If I Had You Page 11

“You’re doing well. You’re doing really well.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “We’re going to do this all natural, young lady. There’s no time for an epidural, okay?”

  Tess nodded again.

  Oh, Father. My little girl. Nora wanted to stand close to Tess through this but she realized, once again, that she was in the way. She hung back a little for a moment, and the only thing she knew to do was pray.

  “Here we go. Focus. Pull back on your knees. Keep your chin on your chest.”

  Tess’s entire body arched, her teeth bared, her face red. She fell back on the pillow with a sob, a sigh.

  “That’s okay. Great. Wonderful.”

  “I’m so—”

  “The baby’s going to come quickly and you’re having another contraction now, very close. Here it comes. Take a deep breath in.”

  With the next pain Tess bore down, strained forward, didn’t cry out. The nurses pushed flat hands against her belly. Nora shoved in with them, unable to stay removed anymore.

  “Push straight down. A little bit at a time. Straight down.”

  Dr. Strouth with a gloved hand on her knee. “Tess, whatever you did at that last second was very productive.” A glance over the towering stomach. “Did you do something different?”

  A little sob. “No.”

  “I saw the baby’s head move a little more. Whatever you did, do it again.”

  “You’re doing a fine job, hon.”

  “Deep breath in. This could be your last one.” And, “Straight down,” as Tess arched, spread her knees as wide as she could, grunting with effort. “Straight down. Come on come on come on. We’ve got a head. Lift a little bit. We’ve got a head. Here come the shoulders, Tess. Here they come.”

  If we didn’t have to be ashamed, this could have been such a joyous occasion.

  The baby—all four limbs and the umbilical cord—came straight out, limbs purple and crimped, covered in white smudge.

  “Here baby. Here baby,” as they cut the cord. “Is it okay? Is it okay?” Tess’s weak voice pleaded.

  Patti, R.N., crooned, “Look at those big old toes.” Dr. Strouth aspirated the mouth, both nostrils, and then the mouth again.

  “Mama?” Tess asked so softly that Nora might not even have heard her. “Mama, are you proud of me?”

  And all the world seemed filled when Tansy Aster began to cry.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Nora met the child’s blue eyes and felt the tiny yet substantial weight of life settle into her arms. Nora hadn’t known it would feel this way, heartbeat against heartbeat, the baby watching her like they’d already been friends a long time. That’s all it took, and tears constricted Nora’s throat.

  Oh my goodness, she thought, astounded. She’s a Crabtree.

  What a precious little pink cap she was wearing! And the mere slip of a bracelet that bore their family name. Such a face. Such a little face. Uncanny, when Nora saw the resemblance. All she could do was blubber, “She looks so much like me!”

  She had not realized that this would seem such a monumental moment in her own life.

  My first grandchild has been born.

  She had never expected to feel such instant love for this new, small person. And with that, Nora felt such relief. Her heart opened like a child’s hand, releasing, each petal finger curling out, letting go. Look what Tess has done, everybody! she wanted to shout. This is my daughter’s child!

  “I know you don’t want to let her go,” the nurse said, reaching for the baby again, “but I’ve got to take her away just one more time. Just to check her heartbeat.”

  “She’s okay, isn’t she?” Nora asked, releasing her reluctantly.

  “Oh, yes. She’s fine.” Patti checked her respiration, too, for good measure, and pronounced her fit. “I’ll just fill these things in on the chart. Here she is. You can have her back again.” And no sooner did Nora have Tansy cuddled back in her arms did she look up and see Tess holding out her arms, too, with a look of wonder on her face.

  “You want to hold her, honey? Sure you can.” Their arms entangled as they passed six pounds three ounces of Tansy between them. As mother’s head bowed over the child, and her grandmother’s, too, those blue fathomless eyes seemed to look at them, and understand.

  BEN CAME RACING into the room, his hair sticking out like clumps of nutgrass. Nora knew how he riffled his hair whenever he was driving and got stuck in traffic. “Well.” He gave thumbs up to the doctor, rubbed his hands together, bent his knees. “Well,” he said, and didn’t come another step.

