A Morning Like This (31 page)

Abby said, “Maybe I don’t even know what love is anymore.”

“Mother!” a good number of people bellowed at them from the other room.

“I wanted to be achingly in love with my husband,” Abby said. “I didn’t want to be afraid.”

“Oh, honest to John.” Viola fumbled up onto her walker and pulled it into her grasp. “Someone else is going to have to get
Grandpa. I can’t move that fast. Besides, he’ll never give up the potato gun for
me
.”

She turned back to Abby one last time.

“When he comes in, just look at how handsome Floyd Uptergrove is in that tuxedo. And wearing that flower to please his children.
Sometimes I wonder what Clifton Bates looks like right about now. I’ll bet Clifton Bates is…Clifton Bates is… well, I’ll bet
Clifton Bates is
dead
.”

David and Abby Treasure, who had once been so anxious to leave this party the moment they arrived, had gotten crowded in with
the other party guests to watch the opening of the gifts.

David and Abby Treasure, whose differences seemed irreconcilable and whose future together would be bleak, sat hipbone to
hipbone on the cold stone hearth. He sat with his elbows propped on his knees and his hands dangling between them in a knot.
She sat with her fingers aligned perfectly, pointing downward, pushed hard between clamped thighs as if she was hiding a prayer.

Abby’s son curled like a kitten on the rug beside their feet.

David’s daughter sat as close as she could without bumping into his arm.

Abby could feel the warmth of David’s leg through the linen of her skirt. She scooted a half-inch to the right so their thighs
wouldn’t touch anymore.

The tilt of David’s spine was severe, lunging forward, as if he had to force himself to be still beside his wife. Once, when
his eyes met Abby’s, they moved indifferently away. How unimportant gifts seemed to David and Abby Treasure right then. After
all these years of housekeeping, Floyd and Viola didn’t need a thing. But Viola sat with her hand proudly on Floyd’s shoulder
while he said, “You grandchildren, slow down. You’re opening too fast. Can’t we wait?”

“Here. Hand me that card, Floyd. I want to read the letter.”

One by one, Floyd and Viola exclaimed, thanked, hugged, and passed the loot around. More things to fill up the already overburdened
storage spaces, David thought. A golden bell with their name and wedding date inscribed. A set of coasters with hummingbirds.
A glass hummingbird to hang in the kitchen window. Matching polo shirts that read “Sixty Years Together” and a plaque that
said “Each New Day Is A Gift From God.”

After the gifts had been unwrapped, someone extinguished the lights, someone drew the curtains, and a proud son showed huge
black-and-white pictures on a screen.

All the talk of years-gone-by could not suffice for the sepia-tinted photographs that confirmed it. There were pictures of
the wedding gifts, not so different from the ones their grandchildren had opened moments ago. There was an assortment of houses
and cars and communities and friends. There were baby pictures and Christmases and Easters where the children sat with curved
bonnet brims holding baskets aloft with eggs the color of a sunrise.

There was Viola stretched out full tilt on the hood of the old bullet Chevrolet, a sight that made several men in the crowd
wolf-whistle.

There was Floyd dressed to the nines in his new white Navy uniform, which made one of the women say, “So
that’s
what you fell for!”

“You gonna be one of those tugboat boys like your great-grandpa?” An uncle touseled the hair of a little boy as they all stared
up at the Navy cross on Floyd’s proud, young chest, his impressive chiseled face overshadowed by the regalia.

Faster and faster the images came, as everyone in the room forgot themselves and began shouting out comments.

“What were they doing, Viola? Saving material for the war effort?”

“Oh, those bobby socks and those shoes. Weren’t they something?”

“Which one is the Welsh Corgi who rode in the baby carriage, Floyd? Was that Paddlefoot?”

“Have you seen Mom’s pictures when she was a blonde?” More wolf-whistles. And someone’s laughter. “Hey, she was blonde for
a long time! And red-headed, too.”

On and on they went, through the growing children and the flashier cars. “Look at those two! Out for a date in the fifties.”

Viola’s gentle, reminiscent voice. “Remember? We didn’t even have heat in that car.”

Something entirely different, almost lecherous, in Floyd’s voice. They all saw him poke Viola in the ribs with his elbow.
“We didn’t need heat back then, did we?”

“Daddy!” someone hollered, sounding scandalized.

Everyone burst into laughter. Everyone, that is, except for Abby Treasure, who stared at the ceiling and worked her throat
against the ache. Everyone, that is, except for David Treasure, who scrubbed the back of his neck with his hand and looked
like he wanted to be anywhere but here.

A
bby watched her husband fall in love with his daughter from a remote distance, from a far-flung space that left her separate.
She watched David moving with purpose on an outlying horizon, and she felt totally, completely alone.

They had only hours before Susan arrived. David made the best of them. Like a Santa Claus, he showered Samantha and Braden
with fun. As the mid-summer day progressed, Abby watched as the three of them played, running in and out of the house to change
or to get something.

