A Father for Philip (21 page)

“I can take him home right now, Dr.
Grimes.”

He patted her hand. “No, no. I want him
under observation at least for tonight. He’ll feel pretty bad for a day or two,
but it’ll be quieter for him at home. Can you manage to look after him there?”

She assured him she could look after
him, and would. He gave her a long, level look. “Where has he been, my dear?
How long has he been back?” His glance sharpened. “And how long does he expect
to stay this time?”

“I…I don’t have answers to those
questions, Doctor. All I can think of now is that he’s ill, and he needs me. He
stood by me while I had measles, looked after me as if I was a child, and now
it’s my turn to do the same for him. For as long as he needs me. For as long as
he wants me. Uh, wants me to.”
Look after
him
, she nearly added, but at his nod, she knew Dr. Grimes understood.

For the rest of the day Eleanor divided
her time between David, who shook with chills then roasted with fever and clung
to her like a terrified infant, and trying to keep Philip calm. He begged not
to be sent home with Cindy Exley who arrived around ten in the morning to take
him with her. Eleanor relented and watched while her seven-year-old paced,
worried, fretted and asked a million questions, one of which she had been
expecting for hours. Yet when it came, she felt her heart flip and her mouth
dry.

What if David was about to change his
mind again? What if the woman and the child in the picture, were ones he was
raving about so much, were not to be forgotten after all? But still…

“Mom, how come you keep calling Jeff
‘David’, and ‘darling’,?”

They sat in the small cafeteria in the
basement of the ten-bed hospital that was really little more than a clearing
house in which seriously ill or injured patients were stabilized before being
sent on to larger facilities. “Because,” she said slowly, after a pause to sip
a cup of surprisingly good coffee, “his name really is David. I called him
darling because I… because I love him.”

“Well, if you love Jeff, how come you’re
going to marry Grant?”

“I’m not going to marry Grant.”

“Then are you going to marry Jeff?”

“Philip… I’m… I’m already married to
Je—to David. He’s your father, Phil.”

His brow puckered. “You mean the one
what went away before I got borned and got lost and never came back? That one?”

She nodded “That’s the one.”

“Well, how come he didn’t come back?”
Philip asked with righteous indignation. “We’re his family, right?”

“I don’t know, Philip. We were his
family, but maybe we aren’t anymore. It doesn’t matter, though. He’s still your
father and you still love him. Isn’t that what’s important?”

He slurped the last of his pink
milkshake noisily through his straw. “Yup. I guess it doesn’t matter, does it,
Mom? I mean he is my dad, and he did come back, so I guess we just got to keep
him, huh, Mom.”

Eleanor swallowed hard. The acceptance
of a child! How easily they could find forgiveness. How much time she’d wasted
by not having the same qualities herself.

“Yes,” she said. “I guess we’ve just got
to keep him.”

~ * ~

David woke during the night. It was very
dark, not even a glimmer of moonlight the windows of the camper, and he
wondered why his bunk was so soft and warm and what was causing the lovely
scent that tickled his nostrils. Slowly it dawned on him that he was not in the
camper, he was in Eleanor’s bed.

It must be a dream, he thought, but her
warmth by his side, her steady, even breathing told him it was true. He reached
out a tentative hand and ran a fingertip down her spine. She murmured and
turned into his arms, nestling close, and then he remembered.

The fever coming over him like a freight
train. Going for his Atabrine. He’d felt so sick and dizzy in the camper he
wondered if he’d make it back to tell Philip he needed to go home. He hadn’t
wanted to scare his son and he knew, when the malaria struck, it could keep him
laid low for days. He blinked.

There’d been a hospital. Or was that
another time? No. This time. He remembered Eleanor sitting beside him, holding
his arm while someone strapped it to the side of a high bed. He remembered an
I.V.—he’d tried to pull it out. Eleanor’s voice, though, had gotten through
when he ranted and raged and carried on.

