It is an odd thing to live with, Delphine muses, even weeks after changing the location of her bed to the other side of the room Cosima slept in alone. Cosima looks at her sometimes. And she knows it. And she doesn't mind. But Cosima stays tucked into her own bed all night long. Cosima never makes any move to kiss or touch her at all. Cosima turns to face the wall whenever she changes, and gives her as much privacy as she wants. It's a stark contrast to Deborah who will strip naked and begin bathing in the kitchen as if nothing matters.
She has found a holding pattern, if she leaves the commune and returns to Boston, she will most likely be deported. A couple of the single men express interest in her, and she declines. Michael's ranting about her not wanting to engage in 'free love' anymore likely aids that. And she won't complain. Not now. Not while she's stuck waiting to see if she will truly be free of Michael or not.
She makes breakfast, finding the cabin empty when she wakes. And cold. She builds a small fire in the woodstove. Hoping for improvement. But it makes sense - her cabinmates cannot leave a fire running for her just because she's overslept. It makes no sense, Cosima was too kind to her. Letting her sleep. Not demanding much help from her.
"Goats." Cosima mumbles on her way back inside while Delphine is still eating breakfast. She watches Cosima at the kitchen sink after removing her sweater, scrubbing her arms with soap to her elbows. She feels guilty, for not waking, for not helping. But she slept better here. Maybe Michael had been worse for her than she'd thought.
"What? What happened?"
"Goat drool? Goat fur? All of the above." Cosima gives a little shrug and the effect is adorable, and Delphine cannot resist smiling at her. Cosima's endearing nature hadn't changed. Not at all.
And she's sweaty, Delphine acknowledges that. Cosima had clearly been working hard. Whether that was literally lifting goats, or fixing things around the 's odd, Delphine thinks. How the smell of Cosima's sweat is so…inoffensive. Or she is too used to men who simply smell worse.
"Why didn't you wake me?" Delphine asks as she approaches Cosima. Who has clearly been up a while.
"You looked comfy. I have only been up for like two hours. Still plenty of work to do. I want your help with repairing the milking stand. Besides you helped me with all the pen cleaning last night. You deserve a break."
"You should have woken me."
"Nah." Cosima is quick to brush it off. "No need. Come on. Finish your breakfast and then you can help me. Assuming you're not watching the kids again."
"Non. With the snow, their mothers are largely switching off. I heard Paul is leaving." Delphine still took some work in the creche. It was needed, though with the snow, less so.
"Yeah?"
"No girlfriend. Too much work." Delphine gives a shrug. "I think some of the extra men will just…leave." She doubts Michael will be among them. She sees him more clearly now, she thinks. Easier to see him for who he is when she's not set on getting what she wants out of him.
"Well, some of us were bound to leave… It's not an easy life." Cosima agrees readily. And it makes sense. Not all of them will stay.
"Are you going to leave?" Delphine has her suspicions. That Cosima will go, maybe before winter gets any colder. That will be her only opportunity to leave, maybe for a while. And she will need to decide what to do with that.
Cosima takes a moment to respond. "I thought about it."
"And?"
"I think I'll stick around until spring." Cosima states cautiously.
"What happens in spring?"
Cosima is quick to shrug off notions of having a plan. "I don't know. My next adventure?"
"So you have…no plan?" Delphine attempts to clarify, trying to soften her tone.
"Not right now. I can't go back to the bank. I could probably get another job in San Francisco. Or… I could go elsewhere."
"So you are just… a hippie." At least, for now. But Cosima in some ways is changeable, flexible, in ways she is not. At least, not yet.
"Delphine. We are literally on a commune . And you are here because you believed you could get Mickey to marry you." Cosima is quick to call her out.
"It didn't work. Maybe I should have refused to have sex with him." Delphine considers. That tactic wouldn't have worked on Mickey. But perhaps on a more traditionally minded man it would have. There was just one problem with that: she was not a virgin and wasn't sure she could have pretended to be.
"Wow…" Cosima laughs. "Come on. I have lots of work to do. You can help me move the stinky buck away from the does. Though I guess his work is done now…for now. I mean hopefully he got them all."
