Cutler 03 - Twilight's Child

stopped to wash the grease of his forehead and cheeks.
    "How did you find out where I was?" I began.
    "What's wrong, doctor?" he demanded, looking quickly from me to Dr. Lester, the physician I had been using to care for Christie. He was a very gentle man who had a way of putting his patients at ease with his comforting smile and methodical manner.
    "Nothing's wrong, Mr. Longchamp," he said, and then he smiled. "Unless you didn't want your wife to be pregnant."
    "Pregnant!" Jimmy's look of concern transformed into a look of shock rnd happiness. He smiled with a dazed expression in his eyes and started to stutter. "But
    "Congratulations," Doctor Lester said, laughing. "Is she all right? I mean—-"
    "Everything's fine, Mr. Longchamp," he assured Jimmy quickly.
    "Now, don't you feel foolish running down here like this, James Gary Longchamp?" I playfully chastised with my hands on my hips. Jimmy started to stutter again, so I took his hand. "Come on, Jimmy," I said. "We have lots of work to do."
    "Work! You're not working as hard as you've been working. No, sir. Things are gonna change around that hotel. And don't you start arguing about it, Dawn," he warned, placing his forefinger on my lips. "I'm about to be a daddy, and I've got a say in these matters."
    "Well, it's not going to happen tomorrow, Jimmy," I said, laughing. "And being pregnant isn't like being sick. I'm not going to lie around like Mother and be waited on hand and foot. So don't you start," I said firmly.
    "We'll see about all that," he replied.
    "Uh-oh," Doctor Lester said, "I'm stepping out of this." He retreated to his office, and Jimmy and I returned to the hotel, where we knew the news would spread and everyone would want to share in our happiness. I still couldn't believe it. I was pregnant with Jimmy's baby. At last it seemed all our dreams were coming true.
     
    Mother found out two days later and called. Bronson had told her. Sometimes Bronson knew things about events at the hotel before I did. He had his spies, his informers who kept him aware of how we were doing. I suspected Mr. Dorfman might be his source. I didn't blame Bronson; I imagined he wanted to be up on the news at the Cutler's Cove Hotel because it was such a big investment for his bank. Maybe some of the members of his board were pressuring him to keep tabs on how the new, very young owner of the Cutler's Cove Hotel was bearing up under her responsibilities.
    "I'm not surprised you hid this news from me," Mother began. She didn't even say hello or ask me how I was. She went right into her tirade. "Why you would want to make me a grandmother again, I'll never know. You just got married recently, and you're so young. You have so much to live for, so much to do, and here you go having another baby."
    "Mother, getting pregnant and having children is not sentencing yourself to death," I replied quickly.
    "That's what you say now, but just wait," she moaned, as if it were she who was having the baby. "It takes months, years to get your figure back; most women never do," she warned.
    "I'm not worried about that, Mother. I had no trouble getting my figure back after Christie was born, did I?"
    "You say that now because you are young and naive, but oh, how you will change your mind. Believe me. What are you going to do," she snapped, "have a half dozen babies?"
    "Mother, you had three children, didn't you?" I pointed out.
    "Don't remind me," she said, and then she gave out a deep sigh. "I suppose everyone in the community will be talking about it soon," she added, once again speaking as if my becoming pregnant was a scandal.
    "I think they will have more interesting subjects to amuse them, Mother. If they don't, their lives must be terribly boring."
    "You don't realize who we are in this community," she lectured. "Everything we do, everything that relates to us is news here. Why—why, we are their royalty, their celebrities. Like it or not," she said, "we live in a fishbowl."
    "You didn't always think that way, Mother," I said. "You certainly didn't worry about being under glass," I reminded her. It came out a great deal sharper than I had intended, but Mother was making me angry. I didn't ask to be put on display and have my every little action and decision put under a microscope.
    "I was young and foolish and very unhappy then," she retorted. "I thought you understood that," she added, with tears in her voice. "Oh, do what you want. You never listen to anything I say anyway," she