The hellion Read online

  She turned her back on him and said tightly, "Who am I to approve or disapprove of your life-style?"

  "Still, you do," he reaffirmed. Her shoulders were stiff and she stared at the sliding glass door as if studying something in the dark pool. "I needed it to get through this… this emotional wringer, okay?" He crossed his ankles and draped his empty hand over the cabinet edge in a calculatedly casual pose, though his legs trembled. "Why did you name her Beth?" he asked, so quietly that shivers ran up Rachel's neck.

  They were both vividly remembering the many nights they'd lain in each other's arms in a dark parked car, sexually sated, planning their future and the names of their children. Beth. Their first daughter would be Beth, they had agreed. As she remembered it now, Rachel's skin tingled.

  In the glass doors he saw her full reflection. Her arms were now tightly crossed over her ribs.

  When Rachel's answer came, her voice was far from steady. "I… we… I was seventeen, and still in love with you, and I know it was a foolish thing to do, but it seemed a way to bind us to her, even though we had to give her away."

  He took another long pull and considered at length before admitting hoarsely, "I have another daughter named Beth."

  "Yes, I know." Against the fallen night he watched her face, eyes tightly closed, mouth gaping as if fighting for breath.

  He lowered his brows. "You know, Rachel?"

  "The announcements of all your children's births were in the Franklin County Times. You have a nineteen-year-old son named Michael and a seventeen-year-old named Doyle, and a fourteen-year-old daughter named… named Beth."

  A sharp stab of exhilaration lifted his ribs.

  "So I'm not the only one who kept tabs."

  She ignored his remark and stood as before, tightly wrapped in trembling arms.

  "Rachel…" He'd resisted touching her as long as he could. He crossed the room and laid a palm on her shoulder, but she flinched away. Rebuffed, he dropped the hand. "Turn around and look at me."

  "No. This is difficult enough as it is." She didn't want him to see her face when she asked the next question, even though they both knew the answer, both remembered those sweet shared secrets in a dark car. Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper as she asked, "Why did you name your daughter Beth?"

  He touched her again, and this time she obeyed his silent command, turning very slowly, her arms still locked across her ribs. He stood close, but dropped his hand from her. "Do you want the truth or do you want a lie?" he asked.

  "I wouldn't ask if I didn't want the truth."

  His glasses still lay on the table, and she could see his eyes clearly now, the pale webbing at the corners, drawn lines angling away from his lower lids. But the irises and lashes were the same clear dark brown of the Tommy Lee she'd known and loved back then. With his eyes fixed on hers, he answered, "Because I was twenty-seven years old and still in love with you."

  She felt the shock waves undulate through her body and she turned safely away, dropping tiredly to her chair once again. "Oh, Tommy Lee, how can you say such a thing?"

  "So you'd rather have had the lie."

  "But you were married to somebody else." It made her feel guilty in some obscure way.

  He laughed ruefully. "Yes, one of the three."

  "You say that as if you didn't love any of them."

  "There were times when I thought I did." Suddenly he wilted, ran a hand through his hair and breathed, "Hell, I don't know." He reached into his breast pocket, came up with a cigarette and lighter, and dipped his head as the two joined. When the cigarette was burning, Tommy Lee poured a fresh drink without asking Rachel's permission, disappeared into the living room, and returned with the crystal ashtray, then took up his post with hips and hands braced against the edge of the counter.

  When her eyes again confronted him, there was a hint of censure about her puckered brows. "Tommy Lee, how can you be so… so blithe about it? You conceived children with two different women. How could you have done that if you weren't sure you loved them?"

  He took a long, thoughtful drag, then a long, thoughtful drink. "Who knows why children are conceived?" he asked ruminatively, then admitted, "I can't really say there ever was much discussion about whether or not Rosamond and I should have had the two boys. What else do you do when you've graduated from college? You find some girl to marry and settle down with, and babies just naturally follow."

  "You mean you… you never wanted them?" She sounded shocked.

