by Margot Early
Cameron considered whether she could truly say, I am Paul. She thought, No, thank God. And yet there was that simple comfort of understanding each other, of knowing what the other would do in most circumstances.
But without completely knowing each other. Yes, she’d said that she knew Paul, and she believed she knew his heart, but there was so much she didn’t know.
“Am I…” He seemed to begin, then stop. “Does my presence in your life cause problems between you and Paul?”
“No!” was her immediate response. If anything, it would do no harm for Paul to feel that he had a bit of competition. Then she told Sean about Paul’s proposal and what she’d done. Sean was a trusted confidant and would not repeat the story to anyone. “Do you understand,” she asked, “why I said no?”
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “You feel he’s—well, going through the motions is the best way I can put it.”
Cameron nodded vigorously, stabbing a piece of chicken.
“Do you think he’s afraid of intimacy?” Sean asked. “Emotionally, not physically.”
Cameron considered. “I used to think that. He definitely doesn’t like to sit around talking about his emotions. But—well, in some ways, he’s very practical. In others, I feel like he’ll never grow up. Maybe he’s afraid of commitment. But despite that, he asked me to live with him and he asked me to marry him.”
“It’s not uncommon for men—and women—to fear commitment,” Sean answered, as though this were a professional opinion. But he wasn’t a professional in psychology, except as much as any actor-playwright-director-teacher. “They feel that to be in an adult relationship would make them grow up. It’s a Peter Pan complex.”
For the first time, Cameron didn’t like Sean. She knew she herself sometimes compared Paul to Peter Pan, but she didn’t care for anyone else to do so. Especially because—well, Paul wasn’t so immature. As he’d said himself, many people thought it more mature not to rush into marriage. “He’s a responsible person,” she said.
Sean did not look skeptical. He said, “Sorry. Maybe a little of my own jealousy rearing its ugly head.”
And peace was restored.
“THE DOCTOR SAID you’re fine,” Mary Anne reminded Cameron over the following week as she and Cameron helped clean up the face-painting area at the end of the winter solstice celebration at the zoo. Since Paul hadn’t been able to make it to Dr. Henderson’s office, Mary Anne had accompanied Cameron to her appointment. “And Clare says the same. I’m sure if both still feel it’s safe when the time rolls around, when you go into labor, Paul will be on board, as well.”
Mary Anne had come to Cameron’s second prenatal appointment with the midwife, as well. Cameron had begun joking that when Paul couldn’t make it to the birth because the monkeys had monkey pox, Mary Anne could come in his place.
“What about Sean?” Mary Anne had suggested.
Cameron hadn’t answered.
Now, changing the subject from the birth, still months off, Cameron told Mary Anne all about Paul’s proposal and her refusal.
“He probably thinks you’re completely insane,” Mary Anne decided. “He thinks you wanted to marry him until he asked, and then you changed your mind.”
“Probably. But you understand why I said no, don’t you?” Having asked this question first of Sean, Cameron now began to feel as though she were taking a poll—or perhaps simply trying to convince herself that she’d done the right thing.
“Yes,” Mary Anne answered. “You want him to want to marry you, not to propose because he knows it’s expected of him.”
“Exactly.”
“But are you sure that’s what he’s doing? Cameron, he may really want to marry you. People change, and you two are going through many big changes.”
Cameron considered this. “I don’t know anymore. I just know that I’ve been made to feel as though I’m expecting something of him, and he has an idea of the expectation, and now, maybe, he’s acting on it.” She glanced quickly behind her back. They were using a keeper area off the zoo hospital to rinse out paint trays, but so far they were alone.
“What would it look like,” Mary Anne asked, “for him to behave as you’d like him to behave?”
Cameron considered this. “I suppose I’d like him to be in love with me.”
“Cameron, maybe he is!” Mary Anne exclaimed.
But Cameron knew that the reason she’d told Paul to leave was because she’d known that he wasn’t in love with her. But had asked her to marry him anyway.
