Pride And Pregnancy

“Okay, that’s enough,” Jo said in a voice Karleen had heard far too often since the first day in seventh grade when they’d sat next to each other in Social Studies, and for some bizarre reason the daughter of a hotshot attorney and one of Albuquerque’s most successful car dealers had taken a liking to a little hick from Flyspeck, Texas. “Dammit, Kar—you’re smart, you’ve got your own business, you don’t owe anybody anything. So your marriages didn’t work out. It happens.”

“Three times?”

“So you’ve had more practice than most people. Big whoop. But if being alone is what you really want, hey…go for it—”

Karleen’s call waiting beeped in her ear. “Sorry, I’m waiting on a client’s call, I need to take this. I’ll talk to you later, honey, okay?”

At that point, she almost didn’t care who was calling. That is, until she heard “Leenie? Is that you?” on the other end of the line.

A fireball exploded in the pit of Karleen’s stomach. The phone pressed against her ear, she wobbled out to the family room, dropping onto the worn Southwest pastel sofa. Well-meaning friends, rich hunky neighbors, all forgotten in an instant. Not even the glass menagerie sparkling on the windowsill—usually a surefire defense against the doldrums—could withstand the all-too-familiar tsunami of irritation and guilt.

“Aunt Inky?”

“Well, who else would it be, baby? Shew, what a relief, I was afraid you might’ve changed your phone number or somethin’!”

Definitely an oversight on her part. Karleen resisted the impulse to ask her mother’s younger sister what she wanted. Because she only ever surfaced when she did want something. “Well. This is a surprise.”

“I know, I’ve been real bad about keepin’in touch. And it would’ve been hard for you to contact me, since I’ve been doing so much, um, traveling and all.”

“Uh-huh.” Inky didn’t sound drunk, for once. But then, it was only ten o’clock in the morning. The slurring wasn’t usually noticeable until mid-afternoon. “So where are you now?”

“Lubbock. Been here for a couple months now. It’s okay, I guess. God knows I’ve lived in worse places.” A pause. “You take up with anybody new yet?”

Karleen shut her eyes. “No, Aunt Inky. I told you, I prefer being alone.”

“What fun is that?”

“It’s not fun I’m after, it’s peace. You should try it sometime.”

“Well, each to his own, I suppose,” her aunt said. “You doing okay, then? Money-wise, I mean?”

Ah. Karleen had wondered how long it would take. “I get by.”

“Well, that’s good. You always were a smart little thing, though—sure as heck a lot smarter than your mama or me—so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You still livin’ in the same place, that house with all the trees around it?”

Ice immediately doused the fire in her belly. And oh, she was tempted to lie. If not to pack her bags and make a run for it. Except Inky was the only family she had left, for one thing. And for another, Karleen was done running, done believing that whatever she needed was always right over the horizon.

“Yes, I’m still here.” She hesitated, then added, “It’s all I’ve got, really,” even if that was stretching the truth a little.

Sure enough, Inky came back with a soft “Then I don’t suppose you could spare a couple hundred dollars? Just a loan, you understand. To tide me over until I get back on my feet.”

Karleen nearly laughed, even as she again resisted temptation, this time to point out to her aunt that if she spent less time in a horizontal position—either in the company of men of dubious character or out cold from cheap booze—she might actually stay on her feet for more than five minutes. But it wasn’t like Karleen had a whole lot of room to talk, so who was she to judge? And anyway, it had been nearly a year this time, so maybe this really was an emergency.

“I guess I can manage a couple hundred. As long as you pay it back,” she added, because she wanted her aunt to at least think about it.

“Of course, baby! Let me give you my address, I’m stayin’ with a friend right now—” oh, brother “—but I should be here for a while….”

Karleen scribbled the address on a notepad lying on the coffee table. “Okay, I’ll send a check for two hundred dollars in the next mail—”

“Could you make that a money order, baby? And if you could see clear to maybe make that two-fifty, or even three, I’d really appreciate it.”

Karleen sighed. But, she thought after she hung up, at least her aunt hadn’t asked to come stay with her.

A thought that made her feel prickly all over, like the time she’d lifted up a piece of wood in the backyard after a rainstorm and a million great big old waterbugs had scurried out from under it. Even though it had been probably twenty years since she’d spent any significant time with her aunt, just talking to the woman disturbed a swollen, never-quite-forgotten nest of skin-crawling memories.

