Daybreak (41 page)

“I do love an old house,” said Margaret, “the high ceilings, the woodwork, and so many fireplaces.”

“Well, this is home, and I can’t imagine leaving it,” replied Laura, pouring wine out of Aunt Cecile’s Irish crystal decanter, “but still, on a day like this I wouldn’t object to a fully air-conditioned house.”

And Holly remarked, “Oh, there is a wonderful breeze in this room. I don’t feel hot at all.”

The girl was well-bred, helping the conversational ball to roll. That cerise linen was perfect on her. She had Tom’s paper-white skin. She must be careful not to look at her so much, because of course they would all know what comparison was being made. But then, they were making their own comparisons with their surreptitious glances toward Timmy.

Peter, thought Laura. The name was always a stab, an electrical shock.

“This corn pudding is delicious,” Margaret said. “I’ve never had one like it before.”

“It’s from a handwritten recipe book, my grandmother’s recipe, or maybe even her mother’s, I’m not sure.”

As if it mattered who had first made the pudding.

On a branch at the window, a catbird sat and squawked. Forks touched porcelain, lightly. Someone broke open a biscuit; you could almost hear it crumble. Margaret opened her lips as if to speak and closed
them, as if she had forgotten what she wanted to say. Arthur said nothing. Men never helped to keep the conversational ball rolling. If it was up to them, the ball would drop on the floor and lie there. The catbird squawked again. And suddenly Laura put her fork down.

Without prior plan, she cried out, “Why don’t we all talk about what’s really in our minds?”

Startled, as if she had said something surprising, all except Arthur turned toward her.

“Yes,” he said, “I have been thinking that, too, and dreading it because our thoughts, our questions, have no answers and no future.”

His wife chided him gently. “It’s not like you to be so pessimistic. You’re always the hopeful one who props me up.”

“Good enough in its place. But there comes a time when you have to be a realist. The injustice that was done to us all remains a mystery. I personally think it must have been that nurse who disappeared in Hawaii. We can’t find her, but if we should, what good would it do us? What good now?”

Timmy’s mouth hung open, as it was apt to do whenever his attention was completely caught. “Why would she want to do that?” he asked.

“She wouldn’t want to,” Arthur explained. “It was a stupid, careless accident in a poorly run little private hospital that closed down not long afterward.”

“I wasn’t born there,” said Timmy, reassuring himself.

Laura smiled at him. “A thing like this is almost as rare as putting a man on the moon.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, “I remember reading about a case that happened in France. It was ten years ago, I
think. I remember being so shocked. It was in all the newspapers.”

“It’s a miracle it hasn’t been in the papers here,” Arthur remarked. “I don’t understand it.”

Laura said, “Our lawyer has influence. Since everything happened here in this city, you see … He knows everybody, the hospital board, the two papers.” After faltering a moment, she resumed, “And Bud knew everyone. He was determined to plug every possible leak. He thought it was all a lie, anyway.”

Timmy insisted, “But it isn’t a lie, Mom, is it?”

“No, dear, it isn’t.”

“Well, so far, so good,” said Arthur. “But I wouldn’t count on keeping it quiet forever.”

“Oh,” cried Holly, clapping her hands together so hard that her bangle bracelets clinked, “if it’s ever in the news, I’ll die. I swear I will.”

“No, you won’t,” said her father. “You’ll put up with it like the woman you are.”

Margaret soothed. “Anyhow, you’d probably be away at college when it happened. If it ever does.”

“What the world thinks is of no importance,” Arthur said, almost angrily. “There’s only one person who’s important now, and that’s Tom. What’s to become of him.”

“He’ll always be my brother!”

The exclamation resounded; it was a cry of defiance, of pain and fear. The two mothers’ glances met in immediate comprehension.

“Of course he will,” Margaret said heartily. And then, addressing Laura, she added, hesitating a little, “It’s bothered me that perhaps you might have some worry about our trying to influence Tom someday, to take him away from you. If you’ve ever had such a
thought, dismiss it. It’s the last thing we would ever do, even if it were possible, which hardly seems likely. Tom is yours, not ours, and we wouldn’t have it otherwise.”

