by Margot Early
“Fine,” he said and opened the bathroom door. He glanced back to ask, “Shall we tell the family?” He thought that task might be less daunting with her beside him. No one would say anything…unpleasant…with Cameron present.
Cameron nodded. “I guess.” She would feel stupid if she miscarried, stupid for letting anyone know that she’d known she was pregnant so early. Before she’d even missed her period.
He waited for her in the hallway, and she wished he would touch her. Reach for her hand. Hug her.
He did neither, simply waited for her to join him.
But in the dimness of the hallway, their eyes met. His lips curved into a smile, and the smile was in his eyes, too, encouragement.
The Cureux family was still assembled in the kitchen, Bridget’s preschooler, Nick, standing on a chair to help Clare roll piecrust. Paul’s father sat at the table with Bridget’s toddler daughter, Merrill, in his lap. Bridget was cleaning up the mess she’d made with the pumpkin.
Clare turned from the counter, looking directly at Cameron with the dark eyes Paul had inherited. Her long black hair, liberally streaked with gray, hung in two braids which she’d looped up behind her narrow back. Her expression said, Well?
Cameron managed a smile. “We’re…I’m pregnant.”
David’s head swung round.
A look of amusement played over Bridget’s features. “Congratulations.”
Clare said, “Yes,” and looked at her son.
So did his father.
Paul said, “Thank you,” answering the unasked question and hoping no one would say it out loud.
“Have you seen anyone?” asked Clare and set Nick on the floor. “We’ll get back to the pie in a minute,” she told him.
Bridget took her squirming daughter from her father’s arms.
“Beulah Ann Cockburn, in McDowell County.”
“She’s good,” Clare said approvingly.
“But, as I told her—” Cameron felt a slight fear as she gazed at Paul’s strong mother, the formidable woman whom she knew to be the most experienced midwife in the state “—I’d prefer to have you.”
Clare nodded. “We’ll see.”
Cameron felt a resurgence of terror that was too common since her first visit to a midwife. Different terrors. First, that she wouldn’t be able to deliver a viable child, that she wouldn’t be able to carry the baby long enough. And a second, far lesser, fear—that she would be forced to have a hospital birth and a cesarean.
Granted, a hospital birth would certainly be less painful, and that thought tempted her like heroin must send its siren song to a junkie.
But she’d begun reading the books Beulah Ann had recommended and others she’d read about and ordered from Amazon. Natural birth was better for the baby—and ultimately for her. If it was safe, if she could do it.
But Clare knew Cameron’s family history—Beatrice’s miscarriages and agonizing labor. That had been the meaning of her “We’ll see.”
Clare was not a woman for embraces and she did not attempt to embrace Cameron, did not even approach her.
But Paul’s father stood up, came to her and hugged her briefly. “That’s wonderful news,” he said. “And did your midwife give you a due date?’
“July twenty-eighth,” Cameron told him.
Clare nodded thoughtfully. “Well, let me finish this pie and—we’ll make an appointment.”
Cameron was disappointed; she’d been hoping Clare would be able to examine her that minute. She wanted to know if Clare agreed with Beulah Ann that Cameron should be able to birth the child vaginally. Well, if she couldn’t, then she couldn’t.
The melody of “Narcolepsy Baby” by Rhesus rang into the room. Paul’s cell phone. He took it from his waist and did touch Cameron then, squeezing her arm before he stepped around the table and went outside.
Cameron had no curiosity about his phone call and knew that he’d gone outside because he didn’t want the call to interrupt his family. She wished he’d stayed.
Clare said, “You know that neither Beulah Ann nor I have hospital privileges at this time.”
Cameron nodded. She felt exposed. Paul’s mother was so strong, so capable, and Cameron knew that she would keep Cameron and the baby safe if it was within her power. Yet she was also strangely pitiless. She was not weak, and Cameron sometimes wondered if she despised weakness in others. But no, that wasn’t precisely it. She reminded Cameron of a raven, sitting wise and separate.
