The River Valley Series

by Tess Thompson

  Ellen sat next to her on the bed. “We’re safe now.” She patted Lee’s leg. “I thought Clive was going to fall right through that old roof.” She chortled and shook her head back and forth.

  Lee giggled and her shoulders began to shake, tears sliding down her face.

  Ellen began to laugh too and the more they tried to stop, the harder they laughed. Ellen hobbled to the window and rested her hand on the sill, doubled over, breathless. “Stop. My stomach hurts.”

  Lee sobered. She folded her hands in her lap. “I’m pregnant.”

  Ellen’s face shifted like someone slapped her. A split second later she went still. “I see.”

  Lee brushed her hair from her eyes. “Did you know a fetus has fingernails at ten weeks?”

  Ellen looked as if she wanted to say something but walked back to the bed and sat next to her, the bed squeaking with her weight.

  “Do you think God could talk through an animal?” said Lee.

  They stared at each other and an understanding passed between them, an agreement that such a thing could exist, a mysterious act of God or nature or the universe. “Stranger things have happened.” Ellen patted Lee’s hand. “Oddly enough, your mother never let me shoot at Clive.”

  “Why?”

  “She never said.”

  “Ellen.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m afraid to turn into my mother.”

  “I know.” She shook her head and patted Lee’s leg. “But having a baby doesn’t turn you into your mother.”

  “Dan never wanted children. Thought it was too much to leave to chance—all the things that could go wrong in terms of the massive gene pool, mutations you didn’t expect, characteristics that we wouldn’t know how to handle. It sounds ridiculous as I say it, but I agreed with him, because of my mother. I didn’t think it was a good idea to have a child that turned out like her.”

  “What about one that would turn out like you?”

  Lee smiled and rolled her eyes. “I’m not so great, trust me.” She looked at her lap. “Dan told me once that a child was the end of your life. From the moment of their birth it would be nothing but sacrifice. The part of you that mattered, that had dreams and ambition, died because you poured it into the child. He thought that’s what happened to his father, that his children ruined his life. My mother made sure I knew that her life ended with my birth. She made that perfectly clear time and time again.”

  “Nonsense. The drink ruined her life. Had nothing to do with you. Your grandmother would’ve been so proud of you. Heck, I’m proud to be your friend, watching how you’re rebuilding your life.” Ellen jumped from the bed and plumped a pillow. “Listen, each generation has the chance to put right the mistakes of the one came before. It’s a choice, y’know. To let go of the past and move on. Nothing but a choice.” Ellen stood and pulled at the covers of the bed. “C’mon, scoot in there. If you’re going to have a baby you’ve got to take better care of yourself.” She tucked the covers around Lee’s small frame. “Sun’s almost up. Clive won’t be back. She did what she came for.”

  Lee searched Ellen’s face. “You think I can do it?”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, of course you can. Smart girl like you can do anything you put your mind to.”

  “Ellen, do you remember when you took me to the bus station?”

  “Sure. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I always wondered how you knew I needed to hear from you that day that it was okay to let go, to leave her here so I could have my own life.”

  “When I was a young woman I was in love with a man my father disapproved of. My biggest regret in life was that I didn’t defy his wishes and marry this man. He was my one true love and I let him go because I didn’t want to disappoint my father. Instead I married the man my father wanted me to—a man that slapped me around when he drank and had trouble keeping a job. All my dreams, all my desires disappeared as fast as tissue paper in a fire. That day I picked you up I saw the same look in your eyes and I didn’t want you to hold yourself back because of your mother. I didn’t want you to waste your life.”

  Lee was crying and wiped the tears from her face with her fingers. “I never thanked you properly. I hope someday to repay the gift you gave me that day. That’s what it was, the gift of freedom.” Fresh tears rolled down her face. “But I squandered that freedom by choosing the wrong man, the wrong path.”

