RSVP...Baby

by Pamela Browning

  “Come with me and we’ll get something to eat,” Neill said much too impulsively, regretting the invitation almost as he spoke. He contemplated rescinding it but couldn’t think of a way to phrase it so that she wouldn’t be offended. Bianca looked dubious anyway.

  “The baby...” she said, almost to herself.

  “We’ll get her a new Dinky,” he said.

  “Binky.”

  “Whatever. Suit yourself.” He got the rest of the way into the car, but before he could turn the key in the ignition, he saw the ramrod-straight Genevieve Knox, mother of the bride and resident barracuda, heading toward them from the doors on the other side of the lobby. She was followed by that mousy social secretary of hers, Anne somebody. Bianca saw them, too. While Genevieve paused at the desk, Bianca produced a baby safety seat from behind the bellman’s stand, and before Neill could say “Mrs. Robinson,” she’d secured Tia in it in the convertible’s back seat. She slid into the front beside him and slammed the door.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said tersely. She looked ruffled beyond words and smelled really awful.

  Neill hit the accelerator, spewing a tail of dust to their rear. “Should we put the top up?” Neill asked. Privately, he thought it was a bad idea. The sour-milk smell would be even worse if confined to a small space.

  “Not on my account. I love the wind in my hair. And the baby will probably quiet down as soon as we get rolling,” Bianca said. The gate to the hotel, featuring two swans beak-to-beak forming a heart, swung open automatically in front of them. Bianca cast a worried look over the back of the seat as they barreled through. The hotel, modeled after an English country house, looked undeniably charming. A former mansion which once served as a weekend retreat for Sutton Swain “Swanee” Lambert, Caroline’s great-grandfather, it was now the most exclusive hotel in the Swan’s Inn hotel chain.

  A couple of men lounging outside the gate leapt to attention when the convertible passed. A camera flash went off in Neill’s face.

  “What’s that?” Bianca said, craning her neck backward to see who had taken their picture.

  “Oh, just the paparazzi. They’re hanging around hoping to get pictures of the Society Wedding of the Year.”

  “Good heavens, is it that big a deal?”

  “Well, Hotel Chain Heiress marries Pretzel King’s son, and Pretzel King’s son is an up-and-coming magazine publisher who’s amassing a fortune of his own. Genevieve’s prominent in the society pages, and to a lesser extent so are Caroline and Eric. Genevieve has ruled that no reporters from publications other than Eric’s will come to the wedding, and the premises of Swan’s Folly are off-limits to anyone not on a special list. The weekend is private, Gen says. Thus we have reporters up the wazoo and increased security because Genevieve is paranoid.” He’d never liked Genevieve, who popped tranquilizers like breath mints and washed them down with Scotch in a teacup.

  “I see,” Bianca said thoughtfully, but he didn’t think she did. He understood. With all the wealthy people who had been invited, you couldn’t be too careful.

  Tia’s sobs tapered off into a few token whimpers and then silence after only a mile or so. Neill glanced at Bianca. She appeared as if she regretted her decision to come with him, and when she saw him looking at her, she swiveled her head away and gazed at the rolling Wisconsin countryside. He cleared his throat.

  “Where do we get this—this Binky?” he asked.

  “I’ll watch for a drugstore,” she said.

  At least Bianca seemed calmer now. Well, the baby’s crying had even made him feel jittery.

  It was on the tip of his tongue again to ask how Bianca happened to be in charge of this baby when she exclaimed as they approached the outskirts of town, “There—a drugstore! On that corner! Park in front and I’ll run in. I’ll only be a minute.”

  Neill swerved the car over to the curb and Bianca jumped out, running into the store on light feet. He suppressed a smile. In that moment, he remembered how, when she was a teenager, Bianca had reminded him of a young filly, awkward and ungainly but holding a promise of eventual grace.

