Love Potion #2

by Margot Early

“It does make people crazy sometimes,” Cameron replied, desperately afraid that she might become one of those people. Not that she would adopt a monkey or ape, but…

  “I’ve got to go,” he said.

  “WE’LL KEEP HIM in the hospital.”

  Paul was furious. The zoo director had made the decision so as to create a “favorable impression” of the zoo.

  “We’re not a rescue facility for animals people shouldn’t keep as pets, sir.” Paul was holding the baby baboon and talking on the phone while the zoo vet and head curator, following the director’s instructions, were loading the unconscious, overweight pet baboon, who had just permanently disfigured his keeper, into a van to take him to the zoo. “What’s going to happen to them in the long run?”

  “We don’t have any baboons,” the director responded, as though their acquiring two in this way was a good thing.

  “But they’re social animals! They need a group. And what about quarantine?”

  “I’ve spoken with the vet,” said the director calmly.

  Finally, Paul closed his phone and joined the others at the van, giving the baby, with its distinctive smell, with its warmth and soft hair, to the vet. The things were really cute; he already felt attached to this one after simply holding it. But they should never be pets, for anyone anywhere.

  It was dark when he returned to Cameron’s house, and he found her in the kitchen, cooking dinner.

  He said, “You’re up.”

  “Yes. I need to go back to work tomorrow if I can.” She did not want to lose her job. She’d been instrumental in building the Women’s Resource Center into what it was.

  “It seems more important,” he said, “to keep from having a miscarriage.”

  She repeated what his mother had told her. Then she said, “I don’t want to lose the baby. I’m terrified of losing the baby. But your mother did not think bed rest would stop me miscarrying at this stage. I know that we’re only engaged because of the baby—and because your sister gave you a love potion.”

  He said, “You won’t lose the baby.”

  She was eating almonds as she cooked, adding them to a pot of rice, steaming vegetables, creating the kind of healthful meal they both liked.

  Changing the subject, he said, “So can we make love yet?”

  She shook her head but was soothed by his asking. She noticed he hadn’t denied either of her last two statements, so she repeated them. “Because I’m pregnant and because of Bridget’s interference, you asked me to marry you.”

  “Fine,” he said. “What’s your excuse?”

  She couldn’t say with truth that it was the same. She’d become engaged to him because she was in love with him, and she definitely wasn’t in love with him because of a love potion.

  Paul crossed to the sink where she stood, took one of her hands and turned her to face him. He looked into her eyes and tried to remember everything useful he’d ever heard about being charming to women. Be truthful? Act like she’s the only woman you’ve ever loved? Let her know that you’re her slave? Actually, all of those things seemed rather easy, because, in some way, each was true. But none of them were what he wanted to express.

  Those brown eyes in her small face cut into his heart. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, “about the baby. Or whatever reason I asked you to marry me. I’m glad we’re engaged. I’m glad you’re going to be my wife. You want to have this baby, and I want you to, and all of that’s great, but it has nothing to do with why I love you or how I love you.

  “Cameron, I just left a couple—well, the wife—the husband had been mauled—who were so determined to give their love to some helpless infantile creature that they adopted one—no, two—of a wild species.” He felt like crying when he thought of it. “Stolen from its own mother. Cameron, I want to be with you. I didn’t ask to marry the baby.”

  She pressed herself close to him, and he wrapped both arms around her and hugged her and stroked her bright hair in its two long braids.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CAMERON RETURNED TO WORK

  the following day and worked the following week while Mary Anne and Graham were away on their honeymoon. They’d gone somewhere leaving from New York, their destination a secret even to Mary Anne. The height of romance. Well, assuming that Graham could be counted on to choose a romantic destination, which Cameron believed he could be. When Mary Anne called her to say they’d come home, it was to announce a fabulous time on one of the Virgin Islands. Yes, indeed, it had been romantic.

  Cameron considered the fact that Graham Corbett had drunk a love potion, and now he and Mary Anne were married. Yes, but Graham was definitely a case of a person who’d been smitten long before he drank the love potion. If Mary Anne had received one, well, that would matter, because for a long time Mary Anne had detested Graham, or at least claimed to.

