by Lynne Hugo
“Sorry I took so long, my digestion’s not quite right today,” I said, and started pulling beans.
“Eating more vegetables,” Louisa said. “Good for you.”
“Yup. Bless your heart.”
“Don’t start with me, Sister. They are much better for you than meat.”
“I know, I know. Is Gus coming again tonight?” I fervently hoped he wasn’t, and I especially hoped they weren’t going to take a nap together before dinner, because let me tell you, their naps didn’t involve a lot of sleeping as best as I could discern. Seriously, can you fathom? There I am turning the television up so loud you’d think I was Charlie, or taking Jessie for a walk, anything I could think of. Louisa would have some of her special tea, and Gus would have just the Wild Turkey ingredient, straight up, and they’d both have these silly smiles on their faces and be passing secret looks at each other like they were Brandon’s age, which must have been eighteen but honestly, he looked twelve to me.
“Might come by, but he had to take the truck in for maintenance or something and so his schedule is messed up. He told me about it but I didn’t pay a lot of attention once he started explaining what was wrong.”
“Half the time he shows up in the squad car . . .”
“True, but I guess the deputy’s squad car is in the shop. So they’re down a car. I told you I quit paying close attention. Can you pull those weeds while you’re in that row?”
I was hot and hungry and couldn’t figure out why Gary was taking so long to figure out that no one was coming to the front door. Why didn’t he walk around to the back of the house? He sure knew where to find us. He’d done it before. Louisa plain couldn’t hide from him, she’d told me. I admit I was hooked on the notion of sitting in the cool—well, maybe not cool, but cooler—house with iced tea, visiting with my nephew and maybe sharing memories of Charlie with him without feeling guilty. What a welcome rescue he was going to be.
Isn’t it strange how we think one thing is going to happen and something utterly different happens? Inside we are so disappointed and have no idea that life might just have handed us a huge gift. And it’s so difficult to remember to be open to that possibility, isn’t it? Because we never know when it might be the case.
Anyway, as it happened, I was annoyed with Gary for dawdling because now it was his fault that I was getting fried and still picking beans—and now even being instructed to weed, which was truly adding insult to injury because, I mean, why? Let the fall frost kill the weeds. This ground wasn’t going to be planted again before spring, right?
I went into a spin cycle then; teary, I wanted my old life back. I wanted my husband tinkering with stupid stuff out in our garage in Atlanta. I wanted a good game of bridge after a ladies’ lunch at the club, all of us wearing colorful slacks with coordinated blouses, necklaces, matching earrings. I’d gotten to be a decent enough player that I was always asked to be someone’s partner, never had to go looking for one. In comparison to her own, I thought Louisa saw my life as frivolous, or maybe just overprivileged, lacking depth and meaning. Perhaps she thought easy come, easy go. I only knew that in moments like this when some small disappointment opened a door, I’d be overcome with the giant loss of Charlie and our life together. And I didn’t feel like I could cry to her because we were only married fifteen years and it didn’t compare to the long shadow of her life with Harold, well over forty years when he died. Maybe I could have, and she’d have understood that even though he wasn’t the father of the babies I’d lost, he wasn’t the man who abandoned me, either. He never would have, not if he could have helped it. Maybe she would have understood that love isn’t measured in length of time, but in tenderness and gratitude. But now there were things she’d not told me, and things I couldn’t tell her.
Five minutes turned into ten, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Had Gary left? Was this the one time he wasn’t going to, in Louisa’s words—snoop all over the place until he sniffed her out? (I’ve mentioned how he gets on her nerves, haven’t I? For the first time, I truly found myself on her side of the fence, except for not sniffing her out, the irony of which wasn’t lost on me.) “I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I said. Perhaps I could have been smarter, since that was exactly what I’d claimed before.
“I’m the one with a bladder the size of a pea, and I’m not running in every fifteen minutes,” she said, giving me The Look, the same tilted chin, squinty-eyed Look we both learned from our mother that said I’m Not Buying This Crap.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m not discussing this,” I said. “Your hair is a mess. Have you got a box of your color? Let’s get those roots done,” I said as I dumped the meager pile of green beans I’d picked onto her much larger pile and headed for the back door. I hate it when she catches me like that.
