Potter Springs

by Britta Coleman

  James Montclair had the nerve to ask about her health on their last Sunday. Not caring who saw, she rubbed her midsection and grinned a Cheshire smile. “Just fine, Jimmy. Just fine.”

  Amanda got up from the nappy apartment carpet and stepped carefully over her list of thank-you notes from the wedding. Piled all around her lay crystal bowls and heavy linens, priceless china and the few oddball gifts. A nacho warmer. A set of hand-knitted pot holders. A hideous clock with pigs cavorting on it. From Mark’s side, she had no doubt.

  She changed the radio to something bouncier, to get in the mood for organization. Her decaf iced tea melted, so she dumped out the huge plastic glass and made a new one with fresh mint from her window box.

  Settling herself back in the one circle she’d managed not to clutter, she picked up the picture again, postponing the tedious art of writing thank-you notes. Choosing instead to dream. Little One. Half-pint. Two Bits.

  Not knowing the sex of the baby was killing her, but she and Mark would find out in a few more weeks. She’d go back to Dr. Hoffman’s office, lie down on that vinyl green “lounger,” and stick her feet in the freezing stirrups. She’d do it cheerfully, because she’d get to hear the baby. To see the baby.

  At the first appointment, she’d felt so nervous she’d been afraid she might pass gas right there on the table. The thought gave her the giggles. Mark’s exasperated look couldn’t squelch her laughter, but the chill from the clear gel sobered her.

  Lisa, the technician, a skinny girl with long permed hair and puffy bangs, seemed perfectly at ease poking around her most private areas.

  Amanda kept her eyes glued to the screen, a small monitor to the side. She couldn’t really make out the lima bean shape but uh-huh’d knowingly as Lisa listed off her baby’s critical parts.

  The heartbeat, big rhythmic booms, had been so strong it startled her, like heavy orange basketballs thumping in practice in a high-school gym. That sound, the hugeness of it, made it all real.

  Amanda met Mark’s eyes as hers filled at the sound-the external proof of the internal. Her baby’s music.

  Mark slid his gaze away and focused on the screen. Wordless. He hadn’t made the leap to expectant fatherhood yet, not quite in the way she’d hoped. But he would. He just needed more time. After all, they’d gone through so many changes already.

  When the communications firm had cutbacks, she’d agreed to a part-time position to preserve her job. Now, with Mark out of work, the financial strain became evident in the hours he spent at the kitchen table, brooding over the bills and job listings in the paper. With the pregnancy and lack of money, their dancing dates had waned away. Even finding time for movie nights at home proved difficult, with Mark on the computer for hours. Polishing his résumé. Searching for opportunities.

  But she knew, when Mark found another job, and especially when the baby came, things would get better. Easier.

  Like they were before.

  Amanda replaced the sonogram photos in her memento box, an old cardboard boot box she hoped to replace with something prettier. Pregnancy tests, doctor receipts and prenatal brochures spilled out. Her baby stack grew as fast as her stomach.

  Digging through the pile, her hands found an oversize album easily. She’d bought the Beatrix Potter baby book at Hallmark. Fell in love with it at first sight. With no regrets, she handed over her Visa.

  When she showed the treasure to Mark, proud of her purchase, he said it was too expensive. He obviously didn’t share her unbridled enthusiasm for whimsical flowers and little mice. Not to mention flagrant disregard for their strict financial plan.

  “I’ve got no job, Mandy,” he’d reminded her. “We’re on a shoestring. This severance isn’t going to last forever.”

  So, she hadn’t started using the album in case she had to return it. But the baby book had a spot ready for the sonogram photo, outlined with ivy petals and impish critters. She itched to go ahead and paste the picture in, but she was trying hard to be a good wife.

  She’d wait until he forgot about the purchase, and do it later.

  After all, how could she possibly return her baby’s first keepsake? She imagined looking through the album with her child, reminiscing about first teeth and birthday parties.

  Besides, she didn’t have time to worry about it, not that she was much of a worrier-she had a hundred thank-yous to write.

  The phone rang, she dug behind a pile to find the cordless.

