When Mrs. Sterling leaves, Arlene touches me on the shoulder. “I guess I just wanted you to know.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
I’m trying to act like I’m not surprised, but maybe she sees right through me, because she says, “Hope that doesn’t hurt you too much.”
“I don’t have the time or energy to be hurt.”
Arlene gives a tired smile. “I remember that. Having to get out of bed five times to warm a bottle. Oh, god, I was tired. Of course, that doesn’t last forever and it sure is worth it.”
“Everyone says that.” What I’m wondering is, do people all say the same thing because it’s true or because they just want to believe it’s true? Because it could be that being a mom is too hard and when you get right down to it it’s not worth it, but you can’t say that out loud, because the world is terrific at lying to itself about all sorts of important things.
Arlene starts ringing up another customer but keeps talking to me. “Right now, all she does is eat and sleep and cry. I know it. But just you wait. Someday soon, something inside her is going to go click, just like a light being turned on. Then, in those eyes, you can see a person unfold. She’ll smile soon. Then she’ll say ‘Mama,’ and then she’ll wave goodbye. I know it takes awhile. Everyone used to say to me, ‘They grow up so darn fast!’ and I remember thinking, What? Seems to be taking a long time, but then suddenly I realized my kids were in kindergarten and I thought, What? How’d that go so fast? There were just so many hard times, it sometimes felt like it was taking forever.”
She looks up at the clock above the door. “Like this job. I wait for time to slip away so I can go home. Life isn’t supposed to be about waiting.”
She waits, though, until the customer pays and I’m done bagging. When we’re alone, she says, “That’s how I figure if my life’s any good or not. Whether I wish time would speed up or slow down. It makes me cry when I think about it too much. Because I wasted my life wishing it would speed up.” She’s looking out the glass door like she’s not paying attention to me anymore. Then she turns back and touches my cheek. “If you need some help, let me know.”
“All right.”
“I guess I could watch Amber some night and you could go out.”
“You don’t have to do that. As Kay says, I’m not entitled to any help.”
She tilts her head and considers that. “Well, all I know is that you’re a beautiful kid, Libby.”
“And you’re a beautiful lady, Arlene.”
We both smile, because we’re always saying that to each other, and isn’t it funny that we keep saying it even though it’s a lie, and so it’s not a nice thing to say? It’s supposed to be, but really it just hurts the both of us.
I’m in the chip aisle, watching the gray ropes of my mop push water across the floor, when Simon’s parents walk up. At first all I see is two sets of shoes that stop by the slick part of the floor: cowboy boots and old-lady tennis shoes. When they don’t move, I look up and there they are. I don’t know how I know who they are, exactly, except they were probably at the same basketball and football games I was, or maybe at the store, or maybe in Lamar, and it’s just the sort of knowledge that’s seeped in without anyone ever telling me. Plus not too many people are as fair and blond as his father, who’s staring right at me. My eyes sting from tiredness and from bleach, but I manage to look back at him without squinting.
He clears his throat and rubs at the back of his head with his big hand, which is covered with blond hair. He’s wearing a shirt that says RATTLESNAKE FEEDS AND SUPPLY and old jeans, and in his face—it’s a nice-enough face, a regular face—I see a little of Amber. “I’m Harold Frazier. And this is Dottie,” he says.
Dottie smiles and nods. She’s wearing a pink handkerchief over her permed gray hair, and something about her looks weak, like she’s been rolled over by life, like maybe she’s had all the strength pushed out of her.
“We’re Simon’s parents,” Harold says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
“We needed some groceries.”
“Oh, okay.” I step back a little to let them pass, although there’s plenty of room.
“Well, and to see you.” Harold clears his throat again. “You’re Libby, right? We wanted to ask you how the baby’s doing.”
I look around the store before looking back at them. “Amber’s doing fine. Thanks for asking.”
“She’s pert-near a month, now, huh?”
“Almost.”
Dottie leans forward a bit. “That’s about when they start to wake up a bit. Does she look around a lot? Is she alert? Are you putting her on her back to sleep?”
