“You said it. I didn’t.”
There was no laughter in his face. Suddenly, Helen realized that she had almost never seen him laugh. Collie’s face was dark and solemn, a face that had been places and seen things, perhaps some of them not very pleasant.
“You’re a pretty girl,” he said now. “I’ll give you that. But there are plenty of people in the world besides you. You might try looking at them sometime. Some of them are interesting.” He reached out and touched her chin with a blunt, strong forefinger.
“I’m interesting. Look at me sometimes. Ask me things. Listen to my answers. You just might find that I’ve got some things to say that you would be interested in hearing. I may soon have a more important place in your life than you think right now.”
Then, without waiting for her answer, he flipped himself onto his feet.
“So long,” he said, just loudly enough for his voice to carry the length of the pool. “I’m off to get dressed for my date. She’s a cute little redhead. Can’t be late picking her up!”
I don’t believe it, Helen thought. I simply don’t believe it!
For a moment she remained there, stunned, gripping the side of the pool, as bewildered as if a pet puppy had suddenly planted its teeth in her wrist.
He’s Collie, she thought. My friend Collie! How can he possibly say things like that!
Then she heard the laughter and turned to see that the schoolteacher in the deck chair had been joined by her roommate. Collie’s farewell had been easily overheard, and they were enjoying it tremendously.
Slowly, Helen’s astonishment began to be replaced by a rising wave of anger. He did that on purpose, she thought. He was trying to embarrass me. Why that…that bastard!
“You said it. I didn’t.” The words came back to her, and she clenched her teeth in fury. It was all she could do to keep from climbing out of the pool and racing up the stairs to intercept him on the balcony.
But she couldn’t do that. It would look as though she were chasing him. She would have to swim a while longer and then sit around the pool for a time, chatting with people, as though Collie Wilson didn’t mean a thing to her. Which, of course, he didn’t.
In the meantime, who was this girl he had known before he met her? And just how well did he know her?
CHAPTER 16
Mrs. James put the last of the dinner dishes into the dishwasher and poured herself a final cup of coffee to carry with her into the living room.
It was a lovely evening. The windows stood open to the breeze, and spring poured into the house with the faint sweetness of the first hyacinths and the thin chirp of an early cricket.
It’s beautiful, Mrs. James thought, seating herself on the sofa and placing the cup on the coffee table before her. It’s a heavenly night—things went well at school today—Julie’s been accepted at Smith. By rights I should be floating on air. So why do I feel so strange?
Because she did. It was an odd, prickly feeling along the back of her neck.
Something is going to happen, she thought. I don’t know what it will be or how I know it, but there is something in the air. Something bad is going to happen, and there is nothing I can do to prevent it.
It was not the first time she had had such a feeling. Premonitions had come to her off and on throughout her adult life. The first time it had happened had been when Julie was only eight. It had been in the middle of the morning, a nice, normal morning with the sunlight pouring down golden into the yard and the chatter of birds in the elm tree. Mrs. James had been kneeling in the grass, pruning the roses, when suddenly she had stiffened with the realization that something was wrong.
Perhaps, she had thought, I have left a stove burner on or forgotten an appointment. Is there a phone call I was supposed to return and have forgotten about? Is there an invitation I haven’t answered? What in the world could it be?
Chiding herself for her silliness, she had nevertheless gone back into the house to check the stove and her calendar, and while she was there the phone had rung. It was the school calling to say that Julie had fallen on the playground and broken her arm.
The next time the feeling had come to her it had been one year later. This time it had been so strong, so sharp, that it had been almost a physical pain.
“What is it?” she had cried aloud, and she had not been surprised a short time later to see a police car pull up in front of the house. She had gone to the door and stood there waiting as the two uniformed officers had come toward her across the lawn.
“Mrs. James?” one of them had said. “I have bad news for you, ma’am. There’s been an accident. Your husband’s car—”
“Yes,” Mrs. James had said dully. “Yes, I know.” She had gone to get her purse and had not seen the astonishment in the men’s eyes.
In the years since her husband’s death, the feelings had never occurred so strongly again. They had been there though, off and on, and almost always they had predicted trouble.
There had been the time the light switch had shorted, and the kitchen had caught fire. She had been at a PTA meeting, and had called Julie, who was visiting at a friend’s house, and had said, “Run home and check on things, will you, dear? I have one of my feelings.”
Julie had reached home in time to call the fire department, and the damage to the house had been minor.
Not that the feelings were foolproof and could be taken as gospel. Last summer, for instance, there had been a time when she could have sworn that she felt something terrible approaching. It was during a period in which Julie was seeing a great deal of Ray, and for a while Mrs. James had wondered if that was it, if the young people’s feelings for each other were growing too strong and would create a problem. Fond as she was of Ray, she was aware of his immaturity, and she wanted another year of high school for Julie and then hopefully college. The idea of an unwed pregnancy or a very young marriage was not easy for her to accept.
In this case, however, the problem had not materialized. There had been one long evening when she had lain awake, counting the minutes, waiting for Julie and her friends to return from a cookout in the mountains. That night she had known that something would happen. Then, how silly she had felt when Julie had come home safely no later than midnight. Soon after that she and Ray had stopped seeing each other, and Ray had gone off to the West Coast.
