Love Potion #2

by Margot Early

  The children believed that she and David had simply ceased getting along. Clare was content with this interpretation of the story, which had the advantage of being true, as far as it went.

  But Paul, she knew, considered the explanation inadequate. And he used its so-called inadequacy to justify his own absurd belief that it was impossible for two people to remain married. Well, he claimed that he could never have such a partnership.

  She sometimes wondered if knowing the whole truth would change Paul’s mind. It was academic. He never would know, of course, because David would never tell him and neither would she. It hadn’t been her finest hour; and if her son ever learned the truth, Paul would see it just as David had.

  When given the choice, she’d chosen her vocation over her marriage. It had been selfish. But as she shut off the light in the kitchen and made her way through the dark cabin, reflecting on the birth she’d just been honored to witness, she was content.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CAMERON SOMETIMES

  thought she was actually insane. She considered her insanity as she crawled beneath her bed to retrieve the third used condom. Paul had left all three wrappers on her bedside table, from where Mariah had stolen them and taken them to her bed.

  Glad that Paul had been forced to go to the zoo, glad that nothing on Earth would come between him and his job, Cameron took her find into the bathroom to join the other two, turned on the water and prepared to make sure that every condom had kept its integrity. It was the kind of fanatical thing that an insane person might do, and Cameron had been told by various people that her fear of pregnancy was insane.

  She didn’t care. She had been in the middle of her monthly cycle last night—only peak fertility could have made her behave so stupidly—and she would be happier by day and night if she knew that not one of these three condoms had a hole in it.

  Strange, she had not been terrified by pregnancy last night. And maybe she was distracting herself now from something a bit more frightening than bringing forth children in pain. Paul. She remembered every detail of the night before. She absolutely did not want to be cured from her infatuation with Graham Corbett by falling in love with someone so avowedly against commitment as Paul Cureux.

  She was trying to talk herself out of actually making sure the condoms had no holes when she heard someone call her name. “Cameron! Cameron!”

  Not Mary Anne. Cameron was glad of that. If her cousin had slept with Graham Corbett—and why wouldn’t she have done so—she wouldn’t come around and tell Cameron about it. No, this was the voice of Cameron’s younger sister, Denise. Denise, unlike Beatrice and Cameron, had inherited a normal physiognomy that would allow normal childbearing. She was a student at West Virginia University but home for the weekend.

  Her little sister, with no respect for privacy, appeared in the bathroom door. “What are you doing?” said Denise. “My God, who hit you?”

  “I walked into a cabinet door.” Cameron tossed the condoms in the trash.

  Denise’s face filled with alarm. “No, you didn’t. You tell me people always say that when someone hit them.”

  Cameron had told her that, basing the statement on her experience working with battered women. “I turned around in the kitchen and whacked the cabinet door. I’d never let anyone hit me.”

  Unfortunately, Denise’s acceptance of the truth allowed her to return to her original question. “Were you washing out condoms?”

  “Of course not. What do you want?”

  “You asked me to join you for your Women of Strength herb walk, if you remember.”

  Every weekend, Cameron planned something for Women of Strength, a program she’d instituted at the Women’s Resource Center to help battered women regain their self-confidence through physical activity. Sometimes it was a caving expedition, sometimes a self-defense class, sometimes a bicycle ride or hike.

  “I’m sick. I might have to beg off,” Cameron said. She was sick because it was absurd to think she might have become pregnant despite birth control, but it was far from absurd that after such a very interesting—such a truly great night—with Paul, she could hardly think of anything but him. Never, never, had she experienced anything like it.

  “You’re never sick,” said Denise.

  The herb walk might distract her from Paul—if only any woman but his mother were leading it. Well, there was no begging off. She murmured, “True,” with distraction and hoped fervently that Clare could not or at least would not read her mind.

