Picture Perfect (27 page)

 

T
HREE DAYS LATER
I
HAD RECEIVED WIRES FROM
A
RCHIBALD
C
USTER
and from two museums expressing interest, but I had not heard from my husband. The hand lay in all its glory, itemized and recorded for posterity, reconstructed on a bed of coarse black cotton. We had been taking the obligatory photographs, the ones we could send out before the actual bones went around for exhibit. I stood with my hands braced on the edge of the table, sweat running down my back. Wally, a graduate student who was writing his thesis under my tutelage, was packing up the Leica and its lenses. “So what do you think, Professor Barrett?” he said, grinning. “We gonna be mobbed at the airport?”

We were not scheduled to leave Tanzania for another two weeks, and I knew that Wally was joking, since the anthropological community was too small to generate more than an occasional article in the
Wall Street Journal.
Unbidden, a memory of my first return to LAX with Alex came to mind. I imagined that kind of media circus for a dusty, tired scientist holding a crate full of bones. “Somehow,” I replied, “I doubt it.”

Wally stood up, brushing the red earth from his shorts. “I'm going to bring this back to Susie before she pitches another fit,” he said, and he moved to the front flap door of the tent. He lifted it partway, then let it fall as if he'd seen a mirage he couldn't quite face. He blinked, and pulled aside the canvas again.

In the middle of the base camp was a pickup truck, and Koji, one of our native scouts, was unloading boxes stamped with the seal of Les Deux Magots, the Parisian restaurant. My little group of assistants stood in awe, watching crates of lobsters and fresh fruits and wheels of Brie being gently lowered to the ground. I had seen the likes of this only once before. Wally stepped into the sunshine, leaving me an unobstructed view. “Now I know,” he murmured, “there is a God.”

“‘God' is a bit much,” a voice said. “But I'll settle for sainthood.”

I whirled around at Alex's first words. He stood a few feet behind me, having entered through the rear flap of the tent. His hands moved restlessly at his sides, and I realized that he was more nervous than he wanted me to see.

“I thought,
What do I bring a woman who's about to change the course of human evolution?
And flowers just didn't seem to cut it. But I remembered from the last time I was in Tanzania that the local cuisine leaves a little to be desired—”

“Oh, Alex,” I cried, and I threw myself into his arms. His hands roamed over my back, relearning my body. I breathed in the familiar smell of his skin and smoothed the wrinkles of his traveling clothes. “I thought you were mad at me,” I said.

“Mad at myself,” Alex admitted. “Until I realized I had deliberately acted like an asshole just so that we could kiss and make up.”

I held his face in my hands. I was filled to bursting now that he was standing in front of me, wondering how I hadn't noticed how very empty I had been. “I forgive you,” I said.

“I haven't apologized yet.”

I rested my forehead against his chin. “I don't care.”

He gently tipped my face up toward his. Outside, I could hear the splintering of a crate being split open, and the delighted cries of the graduate students ripping out its contents. “If this is truly like winning an Academy Award,” Alex said, “then I'm more proud of you than you can possibly imagine.”

I leaned against him, thinking that the praise I had received from Archibald Custer and all the accolades the hand would bring me paled in comparison to Alex's words. His was the only opinion that mattered.

We had a sumptuous meal that night, even if the smoky flavor the campfire gave the veal piccata was a little unorthodox. Alex talked easily with my assistants, making them laugh with stories about the mistakes he'd made playing an anthropologist on film until I came along to correct him. When the five kids took a few bottles of Bordeaux and suggested moving the party to the raw ground near the excavation site, Alex declined their offer. He picked up the last bottle of wine and then held out his hand to help me up, as if by prearrangement.

He tied the flaps of my tent shut, and I stood with my back to him, glancing at my comb and my toothbrush and tube of Crest beside the chipped washbasin. I frowned; there was something I had to tell Alex that I couldn't seem to remember. His hands came to rest on the sides of my waist. “What is it with you and me and tents and Tanzania?” he said.

