If I Had You

by Deborah Bedford

  “Where did you put all my things? This isn’t my room anymore,” Tess demanded.

  Ben set the bag on the barren bed while Tess turned all the way around. “Well, sure it is, honey. We just painted.”

  “Tess?” Nora asked. “It’s a pregnancy test, isn’t it? That’s what you were buying at the store.”

  Tess lowered herself to the edge of the bed that wasn’t hers anymore and they knew what she was going to say, even before she said it.

  “What if I were pregnant?” she asked. “How would that be?”

  That would be awful, Nora thought. But she didn’t answer Tess’s question out loud.

  Tess’s hands stretched over the coverlet, as if she needed all ten fingers to balance. “I was going to do the test before anyone knew I was here. But Caroline Rakes knows about it. You might as well know, too.”

  Caroline Rakes had been running the register at the Food Basket this afternoon when Tess had brought the box to the counter. “Hi, Tess,” Caroline had said, running the little carton across the scanner as if she hadn’t really looked at it, as if she had absolutely no idea what it was for. Then she handed over the small bag and gave the cash drawer a sharp little shove. “What brings you back to town?”

  As if that isn’t obvious, Tess had thought with a self-righteous humph. Buying a pregnancy test; that’s exactly what I’m doing. You don’t even have to ask, and fifteen other people will know before tomorrow.

  Ben spoke up. “If you are pregnant . . . you know who the baby’s father is, don’t you?”

  Tess’s brown eyes filled with irony. “What does that matter? I’m going to get rid of it. You know there’d be something wrong with it anyway, if it came.”

  “You don’t have to rush into this.” Ben hefted her bag off the bed and stood it on the floor. “You can stay here for a while. Think this over before you do anything.”

  “There isn’t anything to think about,” Tess snapped.

  Ben wouldn’t be sidetracked. “Why would something be wrong with it? Are you still on drugs?”

  The father’s eyes locked onto his daughter’s. Outside the window a cardinal hopped through the pyracantha and let off a string of loud, rapid whistles—cheer cheer cheer. Tess said only, “You know me.”

  Her confession was so unexpected that at first her parents thought they hadn’t heard her.

  “No,” Nora said, her words almost inaudible. But then the emotion began low in her chest; her lungs felt as if they were weighted with stone. “We don’t know you at all.”

  Tess met her mother’s eyes head on, with pride. “I just need money to take care of it.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The little town where Nora Crabtree first planted her pyracantha hedges and listened to cardinals singing, the town where her daughter had been born, was called Butlers Bend. It huddled on the land about seventy miles from Fort Worth in the direction of the Oklahoma state line and about seven years behind Fort Worth when it came to the fashions in the window of Noelle’s Chasing Skirts Boutique.

  Or so anybody under the age of forty would tell you.

  The vista was endless. The morning sun ran like a river in this place and the soil—as dark brown and rich as blackstrap molasses—curved on forever toward the vast expanse of sky. Only the proud thrust of Harlan Lane’s three gleaming grain silos broke the endless view; in the distance, their downspouts angled high over the Texas and Pacific train tracks like spouts on vintage coffee percolators.

  The owner at Stitch ’N Time—the fabric shop where Nora worked measuring lengths of gingham and chintz and satin, the place where she arranged bolts of cloth in rainbow displays—didn’t often schedule her for Saturdays. Today, though, with Tess prowling their home, and Ben out in the grass flaying the edge of the pavement with the weed eater as if he wanted to flay Nora for not opening her heart, all Nora wanted to do was escape.

  Earlier, when she’d headed toward the laundry room, a washload of Ben’s dark T-shirts hugged against her chest, Tess was pacing back and forth, her hands shoved inside the pockets of her ragged denim shorts as if she were reining herself in from taking flight. Then, when Nora sat at her desk paying bills, Tess circled her, her heels dragging on the carpet, the scuffles saying, You write checks for all those other people. You could write a check and help me.

