Commitments Page 5

  She wanted to say, “What isn’t?” But she didn’t. Nicholas would accuse her of being a pessimist, and though she’d argue that she was being honest, she couldn’t win. Not with Nick. So she said, “Who knows? He may be hungry. Pam said he didn’t eat much supper. Or he may be constipated. He doesn’t have a fever, but his ear may be bothering him again. I wish he could tell me, but he can’t.”

  “If you’d been back earlier, you’d have had a better chance of guessing.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You’d have been able to keep an eye on him.”

  “I have my eye on him now. Earlier wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  “Well, it would have made a difference to me,” Nicholas declared. “I’ve been leaving meetings to call you. It’s annoying to find you’re not there, especially when you knew I was due back.”

  “And I’m here, just when you said you’d be. But you’re still in Chicago.”

  He ignored her logic as though it were irrelevant. “That was what I called to say. We’ve run into a last-minute glitch. I won’t be back until tomorrow. If we wind things up by noon, I should be home by five-thirty—”

  “But we’re supposed to be at the Taylors’ at six!” she cried. When an answering whimper came from Nicky, she realized that she’d stopped bobbing him. The muscles of her thighs were screaming for relief. Juggling the phone, she slid to her bottom, simultaneously maneuvering Nicky onto her lap. It was no mean feat; he was as helpful as a sack of flour.

  “Half an hour is all I’ll need to shave, shower and change,” Nicholas went on.

  “Oh, Nick.” She sighed, then reasoned quietly, “We agreed that we’d take turns with Nicky when we’re getting ready to go out. He wants to be held, and unless we want him to fuss the whole time—”

  “You’ve spoiled him, Sabrina. He fusses, you pick him up. When you put him down, he fusses, so you pick him up again. At some point he’s got to learn that he can’t be held all the time.”

  “But he doesn’t learn,” she cried, as frustrated by her husband’s tunnel vision as by the baby’s shortcomings. “That’s the problem!”

  Nicholas didn’t want to hear about it. “Mrs. Hoskins will just have to give you a hand.”

  “Mrs. Hoskins can’t hold Nicky. She has a bad back.”

  “If she has a bad back, what good is she?”

  “Beats me,” Sabrina said dryly. She’d often argued that if they replaced Mrs. Hoskins with someone equipped to handle Nicky, Sabrina would benefit on two fronts. But since Nicholas refused to admit that Nicky’s problems warranted special full-time help, Mrs. Hoskins had a staunch ally.

  “I suppose she keeps things organized,” he pointed out, just as Sabrina had known he would. “If you had to worry about making the beds and dusting and doing laundry and polishing silver on top of everything else, you’d be exhausted.”

  I am exhausted, Sabrina wanted to scream, but she knew it would do no good. Nicholas saw what he wanted to see. It had been that way from the first time they’d met, and it had been okay back then because they’d shared a vision of their lives and of the future. They shared few visions nowadays, though—which was why, when Nicholas pulled his blinder routine, Sabrina suffered.

  “Would it be at all possible,” she began, her body tense as she rocked Nicky back and forth, “for you to catch an earlier plane?”

  “No.”

  “Just one hour earlier?”

  “I’m not here on vacation, Sabrina. This is a business trip. And I’m not alone; there are a dozen people waiting in the other room. I should have been off the phone ten minutes ago.”

  Sabrina was annoyed enough to ignore that. “I’ll call the Taylors and tell them we’ll be late.”

  “Don’t be selfish. You know they’re on a tight schedule. They can’t hold things up for us if they’re going to get through a sit-down dinner and to the theater in time.”

  “Let them start dinner without us. Well join them for the second course.”

  “That would be very rude, particularly when it isn’t necessary, I told you I’d be home in time.”

  “But not in time to help me! My God, Nick, I can’t do it all myself! As it is, Donna’s doing us a favor by agreeing to sit”—Donna was the second of the therapists who worked with Nicky—“but she can’t get here until six-thirty, which means that Mrs. Hoskins will have to do the best she can for half an hour—”

  “I have to go, Sabrina.”

  “I didn’t want to go to the Taylors’ in the first place!”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.”