  Not that he’d ever told her or anyone else what he thought about her. She was five years younger than his lofty nineteen years when his father married Ursula, and he’d been away at college for most of the marriage. Bianca had soon become co-conspirator with Eric, only two years her senior and still living at home. They’d teamed up to make life difficult for the rest of the Bellamys. Hellraisers, the two of them. Who would have ever believed in those days that Eric would become the successful publisher of a Chicago society magazine, The Loop, and that Bianca would gain a growing reputation as a jewelry designer in Europe?

  The baby in the back seat was awfully quiet. He cast a skeptical glance at it. At her. It was a girl, he reminded himself.

  The baby, held firmly in the egglike shell of her safety seat, gazed back, clearly interested. Neill wondered what one said to babies. They couldn’t exactly converse.

  “Great weather we’re having,” he offered experimentally.

  The baby frowned. He hoped she wasn’t planning to start wailing again. He thought maybe he should joggle her just to let her know that everything was fine, the Binky was on its way, and soon the car would be soothingly in motion again. He decided against any of that when the baby blew a bubble. Who knew what that meant?

  “Good baby, nice baby. We’ll have your new Pinky in no time. No, make that a Binky. Or whatever,” he amended on a note of desperation.

  The baby—what had Bianca called her? Tia? Well, Tia looked distinctly unsettled. In fact, she looked downright disgruntled. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do if she began to cry again.

  Fortunately, Bianca dashed out of the drugstore in the nick of time and waved a pacifier in Neill’s face. “This will put Tia right to sleep,” she proclaimed. She leaned over the back of the front seat and popped the pacifier in the baby’s mouth.

  Neill breathed a sigh of relief as he started the engine and pulled out of the parking space. He had to admire how competent Bianca was with the baby; was she that way about everything? She’d certainly been competent last year in the gazebo. Thinking about it made it difficult to concentrate on his driving.

  Bianca seemed buoyed by a kind of nervous energy that Neill attributed to her jetting across time zones. “I bought some other things, too,” she said, pulling a small box of baking soda out of the drugstore bag. “To mix with water. It’ll get rid of the spit-up smell.”

  Or maybe it wasn’t nervous energy. Maybe she was talking only to keep talking. In a way, he wished she’d shut up and give him a chance to explore what was really going on here.

  “I misted myself with perfume while I was inside,” she said sheepishly. “Something vanilla-y. I don’t know which smells worse, the perfume or the sour milk.”

  He liked the vanilla smell, but it didn’t fit Bianca. “Don’t you, um, usually wear a more sophisticated scent?”

  “Joy. By Patou,” she said. “They don’t sell it in drugstores.”

  If Neill remembered correctly, her mother had always worn Joy. It was his favorite scent. He remembered a time when—

  “Remember the time—” Bianca began, voicing his thought exactly, but she stopped talking and looked away.

  Neill knew without a doubt what she was thinking. “The time when you and Eric were smoking cigarettes in the game room and I came home and caught you?” He’d been home from college for a couple of months in the summer, the teenaged Bianca and Eric had driven him and everyone else slightly crazy.

  “Mother and Budge drove in right after you did, and I galloped upstairs and sprayed myself with Mother’s Joy so she wouldn’t smell the smoke on me.” Bianca smiled, remembering.

  Neill smiled, too. Bianca had reeked of perfume, but neither parent had noticed. Or if they had, they hadn’t connected perfume overkill with any misdoings. “It was a gambit that worked. Ursula never said a word.”

  “I haven’t touched tobacco
since. At the time, Eric and I were sure you’d tell on us.”

  “Not me. Not then or even when Eric kidnapped you for a wild ride through downtown Chicago in Dad’s new Rolls-Royce on your sixteenth birthday.”

  She turned, her eyes grown wide with astonishment. “Eric told me he had permission!”

  “He didn’t,” Neill assured her as they approached the Burger King.

  He quickly hung a left turn into the drive-through lane figuring she wouldn’t want to get out of the car with the baby.

  “What do you want?” he asked as he focused his attention on the menu with its squawk box.