“Go around, not through those! Stop! Those are winter squash and pumpkins.”
I turned, trying to grind my shoe down a bit on whatever I was standing on. “Do we have to can them?”
“Well, pumpkin, sure, but not winter squash. Good grief, what do you think we make pumpkin pie with, huh? Tomatoes?” She shook her head at my astonishing ignorance and laughed.
Hoping I was killing a pumpkin vine, I twisted my foot again before dutifully getting out of the garden to make my way to the back door. On the stoop, I stopped with my hand on the knob and looked back at Louisa, surrounded by her neatly planted and tended vegetables, so high and full and lushly green, the purple eggplant glistening on the ground, the bright spots of tomato red-hanging ready, everything offering its goodness and life like my good sister, who I wanted to kill, or at least leave standing there in dirty cutoffs, wild hair, and no makeup, while I went inside and packed whatever I still had to go back to Ladies’ Bridge Luncheons at the country club in Atlanta. In that moment, Louisa looked up, waved and me, and called, “Well, go ahead, get on with it,” and so that’s exactly what I decided to do.
* * *
As quickly as I’d decided to move in with Louisa—or she’d decided it for me—I’d decided to move back. And I was resolute about that much. That’s not much of a Plan. Didn’t you claim to be the sensible one? You emptied out your house, didn’t you? Where exactly are you going to go? I imagine you’re muttering all that right now. I was going to have to come up with a Plan, true enough, and I couldn’t see expecting Louisa to be a whole lot of help with that right off the bat, but I’m sensible, and even if I don’t lay out a huge Plan the way Louisa does, I don’t drink special tea in the late afternoons with Marvelle and the girls—meaning the chickens, remember—although I’ll admit it’s not bad, and now and then I join them.
Energized by my decisiveness, I marched through the kitchen and thought to check out the living room window. Really, I expected Gary’s church van to be gone. It was there, and not only that, he had the back passenger side open and was bent at the waist leaning far into it, his elbows sawing back and forth, clearly working on something, although I couldn’t imagine what. I watched, trying to keep back enough to stay out of sight if he looked at the house.
He straightened up and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, looked sideways at the house. His face wasn’t clear, but I thought he looked upset. Then, a moment later, the upper half of his body disappeared back into the van.
Isn’t it amazing how we can be completely derailed, slip from one track right onto another? Gary is easier for me than for his mother, so perhaps you’ve already guessed that I opened the front door and started toward him without another thought.
“Gary? Are you all right? What’s the matter, honey?”
“Oh, Aunt CarolSue. I could really use a hand,” he called back, pointing into the back seat.
As I got close to him, I saw his face was bleary with sweat, his eyes bloodshot.
“What’s happened?”
“Someone has left her baby at the church and I need help taking care of it—her, I mean—while I find the mother and minister to her. So she takes her baby back. Lik
e God wants.”
Sure enough, there was a baby in the back seat, in a baby carrier. I heard her whimpering before I saw her, sweaty, overdressed, with a blanket on her in this heat! A pink hat! I pulled off the blanket and saw the problem. Gary had been trying to change a dirty diaper. Clearly he had no idea what he was doing.
“Oh honey. Oh honey. Okay, let’s get her cleaned up, and we’ll call Gus. Or did you do that already?”
“No! We’re not calling Gus. It’s not a police matter. It’s a church matter.”
“Gary, sweetheart. You can’t. She wasn’t even belted in a safety seat right. You can’t do this. What do you have for her?”
“That stuff,” he said, pointing to a couple of diapers and a bottle on the seat next to the baby carrier. “Pretty much nothing.” Gary’s curly hair was sticking to his forehead and neck. The back of his plaid shirt stuck to his skin. If it hadn’t been so hot, I’d have thought he’d been crying.
“Don’t you see? You can’t—” I shook my head and didn’t argue more then, seeing how his face turned to stone, glistening with sweat or tears. “Let’s change her and cool her down.” The baby had to be taken care of. Louisa could talk sense into Gary. “She’s a mess. Run into the house and get me two wet washcloths. Ring them out well. And a plastic bag. Make that two old plastic bags. I don’t suppose you know her name?”
