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Would it really hurt to look? He was sort of, technically, hers to gaze upon, wasn’t he?
That was the conundrum Livy found herself having as she stood before the open window of the farmhouse. She’d just gotten around to starting to clean the dishes they had dirtied at breakfast. She usually did that right after they ate, as soon as Ray left to start his work around the farm. But today she’d found herself suddenly experiencing her first bout of the dreaded morning sickness she’d heard so much about.
When she’d returned from the bathroom, she’d been somewhat surprised to see that Ray was working so close to the house for the moment. Usually, she wouldn’t see him the rest of the morning. She was happy he was staying close for now. She liked knowing where he was, if she needed to get him for something, or if she wanted to go out and talk to him at any time. She would have to bring him out a cola at some point.
It was a late day in August. The summer had been increasingly scorching and only seemed to get hotter as the months rolled toward Fall. The temperature had been getting up into the nineties the last few weeks, and even though it was still morning, that didn’t make much of a difference.
She wasn’t sure how Ray and Hank and the other farmers didn’t suffer heat strokes. She’d been worried about Ray recently, asking him if he should stay in a little more during the day. But he’d just laughed and told her that he’d be fine. He’d assured her that he was conditioned to the heat and that the work needed to be done before it got cold.
Livy wasn’t sure what crop grew in this particular field. He’d told her many times, definitely, but she still didn’t remember. She was still unsure, and it had been a while since she first spotted him out there. Ray had just been rutting around with a ho, accomplishing what exactly she wasn’t sure of, and not doing anything to reveal to her the specifics of the crop from this view.
Then, not long after, he switched tasks completely. He took a few trips between the building that sat beside the barn and the plain, grassy plot still within her sight. He was carrying out large quantities of wood and, at last, an ax. Once he had a decent pile of wood and the ax lying on the ground by his feet, he sat his first piece up on a tree stump to cut.
From his very first swing, it was clear to Livy, even with her severe lack of knowledge on anything having to do with cutting firewood (at least she assumed it was firewood), that this was something Ray knew exactly how to do. His movements were swift and sure.
With each new swing, color grew over his features, much more since she’d returned to the kitchen and first saw him out there. As she had gone about tidying up in the kitchen and adjacent rooms over the next hour or so, she caught him blotting at his face with the handkerchief he always carried. The sun had come to hit him more and more directly as he worked.
Livy was just about to bring him out a cola and see how he was when he suddenly did something she had never previously bore witness to. Ray started by rolling his long sleeves back down to his wrists. Then, carefully, he began to unbutton his flannel.
She didn’t know how he managed to work outside all day in the heat in those long sleeves and layers. She’d never given it much thought before, but that did seem rather impractical. Maybe he did it to protect himself from being burned?
While she was lost in her musings, he got the shirt the rest of the way off. He hung the garment off a nearby wire post that remained from what she assumed was an old fence. He balanced his wide-brimmed hat in the same place. Then he did the most unexpected thing of all. After wiping his wet face again, he tore off his undershirt, throwing it in the same direction as where he’d left the outer layer. That left him completely exposed from the waist up, all besides the hat that he quickly returned to his head before resuming his labor.
Livy found herself transfixed by the new sight she was exposed to for the first time. She took in the flushed skin of his muscular chest and toned arms. Stereotypes had their merits after all— he was fit from all the physical labor he did each day, and he sported a classic farmer's tan, though the lines weren’t dramatically pronounced. His upper arms, paler than his hands and forearms, flexed with each rise and fall of the ax as it met the wood. She couldn’t help but wonder what those arms would feel like holding her. Or imagine that glistening chest pressed against her own.
At first, Livy was far too consumed with her surprise at this new visual stimuli to realize exactly what she had been doing. She was acting like a vulture! Ray was obviously burning up while he worked the land, worked to support her and the baby, and here she was flat-out objectifying him. Her face felt as warm as he looked.
But, really, what harm would it do for her to starve off her bone-deep boredom? She found herself attempting to justify her pathetic actions. Livy itched more and more each day here as she began to feel stir-crazy. She never would have been able to phantom the complete lack of excitement she now lived with for most hours of the day. She’d had to become increasingly creative in figuring out ways to entertain herself.
During the first week or two here, she’d found herself more nervous when Ray was around. He’d been a stranger who was also supposed to be her husband. But now that they’d started to get to know and become more comfortable with each other, it was worse when he was gone.
