Pregnant and Incognito

by Pamela Browning

  “Son, you’re as good as any Clay and as smart,” his mother had declared one day when Conn was twelve. “You’re going to go to the best college. Not the best college I can afford, Conn, but the best college, period. Someplace where you can rub elbows with the Clay kids.”

  It hadn’t escaped Conn’s notice that his mother had scrimped and saved all her life. Instead of shopping at the local Belk store like everyone else in town, she had replenished her meager wardrobe from the racks at Goodwill and at the Salvation Army Thrift Store two towns over. Shopping thirty miles away from Clay Springs meant, Gladys explained, that no one would see her buying others’ cast-offs. But for him, for Conn, Gladys had bought the best—new Dockers and Levi’s from Belk.

  In the eighth grade, when lavish brochures from prep schools began to turn up regularly in their mail, Conn had been mystified as to their purpose until his mother told him that she was planning to send him to Woodfield Hills Academy, a private prep school in Virginia.

  “But I want to go to Clay Springs High!” he had said, devastated to think that he wouldn’t be joining his friends there the following fall.

  “And grow up and work in a cotton mill? I don’t think so,” Gladys had huffed indignantly. She’d gone strangely quiet after that exchange, and of course Conn couldn’t have known what a financial sacrifice it would be for her to send him to Woodfield Hills. He didn’t understand, at age twelve, how preposterous her ambition was for a mill-worker. For someone who had spent her life servicing a loom in the mill, who came home covered with white lint every day, a private prep school should have been out of the question. Conn didn’t find out until much later that Gladys had been shrewdly investing part of her meager salary and all of her overtime pay since he was a baby and had amassed a nest egg of amazing proportions.

  Conn went to Woodfield Hills, all right, where he’d become friends with assorted teenagers from the Clay family, who were duly enrolled there at birth. If his wealthy schoolmates thought it odd that on holidays he went home to a weatherbeaten old house in the mill village while they returned to the sprawling elegant mansions where they had grown up, no one ever said.

  At graduation from Woodfield Hills, Conn won a full scholarship to Princeton. “See you there,” Rhett FitzAllen Clay had said offhandedly as they walked in procession out of Woodfield Hills’ Wade Rhett Clay auditorium, named after Rhett’s great-grandfather, a benefactor of the school. And Conn and Rhett Clay had been classmates for four years at Princeton, with Rhett giving Conn rides back to Clay Springs every Christmas and Easter vacation in whatever latest BMW model he happened to be driving.

  Rhett FitzAllen Clay had recently been appointed president and CEO of Clay Mills. And Conn, who had once dreamed of winning a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, was currently unemployed.

  Which brought him back to the main problem—sending Gladys to Catalina-Pacific. If there was a way to do it without returning to work at the National Probe, Conn sure would have liked to know what it was.

  The dark outskirts of Cougar Creek were quiet. The town’s only trailer park slid past in a blur of squatting single-wides and a sprinkling of satellite dishes a minute or so before the Welcome to Cougar Creek sign heralded his arrival in the town proper. If there had been a bar around, he would have stopped in for a couple of drinks, but there was no place like that. No naked dancing parties, no singles’ clubs. He pulled up outside Susie’s, thinking that he might stop in at the diner for a light meal, but for once no rusting pickups occupied the parking slots. He could see Susie inside polishing the Formica counter, and he figured that she wouldn’t welcome somebody messing it up right before closing time. Down the street, he caught a glimpse through a dusty window of the town librarian sitting at the library’s only table and reading a book.

  Those were the sole signs of life in the town, and it was only eight o’clock in the evening. The town didn’t even have a video rental place in case he’d had a TV, which he didn’t. With a sigh, he pulled out of the parking place and, gunning his engine past the Conoco station, where a couple of young fellows were chilling out and shooting the breeze, Conn set his truck on a course for home.

  Only he didn’t go there. He found that without thinking about it, he had headed down the road that would take him to Dana’s place.