“Gracia.”
“Gray-see-a? Is that like Grace or Gracie?”
“Close enough. I like that,” my nephew said.
While Gary jogged for the house, I soothed Gracie as best I could. She was a beautiful baby—well, aren’t they all?—but she really was. Tiny, with lots of dark hair and those navy-blue eyes they’re all born with. I couldn’t pick her up without covering myself with poop, which Gary had done an astonishingly inadequate job of cleaning up with tissues, smearing it hopelessly up her belly and down her legs. I held her tiny fingers and talked to her, stroked her head. She looked at me, right in the eyes it seemed, and quieted. “You’ll be all right, honey, listen to me, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be fine, don’t be scared, it’s all right, it’s all right,” I crooned. I hoped I wasn’t lying to her. I so wanted to be telling her the truth. I had to believe I was.
Gary came back with the wet washcloths I’d sent for, having forgotten I’d told him to wring them out well, and not had the sense to think that an infant shouldn’t have the shock of cold water on her skin regardless of how it might feel to a grown man. I sent him back. When he reappeared with lukewarm ones, I used the first cloth on Gracie, lifting her legs and cleaning the folds—of course her onesie was dirty. “What else do you have to put her in?”
“Ah, just the two more diapers. Wait, this is with the diapers.”
“Bless your heart, you’re not serious? That’s an undershirt. Give it to me.” I bit my tongue. He’d had a baby, lived with one of his own. Had Nicole done everything or had he blotted out all memories of Cody to endure his grief?
I finished cleaning the baby with the second washcloth, after taking off the messy onesie, and put both cloths and the onesie in one of the bags. I put the dirty disposable diaper and all Gary’s used tissues—picking them up gingerly from the floor mat he’d left them on—and put them in the second. Gracie waved her arms and fussed mildly, turning her head side to side. “She’s hungry,” I said. “I think she’s looking for a bottle . . . or her mother’s . . . um . . . do you know how she’s fed?”
“I got one bottle.”
“ONE? Bless your heart, how long do you think that’s going to last? Oh Lord, let’s get her inside, it’s too hot out here for this.” I picked the baby up, put her over my shoulder, and headed for the front door. “God help you with your mother,” I said to Gary, who still stood by the open van door, his mouth opening to say something. “Shut your mouth now, honey, and shut the van, pick up those bags, bring the bottle, and come on.”
* * *
I was sitting in my own armchair from home, cradling Gracie in one arm, giving her the bottle. Marvelle stared at us suspiciously from her perch on the back of the sofa, but Jessie lay at my feet, her nose on her paws, contented. Outside, I could hear Louisa reading Gary the riot act, doubtless getting the chickens all stirred up, and she hadn’t even been inside to see the reality yet. “. . . lost your mind . . . it’s not about Jesus . . . call Gus . . .” (The business about calling Gus, by the way, is because out here in rural farm country where there’s not much of a tax base, the sheriff’s department is pretty much the emergency social service system, too.) I caught snatches when Louisa went into her playground control voice. Meanwhile, Gracie was looking into my eyes and I into hers. She was such a sweet little girl. Does it sound like a cliché to say her mouth was like a little rosebud? It was, though, and her eyes searched mine in such a trusting way, the same way the fingers of one of her hands latched around my right pinkie as I held her bottle.
I had to take it away halfway through to burp her, I knew; she fussed a little, but then nestled in over my shoulder, her head in the crook of my neck. I patted her back and sang a little, and she rewarded me with a huge, satisfying belch. “Good girl, that’s my good, good girl,” I cooed, before I laid her back and gave her the nipple again.
She was so easy to smile at while outside the argument went on. Her eyes grew heavy and she fought sleep, sucking, stopping, sucking again. I pulled the bottle away with a couple of ounces remaining, and shouldered her again, patting her back softly. “Can you burp for me, sweetheart?” After a while she did, and then again, and she was asleep. I could tell by her weight, how she’d given her body over to mine. She felt safe, and she was.
