Across the Spectrum (19 page)

Sarah turned away from the crib. “I’d take him, Mrs. Pratt,”
she said. “I’d like to.”

While the ugly child in his crib slept, the ladies went down
to the parlor, and Mrs. Pratt gave Sarah the first of many lectures she would
hear on the folly of adopting the boy. What business had a maiden lady, no matter
if she was barely thirty and well to do, to be raising a child like that, a
boy, and a stray, too, parents the Lord knows who?

Sarah heard the words over and over. Tannesburg had a
certain pride in Miss Eamons, living in the old white house settled in acres of
green lawn; as they would have protected Sarah from ruffians and outsiders,
they now tried to protect her from the baby—only Sarah refused to be protected.
From the first moment, sitting cool and smiling in Mrs. Pratt’s fussy parlor,
her determined civility could not be persuaded.

She took the boy home within the week, bought a crib and
baby clothes, toys, made arrangements for the daughter of the livery stable to
come and help with extra chores at the house. The boy was christened Joseph.
Sarah spent hours sitting, watching him, playing with him, looking for the
flash of something turbulent in his violet eyes. Two weeks after his discovery,
Tannesburg was distracted from the subject of Miss Eamons and her foundling by
the incursion of a horseless carriage into the streets; gradually the adoption
ceased to be a nine-days’ wonder.

Joe grew slowly, small for his age. Neither Sarah’s
encouragement nor the cook’s ingenuity could fill out his frame or plumpen his
narrow face. His nose grew long and bony, incongruous in a child’s face, and
his elfin ears grew larger, pronouncedly pointed. There was also a deformity,
twin ridges of bone parallel to his spine that began just below the shoulder
blades. When he walked, Joe carried himself hunched forward slightly.

Children in the town, even the gentlest of them, called him
names. It might have been expected: his odd looks and violet stare were
disconcerting; his voice was harsh and croaking. Sooner or later someone would
give in to the temptation to play a trick on the dummy, taunt him, make him
cry. When he was old enough to start at school the teasing briefly became
worse, and Joe returned from school every day bruised and dirty and stubbornly
silent. Just when Sarah thought she would have to do something, take steps, the
boy learned an odd knack for effacing himself, avoiding the troublemakers, and
the trouble lessened.

Through the fights Sarah had watched, afraid to interfere or
even comfort too much. Even as a very little boy, Joe had a manner that
dismissed sympathy; Sarah had recognized that at once; it was something they
shared.

Though Miss Eamons and her boy became a commonplace, they
were never wholly taken for granted. Married women from town called at the big
white house from time to time to advise her about raising the boy, certain that
even the best-intentioned maiden lady could not raise up a boy without
guidance.

They came, in complicated afternoon dresses bustled over
important figures, carrying parasols and beaded reticules, and balanced teacups
as they lectured. “Boys, Miss Eamons: you can’t wrap them in cotton wool. My
Teddy, for instance—”

They gave her the benefit of their experiences graciously,
and if Joe stopped in the parlor for a moment on his way out to play, they
smiled generously on him, disconcerted by the tenderness at the corner of Miss
Eamon’s mouth and the gentleness of her hand on his hair. “Children must take
their share of lumps, Miss Eamons,” the ladies would tell her when he had left.
“You can’t be too easy with them just because . . . ”

The “just because” would drift off uncomfortably, and after
a little while the ladies would finish their tea and go, between discomfort and
virtue. Sarah Eamons was a maiden lady; what did she know about raising boys?
And such an odd boy. It must be such a quiet life for the child. Neither of
them would have recognized Sarah Eamons an hour later, running in lunatic
circles across the lawn near the wood, playing a ruleless game of
catch-as-catch-can with Joe, laughing, breathless, until Joe reached up to
overbalance her, knocking her to the ground.

“Mama?” He circled back, just out of reach, to where Sarah
lay gasping, a splash of white linen on the grass. For just a moment his eyes
were dark and serious, alarmed. “Mama, are you all right? I didn’t mean to hurt
you.”

“You can’t wrap your Mama up in cotton wool, Joey,” she
sputtered, laughing. Sarah got shakily to her feet again. “But I do think it’s
time for dinner.”