Paul came back inside. “A problem at the zoo.” He looked at Cameron. “Want to come with me?”
Grateful, she caught up her coat from where it lay on a bench against the wall and followed Paul out the door.
PAUL NEVER TALKED on the phone and drove at the same time, so he handed the keys to his truck to Cameron.
In his ear, Helena Ruffles said, “I don’t know how it happened. And Portia’s the only one I saw.”
The graduate student had returned to the zoo at dusk and seen Portia sitting on a bench outside the saki exhibit, looking in at the sakis. She had immediately returned to the parking lot, gotten in her car, and called Paul.
“Are you sure it was Portia?”
“Definitely.” Helena knew Portia better than anyone. But Portia was a wild animal, a chimpanzee, inhumanly strong and inherently unpredictable.
“Stay in your car. If you see any others, be prepared to drive away if they notice your car. I’m on my way and making some calls. Then I’ll call you back.”
“I don’t want anyone to do anything that will set us back!” Helena begged.
And Paul understood. He had held Portia when she was younger. But now she weighed a hundred and thirty-five pounds and could rip apart the iron fence surrounding the zoo if she chose. And after this incident, no matter its outcome, they would have to reevaluate the safety and wisdom of continuing Helena’s research.
Suddenly, Paul wished Cameron wasn’t with him. She would have to remain in the truck in the parking lot with the doors locked. Portia was unlikely to approach the truck for any reason, but if she did…
A weight of responsibility surrounded him. He would deal with Cameron in a moment. But he had more calls to make first.
His next call was to the zoo director, Samuel Bannister, PhD.
“Hello?” answered a woman’s voice as Cameron steered the truck out of Myrtle Hollow and toward the shortest route to the main road.
“This is Paul Cureux. Is Dr. Bannister there?” Paul disliked the former sociology researcher’s insistence on the honorific and refusal to let underlings use his Christian name, but now was not the time to push anyone. “It’s about the zoo.”
“Well, he’s busy just now.”
“It’s an emergency.”
“Well. I’ll see.”
Looking anxious, Cameron picked her way along the road, slowing as the headlights caught a deer.
“Paul?” The director’s voice.
Thank God.
“Portia’s out.”
“How did that happen?”
“No one knows yet. We need the vet and the shooting team until the vet arrives. Will you call Dr. Marshall? I’ll round up the other guys.”
“I hope you don’t have to shoot her.”
“Me, too.” Paul thought his heart would break if someone shot the chimpanzee. He loved her above all the other animals at the zoo. But if Portia could not be subdued with a tranquilizer gun or otherwise persuaded back into her enclosure, she would have to be shot. Though the zoo was closed, it was evening and if Portia escaped the park there was a threat to the public. Paul had an inner damn-the-public feeling, but he was a strong believer in following protocol—and he well knew that an escaped great ape could pose a threat to the public. Still, while not freezing, it was cold. Surely they wouldn’t stray too far from their home.
Don’t leave the zoo, Portia. Don’t leave the zoo.
If she really wouldn’t cooperate, then George Marshall could get her with the tranquilizer gun.
Paul quickly called the two other members of the zoo’s shooting team, then closed his phone. “Okay, pull over at the gas station up there.”
“You want to drive?” Cameron asked.
“No, I want to leave you there.”
“You invited me to come!”
“I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. I’ll come back for you. I don’t have time to take you home, but I don’t want you out there at the zoo.”
The gas station was closed, and Cameron said, “It’s cold, and there’s nobody around. I don’t want to be left here.”
“Keep driving, then.” He would find somewhere else to leave her. “Look, Portia’s a wild animal, and this is a dangerous situation. All right. You’re going to drive me there, let me out, lock the doors and drive back to the park entrance.” Which was a good five miles from the zoo. “I will phone you when it’s okay to come back.”
“Why can’t I sit in the parking lot in the truck?”
