Daybreak

by Belva Plain

  “Do that. Let yourself unwind.” He spoke kindly, cheerfully. “Poor little Laura! Worry, worry, worry. You can’t take the world’s troubles on your shoulders, you know. Those blacks will take care of themselves, and Tom will take care of himself, too.”

  Alone in the bed while Bud watched television downstairs, she lay awake. The boys were in their rooms, Timmy no doubt with Earl asleep on his feet, and Tom most likely trying to smother his anger. What future was there really for either of her sons? Our children hurt us so.… For Tim, the end was too clear. And Tom’s future is up in the air. There is so much of Bud in him, she thought. The ambition and the stubbornness are both his. What if she had married some other man with different genes? He would still be her son, but he would not be Tom. What if, for instance, she had married Francis Alcott? Foolish, aberrant thought.

  From the trees near the window a bird, awakened from sleep, gave a startled cry and subsided. This cry, followed by its silence, now suddenly brought to her awareness the insect chorus in the yard, a level sound as incessant and unremarkable as silence. Yet for an instant now she became aware of it as though she had never heard it before. And perhaps because Francis’s name had slipped out of some locked box inside her head, something more slipped out: sounds of the summer night when she had played Eine Kleine Nachtmusik for him. The crickets had been loud that night. Another aberrant, foolish thought.

  PART

  IV

  The Crawfields

  CHAPTER

  8

  The mail always came in the late afternoon. Shoved through the slot in the door, it landed on the floor of the hall, a tumble of bills, postcards from the traveling aunts, appeals from charities, and slippery catalogs presenting kitchenware, hand-knitted sweaters, birdhouses, and everything that has ever been manufactured by man.

  Among all these this day there lay a long white envelope. It looks stern, thought Laura, with its professional lettering: LONGFELLOW, BRYCE & MACKENZIE, COUNSELORS AT LAW. She didn’t like the bold look of it, which was silly of her. And thrusting everything else aside, she sat down to read it.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Rice:

  A matter of urgent importance to you has recently come to my attention. My purpose in writing is to request that you respond by letter or telephone as soon as possible, so that we may set up an appointment at any time or place that is convenient for you.

  Thanking you, I am very truly yours,

  Ralph R. Mackenzie

  A matter of great importance.

  Really, really, it was ridiculous to be feeling this quiver of the nerves, this tiny lurch of the heart. People in business received letters like this one all the time. The man probably had something to sell. But—Mackenzie? Ralph Mackenzie, who was running against Jim Johnson, was not a salesman. What could he want?

  There was no sense waiting to find out, so she went to the telephone and asked to speak to Mr. Mackenzie. “I just received your letter,” she said, “and it seems so mysterious that I’m answering right away. What is this about?”

  “It’s a very personal matter, Mrs. Rice. It’s not anything we should discuss over the telephone. I’m sorry.”

  Tom, she thought. The awful business that night. Oh God, could Tom have really had anything to do with it? Yes, maybe he could.

  “I’d like to make an appointment with you and Mr. Rice. You tell me when.”

  The voice was a gentleman’s, but that meant nothing; he could still be some sort of con man. “You are the Mackenzie who’s a candidate for the senate, aren’t you?” she asked anxiously.

  “I am. I am the only Ralph Mackenzie in the book. If you want to make sure I am who I say I am, this office has several telephone numbers, all listed. You may try any one of them to check me out.”

  “Tell me, this worries me. Are we being sued for something? If this has anything to do with business, you should get in touch with my husband at his office.”

  “Don’t be frightened. You’re not being sued.”

  This gentle assurance made Laura feel foolish, and she said hastily, “I don’t know why I said that. We don’t owe anyone, we haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “I’m so sorry to be worrying you, and I don’t like being mysterious. Tell me what day will do. Tomorrow, perhaps?”

