Taking Care of Terrific

  Tom Terrific looked at me in absolute amazement and delight. "Did they say yes?" he asked. "Did they say their refrigerator was running?"

  I nodded.

  He began to laugh. "And then you said, 'You'd better run after it!' Do it again!"

  I did it again, twice more, to unsuspecting people, and Tom threw himself on the couch, roaring with laughter. "You tricked them!" he cried. "Let me do it!"

  I picked out another number and reached toward the telephone. "No, let me!" said Tom. "I can read numbers. Tell me the numbers and let me do them!"

  So he dialed carefully, and in a scared, awed voice he said, "Is your refrigerator running?"

  Then, with more confidence, in a deeper voice he said, "Better run after it before it gets away!" He put the receiver down and stood there, holding his hands over his mouth, astonished and pleased that he had done a forbidden thing, that he had played a trick.

  He did it again and again until the novelty wore off. By then it was eight o'clock. Less than four hours to go.

  "Eight o'clock," I said without thinking, looking at my watch.

  Tom Terrific's face fell. "Bedtime," he said sadly. "I was spozed to have my bath at seven-thirty."

  At some point I was going to have to tell my little buddy that he wasn't going to bed tonight. I looked at him. There were pizza remains on his chin and nose. Well, a bath would kill a little more time.

  "Come on," I said. "Upstairs for your bath. Want to make it a bubble bath?"

  "What's that?" asked Tom Terrific.

  What's that? What's a bubble bath? Can you imagine a four-year-old kid who never in his life has had a bubble bath? Talk about underprivileged!

  I tried to explain about the fun of being surrounded by bubbles.

  "I don't think I'm allowed to do that," he said apprehensively.

  "Tonight you are," I told him, and I went to the kitchen and got a bottle of dishwashing liquid. Great for bubbles.

  Watching Tom Terrific's face as the bubbles appeared in the bathtub was just as good as watching the kid in the movie when E.T. appeared in his back yard. Tom's eyes grew big and then bigger, and his grin spread across his face until dimples appeared on either side. I dropped his clothes into the hamper and lifted him, wiggling in delight, into his bubble bath. He squealed with happiness.

  For forty-five minutes we played: Tom in the bath, me sitting on the floor beside the tub. I made him a beard of bubbles and lifted him up to see himself in the mirror. Then I soaped his hair—promising a cross-your-heart oath that I wouldn't get soap in his eyes—and shaped it into a pair of devil horns, which I then had to show him in the mirror as well. We threw bubbles all over the bathroom. We drove matchbox cars along the rim of the tub and plunged them into the water again and again, with sound effects.

  Finally, when his fingertips had turned into absolute prunes, I lifted him out of the tub, rubbed him with a thick towel until he was bright pink, and dried his hair. He scampered naked across the hall to his bedroom to get his pajamas, and I cleaned the bathroom until it looked fairly normal.

  "What time is it?" Tom Terrific called.

  I looked at my watch. "Almost nine," I called back. "Why?"

  He trudged from his bedroom back to where I was. He was wearing seersucker pajamas, wrong side out, and funny little blue slippers on the wrong feet.

  "No stories tonight," he announced with a shake of his head. "I have to go right smack to sleep imm-meed-i-ut-ly!"

  "Wrong," I announced as I scooped him up into my arms. "Now we're going to watch Love Boat on TV." I carried him down the stairs.

  Less than three hours left.

  I turned on the TV set and we curled up together on the pale green couch in the study. Tom watched the first few commercials intently, giggling when a dog said, "Yuck, I don't want that nutritional dog food." Then his head became heavier against my arm, and when I looked down, his eyes were closed.

  "You asleep?" I whispered.

  "Nope," he whispered back, his eyelids fluttering a little. Then he sighed and his head flopped into my lap. He was zonked. I stroked his damp hair while I watched the characters on the show, a rerun I'd seen before, fall in and out of love.

  Love Boat ended. Ricardo Montalban advertised a long, sleek car. A rerun of Fantasy Island began. Tom slept on. I reached over for a crocheted afghan that was folded on the arm of the couch and covered him. He snuggled closer to me. He smelled clean and fresh and young.

