Love Potion #2

by Margot Early

  “I’m glad we agree on that.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, feet from where the infant was sleeping. “You keep getting upset about this wedding thing. What’s the problem?”

  She let Bertie down to the ground and used her fingers to enumerate. “One, you didn’t want to marry me at all until you drank Bridget’s love potion. Two, now you’re marrying me so that Gabriela’s parents will be married.”

  “I’m what?”

  “At your core, you’re more conventional than I am. You’re not in love with me. You don’t even care about sex with me particularly.”

  Paul stared at her, wondering if she’d gone mad. “I am in love with you. You just gave birth to my child!”

  “See! That’s not being in love with me; it’s being in love with yourself. She’s our child anyhow.”

  “And what’s this about my indifference to sex?”

  “I didn’t say you were indifferent.”

  “Is this more about your wanting me to show emotion? Cameron, I’ve done everything I can to convince you that I love you. Maybe the doubt is in yourself. Is there a chance you don’t feel worthy of being loved?”

  Cameron listened to his words and was further angered by them and knew her anger to be somewhat irrational. His saying that he knew no other way to convince her of his love seemed true. She didn’t know what would convince her—except his being so. Which she believed he wasn’t.

  “Also,” he added, “what you’ve said makes no sense. Either I drank the love potion and am in love with you only because of it or I’m not in love with you and am marrying you only because of Gabriela. I can’t win. Are you telling me that you don’t want to be married?”

  She did want to be married, and she felt foolish for practically begging for proof of his love. He had told her he loved her. What more should she expect?

  “No,” she said. “I want to marry you.”

  Paul hesitated only a moment before replying, “Good.”

  “That sounded enthusiastic.”

  “We’ve been fighting, and we’re not even married yet. How do you expect me to sound enthusiastic?”

  “Is marriage a lifetime commitment for you?” she asked, suspicious.

  “Oh, yes,” he replied emphatically, and she knew he was thinking of the disruption caused by divorce in his own childhood.

  She decided to drop the subject, to let him bring up the idea of setting a date. She wondered how many years she’d have to wait.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  PAUL WAS GLAD

  that Cameron seemed to drop her agitation about marriage. He was loath to propose that she name the date for fear of hearing more stupid accusations of his lack of love for her. What he wanted to see happened. Peace. Cameron took Gabriela to work with her on every day but his weekday off, when he liked to care for the baby. At night, when he got home, he found his child and his best friend, his beloved, who seemed to be recovering much of her spirit. He loved playing his guitar for Cameron and Gabriela, and the only gigs he accepted were for a daytime birthday party and a concert in the park. His father asked him one day, “So when are you two actually going to get married?”

  Paul said simply, “I don’t know.” But when he returned from the zoo one day in early October, he asked Cameron, “So…shall we set a date?” He hardly knew how to sound as he asked, and he told himself that it was because she’d been so damned desperate for marriage. Cameron! Who had pretended to be his girlfriend for years, who had been, he’d thought, as wary of commitment as himself.

  Cameron, who was carrying Gabriela in a sling against her chest as she cut vegetables for dinner, kept her own voice level. “Sure. How is November for you?”

  “Is that too soon?” he asked.

  Cameron considered. Yes, weddings did take time to plan. Yet she heard no enthusiasm in Paul’s voice and could awaken no answering enthusiasm in herself because of his lack of enthusiasm. Somehow, the dream of being married to him had become tarnished in her mind.

  “Let’s just go to the courthouse some day,” she said. “I don’t need a big wedding.” As she spoke, she was conscious that wanting her to have a real wedding was the reason Paul had given for postponing the wedding till after Gabriela’s birth. She looked down at her baby daughter’s precious head, with its tufts of dark hair. You’re the one I’m in love with, she thought, comforted. She added, “I don’t want a big wedding.”

  And it was true. The wedding no longer mattered. Paul and she both felt that their being married would be best for Gabriela. This was what she told herself and tried to believe, that the two of them felt the same. But as she spoke, she realized that it wasn’t how she felt.

  That she didn’t want to be married to him at all, not on such apathetic terms.

  She said, “Let’s just skip it.”

  “What?” He had crouched down to pet Mariah.

  “Why get married? We’re fine as we are,” she said. “As a matter of fact, there’s no reason for you to live here now.”

  Paul said, “I want to live here. You’re my family.”

  Cameron was satisfied by the answer, felt comfort in it. “Well, being married won’t make that any more true.”

  Paul felt as though he’d taken a wrong step somewhere, and he could not go back and retrace it no matter how hard he tried. He knew what the wrong step was. It was that he hadn’t immediately asked Cameron to marry him within five minutes of learning she was pregnant. Never mind that Cameron’s point of view was entirely unreasonable, never mind that she never came out and said that was the problem. He knew it was, and her attitude annoyed him.

  Now she didn’t want to get married?

  He said, “We’re engaged. Doesn’t that mean that next thing we get married?” He tried to put some humor in his voice and feared he sounded cynical instead.

  “There’s no need.” She looked down at the ring on her hand, put down the knife, slid the ring off, turned and tried to put it in his hand. “Really. Let’s just say we’re as committed now as we’ll ever be.”

