For All Their Lives

 

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Table of Contents

As a mother, a sister, an aunt, a writer, and as a human being, I want to thank all those fine, dedicated, wonderful nurses who took care of our sons so willingly and selflessly in Vietnam.

H
E WATCHED HER
. . . with clinical interest.

And he wondered why he felt so removed.

The object of Mac Carlin's intense scrutiny was Alice, the woman he'd been married to for eight years. He felt like a sneak, a Peeping Tom, watching her.

Mac's index finger automatically rose upward to adjust his aviator glasses, which were slipping down his nose.

How was it possible, he wondered, for this woman to spend eight solid hours sleeping between lace-bordered satin sheets, and then wake up with every blond hair still in place? There was color on her high cheekbones and a smudged line under her lower lashes. And not one, but two diamonds winked in each ear. Her lips were a glossy deep pink that matched the polish on her exceptionally long nails. He wasn't sure, but he thought the nails were artificial. He wasn't sure about the glossy pink lips either. It had been awhile since he'd kissed his wife or even looked at her up close.

The peach-satin creation that swirled about her was one he'd never seen before. He knew that it must have cost as much as two good suits from an expensive tailor.

Once he'd thought her delectable as a bonbon. He'd wanted her, but the only way he could have her was to marry her. Which he did, the day he graduated from West Point. Crossed swords and all.

To his mind, Alice now more closely resembled a shellacked mannequin, and her personality, if she'd ever had one, was brittle and artificial.

When he'd first met Alice Summers at a pool party ten years ago, during his third year at the Academy, she looked like the girl next door. She'd been a flirt, a tease and a virgin. She told him in no uncertain terms that she was a “good girl” and didn't “put out” for anyone. He'd done everything but howl at the moon in his desire to have her, but she wouldn't even let him put his hand near her breast, much less
inside
her dress. He couldn't really remember now, but he thought that back then he'd respected her for holding out.

Marriage to Alice had been, and still was, the biggest disappointment of his life. Alice's idea of sex was: I give you something and you give me something back. What he had to give were material offerings: a new fur jacket, a gem, a trip, a sports car, trinkets, elegant handbags, lizard shoes, anything so long as it was expensive. With every promise of a new treat, Alice performed. Once a week. If he held out in the gift department, once every two weeks. If the check from his trust fund was slow in arriving, every three weeks.

It took him a full year before he got it through his head that he was buying his wife's sexual favors, and another year before he realized Alice had married him for his money. He couldn't recollect anything about the third and fourth years, but he did remember the fifth year because he'd asked for a divorce. Of course she'd said no, after she'd had a good laugh. “Do whatever you want, darling,” she'd said, “but please, be discreet.” He'd never touched her again, until a few months ago when he'd gotten stinking drunk and literally dragged her into his bedroom. He hadn't raped her. You couldn't rape someone who was dead from the neck down. In fact, he remembered her exact words: “Just do it and get it over with.”

The next day he'd volunteered for Vietnam. He managed to pull the same strings his father had pulled to get him stationed at the Pentagon. His father, Supreme Court Justice Marcus Carlin, had more strings to yank than a hot air balloon. It had worked for him just the way it worked for his father. Captain Malcolm Carlin was to depart the United States of America in two days. He felt like cheering. Maybe he would, after he told Alice.

Mac leaned against the wall. Alice hadn't yet noticed him. Maybe, he thought, she hadn't put the startling green contact lenses in her eyes yet. Cat eyes. All she needed was a tail.

For the thousandth time he wondered what it would take to make Alice give him a divorce. He'd already offered her the house in Palm Springs, the chalet in Aspen, this monstrous house in McLean, Virginia. He'd even offered her his prize stallion, Jeopardy. She'd laughed and said, “It's not enough.” He'd raged, demanding to know what
was
enough. “Put a price on it, Alice.”

“Some day, Mac, when your father goes to that big courtroom in the sky,” she'd said, “you will be an incredibly wealthy man. When that happens we'll discuss it, and not a moment before.” She'd stunned him with that. He'd called her a ghoul and she'd laughed again, a weird, tinkling sound that gave him goose bumps.