  “But we haven’t settled—Damn it, Nicholas Stone, don’t hang up … Nick?… Oh, hell.” She whispered the last in a plaintive, tone, hating what she’d said, hating even more the shrewish sound of her voice. She’d been so easygoing and flexible … before Nicky.

  With a sigh that carried a pained whimper, she tossed the phone aside, along with what little relaxation she’d found in the two days’ break. Reality was back in full force—endless work, frustration and heartache. And responsibility. During those two days she was gone, she’d been free of responsibility. It had felt good, so good. But it was over. She was back. Nicky was her responsibility. Her shoulders sagged beneath the weight.

  Nicholas was letting her down again. She should have guessed he would. Lately he’d been in his work world more and more. She could tell herself that he was legitimately busy, that the company was doing famously, that their financial status was better than ever, but somehow none of those arguments gave her comfort.

  Dipping her head, she looked into Nicky’s face. What would give her comfort would be his looking back at her, reaching up to grab her hair, maybe calling her mama. Hell, she wasn’t fussy; he could call her anything his little heart desired, if only he would make the connection between his vocal cords and speech.

  But he didn’t make that connection. The sounds he made were involuntary, brought on by discomfort or displeasure or—on the rare occasion—delight. A helpless gurgle when his tummy was tickled. A reflexive gasp when he was tossed into the air. But he seemed to have no knowledge that he’d produced the sound himself, and he had no inclination to reproduce it at will.

  Yet he was beautiful. Sabrina never failed to think it, and she knew that far more than maternal pride was at play. People stopped her on the street or in elevators or in stores to tell her. Nicky Stone was a beautiful child. No heat rashes for him, no excema, no chafed skin. His complexion was smooth, his cheeks soft. He had eyes that were large pools of mocha, fringed by unfairly long lashes. His hair was a cap of loose, pecan-colored curls that caught and reflected the nearest light. Sabrina dressed him in the most adorable clothes she could find—even now he was wearing a bright sweatshirt, pint-sized Guess jeans and tiny Reeboks—but she knew that with or without the duds, he’d catch the eye.

  It was a cruel paradox. A beautiful shell housing a limited mind. A cruel, cruel paradox. She’d have traded looks for mental health in a minute. But it wasn’t to be.

  He was a slight child. Aside from the baby fat that gave his face a slightly rounded look, he carried no extra weight—no mystery, given the trauma of meals. Since he couldn’t learn to swallow, his food had to be strained, and even then it was all Sabrina could do to massage half of it down his throat. He fought her. He could be famished—and she feared that half the time he was, which was why, on doctors’ orders, he was fed six small meals a day—but he still objected to the intrusion of foreign matter in his mouth. He lacked all understanding. He couldn’t make the connection between eating and survival, satiation or pleasure.

  For all the times Sabrina had seen exasperated mothers trying to clean up chocolate-covered children, she’d give the world to see Nicky like that once, just once.

  The phone rang, jarring her from wistfulness. Knowing that Mrs. Hoskins would answer it, she gathered Nicky into her arms and pushed herself to her feet. She supposed she was lucky that he was light for his age. The strain
on her back from holding him for hours each day was bad enough; had he been heavier, she’d have been in serious trouble.

  “How about a bath, bud?” she asked, nuzzling his temple. He was facing outward, sitting in the chair she’d fashioned out of her arms and her hip, and the extra bounce in her step was designed for play. “I’ll add some bubbles and bring ducky in and you can stretch and kick and swim. Sound good?”

  She was halfway to his room when Mrs. Hoskins caught up with her. “That was your husband again, Mrs. Stone. He didn’t want to disturb you, but he forgot to ask you to pick up his new tuxedo. It’s ready and waiting at the shop. He couldn’t remember whether he’d ordered a dress shirt, but he said they had his size on file. Also, he’s out of shave cream and deodorant. And he suggested picking up sweets of some sort for the Taylors.”

  Sabrina stopped in her tracks, dropped her chin to her chest and squeezed her eyes shut. Pick up his new tuxedo. Pick out a new dress shirt. Pick up shave cream, deodorant, sweets, a new cordless. Nicholas had a knack for tossing off little orders, totally oblivious of the effort required to carry them out. Errands that would have been simple three years ago weren’t so simple now. She sighed against Nicky’s head as she continued into his room.

