Song of the Brokenhearted

by Sheila Walsh

  Ava fed the baby a bottle while rocking her. Emma’s eyes closed and opened as they went to and fro.

  “Call if you think of anything. I put your phone on vibrate so it doesn’t wake her,” Kayanne whispered as she tiptoed toward the front door.

  When the baby—Emma, she reminded herself—had fallen completely asleep, Ava laid her carefully on the sofa and propped some pillows around her so she couldn’t roll off. Then she dug out her old address book from the file cabinet in the den. She flipped through the names of her old family members, wondering if they still had the same numbers.

  She tried her cousin Jessie—Bethany’s mother—but the number now belonged to someone else. Her grandmother’s house where her family surely still lived had its number disconnected.

  Ava called every number in the worn-out address book. It was as if the entire family had disappeared. Every number was disconnected or reassigned, except for her brother Clancy’s, but his line just rang and rang.

  Then she remembered that Bethany had called her. She found the number and called it.

  “This is Bethany’s phone, but I’m doing something other than being on my phone. Leave a message and I’ll see what I can do. Ciao.”

  “Bethany. It’s your Aunt Ava. We need to talk right away. Please call me back.”

  She slumped against the sofa with the baby asleep close against the cushions. It was getting dark out and she realized she was starving—the only thing she’d eaten all day was a few bites of Kayanne’s coconut cream pie. She went to the kitchen and poured a bowl of cereal and brought it back to the sofa, watching Emma sleep while she ate.

  Ava could help other people in crisis. But her own extended family, Ava couldn’t even remain in contact with them. She wondered if that was sort of like pointing out the splinter in someone else’s eye when she had a log in her own. The analogy didn’t quite work since she wasn’t being judgmental, but instead was trying to help people. And Ava couldn’t help her own family.

  She stared at the baby.

  You can help this one.

  Ava shook her head. She wondered who to call, what person would be able to help during their crisis. Mostly Ava wished she could keep it all a secret—their financial problems and now a baby dumped on her doorstep by another loser member of her family.

  Ava’s phone buzzed and she popped open the text message to a picture of a sheer orange wall of rock with a vivid blue sky above. The message read: We rappelled down this!

  Jason had copied it to Sienna, who wrote: I’m jealous, little bro!

  Ava tapped one letter at a time. Fun, be careful!

  She wondered what they’d think if they could see her now and considered taking a picture to shock them. Ava never shocked her family, she realized with a frown.

  Baby Emma stirred within twenty minutes of putting her down. Ava scooped her up and rocked her again, feeling her small body go limp against her chest.

  Her cell phone buzzed again—her husband this time.

  “Hey there. I saw a pretty exciting picture from Jason,” she whispered, hoping Dane could hear her without her waking the baby.

  “We had the best day!” Dane said as he launched into describing their day as they canoed and climbed through a canyon to some Native American ruins. She took in the excitement in her husband’s tone more than the stories he was telling. Dane talked about the clearness of the night sky and how they’d talked about God and eternity. He sounded happier than she’d heard in years. It was a youthful, carefree excitement that twisted up her emotions. She wanted to be happy for him, happy for their son—this was the closeness she’d hoped to see rekindled. But she was envious of it as she felt the worries and fears pressing in on her from all sides.

  Ava wondered when or how to bring her own news into this conversation. When Dane asked how she was doing, she dumped it on him without much ceremony or warning.

  “A what?” Dane’s voice rose with surprise. “Wait, what? Did you say you found a baby on our front doorstep?”

  Ava gave the short version of her baby discovery.

  “Should we call Child Services? I need to be there. I’ll find a way to get back. Um, I think we’re going into a town tomorrow, but I have my GPS and could get out of here tonight. I’ll wake Jason.”

  Ava bit the edge of her lip as she thought of Dane with his GPS launching into the desert to find his way home to rescue her. She couldn’t help feel a little better with that.

