If I Had You Read online

  Tess watched Cootie now, her face gone grave and pale and still. Give a little credit to Cootie, though; he did hesitate before he handed her away to Tess. “This isn’t going to change my mind,” he said.

  Ben rose from his chair and clutched Tess by the shoulders, even then, as if he already knew he ought to hang onto her. “No one asked you to change your mind, buddy,” Ben said. “No one asked you to come here and find them.”

  “It’s okay he came here, Daddy. It’s really okay. It’s really all right.” The deliberate way she ducked her father’s grasp, the shy way she said those measured words, turned Nora’s blood to ice. “If you want me to come with you, Cootie, I will. If you don’t want me to bring the baby,” she said, clutching Tansy against her, “I can leave her here.”

  Nora had reached for the tassel to pull open the shade. When Tess said those words, Nora lost her grip. The shade snapped itself and rolled up, thwack-thwack-thwack. Even that startling sound didn’t make the others move.

  Outside in the first morning light Nora could see a thick bank of clouds hovering toward the east. The sun had begun to rise beneath it, bleaching the sky to the same yellows and blues as a reflection on a clear stream. For long moments the low clouds blotted out all but that hint of light. Then suddenly, like the appearance of an angel’s gilded wing, the sun topped the clouds. Every fluff beamed with gold.

  “You can’t go back with him,” Nora said to the window. “We won’t let you do that.”

  Ben jumped in, too, his voice a low growl. “Very significant events happen when you lose sight of where you’re going.”

  Tess’s eyes leveled on her mother in hostility and defiance. “I know where I’m going.” For one split instant, everyone else faded; only Nora and Tess were in the room. They’d returned to the confrontation that, no matter how they tried to ignore, was never far away. “Cootie is one person who sees good things in me.”

  Tess might not be willing to give up her daughter for her daughter’s sake. But she was willing to ditch it all for another violent payback to her mother? Something inside Ben snapped. When he rose and strode toward the telephone, he did not have to look anything up in the book. The sheriff’s number hung on a little card Nora had thumbtacked to the side of the cabinet. GILFORD COUNTY EMERGENCY NUMBERS, the little card read, with a list including the clinic, the fire department, the city water office, and the number to the library’s daily dial-a-story. Ben dialed it fast, 5-5-5-3-4-2-1, while Nora stood staring at her daughter and cried inside.

  Lord? What is it about Tess and me that we crush each other’s spirits? Why would she need to run this fast and this far?

  “Sheriff’s office. How I can help you?”

  “I’m calling to report an intruder,” Ben announced.

  “You can’t do that.” Cootie shoved himself from the table and his chair landed on the floor. “Tess.” He flung his hands at her and almost knocked the baby out of her arms. “Don’t let your dad do that. I ripped off the car.”

  “Daddy.” Tess wrestled for the receiver but it was too late. He’d already given their address to the dispatcher. “You have to stop.”

  “I’m not doing more time in jail.”

  “Tess.” Nora took Tansy away from her. “You can’t give this much up for him.” When she didn’t turn, “Tess, listen to me.”

  “This is my chance to have it, too, Mama. Didn’t you see the look on Creede’s face on his wedding day?”

  “You aren’t going to have anything the same as that. You’ll get pulled back in,” Nora said. “You’ll end up getting high.”

  Oh, Father. You’ve got to change Tess. Nothing’s any different now than it ever was.

  Ben brandished the gun again. But this time, when he aimed the Ruger at Cootie, Cootie ignored it. He started for the door instead.

  “Stop,” Ben said, letting a shot fly at Cootie’s feet. It sent up a meager fluff of carpet.

  “I’m getting my stuff,” Tess shouted.

  Cootie said to Ben, “You aren’t going to shoot me.”

  Tansy had started to fuss in Nora’s arms. With a catch in her heart, Nora demanded this: “If you’re going to go, you can do what’s right for her, Tess. Let me call Janet Whitsitt. I can get those relinquishment papers to sign.”

  Only then did Nora see the glint of regret in Tess’s eyes. “There isn’t time. I should have done it the other day.”

