A Morning Like This

by Deborah Bedford

  Kate Carparelli

  In a shelter meant for battered women, there were only two reasons a person would decide to leave. One, she had decided to launch out on her own and begin a new life. Or two, she had decided to go back to someone who had hurt her. It happened all the time. Some women came here seven or eight times before they made the choice to give up on their marriages and refuse to live in a dangerous place.

  Sophie Henderson could go either way.

  Abby found Sophie in an upstairs room stuffing meager belongings into a bag that read Friends of the Teton County Library. On it, a cowboy sat atop a horse, burying his nose inside the pages of a book.

  “Hey.” The sight of this woman packing made Abby’s heart clench. She couldn’t help feeling close to the women who passed through this place. She couldn’t help feeling bound to them. Over the past weeks, Sophie had become a special friend.

  “You heard?”

  “I did.”

  “I figured everybody around here would be talking about it.”

  “They are.”

  “I’ve decided to go back to him.”

  “You have? Sophie—”

  Abby stopped herself. She was not allowed to offer advice. Leaving or staying should be each woman’s choice to make. She’d trained her shelter staff to offer support, never outright opinion.

  “You know what my sister Elaine said the last time I showed up on her doorstep with a bloody nose? ‘Mike’s a good man, Sophie. He would never do all those things you say he does.’ ”

  Sophie stuffed a threadbare sundress into her Friends-of-the-Library bag. A frayed towel. A lime-green wind-breaker. All of these either donated or hand-me-downs purchased for nothing at Browse and Buy, the official rummage shop of the Episcopal Church.

  “So, you’re going back because of your sister?” Abby asked.

  “No. I guess I’m going back for myself. Maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s good enough that we can make it work this time.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “He said he’s willing to go to counseling and to try. He’s capable of changing, Abby. I just know it.”

  Abby leaned against the doorjamb, her arms interlaced, a confidante’s pose. She fought to remain neutral, even though she cared bone-deep for Sophie. “We’ll miss you around this place.”

  Sophie laughed. “It’s been like a slumber party or something here. My sister and I used to share a room when we were little, in a double-sized bed. Have you noticed how easy it is to laugh when you’re laying down? In the dark? With someone close beside you like a sister?”

  “I remember those days.” Abby smiled.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you aren’t folded over, trying to sit up. And there’re no faces to look at except the faces in the ceiling. There’s nothing to make you stop laughing. It just comes out.”

  A ragged khaki visor sat beside the bed on the night-stand, its bill shaped to form a perfect eyeshade over Sophie’s face. Abby walked over to pick it up and hand it to her. “Don’t forget this.”

  Sophie hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t know if I want that or not. I don’t think I’ll need it.”

  Abby turned the frayed brim in her hand and examined it straight on. “I’ve seldom seen you without it.”

  Sophie stopped stuffing items into the overloaded bag. “Mike gave it to me for my birthday. I was wearing that the night I left. I don’t want to do anything to him that will remind him of anything bad.” She glanced out the front window, then aligned her hands as if in prayer, touching fingers to a disjointed nose that had been broken too many times. Her eyes glimmered with precaution—or tears. Abby couldn’t be sure which. “I have to go. His truck’s out there.”

  A heartbeat passed between them. Then another. And then they were rocking in each other’s arms.

  “Thank you for everything,” Sophie said into Abby’s hair.

  “If you need us again, you know where we are.”

  “Yeah, I know where you are.”

  “Oh, Sophie. Good luck.” The two women swayed to and fro in their embrace. Abby said again, with great emphasis, “We’re going to miss you,” because those were the only emotional words she was allowed to say.

  “Will you get the test done today?” Susan had called to David from halfway across the crosswalk as they parted. “You don’t have to make an appointment. You just go.”

  “Today?” he’d called back.

  “Every hour matters.” She’d pulled up short in the middle of the street and turned back to him, ignoring a huge motor home from Minnesota that bore down on her in the oncoming lane. “Every hour.”

  “Get out of the middle of the highway,” he had called to her. “Everything will be okay.”