  But Paul….

  She sat at her desk thinking of these things, glad, as she had been every day that week, that she was having no cramps, seemed just fine. A volunteer—Angie Workman, in fact, who’d been trained only in the last two weeks—popped her head in Cameron’s office.

  “There was a bad one, Cameron.”

  No one else was in the building but the security guard, and Cameron motioned for Angie to come in and shut the door.

  “She thinks he’s going to kill her, but she says if she goes to a safe house, even with the kids, she’s sure he’ll get them in the divorce because he’s got a good job. I told her that legal aid could help her, but she said they wouldn’t because she’s had a DUI, though supposedly she’s on the wagon now.”

  Cameron said, “It sounds like you did what you could. You just have to let it go. And she’s right that the DUI will be a problem—how much, I can’t say. It depends on the judge.”

  Angie sank into a chair. “I never want to get married. I thought I did.” She’d been recently engaged, to the manager of the local radio station, whom Mary Anne had liked before she fell in love with Graham. And before Graham drank a love potion.

  Cameron tried to get the love potion Paul had drunk out of her head, out of her thoughts. “But I’m so shocked that somebody who seems like a nice guy can turn into an animal.”

  “I think you have to know the person for a long time,” she told Angie. “Sometimes people marry quickly, or they ignore signs, problems. Quick courtship is very typical in—well, the kind of relationships we see in here, the bad ones, I mean. You know, a guy who comes on very romantically, very fast…” Cameron found herself remembering again what Paul had told her, that by wanting him to talk about his emotions to her, she was expecting him to behave like a woman rather than like a man. She wondered if she had also wanted a very sudden romantic courtship. She didn’t think so.

  What she did know was that she loved Paul, that Paul was exactly the man she wanted. Perhaps he’d been right that she was attracted to him, in part, because he didn’t tell her everything he was thinking and feeling. It was certainly true that Sean did tend to do this.

  Angie gazed briefly at Cameron’s left hand. “You’re engaged. But yours wasn’t a quick courtship. You’ve known Paul and known him for years.”

  “Yes,” Cameron agreed, again banishing the love potion from her thoughts, “we’ve certainly known each other for a long time.”

  Her cell phone rang and she looked at the number displayed on the screen. Sean.

  She opened her phone. “Hi.”

  Angie waved and left Cameron’s office to return to the hotline.

  “Hello,” Sean said. “How’s it going?”

  Sean had called less frequently since Cameron had become engaged to Paul, and she hadn’t heard from him since Mary Anne and Graham’s wedding.

  “I’m at work,” Cameron said. “And so far, so good.” Sean knew that she’d been spotting. Paul had taken to calling him “Uncle Sean,” a wry reflection that Sean seemed as interested in the baby’s well-being as Paul himself was.

  “So everything’s better?” Sean said.<
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  “Yes,” Cameron answered.

  “And between you and Paul?”

  “Great!” she said, not wanting Sean to have any hope that Cameron and he would end up together. But Sean was a good person to share worries with, because he listened and gave intelligent answers. “Sean, suppose there was such a thing as a love potion that worked. And say that you were in a relationship and found out that the person who you thought loved you for yourself had been given a love potion.”

  “Ah, the love potions,” Sean remarked. Cameron decided he must have heard about the Cureux family potions from Mary Anne or Graham.

  “Yes,” Cameron said. “Wouldn’t you feel as though your partner had been tricked, as though your relationship wasn’t quite the real thing?”

  “Did someone give Paul a love potion?” Sean asked, a smile in his voice.

  “Yes. His sister.”

  “Break off the engagement, by all means,” Sean replied. “You’re right. His feelings for you can’t be real. Find yourself a man who loves you without the benefit of a love potion.”

  Cameron understood his flirting and smiled in spite of herself. “Be serious,” she said.