  A short time later, he was in the tub. Sabrina had a firm grip on him, which put her practically in the tub herself, but that was okay. She’d change into dry things later. For now it was enough that he was calm.

  She ran a washcloth along his chest and around his neck, then positioned her hand under the cloth and pretended it was a dog—not that he knew what a dog was, despite the endless hours she’d spent pointing at picture books or ooohing and aaahing over the real thing in the park. But something about the yipping sounds she made and the gentle patter of the puppy’s paws on his tummy made him gurgle. She repeated the patter again and again, laughing, praising, coaxing. The results were sporadic, a few gurgles, then silence, another gurgle, then a whimper or two. She continued to bathe him until the gurgles were absent and the whimpers increased to three or four, then, for her sake as much as for his, she took him out.

  Dried and diapered and dressed in a fresh sleeper, he was precious. She sat in the rocking chair by his crib and held him close, loving his softness and his baby-sweet smell. She read him a story—Green Eggs and Ham—because the pictures were bright and might catch his eye and because she’d always found the cadence catchy. Nicky wasn’t being caught by either the pictures or the words, but he was getting sleepy.

  She helped him along by singing softly—humming, actually, with a few words stuck in. “Hush … mmm … baby … mmm-mmm … a word.” The important thing was the movement of the rocker, the warmth of her body, the gentle vibration of the small sound she produced.

  Carefully, she transferred him to the crib.

  And then came the one time each day that Sabrina looked forward to. With only the dimmest dresser light on, she bent over the crib and smiled at her son. He looked back at her. He always did at night like this, when he was as relaxed as it was possible for him to be and was tired enough to tune out everything but that which was directly in front of him.

  Sabrina was directly in front of him. She blocked out the bright red clown mobile that hung over the crib and the vivid yellow cars that raced across the nearby wall and the turquoise Care Bear that sat between a pair of Cabbage Patch twins at the foot of the crib.

  “Sleepy, angel?” she crooned in little more than a whisper. She rubbed his cheek, then his neck. “Been a rough day, has it?” She ran her thumb back and forth just under his jaw. “Who’s mommy’s good boy?” she asked, but her voice cracked halfway through when he broke into a smile. “Ahhh, that’s what I like. That’s what I like, Nicky-ricky. How about another one? Another one for mommy? A nice big one? A nice big, toothy one? Mommy loves that kind. How about it, Nicky-ricky?”

  But one smile a night was all she got, so when Nicky’s eyes began to droop, she turned him onto his stomach and rubbed his back for a while. Then she stood with her elbows braced on the crib rail and smiled through her tears.

  He looked so normal. At night like this when he was sleeping, when his limbs were loose and his diapered bottom was slightly raised and his hands lay—palms open and up—by his sides and his curls hugged his head, she could pretend that he was like any other three-year-old. She could pretend that he was dreaming sweet dreams, and that he’d be awake at dawn jumping up and down, clamoring to be free of his crib.

  Was she lying to herself? Sure she was, and it had nothing to do with better judgment. It had to do with hopes and dreams and the fact that she was desperate. Ninety-nine percent of the time she was realistic; one percent of the time she allowed herself to dream. Only at night. Only when she was alone.

  * * *

  Derek McGill felt very much alone that night. Oh, he was alone every night, but that night it felt worse, and it was all her fault.

  Up to then, he’d been in control. He’d learned to slow down his thoughts and narrow them. Prison was too confining for the free run of reason; a man could go mad if he didn’t conform. So Derek had conformed. In those idle hours—so many idle hours—he focused his thoughts on the crime he’d committed, his trial, the work he’d been doing when he was arrested and the connection between the three. He read the papers each day—it was a compulsion, he decided.

  He didn’t think about driving to the North Woods of Maine as he used to do each summer. He didn’t think about fastening his shell to the roof of the Saab, driving north from Manhattan and sculling along the Mohawk as he’d done when he had just a single day free. He didn’t think about filet mignon, water beds or clothes washed in fabric softener. He didn’t think warm or soft or gentle.

