A Morning Like This (7 page)

“Are you dizzy, honey? Do you feel like you might faint?”

“No…Yes…I…I want Dad. Where is
Dad?
”

“You know your dad,” Abby said with more confidence than she felt. “He’ll get here as soon as he can.”

At the hospital the minutes passed in a slow march as Abby waited with Braden in the admittance area and Braden fought against
tears, struggling to breathe through his swollen nose. The peas in the bag had melted to mush and his foot jiggled with pain
as Abby answered a barrage of unnecessary questions. Name. Address. Place of employment. Insurance company. To make matters
worse, the admittance clerk kept stopping to answer the phone.

“Look. Don’t you have these things on record? My son is in pain.” Abby could scarcely bear this, seeing Braden hurting without
any help.
I’d like to take that stupid computer screen and hit you over the head with it
.

“I’m sorry. I cannot admit him until we have this complete.”

Then, to add insult to injury, they wouldn’t give Braden a drink of water. “Sorry, kiddo,” the nurse told them. “No drinking
and driving. Dr. Meno says we’ve got to get X-rays first. You can’t drink until we know what’s going on inside that head of
yours.”

“He can’t even have a sip?” Abby said as a nurse pushed him in a wheelchair. “He’s thirsty.”
If David were here, he’d make them give Braden a drink of water
.

They rounded a corner and, as if this very thought of David had conjured him up, here came her husband, stepping out of a
side door, rolling down his sleeve.

“Dad!”

“Braden!” One odd, awkward pause. David’s eyes shone with fear. Abby decided he must be worried sick about his son.

“Oh, you’re here.” She raced forward. “Thank heavens.”

“What are you—”

She grabbed his forearm. “I knew they’d tell you at the ball field to find us here.”

“The ball field? Oh.” For one moment, it almost seemed as if he was struggling to understand. “Oh. Oh, yes. Braden’s game.”

“He got hit in the nose. Did they tell you that? We’re getting X-rays. They won’t let him drink anything until they know if
it’s broken.”

David began to follow his family, leaning low as a nurse wheeled his son along the corridor. “Braden. Buddy. Let me see.”

Braden removed the latest tissue. “It hurts.”

“Oh, my.” A regretful laugh. “It doesn’t look very good, either.”

“Where were you, Dad? Where
were
you? You almost missed the whole thing. I was batting.”

At David’s pause, Abby turned toward him again. A flush had risen on his neck. She had an odd sensation that David felt guilty
about something. The sad, set expression in his eyes made him look rigid and bereaved, almost old. Strong frown lines etched
the outline of his mouth. He kept staring at the bloody cleats in Abby’s hand as if he’d never seen them before.

He answered his son cryptically. “Some days are harder than others. This one has been harder than most.”

“David, what’s wrong?”

He turned defensively toward Abby. “I never said anything was wrong. I just said it was a hard day.”

“It started out lousy. I could tell. Something was wrong this morning.”

“Look, Ab. We’ve got Braden to take care of. I’m not prepared to go into it right now.”

“Did you have a late meeting or something?”

He hesitated again. “Yeah. Something… came up.” He scrubbed his son’s grimy hair. “How about you, sport? Wow, I’m sorry. Did
you lose a lot of blood?”

“Yes. Lots.”

David grasped Abby by the arm, taking charge, and she relaxed against him. “Did
you
do okay?” he asked her, drawing her shoulders close.

“No,” she said, her voice finally calming. “I didn’t. I needed you.”

Lies. Lies.

One led to another, the falsehoods growing around him like snarled vines.

David sat on their sofa with the huge mass of Brewster curled into knotwork at his feet, alternately holding ice against Braden’s
swollen nose and reading aloud
The BFG
, Braden’s favorite library book from school.

He’d promised Braden he wouldn’t miss this game. Beside’s being late, David had avoided the ballpark because he couldn’t bear
playing the part. The part that had been his own life yesterday. The part that would have left him faking it, rooting for
his son with his arm draped across Abby’s shoulders while beneath it all he counted the cost of infidelity.

The telephone rang constantly tonight. At first, each time, David swayed forward on his feet, desperate to answer the calls
himself. He was certain it would be Susan Roche inquiring about the test. But the questions all came from people concerned
about Braden: team parents, friends from church who had heard about the accident, Ken and Cindy Hubner, and even the little
girl named Josey who had a horrible fourth-grade crush on Braden and made Braden’s ears turn red each time anybody mentioned
her name.

Word of Braden’s calamity had traveled around town in less than two hours.

“Thank goodness it wasn’t fractured,” he heard Abby saying over and over again to everybody who phoned. “He got walloped in
the nose, I’ll tell you that much. It scared us to death. But nothing’s broken. Of course it was terrifying, but he’ll be
okay.”

David squirmed on the sofa, his voice droning on with the Roald Dahl story, his heart lurching within his chest every time
he heard his wife speak the words.

I don’t know, Abby, if he’ll be okay or not. I don’t know if
you’ll
be okay. Maybe, after today, our family won’t ever be okay again
.

“Dad,” Braden said. “When you read aloud, you have to read like you’re interested in the story. You’re making it boring.”

David read another two paragraphs before he gave up trying. “Sorry. Guess I’m not much in the mood to read tonight.” He lay
the book, upside down and open, beside them on the couch. Once again, he replaced the ice bag on his son’s septum. “How’s
the nose feeling, sport?”

