The Eternal Wonder (7 page)

“THAT AIN’T YOU, IS IT?”
Chris shouted. He had grown into a burly youth, red-faced, loud-voiced, his full mouth pouting, his blond hair crew-cut. He wore soiled green coveralls and his nails were black.

“I’m Rannie Colfax, if that’s who you mean.”

He put out his hand but Chris drew back.

“I’m all black grease,” he said. “Say, what you doin’ with yourself these days?”

“We were going on a long tour around the world but my father was taken ill—cancer. He’s—very ill.”

“Too bad—too bad,” Chris said.

A customer stooped and, putting his head out the window, he bawled, “Fill her up—high-test—”

“What you doin’ tonight?” Chris asked from the gasoline tank.

“Nothing—I just thought I’d look you up.”

“Me and little ole Ruthie,” Chris said, snickering.

To his surprise, Rannie felt a strange stir in his groin. “How is she?”

“Pretty,” Chris said. “Too pretty for her own good—or mine. I might marry her one of these days, if she can ever be pinned down.”

“But Chris, how old are you?” Rannie asked in astonishment.

“Fifteen—sixteen—somepin like that. My ma’s never sure just what year it was she borned me.”

“But Ruthie—”

“She’s thirteen, but she’s all dolled up to look sixteen. She’s rare, she is. Lots of fellers—but she likes me best, she says—acts it too. I make good money here with my dad—ornery old cuss!”

“I’d better be home tonight,” Rannie said. “I don’t like to leave my mother alone just now.”

“No, well, you’re right at that, I guess. Gee, I’m sorry about your old man. But come again, will ya, Rannie?”

“Yes, thank you, Chris. It’s good to see you.”

“RANNIE!” HIS MOTHER WAS SHAKING
him awake. “The doctor is here. Your father is—dying.”

He leaped out of bed, instantly awake, and put his arm about her. She leaned against him for a few seconds and then drew him with her.

“We mustn’t waste a minute,” she said.

He followed her into the room where his father lay, stretched straight upon the wide old four-poster bed. The doctor sat beside him, his fingers on the dying man’s wrist.

“He has lost consciousness, I think,” the doctor said.

A whisper came from his father’s stiff lips—

“No—I am still—here.”

With effort he lifted his eyelids, searching.

“Rannie—”

“I’m here, Father.”

“Susan—love—”

“I’m here, darling.”

“Give our son—freedom.”

“I know.”

A silence came, so long that those watching thought it was forever. But no, his father had not finished with life.

“Rannie—”

“Yes, Father.”

“Never give up—wonder.”

“I never will, Father. You’ve taught me.”

“Wonder,” his father whispered, gasping for breath. “It’s the beginning of—of—all—knowledge.”

His voice stopped. A slight shiver shook his skeleton frame. Now they knew he was gone.

“Father!” Rannie cried, and seized his father’s clasped hands in his own.

“It’s over,” the doctor said, and, stooping, he closed the glazing eyes. Then he turned to Rannie. “See to your mother, my boy. Take her away.”

“I don’t want to be taken away,” his mother said. “Thank you, Doctor. Rannie and I will just stay here with him for a while.”

“As you like,” the doctor said. “I’ll report the death and send someone to discuss details with you.”

He shook hands with them gravely, kindly, and left them. They stood side-by-side, together and yet forever separate, as they looked down on the quiet figure of the man they both loved so well, yet each so differently. Memories, too, were altogether different, and so was the future each faced. What, Rannie was thinking, shall I do without him? Who will tell me the
truth about everything or where to go to find the truth? Who will help me to know what I am and what I ought to be?

What his mother was thinking he did not know, because he did not yet know what love between man and woman was, although wonder was beginning. He could not wonder now for he wanted only to see his father in his memory as alive and strong. Instead here lay this still, inert figure of a man, a mere shadow of the man he had known and looked to for nearly everything for all of his life.

He turned to his mother, seeking comfort, thinking at this moment only of himself.

“Oh no,” he sobbed. “No—no—no!”

His mother said nothing. She put her arms about him, and after a moment she spoke.

“Come,” she said. “We can do no more for him now—except live as he wanted us to live.”

And she led him away.