It was impossible not to think of the first night we had made love—not with the fire dancing orange on the canvas, and the low wind moaning through the hills, and the heavy, sable folds of an African night pressing us even closer.

We came together the same way the rains come to Central Africa: quickly, without warning, bringing a fury so intense that for the days it lasts you stare out the window and wonder if the world has ever been any other way. When it was over we lay in each other's arms, half dressed and drenched in sweat, fingers restlessly moving over bare skin just to keep the connection.

We drank the Bordeaux straight from the bottle, watching the silhouette of the fire with a lazy contentment born of knowing there would be a slower, sweeter next time. I absently traced my fingers along Alex's wrist. “It means a lot to me,” I said. “Your coming here.”

Alex kissed my ear. “What makes you think I did it for you?” he said. “Three weeks of abstinence is hell.”

I smiled and closed my eyes, and then I stiffened and bolted upright. Abstinence. Suddenly I remembered what I had forgotten to tell Alex.

When I had unpacked in Tanzania, I realized I had left my birth control pills at home. At first I'd considered having a prescription filled here, if they even had that at the local pharmacy; then I'd realized that if I was half a world away from Alex there was little chance of my getting pregnant. But now Alex was here, and we had slept together, and there were no guarantees.

“Just out of curiosity,” I said, turning around to face him, “how do you feel about fatherhood?”

Alex's eyes darkened and something in them closed off from me. “What the hell are you trying to tell me?” he said, biting off each word.

I put my hand on his shoulder, realizing this sounded much worse than it actually was. “I left my Pill at home. So I haven't been taking anything for a few weeks.” I smiled at him. “I'm sure nothing at all's happened,” I said. “I'm sure I'll be fine.”

“Cassie,” Alex said slowly, “I do
not
plan on having children.”

I don't know why we hadn't discussed this before; I had assumed that he'd want to wait awhile, but that eventually he'd want a family. “Never?” I said, slightly shocked.

“Never.” Alex ran a hand over his face. “I have no intention of being like my own mother and father.”

I relaxed; I knew Alex, and there was no chance of that happening. “My parents weren't exactly Ozzie and Harriet either,” I said, “but that wouldn't keep me from having kids of my own.”

I closed my eyes, picturing a beautiful little boy running across the lawns at the house, his feet picked up by the sheer joy of the wind. I imagined him here in Tanzania, digging at my side with a plastic shovel and bucket. I knew, given time, I could bring Alex around.

He pulled me down into his arms, taking my silence for rebellion. “Besides,” he pointed out, “how are you going to become the next Margaret Mead if you're about to give birth? You can't take your hand on a lecture circuit if you're barefoot and pregnant.”

I questioned the validity of that, but in some ways Alex was right. Maybe soon, but now was not the time. I rolled over and faced him on the narrow cot. “So which one of us is going to sleep on the floor?”

Alex laughed
. “Chère,”
he said, “you ever hear of Russian roulette?”

 

W
HEN
I
GOT BACK TO THE STATES
, I
WENT ON A SERIES OF LECTURES
at several universities, discussing the implications of the hand and tool on the evolution of the human mind. I did not like being away from Alex for so long, but he was busy filming
Antony and Cleopatra.
It did not matter if I was in Boston or Chicago or Baltimore. Alex was working twenty-hour days, so even if I'd been in L.A., I wouldn't have been able to spend time with him.

Alex's voice rolled down the stairs from the bedroom. “Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish, a vapor sometimes like a bear or lion, a towered citadel, a pendant rock, a forked mountain, or blue promontory with trees upon it, that nod unto the world and mock our eyes with air.”

I sighed with relief as the taxi driver set my bag inside the front door. I hadn't kept him up waiting; he was doing what he usually did the night before filming a critical scene—rehearsing. I knew that I'd find him stalking the sitting area of the bedroom, wearing a ratty Tulane T-shirt and his boxer shorts, and I smiled at the comfort of the familiar.