First, he had taken Sam for a ride on the candy-apple stagecoach through the square, where people perched on the top or hung
out of windows and doors like hedgehog spines and waved at friends and family, and at people they didn’t know.

Next, they took a jaunt to see Menor’s Ferry, where wagons had crossed the Snake River before there was any bridge. They followed
the trails, dust adhering to their tennis shoes, through the once-bustling town of Moose, Wyoming, viewing the carriage house
and the log Episcopalian chapel, where David took turns holding them both high so they could yank the chain and ring the chapel
bell. Once David decided that the bell had been clanged enough to give everyone within a ten-mile radius a headache, he took
them to the Moose General Store and bought them spearmint candies from a jar.

Abby heard the details while she spread mayonnaise onto their sandwiches for lunch. She held a piece of Country Farm loaf
flat in her palm, wiping it first with one side of the blade and then with the other. She kept spreading long after the thick,
creamy dressing had soaked into the bread.

“I know what we’ll do,” David said around the edges of his sandwich. “How about a float down Flat Creek this afternoon?”

“On inner tubes?” Braden was already standing, fists lifted in victory in the air. “Sam, you’ll love this. It’s the best thing
you’ll ever do!”

“It’s your favorite thing, huh?” Samantha’s fingers were working, happily braiding the fringe of Abby’s placemat.

“Yeah. It is.”

As much as she begrudged it, Abby had to give David credit. Whenever he talked for long minutes with Braden, he would turn
and give Samantha a wink. Whenever he went rapt with awareness of Samantha, he would clap his hand heavily on Braden’s right
shoulder, squeezing hard on his son’s bones.

David moved, in Samantha’s presence, like a man entranced. His eyes followed her with delight and reverence when she bounded
across the room. Whenever Samantha came near him, the whole stature of David’s body went gentle. He became a knight ready
to do battle for her. With every movement, every glance and smile, he paid homage to this new daughter. He was so proud of
her, his movements were excruciating. And Abby felt like she was a foreigner to them, living on the opposite side of some
impenetrable boundary, looking inside a store window when she didn’t dare to walk into the shop.

After lunch, David, Braden, and Samantha loaded the Suburban, tossing towels and mud shoes and dry T-shirts into a pile on
the backseat. Inner tubes, inflated as large as they could inflate, lay perfectly aligned in the cargo hold like donuts in
a box. The engine was already running when David turned to Abby as if he’d forgotten something.

Well, this would be a surprise. Maybe he was going to ask her to join them on the creek. She loved floating Flat Creek. There
was one spot she especially liked, where the banks twisted back on themselves, where forget-me-nots and wild violets grew
in miniature nosegays, hidden on the banks beneath the fierce protection of the willows. Hikers who explored the riverbank
would never see them. But from the low water, moving at the level of the current, tiny blue-purple flowers peeked out everywhere.

In another spot, downstream, the creek slowed, to where it moved just faster than a mirror. Abby had learned that, if you
held your limbs motionless and let yourself bob along with the stream in that place, fingerling trout would rise beside the
inner tubes to snap at mayflies.

This, she could show Samantha. She could gather her towel and her dry clothes and her Teva sandals fast, if David wanted.
She
could
. She waited, her hand frozen in midair, her breath in her throat.

But David didn’t invite her. He watched her for a moment with his head slightly turned, as if he knew they had no other choice
but this one. He didn’t tell her good-bye. She remembered the first morning when he’d left, when he hadn’t kissed her. How
many of their partings had been like this since then, with him leaving, or turning away? As if it didn’t matter to him what
she did at all?

That afternoon while the children were gone floating Flat Creek, it began to rain at the house.

Heavy drops began to pelt the dust and the metal roof; water ran in rivulets down the window. Abby looked out the front door
and worried. Storms could be spotty in this valley, one square mile doused with rain, another never out of the sun at all.
David had a bad way of being caught in the wrong place during storms.

Outside the front window, ominous gray clouds hung like scalloped, thready valances over the mountains, obliterating any view
of the Tetons. Town would be busy today. Campers from Yellowstone would drive all the way into civilization just to get warm
and dry. They’d wait in line for hours at Bubba’s for a hot plateful of ribs and, since they’d been forced out from the wilderness,
they would do laundry at the Soap Opera Laundromat and make use of the time.

Abby was scrubbing the condensation off the front glass when she heard the sound of a car. That’s how it came to be that Abby
was watching when Susan Roche parked far away on the road, as if she didn’t know whether or not she was allowed to drive close.
She didn’t get out of her car.

Abby opened the front door and held Brewster back by the collar. For long moments she waited, while Brewster barked low and
hard, warning her of danger. For long moments, Abby didn’t move, issuing a challenge, making herself visible to the woman
parked on the street. Beside her feet on the walkway by the steps, the handprints they’d joyously smashed into the cement
when they’d first built this house—David’s big hand, Abby’s medium one, Braden’s tiny splayed fingers—sparkled with rain.