Daybreak (4 page)

And should Tim not be fearful? He knew too much about human suffering already, and knew what still awaited him when cystic fibrosis had run its course.

These thoughts, as always, made her pulses race. What if by some unlikely chance he should outlive Bud and me? she thought again. And she reminded herself:
But Tom would take care of him
. Tom loved him, Tom got up at night when Timmy coughed; Tom knew all the medications and cautions; he never let Tim get too tired or too hot. You could depend on Tom. He meant what he said and did what he promised to do.

Good sons, both. And each of them a gift of joy, each in his way a painful sorrow.

A sudden weariness born of these thoughts and of the dark day overcame her, and she lay down on the sofa, something she never did in the daytime, to wait for the four o’clock lesson. A plaster frieze of fruit and flowers ran where the ceiling met the wall. Idly her eyes followed it from grapevines to acorns, pine cones, wheat sheaves, and back to grapevines. The hard, monotonous rain beat on the roof of the porch. Powerful outside forces beat on the family … I hate these moods, she thought, closing her eyes. I shall will this one to pass.

Nevertheless, there were times when the will was never enough, when the questions persisted as if they were written in tall red letters and even closed eyelids could not shut them out.

Who is this woman, this Laura Paige Rice, and how did she get from there to here?

   Adults think that a child building a castle of blocks on the floor in the next room is too absorbed in play to hear their talk or even if she should hear it, to understand it.

“Poor little soul,” said a visitor, commiserating. And then briskly, brightly added, “But how lucky to have you girls to take over.”

The Paige sisters, Cecile and Lillian, would always in their circle, and should they live to be ninety, be “the
girls.” But they were far from the stereotype that that term brings to mind: “ladies who lunch.” They were just as thin and fashionable in their expensive suits, but more significantly, they were out in the world; they were keeping their inherited place at Paige and Company.

“What did we know about wholesale building supplies? Lumber and wire and cement?” Lillian would say to anybody who would listen, and many did. “First our father, then our brother, and finally no one but us two girls to run that huge spread out on the highway. Well, if you’ve got a brain, it’s a challenge to use it. Besides, we had Laura to think of.”

They liked, these two aunts, to talk about Laura with their friends while the teacups clinked on the saucers on Sunday afternoons. Unmarried and already in their forties, they had been given a present of a pretty child, a responsibility, a beloved toy.

“She must have an inheritance. That’s the main reason we worked so hard to expand. It will mean security. A woman needs security.” People still talked that way about women in the 1950s. They took Laura’s picture under the enormous sign that read “Paige and Company,” and while she was still in nursery school, taught her to spell out the words.

“Yes, if it hadn’t been for Laura, who knows? We might even have sold out and retired.”

“But she is an enchanting child, isn’t she?” Cecile’s lovely voice rang with pleasure. “I do hope her hair stays blond. Blond hair,” she mused, “fastened back with a black velvet band, or navy blue.”

They had their own anxious, fussy way of loving Laura, not sparing a moment’s energy on her behalf. From the pediatrician to the dentist to the French lesson
they drove, and as soon as her talent for music was discovered, to the music lesson, too.

“They gave me everything. They gave me their whole lives,” she said to Bud years later. “I was completely spoiled.”

And he refuted her. “If they tried to spoil you, they didn’t succeed. You’re the least spoiled person I ever knew.”

“We must be careful not to let her get too bookish,” Cecile reflected when Laura was ten. “I think I’ll arrange for tennis lessons on Saturday mornings. What do you think?”

“Yes, it’s a healthy sport, and very useful socially, too. You can play it all your life,” agreed Lillian, whose only exercise was a walk from the house to the car, then from the car to the office desk.

And Cecile: “Perhaps we should put in a tennis court. There’s a good level place back of the garage.”

“Yes, and while we’re at it, we might enclose the vegetable garden, the way they do in England. A trellis, perhaps?”

They were always doing things with the house. It was a house for the generations. They liked to dwell on some idyllic future for Laura in this dear place.

“Someday you will marry a man who will take over the business and will live here with you,” they would often tell her.

