The Baby Gift

by Bethany Campbell

“I didn’t know allergies could make you tired all the time. She’s seemed—well, almost frail lately.”

  “Allergies are complicated,” he said. “It takes a while to straighten them out.” He saw how easy it was to fall into Briana’s pattern of hiding the truth. He clamped his mouth shut and said no more. Glenda seemed to realize he didn’t want to talk about it.

  Nealie finished her thinning, jumped down from her step stool and washed her hands. Josh helped her and Glenda into their jackets. He knelt and zipped Nealie’s, wound her scarf around her throat and straightened her cap when she jammed it on crookedly.

  “Thank you, Nealie,” Glenda said. “You did as much work as I did. I got a good rest.”

  “I know why you need rest,” Nealie said brightly. “It’s because you’re going to have another baby.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish my mommy and daddy would have another baby.”

  Josh had the sudden sensation of being hit in the head by a rock. Glenda blushed. He put on his parka and said, “That’s not an appropriate subject, Nealie.”

  “Why?”

  “For complicated reasons.”

  “What reasons?”

  “We’ll discuss it another time.”

  “When?”

  “Later.”

  “How much later?”

  He sighed and said, “Let’s go.”

  They left the greenhouse, and Nealie was distracted by the sight of two cardinals sitting in a pine tree. “Why don’t cardinals fly south in the winter?” she asked.

  “We’ll look it up in the encyclopedia when we get back.”

  “My goodness,” said Glenda, looking at him. “You don’t even have your coat fastened or your hood up. Aren’t you cold?”

  He smiled. “After Siberia, this seems balmy.”

  “My daddy is very strong,” Nealie said proudly.

  “Yes,” Glenda agreed. “He is.”

  “That’s why you thin the seedlings,” Nealie told Josh. “To make sure the plants are really strong.”

  “Is that so?” he said, although he knew it well.

  “You get rid of the weak ones,” she said. Then she frowned unhappily. “Rupert said somebody should thin me out. Because I’m one of the wimpy ones.”

  A wave of shock and anger swept over him. But he could not say what he wanted to in front of Glenda.

  Glenda looked profoundly embarrassed. “He shouldn’t have said such a thing. And it’s not true. I apologize for him saying it.”

  “It’s okay,” Nealie said. “I called him an imbecile. It made him really mad because he didn’t know what it meant. But it kind of scared me.”

  She hit a deep patch of snow and staggered, almost fell. Josh scooped her up in his arms. He would carry her the rest of the way home. He held her tight. “Don’t be scared,” he said. “Your mother and I will take care of you.”

  She put her arms around his neck, her mouth set in a determined line. Behind the big glasses, her eyes were thoughtful, almost solemn. “I don’t want to be thinned out,” she said.

  “You won’t be,” he said and held her tighter still.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LEO’S HOUSE WAS LARGE, and although it had many windows, he kept it dark. When Briana’s mother was alive, it was a bright place, always tidy and clean and cozy.

  Sometimes when a man’s wife dies, he keeps the house exactly as she had it, perhaps out of habit, perhaps out of sentiment or perhaps out of something deeper than either.

  In contrast, Leo had changed everything—or he had started to. At different times he had begun to move the furniture, but halfway through he would give up, claiming he had hurt his back or changed his mind or he should throw it all out and buy new.

  Both Briana and Larry had offered to help him finish rearranging, but Leo would fall into a pensive mood and refuse. The furniture stayed at odd angles in odd places.

  Pictures hung off-kilter or were taken from their nails and leaned facing the wall. Magazines and newspapers were stacked haphazardly on almost every surface. This disorder bothered Briana, but not just for its own sake. She thought it symbolized some deep unhappiness in her father.

  The heat in the house was turned to high, today. The smothering air and the disarray made her feel claustrophobic after walking through the sparkling snow and sharp, clean air. “Poppa,” she said, trying not to sound like a nag, “you should really clean this place up.”

  “Phooey. Why?” Leo asked. “I live alone. What difference does it make?”

