Prospect Street (39 page)

She set the glass on the edge of her grandmother's mahogany table. “I cleaned the house and did some gardening. Read a little. And I made a casserole for dinner because I wasn't sure what time you would be home.”

“I lost my appetite about four o'clock. Do you want to know why? I got this reminder from my secretary.” Joe thrust out a slip of paper.

Frowning, Lydia took it. The paper had been crumpled, then smoothed. The words were in pencil, and the light was dim. She couldn't make them out. “I can't read it.”

“It's from your obstetrician's office. You have an appointment tomorrow?”

“Yes, but—”

“They couldn't reach you at home, so they left the reminder
with my secretary. Apparently they had my office number in case of emergency.”

“I was home all day, Joe. But I was outside for part of it, pulling weeds in the garden. It was such a beautiful day I—”

“Let me tell you the best part. You don't know the best part, Lydia. She wasn't just reminding
you;
she was reminding
me.
Because your doctor likes to have the fathers come at the end of the second trimester, and I'm expected at this appointment.”

She pretended she didn't understand, desperately trying to buy time. “I didn't ask you because you're so busy. I figured I could tell you everything you needed to know afterward, I—”

“Needed to know, Lydia? Like the fact that you're a full month further along than you told me? Like that? Like the fact that you got pregnant when I was away from home? Like that?”

He was shouting now, and moving toward her. She backed away, but the table was behind her, and she was trapped. He slapped her hard across the cheek. Then he clasped his hands around her throat and began to choke her.

She grabbed his hands and tugged at them. “Joe!” She couldn't breathe. The plea was expelled on her last breath. Frantically, she tugged harder.

Something crossed his face, some semblance of reason, perhaps only the realization that if he continued, his life would change forever. He dropped his hands, but he didn't move away. He trapped her there, the bulk of his body a barrier to escape.

“I called your doctor and told him I was confused about dates. He went over them with me, Lydia, including conception times. This isn't my baby, is it? Say it!”

She knew better than to lie. She shook her head. He closed his for eyes a moment, as if to gather the strength not to finish what he'd started. Then he stepped away.

“You whore.”

She put her hands to her throat. Moments went by before air was passing normally through her lungs again. Despite the attack, she wasn't frightened of another. Joe was not a physical man, and until now he had never lifted a hand against her.
He controlled with words. The attack had been one moment of pure unadulterated rage, completely out of character.

“I didn't know,” she said. “Not at first. When I told you I was pregnant, I thought the baby was yours.”

“Even though you'd had an affair?”

“We—I was careful. I thought pregnancy was impossible.”

“You need a few lessons in biology, don't you?” His expression was menacing, but his hands were locked behind his back. “Who's the father?”

She shook her head.

“I'll find out.”

“It doesn't matter. I haven't seen him since the day I found out I was pregnant.”

“What? He didn't want a pregnant mistress?”

“I told him goodbye, Joe. I thought I was having your baby.”

“And when you determined differently?”

“He still doesn't know.”

“So you were going to pass it off as mine? That was your answer?”

“I didn't know what to do. And for a long time I thought the baby might be yours, after all. I hoped…”

“If wishes were horses, huh?”

“I know how you must feel.”

“I doubt that, Lydia. But since you think you can read minds, what am I planning next? What does the future hold?”

“If you divorce me, the truth will come out. And everyone will know that Joe Huston was cuckolded by his own wife.”

“Yes, but there's always the sympathy factor.”

“You don't want sympathy. You want power.”

“If divorce makes
me
look weak, it will make
you
look like a fallen woman.”

“With time my letter
A
will fade until nobody remembers.”

“In the capital, everyone remembers everything.”

She tried to appeal to his better side. “I don't want a divorce. Do you?”

“No, but I don't want this baby even more. So here's what
we're going to do. I've had the afternoon to give this some thought. You're going away, somewhere nice and quiet, because you're having problems with the pregnancy. You'll deliver out of town, and the baby will unfortunately be stillborn—or that's what we'll tell people. You can do whatever you want with it at that point. Leave it on someone's doorstep, give it to some childless woman, I don't care. Just be sure no one ever discovers the truth. Then you'll come back here, we'll stay together for a year, after which we'll file quietly for a divorce. Nobody will connect the two events.”

“I'm not giving away my baby like a CARE package. And there's no such thing as a quiet divorce for a politician. Someone will snoop. Someone will discover the truth.”

“If our despicable president can cover up
his
shenanigans, we can keep this a secret!”

“I'll tell the whole world the truth before I'll give this baby away.”

His eyes were blazing, but his hands were still locked behind his back. “Then what's your plan, Lydia?”

“I married you in good faith. I thought we could make a wonderful life together, but you drove me to this affair with your demands and your criticism and your lack of affection. You have some responsibility. So here's what
we're
going to do. We're going to stay together, and you're going to claim this baby as your own. You're going to help me raise it, and as much as you're capable, you're going to love it. In return I'll be the perfect political wife. I'll do everything in my power to help you. On the surface we'll be the ideal American family.”

“You're crazy.”

“Do you think so?” She was trembling now, about to play her final card.

“Why would I stay with you? Why would I accept a child who isn't mine?”

So she told him. She watched his eyes widen and watched, for the first time in their marriage, fear steal over his features and overshadow conceit.

“And that's why,” she finished at last. “Because in the end, you have no choice.”

He stared at her for a long moment. As she watched him, she wondered if he would explode again, perhaps kill her. But he was too much of a political animal for that, because by now he probably realized that if she died under any circumstances except the most natural, he would be an immediate suspect.

Her attorney would see to it.

