The Black Sheep’s Baby

by Kathleen Creighton

  “Something like that.” Her gaze didn’t waver.

  He stared down at her for a long time before he answered, noticing the faint bluish shadows beneath the fine-textured skin around her eyes, the golden tips of her lashes, the faint, unexpected hint of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. Funny-he wasn’t thinking at all about how beautiful she was then, only how terribly vulnerable she seemed. He could feel her trembling still, a fine, tight quivering deep down inside, and it was odd, too, how it affected him so differently now than a moment ago. Definitely not as a spur to his desire, but not to anger, either. He wasn’t sure which he wanted to do most, in fact-turn away from her in utter defeat and thwarted passion, or gather her close and hold her in tenderness and protective care. Like Susan…

  “You can believe me or not,” he said in a voice that had become guttural with emotion-and it was odd, too, how much it mattered to him whether or not she did. “But until today it never occurred to me that I could. Get you into bed, I mean.”

  She believed him. And wished she didn’t.

  “It never occurred to me that you could, either. Until today.” She couldn’t believe she was actually laughing, but she was, in quiet gusts against his chest, but she knew it was the kind of laughter that can crumple into sobs in a heartbeat. Desperately afraid it might, she fought to stop it, drawing in a breath, holding it, parceling it out in little settling-down sighs as she lay back against his arm. “We can’t possibly do this,” she said in a low voice.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Eric gave a gusty sigh of his own and lay back on the cot’s meager pillow, settling her subtly against him. “The bed’s too damn small. Plus, if I have a condom at all, it sure as hell isn’t here.”

  Was he joking? She didn’t know him well enough to tell. She sniffed and said, “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.”

  They lay together, side-by-side on the narrow, dusty cot, listening to the baby’s gentle snores and staring up at the ceiling like children watching clouds. Devon’s chest, her whole inside ached as if a tremendous weight was bearing down on her. Filling her lungs seemed a difficult task. She felt air-starved and exhausted when she said, “You could have me disbarred.”

  She felt his body flinch as though she’d struck him. “You think I’d do that?”

  “I think you’d do whatever it takes to keep Emily.” Listening to her own toneless voice, she felt a chill go through her. “To keep my parents-my clients-from getting her.”

  “You’re right about that,” Eric said softly, flatly. There was a pause, and then said, “Having you disbarred isn’t going to accomplish that, though, is it? They’ll just get themselves another lawyer.”

  She nodded, feeling her head move against his arm, and she thought how strange it was to be talking about such things as this, lying together like sated lovers. “They’ll be doing that anyway.” She hesitated, then added bleakly, “After this, at the very least I’ll have to recuse myself.”

  “Would that be such a bad thing?”

  She had no reply. As she tried to think of one, misery settled over her like a thick, musty shroud.

  Silence came, then, too, until it was broken by a baby’s sleeping sigh. Devon felt Eric’s body tense as he turned to check, then relax again beside her.

  After a moment he said lightly, with an air of beginning, “Devon…tell me about your childhood.”

  The quiet words stirred through her and she held herself in a listening stillness, frightened at the emptiness she felt inside, thinking of images of dry husks blown away by cold autumn winds. The silence lengthened until finally she whispered, “I can’t.”

  She felt his body sink as he exhaled. “Look, I’m trying to understand, okay? I just want to know how it was with you, with Susan. Make me understand.”

  “I said, I can’t.” His hand, which had been a warm, strangely comforting weight across her ribs, now seemed like the bar to a cage. On the brink of panic, she pushed it away and struggled to sit up, scrambling over his legs and reaching with her feet for the edge of the cot. “I don’t remember, okay?” She threw it over a shoulder, defiantly.

  He raised himself on his elbows. “What do you mean, you don’t remember? Your whole entire childhood? Not anything? Even a single memory? How’s that possible?” He gave a disbelieving snort. “Everybody remembers something.”

  Anger came, and she embraced it gladly. “What’s with you? What’s this…thing you have about memories? That’s all you ever talk about, you know it? ‘Remember when this? When I was a kid that?’” She was on her feet, now, turning jerkily, hugging herself between furious gestures. “What difference does it make?”

