... Steve continued:
"May be I shouldn't have said it that way! I meant that we're finally at peace! You've made a mistake; not a good one though, I might add! Many men could never forget or forgive something like this; but I've tried very hard to forgive you!
Still I have a very hard time to forget it! But I guess I have to live with it."
He looked at Helen to see the effect of his little speech and then turned his back to her and began walking again.
"I Have loved you all these years; that is why I've never thought about leaving you..."
"Please get to the point!" She interrupted him. She was not sure where his intention was with this little petty lecture of his.
"You just broke the train of my thought. I've been getting myself ready to talk with you for a long time! Okay you want me to get to the point, so I will. I want another child! Elizabeth is two years old now. I want to have another one before we turn thirty one. We need to hurry though." He stopped walking at this point, took a look at Helen, who was still sitting on bed with the sheet wrapped around her. He hesitated for awhile. Helen thought that he was finished with his trifling speech. But suddenly he began walking and talking again:
"Well, I know you take birth control pills. I want you to stop taking them. I want a son! Then my life will be complete!"
Helen, at this moment, could not bear him. She began despising him again for the very thing he was proud of and that part of him that was narcissistic and egotistic, his highly- unyielding mannerism and disposition and prudent disrespect and disdain for everything crude and profane. She wondered: " Was he like this always or military and war made him this way?" But then she remembered even during their courtship before he had gone to Vietnam, he was always contemptuous towards women!
Her whole face suddenly assumed the solemn immobility of a dead. That expression did not change through the time Steve put his clothes on. Then he put more lights on. She was still naked with the sheet wrapped around her, sitting at the edge of bed with her legs hanging and shaking. She was thinking of more than a year of hell she had gone through with Elizabeth from her birth to the time that they had bought the house! Now finally she had become a loving child. Helen wanted to go back to work when Elizabeth was three years old and she could send her to prekindergarten!!
To Be Continued
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