Angel's Baby

by Pamela Browning

Angel could tell he wasn’t about to take no for an answer, nor would he listen to lame excuses. Consequently, Angel soon found herself boarding the boat that Stuart now referred to as Angel’s Wings.

  “Think of sailing the same way as you think about riding a bike. Once you learn it, you’ll never forget it,” Stuart said as they cast off from the dock.

  This she most certainly did not believe. She had been trying to forget what sailing was like ever since earlier experience with it. “Isn’t the water a little rough?” she asked anxiously. She thought she’d spotted a whitecap or two beyond the reef. Maybe she could talk him out of this if she convinced him that beginners had no business learning to sail in rough seas.

  Stuart glanced out to sea. “No, it’s as smooth as a mirror, and even if it were rough, you’d find your sea legs after a while,” he said.

  Sea legs, Angel thought dismally. What about my sea stomach? She hadn’t dared to take a motion-sickness tablet before leaving the house. She thought it might not be good for the baby.

  Stuart didn’t know it, but morning sickness was now more than a quirk of pregnancy, it was a full-fledged problem that was almost impossible to hide. Never had she thought morning sickness could make her feel so awful; it hadn’t the first time she was pregnant. She had felt fine. But that was then. This was now, and an unsteady now at that. She inhaled deeply, hoping the fresh air would help.

  “We’ll get out on the open sea,” Stuart called to her as he busied himself with lines and sails and other parts of the sailboat that, despite a short lesson on the subject, Angel didn’t yet know the name of. “Then I’ll show you how to come about.”

  She swallowed and felt stupid. She had no idea what he was talking about. “Come about?” she said, trying to look interested.

  “It means tacking through the eye of the wind when sailing a zigzag course to windward,” Stuart said. He clapped her on the back. “You’ll be a good crew member. I’m sure of it.”

  He seemed not to notice that she was distinctly green around the gills as they sailed effortlessly through the cut. Stuart looked as if he were in his element, his hair unruly in the wind, his hand firm upon the tiller. She would have warmed to him if she’d felt all right, but at the moment all she could feel was resentful. And sick to her stomach. How could he insist that she go out on a boat when she was pregnant?

  Oops, she thought. Almost forgot. He doesn’t know.

  “When it’s time to put in a tack, I’ll shout, ‘Ready about,’” Stuart said.

  “Ready about what?” she said. She could already taste bile at the back of her throat.

  He grinned. “You really are a novice, aren’t you? ‘Ready about’ is a warning for the crew to prepare for the tack. When I start the turn, I’ll say, ‘Hard-alee.’”

  “Hard-alee. Sounds like ‘Hardly.’ As in I hardly think I’m going to like this.”

  Stuart only laughed.

  Angel thought she had managed to get a grip on her nausea when he shouted, “Ready about.” The call “Hard-alee” came shortly after that, and the forceful turn of the boat lurched her to the center.

  “That’s good, Angel,” Stuart said. “Stay there to balance the boat.” He shifted his weight to the other side of the boat while she crouched where she was. God, she felt awful.

  “Stuart, I—” she began. She wanted to go back to the island. She should have made up some excuse, any excuse, to get out of this.

  “All right, now we want to—” Stuart began.

  “Stuart, I can’t,” she said, clutching her stomach.

  “What?” he said, his expression questioning.

  But she didn’t get a chance to tell him what. Instead, she leaned over him and tossed her breakfast into the sea.

  * * *

  “A MERE UPSET,” she said when they were back at the house. “I get seasick sometimes.”

  “The water wasn’t rough at all, and you’ve never even mentioned seasickness before. You’ve been on this island how long? Three years? Traveling back and forth to Key West by boat?”

  “The mail boat, Stuart. I’ve never been on a sailboat the whole time I’ve been here,” she pointed out.

  Stuart shook his head in disbelief. “All right, all right, I can’t deny that you were really sick. Listen, Angel, you’d better take it easy. I’m going to cook dinner.”

