Between Husbands and Friends

by Thayer, Nancy

  “Jeremy.” I do not yell it, not yet, I don’t want to frighten Margaret, we’ve got enough going on in our lives, there has to be a reason, something I’m missing, something logical that explains where Jeremy is.

  The back door is closed and bolted.

  The front door is closed, but the closet door is open to the hall, and at once I see what is missing: Jeremy’s rain slicker and rain boots.

  All right. Think. No one has kidnapped him, no one could have come into the house and lifted him from his bed and dressed him in his rain gear. He’s not crazy, he wouldn’t have gone out to play in the rain. So he went somewhere on purpose.

  He went to see his father.

  That has to be it. Jeremy is worried about his father, and confused because Max has been away for so long.

  I race up the stairs and into my bedroom. I pull on sweatpants, sneakers, sweatshirt. I scribble a note to Margaret and stick it on her bedside table. Grabbing up my car keys, I head out into the rainy night.

  Steadily the rain pounds down, banging on the roof and the hood of the car, like hundreds of evil spirits trying to get in. Most of the houses on our street are dark, with a porch light shining here, the blue flicker of a television screen shining through the window there, the steady glow of a stove light in a window further down the street. This is a safe town. It’s a small town. It’s only a matter of perhaps twenty blocks between here and the newspaper. A child could walk there. Which way would Jeremy go? These streets should all be familiar to him, but then again he’s just a child, and it’s dark, and rain obscures everything. We have walked from our house to the Little Red Schoolhouse, about eight blocks away. We have walked from there into town, to the library, the post office, the pharmacy where we buy ice cream cones. We have walked from there to the other side of town, where The Sussex Gazette is. Jeremy could figure it out. He could find his way.

  It’s a safe town, I keep telling myself. There will be no perverts, no monsters lurking to steal a little boy, not in the middle of the night, not in a downpour like this. I drive six blocks without meeting another car on the streets. As I turn the corner onto Main Street, a blue pickup truck goes around the corner, a woman with bleached blond hair driving. She’s driving carefully, concentrating in the heavy rain. People would be driving carefully, they wouldn’t be speeding, the chances that they would accidentally hit a small child walking on the sidewalks are low. Really low, I would think.

  Still I wish I had called the police. The police department is only three blocks away from the newspaper. They would be there by now.

  And then I am there, pulling into the parking lot. No cars are parked there. Through the picture window a light gleams, illuminating the empty office. Rain pellets slam my windshield so furiously it’s like a swarm of bees, splattering noisily, trying to break through the panes. Rain hits the pavement of the parking lot in pops, ricocheting back up in little bursts. The shrubs beneath the window and on either side of the front door shiver violently in the wind.

  Between the bushes, sitting on the front step, head bowed over onto his knees, is a small figure, a little boy in a yellow rain slicker. He looks up as my headlights play over him. His face is streaked with tears and rain.

  “I want my daddy!” Jeremy insists as I lift him and carry him to the car. “I want my daddy!”

  “Daddy’s going to be furious with you for leaving the house in the middle of the night.” I dump him in the backseat and fasten his seat belt. My teeth chatter with adrenaline. “You were a very bad boy, Jeremy. You did a very dangerous thing.”

  “I want my daddy,” Jeremy weeps. “Where is he? I thought he was here. You said he was here.”

  I pull a tissue from my pocket and wipe off Jeremy’s wet hands and face, wishing I had a towel. Jeremy sneezes.

  “Daddy’s not at the newspaper tonight. He’s at a friend’s house.” I start the car, turn the heater on full blast.

  “Is my daddy dead?” Jeremy asks.

  “Dead? No! Where did you get such an idea?”

  “My daddy would call me if he was alive.”

  “Oh, Jeremy.” I turn to look at my frail, wet, weeping son, and my throat closes up with pity and remorse. “I tell you what. I think I know where Daddy is. I’ll show you his van, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  It takes only about ten minutes to drive through the dark night out along Route 16 to Garrison’s house in the woods. We meet no other cars.

  The porch light is on at Garrison’s house, the rest of the windows dark. Kate’s Mercedes convertible is in the driveway; Max’s van behind it.

