back and forth between being dead and screaming at me because what was I thinking, anyway? And I think I better keep myself quiet because it seems like if I tried to say anything I’d just blow apart.
“She’s waking up.” Baxter nods at Amber over the syringe he’s filling up from a brown bottle and then mumbles something about the right number of cc’s.
“I’ll get her a bottle,” I say.
“You will not,” Kay says. “Wait till she cries. You need to stretch out her feeding times. She could go three or four hours. This every half-hour in the middle of the night is ridiculous. Just let her be. And if you hold her every second, you’re never going to be able to put that kid down. I’m telling you, you’re spoiling her.”
“She’s lonely.”
“She’s not lonely. She’s figuring out the world. Leave her be.”
Baxter clears his throat. “Libby, Libby, Libby. Listen here. You shouldn’t go and lose the first thing that makes you smile each day. You hear me? Don’t go and lose the first thing that makes you smile.”
“Okay, Baxter. You’ve told me that a time or two.”
“Which means, you got to pause and think about what it is that makes you smile.”
“All right.”
“I haven’t smiled yet today,” Kay says. “I don’t think I will. I guess I got nothing worth keeping. Are you going to help me here or what?”
Baxter doesn’t move. He says to me in a real quiet voice, “Adeline’s what made me smile. When I woke, I was thinking of her and smiling.” I don’t say anything, but he says what’s on my mind for me. “But I went and lost her anyway, didn’t I?”
I wish I had words for things. Other people do, probably. But I’ve never been able to tell Baxter how sorry I am that his wife died, that I miss her too, that she made the best frog’s-eye salad. Which scared me when I was a kid, till she told me it was made out of tiny pastas and whipped cream and no frogs were involved. When I was little, I used to wish that Adeline was my mom because she seemed warm and soft and calm, like she didn’t have that need to hurt anybody, but mostly, I guess, because she seemed to actually like me. I never said anything about this to Baxter, and I can’t now either. Stupid me, because this is my chance to say something if I only could think of it. Instead, I shrug and stare at Amber, who is staring at the air in front of her.
“I’ve been thinking of selling this place,” Baxter says.
I look up, surprised, and I see that he’s watching me, waiting for my reaction and nodding, like, Yeah, I knew that’d get her.
“That decided it, though—remembering my ma saying, ‘Don’t go losing the first thing that makes you smile.’ This place makes me too happy. I lost too much already. I’ll stick it out for a bit longer. I’m getting old, though. I’m getting old.”
“You’re not old, Baxter.”
“Plus, a person’s just got to rise to the occasion.” He’s always saying that, but he especially started up with that particular phrase right after Adeline died. Kay’d been worried for a bit, because for a while none of the bills were getting paid and the place was starting to fall apart. Kay had said that everyone needs a wife, including wives, and when you don’t have that extra helper all hell breaks loose. But Baxter figured out how the bills got paid and the books got kept, and now it seems he’s adjusted to being alone and I guess he rose to the occasion after all. “You do that, too, Libby,” he says to me now. “Rise to the occasion.”
“Sure,” I say.
“And as long as I got Kay, this place’ll run for a bit longer.” He says it in a whisper, though, because Kay’s coming up the alley with a calf. He winks at me, like this is a secret we should keep, and that’s another thing about Baxter, he’s always trying to make something special or secret when it’s not.
A calf bawls, wanting his mama. The mama bellows back. Flies are landing all over me and, Jesus, it’s like a million degrees out here.
Amber’s staring up toward the sky. I should get her picture taken by a real photographer. Probably she needs a diaper change. I gotta move out of here. I gotta get some money. I wonder what Derek’s doing right now at the rig. I wonder where Tess is, because she sure didn’t tell me where she was heading when she drove off yesterday. I wonder if Amber is getting too much sun, because the doctor said no sunscreen till she’s six months and that I was going to have to work hard at keeping a baby out of the sun in eastern Colorado. I wonder when my heart is going to quit hurting for Tess, and I wonder when I’m going to start feeling wonderful for Amber. I wonder how, exactly, I ended up here, because not in a million daydreams did I ever imagine this.
Last fall, Tess said to me, “Libby? You want to know something funny?” She was ready for school, in her Roper jeans and boots, with her hair curled and her dark eyes made up. It was one of her country-dress days. Other days she dressed up artsy, or scootery, as she called it, with her skirt with pleats at the bottom. She cared about that sort of thing and it drove her insane that I was pretty much a fan of jeans and baggy T-shirts. But anyway, this was one of her country days, and she said, “Lib, I have the funniest thing to tell you. You want to hear something really funny?”
“Sure.” We were leaning against Kay’s truck, and I remember it being warm from the sun, even though the day was cold. The snow was falling in little lazy circles, but neither of us had put a coat on. We were hugging ourselves with sweatered arms, waiting for Kay to come out of the house so she could drive Tess to school and drop me off at the store.
Tess was doing a little bounce number on her feet to get warm and she bounced up and down and she said, “I’m pregnant.”
I think maybe I laughed, because she had said it was supposed to be funny, and also because it was surprising, and also because I didn’t believe her. Then I said, “What?”
She pressed her lips together, blending in the pink lipstick. “I’m pregnant.”
I looked from her face to her belly, where her sweater met the fabric of blue jeans. Her tummy was tiny, as always, and the sliver of it I could see was as tan and muscular as ever. “You’re not pregnant,” I said.
“I am.”
“That’s very funny.”
She rubbed at her nose and looked away from me. “It’s true. We weren’t careful. Don’t freak out. It happens. You know, it just happens. I don’t want to ask him to drive me.”
“Who?”
“Simon. I don’t want him, I want you. To drive me to Denver. Or Pueblo, if they do them there. I’ve got the money, I’ll figure things out. But I want you to drive me.”
“But Tess—”
“I’ve already thought about everything.” She tipped her head up toward the sun and closed her eyes. “I wish I could go back in time. This is the first time I realized what people mean when they want to go back. You understand? I wish I could redo that instant. You remember what that health teacher always said? A moment of pleasure, a lifetime of pain. Only it wasn’t even a moment of pleasure.”
“Tess?”
“He wasn’t worth it. The sex wasn’t worth it. Of course it wasn’t. At least I’m eighteen now, because otherwise everything would be more complicated. How come you never warned me?”
“What?”
“Warned me that just a moment could fuck up so much?” She looked at me and smiled. “I’m just teasing, Libby. Don’t look so surprised. It wasn’t your job to warn me, even if you are my big sister and all. Just joking.”
I was looking at the icicles hanging from the house. They were dripping, and the drips made little plops and dings as they hit the stuff below: a hubcap, an empty five-gallon