  He tossed a salad together, gathering the cucumbers from her garden and humming to himself as he worked. It wasn’t until he started frying hamburgers that Angel’s stomach revolted.

  She had to eat; otherwise, Stuart would grow suspicious. She couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t caught on already that her symptoms were suspiciously like those of pregnancy. Stuart, unlike most men, was neither bored nor baffled by the mysterious inner workings of a woman’s body. And he knew her body intimately.

  Stuart brought trays into the living room, and she accepted hers without comment. He sat down in a chair across from her and gulped down his hamburger heartily, while she only picked at hers. She could hardly bear to watch him eat.

  She swallowed hard against the nausea; it refused to go away. She had to concentrate mightily on each swallow, and then she had to take a deep breath and force herself to take another mouthful. She became light-headed with the effort.

  “Is your hamburger all right?” Stuart said when he saw that she had eaten only half.

  “Wonderful,” Angel said, feigning an enthusiasm that she did not feel, and all the while she was thinking, Lies, lies and more lies. Why had she ever decided that honesty was the next-best policy?

  Later, when she had managed to get her recalcitrant stomach under control, she sat quietly, appreciating her lack of nausea, and thinking that the poet had been right when he wrote,

  O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.

  Although in her case, the poem should be altered, since she didn’t deal with spiders but with solitary bees, who nest in the ground:

  O what a tumbled tunnel we dig When we fill it with lies so big.

  And it seemed as if she were digging herself deeper into that tunnel all the time.

  * * *

  AFTER THE NEXT DAY, when a whiff of a rotten fish washed ashore at the high-tide line sent her running for the woods, Angel avoided the beach as much as possible. Consequently, she spent a lot of time in the field, and one day Stuart surprised her by bringing her a tall, cold drink when she was lying on her stomach in a thicket, patiently watching one of her bees build her nest.

  She sat up when Stuart appeared.

  “Mind if I interrupt?” he asked. He held out a thermos and she opened it.

  “Mmm... What is this?”

  “It’s tea laced with juice from the key limes that Toby brought the other day.”

  “You’re getting handy around the kitchen,” she said. She poured some of the tea into the cap of the thermos. “Want some?” she asked, holding it toward Stuart.

  He shook his head. “I drank a glassful before I left the house.” He gestured at the bee, which was hovering outside the hole it had been digging. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Observing,” she said. She never knew these days how eating or drinking was going to affect her stomach, but the tea was good; it slid easily down her throat. Stuart stared at the bee. “I often wonder how you can do this day after day. Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

  She shook her head. “Never.”

  “I would,” he said, studying her. She knew he was admiring her; she liked it. She enjoyed being the focus of his attention more and more these days, even when it was focused on what she had always considered her physical liabilities, which Stuart had by this time convinced her were assets.

  “I’d get tired of designing boats,” she pointed out. “How’s your work coming on that cabin cruiser, anyway?”

  “I’m having fun with it. It’s so easy to concentrate here on the island, where there’s no telephone and no interruptions— By the way, the last time I went to Key
West I forgot to buy that shortwave radio. Next time I’ll pick one up. It’ll put you in touch with the rest of the world.”

  “I only hope I can learn how to work it,” Angel said dryly.

  “No problem. I’ll teach you,” he said.

  “Always teaching me something, aren’t you?” she said fondly.

  “With varied success,” he pointed out as he sat down. He smiled lazily. “Why don’t you teach me something? I’d like to know what you and your bees are doing today that’s so fascinating, for instance.”

  She lay down on her stomach again. “Observe this female.... No, you’ll have to come down to ground level. Lie down beside me.” She patted the patch of sand next to her.

  When their shoulders were touching, she said, “Okay, now watch her dig her nest.”

  It was silent except for the whirring of insects in the brush as the subject female bee created a subterranean home. She stood on her four hind legs and swept at the dirt with her forelegs, shoving the sand backward under her abdomen.

  “I’m glad we don’t have to do that to create a home for our baby,” Stuart whispered.

