Daybreak

by Belva Plain

  To Tom’s surprise, Timmy just shrugged. “Okay, you don’t have to. You think they’re after you,” he said, with rather a shrewd expression, Tom thought, “but we were all talking one night, and Uncle Arthur said you’re a man, you can do what you want with your life, and if you don’t want to have anything to do with them, you don’t have to.”

  “He said that?”

  “On my honor, Tom. He’s a very smart man. He knows a lot of new things about cystic fibrosis, too. He studies about it, and—”

  “Well, Mom and Dad did too. What do you think, that they didn’t?”

  “I know that,” Timmy said impatiently, “but this is brand, brand new, only a few months old. Uncle Arthur explained what they’re doing with genes; they’re going to try putting better genes into our airway tissue, they expect to try it on some people next year, it’ll take a few years, maybe five, Uncle Arthur says, but—”

  Tom wanted to interrupt again with the remark that “Uncle Arthur was no scientist,” but the boy’s eyes were so alive with hope, so gay with excitement, that he refrained.

  “Well, that’s good news,” he said.

  “And I’m young enough so that even if it does take that long, it won’t be too late for me.”

  No, pray God it won’t, little brother.

  “It’s called ‘genetic manipulation,’ and it’ll really be a cure, not just a medicine. If they’d only had it, then Peter wouldn’t have died.”

  Oh yes. Peter, the Other One.

  “They talk about Peter a lot. He looked like me. Holly says he was a wonderful brother. They hardly ever fought. He was very good-tempered.”

  Like you, Tom thought. Like your mother.

  “I like her. We played chess. I wasn’t much good at it to start, but she taught me a lot.”

  How innocent, Tom thought. A game of chess wins him over.

  “Come on downstairs, Tom. You can’t stay up here.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Dad taught us manners, didn’t he? Even Aunt Margaret said I have good manners, and I told her Dad was strict about manners.”

  “Yes? And what did she say to that?”

  “She said that was good of Dad.”

  Tom prodded now. “Did they have anything else to say about Dad?”

  Timmy appeared to be reaching into his memory. Then he said, “Well, I don’t know what started it, maybe I said something first, but Uncle Arthur said that Dad’s being in the Klan was terribly wrong, yet we should thank him for the good things he did for us.”

  That sounded like Dr. Foster at the funeral.

  “Come on down, Tom.”

  “It’s so hard for me, Timmy. You don’t know how hard.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re all upset about that girl. I see her picture’s not here.”

  “For Pete’s sake, who told you about that?” Tom cried indignantly.

  “Mr. Mackenzie told Uncle Arthur and we talked about it. Aunt Margaret said how hard it must be for you to accept, or something like that.”

  His private affairs laid open to be chewed over … Had they all nothing better to do?

  “She stinks, Tom. She lied, too. I read all the stuff in that paper you had on your desk. That stuff about blacks. And I thought about Betty Lee. The stuff about foreigners, and I thought about Mr. Foutiades at the pancake shop and Mr. Bruno the barber. The stuff about Jews. Why, you’re one yourself, Tom! You see how she lied? She stinks.”

  The innocent, decent kid, holding his dog in his arms, kid with an earnest plea …

  “Come downstairs, Tom. Please come.”

  “Okay. Okay, I will,” he said.

  They were gathered on the long back veranda, the three women at one end seated, while Arthur Crawfield stood alone at the far end, looking out toward the garden. Timmy promptly went to him, while Tom, after minimal greetings, sat down on a bench by himself, halfway between the two groups. And he realized that there must be some agreement, tacit or otherwise, among them all, including Mom, to let him alone.

  He wanted that, yet every nerve in him was alert; his ears and the corners of his eyes paid attention in both directions.

  The women were talking about jewelry. Mom was saying something about her aunts on their round-the-world trip.

  “They love to shop, and Lillian, especially, has a connoisseur’s eye. This necklace arrived last month from Bangkok.”

  “A lovely present to arrive in the mail,” said Margaret.

