Random Winds (28 page)

“Yes, what?” the father cried.

“It may have been nothing at all.”

“What did you see?” Moser asked. “What did you see?”

“I am not sure. I don’t want to give you fake hopes—”

He pinched the girl’s arm. He thought her lips moved but he couldn’t be sure. And he stood there, stroking, then gently pinching, then pressing that thin white arm. And all the time, without seeing it, he felt Eastman’s gaze upon him, scorning and challenging.

Mr. Moser sighed. “Nothing. Nothing,” he murmured.

“I don’t know. I feel—” Martin began.

What he felt was a slight, slight reflex in the arm.

“I don’t know,” he repeated.

And Vicky’s lips moved. A little sound, a breath, the faintest groan came into the silence around the bed. Martin bent over the girl.

“Are you Vicky?” he whispered. The dry lips moved again, barely touching each other.

“Are you Vicky?”

The eyes flew open. For the first time in days they opened to the light; for a few tense moments they were blank, then subtle recognition gathered there.

“Have you been sick?”

She nodded. Her head barely moved on the pillow, but it was unmistakably a nod.

“You’re going to get well now, Vicky.”

She stared at Martin. Her eyes strained to understand.

“Yes, you are. Do you know I’m a doctor?”

Again she nodded.

Martin thought—be thought his heart was in his throat.

“There’s someone here to see you,” he said softly. “Look,” and he motioned to Moser.

Moser leaned over the other side of the bed.

“Is this your father?” Martin asked.

It was a long minute. “Is this your father?”

The girl’s eyes struggled to focus. The whole face struggled to come back from a far place. There was no sound in the room, no breath, no rustle, as the three men waited, their faces furrowed with their tension.

And finally, finally, into that agonizing silence came a word, very low, but audible and clear.

“Daddy,” she said.

Bob Moser grasped Martin’s hands. “I was half out of my mind, Dr. Farrell! For God’s sake, you can understand that, can’t you? If I was hard on you, if it was unforgivable, try to forgive it, will you? I’ll never forget you till my dying day. I—we—all of our family—we’ll never forget you.”

So much emotion, so much gratitude, were both overwhelming and oppressive. As quickly as he decently could, Martin fled.

Eastman caught up with him outside of the solarium. “I don’t mind telling you, Martin, this has been one of the worst experiences of my professional life. I just went off the deep end. It looked so bad there, just so bad.”

“I understand,” Martin said.

“I’m Sorry if I was unjust to you. I sincerely am. I was wrong and I admit I was.”

There was embarrassment in another human being’s discomfiture. And Martin fidgeted. “That’s all right. As long as it’s turned out well.”

“Turned out well? The girl’s going to come out of this and what can you add to that?” Eastman beamed. Light twinkled on his glasses; his teeth twinkled in a large, affable smile. “So let’s forget the whole business, Martin, and take up where we left off.”

Martin began quietly, “I’ve been doing some thinking, Doctor.”

“Yes?”

“And the sum total of it is—that I really want to go it alone from now on. It’s been a fine opportunity, working with you, and I’ve appreciated it, but—perhaps it’s a matter of temperament—I know I’d rather work alone.”

“Martin, you can have all the freedom you want. That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it? I understand your position. I give you my word that from now on it will be the way you want it.”

Martin shook his head. “Thank you, Doctor, but I’ve made up my mind. I can wait a few weeks until you find another man, of course. I’m sure there’ll be a dozen knocking at your door to take my place.”

“Don’t be foolish. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face just because you’re piqued.”

“It’s not pique. I’d been mulling it over long before this, without knowing I was doing so.”

“There’s a depression out there, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed, all right! But my wants aren’t very many. I feel I can manage.”

“You’re making a great mistake, Martin!”

“I hope not. But I have to try.” Martin put out his hand. “Thank you for everything, all the same.”

He walked on past the solarium. Wheelchairs stood against the walls. There was a rich smell of flowers; hospital bouquets were wistful, belying the very nature of flowers. He went on past stretchers in the corridors and visitors waiting in the lobby for admission cards. The loudspeaker called with urgence: “Dr. Simmons—stat, Br. Feinstein—stat.” My world, he thought.

