If I Had You Page 6

  “Can’t guarantee whether you’ll get Carswell. Can’t guarantee whether you’ll get Ramstein or the North Pole. Or New Jersey. There’s always that possibility, too.”

  Tess just stood there, her hand resting on the ancient copies of Texas Highways and Texas Monthly. She didn’t know whether this yearning she felt was the deep need to be high again, or for something she’d left behind and couldn’t go back to.

  “Can I ask you why you’ve decided to sign up with us? Why you’ve waited three years since you graduated from high school to proceed with your future?”

  With his pointer finger, Creede explored the cusps of three more molars before he clasped knuckles together on the tabletop.

  “I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything, if that’s what you mean. I fly my dad’s Grumman.”

  “One of those old Ag-Cats. Great little planes. I went up in a Kaydet once.”

  “I’ve seen those.”

  “Friend rebuilt it. His grandfather bought it at a surplus store for $250 right after the war.”

  “I’d like a shot at flying the big birds.”

  “That’s why I did it, too.”

  “I’ll come back eventually. With more of my own identity, I think. More of my own faith.”

  “That’s honorable.”

  “Reason I asked about Carswell is that I’m getting married. We’ve talked about all this, and my girl would like to know where we’ll end up.”

  The recruiter grinned. “She’s going to end up alone, that’s where she’ll end up. Other than when you’re off on leave. Then you’ll be together.”

  What felt like fine slivers of metal prickled inside Tess’s ears. Creede was getting married?

  “Give me the girl’s name. I’ll put it in the record, let them know you’re going to have someone to come home to.”

  “Her name’s Candice Murfree.”

  And so the consonants and vowels were entered into the document, each letter one succinct punch. C. A. N. D. I. C. E. Space. M. U. R. F. R. E. E.

  “And how did that incident occur to your upper left bicuspid? Do you remember?”

  “I was on a Cub Scouts camping trip.” A long drawn-out explanation about falling over a downed pecan limb and being trampled by a stampede of other cub scouts. While Tess thought, Candice. Candice. I don’t know any Candice.

  Tess started thinking about what it would be like to be marrying Creede. She thought about Cootie, how he’d said, “You aren’t coming back here as long as you think you’re pregnant. I don’t want to hear anything about that.”

  “Any distinguishing body markings?” the recruiter asked him. “We need to know that, too.”

  “What?”

  “This is the last question, I promise. No more. I need distinguishing markings.”

  “You mean, like scars? Birthmarks?”

  “Or tattoos. Do you have any of those?”

  The last question was the first one to make Creede balk. “Why do you need to know that?”

  “You know. In case something should happen. To identify you.”

  “Oh. I see.” Creede stared at the light fixture high overhead. He examined his thumbnail from three different angles. He rubbed a pencil marking off the table with his pointer finger. Then he met the recruiter’s gaze. “Well, yes. I do.”

  “Where? What are they?”

  “A birthmark on my left hip. A large mole.”

  “What shape?”

  “Round.”

  “Protruding?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dark? Or light?”

  “Light.”

  He typed that into the computer.

  “And I have a tattoo.”

  “Describe it, please. And describe its location.”

  “My father wouldn’t want anyone to know.”

  “That’s all right, Creede. This is between you and me. Strictly confidential.”

  “It’s this design. Here.” To indicate its position on the outside of his thin T-shirt, he placed his big farm-worn hand over his heart. There they sat, in the middle of the Gilford County Library, and Creede began to roll up the shirt.

  “Hm-mmm.” The recruiter smiled slightly and tilted his shorn head. “I hadn’t expected anything like that.”

  “Well, here it is.”

  The thing was beautiful—if tattoos could be beautiful—and much larger than anyone would expect. Two intertwined, interlocking knots, woven into each other with a number of carefully drawn strands. In the small center of the knots stood four filigree letters, intricate and interlacing.

  T and E and S and S.

  “You know how it is with tattoos,” Creede said. “I got this a long time ago.”

  But it was too late for Tess to hear that part of the story. The queasiness took over again and conquered her. She had just enough time to think, This is what it feels like to faint. This is fainting. I’m fainting.

  At the slight sound she made, Creede glanced in the direction of the periodicals. “Tess.” He yanked his shirt down. “What are you doing here?”

  Her ears buzzed and the room spun. She heard him, but couldn’t answer. The pile of magazines flittered like birds onto the library carpet when she fell. And Tess lay on the floor, as curved and helpless as the letters she’d seen spell her name.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tess felt arms lifting her up, heard voices murmuring around her. Someone touched a cloth to her forehead. It felt cool. Someone was easing something off her arm.

  “Can I get you to take your coat off for me?”

  “I don’t—” She didn’t remember wearing a coat. But then she remembered she’d been leaving her parents’ house, carrying everything. She’d shoved her arms into her jacket on the way out the door.

  “The blood-pressure cuff is going on. It could get a little tight.”

  “I’m fine. I don’t need—” She felt alone and disoriented. She didn’t know what she’d been about to say. She heard the hum, felt the cuff constricting her bicep. Her blood rose within her, pulsed against it.

