A Solitary Blue (3 page)

“I didn't handle them at all. I knew it didn't make any difference what they said.”

The Professor sounded pleased, though. Jeff could hear that, and he offered Brother Thomas another hamburger.

Jeff waited a couple of weeks before asking his father about Brother Thomas. “Who is he?”

“A monk. A Christian Brother, that's a teaching order,” the Professor said. “From the Catholic University; he teaches a Bible course for us.”

“That's not in your department. How did you meet him?”

“He played Whist with us — then I wanted to study Greek and he wanted to freshen his up.”

Jeff sat in surprised silence, wondering why his father needed to learn Greek, wondering how long this friendship had been going on. While he wondered, his father got up from the table and returned to his study. Jeff didn't mind. As long as the Professor was doing what he wanted he would be content with Jeff. The hard thing was trying to figure out what he wanted, because he seldom asked for anything. Jeff washed the dishes, rinsed them, and placed them in a rack to dry. He took out the broom and swept the floor. The Professor liked things neat. All of their extra belongings they packed away into the unused living room, and the rest of the house they kept neat. After four years, Jeff was pretty good at figuring out what the Professsor might want, reading his reactions. It was pretty easy, after all, because
mostly the Professor didn't think things made any difference. He often said that. And in the same way, so he could give the teachers what they wanted to get, Jeff worked at school, listening carefully not only to instructions, but also to the teachers' reactions.

Occasionally that fall, Brother Thomas would come over to their house for supper. He always brought a bottle of wine with him. Early on, he brought four wine glasses, tall, stemmed crystal glasses, formed from what he called flashed glass, a layer of colored glass on top of a layer of clear. An intricate design had been cut through the outer colored layer, so the glasses shone like jewels. One was red, one blue, one yellow, one green, and the men would say what color they wanted as Jeff set the table. Brother Thomas liked to eat, so Jeff cooked some of the recipes Tony had left for him, like a chicken roasted with two pierced lemons tucked into the cavity so that the meat tasted slightly of lemon, and the juices made a sauce for rice. “The boy has a real hand for it,” Brother Thomas said to the Professor. “How did you get so lucky? He certainly didn't get it from you — was his mother a good cook?”

Jeff kept his eyes on his plate and his face still as he listened to what his father would answer.

“No, she hated housework of any kind.”

Nobody said anything else. Jeff turned the red glass around in his fingers.

“Let's take our coffee in and get to work,” the Professor suggested.

“With pleasure. After I toast the cook.” Brother Thomas raised his glass to Jeff and the Professor did the same. Jeff tried to smile at Brother Thomas, but he saw how the man's brown eyes studied him, and he did not know what the man was thinking. He did know, however, that Brother Thomas wouldn't say anything. That much he had figured out, that although Brother Thomas had a lot of ideas, he kept them to himself. Jeff would have liked to hear some of them, but he didn't ask.

In the winter a flu ran through the University School, and Jeff caught it. He spent two days in bed, unable to eat, listening to the sound of his father's typewriter in the silent house.
Tickety-tick. Tickety-tick.
Outside, a gray Baltimore snow fell steadily. Jeff studied the ceiling of his room and kept alert for the first signs of nausea
or diarrhea, so that he could be sure to make it to the bathroom. At mealtimes, his father came to the door and asked if he wanted anything. “No, thank you,” Jeff said, trying to sound better than he felt, so that the Professor wouldn't be disturbed. He hadn't been really sick for such a long time that he had forgotten how terrible it felt.

On the third day, a Friday, he went back to school, but when he got home in the afternoon and tried to climb the stairs to get to bed, he felt so dizzy he couldn't make his legs move. He rested on the stairs for a while, until he could get to the kitchen and sit in a chair. He was terribly thirsty so he poured himself a glass of ice water, which he guzzled down. For a couple of seconds he felt wonderful. Then he started to cough, deep racking coughs of the kind he had suppressed most of the day. Between the coughing and the dizziness, he threw up in the sink, the water he'd just drunk as well as the little lunch he had eaten. Then he felt better, so he cleaned out the sink.