Hazel Janos, powder-white from cap to shoes, was coming up the steps. Her eyes widened and brightened when she saw Martin.

“I think our girl’s going to make it,” he told her jubilantly. “She spoke this morning, recognized her father.”

“Oh,” Hazel cried. “I’m so glad! I prayed for her.”

“Say a little prayer for me, too, will you? I’ve taken a big leap. I’ve left Eastman and I’m on my own.”

“I will, but I don’t think you’ll need prayers. You’ve got success written all over you.”

“Have I? Strange, I don’t feel that way about myself. I don’t especially want it, either, if it means being another Eastman.”

“You’d never be like that. You’re soft inside.” For a moment she looked frankly into his eyes; then, flushing, turned away as though she had been too intimate, and went inside through the revolving door.

Martin ran down the steps. It might not be so easy, after all, to make his way without Eastman’s protecting hand. But it was time, as he had said, to try.

And he felt more free than he had felt in a very long time.

We remember more than we think we do. We understand more of what we see than we are credited with understanding. Years after the fact, one day things fall into place and we say, “Ah true, ah true! I must have known that, really, when I was only five or six or seven.” Flickering as interrupted dreams, the voices—indignant, earnest, mournful—sound again behind shut doors and across the lawn. Sudden tendernesses and secret glances repeat themselves in a dim landscape at the back of a stage, behind a gauze curtain.

The child knew her mother was different from other mothers, from other people. How? When did she first perceive this shameful difference?

The child knew that her father had gone away and that there was something terribly wrong about that. She thought she remembered great height, someone bending down to her, always bending, and being picked up and hugged. There had been a statue in a wide green place, and they two had stood in front of it. There had been a tiny glass boat, hanging on a Christmas tree. She had put out her finger to feel the pointed masts. Gold walnuts hung on the tree. There was a huge glass ball, lavender, so smooth you wanted to stroke it or else to crumble and scrunch it, like that.

“You mustn’t break it,” her father had said.

It was he, wasn’t it? Who else could have said it, then?

Dogs had come barking. The house had been full of dogs. And there had been children, some vague girls and a boy, quite big, who called the jumping dogs away. But she had been frightened, and her father—who else could it have been?—had picked her up and told her not to be afraid.

She asked her mother about this memory, but her mother had forgotten. Her mother had forgotten everything, it seemed, and although she always answered questions patiently, the answers never told anything. So after a while, Claire stopped asking.

One day at a friend’s house after school, an old woman said, “And you’re Claire Farrell! I knew your grandfather. He was a good doctor, a good man.”

“My grandfather? He’s not a doctor. He’s sick at home. He stays in bed most of the time, or on the sofa in the sun parlor.”

“Your other grandfather is the one I mean, child. Your daddy was a doctor here, too, but he didn’t stay very long.”

In the bottom drawer of a cabinet in the library, Claire found the photograph albums. Some of them were very old, bound in shabby red velvet with tarnished metal clasps. The people in these were strange; their wide skirts looked like lampshades. The men had full beards and solemn eyes. She could recognize none of them.

But there was another album, a black one with a broken spine. Here the pages were loose, and some of the pictures slid out of their pointed corners. These were familiar people: Grandpa, looking much the same as now except that his hair was dark; and Mother as a little girl, twisted even then. It was strange to think that a little girl could look like that. Here she was again, older this time, with a dress-up dress on and a pearl necklace, standing next to a laughing girl, much taller than Mother and not twisted. Claire carried the album to where Grandpa sat in the sun parlor.

“Who’s the pretty girl with Mother? That’s our porch they’re standing on.”

“That’s your aunt, Mary Fern. We don’t talk about her anymore. We don’t think about her. You’d best go put that away.”

“Why? Is she dead like Grandma?”

“No, she’s not dead, but she might as well be.”

“Why?”

“Because she was wicked. She did bad things.”

“What bad things?”

“Stealing, for one. Taking things that didn’t belong to her.”

When Mother came in, she was very angry. “I will not have you talking to the child like that, Father,” she said. It seemed to Claire that she was shaking.

“Why not? She might as well know the truth.”

“At six?”

