want him down there smooching on the sides of her knees and she told him so, to which he replied, “But don't you see, woman, I adore your knees.'
“And they adore you, sweetheart, but I want you up here where I can look at you. “She sort of pulled him up, body weight notwithstanding, kissing the parts of him she could reach, first a hand and then the top of his head and then his face. “I wish I could have your child,” she said out of nowhere.
“I'm glad you feel that way.” It was enough for both of them and more and they went to sleep like that. Holding each other, not in the fitted curves of tummy and hand and stomach against back and groin to butt, which is the way they so often fell asleep, but in each other's arms, with their faces almost touching, pillows pressed together, as close as they could get.
He'd known since Dallas that Donna couldn't have kids. It meant next to nothing to him when they'd first married. It was only after she'd told him a few times that she wished she could bear his child that he even allowed himself to think about it. He had never fathered a child nor had he felt the usual, normal fatherly urge to propagate. In fact, with the abrogation of his first marriage he'd assumed that his age and profession and life-style would preclude children. It was only later, growing close to a child—Lee Anne Lynch—and letting his heart fill with the joy a child could bring a man, that he allowed himself even the luxury of an occasional thought, wondering, as a man will, what it might be like—fatherhood.
It was clearly something Donna wanted but neither of them had talked about the possibility of adoption. To Eichord it was as remote as a faraway planet.
But when she said it this time, told him how she wished she could have his child, told him with such intensity of feeling and longing and regret, it stayed with him. And he supposed it was kicking around up in the old brain wrinkles when the thing happened at work, and maybe it was one of those surrogate things. Whatever. In any event, a couple of nights later he was in the garage talking to himself.
“I'll never leave you again,” he was saying. “No. I promise. Never. You'll never be alone again.” Nobody else was with him. He was talking into a box.
He went in and found her, and he took her hand and led Donna back into the bedroom the way she'd taken his hand and led him through his birthday treats, and she looked at him with a quizzical smile as he positioned her on the bed.
“What?” she said, sensing something.
“Well,” he said as he handed her his homemade card, “just a little something.” She stretched out on the bed in her slightly decollete top, French jeans, and heels, looking good enough to jump right there, he thought, and she read the card aloud as he had hers, “Dearest wife,” penned in a carefully drawn heart, “when I look at you I never fully believe my luck. I love you so much it makes me laugh out loud when I think I'll be able to come home and find you here waiting for me. You give more than you could ever take. You're the best woman I've ever known.” She looked up at him with eyes that looked moist and beautiful and he had her close them.
“Keep them closed for sixty seconds. Just lie there please,” he whispered. She didn't hear him leave the carpeted bedroom until she heard the steps going down the hall, but she stayed where he'd put her and kept her eyes closed wondering what was cooking. She heard him open the door to the garage and then close it and he heard her voice down the hall. “I'm getting awfully curious back here all alone in this big bedroom.” And she could hear him say almost like he was talking to a baby.
“Well, we won't be alone in that ole bedroom anymore, eh? No. Not anymore. Nosiree. No way.” And saying to her from the hallway, “Are those eyes firmly closed?'
“Yes, Officer.'
“Just keep ‘em that way, lady, I'll instruct you when to open them.” And she heard something, a kind of skittering noise against cardboard or paper, and felt something moving, touching her.
“OH!” she opened her eyes and saw what was standing on her. A little gray kitten. Very young. A baby one. Standing, or doing its best to stand there, head cocked at her. It weighed nothing. A ball of gray fluff.
“His name is Tuffy,” Eichord told her.
“Tuffy,” she whispered softly, and the cat liked it so well he spun in a circle and fell off her stomach in a tumbling kind of somersault and then did a few acrobatics on the bed. “Guess what?” she said to the kitten. “I LOVE YOU!” It was a whispered rush of adoration, to which she added, “BOTH of you,” and Eichord smiled.
“We feel the same way, my sweet.'
“Oh, thank you,” she said in her softest tones, smiling at this fluffball attacking her leg. “Oh!” She laughed. “I don't know what to say. I just adore you, Tuffy. I think you're great.'
To which the little gray cat responded by opening his mouth wider than she'd have thought possible and yawning a great yawn, and showing a mouth that was shocking pink like the inside of a seashell, and Donna laughed with glee.
“What a guy,” she said.
And Eichord smiled like he'd knocked one out of the park.
Daniel would never have expected the girl to accept this weird turn of events in her life so easily. She was perfect. He sensed that he couldn't have done better if he'd had a hundred shots at picking up somebody who would suit his needs to the nth degree. Sissy was one of those people who, once dedicated to a person or a cause or a goal, hoped only to please. She required some direction or she would be aimless and rootless. She was not a self- starter. She needed positioning, guidance, but once she had that she could function with surprising smoothness.
Sissy was of a gentle and placid nature. A girl who had never known a father, or even a particularly strong maternal influence, she took to Daniel as would a duck to the wet stuff. He would tell her precisely what would be expected of her within the framework of each given day or event. Never really bossing her or being domineering, she felt, just telling her the way it was to be. He expected NOTHING from her in return. No sexual favors. Nothing. It was so new to her, this sort of a benevolent, guiding hand, and she took each word from the huge man as if it were handed to her engraved on stone.
She was used to BOYS not men. A boy who would want her only for sex or for companionship on a date, and who would say, “Hey, wanna go to the Steakhouse tonight?” and she'd say, “Sure, sounds great.” And then she'd think for a minute, thinking for both of them and say, “But, uh, Toby,” or Kevin, or whoever, “
“Um—uh, no,” he'd say. “Uh, can you let me borrow fifteen dollars?” And now here was a guy, a man, who would hand her thousands of dollars and trust her to do the right thing.
She fully expected he'd been conning her when he pulled her off Randolph Street but, God, wasn't it worth a shot to find out? He was so interesting and so convincing and obviously experienced.
Life had not been especially rewarding to Sissy Selkirk. People had told her she was pretty, she was this, she was that. But nothing had ever come of it. Only more of the same boredom and let downs and hand-me-downs. She had failed at school. A boy had taken her virginity. She had gone out into the workplace pregnant and been taken advantage of by an employer who saw in her only the easy sex and vulnerability, paid her minimum wage, abused her, and when she was big with child, abandoned her as her teenaged lover had. She had not picked her men well. She had given birth to a little boy. Guy, named after her unknown father, and she had failed at mothering. Her ways were “unconventional,” and they had taken Guy away from her, and called her unfit to be a mother and put Guy into a foster home somewhere.
This was the first time in years that it looked like something good could happen to her. So when Daniel came in from a hard day of work out in the fields, she was quite content to feed him and watch him leave again “on business” as he often did, with no more dialogue than “You can watch TV or read, okay?” To which she would nod and smile and say, “Sure.” She knew enough not to ask when he was coming back. And then late that night she would hear the rumbling engine of the black Caprice, which he now parked beside the old sharecropper's