  “It’s me,” Mark said.

  “How’s it going?” She loved when he called her during the day to check in. She never tired of hearing his voice. “Have you interviewed yet?”

  “No. There’s about ten guys in the waiting area. They all look pretty much like me. Younger, though. More professional.”

  “No such thing. You’ll be great. Call me when it’s over. Better yet,” she put a sexy spin in her tone, “come right home.”

  “That, Mrs. Reynolds, is a promise.” They still got tickled calling each other Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds.

  “Good luck.” Smiling, Amanda leaned to hang the phone up. A sharp pain hit her side, almost like a cramp from running.

  Massaging the spot, she stood upright.

  “Little one, we’ve overdone it, I think.” Thinking to lie down, she headed for the garage-sale couch in the living room. The cheap fabric covering she’d made already pulled away from the burnt orange velvet underneath. I should really sew that up. It won’t take but a minute, and I can sit down when I do it.

  Changing direction, she headed for the laundry closet to get her sewing kit. But she didn’t make it down the hall. The pain returned, slicing through her entire abdomen like a scythe.

  A sound, shrill-between a scream and a whisper-escaped her as she crumpled to her knees.

  Oh no. Oh no-no-no. She held her stomach with her hands and prayed. Oh, God, please, no. The cramps hit harder, twisting her insides around. The pain skewered her, held her helpless. Oh, little one, little one. You’re okay. Please be okay. I need you to be all right. We’re all right.

  Trying not to hyperventilate through the spasms, she crawled to the phone. She squeezed her thighs tight together and continued encouraging her unborn baby to hang on. She paused between shuffles to cry. To breathe.

  The phone book weighed a thousand pounds as she tugged it off the counter, still on her knees. Where was the interview? Which office? Mark no longer had a cell phone. The church paid for their old account and apologetically confiscated Mark’s phone upon his “resignation.”

  They hadn’t had the money yet to get another one.

  She turned pages, her leg muscles shaking from the strain.

  She had to control her breathing so she could talk. She misdialed once, then twice. Trying to calm herself, so they would understand her.

  Please let them understand me.

  A pinched voice piped through the phone. “Good morning, Davis Enterprise. How can I help you?”

  “Mark Reynolds,” Amanda whispered. Then, with more strength, “On an interview this morning. The ad department.” She couldn’t help the sob that escaped. “I need Mark. Please get Mark.”

  “One moment, please. I’ll put you through.”

  The line clicked to hold, and Amanda listened to the Muzak. An instrumental of “Walking on Sunshine,” she guessed, while she waited for Mark, and her baby died inside her.

  THE PAPER-COVERED pillow crinkled as Amanda turned her heavy head toward Mark. He entered the hospital room well, with the appropriate air of someone bringing both empathy and hope to a sad situation.

  He does this so well. He would have made a good pastor.

  As he stepped close to the bed, she saw he wasn’t as pulled together as she first thought. His green eyes now bloodshot, red around the edges, and glassy. He had that line on his forehead, that crease telling her he’d been worried or angry. Maybe both.

  But he smiled at her, gentle and sad.

  She hadn’t seen that smile before.

  “Co
me here.” Her voice sounded thick to her own ears, like the walls of her throat caved in on themselves. Like her uterus had caved in on her baby.

  Women had babies every day of the week. Carried them, strong bellies round and triumphant. Yet she had failed. Failed herself. Failed Mark. And failed her child.

  She reached for Mark and pulled his head, his precious head to her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I tried to hang on…. The baby—”

  “Mandy, no. Shhh. It’ll be all right.”

  She buried her face in his hair, not caring if her tears or nose or anything else ran over him in the process. He was hers, and she could cry on him if she wanted to.

  His smell comforted her, spoke to something deep inside. He smelled like safety and hope and a future. She drew it in as deep as she could. She cried harder, letting herself dissolve into his scent. He bent over her, curving around and above her like a shield.

  Holding her, but he did not cry.

  He accepted her tears and stayed strong for her, and a tiny shadow in her heart hated him for it.