  Is it anger? Is it jealousy? Is it idiocy? I park the car behind the van, storm around the side, undo Jeremy’s seat belt, and lift him in my arms. He seems weightless as I stride up the front steps and pound on the door. It’s as if I have three arms, four, I hold him and beat on the door while the rain plummets down all around us.

  A light comes on inside. Figures move behind the curtains.

  Max opens the door. He’s wearing only a quickly tied robe.

  “What the hell?” he says, blinking.

  “Daddy!” Jeremy whoops, and hurls his entire body at Max with absolute unthinking assurance that his father will catch him.

  Max catches him. Jeremy hugs his father’s neck, clings to him like a wide-eyed baby lemur.

  “Can we come in?” I don’t wait for Max to answer. I step inside, out of the noise and assault of the rain.

  Kate enters the living room clad in a pale cream negligee beautifully ornamented with lace. I am aware of my thoroughly drenched hair, my drowned-rat appearance.

  “Daddy, you didn’t come home, you didn’t answer my phone calls, I thought you were sick. And I threw up tonight!”

  “Jeremy sneaked out of the house,” I tell Max. “He got up when I was sleeping, and dressed himself, and walked to the Gazette. In the dark. In the rain. Alone.”

  “Mom said you were working, Dad. But why can’t you come home at night like you always do? Why don’t you call me on the phone? Are you mad at me? Why—” A series of sneezes overcomes the little boy.

  “You’re all wet, pal,” Max says.

  “I’ll get a towel.” Kate hurries from the room.

  “Don’t you love us anymore, Dad?” Jeremy asks.

  For one long moment the room is silent except for the plopping of beads of rain off my clothes onto the wooden floor and the steady drumming of rain on the roof.

  Max looks so sad it breaks my heart.

  “Of course I still love you, Jeremy,” he says.

  Kate hands Max the towel. For a moment Max’s dark head is bent as he rubs the towel over the golden-streaked hair of the little boy nestled between his forearm and his chest.

  “Will you come home with us, Dad?” Jeremy asks.

  Max doesn’t answer right away but intently rubs the towel over Jeremy’s legs. He’s looking down; I can’t read the expression on his face. I can hear Kate breathing and the crackle of Jeremy’s raincoat as he shifts in his father’s arms. I hold my breath.

  Max says, “All right.”

  He sets Jeremy on the floor. “I’ll get my things.”

  Oscar has been wriggling around our feet ever since we came into the house, and now the little dog stands on his hind legs and does a wriggling dance of ecstasy as Jeremy greets him. Kate follows Max out of the living room. I hear their voices but not their words.

  Max returns, a duffel bag in one hand, a briefcase in the other. Without speaking, he hands me the briefcase, then picks Jeremy up with one arm. “Okay, sport. Let’s go home.”

  Oscar whimpers and jumps at our feet. Kate walks over to pick him up; as she bends, the low neck of her negligee falls forward and I can see clearly her small high breasts. I think of Max touching those breasts. I thrust the thought away. Kate stands holding the dog to her chest.

  Jeremy says, “Is Aunt Kate going to come home, too?”

  “Not tonight,” I reply. “She’s staying here to take care o
f Garrison.”

  “Want an umbrella?” she asks as we open the door to the windblown rain.

  “No, thanks,” I tell her. “We’ll be all right.”

  Back home, I stand in the shower, letting hot water scald down over me, until I’m warm again. Max is putting Jeremy into dry pajamas, blowing his hair dry, and he’s brought out an electric blanket for Jeremy’s bed, and layered it above the sheet but beneath a quilt, so that Midnight’s and Cinnamon’s claws won’t snag a wire. I don’t like using an electric blanket with the children, but I understand Max’s logic tonight, to make the bed as warm as toast. And I’m so glad he’s back I’m not going to fuss about a thing.

  I blow my hair not completely dry—that would take forever—but dry enough, and I pull on my flannel nightgown and knee-high cotton socks, a far cry from Kate’s negligee, but I don’t feel very seductive right now. I’m exhausted. It’s 2:00 A.M.

  And Margaret is awake; I find her sitting on my bed when I come out of the shower.

  “Dad’s home,” she says.

