“Look, Davey, I don’t know what to make of you. I’ve never known you to be so unreasonable. Frankly, you’re driving me to my wits’ end over this sorry business, which I regret, I deeply regret, how many times do I have to tell you, so will you kindly let me alone, just let me alone tonight, for God’s sake, will you—”
“Oh, I’ll let you alone, all right. You can bet I’ll do that. I’ll let you so alone that you’ll forget I exist.”
Who of the two first hung up the telephone it was impossible to say. For a long minute, needing to collect himself, Eddy sat still. He was completely frustrated. He was angry, he was humiliated, and he was sad. How could this have happened to Eddy Osborne, the conciliator, who avoided argument, above all in his family?
But it had happened, and how it was to be resolved he did not know.
These were dark days in Ohio, miserable days under the wintry sky.
“Is this to be another wasteful feud like the one between Connie and me?” demanded Lara. “Every time I talk to Pam, it looks more hopeless, and we feel terrible about it. She can’t get anywhere with Eddy, and I can’t get anywhere with you.”
“I’m tired of talking about it,” Davey answered wearily. “And I have to think you don’t really understand my position.”
“Well, I’m not the only one. Connie says that Martin’s position is: Let the buyer beware.”
“Oh, beautiful! I wonder how Martin would like to come up against the faces that I’ll confront at the next stockholders’ meeting. Standing there at the head of the table, feeling the outrage directed straight at me!”
As soon as the business of the meeting had been dispensed with, and as the shuffle of departure began, Davey called for attention. His heart beat almost painfully, yet he knew he must speak from that heart if only to relieve it of its burden.
“I want to say something to all of you. I’ll only be a minute. I find it hard to breathe these days. The atmosphere has been very heavy. You avoid me. You, my friends.” For a moment he had to stop. “Oh, I know you’ve been hurt in the pocketbook, some of you badly hurt. Joe, I know you bought in to provide for your boy’s education. Doc Donnelly, I know you were planning to help your retirement. Dick, you were my coach in Little League.… Would I hurt you?” Here Davey had to stop again. Then he threw his hands out toward the whole assemblage in a gesture of appeal. “Tell me, do you think I would deliberately hurt you?”
A silence that Davey found extraordinary, even ominous, then followed. He looked around the table, but no eyes were raised to his.
Then someone spoke. It was Henry Baker, the superintendent of schools, a man known for his sharp, outspoken tongue.
“You should have advised us against the investment. But he’s your brother-in-law, so you didn’t. That sums it up, I think.”
“Why should I have, Henry? I had no reason to think it wasn’t a sound investment.”
“Not true, Davey. You had your doubts, and now you’re cornered. No, Davey. You must have suspected something, or else you would have gone in too. Mighty strange that you didn’t.”
At this ten pairs of eyes came to rest on Davey’s face.
“I’m well aware that it doesn’t sound convincing, yet the truth is simply that I—I personally don’t invest in anything but this company of ours.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t sound convincing,” said Henry Baker.
“Of what are you accusing me? I don’t understand. Did I make a profit out of this fiasco, for God’s sake?”
“No, but your brother-in-law did.”
“So is this going to go on till the end of time? Am I to be shunned like a leper because of my wife’s brother?”
“You can’t expect us all to have the same respect for your judgment that we once had. That’s putting it plainly. But you asked for it, so there it is. The plain, harsh truth.”
Dr. Donnelly said quietly, “Time. Time will ease things. Now I suggest that we call it a day, shall we?”
I am as bruised, Davey thought driving home, as if I had been beaten. “No more respect for my judgment,” the man said. And I saw by their faces that they all agreed.
The late February evening was still fairly light after supper, when Peggy, bringing her snowsuit, asked to go outside. Lara, while fastening the suit, kept talking furiously over the child’s head.
“They have no right to be blaming you, or Eddy either. They were willing enough to save tax money. It looked pretty tempting to them, didn’t it?”
