When the Morning Glory Blooms (5 page)

BOOK: When the Morning Glory Blooms
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Splayed on the changing table, Jackson pinched his eyes shut and giggled from his belly, an outrageously soul-satisfying sound. Becky tickled his knee again as she held the front of the disposable diaper in position. The new diaper warmed beneath her hand. Wet already, and she hadn’t even gotten the tabs closed yet. She replaced it with a fresh one, tugged a pair of sweat pants over his tickle-friendly legs, and pulled the clean-enough-for-now knit shirt into position.

He reached for her—
reached
for her—and a remnant of joy stole back into her heart, like refugees crossing the border into safe territory. He’d done that to her since the moment he took his first breath in a birthing center that was shy one man.

The missing man could be the one in the family room right now, part of the acne-ridden think tank conjugating French verbs between bites of Becky’s caramel corn.

Caramel corn! She was an enabler! She might be, at that moment, giving sustenance to a hormonally charged teen who refused to man up and confess he had fathered the child now nestled into her neck with his fingers entwined in her hair, his love laced through the muscles of her heart.

She didn’t like the suspicious side of herself. If Noah were innocent, she was worse than those whose eyes widened a few months ago when Lauren’s belly entered the room before the
rest of her. “It’s not a giant wart. It’s a baby!” she’d wanted to say to them. And what did that say about her? She owed an apology to all the people in the world with giant warts.

“Mom?”

Becky turned. Lauren stood in the doorway, Noah behind her.

“We’re taking a break. Can we have Jackson?”

I don’t know. Can you? Did you? Did the two of you—?

“I want to show Noah how he rolls over.” She shifted from one foot to the other as she held out her arms.

“Carrie and Dane, too?”

Lauren shot her a searing look and leveled, “They had to go home.” She took Jackson from Becky with an exaggerated tug.

Love isn’t Silly Putty.

If I were the perfect mom, I’d say
  . . . 

No idea. None.

“I’m going to run a load of darks. Mind if I grab yours while I’m here, Lauren?”

The lines of Lauren’s jaw turned from freezer meat to refrigerated. Partially thawed. “That would be great. Thanks.”

Maybe Noah was just a good friend. Bless him for sticking by Lauren in spite of everything. How many high school guys would do that? Maybe Jackson’s eyes were more indigo than denim. Maybe he and Noah didn’t share the same chin dimple.

Becky kicked at the piles of Lauren’s clothes, half-expecting something to slither out of the shadows. With two fingers she picked up a nearly stiff charcoal sweater and pulled two pairs of jeans sticking Wicked-Witch-of-the-West style from under the unmade bed. Nothing slithered, but something rattled. The piece of plastic must have been snagged by a belt loop.

She bent with jerky, robotic motions. No.

No.

No. Please, God
.

Becky stumbled to Lauren’s overflowing wastebasket, dumped its contents on the floor, held it under her dimpleless chin, and threw up.

“Mom! You were just holding Jackson. If you knew you were getting the flu, why didn’t you say something? Now he’s all exposed.” Lauren held the baby on her far hip, as if shielding him with her body. “And gross. You owe me a new wastebasket.”

“I don’t have the flu.” She sat on the edge of Lauren’s bed—the basket on the floor at her feet—waiting to gain the strength to clean it up.

“My room stinks. No offense, Mom, but I’m not sleeping here tonight.”

“It’s not  . . .  the flu. Get your dad.”

Lauren backed another step into the hall. “He’s taking Noah home. Noah’s sensitive to the sound of puking.”

“Didn’t Noah drive?”

“His anal parents took his keys. Total misunderstanding.”

Headache. Throbbing headache. “When your dad  . . .  gets  . . .  home  . . .”

“Mom, are you okay? Are you having a stroke or something?” One more step back into the hall. “Should I call 911?”

One of us may need 911 before this night’s over
. “Take Jackson to the family room. You can get the portable crib out of my closet, if you want. I’ll be out in a few minutes. By then, your dad should be back.”

She chuffed. “I—”

“Lauren, if you ever wanted to not cross me, it’s now.”

Two teeth-brushings and a mouthwash later, Becky held a cold washcloth to her eyes. She heard the garage door opener grind open, then close. She timed her entrance into the family room to coincide with Gil’s. She wouldn’t face Lauren alone. Not this time.

Obviously prewarned—thank the Lord for cell phones, sometimes—Gil kept a respectful distance.

“Feeling better, honey? Can I get you anything?” He lowered himself into his recliner before she had a chance to answer.

Sweet man. “I’m okay. My stomach’s okay. Relatively.”

Gil reached to turn on the end-table lamp.

“Dad!”

“What?”

“Jackson?” Lauren pointed to the portable crib, as if it needed an introduction—an explosion of rainbow colors in a room of deep caramel and light cream.

Gil held his hands up, surrendering. “Ah. Indoor voices and low lights. Still getting used to having a baby in the house.”

Becky’s stomach spasmed.

“Mom, you’re looking weird again. Why don’t you just go to bed? Whatever it is can wait until—”

“Lauren,
it
can’t wait.” She dropped the piece of plastic onto the coffee table. “Care to explain this?”

Gil leaned forward, forearms on his knees. Becky caught the movement in her peripheral vision, but her eyes stayed focused on Lauren’s face.

Gil reached to touch it, then withdrew his hand. “Is that—?”

“Yes, dear. A home pregnancy test.”

“Becky, are you—?”

She dropped her lock-gaze with Lauren. “Oh, Gil. Come on.”

“The vomiting. The irritability.”

