Bachelor Mother (20 page)

Their time together flew by. One day in January she was lying out on a chaise near the hot tub. Her knitting needles and yarn were in a tote by her side but Mel simply lay in the sun and relaxed, Henry at her feet.

She felt good. Really good. At peace with herself.

Bubba cared. She knew that now. Though neither of them talked about marriage, she knew the depth of his feeling for her. After Christmas Eve she’d simply moved into his bedroom. If she couldn’t give him anything else, she knew he loved waking up with her in the morning. And she loved to fall asleep in his arms.

She turned her head as she heard the sliding glass door open. Bubba appeared, dressed casually in a pair of gray slacks and the sweater she’d given him for Christmas.

“You’re sure you don’t want to come with me? Mom won’t mind.”

She shook her head. It was rare that Mrs. Williams asked her son to lunch. Mel didn’t want to intrude on their tenuous relationship. It seemed his mother was trying. She’d spent Christmas Eve with them. She’d dropped by one evening after that. Now lunch. Mel sensed something was going on and didn’t want to intrude.

“Eat a dessert for me,” she said, patting her baby belly.

“Will you stop worrying about gaining weight. You’re eating for a future surfing champion.”

She laughed. Bubba insisted his child would love the ocean as he did and she knew their baby would. How could she miss, with her parents being the outdoors buffs they were?

“Cheesecake – it’s my favorite.”

He smiled, leaned over and gave her a kiss. Within minutes, she heard the sound of his car starting up. She closed her eyes and turned her face into the sunshine.

* * *

“Mother, just tell me what’s bothering you.” Bubba shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Something was wrong. Lunch had been a disaster, his mother so obviously nervous she could barely eat a mouthful.

“Robert, I asked you to lunch today because I have something to tell you.”

“You’re getting married.” His mother had remarried once after the divorce but had been single again within three years.

“No. I’ll never get married again.”

He could detect real pain in the depth of her light blue eyes and suddenly it unnerved him. “Are you all right?”

She patted his arm awkwardly. “I’m fine.” Intimacy was difficult between them, old habits hard to break.

He sat back in his chair and stared at her, glad Mel had decided to remain at home. What the hell was going on?

She took a deep breath. “I should have told you years ago, but I thought you suffered enough when your father and I got divorced.”

Your father. 
For as long as he could remember, she’d never referred to his father as my husband or even Harold. It had always been “your father.”

She looked terribly vulnerable. In a completely spontaneous gesture, he took one of her hands in both of his.

“C’mon, Mom, spit it out. Nothing can be that bad.”

Her eyes were anguished. “Oh, Robert. He’s not your father.”

He listened in stunned silence as she told him of the brief love affair that had resulted in his birth, of her decision to get a divorce. And what Harold had done, the ultimatum he’d given her because he’d been so very, very bitter – she could leave but he’d make sure she’d never see her child again.

He listened, his chest feeling tighter and tighter. When she finished telling him the entire story, he asked the one crucial question.

“Does my birth father know about me?”

She nodded her head.

“Do I know him?”

“No.”

His hand tightened around hers. “Will you give me his address?” He had to know. Suddenly all the times he’d felt as if he were not quite his father’s son made sense. They'd never been alike.

Her eyes filled with tears as she nodded her head.

* * *

He lay in bed with Melanie that night staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of his world. In the space of an afternoon it had been rocked right off its foundation.

Santa Barbara.
Ninety miles up the coast. Some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. His father. Jonathan Mills. Just a name on a scrap of paper but it was all he had.

He remembered all the times he’d attempted to be close to his father and the countless little ways he’d been pushed away. Bubba had been eight years old when Donnie had asked him over to play. The moment he’d pushed the door open at the Randell household, he’d felt the warmth.

It had been so lacking in his life. He’d embraced his new family, watching, fascinated, as they shouted and argued, loved and
cared
  for each other. And every evening after he went home, he ate dinner at a table with his silent parents and wished for a brother like Donnie, just so he wouldn’t feel so alone.