Davey’s thoughts were back at the meeting. “The air congealed. I froze in it. The hostility …”
“You’d think they were all going to jail! All right, the IRS disallowed it and they have to pay up. It’s not fun, but it’s not the worst thing in the world either. Oh,” Lara said, “I saw Doc Donnelly’s wife at the hardware store, and she pretended she didn’t see me. It’s disgusting.”
He had no more heart for analyzing or explaining; this night was only a repetition of a dozen other nights. And yet he had to add something new.
“If I had invested with them, it would be different. This way it looks suspicious, as if I hadn’t believed in Eddy. Or I should have advised them not to believe in the project. As I didn’t believe in it! Only, damn it, you wouldn’t let me, Lara, remember? You said he had done so much for us and it would be awful to undermine him, and—”
“Well, he had done for us, hadn’t he?”
“Anybody in your family you’ll defend. Especially Eddy.”
“My memory isn’t that short, if yours is. He’s the salt of the earth. He’s entitled to a mistake.”
“Some mistake!”
“I never thought you’d be an ingrate, Davey Davis—Oh, for heaven’s sake, who’s at the back door?”
Someone was pounding, rattling the knob. Lara ran.
“Whatever do you want?” she began. And then, at the sight of Sue’s face in the glass top-half of the door, she cried, “What? What happened?”
The child was terrified. “Peggy! She fell down the Burkes’ stairs. I don’t know—” She began to cry. “She won’t move! Oh, Mom, she won’t move!”
They flew. In the neighbors’ floodlit front yard a little group had already gathered at the bottom of the long flight of stone steps. Behind a barricade of legs and stooped backs a short, limp leg in a snowsuit was all that was visible; Lara had to thrust through the barricade before she could see her baby—her baby, whose cap had fallen off, whose hair lay spread upon the snow, whose eyes were closed. She fell on her knees. No sound came out of her throat.
A voice said, “Don’t move her. You’re not supposed to. I took first aid.”
Another voice above Lara’s head kept asking, “What happened? What happened?”
More voices babbled. “The ambulance will be here in a minute.… They take so long.… Don’t touch her.…”
Sue wept on Lara’s shoulder. “Mom, Mom, I was in Amy’s house next door, and Peggy must have been looking for me at the Burkes’, and slipped on the ice—oh, Mom!”
But Lara still said nothing, as she knelt there staring at her child.
Davey put his head against Peggy’s chest. As if one could hear a heartbeat through that thick cloth! He looked up at Lara.
“She’s fainted. That’s all it is. She’s fainted.” Then, with a queer, awkward gesture, he put his hands over his face and someone led him away.
People helped Lara climb into the ambulance, where she and Davey sat beside the stretcher. Endlessly they rode through the empty nighttime streets. The day that had begun with a thaw had turned into a bitter, angry night. Lara had never been so cold. Her teeth chattered so that she could hear them. Imploring, she looked up into the eyes of the young man in the white coat who sat at the head of the stretcher.
“She isn’t dead, ma’am,” he said, answering the unspoken question.
Lara nodded. Her thoughts spun, repeating themselves in some strange, determined ritual: If I keep quiet and calm, if I do everything they tell
me to do, not scream or fuss or lose control, then I will be rewarded for good behavior and she will be fine again. Yes, yes, I must. I will. Her hands clasped themselves together on her lap as if in prayer. Then Davey put his hand over hers, and they sat, still without speaking, never taking their eyes away from Peggy, who had not yet moved.
Lights from the emergency wing glared into the courtyard, giving forth the only warmth and brightness in the freezing town. The light looked friendly. Once they got inside there, it would somehow be all right. People there would know at once what to do.
Such a tiny body in her overalls and T-shirt, such a small body next to such big ones all in white! Doctors, nurses, interns; who was who? Lara did not heed; Davey did the talking off in a corner. Low, hurried voices spoke and came back again to look, to touch, and listen. Peggy’s labored breathing was like a snore—a dreadful sound, but at least it proved that she was alive. The man in the ambulance had said she wasn’t dead, hadn’t he? Pay attention to that, Lara! She isn’t dead.
