A Morning Like This

by Deborah Bedford

  “You risked us for some woman who was just ‘there’? You risked us for somebody you didn’t love?”

  He hung his head like a wayward child.

  “When… when the baby was born, when we brought him home, had it changed by then?”

  Almost impossible, making himself say the words, “That was the middle of it,” he said. “She called the hospital. To see if we had a boy or a girl. And I told her. A boy. We had a boy.” He hesitated, remembering. “And she cried.”

  Abby’s eyes were intent and numb and sad. “What would Braden think?” She asked it as if she knew it was the very question that would most torture David, as if she knew exactly how to make him pay. “What would he think if he knew his father had done something like this? If he knew his father had betrayed him? Even while he was being formed in the womb?”

  His father. As if they were talking about someone who wasn’t standing in the room. A third party. Someone Abby hadn’t known before.

  David heard his own voice, thin, like a thread of smoke. “Braden’s going to be involved in this, Abby. There’s nothing I can do to change that.”

  “Why?” she asked dully. “Why would Braden have to be involved?”

  He saw it as a movie going slowly: him saying the words, “I have a little girl whom he needs to know.” Abby letting out a cry and picking up her basket, still just as full as it had been when she’d come in. Walking past him like he wasn’t in the room, leaving him standing there, gaping at the empty spot where she used to be.

  Chapter Eight

  The last place David and Abigail Treasure would have chosen to go, the next evening after they’d discussed David’s having an affair, was to The Spud Drive-In with the entire Elk’s Club baseball team.

  For time immemorial, for as long as anybody could remember—for as long as anybody’s parents could remember—The Spud Drive-In had been the place to gather during summer twilights in the mountains. The screen stood like a great white slab above the farmland. Its red-and-blue sign was shaped like an Idaho license plate. White paint peeled from its ticket booth, where a hand-lettered price list read, “Carload $10. No foot traffic.”

  It was called The Spud because, for people from Wyoming, everything in Idaho begged to be called a spud. People who worked in Jackson Hole but lived eighteen miles across the pass in Idaho were called Spud Brothers. Anyone who drove to Idaho Falls to the mall said they were going to Spudville. And any baseball team that came back victorious from the Madison Grand Slam tournament in Rexburg bragged for weeks about how they’d been Spud-bashing.

  The Spud was frequented by hearty souls who didn’t mind staying wrapped inside sleeping bags to stay warm while they watched a movie. It was filled every night with those who didn’t mind seeing something at least five months old and those who didn’t mind swarms of moths and bats drawn by the huge projector’s stream of light.

  On this night, of all nights, the Elk’s Club Little League had defeated Jedediah’s House of Sourdough at Mateosky Field in a game in which Braden Treasure homered twice and sparked a five-run outburst from his teammates.

  But during the showdown, Abby Treasure had cheered from the third bleacher on the left portion of the stands, sitting conspicuously away from the bevy of other moms that she usually socialized with on the sidelines.

  David Treasure had rooted for the team from behind the north fence-line, standing alone.

  Nobody understood why Abby didn’t jump to her feet at the first homer, lifting her fists in victory and proclaiming, “Yes, that’s my kid. I taught him everything he knows.”

  Nobody understood why David didn’t step forward and high-five the other fathers and speculate with the usual false modesty, “Yep, it was a nice pitch, all right. Brade really got ahold of that one, didn’t he?”

  Nobody understood why, with the game ended and Braden begging them to come to The Spud, David had said, “Maybe tonight isn’t the best time, sport.” And Abby had said, “Honey, I’m just not in the mood.”

  Braden wouldn’t give up. “But, Mom. I hit two homers. Two.”

  “I know that.”

  “Everybody’s going. The whole team. Even Wheezer.”

  Wheezer was Sam Jacoby, who suffered asthma attacks every time he inhaled dust while base running or had to slide in at the plate. He kept his inhaler in his sock, and nobody could understand how a boy could suck something into his lungs that smelled like his feet.

