Her Father's House (16 page)

Afterward, about ten minutes later by the clock although it had seemed as if an hour had gone by, Jim found himself sitting with Dr. Scofield in a small room near the examining room, from which Laura had been carried to fall asleep on a couch between them.

“A bad stomach upset, Mr. Fuller, that's all it is. It's either something she ate, or a virus. There's no fever to speak of. She was simply overheated in the sun, frightened by the vomiting, and maybe overexcited, mostly because of your excitement.” The doctor smiled. “Take her home to her mother. She's probably more used to this kind of thing than you are.”

“Well, she—she has no mother. Her mother died last February.”

There was that expression again, the sober sympathy for the two-year-old whose mother was dead.

Faces changed when you told people something sad. Was it because they really felt for you, or because they knew they were expected to feel for you?

“You don't live in town, do you, Mr. Fuller? It seems to me I know practically everybody here, by sight if not always by name.”

“No, I'm from a long way off. Philadelphia. We've been more than a week on the road.”

“Just passing through, then.”

“No, hoping to settle somewhere around here. Hunting for a job.”

“In any special field?”

“No.”

“Just looking? Just like that, without any plan?”

“That's about it, I'm afraid.”

He wondered why so many doctors seemed to feel free to ask such personal questions. Did they believe that their degree entitled them to such liberty? But this man, although garrulous, was modest and had been especially gentle with Laura, so he replied with candor, “I have simply a need to forget the past and start fresh.”

“I see.” The doctor looked thoughtful. “Kind of hard to do with a baby, and driving all this way. Strange food, the motion, the constraint; she's an unusually strong child. Most of them would have gotten sick before this. Frankly, Mr. Fuller, I think she's had enough for a while.”

“I know that only too well. We're in the hotel here in town, but it's no place for her. I was wondering, is there any nice inn nearby, a country sort of place where we can rest and play outdoors or something?”

“I'm afraid not. Tourists don't come through here very often. The hotel's never more than a quarter full, if that. When you're this close to the mountains, you keep going till you get there, I suppose.”

It occurred to Jim as he sat looking out at the quiet street, where two young women were walking together and a dog was trotting alongside an old man, that this was the first time in his life when he was without an anchor. Job, school, university, law, New York, had flowed in orderly succession, one firm step after the other. Now he was afloat. Why had he not known it would be like this? But he had only and frantically needed to get away before it should be too late to save Laura.

“Might there perhaps be some family with extra space for us for a few days or so? Until I get my bearings? I'm not hard up, Doctor. I'll pay whatever they ask.”

The two men regarded each other. He is wondering about me, whether I am some sort of unreliable drifter fighting a nervous breakdown, Jim thought. He was about to say something that would show how steady a man he really was, when Dr. Scofield struck the arm of his chair with the flat of his hand.

“I just had a brainstorm. There's a family way out toward the mountains, Clarence and Kate Benson, they've got a cottage on their place. His folks lived there, but I don't think anyone's in it now. It'd be a great place for you to rest up and get your thoughts together. You look as if you need a rest, and they're the best people you could ever know.”

So I look the way I feel, thought Jim, as he explained that he was already acquainted with the Bensons. He remembered the cottage that Benson had pointed out. He thought he had had an impression of hemlocks dipping under strong wind.

“They're first-rate people, and you'll be perfectly safe out there with this baby of yours. Want me to phone them and ask?”

“Yes, please do,” Jim said.

   

The cottage was immaculate when, on the following day, Jim, with Laura and the heaped-up contents of the car, arrived at the farm. It was even welcoming. At every window hung white curtains, newly washed and starched; the bed and the yellow-painted crib left over from their boy's baby days were made up with sheets that looked new. Also left over from that time were a high chair and a playpen which Jim, with a laugh, doubted that Laura would consent to use.

“She tends to be what you might tactfully call ‘independent.' No, no, Laura! Don't touch.” For she had spotted a splendid gardenia in a plant stand.

“Obedient, too,” observed Kate.

