Love Potion #2

“Thank you for feeding the dogs.” Wolfie ate outside and only when he thought no one was looking. Mariah had followed her into the house and sat politely beside Paul, looking hopeful. She had a beautiful black-and-brown face and fluffy black fur that had remained puppy-soft even as she matured.

Cameron managed to ask, “Why did you come over?”

He looked up, dark eyes wide, and it occurred to her that what other women—her cousin, Mary Anne, for instance—had been telling her for years was true. Paul was a hunk. He had one of those hard-jawed faces that you sometimes saw on guys who climbed Everest. The hint of five o’clock shadow, though undoubtedly uncomfortable for anyone who kissed him, increased the sexy mountain-man effect.

She wished she could stop trembling.

“To see how your day went,” he replied calmly.

“Everyone asked who hit me,” she informed him.

He winced slightly, almost as though he had hit her.

It was an unusually sympathetic response from Paul. Normally he would have said that it would help bond her with her clients, or something equally thoughtless. But he seemed to appreciate how bad it was for the director of the Women’s Resource Center to walk around with a black eye.

“Denise is coming over,” she said. “For dinner. You can stay.” She went out to her bicycle to collect the groceries she’d bought and bring them inside.

As Cameron began slicing vegetables, she noticed that Paul had made no attempt to touch or kiss her. She kept thinking of the way he’d kissed her the night before, not opening his mouth at first, just gradually doing so, just tasting her lips with his tongue, as though it was something he’d never done before.

So, we’re going back to being just friends, she thought. Maybe he thought they’d be “friends with privileges” or bonking buddies. Not a chance.

From the table, Paul watched her back, the two light brown braids swinging over the shoulders of her thrift-shop Fair Isle sweater. He could say something about last night. But what was there to say?

He wanted to do it again.

What he said was, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

At the counter, Cameron froze. Of all the things a man could say after a sexual encounter, this was one of the worst. Implicit was the fact that his hurting her was quite possible. In fact, it implied a certain likelihood. Attempting objectivity, she compared “I don’t want to hurt you” to “Sex will ruin our friendship.” Hard to judge which was worse, actually. What was she supposed to say?

She wheeled around. “You can’t hurt me, because I’m not sleeping with you again. For one thing, I don’t want to get pregnant.” She wished she hadn’t said that, for many reasons, from hating to discuss a terrifying subject to hating to tell lies. “But even if being pregnant wouldn’t kill me, you and I are just friends. What happened happened, but now my biggest concern is learning how to conceal a black eye before I lose my job.” Since I’ve already lost my mind and slept with you.

Paul thought she was acting strangely, but she’d been clear. He told himself it was a relief. And though the thought of her becoming pregnant alarmed him almost as much as it could alarm her, he knew that any fear of that outcome was neurotic. He said, “This is the twenty-first century. It’s totally irrational to believe you will die in childbirth.”

Her face flushed in a way he associated with her being particularly—well, hysterical. Oh, God, here we go.

“Easy for you to say! Didn’t one of your own mother’s clients almost die in childbirth?”

“No. It was a stillbirth, what you’re talking about, and it happened at the hospital.” Actually, Paul wasn’t sure of this. It had happened when he was six years old, and his father had moved out soon afterward. Sometimes the story of the stillbirth came up when people argued that homebirths were unsafe. He thought he could remember his mother saying, “If she’d been my client, I would have sent her to a physician.” But Paul didn’t know why this was, knew none of the details, though he was sure either of his parents could provide them.

Cameron was still talking. “Anyhow, you think dying in childbirth is the only unpleasant possibility. You think, ‘Oh, they’ll just give her an epidural. She’ll be fine.’ Roxanne Jacobs had an epidural, and she’s had crippling back pain ever since. You think, ‘Oh, Cameron will just have a cesarean section.’ My sister miscarried in the fifth month four times. You think a little miscarriage is nothing, but that’s like a stillbirth every time.”

Paul considered interrupting, but it was hard to find a place.

“And each time was physically excruciating. She thought she was going to die, not to mention being heart-broken because she’d lost the baby. And they are babies, premature but completely babies. Beatrice named every one.” Tears welled in Cameron’s eyes.

