by Margot Early
Paul suddenly felt equally infuriated with his father, who had overreacted. Surely counseling or…forgiveness? And yet it must have been almost impossible. Paul himself found he didn’t want to forgive his mother. Part of him had wanted to know, yet now he wished he didn’t know. He felt a surge of hatred for all of them—his weak mother, his unforgiving father, the corrupt chief of obstetrics, the idiot parents of the stillborn child. In fact, his mind, heart and soul overflowed with conflicting emotions.
I wish I didn’t know.
He’d spent most of his life feeling bitter toward his parents for being divorced for no reason.
Now he’d been given a “reason,” and it was terrible. This sordid drama had been going on while he and Bridget were small children. But even then, they had felt it.
He heard the anger in his voice when he said, “Is there any reason at all to think that Cameron might have—what you said—CPD?”
“CPD means that the baby’s head is too big to pass through the mother’s pelvis. We will know more as her labor approaches, but I think she can have a vaginal birth. We’ll see what Dr. Henderson says. In any case, the scenario will not be like the one twenty-five years ago. I’ll remind you that the woman involved was not my client.”
Paul heard the steely sound in his mother’s voice and heard the anger, and her anger was more like fury.
“Then why didn’t you fight it?”
“Because it would have taken me into the courts, and there would have been long delays, and I would have been barred from attending homebirths. I could not fight it and continue to take care of the women who were depending on me.”
“And you weren’t licensed, and you’re still not licensed.”
“You know why. I’m not going to discuss it in this context.”
Paul did know why, just as he could feel his mother shaking with rage, looking as if she would spit nails. West Virginia had a long tradition of midwifery. Practicing midwifery “without a license” was deemed illegal, and then room was made for certified nurse-midwives to practice. At the time that law was passed, his mother already had ten years’ experience with homebirth; she had chosen not to leave her family to go to school and become an RN and then a certified nurse-midwife.
“It’s a misdemeanor,” he whispered.
“Yes, until something like that disaster happens. I didn’t want it in the courts, Paul. For a host of reasons.”
“So you traded yourself.”
He’d gone too far. He saw it.
“You don’t know anything about it! You think this is something I’m proud of? Why do you think we kept it from you?” She was almost shouting.
He almost shouted back, “Why didn’t you keep on keeping it from me?”
“Because your sister knows, and I thought you were old enough to hear it, too.”
“Bridget knows?”
“Yes, I told her a few years ago.” Clare would not reveal the circumstances under which she’d told her daughter this shameful secret from her own past. It wasn’t Paul’s business but Bridget’s. During the birth of her first child, Bridget’s labor had abruptly stopped. With only her mother in the room, Bridget had revealed an instance of sexual violation from her college years. Clare remembered the time well, remembered her certainty that Bridget was in trouble. But Bridget, when she’d answered the phone, had denied everything.
And left Clare more certain than ever.
So Clare had told Bridget what had happened to her, her anger joining with her daughter’s.
And labor had progressed again.
So often that was the case. And though the incident in Clare’s past was horrible to her, she had come to see the gift in the horror. That she could relate, just a little bit, to women who had been violated and abused. And so she had become a better midwife.
Paul remembered what he was supposed to be doing, collecting garbage and recyclables. He walked back to the porch to grab the last trash bag. His mother stood near the tailgate, arms wrapped around herself in a posture that reminded him of Cameron—but only Cameron recently.
Clare dropped her arms. “Well, that’s the story, and now you know it.”
“Why did you tell me now?” he asked again.
“Because you asked about the birth.”
“You told me about the birth.”
Clare knew what he was asking. “I thought it would be good for you to know.”
“Like castor oil?”
“I never gave you castor oil in your life.”
“This is about Cameron, isn’t it? You and Dad decided this, didn’t you? To tell me. You’re trying to get me to marry Cameron.” Paul heard how childish he sounded. But part of him was the small boy seeing his father leave, saying, But you’re our dad! You can’t leave!
“I would never try to get you to do something you don’t want to do. Not in your adult life and nothing so important as marriage.”
“Then it’s Dad.”
“Paul, you’ve made this bed, and you better lie in it. And that means if people think the less of you for getting a woman pregnant and not marrying her, that’s something you’re going to have to deal with. It has nothing to do with me, and you can’t stop people feeling what they will.”
Her voice had stopped shaking. Paul felt no censure from his mother on the subject of Cameron, and that was a relief. His mother truly had no opinion on the subject. But his father… At the restaurant, Paul had felt his father’s disapproval in waves across the room.
Well, his mother was right. He was an adult.
He wished he didn’t feel so much like a child.
He wasn’t ready to confront his father, but he wanted to talk to someone about what his mother had said.
There was only one person he wanted to talk to.
AN OLD MAZDA with a crushed passenger door was parked diagonally across a spot for the handicapped in the parking lot of the Women’s Resource Center. Another car, a new Volvo Paul recognized as belonging to Sean Devlin, was parked in another space. As Paul swung open the glass front door, he immediately saw the person who must have driven the Mazda.