At that moment, Paul pushed open the door to the zoo hospital.
She wished her heart wouldn’t pound so fiercely every time she glimpsed his face.
“Ready to go?” he asked. He’d driven her to the zoo and planned to drive her home, as well.
Cameron nodded, looking at Mary Anne. They all walked out together, Paul locking the employee exit behind him. After Mary Anne had started her car and driven off, Cameron got into Paul’s truck with him.
“What are you doing Christmas Eve?” he asked. “Do you have plans with your family?”
“I’m usually expected to show up.” She thought for a moment. “Want to join me?” At her parents’ house. Her grandmother was supposed to be there, the grandmother who hadn’t yet been told that Cameron was pregnant. That was because Cameron was unmarried, and it was all supposed to be too much for Nanna.
Paul nodded. “I love Christmas at the McAllister house.”
“Ha ha,” said Cameron, knowing that he meant there might be family drama there to witness. Her uncle, Mary Anne’s father, being drunk perhaps. Or simply the family collusion to keep everything unpleasant from Cameron’s grandmother.
He said, “Thank you for inviting me. Of course, I’ll join you.”
She felt that strange comfort with him, that brotherly comradeship that crossed into something unknown and exciting. Best friends and more…. Was it possible that what Mary Anne had suggested could be true? Could he want to marry her for some reason beyond the baby?
Christmas Eve
WHEN SHE HEARD the knock at her door, Cameron thought it might be Paul, arriving early to drive her to her grandmother’s. But when she opened the door, Sean stood there.
He was carrying a package wrapped in gold paper and tied with a ribbon. “Merry Christmas,” he said, holding the gift toward her.
Cameron had bought one for him, too, a small journal which she’d had gift-wrapped at the store. She said, “Come on in,” and went to pick it up from beside a foot-high artificial tree Mary Anne had given her one year when she was ill. Sean’s wreath, hanging on the door, was larger than the little tree.
They sat down on her couch and each opened their gifts. Hers was a 1931 edition of Wuthering Heights illustrated with woodcuts. “This is beautiful, Sean. Thank you.” She turned pages eagerly, looking at each representation of the characters, of scenes from the story.
“You’re welcome.” He lifted the journal slightly. “And this will come in handy.”
Cameron heard the sound of a vehicle outside. “That will be Paul.”
She stood and went to the door, opened it and looked out.
He was unloading a Christmas tree from his truck, while casting contemptuous looks at Sean’s Volvo.
Sean, behind Cameron, said, “Let me see if he needs a hand.”
THERE WASN’T TIME to more than put it in a stand Paul had brought and test the lights on the floor before the two of them had to leave for Cameron’s parents’ house. Sean left well before that time, no doubt sensing that his presence was unwelcome. When he was gone, Cameron said, “Paul, I don’t have any Christmas ornaments.”
“I thought we could make some. Maybe when we come back from your folks’ house.” He indicated a paper bag, which seemed to contain art supplies and other assorted junk. He looked from the copy of Wuthering Heights to Cameron’s face. “Do you like him?”
“Just as a friend. I mean, he’s a good-looking guy, but—” She s
hrugged, meaning to imply general indifference to whatever else Sean might have on offer.
“Does he know he’s just a friend?” Paul asked.
“I’ve told him so.”
“And he remains hopeful?”
“Maybe that’s why he’s hopeful,” Cameron said, as though considering for the first time the possibility that Sean liked her because she was in love with another man.
“Which reinforces what I’ve told you before,” Paul said. “You represent the unknown to him. But he is the known to you.”
Cameron frowned. “But I don’t know him as well as I know you, for instance.” And yet it was Paul who interested her, who intrigued her, who held her happiness in his hands.
Paul looked down, afraid to gaze at her, suddenly disturbed by how much he felt. He focused instead on the Christmas lights. After checking that every bulb had successfully lit, he pulled the plug from the wall. “Let’s head out.”
