CHAPTER 7
July 1983
Dr. Eloisa Brownback pulled off her latex gloves and tossed them into the wastebasket before snapping off the goosenecked exam light.
“All right, Mary Dell. You can sit up now.”
Mary Dell took her feet from the stirrups and pushed herself into a sitting position at the end of the table. She didn’t ask the doctor if the baby was all right. Eloisa’s solemn expression told her everything.
“I’m so sorry.” Dr. Brownback sat down on a rolling stool and sighed as she took Mary Dell’s hand. “Did you tell Donny you were pregnant?”
“I didn’t want to talk to him until after the first trimester. Didn’t want to get his hopes up again.”
“I think you should talk to him—about adoption. It’s time.”
Mary Dell shook her head. “I’ve tried. Donny is dead set on us having a child of our own. He says it’s up to him to carry on the family name.”
The doctor sniffed. “Look, Mary Dell. Maybe it’s not my place to meddle in family affairs, but it’s not like the entire future of the Bebee clan rests solely on Donny’s shoulders, does it? He does have a brother, after all. Can’t he be the one to carry on the line?”
Eloisa raised her eyebrows to underscore the question, then turned her back and started scribbling notes on Mary Dell’s chart. Mary Dell slid off the exam table, wrapping the white sheet around herself like a sarong.
“Doesn’t seem likely,” Mary Dell answered as she stepped behind a privacy screen and started to dress. “Graydon’s up in Kansas now, works as a hired man and lives like a hermit. He lives in one room, doesn’t have a telephone of his own, doesn’t keep company with anybody, never even goes to town unless he has to. I can’t see him getting married and making babies anytime soon.”
Mary Dell sighed as she reached around back to hook up her bra. She felt sorry for Graydon. Life in that POW camp must have been unimaginably difficult, but that wasn’t what had driven him to his hermitic lifestyle. No, it was coming home to discover the woman he’d pinned his dreams on had married someone else that had done it. Of course, it had to have been a terrible and heartbreaking shock. But it was so sad. Having lived through the misery and isolation of one prison, Graydon had returned home and entered another, but this time he’d done it by choice.
Lydia Dale, on the other hand, was stuck. Mary Dell had tried to talk her out of marrying Jack Benny, but she’d accused Mary Dell of trying to “spoil her last chance at happiness,” unable to see that if anything was going to spoil her chance for happiness, it was marrying Jack Benny. She knew that now, of course.
Mary Dell did up the green rhinestone buttons on her bright blue blouse, thinking back on the vision of happiness that Lydia Dale had conjured all those years ago, the one that had propelled Mary Dell out of the bathroom and down the aisle, a picture of them living next door to each other with passels of towheaded children running back and forth between the houses, stealing cookies and causing havoc, of holidays and birthdays celebrated with a crowd of relatives, of being best friends again and for always.
It hadn’t happened.
The sisters lived close, but they weren’t close—not like they had been. They talked all the time, and Mary Dell saw the children, nine-year-old Jeb and six-year-old Brocade, known as Cady, at least twice a week. The kids were sweet, and Lydia Dale and Jack Benny’s little house was just six miles from the ranch. But Jack Benny was a wedge between the sisters. Lydia Dale refused to discuss her marriage, and because they couldn’t talk about that, they couldn’t talk about a lot of things.
So many fine plans, but none of it had worked out.
The only thing that had turned out better than she could have hoped was the one thing she’d never planned on at all. She’d never figured on falling in love with her husband on her honeymoon, but that’s what had happened.
Donny was not only a handsome man but a good one, and a loving husband, a little incommunicative and hard to unglue from the television during football season, but that was all right. Mary Dell loved football, like any true Texan. She’d grown up going to the high school home games every Friday night during the season and still did, along with everybody else in town. Friday night football was the social highlight of the week in Too Much. And, of course, they watched televised college games on Saturday and professional teams on Sunday after church, especially if the Cowboys were playing. Mary Dell couldn’t wait for the start of the new season. Sitting snuggled up next to her husband on the sofa while they watched a game together was just one more pleasure of being married to Donny. But for their inability to have children, Mary Dell would have described her marriage as perfectly happy. Who’d ever have figured that the man she’d “had” to marry thirteen years before would be the ideal man for her? How did she get so lucky?
And Donny wasn’t just good to her; he was good to her folks too. She didn’t know how the family would have survived without him.
After Dutch developed diabetes and lost part of his left foot to the disease, he wasn’t capable of doing as much on the ranch—not that he’d ever been much of a go-getter to start with. When Dutch was running things, the ranch barely broke even. But things changed when Donny joined the family.