  All this clutter—it’s not a healthy atmosphere.”

  “Move in and change it,” he teased. “It’s too big for me. And you live in a cracker box.”

  He always made this joke, and she feared it was half serious. She said, “You should hire someone to come in and help you keep organized.”

  “I don’t want a stranger in the house,” Leo said. “I know where things are. That’s what’s important.”

  Briana knew he was set in his ways, so she changed the subject. “What did you want to show me, Poppa?”

  “Ah,” he said. “Come into my office.”

  NEALIE WAS TIRED from her walk in the snow. She took off her beloved boots, stretched out on the couch and watched her favorite video, Beauty and the Beast.

  Josh sat beside her, and she lay her head on his thigh. “I love this story,” Nealie said. “I think she looks like Mommy, don’t you?”

  She meant the brown-eyed heroine, singing with passion about how she wanted to live somewhere other than her provincial town.

  “A little,” Josh said.

  The girl on the screen did resemble Briana, but she sang an altogether different song. Briana was happy in her small corner of the universe, and she wasn’t about to be budged from it.

  “I’d like to see all the places you get to see,” Nealie said, nestling closer. He put his hand on her shoulder, which felt impossibly small to him.

  “Someday you will,” he said.

  “Mama would, too,” she said.

  “I don’t think so.” His hand moved up to wind a lock of her hair around his forefinger. It felt finer than strands of silk.

  Nealie said, “She likes to look at your pictures. She always does.”

  He was surprised. He thought she’d resented his work too much to want to see it. “Does she?”

  “She keeps them all,” Nealie said, turning to look at him.

  “You mean she keeps them for you. I always send you a copy.”

  “No,” Nealie insisted. “She gets other copies, too. She says it’s so I can look at mine all I want but still have a good set. But she looks at them lots.”

  He said nothing, only put his hand on her shoulder again. She apparently took his silence for disbelief, because she propped herself up and adjusted her glasses, looking at him righteously.

  “I’ll show you,” she said. She put the video on pause and hopped from the couch.

  “Nealie,” he began, not sure what she was up to.

  She was already on her way, padding upstairs toward Briana’s tiny second-floor office. She turned and looked at him over her shoulder. “Come on,” she said.

  Reluctant, but curious, he rose and followed her. At the top of the stairs, she waited for him at the closed door of the office. She reached behind an aspidistra plant in a glazed green pot and drew out a key. She thrust it into the lock and turned it.

  “Nealie, don’t. If it’s locked, she wants it kept private.”

  “She knows I know where the key is,” Nealie said with perfect confidence. “The lock is to keep out people like Rupert, not me. I can go in whenever I want and play computer games.”

  She swung open the door and switched on the lights. Feelings still mixed, Josh stepped in after her. She lifted a ceramic paperweight shaped like a large tomato. Beneath it was another, smaller key. She plucked it up as if she’d done it a hundred times.

  She turned to Briana’s four-drawer file cabinet, stood on her tiptoes and clicked open
the single lock at the top. “Nealie, don’t,” he warned again, but already she was squatting, pulling open the bottom drawer.

  “But these magazines are for me,” Nealie countered. “Mommy always said so. It’s where she keeps her other pictures you took, too.”

  Josh inwardly swore, but he was unable to look away. There, in clear plastic covers, were the magazines that held his work of the last six years—Adventure, Smithsonian, Islands, The Far Territory, Stepping Westward.

  That’s it, he thought. That’s the last six years of my life. That’s what I’ve done all the years that Nealie’s been alive.

  It filled less than half a long file drawer. It suddenly didn’t seem like very damn much. Next to the magazines were books he recognized as photograph albums.

  My God, how many pictures did I take of Briana, of us together, of all the places she loved? And then Nealie? A thousand? More?

  Briana had been wonderful to photograph, perfect to his discerning eye. Her beauty was not flashy, but deep and real, and the longer he’d looked at her, the lovelier she’d seemed.