  “You could do it now.” But Nora and Ben felt like Tansy belonged to them, too. She was their granddaughter and, immediately, they had loved her. Three days, Nora thought, and it would take everything I am to let this baby out of my sight.

  “This is who I am. I can’t change that. This is who we are together.”

  The words seemed to come from the air around her, the trees outside, the sun that rose through the clouds. Beloved, you pray for Me to change others. Pray for Me to change you.

  “Give us some address, some way to get a hold of you, something.”

  “You’d only try to bring me back.”

  Let her go. Let Me work.

  Tess shrugged into a jacket that was hanging by the door. “Bye, baby,” Tess said, tears brimming in her eyes as she gave Tansy a light kiss. “Baby, baby, baby, baby.”

  “Tess,” Nora whispered, broken, feeling as if her heart had fallen away and was lying limp somewhere. “He isn’t worth this. Think of your daughter.”

  “I am thinking of her.” And if Nora could have read Tess’s mind, she would have seen everything she was thinking: Maybe this is what I was waiting for, Mama. See, I do so many things wrong. “I think it would be best if you have her.”

  Tansy’s hand seemed to flutter up and touch the back of Nora’s neck. Nora brushed a hand over her granddaughter’s forehead. The delicate weight of the baby grew heavier as Tansy rooted against the warmth of Nora’s arms.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  You are cordially invited to a BABY SHOWER

  IN HONOR OF: Tansy Aster Crabtree, new granddaughter of Nora and Ben Crabtree

  DATE: Saturday

  TIME: 7:00 p.m.

  PLACE: 579 Texoma Street, Fellowship Parlor Butlers Bend Baptist Church (SBC)

  Light refreshments will be served

  PLEASE R.S.V.P. TO: Jane Ruckmann 555-4983

  The Crabtrees need all supplies, diapers, Desenex—beginning to have problems with diaper rash—soft blankets and one-piece rompers. If you have items you don’t mind handing down, bring them. Also, we are taking up a collection for a rocking chair (see Sears catalog pg. 283). If you would like to go in with us on this, let me know. It’s a surprise, though, so please don’t say anything!!

  Ben had to hand it to the ladies. You give a woman a good reason—even a tragic reason—and forty-eight hours, and someone will come up with a party. Scallops of pink streamers dangled from the ceiling. A slab of cake the size of Wisconsin sat in the middle of a Sunday school table; he was already waiting for one of those icing roses. Over in the corner beside the door, the stack of wrapped packages had become enormous.

  “Oh, just look at this baby,” Lavinia Simms said with a sideways glance at Ben. “Isn’t she just the sweetest thing?”

  “Have you seen what she does when you stick your thumb in her mouth?” he asked, acting the expert. “She latches on like a leech.”

  Ben didn’t want anyone to see it, but he was lost. He often thought his granddaughter would stop crying if he could only make himself understand what she wanted. During the past forty-eight hours, he’d spent more time than he wanted anyone to know just lying on the bed with her, looking into her face, thinking, What will we do with you?

  If this new child had seemed amazing and familiar in the hospital, she now seemed like someone he didn’t know at all. Trying to put a diaper on this wrinkled and wise thing felt like trying to diaper Yoda from Star Wars. Ben felt as if he knew nothing when he gazed into her face, as if she were an old little woman as shrewd as the sea and he was just, well, him.

  Although h
e wouldn’t let it come to the surface, he felt responsible. Responsible for the maternity leave Nora had taken at Stitch ’N Time. (Maternity leave for a forty-six-year-old grandma, for heaven’s sake.) Responsible for not making things right enough so Tess would stay. Responsible for the way Nora wouldn’t turn the lights off in the baby’s room at night. (“She won’t know the difference between day and night,” he’d disagreed with her. “She’ll never learn to sleep if you don’t give her time alone in the dark.” “I can’t, Ben,” Nora had told him. “I won’t leave her alone where she can’t see.”)

  Jane Ruckmann brought him back from his thoughts. “Can I, please?” she asked, touching his arm. “Can I hold her?” It took him a minute to figure out she wanted Tansy. “You could go get something to eat.”