“Thank you for being frank,” Laura said. “Yes, I’ve had some worried moments. But I won’t anymore—not about that, anyway.” She stood up. “Who would like iced coffee with dessert? Or hot coffee, or tea? I have them all.”

“Let me help you,” Margaret offered.

“No, no thanks, you sit still.”

Once more, the tension passed, and conversation was moved to neutral ground, stiffer, and yet unquestionably safer. The dessert was praised. When Margaret expressed a wish to see the garden, they all went out into the broiling sun, beneath which petals curled and leaves drooped.

Now, surely, they will want to go home, Laura said to herself. With this mission unaccomplished, why do they want to stay?

“Why do you have this wire fence around your fishpond?” inquired Holly.

She was being attentive to Timmy, which was rather sweet of her because she could hardly find an eleven-year-old boy that interesting. She is sorry for him, and for herself, Laura thought, because he reminds her of Peter.

“It’s to keep the dog from drinking the water,” Timmy told her.

“Oh yes, Tom—I mean, someone said you had a dog.”

“Not anymore. He was killed with Dad.”

“I’m sorry,” Holly said softly.

A nice girl. A nice girl.

The telephone was ringing in the kitchen. “Do answer,
Timmy,” Laura said. “Whoever it is, say I’ll call back later.”

The message was not for her. It was Mr. Mackenzie calling to talk to Mr. Crawfield.

Everyone followed Arthur into the house. When he turned from the telephone, he reported with his hand over the speaker, “Ralph only wanted to know how everything was going. I wondered—he’s in the city today—whether I might ask him to join us here for a few minutes.”

“But of course,” said Laura.

I bow out
, he had told her, and she had taken that to mean that their relationship—no, you could hardly call it that—their friendship, then, was to dwindle easily away, as water trickles off into sand. And that was surely what he had meant. This visit today was for the Crawfields’ benefit.

“How like Ralph.” Margaret sighed. “He’s made such an effort to bring us all together, and now he’s feeling our pain.”

“He’s a prince,” said Arthur. “We’re agreed on that. But enough of pain. Are you perhaps planning to get another dog, Timmy? Holly volunteers at an animal shelter, you know. That’s where we got the dog we have now. Our first one, who came to us when Holly was two years old, died of old age. We went right out and got another one.”

Timmy said, “I don’t know whether I’m ready. Earl was a special dog. I don’t think I could ever love another that much. I don’t know. Would you like to see pictures of him, Holly? I have a whole album in Dad’s den.”

“I’d love to,” Holly said enthusiastically as she went with Timmy, followed by Laura’s grateful glance.

“There is something especially touching about boys that age,” Margaret observed. “A girl that age is almost a woman. There’s very little of childhood left in her. But in a boy, even when he’s very bright and can surprise you with adult opinions, the little child still shows through.”

“Timmy is very much like a child in some ways. I have to watch him so carefully. For instance, he knows that if he spits blood when he coughs, he’ll have to go back to the hospital, so I’m sure he’ll try to hide it from me if it happens. This heat’s the worst thing for him, too. He hasn’t been feeling well, but he won’t admit it. So I have to watch. It’s difficult …”

Margaret nodded. “Yes, they hide things. Sometimes they wait till the lungs fill up and it’s almost too late, or it is too late.”

“Last year he wanted to try out for the track team. He pestered and pestered, so finally we said he could. Of course he didn’t make it, he almost suffocated from the effort.”

Arthur, who had been staring at nothing while they talked, came awake. “It must be hard for him to compare himself with someone as vigorous as Tom.”

“Yes,” Laura said simply. “Yes, it is. But Tom has always tried to make it easier. He’s taught Timmy to lift weights, which is good enough for the muscles, but better still for the spirits. It’s an adult male activity, and they can do it together.”

No one commented. Darn catbird, Laura thought. He, or one of his relatives, had followed them from the other side of the house to squawk into their sudden silences.

Then Margaret said, “I have a sense of unreality. Do
you feel how unreal it is for us to be sitting here like this talking about Tom?”

And Laura answered, “I do. And I also feel how remarkable it is that we don’t hate each other.”

Arthur spoke. “There wouldn’t be much use in that, would there?”