"Hopefully. At least Gandalf isn't too aggressive." Delphine agrees. She'd noticed he was fine hanging out with them, as long as they weren't in heat. And he was no longer in rut, or quite as stinky. For now, anyway.
"Still we should put him on the far side of the barn."
"You don't worry he'll be lonely?"
"No… Well I guess he might be. I don't know what the social world of goats is supposed to look like." Cosima hesitates. "We should trim his hooves."
"You want to put the buck into the milking stand." Delphine grimaces, she doesn't think Gandalf will stand there, even if Cosima gives him food to distract him from hoof trimming. She helps Cosima, but the miking stand, even imperfect, is intimidating to Gandalf.
"Just shut him in." Cosima says, and Delphine pulls the wooden part at the top that secures the goats head. It's rickety, and she holds the bar steady. Gandalf whips his head around, and she finds he is less smelly. Which is a good sign. Probably.
Delphine gives him food and tries to hold him still as Cosima begins trimming his hooves.
"The books say I have to trim their hooves." Cosima mutters, wrestling to hold Gandalf steady as she clips.
"Well… as long as you're here."
"I still pick goats over the creche. It's quieter. Less chance of pissing off the moms." Cosima lets the first hoof drop and goes for another.
"Colder." Delphine points out. It's warmer near the house. And though the kids play outside, there's always a fire and warm blankets inside for afterwards.
"Yeah. I need to talk to Judith. If we have baby goats in winter, we need…some way to safely heat the barn. Or they are going to die."
Delphine pictures it, she doesn't think Cosima would take it well if she was losing baby goats to the cold. And she resolves to try to exert whatever power she could. Though she suspects now that she's left Michael her social standing is probably lower.
Cosima finishes trimming, and they let Gandalf down. He jumps, and Delphine laughs a little. Cosima is quick to try to herd him towards his pen.
"Well who is next?" Delphine laughs.
"Minerva." Cosima is quick to select the next goat. "We'll do them all. Then… I don't know. Do you want to take a walk? Do you want to rest?"
"Rest?" Delphine looks at her blankly.
"Well it's just a question." Cosima asks even as Minerva begins rubbing her large brown head up against Cosima's hand to be scratched. Cosima obliges the goat, and continues.
"What do you want to do?" Delphine asks instead. She'd rather have Cosima's company than her own mind spinning its wheels uselessly about her possible situation. Or the looming reality of deportation.
"Well what do you want?" Cosima asks bluntly, even as she's pushing Minerva up onto the milking stand. Minerva seems to love Cosima, and goes willingly, her large belly suggests at least two baby goats. At least Delphine thinks so.
Delphine hands over the clippers wordlessly. She may not be able to have what she wants. Not if Michael has gotten her pregnant. She wanted to practice medicine. Wanted her own version of the American Dream. Wanted independence and freedom from her family's expectations of what a woman should be. What she should want. All of this doesn't seem direct enough for a good answer so she hesitates. But what does she want now? What does she make of her life from here? Wherever she goes?
"Do you even know?" Cosima remains soft.
"I don't. Not anymore. Not beyond having my freedom and practicing medicine." Delphine sighs. "It is what I wanted."
"Hey, that's a start." Cosima continues. They go through two more goats, Cosima humming a sound she doesn't quite recognize under her breath.
"This isn't so bad."
"But it's not forever. Not for you." Cosima is quick to tell her even as she returns Minerva to the pen and selects another goat.
She leans in and finds she doesn't mind the smell. Not of Cosima's sweat. Not even of the goats. As long as their pens are clean.
"What?" Cosima asks, as she's pushing a goat into the milking stand. The goats are crazy, Delphine notes. They climb and bounce around and attempt to eat absolutely everything. They headbutt each other whenever put back together after separation in an attempt to work out what Delphine can only term a pecking order. But they are cute. And seem to like scratches. She wonders if Cosima had turned down the easier job, rejecting working in the commune's creche.
"You just… smell… good." Delphine tries to shrug it off. But finds Cosima is practically beaming.
Cosima laughs then. "I smell like goats ."
"No. You smell like you."
An amused expression crosses Cosima's lovely face. "Do I now?"
"You do…" Delphine gives a nonchalant shrug.