  I’ll tell her we can fly the hawks tomorrow. He knew that stopping in to see her was silly, since, as of this morning, he had a phone and could telephone her more easily than go out of his way. For a moment he thought about backtracking and heading toward his own house, but then he decided against it.

  He had this sudden irrational urge to see her. To fix his eyes upon her lovely face and drink in her beauty. He hadn’t realized it before, but all the while Martin had been visiting, he had ached to see Dana, had missed her, had longed to hear her voice. And not on a telephone, either.

  When he pulled to a stop in Dana’s driveway, he noted that the cabin was dimly lit, and he sat for a moment in the truck debating whether or not to go to the door. Then he realized that she would have already heard and possibly seen his truck and that it would be awkward to explain later why he had driven up to her cabin and then left again. He even had an excuse for showing up, a book on falconry from his own extensive library on the subject. He’d stashed it in the truck after their first trip to Shale Flats together, and then Martin had arrived.

  He paused for a moment on the shadowed porch. A coyote howled somewhere in the distance, a mournful lament. His knock on the door sounded hollow, and a cluster of dead leaves, driven by some stray remnant of a wind, flurried around his feet. He waited, didn’t hear any movement within and began to feel alarmed. Shouldn’t Dana have answered the door by now?

  He knocked again, louder this time, and glanced at his watch. It was almost nine o’clock, not so late that Dana would have gone to bed. Or would she? He had no idea what her schedule was like.

  He heard a rustle, and then the curtain at the window parted and he saw her peering out. Her face seemed two-dimensional behind the glass, a pale, startled oval parting the two sides of the curtain.

  “It’s me, Dana—Conn,” he said.

  She didn’t smile, just let the curtain drop, and then he heard the snick of the lock as she unlatched the door. The door opened, and he shuffled from one foot to the other in front of her, feeling unaccountably out of place.

  “I guess I could have called,” he said by way of apology for interrupting her evening. “Now that we have phones.”

  “Oh, Conn,” she said wanly, as if with great effort. Her voice sounded husky, weak, but she stood aside so he could enter.

  “You weren’t asleep, I hope?” he asked as she shut the door behind him.

  She shook her head and put her hand to her throat. Her face was flushed.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you up. I thought it was early enough—hey, is everything all right?”

  If he wasn’t mistaken she swayed on her feet. Her hand went out, flailing empty air as she reached for support from the wall.

  Conn caught her just before she hit the floor.

  Chapter Six

  When Dana opened her eyes, Philip was hovering over her, a concerned expression on his face, and for a moment she couldn’t figure out where she was.

  But it wasn’t Philip. It was Conn, and she was at the cabin in Arizona, lying on the couch.

  “What happened?” she said woozily. Her voice sounded like a rusty hinge, and her throat was on fire. Conn was regarding her with concern, and the sight of him both reassured and, for some reason, annoyed her.

  “You answered the door and were so overwhelmed to see me that you keeled over in a dead faint,” he said. “What’s going on? It’s not the baby, is it?”

  Conn’s tone, though Dana could tell he was attempting to be calm, was threaded through with worry. She stopped being annoyed and started to feel grateful. She, who had been only too aware this evening that she had no one, was not about to throw away a human being who was willing to expend ti
me and effort on her.

  “Not the baby. My throat hurts,” she said, wrapping her arms around her swollen belly to reassure herself that everything was okay. The baby aimed a few reassuring thumps at her pelvic bone, which couldn’t help but make her wince.

  “It is the baby, isn’t it?” Conn said, kneeling at her side. “I’d better call a doctor. Do you have a doctor here?”

  Dana struggled to prop herself up on her elbows. “I swear it’s not the baby. Just my throat. I see an obstetrician in Flagstaff, but I don’t have a doctor in Cougar Creek. Please, try not to make me talk.” Her teeth began to chatter.