LIFE BEGAN AGAIN SOMEHOW.
THE
few days before the funeral were a dull maze of grief, the funeral was an hour of incredible agony.

“Dust to dust—,” the minister intoned at last, and he heard the dull thud of clods falling upon the coffin. He and his mother stood hand-in-hand, transfixed in horror, until someone, the minister or a neighbor, someone, led them away. Someone said, “This at least you need not endure.”

And they left the others and were driven back to the house, which no longer seemed a home but only a house that happened to be theirs.

Someone said, “Tell me, would you rather have us stay with you or would you rather be alone?”

“Thank you—we’d rather be alone,” his mother said. They were left then, alone in the house. The foolish dog leaped and jumped about them joyously, and neither of them could bear it.

“Put the dog in the garage,” his mother said.

He put the dog in the garage and then came back to the kitchen and sat down at the table while his mother cooked something.

“Neither of us will be hungry,” she said, “but I’ll bake some gingerbread and make that special sweet sauce you like.”

“Don’t bother, please, Mother,” he said.

“I’m better doing something,” she said.

He sat in silence then, watching her and wishing he did not think of his father lying white and still under the newly piled earth. He tried indeed most earnestly to remember his father as he had been when he was well, the autumn days when they had tramped in the woods, the winter days when his father had taught him how to ski, the summer days when he had taught him how to swim. It seemed to him now that everything he had learned his father had taught him. Who would teach him now?

“It is terrible—terrible—terrible—”

The words burst from him and his mother stopped her stirring in the big yellow bowl and looked at him, spoon in hand.

“What are you thinking, son?” she asked gently.

“He’s lying there all alone—in the ground—in the
ground
, Mother! There ought to be a better way.”

“Yet I couldn’t bear to think of his body—his beautiful, beautiful body—burned to ashes,” she cried passionately. “A handful of ashes—no, I couldn’t bear it. There’d be nothing left. As it is—he’s decently clothed, he’s in a sort of bed—alone, of course.”

Suddenly she began to weep in great, heaving sobs. She dropped the spoon into the bowl and covered her face with her hands. He leaped to her side and put his arms about her. He was as tall as her now, and suddenly he felt her small and in need of help and protection. But he did not tell her to stop crying. Somehow he knew better than that. He could no more take his father’s place with her than she could take his father’s place with him. They had to continue as they were, mother and son, sharing as much of life as they could.

As though she felt what he was thinking she suddenly stopped weeping. She lifted her head from his shoulder and pushed him gently aside, wiping her eyes with her apron.

“I must finish the gingerbread,” she said.

He left her then and went upstairs to his own room and, drawing the armchair to the window, he sat watching the dusk change to darkness. He was not thinking, he was only feeling—feeling his loneliness, feeling his mother’s loneliness, feeling the emptiness of the house, the emptiness of his world. He did not turn on the light but sat in darkness until his mother’s voice called up the stairs.

“The gingerbread is just perfect, Rannie!”

Her voice sounded natural, and almost gay. He went downstairs then and into the brightly lighted kitchen.

“I’ve also made Irish stew,” she said, “and a tossed salad. The gingerbread is for dessert.”

She had set the table for
their evening meal in the kitchen and this she had never done before. Until now they had always eaten dinner in the dining room. He could not imagine his father eating this meal in
the kitchen. Now he sat down, glad that his mother had put these two places here, so differently from their usual meal. Suddenly he was very hungry and later was ashamed of himself that he ate every bit of the Irish stew and salad she put before him and still ate two huge helpings of the hot gingerbread and its sweet, spiced sauce. Afterward he felt full and sleepy and they went early to bed.

IN THE MORNING SHE SET
the table again in the kitchen. He had not slept well, waking fitfully and often to think of his father lying alone on the hill. His imagination, always too quick to summon reality, brought to life before him the picture of his father’s body lying in the grave. He saw, again, every detail of the dead thing once his father but now no more. He saw the closed eyes, the sternly set mouth, and even the pale folded hands. The hands were the most dead. His father had beautiful hands, strong and well shaped, active hands, working, gesturing, always expressive. The stillness of his father’s hands he could not forget.

“Would you like scrambled eggs, Rannie?” his mother asked.