  “No, wait. It’s okay. I’m fine. The baby is fine, for now. I’m going to try finding Bethany. Kayanne is out buying supplies as we speak. But if I can’t reach them, I was thinking I’d drive out there tomorrow.”

  Ava hadn’t actually thought of that until she was speaking it.

  “You might go out there? Alone?”

  “Maybe.” She could feel the panic bubbling up in her.

  “I don’t know if that’s the best idea. But, honey, my battery is running down and is only on a solar charger. I’ll call in the morning.”

  “Okay. She’s sure cute, though.”

  “Who? Oh, the baby? A girl, huh?”

  “Yes.” Ava wanted to touch the soft pink on her eyelids and the tiny pucker of her lips as she sucked air in her sleep.

  “I look forward to meeting her. But . . .” Ava waited for the rest of his words.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what to think. What are you thinking?”

  “I guess it’s more what I’m not thinking.”

  “Not thinking?”

  “I mean, it would be crazy for us to take on a baby. We didn’t want any more children.” You didn’t want more children, Ava thought, but she had to agree, it was crazy to think of them raising a baby now. “But especially when we’re losing everything. And Jason will be gone in a few years . . . never mind. We’ll talk about it when I get home.”

  “Okay . . . and of course we aren’t going to keep her. Hey, I was hoping to talk to Jason real fast too, tell him good night—”

  “He’s asleep already. I’ll tell him to be careful and that you love him,” Dane said with a chuckle, then his voice grew serious.

  “Listen, Aves . . .”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We’re going to make it through this. We have one another, but more than that, we have God taking care of us. He loves us more than we can even know. You can count on that.”

  Ava closed her eyes as she rocked. These were the words she was supposed to be telling him. These were the words she’d told others to believe and that she should believe herself. She did believe it in her heart, but what about outside her heart in the real day-to-day?

  Kayanne returned with enough bags and boxes that Ava thought she could open a small baby store. She knew Kayanne expected Ava to repay her, and normally that would be fine. Since her divorce, Kayanne struggled paycheck to paycheck, especially with her husband’s refusal to pay alimony and claims that he had no income while living at their island bungalow.

  But Kayanne didn’t know they’d had their accounts frozen. Why hadn’t she told her? Why didn’t she think of these things until a predicament like this?

  “Can I have the receipt?” Ava asked, thinking of Dane’s claim that she veiled her heart from her family and friends.

  “Sure, but I’ll contribute to the cause. I know I sort of went crazy. It just seemed better to get everything we might need in case this turns into a longer stay than just overnight.”

  Ava’s heart dropped at the final cost. Baby swing, diapers, wipes, bouncer, bottles, formula, toys, outfits, playpen, blankets, onesies, front pack . . .

  “It looks like we had a baby shower,” Ava said, feeling a sense of claustrophobia at the brightly colored packages littering the kitchen, dining, and living room.

  “You should have seen people staring at me in the checkout line.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “We still don’t have a high chair, and I bought this book about making ho
memade baby food. You have that great blender after all. I’ll need to get some organic veggies first; we don’t want all the stuff with pesticides.”

  Ava’s mind whirled at it all.

  “Whatever you don’t use, we’ll take back. But it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  “Good idea,” Ava said, knowing this would’ve been her exact philosophy just a few weeks earlier.

  “Watch the baby, and I’ll be right back,” Ava said, going upstairs to the small safe. Dane had given her a wad of money when he’d left. She counted out the money and needed most of it to pay Kayanne back. She had three hundred dollars remaining of her cash, and Dane had yet to tell her how long that needed to last.

  Ava gave Kayanne the cash in an envelope, brushing away her attempts to help pay for the objects. “The baby was left at my doorstep, this is my dysfunctional family, and now I have to pay for it. Literally.”

  They laughed and cut tags from the blankets while Emma entertained herself in her car seat, and then Ava put all the baby clothes into the washing machine, even those neatly folded in the baby bag that smelled slightly of cigarette smoke.