Jeff made soup for supper and cheese sandwiches toasted in the broiler, and he was careful not to eat much so that he would be able to wash the dishes and get up to his bedroom without his father noticing. He kept his coughing down as much as he could. His ears rang and his body alternated between being too hot and being overrun with chills. He wondered, as he lifted his soup spoon, if his hands were shaking, because it felt as if they were; but, when he looked to check, he could see that they weren't. In bed, he fell asleep without even taking off his clothes.

The next morning he couldn't get out of bed. His teeth chatered and his chest ached and his hair lay cold and wet across his forehead, at his neck, all around his head. He woke himself up, coughing, then drifted off again. Late in the morning, the Professor looked into his room. When he opened the door he awoke Jeff from a shallow sleep. Jeff tried to sit up, but he didn't want to raise his head from the pillow, because then he would feel dizzy, and when he felt dizzy he felt sick.

“I'm going to see Brother Thomas,” the Professor said. “I don't know how long we'll be on this passage, the syntax is strange. We're almost out of milk and coffee,” he said. Then, about to leave, he asked, “Jeff? You look pale, or is that the light. Is there something wrong?”

Jeff had to say yes.

The Professor came in then and stood looking down at Jeff.
He hesitated, then rested a hand on Jeff's forehead. His hand felt cool and dry. “What's your temperature?” the Professor asked. “I thought you were over that flu.”

“I'm sorry,” Jeff said.

“Where's the thermometer?”

“We don't have one. I'm sorry.”

The Professor left the room. The door was open, so Jeff heard him going down the stairs before he slipped back into uneasy sleep.

The next thing he heard was Brother Thomas asking him to wake up. Obediently, he opened his eyes. Brother Thomas put a thermometer into his mouth. The Professor stood tall behind him in a blue cardigan sweater. “Who's his doctor?” Brother Thomas asked. The Professor shook his head helplessly. Jeff had to take the thermometer out of his mouth to cough, but he put it right back in when he was through. The two men listened to him. “What do you mean you don't know,” Brother Thomas asked the Professor. He sounded cross; Jeff hoped he wasn't going to get Brother Thomas angry at the Professor. “Jeff, do you know your doctor's name?” Jeff shook his head.

“When's the last time you saw him?” Jeff shrugged; it was too long ago, he was too tired. “It'll be on the school records,” Brother Thomas said. His worried brown eyes were fixed on Jeff.

“Today's Saturday,” the Professor said. “The school's closed.”

“Who would remember the doctor?”

“His mother might. I guess.”

“Can you get in touch with her?”

“I haven't heard from her in four years,” the Professor pointed out.

“It's all right,” Jeff said. He coughed again, then added, “I had flu this week. Just a relapse. I'm sorry.”

Brother Thomas read the thermometer. “One hundred four. And this is still morning, Horace. Have you got any aspirin?”

The Professor looked at Jeff. “In the bathroom,” Jeff told him.

“He needs a doctor,” Brother Thomas said. “We can give him a couple of aspirin to bring down the fever, but he needs a doctor. His own doctor might make a house call — I don't want to take him outside in this weather.”

“I could try calling her family, to see if they know where she is.”

“I think you'd better do that,” Brother Thomas said. His round face looked sternly at the Professor, and then he hurried out to get the aspirin for Jeff. The Professor put his hand on Jeff's forehead again, before going downstairs. When they had both gone, Jeff rubbed his hands over his chest, because coughing made it hurt. Brother Thomas gave him two aspirins with a glass of water, and he sank back into sleep.

There was a third man in the room when he woke up again, a youngish man. “Do you remember me?” Jeff shook his head. “Well, I wouldn't recognize you either. You've grown.” He opened his bag and put a thermometer into Jeff's mouth. He took out a flashlight and looked into Jeff's eyes and ears. He read the thermometer and said, “Hmmmm.” He listened to Jeff's chest, front and back, with a stethoscope. He looked down Jeff's throat.