  “Ridiculous. You did what you thought was right at the time. You’ve had a blow, no question, but we’re gonna get you back on top once more. Tomorrow is a new day, a chance to start over again. You hear me now?”

  Lee wiped her eyes and attempted a brave smile but her lips trembled. “Alright.”

  Ellen smoothed Lee’s hair. “Now, get some rest. I’ll check on you in the morning, bring you something to eat.”

  Lee yawned and relaxed into her pillow. “I think the baby likes pie.”

  “That’s more like it.”

  Chapter 12

  The next morning, Lee dreamt of Dan. He stood at his desk, dressed in swimming trunks. Drops of water dripped from his hair to his bare shoulders.

  “Why?” Lee said.

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  “But I’m having a baby.” She glanced down at her stomach, extended to the size of a beach ball. She looked back at Dan. He backed towards the door. “Wait,” she called to him. She felt cold water seep into her shoes and looked to see the floor flooded. Dan trudged through the water. At the doorway he turned back to her. “I’m sorry, so sorry. Take care of my baby.” The water rose, to her knees, her stomach, her neck. She could no longer see him. She tried to swim after him but her limbs were lead. She opened her mouth to call out, no, you can’t leave me alone like this, but the water covered her mouth.

  Lee jerked awake. The room was lit with sunshine. The clock read five minutes after ten. Her feet were freezing. She tucked them under the blanket, turned on her side, and stared at the peeling paint next to the light switch.

  She remembered the appointment scheduled for that afternoon at Planned Parenthood. No dogs, no kids—that was their pact, she and Dan. The power couple. She flattened her hand on her stomach and lay, gazing at the crack that ran along the ceiling.

  She thought about the loneliness of her marriage as she watched the clock’s minute hand move in little ticks every sixty seconds. Two memories came to her, like bookends of the beginning and end of the five-year marriage. The first was a month or so after their wedding. It was a Saturday and she’d purchased tickets for them to attend a matinee production of A Doll’s House at the Intiman Theatre. He’d forgotten and instead invited five former fraternity brothers over to watch the college games. She asked him to cancel. “It’s one of my favorite plays and I’d love to share it with you.”

  “Babe, the boys would never let me live it down if I went to a play instead of watching the games. I mean, c’mon.”

  “But I told you about the tickets several weeks ago.”

  “I’m sorry, hon, I forgot about it. You sure I knew it was a Saturday? I would never schedule something during college ball.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  “C’mon, don’t be mad. Call Linus. He loves that kind of stuff.”

  She had called Linus and the ‘boys’ came and watched the games, shouting and standing, shaking fists, resting their feet on her coffee table. By noon beer bottles were scattered around the room that now smelled like a bar. They ate greasy chicken wings, onion rings, and fried mozzarella sticks, the crumbs scattering on her clean carpet. Before she left for the play, she stood in the foyer watching the scene in her living room and felt a hole in the pit of her stomach, thinking, was this marriage just a continuation of the loneliness she felt all her life?

  The other bookend was a Saturday morning six months before he died. She and Dan sat at the breakfast nook in their condo, sipping coffee. She worked on a list in her pocket-sized notebook of the errands she must make that day: dry cleaner, Whol
e Foods, Nordstrom. Across from her, she could feel Dan’s foot moving up and down in what she knew to be nervous energy. He asked, without shifting his gaze from the window, “What’re you doing tonight?”

  She wrote her grocery list as she answered him, “Opera with Linus. You?”

  “Poker.”

  “Should I add creamer to the grocery list?”

  “I don’t know.” He poked her notebook with his finger and she looked at him, noticing the dark smudges under his eyes. “You want to do something together tomorrow?” he said. “Maybe a movie?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “We wouldn’t be able to agree on what to see, I’m certain.”

  He sighed, looked out the window. “Probably not.” He paused and rubbed his eyes. “My dad called this morning, ostensibly to tell me about this guy I knew in high school who just took his company public and is now worth a half a billion dollars.”

