by Margot Early
“Are they all right? How did they get out?” the zoo director demanded.
Paul said, “Come on. I’ll show you. Cameron, stay away from the cages. All the cages.”
As they stepped out of the infirmary, the zoo director informed him of the liability issues of having a non-employee in the infirmary while not on a guided tour. Paul took him to the chimp exhibit, and when the director saw the damage, he almost rubbed his hands together gleefully.
“This,” he said, “is the fault of the designer of the exhibit. He’s to blame. He’ll have to correct the flaws.”
Paul remained silent, thankful for the first time in his life for the director’s single-minded obsession with looking for blame outside of his own realm.
Dr. Bannister looked at him. “Is that girl a family member?”
“Uh…yes,” Paul said finally. “In a way.”
The zoo director, vaguely concerned about liability, heard only the part of the answer that he wanted to hear.
“THERE WILL STILL be food,” Paul said, driving out of the park at eleven. “At my mother’s house. She went to bed, but she said we can help ourselves.”
Cameron could barely keep her eyes open. “I’ll just go home.”
Paul felt responsible for her not eating. She’d eaten cheese and crackers at the zoo, but she needed a real meal. “I’ll cook for you at your house.”
“I just want to sleep.”
“I think it’s not eating that causes morning sickness.”
“No, I need protein and B6,” she said matter-of-factly. She’d read about morning sickness. “And no stress,” she added.
“Find a new job,” he muttered.
“Ha ha. I got to touch fingers with Portia. George said it was all right.”
Paul wanted to murder the veterinarian.
He pulled the truck over and put it in neutral. “She could have grabbed your arm and bitten it off! You think I’m kidding? You know what it looks like when they attack people? She is not a pet. Helena doesn’t even sit in the same room with her to do her research!”
“You’re overreacting. I’ve seen pictures of Dian Fossey sitting with gorillas in the wild.”
“Portia is not a gorilla, and I wouldn’t sit around with gorillas in the wild. They’re wild animals. I love them! Never go near any of the chimps again! They can kill you. In the wild, they kill their infants and eat them.”
Realizing what he’d just said, he put his hand over his face. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Cameron, however, seemed unfazed. “George wouldn’t have let me if it wasn’t safe.”
“It wasn’t safe, and he did let you.”
“He was standing right there.”
I could kill him, Paul thought again.
“Their teeth are sharp as knives. Promise me,” he said, “you will not do anything like that again.”
“Why do you care?” she asked, half fishing for information on his feelings for her, half-disgusted at what appeared to be a chauvinistic response to having conceived a child.
“I like you!” he almost shouted. “Your pretty face is part of my life! And I don’t want chimpanzees killing you, all right? You’re my friend.”
Cameron noticed that he didn’t mention that she was pregnant. She considered turning him loose in her kitchen. He would make a mess. He and Jake were slobs. She would wake up in the morning to a horrible mess.
“I won’t be awake to eat any food anyhow,” she said.
He put the car in gear. At her house, he turned off the engine and got out.
There was a greeting-card-size envelope on her front door with her name on it, and nearby, leaning against the outside of the cabin, was a Christmas wreath. The card was from Sean, and it showed a picture of two puppies playing together on the front. Inside, he’d written, To brighten your season. Your friend, Sean.
Paul perused the card over her shoulder. He picked up the wreath. “I’ll hang it up for you.” He’d have preferred to throw it in the river but recognized this response as childish.
“Thank you.” Cameron let him follow her into the house, where she dropped the card on her entry table. She found she was trembling. Would he want to make love with her? Was he suddenly interested in her because of their child?
She was too exhausted to figure it out. Wolfie looked at them, and Mariah followed them inside.
Paul said, “Go to sleep. I’ll wake you when the food is ready.”
Cameron thought, This is scary, and she wasn’t thinking about his wreaking havoc in her kitchen. What frightened her was that she knew herself to be in love with him. And she was afraid he would think he loved her back, think so and then change his mind.
That she would grow used to his presence and his kind treatment of her, and then, one way or another, he would abandon her and their child.
Myrtle Hollow
CLARE HAD NOT gone right to bed, because her ex-husband had not left. She knew he’d deliberately stayed till after Bridget and her children had departed, and Clare knew why.
Bridget and the kids drove away.
David said, “So.”
“Yes,” Clare replied. Both of them thinking of Paul and Cameron.
“The man who doesn’t want so much as a houseplant.”
“I don’t expect he’ll marry her,” Clare said wearily. It seemed sad to acknowledge this of her own son, but she couldn’t imagine Paul committing himself to marriage.
“I expect he better,” David said grimly.
“If you think he will, you don’t know your own son.”
“What I don’t know about my son,” he replied, “is the reason for this nonsense he has about never being married. It’s time for him to grow up.”
“He is grown-up. He simply believes that no one can remain monogamous.”
“He’s not that illogical. He believes he can’t,” her ex-husband replied. “And I think you have something to tell him, Clare.”
“It has nothing to do with Paul. If you think he needs to know,” she challenged, “you tell him.” She knew David never would. He considered the business shameful to her and would not reveal her shame to their children. It really wasn’t their business anyhow. It was hers and David’s.