By the time they reached the house, hand in hand, Sarah was
listening to a story of Joe’s; when Carrie, one of the hired girls, met them on
the sun porch, they unclasped their hands as if by mutual consent, and Sarah
sent him off to clean up for dinner.

In the evenings they sat on the sun porch at the back of the
old house if it was warm, with Joe by Sarah’s feet, leaning against her chair,
near enough so that she could touch his shoulder as they talked, so that he
could turn and bump his forehead against her knee, his awkward caress. When the
weather turned cold, they moved indoors and sat together on an old red
davenport, reading together, inspecting picture books of English castles,
Russian mosques, French cathedrals with vaulted ceilings and odd carved figures
guarding the downspouts and doorways. Sometimes Joe made up stories for Sarah’s
benefit, or she would talk about growing up, about her parents, about waiting
for something special that had never come.

Once he asked Sarah why she had never married. She thought
seriously before she replied; her answers to his questions were always considered.
She and Joe were sitting that evening on the sun porch, washed with sounds:
clatter of the hired man carrying coal for the new patent furnace, a rattle of
supper dishes from the kitchen, a bird’s call from the woods, the silvery click
of Sarah’s knitting needles. She was making a scarf for the boy; bright blue
wool spilled down the front of her long white skirt. On the faded Oriental rug
at her feet, Joe sat playing a game with twigs and stones. Sarah looked up at
last, past the barn toward the trees that hemmed the north edge of the lawn.
She smiled and admitted, “I suppose I never thought the last man who asked me
would be the last man who asked me.”

The boy accepted the logic of that. “There were lots of them
that asked; didn’t you like any of them?” He clicked two stones against each
other so that one jumped into the air and was lost in Sarah’s skirts.

“Oh, well,
like
. I liked some of them. But not one of
them specially,” she explained, still watching the border of wilderness.
“They’d come on Sunday to take me buggy riding, or sometimes sit right here on
the porch with me, watching the sunset.”

“And?” The boy looked up at Sarah, frankly trying to
reconcile her with a woman fifteen years younger, a Miss Eamons with beaux and
a flirtatious manner.

“And nothing, love. As soon as the sun set Carrie would
rattle dishes inside and they’d realize that it was dusk, and me a single lady
with no chaperone, and they’d do what was proper and take their leave.” Sarah’s
eyes dropped from the woods to her knitting, from green to blue. “No one ever
stayed past dusk,” she murmured, more for herself than for the boy.

At her feet Joe nodded again and returned to his game.
Sarah, looking down at his stooped shoulders and narrow head, smiled and
returned to her knitting. It was as if, she thought, they had to know each
other very well, as if each was learning the other even when they were quiet;
then it was as if they were hermits, sharing the silence companionably,
watching, waiting.

When he was eleven or so, Sarah noticed that the bony ridges
on Joe’s back were getting larger. The skin over them was stretched tight and
dry, patchy red. Sarah swallowed a quick taste of panic; the thought came from
nowhere:
So soon?
She sent for Dr. Pratt.

The doctor examined Joe, teased him gently about his
thinness, saying over his shoulder, “What’s the matter, Miss Eamons? Don’t you
feed this boy more than once a week?”

Sarah tried to joke back, her voice wavering over the words.
“Feed him? Dr. Pratt, Joseph has two hollow legs. If you saw him at table!”

Joe sat pliantly under the doctor’s prodding hands, grinned
a shy grin that was overshadowed by that beaky nose, and said nothing.

When the examination was done, they left Joe to dress; Sarah
took the doctor out to the sun porch and sent for iced tea. Then she turned to
him, and her eyes were dark-circled and afraid.

“Boy really could use a few extra pounds, Miss Sarah,” Dr.
Pratt began easily. “He hasn’t complained of any pain? The skin around
the—ah—affected parts seems irritated.”

“I’ve seen him scratching at it,” Sarah agreed. “But he
hasn’t said anything. Doctor, what’s happening to him?”

Dr. Pratt paused uncomfortably, as if he were genuinely at a
loss. “Miss Sarah, I can’t tell you what I don’t know. We don’t know who his
folks were, if this condition is congenital, anything like that, and I’ve never
even heard of anything quite like your Joe’s case. All I can say is to wait.
He’s sound, healthy—that is, except for . . . well, you know as
well as I do that the boy’s not . . . altogether normal. This
may be part of the course of his, uh, his condition.”