Donny worked sunup to sundown, adding a new breed of beef cattle to the mix of livestock, sheep too, putting those ideas he’d talked about on their honeymoon into practice and making the ranch profitable enough to support the whole family—the whole family, not just himself and Mary Dell but Dutch and Taffy, Grandma Silky, even Jack Benny and Lydia Dale.
Jack Benny was a Benton, which, in theory, should have made him a wealthy man, at least by Too Much standards. But he and his daddy didn’t get on. Noodie kept a tight grip on the family finances, swearing that his worthless son wouldn’t get a dime of his money until he was dead and buried. Since Noodie looked to be in pretty good health, that might take some time. Until then, Jack Benny was supposed to be working at the ranch to help support his family. Mary Dell couldn’t remember the last time he put in a full week’s work, but he had no compunction about taking a full share of the profits.
That was something else they couldn’t talk about. Mary Dell knew Lydia Dale was embarrassed by her husband’s shiftless ways and hated accepting money that he’d done so little to earn, but what else could she do? She had two little children to support. Mary Dell didn’t blame her or resent her. Lydia Dale deserved more from life than she’d been given.
After sucking in her breath and zipping up her jeans, Mary Dell came out from behind the screen and sat down on a metal side chair. The doctor scribbled something on a pad of paper.
“I don’t think you’re going to need it,” she said, tearing the top sheet off the pad and handing it to Mary Dell, “but here’s a prescription just in case. If the pain is severe or the bleeding gets worse, call me. Take it easy for a week or so, and no driving today. Is somebody coming to pick you up?”
“Lydia Dale will be here as soon as her meeting lets out.”
“Good. And tell Donny to keep his hands off you for a few days. Or maybe I should be saying that to you instead?” the doctor asked with a wink. “Your aunt recently gave me a very informative lecture about the Tudmore clan’s Fatal Flaw. Velvet is quite a character.”
Mary Dell grinned at the mention of her aunt. “Well, she’s got a lot of theories, but I think she’s right about the Fatal Flaw. I don’t know why, but every now and then, Donny starts looking like Robert Redford and Paul Newman all rolled into one.”
The doctor laughed. “That’s no fatal flaw; that’s biology, nature’s way of making sure the human race goes on. And thank heaven for it, or I’d be out of business.”
She got up from her chair and slipped Mary Dell’s file into a rack near the door. “Speaking of business, how is Lydia Dale feeling? She should be over the nausea soon, but if not, tell her to call the office.”
Mary Dell’s eyes went wide. “Nausea? You mean Lydia Dale is . . .”
Dr. Brownback covered her mouth with her hand. When she removed it, her smile was replaced by a stricken expression. “She’s your sister, so I—I assumed she’d told you by now. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Mary Dell said. “She was probably trying to spare my feelings.” She attempted a smile.
Mary Dell wanted a baby so badly, but three doctors and five miscarriages after her first, no one seemed to be able to explain or solve the problem.
Lydia Dale, on the other hand, could use her husband’s toothbrush and get pregnant—at least that’s how it seemed. Mary Dell was certain that this baby was a surprise, perhaps even an accident. It was so unfair. Why should Lydia Dale so easily be granted the thing Mary Dell wanted most? But then again, maybe Lydia Dale had the same sort of questions. Maybe she wondered why Mary Dell should have so easily and unexpectedly found what Lydia Dale wanted most: the love of a good man.
Mary Dell got to her feet and slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder. She would not be jealous of her sister.
Dr. Brownback opened the door for Mary Dell. “I’m really very sorry,” she repeated. “It was a stupid mistake. Please tell Lydia Dale that I’m going to call her later. If she wants to find another doctor, I completely understand. And if she wants to file a complaint with the medical board . . .”
Mary Dell rolled her eyes. “Oh, for pity’s sake. Stop it. She’s not going to file any complaint. Lydia Dale’s not the complaining kind. And anyway,” Mary Dell said with a shrug, “I was bound to find out before long. Last time Lydia Dale was pregnant she blew up like a bloated fish. But don’t tell her I said so.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” Dr. Brownback said, holding up her hand and then letting it drop on Mary Dell’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? I’m going to be an aunt again. I get a new baby to snuggle and I don’t even have to get morning sickness or stretch marks to do it.”
“That’s kind of how adoption works too.” Eloisa squeezed her shoulder. “You’re going to talk to Donny?”
Mary Dell bobbed her head. “I will. Just as soon as the time is right.”