A deafening car commercial poured from the television and filled the small living room where Amanda sprawled with Mr. Chesters on the couch.
On screen, a scrawny salesman sat with his four grandchildren in the back of a used double-cab Chevy. “Putter to Potter, to Hemp’s Used Motor-way. Where the prices are low, and the people are friend-lay!”
The doorbell rang, and Amanda muted the jingle she’d heard so many times. Unsettling Mr. Chesters, she peeked through the miniblinds. Wanda Zimmerman. Again.
“Hi, Mrs. Zimmerman.” Amanda held the door open a crack and the autumn sun poured inside.
“My, you’ve got it awfully dark in there.” Mrs. Zimmerman’s eyes fairly danced over the interior of the house. Waiting, no doubt, for an invitation to come inside. In one hand, she held a black poodle, in the other a Tupperware dish.
“I was napping.” Amanda didn’t soft-soap her response, knowing it wouldn’t matter if she said she’d been performing open-heart surgery.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Mrs. Zimmerman craned her neck for a closer look down the hallway. “We sure hate to interrupt you.”
The woman didn’t look sorry at all. Her hair was freshly teased from the beauty parlor and today’s culottes were a sassy lime green. Spiffed up to go a-calling.
“I’ve brought this soup over for you, cream of mushroom. Mark told me how much he liked it last week, so I made extra.”
Amanda believed Mrs. Zimmerman had a crush on Mark, in spite of their forty-year age difference. “Thank you so much.” She took the bowl, still frozen solid as if Wanda had whipped it out of the freezer on a whim. A good excuse to pop in on her favorite next-door neighbor.
“Thought you might have it for your lunch. He should be home soon, right?” Wanda patted the puffy sphere atop the dog’s head.
“About a half hour or so. I’ll tell him you came by.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll probably be out walking Princess, and catch him when he pulls in. It’s a lovely day. Have you been out?”
“Not yet.” As if the woman didn’t know already. With a picture window covered only with sheers, and supersonic telescopic hearing, Mrs. Zimmerman had the inside track on virtually everything.
“Well, I’ll see you around the yard, I guess.” She waggled Princess’s paw in good-bye.
Not if I see you first. Amanda closed the door and returned to her show.
A dizzying pattern flashed above the host’s coiffed head. “And it’s back to you, Tammy. What will be your bid on this beautiful white sofa bed?”
Amanda sipped her coffee, bitter from hours on the burner after Mark’s early departure for church, and watched the contestants hop up and down while the audience screamed numbers.
Come on, Tammy. Go for the undercut and bid a dollar. She put the mug back on the antique chest next to her breakfast remains, an empty carton of yogurt and crooked bone crusts from cinnamon toast.
Flopping back on her own couch, she ran a finger over the unraveled edge. She never got around to fixing it. Maybe she should get to a furniture store today and look around.
Or maybe not.
She tucked the frayed part into obscurity and readjusted the fleece blanket over her legs. Her movements twisted the waistband on her pajama bottoms, borrowed from Mark’s dresser. She slid a hand under her cocoon to adjust the worn cotton.
Her stomach was still squashy, like a layer of bread dough. She didn’t dwell on it. She was tired of dwelling and tired of crying.
The cordless phone buzzed on the antique chest and interrupted her self-evaluation. Picking it up, she read the caller ID. Ben Thompson. Sorry, Mama, I just can’t. Setting the phone down, she sent silent apologies in the general direction of Houston.
The machine kicked on. A loud beep, then her mother’s voice. “Amanda. Amanda, baby, I know you’re there. You’re probably lying on that wretched couch watching television.” An audible intake of breath, a phone-call smoke under way.
“It’s all right if you don’t want to talk to me. If you’re too busy with your new life up in Potter Springs.” The heavy guilt tone seeped through the phone line like toxic gas.
Amanda nestled farther into the cushions. Her new life. Where she dodged invitations from Shelinda for coffee. Avoiding “How are you, honeygirl?” phone calls from Peggy, and hiding when Missy delivered a welcome basket to her door.
Amanda told herself she was just settling in, but she didn’t believe it.
“Anyway”-an exhale-“you might call your father sometime this week. He’s worried about you. I tell him you are just fine, but of course he doesn’t believe me. And I don’t know why he should, it’s not like I’ve spoken with you this week, to know for sure.”
Her mother let that marinate a moment or two.
“Well, that’s all I have, baby girl. I’ll talk to you soon.” Katy Thompson hung up without a good-bye or I love you, as was her tradition.
Amanda pushed a button, amplifying Tammy’s delirious screams, drowning out the silence.
“Miss Tammy, tell me this … how would you like to win … a NEW CAR!” Bob said the magic words, and Tammy launched into an ecstatic explanation of how winning this ice blue seven-passenger minivan would be an absolute answer to prayer.
The phone rang again, interrupting Tammy’s enthusiasms. The church number came up, Lakeview Com broken off at the top. Mark. Amanda cleared her throat. “Hello?”
“Amanda?”
She always thought it funny that Mark asked. As if some other strange woman would answer their phone in the middle of the day.
“Hi.” She tilted the phone to the side and coughed again, to expel the morning frog.
“You feeling okay? Sounds like you’re getting a cold.” Concern filled his voice.