They were taking her blood pressure. They were listening to her heart.
“No blood in the lungs,” announced a young man with a stethoscope around his neck.
But surely that was blood seeping out of her ears? Still almost speechless, Lara pointed.
“That’s from the skull fracture,” the young man said. “A skull fracture need not be as dreadful as it sounds.”
He meant to be kind. “Need not be.” What did that mean? It meant that it could be.
Now Peggy’s little face began to swell. One could almost see it happening as the flesh rose, black and blue. A crust of blood had hardened on one cheek. As Lara bent to wipe it away, she was gently restrained.
“That’s nothing, only a skin scrape.”
“But will she wake up soon?” It was her first question, a foolish one, she knew as she was asking it.
Davey shook his head, warning: Don’t distract them. They know what they’re doing. And he said aloud, “Darling, it takes time.”
“But look,” Lara whispered, “look, her lips are moving.”
Indeed, the child was shaping her mouth into an unnatural grimace, an expression that they had never seen before.
“She’s unconscious,” repeated Davey.
A little more than an hour ago she had been eating banana pudding at home.
And suddenly the little body stiffened, rose into an arc, straightened, arched again with head thrown back and legs jerking while her arms flailed frantically from side to side.
“My God!” cried Lara, grasping Davey’s arm.
They were putting a tongue depressor into Peggy’s mouth and holding her firmly.
“A seizure,” a nurse told Lara. “Look away. It will be over in a minute or two.”
“But why? Why?” Lara wailed.
“Perhaps you had better take Mrs. Davis out,” said the doctor, who now appeared to be the one in charge. An older man, he had just arrived, hurrying as though he had been summoned from a distance.
“No,” Lara protested. “No. I’ll be quiet. Please. Please.”
When the seizure ended as abruptly as it had begun, the child lay back inert, and the slow, noisy breathing resumed as before. Davey was motioned aside. Again there was swift talk at the far end of the room, and again he came back to Lara.
“They’ll be taking her for X rays of the chest and skull. And after that, an electroencephalogram.”
So she knew. She knew enough about brain damage to understand what was happening. If she had had any thoughts—and she had had them—about swift repairs in this emergency room, after which they would take Peggy home as good as new, she now knew better.
Hours in the intensive care unit were to follow. Now came the specialists, the otolaryngologists, the ophthalmologists, and the neurologists to observe, to test, to prescribe, and mostly, in the end, to counsel patience. As the hours went past, they spoke more guardedly and less frequently of hope. No nuance of their voices or their glances escaped Lara and Davey. Admitting nothing to each other, they did not have to admit anything, for the fact was plain: The child was still unconscious.
Every third hour the parents were allowed to see her. And the pathetic silly sentence kept sounding in Lara’s head: She was eating banana pudding, sitting on the other side of the table next to Sue.
They had almost forgotten Sue. At home, on the first night of the disaster, each had asked the other whether he had told Sue to watch Peggy in the yard, and each had answered, “No. I thought you had.”
“So that’s why she was at Amy’s that night. Peggy left the house a bit later, I remember now. We were arguing,” Lara said, and wept again. “Arguing, like fools.”
On the second day Connie flew in and met Lara in the waiting room outside the intensive care unit.
“Sue phoned me. Poor child, she could hardly talk. Oh, Lara, what can I do for you?” Connie lowered her voice. Two middle-aged women, farm wives perhaps, were staring in frank curiosity at her sweeping fur coat. “And Martin says if you need anything, if you run short, Davey must let him know. You understand? I’m going to stay a few days. Davey says you haven’t rested at all. You have to go home and sleep, Lara. I’ll take your turn here watching.”
“I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept. Anyway, Davey will be here.”
“He needs rest too. And he has to spend some time at the plant. It can’t be allowed to fall apart, he says. So I’m staying for a few days. Don’t argue.”
“I can’t sleep, anyway. I told you.”