  “It’s okay, Ben.” Nora dried her eyes with the back of one hand and backed out so he could come close. “Come have a look at her.”

  “Her? A girl?”

  “Sorry, Daddy. I tried to wait until you got here.”

  “Good grief, Tess.” He laughed as if the joke were on him. “I’m starting to realize you never do things the way they’re planned.” They had a good laugh together, and then Ben wrapped an arm around Nora. “How’s my girl?”

  “Tess? She’s—”

  “No. Not Tess. Here. Come get some fresh air with me.” He drew his wife sideways against him and they walked into the hall, out of Tess’s earshot, before he said any more. “I was worried about you.”

  “Oh.” Nora glanced quickly at his face. “Oh. I’m fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “Looks like you came through with flying colors.”

  It would have been so easy to smile up at her husband and say “Thanks.” But this mixture of extreme joy and grief brought on by the baby, coupled with the nudge of guilt, the odd inescapable numbness she’d felt for her husband since this had all begun, wouldn’t let her speak. The gravity of all that had happened suddenly hit her. She would have sacrificed this baby’s life for her own pride. She might have sacrificed Tansy Aster because it had exhausted her to think of being involved in her daughter’s life again, because opening her life to Tess’s pregnancy had been so frightening.

  She might have snuffed out the life of this lovely little person who seemed to quietly know her.

  Oh, Father. And, as her husband held her, she felt like a beggar before a holy God. Oh, Father. What might I have done?

  “Are you okay, really?”

  “Oh, Ben.” And when she began to falter, the words babbled out like water over stones. “Tess has to make certain she goes to a good family.”

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “What if she doesn’t? What if she ends up growing up in the back seat of a car?”

  “Hang in there, girl.” Then, “Tess has that figured out, remember?”

  “I thought I’d be good at this kind of thing. Knowing that to love something best is to give it away.”

  “I don’t think anybody ever gets good at that.”

  As if on cue, Janet Whitsitt from Best Beginnings Clinic appeared down the hall, carrying a thick Filofax beneath her left arm. “I hear it went well.”

  “Yes, it did. She did.”

  “Do you think she’s ready for me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “To talk about the adoption. Now that the baby’s born, I can’t initiate anything anymore, Mrs. Crabtree. Everything has to come from Tess.”

  “Yes, then. Please. It’s time, I know.” And Nora thought, How ridiculous, being free to love something this much, and not being able to make the choices.

  “Do you know if she’s made the decision about the birth family? If she’d give us a name, we could call them and bring them in. And there are relinquishment papers; nothing happens without her signing those.”

  At the mention of “relinquishment papers,” Nora closed her eyes, picturing the baby’s tiny fist, how it curved against Tess’s neck like a cowry shell. How could she be afraid of Tansy being unsafe now? A little girl who had almost been unsafe in her own mother’s womb. It was something Nora had almost encouraged to happen.


  Our first grandchild.

  Ben had taken the papers from Janet Whitsitt and was reading over them.

  No one could have told me that I was going to feel this way.

  THE WEE HOURS of the morning, that time when the sky is at its darkest and the future seems its bleakest—those were the hours that Tess had heard her mother call “the harsh of the night.” And, true, to a young woman who couldn’t sleep, who had nothing to do with her hours except memorize the face of the child she would never see again and stare out at the severe fluorescent light in the hospital hall beyond her darkened doorway, those hours wounded her heart. She listened to the muted footsteps of the nurses going about their duties and thought, This time won’t ever come again.

  She heard the whirring begin on the automatic blood-pressure cuff, felt it tighten around her arm again and thought, I will think of this day for the rest of my life.

  Occasionally one of the nurses would step inside her room to check the cuff and ask if she or the baby needed anything. No matter how much juice she drank, Tess stayed thirsty. She couldn’t swallow. Her mouth felt as dry as cotton.

  I want to remember her face. I want to remember every part of it.

