Angel's Baby

by Pamela Browning

  “These are for you,” he said, and she gathered them into her arms, enveloped in the heady fragrance.

  “Stuart, it’s almost time for the mail boat,” she said.

  “I know. I’ll hurry,” he replied.

  He made a move to brush past her, but she stood in his way. “I was so worried,” she said.

  For a moment, Stuart wasn’t sure how to react. He took in her flushed cheeks, her heaving bosom, the full lips that he had never seen brightened with lipstick until now. He also saw how her elaborate hairdo made her neck look thinner and more vulnerable. The tendrils escaping from her braid framed her face in gold.

  “I only went for a swim,” he said. “And to get these flowers.”

  “They’re lovely. Thank you. But I—I thought something had happened to you.”

  It was a complete surprise to Stuart that Angel didn’t seem to expect an apology for the way he had touched her when she was taking a shower. “Nothing happened,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Oh,” she said. “I just wondered.”

  “Guess I’d better get ready,” he said.

  “Yes.” She stepped aside, and he hurried into the house. She tagged along, feeling foolish and not knowing what to do with herself. Should she follow him inside? Watch him get ready? Go into her room until the mail boat arrived? Finally she walked around the house to the front porch and decided to stay there.

  She was touched that he had brought her flowers. It made the day seem more festive, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. To celebrate this occasion seemed wrong, misguided. But not to celebrate it seemed even worse.

  As she wound the orchids through her braid with trembling fingers, she heard Stuart moving around inside, running the water in the kitchen sink to wash his face and hands, opening and closing the closet door. She imagined him moving around inside her house, taking up too much room, making too much noise, filling up the rooms with his belongings. Thinking about the changes he would bring—had already brought—to her easy life, Angel felt edgy and jittery. She felt overdressed. She definitely did not feel like getting married today.

  When Stuart emerged fifteen minutes later, Angel was arranging the oleanders and the periwinkles in a vase on the porch table. Stuart smelled of shaving cream, and his hair was still damp so that it curved over his ears in shiny dark waves. He wore an open-throated white dress shirt and a pair of dark trousers. In deference to the heat of the day, he carried his suit jacket.

  He looked at her as if he expected her to say something. “You look very...nice,” she told him.

  “Thanks” was all he said before sitting down, and as she dropped to the chair across from him, she had the fleeting impression that Stuart was not as ill at ease about getting married as she was. He was acting as if people got married every day. Well, of course, they did. But not these two people under these very special circumstances.

  To hide her nervousness, Angel bent down and gathered Caloosa into her lap, rubbing the cat behind her ears until she subsided into a floppy, purring dead weight. Stuart had made it clear last night that he didn’t think she knew how to converse, and she thought now that maybe she really had lost the ability. She could think of nothing to say to him. What did people talk about when they were about to be married? Were all brides and grooms so self-conscious? Or was she unable to talk to him because of what had happened when she was taking a shower? Because she was thinking of the firm, cool touch of his hands upon her body? Of his kiss on her willing lips?

  When she looked up, Stuart was watching her. “What were you thinking a moment ago?” he asked sharply.

  She bowed her head over the cat again. “It’s not important,” she said.

  “Tell me,” he demanded in such an imperious tone that she found the words spilling out before she could stop them.

  “I don’t know what to talk to you about,” she blurted, thinking that was the least of it.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said so dismissively that her spirits took a dive.

  “I suppose that other people who are going to be married have plans to look forward to, and that’s what they talk about,” she said, momentarily envying couples whose futures together were assured and inevitable.

  “You didn’t want to have plans,” he pointed out, not unkindly.

  “I know,” she said, and then sighed.

  For a long time, the quiet was punctuated only by the purring of the cat. It was Angel who broke the silence. She wanted to talk, wanted to chatter, wanted someone to listen.

  “When I was a child, I thought I’d have a big wedding. A huge wedding, in a church. With bridesmaids, flowers, all of it,” she said.