 

“So Dad realized the baby wasn't his flesh and blood,” Faith said. “And for some reason he was willing to accept it and move on? I can't buy that, Mother. Joe Huston doesn't have a forgiving bone in his body. And what about Dominik? Did he find out Hope was his? Is that why he killed himself? Because
his
daughter had been kidnapped? Or did he take Hope after all, because he thought she belonged to him and something terrible went wrong along the way?”

“Dominik figured out the truth,” Lydia said. “After Hope was born, Dottie Lee told him that the baby had come a little earlier than expected but we were both doing fine. Dominik worried all along that he might be the father, even after all my assurances. When he counted backward from July, he knew he'd been right. The three weeks your father was away were the three that we were together the most.”

“Surely he came to see you when he discovered whose child it was. What did he say?”

Lydia could talk for hours and not tell it all, not the terrible emotions that had filled her, not the despair that she and Dominik could never escape together with their child and start a new life.

The last time she saw him was as clear to her as the past few minutes. The man himself was dead. The child had only been hers for a week. But the tragedy would be engraved on her heart forever.

 

The birth wasn't easy. 1962 was the year of the Thalidomide tragedy. Lydia finished the pregnancy convinced that her sins
would mark her child, that somehow the things she had done with Dominik would imprint themselves on her son or daughter for the world to see.

When labor began, Joe took her to the hospital and dropped her off, giving instructions to the nursing staff to call his secretary when the baby arrived. She was left to labor alone while she fought every contraction, hoping the labor would stop and she could go back home, her sins yet undiscovered.

The hospital was advanced, and hygiene was considered more important than comfort. The nurses only visited to chart her contractions. When the time came to deliver, she was so heavily sedated that the doctor had to use forceps to usher Hope into the world. Hours passed before Lydia learned she had a healthy daughter.

The first sight of Hope allayed months of fears. She was a beautiful baby, with masses of dark hair and chubby cheeks. The nurses bragged she was the prettiest child in the nursery and couldn't understand when Lydia clasped her baby daughter to her chest and wept.

Unfortunately, the nurses owned her child. They brought Hope to be fed every four hours and whisked her away when twenty minutes were up. Breast-feeding was out of the question, not the style and not considered the scientific alternative. Lydia longed to try anyway, but she knew Joe would be furious. The sight of someone else's baby at his wife's breasts might be the final straw, so she let the nurses bind them and took the drugs they prescribed. And she dutifully placed the rubber nipple between Hope's lips, whether the baby wanted it or not.

The nurses told her Joe had come to see her while she was still sleeping, and that he had made a fuss over Hope. Lydia didn't see him until the day after the birth, when he arrived with a photographer to record the happy event. She smiled dutifully and let him hold the baby for the photos.

Late that evening she lay awake, staring at the ceiling and
praying she had made the right decisions. At Hope's final feeding that night, she had been fussy and unpleasant, as if she sensed her mother's tension. In front of the photographer and nurses Joe had kissed her and promised to visit again tomorrow, but Lydia doubted he would be back. She was alone in an antiseptic hospital where visitors were discouraged and her baby was sequestered.

The night nurse came with a routine sleeping pill, but when the woman turned to pour ice water, Lydia slipped it under the covers. The nurse left and turned off the light, and, wide-awake, Lydia stared at the shadows creeping across the ceiling.

Sometime later the door squeaked, and she shifted to see what the nurse had forgotten. Dominik moved silently across the room to stand beside her bed.

She sat upright, pulling the sheet to her breasts. She was wearing a hospital gown, and she felt exposed and ugly.

He held a finger to his lips. “I have been waiting for her to leave this wing. She won't be back again, will she?”

“Not for hours, but—”

“Good, then.” He rested his hands on the metal railing that enclosed her bed. She had asked the nurse not to raise it, but it was hospital policy, even for healthy new mothers. Now she felt as if Dominik were a visitor at the zoo.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“I came to see my daughter.”

Something rose in her throat. A denial, perhaps. Or simply bile, but in the end she swallowed both. “I didn't know,” she said. “Not for a long time. When I told you she was Joe's, that's what I believed.”

“And you didn't think to tell me differently? This was something you didn't consider?”

“What good would it do? She's Joe's daughter now. The birth certificate has his name on it.”

“And he knows she is not his?”

“Yes, he knows.”

“What kind of man accepts this?”

“One who has no choice.” There was only dim light from the street lamps outside her window, but she saw that he didn't believe her.

From the beginning she had considered whether to tell Dominik the whole story. Someday Joe might discover Dominik was Hope's father, and she didn't want him to punish her lover or harm his family. She was only too aware that a man like Joe could pull any number of strings. If Dominik knew the truth, he might be able to protect himself. Now that was all she could give him.

She spoke quietly, but she leaned forward, still holding the sheet against her chest. “Last year, after the Bay of Pigs, Joe and several other political leaders discussed assassinating President Kennedy.”

She lowered her voice even more. “Joe hates the president. He thinks he's a traitor, and so do the others. So they came up with a plan. They were going to use Cuban nationals to kill him. Then, if any of the men were caught, they could claim they were under orders from Castro.”

“He hates the president this much? He would order a man killed in cold blood because he hates his politics?”

“He hates everything about him, Dominik. He thinks Kennedy is leading us to hell. He's sure he's going to push civil rights legislation and integration, and if Johnson becomes president,
he
won't dare. Johnson's a Southerner, too, don't you see? They feel safer with him. And they think Kennedy is soft on Communism and too liberal to do what he needs to in Cuba. Joe was in Cuba; he's rabid on the subject. He and the others think Kennedy's a poisonous moral influence.”

“They think the president is a poison, but they don't think killing him is bad?”