Potter Springs (15 page)

She picked the broken pieces out. Ones missing the pointed white tip, or cracked in half. These, she ate. But their sweetness
spread bitter on her tongue.

I need to talk about our child. The one who died. Let’s use words like
loss
and grief and heartache and admit our lives aren’t anything like we thought.

But unspoken sorrows had fermented to anger. Acid, just below the surface. Amanda feared the sputtering bile would burn them
both, should she crack that lid.

“I need,” she started, the words choked inside her. Their sharpness hung on the sides of her throat. Fresh burrs on tender
flesh. “I don’t know what I need.”

“Come on. It’s all set up. A chance to get away. You’ve been so … unhappy.” A protein mustache covered his lip. He looked
like an oversize boy. Lost and bewildered.

“So, why would I want to get away? To be unhappy with people who don’t even know me?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I’m
sorry if I’ve been a burden-”

“I can’t stand seeing you like this.” His confession strung an invisible banner in the late-morning air.

She played with it in her mind. Folded the streamer into new shapes.

I can’t stand seeing you like this.

I can’t stand seeing you.

I can’t stand you.

It tried to tangle her, this twisted string. Knotted up, she closed her eyes and prayed for freedom. The sun touched her face
through the screen door, but not enough to warm her.

“Although”-Mark took a heavy swallow of the thick drink- “I’m glad you’re taking an interest in the house.” He glanced uncertainly
at the glow-in-the-dark skeleton, kicking his heels up on the front door.

“This is your solution? Sending me to Colorado? So you don’t have to see me like this?” She stared back at him, not caring
about her red eyes and inflamed nose. He should be used to them by now.

“Stop. You know that’s not what I mean.”

“I don’t have a say in this at all, do I?”

“No.
N-o,
Amanda Reynolds. You have no say-so.” Surprising her, he set the glass on a nearby table without a coaster. His tennis shoes
squeaked on the hardwood floors.

He folded her in his arms. She smelled the salt on his skin, the sweet of the drink on his lips. She folded herself into him,
wishing she could disappear.

“See, I can do it,” he whispered. “I’m taking a stand. You need to go to Colorado.”

They stood in the doorway, embracing. Appearing, for all the world to see, like snuggly newlyweds.

“For both our sakes, you need to go.”

THE WOMEN ARRIVED
for Amanda nearly a week later, early Thursday morning. They swarmed out and grabbed her bedding from the entryway. A few
waved to Mark, as an afterthought, but mostly they buzzed around his wife like a prize pie at a summer fair.

Amanda stood as if frozen, not showing her panic. Mark sensed it, though. A silent, high-pitched alarm. An impending warning.

Mark rubbed her arm. “Mandy, you remember Shelinda James, from moving day? And here’s Missy Underwood and Pam Hart. You might
not know Kendra Sue McAllister. She leads Bible studies at the church.” He gestured to a woman with glasses and mousy brown
hair.

“Hello.” Amanda stayed stock-still.

He wished she would give them a chance. Give
him
a chance. He missed the dazzling Amanda, the one who lit up a room with her presence. Her fire. Her laughter. The spirit
that made him soar.

If he saw her glimmer again, even just for a second, it might give him the strength to carry on.

Maybe he hoped for too much. Maybe this was all a huge mistake.

Shelinda tugged Amanda’s sweatshirt sleeve. “Don’t look like that. We’re fixin’ to have some fun!” The woman laughed at Amanda’s
dour expression. “Just wait until we have our evening celebrations. The ones where we cut the heads off live chickens! Course,
that’s after the public confessions and ceremonial cleansings. I’m telling you, it’ll bring you close to the Lord!”

Mark didn’t find Shelinda’s gentle terrorization of his wife remotely funny. Then he caught a hint of Amanda’s smile as she
followed the others to the bus-size SUV in the driveway.

God bless Shelinda James.

Mark loaded Amanda’s suitcase in the roomy luggage area. He rearranged sleeping bags and hanging clothes in a more efficient
arrangement. Finished, he quizzed Shelinda. “I’m assuming you know the way?”