  “A Whopper with everything but onions, large fries and a chocolate shake,” Bianca said promptly. “Oh, and a glass of water.”

  “Welcometroburgerkingmayitakeyourorder?” The tinny voice, running all the words together, startled them.

  “Twowhopperswitheverythingbutonionslargefriesandtwochocolateshakes,” Neill fired back. “And a glass of water.” Bianca stifled a giggle.

  “Two whats?” said the dubious voice of the order taker.

  “Yeah. With everything but onions. And don’t forget the water.”

  Bianca did giggle then while he straightened out the order. Neill couldn’t remember ever hearing Bianca giggle before. With him, she’d always been so solemn. It was Eric with whom she’d shared all those good times. Neill had felt kind of left out, to tell the truth.

  When they’d picked up their order and were headed down the main street of the town, he said, “I thought we could park near the lake and eat there. Would that be okay?” He glanced briefly over his shoulder. The baby was sleeping, her fists curled under her plump cheeks.

  Bianca had mixed some of the baking soda with water and was energetically swabbing the solution into the spot on her skirt. “I know a place,” she said. She directed him to a park, and he pulled the convertible under a spreading maple before switching off the engine. Out on Geneva Lake, a boat’s multicolored sail billowed in the breeze.

  Bianca opened the bag and handed him a burger and a container of fries. “I get hungry for a real American hamburger sometimes,” she said wistfully. “In Europe, they just don’t taste the same.”

  “I know. Have you ever wanted to move back here?”

  “I’m thinking about it,” she admitted. “This hamburger has just about made up my mind for me.”

  “Could you move back?”

  “My business is doing so well that it’s not out of the question to open an office in the States. In fact, Eric and I talked about it last year.”

  This was news to Neill. “I thought Eric told me he hadn’t seen you since the engagement party.”

  “That’s when we discussed it.”

  “Did he think it was a good idea? To open an office here?” Since Eric had become successful in the publishing business, Neill had developed a great deal of respect for his younger brother’s business acumen.

  Bianca swallowed and shrugged. “We were in the middle of our discussion when all hell broke loose and we never had a chance to talk about it again.” She looked down at the packet of French fries in her lap, and he saw that she was embarrassed.

  He tried to put her at ease. “As I mentioned last year, I thought Gen was way out of line when she lit into you in front of everyone else.”

  “We didn’t mean to be late and cause a problem. We lost track of the time, and it was my fault. But when else were we going to talk about things?”

  “Bianca, neither you nor Eric could have known that the photographer moved his appointment to an earlier time because of a conflict.”

  “Conflict? Believe me, by the time Gen got done putting me through the wringer, I could have told that photographer something about conflict,” she said.

  Neill had helped look for Eric that afternoon, even phoning the styling salon where he supposedly had gone for a haircut. “We were on the verge of calling the police to check if Eric had been in an accident when the two of you turned up together. You understand how that could raise eyebrows, don’t you?”

  “Eric and I are close friends and have been since we were kids,” Bianca said firmly. She didn’t say anything about being on the outs with him.

  Privately Neill wondered if friendship was all there was to the relationship between Eric and Bianca. Neill really didn’t understand why, if they were such good friends, they were hardly speaking. If indeed Eric and Bianca had indulged in a little fling, Eric certainly wasn’t talking. Nor was Bianca, apparently.

  Bianca sighed. “Anyway, most of the people here seem determined to ignore me this year. That’s good, I suppose.”

  “Don’t let them get to you, Bianca,” Neill said.

  “I’ve got other things to think about. Like the new gemstone line and our New York show of popular-priced jewelry in October.” Bianca licked ketchup off the corner of her mouth; the tip of her tongue was pink and moist. It made Neill think of things erotic, the same kind of thoughts he’d been entertaining about her for the past year. The very long past year, it now seemed to him.

  “What’s the new gemstone line?” His mine produced emeralds; he couldn’t help but be interested.