Horrified, Paul said, “Baby—” He almost put his hand over his mouth. He’d called her “baby.” That could lead to lack of clarity. About their relationship. But he forced himself to finish saying what he’d begun to say. “You know how you get before your period. You’re just freak—”

“I AM NOT EXPECTING MY PERIOD!” she shrieked. “Would I be worried if I was? Do you know nothing about women?”

He considered asking her to please put down the knife but decided to remain silent.

He heard the front door open. Denise called, “Cameron?”

Thank God, he thought.

Cameron grabbed a dishcloth to wipe her eyes.

Two days later

CAMERON PEERED around the Charleston Walmart as she waited in line, clutching a magazine on top of her two-in-one, double-check home pregnancy kit. Paul was not with her, having dropped her at Walmart and gone alone to prowl the endless aisles at Home Depot. That night, he was going to be the soundman for an English band called Crawl at a Charleston concert, and he’d asked her to go with him, and she’d agreed. So, though this was the Charleston Walmart, it was not out of the realm of possibility that she would see someone from Logan here.

With the coast clear, she went through the checkout, smiling tensely at the clerk. She paid for her purchases, then hurried into the ladies’ restroom, where she closed herself in a cubicle to find out the worst.

Alone, she watched the test strip, prepared to wait the three minutes, waiting to exhale in relief.

One line appeared, confirming that the test was working.

Nothing else.

She waited.

She looked at her watch.

She tried to breathe. It’s okay. It’s okay.

She wasn’t pregnant.

She waited for relief to wash over her, but relief wasn’t precisely what she felt. She was relieved, of course she was. But—well, it must be the biological clock thing. She’d been terrified by the possibility that she was pregnant, or she’d never have bought a test. But she’d had a sort of excitement, a sort of pleasure, in thinking she and Paul might have conceived a child.

Which was silly. She threw away the first test, stuck the second in her purse to take home, and washed her hands. There was really no way that pregnancy could have been good news. Even if she’d been pregnant, she’d have been likely to miscarry. This would save her so much heartache.

There was no reason for her to be depressed.

But she considered telling Paul she wasn’t feeling well, that she had run into friends and would make her own way home from Charleston. He could go to this gig on his own, a gig that epitomized everything about him that refused to grow up. He worked in the zoo to support his career as a musician and worked as a soundman to help pay for his equipment. Of course, he should be a musician. And he did love his job at the zoo. Okay, she was being hard on him, but she needed to keep her distance from Paul for the time being.

The thing is that she’d sort of, almost kind of, wished she was pregnant. It would have been a catastrophe. There was no way it could have turned out well. Paul would never have married her, and she didn’t think she would have wanted him to. Permanent children did not marry, and the thought of Peter Pan being a father to anyone but the Lost Boys was both ludicrous and scary.

No, she’d go to the Crawl show and be friendly. Paul was no threat to the peace of her heart.

But as she emerged from the ladies’ room, she collided with someone entering the men’s. She looked up into the handsome and obviously delighted face of Sean Devlin.

“HOW DID YOU MEET these guys anyway?” Sean asked Paul, looking around the nearly empty club where roadies and members of Crawl were setting up. Sean had paid the cover charge, telling Cameron he was interested in young bands.

Paul pretended he hadn’t heard. He was angry at Cameron, who had explained Sean’s following them to the club with, It’s okay. I told him you and I aren’t really together.

He’d told her it was not okay to tell random people from Logan that they weren’t really together.

She wore jeans and a brown long-sleeved T-shirt, with her hair in braids. Paul didn’t know that she’d deliberately dressed down to emphasize to herself that she and Paul weren’t really dating, that they were friends and her presence here tonight was all part of the sham they’d developed.

A roadie walked past in a T-shirt showing their first CD, In the Name of Fear.

“Facebook,” Paul finally answered Sean. “I met Angus.” The bass player. “He sent me a CD, and now I’m a fan. Also, he came to see me play in Logan at the campaign party, before the election. We talked then, and I said I’d do sound for them at this gig and the one in Morgantown Wednesday.”

Cameron, aware that Paul wasn’t keen on Sean’s presence, asked him, “Want anything to drink?”