  If Nora held any hope that she’d been wrong about her daughter, that Tess might be sorry or humbled or afraid, Tess’s actions dashed those hopes. Tess never met her mother’s eyes. She never settled. Instead she moved in and out of rooms, heavy footed and sour faced, like a housefly that wouldn’t alight.

  When Nora heard the hose running she fled outside to find Ben. “I’m going out to mail these bills,” she told him, her eyes never leaving the lawn stubble that covered his shoes. “Then I’m headed over to the Stitch.”

  “Why would you do that? You don’t work on Saturdays.”

  “I want to get out.”

  “Those bills can wait until Monday.”

  “I know, Ben. I’m sorry. I just . . . can’t be here right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not.” Nora felt like she’d been tiptoeing around her own house for hours. “I just can’t . . . I just can’t breathe when she’s around.”

  When Nora stepped into the shop, the air conditioner hummed out cool air. Nora caught the sharp scent of dye, crisp cotton, sewing-machine oil. Babs Stanton looked quizzically at her as Nora came behind the counter. “I had a few extra hours,” Nora lied. “Thought I’d finish cutting those sales remnants before Monday. I didn’t want you to get behind.” Nora slid her sewing glasses onto her nose and that was that.

  Once Nora finished her sorting and cutting, a surge of customers kept the cash register busy until almost suppertime. Fran Coover purchased green chintz to make into curtains. Dolores Jones brought in six shiny, stiff cards of ladybug buttons and asked for an exchange. Meg Lang sought her advice on the newest Butterick patterns. Babs Stanton regaled her with stories about Bab’s recent fabric-buying trip to New York. “It’s a shame you’re so afraid to fly, Nora. Some year, I’d love for you to go with me.”

  Only when Jo Ellen Wort carried up three bolts of pastel flannel and let them topple over onto the table did Nora falter. “Three yards of each, please,” Jo Ellen said as Nora narrowed her brows at the cloudlike outlines of yellow bunnies, green clowns, pink bears. “Just feel how soft these are. Perfect for baby blankets, don’t you think?”

  Nora unfolded, marked the three-yard measure with her thumb, brandished the shears, and began to snip. “Perfect.”

  “I’m going to crochet around the edges with embroidery floss. It makes such a nice finish. Like lace.”

  Nora felt the cloth texture through the scissor handles, through the slight vibration of blade against Formica. “Who’s having the baby?”

  “Paige Lee. My middle girl. Due in February.”

  Nora began to fold the yardage. She shook out every wrinkle, paying scrupulous attention as the flannel fell into smaller and smaller squares.

  Tess, my little girl. Due in God-knows-when.

  She measured out the second length of fabric and, while she cut that one, her mind began to calculate dates. Jo Ellen’s daughter, with six months to go. Add another three months for Tess, perhaps.

  An April or May baby.

  A child born to a child.

  “That’s great for Paige Lee.”

  Nora punched the price and quantity buttons on the cash register. She crunched the paper sack closed with both fists and handed it over. She closed the cash drawer with a sharp little shove of her thumbs and said the thing they’d all been trained to recite: “Come Stitch another Time.”

  “Thanks, Nora.”

  What was beginning to horrify Nora the most about herself was that she wasn’t at all disturbed by the idea of Tess getting rid of a baby. She wanted her to get rid of it. With the horror came memories of sermons she had heard from the pulpit. The pictures she’d see
n of tiny, perfect little feet that the Gilford County Right-To-Life ran in the Butlers Bridge Echo-Bulletin every Wednesday. Even when she heard the word fetus, she cringed.

  She knew as a Christian she ought to urge her daughter, Have the baby, honey. Give it a life the way God intended.

  Only she didn’t really believe that was the answer for everybody.

  Did she?

  I can’t do this. It’s too much to expect from us.

  During the months after Tess had disappeared, Ben and Nora had paid for a counselor, trying to make some sense out of everything they’d lost when their sixteen-year-old daughter left them for the Dallas streets. They’d sat as straight as two clothespins in an office almost as small as a broom closet, Ben’s fingers curled lightly over hers, bookends on either side of the sofa. They’d paid a detached young man with smooth skin and a smoother voice to tell them, “You mustn’t think it was because you were bad parents. She’s made her own choices. You mustn’t blame yourselves.”

