Love Has The Best Intentions (10 page)

“This one,” she said suddenly with the
conviction of a mother hen picking out her chick form the scattered
flock.

Her choice featured a design of floppy-eared
puppies in a basket. As I made the proper appreciative comments, a
woman pushing a stroller—a designer stroller—down the narrow aisle
begged our pardon. We moved aside.

I caught myself patting the waistband of my
shorts in an unconscious imitation of Rachel’s gesture and jerked
my hand away as though the material had been threaded with red hot
wires.

A nearby sign decorated with a tumbling clown
pointed the way to the maternity clothes. A child hurried past
bearing a golden-haired baby doll in her arms. To me, the air
seemed suffocatingly thick. Cloying whiffs from the perfume counter
mingled with the fresh, clean scent of the powder patted onto
Sandi’s soft skin after her morning bath.

I couldn’t help my runaway thoughts.
Yesterday, drained from hours of weeping, I had curled up in the
closet which still contained an elusive hint of Ken’s cologne and
reached a decision.

I wanted this baby. But without Ken, I would
shrivel up like a plant denied the life-giving rays of the sun. He
had been gone for less than two weeks and I already hated eating
alone every night, dreaded facing the lonely expanse of the
bed.

My lover’s ultimatum could be read in the
jangling, hanger-filled emptiness of the closet, in his absence in
the bed where we’d made what I thought was love every night.

I could see it in the absence of his shaving
cream in the cabinet, and in three scribbled sentences on a note
stuck to the refrigerator with a Huckleberry Hound magnet. “I want
you, Claire. Just you. Call me if you want me.”

“I want you, Ken,” I whispered.

A tug on my hand brought me back to the
present; I winced from the renewed assault of the kaleidoscopic
displays and piped-in music on my strained nervous system.

“Let’s go to the park and play with my new
ball,” Sandi suggested.

I’d promised to keep custody of my niece
until at least five o’clock. Sandi, displaying the budding of
exotic tastes, chose rum raisin from the flavor selection available
in the frosted depths of the ice cream wagon parked in the shade of
an ancient oak. After a few tentative licks, however, she proposed
an exchange and I handed over my sensible strawberry cone.

The morning clouds had vanished and the sun
beat down on my uncovered head. Black ants and lady bugs accepted
the barrier of my sandal-clad feet as a detour through the grass.
My legs were still slim, but I punished myself by picturing them
puffy and blue-veined in the last stage of pregnancy.

Sand pranced up. After twenty minutes of
energetic motion, the exposed flesh around the neckline of her
sunsuit had turned bright pink and beads of perspiration darkened
her hairline.

“Come sit with me,” I coaxed, moving into the
shade.

She reluctantly collapsed onto the blanket
I’d unearthed from the clutter of belongings in the trunk of my car
and cradled the ball in her lap. Leaning against my shoulder, she
began her favorite game, head tilted back to catch the first
glimmer of a smile on my face.

“Honey, do you love me?”

The proper response came easily to my lips.
“Honey, I love you, but I just can’t smile.”

She seemed pleased. Her small, quivering body
generated the radiant heat of a furnace and I reached down to mop
up the clear drops of perspiration that glimmered like crystal
tears on her upturned face.

“Honey, do you love me?”

“Honey, I love you, but I just can’t
smile.”

Again, “Honey, do you love me?”, this time
injecting wistfulness into her tone while wrinkling her nose
comically, a sun-pinked bunny sniffing a succulent lettuce
leaf.

Her gaze was fixed on my mouth, her eyes
alert for the smile that was the signal of victory and her cue to
pounce for a free-for-all tickling assault.

“Honey, I love you—”

The remainder of the ritualistic reply stuck
in my throat. I’d screamed the first part, those very words, at
Ken’s back and had been answered by a door slam.

The sunglasses fell to the ground as I
covered my face and wept, only dimly aware of Sandi’s hands
clutching my elbow in distress.

“Aunt Claire, don’t cry! Don’t cry! We don’t
have to play!”

I tried to look at her through burning,
streaming eyes. Instead of her piquant features, however, I saw the
eyes of my unborn babe staring imploringly back at me.