  “I know. Did you see my note? Your dreadful little brother walked all the way to the Gazette in the dark.”

  Margaret’s eyes go wide with surprise. “Oh, man, he’s going to be grounded for life.”

  “At the very least.”

  “But he got Dad to come back from the newspaper.”

  Something bitter stirs in me, longing to tell Margaret exactly where Max was tonight. Instead I say mildly, “He would have come back sooner or later.”

  She eyes me warily. “Dad’s thumping around in the guest room.”

  “Well, we still have a lot of stuff to discuss. But he’s here. So stop worrying and get some sleep.”

  To my utter surprise, Margaret comes over and wraps her arms around me. “I love you, Mommy,” she says, her voice muffled by my nightgown.

  I hug her against me tightly. For a moment I cannot even speak. Then my breath comes and I say as if I never doubted it, “I know you do, darling. Now go to sleep. You’ve got school tomorrow.”

  I walk her to her room and tuck her into bed. She’s asleep the moment her head hits the pillow.

  In his room, Jeremy sleeps soundly, too. Both Midnight and Cinnamon are on his bed; they like the warmth of the electric blanket.

  The light is already out in the guest bedroom. I stand in the doorway.

  “Max?” I can see that he’s already in bed, turned with his back to the door. “Thank you.”

  “It doesn’t change anything, Lucy. It’s just for tonight.”

  “Can’t we talk?”

  “I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “All right.” Still, I linger, waiting for him to say something else, wishing I could say one perfect thing. After a few moments, I say, “I love you.”

  He doesn’t reply.

  I leave him, go into our bedroom, and stretch out alone on our queen-size bed.

  But this isn’t my night for sleep. No sooner have I fallen into a deep doze than a noise wakes me: Jeremy coughing. I stumble through a familiar night-nurse routine, finding the teaspoon, the children’s cough suppressant, the Vicks VapoRub, the cherry cough drops that probably don’t do any good but help Jeremy to believe that not all medicines taste bad. Jeremy feels warm to me, no doubt because of the accumulated heat of the two cats and the electric blanket. He’s fussy and exhausted and doesn’t want to let me take his temperature with a mercury thermometer and I’m out of tongue fever strips, so I turn off the electric blanket. I manage to get the cough medicine down him and prop him up on two pillows, then bumble back to my own bed, dizzy with fatigue.

  I wake to the smell of coffee. Amazing. An adult in the house again. I lie there, loving the aroma, letting it lull me into a sense that this is a normal morning like any other. I hear Jeremy cough; I hear Max talking to him.

  I find everyone in the kitchen. Max is at the stove, preparing his famous scrambled eggs. Margaret flutters around him, handing him the salt and pepper, taking the eggshells from him and disposing of them, setting the table, pouring orange juice, fussing over Jeremy, so happy to have her father around that she can’t stop smiling. She’s dressed for school, and so is Jeremy, but after one look at him, I know I’m keeping him home.

  “Morning, Glory,” I say to my daughter, kissing her cheek.

  “Morning, Mom.”

  “How do you feel this morning, Jeremy?” I bend to kiss his cheek, too, and let my own cheek linger against his forehead. I’m pretty sure he has a fever.

  “All right,” he says and bursts into a series of coughs.

  “You know what?” I speak casually, stirring milk and sugar into my coffee. “I think I’ll keep you home today.”

  “But Dad’s going to drive us to school!” Jeremy protests.

  “Honey, listen to yourself. You’re coughing. And you didn’t get much sleep last night at all.”

  “Mom, I want to go to school!”

  “Better stay home, sport,” Max says. “Better take care of yourself and get over your cold.”

  “If I stay home from school, can I come to town meeting tonight?” Jeremy asks.

  Max hedges. “Let’s see how you feel this afternoon.”

  “Dad,” Margaret says, “all the teachers are talking about town meeting. They said you’ve been writing editorials in favor of developing the Lamb property, but lots of people think it should go to conservation.”

  A blob of egg falls from Jeremy’s fork. I reach over to wipe his shirt. As he answers, Max stretches out an arm to shove Jeremy’s chair closer to the table. “That’s true, Magpie. It’s a complicated situation, and an emotional one.”