  It took David hours to get to the hospital to have the test.

  Although his schedule had seemed light this morning, an impromptu meeting, a hundred small details, filled the afternoon. Every so often, he’d leave his upstairs workplace, thinking he could slip out to St. John’s. But every time he tried, someone stopped him in the stairwell.

  Finally, he stepped into the cramped laboratory waiting room late that day, knowing he didn’t have much leeway if he wanted to make Braden’s game. He took a seat in one of the three plastic chairs and shot a covert glance around the office. What if someone recognized him here? “I’m David Treasure,” he said to the woman who approached. “I’m here for a blood test.”

  A stainless steel clock on the wall read 4:47. The woman, who wore scrubs with Snoopy dancing across the sleeves, held out a hand for doctor’s orders.

  “I don’t have anything from a physician,” he said. And found himself struggling just to voice Susan’s name. “A…a friend told me the test had been sent from Oregon. That you would already know about it.”

  From the next room he could hear the sound of a child whimpering, and a mother’s consoling reply: “It’ll hurt for a minute, and then it will be over.”

  “It won’t be over,” said the child. “It will hurt for a long time.”

  The lab tech leafed through a pile of manila folders on her desk. David sat down. He couldn’t help himself. He had always been one to ask stupid questions when he was uneasy. He bounced his knee up and down, striking up a conversation out of nervousness, as if he could use any friend he could get.

  “So, you like Snoopy?” He gestured toward her sleeves.

  She either ignored his question or didn’t hear him. Probably the first. “Oh, here you are. You’re the test kit we’re sending back to Good Samaritan in Corvallis.”

  His knee stopped bouncing. No, I’m not a test kit, he wanted to say. I am a man. You aren’t sending me anywhere.

  She gave him papers to fill out, assigned him a confidential number, and told him the doctor in Corvallis should have results in five days. Then, to his chagrin, she ushered him through the doorway to a reclinerlike padded chair. A metal stool gleamed beside it and a nearby cart stood laden with stainless steel utensils that looked as if they could inflict a wide variety of bodily harm.

  “Oh, look,” said the owner of the voice he’d heard earlier, sounding relieved. “Here’s Braden’s dad come to have a blood draw, too.”

  David’s heart plummeted. He recognized them. He couldn’t remember the little girl’s name, but he knew her well enough. She and Braden had dressed up as pirates together and had given a fourth-grade class report on the migration of whales.

  She made him think of another little girl, too. The reason for his being here. A child of his own, who might be dying. A child whom he’d never known.

  The mingling smells of rubber and rubbing alcohol set his stomach roiling. He sat on the chair and lifted his arm so the Snoopy-shirt lady could lower the tray where he would lay his arm. “So they do blood tests in groups now, do they?” He winked across the way at the little girl, trying to make light of knowing her. His throat constricted with dread.

  The mother gave her daughter encouragement. “See,” she said. “If B
raden’s dad is brave enough to do this, I’m sure you can be brave enough, too. If you don’t cry, I’m sure Mr. Treasure will tell Braden how brave you were and what a good job you did.”

  David hesitated three seconds too long before he agreed with them. “Sure. I’ll do that.” I don’t even know their names and I’m lying.

  “You’ll need to roll up your sleeve, sir.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  The tech at his side began to lay out a row of vials, their lids coded with primary colors. He did as she said, unfastening his cuff with the opposite hand, fumbling with the buttons.

  “Make a fist for me now.”

  He did it. “How’s this?”

  “Hm-m-mm.” She strapped the tourniquet around his left biceps with more enthusiasm than he thought necessary. On the inside of his arm, she swabbed a spot the size of a nickel with cold, brown liquid. “They certainly sent a lot of vials. What do they need so much blood for?”

  “Take whatever it is they want,” he said, evading the question. “It doesn’t matter. Drain me until I’m dry.”

