Amy looked dismayed but stayed where she was.
Ann walked over to the hall, put her mouth to the doorjamb, and said as firmly as she could, “Heath, I’ve already told you that I don’t want to talk to you.”
She could hear his heavy sigh from the other side of the paneled door.
“Ann, I’ve had legal advice on this,” Heath replied wearily. “I can get a court order allowing me access to you if you want me to go that route.”
“On what grounds?” Ann demanded.
“You sound like a lawyer,” Amy whispered.
Ann held up her hand for Amy to be quiet.
“On the grounds that you’re sequestered here in an emotionally disturbed state and may be endangering the life of our unborn child,” Heath replied.
This remark so enraged Ann that she yanked open the door and confronted Heath, hands on hips, eyes blazing.
“How dare you?” she demanded. “Not wanting to see you means that I am emotionally sound, not disturbed, and since when are you concerned about the welfare of a child you don’t want and furthermore claim isn’t yours?”
Amy was slinking past Ann soundlessly, heading straight for the closet door.
“Stop!” Ann said, whirling to confront her.
Amy stopped.
“Why don’t you let Amy go? This is embarrassing her and isn’t doing much for me, either,” Heath said. “We’ll have to talk about this sooner or later, it might as well be now.”
Ann glared at him, thinking it over as Amy looked at her hopefully.
“All right,” Ann finally said.
“I’ll be across the square in the Shamrock Shanty,” Amy said swiftly, grabbing her coat from the closet. She gave Ann the thumbs up sign behind Heath’s head as she fled through the door and closed it behind her.
“How can you live in this place?” Heath asked, looking around him in amazement. “It’s a telephone booth.”
“I’m not in the mood for small talk, Heath,” Ann said directly. “Get to the point.”
“I want you back, you and the baby,” he said.
“I take it you saw your doctor and he confirmed that you could be the baby’s father?” Ann said.
“I haven’t seen anyone. I know the baby is mine. You’re in love with me and you wouldn’t have slept with anyone else.”
“And when did you receive this dramatic revelation?”
“I’ve known it all along.”
“So you had a psychotic episode when you accused me of being unfaithful?”
Heath slumped in resignation, unable to reply. He unbuttoned the cashmere stadium coat he was wearing. “Do you think it would be possible for me to sit down? My limo didn’t show up at the airport and I had to take a taxi here from Kennedy.”
“What a shame,” Ann said, stepping aside, no trace of sympathy in her voice.
Heath dumped the heavy coat on a chair and sat on the small sofa. He was wearing a cream-colored wool crew-neck sweater and chocolate brown slacks with his customary moccasins, which were now stained dark with dampness.
“Take your shoes off,” Ann said.
He glanced up at her. “What?”
“Take your shoes off, they’re soaked right through. You’ll catch a cold.”
He obeyed, peeling off the wet socks, too. Ann took the socks and draped them over the radiator, where they sizzled and emitted a satisfying, safe- from-the-storm odor of wet wool and steam. She shoved both of the stiffening moccasins under the radiator and turned around to face him.
“Tm not coming back,” Ann said.
Heath looked at her, then away. “Ann, I’m sorry for what I said. It was uncalled for and I’ve regretted it ever since.”
“I believe that you’re sorry. This time, as you were the last time. And you’ll be sorry the next time, too.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“There will be a next time, because the fundamental need to hurt me and drive me away will always be there. I can’t raise a child in that atmosphere. I won’t.”
“So you’re saying there’s nothing I can do to make it right and have a life with you?”
“There is.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “Like what?” he said.
“Go for counseling. I’ll go with you.”
His face closed. “No.”
She picked up his coat and handed it to him. “Then there’s nothing more to say,” Ann stated.
He dropped the coat on the floor. “I’m not going to a headshrinker to dredge up all that crap from my childhood that I’ve been trying to forget for twenty years!”
“It’s the source of your problems now, Heath. Surely you must see that.”
“I don’t need to be analyzed by you or anybody else, thank you very much.”
“Fine. Goodbye. I think you can see the door from where you’re sitting.”
His eyes narrowed. “How could I have forgotten how tough you can be?”
Ann said nothing.
“I should have remembered the way you were with your father,” he added.
“If I’m tough, as you put it, you’ve forced it on me. I’m not going to raise this child in an environment as dysfunctional as the one which surrounded you.”
“And the only way to prevent that is to get rid of me?” Heath inquired.
“Or help you.”
“I don’t need that kind of help. We can work things out between us.”
“We’ve tried that, Heath! How’s it going?”
Heath’s mouth became a hard line. “If you refuse to come back to me, I can sue you for custody once the baby is born.”
“Go right ahead. I’ll be very happy to say that you had an operation to prevent your ever fathering children and then denied paternity when I told you I was pregnant. I doubt very much that a judge will give custody to a man who never wanted children in the first place and would spend all his time working while the child was left in the care of servants.”
He gazed at her levelly. “I see you’ve already thought about all of this.”
“I’ve had plenty of time to think.”
“So this is how we’re going to leave it?”
“I guess so.”
“What are you going to do? Stay here?”
“Yes. I have a good doctor, the hospital is two blocks away. I have plenty of work to keep me busy.”
“What about the trip back to Italy?”
“It can wait until after the baby is born.”
“I’ll want to see it.”
“I’m sure we can work out reasonable visitation rights, other people do.”
“As crisp as lettuce, aren’t you?” he said bitterly.
Ann relented. “Look, Heath, I know you can afford to hire a legal team that will drag me through the courts for years. For that matter, you can probably pay off anybody you want in order to make this come out exactly the way you please. But I’m asking you, for the sake of the baby, not to do that.”
He was silent, then picked up his coat and put it over his arm. He stepped into his fried shoes and then draped his other arm around her shoulder and kissed her cheek.
“Don’t, Heath. Please don’t. That’s not going to help this situation.”
His arm fell. “When is the baby due?”
“The third week in August.”
“I’ll arrange through Caldwell to have all of your bills sent to me.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“You’re still my wife. We’ll work out the details later, but I’m not going to have you scrimping along here while you’re carrying this baby.”
“All right.”
He looked at her and she felt her heart turn over; he still had the power to turn her insides into putty. She’d better send him on his way, fast.
Ann walked to the door and opened it for him. “Goodbye, Heath,” she said.
“Goodbye.”
Ann waited until she heard his footsteps fade before she started to cry, staring at his smoldering socks on the radiator.
Chapter 12
“Good Lord, you’re as big as a house,” Joan said, laughing delightedly and patting Ann’s tummy. “That baby isn’t going to arrive right now, is it?”
Ann closed the door of her apartment and ushered Joan into the living room, which appeared even smaller than usual with the boxes of baby clothes and receiving blankets stacked against one wall taking up a good deal of the walking space.