  Conn laid a cool hand against her hot forehead. “You’re burning up. Do you have a thermometer? Oh, don’t talk—I forgot. I’ll look around, see what I can find.”

  Dana fell back against the couch pillows and commenced shivering. When Conn came back with a thermometer, which he seemed to have found in a first-aid kit she didn’t even know she had, he sent her a sharp look.

  “You’re cold. Open your mouth like a good girl, and while we’re waiting for the thermometer to register, I’ll warm this place up.” He went to the wall heater and switched it on before assembling tinder, kindling, and logs for the fireplace.

  “Matches?”

  She pointed to a small redwood box on the mantel. He found a match and lit it, bending to touch it to the tinder. The flame flared, caught. He stood up again, unmistakable signs of strain in the white lines around his mouth, before gently withdrawing the thermometer from between her lips. She was proud of herself for not biting it in half. He bent and studied it in the light from the nearby lamp.

  “A hundred and one temperature,” he said, looking none too happy about it. “No wonder you’re feeling rotten.”

  She started to get up to retrieve the afghan from where it had fallen when she’d been awakened by Conn’s knock on the door, but he rested a restraining hand on her shoulder. “What do you want? I’ll get it for you.”

  She pointed to the afghan, and he went and brought it back, spreading it carefully over her legs. She closed her eyes, thinking that if she had her choice, she would choose to sleep for a couple of days at least. She would huddle in front of this warm fire, let this man take good care of her, and retreat into…

  Conn shook her awake. “Dana! I asked you for your obstetrician’s phone number.”

  She opened her eyes. “Did I sleep?” Now her voice was no more than a croak, and Conn said, “You started to doze, but I woke you up. Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to stay awake much longer. Just tell me where to find your doctor’s number.”

  Her obstetrician was Dr. Tolliver Evans, and his office was in Flagstaff. She went for regular appointments, but her pregnancy had been uneventful from the first, and anyway, would you call an obstetrician for a sore throat? She didn’t want to say all of this at the moment because it hurt too much to talk.

  “Never mind, I’ll find it.” Conn strode to the small desk in the corner of the room. Suddenly Dana felt a stab of panic. If Conn found her little leather address book in the drawer, the one she’d brought with her from Chicago, he’d know who her friends were, would be able to guess where she had lived. Agitated, not wanting him to find it, she sat bolt upright. “Doctor—booklet,” she croaked, pointing at the pile of papers on the corner of the desk, and he must have known what she meant because the next thing she knew he had picked up the brochure with a picture of a smiling baby on the front. Dana nodded vigorously. The booklet was a handout from her Dr. Evans, and his phone number was stamped on the back.

  Conn found the number. “I’ll call him,” he said. He pulled the new phone toward him, tapped out a number. Dana closed her eyes while Conn dealt with the inevitable answering service. After outlining the situation to the answering clerk, he secured a promise for the doctor to call back and hung up.

  “Well, that wasn’t much help.” He regarded Dana, a slight frown pleating his forehead. “Would you like anything? You look so weak.” Conn eased down beside her on the couch, and she could smell the scent that she identified with him—leather, pine and wide-open spaces. She shook her head.

  “I think I’ll make you a cup of tea with honey. My mother always gave that to me when I had a sore throat.”

  Dana attempted a smile. Conn went into the kitchen and dug around in the cabinet under the counter for a teakettle. She wanted to tell him to look in the drawer under the stove, but her throat felt raw and fiery. She knew he would find the teakettle on his own, and eventually he did. She heard him running water in it, and soon he reappeared in the living room. He checked the fire, said that the logs were catching and stood watching her with his hands on his hips. “I wish that doctor would call back,” he said, looking agitated.

  If Dana hadn’t known it would hurt too much, she would have chuckled at Conn’s bewilderment. Here he was, so sure of himself, so in command of most situations, and he seemed to be thrown for a loop by a pregnant woman with a sore throat.