What bothered Mac even more was his father's blindness with regard to Alice. The old man thought she was right up there with sliced bread. On those occasions when the old man needed a hostess, Alice willingly played the part, which gave her a perfect entrée into Washington society.

Mac had no illusions about his father, none at all. Marcus Carlin was a lecher, if a discreet one—a good ol' boy, salivating, geriatric, ass-pincher.

The old man was as fit and trim as a frisky pup. He still worked out, jogged three miles every morning, had the wickedest backhand at the country club and could belt down a half bottle of Old Grand-Dad and never blink an eye. He was also the youngest Supreme Court judge on the bench.

Mac sighed. Time to get on with his day. He glanced at his watch. Just enough time for a quick cup of coffee and another minute to tell Alice he was leaving. He wondered now for the first time what his wife was doing up at the ungodly hour of seven-thirty. He allowed his eyebrows to shoot upward in surprise.

“To what do I owe this
early
morning breakfast?”

“It's
too
early for humor, Mac,” Alice murmured.

Once again Mac wondered how she managed to talk without moving her facial muscles.

Mac poured his coffee into a fragile little cup, which looked like it belonged to a child's tea set. He shrugged.

Alice looked down at the piece of dry toast on the gold-rimmed plate. Would it stay down if she nibbled on it? She rather doubted it. Panic coursed through her. She knew what was wrong, and she didn't need a pelvic exam or a urine test to confirm it. She was pregnant. The whole idea was so repulsive, so abhorrent, she almost gagged. A baby wasn't in her plans—not now, not later, not ever.

Last night in the privacy of her bathroom she'd wadded two towels into a ball and slipped them under her nightgown to see what she would look like with a protruding stomach. Her father-in-law would be delighted. Mac would be delirious. But she had gagged.

She needed to give her condition a
lot
of thought. It was only nine months out of her life. She'd demand a trip to the south of France, where she'd live out those months so that none of her friends would see her stomach grow fat.

“Dieting again?” Mac said, stalling for time.

Mac was such a disappointment to her. She'd expected wonderful things from him, and he hadn't come through. He was still a captain working at the Pentagon. Nothing prestigious about that. He
did
look dashing in his dress uniform, but otherwise he didn't stir her in any way.

“You should think about dieting yourself, Mac,” she said. “You look like you've put on a few pounds.” It was a lie, she thought sourly, he was as fit as his father.

“Alice, I have to talk to you about something, and no, it cannot wait. I'm leaving for Vietnam in two days. I volunteered. We'll have time away from one another, and when I get back, if I still feel the same way I do now, I'll file for a divorce. I want that clear and out in the open. If you still refuse, I'll simply walk out.”

Alice raised her green eyes guilelessly and smiled. “I'm pregnant, Mac. So it's hardly the time to think about divorce. Or for you to be going off and leaving me. Well, say something.”

He did, but it wasn't what he intended to say. “Did you tell my father?” A baby. The thought was mind-boggling.

Alice's brain raced.
What did that mean?
Did he suspect? “What a perfectly silly thing to say. Of course I didn't tell him. You're the first one I've told.”

“I'm having lunch with Dad. I'll tell him. He'll look out for you while I'm gone.” Jesus Christ! Of all the things in the world she could have sprung on him, this was the worst.

Mac found himself staring at his wife. She was beautiful, cold, and brittle. He now realized, of course, that he'd never loved her.

Alice's long nails tapped on the dining room table. “How long will you be away?” she asked in a disinterested voice.

He didn't want to tell Alice he would be in Vietnam a year, so he shrugged.

“Be sure there's enough money in the account to take care of things. I don't want to have to beg your father for handouts. I think I'll go to France and have the baby there. I'm sure you have no objections. Of course, I'll need enough money to rent a villa. And I mean carte blanche, Mac,” she said warily.

“I wouldn't have it any other way,” Mac said sarcastically. He saluted her smartly before striding out of the dining room.

Alice wrinkled her forehead. She hadn't counted on Mac's being gone for the birth of the baby. The manicured nails tapped on the shiny surface of the dining room table. When Plan A doesn't work, switch to Plan B. Or C or D.