  Kayanne’s phone had been beeping continuously as they organized.

  “Who is he?” Ava asked, picking up Emma.

  “Not him or him him. Why is it that the ones I like don’t like me that much? And the ones I don’t like, like me a lot.” Kayanne picked up her phone and smiled. “Oh, there’s a text from one I sort of like. He got home early from a business trip and wonders if I want to meet for coffee. Spontaneous, I like it.”

  “So, are you going?” Ava said with a growing sense of panic. She didn’t want to be left alone with this baby all night.

  “Well, it’s Friday night, after all. Do you think you could manage for a while? I don’t have to go. Or I can come back and have a sleepover.”

  “Go on your date. I can handle a baby for one night, after all. I raised two of them already.”

  “You do have enough baby gadgets for a daycare center.” Kayanne’s phone beeped again. “Oh, he just wrote again. He wants to get coffee and watch the meteor shower at one in the morning.”

  “Sounds . . . cold,” Ava said.

  Kayanne gathered her bag and jacket.

  “Be careful. Have you actually met this one in person?”

  “Yes, this is Dirk, he’s not an online match. He’s an engineer or an architect or maybe he’s the biologist. I’m getting these guys confused. We met on that singles hike I went on last August, but he was sort of still seeing someone. He’s pretty cute too.”

  “Still. Be careful, and you know what that means.”

  Kayanne tossed her head back in a laugh. “Yes, I know. Be careful he’s not a serial killer, be careful not to believe everything he says, and be careful not to let passion get the best of me. You don’t have to worry about that last one.”

  With Kayanne’s departure, the house grew hollow and large around them again. Ava stared at Emma and Emma stared at her. A moment later, the baby let out a howl.

  Ava woke on the couch with the softest of morning light coming through the eastern windows. She bent her neck to one side, stretching out a kink ever so carefully. The baby was nestled in the crook of her arm.

  A half-drunk bottle sat on the coffee table beside her, and Ava realized it had been five hours since Emma had last eaten. She’d written the time on a Post-it Note she stuck to the table. Five hours was pretty good, she mused, though she knew she’d only slept in short intervals during that time. Instead, she watched infomercials and reruns of Bonanza. If they weren’t broke and without credit cards, Ava would’ve ordered a towel that could soak up a bucket of water, a real estate get-rich-quick program, and an exercise gadget that toned your abs while you sat watching television.

  Carefully she rose, trying not to disturb Emma. She slid the baby toward the back of the couch and rearranged the pillows around her. Emma stirred, stretching her arms and legs taut, and then relaxed back into sleep.

  Turning from the couch, Ava was stunned by the mess. Sterilized bottles, wrappers from packages, two piles of laundry, a baby swing partially put together with the box and plastic strewn across the floor. The house looked worse than after Jason and his friends came through like a pack of locusts attacking everything in sight.

  Emma sighed that perfect baby sigh and looked like a tiny angel stretched out on her couch.

  “We did it,” she whispered with the words barely sounding. The heater hummed through the vents of the house.

  They’d survived their first night together.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ONCE THE COFFEE WAS BREWING, AVA RETURNED TO MAKING phone calls. There was no way she could keep the baby for another night. Surely there were laws against this kind of abandonment; Ava might be breaking them by keeping the baby instead of calling Child Services or the police immediately.

  After leaving another message on Bethany’s voice mail and sending her a text, Ava opened her laptop—she wanted to search the Internet and Facebook for family members she’d nearly forgotten.

  Ava had never created a Facebook page, though people were constantly trying to get her to do so. Being publicly available allowed her to be a target for old family members, classmates, or her father’s old congregation who might want to reconnect with her. Her ministry had a Facebook page, but the church web guy and Kayanne kept it current. There were some techie things she just didn’t do.

  Her web browser wouldn’t open, then she remembered why.

  She checked to be sure her phone still worked, then wrote a text to Dane. The Internet is down. What should I do?

