Free Strange Cowboy by Sam Michel

remotely moved. She says she cannot picture it. She wonders what do lambs and milkcows
     have to do with us. Our milk comes from cartons, she reminds me, and doesn’t Hans
     provide our meat? This is the twenty-first century, my wife informs me. In her opinion,
     we don’t need to be reminded of the technical embarrassments a mother stuck in nineteen-ought
     would use to suffer for a party.
    “It doesn’t sound like any fun,” my wife protests. “I thought you said that it was
     fun.”
    “It was something I was looking forward to,” I say. “I said parts of it were fun.
     Nothing is all fun. Go ahead and name me one good thing that’s pure.”
    I have suggested that my wife observe herself, asked her if her pregnancy and labor
     with the boy was not in some way an adulterated bliss. A bag of waters, I believe the saying was, she was a waterbag, remember? Did she not recall the retention
     of her menses, the growths of bones inside her, her bloat and her thrombosis, the
     kicks and shoves, the hiccups and the heartbeat? I myself recall she wept, just as
     our physician had foretold it. Her ankles swelled. Her gums bled. She described for
     me the bloody show; acquainted me with the mucous plug. Sure, we told each other this
     was what we wanted. We dined out, looked the other way, blamed the broken crystal
     on a raging hormone. My wife, we said, had got the “dropsies.” She said, “Whoops,”
     a lot or, “Whoopsey, someone’s got the dropseys!” We knew some items were irreparable.
     Some took glue. True, my wife directed me to look onto the bright side, where she
     foresaw a family trip to an exotic beach in no time. We would sun ourselves, boil
     a lobster, teach the boy to float. Noregrets, she would say, all’s not lost, we are at a new beginning. I concurred, in
     part, and asked her was there nothing I might do for her. She began to smell of Pine
     Sol. Her knees chapped. Her ligaments, I reminded her, were killing her. Even so,
     the days were rare when she was not pursuing dust and cobwebs, committing suicide
     by rubber glove and plastic bucket. I told her, I said, “You are killing yourself.”
     She said, “I know it,” and suggested I might help her. She pressed brooms on me, and
     clothespins, and a book describing fifty-seven ways in which a father might be useful.
     She was repeatedly astounded by how many products dear to her are causing birth defects,
     in the state of California. So much we saw was dear to us. Dearness colored every shirt and shoe sized zero. So much to us became so cute. My wife held up the sailor’s blouse, the coveralls, and blazer, asking me to picture
     in these flattened fabrics the cherubic figure of a milk-plumped son. She moved a
     sleeve about, to stimulate my vision, assisting me to see our sailor’s first salute,
     this kick our future farmer was to give me in the region of my shinbone.
    I told her I could see it, saw it all, just today, in her face, its distortional facility,
     even as she stood beside my chair and looked down from above me. Items: Why we absolutely
     must possess a wicker bassinette; why the boy requires seven sleepers; why the room
     cannot be painted white, but must be painted blue; why I, and only I, should be the
     one to paint it. I am made to see the need for sacrifice. My wife, I see her purge.
     I watch her “cut the fat out,” pare her fingernails and dress for comfort. She models
     for me, asks me whether she is just as ugly as she feels, and as pretty, and as sotted.
     She milks herself, in the bathtub, or in bed, wants to know if I have given any thought
     to formulas, or if I ever worry over the efficacy of breast pumps. We make love, at
     her request,athletically, and partially, owing to her bulk, and my reluctance. We experiment with
     pillows, using them as props, where props are necessary, or as cushions, where necessity
     appears to call for cushions, or else we substitute a pillow for my arm, or for my
     wife’s