  Cindy Hubner, the coach’s wife, gave Abby a long look. “Are you okay? You were really quiet today.”

  Abby tried her best to answer, but no words came. Her lips felt as thick and useless to speak through as sponges. “I don’t—”

  “You have to come, Abby. It won’t be as much fun without you.”

  And so they were coerced. Two people driving over Teton Pass to Idaho, sitting in the front seat of a shiny late-model Suburban, and there might as well have been a fissure in the earth between them. The man, who’d satisfied himself at the expense of their covenant. The woman, who saw her life changing forms and boundaries, melting away like a Salvador Dali painting. She was standing on empty air. Nothing around her was what it seemed to be.

  As the road descended past outcroppings and moss gullies, Abby longed for the place she wasn’t trapped, she and Braden wrapping gifts on the floor, honoring someone she trusted.

  As the car crossed Moose Creek Bridge, Abby tried to touch the wound inside her, to examine it, but found it was too frightening to try.

  As David signaled their turn into the drive-in, she relived the click of the lock as she’d shut their bedroom against him, realizing that the place she wanted to run from was the only place she knew to be.

  They passed the ancient flatbed Army Dodge with the huge papier-mâché potato nicknamed “Old Murphy” on the back.

  They bounced along the gravel driveway to the booth, where David had to pay ten dollars for just the two of them because Braden had ridden with somebody else.

  They rattled in over the metal teeth that would shred tires if anybody tried to go in the wrong direction without paying.

  It wasn’t until they’d backed into three different spaces, looking for a spot where they could see the screen beyond the sleeping-bag races and boys tussling on the weeds, it wasn’t until they’d tried three different speakers for sound quality and the moon had ridden over the hood of the car, that she saw he’d noticed what she had done.

  “Abby?”

  She’d lifted her left arm to fasten the unwieldy metal box to the edge of the window glass. She fiddled with the volume knob, trying to get the speaker to play, and began to roll up the window.

  “You’ve taken off your ring.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Her voice, quiet and cold and broken. “I think you ought to be able to answer that question for yourself.”

  He reached across the front seat to her, but she recoiled against the door.

  “Don’t even think about touching me, David.”

  “We have to handle this like mature adults, Abby. We can at least talk about it.”

  “No,” she said. “We don’t have to talk about it right now.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, Abby, nobody knows. Nobody. Nobody has to know about it.” Then, “We were very discreet.”

  With a kind of terror, Abby felt her grief welling up, overtaking her, shoving her emotions into the fore-front—all the anger and betrayal and shame. Devastation hit her with such force it drove her voice out of her in a sob. Her shoulders sagged against the door, her knees trembling against the seat. Oh, yes, she thought. Nobody knows. Only him. And her. And me.

  “Where is it?” he asked. “Where did you put it?”

  “What?”

  “Your ring.”

  “It doesn’t matter where I’ve put it,” she said, her body shaking but her expression still wrought of stone. “I took it off at work. I gave myself permission.”

  Earlier today, through blurred
vision, the delicate twine of white gold had glimmered like a joke on her left ring finger. This cold piece of jewelry, this one statement, had been so much a part of her for so many years that for at least seventeen hours after David’s admission Abby hadn’t once thought of removing it. There at the Community Safety Network, in a shelter room that had been made to look like a home but wasn’t a home at all, Abby allowed herself a momentous thing: in a wonderful, therapeutic act of defiance, she had taken the ring off and had dropped it inside her skirt pocket, a loose and dangerous place for a precious stone.

  Now she flexed her ring finger once, twice, marveling at the naked feel of it. She hugged herself against the Suburban door.

  David’s voice was harsh again, his mouth tight and thin. He said defensively, “I knew you would go off the deep end when I told you.”

  Abby kept rubbing her bare finger. “Surely you can’t expect me to act as if everything’s still the same, David. Not anymore.”