  She went to the refrigerator to see if they needed lettuce. “Good for him.”

  “Right. Good for him.” He got up from the table and poured more coffee into his cup. “You think that’ll ever happen to me?”

  She shut the refrigerator door and turned to look at him. “Worth a half a billion? Is that what you mean?”

  He shrugged, nodded, took a sip of coffee. “Yeah.”

  “If we keep working hard, maybe.”

  He spoke quietly, his voice so calm as to seem disengaged. “You really think that all it takes is hard work? That’s so naïve. You know the way the world works, just when you think you have it all figured out, wham, life or some asshole causes everything to blow up.”

  She put down her pencil and closed her notebook. “Why do you have to be worth a half a billion dollars? Can’t it be enough to just enjoy our life? I mean, when will it ever be enough?”

  He pushed against the table and stood. His voice was loud and he began to pace back and forth in front of her. “Because I won’t know who I am if I can’t make Deep Black the next huge game. Don’t you get that?”

  She stared at him, bewildered. “No, I guess I don’t. Is this just a mission to please your father? Because he’s proud of you regardless of what happens with our game.”

  He shouted now and raked his hand distractedly through his blond curls like he might pull the strands from their roots. “This is more complicated than just pleasing my father. I’m doing this because he never had the chance to do it himself. He was raised in poverty and had to scrape his way to lower middle class. I refuse to let another generation of Johnson men be ashamed of their life.”

  “This life we have is good, better than ninety-five percent of people in America. We’ve had opportunities to go to the best schools and have a successful business. We have the American dream. Honey, it’s just one product. If this one doesn’t work, we’ll come up with another. Don’t you get that?”

  He was hoarse from shouting and leaned his forehead on the refrigerator door, speaking into it, sounding resigned and sad. “I get that you still think like a small town girl, all wide-eyed and grateful. That’s what I get.” He jerked back and opened the refrigerator. He pulled out a carton of half-and-half. “This is empty.”

  She raised her eyebrows and was cool when she said, “I just asked you if you needed more creamer.”

  He looked at her, face blank. “Did you?”

  The clock struck 11:00 on the bedside table, pulling her from the memory. She pulled the bed covers up to her chin. She hadn’t realized in that moment with Dan, or the subsequent months after, how dark and hopeless he had become. She understood now that he must have been frantic to get the game to work, especially as they crept closer and closer to the date the loan was due. Suddenly it came to her that his mind was like a reflection of Deep Black—no matter what you did, you couldn’t win. And she’d been blind to it, to his suffering. Even now, knowing the outcome, she was lost as to how she could have saved him. Perhaps there was no saving him. Whatever damage roamed through his psyche was pervasive by the time she met him. As was her damage, she thought. She’d been unable to reach him because of her own limitations, her inability to connect with him the way he obviously needed but didn’t get. Living together for five years, doing their best to love each other, had not been enough to save either of them.

  That thought caused her to think again of the baby. She must figure a way to emerge from this rubble and make a life that could provide the life for her baby that every child deserved. She swung her legs to the floor and reached for the phone. She dialed the Planned Parenthood number. “Hello, this is Lee Tucker. I won’t need to come in after all.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, seized with a sudden frantic energy, she decided to spend the afternoon ridding the house of junk. She carried as much as she could at one time into the front yard and threw it into a huge pile. After twenty trips, the two small bedrooms were empty except for the small pieces of furniture. She was covered in dust and dirt and the pile was almost as tall as the house. She found a rusted gas can in the shed, half full. She used a butter knife to pry the cap loose and accidentally knocked the can over, spilling gas onto the steps. She wiped the spill with a rag and tossed the rag onto the top step of the stairs.

  She doused the pile, threw a lit match into the heap, and watched it burst into flames. The fire was hot on her face and hands. She backed away just as the fire sped along an invisible trail of spilled gas until it reached the porch. The dry wood of the steps, protected by the overhang and untouched by rain, caught in an instant. Before she could take a breath, the entire porch was engulfed. She dragged the water hose from the side of the house, spraying in the direction of the fire, but the stream was not enough to extinguish the gas-fueled flames. Smoke billowed around her head and she gulped for air. She ran through the smoke to the side of the house, coughing until her stomach knotted.