  "Maybe we never should have wanted them. Roz and I…" He studied his smoking cigarette with a faraway expression in his eyes. "We got married for all the wrong reasons. Maybe subconsciously we thought that having the boys would pull us together. But it didn't. It was a poor excuse, and the boys are the ones who paid for it." He studied his crossed ankles as he ended quietly, "They're both sorry."

  "Sorry?"

  He looked up. "Rebellious, troublemakers, in and out of scrapes with school, the law, you name it. Not exactly all-American boys."

  "Oh, Tommy Lee, I'm so sorry."

  He half turned, stubbing out his cigarette. "Yeah, well, don't be. It was Roz's fault and mine, not yours. Maybe if we'd loved each other more we would have been better parents and raised better kids. I don't know."

  "And they live with her?"

  He nodded. "In Mobile."

  "Do you ever see them?"

  "As little as possible. When we're in the same room you can see the sparks in the air."

  "Do they write to you?"

  He lifted sad eyes to her. "When they need money. Then good ol' dad gets a letter."

  Her heart melted with pity. He looked lonely and defeated, and she wondered if losing a child the way he had wasn't more devastating than giving one up for adoption.

  "And what about… Beth?" The name was difficult for Rachel to say.

  He smiled ruefully, shook his head, then crossed to take the chair opposite Rachel, dropped an ankle over a knee, and drew circles on the white Formica with the bottom of his glass. "Beth is hovering on the brink. I'm not sure yet which way she'll go. She and her mother don't get along and I'm out of the picture."

  "You had her with your second wife."

  It struck Tommy Lee that Rachel had kept close tabs, indeed, but for the moment he answered her non-question by going on, "Yes, my second wife, Nancy. Do you know why I married Nancy?" His glass made dull murmurs on the tabletop. When she looked from it to his face, she found his eyes on the giraffe at her throat. They moved up and locked with hers as he admitted quietly, "Because the first time I saw her, she reminded me of you. Her hair was the same color as yours, and her mouth was a lot the same. And when she laughed, there was always that little half-hiccup at the end, just like you do."

  The pause that followed was anything but comfortable for Rachel. She was embarrassed, yet flattered, and her heart seemed to thump in double time while she couldn't think of a single sensible thing to say. She was thankful when he went on. "But before we were married a year I realized she was nothing at all like you. She's a vicious bitch. I married her because I was lonely, and on the rebound from another marriage. That-granted- wasn't so hot, but at least it was company. I needed the sound of another human voice at the end of the day, and somebody across the supper table. So I married Nancy."

  She could well imagine his loneliness at the time, for by then he'd cut himself off from his parents.

  "And your third wife, Sue Ann?" she prompted.

  He flexed his shoulders against the back of the chair, glanced out at the night, chuckled ruefully and shook his head. "What a joke. The whole damn town knows why I married Sue Ann Higgenbotham." He swallowed the last of his drink, set the glass down and crossed his forearms on the table, meeting her eyes directly. "I think most people refer to it as male menopause."

  She smiled at his candor but recalled her mortification upon reading of his third marriage to a woman fifteen years his junior, and one known for her licentious relationships with countless ol
der men around town. She recalled the snickers and raised eyebrows, and the way she'd always reacted to them with a quick defensive anger. How many times had she bitten back a quick defense of Tommy Lee? She experienced again the quick flash of anger she'd felt toward him then for making himself vulnerable to speculation and gossip.

  "But did you have to choose someone that much younger than yourself? And a girl like that?"

  "Why, Rachel," he noted, grinning, "do I detect a spot of temper?"

  She colored slightly, but unloaded her convoluted feelings at last. "I used to get so angry with you for… for cheapening yourself that way. There were times when I wanted to smack you in the head and ask you just what in the world you were trying to prove! And you realize, don't you, that you left me open to questioning, with all your antics. People remembered that we were practically born and raised together, and they'd come up to me and ask the most embarrassing questions, as if I still kept tabs on you."

  "Apparently you did."