  He stood but didn’t take the ring. He didn’t know what to do. “Are you breaking our engagement? Are you saying you don’t want to marry me?”

  “Not especially,” Cameron answered, rubbing Gabriela’s tiny back through the cloth of the sling. She tried to put the ring in his hand.

  “I don’t want to give that to anyone else,” he said.

  Her cheeks pinked slightly, and a small smile formed on her lips. “Okay.” She started to put it back on, but Gabriela shifted then and made a soft cry.

  Paul slid the ring onto Cameron’s finger.

  She grinned. “Thank you.”

  He bit his lip, not sure what to say or do. He went to the sink to wash his hands. Cameron sat down at the table to nurse Gabriela. Almost automatically, Paul filled a quart juice jar with water and set it in front of her on the table. Nursing required her to drink an incredible amount of water.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  He touched her hair before returning to his work at the counter. His back to her, Paul asked, “Have you ever considered what I said to you before, that maybe you don’t feel worthy of being loved?”

  “I feel worthy.” Cameron gazed into Gabriela’s dark eyes, which watched her. They were the shape of Paul’s, Cameron thought, and Cameron believed she might have a Cureux nose. The milk flowed from her breasts, tingling, warm, and she was joyful and content in oneness with her child. She admired Gabriela’s miniature fingernails. She loved everything about the little girl and thought her the most beautiful baby she had ever seen.

  Paul turned from the sink to look at the two of them. He loved them both so much. He said, “Cameron, I want to marry you. I want you for my wife.”

  She looked up and saw the steadiness of his gaze. He did sound sincere. What’s my problem? she thought. She had wanted to marry him, but she’d wanted all of him and hadn’t quite believed all of him was committed to her. And now he was watching her nurse their child, s
o of course he leaned toward commitment, perhaps even yearned for it. She said, “Thank you for saying so.”

  “I’m not saying it. I mean it.”

  “I know. Thank you. Let’s not worry about it right now. I have your grandmother’s ring, and we’re a family, and let’s leave things that way.”

  Paul swallowed and turned back to the sink. Well. It was the kind of arrangement he’d have found just about perfect at one point. He still found it that way except for a single thing.

  He kept thinking of the sakis, of the male ignoring his mate, of her inner collapse.

  He’d done Cameron some deep injury by not immediately wishing to marry her. He felt he’d hurt her in a way that had formed a scar, and the scar was what lay between them, and he didn’t know how to heal it.

  Yes, he’d spent most of their acquaintance feeling that he never wanted to make a lifetime commitment to any woman. He’d been unable to imagine submitting himself to the constraints of wife and family.

  But caring for Cameron during her pregnancy, seeing Gabriela born and Cameron’s struggles with sore nipples, her devotion to their child had changed him so deeply that he felt unlike the person he’d been before. He’d begun to think of life insurance policies. Cameron’s medical insurance was covered through her work as his was through the zoo. But he was thinking, talking to her, of enlarging her house, making another bedroom for Gabriela when she was older. Now the baby slept with them.

  Why did Cameron not want to marry him?

  Silly reasons. Constantly doubting his love, his devotion to her and their child.

  He tried to put it all out of his mind as he stir-fried vegetables and chicken, as he checked the soup simmering on the stove.

  THERE WAS NO ONE to whom Paul could speak of what was going on between Cameron and himself. No one but her, and those conversations had become less and less productive.

  And at the zoo on the following day, when the male saki finally showed some interest in his mate, she yelled at him in the saki language, made faces and pelted him with anything at hand, except their infant.

  Watching, Paul covered his own face. There was nothing he could do about this situation any more than he could correct his own. The junior keeper, a woman, who witnessed with him the female’s response, said, “He should have been nicer earlier. She doesn’t like him anymore.”

  Great, Paul thought, considering his own situation. Just great.

  Because he had been “nice.”

  In the wild, the male perhaps would have won his position with his mate by securing resources for her, special things. Paul remembered all he’d tried to do for Cameron during her bed rest. He thought he had done everything in his power to show his love for her. But she had turned that into devotion for their baby.

  Now she seemed uncertain that he wanted to marry her simply because he loved her and wanted to be her husband and wanted her to be his wife. It occurred to him to snatch her and Gabriela away to an elopement. To do something extremely romantic. Yet he was having a hard time finding the inspiration, and where could he take her that would be romantic? How could he create the romance she seemed to need so much?

  THAT AFTERNOON at the Women’s Resource Center, just as Cameron had finished nursing Gabriela in her office, she heard the bell signaling the opening of the front door. She settled the sleeping infant in her bassinet, then opened the door of her office and stepped out. The newcomer, a pretty woman, was crying hysterically. While her two puzzled children played with toys in the lobby, Cameron took her back to her own office. Calming the woman, who said her name was Tammy, Cameron listened and tried to understand her story.

  “I don’t know if this is the place to come. I don’t know if there is anywhere to come.”