Since the baby, Mark had tiptoed around her health. He never mentioned the miscarriage, just made vague references to her general well-being.
Maybe he feared if he mentioned baby, she’d come apart like a rag doll. That she’d spill lumpy grief on him, exposing her unpretty insides.
“No, I’m good,” she lied. Knowing he didn’t want the truth. He wanted her to hurry up and get over it, so for both their sakes she would pretend that she had. “Just lazy. I slept in a little this morning.”
“Oh. Well, that’s okay. You probably need the rest.”
“Probably.” She eyed her open journal on the floor next to the couch. Instead of Mark’s shoulder, she cried on flat pages. Gushed out stored sorrows in a muddy flood, ugly words written in a spiral notebook. She wrote letters to the baby, tried out names.
Amanda believed, in her heart, that her baby had been a girl. She would have named her Grace.
“How’s work?” She changed the subject to a safe topic and picked up a pen.
“My computer came in. It’s a total dinosaur, but I’ve got my office all set up. I’d love for you to come up here and see it. When you’re feeling better.”
She doodled on the empty page. Daisies, shooting stars, and the name Grace Reynolds, over and over.
Grace would have had Mark’s fair hair and long fingers, and would have been naughty and funny and wonderful. Grace would have filled Amanda’s days with coos and cries and diapers.
Maybe with Grace, Amanda would feel a connection to this place-the place where her baby would be born. She’d push the carriage through the square, like the other moms, and share a melting ice cream with Grace. The sweet cold would touch perfect rosebud lips and she’d watch her baby’s eyes sparkle.
“Listen.” Mark’s tension cut through her silence. “They’ve got a women’s social coming up soon.” He softened his voice with an encouraging lilt. “Their fall kickoff, a kind of a getting-to-know-you thing. It’d be a great chance for you to meet more of the women. There’ll be a luncheon, maybe a speaker. What do you think?”
That I’d rather have a root canal? “Oh, I don’t know, Mark. I’m just not sure if I’m ready.”
If Amanda had Grace, she would be eager to make friends instead of staying home on Sundays, each week’s excuse lamer than before. They’d throw her a shower with flowers and ribbons and balloons. Precious things for baby Grace. She’d fill in her book, put Potter Springs, Texas, on the space for place of birth, and would laugh with her daughter about how it had no spring. She’d love this town and these people because of her baby.
But there was no baby. And there never would be.
The day she checked out of the hospital, when the doctor came in with his starched coat and cold eyes, he’d told her. Gave a fancy name that meant your womb is no good. Close to impossible, he’d said. Made condolences, shook Mark’s hand and left.
Mark, holding her clumsily as she sat stunned in the hospital-issue wheelchair, telling her everything would be okay.
But it wasn’t okay. Their baby had died, and so had her dreams. They would never have a family and now she was stuck in this town with no friends and no desire to make them.
“It’s just that, well, everybody wants to meet you. There are some really nice people here.”
“Like Letty? Or Dale?”
“No. There are others, believe it or not. Like when we moved in. A whole congregation full. You’ll like them, I promise.”
I promise. She’d heard them before. It’ll be better in Potter Springs. We’ll get through this, Mandy. I’m here for you. Always.
I promise. To have and to hold. For better and for worse. In sickness and in health.
Till death, do we part.
I promise.
She didn’t comment on Mark’s promises, just watched Tammy race to place gigantic price tags on tables holding electric toothbrushes and vacuum cleaners.
When she didn’t say anything further, he offered, “I understand if you need more time.”
He didn’t understand at all.
“Amanda, I’m trying here.” He lowered his voice as if Letty Hodges lurked just outside his office door, ready to snatch up marital gossip and run. “I’ll give you all the room, all the space you need.”
But she didn’t want room. Or space. Or time. She wanted her best friend, her only friend, to climb into the darkness with her and hold her. Cry with her. Rail against fate with her and talk about what could have been. Grace.
To come into this cave and bring some of that light he shone so bright.
If he knew about the cave, he didn’t say so. And the walls were so cold, the air so heavy, she could hardly breathe to tell him. To scream out to help her, for God’s sake.
But Mark was elsewhere, for God’s sake, she reasoned. She felt pretty safe in the cave, used to the coolness. The security of the prison. She wasn’t sure she was ready to leave its confines to the wide, open spaces of Potter.
“I’ll tell you what. Just think about it, okay?”
“Sure,” she managed. The hope in his voice nearly crushed her. “I’ll think about it.”
“Great. So, I’ll see you in a little bit?”
“See you then. We’ve got more mushroom soup from Mrs. Zimmerman.”
“Lord, help us.” Mark sighed. He hated mushroom soup.
Amanda clicked the phone off as Tammy wrapped stubby arms around Bob’s neck and planted a fevered kiss on his face. She’d won the van.
Amanda checked the wall clock. Eleven-thirty. She had just enough time to hop in the shower and clean up her breakfast mess. With a little lipstick and a fresh outfit, she’d be ready. She rose from the couch, ran her hands over the buckled fabric, and padded down the hall toward the shower.
Her husband was on his way home. Cave or not, she’d put on a happy face for him. Because raggedy dolls always wore smiles, and she wasn’t about to disappoint him.