Touched by their goodness, amused by their blindness, she gave them in reply her secret smile.

I am going to marry Francis Alcott. You don’t know that yet, but you will
.

Lying here now so long afterward, she felt the gathering of another smile, this in nostalgic recollection of that peace and innocence.

But are children, was I, ever innocent? No, Laura, you know better.…

   A thick privet hedge grown taller than a man divides the properties. Toward one end some damage, either by disease or storm, has made a gap in it through which a child can peek, or, if permitted, slide. But Laura is not permitted.

“Dr. Alcott really should fix that,” Aunt Lillian complains. “It’s unsightly. They’ve not been keeping up the place as well since Francis went away.”

“Poor folks,” says Cecile. “It’s a pity they haven’t got a daughter. Francis is never home anymore.”

“He’s on his way home now, didn’t you know? I heard this morning. He broke both legs skiing in Colorado during spring break. Or maybe it was both ankles. Anyway, we should go over there this evening.”

Laura asks how a leg can be broken. In her mind there’s a picture of a broken cup lying in small pieces on the floor.

“No, no, it’s not like that,” says Lillian.

“Well, I’d like to see one, anyway.”

Cecile promises, “When Francis has had a chance to rest awhile, you may go over with us one afternoon. We’ll bake some cookies for him. He’s such a nice boy.”

Laura is in the yard the morning after. She is sitting on the rim of her sandbox when a screen door slams and voices sound far off at the end of the Alcotts’ lawn. It might be the boy with the broken legs, she thinks, so she goes to investigate. What she sees is a man with fat white legs stretched out on a long chair. There is a little table beside the chair on which she can see a pitcher and a glass. Lemonade? she wonders. And she
watches closely, spying from the gap in the hedge as the man takes up his book, puts it down, drinks from the glass, runs his hand through his hair, which is dark and wavy, and picks up the book again. She would like to know whether those white things really are his broken legs; probably, though, they aren’t because they don’t look like legs, and anyway, the aunts said Francis was a nice boy, and this is not a boy. He’s a man, so he can’t be Francis. She’s pondering all this when the man sees her and calls.

“Hello. How are you? Come on over.”

“I’m not allowed to.”

“Not allowed? Why not? We’re neighbors.”

“I’m not supposed to annoy Dr. Alcott. He’s busy.”

The man laughs. “You’d never annoy Dr. Alcott. Anyway, he’s at the office now. And I’m his son. I’m Francis.”

“Are those your broken legs?” asks Laura, already on the other side of the hedge and halfway toward the chair.

“Yes, and they’re an awful nuisance. I’m missing half a term at college on account of them.”

She draws nearer and suddenly solves the puzzle. “The broken part is under those white things, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. The white things are casts. Like bandages.”

“Oh. Do they hurt?”

“Not anymore.” He has put the book away and is smiling at her. “I’ll guess your name, shall I?”

She nods. “But I’ll bet you can’t.”

“Let’s see. Is it Caroline?”

She shakes her head. “Nope.”

“Susan?”

“Nope.”

“Fuzzy Wuzzy?”

This seems very funny, and it delights her. “I said you couldn’t guess!”

“Oh, but I can. You’re Laura, and I knew it all the time. My father told me about you when you came to live next door, only I haven’t seen you before this because I’ve been away at college in California.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s far away.”

“Oh. Like Korea?”

“Not quite.”

“My father went to Heaven from Korea.”

Francis says gravely, “I know. He was nice, your father.”

“Did you know him?”

“Very well. He lived here where you live now.”

“Oh.”

“You look like him except that your hair’s blond.”

She considers that for a moment. Then Francis touches her hand, saying still gravely, “He bought me my first ball and bat when I was a little boy.”

“I thought,” she says, “you were still a boy.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Aunt Cecile said, ‘Francis is a nice boy.’ ”

“I see. Well, she’s very nice herself.”

Laura considers that, too. “But I miss my mommy.”

“Of course you do,” says Francis.

She likes the feel of his warm hand on hers. When she peers up into his face, his eyes look into hers with the same smile that Aunt Cecile has when she says “I love you.”

