“You, too.”
“I don’t mean, in the bathroom.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“Let me get the door for you.”
Noble, considering how you dissed my daughter, my parenting, my . . . “Thanks.”
Monica searched the crowd in the narthex.
Wow, not even a lame comment about the weather.
Another few seconds ticked by before Monica asked, “Do you want to grab some lunch and talk?”
“Yes.” Becky drew a steadying breath. “Someday. Not today, if that’s okay with you.”
Monica opened her mouth as if prepared to proffer the perfect response. Nothing.
Where was Lauren? Daughter of mine, this isn’t your fault, exactly, but it’s part of the fallout. “I’ll see you next week, Monica.” Becky tucked her Bible under her arm and caught Gil’s eye with a “meet you in the car” hand signal. No doubt Lauren and the baby were already there, trying to make each other smile.
“Can I call you tomorrow, Becky?”
“I won’t be home.”
Who was she kidding? Of course she’d be home. Where was she going to go? The spa? Work? The Ellison Corp. didn’t have a gram-ternity leave plan. She’d had to quit to take care of Jackson when the school year started. If Lauren graduated on schedule, maybe she could work part-time next summer. If the new editor who’d taken her place didn’t pan out.
“Burgers or pizza?” Gil alternated glances at Lauren in the backseat and Becky in the front.
“Let’s just go home, Dad.”
Becky nodded.
“I’m offering to take my two best girls out for lunch. What am I hearing? Okay, okay. Seafood. As long as it’s deep-fried.”
Jackson voiced his protest over that idea. With a vengeance.
“Home it is.”
More howls from the backseat. Becky offered, “Lauren, try—”
“I’ve got it, Mom!”
And she did. Quiet returned except for the faint sound of a Kutless song bleeding from the earbuds of Lauren’s iPod, one bud of which rested on the upholstered car seat near Jackson’s ear.
Becky calculated decibel levels versus fragile eardrums, but landed on gratitude that Lauren had discovered a way to comfort her son. All by herself.
3
Becky—2012
I leave again on Tuesday.” Gil’s words slid into the conversation like too many raw onions on a fast-food burger slicked with special sauce.
“Where to this time?”
He drew his rake through another chaotic convention of sun-crisped oak leaves, stirring that unmistakable “autumn’s here” aroma. The leaves rattled as they bumped against one another in an effort to escape Gil’s tines. “Cincinnati.”
Becky pulled a desiccated tomato vine, knocked the dirt from its roots, and threw it into the four-by-four garden trailer hooked to the riding mower. Gil didn’t like traveling this much any more than she did. But with jobs this scarce, refusing to get on a plane was a death knell to collecting a paycheck.
She’d waited too long to respond. He’d know she wasn’t happy about the trip. “It’s . . . it’s not so far. How long will you be gone?” At one time she’d been more skilled at imitating lighthearted. She brushed garden debris from her fleece work pants as she waited for his answer.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
That long? You’ll be gone that long?
“Becky, why don’t you come with me?”
Her turn not to answer.
“I know,” he said. “Jackson and Lauren are why. But maybe you could get Monica to help out for a few days? Please?”
“She works.”
“Volunteering. Maybe she’d see it as an opportunity to serve. Ministry.”
The hope in Gil’s voice clashed with what Becky knew about Monica’s interest in “ministering” to the aftermath of an unplanned, untimely, unblessed pregnancy.
Unblessed?
The arrival of the child changed everything. A blessed, wanted, adored, cherished child. Pulsing evidence of God’s grace. A redemption object lesson.
A game-changer in so many ways.
The rhythm of Gil’s rake stilled. A gust of a fall wind’s rebellion tugged at the neat piles he’d created. He leaned his chin on the pad made by his crossed hands on the handle end of the rake. “Maybe when the little guy’s a few months older.”
She looked up into eyes that didn’t resemble Jackson’s. Middle Eastern dark, like she expected of someone born in, say, Bethlehem. How long had it been since she’d taken time to study the nuances in those irises? How long since she’d not left his side in the middle of the night to check on their grandson? How long since she felt comfortable surrendering to the fire of his touch?