  “Oh, yes.” Ben gave the baby over, balancing her as if he were handing over something that might break into pieces. “Sure.” And Jane scarcely had his granddaughter before three others were in line for a turn.

  Where are you ladies in the middle of the night when we really need you?

  Pastor Franklin gestured toward the gift corner with a plate that, Ben noted, held the piece of cake with the roses. “Lots of stuff there.”

  Nora sat at the head of the table and began tearing paper, slicing strips of tape with her nails. The pastor nodded in her direction, saluted with his fork. “Well, I had enough practice with presents at Creede and Candy’s wedding. I’ll help you load them in the car.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You want this cake? I certainly don’t need it.”

  Ben nodded. “It’s the rose I want. Let me have a bite.”

  If the two men hadn’t been friends before, they bonded out of necessity here. It seemed impossible that baby paraphernalia could have changed so much over the past nineteen years. Where Tess had started in regular white Pampers sized Small, Tansy would begin life in mountains of newborn Swaddlers, with a notch cut out for the delicate umbilical cord area, pink penguins parading across the tapes, and a color-coded tab to indicate whether baby was wet. She would have her face shaded by two Baby Gap sailor hats, one white and one lilac. And that’s as far as the two gentlemen could get without leaning forward in puzzlement, squinting across the room, relying on each other for technical information.

  “What do you imagine that is?”

  “What does it do?”

  “You seen one of those before?”

  They managed to figure their way through a headband with purple flowers, a rhino that laughed when you squeezed it, rattle shoes, coupons for free babysitting, a pacifier clip with a string (And so, that attaches to something?), a tooth-and-gum cleanser with gum brush, a musical key ring (Not the keys to the car already. By the time she’s driving, maybe I’ll be dead.), and a baby-view safety mirror that read on the box WHEN IT IS IMPORTANT TO SEE BEHIND YOU.

  They didn’t falter until Nora opened the Baby’s-First-Year Cold-Care set and Pete saw the picture on the front of the carton. “Good heavens, you don’t stick that thing up the nose do you?”

  “Of course you do. I remember when Tess got the croup—”

  Ben saw Nora shoot him a look of caution; oh, yes, he knew his wife’s heart. He saw bitterness in her that he didn’t understand, something dark that only seemed to grow over time. That look said, Don’t talk about Tess. I don’t want to hear that girl’s name.

  Well, he did remember. Remembered how Tess had tried to nurse with desperate, clogged little snorts. Remembered how Nora had asked him to time with his wristwatch while she counted Tess’s breaths. The baby’s breathing rough and choked, like something being strung through gravel every minute. Hot water steaming the bathroom and stars pricking the cold night sky. And when they’d gotten her to the hospital and put her inside a plastic tent with oxygen, all he’d wanted to do was climb inside with her. That had been the worst thing; being able to see Tess and yet not touch her. Looking at her, and feeling a thousand miles away.

  Pete Franklin reached out to shake Ben’s hand as they rose. Ben’s fingers fit into many crevices, the way they would fit around crumpled paper. “You haven’t come to me much, Ben, but I know these past years have been a challenge.”

  Ben surveyed the half-moon circles of his nails.

  “There’s not a person in this entire congregation who wouldn’t help you take care of your new little girl.”

  “Thanks. We’ll call on you, Pete, if we need to,” Ben said.

  “We could schedule a baby dedication if you’d like. It would signify a lot. Starting over again with this one, having a new chance.”

  “Nora and I will talk about that.”

  The minister took the cue and changed the subject. He picked up a box. “A baby-wipe warmer. Imagine that.”

  “Think I’ll be able to do something useful with that?”

  “Maybe keep bread warm? Or your shoes warm when it’s cold?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Put it on a timer so the pastries or the slippers would be hot in the morning?”

  “Fine idea,” Ben said, and they both laughed.

  They had found something on which they agreed.

  “DOLORES?” Nora asked, peering inside the huge box. “Is this one from you? Do you want me to open this? What do I do?”

  Until now, Dolores Kay Jones had been quiet. She settled into a seat beside Nora, her hands splayed across her polyester skirt like small doilies over a sofa arm, her eyes glistening like seed pearls. “You and Ben and Tess and the baby,” she said. “You are such a special family. This is the best gift I could think of.”