Karleen sucked in a lungful of air, then glanced over at the big mirrored clock by the entertainment center. Plenty of time before her afternoon appointment to do some digging in the garden, work off some of this negative energy.

She traded her bicycle shorts for jeans, shoved her feet into a pair of disreputable sneakers, plopped her silly straw hat on her head and went outside, where she was greeted by that brain-numbing music Troy liked so much. She half thought about going back inside, only to decide she couldn’t become a recluse simply because her new neighbor made her uncomfortable in ways she didn’t want to think about too hard. The music, though, might well drive her right over the edge.

So she rammed a Garth Brooks CD into the boom box on the deck, hit the play button and tromped over to her shed. Honestly, she thought as the metal doors clanged open, she doubted Troy was even forty yet. How he could like music that reminded Karleen of meat loaf and black-and-white television, she had no idea. Eighties rock, she could have understood. She wouldn’t ’ve liked it any better, but at least it would’ve made sense.

But then, there was a lot about Troy Lindquist that didn’t make sense. Like why, if he was so well off, he’d bought a fixer-upper out in Corrales when he could’ve easily bought one of those flashy McMansions up in the foothills. Why there didn’t seem to be a nanny or housekeeper in the picture.

Not that any of it was her business, but it was curious.

After shaking out her thickest gardening gloves in case somebody with too many legs had set up housekeeping inside, she yanked them on, then batted through a maze of cobwebs to find her shovel, which she carted over to a small plot that, unfortunately, was next to Troy’s fence. But that was the only spot in the yard that wasn’t in shade half the day, or plagued with cottonwood roots.

The pointed steel bit into the soft soil with a satisfying crunch. By the third thonk, two little pairs of sneakered feet suddenly appeared on the lower rail, followed by two little faces hanging over the top. Two little eat-’em-up faces that she bet looked exactly like father’s when he’d been that age.

“Whatcha doing?” the shorter-haired twin, clearly the appointed spokesperson of the duo, now said. The babies reminded her of leaves fluttering in the breeze, never completely still.

“I’m gettin’ the soil ready so I can plant a garden.”

“Whatcha gonna plant?”

“Tomatoes,” she said, breathing a little hard as she jabbed the shovel into the soil. Most people would use a rototiller and be done with the chore in no time flat, but Karleen liked doing it the old-fashioned way. “Cucumbers. Squash. Maybe cantaloupe.” For some reason, she couldn’t grow flowers to save her soul, but vegetables, she could handle.

“C’n we help?”

“Yeah,” the second, smaller one said, his voice like a butterfly’s kiss. “C’n we?”

“Oh, I’m not planting anything today,” she said, secure in the knowledge that by the time she did, they would have in all likelihood forgotten this conversation. “It still gets too cold at night. So not for weeks yet.”

“Oh,” the first one said again. “But when you do, c’n we help?”

Then again, maybe she’d have to plant by moonlight this year.

Then the littler one said, his eyes like jumbo blue marbles in a face that was all delicate angles, “Yeah, we never, ever had a garden before.”

Oh, Lord.

“Tell you what,” she said, straightening up and shoving her hair out of her face with the back of her wrist, which was when she noticed Troy, his damp T-shirt molded to his torso, standing on his deck, watching her as intently as a cat stalking a bird. “When it’s time, you can ask your father, and we’ll see,” which of course sent both boys streaking away shouting, “Daddy! Daddy! C’n we help Karleen plant her garden?”

Troy swung the first child to reach him up into his arms, making the little boy break into uncontrollable giggles as he blew a big, slurpy kiss into his neck. Chuckling, he squeezed a few more giggles out of the kid before setting him down to scoop up his brother and repeat the process. “You two are going to be the death of me yet,” he said, the top notes of amusement and exasperation in his voice in perfect harmony with the deep, almost unbearably tender melody line of unconditional love.

The ache that bloomed inside her was so sweet it clogged her throat, even as, from thirty feet away, she caught the apology in his eyes. “It’s okay,” she pushed out, but he shook his head. He said something to the boys, who scampered off to the other side of the yard, before he stepped inside his house. A second later he reappeared and headed her way, a bottle clenched in each fist.

Karleen jerked her head back down and plunged the shovel into the soil again like she was inches away from striking oil.