  He was certainly in a hurry. And this sense of hurry conveyed itself to her, so she said promptly, “Tomorrow afternoon. It’s Saturday, and my husband will be home.” And remembering that it was this man and not she who had asked for the appointment, she said with dignity, “Three o’clock will be convenient for us.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Rice.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Bud protested. “The guy’s a politician. He’s collecting for his campaign. Going around begging. ‘A personal matter.’ Yeah. Personal for the bastard, and you fell for it.” He laughed. “Well, I’ll make short work of him. He’s come to the wrong place. Any pennies I have go to Johnson.”

  “I don’t know.” And again there was that prickle of fear. “He said it was urgent. He was very nice.”

  “Aha! I’ve got it. Some third cousin, yours or mine, has died without wife or child and has left a fortune. And they’ve tracked us down as the nearest relatives. That’s it, Laura. Wow! We’ll go around the world. I’ll buy you a diamond necklace that you can wear to the supermarket. How about that?”

  “He’s coming tomorrow,” she said, not laughing.

  Now Bud frowned. “You shouldn’t have allowed it. Let him come to my office with whatever it is. I don’t do business at home, and he ought to know better, a high-class attorney like him. Longfellow, Bryce and Mackenzie.”

  “I told you he said it was personal.”

  * * *

  Ralph R. Mackenzie arrived on time at three o’clock. He was tall and thin and looked like a lawyer in his immaculate seersucker suit with his attaché case in hand.

  “I’m sorry to intrude on your home,” he said pleasantly. “But I think you will see it is the best way.”

  “Quite all right,” replied Bud in the courteous manner that he could display so attractively. “We’ll sit in the library. It’s the coolest room in the house.”

  Mackenzie set the attaché case on the floor beside his chair, opened it, took two or three typewritten sheets out, and was about to speak when Bud spoke first.

  “I might as well tell you, in case this has anything to do with the campaign, that I’m a Johnson man. I always believe in speaking frankly from the start.”

  “I understand. But this has nothing to do with the campaign. I’m here as a lawyer, not a candidate.”

  Laura was frightened. The fright came over her like a cold draft. The events of the last few days had made her vulnerable to outside forces. There was menace in the world; she had never been so sharply aware of it. Her gaze was fixed on the man as she waited.

  “This is, as I told you, Mrs. Rice, a personal matter, a very painful one. So I shall get directly to the point with no long preamble. I represent a family whose son was born in the Barnes Private Maternity Clinic, now no longer in existence. He was born on July 8, 1974. And you have a son, Thomas, I believe, born there on July 9. Am I correct?”

  “Thomas Paine Rice,” Bud said. His voice rose. “What is this about?”

  Mackenzie, putting the papers back into the attaché case, had a moment’s problem with the lock. This delay was maddening. Yet Laura saw at once that it was purposeful, because the man was tense. When he had adjusted the lock, he looked from Bud to Laura and back to Bud.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Rice, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in the fourteen years since I passed the bar. There is reason to believe that a mistake was made at the hospital, and that the two families were given each other’s babies.”

  Laura gasped, and Bud jumped up from the sofa where he had been sitting next to her.

  “What? Are you crazy?” he cried. “Crazy, to come here with a cock-and-bull story like this?”

  “I wish it were, Mr. Rice. Bu
t I can tell you—I represent a family—we’ve been exploring this situation for months now, and unfortunately—”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” Bud shouted.

  Laura touched his arm. “Bud, please, please don’t. We have to hear it.” Thank God the boys were out of the house. Her heart hammered so—

  “Look at my wife! She’s going to faint.”

  Mackenzie shook his head. “I don’t know what to do. I have to tell you this, but I don’t want you to be ill, Mrs. Rice. What shall I do?” And he gave Laura a look of purest compassion.

  “Of course you have to go on,” she whispered.

  “These other people, when they were told, came to me. They were as shocked and disbelieving as you are—”

  “It’s a trick,” Bud interrupted. “These things don’t happen. It’s a fabrication, and I am damn well going to get at the bottom of it.” His throat muscles bulged at the V of his open collar, and his cheeks were flushed. “Coming here like this to scare the life—” And then remembering himself, he said more quietly, “I don’t say I blame you, Mr. Mackenzie. You’re an attorney, and when people come as clients with some wild, tricky story, I understand you have to listen. But I don’t have to.”