  “IF A PERSON has already drunk a love potion, what happens if someone gives them a different one?” Cameron asked Clare Cureux. Because Graham Corbett had drunk a love potion, and he was now in love with Mary Anne. That he’d never been the intended recipient of the potion was moot. And Graham Corbett would still be a much better choice for Cameron than…

  Don’t think about him.

  Paul’s mother, her gray-threaded hair in one long braid, glared at Cameron. “Who are you talking about? Not that radio—”

  “No one,” Cameron insisted. “It’s just theoretical.” In fact, she still couldn’t help fearing that Clare, who had “the Sight,” might somehow know what had transpired the night before with her only son. These questions were Cameron’s way of trying to distract Clare, to make Clare think that Cameron was focused on Graham.

  Which she wasn’t at the moment. She did feel differently about Graham after sleeping with Paul.

  “The answer is that nothing would happen. Nothing.” Clare gave her another irritated look. Though Clare sold love potions, she did so reluctantly, always trying to talk the buyer out of it first. Let nature take its course, was her unchanging advice.

  Bridget said, “How is it going, by the way, Cameron?”

  No doubt she thought her question suitably vague. Cameron made a noncommittal gesture with her hand. So-so.

  Now, mother cast an appalled look at daughter, then coldly turned away.

  “It wasn’t a love potion,” Cameron interjected.

  She hadn’t been thrilled to find that Paul’s sister was along on this walk. Cameron felt edgy enough in Clare’s presence without the danger of Bridget’s sometimes greater perceptiveness.

  Cameron was surprised so many women were interested in herbs. Four had turned out for the first herb walk and eight for this one, not including Cameron, Denise, Clare or Bridget.

  Bridget tossed her long dreadlocks and said, almost reverently, “Coltsfoot. Look, Mom.”

  Cameron stepped back to let the other women, three of whom had left abusive spouses and taken refuge at the Women’s Resource Center’s “safe house,” come in closer to see the plant and hear Clare describe its medicinal properties. Like nearly everyone else on the walk, these women had wanted to know who hit Cameron, if she was in trouble, what they could do, how she could let this happen to her. They seemed skeptical that she’d actually walked into a cabinet door.

  Cameron thought she might lose her job over this black eye. She was supposed to be helping women to escape from abusive situations, and now her clients thought she was lying about how she’d gotten hurt.

  Clare didn’t suspect her of lying. When Cameron had explained, she’d simply sniffed and told her the sort of poultice she should have applied at once.

  Another memory of the night before—more a question—What had Paul really felt?—needled her. She had to stop thinking about the night before. It was nothing to get romantic about. She tried to distract herself with the fear of pregnancy, the illusion of a tiny hole. Surely a meaningful amount of sperm couldn’t get through. There was no way.

  Of course, it was Paul’s father, David, a former obstetrician, who had once redefined competition to Cameron, when she was stressing over her chances before a 10K. “My dear, as I am constantly reminding my children, you are the sperm that made it. You’ll never face competition like that again.”

  She didn’t care. It was a silly fear. And if she got pregnant, it was only what women had been doing forever, wha
t women’s bodies were made for.

  Had she been crazy to sleep with Paul? She could not afford to feel this way about him. She needed to be normal with him. If he thought she felt romantically toward him— She almost winced at the thought of it. Being in love with Paul would be a hundred times worse than being in love with Graham.

  Chief Logan State Park Zoo

  PAUL HAD FOUGHT as hard as anyone to get the pair of pale-faced saki monkeys to the zoo. What was more, he’d managed his fight the old-fashioned way, schmoozing with wealthy individuals who might become zoo benefactors. He’d wanted no part of his boss’s “Hold A Baby Snow Leopard” money-making scheme.

  He was, at this time, head keeper of primates. In the past, Paul had worked in reptiles and with the felids, but for the past four years he’d worked with the zoo’s ring-tailed lemurs, black howler monkeys and chimpanzees. He found it difficult to go home at night sometimes because he was attached to these animals.

