The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow (10 page)

After a time Peggy got up and called the main number at Manhattan. When she got through to Hal's secretary, she asked for his new direct line and memorized it as the woman recited the numerals.

"You want me to repeat that, Mrs. Cooper?"

"No, that's fine," Peggy said. "Is he available?"

"He's on another call. Would you like to hold or shall I have him get back to you?"

"I'll wait," Peggy said.

She pulled a stool over to the baker's table and sat down, going over the sequence of seven digits until she was sure she had them right.

"You fellas need more cookies?" she called out to the breakfast room. But then Hal came on the line and she never heard their answer.

"I tried you at your office. They said you didn't come in. You feeling any better, Pegs?"

"Yes," she said—because she knew it didn't matter now what she said to him. "Look," she 
said, lowering her voice, "I'm calling because Pop's here."

"Val? Val's in New York?"

"He wants to stay a few days and I thought you should know."

There was a silence for a time, as if he was considering what this meant.

"Pegs," he finally said, "if you ask me, it's just what the doctor ordered. You talk to Val. You tell him what's got you all upset. He'll set you straight."

She said nothing. She let his statement hang in the air. She waited.

"Pegs?"

"I'm here," she said. "We can put Dad up in the third bedroom. I just thought you should know, is all."

"Well, I think that's great news. You tell him hi for me and say I'll be home in about an hour."

She nodded as if he could see her.

"Pegs? Cheer up, baby. Everything is going to be fine."

"Right," she said tonelessly. "I'll get Pop comfortable and then I'll start fixing dinner."

"No, no," she heard him say, his voice sounding genuinely excited, "you get everybody ready and we'll treat Val to a steak down at Luger's. How's that grab you?"

"That's fine," she said, and then she said good-bye.

***

All the way down to Brooklyn Val kept insisting it had to be his treat, but Hal wouldn't hear of it.

"I fly free. So I'm how many dollars ahead of the game? It some kind of federal offense if I spend a few bucks on my kids?"

"Save your money," Hal said. "The price of Kool-aid's going up."

"It is?" Sam said from his perch on his grandfather's lap.

The men laughed, but Peggy kept to her silence, her face averted to the window as the cab wove in and out of the heavy commuter traffic along FDR Drive.

At the restaurant Hal kept up a steady stream of endorsements about what a great feed Luger's was, the best porterhouse steaks in the country, not to mention the sliced tomatoes, the sliced onions, the incredible rye bread, the home fries, and the pecan pie that was sure as hell coming after they'd stuffed themselves with everything else.

Peggy nibbled at her steak and listened. She'd never heard Hal quite like this before, nervously jabbering about the food that was right in front of their faces when anybody could see that Sam was bored and Val would sooner hear about other things—their new jobs, the apartment, St. Martin's. When the subject finally changed to how Sam was getting along in his new school, Hal interrupted to say he had more good news.

"Sam boy, guess what! Tomorrow, after school, guess who's coming to your new house!"

The boy had a forkful of pie on the way to his mouth. When he looked up to see what his father was so excited about, the food dropped back down to his plate.

"Your teacher!" declared Hal, beaming with pleasure.

"Miss Putnam?" Sam said, swallowing as if the pie had made it all the way.

"How did that come about?" Peggy said through clenched teeth, something sharp and oppressive moving over the area near her heart.

"She called me herself to set it up," he answered glibly, "almost right after you left my office. It's standard procedure at St. Martin's. The teacher calls on all her students some time during the year. It's a nice tradition, I think. Just give her a cup of tea and some cucumber sandwiches, and that'll be the end of it."

"Why didn't you tell me when I called you at your office?" she almost hissed.

He looked at her as if her question was absurd.

"You've got all the time you need to get ready, Pegs," Hal said soothingly, looking to Val as if to signal his conviction that Peggy's behavior was getting more aberrant by the minute.

"The place needs cleaning. I've got to work tomorrow."

"No sweat," Val said. He reached his hand to Peggy's arm and winked at Hal. "You kids can count on me to tidy up. It may come as a big surprise to certain citizens," Val said, moving his hand from Peggy's arm to tweak Sam's nose, "but us old Navy fly-boys can do some pretty fair strafing with a dust rag and a broom."

"We've got a vacuum cleaner," Sam offered helpfully. "A Kirby—right, Mom?"

"What?" Peggy said, her mind spinning with possibilities, the splinter that had by now penetrated her heart shattering into a thousand bright shards of glass.

"A
Kirby
!" Val bellowed. "Did I ever tell you, boy, what your granddad once did with an old Kirby motor, some baling wire, a couple of GE dimmer switches, a rebuilt Mixmaster, half a dozen lug nuts, and a 1957 Admiral TV?"

Sam looked wide-eyed, waiting.

Hal started laughing, and Val joined him. Together, they spluttered and roared, laughing and laughing until the tears rolled down their cheeks. 
And at last Sam laughed too, loving the laughter and the joke and these wonderful men, even if he didn't really understand.

Peggy watched them over the lip of her coffee cup, and then she closed her eyes and drank.

She had the alarm triggered for an hour early. But she was up and into her clothes before it got anywhere near the time it was set for. She took a last look in the bathroom mirror, wet her eyes with more cold water, and crept out of the bedroom. As she eased the door shut behind her, the faint opalescence of the seven scrawled letters still lay smeared across her dazed vision.

FORGIVE

No, Peggy would not forgive. It had passed the point of forgiveness now. Whatever it was, it had to be worse than that, too awful for her even to guess at. She could only grope her way, reach out with her wildest surmise—and even so, what would she have? Nothing. Nothing solid; nothing but suspicions and the aimless insanity of never knowing which one led anywhere near the truth. She would forgive nothing. Instead, she would fight. Yet who precisely was the enemy? It could be even herself.