  “The story is wild enough,” Mackenzie said quietly, “but it isn’t tricky. That I can vouch for. I have known these people, they’re my friends as well as my clients, and they are honorable people. Also, it goes without saying that I have made my own extensive private investigations. We searched the records that were transferred to Wilson General when Barnes was closed, we interviewed the only nurse from that section who is still employed there, and naturally she knows nothing. The sole fact we can establish clearly is that there was just one other male infant in the nursery at that time, and he belongs to Homer and Laura Rice. That’s it.”

  Bud was breathing heavily, leaning forward with his tense hands on his knees. Still quietly, with a visible effort at control, he said, “No more, please. That’s enough, Mr. Mackenzie.”

  Laura said, very low, “It’s not enough, Bud. We have to listen. We have no choice.” And she grasped the arm of the sofa as if to brace herself.

  “About five months ago,” Mackenzie began, “these people’s son Peter, who had been a sick child from birth, had a crisis. They had gone everywhere over the years from one great medical center to another—Baltimore, New York, Atlanta—all over. At the last place where he was hospitalized, it happened that some genetic study was being made, and for its purposes, extensive blood tests on the parents were made—DNA and so forth. It was then that they learned that Peter could not possibly belong to them.”

  “And laboratories don’t make mistakes?” Now Bud’s control vanished. “Some jerk in a laboratory decides that their child isn’t theirs? Those people are big jerks themselves. And so they go creeping around to find out who is their son, and they decide that my boy is their son. Not on your life! What kind of a fool do you take me for?”

  “I know this can sound something like a detective mystery, but—” Mackenzie started to say when Bud again interrupted.

  “Half a mystery. My Tom is mine, and there’s nothing mysterious about that. Period.”

  There were a few moments of silence. Laura wiped her forehead and her hands, twisted the handkerchief, and waited.

  Then Mackenzie said very gently, “I have records here in my case. Will you take a look at them?”

  “No. I won’t dignify the subject by reading such stuff,” Bud cried.

  Inquiring of Laura, Mackenzie now took another path. “Wouldn’t it ease your minds if you were to find out more about this?”

  “Our minds are quite easy,” Bud said. “Quite.”

  “Mine wouldn’t be if I were you. There were only five newborns in that hospital during the days when your son and this other boy were there. Three out of the five were girls.”

  “Listen to me,” Bud commanded. “There were other male infants in that hospital. Some baby from the sick ward could have been brought somehow to the nursery. It’s not even common sense to pinpoint the other boy in the nursery, who happens to be ours.”

  “Your possibility is farfetched, Mr. Rice, but still I admit it’s a possibility.” Mackenzie paused. “So that’s why we have to look into everything, look at everything. My clients say that the switch couldn’t have taken place anywhere but at the hospital, since once they took their baby home, he was never out of their sight.”

  “That’s another crooked story,” Bud said.

  “If so, it’s a simple thing to set it straight. All you need do is have some blood tests made, both of you and of your son.”

  Bud exploded. “Blood tests! I’ll be damned if we will. It’s unconstitutional, an invasion of our privacy.”

  “No,” Mackenzie said. “I could get a court order, Mr. Rice, but I’d rather not have to do that.”

  Nausea was rising to Laura’s throat. If Bud would only tell the man to go! If she might only lie down and pull her thoughts together!

  “Why the hell don’t they sue the hospital?” demanded Bud. “And let other people alone.”

  “The hospital doesn’t exist, as I told you. Anyway, they’re not interested in damages. They only want to know what became of their child.”

  Laura was struck unbearably by full horror. Tears that must have been gathering and been bravely contained now gushed in force. She put her hands over her burning face and let them pour between her fingers.

