Daybreak

  “Good Lord,” Lillian said, “he’ll be five years old before he grows up to the thing.”

  The aunts were moving out, leaving the house to the new family. Bud was doing so well at the business that they were able to foresee retirement before too long.

  “You’re on your own now,” Lillian told them. “It’s time for us to slacken off. I’ve been wanting to see some more of the world, anyway, and Cecile—I kind of think she may have some plans of her own.”

  Cecile had met a man, retired from the navy in Pensacola, an interesting man who was interested in her.

  So there came another phase, the beginning of real adulthood for Laura Rice, responsible for a husband, a child, a house, and a burgeoning career. In the afternoons when piano pupils came, Betty Lee took care of Tom as she did on evenings when Laura and Bud went out.

  He loved going out with his wife beside him, shining in her best clothes. A convivial man, he liked to dine and dance; a competitive man, he wanted the world to admire the woman he had won. And his pleasure warmed the atmosphere in which she moved.

  It was a good life then in those first years, so busy that there was no time, let alone inclination, for introspection concerning the nature of true “happiness,” or true marital compatibility.

  In the bedroom, a lovely space enclosed like a garden by millefleur wallpaper, there in the grand bed with its airy white embroidered tester, they were together.

  Always and exactly, Bud knew what to do. He knew how to hold a kiss, a soft, moist pleasure, never detaching no matter how their bodies twisted together. Never over too soon was this union, nor was it prolonged so far that the height of pleasure could be bypassed. His hands knew where and how to touch. Eagerly, she wound about him, all vigor, all desire flowing, giving and receiving.

  It really was queer when you considered it. For those few minutes of total union, your mind literally left you. You were one force and one urge, so that whatever had pained your thoughts beforehand was obliterated in a total mindless bliss.

  The business throve, for Bud worked hard; the roster of piano pupils grew so that the house seemed to ring all day with music. And most of all there was Tom, darling Tom.

  “He’s the image of your father,” the aunts used to tell Laura when Bud was out of hearing. “So much emotion, with the temper and the kisses five minutes later. And the silky black hair—he’s the black Irish all over.”

  The child was Bud’s treasure. “A man’s boy,” he used to say as Tom grew and followed him around at his chores, watching while Bud hammered a loose board or mended a hose.

  He was a mother’s boy, too, as he leaned on her lap, listening with all ears and great, wide-open eyes to the tales of Winnie-the-Pooh. There was a sweetness in him; predictions of jealousy when a new baby arrived just did not come true.

  “It’s a question of intelligence,” Laura told Bud. “I don’t think most, or many, little boys would understand so much.”

  “Why does Timmy have to go back to the hospital?” asked Tom, for fair-haired, pretty Timmy had been sick from the moment they had brought him home. Ail night he cried; Bud and Laura took turns with him through exhausting hours. He did not gain. He caught one cold after the other, turning blue in the face as he struggled to breathe through his tiny stuffed nose.

  “I told you I had no confidence in a woman pediatrician,” Bud grumbled and snorted. “Women! Women doctors don’t know which side is up. But you insisted.”

  Laura let this idiocy go unchallenged. The poor frightened man had to let off steam somewhere, had to blame somebody.

  When they changed doctors, they fared no better. Some said it was colic, some said allergies. Before Timmy was eighteen months old, he had been twice in the local hospital with pneumonia. And meanwhile, Tom went off to school in his jeans and cowboy shirt, the tallest and strongest in the class. The contrast was poignant.

  “There has to be a doctor on this planet who can tell us what’s wrong with Timmy,” Laura insisted.

  And so, one bright winter day they got in the car with their baby, drove across the state to a teaching hospital, and there found someone who did finally tell them what was wrong.

  The doctor was kind but blunt, for Laura had asked him not to spare them.

  “Cystic fibrosis,” he said, “is a fatal disease. With care and love, a patient can live into his twenties. But more usually—” He stopped because Bud’s eyes had filled with tears, and Laura, too shocked to cry, was trembling.

  When she was able to speak, she said softly, “Maybe we shouldn’t have asked you for the truth.”

