Her Father's House (10 page)

   

One morning as Donald was prepared to leave for the office, Maria telephoned with news: Cookie was sick. She had been up all night, hot with fever. The woman at the doctor's office had not understood her, and what should she do?

“Where is her mother?” Donald asked.

“They went away, someplace far away, to ski.”

“Can't you reach them?”

“They left the telephone number, but maybe I wrote the wrong one down, I don't know. I don't think so, but nobody can find them.”

Donald looked at the clock. There was on his desk a pile of documents that had to be checked before a noon conference. “There's something to be said for a two-parent family,” he muttered, “with parents who pay a little more attention to their children, too.” Then, after instructing Maria to wrap the baby very warmly and expect him in fifteen minutes, he threw on an overcoat to ward off the snow, rushed downstairs, and hailed a taxi.

Cookie's tear-wet face was so painfully red that it terrified him. Maria's ominous silence terrified him. The taxi, whose driver Donald had urged to hurry, also terrified him as it skidded through the slippery streets.

I don't know anything about children, he was thinking in his fear. If I were living with her mother, I would know things, would know what to do. What if she's dying? Damn the driver! Is he going to take all day? Hurry, hurry, Donald wanted to cry as the man fumbled with the fare, as the elevator took forever to arrive, and as the receptionist wasted time on the telephone before acknowledging their presence.

“You look scared to death,” remarked the doctor. “Take it easy, Mr. Buzley. My guess is strep throat. There's an awful lot of it around this season. We're going to take a culture and by tomorrow we'll know whether it is or not. In the meantime we'll start the young lady on some antibiotics right now. Is she allergic to penicillin?”

Donald said helplessly that he did not know. Neither did Maria.

“No matter. We'll give her something else to make sure. Here, Maria—that is your name, isn't it? I'm writing down all the instructions for you. Maria takes wonderful care of Bettina,” the doctor said, turning to Donald. “We're old friends by now. How is Mrs. Buzley? I haven't seen her in so long, I thought perhaps she had been ill.”

You talk too much, but you mean no harm, thought Donald as he replied, “No, she's all right.”

“That's good. Well, take this lady home and expect our call in the morning.”

Back home, Donald tried to cope with his fury. Fine, he thought, fine mother! Buy an absurd mink blanket for the child's stroller—to match Mrs. Buzley's new coat, Maria said—and then go a thousand miles away after leaving the child in the sole care of a frightened woman who scarcely knows her way around the city.

So, because a week later the anger was still hot inside him, Donald went to the telephone and called Lillian.

“Who?” she said. “Oh, Donald? I didn't recognize your voice. I'm half-asleep.”

“Well, wake up. It's time you did.” He spoke roughly. “Wake up and pay attention to your child.”

“Got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning, did you?”

“Do you by any chance know, did Maria tell you what happened while you were away on your ski trip?”

“Cookie had a bad cold. What are you fussing about?”

“For your information, she did not have a cold. She had a strep throat. Maria did her best, but she was terrified. Who knows what might have developed if I hadn't been here in the city to take charge?”

“Well, that's always your function in life, isn't it—to preach and to take charge? Listen, Donald, you're all wrought up. But I don't want to argue with you because I don't dislike you and because I'm a really nice person. Try to remember that.”

“I'm not wrought up,” he said, dropping his voice. “I'm only concerned because you don't pay enough attention to Bettina. I'm justifiably concerned. You went away and left a useless phone number. You left this woman here helpless.”

“It wasn't a useless number. What happened was that people we know were giving a housewarming at their new place on the mountain. We stayed an extra day to talk to their builder because we're thinking maybe we'll build something for ourselves.”

“Don't quibble with me, Lillian. You're a skillful manipulator of language, but it won't work with me.”

“I really thought we had decided to end things finally in a friendly, civilized way, Donald.”

“Unfortunately, you and I will never have a final ending. Our child is the reason it can't be as final as we'd like. You are neglecting her, and I won't keep quiet about it.”