  “Do you feel pain? On a scale of one to ten, can you tell me if you feel pain?”

  She shook her head. Her cheek scraped against the carpet. They began to talk louder, as if she couldn’t hear. “The same scale, one to ten. How is the pain in your head?”

  “No, I—”

  Creede. Where was Creede?

  Mrs. Paris Bramlit, who had been the librarian so long that Tess couldn’t remember anything about books without her, began to gather the issues of Texas Highways that littered the floor. “Honey, the EMTs are here. You passed out in a public place. We can’t just let you get up and walk away.”

  THE GILFORD COUNTY Day-and-Night Clinic had a helicopter pad with an orange windsock so the critical patients could be transported to ER at the big hospitals in either Dallas, Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City. All others fell under the jurisdiction of Dr. Levi Strouth, who clearly enjoyed pursing his mouth while he examined his patients. This he did with regularity as he pressed the cold stethoscope against Tess’s chest to hear her deep breathing, and as he used the otoscope and its pinprick of light to peer inside the caverns of each ear. Next he directed the thin light into her throat where he used a tongue compressor and asked her to say “ahh.” A lab technician pricked her finger for a blood sample. Tess followed directions to the lavatory and peed in a cup.

  “Well, I think you’re going to be fine, young lady. But that’s a nasty cut you’ve got above your eyebrow. I’m going to want to stitch it up. And your blood pressure’s low. When you begin to feel faint, you need to sit down.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “You get these spells often?” he asked. “Dizziness? Fainting?”

  She shook her head.

  “Any idea why you went weak like that? Why you would feel squeamish?”

  She said nothing. She slouched, her fingers splayed around the front of her tummy, a firm barrier. With his mouth thrust sideways toward his left ear, Dr.
Strouth warned her that this might pinch and gave her a shot of anesthetic to deaden her forehead. Then she watched as the doctor threaded the needle, making ready for the sutures, jabbing the strand of fine filament through the tiny eye. She thought of the times she’d watched her mother handle a needle, the deft movement of her fingers as she tied the knot, pierced the fabric, drew a stitch through. “I’ve got something I can put over your face so you don’t have to watch this,” Dr. Strouth told her.

  She shook her head. “I’ll be fine without it.” She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes so she couldn’t see.

  As she felt the sutures tugging at her skin, he said, “I’ll bet you hit a bookshelf when you fell.”

  Her voice muffled, as she bit her lower lip against the unpleasant sensation. “It’s -ard not to do that in a -ibrary.”

  He finished at last and was just jotting notes inside a manila folder when a nurse brought in results of the tests he’d ordered. The nurse motioned at something without speaking. The doctor read something there, snapped the folder shut, and, with a large amount of kindness in his voice, said to his nurse, “Why don’t you stay in here? I think we need to do a pelvic.”

  Well, here we go, then. Tess lay down as instructed on the examining table and kept her eyes on the odd landscapes in the ceiling. It didn’t take long for the doctor’s voice to become serious.

  “Do you know this, Tess? That you’re pregnant?”

  The ceiling, brushed into shapes, long faces, jutting trees.

  “How far along are you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He prodded further. “With the baby?”

  “Not very.”

  “Which means—”

  She raised herself up on her elbows and looked at him.

  “—you probably don’t know.”

  She bit her bottom lip again and nodded.

  “Are you seeing anyone about this? Getting prenatal care?”

  “No.”

  “And, do you want to?”

  She stared at him, didn’t say a word.

  “Tess?”

  “Maybe.” And as he waited for her to say more, she hated herself because she began to cry again. “I’m s-sorry. I-I don’t know. There are so many choices, and I—”

  “Are you married?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are you willing to do this? Do you have family that’s willing to help?”

  And then she said it very slowly. “They’ve told me they will.”

  “There’s a class with the public health nurse. You can take that.”

  Silence.

  “Are you experiencing morning sickness? Do you know the date of your last period?”

  No. Tess shook her head. And again. No. No.

  As the activity began around her, Tess felt trapped. Things appeared before her and she had no choice but to take them. An enormous bottle of prenatal vitamins. A brochure titled “Bonding and Beyond: How to Massage Your Baby.” A thick reference book called The Complete Guide to Pregnancy and Birth, which promptly fell open to a page: “This week your baby is the size of a telephone receiver.”

  Once she had those goodies in hand, they herded her into a different room. “We’re going to check this out,” Dr. Strouth said, “see what we can see.” The nurse squirted clear goop on a probe (“This is called a trans-vaginal ultrasound,” the woman explained. “We’ll be able to see a lot even though the baby is small.”) and inserted it. Dr. Strouth took hold of it in rubber-gloved hands, making satisfied humphs as globs of black and white slid past on a screen beside Tess’s head.

  “Nice picture. I’d say you’re seven weeks along. Let’s measure this right here.” He tried a different angle and clicked. “And this, here.” He clicked again, narrowed his eyes and smiled. “I’m going to say late April, early May.”

  “What?”

  “This makes it easy to figure dates. Look, you can see the backbone. Right here. And a heart beating. Here. Everything looks great.”

  “No. What did you say about April?”

  “April 29. That’s the due date for this little guy.”