“All we can do is wait,” Sarah repeated dully.

“It’s the only answer I have right now,” the doctor agreed
unhappily. “You might put some lotion on the bumps to soothe the itch.”

Carrie brought the iced tea, and Sarah and Dr. Pratt sat
quiet, sipping. When the doctor rose and Sarah had paid him, she offered to
have the hired man take him back to town in the buggy, but he refused,
insisting the walk would do him good. By the time Joe had appeared, half a
cookie in his hand and his smile lined with crumbs, Sarah had calmed down a
little and could smile at him.

“It’s all right, Mama. I’m fine,” Joe told her, and patted
her hand awkwardly.

Sarah kept herself from gripping his hand, clutching at him.
“You’re fine, but too skinny. Where do you keep all the cookies you eat?” she
teased, but inside the voice repeated,
So soon?

After that, Sarah kept a jealous, distant watch on the boy,
unwilling to encroach on his freedom but fearful, terrified of the change she
knew in her bones was coming soon. Where the intuition came from, she could not
have said, and gradually, as time went by and nothing seemed to happen, she
began to scoff at her fears, relaxed and let the tension ease from her. It
would be a shame, she reasoned, to hem Joe round just to ease her own mind.

∞

She was awakened from deep sleep one night by shrieks. Joe’s
screams, high and unnatural, like the coarse screech of a crow. Sarah was out
of her bed in a minute, trailing her night wrapper around her as she ran.
Outside his room the two hired girls stood, hands fluttering near their mouths
in mingled fear and curiosity. “Don’t sound like nothing human,” Bess was
saying.

“I’m sure it’s just a nightmare,” Sarah said hurriedly. “Go
on to bed. If I need you, I’ll ring.” She did not stop to argue.

Joe was tangled up in his bedclothes, whimpering and crying.
His skin was fiery hot to touch, and dry; when she turned him over Sarah saw
that the bony ridges on his back were enlarged, breaking the skin in places.
Sarah left Joe just long enough to send Bess for Dr. Pratt. Then she went back
to Joe’s room, bathed his forehead in cool water, and held him trying to calm
his cries.

The doctor was not much help. He looked at the boy, gave
Sarah a powder to bring the fever down, and shook his head, angry at his own
helplessness. “I don’t know how to fight this. It must have something to do
with his back, but I’m damned—excuse me, Miss Sarah. I don’t know what to tell
you except to wait and do the things we can do for a fever: give him the powder
when he gets restless, a spoonful in water. And send someone for me if he seems
to get worse.”

Sarah nodded dumbly and went back to Joe’s bed.

The fever lasted through the night and into the next day,
and the white house was filled with Joe’s harsh cries. The hired girls and the
cook and the hired man felt sorry for Miss Eamons and the boy, but kept as far
from the room as they could. Joe began to murmur incoherently sometime that
afternoon, the same garbled, incomprehensible sound over and over. Sarah sat by
him holding one bony hot hand in her own, changing the dampened cloths on his
forehead, watching him and wishing she could reach him, talk the language of
his fever to him. At nightfall he was still delirious, showing no sign of
change for good or bad. Bess tapped at the door and persuaded Sarah to take a
bite of supper, but she would not leave the boy. A tray was brought upstairs to
her.

Toward midnight it seemed to Sarah that Joe was quieter, a
little less restless; he cried out less frequently. In the silences she had
time to realize how tired she was; her eyes were gravelly red and her head hurt
with a dull, pounding ache. When it seemed that Joe was sleeping, really
asleep, Sarah went down to the kitchen for a few minutes to make herself tea, a
tisane for her headache. There was a certain comfort in measuring white willow
bark, chamomile, and cloves into the pot, adding hot water and smelling the
rich, calming odor that rose up from the warm teapot in her hands. She took the
pot and a china cup with her on a tray.

Joe’s door was open. Sarah frowned and cursed herself for
carelessness, worrying about the draft. Then she saw: Joe was gone.

“Oh, God.” She stood in the doorway, unable to move, the tea
tray still in her hands. “No, God, please.” Upstairs? Downstairs? Somewhere
along the hall? Then she heard the scratchy pad of bare feet on the polished
boards of the hall floor and felt a draft. He was at the front door.