  The tech raised one penciled-in brow at him before she snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and turned her attention to the blue, bulging lines in the crook of his elbow. She touched one vein with her gloved finger, rolled it around beneath the layer of his skin. “This looks like a good one.” She pursed her lips and touched another. “This one would work, too. You’ve got good veins.”

  “Either one.” He shrugged. “I don’t care.” Just get this over with. Please. I have other places to go.

  “Do you get woozy?” She tapped his wrist. “You look pale.”

  “No. I’m not pale,” he answered, although he had absolutely no idea if he was or not. He had handled Braden being born, for heaven’s sake, and that hadn’t been easy. He remembered it now—Abby moaning and the monitors shrilling, his body revolting as he tried to dab her forehead with a cloth. Every time Abby’d pushed, he’d strained, too. He’d almost hyperventilated and fallen off the stool. He’d gasped for breath as the baby came, until the doctor turned toward him, ignoring Abigail and the crowning infant for a moment, and sat him down so he wouldn’t pass out.

  The moments after his son’s arrival—the delicate orchestry of it—would remain with David forever. The staggering pattern of those tiny brows, the curl of a miniature finger, the faint scribble of blue vein beneath translucent skin, the smell of baby.

  But that one instant—that one moment when Dr. Sugden had turned away from Abigail to help him instead. It hadn’t been the blood or the baby birthing that had rendered David queasy and ill.

  It had made him sick seeing Abby in pain.

  As the tech fussed about with vials and needles, other remembrances came unbidden—other memories of Abby in times of hurt and pain.

  The time she’d found out a high-school friend had died and he’d held her in his lap while she cried…The week of an abscessed tooth when he’d nursed her after an awful bout with the dentist and her face had swollen to the same shape as an otter’s… Every year when her father’s birthday came and went unannounced and she silently grieved…

  How he loved Abby these days, even if he’d doubted their chances at the beginning.

  If I could only have known then what I know about our lives now.

  Snoopy-scrubs readied her long needle. David watched it pierce his skin and welcomed the twinge. She inserted it the rest of the way into his arm almost effortlessly and must have hit exactly what she’d been aiming for because deep red began to well into the syringe. She focused on pulling the plunger out of the syringe while he stared at the dark blonde roots in her hair.

  “You can let go the fist now.”

  He did as told.

  She loosened the tourniquet and David watched with miserable fascination as his blood inched up the tube, the dark red pooling inside the glass.

  Chapter Four

  The best thing about living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, was that even the busiest working fathers tried to make it to Little League baseball games.

  David didn’t miss a game unless he had good reason.

  His absence this afternoon, with no explanation, worried Abby. For a long while after the cell phone had failed to ring through, Abby stood beneath the bleachers where to her right she had a view of cars pulling into the parking lot and to her left a view of bare, sunburned legs, wide-pocketed shorts, and an assortment of tennis shoes, dusty sandals, and mothers’ toenails painted Fish-net Stocking red.

  Every time a cheer went out above her, she knew she’d missed something exciting on the field.

  Every time a car pulled up, she stood on tiptoe and searched it out, hoping to see David.

  Finally, during the middle of the third inning, she gave up, hefted her stadium blanket high beneath her armpit, hiked her skirt to her knees, and climbed the bleachers. “About time you got here,” somebody said as the other parents scooted over to make room. “Braden’s on deck.”

  “I’ve been here.” She unfolded the blanket and made a place for David to sit, too, just in case. “I’ve been watching from down below.”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  Abby shrugged and roosted in her regular seat beside them. “I guess he’ll get here,” she said. “He’s never late like this.”

  Braden donned a batter’s helmet, stepped to the plate, and took a practice swing outside the box. On the stands, Abigail fretted. Oh, David’s going to miss Braden at bat.

  Braden stepped into the plate. “Come on, Brade.” Abby clapped her hands. “Take it for a ride!”

  The scoreboard at Mateosky Park hadn’t been painted in so many years that spectators could scarcely make out the faded words announcing WESTERN BOY’S BASEBALL, JACKSON HOLE. Banners advertising everything from Corral West Ranchwear to the Strutting Grouse Restaurant sagged against the outfield fence. In the dugout, boys teased each other and clamped mitts over each other’s heads. They tipped their mouths to drink from the spigot of the orange Gatorade cooler.