He remembered, too, her being there when
he woke up fully in the hospital. She’d put him in a wheelchair and rolled him
out and helped him into her car. Philip, in the backseat, had said something
about did he like the chair better than a wheelbarrow… and then Philip had
called him ‘Dad.’

Abruptly, David sat up.

At once, Eleanor was wide awake, one
hand on his back, the other wrapping around his arm. “David?”

“I’m okay,” he said, to still the panic
he heard in her tone. “Just… remembering. I was in the hospital. You brought me
here. Why?”

“Because you’re ours, and we gotta keep
you. Philip said so. Lie down, love. Cover up. Dr. Grimes said you’ll be weak
for a few more days.”

He put his lips to her hair, afraid to
move, afraid he might wake up and find this was nothing more than a fever-dream
again. For these few moments in time he would pretend that this was how it
would always be.

“David? You all right?”

“I’m okay, Eleanor. Was it another
malaria attack?”

“Another?”

“I… I’ve been having them pretty
regularly. That’s why I left South America. They said I had to get out of
harm’s way. Those mosquitoes seem to like me.” He lay silent for a minute. “You
were in an ambulance with me.”

“Yes, David,” she said very quietly.

“Then how did we get here?”

“My—our neighbors, Jo-Anne and Cindy
Exley brought my car to the hospital Sunday so Philip and I could come home.”

“What day is it now?”

“Probably early Tuesday morning.”

“What happened to Monday?”

“Nothing much. The same as Sunday. You
had chills, fever. You spent one night in hospital then I brought you home.
Here That was Monday, around four in the afternoon. Malaria is something of an
irregular experience for our doctor and nurses. If the hospital hadn’t been so
over-crowded, I think they’d have hung on to you just to watch the progression
of your symptoms.”

“Did you go… to town? I mean, to see a
lawyer?”

“No, David.”

“Are you going to?”

“Not unless you want me to.”

He couldn’t suppress the tremor that ran
through him. “I want you to stay here, Eleanor. Forever.”

“That’s what I want, too, David, if you
want me,” she said in a rushed, frightened voice.

“I want you. I love you, sweetheart…” He
was unable to go on for a moment. “I love you more than life, Eleanor. More
than anyone.”

“Man… Manuela?” she whispered, choking
on the word. “Manuela and Juanita?”

“God! I must’ve been doing some raving!”

“A little. But I saw the picture in the
truck, David… On Friday. I went to see you to… to ask you something. I went
looking for you and I found them… They are both very beautiful, David… Or maybe
I should say ‘were’? Maybe someday when I can face it you will tell me about
them, about what happened to them… You talked when you were sick… Said,
‘they’re both dead. I want to die, too.’ I was horribly to jealous, David, and
for a time I hated you, but when you wanted to die I couldn’t let you. I love
you and I’m just grateful that you came back to me when you lost her.”

David was silent for a long time.

Eleanor thought he must’ve fallen asleep
once more, when he spoke in a husky voice. “And you still want me, Eleanor?”

“I always have. On Friday when I saw
their picture, I could have put your axe to the kind of use Philip wanted to,
on Grant. Even the little girl. I resented the fact that you could be with them
while I was all alone, nursing my own child through all the childhood ailments,
trying to raise him without your moral support. But that was just self-pity. It
made me ashamed. You loved them and I can understand that and when you said
they were dead, I couldn’t hate them or you any longer. You are my husband,
Philip’s father. I’ve told him, too.” She raised her head and kissed his mouth
tenderly. “I only hope Philip will make up in some ways for your loss of the
little girl.”

 “Oh, Eleanor, Eleanor, my own
sweet one! God! How can I tell you?” He held her to him, rocking her as if in
pain, his hands slipped into her hair and he kissed her, showing he was not as
weak as she had thought.

“Tell me what?” she asked.

“Tell you… tell you how much I love you.
Tell you how much your loving me, in spite of everything, means to me. I don’t
think I’ll ever have the words to do that. So, let me show you, please.”