Paul had seen after photos of two people who’d been mauled by chimps—both male chimps, both kept as pets. He said, “Cameron, please.” He didn’t sound like himself. What was this? All these feelings.
He was worried about Portia. That was it. That must be it.
Protocol. Return to protocol.
And protocol’s place for a pregnant Cameron McAllister was the park entrance.
Paul talked on the phone to Helena through the rest of the ride to the zoo’s employee entrance. At least it was Portia and not one of the males, he and Helena told each other over and over. But what if the males were out, too?
Paul was attached to all the zoo’s primates—and many of the other animals—but he’d often wished for orangutans or gorillas over chimpanzees. Of course, that might be because he’d had no experience with the former. He had met a couple in Morgantown that kept a chimp as a pet—in fact, he’d met the animal. The situation appalled him, and he’d told the owners so and told them why. These are animals. These are very strong animals. These animals can and will injure or kill you. The couple had told him that the chimp was like a son to them.
God. People.
Portia’s situation was different. She was a zoo animal, and Helena was doing research on language with no harm to Portia and with constant attention to safety. Helena was trying to determine if chimps would ever use language to communicate for the sake of communication rather than simply aping what they had learned in order to receive a reward. Most research to date had supported the latter probability.
Paul’s view was that chimps chose to do what they wanted to do and what they wanted to do was seldom the equivalent of sitting around philosophizing.
Closing his phone, Paul climbed out of the truck beside Helena’s car. “Lock the doors and go,” he told Cameron. As she drove away, a sedan pulled up and parked, and another keeper, Aron from Reptiles, stepped out with his rifle. Paul’s rifle was inside the zoo. Helena got out of her car.
They stood in the parking lot, carefully scanning the area, especially the trees within the zoo, and waited for the others.
“If Portia’s out, the others must be, too,” Aron remarked.
Paul presumed that was the case. His assistant keeper had been the one to give the chimps their vitamins that afternoon and hence the last one to secure their enclosure. And by that time Paul had left for a meeting with the local SPCA who had rescued a macaque from a local home. The animal was malnourished and had injured one of its owners, and Paul could not say if the zoo would be able to take the animal. Paul had advised the SPCA on housing for the animal. In West Virginia, you could keep almost anything as a pet.
The vet showed up with his tranquilizer gun and another keeper with a rifle.
Outdoor lights on, into the zoo through the employee entrance, weapons ready, everyone looking out for escaped chimps. Paul heard laughterlike vocalizations from farther in the park and looked ahead to see two chimps wrestling and rolling on the grass, while another had knocked over a popcorn vendor’s wagon and was throwing popcorn kernels at the rhinos.
This chimp saw Paul and screamed.
The keepers and vet ran back to the entrance and back out, and the chimp reached the bars and screamed at them until the vet darted him. Then he ran off, or began to, moving drunkenly in midstride. The vet efficiently reloaded. Paul knew it would be a miracle if all the chimps survived this disaster. Aron jumped in his vehicle and drove around to the front of the zoo to make sure none of the chimps escaped that way. All five must be out. Thank God Helena hadn’t been hurt.
The fire department arrived with a firehose Paul had requested, and he was able to use the hose to direct Portia and Anthony, the youngest male, back into their area, while the vet darted another male. The last of the group climbed on top of the Big Cat House and began pulling tiles from the roof and throwing them. The vet darted him, as well.
The weakness in the enclosure was discovered when Paul attempted to lock Anthony and Portia inside. The steel door frame was missing, the chimps having used their strong nails to pry loose fittings and unscrew bolts. Paul blamed himself, because he had felt something different in the door and had not investigated thoroughly enough.
The animals were all temporarily housed in holding cages in the zoo’s animal hospital, and Paul was in the chimp exhibit investigating damage when Cameron walked in.
“What are you doing here?” he said. “I told you to stay at—”
“You didn’t call, and I threw up again, so I came back, and the firemen told me all the chimps were put away.”
