Read The Woman in Oil Fields for Free Online

of God – come on, Josh, do it with me.”
    â€œMy guardian dear,” I recited.
    â€œTo whom God’s love.”
    â€œEntrusts me here.”
    â€œEver this day … Joshua, ever this day …”
    â€œI forget.”
    â€œBe …”
    â€œAt my side.”
    â€œTo light, to guard.”
    â€œTo rule and guide.”
    Lately she prayed I’d do something with Meckie before the baby moved in. “The Knife,” as we called the cat (two of our quilts were in tatters), had grown into a good, solid hunter. Each day after school I’d come home to find pulled-apart little creature-hearts on our porch.
    â€œI won’t have our daughter crawling through diseased former things on the floor,” Susan told me one night.
    I was chopping daikon for a Chinese dinner. Chinese had been Susie’s favorite before she’d started craving okra. “Let me work with her,” I said.
    â€œYou can’t work with cats. They’re untrainable. You, of all people, should know that.” She looked at me.
    â€œWhat is it?” I said.
    â€œI was wondering what kind of daddy you’ll make.”
    â€œShall we trot out all my flaws? They’re in a bag here somewhere – no no, those are the mushrooms …”
    She laughed. “Our little girl’ll be screaming for supper and you’ll be out with your head up a Rabbit’s ass.”
    I liked to hear her laugh. “Help me clobber these carrots, will you?” I handed her a knife. “I’m ready for her, Susie. I’m ready for anything.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œMy dreams,” I said.
    Usually my past returned m sleep. Like videotapes, my dreams replayed hard facts and added very little by way of imagination or editorial comment. Often at night my mind recalled the trips I’d taken on research grants: Barcelona, where I once found a rare wire-haired Balinese under an I.R.A.-brand delivery truck, Iran in the Shah’s last year of power. Behind an outdoor market in Tehran I’d followed a beautiful blotched tabby down a dead-end alley. The cat had whorls instead of stripes, an uncommon marking in the Middle East, and I wanted to note its gender, the state of its health, etc. Two SAVAK agents picked me up and took me in for questioning – strange behavior, they said. Suspicious character.
    But last night my dreams had been different. “Forward-looking,” I told Susan. “In one dream I followed a slender Siamese under a classic white Fairlane. When I poked my head beneath the bumper, the oil pan started to leak and out popped a baby drenched in ro-W-40. ‘Papa,’ she said. ‘Take me home and show me the good life, with Mars bars and lots of TV.’”
    Susan shook her head. “A good father wouldn’t let that old thing in the house.” She pointed at Meckie. “And a really good father’ d promise not to leave –”
    â€œAh,” I said. “I see.”
    Susan frequently complained about my field trips – my “animal habits,” she called them. She also said I didn’t make enough money. Absolutely true. “If you joined an honest-to-goodness research institute, instead of teaching, you’d have more security and benefits,” she said. “You’re thirty-four, Josh. We need to be more settled.” Also true – and the only course of action now that we were about to have a child. But I liked chasing cats around the globe. It kept me on my toes, and made me feel younger than I was.
    ______
    One evening, late in her second trimester, after a wheezy, throbbing day in which Susan had had second thoughts – about the baby, about me, about virtually the entire planet (oddly, these black moods were always followed by weeks of maternal rapture) – I snapped a picture of her in the bath. Dime-sized bubbles of soap wavered and popped on her belly. “It’s all