Baby Business

by Brenda Novak

  * * *

  “SO THIS IS your fiancé.” Macy’s mother stepped back, one critical gray eye almost squinting as she looked Thad over.

  Standing next to him in the middle of her mother’s modest living room with Champ, her mother’s German shepherd, sniffing and circling them both, Macy took a deep breath and held it. She had no doubt Thad would pass muster. He was pouring on the charm, saying all the right things, admiring Champ and scratching him behind the ears.

  Macy didn’t think there was a woman alive who could resist Thad now. Even her little dynamo of a mother. What made her nervous were the lies. In nine months, she’d be calling her mother to report another divorce, and Edna would probably be disappointed Macy had lost him. She felt like a failure in advance.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” her mother was saying, patting her carefully arranged white hair. “I would have picked you up at the airport.”

  “It wasn’t any trouble to rent a car, Mrs. Phillips,” Thad said.

  “You’re going to be my son-in-law. Call me Mom,” she insisted, smoothing her skirt. Dressed in her Sunday best, Edna had obviously taken pains to prepare for their arrival. “I understand about the car, of course,” she went on. “You’ll need it for after the wedding. A young, handsome man like yourself won’t want to waste time visiting with an old lady like me, not when he could be starting his honeymoon.” Edna smiled slyly, as though they shared an inside joke, and Macy resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Little did Edna know her honeymoon consisted of latex gloves and doctors. Nothing to get excited about, but Thad must have smiled, at least enough to appease Edna, because she waved them to the rust-colored sectional that crowded the room.

  “Sit down. This came about so quickly, I can hardly believe it’s happening. You know, when Richard left, I told Macy there’d be someone else.”

  Macy remembered their conversations being more about the unreliability of men and how Richard had been a perfect example and what could she expect? But she kept her mouth shut. At least her mother seemed to be putting forth an honest effort.

  “She was so heartbroken,” Edna continued, taking the worn brown chair facing the couch, on which they’d settled, and crossing her legs in ladylike fashion. “She could scarcely function. And then, when we found out why he’d left! It was humiliating.” She looked thoughtful for a moment as Champ went to sit near her knee, obviously hoping to receive a little absentminded scratching. Macy hoped her mother had finished with the subject, but then she went on, “Of course, we should have seen it coming. He always did have a wandering eye—”

  “Mom, we don’t need to go into all that,” Macy interrupted. “I’m sure Thad doesn’t want to hear about my first marriage.”

  Edna looked slightly offended, but when Thad said nothing, she gracefully conceded the point. “You’re right, dear. Let’s not ruin this day with bad memories. Okay, tell me, Thad, how did the two of you meet?”

  Macy opened her mouth to answer, but despite her confidence on the plane and the one plausible scenario Thad had suggested, her mind drew a blank. “Well…we…we met…” She glanced at Thad, and he jumped to her rescue.

  “…on a blind date,” he finished, and started to embellish the story from there.

  Reluctant to relinquish control of the conversation to him—this was her mother—Macy tried to interrupt, but Edna was hanging on every word, nodding and smiling and soaking it all in. Besides, it was as good a story as any. Giving up, Macy sat back and listened.

  “The moment I saw her picture, I wondered if she was the one,” he said. “There was something mysterious about her smile that appealed to me. I kept going back to that picture.”

  His voice sounded almost wistful, and so damn sincere. Macy told herself never to believe another thing he said. She also decided her mother had heard enough.

  “So it was love at first sight,” she cut in, finishing for him as a muscle started to twitch near her eye, “and here we are.” She stood to indicate that she was ready to leave, but Champ was the only one who followed her lead. “What chapel should we go to? Any ideas, Mom?”

  Edna blinked up at her. “My, you are in a hurry.”

  “Well, Haley’s sick, in case you’ve forgotten.” She hadn’t meant to say it, especially with such sarcasm. But the words, and the emotion behind them, simply slipped out.

  “What do you mean, ‘in case I’ve forgotten’?”