Mel shifted in her sleep and sighed. She kicked off the covers all the time now, claiming she was too warm. He studied the smooth swell of her belly, the taut lines of her breasts. Gently, so as not to wake her, he placed his hand over her belly.

She sighed and moved closer to his touch.

For the first time Bubba thought about their baby as an actual child. Pregnancy was such an abstract idea. It was hard to believe Mel was going to have a baby –
they
  were going to have a baby.

He thought of his mother. She must have been miserable. If her husband had given her an ultimatum like that when she wanted to leave him, how supportive could he have been while she was pregnant? So much of the quiet tension between his parents made sense now. The way his father – stepfather – had watched his mother, never letting her out of his sight, the slightly ashamed expression she’d always worn. He remembered the way they’d stayed as far apart as possible – his stepfather in his home office, his mother in the kitchen.

Both their emotional lives had been over and they’d known it.

“Bubba?” Mel’s voice was sleepy.

He realized he’d been squeezing her belly slightly and dropped his hand, upset that he woke her. He wanted to ask her to take him in her arms and tell him she loved him but he didn’t want her to think he was weak. So he remained silent.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m just tense.”

“Do you want me to rub your back?”

“No. Go back to sleep.”

He could feel her eyes on him. He felt her hand reach out and brush his hair back from his forehead.

“Did you have a good time with your mom?”

His eyes stung. Her touch was so tender, so knowing. Mel never demanded an answer. She simply asked the right questions or listened – and waited for him to tell her. But he couldn’t. Not yet.

“You know my Mom,” he said roughly.

“I think she tried very hard, Bubba. I always – ” She stopped in midsentence and he glanced quickly at her face. She had the strangest expression. For an instant sheer, unreasoning terror washed over him.

Something’s wrong –

“Bubba,” she whispered. “Oh, Bubba, she’s moving! I can feel her, right inside me! Oh my God, she’s moving!”

She groped for his hand, pressed it against her belly. He couldn’t feel anything but her intense excitement.

“What does it feel like?” He was curious and scared at the same time. There was someone in there.

“Like – ” she wrinkled her face in concentration “ – like a little butterfly. Like she’s turning over. Oh, Bubba, do you feel it?”

“I can’t tell if it’s you or her.”

“Maybe she’ll do it again.”

They waited, lying side by side in the darkness, but nothing happened. Then Mel said quietly, “There she goes again.”

He gathered her into his arms, holding her tightly against him. He could feel her heart beating rapidly. He needed to hold her, needed to let her know how very special she was to him.

He felt her lips brush against his ear. “I love you, Bubba. I shouldn’t tell you but I’ve loved you for a long time.”

“Me, too.” It was all he could get past the sudden tightness in his chest.

* * *

Now that there were no secrets between them, each day flowed into the next and Mel really began to enjoy her pregnancy. The baby had become real to her. With just the slightest, sweetest fluttering movement, she suddenly became a person.

“Danielle. I like the name Danielle.” They were lying on the couch, watching the rain patter against the sliding glass door.

“What happened to poor old Skip?” Bubba hugged her playfully.

“Only if we have a boy.”

Bubba tickled her ear. “Did the doctor hear any multiple heartbeats?” He teased her about twins constantly. “The deal’s off if you have a litter,” he announced over breakfast one day. “It’ll be settled fair and square – one for you and one for me.” At her mock horrified expression, he’d laughed and reached over to tweak her hair.

“Everything’s fine. There’s only one heartbeat.”

“Danielle and Skip. I like that combination.”

“Danielle. Or maybe Alexandra,” Mel said.

“Alexandra sounds like a Russian princess.”

“Please don’t use that word in this house.” They both laughed, remembering the unfortunate Joel.

“Now there you go. If you have twin boys, we can call them Phillip and Joel. They’ll grow up to be musicians, not surfers. Those are good musician names.”

“Oh, please. Why don’t we get a kitten and call it Skip? You seem to have a fixation on that name.”

“Hey, I like Danielle. The kids at school can call her Dani.”

“Finally something we agree on.” She heaved a mock sigh of relief. “But what if it’s a boy? Robert junior? Bobby?”