  When her sobs waned into deep breaths, gasping for a calmer rhythm, he pulled away. He smoothed her hair with long fingers. They tangled and it hurt.

  Making more crinkly sounds, he leaned to the side of the bed and pulled a tissue from the rollaway cart. He handed it to her and she blew her nose loudly, inelegantly.

  “Amanda.” His voice had the thick sound too.

  She looked into his eyes, still bright with unshed tears, and saw it written there. She knew what he was going to say.

  It was tangible, like the awful pillow and the grainy tissue and the hollow pain in her womb where the baby used to be.

  Don’t say it. Please don’t say it. Oh, God, don’t let him say it.

  He squeezed her hand, reassuring. “I know this is a terrible thing. I know how you must be feeling. I’m hurting too.”

  Her doubt of his intention stirred. She didn’t see the hurt in him. She didn’t see much feeling at all. Then anger, displaced rage at his wholeness, while she lay in a million pieces, reared hot and lashed inside, a loosened tether whipped free.

  There’s no way on God’s green earth you know what I’m feeling. Have you ever had your insides scraped out, Mark? Have they taken out your very heart and called it a “simple medical procedure”?

  She lay there waiting, knowing what would come. She only hoped she could stand up against it, and not melt like wax before the fire.

  Mark’s fingers wiggled a little, betraying him, but his voice came out strong, sure. “Mandy, I just can’t help thinking that maybe this was for the best.”

  His face had nothing “best” about it. He looked like ashes stuck together, his green eyes dull against the mottled gray.

  “That God knows best, and it’s his will for us.” He finished with another squeeze of her hand, a stranger to her in this intimate moment.

  So it fell, like a tombstone on her soul, pushing, knocking away her breath and hope in one sweeping motion.

  CHAPTER 8

  wise men

  Mark stepped into the hospital hallway. He wished for a quiet place to hide, to pray, for the fluorescent light above his head to stop buzzing.

  Her face. My God, her face. He leaned against the wall, the tile behind him cool against his palms, and closed his eyes. Trying to forget the sights of the day. Amanda in the fetal position balled on the apartment floor. Begging him to help her and save the baby.

  He’d never felt so inadequate. So helpless. Never had he felt so far from God. Crazy thoughts raced through his mind, hymns and verses jumbled together. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. How precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. The red against the white of her thigh. Sin and sacrifice, paid for in blood.

  Her face, in the hospital, paler than the pillow. The checks from her gown dancing in front of his face. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. Copper hair twisted around her.

  I am looped in the loops of her hair.

  He’d asked, “How are you feeling?” A stupid question.

  Two single tears began to flow out her eyes, taking on speed and strength to course down her cheeks. She didn’t brush them away and they pooled, sacred springs of sorrow wetting the sides of her temples.

  She held his hand like a lifeboat line, thin and slipping, holding so tight her knuckles whitened.

  Then he heard the words come out of his mouth. God’s will. Best. They tasted like bitter death on his tongue, and he watched them fall on her. Making the darkness in her eyes grow, as if way in the back a light had been extinguished.

  He’d meant to soothe her. To put a balm on the hurt. Instead, he fouled the room with his presumption, poisonous and painful.

  She rolled to her side, slowly, heavily, a ship tipped over in deep waters, and she didn’t look at him again.

  The tap of his dress shoes had sounded his defeat as he left the room to seek sanctuary in the too bright hall.

  He imagined he appeared to be a grieving father, leaning outside her room, industrial bulbs highlighting him like a halo. Only he knew, he was a man afraid of the darkness in himself, of that tiny part glad this happened. Wicked, evil relief that the path to his own desires, his own will, had suddenly become clearer.

  A nurse passed by with a squeaky cart and Mark wanted to hush her. To tell her people were sleeping, and could she keep that racket down? He glared after her, following the squishy steps until his gaze stopped abruptly on an incongruous sight.

  James Montclair, his tie askew, drinking coffee in the waiting room. He must have sensed Mark’s stare as he looked up from the magazine in front of him and put the drink down.

