Forever And A Baby

“He has faith in our love.”

No comment.

So be it. If Omar wanted something…She couldn’t guess. But he had decided on this plan in love; she’d agreed for the same reason.

“I would like,” she said, “to see inside your mind. I remember when you could hit an upright twig at thirty yards with a slingshot. In the desert.”

“You remember a lot.” He gazed at her for too long, as though he understood things she didn’t. “What do you think is in my mind?”

She didn’t know. “Maybe…you’re hardened. Maybe…you go to look at difficult things, as you’ve said, and you’re silent and moved but you write what you feel. I read the piece in Harper’s. It wasn’t just journalism or essay-writing. Philosophy, too.”

“And what’s in your mind?”

She stared at the cabin, feeling the lock on her mouth, on the expression of her heart and her body. “It is the mind of Omar Hall’s wife. Hedge funds and hedgerows—on Orange Street, that is.”

“You’re a gardener?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.” Her throat ached. She was freezing and didn’t care. The wine was good. But it didn’t let them communicate, didn’t let her speak with his soul as she wanted. She would never criticize Omar. You couldn’t know when you were seeing your loved ones for the last time.

Or when you would see them again. She remembered the face of the boy in the Sudan, the eyes in the tent.

He emptied the bottle into her glass. The boat rocked, sang with the others to the sigh of the dock. “You saw the birth of Raisha’s child.”

The Tuareg mother in Mali. She didn’t ask him where he’d been, how he had followed them over the desert, across the Niger, along the river with the nomads, to Timbuktu. Or if he’d seen her flee the tent, drenched in sweat. For 204 days, she’d been in solitary confinement with the truth. Many truths.

“I want to know you.” He paused. “I think we can be friends.”

Her stomach hummed with heat, blood flushing her, seeping, pounding, while her skin reached for the hot quivering vibration. She smelled saltwater, fish, diesel and the scent of a man, carried on his garments. He moved closer on the aluminum locker. Closer.

“Tuareg is an Arabic name,” he said. “The nobles call themselves variations of Imighagh, from their verb iobarch, which means to be free, to be pure, to be independent. All those things.”

She breathed them in. All those things her counted days had come to be about. Tears gathered in her head and hid themselves, exerting pressure she ignored, except to think, I must be a midwife. I can’t be a midwife. I must be free. I’ll never be free. “Do you think Nudar was Tuareg?”

“I doubt it. I want to show you part of how they court. Ideally this would occur in your home, with your parents sleeping nearby. We mustn’t wake them.”

“Can we wake Omar?”

His nose neared hers. “It’s this.”

Her arms on his shoulders, his around her. He didn’t kiss her, and she wanted it. His scent infused her, carried through the damp air. She breathed him; he breathed her. No! No! She wasn’t a woman who did this, who would ever think of doing this. She would walk away from any man who made her consider doing this.

Because this was the moment of choosing whether or not to commit adultery, with her husband’s blessing.

Backing out of the tent, then away from the desert sun, she drank more wine. Wiped her brow under her hat. The wool itched her skin.

He wanted to be friends. It was the only way this could work. More, and she’d be unhappy when she returned to Omar, dissatisfied with him. Less, and she could not trust. She spoke to a friend. “I’m not sure I want to do this. I’m not sure I can.”

He took her empty glass from her. “Breakfast? I’ll shop. And cook.”

Why not? The trawler was private.

Dru tried to read her watch, from Cartier’s, a wedding gift from Omar. Eight-thirty. “I need to phone Omar.” Shaking. Shaking so hard. And not at the prospect of walking to the phone. “You’re family. It might not be…what he wants.”

He showed no reaction. They stood, still shadowed by the canopy. The skin at his throat was dark. Some black chest hairs, where Omar was hairless. “You might think,” he said, “of what you want.”

She released a cable to step down to the dock. But looked back first.

His eyes waited. He knew she might be afraid of the dark. Or, indelibly, of abduction. He would let nothing harm her. With a careless stroke of his gaze, he slayed her fear. His footsteps beside her on the dock were lazy, companionable, the angels of comfort. His warmth reached her through three hundred cubic inches of cold mist.

She could read the blueprint of a kind man.

Briefly, sweeping her hand over a wet and splintered railing, she wished he was cruel. Because she wanted to accept what he offered. And that was reckless.

She stumbled over chewing gum and cigarette butts. Her fears gathered and pressing on her, chanting in the key of doom that she should not. She should not. Dru walked through the chorus, losing his scent somewhere, until she saw the light above the telephone.

She dialed, followed the recorded prompts to enter her card number. Where was Ben? Even under the security lights, she couldn’t find him. He must be near, would not have left her. Privacy. In the cold, under the skeletons and monsters of steel, under a dry-docked leviathan, Dru listened to the phone in Nantucket ring. He won’t be home. Again.

Sergio answered. Then Omar was on the phone.

She felt half-warmth at the sound of his voice. And flatness, distance. Had part of her gone on leave from their marriage? She asked, “Do you really want me to do this?”

His soft laughter reminded her of nights of talk, Omar discussing the stars and the sight of snow on quahog shells and the antiquity of sharks and the intelligence of apes, then slipping past her to philosophy and quantum theory and the history of money and its future and the connections between all these things. “Aren’t you really asking if I don’t want you to do it?” His accent was all Massachusetts. Nantucket. Some people even called him an Islander.

Dru didn’t. She was.

She said, “I’ve met Ben.” Her heart pounded. Was Omar afraid, too? Did he know, had he known all along that she would find Ben attractive? Had he—“Did you ask him to be the donor? Did you plan it, Omar?”

“I asked Ben not to let you see him. But if you want him…”

“You know who I want.”

“That is a gift in my life. In many cultures, love is considered a sickness, something to be avoided. Marrying for love is frowned upon, because love, particularly sexual love, is unstable, and marriage must endure. So, go forth, Dru, if you want to bear a child. If you develop feelings for the man with whom you conceive this child, even for…my nephew, Ben, they will go away when you return to me. The Chinese cure for lovesickness includes a steady regimen of sex with a person other than the desired object.”

“I don’t want to be lovesick. And he’s a family member.”

“It’s nothing. Choose who you want.”

Her fingers grew stiff, icy, around the receiver. “I guess this is how you create a fortune. Taking this kind of risk.”

His voice roughened, a sign of life to her. “I’m sixty-six years old, and you want to make love with my handsome young nephew. This, Dru, is the gamble of my life.”

She could tell him she loved him, promise to always love him and say good night. She should. She was cold. But if she let him go…would it ever be the same? “Is that why you’re doing it? For the risk?”

“I want a baby. With you. And you have been a midwife and aren’t now because of my circumstances, and I won’t be responsible for your never bearing a child of your own.”

Her sigh echoed under the railways. “You aren’t responsible. We could adopt.”

“I want to raise a child who is part of you, Dru.”