THOUGH CAMERON’S MOTHER had reacted stolidly to her pregnancy, Cameron’s grandmother, with whom Mary Anne had lived pre-Graham, had still not been told. Mary Anne, following the family line, maintained that Jacqueline Billingham might die of shock hearing news of the out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Cameron knew better. Her grandmother would say, “My goodness,” and then ignore the situation. It wasn’t that Nanna believed such things could never happen in her family. She would just behave as though that were the case.
Jacqueline had been brought to the Christmas Eve dinner by her attendant, Lucille. After the meal, Jacqueline sat on the couch, admiring Cameron’s parents’ Christmas tree.
Paul sat near her, while Mary Anne’s father plucked out tunes on the piano, and her mother listened attentively to the interests of Beatrice’s four-year-old daughter.
When Cameron had told Paul that the family was still colluding to keep the pregnancy from her grandmother, she’d seen a mischievous, almost Peter Pan-like expression flit over his features. “Don’t you dare,” she’d whispered.
This wasn’t because she thought her grandmother shouldn’t be told but because she didn’t think Paul was the person to deliver the news. “We’ve got to tell her,” Cameron said to her own mother in the privacy of the kitchen.
Beatrice, as elder sister, said, “Maybe put it off a little.”
“You might miscarry,” Cameron’s mother pointed out.
Tears sprang behind Cameron’s eyes.
“Oh, honey, what is it?” her mother exclaimed.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” snapped Beatrice, sensitive to Cameron’s fears and fully realizing that their mother had just predicted that Cameron’s child might die.
But neither of them said Cameron wouldn’t miscarry.
Cameron fled to the bathroom, and a moment later Paul walked in without knocking. He lifted her from the edge of the bathtub, where she’d been sitting, holding her stomach as she cried.
He pressed his face to her hair. “You won’t miscarry,” he said. “It’s okay. That won’t happen.” And he touched her stomach, too, as though seeing if he could feel any difference.
“It could.”
“Nope,” he said, hugging her. “Won’t happen.”
Cameron thought, Is it possible he understands? And is there a chance that the idea is as horrible to him as it is to me?
A few minutes later, he led her back into the living room, and he resumed his seat beside Cameron’s grandmother.
Jacqueline looked at Cameron in surprise. “Are you all right, dear?”
“Well, she’s pregnant, so we’re a little anxious sometimes,” Paul said blandly.
Jacqueline Billingham looked at him once, then admired the Christmas tree. “Don’t those old ornaments look nice?”
“We hope you can come to our wedding,” Paul continued.
Cameron’s jaw dropped. The exclamations that occurred to her, What wedding? and We’re not getting married! could not be spoken before Jacqueline Billingham.
“Of course I will,” exclaimed Cameron’s elegant grandmother. “When is the date?” she asked Cameron.
“Probably after the baby’s born,” Cameron replied blithely.
“Perhaps,” Paul agreed. “But possibly sooner. We know how important it is to the baby.”
Cameron wanted badly to contradict all this.
But having married parents could be important to their baby.
Wasn’t this the point when she should cease to worry about her own feelings and start to think about her child’s instead? She loved Paul, and her only doubts had to do with his real desire to marry.
“Though we were thinking of the first Saturday in January,” she said sweetly, hoping to watch Paul’s face pale.
She could detect no reaction at all.
“Just a small ceremony at the courthouse,” Cameron added. “After all, Mary Anne’s is the big wedding we’re looking forward to.” As Mary Anne entered the room with her fiancé, she said, “Mary Anne, how does the first Saturday in January work for you? For Paul’s and my wedding?”
Mary Anne pasted on a quick smile. “Great! But that’s soon to get you a dress.”
“I’m not having a dress,” Cameron replied. “It’s ridiculous. For me,” she quickly added.
“I don’t see why,” Graham Corbett put in with that very nice manner that was the hallmark of all his behavior.
Cameron shrugged. “I’ll find something.”