  With equal softness, the doctor replied, “I would have had to tell you most of it, and in time you would have found out the rest for yourselves.”

  Stunned in their grief, they had sat there trying to absorb instructions numerous enough to fill a thick booklet—which was handed to them anyway along with their delicate baby, wrapped for the journey home in his blue blanket that Aunt Cecile, with loving care, had embroidered with white rabbits.

  So there began another phase, and here she was, eleven years later, lying on the sofa with her memory racing and the monotonous downpouring rain drumming on the windowpane.

  In the kitchen Betty Lee was talking to Earl, Timmy’s beloved mongrel, with a cocker spaniel’s truthful gaze and the feisty spunk of a terrier. Timmy had chosen him at the pound to celebrate recovery from one of his worst sieges, that time his lungs had filled up and he had come so close to death.

  “I don’t want to call him ‘Prince’ or ‘King,’ ” Timmy had said. “I want something different, but something noble.” He had been nine years old, and very serious, his small face wrinkled in thought.

  “How about ‘Earl’?” Tom had suggested.

  A less aristocratic dog would be hard to find, Laura thought now, a little rueful smile on her lips.

  “Oh,” said Betty Lee, coming in from the hall, “I didn’t know you were asleep. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right. I wasn’t.”

  “I forgot to tell you that your lesson’s been canceled. There’s no one to drive, and the child can’t walk over in all this rain.”

  Right now a cancellation was welcome. These foggy moods came rarely, but when they did, they sapped not only the spirit but the physical body, too. It would take real effort to get up now and go to the piano.

  Still standing in the doorway, Betty Lee hesitated. “Is something wrong? You never lie down in the afternoon.”

  Well, sometimes she did. Betty Lee, who came only three days a week now—after forty-two years with this family, she was not yet willing to sever the connection—did not know everything that happened anymore.

  “You worry too much,” she warned, although Laura had not replied.

  An unexpected crash and crack of thunder rocked the house, and the two women looked at each other in alarm.

  “Timmy’s picnic,” Laura said.

  “I’m sure they’ll find shelter someplace.”

  “But if they’ve had to run for it? You know he mustn’t! Oh,” Laura lamented, “it’s so hard to draw the line between coddling him and letting him live like other boys! ‘Let him have as normal a life as possible,’ they tell us. But what’s ‘normal’? Watch out for pneumonia, and diabetes, too. He must not be too hot, mustn’t sweat because he’ll get dehydrated and vomit. Be sure to keep salt tablets in his pocket. ‘Let him have as much exercise as his condition allows, but don’t let him over-exercise.’ What on earth does that mean when a boy is crazy about baseball?”

  “Don’t you think he’s improving, though? I know he’s a little small for his age, but lately to me he looks healthier—”

  “Oh Betty Lee, God bless you for trying, but you do know better.”

  “Well, well.” The soft voice attempted to encourage. “Worry won’t help, as your aunt Lillian used to say. And there’s a car now, coming up the drive. See what I mean?”

  A harried-looking woman came rushing to the door with Timmy. Both
of them were soaked through, and Timmy was weary.

  “He isn’t feeling well. I’m sick over it, Mrs. Rice,” she apologized. “But the storm came without warning, and we had to run for shelter. I know he isn’t supposed to run. I don’t know how to tell you—”

  Laura had to interrupt. “Go upstairs, dry yourself thoroughly, put on pajamas, and get into bed. I’ll be up in a minute,” she commanded, and Timmy obeyed. These were the rules.

  “I hope he won’t be sick because of this. He’s such a dear little boy.”

  At eleven, he could still be called a “dear little boy.” Laura winced. Would she ever get used to it? People were always so kind to Timmy. They were so thoughtful and tactful because they knew he was going to die.

  “Please. It’s not your fault,” she said. “You didn’t know it was going to pour. And it was so good of you to invite him in the first place. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  Timmy was already in bed, leaning against pillows. Laura pushed the damp hair back from his perspiring forehead.

  “It was so terribly hot, playing baseball,” he murmured, “but nobody else minded it, so I had to play.”

