Next to Love (23 page)

She opens the door, and right away he says, “You must be Amy,” then steps into the hall. He holds out his hand. “I’m Dr. Banks.”

She takes it the way her mother has taught her to. “My mother will be right down.” Her mother hasn’t told her to say that, but it sounds grown-up.

Then, as if her mother has been standing at the top of the stairs listening, she is coming down them.

Dr. Banks helps her mother on with her coat. Then, as Amy is getting into hers, he takes it and helps her too. She likes the way he pays attention to her. He is definitely dad material.

In the car, she is squooshed as she knew she would be, but she wants to keep her mother happy. She wants her mother to do this again. And again and again. Not just for her. A man in the house will cheer up her mother too.

At the restaurant, he asks her mother what she’d like to drink, then repeats the question to her. She doesn’t know what to say. She always has a glass of milk with supper, her mother makes her, but they’re not eating supper yet. They haven’t even looked at the menus.

“Would you like a Shirley Temple?”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t know what a Shirley Temple is? We’ll have to remedy that.”

The next thing she knows, sitting in front of her is a fancy glass full of something red with a slice of orange and a big fat cherry on top. Dr. Banks’s glass is the same shape, but whatever is in his is clear. Her mother’s glass is shaped differently. He lifts his glass and clinks it against her mother’s, then hers. “Happy days,” he says.

She tastes the drink, though she really wants to get to the cherry.

“How do you like it?” he asks.

“It’s good.” She takes another sip. “Why’s it called a Shirley Temple?”

He takes a sip of his own drink and leans across the table toward her. “I thought you’d never ask. The drink was invented at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu. When Shirley Temple was a little girl making all those movies, she used to stay at the hotel.”

“I never stayed at a hotel.”

He presses his lips together and raises his eyebrows until they make two points in his forehead. “I never made a movie. We obviously have a lot in common.”

“Did you ever stay at that hotel?”

“I never stayed there, but I was in Honolulu once during the war, and I had a drink in the bar where they invented what you’re drinking, or so they say.” He turns to her mother and says, “Imagine someone like me going to Hawaii, let alone drinking at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.” Then he tells her mother a long story about being poor, working his way through school, and helping his younger brothers and sisters. She picks up the cherry by its stem, puts it in her mouth, and pretends not to listen, but she doesn’t miss a word.

THE THREE OF THEM
stand in the front hall. Grace can tell from the way Amy leans against her that she is sleepy from the hour, the big meal, the excitement. She puts an arm around her shoulders. Hang on a little, the gesture says. She does not want her to go up to bed, not until he leaves.

Amy pulls out from her grasp, not the sullen withdrawal Grace knows too well. She is, in fact, all smiles and good manners. She is the child other people see. Grace would be proud of her, if she weren’t so frightened of him.

“Thank you, Dr. Banks,” Amy says. “I had a very nice time.”

He takes her hand. “So did I.” He hesitates a moment, then goes on. “Do you think we know each other well enough?” He leans down and offers his cheek for a kiss. Amy blushes, but she plants one. Then she is gone.

This is what Grace has been dreading. This is what King warned her about. His words have been in the back of her head all night. Any decent man, any man who truly cares for you, will not try to take liberties. He will not try to take liberties with Amy rattling around over their heads, she is fairly sure of that, but she cannot even imagine kissing him. She cannot imagine kissing any man except Charlie, and she can barely remember kissing him.

She takes a step back from him and thanks him for the evening. “Amy really did have a wonderful time.”

“So did I.” A moment passes. “I guess that means you’re the one we have to worry about.”

“I enjoyed it. Thank you.”

“Enough to repeat the experience?”

“Amy would love it.”

“I was thinking next time it could be grown-ups only.”

Liberties. The word rolls around in her head, fat and fleshy and shameful.

“What will I do with Amy?”

“I believe there are such things as babysitters. Dinner next week, just you and me, then the following Sunday I’ll drive out and the three of us can do something. Maybe I can dig out my old ice skates. What do you say?”

She means to say no, but again Dr. Gold nudges her, and it comes out as yes.

He moves a step toward her. She never should have said yes. He takes her hand between his big ones and says thanks, then lets go and turns toward the door. He opens it, hesitates, and turns back to her.

“Look, I hope this doesn’t scare you off, but I have to say something. You and Amy are quite a team. You’re the family I’ve always dreamed of.” His big face flushes. “Me and my big mouth,” he says, and is out the door in seconds.

BABE IS THE FIRST PERSON
Mac sees as he walks into the drugstore. He did not want to come down to the store, he never wants to when he returns home for the weekend, but he does it for his father. His father likes to show him off, or at least let people see that he is not crazy, merely someone who prefers doing medical research in a big city to practicing medicine in a small town.

Babe is standing at the prescription counter. Mac hangs back to give her privacy, but when the assistant pharmacist says in a voice loud enough for him to hear, “The directions for Mr. Huggins are right on it; one at hour of sleep as needed,” he knows she is picking up sedatives for Claude.

She puts them in her handbag, turns away from the counter, and sees him. Her faces opens into a smile. She is genuinely happy to see him. The expression makes him realize how few people in town are. No matter how good a face his father tries to put on his flight, they still know there is something wrong with him.

“Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.” He takes her arm and steers her to a booth.

They slip out of their heavy coats and scarves and gloves. When the coffee comes, she rubs her hands together in the cloud of steam rising from it and asks how things are in Boston, and he inquires what’s going on in town, and all the time he is circling the real question.

“How’s Grace?” he asks finally.

“Fine, as far as I can tell. Did you know your friend Dr. Banks called her?”

Mac tries to keep his face impassive. “How do you think he got her number? He even asked me if I minded.”