Paul said, “Do you know what they can do to people?”
“I was the one locked securely in your truck.”
“They can pull the doors off that truck.” He grabbed Cameron’s arm and marched her outside into the night lights of the zoo, where he showed her the bench one of the chimps had ripped out of the concrete.
Cameron started shaking and then had to kneel beside the duck pond to throw up again. “What were you doing with them, then?” she shouted.
“Getting them contained. It’s my job. We had rifles, a dart gun and a firehose. Why didn’t you call?”
“My phone’s dead, and your charger wasn’t in the truck.”
“It’s under the seat. You look green.”
“Of course I do.”
Paul tried to remember anything his mother had said about what to do for morning sickness. He seemed to recall that protein was involved, and this made sense to him from his observations of the zoo’s primates. “Come with me.”
He led the way into the keeper area. He had an irrational desire to check every enclosure in the zoo to make sure no animals were out who could injure Cameron. He’d never felt that way before, but the chimps’ escape had unsettled him.
He indicated the bench near the lockers, and while she sat, he stepped into the small kitchen, opened the refrigerator and brought out cheese. He sliced cheese, brought crackers from the cupboard and added some baby carrots. He brought her the plate, then said, “I’ve got to look at the chimps.”
“Isn’t the vet with them?”
“Yes, but they’re my responsibility.” What he didn’t want to say was that he needed to reaffirm for himself that the chimps actually were in the cages. He feared he would have nightmares about a chimp attacking Cameron.
She’s pregnant. I’m going to be a father.
The last thought was too overwhelming—too new and strange—to be long contemplated, not when there were other things to do. He never wanted to be so much as a pet owner. He liked children well enough but knew their propensity for entirely reorganizing their parents’ lives. Well, he supposed he’d have to be some kind of part-time father.
He didn’t like that thought. Kids deserved full-time parents. Of course, he’d had a part-time father. Parents worked part of the time, in any case.
Only Portia and Anthony, who had been only lightly sedated for the move, were stirring. Paul approached Portia’s cage, and she reached through the bars and ligh
tly stroked his fingers. He touched her rough fingers in return. “Sorry for all the excitement, Portia. I don’t suppose you want to say who pulled up the bench.” He wished Helena was there to ask Portia this in sign language, which Portia knew.
George Marshall sat at his desk at the hospital, apparently updating patient charts. Besides the chimps, the only other inmates were a serval, a wild-caught copperhead in quarantine and awaiting tick removal before moving to her new exhibit, and a ring-tailed lemur who was Paul’s charge and unusually susceptible to parasites.
“How is he?” he asked George, pausing at the lemur’s cage and watching the round brown eyes that gazed back at him.
“Same old, same old.” George stood up. “And if you put him back in with the rest of them, he’s going to spread it again.”
“Maybe he’s not getting rid of it the first time,” Paul suggested.
“It’s occurred to me. I recommend an extended time on his own.”
“They hate that,” Paul said. The lemurs loved being together. It was the nature of lemurs.
“He’s doing all right. When the chimps are out of here and we can have small school groups through here again, he’ll get visitors. He likes that.”
The door of the infirmary opened, and Cameron came in, looking much better.
“Stay away from the cages,” Paul said. He had given Anthony plenty of room, only allowing Portia to touch him.
“Which one’s Portia?” she asked, her eyebrows drawing together.
Paul nodded toward the female’s cage.
Portia sat down in her cage and glanced at Cameron from the corner of her eye. She wasn’t always friendly, and she didn’t know Cameron. Cameron had seen Portia before but couldn’t tell the chimps apart.
Cameron surveyed the slumbering apes.
“They’ll all have hangovers,” George remarked.
“Did they have a good time?” asked Cameron, who knew the veterinarian.
“Probably,” George admitted.
The door opened again, and the zoo director walked in.
Finally, Paul thought. Dr. Bannister should have shown his face a half hour earlier to help make the hard decisions.