She’d found herself doing much stranger things than lecherously watching her husband during these past months. She’d never been left to her own devices quite so much before. One particularly pitiful afternoon, she’d ended up in front of the bathroom mirror with a pair of kitchen shears, ready to carelessly prune away at her hair. She’d come back to her senses just in time to save herself from what was destined to be a very crooked excuse for bangs.
She was surprised with herself more than anything else. She had been sure for a while now that she would never be capable of feeling this way about any man ever again. Not with where feelings of that nature got her the last time. She should have felt shame now as she had then, once she’d realized the consequences of her careless actions. Ray was her husband, though, she reasoned. It wouldn’t be classified as sinful, thinking of him this way. Just morally questionable with the unusual type of marriage they had.
She had been raised to be better than this. She had been raised not to do a lot of things.
At least she couldn’t get more pregnant, she sighed thoughtfully.
And Ray was a good man. A saint, really. As much as she’d tried to keep him at arm's length, had tried to avoid becoming attached to this gentle man, she could no longer deny that she had, for the most part, failed. He’d snuck his way into her affections.
How could he not? She’d have had to have been stone cold not to enjoy his disposition or appreciate his acceptance of her into his life and home. He had done everything he could think of to try to make her feel like this was her home. To try to win her approval. At this point, she still couldn’t make herself believe she could ever deserve his affections, even if she already had them.
And that wasn’t even mentioning the simple physical side of things— the attraction. That word made her squirm. It was too strong, too accurate, that the realization made her ready to back away from the window for the rest of the day. Almost.
It was just a fact, she reasoned. He was objectively an attractive man. He had a sweet, slightly crooked smile. Kind eyes. Nice hair, even if it was often hidden beneath a hat. A strong, muscular body from a life of taking care of the farm. Any other reasonable person would have agreed with her assessments. It’s not like that alone changed how she felt about anything, about him, but it was true. Florrie had called him handsome. Even Abby had been surprised when she’d finally gotten to lay eyes upon him.
He’s actually a bit nice, isn’t he? She’d whispered that night on the couch as they caught up. She hadn’t been referring to Ray’s sparse niceties to her once he’d come back to the house. At least you have something to look at while you’ve been exiled to this dull place. I’d expected someone… older. Plumper, maybe. Then she’d laughed like she always did, like they were discussing a radio play, and not her life.
She had expected the same, in all fairness. Someone much different than what she’d found Ray to be. The first time she’d seen him, in the church right before they were to be married, she’d been surprised— at his age, his manners, his stature. It had unnerved her a little. She’d been prepared for much different than she’d ultimately been presented with in Ray. In her overwhelming fear and nervousness, she hadn’t even been able to make much note past the fact that he was seemingly normal and inoffensive. She’d simply been waiting for the other shoe to drop, to finally figure out what terrible traits had kept a hardworking, good-looking man like Ray unmarried. Men like Ray weren’t thirty-year-old bachelors.
And yet he was. She still wasn’t sure how a man like Ray existed, but here he was. Right in her line of sight, in all his glory.
She’d just have to blame it on the hormones. That doctor in town had made mention of the hormone fluctuations and that they might make her feel some exaggerated feelings; like how she hadn’t been able to stop crying midday yesterday when the thought crossed her mind that the leaves were all going to die off soon as autumn drew closer.
Fall had been her favorite season for as long as she could remember. She loved to see the leaves once they turned all the pretty colors and began to fall. It always served to remind her that change can be beautiful.
And yet, in that particular moment, the thought of those leaves drying up and changing color meant nothing besides death and cold. The end of something. When Ray had come back to the house for lunch and saw her puffy eyes she’d blushed from embarrassment as she relayed to him the honest reason for her uncontrolled tears.
He’d only smiled at her, not too much where it felt like he was mocking or taking joy in her sadness. He’d said it was normal, that he’d seen Martha behave similarly when she was pregnant. Then he’d mentioned that he’d read about it in a book he checked out from the library and had been working his way through— a book about pregnancy.
Thinking back to the contents of that conversation now, she wondered if this pregnancy book of his mentioned anything about this side effect. She wasn’t sure if it was more mortification or amusement she experienced at the thought. She could so easily imagine him blushing as he read about this particular kind of symptom. She felt a smile beginning to form on her lips at the picture.
Returning her focus to the Ray of the present, she bypassed her initial instinct to resume her ogling and instead really looked at him.
He appeared even worse for wear. He’d told her he didn’t get overheated, that he was used to the temperatures, but he was only human at the end of the day. He, quite simply, was beginning to look terrible.
Livy wet a few washrags in the sink with the coldest water the pipes would supply her. She finally turned her attention away from the window. She opened the icebox, grabbed the colas, and stepped out onto the porch.