I don’t know what to think about these folks. Part of me wants to push them away, because, man, they didn’t give Tess the time of day and acted like she and her baby were the biggest mistake on earth. On the other hand, part of me wants to pull them in, because they’re Amber’s grandparents, after all, and here they are, standing in front of me looking old and sorry. “Of course I put her on her back,” I finally say. “She’s a very healthy baby. I have pictures in my purse. You want to see?”
“Yes,” says Dottie. “We really would.”
When I come back with my wallet, they’re standing just where I left them. Harold’s got his arms crossed, and Dottie is tugging on her pink handkerchief.
I show them the one from the hospital, and two I’ve taken since then. “I’ve got extras of these,” I say, handing them the hospital one. “You can keep it.”
“It’s just like I heard,” Dottie says. “She looks a lot like Simon.”
“That’s what people say. Although it’s hard to tell too much, I think. See the nose there? That’s Tess’s nose.”
“Well, I’ll be,” says Harold. “I’ll be. A little baby girl.” Then, “You live in that house on the Baxter place, right? The one off the highway?”
“Yes.”
“With your mom?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re raising the baby?”
“Yes.”
“Probably it’s nice to have your mom there to help.”
“Sure.”
“It’s a hard thing to do alone.”
“Well, I’ve got Kay.”
“I know Baxter a little. Surprising how little, though. It’s just that we’ve only been here two years, and we live way on the other side of the county.”
“Yeah, that’s what Tess told me.” I say it only because there’s a long pause, and it feels like I ought to say something.
He opens his mouth and closes it, opens it and closes it. He looks like a fish struggling, too—a fish right before the Arlene stage. “We’re good people,” he suddenly says. “You don’t know us and we don’t know you, so me saying that doesn’t mean much. But we are. We were—we were very angry at Simon. We had hoped—well, we didn’t want him getting tied down before he got to accomplish some things.”
“We love him so much,” Dottie whispers.
“And I must admit, we were angry with Tess. All along, we’d told him—well, we weren’t in favor of—her.”
“Shhh, now, Harold,” Dottie says. “We just have been wondering. If we did the right thing. It’s hard. Knowing this baby is growing up right across the county.”
“Well, we were just wondering about the situation, exactly,” says Harold. “Could you explain, maybe? How is Amber and what are your plans for her?”
They’re having real trouble talking, these two, and usually I want to jump in and help people like that, but for once I stay quiet and watch them fumble around. But I can’t take it after a while, and finally I start talking to help them out a bit.
“Well, I’m Amber’s mother. Tess wanted an abortion. And so did Simon. But I argued with them both, and the result is Amber. And she’s beautiful. And I’m a good mother. I’m going to give her everything I can.”
“Oh honey,” Dottie says. “I don’t doubt it. What we came here to ask you, and I hope you’ll be open to t
he idea, is if we can meet her.”
I shrug. “We could meet in town sometime.”
“Sure,” says Harold. “Or maybe we could come by the place? We’ll be out that way Friday night for a Farm Bureau meeting.”
“We’re so sorry,” says Dottie. “I should have called you sooner. I should have gone to the hospital. We should have.” She shrugs and looks down at her feet.
“We had a real busy spring,” Harold says. “We lost the fellow who’s been helping us run the ranch. By lost, I mean he died. He—the place—well, never mind. It’s not important to you. But it’s been a real hard time for us, this spring. The drought and all, you know. Sold off most of the herd.”
“We tried to forget about the baby,” Dottie says. “But that didn’t work.”
“We’re good people,” Harold says.
“You probably need to get back to work,” Dottie says.
“We’ll call you. And see if we can’t take you and your baby to lunch.”
“Harold, we should let this girl be. We should get some groceries. There’s a store, not as nice as this one, out our way. Usually we go there. But it’s smaller and I think we should come here more often. Don’t you think so Harold? The fruit here looks fresher.”
“Yes,” says Harold. “It’s not too much farther to come here. Nice to meet you, Libby.”
“We’re real sorry,” says Dottie.
