Daybreak (32 page)

She said mournfully, “If only there might be some middle way.”

“That’s what we have to hope for.”

When the car stopped in the driveway, an aberrant thought almost formed itself into words on her tongue: When shall I see you again? You are so sane, such a
man
. I need to see you again. And immediately came chastisement:
You are a fool, Laura Rice, a big damn fool. What can you be thinking of
?

“I hope,” Ralph said, “I shall find you working away the next time I drop in at headquarters. That will mean that Timmy’s doing fine.” He laughed. “To say nothing of the fact that I want all the help I can get.” And as she moved out of the car, he added, “I’m sorry we didn’t solve Tom’s problem, Laura. But will you remember me to him anyway?”

“I will. And thank you for everything, for trying and for being a friend.”

She was inserting the key in the lock when the door opened and Bud faced her. “For Christ’s sake, where’ve you been? Who’s that who brought you home?”

“Ralph Mackenzie.”

“Ralph Mackenzie! What’s going on here, Laura? What is this?”

“Going on?” As she walked toward the kitchen, he stood in her way. But she pushed past, saying, “Nothing’s
‘going on.’ I worked at the campaign. You know I’m against Johnson. I haven’t made a secret of it. Now I’ll have something on the table in fifteen minutes so we can get back to the hospital.”

“Yes, we do have a sick son, don’t we? But, of course, Mackenzie’s campaign is more important.”

“That’s not fair, Bud! I was with Timmy from half-past eight this morning until half-past one. It was Dr. O’Toole who told me I must get out for a few hours, now that Timmy’s so much better.”

Bud stood in the kitchen doorway while she put out the cold supper that had been prepared in the morning. Whenever she turned, she felt his eyes on her back. Guilty thoughts produced a flush that was hot on her neck.

“How did you get downtown? Your car’s in the garage,” he demanded.

“Ralph telephoned to inquire about Timmy, which was very kind, I thought, and when I mentioned something about going to work a bit on the campaign, he offered to give me a lift. Since he was to be in the neighborhood anyway,” she amended.

“You’re blushing red as a beet. Is this guy making a play for you? Is that it?”

“If I’m blushing, it’s because your remark is so idiotic.”

The lie now burned all the way to her forehead. Yet it wasn’t altogether a lie, was it? Really, this is much ado about nothing, she thought, and said, “Ralph has been a friend to us, Bud.”

“Such a helpful friend. A real friend of the family.”

“Don’t sneer. He truly is. He’s taken a lot of trouble to help Tom.”

“Tom doesn’t need his help. And we don’t need any
more friends, Mackenzies or Crawfields with their phone calls and presents. Bastards, all of them.”

“What presents are you talking about?”

“Tom got a package, a book from him, a big book on astronomy. How the bastard knew Tom was interested in astronomy, I don’t know, unless maybe the kid mentioned it when he was at their house. Anyway, Tom was too upset to talk about it. He went up to his room and left the thing on the library table.”

The book, still lying in its wrappings, was magnificent, a thousand pages of narrative, drawings, diagrams, and splendid photographs. Beside it was a gift card inscribed simply,
From Margaret and Arthur, who hope you will enjoy it
.

From Margaret and Arthur
, to their own son. Surrounded by crumpled paper, the book was a sorrowful symbol; it seemed discarded, dead at birth. Objects take on the mood of the viewer.

“The nerve of them,” said Bud. “What do they think, that they can buy his affection? If my son wants a book, I guess I can provide it for him.”

And picking it up, he let it drop on the floor upside down, so that the binding split of its weight.

“Oh!” cried Laura, “you’ve ruined it. You’re no better than a vandal. How can you be like this?”

“Why not? Tom doesn’t want the thing. Throw it out, or give it away. I’ll buy him another one if he wants me to.”

She said nothing. Anger boiled within her, but it was less important to vent the anger than to get the supper over with and go to the hospital. They ate in silence.

   Day by day, almost hour by hour, Timmy returned to life. In the middle of the second week, he got out of
bed with the intravenous pole attached and walked very, very slowly down the hall. Next, he was detached from the pole, and to keep his legs moving, was allowed to walk all the way to the sunroom at the end of the hall. Finally, he began to get cranky, which was a sure sign of improvement.

