Beyond Desire

“Then you’re talking to the wrong man. You should be talking to the guy who had the pleasure of putting you in this predicament.” She winced, unable to hide her embarrassment, and he apologized.

“I don’t know where he is, and if I did I don’t think I’d marry him. I’d rather be disgraced.”

“Many single women have children outside the sanctity of marriage. Why would you be disgraced?”

“Those women aren’t principal of Caution Point Junior High School. I am. I just got the appointment week before last, and I don’t think the Board of Education would like having an unmarried pregnant principal as a role model for fourteen-and fifteen-year-old girls.”

He knew how to whistle: it was long and sharp. “You don’t have to have it, you know. You’re only two months along.”

Her lips quivered, and she closed her eyes, fighting back the tears. No point in getting annoyed, she told herself, as she gathered her purse to leave, then felt rather than saw his hand lightly on her sleeve, detaining her.

“Why do you want to have it?” he asked softly, showing sympathy for the first time. “You obviously don’t like the father. Why?” She hadn’t had anyone with whom she could discuss personal things since her aunt Meredith’s death eighteen months earlier, just after her friend, Julie, had married and gone to live in Scotland with her husband. She had turned to Pearce Lamont out of loneliness and the need for more than casual contact with another human being, and she had convinced herself that she cared for him and that the feeling was mutual.

“I didn’t plan…that is, I was unprepared for…I mean I wasn’t taking the pill, and he told me that he would protect me. I had every reason to believe him and to trust him, but I found out that he was just stringing me along; he didn’t really care. I’d rather not be pregnant, but I am, and I don’t expect ever to conceive another child. I’m thirty-nine years old, and neither boys nor men ever found me irresistible.”

“At least one man did.” He said it softly, gently, as if he didn’t want to hurt her. “Go on.”

“I don’t have any family, and if I had a child at least there would be someone who needed me and cared about me.”

“Are you sure you’re doing the right thing by not trying to find the child’s father?”

“I cared for him, and he knew it. But I discovered that I was just fun to him, a game, a challenge. He was one of the summer people, the first man who’d showered me with attention, and I wasn’t wise about such things and fell for him. He strung me along through the winter, but I refused to have an affair. Aunt Meredith said that men could change their minds once they got what they wanted. I finally gave in and proved her right. He wasn’t very kind, and I never saw nor heard from him after that night.” She searched her handbag, found her business card and handed it to him. He read: Amanda Ross, Ph.D., Chairperson, English Department, Caution Point Junior High School, followed by her school and home phone numbers.

“I haven’t gotten my new cards printed yet,” she told him, trying to display the cool dignity that was so natural to her. “Please call me after you think about it.” If you refuse, I’ll probably have to resign and leave town, she thought. He put the card in his shirt pocket.

“You have to find that man.” He took the card out and looked at it. “Amanda. The name suits you.”

She smiled. “I’ve always liked it.”

“Amanda, no man is going to take responsibility for a child without knowing something about the father’s whereabouts and his reaction to the whole thing.” For a minute he seemed deep in thought, letting his left hand lightly graze his strong square chin. “Are you being wise to consider marriage to a stranger? You’d be sharing your property as well as your life with me, and you wouldn’t have much protection if I proved to be unscrupulous. Legally, a marriage is a marriage, no matter what kind it is.”

“I am not entirely naive. Taking a chance on a man who would mortgage his life for the health of his four-year-old daughter is no gamble whatever. Besides, Dr. Graham seems to think highly of you. You’re an honorable man, Mr…. Do you realize that this is the second time we’ve talked and that we’ve been sitting here nearly an hour, and we’ve never introduced ourselves.”

“Marcus Hickson. This is a lot of money we’re talking about, Amanda. Will it put you in a hole?”

“No, it won’t. If you can’t give me your answer now, will you call me tomorrow or the next day?” He stood and offered her his hand. Her trembling reaction to the current that shot through her at his touch must have shocked him as it did her, for he quickly withdrew his hand. She couldn’t look at him, merely picked up her tray with the half-eaten peanut butter sandwich and fled.

“I’ll phone you,” he called after her. He looked at the card, then back at her, knowing already what his answer would be. He’d gotten his food, started for a table and noticed her sitting in a far corner of the nearly empty cafeteria shrouded in despondency. Thinking that she might have just left one of the patients and sensing a kindred soul, he’d stopped at her table on an impulse. He hoped she got out of her predicament, but he wasn’t her solution. He’d find a way to pay for Amy’s surgery, and marriage wouldn’t be in it. He had just been curious; he never expected to marry another woman as long as he inhaled oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide.