  “Life,” said Stuart, “doesn’t always live up to our expectations.” He leaned back in his chair, studying her dispassionately. “Did you ever come close to the wedding of your dreams? Ever think about getting married?” he asked.

  This was cutting much too close to the bone. “Once,” she said, biting the word off short.

  “What happened?”

  She leveled a steady look at him. “It didn’t work out.”

  When it became clear that she was reluctant to elaborate, he lifted an eyebrow. “So what do you want? For things to be different than they are?” he said.

  Angel thought about it for a moment. “No,” she said firmly. “I’m doing what I wanted. I’m getting married for the sole purpose of having a child.”

  “Want me to propose? To make this a little more conventional?”

  She was afraid that he was making fun of her. “Absolutely not,” she said stiffly.

  “Well, I offered,” he said.

  She had no idea whether he was joking or not. They stared at each other for a long moment.

  “Don’t I hear the boat?” Angel said hopefully. The drone of the engine was still far away.

  Stuart stood up. “Shall we go to our wedding, Angel?” he said, his expression inscrutable. He held out his arm, and after a short hesitation she stood up and looped her hand through it. His skin beneath the thin cotton of his shirt sleeve felt warm, distracting her, making her think of things she’d rather not think about. Before twenty-four hours had passed, she would know Stuart Adams’s body intimately. Was it possible to have sex with someone, anyone, without being changed by it? At the moment, Angel doubted it.

  As they made their way down the slope to the dock, the mail boat eased through the inlet channel in the coral reef. It approached slowly, pulling a curving white wake, and soon Toby was tying up at the dock.

  “Halloo!” he called at their approach. He leaped from the boat to the dock, taking in Angel’s white linen dress.

  “What’s the special occasion?” Toby asked.

  “Nothing elaborate,” Angel said. “Just a small wedding. We’re getting married.”

  Toby’s eyes nearly popped out of his head as his stare darted from her face to Stuart’s.

  “Married?” he squeaked in disbelief.

  “Right,” Angel said as Stuart handed her onto the boat and tossed their overnight bags over the gunwales.

  Toby followed Stuart onto the boat, forgetting to give Angel her mail, staring at Stuart in his starched white shirt. Finally he disappeared into the wheel house, shaking his head and muttering to himself.

  “I think Toby is shocked,” Stuart whispered.

  “I think it’s none of Toby’s business,” Angel managed to whisper back, but Stuart only laughed.

  * * *

  THE PUBLIC MARINA where Toby docked the mail boat in the island town of Key West was a hubbub of activity. Stuart stood up as Toby made the lines fast.

  “Might as well get this show on the road,” he told Angel.

  She bit her lip. “You don’t have to sound so...so...” Her words trailed off.

  “Well, go on,” he said.

  “You sound so nonchalant,” she finished.

  This only caused Stuart to shrug before turning to Toby and arranging for him to drop their over
night bags off at the Kapok Tree Resort Hotel.

  “You going to stay in Key West for a while?” Toby asked.

  “Overnight,” Angel said.

  “Well, I guess I should offer my congratulations or something,” Toby said, scratching his head.

  “Or something,” Angel agreed, making her way nimbly over the side of the boat despite her high heels.

  “Congratulations, then,” Toby said, as if as an afterthought.

  “I don’t think he likes this idea,” Stuart said under his breath once they were walking up the dock.

  Angel shrugged. “Does it matter?” she said.

  “Toby’s a nice guy. Maybe he deserves some sort of explanation.”

  “You explain it. I can’t,” Angel said, thinking that the world of seeking mates through the personals columns would be anathema to the ultratraditional Toby.

  Their progress along the dock was impeded while a fisherman scooped a flopping fish into a net and dumped it into a water-filled bucket. A group of children clamored to board a sleek speedboat. Nearby, two old men sat playing dominoes, slapping the tiles down on the bottom of an upended fish barrel and cackling loudly with each slap.

  “That looks like fun,” Stuart observed.