“It’s boring here,” he complained. “I’m sick of it. I haven’t seen any of the guys, and I’m worried about Earl.”

Dr. O’Toole winked at the parents.

“I want you here a few days more so we can watch you. The guys will be just as glad to see you next Monday as they would be today.”

“Well, I’m still worried about Earl.”

“Who’s he?”

“My dog.”

O’Toole winked again. “I’m sure your parents are taking good care of him. After all, they brought you and your brother up pretty well.”

“Actually, it’s Tom who’s been responsible for Earl,” Laura explained. “He’s had his run every day, Timmy, and everything he needs.”

When Timmy was sick, she forgot that he was eleven; she saw him as a little, little boy and tended to talk to him accordingly.

“And when you do go home,” cautioned O’Toole, “you tell the guys and Earl to sit in the yard with you and do nothing but sit for a whole week. After that, you may start with a short walk in the cool of the early morning or the evening. I do not want to see you back here in the hospital ever again, Mr. Timothy Rice. Hear?”

Laura smiled, going along with the mock severity, the
game
, the
play
. For someday, as they all knew well,
although they could not know when, he would be back in a hospital just as Peter Crawfield, his brother, had been before him.

   In Timmy’s room on the table by his bed, the medicines stood in a row as they had always stood beside a glass and a pitcher of water. Oxygen was at the ready in the far corner by the windows as it had always been. Nothing had changed. And yet it would take time, a long time, to fall back into the familiar order of the house.

Laura reflected: We have come back from a far, dangerous journey. A soldier returning from brutality and terror must have these feelings, too. There was a tension among them all, revealed in sudden bursts of laughter when nothing particularly funny had been said, revealed in quick glances that met behind Timmy’s back, revealed by unspoken questions on each other’s faces, Laura’s, Bud’s, and Tom’s.

Wan and tired now although he had been clamoring to go home, Timmy lay outside on one or another of the large chairs, moving from shade to sun and back again. He read, dozed, listened to his Walkman, and talked to Earl, who, after chasing a squirrel, always returned to his place at Timmy’s feet.

Toward the end of the week after the air had cooled, he went for his first walk. He would not admit it, but the effort was obviously exhausting, and he needed no persuasion to go directly to bed. The others, hearing his intermittent cough, were restless.

Tom worried. “Are you sure I should go out tonight? You might need me.”

“No, go,” urged Laura. “We’ll get you at Eddie’s
house if we should need you, but we won’t need you. Go.”

“The kid’s a prince,” Bud said when the front door closed behind Tom. “Do you realize how faithful he’s been from the first minute in the emergency room right up till now?”

“I realize.”

She wanted to ask but did not: And do you realize that he is being torn in two?

“Character,” said Bud. “Quality. It’s in the blood. Well, he’s got good blood on both sides, yours and mine. Staunch people.”

A long sigh struggled up from the region of Laura’s heart and was stifled, unheard.

Bud went on cheerfully, “Eddie must have a couple of girls over. For all we know, our Tom’s got a girl right here in the neighborhood. I hope he has. This is his time. Nineteen! I’m not too old to remember what it felt like. That one in the photo on his desk isn’t bad-looking at all.” He chuckled. “Have you noticed?”

“I noticed.”

One of the girls who wrote the venomous trash in that paper. The photograph had stood in its place all year, so it must be serious. She, too, was not too old to remember what it felt like to be nineteen … This time the sigh escaped.

“You’re tired,” Bud said kindly, “and I am too. It’ll take a while to recover from what we’ve been through. Let’s go on up.”

Timmy called good night when he heard them in the upstairs hall.

“Good night, Mom. Good night, Dad.”

The voice had the nasal tone that often went with his particular illness. Its every nuance and catch was too
familiar, as were every modulation and variation of his wheezing cough. How many nights had they not lain between sleep and wakefulness, estimating the strength and duration of the cough, asking themselves and each other whether this was the “normal” chronic cough or something dangerously acute!

With every muscle tense they lay stretched out beside each other, listening, listening, until the last cough died and the house was still.