  Macy hesitated. She didn’t want to get into it, not with Thad here. Not ever. If only she could close off the hurt, put it in the same place she’d put the pain when Richard left. “Nothing. Never mind. Let’s go.”

  Her mother didn’t move. She’d dropped her friendly, social aura and was staring angrily at Macy. Champ, sensing the hostility, swung his great head back and forth between them, tail wagging uncertainly. “How dare you come here and accuse me of not doing my part for Haley. Here I am, living on a pension, yet I’ve paid your rent for the past three months!”

  Pandora’s box… “I appreciate that, Mom, and I plan to pay you back, like we agreed, as soon as I can get back to work. But Haley’s been in the hospital a long time, and you’ve only been to Salt Lake twice. You rarely call. Even when you do, half the time you don’t ask about her. I feel like she and I are fighting this battle alone. You say that men don’t stay. They don’t last when the going gets tough. You even told me you knew all along that Richard would run out on me—” Macy stubbornly forced a swallow past the tightening of her throat “—but sometimes it feels like you’ve abandoned us, too.”

  Shocked silence. Thad’s face was inscrutable. Edna looked as if she’d just been slapped. It was hardly what Macy had planned to say when she saw her mother today. She’d expected a quick, uneventful visit, more pleasant than not. Instead, she’d started World War Three. And blame it on raw nerves, exhaustion, stress, hurt, disappointment, whatever, it was too late to change that now.

  “Always finding fault. That’s what children do these days. What a parent gives is never enough, is it?” Edna demanded. “I try and try, sacrifice things I’d like to have so I can send the money to you, and it’s still not enough.”

  “I’m sorry Haley’s illness has put a dent in your pocketbook,” she said. “I’m certainly not asking for more money.”

  “How dare you sit in judgment of me! I’m your mother. You have no right!”

  Thad stood and put his arm around Macy, who had started shaking and couldn’t figure out how to stop. “I think we’ll go now,” he said, herding her to the door.

  “She wants me to suffer right along with her,” her mother called after them. “That’s what she wants!”

  “No, she just wants your love, much more than your money,” Thad said under his breath as they reached the porch, but only Macy could hear him.

  Champ dashed out behind them and nudged her hand with his wet nose, but a moment later her mother yanked him back by the collar and slammed the door.

  * * *

  “I’M SORRY,” Macy muttered, keeping her face averted as Thad drove down the Las Vegas strip looking for a wedding chapel. The day was warm, almost hot, and the sky clear and blue. “Ours is a business deal. I’m sure you weren’t expecting to be dragged into an emotional maelstrom.”

  He glanced over at her. Her emotions were so raw, he could watch them playing beneath her expression like fish gliding silently near the surface of a lake. “Should we go back to your mother’s?” he asked. “Maybe you’d feel better if you had a chance to put things right.”

  Macy shook her head, one crystal tear falling from her dark lashes. She wiped it away in a quick, impatient gesture. “It’s too soon. She won’t listen. And I don’t know what I’d say, anyway. I don’t understand why she doesn’t seem to care about Haley. She used to dote on her.”

  “It takes a strong person to watch what’s happening to Haley,” he said, remembering his own hesitation as he stood in the hospital lobby that first night. “Maybe she’s afraid.”

  “Mayb
e she is. But then, so am I. And if Haley can’t count on her family, who can she count on?”

  Me. Thad almost said the word before he caught himself, before he reminded himself that his involvement in their lives was only temporary. “What about Richard’s family?”

  “They live back East. She gets a Christmas card every year and a birthday present. That’s it.”

  Thad reached over to take Macy’s hand, knowing he couldn’t fix the hurt. He could only try to comfort her, but she pulled away. “I never would have said what I did if you hadn’t been there, telling my mother all those lies.”

  “You wanted me to tell the truth?”

  “No, but did you have to go on and on?”

  “I was telling her what I thought when I first saw your picture.”

  “I heard.” She pulled a face. “I had a mysterious smile that kept drawing you back.”

