Eleven Hours (2 page)

“Bet your husband wants a boy, though,” the man said.

He doesn't know I have a husband, Didi thought, and then remembered mentioning that one of the pretzels was for her husband. She was instantly upset with herself. Why am I being unkind to him? she thought. I'm being unkind and unchristian.

“Bet your husband wants a boy, though,” the man repeated evenly.

“If he does, he isn't telling,” Didi said quickly. She took out three dollars and paid for the pretzels.

Taking a gulp of water, she gave the cup back to the salesclerk to throw out. She didn't have a free hand to carry a drink. Throwing the change inside her purse, Didi said in a friendly voice, “Well, have a nice day.”

“Yeah, you too,” said the guy behind the counter.

The man followed her as she walked away from the store. Didi tried to speed up but realized it was impossible. He came up beside her and said, “Hey. Do you need help with those bags? They look so heavy.”

Didi tried to speed up again. Did she look as if she was languishing? “They're fine, not too bad at all,” she said. “But thanks. Have a nice day, okay?”

“You sure? I don't mind helping. Don't have much to do right now. Really.”

She tried not to look at him. A troubled feeling settled on her heart—no, she thought, she was being silly.

She saw a Warner Bros. store. “Really, I'm fine,” she said, moving away from him. “Thanks anyway.”

She walked into the store without looking back, but the heaviness didn't leave her chest.

Didi went toward the children's section and looked around, putting down her bags and taking a few bites of the pretzel.

Suddenly she was no longer hungry and had lost her desire to shop. Deciding to call Rich, Didi pulled the cell phone out of her handbag. The cell phone was defective, with the number seven missing because little Reenie had eaten it on one of their weekend trips to Lake Texoma. It was time to get a new one.

What was odd about that man aside from his open smile? He acted as if he knew her, but that wasn't what was odd. Something else. She wanted to cross herself.
What's the matter with you, Didi?
she whispered, intently studying the plush Tasmanian Devils.
Why are you being so uncharitable? He was just trying to help.

Her husband wasn't picking up. What else was new? His message machine answered. “It's just me,” Didi said after the beep. “Calling from the mall, hoping I could meet you a little earlier.” She paused and thought about turning around. “It's okay. I'll see you at one, I guess. Bye.”

She picked out a couple of T-shirts for her girls and turned to walk to the cash register. She saw him immediately. He was near the Tweety Bird clocks. He appeared to have forgotten her completely.

At the register, Didi took out cash to speed the transaction.

“Linda, look!” the salesgirl exclaimed to another salesgirl. Then to Didi, “Wow, you're really pregnant.”

“Yeah,” said Didi, smiling as kindly as she could. “I'm also in a real hurry, so…” She slid two twenties across the counter, but the money didn't impress the salesgirls.

“When are you due?” Linda asked, looking warmly at her.

“Just a few weeks,” Didi said, chewing her lip. The salesgirl scanned the T-shirt tags with near-deliberate slowness. Didi thought of walking out, but she didn't want the man to think she was nervous or in a hurry. She wanted him to think she had forgotten him completely, too.

“Do you know what you're having?” asked Linda.

“No, have no idea,” said Didi.

“Don't want to know?”

“No, not really.” Didi started tapping her fingernails on the counter. The nails were short, and the tapping wasn't satisfying.

“Oh, I'd want to know,” Linda said.

Didi pushed the twenties so far to the edge of the counter that they fell to the floor. The salesgirl said, “Oh, look—your money.” And for some reason she found the falling cash amusing and laughed. Linda chuckled with her. Didi tried to smile.

Suddenly, Didi sensed someone standing behind her and felt afraid.

She willed herself to turn around. An elderly gray-haired man in a suit nodded politely to her. The man in the jacket was still near Tweety Bird. Didi felt both relieved and silly.

Linda moved to help the elderly man, while Didi's salesgirl looked for a bag for the T-shirts. “The total came to twenty-eight seventeen,” she said cheerfully. “Did you only give me a twenty?”