  What might seem like flaws on another woman made her only more interesting—the smattering of freckles across the nose, the mole under her jaw, the slightly asymmetrical widow’s peak. And her smile, of course. Her smile.

  Nealie said, “I’m not supposed to take out the magazines because I’ve got my own. I’ve come in here and seen her looking at them, though.”

  “Um,” he said. “Well, that’s how I met her, taking pictures. So I guess that’s how you got here.”

  “I can look at the albums, though,” she said, putting her hand on one. “Do you want to see them, the pictures you took back then?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think you’d better lock up again. Your mother might not want me in here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is her private place.”

  “But I can come into it,” she said, looking puzzled.

  He knelt and slid the drawer shut. “It’s a private place for you and her, then. You shouldn’t bring anybody else into it without asking. As a courtesy to her.”

  “Oh,” Nealie said, clearly disappointed. But she stood and locked the filing cabinet.

  She put the small key under the ceramic tomato. But he wasn’t watching her. He was reading the labels on the file cabinet drawers. The first two were business. The third was marked Family, Financial, Medical.

  Nealie’s records would be in there. The records, the insurance, the bills. And he thought, The bills. How does Briana think she’s going to pay all these medical bills?

  She had never told him, never given so much as a hint, not even mentioned it. If there was an answer, he suspected this drawer held it.

  He held Nealie’s hand and led her downstairs. She turned on her video. But she was yawning, getting sleepy.

  Josh kept his eyes on the screen, but he wasn’t thinking of Beauty and the Beast. He was thinking that upstairs there were two keys that might unlock the secrets Briana was keeping from him.

  LEO LED BRIANA through the neglected living room to a door he always kept locked. He took the old-fashioned brass key from his pocket and placed it in the keyhole.

  He swung open the door and switched on the light. Leo’s study wasn’t nearly as disheveled as his living room. He kept the curtain half open so he could look out as he worked at his desk.

  From his window he could see Larry’s house and Briana’s, as well as the greenhouses. Briana and her father paused and stared outside. Josh’s rented car was parked in the drive. The only color he could get was flaming red, and it looked as brash and bright as a male cardinal against the backdrop of the snow.

  Leo frowned at it. “Hmph. Where’s he going next?”

  Briana’s heart contracted. “He doesn’t know. He has an assignment he has to take if they call. It’ll probably be Burma. There’s an outside chance it’ll be Pitcairn Island.”

  “Pitcairn Island?” Leo said with a sniff. “Isn’t that the godforsaken place where all those pirates went?”

  “Mutineers,” she said. “From the Bounty.”

  “Burma. Pitcairn Island. I never saw a man with such wanderlust. When’s he going?”

  “I told you. He doesn’t know.”

  Leo sighed, as if Josh’s lack of plans was a great personal burden. He turned from the window. “Sit,” he said, gesturing at the easy chair before the crowded bookshelves. The chair was full of gardening magazines, seed catalogs, pamphlets and a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel.

  Briana moved it all aside. The water in the bottle was cold. “Poppa, is your arthritis bothering you again?”

  “It always bothers me.” Gingerly he lowered himself into his desk chair. “But I didn’t bring you here to discuss my aches and pains. Sit, sit.”

  She sat, her fingers linked in her lap.

  He gave her a long, significant look. His blue eyes twinkled. “I’ve done it. I’ve finally started my project. Where’d I put it? It was right here.”

  Briana’s muscles were tense. For the last three years Leo had been talking about writing a newsletter to be mailed out with the catalog. At first she’d been delighted he had found a subject that interested him so passionately.

  She was no longer delighted, for Leo’s obsession fueled her secrecy about Nealie’s disease. It was another reason she could never tell him what she and Josh must do and how they must do it.

  “Ah,” said Leo, “here it is.” He picked up a pile of papers of different sizes, unevenly stacked. He handed it to her, pride aglow on his face. “Look—my first issue. Done except for a little touching up.”

  Briana gazed at the top page, which was blue. It said, Nature’s Worst Nightmare—Genetic Engineering or a Bargain with the Devil, by Leo Lawrence Hanlon.

