Daybreak (33 page)

You’re acting like a high school girl, she scolded, becoming aware that she had been standing in the doorway for several minutes. But suppose somebody was to see her hesitating there, as if she were disoriented, suppose Ralph was to drive up and see her; suppose he was actually inside right now, wondering what was the matter with her?

She fled. Clutching Tom’s sweater, she almost ran and almost tripped in her high heels. She frightened herself. Her mind was doing tricks.
If you play with fire, you get burned
, warned Aunt Cecile. And it was true. You had only to read the newspapers or watch television to learn the ways in which people burned themselves. Stay out of this campaign. Stay away from Ralph Mackenzie …

Across from the parking lot was a row of stores, among them a music store, from which now sounded the raucous voices, the tom-tom beat of teenagers’ music, reminding her that she had offered to buy some CDs for Timmy. And she went inside, made her selection, started out the door, and went back to ask about recordings of classical guitar.

“Segovia? Bream? We’ve got a few of each, and we’ll order if you want anything that we haven’t got. Are you looking for something in particular?”

“No, I’m not at all familiar with the guitar.”

“But you most surely have one of the country’s largest collections of piano soloists.” The man smiled. “Not giving up the piano for the guitar, are you?”

Laura smiled back, thinking, It’s funny how we feel compelled to fill every moment with these friendly, joking, meaningless remarks; we all do it.

“Hardly. I was just talking to somebody the other day and got the idea that I’d like to hear some guitar music.”

And that was true. Why, only a while ago, she had heard a flute recording on the car radio and gone right out to buy a James Galway selection. This time it was the guitar, that’s all.

At home that afternoon she took out a disk: Segovia playing “Granada” and “Sevilla.” The room was cool and shadowed by the sycamore, now that the sun had gone around the side of the house. Through this coolness the music flashed; it danced and sang; one could imagine water rippling through a Moorish garden, a red-flounced, whirling skirt, castanets, a pleading serenade.

“Like fire in the blood,” he had said.

So it was. Laura lay back on the chair and shut her eyes.

The back door closed with a bang, and Bud came in wiping his forehead.

“Whew! It’s a sizzler out there. What the deuce is this racket? I could hear it out on the back steps.”

“I like it,” she said, and got up to press the “stop” button.

“You didn’t have to do that. Did I say shut it off? If you like it, have it. I don’t have to like it. Gee, you live here, too.”

Immediately, she felt ashamed. “Never mind,” she said. “Not important. Where’s Tom?”

“Coming in. The place was busy today, a madhouse. You wouldn’t think so in this weather. Tom worked like a horse. I told him I wish I could get a few more men like him. How’s Timmy been?”

“Quiet. He read, and then a couple of the boys came over to play board games. No coughing, or very little. I’ll have dinner before you’re through washing up.”

When the telephone rang, Laura took it in the kitchen. A voice, now familiar, spoke her name.

“Laura? I hope Timmy is feeling better?”

“Thank you, he is. Margaret?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m a little nervous, I guess. Yes, it’s Margaret. Margaret Crawfield.”

It seemed to Laura that her heart actually did sink a few inches. This voice, like a living presence in her kitchen, came to remind, to warn that it was now
attached
to this home and family, forever attached, and never to go away. God, if those people would only go away!

Yet the voice was tremulous and appealing. “Is this a bad time for you? Am I interrupting anything?”

“No, no, it’s all right. And so good of you to ask again about Timmy.”

“Well, we know it must have been very bad. Ralph didn’t need to describe what was happening. We knew it all.”

“Yes,” Laura said weakly.
My other son. Peter Crawfield, my other son
.

“Ralph said he had called a few times and spoken to Tom. Do you think—well, to tell you the truth, I hoped it might be Tom who’d answer the phone just now. Do
you think—will you ask him to talk to me? Is he at home?”

Laura knew without asking that he would not talk to her. It would be easier to say that he was not at home, but she also knew that she could not do that.

“I’ll call him,” she answered.

The other must have detected some hesitancy, because she hurried in explanation. “We sent him a book on astronomy. Arthur thought maybe that might be a talking point. I don’t know—”

And Laura, thinking, she is close to tears, as am I, said quickly, “Hold on. I’ll try to find him.”

Tom and Bud were in the library standing near the telephone.

“Don’t bother to ask,” Bud said. “I know who it is. I picked up the phone the same time you did.”

Defiance was written on Tom’s lips, sucked into a thin line, and on his pose, arms folded across his chest, feet apart.

If only that woman would give up, Laura thought once again.

Yet she pleaded, “Please. It’s only a few words, Tom. You can’t keep evading this. Something’s got to give.”

“Let that woman give,” Bud said. “Damn pushy persistence. It’s typical. Jews never give up.”

“Put yourself in her place, Bud,” Laura said quietly. “Have some mercy.”

“Mercy! For a pair of impostors who’ve shoved themselves into our lives with a pack of slick lies so they can take Tom away from us? If murder weren’t illegal, I know damn well what I’d do. I’d get my shotgun and—and—” Having reached the top of a crescendo, he paused.

Appalled, Laura warned, “You’re shouting! She can hear you. Shut the door, Timmy.”

The boy, hearing the commotion, had come running downstairs and now demanded to know what the trouble was.

Tom told him. “It’s those people. She wants me to talk to her, and I don’t want to. Mom wants me to, but I won’t. I’m sorry, Mom, but I can’t. You don’t understand. I can’t.”