  “I think it’s less important whether a love potion is involved,” Sean answered, “than that the kind of love between two people is lasting and is going to allow both of them to grow. That there will be a real partnership between them. After all, there’s no proof that these love potions do anything. The only thing definitely real is the relationship between the two people.”

  “But Paul believes in the love potions, Sean. He believes so firmly and entirely that for him the thing has to work.”

  “Not your problem,” Sean said succinctly. “But it’s the last time I’m saying so. Believe me, if it’s possible to break up the two of you, I’m happy to help make that happen.”

  “It would make no difference,” Cameron said as gently as she could.

  “You mean, you still wouldn’t be over him? Or that your breaking up with Paul wouldn’t guarantee your ending up with me? The last is certainly true, but it would give me a better chance. At the moment, you’re unavailable.”

  “Do you think that might be the basis of your attraction to me?” Cameron asked, smiling again.

  “Not the basis. But,” Sean admitted, “it does add a certain piquancy to my feelings.”

  The phone on her desk rang.

  “I’ve got to go,” she told him. He quickly asked her if she could meet for coffee—in her case, tea—the following day, and she agreed. Then, she answered the other phone.

  Mary Anne said, “Oh, my God, Cameron, did you hear about Billy?”

  Cameron knew only one Billy whom Mary Anne could mean—Bridget’s husband, Billy Marten.

  “No,” said Cameron.

  “Oh, God,” Mary Anne repeated. “Um, forget it.”

  “Forget what?”

  “Wait. My editor’s here.” Mary Anne seemed to be at the newspaper, where she worked. “I’ve got to go.”

  “But what—”

  Mary Anne, however, was gone.

  Cameron punched the speed dial for Paul into her cell phone.

  He didn’t answer. She left a voice mail message. “Mary Anne just told me something happened to Billy, but she didn’t say what.”

  Her heart thudded hard. Mary Anne hadn’t wanted to tell her. Why? What was so bad that…

  Her mobile rang a minute later. Paul.

  She answered and asked if he’d received her message.

  He said, “No, I was calling to tell you something. Something bad.”

  Bridget’s husband, Billy, had been killed in a car accident. Paul’s father had just called to tell him, and Paul had called to tell Cameron so that she wouldn’t hear it from anyone else. Mary Anne must have heard about it on the police scanner at the newspaper or in some related way.

  Cameron felt the shock go through her. She didn’t know Billy well, certainly not as well as she knew Bridget. She knew that he worked hard. He’d been a contractor, had always had projects going, had always had too much work to do. But Bridget… “Where’s Bridget? And the kids?”

  “At my mom’s. I’m going over there now. Shall I pick you up after work?” She’d been riding her bike to work as often as possible, but Paul was always willing to pick up her and her bicycle if she was tired at the end of the day.

  “Thank you.”

  PAUL ALMOST DIDN’T recognize Bridget when he saw her. She had cut off her dreadlocks, and hers definitely looked like a homemade haircut, boyish. Her hair was as dark as his, though her dreadlocks had been bleached, lightened. Now, she looked like his twin. She sat on his mother’s porch with her daughter, Merrill, on her lap, hugging her, while Nick sat on the porch swing with Paul’s mother, rocking.

  Paul climbed out of the truck, walked to the porch and sat down beside his sister, embracing her. Her face was tearstained. She said, “Look at this,” and showed him a plant budding beside the porch step. “It’s spring again.”

  Paul nodded, remembering how recently his sister had told him that she was happily married. It had been at Graham and Mary Anne’s wedding. And undoubtedly she and Billy had danced there together, though he hadn’t been there to see it. He and his mother and Cameron had left to get Cameron to her bed.

  “I’m so sorry, Bridget,” he said. “Where is he?”

  “The funeral home. He wanted to be cremated. I thought we should both be cremated. But I think it’s too traumatic for the kids.”

  Merrill, only two, seemed barely to comprehend any of it.

  “Have you been down there?” he asked.

  She nodded and began to cry again.