“How old are you?” he asks now.

“I’m four. How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“That’s old, isn’t it?”

“Kind of, but not awfully.”

“Laura! Laura! Where are you?” It is Aunt Lillian standing at the hedge.

“Oh dear, you shouldn’t—Francis, I’m sorry, is she bothering you?”

“Bothering, Miss Lillian? She’s adorable.”

“But you have to study, you said, and—”

“I’ve got another six weeks to be laid up with the books. Please, let her come over whenever she wants. I mean it.”

So it begins.

   It was Francis who taught her to read even before she entered kindergarten. All that spring while the casts were on his legs and even afterward when he began to walk again, he made a game of the alphabet and the words in his big books.

“Show me a word with three letters,” he would command. “ ‘Sun,’ that’s right. Tell me,
is
the sun cold?”

“No, silly, it’s hot.”

“Okay, can you find ‘hot’ on this page?”

And Laura’s plump finger would slide along the lines until, triumphantly, she would find it.

“ ‘Hot’ There it is!”

“What a fine young man,” the aunt remarked. “So patient, so very gentle. He’ll make a marvelous doctor, you can just see it in him.”

For the Christmas when Laura was six, somebody gave her a copy of
Alice in Wonderland
.

“But I can’t read it,” she complained to Francis when he and his parents came to dinner during the vacation. “The words are too long.”

“Come here, and I’ll read it to you,” he offered.

“That child takes such advantage of his good nature,” said Aunt Lillian, who was serving after-dinner coffee on the other side of the room.

To this remark Dr. Alcott replied that Francis never offered anything unless he wanted to give it.

“He likes children, and besides, there is something especially appealing about Laura. You must know that.”

Well, yes, she had to admit that she did. Her sigh was contented. “Cecile and I consider ourselves blessed. So many people seem to have such problems with their children through no fault of their own.”

Always, Laura would remember
Alice in Wonderland
, its gray binding, the illustrations of Alice with her flowing hair, and Francis’s long fingers resting on the page.

“You remind me of Alice,” he said.

And she would remember, as the years passed, every detail of every book that was in some way connected to Francis.
The Secret Garden
because he gave it to her for her birthday when she was eight, and
Treasure Island
because he had visited the real island on a sailing trip.

When he returned, he showed photographs of the boat and his friends and the island that lay like a great green whale asleep on blue water.

“Someday you’ll see these places,” he told her. “You must see as much of the world as you can while you’re young. The world is so beautiful, Laura. You can’t believe how beautiful it is.”

Whenever he was home, he gave her books and listened to her opinions about them. They agreed and they argued. He taught her to play chess. He gave her a camera and taught her the art of using it so well that she won a contest for her still life of rain on magnolia leaves. Sometimes in the evening when he and his father
came visiting, she played the piano and was pleased when everyone praised her.

Yet at the same time she knew that all of them except Francis were overpraising. “My aunts think I’m going to go around the world giving concerts,” she complained to Francis. “It’s embarrassing. If I were going to be famous like that, I would be now. I’m twelve, and that’s already late.”

“You have a talent, and that’s more than enough to bring you happiness. There’s no need to be famous,” he said gently.

She loved his voice when he was serious like this. It had tones in it, deep, soft notes like the lowest piano key when the left hand barely touches them.

“You’re wise, Laura. It’s wise to see yourself so clearly.”

Curiously, she asked, “What do you see when you look at yourself?”

“I? A pretty good student who always wanted to be a doctor like my father. That’s all.”

Laura shook her head. “No, you’re not seeing everything. You’re going to be great.”

He laughed. “Good God, no. Never.”

“Oh, yes. Everybody says so.”

“Who’s everybody?”

“My aunts say that everybody says so.”

And Francis laughed again. “Well, tell them I’ll try my best.”

Sometimes while Laura did homework in her bedroom, the aunts would be talking in the upstairs sitting room. They knew everything that was happening in the neighborhood. “Internal medicine,” one said. “Rare diseases, I think. Or tropical, maybe? I’m not sure.”

“He’s going on to a fellowship after a three-year residency, Mrs. Alcott told me.”