Marcus put Amanda’s business card back in his shirt pocket and stood where she’d left him, staring in her direction until she was out of sight. As he stood shaking his head, he didn’t think he’d ever heard of a more ridiculous idea; she had to be out of her mind. Or desperate. He’d had a lot of experience with desperation, and he couldn’t help but empathize with her, but he did not want any part of her scheme. He carried his tray to the disposal carousel and stepped out into the spring sunshine, dreading going to his daughter’s room, abhorring the expectant looks he knew he would see on the faces of the nurses. But they no longer asked him when Amy would have her operation, because they could read the answer in his face. He had to find a way, and it wouldn’t involve Amanda Ross.

Unable to postpone it any longer, Marcus walked past the nurses’ station, relieved to see it unattended, and hurried to his daughter’s room. During the last fourteen months, he had spent so many hours in that corner watching her sleep that he imagined he’d be lonely for it when he no longer had to go there. She opened her eyes, smiled at him and closed them again. He supposed the painkillers made her drowsy. Leaning over her carefully, so as not to touch the tube in her arm, he kissed her forehead, and his heart kicked over when her little fingers brushed his cheek.

Clouds had begun to darken the sky when he left the hospital for the short walk to the railroad station. He ignored the fine mist that soon dampened his cotton poplin bomber jacket and made his way at a normal pace. He grabbed a copy of the Carolina Times, tossed the newsboy fifty cents and boarded the train for Portsmouth, Virginia, and home seconds before it left the station. But he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t even decipher the words; visions of Amanda Ross flitted around in his mind, troubling him. A couple and their twin daughters around Amy’s age got on at Elizabeth City and sat across from him. He realized later that he’d ridden thirty miles without being aware that he’d covered his eyes with both hands, shutting out the pain of watching that couple with their healthy little girls.

“How’d it go?” Luke, his older brother asked when he opened the apartment door. Marcus walked in, comfortable in his brother’s home, but it galled him that he might be forced to rent out his own house and move in with Luke in an effort to conserve his resources. Yet, he knew that, barring a miracle, the move was inevitable.

“Same old. Same old, man. But I haven’t given up. I can tolerate anything, but I want Amy to have a normal, healthy life and I have to do whatever I can for her.”

“Of course you do. If I hadn’t just bought that resort property on the Albemarle Sound, you wouldn’t have a problem.” He handed Marcus a piece of paper. “The surgeon wants you to call him.”

After the doctor’s first few words, Marcus stopped listening. What was the use?

“I’ll get back to you in a couple of days,” he told the man, but he knew the futility of the gesture.

“Something wrong?”

Marcus pulled air through his teeth, leaned back in the kitchen chair, crossed his knee and took a hefty swallow of the beer that his brother put in front of him.

“Yeah. Plenty. The doctor and his team have two dates open during the next month. After that, it will be too late. They can help some, but if we wait any longer, she’ll be deformed.” A deep sigh escaped him. “Hell must be something like this.” He pushed the beer aside. “I’m going down to Elizabeth City. See you tomorrow.”

“You want to take my car?”

Marcus shrugged. “Thanks, but I’d better take the train.”

An hour later, Marcus sat in Jacob Graham’s living room questioning him about Amanda. “Her suggestion stunned me. She doesn’t know anything about me, except that she saw me here twice and yet she makes this preposterous offer. I shouldn’t mention this to you, and I doubt I’ll do it, but as things stand now I have to give it some thought.” Marcus couldn’t think of a reason for his friend’s smile and happy mood. He frowned. “Am I to think you’re enjoying this, Jacob?” The smile dissolved into a grin.

“Yes, I suppose I am. This is precisely the solution I wanted to propose, but you seemed to find it preposterous that anything involving Amanda would interest you. She’s a fine woman, and she’ll honor any commitment. You could do much worse.”

He spent the next day reviewing his options and concluded that he didn’t have any. At six o’clock that evening, he forced himself to smile and walked into the intensive care room that had been his little daughter’s home for more than a year. At least, she was out of danger now. She would live, but would she ever walk? Her multitude of internal injuries had been repaired, and the web of tubes that for months had reminded him of the frailty of her life had been removed—the last one just that day—and he was thankful. But he wanted his child to be whole, to be like other children. The nurses had propped her up in bed, combed her hair and plaited it with two big yellow bows. Sometimes he thought the doctors and nurses on Amy’s ward ministered to him as carefully as they did to her. He leaned over to hug her and caught a whiff of a lovely, feminine scent. She smiled brilliantly, as if she knew he needed cheering.

