I’m daydreaming—the usual one, about a man who’s feeling very quiet and still inside, and me feeling very quiet and still inside, and we’re coming together, direct and honest and true, and it’s a dream I could stay in for a good long while, so I scowl when a truck pulls into the driveway. In an instant, though, I see that it’s the beat-up three-shades-of-white thing I last saw Tess in and my insides whoosh up and I say “Oh!” before I can help it, and I’m looking, looking, trying to see past the glare of the sun on the windshield to see inside.
The driver’s side door opens and Clark climbs out. But Tess doesn’t swing out of the passenger side, even though I’m staring at it hard, wishing like crazy.
Finally I turn my eyes to Clark, who’s walking toward me. He’s wearing jeans and a red T-shirt, scratching his black hair before he puts on a Colorado Rockies ball cap. “Hey, Libby.” He stands above me, staring down, and jams his hands into his jeans. “And hi, baby.”
I nod at the truck. “No Tess?”
“No Tess.”
“Oh.”
“Just me.”
“Oh.”
“What’s that kid’s name again?”
“Amber. Is she okay?”
“Tess? Yeah.” I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. Instead he stares down Amber. “Cute. She was three days old last time I saw her. She wasn’t as cute then.”
“You wanna sit down?” I shift over to make room for him, but he doesn’t move and I don’t know how to ask him what he’s doing here, so I pat the blanket and say, “So—Tess is in Durango?”
“Yep.”
“And you’re here?”
“Yep. I had a delivery to make up there. She said she wanted to get out of here for a while so I gave her a ride.” He sits down, not on the blanket but on the dry grass beside it, and bends his knees and rests his arms on them. He smells a bit, like sweat and grease. “She’s at a little resort, waitressing and stuff.”
I wait, but when he doesn’t say anything else I say, “Yeah, I know. She sent a postcard.”
“Well, then. You know as much as I do.”
“And you’re back here, working and stuff?”
“Yeah, at Sammy’s.”
“What’s Sammy’s?”
“Shop in Lamar. I’m a diesel mechanic. Fix semi-trucks and stuff like that. But also I do some driving for a fellow who ships alfalfa. I’ll probably be hauling that, in fact,” he says, nodding at Baxter’s field.
That makes me pause but I don’t know what to say, so I say something else, which is, “Tess never told me she was leaving, you know. Not till the day you picked her up.”
He looks at me and nods. “I know it. I know that must have been hard. Have you called her?”
“No.”
“Are you mad at her?”
“We don’t have long distance on our phone here. Plus she’ll call here when she wants to talk with me.”
He looks at me and tilts his head. “I’d be pissed if I was you. I’d be mad at me too, maybe. But look, I just gave her a ride out of here. We met at a party, and I stopped by a time or two, and one time I told her I was driving up to the mountains and she asked for a ride. Thought I’d do her a favor. I hope it was. But I don’t need to be checking on her. She’s a big girl. Me keeping tabs on her wasn’t part of the bargain.” He touches Amber’s feathery-soft head. “So I was just driving by, out this way anyway, and I thought I’d stop in. You’ve been on my mind a little. I wondered how you were doing with this baby and all. Plus Tess told me to give you something. I’ve been meaning to drop it by for a while now. Sorry.” He walks back to the truck and comes back with a little package wrapped in newspaper. “Tess told me to check in on you. She told me a lot about you, in fact. About you and Kay.”
“Oh? Like what?”
He’s looking off toward the mountains now, but his big hand is on Amber’s head and that’s funny, that he wants to do that, or that such a big guy can suddenly look so tender. “She told me the story of how when you were kids and your mom was drunk, you and her would ride off bareback on your horse. What was your horse’s name?”
“Slug.”
“Yeah, Slug. Because he walked so slow. And that she’d sit behind you, holding onto your waist, and you’d say, ‘Don’t worry Tess. We’ll just ride off into the mountains and then we’ll be free.’”
I laugh a little. “We were just kids then, eight and five or something. Slug died on my ninth birthday.”