She could have put a capital H on “his” and asked those same questions.
“Becky?”
“Yes?”
“Are you lost somewhere?”
“Lost in gratitude for you.”
Gil’s eyebrows arched. “Sounds like an invitation to me.”
Becky’s hand reached for the baby monitor tucked in the pocket of her windbreaker. “It’s about time for Jackson’s nap to end.”
“Oh. Right.”
Longing left its dusty residue on their words. Longing for each other. For life to be different, less complicated.
The monitor breathed deep, grunted, then started to make “I’m no longer happy here” noises, proving her timing accurate and Jackson’s unfortunate.
She peeled off her garden gloves without losing eye contact with Gil. “I’ll . . . I’ll change him, feed him, and bring him out here. The sun’s nice and warm. If I bundle him up, we can keep going.”
And they would. Keep going. Like it or not.
“Want me to get him?”
“It’s not your responsibility.”
“Yours, either.”
It was easy for Becky to assume Jackson’s care as if he was her responsibility. Maternal instinct and guilt shared many of the same traits. Add to the mix her unquenchable love for him, and the concoction smoked and boiled like a showy science experiment. Baking soda—maternal instinct. Vinegar—guilt. Love—catalyst for anything good that came from it.
Catalyst. Cattle list: Angus, Hereford, Holstein. One of the lame jokes Gil shared on their first date. It reappeared every anniversary, like wooly caterpillars before the first snow.
She reached into her pocket to turn off the monitor. “I’ll get him.”
“Want me to pull these dead things over here while you’re gone?”
Becky aligned her gaze with his. “No!”
“Just trying to help.”
“Sorry to snap. It’s my morning glory vines.”
“Yeah? You’re not expecting them to bloom anytime soon, are you? I believe their season is long past.” He crumbled a crunchy vine into powder between his fingers.
“Don’t . . . don’t touch them, okay? I’ll take care of them later. I’m saving the seeds.”
Gil straightened, his chin tucked against his windpipe. “Yes, ma’am.” He saluted.
“I’m not trying to be stinky about it.”
“Sometimes you don’t have to try.” He winked.
She’d let that go. He did lighthearted better than she did. His smile seemed genuine. Plus, she hoped to catch Jackson before his babble turned to tears.
Or hers did.
Tiny black-brown seeds housed in a papery brown pod. Why did saving them mean so much to her? Most years, the plants would come back on their own. Or she could purchase a packet of morning glory seeds next spring from any number of suppliers—Walmart, the grocery store, the Westbrook Greenhouse. Even the gas station had a seed carousel, if she remembered right. She was no master gardener—that was Monica’s department—but preserving those morning glory seeds each fall stirred something in her.
If she thought too hard, her dedication to the task might take on an obsessive taint. So she wouldn’t think. She’d collect t
he dry pods, the remnants birthed from what was once a Microsoft-blue flower, rub the papery covering in her hands until the seeds separated from the chaff, and save them in the baby food jar reserved for that purpose.
The jar she’d used since her Mark first tasted pureed pears. Her heart lost another beat. How many could she afford to lose?
The jar she’d used since the first morning glory bloomed in the side yard. Since the sight of that startling, delicate, unfurled sapphire blossom with its glistening white center lifted her postpartum depression by an inch, then another inch the next day when another bloom appeared.
She fixed Jackson’s bottle and toyed with another thought. How does a person recognize postpartum depression in a surly teen?
Becky pushed open the door to Lauren’s bedroom. “Sweet boy, did you have a good nap?”
His hair, sleep-damp, stuck-in-the-50s pin-curl shapes around his baby doll face. The first Trundle with naturally curly hair.
Jackson Trundle. He should have had a different last name.