  At that moment the telephone rang. Unaccustomed to that sound in this place, Dana was startled. Conn, however, strode across the room and scooped up the receiver.

  He rapidly explained the situation to the person on the other end, presumably Dr. Evans. “Right,” Conn said, and then, “Okay.” He listened for a while longer. “I’ll tell her. And thank you.”

  He turned to Dana. “Your doctor says you don’t have to drive all the way to Flagstaff to see him. You should have a local doctor take a look at you, but don’t try to talk anyone into prescribing medicine over the phone. You’ll want a new doctor to understand that you’re pregnant so he won’t prescribe anything to hurt the baby. He said that you should take a couple of acetaminophen for the pain and get to a doctor first thing in the morning.”

  “Umm,” was all Dana said.

  The teakettle whistle blew, startling both of them. Conn went into the kitchen, and soon he came back with tea. She appreciated his pouring it into her favorite cup; it was one of the few feminine things about this place, a remnant of the set of dishes her mother had used when Dana was a child.

  He gave her a pill, which she swallowed in a gulp. She drank the tea in little sips, barely able to force the warm liquid past her burning throat. Conn sat in the chair across from her, his forehead furrowed into a worried frown. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”

  She sent him a questioning look. He got up and paced from one end of the room to the other. “What if this is something more than a sore throat? Lots of illnesses start that way. What if it’s scarlet fever? Some kind of strange southwestern rodent disease? And what’s that other one? It has the name of a fruit.” He looked distracted, and his hair, curved into loose waves across his forehead, stood up in front where he had run his fingers through it.

  Despite her misery, a bubble of laughter welled up in Dana, and she smiled. “Lyme disease,” she said, the words grating painfully.

  “That’s the one I mean, Lyme disease. How do you know that’s not what this is?”

  She shook her head and made a face.

  “You don’t think so? Well, I’m going to make sure you get to the doctor tomorrow morning, first thing.”

  She blinked at him.

  “Well, what do you expect me to do? Let you drive into town when you’ve got a fever that makes you faint? Someone has to make sure you’re okay, and I don’t mind being that someone.” He glared at her, and if she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was angry. She tried to telegraph her gratitude to him, and perhaps he understood.

  “You can’t stay on that couch all night,” he said after a time. “I’ll help you to bed.”

  She must have looked alarmed, because he spoke swiftly to allay her fears. “I said I’d help you to bed. I didn’t say I was going to bed, too.”

  She felt a blush spreading to the roots of her hair. She hadn’t meant—well, she hadn’t thought—but that was the thing. She had thought. The fact that he knew what she had been thinking didn’t hel
p her state of mind any.

  He took the cup and saucer from her and disappeared into the kitchen. She heard him running water in the sink, then the ripping of a paper towel from the roll. His hands were still damp when he returned and pressed a hand to her forehead again.

  “Still hot as blazes. Let me help you up.” He bent and slid an arm around her shoulders. He levered her up from the couch so that she didn’t have to go through the awful spraddling of her feet and knees that was the way her big belly required her to rise from a sitting position these days.

  “Everything okay?” Conn asked anxiously.

  All strength seemed to have left her legs, but she nodded. He kept a tight hold on her as she turned slowly and made her way toward the bathroom, conscious at every step of the bulk of her pregnancy.

  Conn left her at the bathroom door. “If you have any problem, holler,” he said as she closed it.

  Dana knew he was standing right outside the door, and she wished he wouldn’t. She gripped the edges of the bathroom sink and stared at herself in the mirror. Her face was red and puffy, her hair a careless tumble of red-gold. Her eyes were glassy, bright. She hated looking like this for Conn. She hated looking like this for anybody.

  When she emerged from the bathroom, she saw that Conn had pulled aside the curtain concealing the sleeping alcove to expose the double bed behind it. There was a window above the bed, and its thin draperies were looped back to expose night-dark panes. Her reflection in them was wavery, watery. Kind of like I feel, Dana thought to herself.