Over six feet tall, wearing work clothes and a dark slouch hat with a feather in the band, smelling of sweat, cigarette smoke and alcohol, the man said, “You tell me where the bitch has gone!”
Cameron, five foot five in her running shoes and looking smaller than ever, wearing new pants because her others had become too tight, stared impassively at the angry intruder, Sean towering over her. “No,” she said. “And you need to leave this building, or I’m calling the police to have you removed.”
He turned his unimaginative and profane vocabulary on Cameron, who turned away to go into her office and phone the police.
“Don’t you turn away when I’m talking to you!” He grabbed her shoulders roughly and spun her around.
“Hey,” said Sean, stepping toward the villain.
The creep did not release Cameron, and Paul threw an arm upward between them, lifting the hands from Cameron’s shoulders.
A fist like a sledgehammer connected with the side of his head.
Paul slammed his fist into the man’s stomach and drove his knee into his groin.
The guy took one breath, seemed to crumple, but then staggered forward, grabbed Paul’s head and sunk his teeth into Paul’s ear, and Sean threw a punch, which hit Paul instead of its target.
“Oh, God, sorry!” Sean cried.
Enough was enough.
Paul twisted the chief assailant’s arm backward and used his leg as leverage to flip the bigger man onto his back.
His opponent grabbed Paul’s knees, not giving up. As Paul went down, taking the opportunity to slam the heel of his hand into the guy’s nose, Cameron was there, saying, “The police are coming, Jerry! Stay where you are and make it easy for all of us.”
But Jerry, as though deaf, was still determined to get in his retaliation against Paul, now pulling his hair and preparing to gouge out his eyes.
Cameron,
who had the same martial arts training as Paul, slammed a sidekick into Jerry’s knee. The sound was sickening, and as Jerry released Paul, Cameron fled to the ladies’ room.
Paul distanced himself from Jerry and, exchanging glances with an abashed-looking Sean, got on his own phone to tell the police to send an ambulance, as well. Cameron had done damage.
Certain that Jerry, who was cursing volubly, couldn’t go anywhere—and not caring if he did, as long as it was somewhere else—Paul followed Cameron into the bathroom where she had finished vomiting and was rinsing her face.
“I hurt him, didn’t I?” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I wish you’d stayed out of it.”
“He was hurting you! Oh, God, I’m going to throw up again.” She retreated to a cubicle, where he heard her retching.
Paul noticed blood dripping on the ground. It was from his ear, which he started washing, hoping the guy didn’t have anything that would kill him.
“This isn’t a safe place for you to work.”
She emerged from the cubicle. “It usually is. He wanted to know where the safe house for battered women is.”
“Lovely. And you’re all that was standing between him and that information.”
“Sean was here.”
“That’s the scary part. Your Jerry’s the kind of guy who is undeterred by your six-foot-three hero. How many creeps like him are out there, wanting to know the same thing? You need a security guard in here, Cameron.”
“It has been said before.”
“Do something about it.”
“Funding?”
“I don’t want you working here. You could have lost the baby.”
“I didn’t think it was me you were worried about,” she murmured.
“It is you. If you miscarried, you could have bled to death!”
Cameron swallowed, mollified. They heard sirens, and she opened the restroom door. Jerry had managed to drag himself up and was now standing on one leg, leaning on the door. He pushed open the door, and neither they, nor Sean, who sat moodily on a chair in the waiting room, tried to stop him.
Sean said, “I’m sorry, Paul. I have no experience with fights. I should have left you to it. Or done something helpful. Are you all right?”
“You didn’t hurt me.” Paul put slight emphasis on the first word, hoping to convey that Sean’s feeble punch couldn’t have hurt an eight-year-old.
“What about you?” Sean asked Cameron, standing up and gazing down at her.
Paul saw the other man’s expression, the sort of forlorn concern, and thought, Shit.
Sean was in love with Cameron.
Of course, she didn’t love him back. He wasn’t her type. Paul considered the question of what Cameron’s type might be and answered the question easily, brushing aside her juvenile infatuation with Graham Corbett—who was somewhat Sean’s type. What was Cameron’s type?
Me.
He gave Sean a smile dripping with pity as the door opened and the first cop came in.
TWO HOURS LATER, Cameron sat at her kitchen table while Paul roasted red bell peppers over the flames on the gas range, minding a pot of rice on another burner and a skillet in which he was sautéing tofu.
Statements taken, police gone with Jerry, Paul had thrown Cameron’s mountain bike in the back of his truck and wished Sean Devlin a pleasant evening. On the way home, he’d told her the reason for his visit to the resource center, to repeat what his mother had told him. Then, before giving her time to react, he’d told her again that she needed to get a security guard in “that place” or quit.
Cameron had said she would investigate the security guard plan and call an emergency meeting of the board.
Paul had then begun analyzing his own actions in the fight, saying he should have struck more aggressively earlier.
“He was unusually…tenacious,” Cameron had said, trying to think what Paul could have done differently, and the ideas were all severe. Put his foot on the guy’s throat.
Now she said, “Your poor mother.”
“Why poor her?”