“Sure do,” she sassed back. “Colorado’s what, west of here?”

“Oh.” Frosty breath exited in a puff of anxiety. Mark attempted a chuckle, but it sounded more like a hiccup or a wheeze.
“Do any of you have a cell phone? Just in case?”

To the chorusing yeses, he nodded, approving. He walked Amanda around to her side. Kissing her brow, he whispered, “I’ll miss
you.”

“Me too.” She clenched his shirt, tight.

“And I love you.” He tugged her fingers away, squeezed them and let go.

“Me too.” She turned to stuff her pillow in the car.

The door, larger than the entire broadside of Amanda’s Toyota, closed and latched. Sealing his wife’s future for the next
three days.

Maybe his as well.

They scraped away, running over his morning newspaper. Mark waved until he couldn’t see them anymore. Precious cargo.

His day stretched before him, the pink light just touching the oak next door, brushing on its pointy leaves.

The house looked at him. Empty.

Her car sat in the open garage, dust covering the faded red paint.

An idea struck him with pleasure. He got the keys and started the Toyota with a clinking hum. Backing it out, he found the
floorboard full of muck and the seat seams stuffed with crumbs. The interior would need a full cleaning too, but he’d start
with the exterior.

The water from the hose splashed cold on his hands, liquid ice. He relished the sting and the soapy bubbles, caressing the
hatchback’s dinged panels, washing at the rust. The sun rose higher and warmed him at his work. He whistled through the easy
labor.

He needed to do this for her. He needed to show her, without words. A small thing for the woman of his heart.

He only wished he could do more.

T
he bell above the Toot ‘n’ Totem jangled when the five women entered. The convenience store greeted Amanda with the distinct
smells of coffee and hot dogs. Fresh doughnuts shone in a gleaming case.

“Hey, girls,” a familiar voice called from a side booth. “Y’all headed out for the retreat?” Dale Ochs sat with a group of
men gathered over ceramic mugs.

“Yessir,” Shelinda said.

He waved them over, but Amanda pretended not to see. Instead, she wove her way past boxes of paper towels and found the women’s
restroom, wondering what she’d gotten herself into for the weekend.

The stall next to her clicked shut. “I like your shoes,” Kendra Sue complimented.

“Thanks.” Amanda wore her most rugged style, hiking boots that Mother hated. Mountain shoes. “I like yours too.”

Kendra Sue had on Birkenstocks with rainbow fleece socks. “They’re my traveling shoes.” She did a little tap dance on the
floor, and Amanda laughed. “Got to be fashionable, you know.”

“You got any extra toilet paper over there?” Pam called from the other side. “I’m out.”

Amanda passed some under the divider. “Here you go.”

She finished up and washed her hands. Missy stood by the sink, and the hot-air dryer whirred behind Shelinda. “I always add
chilies to my cheese grits,” the taller woman was saying. “It adds that little bit of pep.”

“I’ve heard blue cheese is good too,” Missy said.

“Chocolate,” Shelinda announced as she followed Amanda into the shopping area. “We need chocolate.”

Dale Ochs and his cronies had left. The women loaded up on candy bars and diet Cokes. Girl food. Pam bought a fried burrito
and Missy sipped a blue Slurpee.

“Just don’t spill it on the seats,” teased Shelinda.

Next to the register was a plastic bucket with a picture of a child’s face on it.
Help send Lou Bell to Houston for chemo treatments!
read the handwritten paper.
God bless you!

She was a beautiful girl, with a front tooth missing. Her smile spoke of innocence and hope.

Amanda put money in and took her bag from the cashier. The bell jingled again and she found her spot in the Suburban. They
hit the highway at top speed, leaving the Panhandle behind in a great golden river.

Shelinda drove while Kendra Sue rode shotgun in a dual role of navigator and conversation starter. In the second row, Amanda
and Pam presided over the snacks. Missy sat in the third row of seats, stuffed in with the jackets and extra blankets.

Time flew as steadily as the Michelins over the asphalt as they talked nonstop, pausing only to sing along to songs pouring
out of Shelinda’s CD changer.