“Neglecting her? You're making a fool of yourself. Have you seen this home? Yes, you have, and you can still use the word ‘neglect'? You're an idiot. Do hang up and let me alone.”

“I'm not finished. I want you to listen to me—”

“No. Sorry. Don't bother me.” The receiver slammed in Donald's ear.

Well might he use the word “neglect,” but it would be difficult to prove in the face of every luxury, the Fifth Avenue apartment, the nanny, the summers at the beach house—and even a blond mink blanket for the stroller! Imagine that! Besides, everyone knows that she hugs and kisses Cookie, doesn't she? Would anyone believe that the child is neglected?

He was late for an early conference with Mr. Pratt, and if there was anything that Augustus Pratt despised, it was lateness. In addition, the snow that had been falling all night showed no signs of stopping, so that his noon flight to the meeting in Washington, which was the subject of the morning's conference, might well be delayed or canceled. He'd have to settle for the train. Donald Wolfe was in a bad mood.

   

Still frazzled, he boarded the train. Red-faced passengers, people with wet coats and windblown hair, came in stamping their feet and rubbing their cold hands, even as he was doing. He was resenting his own bad mood and the long ride ahead. The morning's telephone call still rankled. He was too disturbed even to open the book he had bought for the journey, and lost in a welter of indeterminate, useless thoughts, he rested his eyes on the incessant, whirling snow beyond the tracks.

“That's a wonderful book,” someone said.

He had barely noticed the person in the next seat except to see that she was a young woman, and breathless, because the train had already been about to start when she came rushing in.

“Oh yes,
Bleak House
. I haven't read it since high school.”

“Look.” And opening an overstuffed tote bag, she took out a copy of
Bleak House
.

“I tutor high school kids sometimes, so I'm reading it for the second time, too.”

Now Donald looked at her. She was freckled and neat-featured, with reddish hair. She could have been Augustus Pratt's daughter.

“You're a full-time teacher?” he asked politely.

“No, I'm a farmer, a farmer's wife. I love books, and since where we live there aren't that many families who do love books, I like to help kids who don't get help at home.”

“Where is that? Where do you live?”

“Well, if you look at the map, you'll see that there's a corner of Georgia where three states meet. It's where the Great Smokies end, or begin, depending on your point of view. But I'm keeping you from your book.”

He was truly not feeling sociable, so taking advantage of the remark, he turned to the window and the flatlands of New Jersey. His thoughts were tossed between the morning's nastiness and the negotiations forthcoming in Washington.

After a while he heard and felt a stir in the adjacent seat. The young woman, rummaging in the tote bag, withdrew what looked like a tin of cookies.

“Want some?” she asked. “They're delicious, left over from my girlfriend's wedding. She made me take them home, and I'm glad she did because I'm starved. I didn't have time to eat or I would have missed the train in Boston. Oh, do,” she went on when he hesitated, “otherwise I might eat them all myself and I can't afford to do that.”

The cookies, as might be expected, led to further conversation, Donald remarking that he hoped all the food at the wedding was as good as this.

“Oh, it was! It was a country wedding at home. The bride and her mother did all the baking. Have another.”

He would have liked to accept another, but since it would not have been appropriate, he declined and remarked instead that weddings were always fun—which was not necessarily true.

“Yes, aren't they? This wedding was in New Hampshire in a beautiful little town, something like one of ours at home except for the climate. I'd never seen that much snow in my life. Amy and I met at college in Georgia, you see, and we've been friends ever since, but I never visited her at home. We hadn't seen each other in ages, and I simply couldn't see myself missing her wedding.”

Donald was thinking that once a conversation gets rolling, it is almost impossible to stop it.

“So it was a real event for you, a reunion, a great time,” he said.

“Yes, it was, except that I had to come without my husband. We have six hundred acres, twenty-two head of milkers, and a farm manager who's petering out, so Clarence didn't feel secure about going away. People don't have any idea of the work there is on a farm.”