  "Don't get smug, and stop trying to evade the issue. I asked you why in the world you got tangled up with somebody like Sue Ann Higgenbotham."

  "Chasing after my own youth, I guess. Trying to find it with somebody who was as young as I wished I was."

  "But you were young." She leaned forward earnestly. "You were only thirty-five, Tommy Lee."

  Again her recordkeeping struck him, but he made no issue of it. "Rachel, I've felt old since I was twenty-one, fresh out of college, marrying some woman because it was the acceptable thing to do."

  "That was different. She was your own age, and you were starting out together. With Sue Ann I always had the feeling you were throwing her in your parents' faces."

  "How could I throw her in their faces when we weren't even talking to each other?"

  "You know what I mean. Flaunting her, choosing the worst woman the town had to offer. They were just as aware of what a mess you were making of your life as everyone else in Russellville. Through the years I've often felt you came back to do it under their noses just to humiliate them."

  He pondered, studying her steady eyes. "Maybe I did. God, I don't know. You as much as admitted there were times when you had the urge to get even with your parents, too."

  "Yes. Times. But I wasn't raised that way, Tommy Lee, and neither were you. I realize they were as fallible as anybody else. They made their decision because they loved me and thought it was best for me."

  There was a stern edge to his voice and his brows drew downward. "But it wasn't, Rachel, was it?"

  Her heart thundered heavily as she met Tommy Lee's eyes and wondered if her own disillusionment showed as openly as his. "My life with Owen was very good," she argued, perhaps a little too quickly.

  Tommy Lee's eyes swept around the room, returned to her before he asked very simply, "But where are the children, Rachel?"

  Her polished lips fell open and a pained expression etched her eyes. Beneath the draping silk blouse he saw her breasts heave up once, as if she were struggling for control. He was terribly sorry to do this to her, but what she'd suffered-if she had-was important to him.

  She dropped her eyes to her empty glass and admitted quietly, "We were never able to have any."

  "Why?"

  Their eyes met, delved deeply, and he saw fissures of vulnerability within the woman who always appeared so carefully in control. She pondered the advisability of revealing the truth to the man who'd fathered the only child she'd ever been able to have, but somehow it seemed right that he should know. Her lips trembled, paused in shaping the first word, but finally she got it out. "I… I was allergic to Owen's sperm."

  He couldn't have looked more surprised if she'd slugged him. His jaw dropped and he tried to speak, but nothing came out. Though she was hidden by the table from the waist down, his eyes dropped to the point where her stomach must be, then as he realized where he was gazing, they flew back to her face again. But his own face was a mask of regret.

  "Ironic, isn't it?" Rachel added. "But it's true."

  "I've never heard of such a thing," he blurted out.

  Her face was slightly pale, his growing increasingly pink as she went on, chafing her crossed arms as they rested on the table edge. "It's not all that uncommon. It seems my body had an excessive sensitivity to his semen, and put up what they called an immunologic reaction to it. I actually created antibodies that prevented the sperm from reaching the egg to fertilize it."

  He was stunned by the queer twist of fate that had made her pregnant at a time in her life when she didn't want to be, but had prevented pregnancy during the years when it was what she must have most desired. Yet she stated it all with apparent clinical coolness while he sat before her, greatly discomfited by the personal revelation. Still, something forced him to go on.

  "Couldn't anything be done about it?"

  "Believe me, we tried. I visited gynecologists as far away as Rush Medical Center in Chicago. Different doctors said it could be treated in a number of ways, but none of them had a history of success. I took drugs, but some of them had unpleasant side effects. We even tried artificial insemination-something to do with bypassing the cervix and going directly to the womb-but that didn't work, either. In some women the antibodies disappear by themselves after a while, but I wasn't so lucky. More than one doctor felt that reducing my exposure to the sperm would reduce the sensitivity and the antibodies would disappear, or at least decrease enough so that I could conceive. We tried long periods of no contact, but when we resumed, there still was no pregnancy."

  He drew a hand down his face, covering his mouth for a moment while studying her solemnly. Then he took one of her hands in both of his. "Rachel, I'm so sorry."