“You can try. If Peggy wakes up, I’ll be here. She knows me, and I’ll telephone you right away and tell her you’re coming. Now go home.”
On the next day Eddy arrived with Pam. Pam took Lara into her arms, but Eddy went first to embrace Davey.
“Davey, Davey, there are no words for this. I take back every mean word I said to you that night. God help us all.”
Davey’s eyes were wet. “It’s all unimportant, not worth a breath. Only our baby matters.… Thank you for being here, Eddy.”
From everywhere came an outpouring of concern and help. Neighbors took Sue to school, watched the house, and fed the dogs. The telephone rang, the mail flowed; there were fifty names on a huge card from Peggy’s nursery school. Even those who had felt so bitterly unforgiving toward Davey came through. Dr. Donnelly’s wife took Sue to play with her grandchild. Ben Levy left a roasted turkey at the kitchen door. And Henry Baker, meeting Davey at the gas station, came up and took his hand.
Without animosity Davey could not refrain from asking sadly, “Still won’t trust my judgment, Henry?”
The reply was not unkind, yet it was unmistakably firm. “That’s entirely separate from your little girl. The one has nothing to do with the other. I pray for the child.”
Later that week Lara came home to find a message on the answering machine. Sue had not gone to school that morning.
The three adults, Lara, Davey, and Connie, stared at each other. Is it possible for another disaster to strike this little family? Davey asked himself.
“She had her schoolbag,” Lara said, “I remember that distinctly. I watched her go down to meet the car pool.”
“Who drove today?”
“Lee Connor. I’ll call her.”
When she returned to the others, Lara’s eyes were terrified. “Lee says Sue telephoned her this morning to say she wasn’t going to school.” Lara sank down on the sofa. “I don’t think—I just don’t think we can bear one thing more.” Her voice quavered.
Davey cleared his throat. “We mustn’t panic. Think clearly. Don’t get excited. Think clearly.”
He has to play the male role, Connie thought with pity. He’s not supposed to show that he’s shocked to death. Lara can show it, but he doesn’t dare to.
Aloud she said, “Give me a list of her friends, and I’ll make phone calls. She’s probably gone with one of them to the movies or the mall.”
“Sue wouldn’t do that,” Lara said faintly. “She’s very
responsible, very obedient.”
“Even so. There’s always a first time, and she’s getting to the independent age. Give me a list, Lara.”
“There’s one on the bulletin board in the kitchen. I’m class mother.”
After eighteen calls Connie, receiving no clue, began to feel weak in the knees herself. The world was so full of horrors! Could the child possibly have become involved with an older boy and gone to meet him someplace? Some pervert, some killer? One heard of all kinds of terrible things on the news.
When she came back from the kitchen, she found Davey and Lara still where she had left them, staring into space as if devoid of energy or the ability to think. Somebody would have to think for them.
“I have a hunch she might have gone to the movies,” Connie said, trying to sound positive.
Davey frowned. “What makes you think that?”
“Because I remember once when I was about eleven or twelve I was so furious at my parents about something, I forget what, I went off to the movies all alone and sat there sulking through two double features.” There was no response from anyone. “Listen,” Connie said, feigning a vigor that she did not have. “I’m going to ride down to the theater and take a look, just in case. I’ll want your station wagon. Maybe I should try the mall too. Kids like to hang out in malls. Are there any particular places where I should look, Lara?”
“The record shop, I guess,” Lara said, still so faintly that Connie almost missed the words. “And she likes thick shakes.”
The matinee was ending when Connie drew up at the theater. At once she saw that there were no children among the scanty crowd of retired oldsters; this was, after all, a school day. Next she tried the mall, which, being merely a small strip, was easily scanned from end to end. On the way back home with no success, she had a cold, sick feeling in her stomach.
Determined, nevertheless, to keep up a positive attitude, she walked briskly into the kitchen. Lara and Davey were at the kitchen table, each with a coffee cup in hand. It was after six o’clock, and no dinner was in evidence.