  She traced the shape of Tansy’s tiny lips with her finger, thinking how when the baby sucked in her sleep, her mouth made the same shape as a Valentine’s Day heart. Tansy’s face wasn’t flawless by any means. Her nose had been bruised when she was born and her head had been squeezed into the shape of a kiwi fruit and there was a red strawberry-shaped stork bite (they had learned about stork bites in childbirth class) beside her left eye.

  When her dad had come to visit the second time last night, he had brought the manila folders that Tess had requested. They were lying now on the shelf beside the sink. She didn’t have to look at them again to know what each of them contained; she had memorized every name, every detail, every word.

  Just before Patti, R.N., ended her twelve-hour shift, she entered with a fresh bottle for the baby. “I came to tell you that I’m leaving, Tess. Marsha will be your new nurse. I thought you might want to try some more water with her, keep getting her used to that sort of nipple.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You did a great job today, honey. You are a courageous young lady.” A little pat on the shoulder. “Oh, here’s Marsha. Marsha, this is Tess.”

  “Hi.”

  As the sky began to soften outside the window blinds, Tess made her final decision. She had spent all night thinking about the Laughlins in Fort Worth, the McKay’s in Storm Lake, the Smiths in Amarillo. Who can tell if this story might have been different if Tess had not sat in the fifth row at a wedding yesterday afternoon, watching a white-lace version of who she wished she could be.

  Who can tell what might have happened if she hadn’t thought, I’ve watched parts of my life march by these past few hours and nobody will let me have any of it.

  She examined Tansy’s face in the first light, thinking, This is her first real morning. Tansy lost the rubber nipple and rooted. Tess jiggled the bottle and Tansy found it again.

  Let them disapprove of me now.

  It’s nothing new.

  There was no doubt in Tess’s mind what she wanted to do.

  MILES BUTLER had often told stories of the beginnings of Butlers Bend, near the turn of the century. He was convinced that his windmill pond could heal wounds.

  Documented in the early 1900s, the scrawled ink ledger at the library said: “It is purported that the waters rising from this deep well offer healing properties to those who would bathe in them, much like the recorded properties of the pools at Sulphur Springs.” Then other notes followed, of cows dipping their faces in for a drink and their noses, razored by barbwire, coming up whole and pink and wet. And a story of a boy who’d broken his femur when he’d been kicked by the family mule and who had been dipped into the waters and made to walk again.

  Now that modern medicine had come, Butlers Bend residents didn’t place much stock in those old stories. But they still hung Christmas lights on Butler’s old windmill fifty years after the cattle had been auctioned off in the Fort Worth livestock yards and much of the farm acreage had been parceled into lots for homes and the library and the corner Texaco station.

  Ben didn’t glance in the direction of the legendary pond that morning as they zoomed by. He and Nora had told Tess they’d arrive at the hospital as early as nine, right when visiting hours began. They had to hurry, even though neither of them had the heart. In the distance, as they drove through the trail of small Texas towns toward Collin Health Science Center, Sunday church bells were ringing. Ben drove. Nora sat with her head tilted away from him, her forehead against the glass, the patchwork of houses visible beyond wisps of her hair. There wasn’t much traffic. They passed a pickup pulling two muddy dirt bikes on a trailer and a rusty Volkswagen bus with a bumper sticker that read MAY I ALWAYS BE THE KIND OF PERSON MY DOG THINKS I AM.

  Ben curled and uncurled his fingers on the steering wheel. “We aren’t the first people to go through this, you know, Nora.”

  “I know.”

  “I keep trying to think of things to make it easier. It helps, thinking that we aren’t the only ones. That there are plenty of others who have gone before.” The sky throbbed blue overhead but the brightness wasn’t touchable.

  “Gone before? You sound like Star Trek.”

  He grazed her hand with his knee and affected a bad British accent. “Captain Picard.”

  “You’re thinking of the wrong captain, Ben. Captain Kirk is the one who got all the women.”