Since then she had carried with her a strange, troubled feeling about Julie, but it was nothing that she could pinpoint. Her daughter had seemed different—quieter, more studious. Her social life had fallen away to almost nothing, but that might simply have been because Ray was gone.
“She’s growing up,” Mrs. James had told herself. “There’s nothing especially wrong. She has just changed from a lighthearted little girl into a serious-minded young woman.”
She was not sure that she completely favored the change. The old, happy-go-lucky Julie had been fun to live with. But then, she reminded herself, no mother really liked to see her child grow up.
This month, however, there had been something else. A growing restlessness. A nervousness within herself. She could not put her finger on the reason.
Something’s not right, she had thought.
More and more often on the days on which she substituted and had to remain after hours to make notes for the regular teacher’s return, she had called home to see that Julie was safely back from school and, if not, she had called her on her cell. She had all but stopped her own evening activities, the meetings and plays and card games which she often attended with her friends. She felt she should be at home.
“In case,” she told herself, trying to laugh. In case of what, she did not know.
But tonight she did know. Tonight there was a reason. She had not been able to rid her mind all day of the picture of Julie as she had been the night before, standing in the kitchen, looking at her with pleading in her eyes. Pleading for what? What did she want or need?
“Mom,” she had said. “Mom, I love you so much.”
&nbs
p; How long, how many years, had it been since she had burst out with something like that? It had been almost as though she were begging for something, asking for help.
“Mom,” she might have said, “I need you!” It had been in the voice if not in the words.
Something is wrong, Mrs. James thought now, staring at the untouched cup of coffee on the table before her. If I knew what it was, I could fight it, but I don’t know. I can’t even begin to imagine.
Julie had gone to her room to dress for her date with Bud. The sound of her CD player flowed down the stairs and the music trickled into the living room, mingling with the scents and sounds of spring.
It was a beautiful night and, Mrs. James realized with growing apprehension, it was a night when something terrible was going to happen to somebody.
Mr. Rivers tilted his chair back against the kitchen wall and asked, “Are there any more potatoes?”
“Of course there are. If there’s anything we’ve always got, it’s potatoes.” His wife wiped the back of her hand across her forehead and opened the oven to take out the bowl. “Elsa, don’t you go digging into them, now. Dad needs to eat, and you don’t need any extra helpings.”
“You want me to look like Helen, is that it?” Elsa said irritably. “Well, you might as well forget it. I’m not about to starve myself like she does in hopes some TV station will offer me a contract.”
“Helen’s got willpower,” Mr. Rivers said, helping himself to the gravy. “It’s gotten her where she wants to go.”
“And she hasn’t cared who she walked over to get there.”
Mrs. Rivers turned away from the oven. She was a thin, sallow-faced woman who for one brief time in her teens had been mildly pretty. Since then the advent of baby after baby, housework, ill-health, and the constant weight of financial problems had combined to give her a look of permanent exhaustion. The violet eyes, which had been her gift to her second daughter, looked oddly out of place in her drawn face.
“I don’t like to hear you talk that way, Elsa,” she said. “It sounds like you begrudge your sister a happy life.”
“Well, I don’t see where she deserves one,” Elsa said with a burst of feeling. “It’s not fair that she should have it all—looks, a cushy job, all kinds of money. What has she done to earn all that, I’d like to know? Helen’s never had a thought for anyone but herself in her whole life.”
“She helps out here,” her father reminded her. “She sends a check every payday.”
“Not as much as she could. Not so much that she can’t buy anything she wants for herself. She’s selfish, Dad, and you know it, but you’ll never admit it. Helen’s always been your favorite.”
“Dad doesn’t have favorites among his children,” Mrs. Rivers told her, “any more than I do. We love all of you just alike, and we’re glad for anything good that happens to any one of you. You’ll have your chance, Elsa. Your luck’ll turn. You’ll meet some nice boy.”
“Like Barry Cox?”
“Maybe. Who knows who you’ll meet.”
“I know,” Elsa said bitterly. “It’ll never be anybody handsome and rich like that. It’ll be somebody who’s a nothing, and I’ll marry him because nobody else asks me, and we’ll live in a house like this one and have a million kids just like you did. And we’ll live on mashed potatoes.”
“Talking about kids,” her father said shortly, “go look in on ’em, will you? It sounds like they’re tearing the living room apart.”
“I’m glad Helen’s boyfriend got hurt,” Elsa said. “Maybe this will show her she can’t have everything perfect.”
She got up from the table and left the room. Her voice floated back to her parents, “What do you kids think you’re doing? Get those trucks off that sofa!”
Her mother shook her head. “What did we do wrong?”
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Rivers told her. “We did the best we could, all things considered. Like you said, there’ll be a life for Elsa if she gets out and looks for it and stops using her sister for an excuse not to.”
“But she’s right in a way,” Mrs. Rivers said softly. “Helen is selfish. And she does seem to have everything.”
“No, she doesn’t,” her husband said softly. “Not nearly. When she finds somebody to love her, then maybe she’ll have everything. But the way she’s going, that’ll take a long time. First she’ll have to learn to think past herself to somebody else.”