“Nope,” Bubba said quickly. “I’d want him to have a name of his own. That baby book said you can give a kid a complex by saddling it with someone else’s name.”

Mel started to laugh. “What was the name of that guy on those old Gidget movies you used to make me watch? What was it?”

He didn’t answer.

She tickled his ribs. “Moondoggie! That’s it! Skip and Moondoggie! They’re unisex names. We have two picked just in case. Bubba, I can tell you don’t like it.”

“The kids will call him Moon for short.”

She was laughing so hard tears were rolling down her cheeks. “Can you see me on the front steps – ‘Moon, Skip, you two get in here this minute!’” She couldn’t stop laughing and her stomach was starting to hurt.

“Moon just doesn’t sound right.”

“Didn’t Frank Zappa name his daughter Moon Unit? I think it’s pretty distinctive.”

He growled deep in his throat, then rolled her carefully over on her back and nipped her neck gently. “If you’re not careful I’ll moon you.”

“It’ll be nothing I haven’t seen before.” She shrieked as he started to tickle her.

* * *

Several evenings later, he broached what was on his mind.

“I think we need to go on a honeymoon, Mel.”

She looked over at him, the sweater she'd been knitting completely forgotten. He’d captured her attention.

“What?”

“Before you say anything, hear me out. I thought we could take a long weekend and drive up the coast. Just something a little romantic.”

She was bristling slightly so he could tell she was pleased. Mel could sometimes get a little prickly when she was feeling deep emotion.

“When did you think this up?” Her question was abrupt but her eyes were dancing with happiness.

“Well, since you refuse to make an honest man of me…”

“Bubba, we’ve been through this a million times. Henry is going to remain the fattest thing in white in Santa Monica.”

“Will you cut that out!”

“I can’t get married looking this hideous.”

“You look beautiful to me.”

“We could elope,” Mel said.

“Nope, not good enough. I thought we could get married in the backyard.”

“Someone will mistake me for a great white shark and shoot to kill.”

“You could wear a red dress.”

“And look like a tomato? No thank you.”

He knew her fears were still lurking just behind the bantering. Mel wanted them to wait. She wanted him to have time to get to know his child and see if being a father was an experience he wanted. But he knew, now more than ever, that he didn’t want any life but the one he could share with her.

“We could sleep in, make love, order room service, eat croissants, make love – ”

“Then why go to Santa Barbara?”

‘We might roll out of bed and take a walk or two. You know what honeymoons are for.”

“I think we’ve practiced enough.” She was grinning.

“This is really important to me, Mel. I’d like to drive up this Thursday.”

“I’d love to. If I finish that sundress with the stripes, I can camouflage myself as a beach ball.”

“Mel!”

* * *

Friday morning he asked her to stay at the hotel while he ran a quick errand. He made sure she was settled in by the pool with a fat paperback and some freshly squeezed juice before he got into the car and headed toward town.

He’d always liked Santa Barbara. There was an ordinance that prohibited buildings from towering too high, so the city had resisted that overdeveloped, crowded look so many Southern California areas fell prey to. The main style of architecture was Spanish stucco with deep red tiles. Brilliantly colored flowers bloomed everywhere.

He’d already set up an appointment with Jonathan Mills. He had to know who his father was. His mother had said he’d kept track of Bubba from the moment he was born. Bubba had been relieved when he’d learned from Mr. Mills’ secretary that he would see him.

Father or not, he still could have refused.

His stomach seemed to tighten as he found the building, parked and walked inside and up the stairs to the second floor. Glancing at the office door and recognizing the name, Bubba gently pushed it open and walked inside.

Within minutes he was in his father’s office.

The man behind the desk stood up as he entered. Bubba recognized the eyes first – the same dark blue-gray. His blond hair was thinning, his face deeply tanned and etched with strong lines from a life outdoors. It was like looking in a mirror, seeing what he’d be like twenty-five years from now. Though the resemblance wasn’t exact, there was enough that he had no doubt this man was the father he’d searched for, unknowingly, all his life.