Kendra Sue flipped a page in her book of questions. “All right, here’s a good one. ’When you were a child, what did you want
to be when you grew up?’”

“Children!” Pam perked up as if she’d waited the whole ride for this precise moment. Dressed in a vibrant pink and green running
suit, she made a violent
swish
sound as she twisted toward Amanda. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve just been
dying
to ask-when are you and Mark going to start?”

The blood rushed from Amanda’s head. The highway whirred outside as vertigo blurred her vision.

Kendra Sue winced. “You know, Amanda, you don’t have to answer
all
the questions. We just want to have fun. Not be… well… nosy.”

“Nosy yourself! I’m a grandma. It’s not nosy, it’s natural.” Pam was undeterred by the gentle rebuke. “My daughter in Chitapee
started right away. Didn’t want to be hauling toddlers around when she’s forty-five. Not like
some
women do these days.” She wrinkled her nose at such thoughtlessness. “So, when?” Pam urged a response.

“That’s a good question,” Amanda stalled. Her voice sounded like it came from someone else. “Our parents wonder the same thing.”

“Now, that’s no kind of an answer.” Pam’s face took on a bulldog quality. “Why not start now? Mark’s got a good job, y’all
have that adorable little house. What’s holding you back?”

“It’s not that we’re holding back, exactly.”

“Aha! Next year maybe? It’ll be so much fun. We can have showers, I’ll host. You won’t want for a
thing
-”

“We’re not supposed to.” Amanda blurted the words out, a short burst of gas from the cesspot. She clamped her lips shut, forbidding
any more to escape.

“Not
supposed
to? Not supposed to what?” Pam’s face contorted into shock, then compassion. “Oh, Amanda. You poor thing! What you and Mark
do in the bedroom is all
right.”
She patted her knee. “It’s the Lord’s
design,
you see. For the man and woman to come together. Tell her, Kendra Sue. You taught that study on marriage. Tell her about
the leave-and-cleave.”

“I don’t think that’s what she means.” Kendra Sue set a soft gaze on Amanda. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Wait a minute. Why in the world shouldn’t she be supposed to? Other than adultery, fornication”-Pam numbered off sexual immoralities
like a grocery list-“lust, lewdness-unless you just flat-out
can’t.”
She appraised Amanda’s figure. “Some sort of a condition?”

Amanda wished a large hole would open up in the bottom of the Suburban and she could roll to safety, or get crushed by an
oncoming car. Either way, she didn’t mind, as long as removal from Pam’s presence was part of the package.

Flipping through the question book, Kendra Sue burst out, “I know-how about another question?”

Amanda twisted her pillowcase until the flesh of her fingers turned white. She stared at its floral folds as if she’d find
a different strain of conversation wrapped around the dark green vines.

“Found one.” Kendra’s announcement released an iota of tension from the now confining quarters. “Pam, your turn. ’Who is the
person, living or dead, you most admire?’”

Pam moved on from her impromptu interrogation to wax eloquent about her ancestors, children and, of course, Jesus. Amanda
prayed instant and numerous blessings on her new best friend, Kendra Sue.

A small pressure fell on Amanda’s shoulder. Light as a leaf in October, a touch to get her attention. Missy, quiet in the
back.

“You’ve lost a baby,” she whispered.

It wasn’t a question. The truth. Uttered and made real.

Amanda hadn’t told. She’d held fast to the unspoken promise. Loyalty to Mark, to her own integrity, had built an ugly, stucco
facade. Slapped together with pain and hypocrisy, the weight had nearly suffocated her.

“Yes.” A slab of moldy plaster fell away. Amanda wiggled her seat belt to turn backward.

“I’m so sorry. My goodness.” Little fingers grasped hers over the seat back. Strong and dry and warm. “I’m just so sorry.”

Narrow beams of light streamed into Amanda’s cave, bringing fresh air and hope. She breathed it in deep. “Thank you.” Not
knowing what else to say, Amanda simply tightened her fingers and held on.