  Standing frozen, Mark watched as his best friend, his mentor, his enemy, stood to meet him. The stifling atmosphere of the hospital unable to contain the glory of Pleasant Valley Baptist Church’s senior pastor.

  Mark thought at that moment he might truly hate James Montclair for coming here, now.

  “Hey, buddy,” James called out, striding forward. A nurse’s aide watched with appreciation as he passed her desk.

  “Hey.” Mark felt like he’d been run under the tires of an eighteen-wheeler for about four months now, and couldn’t help but feel James had done the driving.

  “How is she?” An ID tag dangled from James’s neck. The caption, printed under his photo, stated LIVING IN GOD’S GRACE.

  “Not good,” Mark said. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Hospital rounds. You know, the usual. Saw your name on the board, thought I’d wait. They wouldn’t tell me anything. What’s going on?”

  Mark didn’t even try to pretend. “She lost it.”

  “I’m sorry.” James lifted an awkward hand, as if to pull Mark for a hug, but patted his shoulder instead.

  “It’s okay.” Mark shrugged away. “God’s will and all that.” Punishing himself with the words. He looked at James. “Frankly, I’ve got no idea what God wants. From me or anybody else.”

  To his credit, James didn’t appear shocked. “I know how you feel.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, a study in rumpled elegance.

  Mark raised a brow at him.

  “Sarah lost one, three years ago.”

  “I didn’t know.” You never said.

  “Yeah, it was pretty rough. On everyone.”

  They sat in silence a few minutes, contemplating the name board on the wall. So many people, in little rooms. Bright pink ribbons with bears dangled on some doors. Mylar balloons proclaiming IT’S A BOY! on others. And a few plain, like Amanda’s, where no tiny cries echoed inside. Just pain-a silent flood, building, threatening to spill out onto the antiseptic hall and over the joy of the surrounding patients.

  “Hey, I’ve got something for you.” James withdrew his wallet. He produced a folded piece of paper, upon which his neat handwriting spelled out a name and number.

  “‘Ervin Plumley’?” Mark read it aloud.

  “Old friend of mine. Played ball for him in college. He’s running a church in the
Panhandle. Small, community-type. Needs an associate, and I told him about you. You might give him a call.” James gestured toward Mandy’s door. “When you’re ready.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready,” Mark admitted. “I’m thinking about getting out of the ministry altogether.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” James said.

  Mark fiddled with the note in his hands. He looked at James. “Does he know?” He indicated the paper. “Did you tell him about the baby?”

  “That’s not my place. Just think about it.”

  Mark put the number in his suit pocket.

  “Listen,” James said. “Can your former pastor give you one last bit of advice?”

  Mark nodded.

  “About God’s will. It’s as much a mystery to me as anybody else. But I can tell you this …” James looked Mark full in the eye. “God knows what it is to have a child die.” He paused, giving weight to his words. “And I don’t believe he’d wish that on anyone.”

  James Montclair did pull Mark into a hug then. The preacher gone and the mentor’s arms around Mark, his friend. “Take care, buddy. Take care.”

  IN THE THOMPSON garage, Ben Thompson, immense gut hanging over faded Levi’s with the loops popped off, stirred the boiling pot like a tobacco-chewing wizard. Flames from the outdoor cooker, a wrought-iron instrument attached to a propane tank, cast a rosy glow to his complexion. “Come here, Mark. Need your help. It’s time for the malt.”

  Mark rose from his position on the dusty Coleman cooler. Amanda slept inside, Dragonlady hovering over her, with the men relegated to the outdoors. Or the garage anyway.

  Obedient, Mark got the big plastic spoon, and stood at attention next to Ben.

  “Now stir fast, try not to let any stick to the bottom. It’ll burn if it gets stuck. Don’t want a charcoal taste.” Ben poured the thick caramel-colored liquid into the unfurling steam. “Smooth and steady, there you go.”

  Malt dissipated in the water, making a rich brown liquid. “Smell that?” Ben sniffed theatrically, the aroma like hot, sweet cereal. “Amber ale. Gonna be a good one. Ready in time for the season opener. Nothing better than a cool one and a kickoff.”