  Fantasy Island ended and I watched the news: a plane crash in Hong Kong, a fire in Dorchester, a drug bust in Gloucester. I watched Howie Friendly draw a tornado funnel in Nebraska and some small thunderclouds in Maine, all with his left hand. I watched the Red Sox lose on a third-baseman's error in the ninth. I looked at my watch. Eleven-thirty. I yawned. Tom Terrific slept.

  Carefully I removed his head from my lap and lowered it to the soft couch. I found my backpack in the hall and changed my clothes in the small bathroom on the first floor. Hanging on a hook on the back of the bathroom door was a woman's dark blue cable-knit cardigan. I took it back to the study and gently directed Tom's little arms into the sleeves; he never stirred. I buttoned the sweater down the front; it fit him like a strange little coat. I switched his slippers to the correct feet and zipped them up again.

  A sports special was on the TV now, and two tennis players were smashing serves at each other at about a hundred miles an hour. I turned the set off and looked at my watch. Eleven-forty-five.

  I turned off most of the lights, put the house keys into my backpack, and pulled the leather straps over my shoulders. Then I picked up Tom Terrific, who draped one arm around my neck in his sleep, and went to the front door. I opened it a few inches just as Hawk's car came slowly down West Cedar Street. When the car stopped in front of the house, I opened the door completely, went outside, closed it behind me, and checked to be sure it had locked. I carried the sleeping four-year-old down the front steps, and Hawk reached one hand behind him to open the car's back door for us.

  The street was dark and silent except for a few tree leaves, which whispered in the slight breeze.

  I lifted Tom Terrific into the car, placed him on the back seat, and climbed in beside him. He sat bolt upright suddenly, and his eyes opened in fright.

  "What are we doing?" he asked groggily.

  Hawk checked to be certain the door was closed tightly. He pushed the lock button down. Seth turned in his seat and whispered "Hi."

  "What are we doing?" asked Tom again, looking around in bewilderment as the car began to move down the street.

  "An adventure," I told him. "We're going to meet the bag ladies at the Garden. And we're going to ride in the Swan Boats!" I realized I was sounding like somebody's grandmother, full of fake excitement, trying to prod a reluctant child into some dubious enthusiasm: "Won't that be fun?"

  Tom climbed into my lap and clung to my neck. "I'm scared," he whimpered.

  Chapter 15

  Hawk pulled his car into a parking place on the Arlington Street side of the Public Garden, almost across the street from the Ritz. Apprehensively I tried to remember how many hours it had been since Tom Terrific had gone to the john. But the Ritz didn't seem to evoke any memories or needs in him. He was still curled in my lap with his head on my shoulder, but he was becoming more alert, more awake now. He lifted his head when the car was parked, looked around, and smiled a little when he saw George Washington's statue looming palely through the darkness.

  The night was clear, beginning to be chilly now that it was August, and there was a thin smile of a moon. An occasional car passed in the street. There were lights in the windows of hotels and in the tall office buildings where maintenance men and cleaning crews did their work on weekends and in the wee hours. On the other side of the Garden, the brick houses of Beacon Hill were dark.

  And the Garden itself was shadowed and dim, the statues and flowers luminous and ghostly, the huge trees silhouettes against the midnight sky.

  Seth, on the side
walk, opened the back door of the car, reached in, and lifted Tom Terrific from my lap.

  "Here we go, Head Honcho," he said gently. "Adventure time." Tom wrapped his arms around Seth's neck. I got out and closed the door. Behind me, Hawk was removing things from the car's trunk: the bolt cutter (I winced; but it didn't look as sinister as I had expected; it was like a large pair of pruning shears) and, to my surprise, his saxophone case. He saw my startled look and shrugged, grinning. "I never go anyplace without it," he explained.

  We entered the Garden. George Washington's horse pawed the air, frozen in his eternal pose, and the general stared blankly ahead as we passed him. His bronze face was focused on his own battles, ignoring ours.