  A grad student named Helena Ruffles was doing research with one of their chimps, a three-year-old female named Portia. Paul loved to watch Portia learn words. Portia loved Paul, who had known her since she was a baby. In fact, he often said that Portia was his favorite female.

  But not at the moment.

  What he wanted most of all was to make love with Cameron again. She was an astoundingly good-looking woman. He’d always thought so. Her face didn’t have Mary Anne’s model’s bones, but her smile melted his heart. Seeing her gave him the same feeling as diving into the river in the summer, going barefoot in damp grass, picking up his custom guitar…. However, what he’d always felt for her was friendship, and now he wondered why. It bothered him that Cameron had drunk something Bridget had given her, but he hadn’t accepted a drink from Bridget lately, not even a glass of water.

  His father, long divorced from Paul’s mother, was an utter skeptic when it came to the love potions. Paul wished he could be a skeptic.

  Paul did not want to be married. Women were treacherous and powerful, and he preferred a bachelor’s existence. So he wasn’t sure he should make love with Cameron again. Cameron was…sensitive. The local perception of her was of a man-hating champion of women’s rights, directing the Women’s Resource Center. Paul himself sometimes accused her of being that way. But on some subjects, she had the heart of a marshmallow. And her favorite reading material was pre-1960 romance fiction.

  Paul found saki hair below the trees. Was the male still pulling hairs out of his tail? He glanced up, hunting for the primates, and found the male doing just that. Paul slipped back into the keeper area and returned with several dog toys. He particularly liked the flying monkey toy that screamed when you shot it up into the trees. He sent it flying upward so that the male could go retrieve it.

  The female got it instead.

  The male pulled more hairs out of his tail. Paul threw a dog’s Kong toy on the ground and also tossed out a plush gingerbread man, who promptly began singing, “Run, run, as fast as you can…”

  He should at least go by Cameron’s after work. Just to…reestablish normality.

  CAMERON HAD RIDDEN her bike to the trailhead for the herb walk, and she rode her bike home afterward. During a brief stop at the grocery store, a patron of the Women’s Resource Center asked, suspiciously, what had happened to her face.

  She went home and found Paul’s quarter-ton pickup truck in front of her house beside her own ancient Datsun. As she began adjusting to the fact that Paul was inside, Wolfie and Mariah met her on the porch. Cameron petted Mariah, and Wolfie and Cameron looked at each other, the dog as wary as always.

  She went inside, and Paul said from the kitchen, “I fed the dogs.”

  He was at the kitchen table, reading her newspaper and eating pesto straight from the jar.

  “Are you going to save me some of that?” she snapped.

  “Your eye looks horrible.”

  Cameron found she was shaking. She was shaking because she’d made love with Paul the night before and now he was in her house and she didn’t know how to behave around him. She found it terrifying that her most recurring thoughts of the day had been of him—nothing else. The minutiae of Paul and of the night before. Every single word and touch exchanged. It was absurd.

  So now she didn’t say “What are you doing here?” because she was slightly glad that he was there, although she didn’t want to be glad. She’d barely thought of Graham all day. She’d thought of Paul.

  “Thank you for feeding the dogs.” Wolfie ate outside and only when he thought no one was looking. Mariah had followed her into the house and sat politely beside Paul, looking hopeful. She had a beautiful black-and-brown face and fluffy black fur that had remained puppy-soft even as she matured.

  Cameron managed to ask, “Why did you come over?”

  He looked up, dark eyes wide, and it occurred to her that what other women—her cousin, Mary Anne, for instance—had been telling her for years was true. Paul was a hunk. He had one of those hard-jawed faces that you sometimes saw on guys who climbed Everest. The hint of five o’clock shadow, though undoubtedly uncomfortable for anyone who kissed him, increased the sexy mountain-man effect.

  She wished she could stop trembling.

  “To see how your day went,” he replied calmly.

  “Everyone asked who hit me,” she informed him.

