"Theresa?" I call. She climbs over furniture. "Keep Einstein, baby."
She pulls the goat away from the door and sits down on the floor with him. Martine and I haul goats. They're not heavy, just not made for carrying. They're better for Martine, I pick them up and like as not they struggle.
Coming through the garden with my fourth armload of goat I hear hooves on the kitchen floor. Carlotta is on her feet. "Well, we're not going to have brain-damaged goats," Martine says, coming towards me on her way for her next armload of goat.
"How could you tell a difference?" I ask.
Nineteen goats fill Martine's kitchen. They revive awfully fast and clamber all over each other.
"Do you think we'll be able to put them back in the yard to milk them?" Martine asks.
"Yeah," I say, "in a couple of hours they should be all right. You two go on back to bed, I'll watch goats."
"Come on, Theresa," Martine says.
"Do I have to go to school tomorrow?" Theresa asks.
"Why not?" I ask.
"Cause of all this," she says, exasperated. "I won't be rested."
"Life's tough," I say. "Go to bed now so you'll be rested."
"Dad," she says, "I need to help."
"Nothing to do. Go on."
She says good night rather sullenly and climbs over the furniture. I sit up on the counter.
"Dad!" I hear her call.
"What?"
"My light won't go on."
I hear Martine say, "You don't need a light to sleep."
"Go to sleep!" I call, reinforcement, I hope. The lights are on the system. Everything is on the system. Which reminds me that I have to increase the O2 to the kitchen, nineteen goats are going to use a lot of air. I climb-rather awkwardly actually-over my furniture barricade and Martine comes back down the hall. "I want to increase O2 in the house," I say. "Go on to sleep."
"I won't be able to go back to sleep now," she says.
"Well, go lie down, then," I say. Behind us something clunks and thumps at the barricade and Einstein is in the living room.
I start after the goat, who takes off down the hall, and Martine and I finally corner him in the bathroom.
"That furniture isn't going to stop him," Martine says. Einstein is a shaggy white goat, the kind that look like someone threw a stringy carpet over them.
"Any ideas?" I ask.
Martine thinks a moment and then closes the bathroom door. "Let him stew," she says, "there's nothing he can hurt in there."
His hooves clatter on the bathroom tile. It's dark in there. I hear a muted bleat. I don't think I've ever heard Einstein sound nervous. Maybe he'll have a nervous breakdown and never be right again. It's not that I don't like Einstein, exactly, it's just that he's always been a pain. As Martine says, he's smart.
"Did you lock Einstein in the bathroom?" Theresa calls from her bedroom.
"Yes," I answer, "do you need to go?"
"No," she says, to my relief.
"Go to sleep, Theresa."
I help Martine climb over the barricade, and shove the table more solidly against it. We wade through goat and perch side by side on the counter.
"Do you want a shirt?" Martine asks.
"Not bad enough to go get one," I answer. "You've seen me without a shirt before."
Martine touches her hair self-consciously, barely brushing it with her fingertips, then smooths it firmly.
"It looks all right," I say.
Startled, she drops her hand in her lap. Martine takes personal compliments badly. "Cleo!" she snaps at a goat pushing at the barricade. Cleo doesn't stop and Martine sighes but doesn't go after her.
Oh, I'm tired. And things are a mess. "We're almost out of indicator packs, aren't we?" I ask.
"I imagine," Martine says. "In the morning I'll pick some up, and tell Equipment that our system is down. Can you fix it?"
"No," I say.
"I didn't think so," Martine says and sighes again.
"What are we going to do?" I ask.
"Can you keep the air mixture good manually?"
I shrug. "After a fashion. I guess if I had to I could make some sort of automatic regulator. I don't know if I could do the house, the garden and both goat yards."
"Then we'll close off the new yard and sell some of the goats," Martine says. "We'll see if we can run one yard on manual, at least until we get a new system."
"It might have to wait until the next window," I say. The next window is over a year away.
"We could get one on the free market in New Arizona," she says.
"We don't have the credit," I say.
"We can borrow."
I don't say anything.
After a moment she takes my hand. "Alexi," she says, "this isn't the end of everything, we're not going to lose the place. We may have to give up beer and lemonade and sell strawberries and green beans for awhile."
"It's a lot of money," I say.
Irritated, she says, "You are the most paranoid man imaginable. You think this is debt, you wouldn't believe what I did to get this place started."
"Things don't always go right," I point out.
"And they don't always go wrong, either. And stop talking so quietly. You know, whenever you're upset about something it's as if you had to iron all the expression out of your voice."
"That's better than screaming and raving, isn't it?" I say. I do sound curiously flat, even to my ears. I don't feel flat.
"All right, Alexi," she agrees. Disappointment in her voice, in her body language. We're still holding hands, but I'm sure she doesn't realize it.
"I didn't ask you to marry me," I say, defending myself.
"Son of a bitch," she says, not particularly at me, it has the sound of a general expletive. I'm taken aback, Martine doesn't swear much.
"I should have known. Okay. You want a divorce, we'll divorce."
There it is, proof of how badly I've failed her, failed this whole thing. "I don't want a divorce," I say, "but I'm willing to do whatever you want." I never saw myself sitting on the counter in the kitchen, our feet disappearing into a sea of goats, holding Martine's hand while we discussed divorce. Cleo shoves at the barricade. "Damn it," I leap off the counter and haul the nanny away, shove Theresa-the-goat down. When I turn around, Martine is watching me, and she looks so sad, so, what is the word I am looking for? So devastated. Martine has great huge dark eyes, funny how I never thought of how big her eyes are until this moment, in her pale long face.
"Alexi," she says, forlornly, and to my great consternation she starts to cry.
You have to understand, Martine doesn't cry. At least not in my experience. Martine is iron. She's Army. Discipline. For a moment I don't have any idea what to do. So I wade back through goats and climb up onto the counter and put my arms around her.
"It's all right," I say, and other, soothing things, things you say when someone is crying.
"I know I'm old," she says, sniffling. "I know it wasn't fair, using the holding as a bribe. I thought, though, it would work out." Martine's strong, rather prominent nose gets red, and she looks older when she cries. Certainly not prettier.
"You're not old," I say.
"I'm forty-four," she says, "I'm ten years older than you-"
"Eight," I correct.
"Men like younger women."
"I never felt worthy of you," I say, deeply, from the bottom of my heart.
That makes her cry harder. "I don't want you to feel worthy," she says, "I want you to like me!" She pulls away and gets down among the sea of goats and shoves Lilith out of the way so she can open a drawer and pull out a dish towel.