“I appreciate your cooperation. You will be generously compensated for it.” Her head had no sooner disappeared behind the canvas before it popped back out. “And by generously compensated, I mean in sexual favors. Naturally.” With a wink, she disappeared again.
As I always did whenever the conversation steered toward that topic, I changed the subject. Quickly. Not because I was one of those guys who got creeped out by the idea of making love to his pregnant wife, but because her heart was already straining enough without the added stress of intimacy. “Do you still want to plan on leaving the city after your appointment tomorrow? Have you had enough time to pack?”
“I am not planning, I am dying to leave tomorrow, and yeah, I’ve already packed. I’m ready to hit the road. Bags are waiting at the door, and I’ve got a supply of peanut butter for the road trip. I picked up kale chips and raw walnuts for you.”
Last year, I would have laughed if she’d suggested what she just packed for our road trip fuel or even thought about implying a cowboy from Montana knew what kale was . . . but last year felt like a former lifetime. “Yum. You know I can’t resist a crunchy-bordering-on-chewy piece of glorified lettuce, and who can say no to unsalted nuts? On second thought, double yum.”
That earned a small laugh from her as she worked on the painting. “Come on, it’s like I told you. A plate of red meat and bowl of mashed potatoes swimming in cream and butter is no longer considered the height of health food. Sorry. Besides, all we need to do is look to nature to discover how to take care of our bodies. Carrots are good for our eyes—cut one section off, and you can see it actually looks like an eye. Tomatoes are good for our hearts—cut one down the center, and you can see chambers and ventricles and pretty much a human heart drawn in nature. Crack into a walnut shell, and what does it look like? A brain, just like what it’s good for. More natural foods, less cholesterol and heart disease dripping from a plate please.”
I’d heard that lecture countless times in three months, and it still managed to amuse me every time. “If I’m to buy into your theory that we only need to look at what we eat to know what part of our body it’s good for, what part of mine is a kale chip benefiting?” I felt my brows draw together as I considered what part of the human anatomy was flat, frilly, and putrid green.
Rowen grumbled from behind the canvas. “Those gifts from nature that don’t resemble anything inside our bodies mean they’re good for our entire body.”
“My butter-laden mashed potatoes don’t resemble anything in the human anatomy. So I’m going to infer, based on your conclusion, that eating a serving or five at each sitting is beneficial for my whole body.”
Another grumble, that one louder. These were the moments that got me through our impasse in life. The light ones tempered with laughter and each of us trying to outdo and one up the other. We’d talked so much heavy lately, pertaining to a topic that was heavy in the way that leaned toward the doom-and-gloom end of the spectrum, I clung onto any chance for light and fun and laughter for as long as possible. It wasn’t just good for me; I knew it was good for her too.
“No, mashed potatoes do look like something inside your body,” she said in a tone that gave away nothing. “Your heart after it explodes from clogging and contaminating it with saturated fats and empty carbs.”
I laughed, loud enough for her to hear, but she must have thought I’d earned one since I didn’t get a reprimand for breaking composure. Her laugh joined with mine, along with the sounds of her brush strokes and dabs.
You see, my health was Rowen’s thing. Her habit or fixation or whatever-have-you that had cropped up in the wake of all of this uncertainty was her interest-slash-bordering-on-obsession with keeping me healthy. The food thing was where it had started and was most obvious. Breakfasts of eggs, bacon, and buttered toast had been replaced with steel-cut oats mixed with cinnamon and raisins, served alongside an unpalatable heap of runny egg whites (no salt, of course). On the days I worked, she’d taken to packing me lunches instead of letting me pack my own or, heaven forbid, stop by one of those express-line-to-the-morgue places the rest of the world called drive-thrus. Dinner had turned into a ritual of packing as many vitamins, micro-nutrients, and healthy proteins as she could get into me . . . which translated to me forcing each bite down as I held a careful smile in place and praised her efforts high and low. It was a good thing it was my mouth doing the praising and not my stomach though. It didn’t know what to do with things like mustard greens and seared ahi and goji berries. It had been fed ranch food for two decades and wasn’t accepting the diet change with good grace.
The Keep Jesse Healthy agenda didn’t start and end with the food thing though. No, that was just where it dug its heels in. Rowen had started collecting vials of essential oils and mixing them into what I think she called a diffuser at night to help me fall asleep and stay asleep, and she’d taken to rubbing a potent concoction of oregano oil into the bottoms of my feet every day to supposedly up my immune system.
She’d also found a doctor for me, scheduled an appointment, and pretty much ordered a full panel work-up of my blood tests so nothing could slip through the cracks, not even my slightly elevated levels of cholesterol. You should have seen the meals that week following the blood results. I was pretty sure my stomach lining was still trying to repair itself.
I didn’t have to ask her why that was the thing she’d latched onto—making sure I stayed healthy. I knew. She wanted to make sure our baby would have at least one healthy parent to see them through a good part of their life. One parent who’d see them through their formative years and hopefully way beyond. I tried not to think about that or give any indication that I’d connected those dots. Rowen had a right to her idiosyncrasies; God knew I had my share of mine.