My plane had been delayed from Chicago because of thunderstorms, and at around nine o'clock I called to tell Alex that I didn't know if I'd even make it into L.A. tonight. “Just go to sleep,” I said. “If I come home, I'll get a cab and let myself in.” I knew that he had a draining day tomorrow, filming the scene where Antony realizes Cleopatra's betrayal and then learns of her apparent suicide. Plus, there had been more trouble with the film. Initial rushes used as teasers for movie previews had had a negative audience reaction. Alex had told me over the phone. “They
laughed,”
he had said, shocked. “They watched me running myself through the gut with a sword and they
laughed.”

I wished I had been here to help him with his retakes and to offer the bright side to all the bad press the movie was getting in entertainment shows and gossip columns. Even in Chicago, there had been a short item in the
Tribune
saying that
Antony and Cleopatra
was rumored to become one of Hollywood's most expensive flops. When I'd read it over a room service breakfast at the hotel, I'd had to fight the urge to call Alex right away. I knew that in a week this first rush of publicity would be over. Better to soothe Alex face-to-face, I thought, than to spill words over a cold, crackling telephone line.

Besides, I had something that was going to completely take his mind off the movie. I couldn't be entirely sure yet, since I hadn't had time to go to a doctor, and I was only a week late. But still, I had a hunch. I had considered this over and over on the flight home, realizing that Alex was going to have a fit when I told him about the baby, but I'd worked out a dozen scenarios in my mind. In one, he just stood speechless. In another, I said that the best-laid plans don't always work the way you want. In a third, I patiently reminded him that he'd been the one who wanted to play with fire. All the scenes ended the same way, with us curled up together in the window seat, Alex's hand pressed against my stomach, as if he could help me to carry our child.

I stared at my suitcase, deciding to leave it right there in the parlor, because after all I wasn't supposed to be lifting heavy things. With every step, I heard Alex testing another line, sometimes repeating it with the emphasis on different words
: I made these wars for Egypt…She has robbed me of my sword.

I smiled, thinking of Antony's crisis of masculinity, and then of the news I had for Alex. Drawing in a deep breath, I stepped across the threshold of the bedroom suite. “Hi,” I said.

Alex turned to me, his eyes black with anger. “She has robbed me,” he said more slowly, “of my sword.” He took two steps toward me, coming to stand perfectly still only inches away. “Well,” he demanded, “I suppose you're going to try to explain.”

My mouth dropped open and my arms ached, waiting for a homecoming that did not materialize. “I
told
you I'd be late,” I said. “I called you as soon as I knew.” Carefully edging past Alex, I slipped my coat onto a chair. “I thought you'd be happy that I made it home tonight.”

Alex spun me around by the shoulder. “Your plane wasn't late,” he said. “I called the airport.”

“Of course it was,” I snapped. “Whoever you talked to read the computer wrong. Why in God's name would I lie to you?”

Alex's mouth tightened. “You tell me.”

I rubbed my temples, wondering what kind of stress Alex had to be under to dream up whatever wild schemes were running through his head. “I can't believe you checked up on me,” I said.

The corner of Alex's mouth tipped up. “Well,” he said, “I don't trust you.”

The flat truth of his statement cut through my anger; the strain of a whole week of appearances caught up with me. My eyes filled with tears. This was not the evening I had planned; there would be no late-night snack in bed, no simple touches, no stunned wonder at the life we had created. I stared at Alex and wondered what had happened to the man I knew.

As soon as the first tears ran down my cheeks, Alex started to smile. He grabbed my shoulders hard. “Which one is it
, pichouette?”
he said, his voice spilling like silk. “Did you come from some other man's bed? Someone you picked up in Chicago? Or were you just wandering the streets, holding on to your little week of glory, in case failure is catching?”