“But she’s so pretty,” Mrs. Rivers objected. “There’s not a man in this world who wouldn’t want Helen. Just look at the Cox boy!”
“I didn’t say ‘want’ her,” Mr. Rivers said gently. “I said ‘love’ her. And about her looks—” He got up from his chair and put his hands on his wife’s stooped shoulders. “I’ll tell you one thing, honey; Helen may be pretty compared to some girls, but she’ll never hold a candle to her mother.”
“Do you think he knows?” Mrs. Cox asked nervously. “Do you think Barry guesses that he isn’t going to walk again?”
“Why do you say something like that?” Mr. Cox asked her. “The doctor told us that isn’t definite. There’s still hope.”
“But he said if a week passed and there wasn’t some sign of movement in his legs—”
“A week hasn’t passed. This is only the end of the second day.”
They had just stepped from the elevator into the hospital corridor. Evening visiting hours had begun, and friends and relatives of patients, many of them laden with books and flowers, moved past them in hurried little groups.
Mr. Cox turned to regard his wife with a kind of despair.
“Sometimes, Celia, I almost think you’re wishing this fate on Barry. You’re so glad to get him firmly anchored under your thumb that you don’t even mind the fact that he might be restricted to a wheelchair.”
“What a dreadful thing to say!” Mrs. Cox was sincerely shocked. “Of course I mind! This is a horrible thing to have happened to Barry! Still, I don’t begrudge a minute of the time I’ll be spending taking care of him. He’s my son, my own baby. I’ll do everything I can to make life pleasant for him when he comes home.”
“Face it, Celia,” Mr. Cox said quietly, “you’ve done your best to run that boy’s life for him since the day he was born. You couldn’t stand the thought that any part of it might be something that didn’t include you. No wonder he started rebelling during his last year of high school, picked up a girl you didn’t approve of, started smoking pot and driving like a madman. A boy needs some breathing room if he’s ever going to grow into a man.”
“He’s had all the breathing room he could possibly want,” Mrs. Cox said angrily. “We’re sending him to college, he’s been living at a fraternity house—”
“He’s here at the University because you didn’t want him moving out of town. And the fraternity house is something you gave in on to keep him from taking an apartment somewhere else.”
“If you’re accusing me of not loving Barry—”
“I’m not accusing you of that.” Mr. Cox reached out with an unaccustomed gesture and took both her hands in his. “I’m not saying it’s all been your fault either. If I’d been home more,if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my work, you wouldn’thave had to center your life on Barry. What I am saying is that we’ve got to face the situation and do something about it. When Barry leaves the hospital, he’ll have to come home with us, yes. But not to stay. If the worst comes true, if our son never walks again, he is not going to spend the rest of his life with us.”
“What are you saying?” she gasped. “How can you possibly suggest that we just throw our crippled child out on the street!”
“You know perfectly well that’s not my meaning. Just because a man can’t walk doesn’t mean he’s destined to be a helpless invalid. Barry can continue college, graduate, and go into some line of work that he can handle from a desk. He can drive a car with hand controls. He can support himself, live where he likes, travel without us. What I’m saying is that we’re
going to give him a chance to grow up.”
Releasing her hands, he turned abruptly and started down the hall. After a startled moment, Mrs. Cox hurried to catch up with him.
“But that girl,” she exclaimed, “that Rivers girl, what are we going to do about her? In the weakened state Barry’s in, somebody will have to protect him from opportunists. What if he should decide—”
“Mr. and Mrs. Cox?” As they drew opposite Barry’s room, the white-haired doctor was just coming through the doorway. He pushed the door closed behind him. “I have some happy news for you.”
His lined face looked unaccountably younger than it had that morning.
“Your son just moved his left foot.”
“He did?” Mr. Cox stopped so suddenly that his wife bumped into him from behind. “He moved his foot? Then that means—”
“It means that we’re on the road up,” the doctor said warmly. “It’ll take time, of course, and extensive therapy, and I can’t guarantee that he’s going to be back on the football field any time soon. But if Barry can move his foot, he’s going to be able to move his legs. And if he can do that, he’ll walk.”
“Thank god!” Mr. Cox let out a long breath of relief. “Do you hear that, Celia?”
“Yes,” his wife said softly. “Oh yes!” She reached for the knob of the closed door. “Oh, I can’t wait to see him!”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to,” the doctor told her. “Barry has asked that he be given some time without visitors.”
“But we’re not visitors!” Mrs. Cox objected. “We’re his parents!”
“He asked for the telephone,” the doctor said, “and he’s making a call. It’s odd the way these emotional jolts affect people. The first thing he said when he realized the significance of what was happening, seeing his foot move under the sheet, was ‘I’ve done a terrible thing.’ ”
“A terrible thing?” Mrs. Cox repeated. “Why, Barry’s never done wrong to anybody in his life. What could he be thinking of ?”
“He said he lied to somebody,” the doctor said. “It was all pretty confused. You know, he’s been under sedation and he’s still a bit groggy. He said he’d lied to somebody, and he had to straighten it out before it was too late.”