  It was a short walk to the bridge that spanned the pond and across it to the other bank, where the dock was. The water looked black and calm, and the ducks that usually quacked and paddled noisily were now sleeping in secret places along the edges of the pond and in the tall grasses that tufted its small island. None of us spoke. Even Tom Terrific, though he was wide awake now, riding in Seth's arms, was silent; his eyes were wide, but his usual giggles and questions were stilled by the night and the sense of mystery.

  "Where are the bag ladies?" I whispered to Seth and Hawk as we went down the steps to the dock.

  "They'll be here," Hawk whispered back. "They said they would."

  Seth deposited Tom Terrific on the bench at the side of the dock. "Stay," he said, as if he were talking fondly to a puppy. Tom curled his little slippered feet up under him on the bench and stayed. I sat down beside him and held his hand.

  The Hawk set his saxophone case on the dock beside us. "Watch my horn," he said, as he had said it to me before, in the park. I nodded.

  Through the dim light I could see the figures of Seth and Hawk, both bending toward the water at the edge of the dock, and I could hear them murmur and whisper to each other. "There. Grab it now," I heard Hawk say in a low voice to Seth.

  Then I heard the clank of the chain.

  Out in the middle of the pond, together in a row, I could see the six Swan Boats floating. "Look," I whispered to Tom Terrific, and I pointed. "That's where the Swan Boats sleep at night."

  He stared at them, wide-eyed, and put his thumb into his mouth. After a moment he withdrew his thumb and whispered in an awed voice. "They're waking up now."

  He was right. The Swan Boats were beginning to move. They were silent, the six long necks of the swans arching in a row, their dark eyes as blind as the eyes of George Washington, their stiff wings spread. Slowly they glided, linked together, toward the dock. The only sound was the muffled clank of the heavy chain as Seth and Hawk pulled it together.

  I shivered. So did Tom. I glanced around, but there was no one there: just Seth and Hawk, crouched at the edge of the dock, straining as they pulled, and me and Tom Terrific, huddled together on the bench. The bag ladies hadn't come. I held my wrist up in the pale light and read the time from my watch; it was five past twelve. We had done it for them, and they hadn't come. It was just the four of us now, in this all alone. The chain scraped rhythmically against the dock as they continued to pull. The Swan Boats continued to glide, larger now as they came closer, majestic and mute.

  "Here they come," breathed Tom. I squeezed his hand.

  And finally they were there, the six boats in a line at the edge of the dock, the way I had seen them lined up in the evening after the last tourist had gone and they were ready to be secured for the night. Now Seth and Hawk stood up and moved silently, each of them to a different task, quick and efficient. I realized they had plotted this out between them, that like bank robbers or a team of surgeons, each knew his job. Without a word, they moved across the boats, unfastening things here and there. I heard chains slip from wood. I watched as they separated one Swan Boat from the others and brought it to the boarding area. The other five, still linked together, bobbed still and silent at the side of the dock. But one was now ours. One was alone and free, waiting for us in the summer night.

  Hawk came to our bench and put the bolt cutter down. He picked up his saxophone case. "Come on," he whispered.

  "Ready?" I asked Tom Terrific, and he nodded. He took my hand and padded in his soft slippers across the dock, beside me, to the swan.

  Seth lifted Tom Terrific aboard, into one of the wide seats, and steadied the boat as I climbed on beside him.

  Then I heard a noise. It was a barely perceptible sound, eerie and everywhere, as if the trees and flowers and statues were breathing and beginning to move. Tom heard it, too. He grabbed my hand. We turned and looked at the dock, where Hawk and Seth still stood, holding the boat, and beyond the dock to the shadowy Garden.

  Coming now from behind the bushes, statues, and trees, silent and stealthy as ghosts, were the bag ladies.

  None of them mumbled or shuffled or spoke. The only sound was that barely audible shift in the atmosphere, the whisper of air that told of figures moving through the night. They came separately, unlike the chained swans. One by one, as Tom, Seth, Hawk, and I all watched, they moved to the dock and gathered there. They were dark and motionless now, like a congregation standing in a dim cathedral.