  “Look,” he said ridiculously. “We have a lot of things to discuss. A lot of things we have to deal with. There’s a woman that gave birth to my child.”

  “You betrayed me,” she said, her voice careful and quiet. “You betrayed our marriage vows. You have a lot of things to deal with. I have things to think about.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Abby stared through the bug-splattered glass at the massive screen. “I have some serious decisions to make, David. Until I make them, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with this.”

  “You have to think about Braden.”

  “I am thinking about Braden. And you should have thought about him, too, a long time ago.”

  David glared through the yellow bug guts. “How is anybody supposed to watch a movie in a place like this?” He brandished an old napkin tucked into the door carryall, got out, and applied all his frustration to scrubbing the windshield. Each stroke squeaked against the glass.

  “Turn off the light,” somebody yelled at him. “We can’t see.”

  He got back into the car. His attempt at cleaning had been fruitless. Smeared bugs were everywhere. “That day at the hospital—”

  “David, please—”

  “I wasn’t there to find you and Braden. I didn’t know the two of you would be there.”

  “I don’t want to hear details now. I don’t want to know everything.” Abby just wanted to crawl away somewhere and die.

  “I was there for a blood test. Trying to help my daughter. She’s got leukemia, and Sus—…I… they thought I could help her. But I can’t. I didn’t match.”

  Oh. So that was it. Abby unfolded her arms, but she couldn’t stop herself from the know-it-all lift of her jaw. “You need Braden for a match, don’t you? Because they’re brother and sister.”

  Blue light from the screen flickered on David’s face, illuminating his frown. “That’s about it.”

  “I have to get out of the car,” she said, her voice soft but panicky. “I can’t breathe.”

  “Abby, stay here. Don’t be stupid.”

  In the same wavering light, Abby could see their boys, the entire Elk’s Club baseball team, aligned along the ground.

  “I can’t breathe, David. I have to get away—”

  The dome light flashed on again when she climbed out. She grabbed the blanket they kept for emergencies and slammed the door.

  He opened his side. “Abby, get in the car.”

  “Don’t follow me, David. Whatever you do, don’t come after me. I don’t want you to.”

  He climbed out and shut his door, too, to shut off the light. The SUV hood curved between them like a military bulwark. “Abby,” he said. “Don’t do this. Try to think of what we’ve had instead of what we haven’t.” He watched the screen for another moment, as if he had to search there for ideas.

  “It’s pointless talking about things like that, David. Don’t.”

  The two of them stood there, caught over the hood of their family Suburban like two shell-shocked soldiers stunned to see the whites of an enemy’s eyes. Then, rising unbidden out of her anger, came the very thing he’d told her to think about. What they’d had.

  Three months after Braden arrived, she’d been weeping while nursing him, the bliss and pain of the baby’s insistent tugging absorbing her. In those days she’d been so thirsty she carried a hospital mug of grape juice everywhere she went, filled with grapey ice chips that stained her mouth.

  She turned on the television for noise to soften the stillness and found a movie playing, the sort that always came on at two in the morning—giant ants fighting one another with their monstrous pinchers. While huge black ants took over colonies of huge red ants and terror reigned in the streets of Manhattan, Abby’s tears fell, dripping on her own hands where she held Braden, on his terrycloth sleeper, the downy fuzz of his hair, the working of his cheek.

  I don’t know if I’m doing okay, she thought. I’m supposed to be a wife to him and a mother to this baby and I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be me.

  David padded in, barefooted and barechested, his face colored by the flickering light of the television.

  “Your lips are purple.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Won’t he go to sleep? You’ve been up with him forever.”

  “Stay with me,” she said. “There’s a movie on that will make you laugh. Giant ants taking over the world.”

  “Oh, Ab, honey,” he’d said, stifling a yawn. “Don’t make me do it. I’m so tired.”

  “But I feel so alone,” she’d told him.

  “We’ll do it some other night, okay, Ab? It’s been a crazy week. I need to get some sleep.”