“Some orange juice. Something nonalcoholic. It should be on the house.”

“I’ll get it,” Sean offered. He looked down at Cameron from his towering six foot three. “And what can I get you?”

“The same, please.”

When Sean had gone, Paul said, “Why did you ask him?”

“I thought the band would appreciate more people coming.”

“Plenty of people are coming.” Sean had been allowed in early only because he was with Paul and Cameron.

“Well, you won’t be able to talk to me or dance with me,” Cameron pointed out. “Sean can.”

“No doubt.” He managed to mutter, “Thanks,” as Sean handed him a glass of orange juice, after giving Cameron’s to her.

The club began to fill, and when Crawl finally came on, Cameron was pleasantly surprised by the music, which showed both originality and the influence of many other groups she liked. She danced with Sean, not far from where Paul worked the soundboard, because it was farther from the speakers in front. Sean seemed to share her opinion on avoiding the speakers, and he also seemed disinterested in dancing with anyone else.

At the break, he escorted her outside, where they watched other people smoke. “I used to,” Sean admitted, watching the smokers enviously. He shook his head.

“It’s hard to quit, isn’t it?” Cameron asked.

“Miserable. But I was going through counseling, and that helped—a bit. Some of the things that come up just make you want to smoke more.”

Therapy! Cameron wanted to shout. This man had had therapy! No wonder she could talk so easily to Sean. He wasn’t all masculine barriers, all inaccessible emotions, all defensive silence.

He asked her about her job, and he told her about his and about his avocations, writing plays and poetry.

Cameron said she’d like to read some of his poetry sometime.

He said he’d like that. “I was reluctant to—you know—pursue it,” he said. “I thought you were in a relationship.”

Cameron thrust away the memory of sleeping with Paul that one night. “Well, I’m not. And you?”

He shook his head. “Divorced. After that was when I decided on some counseling.”

“That’s a very mature choice,” she told him and confessed that she’d gone the same road after a tough experience with a man with whom she’d lived.

Sean said, “So—is Paul going to drive you home?”

Cameron thought guiltily that it was because of Paul that she’d gotten into the gig free. “Yes,” she said definitely. “I actually am his date.”

He nodded. “I’ll be gone this week on some teacher training, but I’ll call you as soon as I’m back.”

PAUL FOUND her presence distracting. He had always liked the way Cameron danced, but it had never affected him so strongly, and he didn’t care to see how strongly Sean Devlin was affected, too. Paul remembered making love with her. What bothered him in retrospect, as—he admitted now—it had bothered him then, was that she preferred Graham Corbett.

Never doing that again, he thought. She was preoccupied still, probably still mooning over the radio personality. Yet as he watched her dancing to the music of Crawl, her expression distant but also, to him, vulnerable, his heart tore in all directions. How did he feel about her, say, hooking up with Sean Devlin? Becoming Sean’s girlfriend?

Frankly, Paul hated the idea. Sean was an all right guy and good-looking, anyone would admit that. But Cameron was his, Paul’s, best friend. Her falling in love and marrying someone like Sean—not a good idea at all.

He shouldn’t have invited her along. There was no reason. He’d just wanted to show her that no matter what, he still cared for her, still wanted to be around her. He’d wanted to prove that they remained friends.

Or something like that.

Did he want Cameron for his own girlfriend?

No. Of course not. Definitely not. He didn’t want a girlfriend. First you had a girlfriend, then you had someone who wanted to marry you. Perhaps someone who would want you to find a different job, a job that paid more. And someone who would insist on a certain way of being that would ultimately destroy the magic of life.

At least Cameron wasn’t in love with him.

That was good, he told himself. Best for her, best for him. Best all around.

After the final set, after the fans had screamed and stomped the floor and begged the band for one more, Cameron chatted with them while they moved equipment and Sean dogged her like a shadow. Paul saw the band liked her, even seemed to like Sean, and he felt left out, forgotten by Cameron. Later, he found her waiting in his car, reading a novel with his headlamp, which she had borrowed.

“Where did Sean go?”

“Home.” She didn’t look up.

