, and red onion. We both work on the salad, then sit down to Bo’s ham dinner.
    â€œWhen you grew older and realized your mothers’ unusualness, did you lose confidence in yourself?” I ask Bo, thinking about my own loss lately.
    â€œThey told me they were odd. Around my high school years, they said, ‘Bartholomew, we think we’re getting odd. We don’t mind so much, sister and I, but we worry about your little friends.’” Bo and I laugh at his high-voiced rendition, but it’s sad.
    When the sisters were eighteen and nineteen and their adult lives just beginning, they stepped into “otherness.” And I imagine to be “other” in a small isolated valley like Jackson Hole some forty years ago demanded toughness. But with Bo’s help, I understand that to drift into oddness was for them easier than to fight it. The sisters’ only choice was to follow their bold bid to differentness through to the end.
    â€œMy aunts have made a career out of being strange and they’re quite successful at it,” Bo says.
    I smile. “You admire them.” This is not an accusal—this is a compliment. Something about the way he says this makes the place between my eyes sting. He loves his aunts, I can tell. Makes me long to see my mother.
    I also compliment his cooking. Bo’s experiment turned out well. The ham is juicy and tender. When we’re finished eating, I watch Bo knot his cloth napkin to the back of his chair. He did this same thing this morning. I wonder whether he plans on coming back again for breakfast. I worry that I have let him move into my life too far, too soon. As if the napkin drooping from his chair post resembles the plastic ribbons waving from the survey posts around my lone acre, marking off an acquisition. And I fear the paint of my newly won boundary lines is still fresh enough to be smeared, perhaps by any passing stranger.
    Bo seems comfortable with the silence that’s spread. He watches me eat and sips his coffee. Perhaps I don’t have to entertain him to keep his company. Erik flipped on the television even in the middle of my well-rehearsed stories about his own baby boy. Bo seems easy with himself. Thank God he’s got a major fault—drinking. Which reminds me, I didn’t see him unpack any beer.
    â€œDid you bring beer?”
    â€œNo, sorry. I didn’t think of it. You like beer?”
    â€œNo. Thought you did.” Now I’ve stepped into it. “I mean, I like it…. I just don’t drink often.”
    Bo sets his mug down. “But you heard I did?”
    â€œUmm. What? Like it?”
    â€œDrink often.”
    I decide to come clean. “I saw you drive past Friday night.”
    â€œAnd you heard things.” He tightens his jaw muscles and looks practically inside me.