Daybreak (22 page)

“You may talk,” Margaret said. “We haven’t kept anything from Holly. Good heavens, she’s going away to college in September. She’s not a child.”

“Who’s not a child?” asked Holly. “Oh, you’re here, Ralph. I’ve been out canvassing for you.” And she dropped a kiss on his forehead.

“It’s you who’s not the child,” he replied, “although it’s hard for me to believe that only yesterday when I first met you, you were wheeling a sumptuous doll carriage down the street.”

“I remember. It was one of Grandma’s presents. They’re always sumptuous.”

“Ralph saw the parents of that other baby boy,” Margaret said. “That’s what we’re talking about.”

“I hope that other baby boy isn’t the one we’re looking for,” Holly said with surprising vehemence. “There’s a guy named Rice who goes to state U, and Allison’s brother knows him. He’s some sort of Nazi, a real horror.”

A sudden stillness came upon the listeners. Ralph’s gaze moved outward over the grass toward the low brown-stained wing of this peaceful house with its Japanese air; he saw disaster falling on it from the sky.

“Jews … Disgraceful … Insult and injury …” By such a parent, a seed like that might well have been sown.

“He writes for a rag of a paper,” Holly said. “Far-right bigots.”

When Ralph turned to her, he knew what recollection had suddenly flashed in his head: the eyes of the young man in the photograph that Rice had thrust at him. Heavy-lidded, wide-open, and unusually large, they had dominated the face. And now these same eyes glowed in Holly’s face. Better-looking than either of her parents, neither dark as Margaret was nor sandy-haired like Arthur, she was distinctive. It was the eyes that made her so. He remembered such eyes.

Deeply troubled, he said to Holly, “Rice is a common enough name. I wouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

It seemed to him that he was hearing a long, communal sigh. The pressure on these people must be unbearable. And he looked at his watch, saying, “I’d best be going. I have a speech to prepare, half a night’s worth of work. But I’ll take care of your matter again in the morning.”

“We’re here. We’ll wait,” Arthur said soberly.

   They watched Ralph’s car go down the street and turn out of sight before going back into the house. During these last months all Margaret’s hopes had rested in him, as if he were a conjurer who could pull truth out of the vacant air, or an electronic brain who would compute the truth, or a healer who by a touch would heal the wound.

She spoke briskly. “I do believe Ralph’s on the right track, and he knows he is. He just doesn’t want to stress it yet until he’s certain. Yes, I do believe.”

“What if he is, Mom? And what if it’s the Rice that
Allison’s brother told about? What’ll we do then?” asked Holly.

Arthur nodded gently, “Come, come. ‘What if never solved anything. We’ll wait and see. Meanwhile, we’ll get a good night’s sleep.”

10

J
oseph Fordyce of Fordyce and Fordyce was starting to lose patience with the case. He had been working on it, such as it was, because actually it was not at all complex, for more than two weeks. He had gone over hospital records, ordered new tests, examined two separate sets of reports, engaged one of the best-known pathologists in the area to check the reports, then engaged another pathologist to check on the first one; he had through main effort convinced Rice to submit to blood tests, and on some pretext to get his son to do the same. He had done all there was to do, and now that the matter was solved, he was tired of his client. He had less wearying matters to attend to than coping with Bud Rice’s wild, shifting moods: courteous, heartbroken, cantankerous and overwrought, he was intolerable.

To be sure, this was a dreadful situation. How would he feel if suddenly he had been told that his twin daughters were not his? But somehow he felt more sorry for Laura Rice. He had always seen her when they met at dinner parties as a charmer, a thorough lady, yet never stiff or pompous. And so lovely, with
that springtime air! Fordyce was not usually given to such poetic expression.

Now they were in an office somewhere at the bottom of a hospital, and Rice was badgering the nurse, the sole remnant of the staff that had been in the nursery when his boy was born.

“Okay,” Bud said. “There were two other nurses there with you. Okay, so you don’t know a thing about what might have happened, or whether anything did happen. I believe you. But what about those other two?”

The nurse was containing her anger. Her face was flushed. “Mr. Rice, I’ve told you, Maizie Neill died in a car accident, and Dot Grimm got married, moved to Hawaii, was divorced and remarried. I never heard from her after that. I don’t even know what her name is. Listen, I’ve been over all this six times, and I don’t know any more than what I’ve told you all, and I’m tired of it. I said to them and I’m saying to you, what reason would I or anybody else have had for mixing up your babies? I’m sick of the whole thing.”

“Please, Bud,” Laura said weakly. “I want to get home.”

“Come on, Bud,” said Fordyce. For God’s sake, couldn’t the man see that she was about to fall over? “I’ll drive you home.”

They went outside to Fordyce’s car. Laura sat alone in the back. Through the rearview mirror he could see her; her eyes were closed, and she was breathing hard. She was sick, poor woman, and why not? Bud was, too, sick not with sorrow and shock alone, but with rage.

A Jewish kid in Bud Rice’s family! It was almost comical.

“So you’re saying there’s not a doubt,” Bud said.

“None.”

“I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it.”

For the tenth time, Fordyce tried patience. “Bud, you’ve had two reports explained to you by experts. The boy’s blood matches the Crawfields’.”

For a moment Bud was silent. Then he burst out, “It’s their kind of rotten trickery! They did it, those people, that kind. They paid somebody to make the switch so they could get a better baby.”

Fordyce lost patience. “If that’s so, why would they have taken the sick one and let you have the healthy one? Talk sense, at least. Talk logically.”

