Chapter 6Peggy Warner
Chapter 6
A Dreamer
Peggy Warner
A ll night Peggy sat in an old, uncomfortable rocker, half covered with one of the kids’ blankets she borrowed from her cousins for warmth. Ashley-Lynn, in the bed five feet away, groaned every time she moved.
Peggy had sat with her before, during labor with her previous child. She remembered last time her cousin was pregnant, Ashley-Lynn insisted she needed to go to the hospital a hundred miles away in Lubbock. Three times she and her husband Fred had loaded up in the car and driven to the hospital because her cousin didn’t want to deliver in the tiny clinic in Crossroads. False labor the first three times. On the fourth try, the baby finally arrived.
For this baby, her husband, sleeping on the couch tonight, swore he wasn’t starting the car until he saw the baby crown.
Peggy didn’t interfere with the couple’s fights that seemed never-ending.
Her job was to get the mom-to-be, who was on bedrest, whatever she wanted during the night. Fresh water every hour, which she rarely drank. A towel after she spilled most of the water. Crackers for her indigestion. Pillows to prop up her huge belly just right. Sometimes Ashley-Lynn would demand that she turn the heater up or turn the heater down. Or the worst order, “Wake Fred.”
Every night, Ashley-Lynn swore the baby was coming and Peggy would make sure they’d packed everything they’d need at the hospital. She’d wake Fred, and he’d tell the crazy, round woman she’d have to have the baby at the clinic in Crossroads. He wasn’t driving a hundred miles in the middle of the night when there was a perfectly good hospital bed five minutes away.
Then the couple would wrestle Ashley’s robe and slippers on and sit on the couch to watch TV until her water broke. After all, the clinic was almost within walking distance. They planned to leave the almost eighteen-month-old and the four-year-old with Peggy. They knew she wouldn’t mind.
Tonight, Peggy would mind. “Actually, I can’t stay here after nine, Ashley.” She couldn’t say she had a lunch date, so she said, “I will have been up twenty-four hours.”
“So! I haven’t slept for weeks.” Ashley-Lynn’s voice was somewhere between a whine and a snap. “You’re not even making a baby. You can’t be that tired.”
“Come, Ashley,” Fred said. “Peggy needs sleep too. Besides, both our mothers will be here around eight to get set up for the baby shower.”
As Ashley-Lynn groaned again, Peggy whispered, “I’ll leave when your mom gets here. I want to go home before the party starts.”
Ashley-Lynn pouted, but then conceded, “Well, Mom will be telling everyone what to do the moment she walks in. Maybe you’re right to leave when she gets here!”
Peggy rose from her chair. “It’s been an hour. I forgot your fresh water. I’ll get it right now.” She was gone before Ashley-Lynn could say another word or hatch another plot.
Once she was in the kitchen, Peggy took her time filling a cup and making sure everything was in place.
By the time she went back to the living room, Ashley had waddled to the bed and fallen asleep. Another false labor alarm. No baby tonight.
Peggy sighed. She’d be back again tomorrow night. She settled back under her too-small blanket and waited for her aunt to show up and take over.
She’d gather up her things, go home to sleep an hour or two, get dressed, and then drive out to the cemetery for her first real date with Duke Evans.
For the first time in her life she didn’t care about what the family wanted her to do; nothing was going to stop Peggy today. She had a real date. With a nice guy. For one moment in her life she was going to live for herself, and she might just go wild.
“Almost sunup,” she whispered for the third time.
Fred called from the living room that his mother-in-law was stopping on the way to pick up a few things. “You don’t mind waiting, Peggy, do you?”
Peggy watched the clock move past eight. Fifteen more minutes passed. Half an hour. Ten to nine.
The front door creaked open and Peggy’s Auntie Ruth bumped her way in, making so much noise she woke Fred on the couch and one of the kids. Auntie Ruth called out, “Grandmom is here. Time to wake up.”
Peggy stood, folded her tiny blanket, picked up her water, and looked around to make sure all was in place.
She was ready to leave when her aunt reached the bedroom. Ruth walked right past Peggy and tapped Ashley awake. “I’m here, my girl, and it’s about time. This place is a mess. How do you two make such a clutter when all you have to do is sleep all night?”
Peggy was almost to the front door when Auntie yelled through the house, “Don’t take a donut from the bakery box I set on the counter, Peggy. I just bought enough for the party. All the kin are coming over to wish Ashley-Lynn well. That baby is coming today. I can feel it in my bones.”
The donuts. Peggy loosened her hold of the doorknob, walked back three steps to the counter and wrapped two donuts in a paper towel.
A minute later she was running to her car giggling. She was free and she had a date. And best of all she was a donut bandit. She’d have something to talk about with her cowboy.
He might think she was too wild for him.
Peggy drove over the speed limit just to prove she was going crazy. Then she pulled beside her parents’ house and took her garage apartment steps two at a time.
She was too excited to sleep, so she took a shower, changed her clothes, and now and then stopped and thought about his gray eyes. He saw her, she decided. He really saw her.
Peggy packed a lunch. Nothing fancy. In her little garage apartment, she didn’t have much. She didn’t have enough time to go shopping, and she didn’t dare go into her parents’ house. They’d ask a hundred questions, or worse, they’d have a list of chores for her to do this morning.
Peggy slipped out feeling like a thief in the night.
She’d parked beside the garage just right so no one in the house would see her drive off. She had told her dad yesterday that she was going to have lunch with friends in town this week. Her dad never bothered to ask any questions, but she hoped he remembered.
As Peggy drove toward the cemetery, she practiced what she’d say to Duke.
But when she got to the hill, no one was there. She didn’t see a person for miles. No cowboy.
Peggy pushed her bottom lip out like a child and tried not to say aloud, “Not again.” In the school play she was the stand-in who never got on stage. She almost won the lottery once but she was off by one number. Her date to the prom got sick, and a hundred other things that almost happened. She almost got into the University of Texas. She almost got a job she really wanted, but her parents said Dallas was too far away from home.
Sitting down on the damp grass, she didn’t despair. She could almost hear her father say, “Look, Peggy, when someone has a loss, it does make you stronger. No one gets everything they want.”
She straightened like a wooden soldier. Tall. Stoic. “Another time,” she sighed. But Peggy no longer believed in waiting. If he didn’t come, it was his loss. She would enjoy herself anyway.
She walked to the old graves at the top where the oaks shaded the ground and the rapids babbled in the distance. She spread out a small tablecloth. Set out two sandwiches, two bottles of water, a small bag of chips, and two donuts.
The day was warm for November and no wind for a change. Lying on a wool blanket, she covered her legs with her coat. For just a few minutes she wanted to look at the clouds like they’d done the last time.
It crossed her mind that she might have dreamed her cowboy. Real or fantasy, she closed her eyes and dreamed of him again. He was kind. She remembered that he looked at her as if she was special. No one had ever looked at her as he did.
He’d stared like he saw the beauty in her.
Yesterday, she’d first thought he was teasing her, but as time went on, she recognized the honesty in his eyes. All her life it seemed she’d always been the plant, picture, or unseen ornament in the room, but she remembered that it had seemed she was all he saw.
“He was real,” she said.
He’d told her, in a shy way, about growing up twenty miles away. Duke was five years older than she was. His father had been the postman until he retired. He had two sisters and a brother. All married.
He said he’d ridden in the local rodeos in his teens and twenties, and he remembered her brothers riding too.
She laughed and told him her brothers’ wives made them stop as soon as kids came along.
She remembered Duke talked slow and low. Within an hour of the first meeting, Peggy felt like they were old friends. Like she’d known him forever.
“He was real,” she whispered.