  “Yes, but the funny thing is I’m really not all that wild about jewelry, and they’ve still not caught on. Everything I own came from them.”

  In a high, pretty voice Holly exclaimed, “But it’s gorgeous. Look how it’s made. Do the petals move?”

  Laura’s answering voice had a smile in it. “Come, feel it.”

  They made a picture, the girl’s glossy head bent toward Laura’s neck, the gold flashing through her fingers.

  Only Jews like jewelry, Robbie had sniffed. Lillian and Cecile would be surprised to hear that.

  Holly said, “It happens to be perfect on you. You have the right neck to show it off, a beautiful long neck. I wish I had a longer neck. It’s so graceful.”

  Mom obviously liked this girl. And she had been so nice to Timmy …

  Arthur strolled past Tom down the length of the veranda, ignoring him.

  “I think I may have a buyer for your property,” he said to Laura. “We buy from a furniture manufacturer who wants to expand in this area. From what I remember, your plant could be adapted easily.”

  Tom’s thoughts were on other things. He was feeling all queer and sad. How could this have happened to him, this double blow: new parents, Jewish parents, a Jewish sister?

  Yet it wasn’t their fault any more than it was Mom’s. He ought really to be asking why they, this pair of parents, should have been the victims of some stupid nurse. Surely they were just as badly hurt as he was, to be fair about it.

  “Yes,” he heard Laura say briskly. “First it was Paige alone, then Paige and Rice, then Rice and Son. Now we move on.”

  “It’s the only way,” replied Arthur.

  When he stood before Tom, he seemed to be waiting for him to say something first. When Tom did not, he began.

  “I’m sorry about—” and Tom knew he was hesitating between “your father” and “Bud,” which would be too familiar, so that he ended by saying, “what happened. It was a terrible death, wicked and cruel.”

  “But he was a Klan man. I should think you would say he deserved it,” Tom said bitterly.

  “Violence is never the answer, even toward Klansmen, who teach violence.”

  “They want your destruction,” Tom said.

  “I know that.”

  “Then I don’t really understand you.”

  “No, but someday you will.”

  This was an odd individual. My father! he thought with the same pounding shock he had felt at the first encounter. This time he tried absorbing the man, his laconic speech, his habit of blinking behind his glasses, and the slight frown that could mean disapproval or else that he was trying to solve a puzzle.

  “You’re not thinking, are you, that I see myself as some kind of Holy Roller? Not at all. I only know that once people are allowed to drive a car through a crowd of living bodies, we’ll all be living in a jungle. But enough of that. I want to talk about you, Tom. About us.”

  Tom said awkwardly, “I should thank you for giving Timmy the dog. He’s so happy with him.”

  “That’s fine. But I said I want to talk about you. Listen, Tom. You don’t have to be close to us if you don’t want to. I’ve already made that clear. But I worry about your prejudices, not for my sake, but for yours. They’re acid, they’ll eat you up, and in the end, destroy you somehow as they did the man who was your father.”

  “He wasn’t a bad man,” Tom protested.

  “No, he was just dreadfully misled. Foolish enough to allow himself to be, as so many in Germany were misled. You heard Albert,
my father-in-law, you heard what he endured. And do you know that, like Anne Frank, he still believes in human goodness? It’s a question of education, he says. One must be taught right.”

  Strange people, Tom thought, and then, recalling Dr. Foster, felt a slight smile on his lips.

  “Why are you smiling?” asked Arthur.

  “Because that’s what they taught when I went to Sunday school.”

  “Of course. Because it is right.”

  The women had stopped talking and were listening, so that Tom became the object of attention, and it made him uncomfortable. His hands began to sweat again.

  And a shock went through him, much like the one he’d had on the first morning when, on waking, he’d remembered that Bud was dead. This girl, this Holly on whose arm Mom’s hand now rested as they listened, would, if she had gone to state U, been one of those who received the anonymous dirty messages that Robbie’s group sent out. He winced, thinking suddenly that he had never done anything like that. In his mind’s ear now he heard again Robbie’s jeering laugh; in his mind’s eye he saw the contempt on her face; contempt for him whom she had so “loved,” whose scholarship she had so admired, a scholarship far superior to her own. And again a terrible anger flared in him. But this time it was not merely on his own behalf.