  Thad maneuvered their rented Taurus to the curb of a busy street just off the main strip. A small white chapel with a single spire and a large sign that read Weddings was just up the road. “I wasn’t lying about that,” he said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MACY DIDN’T RESPOND. They sat for a moment, staring at the chapel.

  “Are you ready for this?” he asked at last.

  She took a deep breath and nodded.

  “I’ll go make sure they’re open and that they have room. Do you want to come along and see if you like this place? Because there are plenty of others.”

  “No, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just get it over with.”

  “Okay.” He got out and strode down the wide sidewalk to the green door of the wedding chapel. They’d passed several competing places as they’d driven through town. Some had a storefront, others resembled a plain house or the lobby of a hotel. A few actually appeared to be churches, but they all looked as if they were having some sort of identity crisis. Decorated with the exterior lighting of a casino, the signing and placards of a retail store, and the interior colors and furnishings of a cheap hotel, none were especially attractive. But this one wasn’t as bad as most.

  At first the small lavender lobby was empty, but as soon as the bell tinkled over the door announcing Thad’s presence, a young chunky girl of about eighteen appeared from somewhere in the back and took her place behind a cash register. “May I help you?”

  Thad told her what he wanted. She gave him instructions on how and where to get the marriage license and charged him a hundred thirty dollars, in advance, for the ceremony.

  When he returned to the car, Macy was reading a book entitled Hematopathology.

  “Time to get the license,” he said. “But it should only take a few minutes.”

  She nodded, seemingly immersed in her studies.

  He came around the car and drove to the county courthouse, where he had her go in with him. No blood tests or birth certificates required, just one form of picture ID. They both flashed their driver’s licenses and were back at the Sunnyside Chapel inside of twenty minutes.

  “I’ll get your clothes,” he said, popping the trunk as they got out of the car.

  “There’s really no need to change, is there?” Macy asked, standing at the curb. “I mean, no one’s even here to see us. If I don’t wear it, I can take the dress back and save Lisa some money.”

  “Come on. We should get a good picture for Haley. She deserves a souvenir. And I’m sure Lisa wanted you to wear the dress, or she wouldn’t have bought it.”

  “I don’t think Lisa understands what’s really going on here, even though I’ve tried to explain it to her,” she muttered, but she dutifully took her hang-up bag and small suitcase into the changing room with her when they went inside.

  Thad used another small room to change into his best suit and tie, then waited alone in what served as one of the actual “chapels.” A small room with about ten fold-up chairs, it also had an abundance of dusty silk-flower arrangements and some candles arranged symmetrically in front of a sort of altar.

  A noise drew Thad’s attention to the doorway, where he found Macy, looking as though she might bolt at any moment.

  “You look…nice,” he said, knowing it was a tremendous understatement, but trying to keep them on safe ground. She’d piled her dark hair loosely on top of her head, which revealed the delicate hairs that curled at her nape and accentuated the size and shape of her green eyes. Her dress was sleeveless and sort of bone-colored with a tailored bodice and a flared skirt that fell to midcalf. Nylons and strappy sandals finished off the ensemble, along with a touch of glossy, pink lipstick. She looked…well, stunning, and sexy as hell. But if he told her that, he might just pull her into his arms.

  Hoping his expression didn’t betray him, Thad motioned for her to come on into the room.

  “Where’s the minister?” she asked, hanging back.

  “The girl out front said it’s a woman. She should be here soon.”

  Macy nodded, sighed, then wrung her hands.

  He smiled and handed her the bouquet he’d bought her. “You seem nervous.”

  Her chin came up, but when she answered, her voice was a little higher than normal. “I’m not nervous. Why would I be nervous?”

  “Who knows what’s going on inside that pretty head of yours? Why don’t you tell me?”

  She tugged at her lip with her teeth and moved closer to him, then looked over her shoulder once and lowered her voice. “I’ve just been wondering if…if you’re going to kiss me. I mean, I think it might embarrass me if you let the minister know you don’t want to. But—” she swallowed “—I understand if you don’t…want to.”