  “What difference?” He swung his feet around and sat up on the edge of the cot, occupying the place she’d just left. “Hell, Devon, what are we without memories? Memories are…” He raked a hand through his hair, leaving it endearingly tousled while he searched for the thought. “Jeez-they make us who we are.”

  Endearingly? Confused and distressed, she looked away. “Well, I guess that’s just who I am, then,” she said, brittle and defiant. “A person who was never a child.”

  “Everyone was a child.”

  She wanted to hate him for the sorrow in his voice. She wanted to think of something sarcastic and clever to hurl back at him. Because she couldn’t, she kept silent, while a pulse ticked crazily against her belt buckle, and the tension coiling inside her felt like a watch spring coming unwound.

  “What about pictures?” Eric asked suddenly, straightening with inspiration brightening his eyes. “Your folks must have pictures…photo albums.”

  She shook her head and grimaced impatiently, not meaning to lie, really, just not wanting to explain that she never looked at the photographs in her parents’ house. Except for the one on the shelf in the bookcase in the living room-she could hardly miss that one, the professional portrait of two little red-haired girls, one sitting tall and smiling with the gawky self-consciousness of adolescence, the other a chubby-cheeked baby in ruffles, propped on a pillow and clutching a stuffed Winnie the Pooh toy. A portrait of strangers. Devon felt no connection to the children in the picture whatsoever.

  “What’s your earliest memory, then?”

  God, he was relentless. She wanted to stamp her feet, tear her hair, cry-ironically, all the sorts of things a child would do, and which she had no memory of ever having done. But in any case, she was an adult now, and all she could do was lift her hands to her head and give a tiny moan. “Oh-I don’t know-jeez, I’d have to think-”

  “You want to know what mine is?” She most definitely didn’t, but of course he ignored her whimper of denial. “At least, I guess it’s my earliest-I don’t know how old I was, but I must have been maybe…two. I was sitting on my mom’s lap…” His voice was gentle with remembering.

  In spite of herself, she found herself turning toward it, then moving instinctively closer like a chilled animal seeking warmth in the darkness. And when she saw his face, not gaunt and full of shadows but lifted to her, smooth and light and young, her heart turned over and the anger in it drained away.

  “And we were on this great big tractor. I had my hands on the steering wheel, pretending I was driving it-scared to death, you know? But so proud, too. And I know I must have been pretty small, because that steering wheel seemed huge. I had to stretch my arms wide to grip it on both sides. It felt warm in my hands…almost too warm…hot, actually.”

  “That’s it?” She made her voice light, but there was a quiver of envy in it.

  He spread his hands and smiled his lopsided smile. “That’s it. Hey, memories don’t have to be big, you know. They can be anything-a smell, a song, a certain food, a particular toy…a moment. Just one little moment in time, captured up here-” he tapped his temple “-forever. Like a photograph.” And he grinned at her, cocky over the aptness of his analogy.

  In capitulation, she sat beside him on the cot with her hands pressed tightly between her knees and dre
w a deep breath. “Okay…” she said on the exhalation, “I guess the earliest thing I remember is…I was packing, so I must have been getting ready to leave for college. Susan was watching me. She didn’t want me to go.”

  Incredibly, she wished with all her heart that while she was telling him these things he would put his arms around her again, gather her in and hold her close and enfold her in warmth and safety. And prayed he wouldn’t.

  “Details?” Eric prompted softly.

  Her mouth was dry. Her throat ached. She tried to swallow, and it felt like thorns. “The suitcase was open on the bed,” she whispered. “She was leaning against it…crying.”

  Please don’t go. Don’t leave me here, Devon…please don’t leave me…

  “That’s all-I don’t remember anymore-I’m sorry.” And she was on her feet, heart thumping, racing. Yet she was cold. Cold clear through.

  She jerked away from him, and as her gaze swept past the window, a movement caught her eye. A spurt of relief-and guilt and anguish-shot through her. “Oh, God-” Bobbing to see past the tangle of a climbing rosebush heavily laden with red-gold hips, she managed a breathless, “Look-your mom and dad are back. I don’t want them to see…” Snatching up her jacket, she ran from the cottage.

