When the Morning Glory Blooms (4 page)

While Brianne bounced off the platform at the end of the service and into a gaggle of girlfriends, Lauren headed to the nursery to retrieve her son. Gil chatted with two men from his Tuesday night accountability group. Becky bypassed the conversations and sought out the privacy of a bathroom stall. Just like junior high.

She recognized the shoes of the woman in the next stall to the left. Monica’s
what-were-you-thinking?
eggplant patent leather ballerina flats.

Becky noiselessly slid her own Walmart feet to the right. How long would she have to stay in the stall to avoid facing the woman with the perfect family life?

Oh, that was ridiculous! Had she learned nothing since junior high?

God grant me the something-something to accept the something else that I cannot change
.

Serenity. Yeah, that was it.

Pull up your big girl panties, literally, and leave your hiding place, Becky
.

Side-by-side sinks. A shared soap dispenser. Lavender—supposedly stress-reducing aroma. Automatic paper towel dispenser.
No, you go first
.

“Good to see you here, Becky.”

“You, too.”

“I don’t mean, in the bathroom.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

“Let me get the door for you.”

Noble, considering how you dissed my daughter, my parenting, my
  . . .  “Thanks.”

Monica searched the crowd in the narthex.

Wow, not even a lame comment about the weather
.

Another few seconds ticked by before Monica asked, “Do you want to grab some lunch and talk?”

“Yes.” Becky drew a steadying breath. “Someday. Not today, if that’s okay with you.”

Monica opened her mouth as if prepared to proffer the perfect response. Nothing.

Where was Lauren? Daughter of mine, this isn’t your fault, exactly, but it’s part of the fallout
. “I’ll see you next week, Monica.” Becky tucked her Bible under her arm and caught Gil’s eye with a “meet you in the car” hand signal. No doubt Lauren and the baby were already there, trying to make each other smile.

“Can I call you tomorrow, Becky?”

“I won’t be home.”

Who was she kidding? Of course she’d be home. Where was she going to go? The spa? Work? The Ellison Corp. didn’t have a gram-ternity leave plan. She’d had to quit to take care of Jackson when the school year started. If Lauren graduated on schedule, maybe she could work part-time next summer. If the new editor who’d taken her place didn’t pan out.

“Burgers or pizza?” Gil alternated glances at Lauren in the backseat and Becky in the front.

“Let’s just go home, Dad.”

Becky nodded.

“I’m offering to take my two best girls out for lunch. What am I hearing? Okay, okay. Seafood. As long as it’s deep-fried.”

Jackson voiced his protest over that idea. With a vengeance.

“Home it is.”

More howls from the backseat. Becky offered, “Lauren, try—”

“I’ve got it, Mom!”

And she did. Quiet returned except for the faint sound of a Kutless song bleeding from the earbuds of Lauren’s iPod, one bud of which rested on the upholstered car seat near Jackson’s ear.

Becky calculated decibel levels versus fragile eardrums, but landed on gratitude that Lauren had discovered a way to comfort her son. All by herself.

3

Becky—2012

I leave again on Tuesday.” Gil’s words slid into the conversation like too many raw onions on a fast-food burger slicked with special sauce.

“Where to this time?”

He drew his rake through another chaotic convention of sun-crisped oak leaves, stirring that unmistakable “autumn’s here” aroma. The leaves rattled as they bumped against one another in an effort to escape Gil’s tines. “Cincinnati.”

Becky pulled a desiccated tomato vine, knocked the dirt from its roots, and threw it into the four-by-four garden trailer hooked to the riding mower. Gil didn’t like traveling this much any more than she did. But with jobs this scarce, refusing to get on a plane was a death knell to collecting a paycheck.

She’d waited too long to respond. He’d know she wasn’t happy about the trip. “It’s  . . .  it’s not so far. How long will you be gone?” At one time she’d been more skilled at imitating lighthearted. She brushed garden debris from her fleece work pants as she waited for his answer.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

That long? You’ll be gone that long?

“Becky, why don’t you come with me?”

Her turn not to answer.

“I know,” he said. “Jackson and Lauren are why. But maybe you could get Monica to help out for a few days? Please?”

“She works.”

“Volunteering. Maybe she’d see it as an opportunity to serve. Ministry.”

The hope in Gil’s voice clashed with what Becky knew about Monica’s interest in “ministering” to the aftermath of an unplanned, untimely, unblessed pregnancy.

Unblessed?

The arrival of the child changed everything. A blessed, wanted, adored, cherished child. Pulsing evidence of God’s grace. A redemption object lesson.

A game-changer in so many ways.

The rhythm of Gil’s rake stilled. A gust of a fall wind’s rebellion tugged at the neat piles he’d created. He leaned his chin on the pad made by his crossed hands on the handle end of the rake. “Maybe when the little guy’s a few months older.”

