like me.”
“She doesn’t like anybody.”
“They’re dealing drugs.”
I press my hand to my forehead. “Derek, sometimes you say the dumbest shit. No way would Tess get involved in that.”
“Then where’d she get that money she left you?”
“From wherever.”
“Five hundred bucks? From wherever?”
“Just drop it.”
“Libby, I’m sorry to say this, and don’t get all pissed off, but sometimes I think you act stupid because it’s easier. You just refuse to see things so that you don’t have to deal with them.”
“The whole world does that, Derek. Anyway, I’m never going to use that money, I’m going to pretend I don’t have it. It’s for Amber. I don’t know where Tess got it, but it’s not from drugs.”
He sighs, meaning we got to change the subject before we get into one of our fights. “Who watched the baby last night?”
“I did. She cried a lot, but that’s okay.” I’d like to tell him more, how freaked-out I felt, or how it’s crazy that there’s always something to do—boil water, change a diaper, feed, burp, walk, and then all of it all over again—and how that keeps surprising me. How I don’t know how to get a onesie over her head, or how tight to pull the diaper around her tummy, or how hard to thump her back to get the burp to come. How I don’t know if I should wrap her tight in the baby blanket, because it seems too claustrophobic. And how I didn’t know about how light and hollow she’d feel, how much she’d squawk, how red-faced and blond-haired and angry she’d be.
But I’m trying hard to do what I promised, which is not get so wrapped up in this new situation that I forget about him. So instead I say, “How was work?”
“Same.” He tucks in a pinch of chew and tilts his head. “Wish I’d get off day shift. I get off when you go on. You going to come by tonight?”
I look up at a car pulling in the parking lot. “I don’t know. Amber and all. Can you come to my place?”
“Maybe,” he says. “I’ll see how I feel.”
I tug at his shirt. “I’ll do my best to seduce you if you do.”
But he doesn’t smile. “I don’t know what Tess was doing anyway, sleeping with Simon.”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s a jerk.”
“There was nothing better to do.”
“Tess has always been too damn wild. Plus she felt like she didn’t exist or something if she wasn’t using her body. Do you know what I mean? She was never not sleeping around.”
I giggle as I do Tess’s chant: “I like the boys, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like the boys.” I can picture her exactly, her arms above her head, her hips thrusting in a dance, her dark hair whipping around her head, laughing as she teased herself.
“But Simon?”
I shrug, because that is indeed a mystery. Simon was a proud member of the Cowboy Christian Fellowship, organizer of revival meetings at the rodeos. Not because there’s anything wrong with Jesus, I guess, but because Simon never stopped to consider Jesus much; he was more interested in telling people that he was riding broncs for the Lord, and anyone knows that just doesn’t make any sense. And because he’d do things like give us bumper stickers that said GOD ANSWERS KNEE-MAIL. And because he actually asked us to donate money to him so that he could buy a Harley Davidson, and he gave us little cards on which he’d written: “Psalm 18:10 reads ‘He flew upon the wings of the wind.’ Please help me do the same.” Which is just to say, as Kay put it, this religion wasn’t coming out of anyplace true, it was just the worst and saddest kind of dedication, because it didn’t involve any thought.
That’s how it was with Simon. He was the sort whose talk couldn’t be trusted. He was wispy. For example, he sure changed his tune about abortion when it came down to his future and suddenly he wasn’t so against it anymore.
What Simon really wanted was for his parents not to know. In fact, that was the one good thing about having the baby, Tess said—that it kept Simon from getting out of it completely free and clear. At least he had to fess up. Not that it mattered much, because after his parents found out they signed him up for classes at the college in Alamosa and sent him over there early for summer classes. They said he told them he wanted no part of anything. So Tess did what they asked, which was to put that she didn’t know who the father was on the hospital papers, because otherwise the government would subtract money from his paycheck for child support and all and it wouldn’t be fair for a kid to follow him around for the rest of his life, especially since he wanted the abortion too. “They got a point,” Tess had said. “There’s no need for him to get sucked into Libby’s Situation.” That’s what she called it, Libby’s Situation. I said I didn’t care, go ahead and leave off Simon’s name, because we were going to be just fine ourselves. But Derek knows about all this, so I don’t say anything. But then it’s quiet for a while, so I say, “I wonder if he ever thinks of her?”
“Who?”
“Simon. If he thinks of Amber.”
Derek shrugs. “I doubt it.”
“I thought he might come back.”
“You did?” Derek sounds surprised, because this is something I’ve never told him.
“Well, I thought he might come back and hold Tess’s hand when she gave birth or something. I think Tess did too, because those last few days, when she was home and not feeling so great, she kept looking around, like she was expecting someone. Every time a car pulled in our drive, she’d heave herself up and look out the kitchen window to see who it was.”
“Who was it?”
“Well, you mostly. Sometimes it was Clark.”
“Just stopping in to check on his new girlfriend? His about-to-give-birth girlfriend?”
“Derek, shut up. You know what I keep thinking about? How when Tess went into labor she asked the nurse to have me wait outside. ‘She wants to do it alone, honey,’ the nurse said. I thought maybe Tess would let me in. I can see her not asking Kay, because she’d likely get yelled at the whole time, but I thought maybe Tess’d want me there. How come you think she didn’t want me?”
Derek shrugs. “You got me.”
“She was in there such a long time, Derek.”
“I know.”
“Twenty-six hours.”
“Yeah.”
“I had no idea it could take so long, did you? And finally they called me in and someone handed me a baby and said, ‘Here’s a little girl,’ and I looked at Tess and she was sleeping, or pretending to. Her hair was all knotted up and there were bruises under her eyes, and there was throw-up on her nightgown and she smelled like blood. Blood and throw-up. I was so surprised. Because Amber was a girl, and because she was so blotchy purple, and because Tess wasn’t smiling and lit up. I kept thinking, Naw, this can’t be right, this is just not what it’s supposed to be. I’m just realizing that now. How surprised I was then.”
Derek spits his chew out on the sidewalk, then drinks some water from a bottle he’s got near him and spits that out too. “Libby, you’re a mother now. That doesn’t surprise anyone except you.” Then, like I knew he would, he adds, “You just have to agree I ain’t got what it takes to be a decent father.”
“You keep saying that. You don’t have to be.”
“Okay. Just don’t ask.”
“I’m not asking.”
“You