Love Potion #2

by Margot Early

  Cameron had a horror of how dirty her house would become with her confined to bed. And what if Paul didn’t want to cook for five more months? She looked at him anxiously.

  He said, “I’ll do the cooking.”

  “And we can get help for you, with the housework,” Bridget said. “If you have insurance through your work—”

  “I’ll lose my job.”

  “Unlikely. Don’t you have a second-in-command?”

  Cameron nodded again, thinking of the fiftyish woman with a master’s degree in sociology who was waiting in the wings, ready to take over her job. She felt like crying. She needed to be active; she went running or biking every day. How was she going to stand this?

  But then she looked into Bridget’s face, drawn, remembered that this widow would be going home tonight for the first time to a house without her husband—well, to a house her husband would never enter again. For many of Billy’s jobs had been out of town. It hadn’t been uncommon for him to be gone for five days at a time.

  “Okay,” she said. “Bridget, do you and the kids want to stay here tonight?”

  Bridget shook her head. “We have to go back home sometime. I don’t even know what Merrill understands. Nick gets it a little better, but— It’s best for us to go home. Mom said she’d come and spend the night with us if we want.”

  Paul said, “I better get started on dinner. Is there anything else you need to tell me, Bridget? About this? Cameron’s bed rest, et cetera?”

  “Tons,” Bridget said, “but you’ve got the basic idea.”

  DURING THE NEXT TWO MONTHS, Cameron learned to be still—well, to exist without running, cycling and her usual active lifestyle and to be thankful in the expectation of resuming her past activities after the baby was born. God, to be confined like this every day. It wasn’t that she’d never thought of the plight of disabled women—she saw them occasionally in the Women’s Resource Center—but forced inactivity was a new experience.

  Paul kept her supplied with all the Bollywood movies he could find and had even taken to browsing thrift stores for vintage romance novels he thought would fit her specifications.

  Cameron still felt some concern that his decision to marry her had been caused by her pregnancy and a love potion, but she was dependent on him, and she felt a deep gratitude for everything he did for her. For so long, she’d called him immature, but he was not. He was reliable, responsible.

  The zoo director was busy with the construction of a baboon exhibit and with acquiring other baboons to introduce to Precious and Girl, but Paul continued to worry about the sakis. Precious’s owner had made national news because of her spouse being mauled. She and the injured spouse were on tabloid covers, and Cameron had learned more about the attack on the news. Because of the severe injuries to the owner, people were calling for Precious to be destroyed. The zoo was now keen to protect the baboon. Paul had been interviewed and said, “Nonhuman primates are wild animals. No baboon is made for cul-de-sac life. We’re not going to destroy this baboon for being a baboon.”

  A Morgantown-based animal rights group, West Virginians for Animal Welfare, or WVAW, felt that Precious should be returned to his native land. “Nebraska?” Dr. Bannister had roared down the phone. “He was born at an illegal breeding operation in northern Nebraska. What makes you think he’d be happier there?” The keepers and zoo vet had chipped in on a bottle of Ardbeg, the director’s favorite single malt, to show their support for this sound bite.

  Paul had also been followed home by some WVAW members, who tried to enlist him in a plan to send the baboon to Ethiopia. They had ended up calling him names and accusing him of participating in “unethical husbandry practices.”

  One day when Paul returned from work, Cameron had exclaimed, “I felt the baby move.” But Paul could not feel those movements from the outside till several weeks later. Cameron thought she would never forget his lying beside her, his hand on the rounded melon of her baby, the look on his face one of awe as he felt the baby move inside her.

  Bridget and her children spent a fair amount of time at Cameron’s house, usually appearing in the late afternoon when Nick and Merrill would “help” their mother with some housework. Cameron felt a gratitude for what she knew she could never repay. Bridget was subdued and very thin—“not hungry.” Billy had been buried at a local cemetery, and she and the children took flowers to his grave daily.

  Sean visited often after school and sometimes met Bridget at the house. When they were there at the same time, he often ended up playing with Bridget’s children, and on May Day he helped them construct a maypole in Cameron’s tiny backyard. Cameron watched through the window as the four of them danced around it and thought it would be nice if Sean would fall for Bridget and Bridget for Sean, but that didn’t seem to be happening.

  The baby was growing at a normal rate, and the bed rest had allowed her to hold on to the baby for twenty-eight weeks, well into viability.

  Cameron had stopped reading about homebirths. She’d had a dream of the birth going a particular way, her laboring at home, perhaps enduring the worst pain of her life but triumphing, making her way through it, giving birth vaginally. Now her best hope was to give birth vaginally in the hospital.

  She had to sleep almost sitting up because she had such trouble with gastric reflux. Whenever she got out of bed, it was difficult. She had to move carefully and had to hold up her belly, hold her child, as she waddled to the bathroom. Baths were tepid, showers nonexistent.

  Cameron still longed to give birth vaginally, still thought about it a great deal. It seemed an empowering thing to push the baby out. If she had a cesarean section, someone else would be doing all the work. She wanted to do what women had been doing for thousands of years. She felt as though giving birth vaginally would give her greater strength—as a parent and also in her work with abused women.