  “So far, I’ve only used gold, silver and platinum in my jewelry designs. I’ve been experimenting with some interesting amber from Russia that we plan to include in our holiday show. My business manager wants me to incorporate rubies, emeralds and even diamonds, but I don’t know. I’m thinking about it.”

  “Why do you let him call the shots?”

  “Oh, he knows the business, and he came out of retirement to help me. With him in charge, I can concentrate on the creative end of things. He worked for my father for years, and he’s one of the reasons D’Alessandro is such a success.”

  “And what does your father say about a new direction for D’Alessandro?” Neill knew that Bianca’s father, a wealthy Italian industrialist, had bankrolled her first design shop in Rome; because of that, she’d been able to expand to Paris in short order. Now she divided her time between the two cities.

  Bianca shrugged. “My father is in favor of the gemstone line and wants me to go full speed ahead. As for the office on this side of the Atlantic, he’s willing to finance any new venture I want to try. He’s recouped his initial investment in my business many times over.”

  “It sounds like he’s confident in your ability.”

  “I don’t know if it’s that as much as that he wasn’t around much when I was growing up. He wants to be there for me now.”

  “I think it’s great that you’re so successful.”

  Bianca looked uncomfortable at this compliment. “I only wish someone would tell me why I feel like a little kid again when I’m with this group.”

  She looked like a little kid again, and his heart went out to her. “Because it brings back all the feelings of inadequacy you felt when you were growing up. I know. I’ve been there, done that.”

  She focused her eyes on him, long-lashed blue eyes, eyes as blue as the depths of the ocean, as blue as a mountain pool, as blue as priceless sapphires. Unbelieving eyes.

  “You, Neill?”

  “Yeah, me. It has to do with the way everyone here sees me. In Colombia, I’m the take-charge guy, the one who manages the business end of the Viceroy-Bellamy Mines. Here—well, I’m the Pretzel King’s kid. Not a lot of prestige in that, is there?”

  She looked away, then back. “You always seem so self-assured,” she said in a low tone.

  “I am. But I’m also the same person who had to put on a brave front every time Dad got another divorce. I’d barely get to know the latest stepmother, and then she’d be gone. Oh, and don’t forget—Dad married Mom again after he divorced Sheila even though he left her for Sheila in the first place. Later he and Mom divorced for good.”

  “Your mother’s here, isn’t she? I thought I saw Vivian breeze through the lobby when I registered, only this year she has red hair.”

  “You know Mom—outrageous as ever. Red hair suits her.�
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  “So you took it hard when your father and mother divorced for the second time?”

  “I hoped when they remarried that it would work out. But then I was always getting my hopes up, thinking that we Bellamys could somehow manage to be normal, and then things would fall apart and I’d be trying to be the responsible son, the older brother consoling the younger brother when my own world was being torn apart. Bellamys normal! Now that’s a futile wish if ever there was one.” He managed a bitter laugh.

  “It was like that for me, too, Neill. Mother married my father, then divorced him, and I spent my childhood unsure if I was American because I was born in New. York or Italian because I was shunted off to Rome for every school holiday. And I was always feeling neglected when Mother remarried—to your father, then to my last stepfather, and now her new husband. I wanted a home, a real home. I remember thinking that living in the same house all year, every year, would be heaven.”

  Neill watched the sailboat out on the lake as it headed toward shore. His had been a difficult childhood. He hardly ever talked about it.

  “The Bellamy curse,” he said. “It’s why I’ve decided to remain single. I doubt that I’m capable of a good marriage. Or that Eric is.”

  “Oh, Neill,” Bianca said. “Surely Caro and Eric will be happy.” She sounded upset.

  “They’ve been fighting ever since we all arrived here. From the looks of things, I don’t think they’ll make it to their first anniversary.” He said it bitterly, cynically, perhaps more so than he’d intended.

  Bianca recoiled in shock. “Maybe their disagreement is only temporary. Anyway, I have to think that Caro and Eric will do better than our parents did.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve decided that I can’t fix what’s wrong between him and Caroline, but I can humor him. As usual.”