“She can start getting used to the idea. When she’s older, she’ll have been prepared for it.”

“Never! Never, do you hear? It’s my business, my trouble! Mine to decide how much of it I want to have known and talked about whether all of it, or some of it, or none of it And don’t let me ever, ever hear you say one word to that child again, Father. I mean it, I mean it!”

Old Bridget who had been listening from the kitchen, said to Claire—(but she was half talking to herself, Claire knew; she used to mumble in the kitchen: “The bread knife now, where did I put it? Oh, I am so sick of these rheumatics, my poor legs!”)—old Bridget said, “Yes, that’s what happens when you get old and sick. She would never have got away talking to her father like that before.”

Mostly, though, Mother was nice to Grandpa even when he was cross. She always said she was sorry for him because he was old and sick. Maybe she could be very sorry for sick people because she wasn’t made right and knew how it felt.

When you walked behind her you could see how one shoulder stuck up so much higher than the other and how the crooked edges of her bones stuck out from under the collars and scarves and all the clothes she wore.

Why didn’t she look like other mothers? Why did a person have to have a mother like her?

Yet she could do things the other mothers couldn’t do. She could make anything with her hands. She made a patchwork quilt for Claire’s bed and silk flowers for the bowl on the hall table. She sewed a Tinkerbell costume for Claire to wear in
Peter Pan
. It was all feathery white, with hidden, tinkling bells that had come from a theatrical costumer’s in New York. The teacher kept talking about Claire’s costume. She didn’t say so, of course, but it was
the best costume in the class. Some of the other mothers had used nothing better than crepe paper. The pirate hats didn’t fit and kept sliding off.

Today was the final dress rehearsal. Everybody was standing in the schoolyard after lunch waiting for the bell to ring. The teacher was on the steps watching her first-graders. She wore a dress with little flowers all over it. She had pink nails and a new ring like a pearl button, only it was a diamond engagement ring. She was going to be married next month as soon as school was out. Claire wished Miss Donohue was her mother.

They went inside and ran through the rehearsal. The teacher said it was practically perfect. Claire felt so beautiful and so clever, tinkling her bells. And suddenly, when they were just about to take the costumes off, something came into her head, something from that time long, long ago.

“I really saw Peter Pan once,” she said. “There’s a statue of him in the park in London and I was there with my father.”

Jimmy Crater scoffed. “You did not! There isn’t any such statue!”

“There is so and I saw it.”

“You’re a liar.”

“I am not. Go ask Miss Donohue.”

“Why yes,” Miss Donohue said. “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. It’s famous. Now, who’ll help me stack this scenery in a safe corner till tomorrow?”

“There,” Claire said, “I told you so.”

“Ah, you’re full of baloney.”

“Am not.”

“You never even were in London.”

Now a little circle of allies and enemies gathered around Claire and Jimmy Crater.

“I was born in London!” Claire cried triumphantly. “I lived there with my father and mother. I ought to know where I lived!”

“You haven’t even got a father,” Andy Chapman said.

“I have so. Everybody has a father.”

“Oh yeah? Where is he, then?”

“None of your business.”

Under the Tinkerbell ruff and fluff, Claire felt the rising heat.

“Hasn’t got a father, hasn’t got a father!”

Claire stuck out her tongue. “You’re mad, Jimmy Crater, because I can knock you down. I’m bigger and stronger and I’m a girl, but I can knock you down!”

Jimmy’s fists went up, prizefighter fashion, churning under his chin. Andy, the ally, thrust his up toward Claire.

“Come on! Fight then!” they taunted.

“I don’t want to fight, but I can if I have to!”

“Ah, you’re scared! You haven’t got a father, and your mother’s funny-looking, and you’re scared!”

Claire’s fist struck Jimmy’s nose. When he fell, chairs clattered. Andy shoved Claire. They all fell, ripping the Tinkerbell dress down the back. It made a sound as if the cloth were screaming.

Miss Donohue came running. “Boys! Boys! Oh, how awful! What’s happening here?”

Claire got up. “Look,” she said. “Look what they did.”

Miss Donohue turned her around. Her cool fingers fiddled with the cloth at Claire’s back, pulling and smoothing.