  Ellen, breathless, ran into the yard, jeans tucked into work boots. “Lee, I saw smoke. I called 911. What happened?”

  Lee put her face in her hands. “I was trying to get rid of all this junk.” She stumbled to the hydrangea bushes and fell to the ground on her knees. Ellen picked up the hose. She covered the nozzle with her thumb and pointed it at the flames but the spray was no match for the hot fire. Billows of gray smoke made a swath around the yard and porch. She heard a siren, stopping and starting like it had a short. She turned to see an ancient fire truck racing down the dirt road. The threadbare tires bounced in every pothole, looking like with each jerk they might whirl from their axles. The truck lurched to a stop twenty feet from the fire, steam puffing from the engine, with two firemen sitting in the cab. The one in the passenger seat lowered himself to the ground, favoring his left leg.

  The other fireman pulled the fire hose from the side of the truck. She rubbed her eyes. It was Tommy. Even with the uniform and hat she knew it was him. Her mind tumbled, confused, and she didn’t have time to reason out how he was a fireman too, before he turned a large lever on the side of the truck and yelled to them, “Ladies, get out of the way, this’ll knock you over.”

  Lee was frozen but Ellen grabbed her arm, yanked her to her feet, and dragged her away from the truck.

  Water gushed out of the big hose, dousing the flames on the porch first, reducing them to smoke and scarred wood, and then soaking the bonfire.

  The yard spun, black spots appeared before her eyes, and then a tunnel. Feeling as though she might faint, she lay on the ground and closed her eyes. A few moments later she opened them to see Tommy’s face above her. “Let me take a look at you,” he said. “I’m an EMT. Don’t worry, you’re gonna be fine.”

  “But you’re a musician.”

  “This is my day job.” He felt under her chin and his fingertips were thick and callused. “Do you have any medical conditions?”

  She hesitated for a moment before saying, meekly, “I’m ten weeks pregnant.”

  He raised his eyebrows, catching his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. “Did you breathe in a lot of
smoke?”

  There was a lump in her throat. “Yeah. I coughed for a while.”

  He pulled out a stethoscope from the bag next to him and listened to her breathing, his brows knitted, staring at the ground. He reached for her arm resting underneath the blanket. “You need to see our doc.” His fingers moved to her wrist and took her pulse. “You seen her yet?”

  “No.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “At ten weeks you should see a doc, okay?”

  Irritation cleared her mind somewhat and she wondered who this guy thought he was, telling her to see a doctor. What did he know about babies? “You have children?”

  He smiled and took out a small light from his bag. “Look up for a minute.” He shone the light into one eye and then the other. “I do not have children, however, I’m a trained medical professional, so I know about these things. We’ll take you there now, have you checked out.” He put the light back into his bag and cocked his head, examining her face in a way that made her want to look away and hide. “You don’t like people telling you what to do.” He said it as a statement of fact and as if it amused him.

  Irritated at his obvious enjoyment, she replied in her remotest tone, “It depends.” She stared at the blue sky poking through the branches of the cherry tree above them. The branches had dumped their blossoms weeks before, and she picked up a soggy, fallen flower from the damp ground beneath her and crushed it between the tips of her fingers.

  “We’ll have to take you to the doc in our truck.”

  “No, I can drive myself.”

  “Policy. I have to take you in.”

  “What kind of policy is that exactly? Don’t I have the right to refuse treatment?”

  “Not on my watch.” He chuckled and put his hand out as if to help her stand. She ignored his outstretched reach and rolled on her side, preparing to get onto her feet. “I sounded kind of like a cop on television with that.” He mocked himself, making his voice deeper, “Not on my watch, little lady.”