  Maybe that day—that day, too—David had been with the other woman.

  She said now, very quietly, “Get back in the car, David. I’ve had no reason to trust you for a very long time.”

  For long moments after he did, she wandered around in the Spud parking lot by herself, her eyes prickling with tears as she skirted fenders and stumbled over runnels in the gravel that had been dug so vehicles could park tilted upward toward the screen. Pebbles sprayed and clicked beneath her footfalls. When at last she sensed she’d found softer ground, she kicked off her shoes and felt the lacy cool of weeds between her toes. She slumped into an empty spot of grass, away from the others, and sank down deep. She wished the earth would consume her.

  Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord. No. Not us. Not this.

  Her heart felt like an empty cavern, trackless and strange. I can’t. I can’t. There wasn’t anything left inside her that was capable of prayer. Nothing to ask. Nothing to say.

  Nothing to keep her safe.

  David, liking the warmth of someone else’s mouth on his. David liking the sound of another woman whispering, the smell of her.

  Some parts of marriage were so sacrosanct, so inviolable and beyond price, no one was supposed to be able to touch them. Those parts weren’t tangible. They weren’t supposed to be stolen.

  Despite the warm wool blanket, Abby couldn’t stop shivering. The only thing she felt now was cold, deep cold, as her hair clung in tendrils to the nape of her neck.

  David, having a daughter.

  David, sacrificing their son.

  “Mom? What are you doing laying here in the grass? Why aren’t you in the car with Dad?”

  Braden. Oh.

  She shoved against the dirt, lifting herself an inch or so out of the blanket. Her teeth chattered. “What, honey? What are you doing over here?”

  “Jake wants to know if he can come over and spend the night.”

  She didn’t know. How to cope with another child in the house? How to cope with Braden in the house?

  “Honey, I don’t know. Why don’t you go ask your father?”

  “I can’t find the car in the dark, and you’re right here.”

  “Go ask your father, Braden. I don’t know.”

  So many moments in their lives she’d believed in. So many memories
she had counted as joy.

  How many of those moments, those memories, had been lies?

  “But, Jake—”

  “I don’t care what Jake does,” she said. “Jake can do whatever he wants.”

  Abby heard her son leave, but didn’t watch him go. She fell back heavily against the earth, trying to lose herself in the stars that buzzed overhead. Shifting formations of moths danced in the movie light and occasionally blundered into her face with a velvet wing. Beside her cheek, a beetle as shiny as an orange bead waddled up a stalk of grass on thread-thin legs.

  And who knew that stars had so many colors? Abby had always thought them simple and plain, identical markings of the heavens. But tonight they ebbed and flowed before her, showing their iridescence in the pastel colors of Easter eggs and nurseries—baby blue, soft yellow, powder pink, a white as pure as lamb’s wool.

  My whole life is gone.

  For only a moment, only one short inkling, in the colors and the sky and the glistening, Abby perceived the stars’ distance and her own size.

  The universe shone huge, unfathomable, overwhelming.

  And she was a speck of nothing on the ground at The Spud Drive-In, insignificant, a tiny lost thing in a nightmare, swallowed whole.

  Chapter Nine

  How quickly the numbness in Abby’s heart changed to the acknowledgment of betrayal.

  How easily she converted to mistrusting David, after the complete confidence she’d held in him for over a dozen years.

  She counseled women at the shelter all morning, keeping her expression a mask of indifference while inside her heart justified grievances began to line up like militiamen.

  While we chatted across the table in the candlelight, you wished you could be somewhere else… While we practiced deep-breathing exercises on the floor in Dr. Sugden’s office, you wanted it to end so you could go to her… While we were lying close at night, you wanted to be lying close to somebody different…

  These emotional disloyalties, and Abby hadn’t yet even considered the consequences of David breaking a marriage vow. Bits and snatches of the solemn pledge they’d shared on their wedding day fluttered in and out of her head like paper streamers.