Harold takes out his wallet and holds out a few folded twenties. I back away, but he thrusts his arm out farther.
“Thanks,” I mumble.
He nods and then leads Dottie away. From the back, I’m surprised at how old they look. They’re bowed down a bit, and Dottie leans against Harold. It looks like they’re out of energy, and something about seeing them for real, instead of glaring at me in my mind, makes me feel sorry for all the times I hated them for turning away.
I’m surprised Kay’s up when I get home from the store. At first I’m relieved, because I want to tell her about Simon’s parents, but as I get closer I figure out what’s going on, which is one of her Gone-Berserks, as Tess used to call these moments. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, her head on her hands, her hair hanging loose, sobbing.
I ought to get to my room, but I can’t just leave her there like that. “Hi,” I say, and I sit down in the chair next to her. “Hey there. Hey. Whatcha doing up so late?” I try to sound cheerful, like maybe there’s a chance for a good, happy reason. I bend down to pet Ringo, who’s come up to wind herself around my legs and lick my hand. I wait. Kay doesn’t say anything though, just keeps her head on her hands and shakes a bit harder. I roll my eyes, since she can’t see me. “Don’t cry.”
“Give me one reason not to.” She looks up at me, smearing her tears across her face with her hand, and she looks so ugly right now, with her blotchy face and snot coming down her nose. “Give me one reason! One reason!”
I look at her and shrug.
“Something’s going to change here. I did my share, Libby. I did my share. Don’t you go and mess everything up. Don’t you do it!”
“Okay.”
“I am so tired. You’ve wrecked up my life.”
“Did Amber cry a lot? I’m sorry.”
“You made this decision, you figure something else out.” And then she’s yelling again, a long thing about how I’ve disappointed her because I don’t think very well, how come I’m so slow, how come I’m what she ended up with? I know to ignore her till she gets it all out, and when she does she jumps up and starts moving stuff around the kitchen, pretending to do dishes. She throws silverware into the sink, runs water, pours in bubbles. I’m afraid the noise is too loud at this time of night, and even if it doesn’t wake up Amber, it hurts my ears.
“What kind of life do you think I’ve had? Hard. Not much to recommend it. But one thing I’ve never done—”
“All right, I said I’ll figure something else out.”
“One thing I’ve never done is to unload my problems on someone else. A person just does not do that. Not a mother to a daughter, not a daughter to a mother, not a sister to a sister.”
“Okay.”
“Keep your problems to yourself!”
“Okay.”
“I wish that’s how the world worked. That there were people we could hang our problems on. There is no such person. You got to learn to not even ask.”
“I’ll find a babysitter for nights.”
“Your dad left. Tess left. Baxter told me today, ‘Kay, we’re getting up there in years, gotta face it, we gotta do this last part right,’ and I said, ‘Damn, Baxter, we’re supposed to be able to rest now. When’s it going to end? When’s it going to let up?’ I was just done with you girls. I was done raising you, and now this.” She looks still for an instant, but then Amber cries from the other room and a wave of something fierce and mean crosses her face. “This is not my problem. This is your fault, your problem, you fix it, you let it crush you. You got no light going inside you, Libby. You’re dead and dark inside. And so is Tess. You’ve always both been that way.” She throws silverware, which is still sudsy, into the drying rack.
“I’m going to go get Amber.”
Before I get out of the room, though, Kay throws in, “Tess made a mistake. But you made a mistake too. A big, big mistake. Why’d you do this? Why? You can’t see it from where you’re at, but you’re not up to this. You’re just not.”
The minute I’ve got Amber in my arms I start up a daydream, the usual one about a man falling in love with me. He tells me, ‘You’ve got so much love inside you. You’ve got so much good inside you.’ And the look in his eyes proves to me that he can see it, and so, for a minute, I believe.
The night Tess and I sat down to tell Kay, it was one of those windy spring days, the sort of wind that reminds you of the power of air. It was the kind of wind that brings down tree limbs, smacks dirt and pebbles into windows, makes the house shift.
Tess asked Kay to sit down, that we had something to tell her. Before we could even get a word out, though, Kay said, “Damnit, I knew it.”