“Not always. Remember the raisins? Look, she's sniffing the perfume.”

“Kate's flowers,” Clarence said. “She hoped to supply every florist and nursery for miles around, but things just didn't work out that way. That's her greenhouse down there. See it, back of the barn?”

Following Clarence's finger, Jim looked down upon greenery, pastures, a cornfield, and forested hills.

“You'll have a beautiful sight to greet you when you wake up every morning, Mr. Fuller,” Clarence said.

“Jim, please. The name's Jim.”

“Okay, Jim. Some folks wouldn't appreciate all this or even like the quiet, but I have a hunch you're not that type.”

“Your hunch is correct. Dr. Scofield also told me that this place would be just right. By the way, I'll pay you in cash. Naturally, I don't yet have an account at the bank here.” And Jim drew some bills from his wallet.

“Jim Fuller! This is double what I asked you for.”

“This is less than half what I'd pay at a resort, and it's worth more than many resorts, so let's not argue.”

“It just doesn't seem right, though. It really doesn't.”

One of the world's innocents, this man was. “It's right,” Jim said firmly.

“Well, I won't say we can't use it. We may look well-off, but we're not. Yet, look out there! Everything between this cottage and those hills is ours.”

“You could probably get a good price for it,” Jim said, “rich farmland like this—”

“Good price! Over my dead body. Literally! This is Ricky's heritage, for him, and his children, and their children.”

“You've touched a soft spot,” Kate explained. It seemed to Jim that she looked slightly embarrassed. “This land is Clarence's life. But enough of this for now. It's almost suppertime.”

“So it is,” Jim agreed. “I've got to unpack these groceries and get going or Laura will be complaining. She likes her meals to be on time.”

“Never mind your groceries tonight, Jim. You can start your housekeeping tomorrow. You'll have supper with us tonight.”

   

The table was set in an ell off the kitchen in full view of the stove, the cupboards, potted geraniums on a windowsill, and two dogs at their dinner bowls.

As if to fill a lag in what had been an ongoing conversation, Jim made a comment about the dogs.

“I seem to remember you had two collies in that snapshot, Kate. Am I right?”

“Unfortunately, you are. We lost Jeff to diabetes. Buster the Airedale is his replacement. Quite a contrast to Mutt, isn't he?”

“‘Mutt,' ” Jim observed. “Isn't that rather an odd name for a thoroughbred collie?”

“He had that name when we bought him, so we kept it because he already answered to it. Besides, ‘he' is a ‘she.' ” Kate threw up her hands in mock dismay. “Can you believe it?”

He liked the gesture, and the way her eyes widened as if with surprise.

Ricky made an important announcement. “Buster belongs to me. I picked him out. There were five puppies, but we liked each other right away, so he's my dog.”

“Wow-wow,” said Laura.

Ricky corrected her. “Say ‘dog.' ”

“Wow-wow.”

“No. Say ‘dog.' ”

For a moment, Laura seemed to be studying the matter. Then, “Dog,” she said.

Everyone laughed and clapped for her, while Ricky said importantly, “I can teach her. Do you want me to teach her? I can read, you know.”

“Wead,” Laura said. “Wed light top. Geen light go.”

Again everyone laughed, and Jim cried, “Now, what on earth? I never taught her that.”

“She must have made the connection herself,” Kate said. “She saw that you stopped and started according to the lights.”

“But that's incredible!”

“Not really. It's genetic. I'll bet if you could ask your parents, they would say that you had the same grasp of words at this age. And your wife was probably the same.”

“I don't know. I never asked her mother. I mean, Laura's mother.”

That sounded queer. For God's sake, speak naturally. Say the name:
Rebecca
.

“Rebecca and I never got around to talking about things like that. It all happened so fast, our times together, I mean.”

“Does she miss her mother very much?”

“Rebecca was so ill for a while that we had to get a nurse to take care of Laura. If she misses anyone, it would be the nurse, although she seems to be forgetting her faster than I expected.”

