Nobody's Baby but Mine(50)
“Then your SATs. What were they?”
“I don’t remember.”
She regarded him bitterly. “You’re a liar. Everybody remembers their SATs.”
He swiped at some wet leaves on his jeans as he rose.
“Tell me, dammit!”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.” He sounded annoyed, but not particularly dangerous.
That didn’t calm her. Instead, she once again felt a swell of hysteria. “You tell me right now, or, I swear to God, I’ll find some way to murder you! I’ll put ground glass in your food! I’ll stab you with a butcher knife while you’re sleeping! I’ll wait until you’re in the shower and throw in an electrical appliance! I’ll—I’ll club you in the head with a baseball bat some night when you walk in the door!”
He stopped brushing his jeans and gazed at her with what looked more like curiosity than apprehension. The fact that she knew she was only making herself appear more irrational further inflamed her. “Tell me!”
“You are some bloodthirsty woman.” Looking faintly bemused, he shook his head. “That electrical appliance thing . . . You’d need an extension cord or something to reach all the way into the shower. Or maybe you weren’t planning to plug it in.”
She gritted her teeth, feeling prodigiously foolish. “If it wasn’t plugged in, it wouldn’t electrocute you, now would it?”
“Good point.”
She took a deep breath and tried to regain her sanity. “Tell me your SATs. You owe me that much.”
He shrugged and bent over to pick up her glasses. “Maybe fourteen hundred, or somethin’ like that. Mighta been a little lower.”
“Fourteen hundred!” She punched him as hard as she could, then stomped away from him into the woods. He was a hypocrite and a fraud, and she felt sick down to the very depth of her soul. Even Craig wasn’t as smart as this man.
“That’s dumb compared to you,” he called after her.
“Don’t ever speak to me again.”
He came up next to her, but didn’t touch her. “Come on, Rosebud, you’ve got to settle down enough so I can take you apart for what you’ve done to me, which is a whole lot worse than my damned SATs.”
She whirled on him. “You didn’t do anything to me! You’ve done it to my child, don’t you see that? Because of you, an innocent child is going to grow up to be a freak.”
“I never told you I was stupid. You just assumed.”
“You said ain’t! That first night we were together, you said ain’t twice!”
A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. “A little local color. I’m not apologizin’.”
“There are comic books all over the house!”
“I was just livin’ up to your expectations.”
She collapsed then. She turned her back to him, crossed her arms against the nearest tree trunk, and rested her forehead against her wrist. All the humiliations of her childhood returned to her: the taunts and cruelties, the awful isolation. She had never fit in, and now, neither would her child.
“I’m going to take the baby to Africa,” she whispered. “Away from civilization. I’ll teach her myself, so she doesn’t have to grow up with other children taunting her.”
A surprisingly gentle hand settled over the small of her back and began to rub. “I’m not going to let you do that to him, Rosebud.”
“You will once you see what a freak she is.”
“He’s not going to be a freak. Is that how your father felt about you?”
Everything within her went still. She pulled away from him and fumbled in the pocket of her Windbreaker for a tissue. She took her time blowing her nose, wiping her eyes, regaining her self-control. How could she have let herself fall apart like this? It was no wonder he thought she was crazy.
She gave her nose a final blow. He held out her glasses, and she put them on, ignoring the strands of moss caught in one hinge. “I’m sorry for causing such a dreadful scene. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never hit anyone in my life.”
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” He grinned, and to her amazement, a dimple popped into the hard plane of his cheek. Stunned, she gazed at it for several long moments before she was able to pick up her train of thought.
“Violence doesn’t solve anything, and I could have hurt you quite badly.”
“I’m not trying to get you cranked up again, Rosebud, but you don’t have a whole lot going for you when it comes to packin’ a punch.” He took her arm and began steering her back toward the house.
“This is my fault. Everything’s been my fault from the beginning. If I hadn’t let myself buy into every conceivable stereotype about athletes and Southerners, I would have been a more astute judge of your mental abilities.”