You want irritability?
“This is not mine.” She turned back to Lauren. “Want to explain to your father what this was doing in your bedroom?”

Lauren studied the threads in the side seam of her jeans. “Not really.”

“That’s  . . .  that’s the old one, right? The one announcing Jackson?” Gil dipped his head as if trying to make his daughter look him in the eye. “The old one. Why you saved it is kind of bizarre.”

Becky ran her tongue over her freshly cleaned teeth as she worked to temper her response. “Not the old one, honey. That was a different brand of test.”

“How do you remember these details? I’m in awe.”

“Gil!” Becky picked up the handle end of the plastic rod. She tapped it on the coffee table surface as if beating out a parent’s Morse code of desperation. “Lauren, what does this mean?”

“Why are you looking at me?” Lauren drew her floppy sweater across her front, lapping it like two-layered armor.

“Well, let’s see. Your room. Your bed. Your history.”

“Hey! This is so not fair.”

“Lauren, are you pregnant again?” Gil’s voice was uncharacteristically throaty.

“No, Dad!”

Becky stopped tapping. “That’s not what
this
says.”

Lauren bent at the waist and rocked back and forth.

“Lauren?”

Gil slid out of his chair and knelt in front of Lauren. He lifted her chin and said, “Lauren, we love you. No matter what.”

Becky wished she’d thought to do that.

“I am not pregnant!”

Jackson wailed, as if disappointed to hear he didn’t qualify for a “Big Brothers Rawk” T-shirt.

“You made me scare him! Will you get off my back?” She stood, picked up her sobbing son, and clutched him to her chest, rocking all the harder now.

“Is it Noah? It’s time we knew, Lauren.”

Gil’s laser-beam look told Becky this might not be the time to reopen that case.

She glared back. “What? We need to know.” She turned her focus back to their daughter.

Lauren’s eyes narrowed. “I can’t believe you guys would think that of me.”

“Kind of an odd statement coming from a seventeen-year-old whose curfew is earlier than her baby’s bedtime.”

“Mom!”

“Becky, cool it down.” Gil made a hand motion that looked like a basketball coach trying to slow the pace of the full court press.

I can’t raise my child to make good choices. I can’t teach her how to be a good mom. And I can’t even confront her correctly when she makes another dumb mistake
. “Lauren, we do love you, honey. More than you’ll probably ever know. It’s because we care so much about you that we—” Her throat tightened.
Breathe in. Breathe out
. “Because we care, we’re concerned about you ruining your future, to say nothing about what it will mean for these babies.”

“Baby, Mom. One baby.”

One inconsolable baby to match the other inconsolable people in the room.

Lauren tilted her head, chin lifted and jaw set in a line so tight her lips turned white. “That’s not mine.” She nodded toward the object of derision on the coffee table.

“Then whose is it, Lauren?”

“Brianne’s, okay?” The tears coursing down her face matched her son’s. “But it’s not a problem anymore. She took care of it.”

A groan started at the edge of the universe, dodged all the black holes in outer space, and rocketed to earth, to the Midwest, to one grotesquely silent family room.

Jackson laid one hand against Lauren’s damp cheek. Becky knew it weighed little more than a birthmark.

4

Ivy—1951

How could Ivy take him seriously with that dot of toilet paper stuck to his chin knob? It bobbed as he chewed his corn flakes and stared at the nothingness with which he was obsessed. She would have made him a more substantial breakfast if he’d waited until she’d finished getting ready for work. Or if she’d set her alarm to go off a half hour earlier than dawn. He’d succeeded in swelling her guilt without a word.

“Dad?”

He picked up the newspaper. The word “Korea” always caught her eye.
Promising young Democrat John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts offers views on Korean War armistice talks in Kaesong
. Her father waded deeper into the paper. Editorials? Obituaries? Why did she even bother waiting for the courtesy of a “What, honey?”

“Dad, we’re out of potatoes. It’s Wednesday.”

Meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Canned peas. Fruit cocktail. Like always.

He put down his cereal spoon and ran the palms of his hands forward and back on the overripe-lemon-yellow Formica tabletop. His wedding ring clinked on the metal edge at the near point of each trip.

She couldn’t think about the meatloaf—squishing her fingers through the greasy meat and raw egg, globules of chopped cow and bread crumbs stuck under her fingernails.

Potatoes. “The ad says they’re eighty-eight cents for five pounds this week. I could pick some up at the Piggly Wiggly after work.”

He nodded. Once. That was something.

“But  . . .”

Ornell Carrington braced his hands on the aluminum table edging and pushed off, his chair legs scraping like dulled claws on concrete. He shrugged into the faded blue work shirt he’d hung over the back of the chair and she shrugged out of her apron and into a holding pattern. Six buttons later, he dug into the breast pocket—the one embroidered with his name and Goodman’s Hardware, not in that order—and pulled out an overworked dollar bill.

He held it out to her, gripped between his index and middle fingers like other fathers might hold a cigarette. “Wish I could give you more, Ivy.”

Me, too, Dad. No matter what the subject, me, too
. She swallowed against the recurring thought of raw meatloaf.

What’s the word halfway between
thanks
and
okay
? Ivy needed it but couldn’t retrieve the elusive word from where it hid. She took the bill from his fingers and held it in her left hand while she cleared the table with her right, depositing the bowl, spoon, and gas station juice glass into the once-white, chipped enamel sink.

“Ivy?”

She turned at the sound of defeat in his voice.

He latched the buckles on his coal-black lunch box, tucked it under his arm, and held those same two fingers in the air. “Two months.”

BOOK: When the Morning Glory Blooms
3.09Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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