At night he and Judy would cuddle in the den to watch "Laugh-In" or "The Name of the Game" together, then maybe play a game of Scrabble before they went to bed. On warm weekends they’d go sailing on Lake Lanier, or play tennis and hike the nature trails at Callaway Gardens.
Life was quiet, ordered, sublimely normal. Jeff was thoroughly content. Not ecstatic—there was none of the sense of absolute enchantment he had felt in watching his daughter, Gretchen, grow up at the estate in Dutchess County—but he was happy, and at peace. For the first time, his long, chaotic life was defined by its utter simplicity and lack of turmoil.
Jeff dug his toes into the sand, raised himself to his elbows, and shaded his eyes from the sun with one hand. Judy was asleep on the blanket beside him, curled fingers still holding her place in a copy of Jaws. He gently kissed her half-open mouth.
"Want some Pina Colada?" Jeff asked as she stretched herself awake. "We’ve still got half a thermos left."
"Mmm. Just want to lie here like this. For about twenty years."
"Better turn over every six months or so, then."
She twisted her head to look at the back of her right shoulder, saw it was getting red. She rolled faceup, close to him, and he kissed her again; longer this time, and deeper.
A few yards down the beach another couple had a radio playing, and Jeff broke the kiss as the music ended and a Jamaican-accented announcer began reading about John Dean’s testimony that day in the Watergate hearings. "Love you," Judy said.
"Love you," he answered, touching the tip of her sun-pink nose. And he did, Lord God how he did.
Jeff allowed himself six weeks of vacation every year, in keeping with his pretense of a regular work schedule. The arbitrarily imposed limitation made the time seem all the sweeter. Last year they’d bicycled through Scotland, and this summer they planned to take a hot-air balloon tour of the French wine country. At this moment, though, he could think of no place he’d rather be than here in Ocho Rios, with the woman who had brought sanity and delight to his disjointed life.
"Necklace for the pretty missy, mon? Nice cochina necklace?" The little Jamaican boy was no older than eight or nine. His arms were draped with dozens of delicate shell necklaces and bracelets, and a cloth pouch tied at his waist bulged with earrings made from the same colorful shells. "How much for … that one, there?"
"Eight shilling."
"Make it one pound six, and I’ll take it." The boy raised his eyebrows, confused. "Hey, you crazy, mon? You s’pose go lower, not higher."
"Two pounds, then."
"I’m not gonna argue with you, mon. You got it." The child hurriedly took the necklace from his arm, handed it to Judy. "You wan' buy any more, I got plenty. Ever’body on the beach know me, my name Renard, O.K.?"
"O.K., Renard. Nice doing business with you." Jeff handed him two one-pound notes, and the boy scampered away down the beach, grinning.
Judy slipped the necklace on, shook her head in mock dismay. "Shame on you," she said, "taking advantage of a child that way."
"Could have been worse." Jeff smiled. "Another minute or so and I might have bargained him up to four or five pounds."
She looked down to rearrange the necklace, and when her eyes met his again there was sadness in them. "You’re so good around children," she said. "That’s my only regret, that we’ve never—"
Jeff placed his fingers lightly on her lips. "You’re my baby girl. All I need."
He could never tell her, never even let her guess, about the vasectomy he’d had in 1966, soon after they’d started making love. Never again would he give life to a human being, as he had to Gretchen, only to see her entire existence negated. To everyone but Jeff, she did not even live in memory; and on the unthinkable chance that he might be doomed to repeat his life yet again, he refused to leave in that sort of absolute limbo someone he’d not only loved, but had created.
"Jeff … I’ve been thinking."
He looked back at Judy, tried to keep the pain and guilt from showing. "About what?"
"We could—don’t answer right away; give yourself time to consider it—we could adopt."
He didn’t say anything for several seconds, just looked at her. Saw the love in her face, saw the need for even more of an outlet through which to express that love.
It wouldn’t be as if the children were his own, he thought. Even if he grew to love them, he wouldn’t be responsible for their having come into being. They already existed, had been born, whoever they might be. The worst could happen, and they’d still exist, though with a different life in store for them.
"Yes," he told her. "Yes, I’d like that very much."
The put-in was at a place called Earl’s Ford, at the southern edge of the great Appalachian forests, near the spot where North and South Carolina met the upper tip of Georgia. There were six rafts in alclass="underline" black, ungainly-looking things, inflated at the base camp and hauled with difficulty to the edge of the Chattooga River. Jeff, Judy, and the children shared one raft with a jolly, gray-haired woman and a guide who looked to be of college age, his face and arms brown from the sun.
As the raft slid into the clear, leisurely-flowing water, Jeff reached to cinch April’s life vest tighter around the child’s thin frame. Dwayne saw the paternal motion and tightened his own vest, a look of manly determination in his young eyes.
April was a charming little blond-haired girl who’d been severely abused by her natural parents; her brother was an intense, very bright child whose mother and father had died in an automobile accident. The children’s names weren’t necessarily what Jeff or Judy would have chosen to call them, but they’d been six and four years old when they were adopted, and it seemed best not to further disturb either one’s sense of self by changing their given names.
"Daddy, look! A deer!" April pointed at the far bank of the river, her face agleam with excitement. The animal stared back at them complacently, poised to run if need be, but unwilling to interrupt its feeding simply for having seen these strange apparitions.
Soon the wooded banks on either side began to rise, become a rocky gorge. As the canyon deepened, the river’s speed increased, and before long the flotilla of rafts had entered the first set of rapids. The children whooped with pleasure as the craft bucked and swayed in the downward current.
Jeff looked at Judy after they had cleared the white water and were again drifting smoothly downstream. He was gratified to see that her earlier anxiety had been replaced with an exhilaration matching that of the children. She’d been worried about taking them on this outing, but Jeff hadn’t wanted the children to be deprived of anything so joyfully inspiring.
The expedition pulled ashore at a small island, and Judy spread out the lunch she’d packed in a watertight chest. Jeff munched on a chicken leg and sipped his cold beer, watching April and
Dwayne explore the triangular wedge of land. The children’s curiosity and imagination never ceased to fascinate him; through their eyes, he had come to appreciate this tired world anew. When he and Judy had decided to adopt them, he’d bought some Apple and Atari stock at the right time; not much, just enough to edge the family’s income up a couple of notches. They’d bought a larger house, on West Paces Ferry Road; it had a huge backyard, with a shallow fishpond and three big oak trees. Perfect for the children.
The rafts got underway again, breached another, larger set of rapids a mile or so downriver. The current was moving much more swiftly now, even in the blue-water segments of the journey; but Jeff could see that his wife had lost her fear of the river, was caught up in the beauty and the thrill of it. She held his hand tightly as they shot through the torrent of Bull Sluice Falls, and then it was over, the water calm again and the sun retreating behind the pines.