“He’s okay,” Bud said. “He’s fallen asleep. Poor guy. God knows what his next few years will bring. Years when he ought to be playing ball and chasing girls. Poor little guy.”

This litany was also familiar. Bud saw no future for Timmy. There was no space in his vast, tragic disappointment for the slightest word of hope that Laura might speak. Having learned that, she rarely uttered one. Now, as he put his arm around her, she said nothing, but merely waited for what she knew was to come next.

Sex could be comfort. Some, when beset with troubles, lose all desire, while others find reassurance and escape through its delights. It depends, she supposed, on personality, or mood, or one’s particular hormones.
And on the partner
.

Now Bud desired her. No innovative lover, his routine was unchanging; simply it was the vigorous demand of a healthy male. He was satisfied with himself, and because he was loving and because she was a healthy female, she, too, had long been satisfied. Besides, she had really never thought very much about it.…

His hands moved through her hair, spreading it over the pillow. As his mouth came upon hers, his body
sank its full weight on her, and he settled into the merging that was to give all pleasure. His repetitious murmurings were meant to excite and to arouse erotic fantasies, which generally they managed to do. But tonight, her response was mechanical. It was flat. Disordered, fleeting thoughts absorbed her; what he was doing to her body seemed of a sudden to have no connection with her
self
. It had no significance, no reality.

Something was happening to her. A profound change was taking place.

When he had reached the climax, he turned over and, as was his way, fell almost instantly asleep. For a while she lay staring up at the ceiling. This summer night was a white one, so that the room was only half dark and she could even discern the line where the wall met the ceiling with a thick band of plaster foliage. Bud’s shoulder heaved in a strong arc, like a whale’s back. He breathed lightly, never offending with a snore. From his warm, clean skin there came the astringent fragrance of good soap.

It was a pity that all of a sudden she had no feeling for him. None at all. Even her anger was dead.

It was past midnight, long after Tom’s footsteps whispered on the stair carpet, when she got out of bed and went downstairs. The house, the beloved house, oppressed her, and she went outside. The sky was still white so that the black treetops formed a pattern on it. In the center of the lawn, on the dew-wet grass, she sat down with her arms around her knees. No thoughts came. There was only blankness and deep loneliness. A small wind, swishing sadly through the trees, deepened the loneliness. She was lost on a mountaintop, abandoned in the desert, on the ocean, in a forest—And
yet, behind the holly hedge, now grown twenty feet high, there rose the chimney of the old Alcott house.

She covered her face and cried. Great sobs came out of her chest and whimpered in her throat. Her tears fell, warm and slippery, on her fingers; she let them fall unchecked and unwiped.

Two weeks ago, there had been reason aplenty for tears, while pacing and sitting and pacing through the antiseptic-smelling corridors. But she had controlled her tears then. So why not now?

After a while, though, they ceased, and she was relieved. She was also ashamed.

“There is no excuse to be like this,” she said firmly. “Get up now, Laura. Go about your business. God knows, you have business enough to take care of.”

   In the morning she had errands downtown, at the bank, the dentist’s, and a shop to exchange Tom’s sweater. These brought her at last into the vicinity of the Hotel Phoenix, around the corner from which were the headquarters of the Mackenzie senatorial campaign. Having promised both Ralph and herself that she would volunteer again as soon as Timmy came home, she decided that there was no better time to start than right now. And she walked briskly around the corner with a feeling of good purpose. The woman who had sat weeping on the grass the night before would not have recognized her.

Mackenzie’s party had leased a store; through the wide windows a whirl of activity could be seen. For a moment she paused to look in, not knowing why she paused. Then it occurred to her that if Ralph was there, he might think she had come to see him. But that was absurd. Had they not agreed that she would
help his campaign? She was a concerned citizen, only one of dozens of women in this city who aided their favorite candidates. He was a fine man, an attractive man who had made extraordinary efforts on behalf of his friends the Crawfields, and in doing so had incidentally been very kind to Tom. That was all he was.

All, except that he admired and was attracted to Tom’s mother. But what of it? Thank goodness she was attractive enough to be admired! What of it?