  Shot through with guilt-adrenaline himself, heart pumping like a runaway freight train, Eric stood in the bunkhouse doorway and watched her make her way across the yard to the house, sliding a little on the trodden-down pathway through the snow. He felt jangled and shaken, but exhilarated, too, as if he’d just missed capturing a Pulitzer-winning shot, or a wild bird in his hands.

  Coming up the lane in Lucy’s old Ford 4X4, Mike and Lucy watched the stumbling red-haired figure in the unzipped ski-jacket half running through the well-trampled snow, accompanied and impeded by a pair of excited Border collies.

  “Look, isn’t that Devon?” said Mike. “Wonder where she’s been.”

  “With Eric, I imagine.” Lucy didn’t even try to keep the satisfaction out of her voice.

  Mike frowned at the windshield. “So who’s minding the kid? Is that why she’s in such a hurry to get back?”

  Lucy was shaking her head emphatically. “They wouldn’t be so irresponsible. Look-there she is.” She nodded toward the bunkhouse, where Eric was just coming out of the door with a comforter-swathed bundle tucked under one arm.

  “Huh. What in the heck would they be doing out there in the bunkhouse?” Mike still looked puzzled as he pulled the Ford into its usual parking spot under the trees.

  Lucy gave him an exasperated jab with her elbow. “Oh, Mike, don’t be dense.” He threw her a startled look, and she couldn’t resist smirking at him. “I’m sure he was showing her his darkroom. What else?”

  He let go of a gust of laughter. “Lucy, you are incorrigible.”

  “I love it when you talk writer to me,” she purred, batting her lashes outrageously. She was feeling outrageously pleased. Her plan was working. She was sure of it.

  “Hi, Mom…Dad.” Eric paused beside the car as they were opening doors. “Need a hand unloading?”

  “You get that baby in out of the cold. I can handle the unloading. Your mom’s got to get ready for chores.” Mike grinned. “Hey, how’s the darkroom? Just like you left it?”

  Eric grinned back at his dad, and Lucy’s heart gave a little shiver of happiness. They didn’t really resemble each other, those two, and yet, in the indefinable way of fathers and sons, they were so alike. “Pretty much. Need fresh chemicals, though.” He turned to Lucy with a look of innocence she remembered well. “Hey, by the way, Mom-the photo albums? Where’ve you got ’em stashed?”

  “Oh, heavens,” she replied in pretended exasperation, “all over the place. Some in the parlor, some in your room…my sewing room. There’s so many, I wouldn’t begin to know where to…”

  “That’s okay, don’t worry about it. I’ll look.” He turned back to Mike. “Dad, is it okay if I use your computer for a while this evening?”

  Mike’s eyebrows went up but all he said was, “Sure, go ahead. With all this yet to wrap, I can’t imagine I’ll be using it. Help yourself.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  When their son had disappeared inside the house with his quilt-wrapped bundle, Mike said to Lucy out of the side of his mouth, “What d’you suppose he’s up to now?”

  “Who knows? It’s Christmas,” Lucy replied serenely. At last…

  The rest of the day was devoted to preparations for the coming holiday-and, in Devon’s case, avoiding Eric.

  While Lucy and Mike were outside doing the evening chores, she stayed barricaded in her room like a hostage, listening to the intermittent sound of his footsteps going past her door. Up and down the stairs they went, in and out of his room, and her nerves jumped every time she heard his door click open or shut. Restless beyond bearing, she paced like a caged cat while the tension inside her tightened to screaming pitch.

  When she finally heard the sound of banging doors, the clank of buckets and loud cheerful voices drifting up from the service room, she was so relieved she almost wept, and even though cooking had never been among her hobbies, went skipping down the stairs to volunteer to help with dinner.

  Apparently delighted by Devon’s offer, Lucy banished Mike, who-equally delighted to be relieved of kitchen duty-immediately went off to the parlor to help Eric with his mysterious computer project. She then handed Devon a knife and set her to cutting up vegetables for a salad to go with the beef stew that was already thawing in a Tupperware container in the microwave.