“That’s what Tess said. That your mom loaded up the shotgun and went out and shot her.”
“Only because she had colic. She was dying anyway.”
“Tess was crying, and your mom said she didn’t want to see any of that, and then slapped her for carrying on.”
“Well. Yeah.”
“Kay doesn’t have much room for weakness. That’s how Tess put it. I told her, ‘Tess, crying for a horse isn’t weakness. It’s feeling.’”
“Well, Kay doesn’t have much room for that either.”
Clark smiles at me. “I know the type. There’s only so many times a person can bust you up inside before you need to say, To hell with ‘em. Probably that’s one good reason Tess left.”
I know what he’s saying, and my answer, if I could say it, would be, Well, it’s not that easy, though. At least for me. If I could leave Kay, I would. If I had the money, I’d move into town. Although maybe not. Maybe that’s not entirely true. Because you get all bound up in people, and maybe you love them even if doesn’t always make sense.
“Tess told me that you’ve been her mother. A mother that was three years older.”
“Yeah?”
“But that she doesn’t need a mother anymore.” Clark’s watching me carefully, so I’m careful not to show a thing, because of course that hurts. “Sometimes a situation gets so messed up, and a person feels so guilty, and there’s too much history, and the only way to be free is to leave. Sometimes you have to break a connection to people. For your own good.”
Why? I want to ask, but I don’t. Instead I stare at the package, which I’m curious about but want to open when I’m alone. Then I look at Amber, who’s waving her hands in the air, all disjointed and crazy-like. Clark bends down and nods at her and says, “Hey, hey, hey, little lady.” She blinks her eyes at him and opens her mouth like she’s trying to say something. Clark says, “One of her eyes is squished down.”
“I know.”
“That’s cute. Looks like she’s winking. So you’re doing all right with this kid?”
“I guess.”
He waits for more, but all I can do is shrug. He says, “Anyway, you’re the responsible one. Tess ought to straighten up a bit and you ought to let loose a bit, that’s what Tess says.”
I pick up a pebble from the blanket and throw it into the grass.
“Although, she says, both of you make bad choices in men. But that’s because there’s so few choices in this town and so it’s not your fault.” While he says this, he gives me a look and his eyes hold on to mine.
I laugh a little. “That’s true, I guess.” I lean my head toward the sun and it feels like it’s sending the color red through me, through my eyelids and into my body.
“You’ve been after her, Tess says, for always befriending the bad boys. The crazy and dangerous ones.”
That embarrasses me a little and I wish Tess would keep some things to herself. “Well, I’m not saying that includes you, necessarily.”
“Naw, it doesn’t include me.” Then he winks and says, “No, no. We were never together. Anyway, according to Tess, she knows when to let people go, unlike you. She said she hoped you’d break up with your boyfriend, what’s his name?”
“Derek.” Now I wish I could take off my sweatshirt, because the sun suddenly feels too hot. Now is the moment when the soft purple of morning gives way to everything that’s hard: flies buzzing, heat, noise. Amber starts fussing and I try the pacifier but she spits it out. If only I could take off my sweatshirt, but
I don’t have anything on underneath, so I sit there feeling suffocated.
“Derek,” Clark says over Amber’s fuss. “Derek is nice enough, but just not as sharp as you. And furthermore, you don’t love him. You’re just afraid of being alone. That’s what she says.” Clark turns his head to talk to Amber. “Tess figured he’d leave Libby, here, because of you, you, you, little sweet gal. We’ll see, huh? We’ll see if he hangs in there.” He looks at me like he knows he’s said more than a stranger should, and he’s feeling me out for my reaction. I keep my eyes away from his and smile and shrug.
“Well, then. I’m off. Just wanted to stop in and say hi.” He rubs Amber on the head again and then gets up, and all the time he’s watching me with a certain look in his eye. On the prowl is what Tess would say about that look—we used to talk about that, how some people always have their radar up, always looking, always wondering, and now that Tess isn’t here I guess his wonder is directed at me. Which surprises me, although I guess neither of us is all that good looking or successful, which means we’re on the same level, and it’s a fact that prowlers prowl everywhere, but especially in their own league.