“I'm sorry,” Didi said. “Two twenties fell on the floor. Listen, if it's too much trouble—”

“No, no, of course, two twenties.” The girl bent down, picking up the money. She keyed forty dollars into the register. “Your change is eleven eighty-three,” she said, taking the money out of the drawer. “That's twenty-nine—” giving Didi the change, and then counting the paper money—“thirty, and two fives makes forty.”

Didi could not help snatching the money. “Thank you,” she said. “Have a nice day.”

“Yeah, you too,” said the girl, and yelled after her, “Good luck with the labor and everything!”

Didi cringed.

After she walked out of Warner Bros., she wasn't sure what to do next. She glanced back. He wasn't there anymore.

Should she go to her car? Yes, yes, she should. No, wait. She wanted to make a quick stop at Victoria's Secret.

She looked over her shoulder to see if he was following her. This is ridiculous, Didi thought. He seemed a perfectly nice man.

A few days earlier she and her girlfriend Penny had been at the Collin Creek Mall when a man who looked a little like this one offered to take Didi's bags to the car. He didn't even offer. He just picked up the bags and carried them, saying, “Let me help you with these.” Didi thanked him, got in the car, and went to the movies with Penny. It had been raining, and Penny commented what a nice man he had been to help them.

Didi felt better with this recollection as she walked into Victoria's Secret.

“Hi, can I help you?” An attractive thin girl walked toward her. Didi always noticed the thinness of other women when she was pregnant. Especially in a place like this. It made her feel self-conscious to ask for a negligee or underwear in extra large. The girls always went to the back of the store for that. Sometimes they loudly delegated the task to someone else. “Janice, can you go and check if we have an extra large in the red satin underwear, please?”

Glad to see there was no one in the store this afternoon, Didi asked for something silky and sexy for the hospital.

“I have just the thing for you,” said the salesgirl. “When are you due?”

“Monday,” said Didi.

“As in today, Monday?” The girl's eyes opened wide.

“Maybe not today,” Didi said pleasantly. “But I'm hoping to have my baby on a Monday.”

“Is Monday your lucky day or something?”

Nodding, Didi said, “It
is
my lucky day, I guess. I was born on a Monday. My second daughter was born on a Monday, and it was a pretty easy delivery, so that was lucky. Much easier than the first, which was on a Saturday.”

“Maybe the easy labor was because she was second and all,” the salesgirl said.

“You're right,” said Didi. “But it's still my lucky day.”

“Well, let's pray it's not today,” said the salesgirl. “Let me show you what I've got for you.” She had pretty red hair. Didi wondered if it was her natural color. Didi was proud of the fact that she had never colored or highlighted her own brown hair. She also didn't wear much makeup, though she bought plenty. Didi thought of herself as a person comfortable in her own skin. The salesgirl must have seen Didi looking at her hair, because she smiled and, touching it, said, “Best color money can buy. Do you like it?”

Smiling and secretly pleased, Didi said, “Love it. It looks very natural.”

“I like yours,” the salesgirl said. “Tell me, is it difficult keeping it that long in this heat and with being pregnant and all?”

Touching her hair, Didi replied, “It's not too bad. It's naturally straight, so I don't do much to it. But I can never cut it. My husband loves it long.”

The girl found Didi a burgundy silk robe with a matching negligee, panties, and bra. The ensemble looked great on Didi, although the negligee was too small. It was the largest size in stock, and Didi had to hope that the Belly would not stay enormous forever.

“I'll take it,” she said, walking out of the fitting room. From inside the store, she peered into the mall. Her heart beat faster when she thought she saw the back of the man. The person sitting on the bench was obscured by tall, leafy corn plants; it was hard to tell if it was he. She turned to the cash register.

“I'm sorry. What did you ask?” Didi said absentmindedly.

“Do you know what you're having?”

Didi smiled. “We're hoping for a boy,” she confessed. “But we don't know.”

“Hey, you got a fifty-fifty chance, right?”

“Not according to my husband,” said Didi easily. “He's been wearing his
red
socks for weeks. He thinks that improves our chances to seventy-five–twenty-five.”

“Red socks?” The salesgirl looked at her as if Didi were crazy.

“Hey, I'm not the crazy one,” said Didi. “The same ones he wears when the Cowboys play. They won the Super Bowl once when he was wearing red socks and now he wears them every Sunday. I don't think he's ever let me wash them since then.”

