As Louise walked up to the door of the restaurant, she felt confidant of her plans for the afternoon. She had dressed for the occasion with exquisitely good taste and prepared her accessories with a mind to the afternoon’s aftermath. Her dress was fashionably demur yet gave the woman who wore it the feminine power of persuasion by misdirection. She had even purchased a new bra for their early supper so her recently chemically-enlarged bosom would be comfortably supported and wouldn’t distract her from her purpose. Since she had no intent of making another attempt to lure her wayward husband back into the fold with her sexual wiles, she intended to use her new look to divert her husband’s attention before she sprung the elegant trap she had meticulously planned to remove the man who had caused her so much grief. Instead of playing for the interests of her wayward husband, she intended to bring him to heel in a manner which he could not refuse. Louise carried the black dress pocketbook in her right hand which matched her eternally fashionable black, raw-silk dress and black patent-leather, low-heeled shoes as she entered the building. The only item of apparel that did not fit in with the image of a smartly dressed, attractive, long-haired brunette who was out on the town was the large baby-blue, nylon bag whose strap was slung over her left shoulder.
For the sake of her own feelings, rather than cow to the carnal desires of her dinner companion that afternoon, she had spent some hours at the beauty salon that morning and had had her hair gently waved under at her shoulders instead of her normal straight haired look. She had taken up the nail technician’s offer at the salon to have her nails done while she waited for her hair to dry. Her hair had turned out so well that she had surrendered to the come-on of the salon’s makeup technician and had allowed herself to be completely redone for the coming occasion that afternoon. The plain housefrau that had walked into the salon was a raving beauty when the team of experts in feminine pulchritude were done. She had become an archetypal vision of what men dream of in women. If her husband had tried to recognize her out of a crowd of women, the task would have been Herculean. He had never noticed that her flat chest had filled out in the past two weeks and had become a rather prominent part of her stature. For the two years prior to that afternoon, he had left for work in the wee hours of the morning and usually returned so late at night that she almost never saw him before he went to bed. Unless it was a weekend, he never ate dinner with her, choosing instead to grab a quick meal from a drive-thru junk food palace before he went home to sleep. Louise had slowly became inured to dining alone at home, but her enforced solitude turned her desire for a baby into an obsession. Aside from her business-woman friend, Dinah, with was her dinner companion when they went out to an early dinner three times a week, she spent her time alone with the maid and laundress.
After two years, her need to bear or foster a baby became an obsession. She inveigled her husband, Roland, but they had been unsuccessful at conceiving a baby. After visiting a gynecologist to have her own fertility checked, she had asked Roland to go to a urologist. He’d agreed and had told her a week later that the physician had advised him that he had a “problem”. After a year of unsuccessful attempts, she asked Roland if he was willing to adopt. The tirade that followed had been a nightmare. Roland had thrown a positive temper-tantrum. As far as he was concerned, he told her, “If you can’t conceive a child by having sex with your husband, then it’s the Lord’s will!” When she brought up the subject of medically assisted pregnancy, he exploded. He ranted that artificial insemination was against the law of God and that in vitro fertilization was blasphemous. On the subject of adoption, he stood firm, telling her that he had no intention of raising some “druggie’s discarded whelp” rather than the “fruit of his own loins”! He had made it clear to her that “Almighty God, The Father”, had dictated her fate and it was up to her to accept “His” plan for her with womanly forbearance. For a time Louise had accepted her husband’s religious pronouncements, unjust though they manifestly were, and remained in silent solitude.