  Sean came inside through the back door and walked into the bedroom through her open door. He smiled when he saw her, the smile that always intensified his good looks. “Did you watch our maypole dance?”

  “Of course. I loved it.” She hesitated. “It’s really nice for Bridget and her kids to get to be with you. You know. Because of Billy.” She felt a need continually to impress upon Sean that to her he was a friend and could not be more. She wished he would fall for someone else—Bridget, for instance, not that Bridget was ready for romance. She was mourning Billy.

  “They’re great kids,” Sean said matter-of-factly and sat down in her rocker. “How’s baby McAllister-Cureux?”

  “Not active just now. He was bumping around a little while ago.”

  “He?”

  Though Cameron had allowed an ultrasound some weeks before, she had chosen not to be told the baby’s sex.

  “Or she,” she answered.

  “Have you thought of names?”

  She shrugged. She and Paul had talked of names in a casual way. “I like Gabriela if we have a girl. We both do. We’re not sure about boys’ names.”

  Sean looked toward the front of the house just as Mariah stood up from her bed and Bertie jumped off the bed, both going to welcome Paul home. “Speak of the devil.” Sean stood. “I’ll make myself scarce.”

  “Thanks for coming by,” Cameron told him.

  She heard him greeting Paul as one man went out and the other came in.

  Paul came to the bedside and kissed her. “I learned about something interesting today.”

  “What?”

  “My father told me about it. He read about it, and apparently there’s a new proponent of it at the hospital. It’s called kangaroo care. For taking care of premature infants. You wear them against your skin—kind of like a baby kangaroo in its pouch. You know, around the hospital. Or wherever preemies are allowed to be at the hospital.”

  “Only in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit,” Cameron told him. “And I hope this baby isn’t premature,” she added fiercely.

  “We both hope that. But I thought you’d want to
know.”

  “Yes,” Cameron agreed. Paul looked tired. She asked him about his day, wishing she could be the one to make dinner, to do something useful to make his life easier.

  “How was the movie?” He looked at her most recent Bollywood offering, the box lying beside her on the bed.

  “The guy is sooo immature. I’m not through with it. I’m hoping he’ll improve or show a different side to his character. But he’s just—adolescent.”

  “Like me?” Paul asked, a touch of asperity in his tone.

  Cameron could not remember the last time she’d called him immature—or thought that he was. “Not remotely.” She added, “You’re not immature.”

  Paul smiled, but still there was a faint archness in the look.

  “What?” Cameron said.

  “I’ve heard rumors about my Peter Pan complex.”

  Cameron tried to remember if she’d ever said out loud to anyone that Paul had a Peter Pan complex. She remembered a conversation with Sean on the subject, but wasn’t it Sean who’d used that expression? Had she ever used it?

  She said, “I’m not sure I’ve ever said that about you. Where did you hear such a rumor?”

  He gave it some thought. “Bridget?”

  Had Sean been talking to Bridget about things Cameron had told him?

  She decided to say, “Sean’s been nice, playing with her kids.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s why he comes over.”

  Cameron looked at him worriedly. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

  He seemed to consider. “I don’t think I am. I don’t think you’re attracted to him. I suppose I think he’d be happier directing his attention elsewhere.”

  Paul was preoccupied. There were things he would have liked to tell Cameron under other circumstances, things having nothing to do with Sean Devlin. But she was pregnant, trying not to miscarry.

  He’d found a note on his windshield from the animal rights group that had been besieging him and other zoo employees. HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEND YOUR LIFE IN A CAGE?

  It was a disturbing suggestion, threatening, and he’d considered taking it to the police but just stuck it in the glove box of the truck instead. He understood healthy activism. When he’d lived in England for a year, he’d joined the clown army to protest his own country’s involvement in a war he believed pointless. But the animal rights activists objecting to the zoo holding Precious and Girl and caring for them seemed a few cards short of a full deck. He’d asked one of them, “Do you have the slightest idea what would be involved in sending a baboon to Ethiopia? Are you going to buy him a seat on a jet?”

  The activist had said, “He’s fairly docile normally, isn’t he?”

  Did this person read the news? Paul had then inquired.

  Yes, but we want to return him to the wild.

  Right.

  Cameron seemed almost to guess his thoughts. “Heard any more from the weirdos?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Paul answered vaguely. “They’re still at it.”

  She eyed him thoughtfully. She said, “Thank you for everything you’re doing.” She said it every day. Love-making—well, intercourse—was out of the question, though he slept with her, and they caressed each other in the night. Cameron wanted to somehow repay him for everything he was doing for her, and she had no idea how to accomplish that.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. He stretched out on the bed and put his hand on her stomach, reaching under her maternity top.

  The baby kicked within her, as though sensing his presence.

  “Just woke up,” Cameron said. “He must want to say hi. Have you thought of boys’ names yet?”

  He shook his head. “But we’re not going to name him Precious.”

  She laughed. “Okay.” Then, “What about William? Billy?”

  Paul’s breath caught a little. He mourned the loss of his brother-in-law, who had been a remarkable man, a good parent. Bridget had told him, I was so lucky. I’m never going to find anyone half that good again.