  “I couldn’t decide which title to use.” Leo’s smile was almost boyish. “So I used them both. Sometimes writers do that.”

  Briana could only nod, swallow and stare at the disorderly stack.

  “There’s a few little typos and things,” Leo said with a dismissive wave. “But you can fix that. You got that computer, and you can check my spelling and sentences and stuff.”

  Briana’s spirits withered as she thumbed through the pages. She knew all too well what the subject was. Her father hated genetic engineering. It frightened and infuriated him. He had begun by hating everything science could do to engineer plants.

  Briana understood his concerns, and some of them she shared. But lately Leo’s dislike had extended to all genetic engineering, especially when it concerned humans.

  He said, “First they cloned mice, then sheep, now pigs. Next it’ll be people. Some crazy jerk of a scientist wants to go back and clone Dracula. I read about it. Think of it— Dracula.”

  “I think that story was mostly for the sake of sensation,” she offered.

  “Still, it’s possible,” Leo said darkly. But then he smiled at the manuscript in her hands. “I mention it there. I touch a bit on everything.”

  Briana chose her words with care. “For starters maybe you’d better stick to plants, Poppa. That’s our business. All by themselves, biotech plants are a controversial issue.”

  Leo crossed his arms, a stubborn gesture. “Not for my customers. They believe what I believe. The right way is nature’s way. And that’s that.”

  “Doctors are learning more about genetics all the time. What they learn can help people.”

  “Help, shmelp. Parents will start picking out what sex child they’re going to have,” Leo said. “Then they’ll want to make sure it’s good-looking. That it’s smart. They’ll try to create superchildren but they’ll end up making Frankenstein monsters. Why, I wouldn’t have such a child in my family. It’d be a freak. And its parents would be a worse freaks—not an ethical bone in their bodies.”

  Oh, Poppa, if you had even an idea of what I’m about to do— It’s best you never know. It’s best nobody ever knows.

  “Let’s change t
he subject,” Leo said. “I have other things to discuss.”

  Relief welled in her. She said, “Gladly. Anything.”

  He fixed her with a piercing stare. “Why have you taken all your money out of Wendell Semple’s bank? And why aren’t you seeing Harve Oldman anymore? He’s the man you ought to marry.”

  NEALIE FELL ASLEEP during the closing credits of Beauty and the Beast. It seemed like a light sleep, almost a doze.

  Josh stared at her, a frown line between his brows. It wasn’t normal for a child to nap this much. It was one more sign of her illness.

  He swore to himself. He wished Briana was back. There were a thousand things they needed to talk about. And he had to convince her to marry him again. Her idea of going it alone was gallant but foolhardy.

  He wondered if the phones were working yet. He eased off the couch and padded on stocking feet to the counter. He lifted the receiver and listened. There was a dial tone. The line was in service. He hung up.

  He stood for a moment, thinking of Briana’s closed office, her locked file cabinet. He had no right to look in her private papers, he told himself. He would be worse than a busybody, he would be a sneaking rat.

  With a sigh he moved toward the television to switch it off, then decided to let the closing song play until its end. He went to the front window and stared out for a long time.

  He could see his and Nealie’s footprints from when they’d walked together to the greenhouse. There were those when they returned, he carrying her and Glenda at their side.

  Briana’s tracks, leading in another direction, were the oldest set. They were slowly disappearing beneath the falling snow. So were his and Glenda’s, which were larger. So were Nealie’s, which were the smallest.

  All of them disappearing beneath the snow. So transient. So fleeting.

  Suddenly, under his breath, he said, “To hell with it.” He had every right to look at Briana’s papers about Nealie. The girl was his daughter, too.

  I have conquered my goddam scruples, he thought as he went up the stairs two at a time.

  FOR YEARS Briana had indulged her father, coddled him, protected, defended and nurtured him. But his two questions appalled her. She felt the sudden swelling of an unfamiliar emotion, anger toward him.