Holding on to Nothing

by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne

  “Are you okay?” LouEllen asked. “Looked like that hurt.”

  “Just those practice contractions. They aren’t supposed to hurt, I guess, but they do.”

  “You sure it was a fake one? Are you going into labor talking to me? I will haul you to my minivan and drive you to the hospital if so.”

  Lucy laughed, knowing LouEllen wasn’t joking.

  “I’m fine. I’ve been getting a few of these. But they aren’t real. This baby probably won’t even come for two more weeks, with my luck.”

  “How do you know?” LouEllen asked.

  “I don’t. I’m just hoping. I’m not nearly prepared. Don’t even have a car seat yet.”

  “Aw, you’ll be fine,” LouEllen said, patting her arm. “Most kids my friends had slept and traveled in a drawer half the time. They came out all right.”

  Lucy laughed—she could imagine LouEllen or her friends laying a baby into a blanket-stuffed drawer and strapping the whole thing in with a seat belt. But Lucy was fairly sure there was some rule now about not being able to leave the hospital without a properly installed car seat. She doubted a drawer was going to work anymore.

  “That’s good to know,” she said. “Of course, we don’t even have a drawer to spare in that trailer, but I’ll figure it out, I guess.”

  “This one’s nice,” LouEllen said, pointing to the most expensive one on the shelf.

  “Yep. Expensive too. I’m probably gonna get this one,” Lucy said, pointing to the taupe one she hated.

  “I’ll help you carry it up front if you want.”

  “No, that’s fine.” Lucy looked down at the floor, her cheeks red. “I’m probably going to get it tomorrow.”

  “I could buy it for you. A gift?”

  “No,” Lucy said sharply. “No. I’ll get it. Just can’t today.”

  “Okay,” LouEllen said, holding her hands up in front of her. She stared at Lucy for a minute, her eyes soft, and put her hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “You’ll be okay, Lucy. You always have been.”

  “I know,” Lucy said, straightening up. “I’m just going to get the seat tomorrow.”

  “I’ve got my phone on every night, so if anything happens, if Jeptha isn’t …” LouEllen stopped. Lucy was glad she hadn’t finished that thought, knowing what she’d heard. Jeptha’s spectacular fall off the wagon had not gone unnoticed or unremarked upon in town.

  “Thank you,” Lucy said. “I’ll see you later.”

  Forty feet away from her lane, the same pain from before hit her, starting low and rippling up like water rings on a pond after a fish nips a bug. Lucy lurched to the side, bracing herself on a glass jewelry case. As suddenly as it hit her, it was gone. If these were practice contractions, she hated to think what the real ones were like.

  “First labor is longer than you think,” she remembered the childbirth instructor saying. “Try to ignore the pain as long as you can. Otherwise you’re likely to end up going to the hospital early and having to go home. It’ll feel like you’ve been laboring forever if you do that.”

  That was about all Lucy could remember from class. She’d been so happy to see Jeptha and so proud of him for getting a job that they’d barely paid any attention, just giggled the whole time. She saw now that that had been a mistake. One of many, she thought to herself.

  “Ignore it,” Lucy said as she straightened up and walked back to her lane. “Ignore it, ignore it, ignore it.”

  As she pressed in her code to log into the cash register, she remembered the numbers 4-1-1. She couldn’t remember what the ones stood for, but the four, she knew, was for four minutes apart. Her contractions were nothing close to that. The last one had been twenty minutes before. She relaxed a little and flicked on the light ten feet above her head. Like shepherds navigating to Bethlehem, customers swarmed toward her. Over the next three hours, contractions hit every twenty minutes. If she could grit her teeth through the first forty seconds, the last twenty were an easy slide into pain-free territory. If she could still stand and work, she told herself, there was no way she was having a baby any time soon.

  BY THE TIME Lucy got in her car, though, she’d gone from trying to ignore the pain to trying to manage it. She called Jeptha three times on the eight-minute drive home and each time it had gone straight to voicemail. As she bumped her way up the driveway at five minutes to six, she was as eager as she had ever been to see her husband. Drunk or not, she didn’t care. She wanted him home. But the trailer was dark, and his car was gone.