“I still can’t breathe through it.”

“You ought to get some rest now. I’ll bring down your sleeping bag.”

Dr. Meno had suggested they keep a close watch on Braden tonight, letting him bunk on the floor, waking him up every twenty
minutes to make certain he hadn’t suffered a concussion. David knew that by morning Brewster would have edged Braden so far
to one side that the dog would have a better part of the sleeping bag than the boy.

Once David had spread out the gigantic down bag and Brewster had indeed claimed a spot on it, father and son voyaged to Braden’s
bedroom and lugged out armfuls of extra pillows.

“There you go. How’s that?”

“Good.”

David punched one last pillow into shape as Braden climbed in. “Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“How can they be bedbugs?” Braden said. “This isn’t a bed.”

“Okay. Sleeping bag bugs, then.” With a light kiss on his son’s misshapen, bruised nose, David zipped the bag up to his chin
so Braden would feel like he’d been tucked in.

“Dad?”

David bent low over him, worried that Braden might be woozy. He kept looking at things like Abby’s old pink cardboard jewelry
box and David’s stack of
Money
magazines on the floor as if he’d never seen any of it before. “What?”

“I like sleeping in your room.”

“You do?”

“I like the way it smells. The smell of Mom.”

A melancholy grin. “I don’t see how you can smell anything through that nose.”

“I just can.”

“I see.”

“G’ night, Dad.”

“Good night.”

David had just climbed up from all fours and was heading to turn out the lamp when Braden’s unsteady voice stopped him again.
“Dad?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to wake me up every twenty minutes all night long?”

“Yes.”

“To make sure my head’s okay?”

“Yes.”

“That means you’ll have to wake up every twenty minutes, too.”

“That’s right.”

“All night long?”

David switched off the reading light and stopped with his hand on the doorjamb, staring back at the opalescent length of boy
spread out on the floor. “I don’t mind doing it, you know. It’s worth it to make sure you’re safe.”

No answer came in the stillness, only the arrhythmic breathing of the child and the panting of the dog.

“Maybe I’ll stay awake all night,” David said. “That way I can be waiting every time the next twenty minutes goes by. How
would that be?”

“Good. Dad?”

“Yes?”

“What would happen to me if I didn’t wake up?”

“Well, we don’t—” David paused. He had to think about that one. What did happen? What exactly would they do if something happened
to Braden? “We don’t
know
.”

“I’m scared to go to sleep.”

David went back and crouched beside his son on the floor. “Here.” He unzipped the bag. “Roll over.” He shoved Brewster, damp
warm breath and all, aside and lifted Braden’s pajama top. With an immense hand, he tenderly touched skin as treasured and
newfound to him as the day this child had been born. “I don’t want you to be afraid.”

He worked his callused fingers in circles on Braden’s back, stopping just beneath small shoulder blades that jutted like bony
wings. As he etched shapes with his fingers—figure eights and stripes and big
W
s—David captured all the love he knew for this one child and held it within himself. His devotion to his son at that moment
felt almost too delicious to absorb or grasp. It was so familiar that he’d almost been missing it, as if a wall had come between
them because he saw his son every day and so never really saw him at all.

It hurt, just wanting to not miss things he knew he was missing. Just wanting to see things that he saw, yet didn’t see.

Go figure,
he thought.
Go figure feeling that way about your kid
.

The misery that had been waiting in the recesses of David’s heart came full upon him, powerful, all encompassing. He couldn’t
help imagining Susan’s Samantha, wraithlike and happy, the child in the school picture he’d looked at for the first time today.
He envisioned her expectant wide grin, the strand of stray hair blown across her face as if she’d been running in the wind.

“I love you, Dad,” Braden whispered again.

“Hey. Come up here a minute. I know you’re almost asleep. Let me give you a hug.”

David gathered his son in his arms and held him there, so close and hard he could feel Braden’s heart beating. He kissed him
on the top of his head, in the midst of the wheat-yellow cowlick that would never lie down no matter how Abby tried to slick
it. He buried his face into the dusty sweet scent of boy as if he could bury himself away from the world and from the bad
moves he’d made.

“Will you bring me my baseball glove, Dad? I can’t sleep without my glove.”

“Sure. I’ll go get it. Hang on.”

David rose to his feet, his knees cracking, and passed through the hallway where moonlight sifted onto the floor through thin
curtains. He went quietly through the kitchen where Abby bent to load the dishwasher, her silhouette an arabesque over rows
of white, dripping dishes. He went to her and wrapped his arms around her from behind, treating their relationship suddenly
as a priceless, breakable thing.

“Hey,” she whispered, leaning into him, the smell of dish detergent wafting from her arms.

“Love you,” he said, kissing her neck.

“I’m not turning around,” she said, laughing. “If I do, I’ll get your neck all soapy.”

Abby, there’s something I need to tell you. Abby, honey, I’ve made a horrible mistake
.

Once she found out, he would never be able to take back the truth.

David left her and went to find Braden’s baseball mitt. He delivered it to his son, who was already snoring through swollen
nostrils. Then David circled the living room, moved soundlessly beside the wall, invisible, like a character in a Thornton
Wilder play. And saw rooms in his house as if he hadn’t seen them before. As if they weren’t real to him anymore. As if they
were already slipping away.