That much was true, but the rest, the lies to these good people, would only lead to more inevitable lies. How could they not? Sitting here at their friendly table, he was tricking these good, simple people.

Simple? Who is to say what simple is?

“That next house, the one you pass down the road at the curve, belongs to a friend of mine,” Kate said next. “She used to assist in a kindergarten, and she has a day care license. Maybe you'd like to send Laura there. Right now she has two children and a two-year-old of her own. Jennie's wonderful with children.”

Jim had no intention of staying here any longer than he would stay at a vacation resort. This was a rest to be savored, a place in which to stop running and catch his breath. On the other hand, what was Laura going to do here all day? Perhaps this day care would be a good thing for her during the next week or two. Also, it would be a place to leave her while he gave some deadly serious thought to their next move.

   

In the predawn chill he woke, and opening the front door, stood on the steps to watch the sun ascend the sky. The air was cool, the birds were twittering, and at the bottom of the slope, the farm was already at work. Day laborers were arriving in battered old cars; two men carried milk cans to the roadside, where obviously they would soon be collected; someone was pulling a harrow from under a shed, while someone else trundled a wheelbarrow filled with empty quart baskets in the direction of what probably was a field of blueberries.

Was it a century ago that he had been, however temporarily, a part of this mild farmyard bustle? Was it a century ago that he had checked his luggage through the world's major airports and settled himself and his fine leather attaché case in a first-class seat? He looked at his watch. A few minutes from now he would have been in Washington, assuming that the case had not yet been settled, getting dressed for the resumption of argument. A few minutes from now, allowing for the difference in time zones and if he had not taken the risk he had taken, his Laura might have been waking up in Arthur Storm's French villa.

With this thought in mind, Jim had to rush back inside to the crib as if to make sure that he was not dreaming, that Laura was still there. Yes, there she lay in the pink pajamas printed with rabbits, elephants, and turtles that he had bought. Her fashionable coat that she had been wearing that last Sunday afternoon he had dropped on the grass south of Albany, thus leaving behind the last relic of her former life.

When she stirred and turned, he moved away without making a sound. A child should be encouraged to keep regular hours. Gently and gradually, he would train her to wake up at half-past seven. Breakfast should be ready at eight, and it should consist chiefly, according to the books, of whole-grain cereal with fruit; eggs, once a week, should be scrambled or boiled, never fried.

Almost by heart, Jim knew those rules. Reading time could come at any hour; it was especially valuable between supper and bed as a way to relax. He had already begun to acquire some of the fine old storybooks, beginning now with
Peter Rabbit
and leading gradually up to
Charlotte's Web
a few years from now. It was never too soon to start building a library. . . . And with a sudden pang, before his eyes he saw the shelves he had left behind, divided by subject, history or fiction or biography, then subdivided and alphabetized by author. Who owned them now?

But, first things first. This morning he was a little worried about the day nursery. Laura had never been used to children other than those who went to and fro in Central Park. Yet last night at the supper table she had readily accepted the strange adults and the six-year-old boy. Dr. Scofield had remarked that she was a “strong” child. Had he meant her physical body or her temperament?

Now Jim had to laugh a little at himself. Never before had he been such a worrier. Never had he fretted over even the most important trials or presentations; he had been confident in himself. Yet here he was questioning the rightness of the smallest matter that concerned this tiny girl.

It was only a few hours later that he knew he need not have fretted. At Jennie Macy's little play school, he had lingered for an hour to make certain that everything was in order.

“She's taking to it like a duck to water,” Jennie assured him. “Look at her with those blocks. She's collected a pile, and she's perfectly content. You really don't need to worry about this child, Mr. Fuller. My Tommy is just Laura's age, and he's not as calm as she is, even though this is his own house.”

So, with a pleasant sense of relief, Jim left and walked back to what he thought of as his vacation home.

Now he was feeling the luxury of having nothing at all to do for the next few hours. Until this very minute, in this sudden peace, he had not realized just how these last days had terrified and exhausted him. Maybe he'd take a pillow and a book, lie down in the shade, and just loaf.