  “Please, God, let him be asleep and not gone,” she said to herself, knowing it was irrational if his car wasn’t in the driveway.

  She opened the car door and took a step out, where she promptly had another contraction, the strongest yet. After breathing through it, she mounted the trailer’s stairs, noticing beer cans scattered around Jeptha’s lawn chair from what she guessed was Jeptha’s pre-work drinking session, and unlocked the door.

  “Jeptha?” she called out. “Jeptha?”

  When she turned on the kitchen light, she saw that the trailer was empty. She had to face the truth: her husband was gone, and his phone was dead.

  The contractions were coming faster. She pulled out her phone to time them. She wanted someone—anyone—there with her. She thought wistfully of LouEllen’s offer and wished she’d taken her up on it in the moment. LouEllen had meant it, would come in an instant, and was exactly who she wanted there. But Lucy couldn’t make the call. The East Tennessee in her wouldn’t let her ask for something this big from someone who had meant everything to Lucy and rejected her, even if LouEllen had been nice to her today.

  “Nope, this is all me,” Lucy said out loud, hoping that speaking the words would make her believe it. She stood, swaying back and forth, and turned on the TV as another contraction hit. Ignore it, she thought. Ignore it. She started to hyperventilate over the thought of having to drive herself to the hospital like this but swallowed it down. After twenty minutes of timing the contractions, she pushed herself off the couch. They were coming three minutes apart now. It was time to leave. On her way down the hall, the next contraction hit with so much force that her knees buckled, and she banged her head against the paneling. On her hands and knees, she lowed in pain, sounding like the cattle on the next farm over on cold winter mornings. She had promised herself she wouldn’t make that sound, having heard its appallingly animalistic tones on the childbirth videos. But it rose unbidden from her lungs, escaping past her clamped lips. She hung her head in defeat and tried to remember to breathe.

  In the midst of the next contraction, right on top of the last one, she heard something outside. Over her own moaning, she heard footsteps. Her stomach leapt into her throat with joy as she imagined Jeptha’s heavy thud bringing him into the trailer. She heaved herself to a standing position and waddled, legs spread wide and her back hunched over, down the hall. She wiped sweat off her forehead and blew air out of her lungs. Exhaustion was settling in. As she passed the bathroom, though, another contraction hit, and she felt a sudden heaviness down low. The pain was too bad to move. She pivoted toward the sink, gripping the vanity with such force that the glue that connected the fake marble top to the wood below popped loudly.

  “Lucy?” a voice called out, but Lucy couldn’t tell who it was over her own lowing.

  “Come in,” Lucy yelled, the contraction finally ending. She didn’t care in that moment who walked through the door. Her dead mother, Dolly Parton, the devil himself. It didn’t matter. She needed someone. Anyone.

  Lucy focused on the voice as it grew closer and closer. “I know you said not to, but I got you a present. That car seat. The pretty one.” Lucy smiled during a break in contractions, recognizing LouEllen’s voice, but then another one hit.

  “Oh, good Lord,” LouEllen said when she finally got to the bathroom door, her eyes wide. “You are having this baby.”

  “Not here I’m not,” Lucy whispered quickly before the next contraction peaked.

  LouEllen st
epped toward Lucy and stroked her hair back from her face. “Can you get in the car?”

  Lucy nodded with relief. She let go of the counter and moved her right foot off the ground a few inches. But the pain swept her up again. She grasped the counter and focused her eyes on the slight variations in the vanity. “No.”

  “No what, honey?” LouEllen said.

  “No, I cannot get in the car.”

  “Oh hell. I’m calling 911,” LouEllen said, digging her phone out. “Is this Ethel?” Lucy heard muffled talking on the other end. Ethel Slocum was manning the phones tonight. It made her feel like someone was watching out for her.

  “Hey, it’s LouEllen. I’m over at the Taylors’ place. Lucy’s having this baby right now. There’s no way we’re making it to the hospital.”