  While Seth held the boat, Hawk helped each bag lady aboard. Watching his tall, thin fingers in the darkness, watching him bend at the waist as he held out his hand again and again to the figures in the procession, it struck me that he was as gracious, as gallant, as respectful, as the doorman at the Ritz, and that they were as dignified as anyone to whom a hand of help had ever been extended.

  When they were all seated in the boat, I saw that something had been left behind in the shadows on the dock. Their bags! Each lady had put down her bag full of tattered secrets, and all the fragments of her everyday life had been left ashore when she took Hawk's hand and found her place on the swan. Each of us had done so. We had left our lives behind.

  Quietly, Seth swung himself aboard and into the swan seat at the rear, from which he would pedal and steer. Hawk lifted his saxophone case over and set it down carefully. Then he unclipped a rope and pushed the boat along the side of the dock to give it a little momentum. Finally he stepped across the widening strip of water and sat down in the last seat himself. Now the swan was free. Together we all glided out into the dark pond.

  I could feel Tom's little body, warm and soft, nestled beside me. Ahead of me I could see the night sky with its splinter of moon and the city looming with its gray and geometric shapes; around me, the trees of the Garden and the smooth dark water of the pond. I looked back and saw Seth's head turn as he glanced to either side, getting his bearings in the dim light; his shoulders were straight and proud and taut with power.

  Now I could hear small sounds as well. The breeze. Tom Terrific's contented sigh. The shiftings of the bag ladies as they adjusted to the motion of the boat, and the tiny click of the latch on Hawk's saxophone case. I heard rustlings, suddenly, in the grasses along the sides of the pond: the ducks were waking. With muted quacks and flutters, they slid from their nests into the water and began to swim; I nudged Tom and pointed. Toward the boat, and then beside it, in patterns as graceful and silent as that of the swan itself, the ducks—there seemed hundreds—now moved solemnly with us through the night. I turned to look at the ladies, seated in the rows around me, and although their individual features were lost in darkness, I could see their postures: erect, stately, like the most noble of rulers being carried through an honored populace.

  Then, through the dark quiet, I heard the first notes as Hawk began to play. Melancholy fragments of melodies slid around and over us and through the night sky as the swan moved in a long semicircle at one end of the pond and then along the other shore to the bridge. I recognized bits and pieces of songs I had heard him play before; now he was letting them flow, one into the next, a concerto of memories. I could see from their outlines that some of the ladies were swaying slightly with the rhythm of the music. The swan moved now under the bridge, into hollow echoes and deep shadows, and out into the
expanse of pond on the other side. Hawk eased the melody into the opening lines of "Stardust." One of the ladies began to hum.

  The swan moved so slowly that it felt almost motionless, almost as if the only thing carrying us along was the song, its phrases sliding into each other smoothly until the end. Then, as we came around the curving corner at the far end of the pond, Hawk began the same song again, the same haunting sequence of notes, and the bag ladies began to sing softly.

  "Sometimes I wonder," they sang, "why I spend the lonely nights..."

  They were tentative voices at first. They were the voices of people who had not sung in a long time, who are uncertain, alone, and fearful. But as the swan moved along, so did the song, and their voices almost magically grew stronger; they began to blend together. They became less hesitant. They became a choir.

  "Beside a garden wall," they sang in unison, in tune, in a kind of wonderful rapture, "when stars were bright..."

  I didn't sing. I didn't know the words. It was a song from a different time, a time that had never belonged to me. It was their time. Their song. Their night. It was my time only to listen.

  It was while they sang, and I listened, hugging Tom close to me, that I saw the first police car drive up with its lights out and park beside the Garden. A minute later, the second and third. I heard the measured clop of a horse's hooves. Seth saw and heard them, too; he glanced at me. There was nothing we could do, and although we didn't speak to each other, I knew that Seth and I were thinking the same thing: as long as we can make this last, we will. We'll give them as much as we can of this night.

  By the time we had glided under the dark hollows of the bridge again and were coming close to the dock, the song had faded away and the last saxophone notes were floating out into the Garden. I think the police had waited, as Seth and I had, for the moment to come to its own completion. There was an endless minute of absolute silence, which I hope was filled with memories of better times and less lonely nights.