As dawn broke, sending shafts of summer
light through the bedroom window, David said, “Sweetheart, if one of us has to
get sick before I’m allowed into your bed, I’m going to become the biggest
hypochondriac in the world.” He grinned. “I expect you to do the same.”

“Somehow,” she said, nestling close, “I
don’t think that’ll be required.”

~ * ~

It was a Saturday nearly a week later
and David, Eleanor and Philip were having breakfast when Bill walked in. He
stared around in amazement at what appeared to be a happy family meal in
progress. “Say, didn’t you have a beard the last time I saw you?”

David nodded, rubbed a hand over his
jaw, then reached out to shake hands.

“Bill, I passed!” Philip said proudly.
“I’ll be in Grade Two in September!”

“Good for you,” Bill smiled at the
little boy, but Eleanor could see him giving David an odd little glance out of
the corner of his eye.

“Bill,” she said, pouring him a cup of
coffee, “this man is an imposter. He told you his name was Jeff Davidson,
didn’t he?”

Bill nodded, mystified, and she could
tell by the expression on his face not a little concerned for Eleanor, “I’d
like you to be the first of my friends to meet David Jefferson, my husband.”

Bill’s jaw dropped. “I—Why didn’t you
tell me that before? Where have you been, man?”

David grinned. He’d already told this to
Eleanor and Philip, but he recited it for Bill’s benefit anyway. “Ecuador,
Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and then Ecuador again. Then Brazil and
Argentina again, a number of times and Colombia most recently. I left Bogotá
when the medics there told me if I didn’t get out of the tropics I’d become a
basket case. I wasn’t sure about still having a place to return to here, but it
seems I did.”

“It seems so,” said Bill, stirring sugar
into his coffee. He gave Eleanor a look, stirred more, and glowered.

She touched his hand and smiled at him.
“Be nice to him, Bill! It’s my life, my business, and don’t spoil it by
disliking him for my sake.”

He slowly smiled back at her, and
Eleanor knew he would accept David.

“Tell him about going to jail!” Philip
demanded. That was by far his favorite of all the stories David told.

“Jail?”

 “Well… my son”—And the smile on
David’s face as he looked at the child removed all traces of doubt anyone could
have had in his mind. “My son,” repeated David “is quite impressed by the fact
that I once spent three weeks in a hot, foul little stone cell in Rio, accused
of stealing a fish from a street vendor. I hadn’t, but I stayed there because I
was in a stubborn mood and refused to pay up, purely on principle. When the
fish vendor realized he’d never get a cent as long as I was locked up, he
confessed to having turned his back long enough for a cat to take it. He wanted
the money it was worth, and chose to accuse me because as everyone knows, ‘all
gringos are rich’. That’s all there was to it, but Phil thinks it’s great.”

“Did you pay him when you got out?”

“Hell, no! I didn’t owe him a thing.”

“Stupid things people will do for their
principles,” said Bill. Then, “Look, Ellie, what I came down for is to get your
permission to renovate your dad’s office and make a nursery out of it. It’s the
only room on the ground floor that’s big enough, that we aren’t using already.”

“I really don’t think my permission will
be required, Bill. You see, we were thinking of selling the farm… To you and
Kathy. If you want it.”

“
If
?
Ellie, you know we do. But what about Phil? I thought you planned to keep it in
case he wanted it one day?”

“He won’t,” David said. “He’ll have the
Anderson place if he wants to become a farmer. I bought it.”

“Well! I heard some rich guy from
somewhere, who owned a bunch of gold mines or something—” He ducked his head
and stirred his coffee again.

“Or a drug lord who’d made millions in
Colombia?” David asked, a chuckle in his voice.

Bill glanced up, color tingeing his
cheeks. “Yeah, I heard that, too.”

“Actually, neither one is true. I had a
little success with rubies in Brazil. Then emeralds. In Argentina.”