  Nora didn’t let herself ask the questions anymore, because they hurt too much. She didn’t let herself wonder what she had to make Tess run away and stay away. Had she and Ben smothered their daughter? Had they ruined her self-esteem? Had they been too strict? Too lenient?

  She remembered Tess at the bathroom mirror once, styling her hair with a curling iron. “I heard you,” Nora had said as the anger in their similar blue-violet eyes reflected back at each other from the glass. “I know what time you climbed back in the window.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do, Mom,” in a tone that had made Nora want to slap her.

  “Yes, I can tell you what to do. I’m your mother. You are my child, my responsibility. We have to talk about this.”

  “There isn’t anything to talk about.”

  “It was almost four in the morning when you came back.”

  “So—?”

  “You don’t think your dad and I have a right to be upset about that?”

  “It isn’t any of your business anymore.”

  “You’re only sixteen years old. What do you mean, it isn’t any of our business? As long as you live under our roof, it’s our business.”

  Tess clamped the steaming curling iron around a handful of hair and pulled it straight from the crown of her head, ignoring her mother.

  “Your Diversion curfew is eleven o’clock. You certainly broke that last night.”

  “I know how to tell time, Mom.”

  “You don’t have another chance to get it right, Tess. The officers set it up this way to keep you under control.”

  “I don’t need anyone to keep me under control. I’m fine. Leave me alone.”

  “What if I called the officer and reported you? I have every right to do that. Your father and I aren’t as helpless as you seem to think we are.”

  Nora felt heat on her wrist from the curling iron before she saw it being shoved at her like a sword. She heard Tess say, “Why would you narc on me to my Diversion officer? You’re supposed to help me. Nothing I’ve ever done is good enough for you.”

  “Stop it.” Nora grabbed the appliance by the barrel, trying to get it away from her arm. The pain made tears come to her eyes. “Forget it. Just forget it. I give up, Tess. I can’t deal with you anymore.” Nora fumbled with the faucets in shock, trying to run cold water over her smarting forearm, the sting sinking deep. But the shame she was feeling stung deeper. “Why are you always so much trouble? Nothing I’ve ever done will change you.”

  “I’ve tried to make you happy,” Tess sobbed. “But no matter what, even when I was a little girl, nothing I ever did was good enough for you.”

  Nora couldn’t deal with the rising sense of guilt and shame. She had tried to build a comfortable, protective wall around herself and her husband. Anger and resentment had helped her do that.

  And now Tess was home, bringing more trouble.

  Forgive me, Father. Can’t you see?

  It would be better for any unwanted child not to be born than to be raised by a mother as angry and uncontrollable and dangerous as her own daughter.

  THAT NIGHT, as a breeze fretted with the Dutch lace curtain above their heads, Ben lay with his head imbedded in his pillow, his nose a sharp silhouette, his arms rigid against his sides.

  Nora lay on her left hipbone, her pillow bunched into a knot beneath her ear, staring at the shadow that was the hollow of his throat, the heft of his chest. She watched his ribcage rise, fall, rise, fall before she touched the crook of his arm.

  He moved it away from her.

  “Ben,” she said. “I need you.”

  The sheets rustled. She saw his head turn slightly. But he didn’t reach for her and draw her close the way she’d expected. Instead, “I can’t stop thinking about Tess.”

  Silence.

  “She’s hurting, Nora.”

  “I can’t help the way I feel.”

  “This could be our chance. The thing we prayed for all those years ago.”

  “She’s had all the chances in the world.”

  The darkness surrounding them. Over his head, powder-blue wallpaper dotted with cottage daisies, awash in the frail moonlight.

  “Maybe she’s not pregnant after all. Maybe she just thinks she is. You’re being too hard.”

  “Am I, Ben? Am I, really, when you think about it?”

  “She’s our daughter.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think that hurts me the worst of all?”

  “You could back down, Nora. You could offer to forgive her.”