  Cameron was not a psychotherapist, and though she was often the first person to hear clients’ stories, she generally listened, then let the women know what would be available through the Women’s Resource Center, called someone to take the families to the safe house if necessary, tried to make the clients feel welcome.

  “He never wanted to marry me.” He, Cameron had gathered, was the father of the two-year-old, the younger child in the next room. The mother was still sobbing. “He never married me, and now he has someone else. It’s not right. He had a child with me. He should marry me.”

  Cameron tried to be blank as a slate, even within herself, yet the subject at hand seemed close to her own. But Paul was willing to marry her; she was the one pushing him away because he hadn’t immediately wanted marriage.

  “He’s mine,” the woman continued, against evidence to the contrary, the father of her child living with another woman.

  This was something a counselor could explain to the client. Cameron said, “Let me explain about the services we offer here. You may want to avail yourself of counseling services. If you haven’t been able to collect child support, we’ll connect you with social services. They’re the experts at that, and they’ll make sure he pays.”

  “I don’t want child support. I want him!”

  Cameron stared at the woman. She was very pretty, with well-defined cheekbones and long, straight dark hair, but Cameron was amazed that even a beautiful woman should have lived to the age of twenty-six without realizing there were some things she might never get and that other people could not be controlled.

  Uneasily, she thought again of Paul, of her refusal to marry him. The woman before her sounded childish, and Cameron felt that she’d been childish. No, she was certain of it.

  It took an hour and a half to calm the woman down, get her an appointment with a counselor and finally get her out the door.

  By the time she left, it was almost five, and Cameron was glad to put Gabriela in the car and drive both of them home. Her mind rebelled against the discovery of the afternoon. Well, not discovery. But suddenly she could see herself clearly, see how unreasonable she’d been.

  Gabriela awoke when they got home, and as Cameron nursed her, she again considered the question Paul had twice asked her. Did she feel worthy of being loved?

  She did. That was a solution that sounded brilliant and simply wasn’t. The fact was, her pride had been hurt by his not immediately deciding he wanted to marry her. Her pride was further hurt when it appeared to her that he would never have asked her to marry him at all if Bridget hadn’t given him a love potion.

  How could she make up to him for the way she had acted? When she thought of all he had done for her during her pregnancy, she felt an appalling sense of having done absolutely everything wrong.

  When Gabriela fell asleep, Cameron got up and began preparing dinner. She took a moment out from cooking to go outside and collect some fall leaves, then arrange them on a plate inside to enjoy their colors. What would Paul most want that she could give him?

  Possibly simply the acknowledgment that she believed in his love, and she felt as much at a loss to show that as he must have all these long months of her rejection. Because that was what it had been. She had continually told him that what he was doing was not enough.

  She listened for his truck and felt herself draw a breath of relief when she heard it outside the house.

  She went to the door and found him bringing in paper bags containing wood of various sizes. She had a sunroom on the porch and he used that for what woodworking he’d done since they’d lived together. It was now home to a table saw and quite a few other tools.

  She kissed him and said, “I have to tell you something.”

  His glance was interested. “Let me put this stuff in the sunroom. It’s a not-very-practical project, but I’m going to try my hand at it.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll see. Or it will be a disaster and you won’t see because no one will be able to figure it out.”

  Cameron followed him into the sunroom and sat down on one of the chairs.

  He said, “I brought us a movie, too.” He pulled out Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.

  “Hoo
ray,” said Cameron. “Of course, Mary Anne maintains that Heathcliff is much too toned down in the movie, but I like it.”

  “Is it very different from the book?”

  “Have you ever read the book?”

  He shook his head.

  “He’s not the sort of person anyone should want to marry except the woman who didn’t marry him, because she was the only person he loved.” She drew her eyebrows together a bit, puzzling over it. “He’s really a bit like the guys we see at the Women’s Resource Center, but there’s something different there. I can’t put my finger on it.”

  Abruptly, she changed the subject. “Paul, I’ve been a jerk to you. I’ve been childish, really horrible.”

  Paul’s first thought was that she was going to tell him to move out, that she was actually looking for something different in a man.

  She said, “Can we get married at the zoo?”

  Paul laughed. The zoo could be hired out for private parties, and undoubtedly this was what Cameron had in mind. “Of course.”

  “I want to get married in front of the wolves.”

  “I know some other animals that could really benefit from the example,” he couldn’t help saying. Quickly, he added, “But your wish is my command.”

  “You mean the sakis?” she asked sympathetically. “Aren’t things any better?”

  “No. But we’ll get married wherever you like.” He sat down in the chair nearest hers and scooted it closer. “Cameron, I’m sorry I was so anti-commitment. You’ve got to understand— My parents. It was pretty crazy. Not their divorce. But my mother is a formidable woman with very exact ideas. I loved being alone, being free, a bachelor, without having to consider anyone else’s wants or needs. It’s easy to say I was immature, but it’s not that simple. I was—and am, to some degree—selfish. I thought being married would be too difficult for me. But living with you is easy. You’re like part of myself. I don’t ever want to live without you.”

  Cameron clung tightly to his hand, hearing the words she’d so long yearned to hear, convincing her that he was truly committed to her.