  Margaret watches her father carefully. “They say Mr. Cunningham is the lawyer for the ConCom.”

  “Uncle Chip?” Jeremy asks.

  Max doesn’t flush or pause. “Right. Uncle Chip.”

  Margaret presses. “Are you mad at Mr. Cunningham, Dad?”

  Here it is, I think, the first test, and certainly not the last by a long shot. Jeremy senses the tension and stares from his sister to his father.

  “No, honey, I’m not mad at Uncle Chip,” Max says evenly. Calmly he meets his daughter’s eyes, speaking with the measured judiciousness that people have come to admire him for. “Mr. Cunningham’s a lawyer. It’s his job to speak for the people who hire him. He and I might disagree at town meeting, but that’s business, not personal. We’ve been on opposing sides of issues before, you know that. He’s a Republican, I’m a Democrat, you must have heard some of the arguments we’ve had.”

  “It’s kind of weird, you being on the side of the developers.”

  “I know. It’s not my customary position. But I’ve done a lot of research on this matter, and I believe that building the complex will be the best thing for the majority of people in this town.”

  “I heard the principal tells Mr. Clarence that it’s going to be like Clash of the Titans.”

  To my infinite relief, Max throws back his head and laughs. “Then it should be entertaining for everyone.” He rises. “If you want me to drive you to school, Margaret, better hurry. I want to leave in five minutes.”

  “Dad?” Jeremy twists in his chair. “Are you coming home tonight?”

  Max looks at his little boy. “Yeah. Right after work.”

  Jeremy nods to himself, once, sharply, like Max does, satisfied.

  The rain has stopped, but the skies remain gray, and wind tosses the heavy leaves of the trees so that they occasionally fling their drops of water against the house, making a sound like someone tossing pebbles at a window. When Margaret and Max leave, Jeremy slumps in his chair like a balloon with all the air gone out of him.

  “Hey, chum, I want to take your temperature.”

  He fusses, but I insist, and discover that his fever has suddenly shot up to 102 degrees.

  I call Wally Calder, our pediatrician, then I bundle Jeremy up warmly and drive over to the clinic. We sit docilely in the waiting room, while other children with their ow
n coughs, sneezes, itches, and aches, grumble and whine in their mothers’ arms. People look at us sharply each time Jeremy coughs. I know the sound is impolite, irritating; I smile guiltily and remind him to cover his mouth. He sits on my lap, his skin hot, parched-feeling, as uncomfortably dry as a fish out of water. A new vein of dread has opened up within my heart and glitters at me like a metallic thread leading into a frightening labyrinth.

  Jeremy knows Wally well and does not shy away from the doctor’s various intrusive investigations. Wally is deft and humorous, a genius with children, and pretty great with mothers, too. He’s calm and ugly in a kind way that makes him seem accepting of anything, a mother’s greasy hair after a week with a sick child, a parent’s neurotic need to bring a child in over nothing more than a little cough.

  “Well, buddy,” Dr. Calder says. “Do you know what we get to do today? We get to have a chest X-ray!”

  “Will it hurt?” Jeremy asks.

  “You won’t feel a thing. I promise. It’s sort of cool, like a Star Wars kind of gadget.” He looks at me, glasses glittering. “I think we might have a little pneumonia going on,” he says cheerfully.

  His office is in the same modern glass and stucco building that houses the hospital, and it’s only a matter of walking through a maze of corridors to get to the X-ray room. Again we wait patiently. Jeremy sits on my lap without fussing, his head burning through my shirt.

  After the X-ray, I pull Jeremy’s shirt back on over his arms. We return to the hall, intending to walk back to the pediatrician’s office, only to see the doctor striding toward us down the corridor, his white coat streaming out behind him.

  “Hey, Jeremy.” Wally Calder has the X-ray in his hand. He squats down to be on Jeremy’s level. “You know what, buddy? You get to get some VIP treatment today. You know what VIP means, don’t you?”

  Jeremy shakes his head.

  “It means Very Important Person, and that’s just what you are. You get to check into the hospital today.”

  “I don’t want to,” Jeremy says, cringing.

  “Come on, you haven’t even seen it yet. You get to lie in bed and watch TV all day. Listen, I’d like to do that myself.”