“And you said you didn’t?”

He shrugs.

“But you do.”

He stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray, finds he has nothing to do with his hands, taps another out of the pack, and lights it. When he looks up, she is still watching him.

“You do mind,” she insists.

He goes on looking at her for a moment, wondering how far he can go. “You and Claude married before the war,” he says finally.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

He inhales, then exhales. “Promise you won’t get angry?”

“As Grace has explained to me since her stay at the sanitarium, I can’t control what I feel, Doctor, only how I express it. I promise not to make a scene in Swallow’s Drugstore.”

“Would you marry Claude the way he is now? No, that’s not fair. Let me put it another way. Would he ask you to marry him the way he is now?”

“How did you know?”

“Remember the old playground taunt? Takes one to know one. How’s he doing?”

“A little too interested in the news from Korea, if you ask me.”

“I understand how he feels.”

“You understand!” The word comes out as a hiss. “Then you damn well better explain it to me. Because I’m just a woman, and I do not understand this morbid fascination. You all say you hate the war. But you can’t stay away from it.” She stops suddenly, looks around, then back at him. “And I wasn’t going to make a scene.”

He reaches out and takes her hand. As he does, the cuff of his flannel shirt pulls back. Her eyes go to a thin welt of white flesh on the inside of his wrist, like a pale puffy worm crawling across the veins. She wonders if he has shown it to her intentionally. I know what you’re going through, he is trying to tell her. And I will not inflict it on Grace.

TWELVE

Millie

APRIL
1948

F
ROM WHERE JACK SITS IN THE BACKSEAT OF THE CAR, HE CAN SEE
the grown-ups standing under the trees. Amy is the only kid. She’s allowed to be there because they’re burying her daddy, but he has to wait in the car. Aunt Grace wanted his mommy to bury his daddy too, but his mommy said he’s already buried in France. Then she tipped her head toward him and said
PLEASE
to Aunt Grace.

He kneels on the backseat and rests his arms on the open window. The men are still shoveling dirt into the big hole, but his mommy and daddy and the rest of them are walking around like they don’t know what to do. They look like the kids on the street when they can’t decide what to play. Only this game is over. He knows because Amy’s grandpa, Mr. Gooding, is coming along the path toward the car. His head is down, like a football player running a field. He takes out a big white handkerchief, blows his nose, and jams the handkerchief back in his pocket.

Jack starts to get off his knees. He is afraid of Mr. Gooding. Even Amy says he’s mean. His daddy—this daddy, not the one buried in France—doesn’t like him. Jack is not sure why. But before he can slide down to where Mr. Gooding can’t see him, Mr. Gooding is standing next to the car looking down at him. His face has a lot of loose skin, like Tommy Janeway’s basset hound, but his neck is skinny.

“You’re Pete Swallow’s boy.” The way he pronounces
boy
makes Jack think of corks popping up in water. He doesn’t sound so mean. “Young Pete Swallow, aren’t you?”

He does not know what to answer. His mommy says his name is Baum, like hers and Daddy’s and his sisters’, and everyone calls him Jack, but when he started kindergarten last fall, and the teacher read out the names, she read Peter John Swallow Baum, then looked up and said, your mother says you’re called Jack. Sometimes Grandma and Grandpa Swallow call him little Pete, but not when his mommy is around.

“I guess so,” Jack says.

“You guess so,” Mr. Gooding repeats. “Are you young Pete Swallow or aren’t you?”

Jack rocks back and forth on his knees. Swallow sounds like a nice name, like he could fly, like Superman. And it would be fun to pretend. “I am.”

Mr. Gooding goes on staring down at him. “You look like him.” His voice is so soft Jack almost doesn’t hear what he says.

Mr. Gooding reaches into his pocket, then draws out his hand. A dollar bill flutters in the breeze. “This is for you, Pete.” He gives him the bill, then turns and walks away.

Jack looks down at the money. He cannot believe it. He gets ten cents a week allowance for making his bed and bringing in the milk bottles in the morning. Mr. Gooding gave him a whole dollar just for being Pete Swallow.

He can’t wait to tell his mommy. She is coming down the path toward the car now. He opens his mouth to say, look what Mr. Gooding gave me. Just for being Pete Swallow. He closes his mouth. He likes having a secret. All the way home he keeps saying it in his head. Pete Swallow. Pete Swallow. Pete Swallow.

SUMMER
1950

“Keep your eye on the ball,” Al calls as Jack swings the bat and misses.

Jack retrieves the ball and throws it back, and Al pitches again. This time the thwack of bat hitting ball resounds through the small yard.

“A-okay,” Al calls.

He pitches again. Jack swings furiously. The ball goes past him.

“You don’t have to hit a homer every time, champ. Think about connecting with the ball, not knocking it out of the stands.”

Al pitches again, and Jack hits it, and Al says they might as well call it a day. He likes to end on a triumphant note.

As he collects the bat and ball and glove, and they start up the back steps to the house, he cannot help thinking about it, though he would never mention it. He is glad he and Millie had girls. If they’d had a son, he would not have been unhappy—who could be unhappy about having a son?—but he would have been on guard against himself. He would have worried about playing favorites. He would have weighed his love for Jack and his love for the other boy, who was not born, on his own scale of justice. This is easier. You love girls differently from the way you love boys.

Jack is chattering about the movie he saw the previous Saturday. You talk to boys differently from the way you talk to girls. And they talk to you differently. Betsy and Susan are too young for the movies, but they will not come home nattering about guns and battles and imitating the way men die. Why do little boys always clutch their chests or stomachs as they pretend to fall, as if the rest of the body is invulnerable? The girls will recount stories of love and romance and happily-ever-after last scenes.