I look right back at him and I mumble, “You won’t be seeing Tess again? Because if you do, she’s supposed to call the father of this baby. And tell her I need some signatures. I’m meeting with social services and I need to get this baby legally.”
“I won’t be seeing her.”
“Well, just if you do.”
He raises his black eyebrows and shoots me a different look. “Well, I won’t. I just said that. But your sister, she’s all right. She was afraid to get out of here, I think. More afraid than she wanted to admit. But she’ll make it. She’s got her eyes on the big picture.”
On his way to his truck, he passes by Kay’s old car. Her old lasso is looped around the side-mirror, and he stops to pick it up. “Whose dally-rope is this?”
“Kay’s. I guess she was out practicing.”
He takes the rope and backs up, then starts to swing the rope in a circle, letting out a bit of slack now and then. The loop he makes gets bigger and bigger, swirling in the air above him. He makes out like he’s going to rope the air in front of him, but suddenly he turns toward me and his arm shoots out, right at me. “Jesus!” I yelp, and I duck fast and move toward Amber, so that my body is between him and her. The rope lands in front of me, at my feet.
“Scared you, didn’t I?” He laughs and flips his arm up to send the rope back toward him, and he loops it up and puts it back. “Don’t worry. Don’t be pissed. I wouldn’t have got you. I could have. But I wouldn’t do that.” He looks at me again and smiles. “I was just joking, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay, then.”
Before he climbs in his truck, he stops and stares at our house. I see it the way he does, brown paint that’s cracked, junk piled all around, Kay’s old car growing weeds and glinting sun off the broken windshield.
This isn’t where I should be. Maybe this is true for both of us. I get the feeling that him next to his beat-up truck, and me next to my beat-up house—this isn’t where we’re supposed to be. And maybe that makes us wonder, more than ever, what’s going on behind that junked-up space that separates us, the space that keeps one human from understanding another.
The package from Tess is wrapped in newspaper with a headline that reads “TESS ESCAPES!” And in smaller print below, “KID SISTER CROSSES BORDER TO NEW LIFE!” It takes me a minute to understand that it’s some touristy-thing, a fake newspaper printed with a headline she picked. Durango Times, the paper’s called. The other headlines are “Tourists Trash Sand Dunes, Jailed for 2 Years” and “Two-Headed Cow Left by Aliens.”
A journal book is what’s in the package. On the outside is a photo of a baby sitting inside a humungous flower, and the baby has dark, silky, short hair and pudgy cheeks and doesn’t look a thing like Amber, although Tess’s note says, “This reminds me of your baby girl. Write in this book so that she can read it later and find out what it was like when she was a baby. Draw some of your pictures, too. And tell her about you, so she’ll really know her mother.”
“Damn it, Tess,” I tell the photo of the baby. I hold my head in my hands and push the tears back in with my palms. I sit there for a long time before I can sigh and breathe and look up again.
There’s a silver pen tucked into the metal rings, so I take it out and write:Dear Amber,
My name is Libby and I’m your mom. I’m going to try to be honest with you and tell you that some days I am so scared. I never had thought much about my life or what I wanted to do. But now I realize that everyone needs to change for a reason, and you are my reason.
Here’s what I would write if you were one of Baxter’s cows:
Sex: Female.
Birth weight: 6 pounds, 9 ounces.
Polled: Yes. (No horns that I can see. Just a halo. Like Baxter says, you’re an angel.)
Coloring: Blotchy red at first. Now creamy white.
Sire: Unknown. (Well, the truth is, Simon. Simon Frazier. At college—not in the picture).
Mother: Tess. Libby. You have two. That makes you lucky, I think.
Tag number: A-M-B-E-R
Notes: Blond hair, like fuzzy duck. Right eye squishes down, makes you wink. Bubble on your lip from sucking. Healthy. A keeper.