The paternity discussion long stale, “a’moldering in the grave” as some long-ago poet would have expressed it, Becky still cringed whenever Lauren’s study group included Noah. Noah, the Eddie Haskell smooth-talker—Good evening, Mrs. Trundle—with denim-blue eyes. It brought no joy to her heart that Lauren insisted she couldn’t be sure who the father was. Every mother’s dream. And that she didn’t want any help from the birth father anyway. Would Lauren feel differently about that if Gil and Becky weren’t footing the bill for formula and diapers? And groceries? And a roof over their heads? And health insurance?
They should have forced the issue. Lauren wrote a name on the birth certificate in the line for “child’s father.” It was all Becky could do not to search Lauren’s room for a copy of that piece of paper. Did the backseat male have to file a claim in order to force a paternity test? That issue joined a laundry list of others about which Becky had no answers and sometimes avoided searching.
Lord, I used to be the one sad to have lost a son in Iraq but happy to have a daughter who loved me and filled my life with joy.
Splayed on the changing table, Jackson pinched his eyes shut and giggled from his belly, an outrageously soul-satisfying sound. Becky tickled his knee again as she held the front of the disposable diaper in position. The new diaper warmed beneath her hand. Wet already, and she hadn’t even gotten the tabs closed yet. She replaced it with a fresh one, tugged a pair of sweat pants over his tickle-friendly legs, and pulled the clean-enough-for-now knit shirt into position.
He reached for her—reached for her—and a remnant of joy stole back into her heart, like refugees crossing the border into safe territory. He’d done that to her since the moment he took his first breath in a birthing center that was shy one man.
The missing man could be the one in the family room right now, part of the acne-ridden think tank conjugating French verbs between bites of Becky’s caramel corn.
Caramel corn! She was an enabler! She might be, at that moment, giving sustenance to a hormonally charged teen who refused to man up and confess he had fathered the child now nestled into her neck with his fingers entwined in her hair, his love laced through the muscles of her heart.
She didn’t like the suspicious side of herself. If Noah were innocent, she was worse than those whose eyes widened a few months ago when Lauren’s belly entered the room before the rest of her. “It’s not a giant wart. It’s a baby!” she’d wanted to say to them. And what did that say about her? She owed an apology to all the people in the world with giant warts.
“Mom?”
Becky turned. Lauren stood in the doorway, Noah behind her.
“We’re taking a break. Can we have Jackson?”
I don’t know. Can you? Did you? Did the two of you—?
“I want to show Noah how he rolls over.” She shifted from one foot to the other as she held out her arms.
“Carrie and Dane, too?”
Lauren shot her a searing look and leveled, “They had to go home.” She took Jackson from Becky with an exaggerated tug.
Love isn’t Silly Putty.
If I were the perfect mom, I’d say . . .
No idea. None.
“I’m going to run a load of darks. Mind if I grab yours while I’m here, Lauren?”
The lines of Lauren’s jaw turned from freezer meat to refrigerated. Partially thawed. “That would be great. Thanks.”
Maybe Noah was just a good friend. Bless him for sticking by Lauren in spite of everything. How many high school guys would do that? Maybe Jackson’s eyes were more indigo than denim. Maybe he and Noah didn’t share the same chin dimple.
Becky kicked at the piles of Lauren’s clothes, half-expecting something to slither out of the shadows. With two fingers she picked up a nearly stiff charcoal sweater and pulled two pairs of jeans sticking Wicked-Witch-of-the-West style from under the unmade bed. Nothing slithered, but something rattled. The piece of plastic must have been snagged by a belt loop.
She bent with jerky, robotic motions. No.
No.
No. Please, God.
Becky stumbled to Lauren’s overflowing wastebasket, dumped its contents on the floor, held it under her dimpleless chin, and threw up.
“Mom! You were just holding Jackson. If you knew you were getting the flu, why didn’t you say something? Now he’s all exposed.” Lauren held the baby on her far hip, as if shielding him with her body. “And gross. You owe me a new wastebasket.”
“I don’t have the flu.” She sat on the edge of Lauren’s bed—the basket on the floor at her feet—waiting to gain the strength to clean it up.