  A tiny spot to the right of her breast bone, a vacant place, suddenly touched something bright.

  A date on a calendar was all it was, a landmark by which to measure time passing. “April 29,” she said, repeating it, trying it on for size. “In the spring.”

  “Yes. And I’d like to see—”

  She wasn’t listening. She used every ounce of energy to try to fathom this. All of the months she’d carried everything she owned in a shopping bag from Dillard’s and spent everything she could on another line of coke. All of the nights she’d gritted her teeth and reined in her heart and given Cootie what she thought she owed him. And now, here Tess was, swimming deep, seeking the surface, her lungs bursting for air.

  She had a date. April 29. And that one square on a calendar held more sway than anything her mother or father could say.

  “You know the most important thing is taking care of you and taking care of your baby, don’t you? No matter what happens, we want the two of you to stay healthy.”

  Tess nodded.

  “Oh, don’t leave without this,” the nurse said after Tess had dressed and hung the examination gown over a chair. She handed Tess a reminder card for her next appointment and a complimentary diaper bag with green bunnies. The bag was still swinging from her shoulder when she stepped into the Day-And-Night Clinic lobby and saw her mother.

  “Tess.” The leather straps to her mother’s purse pretzeled around her knuckles. “Honey. You decided not to let us help you? Why were you trying to leave?”

  Well, don’t get all freaked out or anything. Tess almost blurted it out again in self-defense. But the words didn’t come. Her mouth felt too dry to speak.

  “When the clinic called, I borrowed Lavinia’s car,” Nora said. “That’s how I got here. You look awful.”

  “April 29.” Tess stuffed the reminder card inside her jeans pocket. “That’s when the baby’s due.”

  “What happened to your forehead?”

  Tess touched the bandage. “I got stitches.”

  “Why?”

  “I fell. Cut my head.”

  Nora’s fingers worrying the leather.

  “You talked to the doctor about your head? Or did you talk to him about the baby?”

  “Both.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  Although Nora didn’t ask this at first, Tess knew the question was waiting for them, hanging between them, so important that neither of them would speak it. Tess realized that all her thoughts these past hours, about Creede, about Cootie, about herself, about a date on the calendar, all boiled down to the question that her mother would now speak aloud.

  “You’re going to have it, aren’t you?”

  Tess felt like she was jumping off a cliff when she answered.

  One meager nod; that was all.

  “Yeah. I guess I will.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Four Months Later

  The Best Beginnings Prenatal Class was held in a brown room at the clinic with a circle of chairs, a dry-erase board, a pull-down screen, and a poster titled THE HUMAN PLACENTA hanging on the front wall. The layers of the placenta were marked in glow-in-the-dark colors—fuchsia, teal, chartreuse. “We know you aren’t keeping the baby,” the nurse at Dr. Strouth’s office had told Tess, “but we recommend this class to everybody. You’ll need to take it earlier in your pregnancy than some of the others; we want to make sure you aren’t struggling with anything. You’ll need to bring a support person.” And the teacher, Mrs. Janet Whitsitt, had phoned Tess to acknowledge that she would be there.

  Mrs. Whitsitt, who looked like a baby gift herself, dressed for the winter in a pink turtleneck and a matching strand of pearls, began with a pep talk on how smart it was to be attending this class. She listed newborn complications related to mothers who didn’t take care of their own health, which resulted in p
reterm birth. “To prevent this,” Mrs. Whitsitt said, “stop any smoking or intake of drugs and alcohol, and eat balanced, nutritious meals so you can gain the appropriate weight.

  “If you feel like your labor is beginning early, empty your bladder, lie down on your left side. It’s better for your circulation if you’re on your left side. Drink three to four glasses of fluid while you’re resting, and stay down for an hour.”

  There they sat, an entire roomful of women with growing tummies, slouching in their chairs, hands with perfectly painted fingernails embracing their girths. Every time one of them would come back from the bathroom, another one would jump up and go.

  Someone mentioned snacks and they leapt from their chairs at once while their labor partners cast knowing glances. Everyone began filling tiny paper plates with crackers and caramel dip and sliced apple.

  As Tess heaped snacks on her plate, she tried to convince herself she was the same as the other women in this class. But she wasn’t, and Tess knew it. She’d made it through drug cravings, which had intensified, by sheer will and by the grace that there wasn’t any illegal substance available from anyone she knew. Even now, a craving might still hit her. But day by day, she survived. She found it impossible not to look at these man-and-woman couples together, how the men helped their wives out of their chairs, how they stood together at the snack table and the men placed their hands against their women’s backbones in a show of strength and support. The couples carried notebooks and pens, looking official and ready. The men helped the women off with their jackets. Everything about their lives seemed so planned.

  After what seemed like an hour of details, everyone brought out their assortment of bed pillows—plaids and cabbage roses and bright stripes—to begin prenatal exercises on the floor. They shucked their socks and shoes to reveal painted toenails, too.

  “As your pregnancy progresses, your blood volume will also increase.” It seemed absurd how many frightening details Mrs. Whitsitt was giving them at once. “Most of that extra blood collects in the pelvic area and legs. These ankle circles will help your circulation.”