  “As to your faith, if you have any and I hope you have,” Arthur said, “I also hope you will keep it. In your heart, I mean, not just give lip service to it. Peter kept his—ours—till the last.” A cloud came briefly over his face and passed. “Are you still interested in astronomy?” And when Tom nodded, “A person who studies the universe will enlarge his mind and hatred will become picayune, stupid, impossible. Did you enjoy the book we sent to you?”

  “I tore it up,” Tom said, and not trying to hide his shame, looked straight at Arthur.

  Arthur looked straight back. “That’s understandable. Well, we’ll get you another one, if you want. Shall we? You tell me, and don’t be polite. Tell the truth.”

  “I’d like another one,” Tom said.

  And he thought once more that this was an unusual man. You could be sure that Bud’s attitude toward Arthur would not have been like Arthur’s toward Bud, if the situation had been reversed. Yet he wondered whether, if he had been brought up by Arthur, there could have been the closeness he had had with Bud, the hunting, fishing, playing ball, the jokes … Perhaps, but he rather thought not. They were so different.

  At any rate, it didn’t really matter, did it? Now was now.

  “Life has treated us very strangely,” Arthur said, as if he was musing to himself. “Think of it. A nurse’s carelessness gave Peter to a family that made a good Jew out of him, and gave you to your good mother Laura and to Timmy. Incidentally, he and I are friends, do you know that?”

  “He told me,” answered Tom.

  “Give me your hand, Tom.”

  Arthur took it and held it for a moment in both of his. “God bless you,” he said.

  Tom needed to cry, but he wouldn’t let himself. It wasn’t manly to cry. Bud had taught him that as far back as when he’d skinned his knee falling off his three-wheeler. Yet in spite of this resolve, his eyes filled with tears.

  “I don’t know what to feel,” he blurted.

  And suddenly Margaret rushed to him. She was so small, half a head shorter than he, so that he had to look down at her as she held him, down at the face that had been appearing in his dreams, the round, flushed cheeks, the big wet eyes, the hair curved over one cheek, and the earring, the little golden shell.

  And he was struck, struck by a shaft of light that dazzled his brain, while at the same time he was aware of what was happening to him. An epiphany, he thought, like the conversions one reads about, the ancient miracles and revelations.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry about what I’ve done.”

  She put her fingers over his lips. “No, no. It’s all right. It’s all right now.”

  Over Margaret’s head he saw Mom watching and crying, too. And with the instant comprehension that was so much a part of her, she read his fear that this scene would grieve her, after all.

  “Oh, Tom,” she cried, “there’s room for more than one in your heart! We’ll all do well together. I’m not afraid.”

  It was Holly who relieved the overwhelming emotion of the moment. “Goodness, there’s enough water in this place to turn all the dead brown grass out there to green.” She flapped her own damp handkerchief in the air.

  Then, just as the mood broke into laughter, Earl the Third raised his leg against the veranda’s railing.

  “More water!” shrieked Holly.

  Timmy quickly picked him up and set him out on the lawn. “I’ll have him trained by next week, Mom,” he called back. “Don’t worry, I will.”

  By now everyone was laughing, and Tom was thinking that Timmy was right and Holly really was okay.

  “What about telephoning Ralph?” suggested Arthur, and asked Laura, “Do you mind?”

  “Why, not at all,” she said, hoping her face would not betray her.

  “He tried so hard to bring all this about,” said Margaret.

  And Laura directed Tom, “Run down to the cellar closet, will you, dear? If ever a day deserved it, this one deserves champagne.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  Five after five, Laura read on the glowing dial of the bedside clock in Aunt Cecile’s old room. It would have been unthinkable to bring Ralph into the room she had shared with Bud; indeed, that room was now being dismantled, awaiting a complete renewal. In the high bird’s-eye maple bed, Ralph was still asleep. He did not stir while she got up, found her robe in the dark, and went downstairs.