“Hi, Daddy. Tomorrow, I’m going to be in a room with other children. I don’t have to be by myself anymore.”

“That’s wonderful. Maybe you’ll make some little friends.” He gathered his child into his arms and hugged her again. He had to do his best for her. The poor child had been in that bed so long that she’d forgotten what living in a real home with him was like. He thought about Amanda and her crazy scheme. He couldn’t, wouldn’t marry again. Marriage as he knew it was hell, and he would challenge anyone to prove differently. I can’t go that route again: I won’t. There has to be another way, he told himself.

“Am I going to get a wheelchair like Brenda and Terry, Daddy? The nurse brought them to see me today in their new chairs.”

Marcus crushed the child to him. “I don’t know, baby. We’ll see.” He held her until she was asleep and then slipped quickly past the nurses’ station to avoid a discussion of the inevitable. Four years old and already inured to pain and discomfort as a way of life. He let a tear roll down his face untouched. Too drained to make the trip back to Portsmouth, he decided to spend the night with his friends, Jack and Myrna Culpepper.

He hadn’t meant to unload his dilemma on his friends. It poured out of him: his child’s health or his freedom.

Flabbergasted, Jack stared at Marcus. “My God, man, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. This is the answer to our prayers. It’s not ’til death do us part, man. It’s just a year out of your life, and you get more of your problems solved than the money for Amy’s operation.”

“I’d like to know what they are,” Marcus said, losing his taste for the discussion. “What is so good about being bought by a woman for a year? It’s one thing to borrow money and another thing entirely to barter yourself. I have never been beholden to others. And since Helena, I’ve been careful not to owe any woman anything. You get screwed even if you don’t owe them. Until Amy’s accident, I didn’t owe one penny. I don’t like being indebted to anybody, much less to a woman in whose house I would be living and who, for whatever reason, would bear my name.” Myrna sat on the floor between her husband’s knees and turned to face their long-time friend, whom she regarded with sisterly affection.

“Look,” Jack explained, “if you stay with her, you’ll be right here in Caution near Amy and won’t have that four-hour daily and expensive commute from Portsmouth. You can lease your house in Portsmouth for the year, and the income will cover the mortgage you put on it. And you can visit the factory from time to time, which is about as often as you get there these days, anyway.”

Marcus stopped pacing and sat down. He hadn’t thought about Amanda’s problem and, suddenly, he did. “Please don’t mention any of this. I wouldn’t like to see her hurt more. As it is, she has a rough time ahead. If it’s all right with you I’m going to call Portsmouth, talk to my brother and turn in.”

Luke Hickson listened to his younger brother’s story about Amanda and her offer. Marcus had always looked up to Luke and would be the first to acknowledge his brother’s sobering influence. He knew that he could be hotheaded at times and stubborn, and he valued Luke’s judgment. He told himself to be open-minded.

“She needs you just as much as you need her,” Luke told him. “Sounds to me like the hand of Providence working here. Not all women are like Helena. The very fact that she wants the child and plans to have it is a major difference. Don’t forget that.” How could he? It was the reason for his divorce. Helena had blithely informed him that she wasn’t having their second baby after all and that it was a fait accompli, a done deed, giving him no choice. And then she’d left him and Amy. But he had wanted no more of her and would never forget the pain that she’d caused him.

“Thanks, Luke. I’ll keep you posted.” He hung up. A man shouldn’t be faced with such choices; he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

The following evening, Amanda sat on her upstairs back porch looking over at the Albemarle Sound that had been a part of her life ever since she knew herself. She had stopped by the Caution Point Public Library after leaving school and collected books on the North Carolina and Virginia coast towns. Her heart wasn’t in it, but a week had passed and she hadn’t heard from Marcus, so she had to start looking for a new home. Amanda hated the thought of leaving the place where she belonged, where people knew her name and she could distinguish the churches by the ring of their bells, knew the cracks in the sidewalk, the names of the dogs that barked at night and which trees had broken limbs. She would have to move; she couldn’t expect the ultraconservative citizens of Caution Point to accept unwed motherhood from the principal of their junior high school. After all, a lot of people thought it disgraceful that fifty-six-year-old Minnie Carleton, a spinster, had gotten married. A woman in her position wasn’t supposed to think of such things.

Amanda leafed idly through a book on the outer banks of North Carolina, listening to the swirling waters of the Albemarle Sound. She couldn’t contemplate life without it, but she knew she would have to leave if Marcus Hickson turned her down. And he might; the idea didn’t seem to have found any favor with him. But she was betting on his love for that girl, a love that she sensed was strong enough to force him to do things he didn’t want to do.