Another Man's Child

She’d chosen the bedroom across the hall from them to use as the nursery, instead of the room Marcus’s parents had used farther down the hall, and by the fifteenth week of her pregnancy, she was well under way with plans for decorating it. She and Marcus had always said they’d decorate the nursery themselves, piece by piece, rather than hire a professional as his mother had done when she’d been expecting him. And though Lisa longed for Marcus’s help, she settled, instead, for remembering as best as she could the opinions he’d had when they used to talk about the nursery they’d have someday. He’d wanted colors, lots of them, all primaries, and balloons, too. He’d also wanted a race-car motif, but she was holding out on that, waiting to see whether the baby was a boy, or a girl who might prefer something a little softer, like the teddy bears she’d always wanted.

Marcus had also always wanted a Raggedy Andy doll. It was something he’d confessed to her one night after they were first married, and only after having had a couple of drinks. One of his earliest memories was of wanting the doll because of a cartoon he’d seen where the boy, Andy, had saved a little girl’s life. And that was one of the few times he’d received his father’s complete attention. The old man had blasted Marcus for wanting a doll, any doll. Cartwright boys didn’t play with dolls.

Lisa’s first purchase for the nursery was a pair of two-foot Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls.

She’d looked through scores of books of wallpaper samples and had settled on a pattern of red, yellow, blue, orange and green balloon bouquets, all floating on a background of soft white clouds. She bought her supplies, but waited until Marcus was at the office one Saturday to begin the actual transformation. She wanted the conversion to be as painless for him as possible.

She managed to sand down three of the walls rather quickly, but was having trouble getting the old wallpaper down from the fourth wall. Turning off the electric sander, which just seemed to be smoothing the wallpaper into the wall, she grabbed a hand sander and started in on the wall with good old elbow grease. Twenty minutes later, she was blinking back tears of frustration, mingled with drops of sweat. She was only about a tenth of the way done with the wall.

“What in hell do you think you’re doing?”

Lisa jumped, dropping the sander on her toe.

“You scared me,” she accused, standing before him in her plaster-spattered leggings and one of his old shirts, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“I’m sorry,” he said. But he didn’t sound it. “With all this racket going on, you must not have heard me come in. What are you doing, Lis?” He asked the question as if he thought she’d lost her mind.

“Decorating the nursery. What’s it look like?”

“It looks like you’re in danger of hurting yourself. What were you thinking, tackling a job like this all by yourself? You’re pregnant, Lisa. You’re smarter than this.”

Lisa resented his high-handedness. And she’d had enough of sanding a wall that didn’t want to be sanded, of carrying a baby that its own father didn’t want.

“And who was I going to ask to help me with it, since the father of my baby has refused to have anything to do with him?” she hollered at Marcus.

She wanted to take the words back the minute they were out of her mouth. Marcus’s face froze into that awful mask again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, leaving the mess behind her as she walked over to her husband. She laid her head against his chest, sliding her arms beneath his jacket. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him. Hadn’t meant to hurt him. But she was hurting so damn badly herself the words had just slipped out.

“I’m truly sorry, honey,” she said again as his silence rent the room. “I’ll hire someone on Monday to do the job.”

He didn’t put his arms around her, didn’t reach for her at all, except to push her away from him. “Give me time to get changed and I’ll do it,” he said, turning to leave before she could read what was in his eyes.

But she could read the posture in his back as he crossed the hall into their bedroom. His shoulders were slumped, his gait slow, as if he’d just fought an important battle—and lost.

CHAPTER NINE

THE NURSERY GOT PAINTED. And papered. Marcus tried not to look at the colorful balloons when he pasted them up, which was a little difficult since he had to match the strips as he hung them side by side. He tried not to care that Lisa’s choices were making a room so like what he’d pictured for his own children back when he’d thought he’d have some. He tried to concentrate on her satisfied smiles, instead, as they worked on the room together every evening that week. And was never so thankful in his life as he was the day he finally put the supplies away for the last time. The job was done, and now they could get back to normal—at least for the few normal months left to them.

He took Lisa to dinner Friday night to celebrate.

“Here’s to a finished nursery,” she said, smiling across their intimate table for two at one of New Haven’s elite restaurants. It was a place frequented more by his parents’ generation than his own, but it was quiet.

Marcus tapped the edge of his glass of whiskey to the apple juice she held up to him. “To a finished nursery,” he said wholeheartedly.

“Marcus! Lisa! Goodness, we haven’t seen you in months!”

Marcus cringed when he heard

the voice of his mother’s best friend behind him. Soon after his parents’ death, he’d cut most of his ties with the superficial society they had flourished on, but Blanche Goodwin kept reappearing once or twice a year, like a flu bug he couldn’t shake.

He stood, holding out his hand to Blanche’s silent husband. “Blanche, Gerald. It’s good to see you again.” Gerald’s handshake was slightly unsteady.

Blanche bobbed her silver head importantly. “You’re looking good, Marcus. We read in the paper that you’d acquired Blake’s department stores. Your father would have been proud of the way you’ve taken charge of the business.” She spoke before her husband could get a word in edgewise.

“I hope so, Blanche,” Marcus said politely, angry with himself for the immediate pleasure he felt at her words, for the fact that his father’s approval still mattered.

“Are you still toiling down at Thornton, Lisa?” Blanche asked next, making it sound as though Lisa scrubbed bedpans.