  Her slippered feet had not evaded the sharp ears of Earl the Third, who now came swiftly to join her in the kitchen. Most likely, he had been restless, sleeping alone in Timmy’s room this night. And as she bent down to pat him, she felt the smile that began to creep over her face. She couldn’t say she had actually planned to have Ralph stay here, when she had suggested to Timmy that it might be fun to spend election night at his best friend’s house. She hadn’t planned it, but she had definitely hoped.

  The smile broadened. “Well, Earl, you never know, do you?” she said, and went to put a pot of coffee on the stove. “Not that I need waking up,” she added.

  It had been a long time since she had felt this peculiar joy, actually not since girlhood, she thought, so long a time that she had forgotten how it felt, remembering only the marvel of it. Slowly, slowly, the memory, too, had lost its color and gone gray, how gray she had not even realized until now.

  And, as the sky began to lighten toward another mild November morning, and bare treetops grew distinct behind the hedge and behind the roof of the old Alcott house, she sat there sipping the good warmth and musing. Forward, back, and forward again, the film runs …

  Yesterday at headquarters, watching the screen as the returns came sweeping in, and the telephones jangled without stay. Anxious faces floating, anxious feet hurrying, and rumors spreading, only to be denied.

  And the evening at last, waiting and hoping until, near midnight, the hope became reality and uproarious celebration broke loose into a pandemonium of music and balloons and noise.

  Then Ralph coming to her after an hour of all that. “I’ve been looking all over for you in this crowd. Enough! I’ve thanked everyone I can think of, so let’s get out of here. There’s nobody I want to be with except you.”

  And the weeks before this, the last glimpse of Tom at the airport, willing to go, revivified, with his head up. His assurances over the telephone; new friends, astronomy, his first sight of a near blizzard, and more.

  “Don’t worry about me, Mom. Honestly, I mean it.”

  And Timmy, hopeful now, without the vague, anxious look that had always lurked even at his most cheerful moments. Please God, let the hope be warranted.

  And the aunts, who took three full days and nights of talk on their way back to Florida
to absorb the story of Peter and Tom—not that they had absorbed it fully yet, or that anyone ever really could.

  Figuratively, they had wrung their hands over Bud. “The Ku Klux Klan! And he such a gentleman,” mourned Cecile, who, so clever at business, could also be so naive. “Such a gentleman! I would never have believed it if anyone had told me.”

  Lillian, who had been enthusiastic about Jim Johnson, assured Ralph that “If we still lived in this state, we’d all vote for you.” Ralph had given Laura a surreptitious wink. But he liked the aunts.

  “I suppose you’ll be getting married someday,” Lillian said privately. “You’ll wait a year at the very least, naturally.”

  “Do have it in the house,” advised Cecile. “Elegant, but small in the circumstances. He’s a very fine catch, dear.”

  So women really do still talk that way, Laura thought, amused.

  “You’re leaping way ahead,” she had replied. “No one said anything about a wedding.”

  “Oh, but I see it coming,” had said Cecile, the romantic.

  “What are you doing?” asked Ralph, coming now into the kitchen. “It’s almost the middle of the night.”

  “Just thinking. I’m so grateful that you won.”

  “I won the battle. But the war against the Johnsons is never won, neither here nor in Bosnia.”

  “It’s as bad as that.”

  “Of course it is. You know they’ve got all sorts of groups under other names, selling neo-Nazi literature, corrupting the young. They spread themselves like a disease, a virus.”

  “Thank God, Tom conquered the virus.”

  “Yes,” Ralph said soberly. “What do you hear from him?”

  “Nice things. Holly’s college is a three-hour-ride’s distance, so he borrowed a car last weekend and went to take her to lunch. It was funny, the way he tells it. It seems some fellow he knew saw him with her and asked him later who ‘the cute girl’ was. So he simply told them the whole story, and it didn’t seem to bother him in the least to tell it. Naturally, they were amazed, and that’s all there is to it.”