Paul said, “I’m not sure that date will work. It’s very soon.” He met her eyes and said firmly, “You’re going to have a real wedding, Cameron.”
An hour later, back at her house, sitting at her kitchen table with them, both surrounded by art supplies and assorted junk he’d brought over for making ornaments for the tree, she asked, “How do you feel about the first Saturday in January?”
“I feel,” he answered carefully, “that it’s too soon.”
“So that was just to save you from my family’s disapproval?” she inquired.
“Was what just to save me from your family’s disapproval?”
“Pretending we’re engaged.”
He lifted his eyes. He’d stopped at his place briefly, loading a few things under the truck’s camper shell, before driving back to Cameron’s. He looked back at what he was doing, pasting magazine photos onto a small origami box. He had already used Cameron’s stepladder to string lights on the tree.
Finished, he stood from the table, walked into the living room to retrieve something, returned to the kitchen. He set an old-fashioned ring box in front of Cameron.
Suddenly uneasy, she put down the candy cane she’d been turning into a reindeer and picked up the box. She met Paul’s eyes.
He lifted his eyebrows slightly and picked up the origami box again.
Cameron opened the ring box and found it contained a diamond ring in an old-fashioned setting.
“It was my grandmother’s. My father’s mother.”
Cameron realized she had misjudged him, perceiving that the engagement was just for the benefit of her family—or for hers, in their eyes.
She removed the ring from the box and tried it on.
“We can have it sized,” he said.
“It fits.” Good grief. She was really going to be married to Paul. Not next weekend, but…
“I have a gift for you, too.”
She stood up and went to get his gift from the other room.
Paul unwrapped a new copy of Spiritual Midwifery.
He said, “I’m supposed to read this?”
Cameron gave him a small smile.
“And it will reconcile me to you giving birth at home? Have you forgotten that my mother is a midwife, that I grew up surrounded by the concept of homebirth, that I’ve been subject to indoctrination, if you will.”
“So what’s wrong with me having this baby at home?”
That I’m terrified, Paul reflected.
He realized the incredible. That he wasn’t afraid of her losing the baby. He was afraid of losing her.
/> Which was irrational.
“Nothing,” he finally said. “You know, that ring isn’t your present. It’s just your engagement ring. If you like it well enough. If you don’t, we can pick out another.”
“I like it.”
“Shall I get your present? It’s out in the truck.”
“Okay.” She was glad she had another present for him, as well.
He left her. When she heard the front door reopen, Paul called, “Close your eyes.”
“Okay,” she called back and obediently shut them.
She thought she heard Mariah whine. A moment later, something fluffy was in her hands, and she opened her eyes. A tiny, long-haired Russian blue kitten gazed up at her with eyes the color of its name. “Hello!” she exclaimed.
The kitten trembled, apparently not happy about the nearness of Mariah, who had come close to sniff it.
Then, abruptly, a tiny paw shot out, a claw hooking on a black nose.
Mariah yelped and backed away with her tail between her legs.
“Well done,” Paul said. “He can take care of himself. What do you want to name him? After one of the heroes of those books you adore?”
“One of the classics,” she decided. “Ethelbert. Bertie. From Barchester Towers.”
Paul looked wondering.
“He’s just silly and funny.”
“It’s a good name for a cat,” Paul agreed. “I brought you a litter box, but you’re not to touch it, got that? I’ll be over here every day to take care of it.”
“How did you know pregnant women are supposed to avoid them?”
“I just do,” he answered. “And I know why.”
“Yes, well, you work in a zoo, and I suppose zoo animals can get toxoplasmosis.”
“Too often.”
“Thank you for Bertie,” Cameron said and set the kitten on the floor.
Mariah ran out of the room.
“She’ll get used to him,” Paul assured Cameron. “And I don’t think she’ll try to eat him.”
“But her father might.”
“Let’s keep Bertie inside and Wolfie outside for the time being.”
“Okay,” Cameron agreed.