“Oh, dear,” said the salesgirl, handing her a receipt to sign. “I hope you don't sit next to your husband on Sundays.”

“I'm a football widow,” said Didi, but it wasn't true. It just sounded funny, though she wished she hadn't said it. She loved football. She and Rich watched the games together when they could. It was true about the red socks. Rich believed in the socks even when the Cowboys lost. “Think how much they'd lose by if I wasn't wearing them,” he'd say when Didi called the socks' dubious charm into question. Didi had no response to Rich's perverse logic.

“Good luck,” said the salesgirl, tossing her red hair. “I hope you have your boy, and I hope your labor will be easy.”

“Thanks.” Didi smiled. “Have a nice day.”

“Hey, and stay inside,” the girl called after her. “It's brutal out there.”

“Don't worry,” Didi said.

She walked out of the store and looked at her watch. Five to one. It was time to meet Rich. With luck she'd be only ten minutes late, but probably more like fifteen. She looked up and down the mall. Just a few shoppers. God forgive me, is everyone this paranoid at near term? Didi thought. Wait till I tell Richie.

Laden with bags, she walked back to Dillard's, made a left at the Freshëns stand and then a right, and walked out the mall doors. Outside was unbearable. The sun whipped her with heat. After taking a dozen steps, Didi was light-headed. She hoped she could make it to the car and not faint.

Putting her bags down on the concrete, she looked around, wondering where her Town & Country was parked. Slowly she took the pretzel bag out of one of the larger shopping bags, reached into it, and broke off a piece of a pretzel. She chewed and swallowed it. Looking at her watch, she saw it was already ten past one and tried to hurry. She picked up three bags with one hand, three bags with the other, and with her purse on her shoulder and the pretzel bag between her fingers headed up one aisle, swaying from side to side. Did she
have
to get those wooden blocks at FAO Schwarz? She struggled with the bags, setting them down again and wiping her forehead, wishing her hair were up in a bun.

Didi walked a few more feet but couldn't see the minivan anywhere. She put her bags down, sighed as loudly as possible to make herself feel better, and rummaged through her purse. She found her key chain and hit the alarm button to get her car to make its noise, but the alarm did not go off. Instead she heard the dull click of a door lock opening, and looked to her right to see her white van. She had pressed the wrong button. Thank God.

Relieved, Didi dropped the keys back in her purse and bent down to pick up her bags.

A voice behind her said, “You know, you really shouldn't be carrying those heavy bags. It's bad for the baby.”

12:58 P.M.

Richard Wood parked his Pontiac Bonneville in the Laredo Grill lot and looked for Didi's minivan. It wasn't there yet. He glanced at his watch and saw it was a little before one and he was early. That was okay. He sat in the car and listened to a Bad Company CD. Didi said Rich was forever stuck in the seventies, but he took that as a compliment.

The clock in the car read 1:17 when he decided to look for her inside the restaurant. Maybe she'd parked elsewhere. He hurried. He should have remembered that Didi sometimes parked in the adjacent Olive Garden lot to be a bit closer to the exit ramp for the highway home.

1:20 P.M.

Didi wanted to speak but found she was made speechless by her heart ramming itself against her chest. She didn't need to turn around. She recognized his voice. It was the man in the jacket. She felt slightly nauseated.

“Did you hear me, ma'am?” the voice said. “You shouldn't be carrying those heavy bags. It's not good for the baby.”

Didi turned around.

The man was standing in front of her, hands in his jacket pockets. The heat index was up to 120 and he was wearing a jacket over his white shirt. The incongruity of the jacket hadn't registered in the cool mall, but now it seemed distinctly out of place.

She stared directly at him without averting her gaze. His upturned nose made him look petulant, as if he'd been waiting for a bus too long. His mouth was upturned too, in a semblance of a smile. It looked as if he was grimacing, stretching his thin lips upward, toward eyes that weren't smiling. They were blue and they were cold, and she saw that they lacked something essential. The expression in the eyes, like the jacket, did not belong in a mall parking lot on a hot summer day.