“And how is Jane Eyre on the two thousandth reading?” he asked.

Her eyes remained fixed on the page. “If you had a modicum of education, you would know that Jane Eyre is the story of a self-centered older man, who dislikes children, deceiving a vulnerable woman twenty years his junior. After she learns that he is actually married and keeps his first wife, whom he claims is insane, locked in an attic, he continues to attempt seducing her and she continues to love him, and after he is blind and crippled and his wife dead under mysterious circumstances, the female protagonist returns to him. It’s a creepy story, and one reading, in school, was enough for me.”

Paul reached across the front seat, lifted the cover of her book slightly. A novel by someone named Emilie Loring. It was entitled My Dearest Love, and the woman on the front looked like Elizabeth Taylor. Familiar with Cameron’s reading material, he suspected it had been published sometime between 1920 and 1960.

Cameron ignored him.

He started the car, plugged his iPod into the dash, and put on some music. Cameron recognized the start of “So Alone,” by Rhesus. Paul had given her the English band’s CD Narcolepsy Baby two months earlier.

She told Paul, “Those guys—and girl—were sweet. The band members. I think there’s another band with the same name.”

Paul nodded absently. “I think there may be.”

More than an hour later, when he reached her house, she thanked him, and just for a second she glanced at him, and Paul wondered if she wanted him to kiss her. He did want to but knew better. If he did, she would become his girlfriend, and that would herald a world of things he did not want.

But then he thought he’d imagined the look. She got out, and he let her. Made himself let her go.

Myrtle Hollow

CLARE CUREUX woke with a start.

The dream had been horrible. It was Flower Patten all over again, but this time, that case of true cephalopelvic disproportion, CPD, had been Cameron McAllister’s, and it was Cameron DOA at the hospital.

What a nightmare. Clare closed her eyes again, then reopened them.

Silly Cameron thought she was in love with Graham. Clare knew her dream had been no vision. She knew when something was an omen of the future, and this had been a nightmare, nothing more ominous.

The question was, why had she dreamed about Cameron and dreamed that Cameron was pregnant?

Thinking of Cameron made Clare think of Paul, and she frowned at the thought. Paul’s life was his own, but he certainly lived for himself to a greater degree than she’d have liked.

Which had to be something she’d caused, that selfishness, that fierce…well…childishness.

She breathed relief. Just a nightmare. Cameron was not pregnant.

CHAPTER THREE

FIVE DAYS LATER, Cameron, glancing in the mirror as she dressed for work, thought her nipples looked larger than usual. There could be no reason for this. Theoretically, it could occur because of pregnancy. But pregnancy didn’t show signs this early, and she wasn’t pregnant.

Still, she decided to use the second pregnancy test.

She knew it would say that she wasn’t pregnant, and then she could forget about the optical illusion she’d just had and also completely forget about making love with Paul, which she was having trouble forgetting.

She wished Paul was the kind of man she could be in a relationship with.

She thought of Mary Anne, in love now with Graham Corbett. Cameron knew Mary Anne was in love, and in their case the attraction had begun on Graham’s side. A fairy-tale romance. Why can’t it happen to me?

Briefly, Cameron considered Sean Devlin. How bizarre that she felt so little attraction to him. And he was just what she should want. They had talked so easily at the Crawl gig. He’d been willing to tell her of his vulnerability following his divorce, even tendencies he might have picked up from the kind of childhood he’d had. But there seemed, to her, no spark between them—not on her side, anyway. Maybe she wasn’t ready to have a lasting relationship. Her job had made her appreciate the freedom of not having to adapt to another person’s wants, schedule, whims. But selfishness wasn’t the reason she felt no attraction to Sean. And they’d been great friends in college, too.

Paul, however…

Sometimes, sometimes when she saw Paul’s name and number come up on her cell phone, she felt an overwhelming comfort that she thought must be what people felt in good marriages. No—more than comfort. Different than comfort. Attraction. Attraction to Paul—that frightened her. Paul, like Rhett Butler, was “not a marrying man.”

In the bathroom, she used the pregnancy kit and set it on the sink ledge, went into the kitchen and found a banana for breakfast and returned to the bathroom and the sight of two thin lines.