  She met his empathetic eyes and saw how uneasy he was with the intimate subject, after all. She was disquieted, too, but forced herself to maintain a poised exterior. "It's all right. I've learned to live with it."

  "But, Rachel, our ba-was

  "Don't say it!" she warned, raising both palms, closing her eyes momentarily.

  But he didn't need to say it, for the awful truth scintillated between them as their gazes met again. Together they had conceived the only child she was likely to have, and their parents had decreed that it be taken from her and given to strangers in Flint, Michigan. He felt devastated for her and curiously guilty, as if he'd unwittingly slighted her in some way.

  At last he said shakily, "It should have been me you were allergic to."

  She reached across the table and pressed her fingertips to his lips. "Shh." She'd thought the same thing countless times. What if… what if…" But it was shattering to hear him put her thoughts into words.

  He grasped her hand and lowered it to the table. "God, Rachel, I feel so guilty. Me with three kids and my life so loused up not one of them is with me. It makes me realize I should have worked harder at being a better father, tried to make them shape up and make something of themselves." The expression about his lips grew soft and his eyes roved her face lovingly. "You'd have been so good at that. You'd have been a good mother, the kind who turns out successes."

  "Maybe so. But it's too late to think about it, isn't it?"

  Yes, he thought sadly, it's probably too late. The room grew quiet. She picked up their glasses and took them to the sink and he knew he should leave. But there were so many more questions he wanted to ask, and their time together had been too short. Walking away from her would be more difficult than ever, especially after the intimate discussion that had him feeling closer to her than he had in years. But he picked up his glasses from the table, slipped them on and crossed to stand behind her.

  She felt his presence at her shoulder, but forced herself to remain as she was, staring out a black window over the sink. The words she forced herself to say were more difficult than she'd ever imagined they could be.

  "I'm very tired, Tommy Lee. I think it's time."

  "You don't have to say any more, Rachel. I'm on my way out. Thank you for the drinks."

  "You're wel
come."

  Neither of them moved. He studied the back of her neat black hair and a diagonal wrinkle on her violet blouse where it had been pressed against the chair. She smelled so good, so feminine.

  "Rachel," came his strained voice, "I'd like to see you again."

  She gripped the edge of the sink. "No," she replied shakily, "I don't think so."

  "Why?"

  "Because it's too painful."

  "We could work on that, couldn't we?"

  "Could we?"

  "Once all the skeletons are out of the attic, we'll feel better."

  "If tonight is any indication, I don't think so."

  "I didn't mean to hurt you by coming here, you know that, don't you?" He turned her by an elbow, but she stared at his top button instead of his appealing eyes. "Rachel, I'm sorry. I wish I could make it all up to you. You're the one who deserved three more babies, not me."

  Her throat constricted suddenly. "Shh… don't. In spite of what I've told you tonight, Owen and I were happy. We really were. We were compatible, we had money, success. That was enough. Children aren't everything, you know."

  Beneath his fingers her elbow trembled, but she wisely drew it from his grasp. He gazed down at the top of her head, but she refused to look up. "Could I take you to dinner some night and we'll talk about more pleasant things?"

  And start all over again? she thought. But there was no starting over, only picking up from where they were. The load they had to carry was too heavy, and they had changed so much. Too much for things to work out between them.

  "I'm sorry-the answer is no."

  "Just dinner."

  But she knew he wanted more than dinner. "No. I'm not in the market for dinner, or dates, or… or…"

  "All right. I won't push it." He turned and she followed him through the dining and living rooms to the entry. She opened the door and stood back, but he made no move to exit, standing instead with both hands buried in his trouser pockets, staring at his shoes. When at last he lifted his head, the question in his eyes could not be concealed by the tinted lenses. What he wanted tingled in the air between them. One hand came out of his pocket and he reached up to lift the tiny gold giraffe on a single fingertip. He leaned closer… but the scent of scotch came with him, reminding her of the changes that could not be denied.