“We gave him two aspirins an hour ago,” Brother Thomas said.

The doctor nodded. He took out a pad and wrote something on it, then ripped off the page. He wrote something on the second page and ripped that off too. He handed them both to the Professor. Jeff watched.

“My name's Baker,” the doctor said to Jeff. He sat down on the bed, beside Jeff. “You're pretty sick, bronchial pneumonia, and you'll need to stay in this bed for at least three days. No school for a week. Is that going to break your heart?” He smiled at Jeff. Jeff nodded to show he understood. “I want to see you in my office next Friday afternoon. Believe it or not, you're going to feel much better by then. You've got some shots to catch up on, young man.”

Jeff nodded. The three men left the room. Dr. Baker started to talk while they were on the stairs, quick and questioning, but Jeff couldn't distinguish the words.

He slept most of that day. Either the Professor or Brother Thomas came into Jeff's room to give him spoonfuls of medicine, every two hours, and ask him if he wanted a cup of tea or some Coke. By Sunday afternoon, he did feel better. In the evening, when the sky beyond Jeff's window was black, Brother Thomas came in with a tray, which he put down on the table beside Jeff. He told Jeff to sit up and then rearranged the pillows behind him. He put the tray
across Jeff's thighs and sat down in a chair pulled up beside the bed. It was a chair from the living room, a rocking chair, that the Professor had brought up earlier.

There was clear chicken soup on the tray and a slice of unbuttered toast and a glass of Coke. Jeff tried the soup. He wasn't hungry, but he felt empty.

“It's been a shock for your father, your being sick,” Brother Thomas said. His brown eyes watched Jeff. Jeff swallowed quickly so that he could apologize. “It's good for him,” Brother Thomas said, “but it is a shock. I never even thought to ask whether he was sending you for checkups. And I'll bet you haven't been to a dentist either.”

“I didn't need to,” Jeff said. He started to cough again, and Brother Thomas lifted the tray up until he had finished.

Brother Thomas
ttched
as he put the tray back down. “Well, you're a pair of blessed innocents. And you never asked about your mother, did you?”

Jeff shook his head.

“Do you know anything about her? I don't.”

“Her name's Melody,” Jeff said. “She has long black hair and she's beautiful. She has gray eyes.”

“She's living with her family, in South Carolina. I know that much more. Your father wasn't pleased to talk to her.” Jeff kept his face empty. “Are they divorced?”

“I don't know,” Jeff said.

“You ought to get him to tell you about her,” Brother Thomas advised. “It would be good for him; anyone can see that.”

But Jeff knew better than that, although he didn't argue.

Jeff stayed in bed for four days, and the Professor or Brother Thomas came to read
Ivanhoe
to him. They brought him books from the library and, when he could go downstairs, Brother Thomas gave him three paperbacks in a set, The Lord of the Rings. “This will keep you busy while you have to stay inside,” Brother Thomas said. The long solitary hours did go by quickly as Jeff read the story of unlikely heroes in another world, of magic and love, of battles against unremitting evil, the long, arduous journey, of friendship and betrayal.

On Friday, Dr. Baker gave Jeff a complete checkup, two shots, and asked if his father was with him.

“No sir, he has a class,” Jeff answered. The doctor looked up
from the file he was writing in and said, “Well, then, I'll expect you in here for a checkup around your next birthday. That'll be September. You'll be twelve.”

“Yes, sir,”

“Do you have any questions you want to ask? Anything that's worrying you?”

“No, sir.”

Well, if you think of any. How do you do in school?”

“OK,” Jeff told him. He did not want to say that his grades had been drifting down, that his teachers said he was “lazy” or “dreamy.”

The doctor nodded and closed the file. “Don't disappear on me again, all right?” Jeff nodded. “You look like a normal enough kid to me; you're doing fine. No problems. I'll see you next September, unless you need me in between.”