  He winced slightly, almost as though he had hit her.

  It was an unusually sympathetic response from Paul. Normally he would have said that it would help bond her with her clients, or something equally thoughtless. But he seemed to appreciate how bad it was for the director of the Women’s Resource Center to walk around with a black eye.

  “Denise is coming over,” she said. “For dinner. You can stay.” She went out to her bicycle to collect the groceries she’d bought and bring them inside.

  As Cameron began slicing vegetables, she noticed that Paul had made no attempt to touch or kiss her. She kept thinking of the way he’d kissed her the night before, not opening his mouth at first, just gradually doing so, just tasting her lips with his tongue, as though it was something he’d never done before.

  So, we’re going back to being just friends, she thought. Maybe he thought they’d be “friends with privileges” or bonking buddies. Not a chance.

  From the table, Paul watched her back, the two light brown braids swinging over the shoulders of her thrift-shop Fair Isle sweater. He could say something about last night. But what was there to say?

  He wanted to do it again.

  What he said was, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  At the counter, Cameron froze. Of all the things a man could say after a sexual encounter, this was one of the worst. Implicit was the fact that his hurting her was quite possible. In fact, it implied a certain likelihood. Attempting objectivity, she compared “I don’t want to hurt you” to “Sex will ruin our friendship.” Hard to judge which was worse, actually. What was she supposed to say?

  She wheeled around. “You can’t hurt me, because I’m not sleeping with you again. For one thing, I don’t want to get pregnant.” She wished she hadn’t said that, for many reasons, from hating to discuss a terrifying subject to hating to tell lies. “But even if being pregnant wouldn’t kill me, you and I are just friends. What happened happened, but now my biggest concern is learning how to conceal a black eye before I lose my job.” Since I’ve already lost my mind and slept with you.

  Paul thought she was acting strangely, but she’d been clear. He told himself it was a relief. And though the thought of her becoming pregnant alarmed him almost as much as it could alarm her, he knew that any fear of that outcome was neurotic. He said, “This is the twenty-first century. It’s totally irrational to believe you will die in childbirth.”

  Her face flushed in a way he associated with her being particularly—well, hysterical. Oh, God, here we go.

  “Easy for you to say! Didn’t one of your own mother’s clients almost die in childbirth?”

  “No. It
was a stillbirth, what you’re talking about, and it happened at the hospital.” Actually, Paul wasn’t sure of this. It had happened when he was six years old, and his father had moved out soon afterward. Sometimes the story of the stillbirth came up when people argued that homebirths were unsafe. He thought he could remember his mother saying, “If she’d been my client, I would have sent her to a physician.” But Paul didn’t know why this was, knew none of the details, though he was sure either of his parents could provide them.

  Cameron was still talking. “Anyhow, you think dying in childbirth is the only unpleasant possibility. You think, ‘Oh, they’ll just give her an epidural. She’ll be fine.’ Roxanne Jacobs had an epidural, and she’s had crippling back pain ever since. You think, ‘Oh, Cameron will just have a cesarean section.’ My sister miscarried in the fifth month four times. You think a little miscarriage is nothing, but that’s like a stillbirth every time.”

  Paul considered interrupting, but it was hard to find a place.

  “And each time was physically excruciating. She thought she was going to die, not to mention being heart-broken because she’d lost the baby. And they are babies, premature but completely babies. Beatrice named every one.” Tears welled in Cameron’s eyes.

  Horrified, Paul said, “Baby—” He almost put his hand over his mouth. He’d called her “baby.” That could lead to lack of clarity. About their relationship. But he forced himself to finish saying what he’d begun to say. “You know how you get before your period. You’re just freak—”

  “I AM NOT EXPECTING MY PERIOD!” she shrieked. “Would I be worried if I was? Do you know nothing about women?”

  He considered asking her to please put down the knife but decided to remain silent.

  He heard the front door open. Denise called, “Cameron?”