“You know full well I’ll never tell him,” David answered.
“We decided decades ago what we would tell them, and that’s what we told them.”
To her surprise, he said, “I think you’re right. I’m looking for excuses for his being the way he is, and there really is no excuse.”
“I’m certainly not to blame,” Clare said. “He’s an adult. Whatever his problems are, he needs to get over them and stop blaming his parents.”
“He doesn’t blame us,” David said, “because he doesn’t see a problem with the way he is. He wants to remain single and considers it his right. But I hope he understands now that he has somewhat abridged that right.”
“I don’t see that,” Clare replied. “This isn’t the 1950s, when a man was expected to marry a girl he’d ‘gotten in trouble.’” She used the expression ironically.
“Yes,” David agreed. “Never have adults had more support in bad behavior, more freedom to be selfish.”
His sidelong look at Clare silently accused, and she accepted the accusation. “Call it selfishness,” she said. “I did what I had to. I did what I wanted, but it was also what I needed.”
Her ex-husband pushed back from the table, rose and slowly reached for his coat.
They had reached the topic on which they had never agreed and never would, and so he was leaving.
Just as he had twenty-five years before.
CHAPTER SIX
PAUL FOUND
defrosted chicken in her refrigerator, along with red bell peppers and other vegetables. He put rice on the stove and walked to the bedroom doorway. Cameron lay on top of the covers, fully clothed and obviously asleep. The sight stirred him. He remembered her full breasts as he’d seen them the night they’d made love. It had been
very good—all of it.
And now she’s pregnant, Paul.
It must be his sister’s work, Bridget’s witchery. Not the pregnancy—not that. And obviously, he had a responsibility in going to bed with Cameron. But it was unlike Cameron to have accepted his…suggestion. And Bridget was untrustworthy.
He hadn’t the slightest idea what he would do with a baby and had an unsettling remembrance of caring for a six-week-old Nicky for Bridget and her husband. Nicky had been unwilling to drink from a bottle. He had screamed, peed and defecated. But Paul had liked him even then. He had smelled so good, that baby smell.
Cameron’s going to have a baby.
In his mind, he kept trying to separate the fact that it was Cameron’s baby from the fact that it was his baby. Babies were something he could take care of for a few hours. They weren’t something to have around all the time, in a car seat, in the backseat where an air bag could not kill them, with a bag full of their paraphernalia. No night gigs, no dinners at restaurants, no morning runs, no freedom. They were a massive imposition on freedom, and Paul chafed at the thought of the being he felt thrust upon him.
But now that Cameron was pregnant, the baby seemed a fact. He would have to have something to do with it. It just wasn’t an option to have nothing to do with his child. Kids needed dads.
They need full-time dads, Paul.
Well, he hadn’t exactly had a full-time dad. His father had walked out when he was six. And while Paul had still seen lots of him, always, while his dad was still there for Little League games, while he’d slept over at his father’s house almost half of each week, well, David Cureux had still not been a full-time dad.
And Paul still resented it, if he let himself think about it. It wasn’t his nature to dwell on such things, and a quick sight of Cameron’s dressing table gave him something different to think about. Sean Devlin’s self-published poetry volume.
Paul picked it up. Followed by Mariah as he returned to the kitchen to slice vegetables, he opened the chapbook and read a poem. Dark, brooding stuff. It ended with the line, I called, and you did not come.
It was about abandonment, and Paul reminded himself that he was fortunate to have had two parents, to have grown up near both, to have always been treated well by both. If he had called, someone had always come.
The thought of being a part-time father left him with the same feeling as imagining neglecting any of his charges at the zoo. A dirty exhibit, bored monkeys… It was the same feeling. At the zoo, he never let such things happen.
But he was considering being a part-time dad.
Well, he could take care of the child now by taking care of Cameron. Physically. Making sure she ate. And went to an obstetrician, for God’s sake. A homebirth? What was she thinking? He couldn’t imagine a baby’s head passing through her pelvis.
Well, his mother was a realist. She’d seen enough as a midwife that she had no patience with fantasists. Women with unrealistic expectations were set right. And Paul had no doubt his mother would set Cameron straight.
He remembered Cameron, rather recently, talking about miscarriages—her sister having had a string of miscarriages. He saw now why she’d become hysterical on the subject. She’d believed—or known—that she was pregnant. To him, too, the prospect of a miscarriage was nightmarish—after the things Cameron had said. Because it would hurt her. That would be the nightmare.
Mariah kept him company, gladly accepting scraps, as he stood at the stove.
When the meal was ready, he dished up two plates, carried both into the bedroom, and set them on the bed. He switched on a bedside lamp.
Cameron didn’t stir, and he said, “Hey.”
Nothing.
He touched her arm, felt her warmth through the soft cotton of her long-sleeve T-shirt.
She blinked, and her dark brown eyes focused on him, adjusting to the light.
He propped two pillows against the headboard for her and gestured to the plates beside her.
She sat up, her braids mussed, and it occurred to him that she was the most beautiful woman he knew. And she was pregnant with his child. She was the only woman he would want carrying his child, that was certain.