She looked up into eyes that didn’t resemble Jackson’s. Middle Eastern dark, like she expected of someone born in, say, Bethlehem. How long had it been since she’d taken time to study the nuances in those irises? How long since she’d not left his side in the middle of the night to check on their grandson? How long since she felt comfortable surrendering to the fire of his touch?

She could have put a capital
H
on “his” and asked those same questions.

“Becky?”

“Yes?”

“Are you lost somewhere?”

“Lost in gratitude for you.”

Gil’s eyebrows arched. “Sounds like an invitation to me.”

Becky’s hand reached for the baby monitor tucked in the pocket of her windbreaker. “It’s about time for Jackson’s nap to end.”

“Oh. Right.”

Longing left its dusty residue on their words. Longing for each other. For life to be different, less complicated.

The monitor breathed deep, grunted, then started to make “I’m no longer happy here” noises, proving her timing accurate and Jackson’s unfortunate.

She peeled off her garden gloves without losing eye contact with Gil. “I’ll  . . .  I’ll change him, feed him, and bring him out here. The sun’s nice and warm. If I bundle him up, we can keep going.”

And they would. Keep going. Like it or not.

“Want me to get him?”

“It’s not your responsibility.”

“Yours, either.”

It was easy for Becky to assume Jackson’s care as if he
was
her responsibility. Maternal instinct and guilt shared many of the same traits. Add to the mix her unquenchable love for him, and the concoction smoked and boiled like a showy science experiment. Baking soda—maternal instinct. Vinegar—guilt. Love—catalyst for anything good that came from it.

Catalyst. Cattle list: Angus, Hereford, Holstein. One of the lame jokes Gil shared on their first date. It reappeared every anniversary, like wooly caterpillars before the first snow.

She reached into her pocket to turn off the monitor. “I’ll get him.”

“Want me to pull these dead things over here while you’re gone?”

Becky aligned her gaze with his. “No!”

“Just trying to help.”

“Sorry to snap. It’s my morning glory vines.”

“Yeah? You’re not expecting them to bloom anytime soon, are you? I believe their season is long past.” He crumbled a crunchy vine into powder between his fingers.

“Don’t  . . .  don’t touch them, okay? I’ll take care of them later. I’m saving the seeds.”

Gil straightened, his chin tucked against his windpipe. “Yes, ma’am.” He saluted.

“I’m not trying to be stinky about it.”

“Sometimes you don’t have to try.” He winked.

She’d let that go. He did lighthearted better than she did. His smile seemed genuine. Plus, she hoped to catch Jackson before his babble turned to tears.

Or hers did.

Tiny black-brown seeds housed in a papery brown pod. Why did saving them mean so much to her? Most years, the plants would come back on their own. Or she could purchase a packet of morning glory seeds next spring from any number of suppliers—Walmart, the grocery store, the Westbrook Greenhouse. Even the gas station had a seed carousel, if she remembered right. She was no master gardener—that was Monica’s department—but preserving those morning glory seeds each fall stirred something in her.

If she thought too hard, her dedication to the task might take on an obsessive taint. So she wouldn’t think. She’d collect the dry pods, the remnants birthed from what was once a Microsoft-blue flower, rub the papery covering in her hands until the seeds separated from the chaff, and save them in the baby food jar reserved for that purpose.

The jar she’d used since her Mark first tasted pureed pears. Her heart lost another beat. How many could she afford to lose?

The jar she’d used since the first morning glory bloomed in the side yard. Since the sight of that startling, delicate, unfurled sapphire blossom with its glistening white center lifted her postpartum depression by an inch, then another inch the next day when another bloom appeared.

She fixed Jackson’s bottle and toyed with another thought. How does a person recognize postpartum depression in a surly teen?

Becky pushed open the door to Lauren’s bedroom. “Sweet boy, did you have a good nap?”

His hair, sleep-damp, stuck-in-the-50s pin-curl shapes around his baby doll face. The first Trundle with naturally curly hair.

Jackson Trundle. He should have had a different last name.

The paternity discussion long stale, “a’moldering in the grave” as some long-ago poet would have expressed it, Becky still cringed whenever Lauren’s study group included Noah. Noah, the Eddie Haskell smooth-talker—
Good evening, Mrs. Trundle
—with denim-blue eyes. It brought no joy to her heart that Lauren insisted she couldn’t be sure who the father was. Every mother’s dream. And that she didn’t want any help from the birth father anyway. Would Lauren feel differently about that if Gil and Becky weren’t footing the bill for formula and diapers? And groceries? And a roof over their heads? And health insurance?

They should have forced the issue. Lauren wrote a name on the birth certificate in the line for “child’s father.” It was all
Becky could do not to search Lauren’s room for a copy of that piece of paper. Did the backseat male have to file a claim in order to force a paternity test? That issue joined a laundry list of others about which Becky had no answers and sometimes avoided searching.

Lord, I used to be the one sad to have lost a son in Iraq but happy to have a daughter who loved me and filled my life with joy
.