  Dolores Jones’s big box was full of smaller presents. Each one had been folded and twisted, taped and tied. Nora began to dig.

  “Any order I ought to open these in?”

  “No.”

  “This one, then?”

  Dolores nodded.

  First from the box came a beautiful silver-handled mirror, polished and glinting in the basement lights. On its handle, Dolores had tied a puffy homemade bow. Nora found a note tied there, which she opened and read.

  HOLD THIS UP

  “Okay.” Nora did, and saw her face. “I see myself.”

  “Read the other side.”

  Nora turned the note card over. “‘If our faith is in ourselves, we are trusting in something that wavers.’”

  She went rifling through the box again. The next gift she found was neat and crisp, with corners mitered, tucked under, Scotch-taped secure. She found a nick in the tape and peeled it back. She smoothed the paper flat in her lap.

  Nora read these words scribbled across the top.

  ALWAYS REMEMBER

  She lifted the lid and found a collection of coins inside. Pennies. Dimes. Nickels. Even a quarter or two. An entire collection of change. She poured the coins in her hand; a penny or two rolled away. The note was folded inside the small lid: “Jesus doesn’t change.”

  “Oh. I get it,” Caroline Rakes said, rocking back in her seat. “Jesus doesn’t change. Change. Get it?”

  Dolores picked up the coins that had dropped to the floor. “We think about Jesus two different ways.” Dolores plunked one penny in Nora’s palm. “We picture Jesus who came, the depths of a valley in His eyes, love pouring from His soul, following the call to the cross.” She plunked down a second penny. “We picture Jesus who will come, eyes flashing, crushing the one who steals from Him, sustaining all things we know by His powerful word.” One by one, Dolores dropped the other coins inside the box. Plink. Plink. Plink. “Only what happens in between?”

  Someone had to organize these pennies, nickels, and dimes. This bothered Nora. When she got them to the house, she would go to the bank and ask for paper coin wrappers. Then she could keep them for Tansy, stacked in a bureau drawer, carefully heaped and counted.

  “‘The universe will wear away and be folded up like a garment, but you remain the same,’ it says in Hebrews, ‘and your years will never end.’ Jesus is all love and all power and He will not change.”
>
  With each coin she placed back into the box, Nora thought, It doesn’t matter if Jesus doesn’t change. A dime. It’s the world that changes. A nickel. Every time it looks like He fixes something, something else falls apart.

  She would clean out the guest room where Tess had stayed. Tomorrow. She would take the sheets off the bed and wash them. Maybe she’d carry them to Cowboy Cleaners and have them steamed. No, better yet. She would iron them herself while the baby slept. She would wax the furniture, dust the blinds, wipe away every fleck of mascara that Tess left everywhere she went.

  Everything would be clean and fresh.

  She would trail her fabrics all over the floor and all over the bed and all over the chairs.

  She would sew and crochet Tansy a baby blanket just like she’d wanted to, all along.

  They started to complain about her taking so long to open each package. “Oh, sorry.” She began to claw the paper, sending shreds flying, making everybody cheer. She uncovered a black-velvet hinged box with the words,

  A HEART ENCIRCLED

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it. Go ahead.” Inside, on a small incline, laid a crystal heart on a slender cord.

  “This is for Tansy, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Dolores said. “It’s for you.”

  Nora didn’t know why, but she felt afraid.

  “It’s okay,” Dolores said, as if she had known. “Turn it over and you’ll see.”

  On the other side, she found the engraving, “Baby’s First Christmas,” and a tiny gold-etched circle where a picture would go.

  “I don’t—is there a note?”

  “Yes. But the box was so small, I couldn’t find a way to make it fit.” Dolores pulled it from her skirt pocket and handed it over.

  “‘There isn’t anyone alive who can heal a broken heart, no matter what they are willing to do. Healing a heart takes more than human love. It takes divine power. Hang this, and you’ll remember to expect Jesus not to be greater than who He is, not to be different than who He is, but to be who He is. The powerful, loving healer of hearts.’”