Though, of course, he didn’t precisely want a child. Nor did he not want this child.
He sat cross-legged on the bed to eat and to make sure she ate.
She said, “Thank you.” Then, “It’s good.”
When she was done eating, she got up and carried her plate to the kitchen. He followed with his own plate and saw her look around at the mess. He saw her accept that she was too tired to clean up. In resignation, she headed back toward the bathroom. He decided to wash dishes, cutting down the work by first offering them to Mariah and Wolfie, then filling the sink with soapy water and finishing the job properly.
When he was done, he returned to the bedroom and found that Cameron had changed into a T-shirt and sweat-pants, brushed her teeth probably, and was asleep. It was unlike her. She was an energetic woman, liking to oversee everything in her home.
Her exhaustion impressed upon him again that this was real, that she was pregnant.
Pregnant with his child.
He wanted nothing so much as to climb into bed with her, but he hadn’t been invited. Besides, it might…complicate matters. If he behaved as a partner to her, as a lover now, she might draw mistaken conclusions about his long-term intentions.
Until he knew what those intentions were, it would be better if she drew no conclusions.
He let himself out of her house and suddenly felt exhausted. Part of him kept screaming, This isn’t what I wanted. This isn’t what I planned!
CAMERON’S INITIAL prenatal visit with Clare Cureux was punctuated by episodes of vomiting. Clare gave her vitamin B6 from her own cabinet and encouraged her to eat more protein.
Lying weakly on the four-poster bed Clare used for exams, Cameron wondered if she’d been smart to ask Clare to be her care provider. Normally, the father of her child should be present at a prenatal exam, but Paul had shown no interest, except to say, “When you go to her backup physician, I’ll come with you.” Cameron had seen this as Paul’s subtle way of suggesting that their baby should be born in a hospital.
Cameron wanted a homebirth. Only if it was safe, of course. She asked Clare, “Can I do this?”
“Your pelvis is perfectly normal,” Clare said. “Barring an exceptionally large baby or something else untoward, I foresee no problem with a vaginal delivery.”
“And a homebirth?”
“As far as I know at this point. We’ll have to see how things go.”
Cameron felt a moment’s relief at this moderate reply, then recurring fear of the pain she suspected would be a huge part of the childbirth process. If nothing else stood in the way, her ability to have a natural birth would all be a matter of how much pain she could stand.
“What are you thinking?” Clare demanded perspicaciously.
“I just hope I can…tough it out.”
“One thing I guarantee,” Clare told her, “nothing anyone tells you will allow you to know what it’s like until you do it. The women who have the worst time are the one’s who get attached to a particular way of doing things.”
“Oh.” Cameron wondered if she was like that and decided she had the potential to be.
Cameron wished it could be comfortable to discuss with Clare the simple fact of Paul as a father, but there was no way.
If Clare brought it up, it would be bad enough. But Clare would never bring it up. She undoubtedly saw the situation as Paul and Cameron’s problem, or business, at any rate. Which it was.
Clare moved on to the need for Cameron to make an appointment with Clare’s backup physician. Cameron was also reassured by this plan. Hopefully, it would ease Paul’s reservations, as well. If the physician felt a home-birth would be safe for her, Paul must agree.
As Cameron was walking out of the cabin to her bicycle, her cell phone rang. Paul.
Her heart sped
up. She reminded herself, He’s calling because he cares about the baby.
Not because he feels romantically toward you, Cameron.
She answered.
He said, “I left my iPod at your house.”
“I found it. With your wallet. In the kitchen.”
“You’ve had the charge of my wallet all this time?”
“Yes, and I’ve been using your credit cards.”
“Just what I expected of you.”
“Thank you for feeding me last night.” Abruptly, she changed the subject. “Your mother says a homebirth is safe. Well, so far, she thinks that. She seems to have a conservative attitude. Wait and see.”
Paul walked through the animal hospital. Paced, actually, back and forth, occasionally glancing at his charges, none of whom seemed the worse for wear from the previous night’s adventure but who would have to be rehoused soon. Repairs on their exhibit were underway. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Cameron, you are terrified of childbirth.”
“I can’t think about that,” she said. “I can’t think about it or I’ll go mad, and I can’t let it dictate my decisions. Most women who are unfamiliar with childbirth are frightened. In our culture, childbirth is portrayed as dangerous and painful.”
“This might be a good time to let fear have a say.” I’m afraid, he realized. He knew better than to tell her that.
Paul reasoned with himself that the reality of childbirth would change Cameron. She would go to the hospital.
She said, “Why are you against my having a homebirth? Your mother is a midwife, for heaven’s sake.”
Maybe that is why, Paul thought. His current emotions were irrational. He knew the figures from the births his mother had attended. Two stillbirths, neither of which could or would have been prevented in the hospital, maybe a dozen hospital transports. Of course, there had been that one time, the birth no one would discuss, before his parents’ divorce….
On that recent night when he’d asked his parents to relate the incident, no one had obliged.
He spoke as honestly as he could. “A little different reactions come up when it’s happening to you. I mean, me. The baby. When a person is involved.”