She was calm this morning. But he could tell by her eyes that she had wept in the night, unsleeping.

“Thank you, Mother,” he said, and again was ashamed that he could be so hungry in the midst of sorrow.

His mother scrambled eggs and made bacon and set them before him. Then she went to the window and fetched a pot containing an amaryllis bulb. A handful of sturdy green leaves surrounded
a
thick stem that bore two open flowers, still in bud but almost ready to open. She set the pot on the table.

“Those two flowers opened yesterday,” she said. “I wonder if the third one will open today. Three is the perfect number for amaryllis, I always think.”

She spoke conversationally, almost as though he were a stranger, or only a
neighbor, a visitor, but he understood that she was trying to begin life again, that she was determined not to weep again, at least in his presence, and he tried to help her.

“The bud looks as though it were ready to open now,” he said.

He ate his breakfast slowly. His mother drank coffee and buttered a thin slice of toast.

“Won’t you eat an egg, Mother?” he asked, suddenly anxious. She was all he had now. Their relatives were all far away and he did not know them except by hearsay.

“I will eat when I can,” his mother said. “It will take time to get back to myself. Today I must get his clothes packed into boxes to send to the Salvation Army.”

“Shall I help you?” he asked.

“No, dear,” she said. “I think I want to do it alone. He wanted you to have all his books, of course. But you should use the study now as your own. Feel free to change it as you like.”

He knew it was not easy for her to speak these words, but she was trying to do what his father wished—to give him freedom. But freedom for what?

Suddenly he noticed the amaryllis bud. It was already half-open! While they had been talking, between long silences, the bud had become almost a flower, though not quite full-blown. He pointed it out to his mother. She laughed, for a moment forgetting.

“Why, so it has,” she exclaimed. “I never knew an amaryllis bud could open so quickly. But then I’ve never sat in front of one just as I am sitting here now.”

She gazed, half-dreaming, at the flower. “It’s symbolic, somehow—the opening of a new flower at this moment when we’re so sad. It means something—I don’t quite know what—but as though your father were saying something to us. It’s comforting somehow.”

She looked at him wistfully. “Oh, Rannie, I do hope I’ll be the sort of mother you need! I’ve always left you to your father since you were a baby, that is … because he’s … he was so much wiser than I, and he knew you were no ordinary child. I hope … I hope I’ll be able to … not of course take his place—that I could never, never do—but fulfill my own place as perhaps I haven’t, because perhaps I haven’t felt it necessary, but you must help me. You must tell me if there is anything I should be doing that I’m not doing, for it won’t be lack of willingness, darling, but just that I don’t know enough.”

He met her pleading look with a tenderness he had never felt before. All his deepest love he had given to his father, but now he saw her separately, a childlike creature and yet a woman, of whose flesh he had been born and to whom in a way, too, he belonged.

“There is something you can do for me, Mother,” he said.

“And that is?” his mother asked.

“I’d like to know everything about my father—everything—everything. I realized now that when we were together we always talked about me—or something
I
was thinking about. I was selfish.”

“No, you weren’t selfish,” she said quickly. “He was simply—overcome with joy that he had a mind like yours to teach, to work with. He—he was—a born teacher and he revered a fine brain. He used to speak of your—your brain—as a treasure.”

“But I want to know
him
now,” he said.

She looked at him with a wondering love. “How could you know? …” she murmured.

“Know what, Mother?”

“That what you have just said comforts me as nothing else could! I’d never have thought of it myself—that I,
I
could keep him alive for you! I’ll do my best—I’ll remember everything. I can’t all at once, you know, Rannie—but as one thing and another happens in our lives, I’ll remember.”

And in comforting her he himself was comforted. They had a way now to live, a purpose in their life together as mother and son. They would keep his father alive.

IT WAS NOW EVENING
AND
they sat in the study. She had decided that the study was the room where it would be best for them to talk. It would bring his father nearer, she said. Nothing in the room was changed. On the desk his manuscript lay half-finished in his father’s fine, close handwriting. Someday, his mother said, he, the son, would finish it. His father had allowed it and he had been reading it slowly, carefully, understanding and not understanding the philosophy it proclaimed, and yet fascinated by it. Every scientist an artist? Every artist a scientist? What was the secret they held in common?