  “Stop trying to be funny. You’ll disturb her,” Angel said. Stuart rolled his eyes at her seriousness, but they watched in companionable silence until at last the bee flew away.

  Stuart said with a certain amount of relief in his voice, “Is it over? Can we go?”

  Angel looked over at him and grinned. “You go. I’m here for the day,” she said.

  “All day?” he asked incredulously.

  She nodded and sat up, brushing the sand off her front.

  “What if that bee doesn’t come back? What if another bee comes back and you think it’s the old bee?”

  “Another bee wouldn’t be interested in this one’s nest, and the same bee will come back, all right. It’s her instinct. Unless she is injured or killed, of course. But she knows where she started building her nest. She won’t abandon it.”

  “What’s the purpose, Angel? Why do you spend hours watching these bees? What are you looking for?”

  She looped her arms around her legs and hugged them to her. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “You don’t know, and yet you spend hours out here in the hot sun watching insects?”

  “I observe. That’s my job. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but if we waited until we knew what questions to ask about a subject, a lot of potentially valuable information would be lost. So I continue watching this unique species, hoping that the fragments of knowledge that I gather will someday be assembled into a whole for the betterment of the world in some way.” Angel could speak passionately about this; her work had for so long been her life, and hardly anyone ever asked about it.

  Stuart was looking at her with new respect. “I wish you’d told me all this before,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you were interested,” she replied.

  “I wasn’t. But I am now.”

  She shrugged. “This is what science is all about. It’s not only about Nobel prizes or discovering new medicines or going on expensive expeditions to the Amazon. It’s about little people like me, doing what they love to do, furthering man’s knowledge about the world the best we can.”

  “I was going to ask you to go sailing with me. Maybe I’ve changed my mind,” he said, getting to his feet.

  She looked up at him. She didn’t care if she never went sailing again after her first and only lesson, but now she knew how it felt when he showed interest in the activity that was nearest and dearest to her heart.

  “How about tomorrow?” she heard herself say. “I’ll make time in the morning.”

  He grinned, and his eyes lit up. She could tell he was pleased.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, and he walked away whistling.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY was a beautiful day for a sail, and Angel’s stomach was cooperating this time. They left the island in midmorning. Once they were outside the coral reef, Stuart began the sailing lesson in earnest. He demonstrated how to push the tiller down and away in order to bring the bow around through the eye of the wind, and he showed her how to release the jib sheets. Angel was an avid pupil, mostly because she wanted to please.

  Her first test came when the boat turned through the wind, and the crew—in this case, Angel—was supposed to pull the jib sheet across, which she did successfully.

  “Good!” Stuart told her. “You’re doing great.”

  It was easy to do well as long as she felt all right, and Stuart was adept at directing her. As it grew close to noon, Angel realized that she loved swooping along on the surface of the sea beneath the infinite blue sky; on a day like this, everything seemed right with the world.

  “Want to be the skipper for a while?” Stuart said.

  “Oh, Stuart, I don’t think—” she began.

  “You can do it. The best way to learn is by doing,” he said.

  This was something she knew to be true, and although she wanted to learn only in order to please Stuart, she took his place at the tiller. “Having fun?” he asked her once, and she laughed. “I like this more and more,” she admitted, and he reached over and squeezed her hand.

  “Let’s head for home,” Stuart said finally. “You can take her.”

  All went well until they were within sight of the reef. Angel was prepared to let Stuart take over, knowing that she wasn’t ready to guide the boat through the cut in the coral, but in those last few seconds before Stuart was supposed to take her place at the tiller, something happened to the wind. The tiller felt dead, so Angel compensated by giving it more action.

  “The wind direction has shifted,” Stuart said. “Don’t let it get on the other side of the sail, or—”

  The wind caught the sail and slammed at it as if it were an open door.

  “Careful!” Stuart shouted, but it was too late. Angel froze as the swinging boom caught Stuart squarely on the side of the head and he fell, almost as if in slow motion, into the bottom of the boat.

  Chapter Ten

  “Stuart! Oh, my God! Stuart?”