Laura put her hand on his shoulder and looked up—how tall he was!—into his angry, sad, fearful face. “Tom dear, I do understand, much more than you think. We’re all in this together, so we have to understand each other.”

“We’re not all in this together,” Bud shouted again. “I’m not. Listen, Laura. If you want to let yourself be dragged into it and be hoodwinked by these crooks, that’s your problem. But count me out, and count Tom out, too.”

She turned now to her husband. Stubborn, stupid … But Bud was hardly a stupid man. Bud was merely blinded. Hatred had blinded him. If the Crawfields were Methodists, would he be acting this way? No. He would certainly resist, and he would be heartbroken, as she herself was, but he would not be in just this kind of intractable
rage
. She knew that surely.

Still quietly, she said, “Bud, when will you face the truth? This woman gave birth to Tom. She—”

“God damn it, Laura! I’ve heard enough of these lies. Lies! I’ve been patient with your sentimental tears, I’ve accepted our differences, you a softie and I a practical man who’s gone out ready to fight the world and protect you so that you might rear the children, give your little piano lessons and—”

Timmy had stuck his fingers into his ears. “I’m sick of this!” he cried. “Everybody’s fighting all the time. We never used to fight until those people, those Craw-Craw—whatever their name is—came around to mess us up. I hate them. I wish they’d all die.”

At the other end of the telephone, Margaret was still waiting. It was no use, she had to be told. So Laura went to the kitchen to tell her.

“I’m sorry, Margaret. He will not talk to you. I’ve tried. I’ve done my best. I don’t know what else to do. He’s nineteen. He can do whatever he wants.”

Once started, her feelings, her words were all jumbled; resentment at the fates for creating a situation that threatened so many innocents, despair over Tom’s personal suffering—and over his bigotry, too—all these mingled with the ache over dead Peter, whom she had never known, Peter Crawfield, reciting at a bar mitzvah and buried under the Star of David, all these, and her aching pity for Margaret, along with her wish that Margaret would simply depart for Australia and vanish.

“I don’t know what else to do,” she repeated. “What’s to become of us all?” And almost sharply she added, “You must see by now that it’s no use. It would be easier for us all if you could just let Tom alone.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then in a broken voice came a reply. “Maybe I’ll write him a letter. But I won’t call up anymore. I heard—I could hear—I don’t want to make things harder for you.”

The telephone clicked off. For a few minutes, Laura sat before it waiting for mental order to return. She reflected upon the tides and ebbs of life; when only days ago they had stood in unity at Timmy’s bed, the only thing in all the world that had mattered was that
boy’s life or death, yet now that he was restored to them, all their other troubles came surging back unchanged.

Nothing much happened during the next day or two. Yet nothing is constant, she thought. Secretly, slowly, things move. They get better or they get worse. You have only to wait.

Timmy, whose activity was still limited, hung around and, quite unlike himself, sulked. He worried that Tom would have to leave them, as though the hateful Crawfields could somehow conjure up some evil magic and snatch him away. In vain, Laura reasoned with him, and finally, in sheer weariness, gave up.

Overnight mail brought a letter from Margaret for Tom. It was a long one, handwritten, but he never got to the end of it.

“That’s cruel, Tom,” Laura said when he threw it into the trash can. “Can’t you at least read what she has to say?”

Tom’s face was red and he turned away without answering, but Bud answered for him.

“Tom and I have been talking about this on our way to work. And Laura, you have to let him alone. Those bastards have to let him alone. Damn their souls!”

This time it was Laura who turned away.

Gloom descended on the sunny old house. It was as if something heavy were lying on its roof, and on Laura’s shoulders, too, a feel of frozen winter, dark and still. If only I had somebody to talk to, she thought. Perhaps if the aunts had been home, she would have called on them, but they were on the other side of the world. Friends, and she had many, were out of the question, since the family’s trouble was, by Bud’s and
Tom’s wishes, never to be revealed to anyone, ever. Ever.

The only possible person was Ralph Mackenzie, and she hoped, she waited for him to call. Yet when he did not call, she was, paradoxically, relieved. Life was already too complicated.…

A new anger, different from any that had ever gone before, lay between herself and Bud. Flashes passed through her whirling mind, visions of living without him, and these flashes shocked her. For, in spite of what he was doing now, had he not been good to her? And the boys loved him so! It was true that he didn’t and never had truly
known
her, but then perhaps she didn’t really know herself, at least not lately. She only knew, as on that night when Timmy had come home, that some deep change had taken place within her.

13

T
om turned from left side to right, stretched out flat, then lay on his stomach and flipped back, straightened the pillow, and was wretched. At last, despairing of sleep, he got up, switched the light on, and took Margaret Crawfield’s letter from the desk where Mom had put it after retrieving it from the trash can. And again, he scanned it. The sentences were abrupt, written, it was plain to see, by a person in a state of some agitation.

 … 
so happy when you were born … wanted a boy so much … named you Peter after your great-grandfather … a scholar, so admired … you can see you look like Holly … no matter what anyone says … common sense
 … a
new phase in life … an open mind
 …”

He read on, flipping through five pages filled with pleadings, assurances of love, and appeals to reason. The writing was certainly skillful, and the writer was persuasive. But she would never be convincing, because he refused to be convinced. He would always refuse.