She remembered, in panic, the mild disappointment she’d felt in the restroom at the Charleston Walmart. What had prompted such insanity?

But despite her fears—of being pregnant, of losing the pregnancy because of an inability to carry a child, of loving the child and perhaps losing it—she couldn’t deny some private pleasure. She was, at this moment, a mother. She didn’t understand her own feelings but she well guessed the reason for them.

It was because this child was also Paul Cureux’s.

SEAN CALLED later that day and asked if she wanted to meet for coffee.

Cameron was abruptly off coffee but promised to meet him at the coffeehouse anyhow. She would order herbal tea.

When she entered the Chief Logan Coffeehouse and saw Sean stand up, she almost gasped at how absolutely handsome he was. Breathtaking. Truly one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen.

Maybe she was attracted.

He got their drinks—double cappuccino for himself, raspberry leaf tea for her—and joined her at a table by the window, out of hearing range of the other patrons.

He was easy to talk to, told her about his marriage and the ex-wife who was a model. He’d brought her a chapbook of his poems, for which she thanked him.

Watching her with great penetration, he said at last, “I think there’s something on your mind.”

Cameron knew that he was someone who could keep a secret, knew because he had been that way in the past. So she said the requisite words. “I’ll tell you, but you can’t say anything to anyone.”

“Of course.”

And she told him. His mouth fell open slightly, and he gazed at her with an expression of wonder. His dark brown hair was going prematurely gray, but his eyebrows remained extremely dark and bushy. “When are you going to tell him?”

Cameron shook her head. “Not yet.” She wouldn’t mention the possibility of miscarriage because she could no longer acknowledge that possibility, even to herself. It was unthinkable. And if she didn’t think of it, it could not happen.

Sean gave her a very serious look. “You should tell him, Cam.”

“I will. Just…not yet.”

SEAN CALLED every day and became Cameron’s confidant. Cameron really wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t been put off by the reality of her carrying another man’s child. She’d seen men who were just terribly attracted to mothers, and maybe Sean was one of these. Some of these, Cameron felt, were looking for a second mother for themselves, but she couldn’t believe Sean fit into this category. In any case, Sean was not an object. Paul was the man who interested her—and she didn’t want him to interest her.

Paul and she always talked daily, but now Cameron found herself avoiding him. Besides, whenever he brought up Sean—which he always did—they ended up sniping at each other. But it was nearly Thanksgiving before she had a heart-to-heart with her cousin, on the telephone, and felt no jealousy when she learned that Mary Anne had indeed slept with Graham Corbett—only relief at finally speaking with her best friend. Cameron was again astonished by her own reaction. She no longer cared. Not remotely. Cameron could picture Graham in her mind’s eye—the tall body, the curly dark hair—she could imagine his voice, that radio voice—she could imagine all these things beside her tall, model-beautiful cousin with no discernible feeling. Was she actually over him? She didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud until Mary Anne replied.

“You mean, Bridget’s potion worked?”

Cameron now wondered if the draught Bridget had given her had been a love potion, so she wasn’t impressed with Paul’s sister at the moment. After briefly excoriating Bridget, she invited Mary Anne to go caving with her Thanksgiving weekend—a Women of Strength outing. Big Jim Cave was at the state park. Maybe Cameron would go by the zoo afterward. Maybe she’d do what Sean kept urging her to do and tell Paul…. It took Mary Anne’s mentioning her own “suffering” because days had passed without Graham calling to bring Cameron out of her reverie.

Suffering made Cameron think of her sister Beatrice giving birth and of her own pregnancy. It all came out then. Cameron admitted that she was pregnant, avoided mentioning the father and used Mary Anne’s sudden burst of compassion—for Mary Anne knew how terrified Cameron was of pregnancy and birth—to persuade Mary Anne to go caving.

Cameron, who had been talking on one of the lines at the Women’s Resource Center, abruptly feared that somebody might have overheard, that she shouldn’t have said out loud that she was pregnant. Because she had not yet told Paul. Wasn’t sure how—or even if—to tell him. What if he thought her silly for doing a pregnancy test, because it was so early? What if he believed she wanted to be pregnant with his child?