  LouEllen was silent for a moment, listening. “Well, y’all better hurry. Like they say in the movies, I sure as hell don’t know nothing about birthing no babies.”

  Lucy screamed out and gripped the counter again.

  “You hear that, Ethel? I ain’t joking. You get me those goddamn EMTs, and you get ’em here NOW,” LouEllen roared and hung up.

  LouEllen stroked Lucy’s hair. “It’s gonna be okay, Lucy. They’re coming, and they’ll know what to do.”

  Lucy barely heard her. The childbirth instructor was right: she knew when it was time to push. LouEllen, the phone, and the bathroom disappeared. Even the pain had become something different, something to tunnel into rather than retreat from. Her focus had narrowed to a tiny imperfection on the counter, a fleck on the laminate that looked like a German Shepherd at attention. Her eyes were trained on that spot as she strained, bearing down through each contraction with a groan that had gone beyond animal and into savage.

  Suddenly towels appeared beneath her, and the tiny bathroom got very crowded. Blue coats pushed their way into the tiny space. The one on her right, his head totally bald, tried to coax her to lay down. “No,” she whispered. He kept insisting. She tried to block him out as she pushed, but he would not stop saying, “Okay, here we go, move your leg down. Lie down.”

  “Dammit!” she screamed as she pushed. “I am not laying down.”

  She thought she would break in two then, as a massive weight pressed against her from the inside. The bald EMT cautioned her to slow down. Would the man say nothing useful? She yelled out again and pushed with all the strength she had. The pressure peaked, and with a sweet, exquisite pop, the pain stopped so suddenly she burst into tears. Hands reached between her knees. A squirm deep inside her flowed out into the space below, like the exuberant wriggle of a fish unhooked and eased back into the water. There, below her, was her baby, covered in blood and bawling. She collapsed into the EMT’s waiting arms then. They deposited the baby, slippery and pink, on her chest. He smelled like iron and something earthy, and Lucy laughed when he opened his mouth and screamed in her face. Lucy held her son, in awe of the tiny human on her chest. When the EMT took him away for a moment to wrap him in a towel, Lucy recognized in the devastation of her ache for him incontrovertible proof that real love, both exhilarating and sobering, can happen in an instant.

  17

  “ANOTHER ONE,” JEPTHA HOLLERED at the cute blonde bartender at the South Side Bar. It was the kind of dingy place on the wrong side of the tracks where people with class came only in groups and only for one drink so they could tell their friends about it after. For Jeptha, who saw in its dinginess a home, the South Side was exactly the place he knew he deserved, particularly tonight. He’d long since lost track of his drinks.

  Earlier, Jeptha had shown up at work two beers in, which was why they finally fired him. Cody wouldn’t even make eye contact, just shook his head sorrowful-like, when Jeptha trudged out the door. Overwhelmed by shame, he’d driven to the Tuesday-empty parking lot of a nearby church, devoured the four beers remaining in his car, and driven around aimlessly. Finally, he called Lucy. He kept wishing he didn’t have to tell his wife, but he couldn’t see his way clear to that. She’d find out soon enough.

  The disappointment in Lucy’s voice—she was due any day now (although Jeptha was too drunk to say which day)—was low and shocking. There’d been a shining moment in their marriage, a month back, when Jeptha was sober and working and they were happy. Then Crystal Gayle died, and he’d been drunk every day since. Even drunk, Crystal Gayle’s eyes still haunted him. Lucy’s voice joined in, playing over and over in his head. He couldn’t stand either of them. The only solution was to get drunker.

  “You better stop yelling at me, or I’m gonna stop bringing you drinks,” the bartender said. Up close, she was older than he’d thought, but being smiled at by someone felt so good Jeptha didn’t care. “You on your own?”

  “Looks that way. Texted a friend earlier, but I ain’t heard nothing. See?” Jeptha said, holding out his phone. “At SothSde dirkin,” Jeptha had texted Cody earlier. But there was no reply. Jeptha figured Cody was pissed and likely to stay that way.