  “Before my time,” he said, glad to find something to smile about.

  “Is not.” She popped him on the knee. “You’re just as old as I am.”

  Ben struggled to keep their conversation light until they walked into their daughter’s hospital room and saw Janet Whitsitt’s face. He hesitated. “What is this?” He could read the distress in the woman’s pinched expression. “What’s wrong?”

  And then Nora asked the unthinkable. “Is Tess okay? Has she hurt herself?”

  Janet Whitsitt measured them with her eyes for a long time, a look that made Ben profoundly uneasy. “I can’t—” She raised the adoption files at her side, let them fall, like a bird trying to fly with one injured wing.

  “Tess?” he asked.

  Their daughter waited in a plastic chair, her face turned toward the glitter of vehicles packed below in the parking lot. She’d set her jaw tightly; there was a hollow beneath it.

  “Honey?”

  Tess’s eyes stayed closed, as if she didn’t want to see.

  And then, “I’m not signing anything.”

  “What? What did you say?”

  “I said I won’t give her away.”

  Ben drew himself erect, his throat constricting with shock. “Oh.” A glance behind him at the others. “Oh, I see.”

  This idea was so beyond anything they had ever considered that Ben couldn’t speak. He kept his eyes on his wife, as if she could give him some answer. She shook her head slightly. I can’t do anything, she seemed to say, and he turned to their daughter.

  “This is what happens,” Nora said behind him, and he could hear the helplessness in her voice. “Can’t you see that?”

  “Yes, Mom. I know.”

  “You can’t make a lifetime decision based on emotion alone. It’s too costly. You can’t—”

  “If Creede and Candice can have good things in their lives, then I can, too.”

  Nora stepped up beside Ben. “Tess—”

  Tansy nestled in Tess’s arms, leaning against her so easily that they fit together like pieces of a puzzle. “If I let her go, I’m just one again. I didn’t even know her, and she’s a part of me. I’m not going to give that away.”

  Nora pressed harder. “It’s different raising a child when you’re alone, Tess. You don’t have a nurse to tell you everything’s all right. You don’t have people around to find out if you’re okay, or ask if there’s an
ything they can do to help you.”

  “I know that.”

  Ben said, “You’ve got to think of what’s right for the baby.”

  Tess challenged both of them with her chin erect, her chest raised slightly, the posture of someone righteous and indignant. “You don’t think I’m good enough to do this, do you?”

  One of the nurses brought in a vase of flowers that some other patient must have left behind. No one they knew would be sending congratulatory flowers. Nora picked up the vase and Ben could see her hand shaking. She added water from the sink to them with false calm. “You might look back when you get out of here. You’ll see that you could have gone another direction.”

  Tess asked sadly, “Is that what happened to you when I was born, Mom? You got to your own life and looked at me and wished you had gone a different direction? Because God knows I was never good enough for you.”

  There it was, the gauntlet laid out between them. The accusation hung between mother and daughter, as tangible and ugly and immoveable as a dead body.

  A long, aching moment of silence.

  “Tess, I’ve stood beside you.”

  “It was Dad who convinced you to try.”

  All the time they’d been talking, the shock and concern and helplessness had been building up inside Ben Crabtree. Just when he had least expected it, just when he’d steeled everything inside him to tell his granddaughter good-bye, here he was, caught in the middle between his wife and daughter again. He couldn’t bear it. His frustration exploded. “Stop it, you two. Just stop it.” His voice was so sharp and hard that it made the baby jerk in Tess’s arms and begin to cry. “This isn’t about the two of you anymore, can’t you see? It’s about loving someone enough to do what’s best for her—”

  “I’m keeping her,” Tess declared, her voice even louder.

  Ben glanced toward Janet Whitsitt and the woman shook her head. “I’m here if Tess should make the decision to give her baby away. But I cannot initiate anything. It must be her choice.”

  Ben started to say something else, but he couldn’t. There was no more strength left in his diaphragm. He met Nora’s eyes in absolute stunned, numb acceptance.