Then I sketch her face. The thing about faces is to get the placement of the eyes right. They go right in the center of the oval, whereas most people are apt to think they’re up higher. Light as I can, I draw a straight line for the eyes, and one for the bottom of the nose, and one for the lips, and then an up-and-down arc to help get the angle right. Faces start with these four lines, and then the angle of cheekbone and hairline, and I watch as her face comes alive on paper and it’s pretty good, this calm, wide-eyed face looking up at me, much more like Amber than the baby on the cover, and I’m glad that at the very least I can do that—that from nothing except paper and ink, something real gets captured.
When Tess was pregnant, I’d give her presents of chocolate, flowers, a necklace that was on sale at Ginger’s Boutique. Also I did the grocery shopping more, because she was always wanting fruit and complaining that Kay never bought enough of it. I bought mangos, oranges, fresh pineapple, bananas, even though they were expensive. I made her drink milk instead of pop, even though that was more expensive too.
Sometimes she’d flash me a smile and a wink, or grab my hand and start a thumb war, which is something we’d been doing ever since we were kids. Or she’d hug me and whisper in my ear, “You’re all right, Libby, yes you are.”
She made it clear to me that her gift back was the pregnancy. “Good thing this is temporary,” she’d say, “because there’s no way I’m giving up my life forever.” She liked to remind me what she missed: drinking, smoking, partying, pot.
It was at her five-month checkup that I gave her some big shirts, because she was having trouble wearing her old clothes, and because spring was coming and she couldn’t wear big sweaters forever. That was when the nurse did an ultrasound and said, “Hmmm, hard to tell, but it looks like a boy, though that could be the umbilical cord.” I was so excited, but Tess was lying there with a faraway look in her eye. She didn’t look happy or excited or nothing, just faraway. On the drive home, she said, “Some people were never meant to have kids and here I am anyway, with a baby inside, and this was a real mistake.”
I tried to cheer her up. “I read in a book that your baby is—”
“Your baby.”
“Okay, the baby is three pounds now, as big as a grapefruit. It can suck its thumb!” I reached over and rubbed her round tummy. “Hello, baby.”
She picked my hand up from her tummy and moved it away. “I don’t want this baby. I wonder if I’ll feel different when it’s born. But here’s the thing. I don’t want to feel different. I want to make sure I don’t feel different.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not sure you’re going to want it
either. You better not be kidding.”
“I’m not kidding. I’m going to be so happy, Tess.”
“Libby? I’m afraid to know the reason why. Why you wanted to do this.”
I shrugged, because I didn’t know the answer to that question. And anyway, it was like there was a million answers, not just one, and only with them all together did it make sense, and that made it too hard to explain.
Because Tess didn’t really want to have an abortion.
Because it was unfair she’d have to do that, just for a little mistake.
Because it would make her proud.
Because it would make me special.
Because I wanted something to happen in my life.
Because I wanted someone to love me—just me.
Because I knew Tess was about done with high school, and that she was going to leave. And maybe if there was a baby here she wouldn’t take off after all.
Because maybe I don’t know what my life is about if it’s not about Tess. And maybe this was my last-ditch effort to keep her around.
EIGHT
Drunk feels good and melted, like a candle that doesn’t have to stand up any longer, which is a damn relief because for once the wax can be soft, it can let go for just a moment—what an amazing gift—because when something’s that soft it can’t hold anything. Can’t hold anything like scared-hurt-panicked, and that’s why I’m so glad to be here, melting, and there’s no Amber, and I’m free.
Derek’s driving his sister’s car, driving like a maniac down the gravel county road, and we’re leaving nowhere and going nowhere in the middle of the night, and I’m sitting in the back, just for the hell of it, giggling, because there’s this stuffed animal that his sister has on her dash, and it might be a dog but I think it’s supposed to be a bear. It looks like whoever made it couldn’t decide, didn’t care enough to decide, didn’t want to decide. Wobble, wobble, all over the place, who the fuck are we, anyway, and it looks like one of those cheap things you win at carnivals and I’ve named it Randy for some reason. And hey, Randy, doesn’t it feel good to just melt every now and then? I like you Randy. You’re cute. Plus you’re not screaming at me.
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