  “Don’t see anything. ’Cept it’s six o’ clock. You got off early today?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Get fired?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “You aren’t the first one coming in here at two o’ clock in the afternoon drinking hard, full of piss and vinegar, wanting to get back at somebody.”

  “No one to get back at but myself,” he said.

  “Usually isn’t …”

  A man at the other end of the bar called out to her.

  “I’ll come check on you later,” she said.

  TWO HOURS AND three drinks later, she settled back in across from him. “Your friend coming?”

  “My phone died, but I don’t guess so. He’s the one got me that job. Probably pretty pissed at me.”

  “You wanna charge it?” she asked.

  “Doubt it matters,” Jeptha said. “But sure.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said to the other bartender and nodded her head for Jeptha to follow.

  She went through a metal door into a back storage room. Napkins, salt, ketchup, and cleaning supplies nearly spilled off a set of shelves. A small desk sat in one corner, covered with papers, invoices, and empty Diet Coke bottles. “Charger’s here,” she said, pointing at the cord snaking out of the wall. Jeptha slipped past her. He fumbled with the charger, too drunk to make the connection even after three tries. “Here,” she said, taking the phone from his hands and plugging it in.

  “Thank you,” he said, taking a step toward the door. But she blocked his way. She put her hand on his chest and kissed him. Jeptha pulled back.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m bored. You’re cute. And had a shitty day. Figured I’d help out a little.” She kissed him again, and Jeptha gave in a little. He tasted cigarettes and cinnamon gum on her lips, that old combo that had welcomed him home on a dozen other girls before he’d met Lucy, who’d always tasted like the woods smelled, earthy and sweet.

  Lucy. He pushed the bartender away, harder than he meant to. “I’m married. I can’t.”

  “I saw your ring. Doesn’t bother most guys.”

  “Bothers me,” he said, grabbing his still-dead phone. “Excuse me.”

  TEN MINUTES LATER, sitting at Waffle House, Jeptha buried his face in his hands. He was his dad all over again. Drunk, unable to keep a job, cheating on his wife.

  “Double order, scattered, smothered, covered,” the waitress said from above him, dropping a plate in between his arms. “You want more coffee?”

  He nodded, not trusting himself to speak anymore. Used to be, he’d spend all day drunk, not working, hitting on women, and call it a damn fine day. Not anymore. How could he fix this? He had no job, no friend, a baby coming, and a wife who should hate him. His head hurt from messing it all up.

  Jeptha ate a few bites of his hash browns and pushed them aside, watching the cheese congeal. He knew he should get up and surrender his booth to the eager high-school kids waiting, but he couldn�
��t do it. Instead, he lit a cigarette and asked for more coffee.

  As he sipped it, Jeptha saw a woman as hugely pregnant as Lucy lumber out of a truck and take the arm her husband offered. She waddled to the entrance where he held the door. Their faces were subtly lit with what Jeptha imagined was excitement over the child she carried. Their laughter, the way they seemed to actually enjoy being together, was like looking into a mirror that had reversed its purpose and reflected all that he and Lucy were not. This couple was the opposite image of what they had become since Crystal Gayle died. The husband was not sitting drunk in a Waffle House by himself while his wife drove home from her late-night shift at Walmart. The wife was not sitting on the couch every night watching The Voice or The Bachelorette with a face that suggested she would rather be anywhere and in any other condition than the one in which she found herself.

  Jeptha watched them until the comparison became too unfavorable to bear. His marriage was in no better shape than Crystal Gayle had been when he put her down. He rubbed at his headache, caused partly by the drinks but more by his inability to decide whether a man was obligated to shoot his own marriage when it got to the same stage as a dog that needed killing. When he was drunk, he could believe that the problems in their marriage were due to exhaustion and bills and would end once the baby came. On the wrong side of drunk, like he was now, he could no longer buy his own lies. He was the problem.

  Finally, he scooted out of the booth and paid, nodding at the couple as he passed. He wanted that, he knew with a deep thud in his belly; he wanted what they had. Jeptha was smart enough to wonder if it was too late for things with him and Lucy to change. But he was dumb enough to think he might as well try. And the only way to do that was to get stone cold sober again and stay that way.