Cosima is quick to posit her own theory. "Maybe Michael was just particularly rank?"
"Not at first… but at the end… yes." Delphine admits. "He… wasn't any good either."
"Like at all?" Cosima winces a bit and gives her head a shake. "You should have tried a marriage of convenience. I know more than one professional man who needed a wife to quell suspicions about his sexuality."
"A marriage isn't a marriage unless it's consummated." Delphine answers without thinking.
Cosima laughs, and then an odd expression crosses her face. When she speaks it is words Delphine doesn't really expect. "Who says you cannot consummate, just once or twice to make it all legal and then not ever again?"
"What… what would be the point of that?"
"You said a marriage isn't a marriage unless it is consummated."
"Yes, but wouldn't that all be a lie?"
"Wasn't what you were doing with Mickey all a lie? You let him take a look at your unshaved armpits, let him assume you were a flower child wanting free love and adventure out west and followed him to California trying to get him to marry you for a green card?"
Delphine quiets. There is not much she can do to defend herself against that. Against using sex as a tool, as a ploy.
Cosima sobers, and softens a little. "Hey I am sorry. That was… a lot. "
"It is true. I used sex. And I used him. But… I was willing to be his wife. And be a good wife."
"What does that even mean? Lay there and take it?"
"I… I don't know." Delphine sighs, she fetches another goat from the pen. She scratches her back and touches her cute floppy ears. "I tried to do the same to another man I knew in Boston. But…he wouldn't have me either. Not as a wife."
"Just… You may have other choices… I know people. You aren't stuck." Cosima tries to emphasize this even as she's handing off the goat. But she may be stuck, Delphine thinks. And going home, the last thing she wants, may be the only way to escape Michael then.
She goes for a walk with Cosima when their chores are done and finds Bill and Michael building a large bonfire.
"Delphine…" Michael tries, and she cannot blame him. He'd gotten attached to the idea of her.
"Non. Michael." She shakes her head. And Bill gives her a small wave. But it seems without Michael she belongs here even less. Maybe she should find one of the single men who wants to leave. She could be a fun traveling companion at any rate. And then… she could figure out whatever came next.
It's that evening she feels it, a dull cramping in her lower back. She excuses herself from dinner, and finds that though digging out a pad is an annoyance she feels only relief. It's truly over now, Delphine thinks. Nothing could hold her to Michael now. The sight of her menstrual blood calms her, and despite her cramping Delphine feels herself relax fully for the first time in two weeks. She lays in her makeshift bed, trying to decide what now. She can deal with the cramping, it never lasts too long for her. The rest will need some thought. Some idea of what should be next. What she could still be or make of her life.
"Hey… You OK? You left dinner pretty fast? I brought you some leftovers." Cosima comes into the room, and catches sight of her laying on the bed. Cosima holds out the food.
"Yes. Just… my cycle." Delphine tries to sound casual. And not like she's been hoping for this result for the last couple weeks. "I needed a pad… so I came back here to get one. And then I lay down."
"Oh!" Cosima seems surprised, but only for a moment and then she smiles.
"I'm just relieved I'm not pregnant." Delphine speaks honestly. She hadn't wanted to say the word, or voice the possibility. Partially because she would have wanted to leave without Michael ever realizing. And partially because the idea frightened her. A bigger wrench into her plans than she'd know how to deal with.
"Me too." Cosima admits. "I know someone who…knows someone but only in San Francisco… and we would have had to head back there pretty fast to… uh… get it done."
She realizes what Cosima is alluding to is an illegal abortion, and she lets that sit. Surely she couldn't have expected Cosima to do all that for her. Especially with risks of prosecution.
"I don't need to have something done."
"I see that. That is a hell of a lot easier." Cosima gives her a smile.
Delphine nods. "It is."
"So… what now?"
"I still don't know…" Delphine thinks and then looks back at Cosima. "So… we wait until spring, and then on to our next adventure?" She adds this hopefully, as if having a friend to leave with will make it all easier. Even if by then her visa has expired. She could spend time with Cosima, at least until it feels like it is time to part ways.
Cosima goes quiet, and looks at her with probing dark eyes. She finally speaks, with more confidence than Delphine was expecting. "Then on to our next adventure."