Cameron found the question incredible. “It was almost like rape. Can you imagine? She had to have sex with that creep to preserve her vocation and be able to help those women.”
“She shouldn’t have done it,” he answered firmly.
“She felt that she had to.”
“Well, she didn’t have to. I can see why my dad was angry. Except he shouldn’t have left.”
“Oh, please. Of course, you can see why he was angry. And look, I feel for you and all, but even if it wasn’t something your mother should have done, imagine her feelings now, imagine having to live with that—and feeling that she had to tell you.”
“But why did she have to tell me?”
Cameron rolled her eyes. “Probably both your parents are mystified that, although successful marriages do happen and you have been witness to the fact, you feel a total lack of faith in matrimony. Probably they’re hoping you’ll marry me.”
“My mother said she’s not.”
“Thank you, Clare.”
“No—I mean, she’s not attached to it. She likes you. She doesn’t want me not to marry you. She just wants me to make up my own mind.”
“Then, I’m in agreement with her. Adding that my mind also has to get made up.”
Paul didn’t turn around. Suddenly he found himself considering again the similarity between Graham Corbett and Sean Devlin. And there was no doubt Devlin was a good-looking guy. He frowned. “You didn’t even like me kissing you the other night.”
“Because I felt as though you felt that you had to do it. I hate things that are forced. And ‘I think we should move in together’ isn’t going to win any Most Romantic Phrases contest.”
Paul spun around. “I was sincere.”
“I’m not going to give you lessons in courtship. Thank you for making dinner, by the way.”
Paul smiled. “At least I got one thing right.”
“What’s that?”
He put cheese and crackers on the table in front of her and helped himself to some. “You understand that I’m courting you.”
A small place inside her, like a spring bud that has survived a frost, began to open slightly. Her heart felt warm, her cheeks got bright, as well.
Paul turned his attention to the stove, stirring the tofu, turning the bell peppers. “Hey, we’re preparing a winter solstice festival at the zoo. Tell me you want to volunteer.”
“To do what?” Cameron asked suspiciously.
“Face-painting?” Paul turned. “We’ll have a Yule log and a parade through the zoo and a cardboard sled derby down the sledding hill near the entrance.”
“I hope you’re having everyone sign waivers.”
“Of course I am. When have I ever been incautious?” Paul demanded.
“I’ll help,” Cameron agreed, asking herself how much supervision of parents would be her lot. So many times when parents brought kids to activities at the zoo, they behaved as though they’d hired a babysitter.
Paul said, “Thanks,” and put a cup of red raspberry leaf tea in front of her. Having learned it was good for pregnancy, Cameron had drunk nothing else for days but raspberry leaf tea and water.
“Cameron, after hearing the story of that stillbirth, are you sure you still want to have a homebirth?”
“If it’s safe. So far, it seems as though it will be. But the end of July is a long way off. In any case, that woman wasn’t your mother’s client, so your mom didn’t know if her pelvis was big enough or not. Your mother wouldn’t have let that woman attempt a homebirth. She’s not a cretin.”
Paul accepted what Cameron said. He didn’t believe his mother’s becoming a CNM would make her a better midwife in any way. And fortunately, Dr. Henderson was willing to see her clients. He would tell Clare if he saw anything abnormal. And if hospital transport became necessary, at least he would have met the pregnant woman.
In any case, he and Cam
eron were due to go to a prenatal appointment with the physician this week.
A few minutes later, Paul sat across from her at the kitchen table. He had thought about her all day every day ever since the night they’d had dinner together, if not before. The feeling had been growing in him since the first night they’d made love.
“It’s ridiculous,” he said, “if my mother told me because she thought it would make a difference in how I conduct my life.”
Cameron had nothing to say to this. Just stabbed another piece of tofu and scooped up some rice.
“I mean, they told me they got divorced because they stopped getting along, and I can grasp that what happened was certainly an impediment to getting along. But it’s not like I’m fated to get divorced because they did.”
It was the first time Cameron had heard him say this. She asked, “Do you have a fever?”
“Ha ha. Want to play Scrabble after dinner?”
“Sure.”
Their Scrabble games were a long tradition. They played open dictionary so as to improve their knowledge. During Cameron’s turns, Paul played his guitar for her, during his turns, she did yoga or practiced tae kwon do.
“I might get too tired,” she warned.
“I expect such histrionics whenever you’re losing.”
“I never lose.”
It was one of the nicest evenings Cameron had ever spent with Paul. She loved listening to him play his guitar and sing. He played many of her favorite folk songs and her favorite of his original numbers. While he was taking his turns, she washed the dishes. But when there were still at least fifteen tiles left—and Paul, unfortunately, ahead—Cameron admitted, “I can barely keep my eyes open.”
“A likely story.” But he smiled as he put down his guitar. “Why don’t I tuck you in?”
Cameron wanted it and yet was afraid. She knew how strong biology was, knew that he could be—and probably was—attracted to her simply because she was carrying his child. But how silly she was being. She’d been foolish to reject his suggestion that they move in together. The formality of marriage meant little to her; the commitment was what mattered.