  Thad watched her in amazement. She didn’t know how appealing she was. That if he were any other man…

  “This is just a business deal and all that,” she was saying. “You don’t really like me, I mean, in that way, but it wouldn’t have to be a big kiss. Just a peck, so the minister doesn’t know.” Tears started to well in her eyes, but she blinked furiously and managed to hold them back. “I didn’t think any of this would bother me, but now that I have this dress on and I’m holding this bouquet, I feel kind of like a real bride, you know?”

  “I was going to kiss you,” he said.

  “Right.” Her cheeks went pink and she nodded. “Okay.”

  * * *

  MACY CRINGED INSIDE. Her and her big mouth. She’d already made a fool of herself once today, when she’d started that scene with her mother. She just didn’t know when to quit, did she?

  Avoiding Thad’s curious gaze, she stared down at the perfect white roses in her bouquet, then smoothed the skirt of her dress, wishing the minister would hurry. She wanted to put this day behind her, get back to Salt Lake and what was real—soon. But another wedding party had arrived, a large and boisterous one, judging by the commotion in the lobby, and Macy guessed the entire staff was outside with them, trying to sell upgrades to the ceremony.

  At last an attractive older woman of color breezed into the room. “Here’s our happy couple,” she said. Wearing a long black robe and introducing herself as Reverend Gilray, she promptly took her place at the front of the room. “Are we all set? Who’s going to be our witnesses?”

  Macy looked around the empty room. She hadn’t thought of witnesses, apart from her mother….

  “I paid for that service to be performed for us,” Thad said.

  “Fine.” The minister’s robes rustled as she went to the door, spoke to someone in the lobby and returned with a stocky man and a petite dark-skinned woman, presumably chapel employees.

  “Now we’re ready. George and Amy will be our witnesses. Shall we get started?”

  Thad motioned Macy closer. She took a deep breath and stood next to him.

  George and Amy seated themselves and the minister cleared her throat.

  “We are gathered here today…”

  It was the customary ceremony, the one almost anyone could recite from heart, and yet the words stood out, having more clarity, more meaning to Macy than ever before.
She was making a vow to love, honor and cherish Thad Winters for the rest of her life, and he was making a vow to do the same to her. Yet they didn’t mean any of it. They were planning to divorce in nine months.

  Macy’s stomach knotted. Had they thought this through carefully enough? What if he left the cap off the toothpaste? What if he expected her to do his laundry? What if he stayed out late and came home reeking of another woman’s perfume? Wouldn’t that bother her even though it wasn’t supposed to?

  The minister was looking at her, waiting for her to respond, but when Macy opened her mouth, nothing came out. Thad didn’t want her. He wanted a baby, and he had a way of getting one that didn’t involve the intimacy most people shared in marriage. For a moment, she had a hard time remembering why she’d ever agreed to take this vow in the first place. Haley would get better. She wouldn’t, couldn’t die….

  Thad touched her elbow. She could feel the force of his will, compelling her to respond, and finally the words came.

  “I do.”

  “You may now place the ring on your bride’s finger.”

  Macy felt a circle of cool metal slide onto her finger and looked down, expecting the slim gold band she’d seen at Mateland’s Jewelers. Instead, she saw the rock-size, pear-shaped diamond.

  Her gaze flew to Thad’s face. The smile she saw there shot warmth through her whole body. She’d told him he couldn’t come to the birth, but he’d bought her the ring, anyway.

  Oh, God. She was going to be hurt, completely devastated when he walked away….

  “Why did you do it?” she asked, amazed.

  He shrugged. “It looks good on you.”

  “You may kiss the bride,” the minister said.

  Time seemed to stand still as Thad pulled her into the circle of his arms and bent his head toward hers. She could smell wintergreen on his breath and felt the most incredible thrill of anticipation, as if she’d been waiting for this since the first moment they’d met.