police, because for all she knows Tess is flopped dead in a field somewhere, and it’s sure as hell going to be my fault when Tess dies. And you know what else, this baby ought to be having breast milk, because it’s the formula that’s causing her to cry all night. And furthermore I got to realize my horsing around days are over and that I’m not going to know what hit me. Two dumb daughters. The two dumbest daughters a mother could ask for. One that won’t stay around, the other who won’t leave.
Tess used to say: Libby, would you please tell me what you do in your mind all day? You daydream like nobody I ever met. You live in your head more than you live in your life.
I’d say: Leave me alone, I’m thinking.
She’d say: About what? A different life?
And I’d say: No, a different me.
The last time we had that conversation, she said, Well, sister, it’s Real Life that you need to focus on now.
She said:
One, Derek is going to leave you.
Two, You’re going to have your heart broke. Not by Derek, but by this baby. You’re taking this baby so you’ll have something to love, something that will love you back. But you know what? It’s not going to fill you up, it’s not going to make your life complete.
Three, You’re going to end up just like Kay. Pissed off that you wasted your time on this earth.
She said, When we were kids, you’d take me down the road, to get me away from Kay, and you’d play make-believe with me, and we’d pretend to be in other families, in other places. Kids do that because they’re kids. But you never stopped pretending. This is our world. This is it.
She said, Libby, this baby isn’t going to be like you imagine at all, if you’ve even bothered to try to imagine it real. I feel so sorry for you. But this was your idea, remember that. You got to start thinking, and you’ve got to let go of the idea that you’re something special to somebody, because none of us are, and if you don’t, if you don’t stop dreaming about that, you’re going to end up all snap-snap-snapped to pieces.
I light a cigarette and say, “All right all right all right already.”
But it’s not all right, and Amber keeps crying.
If I could get a word in edgewise, I’d say, Kid, night hours are longer than day hours, that’s an actual fact, and one of the things I could teach you is about how certain truths—sixty-minutes-in-an-hour and all that—just are not the truest truth.
But she’s hollering so I don’t even try, I just pace around outside with her cradled in the crook of my arm.
It seems like a few days ago that Kay was yelling at me in the bathroom, but it was just earlier tonight. This night just keeps expanding, and there’s nothing to stop it, and it’s three o’clock in the morning and it’s going to be forever until the sun comes up.
Crickets are chirping and there’s some animal rustling near the burn barrel—a raccoon I think, because I heard it doing that purr-chatter thing that they do—and the occasional car roars down the highway. But I can only hear these things when Amber pauses for a breath, which she doesn’t do all that often.
“Blah, blah, blah,” I say to her. “Be quiet. Go to sleep. Please. Because I’m going to drop dead in about a minute.”
She cries some more, a high-pitched wail that bursts against my eardrums.
“Look, it’s a good thing Derek didn’t come by, because this ain’t how you should be acting when he does. Would you like him as a father? He doesn’t want to be, though. And I don’t think I want him to be either, although sometimes I wonder if he’d be better than nobody. And that makes me feel like a real shit.”
I throw my cigarette down and twist it in the earth with my toe and then cart Amber inside to the fridge for a beer, and then back outside. When I’m not drinking it, I balance the bottle on her tummy. When she quiets down for a bit, I take my turn in the conversation. “Your crying is really damn irritating, that’s the truth,” I tell her. “Listen to this. Once I honked the car’s horn at a deer that was crossing the road and the horn got stuck—this was in an old car of mine. It just kept on honking, and I had to drive thirty miles with that noise, one big long honk, till I got to Derek’s place, and he climbed under the car and cut the wires that lead to the horn, and, kid, you are worse than that. But probably you’re crying because you feel like shit, so I’m sorry. And no matter what, I won’t throw you out a window. Kay’s right about some things, and I guess I’m glad she just says them. I do hate you sometimes.”
She looks at me like she’s listening, for once, so I take my chance and start talking fast before she decides to change her mind. “Derek and me, we stay together because there isn’t anybody else coming our way. I keep trying to figure out how to love him, but I just can’t. Derek is good. He’s nice. He’s a regular good-guy, and I don’t know why, but I just don’t love him.” I lower my voice and say another thing I’m not sure about, but I want to hear out loud. “I’m not sure I love you, either. Not yet.” She’s spitting up white goo now, and I wipe it from her face with the corner of the blanket. “Maybe I didn’t mean that. Sorry. I’m sorry! Listen, one thing I’ll do for sure is get you braces if you need them. That way, you won’t be ugly like me. You’ll have improved chances. Too fucking much depends on how you look, kid, although maybe by the time you’re grown humans will have grown up about this, although I doubt it. Kid, you seem to actually be listening. Good. Listen up. I’ve got things to tell you. I try to imagine you older, a blond-haired girl with braids and blue overalls, but I can’t picture what your face looks like, or what it feels like to hold your hand, or where we’re living and how things are going for us. It’s hard for me to picture. What do you think about that? I think that’s a bad sign.”
She’s quiet and looks like she’s listening, so I drink beer and tell her any dang thing I can think of. How Tess was always my best friend, except for Shawny. How I never stopped to consider how much I loved them, because I just did. How I was counting on that to be true with her too, but so far nothing has cleared up. That I’m afraid of the dark, there’s not so many mosquitoes this year, and that those bright things she’s staring at are called stars. How I’m not really fond of the president of the United States, because he seems to have less going for him than even me. How my father’s been gone since I was three and I have no idea where he is. How my parents used to be Baxter’s ranch hands, but then my father left and Kay stayed on. How I spent my whole life wanting out of this brown house in the middle of an alfalfa field and never once did I figure that I’d be raising a kid in the exact same place. How probably I should call social services because she’s not mine legally right now, and that’s something I should take care of. And I would have, except that I didn’t know Tess was leaving. But that maybe I won’t bother because there’s too much paperwork and anyway, according to Kay, all social services wants to do really is follow you around and figure out how to take your baby. How probably I should meet some other moms so that I don’t feel so alone. How I haven’t told anybody how much I’m missing Tess—so much that my heart feels tired from the ache.
Then I loop back to Derek, because I figure I gotta work this one out somehow. I tell her how we’ve been dating for two years now, and how sometimes he gets out of a nice sleep, drives here, and then gets back up and goes home again, and how he must think what we do is worth all that effort, which I appreciate. I for one wish he would just stay the night, because what could Kay say, given her own track record? But Derek has some weird sort of pride, and he doesn’t want “to be beholden to Kay,” meaning, he doesn’t want to spend the night in the house of someone who doesn’t like him.
I tell Amber that Derek has never given me flowers or taken me to a show in Denver, and sometimes he’s yelled at me for no good reason and once he said, “Lib, I’m not going to tell you you’re beautiful, because you’re just not,” and when he said that a sudden shock of hurt went blasting through my heart. But one thing he’s done is to come through my window and stay