  “And what about me?” A sharp retort, said with quiet desperation in her voice. But something Ben had to remember if he meant to stand beside her.

  The mattress sagged beneath his weight. She felt him reach for her at last, the brush of his knuckles against her jaw, the rush of sensation as he cupped her skull with one rough hand. Her body responded to the simple motion much quicker than her mind. This one thing could draw them together when nothing else would, uniting them. Their marriage bed.

  He said, “We could help her together.”

  When she closed her eyes, the pain began behind her eye sockets. Even so, she kissed her husband fervently, following his lead. “Oh, Ben,” she whispered against his mouth.

  “I love you,” he said. And his words, though she knew they were spoken by rote, reassured her.

  “I love you, too.”

  His arms tightened around her.

  Tess. In the bedroom down the hall. Saying she didn’t need them.

  That thought changed everything suddenly. Locked in Ben’s kiss and desperate for air, Nora felt as if she were smothering. She gave a frantic gasp and he pulled away. No, Lord. She felt the blood hammering in her ears and realized she could hear her own heart. You’ve got to help me. He’s my husband.

  But there wasn’t anything she could do. Her panic was as sure and powerful as any swift weapon. With open eyes now, the pain behind her skull wouldn’t go away. Her tongue became a wood slat in her mouth. Her shoulders flattened the pillow. Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe. Only, she couldn’t.

  “Nora?”

  “I don’t care anymore,” she said, rocked by her own stiffness, tired of trying to explain it, even to herself. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  “You’ve turned yourself off.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “It’s like there’s something of you that isn’t there.”

  “I haven’t done this to myself, Ben.”

  Yes, you have, beloved.

  For one long, horrid silence, he stared at her. The mattress slumped as he lolled to one side, his head propped on one hand, his face looking down at her, chiseled with disapproval.

  She struggled harder. “It’s the best thing for Tess, too, to handle this herself.”

  “Is it?”

  “You remember what the counselor said. It’s the lovingthing. Letting her face her own consequences.”

  “To a point.”

  �
��It’s healthy for us to have our own boundaries with her.”

  “You could care,” he said. “You could try and look at things differently.”

  “Ben.”

  “If we let her go through with this, we’re letting Tess do something that she might regret for the rest of her life. You believe abortion is wrong, don’t you? You would never want her to do anything like that, would you?”

  “The last thing I need,” she said, “is for you to heap that on my head.”

  She turned to rustle the sheets, to yank them across her hip as she flopped toward the wall.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Butlers Bend Baptist Church sat directly beside the town’s namesake, a broad leftward yaw in the road that came about because of Miles Butler’s improper Model T handling. Stories had it that, back around the turn of the century, Miles had been demonstrating how much easier it was to steer an automobile than a horse. When he hit a rock and went out of control, the cotton farmers walked away, shaking their heads. But Miles stood up and shouted, “Why are you laughing at me? I started this town. Of course I’m driving where the road is supposed to go!”

  This stark left-handed turn in Texoma Road, which was otherwise a hundred-mile, straight-as-a-board drive, had been talked about since 1911 and would not (as long as the elders of the town had anything to say about it) ever be changed. Beside it stood a sign that read, “This is God’s Country. Don’t Drive Through It Like Hell.”

  The ochre frame church building was bedecked with planter boxes overflowing with marigolds. The walk and the steps, edged with limestone laid in 1921, now stood half hidden between Bargain Food Basket and Milton Hubbs’s used-car lot, Kick-A-Tire Trade-Ins. Like Johnson grass, the progress of Butlers Bend had sprung up to surround it. There were those who said that Kick-A-Tire had been a special blessing to the Baptists, because numbers in Sunday school had started swelling again and Hubbs’s few empty spaces made a handy parking lot.

  “No Money Down! No Payment Until November!” announced the windshield of a Taurus beside her when Nora turned in. She tucked her Bible and purse beneath the crook of one arm and locked her doors. Her eyes focused on the church and her steps full of purpose, Nora joined the Sunday-morning worship crowd with the desperate intent of a football quarterback who needed a first down.