  “I know. You didn’t want to complain.” There was no use remonstrating with him. He knew only too well the penalty he must pay for breaking the rules.

  “My stomach’s a little queasy, Mom.”

  “You’re dehydrated, that’s why. I’ll run downstairs and get some water.”

  But Betty Lee was already halfway up with a pitcher of cool water, cool but not cold, and never with ice.

  “Is he all right, Miss Laura? If you need me, I’ll stay.”

  “No, no, you’ve done enough today. Go on home. Bud’ll be here soon, anyway.”

  “You call me if you need me, hear? Don’t forget, he’s my boy, too.”

  There was that in Timmy that inspired love. Heaven knew he had cause for complaint over what life had dealt him, yet he never did complain.

  “Drink half a glass at least. You need it. And I’ll get—”

  “—sodium chloride, taken orally,” Timmy said, making a joke of the technical term. He knew all the technical terms, knew he must have high proteins and moderate fats because his pancreas wasn’t functioning as it should. Naturally he had been told what he needed to know, but he had also gone to the library by himself and read there in a medical text that his life would be a short one. They had learned this from the librarian; Timmy had never mentioned it.

  She sat down and watched him drink. Earl came in and bounded onto the bed, scattering raindrops from his rough gray coat. When Timmy put his free arm around the dog, drawing him close, the familiar gesture touched her today with a pain so acute that she had to look away. Yet her eyes, as they wandered from the oxygen tank, always at the ready in the corner, to the roller skates on the closet floor and finally to Tom Sawyer on the night table, found no comfort.

  It was necessary to say something, to make some neutral, commonplace remark, and she said, “Oh my, you’re sunburned, aren’t you? People with such white skin have to be careful even on a cloudy day, you know. People like you and me.”

  “And Tom. Tom and I look alike, don’t we? Except for our hair.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Tom never had pimples, either.”

  “No, Tom didn’t.”

  “That means I won’t have.”

  “Probably not, but if you should, we can easily take care of it.”

  “But I’m like Tom, Mom, so I won’t get pimples,” Tim insisted. “I can’t wait till he gets home. Is it Friday?”

  “Yes. Dad’s going to drive over to get him and all his stuff.”

  “So then he’ll be home all summer.”

  “That’s right. You and he will have good times together.”

  “I was thinking, you and Dad both went to the state U, and now Tom goes, so probably I’ll go there, too.”

  “Of course, if you keep up your marks,” she said cheerfully.

  Timmy yawned. “When’s Dad coming home?”

  Laura looked at her watch. “In about an hour. You’re awfully tired, aren’t you?”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Then have a little nap. You’ve had a long day. Shall I take Earl with me?”

  “No, leave him here. He’ll sleep, too.”

  At Timmy’s age, a boy wanted a dog, a father, and a brother. Without the devastating illness, it would have been a simple time, its problems relatively straightforward compared with what could come later.…

  Tom’s room was near the top of the stairs, and the door was open. In a few days he would be back in it with his possessions stowed away again in their home: his clothes, books, guitar, and tennis racket, all the paraphernalia with which prosperous parents, especially where there is a generous, doting father, could possibly equip a son at college. And she was glad, for Tom brought health with him and energy and hope.

  Hope. It rose whenever she thought of Tom’s potential, and just as suddenly, like a stone, it sank. She walked inside and in the glare of the red sun that shone forth after the storm, stood feeling the stillness of the vacant room. The oak at the window dripped steadily, leaf upon leaf.

  And she looked around the room, knowing what was there, wishing that through some magic these things would have vanished. The book entitled My Hero Hitler, in its bold, bright cover. And then, thumbtacked to the wall, the huge blowup of Jim Johnson’s good-looking face.

  Tom, Tom, what are you doing? she cried to herself.

  She was still there when Bud came home and climbed the stairs, calling, “Hey, what’s up? Where’s Timmy?” For Timmy was almost always on the front porch waiting for his father every evening.

  “In bed. He came back exhausted.” And she explained what had happened.