  He didn’t answer.

  The wind shifted again, and she got the boat under control. She couldn’t stop what she was doing to tend to Stuart; she couldn’t take the chance of capsizing the boat. As she brought the boat around, Stuart moaned and sat up.

  “What happened?” he said.

  “The boom came around and hit you,” she said frantically, reaching for him. “Are you all right?”

  “It damn near knocked me overboard,” he said as he struggled to sit up. “I still feel a little woozy. I think I was out cold for a minute.”

  “Stuart, I’m so sorry. Maybe we’d better get you to a doctor. Maybe—”

  But Stuart refused to sail all the way to Key West. “A doctor is definitely not necessary,” he said as he took her place at the tiller. “I feel fine.”

  “I feel awful,” Angel said, and the words earned her a keen look from Stuart.

  “You’re not getting seasick, are you?” he asked sharply.

  “No, no, I only meant that I feel terrible that I made such a disastrous mistake,” she said hastily, averting her face so that he wouldn’t see her expression.

  “We learn from our mistakes—remember that. Now, matey, let’s take this little bucket home,” Stuart said.

  Still heartsick about having caused the accident, Angel scrambled to follow his instructions to the letter as he tacked through the opening in the reef and down the home stretch toward the dock.

  “Are you sure you’re really all right?” Angel asked again as she and Stuart secured the boat.

  “I was all right enough to get us back here,” he said pointedly, but Angel thought he looked pale, despite his tan.

  “How’s your head?” she asked, reaching up to finger the lump.

  “I’ve got a slight headache,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve been hit worse.”

  “The boom really socked you in the head. I wish there
was a doctor nearby. I wish I could be sure everything is okay,” she said anxiously as they made their way up the path.

  “Angel, stop dithering over me. I should have ducked and dodged a little faster, that’s all. A short rest in the porch hammock, and I’ll be as good as new.”

  “I should have been paying more attention to the wind,” Angel said remorsefully. “I shouldn’t have pushed on the tiller so hard.”

  “I should have supervised you more carefully. As your instructor, I’m the one who was lax.” When they reached the front porch, he smiled reassuringly and gave her a brief hug. “While you’re still in a guilty frame of mind, maybe you could bring me an aspirin.”

  Angel brought him two aspirins and a glass of water, and he swallowed both pills at once. “I’ll get some ice so you won’t have a big lump on your head,” she said, bustling away to the kitchen.

  Angel wasn’t sure she believed that he was okay, especially after he’d sustained such a strong blow, but when Stuart flung himself into the porch hammock and suggested that she make a pot of conch chowder, she decided that there wasn’t much more she could do for him.

  As she cut up the conchs and tossed them in the big soup pot, she kept an eye on him as he rested. Just in case.

  * * *

  ANGEL had been handling the boat well, and then this had had to happen, Stuart thought to himself as he swung gently in the hammock. He was all right, but it was as if the incident had leached the self-confidence right out of her. Maybe she’d regain it. With more work, with more successes as she learned to maneuver the sailboat, she’d be fine. Fine...she’d be fine. He shifted to a more comfortable position and lapsed into a fitful doze, the bag of ice held to his forehead.

  He dreamed a dream that seemed as if it were happening to him at that very instant. It took him back to his past, to a time when all things seemed possible and his future as a member of the family firm was assured. A different future, bespeaking the lifestyle that he had grown up expecting to live, a life filled with family, friends, children, privilege, position. It was the kind of life to which all Adamses aspired, and the young Stuart had been no exception.

  In his dream, he and Fitz had recently arrived on Nantucket for their two-week vacation, as they did every summer. Valerie was there, too, laughing up at him, her eyes bright with the new knowledge that only the two of them shared. She was three weeks pregnant, and since they were going to be married in a month, they were both thrilled. The baby was unplanned, but as Valerie said, who would care? Ever since they had been children together, they’d known they would be married. A baby so soon was hardly an inconvenience. They’d wanted to have a baby in the first year anyway.