While her mind raced, rejecting, sifting, collating, Alice's eyes raked the dining room she'd inherited from Mac's father. After their marriage the judge had turned over the Carlin homestead to Mac and moved into a house in the Georgetown section of Washington.

She remembered that day so well. She'd walked through the house, awed at the magnificence of it, but she couldn't imagine Mac, as a little boy, scampering about the huge rooms. He certainly wouldn't have been allowed to bounce a ball on the old, polished wood floors, or to slide down the banister of the splendid staircase. She'd only given the Carlin ancestry, which graced the walls, a cursory glance. They were history and had nothing to do with her.

She had never changed anything in the huge colonial mansion, because to do so would have angered Marcus Carlin, and if there was one thing she vowed never to do, it was to upset her father-in-law. In the beginning the heavy, antique furniture depressed her, but once she made it her business to learn its value, her attitude changed. Now she had it all catalogued, right down to the last silver spoon.

She'd also had her jewelry catalogued and appraised, which comprised all the fine pieces she had weasled out of Mac and her father on her birthdays and Christmas. She had the neck for diamond chokers, and just the right earlobes for the three-carat clusters that once belonged to Mac's grandmother. Her wrists were slender and graceful enough for the several diamond bracelets she constantly wore. She had a total of seven valuable rings, so valuable that Marcus Carlin insisted she keep them in a safety vault, but it annoyed her that she and Mac had to pay the outrageous insurance premiums on them. Once she'd had to cancel a trip to the Virgin Islands because premiums were due. The following day she'd taken her entire jewelry box to Marcus Carlin and with tears in her eyes told him that she and Mac couldn't afford to keep them. The judge had immediately written a check. Mac and his father had serious words over that incident. She and Mac had had serious words too.

Alice looked down the length of the cherrywood table, which was set with two magnificent arrangements of fresh tulips and greenery. It would seat sixteen comfortably. She fancied she had an eye for beauty, but none impressed her as much as her own. She presented a lovely picture sitting there at the head of the table in her elegant dressing gown, and she knew it. The fine crystal, bone china, and sterling silver inspired her eyes to sparkle. The Irish linen cloth and napkins felt like satin in her hands. Her eyes turned to the sideboard, where an elegant silver service stood. All this now belonged to her, the mistress of Carlin House.

And she was fucking pregnant.

The birth alone would be worth a palatial estate in Hawaii. Or perhaps a chalet in Switzerland. She did love to ski. Then again, she loved the sun.

The Carlin money was so old, it was moldy. It had been made in tobacco and cotton, which was another way of saying the sweat, blood, and tears of slaves. There was so much of it, it boggled her mind. And she wanted it. All of it. If
she
couldn't have it all, then her child would get it. Either way, it would be hers.

On her way up the majestic stairway that led to the wide, central foyer, with its decorative balcony, Alice vaguely wondered, and not for the first time, about her feelings toward Mac. He'd certainly given her everything she'd ever asked for, even the family home. He'd grumbled about accepting it, of course, but in the end he'd given in, because he thought it would make her happy. And then he'd taken her around the world, again, to make her happy.

Alice removed her dressing gown and hung it carefully on a scented hanger. She wanted her own maid, someone to pick up after her, but so far that little treasure had eluded her. A cook, a housekeeper, and a gardener were all she had. Now, though, with the baby coming, she was almost certain she could cajole a personal maid out of her father-in-law. She would also have to give some thought to a nurse and a nanny.

An ugly look crossed Alice's face as she ran her hands over her flat stomach. Soon it would bulge like a watermelon, and she'd have to wear those damn tent dresses. Maybe she could have Dior whip up something that wouldn't shriek pregnancy.

Today was one of her nothing days, a day when she could sit and read, drink a mint julep, watch television, or go shopping. She hadn't been shopping in two days. By now Garfinkle's would have new merchandise. A day for herself. Or she could read a book on pregnancy, the one the doctor had given to her last week. As if she wanted to read about a uterus, ovaries, and the birth canal. Just the words were enough to make her heave.