  With clarity, Abby knew. Something isn’t right. David wouldn’t miss this without calling. Misgiving grew, tightening in her chest. These games meant everything to David. He loved talking with the parents and helping with the coaching and—above all things—rooting for these nine- and ten-year-old boys.

  The pitcher hitched up his knee over the mound, positioned the ball, and played out his windup like a major leaguer. With patient, withdrawn concentration, he launched a fastball and Braden swung over the plate.

  Thwack.

  Dust flew in graceful whorls as the ball hit the catcher’s mitt.

  The umpire strong-armed the signal. “Stree-ike.”

  “Good cut.” Abby clapped even harder. “Keep your head down, Brade. You’ll get it.”

  Braden stepped backward out of the box. He turned, his eyes searching the seats as he looked for his family. “Where’s Dad?” he mouthed.

  Abby held out her hands, palms up, and mouthed back, “I don’t know.”

  “Speaking of David,” Cindy Hubner offered Abby some M&M’s from an open bag, “how was your anniversary last night?”

  Abby shook her head no thanks and hugged her skirt over her knees. “We had a good time. We always do.”

  “Everybody in town talks about you two, you know. You and David are so lucky, having the sort of marriage you do. I give you both a lot of credit.”

  Abby hated to admit this, but it always pleased her when someone noticed. “You know, we trust God for a lot of it,” she said, grasping for some way to appear humble and divert attention. “We couldn’t do it on our own.”

  High above, the Wedgwood-blue sky was calm as a beaver pond and wisps of evening clouds clung to the summit of the mountain. On the Snow King trail people hiked, looking distant and small. At the extolling of their marriage, at David’s strange absence, Abby felt like one of those faraway, upward-bound people: breathless, slightly lost.

  Braden moved back into the box and positioned himself in re
adiness, his elbow angling toward the sky. Out on first base the runner got ready, dancing sideways on muscular little-boy legs, batting-glove fingers flapping from a rear pocket.

  The pitcher cocked his knee. The throw came—high and inside. Braden watched it zing past as the runner on first sidled out and then back to safety.

  “Good eye!” everybody shouted. “Good eye, Brade. Way to see it!”

  “Ball,” the ump said, holding up a finger on each hand to indicate the count. “1-1.”

  “Come on, pitch! You can get him,” a parent yelled from the opposite bleachers. “Give him the chair.”

  “Protect the plate, Braden,” Cindy shouted beside Abby. “Don’t let this one get by you.”

  Braden pounded his bat on the plate. He took a practice swing. As the windup started, the spectators grew quiet.

  On the mound, the pitcher shifted his weight, readjusted, reared his elbow, and let the ball fly. Braden began a full-armed swing, stepping in to protect the plate.

  Braden’s bat sliced through empty air. The ball sailed in and smashed his cheekbone with a hollow thud. Blood splattered on his baseball cleats.

  The little boy buckled to the ground. The black batting helmet went flying. The bat lay at an awful detached angle in the dirt. Abby rose in the stands. “Braden!”

  When Abby recollected it later, she would not remember leaving the bleachers or skirting the fence. She would not remember shoving coaches away or kneeling in the dust. She would only remember the sight of Braden’s confused expression and tear-streaked face, his bangs matted with dirt and sweat.

  Blood saturated Ken Hubner’s hankie. “He’s got a bloody nose, Abby. Don’t panic. I think he’s going to be okay.”

  But when Ken moved his hand away, Braden’s nose was already swollen to the same size and shape as an eggplant. Half-moon bruises already shadowed his eyes. Cindy handed an emergency bag of frozen peas from the snack cooler over the fence. “Get these on him, Abby. They’ll help with the swelling.”

  “Where is David?” Ken asked as he reapplied the handkerchief.

  Abby couldn’t think over the loud buzz in her head. “I don’t know.”