Bud turned bright red. “Well, sorry, you’re right. I’m not thinking straight.” He slapped his fist into his palm. “Anyway, I don’t believe it. Tom’s the image of Laura’s father. You know Tom, you’ve seen him often enough.”

“I also know Timmy,” Fordyce said dryly. “Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

Bud gave a sob. Fordyce looked over and looked away. A bad, bad business. The man was gray; suit, eyes and face were the color of cracked earth in a long drought.

They rode on uptown, and no one spoke until at last Bud whispered, “Can we keep it out of the newspapers at least?”

“I’ll try. I’ll talk to them over at the
Sentinel
. But you know there will be gossip at the hospital, and it will spread. This is a rare case, a human-interest story, and if the Associated Press gets wind of it, there’ll be no help. But I will try, Bud,” said Fordyce, thinking of Laura and of the boy whose very identity was to be turned inside out.

The car turned up the hill and stopped. There, under
dusty summer leafage, the fine old house stood in its simplicity and grace.

“Oh,” cried Laura, “how ever are we going to tell Tom?”

   In the hall Earl looked up from his doze on the cool floor and went back to sleep. Tom had left a note on the table.

Timmy and I gone biking. Back around five
.

The sight of his familiar script, which seemed to lope across the paper in imitation of his very walk, was too much for Laura. Gone was her indignation, gone was her worry over his beliefs or his future place in the world, gone was everything but horror. This was the end, the abyss that had no bottom.

At the window she stood with her forehead pressed against the glass, her eyes too blurred to see anything outside but a green glare; her shoulders were shaking.

In back of her Bud paced. His heavy tread swayed the prisms on the lamps so that they tinkled as he passed. He muttered and groaned.

“Look. Look at him.”

She knew he was holding Tom’s picture, but she did not turn.

“Intelligent, strong. His face shines. A perfect specimen of an American boy. And they tell me he’s not ours. Christ, I won’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I want—we deserve one at least who isn’t sick, God damn it, we do.”

At that Laura did turn to stare with a look whose fierceness was so unmistakable that Bud cried out, “No, no, it’s not that I don’t love Timmy. You know better. But—but this one is my right arm, this one—” And he wept over the picture.

Pity for him mingled with revulsion over the words “one at least who isn’t sick.” But if that other one, Peter Crawfield, had stayed with them, then would there not have been two sick ones in this house? And what then would Bud have done?

So they stood, frozen in fearful expectation, like people waiting for the surgeon to come out of the operating room with news. I have to pull myself together, she thought. For three days now they had been in possession of incontrovertible facts, and for three days, tossing at night, wringing her hands and stifling tears in secret, she had been repeating to herself: I have to pull myself together. I need to talk to somebody. What if I lose my mind? It was so obvious that they both needed counsel and some support to endure this catastrophe, but Bud would have none of it.

“What will you do to Tom? Do you want to spread this crazy news through the city?” he had demanded.

“But it’s bound to come out. The Crawfields will want—”

“Damn those bastards! I won’t hear of them! The whole thing’s a hoax, and I intend to get to the bottom of it. I don’t want anyone snooping into this affair, no doctors, no ministers, nobody until I’ve settled it my way. My way, Laura.”

There was no reasoning with him.

The screen door banged, and Tom appeared with baseball cap and mitt in hand.

“Hi. I left Timmy at the ice-cream store with his buddies. He’ll be home in time for dinner. Hey, is anything the matter? You two look awful.”

I can’t say it, Laura thought. No, this is impossible. As well amputate a leg without anesthesia. No. No.

Tom’s wide-open eyes opened wider in alarm. “What is it? Tell me.”

Bud intervened before Laura could speak. “It’s nothing, a little problem. Problems in business. They happen. You know how your mother—”

“No, Bud. This isn’t right. Tom’s bound to be told, and he must hear it from us.”

“You have cancer,” Tom said. “That’s it, isn’t it? Or something else, and you’re afraid to tell me.”

She summoned all her strength. She was pushing a rock uphill, she was gritting her teeth against some hideous pain. And she put her arm around Tom’s shoulder.

“Come into the library. We’ll sit on the sofa together, and I’ll tell you.”

Bud threw up his hands. “Let it be on your head, then. I can’t go through with it. Oh Jesus!” he cried, and fled from the room.

She took Tom’s hand in both of hers. “Listen to me,” she began. Through some miracle her voice stayed steady. “I have to tell you—no, it’s not that anyone is going to die, nothing like that. But it will shock you! Do you remember ever reading about any newborn babies being mixed up in the hospital and going to the wrong families?”

“Well, vaguely, I guess. It’s hard to believe it can happen, though.”

“Yes, but it can.”

He looked straight into Laura’s eyes, began to say something, paused, and then with difficulty, murmured, “You’re telling me something. It’s happened in our family.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“It’s Timmy. He isn’t ours.”

Her eyes had never left his. Such wonderful eyes, he had, so rarely beautiful, glimmering and deep as a lake at night.

“No,” she said, “not Timmy.”

The silence was long, long enough for a delivery truck to wheeze up the hill past the house, to shift gears and go beyond hearing.

“Me?” he asked, with that dark gaze still fixed on hers.

“Yes,” she said, and bursting into tears, pulled his head down on her shoulder, kissed it over and over. “My boy. Oh, my little boy.”

He said nothing, and she realized that he could not speak. When she felt a spot of dampness on her shoulder, she knew she was feeling his tears. And she raised his head, holding his face with its closed eyes and seeping tears between her cold, shaking hands.