  Nicky began to cry, too, and said, “I want Daddy.” Paul knew that his nephew had a tendency to draw attention to himself in any crisis. Though Paul didn’t negate the possibility that Nicky did want his father and did understand the concept of death, he suspected the boy might be more upset at seeing Bridget cry.

  Paul set his nephew on his own knees and said, “Did you know we have a baby baboon at the zoo?”

  The distraction worked.

  “At the zoo?” Nick asked.

  “Her name is Girl,” Paul told him. “And there’s an adult baboon named Precious, and he takes care of Girl.”

  “How?” asked Nick.

  Paul felt torn between the need to continue distracting his nephew and to show sympathy for his sister. Then there were his own feelings about Billy, whom he’d liked.

  And the situation he’d left behind at the zoo.

  Situation one was the baboons—their temporary housing and the director’s plan to build an exhibit for them.

  Situation two was, for Paul, more worrisome. The sakis had produced a baby, and at first the mother had cared for her well. But then she’d seemed to notice that the male preferred pulling hairs from his tail to attending at all to her or the baby, and Paul constantly feared that, in what he perceived as her depression, she might abandon the infant.

  Paul asked Bridget, “What can I do? Do you want the kids to stay with Cameron and me tonight?”

  She shook her head emphatically, and he sensed that, in light of Billy’s death, having the children close to her was more important than ever.

  Clare said, “Nick and Merrill, let’s go roll the piecrust.”

  She took the children inside, leaving Paul alone with his sister.

  She said, through tears, “You know, when you’re married, you sometimes get so mad at the other person. Sometimes you almost wish—well, wish they were gone. Or different. Or—”

  “I doubt you have anything to feel guilty about, Bridget.”

  “Everyone has things to feel guilty about. But no—I mean, before he’d leave, always, I’d always tell him I loved him, and I’d always tell him to be careful. Well, also, he’s the breadwinner.”

  “Are you going to be okay? For money? I mean, just now.”

  “Oh, I’ll be fine that way. He was great at making money.”

/>   His phone rang, and Paul pulled it out to glance at the number.

  The Women’s Resource Center.

  He answered.

  Cameron said, “Paul, can you come and get me? I’m spotting again.”

  BRIDGET CAME WITH HIM to get Cameron, leaving Nick and Merrill with her mother.

  Bridget and Cameron embraced as soon as they saw each other.

  Cameron rubbed Bridget’s new hair, held her tightly, said, “I think I’m supposed to lie down.”

  “Yes, that’s the most important thing, and I brought herbs from Mom,” Bridget said.

  “You have other things to think about.”

  Bridget shook her head. “I have to do something. I have to have something to do. I can’t stand it. I don’t know what I’m going to do. But you’re going to lie down in the backseat on the way home.”

  Cameron stretched out on the backseat of the dual cab, and Paul drove slowly back to her house. Inside, while she got into bed, Bridget prepared herbs in the kitchen and Bertie jumped up on the bed with Cameron. Mariah joined them, keeping her distance from the kitten, whom she still distrusted.

  Bridget brought in an infusion for Cameron and pulled the rocking chair over to the bedside. Her face was pale, grief-stricken, and yet she seemed entirely focused on Cameron and on being a midwife. Paul stood in the doorway, and Bridget said, “Join us, will you?”

  Paul came over and sat gently on the edge of the bed, taking Cameron’s hand.

  “Bed rest,” Bridget said. “And we’re going to get you in to see Dr. Henderson again, but we’re pretty sure he will advise the same thing. Bed rest.”

  “Just for a few more days?” Cameron asked.

  Bridget shook her head. “Probably,” she said, “for the rest of your pregnancy. Beatrice did that, didn’t she, before Trinity was born?”

  Cameron nodded. Beatrice had also gone through bed rest several times and subsequently lost babies.

  “Bed rest means you get out of the bed to go to the bathroom and—when Paul’s not here—to get food. Not to prepare food, but to get food out of the fridge and bring back to bed. You take baths, not showers, and the water needs to be tepid. Max is a hundred and one degrees—absolutely no higher than that.”