Ken or the unseen child? Choosing the baby
meant being forever denied Ken’s caress, never again sipping coffee
together while bathed in morning sunshine with the Sunday papers
scattered across a bed rumpled from making love. Doing without Ken
meant raising a child alone and pushing that designer stroller on
solitary walks.

My heart was a stone, calcified in the moment
of betrayal, of coming home to find no evidence that the man had
ever inhabited my life except for the faint scent of cologne and
his seed growing within me...

Sandi patted my shoulder with tender concern.
“Aunt Claire, did you hurted yourself?”

I had loved and lost. I’d offered up my
vulnerable soul for repudiation. I wiped at the tears with a corner
of the blanket. “Yes, darling, I did.”

“When I fell down yesterday, Mommy kissed my
sore knee and made it better.”

We stared at each other, aunt and niece.
Supplicant and wise woman. The wind rustled the leaves of nearby
trees, providing faint applause to the solemn, dramatic climax of
the scene.

“Some hurts are too deep for kisses, Sandi,”
I managed at last. “But a loving kiss always helps.”

She scrambled to her knees and kissed my damp
cheek with a zestful smack. Giggled. “You taste salty, like a
pretzel.”

Greek tragedy followed by a stand-up comic
routine. The ending of a relationship begun over a pretzel had been
sealed by a pretzel kiss. My lips shaped a feeble grin at the
irony.

“You smiled! I win!”

Sandi tossed her ball into the air, sparking
a wild game of soccer in which three other children and a cocker
spaniel joined in. Watching the exuberant participants with envy, I
longed for the ability to enter Sandi’s protected world, where a
smile meant security and kisses healed all wounds.

If I closed my eyes, I could imagine Ken’s
arms around me. But he couldn’t—wouldn’t—make love to a woman with
a belly like a sack of potatoes.

A robin stalked past on fragile legs. I
reflected on how the males of the animal world often deserted their
mates during gestation. Honoring no commitment, they choose instead
to live without responsibility while the female raises the young
alone, defends her offspring with tooth and claw.

Although I still ached to feel Ken’s fingers
entwined in my hair and nibble his skin again, the memory of that
slammed door echoed in my head.

What if instead of pregnancy temporarily
reshaping my body, an accident permanently scarred my face? Or my
breasts—which Ken called “my beauties” and fondled like precious
gems—were invaded by cancer cells? Would he pack his bags for
departure while I lay helpless in a hospital bed?

A tune ran through my head, a ditty chanted
when I was a child. Looking back, that singer had been breathtaking
in her naiveté. Love and marriage don’t always go together like a
horse and carriage. Without commitment, infatuation burns at
passion’s white hot, fever pitch but when the inevitable cooling
takes place, nothing lasting has been forged. Only ashes remain,
dead, gray ashes.

I had never played Sandi’s game with Ken.
Honey, do you love me? Yes, honey, I love you, but only on my
terms...

The taste of ashes filled my mouth. Bitter,
charred, dead. My relationship with Ken had existed only on a
mundane physical plane; the spiritual heights of ecstasy had been
attained only in my imagination.

Sandi squealed. The ball skimmed across the
grass, leaving no permanent track or evidence of its passage.

“Let’s go home and help your mom fix
dinner.”

On the way back to the car, I carried the
blanket and Sandi clutched the carryall. She walked sedately by my
side, the reclaimed, oversized sunglasses sliding down her nose,
giving my little waif the jaunty air of a child starlet on an
outing with her nanny.

A bed of tulips caught her hopscotch
attention and she rushed over to examine the blossoms just
beginning to unfold, their furled petals concealing the mystery of
color.

“Can I pick one of these for Mommy?” Sandy
asked, a chubby finger stroking a tightly curled bud.

I crouched, too, the breeze ruffling my hair,
and faced the knowledge that the hollowness within me came not from
Ken’s rejection, but from my futile desire to reclaim that which
was irrevocably lost.

Ken made his decision. I must make mine.

My heart gave a funny little leap, like a
lamb in springtime, and I kissed my niece’s flushed cheek. “The
flower will bloom and become beautiful for everyone to enjoy if you
let it grow, Sandi. Such things only get better with time.”