  Sabrina made him think warm and soft and gentle.

  His cell was dim. Stray shafts of light fell through the bars: not enough to keep him awake if he’d been inclined to sleep, but—since he was up—just enough to illumine his surroundings and remind him where he was. Not that he could have forgotten even if he’d been blind. The night was punctuated by muted snores and grunts, the occasional sleep-talker, the shuffling and rummaging of insomniacs, the punctual footfalls of the guards taking count. There’d been many a night before his imprisonment when he’d fallen asleep over the Kem machine at the office, or at home on his sofa with the television on, but no broadcast studio or late movie had ever sounded like this. The sounds and smells of prison were unique. It was mankind at its worst.

  Derek wanted to know why she’d come. He’d asked her over and over again, and she’d hemmed and hawed, then finally blurted out something about wanting understanding and warmth. Understanding and warmth from him? It would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

  He’d told her, and he’d meant it, that she was naive. It was particularly true if she believed that he had something to give. She had no idea of the hell that was his life. Boredom. Isolation. Wasted days, one after another. Frustration. Distrust. The constant battle against an inner fury that would easily eat him alive if he didn’t appease it with carefully sculpted plans for revenge.

  He wanted to know why she’d come, because he couldn’t shake the picture she’d left in his mind. It brought a new and different kind of ache, and he resented that.

  He’d never claimed to be a monk. At the age of thirteen, frighteningly soon after he reached puberty, he bluffed his way into the arms of the hottest seventeen-year-old number in the neighborhood, and he never looked back. He’d been a sexual terror by twenty. By the time he reached thirty, he’d grown more discriminating; and by the time he reached thirty-five, he’d had several long-running affairs. The past few years had been dry by choice: sex for the sake of sex had grown empty, and he’d been too involved in his job to spare the emotional output that would have made the difference.

  In that sense, and in that sense alone, his incarceration had been bearable. He hadn’t left behind a special woman. It had been years since he’d seen his sex drive as a source of status. He hadn’
t had a hell of a lot to lose in the sexual sense by being imprisoned.

  He wasn’t a prig; he didn’t begrudge the men whose muffled moans suggested self-gratification in the night. Nor did he begrudge those who found willing partners, though he’d had no trouble refusing the invitations he received himself. He had contempt, though, for the groups who cornered innocents in isolated spots and caused anguished cries of pain and degradation. Had it not been for razor-sharp reflexes, a mean left hook and the strength born of revulsion, he’d be one of those victims himself.

  Strength born of revulsion? It had been born of fear, too, but even more of anger and frustration and impotence. That night little more than a year ago, in another town, another prison, he needed an outlet for his rage. There was nothing sexual about the way he battered his attackers. It earned him ten days in the hole, a scar he’d wear for life and a reputation that would stay with him for the duration of his imprisonment.

  No, there’d been nothing sexual about his thoughts that night, or on any other night. Until now. Sabrina Stone touched him. She’d done it that first time they’d met, when he’d equated her with innocence and serenity, and she’d done it today. She touched him, heated him, made him ache.

  Arms folded rigidly beneath his head, he stared at the shadowy cracks on the ceiling. Like a Rorschach test, they took shape, forming a slender body in a large sweater and long skirt with a chic belt and imported boots. And there was more. In the cracks he saw her hair. She wore it in a vague pageboy—vague because it was mussed by the wind, by the collar of her coat, perhaps even by her fingers. And she didn’t seem to care, since not once did she attempt to neaten the blond riot. And there was more; he saw the slenderness of her neck, the gracefulness of her wrists, the gentle tilt of her breasts beneath a sweater that should have hidden everything but didn’t. And jasmine perfume. No, not perfume. It had been too light, too delicate. Shampoo, perhaps. Or body cream.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and took several deep, tortured breaths. He thought about the pathetic something that had masqueraded as hamburger at dinner, about the guard he’d seen kick an inmate whose sole reason for not rising from his cot that morning had been acute appendicitis, about Crazy Louie’s latest—and dumbest—escape attempt. In time the swelling between his legs eased. Only then did he open his eyes. The cracks on the ceiling were back to being cracks on the ceiling. But, damn it, he could still smell her.