  “That’s a nice thought,” he said. “I like it. If you do.”

  “I do. William is a nice name. We don’t even have to call him Billy. Maybe Will.”

  “It’s a good name.”

  He thought again of the rather too-frequent experience of coming home to find Sean Devlin leaving. Paul didn’t think of himself as a jealous man, and he couldn’t really imagine Cameron being unfaithful. But he wished Sean would make himself scarce—for his own sake. The guy was obviously head over heels in love with Cameron, but Cameron was his, Paul’s, fiancée. Though Paul didn’t fear Cameron’s falling for Sean, Paul sometimes had the unpleasant feeling that Sean was waiting for everything to collapse.

  Nothing was going to collapse just now. Cameron needed him. That thought made Paul feel slightly guilty, as though he were binding her to himself with his own caretaking. But what else was he supposed to do?

  He studied her. “You’re okay…with us…aren’t you?”

  She looked startled, then almost pleased. “Why are you asking?”

  “Because you sort of can’t get along without me right now, and I don’t want you to feel…captive.”

  HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEND YOUR LIFE IN A CAGE? Uneasily, he remembered the note.

  “I feel a bit captive because I can’t get out of bed except to go to the bathroom and take a bath. If you mean captured by you, I don’t feel that way. If you’re asking if I would still love you if I didn’t need you right now, I would. Very much so.”

  Paul leaned over, held her, kissed her lips, stroked her hair. He said the words he seldom said. “I love you, Cameron.”

  “Pity Bridget had to give you a potion to make it happen.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t be silly. I loved you when I made love with you. I probably loved you before that. I suspect I’ve been resisting you for some time.”

  “You didn’t love me the first time we were together,” she said, remembering the Halloween night and the morning after. “And I really liked you. Loved you. For a little while, I thought I was in love with you. But you didn’t want me.”

  “That’s wrong. I did and said what I did because I wanted your friendship, wanted nothing to be ruined. It’s taken years of being your friend for me to see that we can be friends and lovers. Partners, if you will.”

  He did not say husband and wife, and Cameron sensed that the final union between them, the marrying, was still something he wanted to hold off, to put off.

  Well, she was in no shape for a wedding.

  Oh, to be able to go for a run. To ride her bike.

  The baby kicked again, and she placed her hand on her abdomen.

  Paul touched her full breasts through her top, reached beneath to touch her nipples, to rub them as books recommended, to prepare her for nursing. Stroked her smooth stomach.

  Cameron had been propped up with a pillow. Now, she lay down beside him, caressing his face, unbuttoning his jeans, kissing him.

  Content.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IN THE LAST WEEK OF MAY,

  Paul left work when it was still light. The days were getting longer. It had been a good day, preparing for tomorrow’s arrival of two baboons who would join Precious and Girl in the zoo’s new baboon exhibit. The protesters had gone, done leafleting the day’s visitors. All the cars in the lot belonged to employees except a white van parked beside Paul’s truck. He thought it belonged to the grad student who’d come to see Helena’s research with Portia. He checked his phone as he walked to his truck, and later he blamed that fact. There was a voice mail from Cameron, and he opened it as he reached the driver’s door.

  Someone beneath the truck grabbed his ankles. The van’s passenger door opened, and a large man put a hood over his head. He shouted, swearing and dropping his phone as someone grabbed his wrist, but they tightened the hood, and there seemed to be three people forcing him into the back of the van.

  He knew it must be the animal activists. He felt certain t
hey wouldn’t hurt him. But Cameron needed him. She was having bed rest, and she needed him to come home and make dinner, to run a bath for her.

  He tried to talk, but the cloth was forced into his mouth.

  His wrists were taped behind him with duct tape. They taped his legs together at his knees and ankles. The van started.

  Who was going to make Cameron’s dinner? Who was going to feed the dogs and Bertie?

  “My fiancée’s pregnant,” he tried to say into the cloth. But it didn’t even sound articulate to him.

  WHERE WAS PAUL? It was unlike him to fail to answer the phone. Cameron had left him three voice mails and tried to keep herself from worrying with Ina May’s Guide to Breastfeeding, which gave hopeful information on nursing preemies. She was at thirty-two weeks now, seemed enormous, and the baby, if born now, would soon be able to begin nursing.

  Oh, where was Paul? Was he in a late meeting at the zoo? Surely he’d have called to tell her.

  At seven-thirty, Cameron phoned Bridget and asked if she’d heard from her brother.

  “No,” Bridget said. “What’s going on?”

  Cameron told her about Paul’s failure to come home. The sky was slowly growing dark.

  “Do you have numbers for anyone else at the zoo?”

  “Just the main number, and no one’s answering.”

  “Look. The kids and I will drive out there and see if he’s still there and get him to call you.”

  “Okay.”

  As Cameron hung up, she felt a slight cramp and wondered if she had to go to the bathroom. She got up and went into the bathroom.

  Moments later, she saw that along with urine she’d left a mucous-like lump in the toilet. Her mucus plug. That must be what it was. She’d lost it.

  Oh, hell.

  Where was Paul?

  Was this labor? Was she going into labor?

  She hobbled back from the bathroom to the telephone.