  “They play every day,” Angel replied.

  “How would you know? You said you don’t come to town often,” he said.

  “I come once a month or so to buy groceries. Whenever I do, those fellows are playing dominoes.”

  “Ever challenge them to a game?”

  “No. I always go back to Halos Island as soon as I buy my supplies. Key West is a touristy kind of place, and all the sightseers get on my nerves.”

  “The tourists seem like a friendly group to me.”

  “They block intersections and slow traffic on the sidewalks.”

  “In your white dress and heels, you look like you could be a tourist yourself today,” he told her.

  “Great,” she muttered.

  Stuart thought maybe he had said the wrong thing. He tried to think of some way to put Angel at ease. “I didn’t get to spend any time here when I got off the commuter flight from Miami. I caught the mail boat as soon as we landed. Tell me a little bit about Key West,” he said.

  “I’m not good at travelogues.”

  “You’re really nervous, aren’t you?”

  “Just because I’m not good at travelogues doesn’t mean I’m nervous,” she retorted, regaining a bit of her usual equilibrium.

  “All right, all right. Don’t tell me anything. Never mind that I’ve spent very little time on this island, never mind that I want to know a little about its history, never mind—”

  “All right,” Angel said, deciding that she might as well humor him. “The Spaniards called this island Cayo Hueso, or Island of the Bones, because they found human bones lying around when they came here,” she said. She took a devilish pleasure in relating this grisly detail; still, it was more interesting than the usual tourist-guide fluff.

  “Whose bones?”

  “No one knows. Maybe pirates’ bones, or Caloosas’ bones.”

  “Caloosa’s?”

  She couldn’t help smiling at the horrified look on Stuart’s face. “Not my Caloosa’s. I named my cat after the Caloosa Indians, who lived in the Keys, maybe even on Halos Island. They were all either killed or they died off due to encroaching civilization. No remnants of the tribe exist. Anyway, the name Cayo Hueso was eventually corrupted to Key West, or so the story goes.”

  “Pretty gruesome history, which makes me wonder why I’ve only heard of Key West as a haven for artists and writers.”

  “They came along later. Caloosa—my cat Caloosa, I mean—was born in Ernest Hemingway’s house. She’s a descendant of his own cat and, like many of her brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles who still live in the house, Caloosa has six toes on each foot.”

  “Six?”

  “Six. You’ll notice if she ever claws you.”

  “No chance of that. We’re friends, Caloosa and me,” he said, recalling too late how she had betrayed him in the palm grove.

  If Angel was thinking of that episode, she gave no sign. “Anyway,” she said, “President Harry Truman found Key West so pleasant that he established his winter White House here, and Jimmy Buffett got his start here singing about Margaritaville, and Tennessee Williams lived here, too. That’s Key West in a nutshell, and I haven’t begun to do it justice.”

  They were walking past yards lush with hibiscus, frangipani and mango trees; the houses were fine and ornate. With a distinct air of taking charge, Stuart took Angel’s elbow when they came to a curb.

  “Maybe I’ll get to know this place better while I’m here. Now, back to business. First we’ll buy the ring. Do you know a good jewelry store?”

  “I don’t want a ring,” Angel said.

  “We can’t get married without a ring,” Stuart insisted.

  Angel went over the wedding ceremony in her mind. “There has to be a witness. A wedding band is probably optional,” she said.

  “The wedding ceremony says, ‘With this ring I thee wed.’ How can there not be a ring?” he reasoned.

  Angel sighed. “All right, so there has to be a wedding ring. It could be a nose ring or a belly-button ring, for all I care,” she said.

  “As far as I know, you lack the proper apertures for one of those. Unless you want me to find someone who will oblige us by piercing your navel in time for the ceremony,” he suggested, the corners of his mouth twitching.

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass on that. Couldn’t we find a gum-ball machine and hope to win a nice plastic ring?”

  “Those aren’t exactly made to last.”

  “Neither is this marriage,” Angel said.