  Ava stopped before she hit the Send button. She could live without the Internet for a few days, though she was surprised at how alone she felt without it. But she could do web searches on her phone.

  She found a phone number Ava believed was that of Bethany’s father. Ava remembered her cousin Jessie’s wedding to Lars. It was the last family event she attended. She and Dane had been married less than a year. Jessie was pregnant with Bethany’s older sister, Deb, yet she was nearly too drunk to stand through the wedding. She laughed her vows instead of saying them.

  A man answered the call. Ava asked if he were Lars Bacon who’d been married to Jessie Grant.

  “I’m trying to reach your daughter Bethany,” Ava said, not wanting to reveal too much.

  “You’re Jess’s cousin? I don’t remember you,” Lars said.

  “I haven’t lived down there since I was seventeen. We’re in Dallas.”

  “Dallas? Wait, you’re the rich, snobby cousin right? The one who took off and never looked back. Jess hated you, oh man, did she. Well, they all did.” He laughed.

  “Yeah, I know. But I’ve been communicating with Bethany, and I’m trying to reach her. Do you know where I can find her?”

  “Can’t help you there. Once Jessie and I split, my girls wouldn’t have nothing to do with me. I tried, but after a while, I just gave up. If they don’t want to see their father, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  Ava swallowed back the words she wanted to say to Lars. She knew he used to beat Jessie and maybe even his girls. Yet he was going to play it like he was the victim.

  “I heard something about her having a kid. Girls these days watch those reality TV shows and think it's all great and exciting having a baby until they have to change diapers and make bottles in the night. I was watching this one new program about where they have the most unwed mothers, and it’s in a state that doles out the cash to these girls and their deadbeat boyfriends.”

  “Do you have Jessie’s number? I tried Grannie’s old house, but the line was disconnected.”

  “Yeah, they’re all on cell phones now. Last I heard Jess was moving in with her mom—that’s your aunt, right? None of them has talked to me ever since I put Jess’s butt in jail, that’s what I did. You know her temper, well, this time she had to receive some consequences. Spent the weekend in jail, she did, before posting bond. It didn�
�t do much to clean her up, but I hope it might have helped anyway.”

  “Jessie went to jail?”

  “Wasn’t the first time, doubt it’ll be the last.”

  Ava walked to the couch and knelt beside Emma sleeping on her back with her arms stretched over her head. This man was Emma’s grandfather.

  “Lars, it’s really important that I reach Bethany.”

  “Sorry, but I suspect she’s been living with all the rest of them at your grannie’s ole farm. What a rundown mess that place is. Best bet is drive on down there if you want to catch ’em.”

  Ava hit End on her phone and chewed on the inside of her lip. She called Bethany’s number again, but this time the line had been disconnected.

  She glanced toward the couch and saw small arms and legs moving.

  “Good morning,” she whispered.

  Emma stared up at Ava. Her mouth broke into a wide smile with a happy coo.

  Emotion welled tears into her eyes as she stared into deep brown eyes and thought of the world this sweet girl was born into—a horrible place where babies were abandoned and families deserted one another.

  Emma wiggled her hands in the air erratically and glanced at the ceiling, then back to Ava’s face. Then the baby sucked her lower lip in, exactly the way Sienna had when she was a baby. Ava had forgotten that.

  As she changed the baby’s diaper on a towel spread out on the floor, Ava marveled at the feel of her chubby legs.

  “Your skin is so soft,” Ava muttered in amazement. Did all babies have such velvety skin? She couldn’t remember. She touched the skin on her tummy and Emma arched her spine.

  “Did that tickle?” Ava asked, amused by the frown that dropped Emma’s thin dark eyebrows. The baby puckered her mouth again and Ava thought of a warm bottle by the sucking noise and way she rolled her tongue.

  “I wonder if you were nursed at all.” Ava realized she knew nothing about this child. What if Emma had been born on drugs?