  Bud exploded. “Fool of a woman! She knows damn well that Timmy has to be watched. All he needs is another bout of pneumonia, the third since Thanksgiving, that’s all. She ought to have her neck wrung.”

  “It wasn’t her fault. That storm came like a gunshot. And they were way out near Hickory Branch. She felt awful about it.”

  “She had no business taking a kid like Timmy that far away. Damn foreigner didn’t know any better, I suppose. Why a man like Rolandson had to go to Europe to find a wife I’ll never know. Some Greek or Italian or whatnot.”

  “You’re being ridiculous, Bud. She’s a lovely woman, and for your information, she happens to be Portuguese.”

  “Well, at least she’s not a Jew.”

  Laura sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t say such things. I especially wish you wouldn’t say them in front of Tom. How can you be so kind to people you know and at the same time sound so cruel?”

  “Oh honey, come on. Let’s not get into that business again. You’re home, wrapped up in your family and your music, and that’s how it should be. You’re not out fighting your way in the world, you don’t see the things I see. Anyway, is Timmy okay?”

  “He fell asleep. He’s not coughing, so I don’t think his lungs are filling up.”

  “Good. What are you doing in Tom’s room, getting ready for Friday?”

  “I’m ready. No, I was just standing here for a minute worrying.” She held up My Hero Hitler. “Look what he reads.”

  Bud shrugged. “You take it too seriously. He’s a kid yet, away from home, exposed to all sorts of new ideas. At least he thinks, instead of being just a dumb jock.”

  “I’d rather he were a dumb jock who didn’t have ideas like these.” She pointed to Jim Johnson on the wall. “It’s that man who’s behind it, that awful man.”

  “Laura, I can’t agree with you. Johnson’s no Hitler. There’s an awful lot of truth in what he says about conditions, the middle class being squeezed to pay for people who won’t work, job quotas—”

  “I don’t like quotas, either. But he’s full of hatred, he preys on ignorance and make a circus out of politics to attract the young. He makes drama for them, and frankly, he scares me.”

&n
bsp; “You’d better get used to him. He’s around to stay. He’ll be in the state senate next November. You watch.”

  “Not because of my vote.”

  “What? You’re going to vote for Mackenzie?”

  “I am. He’s a moderate, intelligent man from Georgetown Law School, and he’s a peacemaker, not a rabble-rouser. And even if he weren’t any of those things,” she said firmly, “he’d be better than Jim Johnson.”

  “So we’ll cancel out each other’s vote. So what? It’s a free country. Anyway, I don’t want to talk politics. Keep your opinions to yourself, I say, even with your wife. You never change anybody’s mind, and nobody ever changes yours. Besides, in my position, it’s bad for business. It makes enemies.” Bud talked as he followed Laura downstairs. “Good thing is, recession or not, we’ve been busy. There’s that mall going up, they’ve been buying stuff from us, and then there’s a lot of home alteration, people fixing the place up instead of moving.” He followed her into the kitchen. “And Laura, don’t be upset about Tom. He’s a good student, a serious kid. Never given a minute’s trouble.”

  She whirled around with the salad bowl in her hands. “Have you read any of those books about blacks that he has in his room? I only hope Betty Lee hasn’t. I won’t have her hurt.”

  “Hey, he cares about Betty Lee. Has he ever been rude to her? No. So, okay, you don’t agree with the books he reads, but as I say, there may be more truth in some of them than you know. And as long as he doesn’t get into any trouble, I’ll be proud of my son. I am proud of him.”

  No, you didn’t change people’s minds …

  “Ah,” said Bud, “I’m sorry we don’t see eye to eye on all this.” He put his arm around her. “But we do on most things, don’t we? On the important things. On doing the best we can for each other and our boys. Right?”

  That was quite true, and she said so.

  “Then, come eat,” he said, and they sat down at the table together.

  The table stood in the path of a breeze sweet with the fragrance of wet grass. Outside, the evening was calm and bright, while inside the old house gave cheerful comfort. But a deep loneliness went sweeping through Laura so that she had to shiver, although she was not cold.