Tess said, “There’s something—” and cleared her throat.
It all happened in a split second, Kay leaning forward, saying, “Damnit, I knew it,” talking at the same time Tess did.
Tess kept going, though, and finished her sentence. She said, “—that I want to tell you. I’m pregnant.”
Kay leaned back and said, “I knew it. Goddamn—”
“I’m sorry.”
“Anytime my daughters ask me to sit down at the kitchen table, I know it can’t be good. I warned you—”
“I know.”
“I knew you were pregnant, but I didn’t want to know it. Oh, damn—”
“I’m due in June, June second—”
“Oh, good god. That soon? Tess, Tess, Tess.”
All that talking went back and forth, lightning quick. Then there was a long pause, and Tess finally said, “Here’s the thing, though. I didn’t want it. I don’t want it. I was going to have an abortion.”
“Uh-huh,” said Kay. “Why didn’t you?”
Tess tilted her head at me, because it was my turn to talk. I opened and closed my mouth, but no words came out and Tess stared at me hard, but still no words came so she glared at me before turning back and looking at Kay. “Libby wants him.”
“What?”
“I wanted an abortion, and Libby said, No, no, no, that I couldn’t, that she wanted the baby, that she’d raise him.”
“That is the—”
“Dumbest thing ever, I know. That’s what I told her.”
“It’s not dumb,” I said.
“It’s a dumb idea, and I still think so. Only she talked me into it and now it’s too late to back out.”
“Like hell! You’ll raise this baby yourself.”
“I won’t.”
Kay stood up and slapped Tess across the face and the sound crashed through the room, even above the sound of the wind. “You goddamn will.”
>
“Kay!” I jumped up.
Tess just sat there, though, with a blank face, far inside herself.
“Don’t hit her,” I whispered. “And anyway, why can’t we all be happy about this?”
Kay looked at me and squinted her eyes. She really lost it then. She stood up, pushed her chair backward, turned to me with a red blotchy face and her eyes shiny green. “You fucking idiot girls! Do I want a grandkid just after I got done raising you? Oh, I see. I see what you’re thinking. No, no, no. Don’t you ask me to—”
“I won’t ask for your help.”
“Oh, Libby. You might not ask, but you’ll need it.” She ran her hand across her face, and held her face in her cupped hand. “You’ll need my help.”
“I won’t—”
“You will.” Then she started crying and walked into the other room. Tess and I sat at the table, looking down, tracing the zodiac signs with our fingers or looking at each other and rolling our eyes, because we didn’t know what else to do. The wind was howling and making the glass in the window clank back and forth, back and forth. We sat there for a long time, and when Kay came back she said, “Listen. I’ll do some. I’ll do some. Maybe if we all help some it will work. Maybe it will work. Right, Tess? We’ll all do some.”
“Right,” Tess said.
“Right,” I said.
I bit my lip and smiled, because that’s just what I’d imagined us saying in my daydreams. And so it seemed like for once a dream was going to come true.
SEVEN
Mornings are soft, and that’s enough to make me love them. If I were married, mornings are when I would stay in bed and curl up in the arms of my husband. They’re when I would feel how much I loved him. And I would feel soft myself, and in love with my life. Then the day would get hectic and hot and full, like they do, but there would be the memory of a quiet morning holding me together.
This morning is like the fuzzy purple blanket Amber’s on, like the daydream of love in my head, like my heart feels. Nothing real yet. Nothing hard, or tight, or hot, or hurt.
Amber and I are resting outside so we can get the morning sun, because for once it’s cool enough to want the sun. I wish we were on a green, evenly mowed lawn, but this scraggly mixture of dry crabgrass and pebbles and cigarette butts isn’t so bad in the mornings. I wish I could have slept in, like I used to, instead of Amber waking me up at five-thirty. But a meadowlark is singing—Crazy Meadowlark, I decided to call him, because I never heard a bird belt it out so loud—and Amber’s awake and she’s looking straight up, not at me exactly, but straight up into the sky.
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