When Louisa came in the back door, followed by Gary, I put my finger to my lips and glared a warning to them. I pointed to the capped bottle and then to the refrigerator. Both of them had apparently had an attack of total stupidity because Louisa said, out loud, “What?”
I repeated the gestures including the finger to my lips and pointed, also, to the sleeping baby. I ask you, how hard is that for the most simpleminded person to understand?
“What do you want?” said my sister, the college-educated former teacher, louder, as if the problem were one of volume. Again, I had that homicidal impulse.
I worked myself to stand without jostling Gracie, picked up the bottle from the side table myself, and carried it into the kitchen to refrigerate.
Gary and Louisa resumed arguing. I grabbed the baby carrier and headed to my bedroom with it. I didn’t want to put Gracie down, but I needed them to be quiet, at least, and I couldn’t intervene with her in my arms. In my room, I inched her into the carrier and took the pillowcase off my pillow to tuck it around her, so there’d be something light over her. She slept on soundly, the sleep of the innocent, the sleep of one whose needs still can be met.
“Gus will find her a good foster home. There’s a list—all pre-approved by the state,” Louisa was saying. She and Gary were both sweaty, but Louisa was a sight in those frayed shorts with dirt on her hands and knees and face (from wiping it with her hands), blondish hair gone wild pinned back, sunscreen forgotten—no matter how many times I remind her these days—Gary in his version of looking professional, collared plaid shirt and khakis with a belt. He does have a certain resemblance to me in the eyes—big and round and what people say is a startling blue, and he’s got dark blond, curly hair that he combs to hide that it’s receding. Maybe he doesn’t know it’s thin at the crown, too. I took the two of them in like that for a minute, trying to decide what to do. That was legal, I mean, and wouldn’t wake up the baby.
“No. Just give me some time,” Gary said. “All I need is some time. I’ll find her. You know how the system is, Mom. She’ll be judged, and she won’t get her baby back. What if she can’t even prove it’s hers?”
“Gary, don’t be dumb. Blood test.”
Gary got a funny look. “Mom, I mean, give her a chance. Just keep the baby for me for a little while. It’s what God wants.”
“Oh, and was it God or Jesus who told you about that? Personal meeting or telephone? Or maybe Western Union.” The sarcasm thing, you’ll see the family talent. Gary was always at such a disadvantage because he didn’t inherit it. Apparently Harold’s genes were dominant in that brain area. Unfortunate for Gary.
“Hold up,” I said. “Gary, what do you know about the baby and her mother? When and where did you find her?”
“Thank you for asking, Aunt CarolSue. Like I was trying to tell Mom,” he said, which probably antagonized Louisa further, “I just found her a little bit ago. Somebody put her in the church while I was in my office. There was a note asking me to help because her mother couldn’t take care of her.”
“I don’t suppose the father is in the picture,” Louisa said. “Yeah, that’s rhetorical,” she huffed into his silence. “So, let’s see the note.”
“I can’t do that. It would be unethical. It’s confidential.”
“But you think it’s a fine idea for me to keep the baby while you hunt down the mother?”
Gary shifted from one foot to the other. Closed his eyes, then opened them and looked at me for help before he looked back at Louisa.
“Um . . . yes.”
Before Louisa could say any more, I inserted myself. “I think we can do that, Louisa. For a day or two. Gary, you’ll have to go get formula and diapers, though. And a couple of onesies. And do that right now.”
Louisa wheeled and stared at me with as much shock as if she’d caught me naked out by the mailbox while juggling tomatoes, smoking a crack pipe, and guzzling a quart of her special tea.
I shrugged and turned to go check on Gracie. Leaving Louisa speechless was sort of fun. It all fell into place as I opened my bedroom door and looked at the baby, sleeping under my pillowcase. I could wait a day or so to pack up and leave. Of course, Gary was off his rocker about this, but his heart was in the right place, a compassionate place. What was a day or two? And besides. No more picking and canning for me while I worked up a Plan to get me and my stuff back to Atlanta. I’d take care of Gracie, sweet baby Gracie.