He could have said that, having hired out during many a summer vacation, he had a very good idea about the work. But not wanting to prolong the talk, he did not say so.

“You're a city man, I see by your briefcase. Would you like to see a picture of our place, or would it bore you?”

Now, how on earth could a person admit that it would bore him?

“Not at all. I'd like to see it.”

So, out of the tote bag came a small cardboard album; undoubtedly it had been brought along for exhibition to the wedding guests. The photographs on the cover showed a tidy frame house with a porch across the front. Two handsome collies lay on the steps.

“These are Mutt and Jeff. ‘Mutt' is kind of an insult, isn't it, because he's a border collie with a royal pedigree. A real extravagance, Clarence said. He bought him at a show—he couldn't resist. Now here's Clarence.”

A tall man in a neat shirt and jeans stood against a board fence. The corner of a barn roof and part of a cow were visible in the background.

“Now here's Ricky. He's six, but this was taken two years ago.”

Between his parents on the same front steps where the dogs had lain now sat a little boy with curly hair and a serious face. Below the picture was a penciled caption:
Clarence, Ricky, and Kate
, with the date, Fourth of July, and the year.

There would be a band in the morning when the veterans marched down the Main Street. There would be little flags in the cemeteries and big ones sagging in the hot, still air over the front door, or sometimes on a pole in the front yard. There would be picnics, fried chicken maybe, and ice cream and blueberry pie.

Suddenly something touched Donald's heart, and he turned, not too obviously, sliding his eyes toward the woman beside him, a person naive in her certainty that he would care about these pictures. His quick glance encompassed her and registered itself in his head: slender figure, hair curly like her son's, facial features undistinguished except for the tender smile, and hands strong with nails unvarnished, clasping the book.

“He's a beautiful little boy,” Donald said.

She sighed. “Yes, he's precious. We would love to have more, but nothing happens. Do you have any children?”

“Just one. A girl. She's two.”

“Ah, well, you'll have more. Most people do. Clarence and I made up our minds almost from the time we met that we'd have a big family. That's the way we were, right from the beginning.” She laughed.

“You were in a big hurry, weren't you?” Donald responded, taking the lighthearted cue from the laugh.

“But anyway, we've been happy together from the day we met.”

He could not have explained why he was curious enough to ask this talkative stranger how they had met, but he asked.

“It was at the university in Atlanta. He was in agriculture, and I was in history, and we hadn't even noticed each other until one day when it was raining cats and dogs and he let me walk with him under his umbrella.”

So that's how it happens. A woman rescues some papers from falling off a man's lap, or a man lends his umbrella.

“I never thought I'd live on a farm. Of course, it isn't just any old farm, it's what you might call an ‘establishment.' It's been in the family for maybe six generations, maybe more. From right after the Revolution, anyway. That's two hundred years ago, at least. I think he loves every tree on the land. And do you know, I admit it did take quite a while, but now I've come to love them all, too.”

Lucky Clarence, Donald thought. You'll take care of Kate if you're wise. She's honest, she's good, and she spreads cheer. In an entirely different way, she reminds me of Maria, except that Maria, even though she was born in a village, is naturally streetwise. This young woman is too trusting to be let out in the world without having somebody take care of her. Of course I might be all wrong, I've been fooled before, but I don't think I am all wrong.

“Well, I believe I'll get back to my book,” she said.

So Donald opened his book, too. But his mind was too full to absorb it, and the reading didn't go very well. The incessant snow fled past the windows, turning white the fields, the housing developments, the factories, the city of Philadelphia, and more. If Cookie could have a mother like this, he was thinking, and closing his eyes, he saw his little girl standing in front of him glowing with joy over the fluffy bear in her arms. If only she had a mother . . . Then suddenly Washington was announced.

He stood up to take his suitcase from the rack and said good-bye to his neighbor. “It was nice talking to you.”

“Yes, it was. Let me scribble our address for you. I always do this when I meet somebody I like. If you and your wife ever travel south, come see us.”