  That shut him up. They walked in silence for a block or two before turning onto a main thoroughfare in the historic Old Town district, where they immediately encountered a jewelry store. Stuart slowed his footsteps, peering through the polished plate-glass window.

  “Let’s go in and take a look,” he said. He marched Angel into the store, where the air-conditioning hit her in the face like a blast of arctic air and where the unctuous jeweler was only too happy to trot out his wares.

  “Now here’s a lovely wedding band,” the man said, setting it reverently on a midnight-blue velvet pad. “It’s eighteen-karat gold and has eight channel-set diamonds, each of them an eighth of a carat.” He turned the ring this way and that so that the diamonds flashed in the light from the well-placed overhead spotlight.

  “Nice,” said Stuart in instant approval.

  The jeweler turned to Angel. “Would you like to try it on?”

  “It’s too fancy,” she said bluntly.

  “Too fancy?”

  “The stones. They’re gaudy,” she said, wishing that she was anywhere but here. She didn’t like jewelry; she never wore it.

  “Perhaps you’d like something in brushed gold,” the jeweler said. “I have a lovely wide gold band with small diamonds set in a swirl pattern.” He took it out and displayed it. Angel hated it.

  “Maybe something more classic,” Stuart suggested after a glance at her forbidding expression.

  “This is a charming Victorian-style band, carved with roses and lilies of the valley,” the man said, pulling out a case and flipping open the top.

  “Very attractive,” Stuart said. “Don’t you think so, Angel?”

  “I was thinking of something in plastic,” she muttered.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the jeweler, but Stuart’s eyebrows drew together in a silent warning.

  Angel escaped to another section of the store. The jeweler hurriedly began to put away his display items as Stuart joined her.

  “You’re embarrassing me,” he hissed.

  “There’s no point in spending a lot of money on a ring I’ll never wear,” she hissed back.

  “Pick one out and let’s get out of here,” Stuart said. He sounded completely fed up.

  The
jeweler joined them. “See something you like?”

  Angel looked down and pointed blindly. “I’ll take that one,” she said.

  The jeweler removed the ring from the case. It was a wide filigree gold band with beaded edges, stunning in its craftsmanship. He held it out so that she could try it on.

  “Put it on,” Stuart said.

  She looked at him. “I don’t—”

  “Angel,” he said, and, unwilling to make a scene, Angel held out her third finger, left hand. The jeweler slipped it on and beamed. “Such a wise choice,” he said approvingly. “So perfect for your finger.”

  Angel studied the ring and admitted to herself that it did look nice. The gold of the ring complemented the golden tones of her skin, and the wide band was attractive. It was the kind of wedding band she would have chosen to wear for a lifetime. If she’d intended to stay married for a lifetime.

  “I like it,” Stuart said. “Angel?”

  “It’s fine,” Angel said, tugging the ring off her finger and replacing it in the velvet slot in its box. The jeweler gave her an odd look, but she didn’t care. If she’d ever stopped to consider what other people thought, this plan would never have progressed this far.

  “There, that’s done,” Stuart said, sounding pleased as they emerged from the jewelry shop. The heat and glare of a Key West afternoon hit Angel full force, and she found that she had nothing to say. But, of course, Stuart did.

  “You’re the first woman I’ve ever had to force to let me buy her a piece of jewelry,” he said.

  She shot him a sidelong glance. “And do you go around buying jewelry for women on an indiscriminate basis?”

  “Never. I’m very discriminating,” he said lightly.

  “No girl in every port?”

  “No” was all he said, and when she ventured a look, his lips were drawn into a firm line and his overall expression could only be described as closed and shuttered.

  He changed the subject. “Where to next?”

  “The home pregnancy test kit. We can buy one at the drugstore,” she said. Stuart took her arm again as they crossed the street.

  Angel traded at this particular drugstore often, but this was the first time she’d ever been here on an errand remotely resembling this one. “I wonder where they keep those things, anyway,” she said, looking around once they were inside the door.