Behind us, the robin rose into the air with
the promise of new life in the beat of its wings.

THE END

The Friendship
Ring

Except for a new jungle gym and the fresh
coating of paint on the picnic tables, the park hadn’t changed,
April thought. Switching off the ignition, she turned to her
daughters. “Would you like to stretch your legs before we go to the
apartment and unpack the car?

Filled with pent-up energy after hours of
travel, they shouted a gleeful assent. The chubby legs of three
year old Beth churned across the grass as she headed for the kiddie
swings, April following more slowly. Annie, conscious of the
dignity of an added four years, walked over to watch other children
on the seesaws.

After making sure the safety belt was
fastened across Beth’s tummy, April gave the swing a gentle push.
Beth shrieked with delight, but April barely heard her, her mind
drifting back to a spring evening thirteen years ago. Despite what
she had told the girls, this stop was more for their mother’s
benefit: April was here to exorcise two ghosts, one of whom was her
younger self.

Although her curfew was midnight, she and
Kevin had paused here on the walk home from the senior high dance
to exchange playful kisses in the shadows of the ancient oak
trees.

The equipment and grassy expanse had been
deserted; all of the children who earlier had swung and played tag
were tucked into bed. Kevin took April’s hand, drew her away from
the watchful eye of the street light, and kissed her again,
tenderly at first, the demands of his mouth quickly becoming more
urgent.

April kissed him back, the music still
lilting in her heart.

Suddenly, Kevin’s mouth no longer covered
hers; his hands gripped her arms. “I love you, April.”

Caught up in the spell of diamond bright
stars sparkling through the leafy branches arching overhead, April
stared up at him, bewildered. “Love?”

His fingers touched her lips in a hushing
gesture. “I have no right to speak now—to selfishly try to hold
you—but you must know I want to spend the rest of my life with
you.”

“Oh, no!” April breathed the words in dismay;
the iridescent bubble of college plans and freedom which hovered on
the horizon like the bright new moon burst with an almost audible
“pop” in the tranquility of the night.

Kevin’s fervent declaration frightened her.
His future was already mapped out: a local college, law school, and
then back home to take over his father’s practice.

She tried to erase his words. “It’s too soon
to talk of love, Kevin. I’m going away next month and between
holding down a part-time job and studying, I probably won’t be able
to come home on weekends. When would we see each other?”

“If we love each other, April, we can find
ways to keep our relationship alive. Whenever I think of doing
without the sound of your laughter, that saucy toss of your head
when someone teases you—even the earnest way you lick an ice cream
cone, my heart aches and I don’t want to face the future.”

She retreated into the moonlight away from
the fervor in his tone, her slippers sliding on the dew dampened
grass. “Kevin, you’re confusing me. I’m not ready for a
commitment!”

“I can’t keep silent any longer.” He raked
his fingers through his hair. “It’s too close to a separation I’m
afraid will be final. When I gave you that friendship ring at
Christmas, I was a coward for not admitting the ring was really a
token of my love.”

April looked down at her hand. The narrow
gold ribbon weighed down her finger like an iron band, holding her
earthbound when she wanted to soar, fettering her to a life of
predictability with a man she knew too well. Kevin was already tied
down with responsibility, a hostage to his father’s
expectations.

Panicked, she wrenched the ring from her
finger and flung it away as if the metal burned her flesh, the
ring’s glittering arc immediately swallowed up by the grass and
shadows...

“Push me, Mama! Push!” Beth’s imperious
demands brought April back from the past and into the fading summer
sunshine.

Dropping a kiss on the child’s curls, April
set the swing into motion again. “Just a few more minutes.”

Beth wriggled in the seat, warbling a
tuneless, baby song, and April glanced over at Annie. Her daughter
was clambering up the jungle gym and chattering to another girl. If
Annie was dropped by parachute into a foreign country in the
morning, she’d have a network of friends established by dusk, April
reflected, grateful for the child’s bubbly personality which would
ease the transition into a new school.

A familiar baritone jolted her. “What’ll it
be, Joseph? Swings, sandbox, or slide?”