“My room stinks. No offense, Mom, but I’m not sleeping here tonight.”
“It’s not . . . the flu. Get your dad.”
Lauren backed another step into the hall. “He’s taking Noah home. Noah’s sensitive to the sound of puking.”
“Didn’t Noah drive?”
“His anal parents took his keys. Total misunderstanding.”
Headache. Throbbing headache. “When your dad . . . gets . . . home . . .”
“Mom, are you okay? Are you having a stroke or something?” One more step back into the hall. “Should I call 911?”
One of us may need 911 before this night’s over. “Take Jackson to the family room. You can get the portable crib out of my closet, if you want. I’ll be out in a few minutes. By then, your dad should be back.”
She chuffed. “I—”
“Lauren, if you ever wanted to not cross me, it’s now.”
Two teeth-brushings and a mouthwash later, Becky held a cold washcloth to her eyes. She heard the garage door opener grind open, then close. She timed her entrance into the family room to coincide with Gil’s. She wouldn’t face Lauren alone. Not this time.
Obviously prewarned—thank the Lord for cell phones, sometimes—Gil kept a respectful distance.
“Feeling better, honey? Can I get you anything?” He lowered himself into his recliner before she had a chance to answer.
Sweet man. “I’m okay. My stomach’s okay. Relatively.”
Gil reached to turn on the end-table lamp.
“Dad!”
“What?”
“Jackson?” Lauren pointed to the portable crib, as if it needed an introduction—an explosion of rainbow colors in a room of deep caramel and light cream.
Gil held his hands up, surrendering. “Ah. Indoor voices and low lights. Still getting used to having a baby in the house.”
Becky’s stomach spasmed.
“Mom, you’re looking weird again. Why don’t you just go to bed? Whatever it is can wait until—”
“Lauren, it can’t wait.” She dropped the piece of plastic onto the coffee table. “Care to explain this?”
Gil leaned forward, forearms on his knees. Becky caught the movement in her peripheral vision, but her eyes stayed focused on Lauren’s face.
Gil reached to touch it, then withdrew his hand. “Is that—?”
<
br /> “Yes, dear. A home pregnancy test.”
“Becky, are you—?”
She dropped her lock-gaze with Lauren. “Oh, Gil. Come on.”
“The vomiting. The irritability.”
You want irritability? “This is not mine.” She turned back to Lauren. “Want to explain to your father what this was doing in your bedroom?”
Lauren studied the threads in the side seam of her jeans. “Not really.”
“That’s . . . that’s the old one, right? The one announcing Jackson?” Gil dipped his head as if trying to make his daughter look him in the eye. “The old one. Why you saved it is kind of bizarre.”
Becky ran her tongue over her freshly cleaned teeth as she worked to temper her response. “Not the old one, honey. That was a different brand of test.”
“How do you remember these details? I’m in awe.”
“Gil!” Becky picked up the handle end of the plastic rod. She tapped it on the coffee table surface as if beating out a parent’s Morse code of desperation. “Lauren, what does this mean?”
“Why are you looking at me?” Lauren drew her floppy sweater across her front, lapping it like two-layered armor.
“Well, let’s see. Your room. Your bed. Your history.”
“Hey! This is so not fair.”
“Lauren, are you pregnant again?” Gil’s voice was uncharacteristically throaty.
“No, Dad!”
Becky stopped tapping. “That’s not what this says.”
Lauren bent at the waist and rocked back and forth.
“Lauren?”
Gil slid out of his chair and knelt in front of Lauren. He lifted her chin and said, “Lauren, we love you. No matter what.”
Becky wished she’d thought to do that.
“I am not pregnant!”
Jackson wailed, as if disappointed to hear he didn’t qualify for a “Big Brothers Rawk” T-shirt.
“You made me scare him! Will you get off my back?” She stood, picked up her sobbing son, and clutched him to her chest, rocking all the harder now.
“Is it Noah? It’s time we knew, Lauren.”
When the Morning Glory Blooms (9781426770777) Page 3