At that moment, Ralph Mackenzie came in. When he had sat down, he looked around at the three solemn, quiet faces, and making no false attempt at useless cheer, said bluntly that he had not expected this meeting with Tom to work, but had thought it worth a try.

“I think,” he said, “you have met with an immovable object.”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “a stone wall. And one doesn’t batter one’s head against stone walls. If Tom doesn’t want to talk to us, we’ll have to accept it. It will be easier all around.”

Margaret was biting her lips again. When she saw Laura glancing at her, she stopped and asked with an assumed brightness, “How is the campaign going, Ralph?”

“Pretty well. Two more of the men at the KKK meeting have been identified as Johnson men. The link is getting tighter and tighter, which is all to the good for our side.”

Arthur, addressing Laura, asked, “Your manager Pitt didn’t do your company any good, did he?”

Margaret remonstrated, “Arthur! Please!”

“Laura’s not a weakling,” Arthur replied. “The facts are there, the whole affair is horrendous, she’s had to face it, and she seems to have faced it rather well.”

“Thank you,” Laura said. “I try.”

“So what is happening with your company? Ralph says you have problems, that they—”

“It’s all right,” Ralph said. “Laura can know that I told you. I thought maybe you might have some ideas for her. You’ve got business contacts that I haven’t got.”

“I may have both, some ideas and some contacts.”

“I would be very grateful,” Laura said. “We can’t last too long like this. The wages and the expenses continue, but business has dropped way off.”

“Will Tom want to take it over someday?” Arthur inquired now. “I understand he’s been working there.”

It was as if, in spite of his remark about Tom and the stone wall, he was unable to stay away from the subject.

“No,” replied Laura. “That was only a summer project to please Bud. Tom still wants to be an astronomer.”

Arthur persisted. “No politics?”

Laura felt the heat tingle up her neck and onto her cheeks. “I can’t tell. It is all up in the air. Everything is.”

“Didn’t Holly come with you?” Ralph asked quickly.

“She’s with Timmy, looking at pictures of Timmy’s dog,” Margaret said.

Laura went to call the two. Her body was rigid from the strain of the day. But they would soon be going home, and the house would be empty of all their questions; she would go to the piano, she would play Monopoly with Timmy, she would lie down …

“You people had a long talk about dogs,” said Margaret. “I didn’t know there was so much to say about dogs.”

Margaret struggled too hard. She was on the verge of
tears, anyone could see that, yet she was so determinedly upbeat. It was irritating. And yet I suppose I do the same, Laura said to herself.

Holly answered, “We didn’t talk that much about dogs, we talked about Peter.”

“Oh,” said Laura.

“I asked whether he knew he was going to die,” Timmy said, “whether when he was eleven he knew he would be dead in a few years.”

They were all stunned. There was no “proper” answer to give because, of course, Timmy was really asking whether he, too, would be dead at eighteen. What could one answer?

It was Arthur who replied. First he removed his glasses and wiped his forehead. Then he sighed. Finally, having moved his chair nearer to Timmy’s, he smiled and began to speak to the boy as though there was no one else in the room, only they two, man to man.

“Listen,” he said. “Listen to me. I don’t truly know what Peter actually thought. He certainly must have worried about it, and probably he put it out of his mind as best he could. We’re all going to die, but we don’t know when. Your father didn’t know it the night he left here in his car, intending to come back in a couple of hours.”

Oh no, thought Laura. He’s too blunt, too rash. He’s tearing the bandage off the fresh wound. But she did not know how to stop him.

“All of us are prey to accident or sickness. The only difference in your case is that you already know what it is that you have to fight. Most of us don’t know, so we’re caught by surprise.”

Timmy looked doubtful, yet kept his eyes focused on Arthur.

“The good news for you is that people with your disease are living much, much longer than ever before. The better news is that—well, have you ever heard anything about gene therapy? Do you know anything at all about it?”

“No, but Tom does. Tom reads about science things all the time.”

“Well,” said Arthur, pausing. “Well, you can ask Tom to look it up for you. There are things going on in the universities and the National Institutes of Health, experiments with packaging the cystic fibrosis gene in a cold virus. It’s complicated stuff, more than I understand myself, because I’m not a scientist. The only thing I do understand is how hopeful it all is.”

“Why didn’t they use it for Peter?”