  “Look,” Bud said roughly, “look what’s happening to my wife. A family torn apart on a nice summer Saturday. Just like that!” He snapped his fingers. And taking Tom’s photograph from the library table, he held it up. “This is our son. He’s not going to know one thing about this rot, Mr. Mackenzie. Is that clear? It would destroy him, and I won’t allow it.”

  Mackenzie said only, “He’s a very handsome young man.” He reopened the attache case. “I have here a picture of Peter Crawfield.”

  “Keep it,” Bud told him.

  Mackenzie then held it up in full view. Unwillingly, Laura raised her eyes. A fair-haired youth with a delicate, narrow face looked back at her. The nose was short, the upper lip long, the chin was markedly cleft … The face was Timmy’s.

  “It’s Timmy. Oh my God, it’s Timmy,” she moaned.

  Bud stretched out his hand and took the picture. “It’s not Timmy at all.” he said gently. “I’ll straighten this business out. Leave it to me.”

  Mackenzie said calmly, “I think you should get a lawyer, Mr. Rice. This isn’t going to go away, you know.”

  “Damn right, I will. Fordyce and Fordyce are my lawyers. I’ll sue those people in every court in the land if they don’t let us alone. I suppose they’ll want custody next, eh?” he sneered. “Jesus Christ!”

  “There is no question of custody when a person is over eighteen.”

  Laura was thinking, Who are these people? What are they trying to do? My Tom belongs to me. Oh, dear God. I don’t, won’t, can’t, believe this. Even if that boy looks like Timmy. A lot of boys look like Timmy.

  Mackenzie was looking from one to the other. Bud was staring at the floor; his hands, hanging at his sides, were fists. In half an hour, he has grown old, Laura thought, and raising her head, met Mackenzie’s sad brown gaze. He was sorry for them. He was a decent man. Somehow she trusted him.

  “Who are these people?” she asked. “May we know?”

  “Why, of course. They already know about you from the hospital records.”

  Bud jumped. “The hospital doesn’t exist, you said.”

  “When it was sold, the records were transferred to Wilson General. The family is named Crawfield. They’re the department store people. Arthur and Margaret Crawfield. They used to live here, but they sold this branch years back and kept the main store across from the state capitol. You’ve probably been in it.”

  Bud’s eyebrows drew together, making a long, straight bloodred line across the bridge of his nose.

  “Crawfield? You d
on’t mean to tell me that they—they’re not—”

  Mackenzie gave him a long, calm look. “Not what? Jewish? Yes, they are.”

  “Well. Well. You not only bring an unbelievable story, that’s bad enough, but you add insult to injury. Jews. It’s disgraceful.”

  Bud was almost unable to enunciate. He fell back onto a chair. He will have a stroke, thought Laura, but I can’t afford to come apart. And it seemed to her that in spite of everything, she would cope with this catastrophe. Somehow. And somehow, Tom must be shielded.

  “You said, Mr. Mackenzie, that this—other boy—this Peter, was ill?”

  Again she met a sorrowful brown gaze. “Yes, almost from birth. Or I should say, right from birth. He had cystic fibrosis.”

  Her heart was hammering again, racing, spinning in her chest. Cystic fibrosis. And that photo had—yes it had—looked like Timmy. Yet she managed to form words.

  “And what became of him? I mean, how is he now?”

  “He’s dead, Mrs. Rice. He died three months ago.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  “I don’t know how you manage,” said Margaret Crawfield, “tearing back and forth across the state for the campaign and now for our affair on top of it. You must be exhausted.”

  “I like the activity,” Mackenzie told her, smiling.

  There was in Margaret a kind of peasant strength that pleased him. It was odd to apply the term “peasant” to a woman who was so fashionable, from the cut of her swinging thick black hair to the scarlet sandals on her feet, but she was sturdily constructed and had a look of endurance that was not urban. He always felt whenever he was in the Crawfields’ house that he envied Arthur, and how good a thing it would be to marry. And yet he never had.

  “So you were there yesterday,” Arthur said a trifle impatiently. “And?”

  “And as I told you over the telephone, I believe they may be the right people.”