  While she worked efficiently alongside Devon, Lucy chattered about all that had been and still remained to be done to get ready for the coming holiday. She sounded positively happy at the prospect of peeling and chopping the endless array of fruits, nuts and vegetables that would go into the various traditional family dishes-potato soup for Christmas Eve, corn bread and walnut stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey giblet gravy, candied yams, creamed onions, cranberry Jell-O, fruit salad and pumpkin pies for Christmas dinner.

  Devon had never heard of so much food. She asked, with twinges of alarm, how many people Lucy was expecting for dinner on Christmas Day.

  Lucy smiled and explained that this year it was to be just her brother Earl, his wife Chris and their daughter, Caitlyn. “And you and Eric, of course,” she added, and her smile was so radiant Devon had to look away, and wonder at the traitorous prickles that had come to the backs of her eyes.

  Thus prompted, Lucy went on to talk about past Christmases when her children had been small and the household had included Great-aunt Gwen, and even farther back in the past when she and her brothers had been the children and their parents still alive. Boisterous Christmases, then, when the farmhouse had been crowded with children and noisy with laughter and music.

  Listening to her, Devon felt a heaviness around her heart. Memories…everything here is memories, she thought.

  What was it Eric had said about memories making people who they are? Who, then, am I? she wondered. The heaviness became an ache.

  When the salad was finished, Lucy handed her a stack of plates and bowls and asked her to set the table. “That was always the children’s job,” she told Devon with an impish little smile. “First Ellie’s, then Eric’s.”

  Devon smiled back, but it felt bleak and fraudulent. The children’s job. Did I do this when I was a child, in my own parents’ house? she wondered as she arranged plates, bowls and napkins, knives, forks and spoons on the red plaid tablecloth. I must have, and probably Susan, too.

  But if I did, why don’t I remember?

  She had no appetite for dinner, and had to force herself to choke down polite helpings of Lucy’s delicious homemade beef stew and the fresh green salad she’d helped to make. There was no reason for it; the atmosphere in the kitchen was comfortable and welcoming, as always. In spite of the baby she insisted on holding in her lap, Lucy bounced up and down, back and forth between tending to Emily’s needs and everyone else’s, a
nd ignored everyone’s urgings to relax. Eric chatted with Mike about computer things and avoided Devon’s eyes. They all reminisced-incessantly.

  But Devon realized that, there in the midst of Eric’s family, surrounded by unself-conscious love, easy conversation, affectionate teasing and warm remembering, she felt alienated…left out. And envious.

  After dinner, Devon insisted on doing the dishes. “You must have other things you need to do,” she told Lucy, nodding toward the baby she held casually cradled in the crook of one arm. “This is about the only way I know of to help. Please, it’s the least I can do.”

  So, with twinkling eyes and secret smiles, Mike and Lucy vanished like co-conspirators behind the closed door of their bedroom, taking Emily with them. Eric went back to traipsing mysteriously up and down the stairs. Up to her elbows in soapy dishwater at the kitchen sink, Devon could hear him whistling tunelessly each time he whisked past the open doorway.

  And each time he did, her heartbeat accelerated.

  Dammit, she thought, staring into the froth of bubbles. Dammit. It felt like failure to her, this inability to forget the delicious warmth of his hand on her neck, the demanding weight of it on her belly, the tingling rush that lifted the fine hairs all over her body, the thumping ache of desire between her thighs. What irony, she thought bitterly. I’m a failure on the one hand because I can’t remember, and on the other because I can’t forget.

  Devon wasn’t accustomed to failure. She desperately wanted to blame someone else for it. Blame Eric, blame his parents, this farm, the entire cotton-pickin’ Midwest, for that matter. One thing she knew for certain: she was sick to death of all of it. She couldn’t wait to get away from these people and their old-fashioned corn-fed ways, their constant conversation and mushy Christmas songs, their house cluttered with holiday decorations, and a kitchen that always smelled of something cooking. Something fattening, naturally. She couldn’t wait to be back in L.A., back at her job where she was almost never a failure, back in the solitude of her own cool, quiet apartment with its uncluttered serenity, everything in its place and classical music playing on the stereo.