She tiptoed down the hall to Sam's room, went in, and closed the door. She knelt at the side of his bed, put her head down next to his, blew her breath against his face. Again. Once more.

This time his hand jerked up and flicked across his nose as if a freckle might be tickling him.

Again she pursed her lips and puffed enough to send a microscopic hurricane hurtling across the twin ravines of his delicate nostrils—then chanted in a whisper:

Little fly upon the wall,

ain't you got no clothes at all?

no little shimmy shirtie?

no little underskirtie?

***

His eyes flew open, then slammed closed, his mouth opening instead.

"Holy cow, Mom, I'm not exactly a baby anymore, you know?"

"You're
my
baby," Peggy said, planting a small kiss on her favorite cluster of freckles as she scrabbled her fingernails under his arms, quickly standing before he could get her back.

It always worked. As late as he'd gotten to bed after the long ride back from Brooklyn and the thousand good nights he'd had to issue to Val, and as early as she'd gotten him up, this morning was no exception. Sam delivered himself of a giant yawn and then tumbled from his bed ready to go. But she stopped him before he could launch himself into his usual morning routine.

"I want you to draw something—a treat for Granddad."

He looked at her, his face falling.

"I can't."

"Of course you can—there's plenty of time," Peggy said. "I got you up early just so you could."

"But I
can't
," he moaned, close to tears now.

She felt the splinter start to move.

"Why can't you, honey?" she said, bending to him, taking him into her arms.

"Because Miss Putnam told me I was going to find myself in a world of trouble if I didn't stop spending so much time on my drawing and work a lot harder on things like reading and arithmetic."

His face was such a mixture of puzzlement and anxiety that Peggy could have wept. She was also flooded with a rage so intense it momentarily blocked out all sight and sound. But then, with an enormous act of will, she brought herself under control. This helpless child was her son, and he needed her to be strong. Her own anger and fear were useless to him.

"Listen, honey," she said, struggling to sound normal. "I understand that there are a lot of rules and regulations at St. Martin's that you're going to have to follow. It's only right. But in your own home, and on your own time, you can follow
our
house rules—just the way you always have. Do you read me?"

"Loud and clear," he answered with a teary smile.

"Okay. So, first thing, when you get home, there's this picture I want you to draw. For your granddad. Okay?"

"Sure. But if Miss Putnam's going to be here, are you sure I won't get in trouble?"

"I'm absolutely positive. Besides, you can work in your bedroom. She doesn't even have to know anything about it."

All right," Sam said, laying one naked foot on top of the other and scratching with his toes. "Only what does Granddad want me to draw?"

Peggy thought for a minute. "How about I tell you on the way to school?"

***

While Sam was getting ready, she put his breakfast on the table and wrote out a note for Val, telling him to meet her for lunch at her office. She put the note on the baker's table, cleared away Sam's dishes, set out pancake batter and bacon and eggs, adjusted the burner under the coffee so that the flame barely showed, then labored over Sam's necktie with what time she had left.

"Don't forget," she reminded him when they were turning the corner onto Fifth, "as soon as you get home, you go right to your room and you draw what I told you. All clear?"

"Suppose she comes into my room and catches me?"

"Don't be silly. She won't do that," Peggy said, bending to kiss him and then remembering it wasn't what he wanted in front of the school.

He smiled, put his foot on the first step, and then turned to hug her before going slowly up the stairs.

Peggy stood watching until he'd disappeared inside. For a time she thought to run after him, not risk these few more hours. She could say he was sick, that he had to go to the dentist, anything. What was wrong with her, taking another chance like this? It was reckless to let him go back in there. But then she thought about her plan, and it comforted her. Surely he'd be all right until she picked him up again.

***

After a hurried lunch with Val, during which she'd made him promise he'd be at the apartment when she got back with Sam, Peggy returned to her office. Her mind elsewhere, she started working through the call-back messages that had piled up on her desk in her absence. Again and again she had to ask the person on the other end to repeat something, and even when they did, she didn't really hear. Around three o'clock her secretary appeared in the door, motioning with his hand to get her attention, mouthing the sentence, "Mr. Cooper's holding," when Peggy finally looked up.

She said, "Who?" before she could catch herself, then nodded, quickly finished the call she was on and pressed the blinking button.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Were you waiting long?"

"No problem," he said. "I called home. Val says you had a good lunch together."

"Umm," she said, already tuning him out. She turned over one of the telephone memos and started forming a circle of interlocking cubes, marking each one with an initial when she'd filled in the last line—first S, then H, then P.

"Yeah, well, I want you to get all dolled up tonight," Hal was saying. "Because there's this party thing for The Six, and I want you to be there."

"What's that?" she said. "I didn't get that. I'm sorry."

"Are you listening, Pegs? Because what I said was that there's a thing for The Six tonight and I have to be there. I thought you'd like to come, too."

"The Six?"

"This
group.
Don't you remember?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "Of course."

"Of course
what
? Will you remember to get fixed up? It's around eightish. At the Four Seasons."

"I can't," she said. "I can't get a sitter. You haven't given me enough notice. Besides, I've got Miss Putnam coming this afternoon. It's just too much, Hal. You go ahead."

She could hear him sigh with weariness. She started placing a C after each initial.

"You've got Val to babysit, remember?"

"Of course," Peggy said. "Pop will be with Sam. I forgot."

Again she heard his small rustle of irritation.

"Pegs, will you for Christ's sake get your act together?"

"Okay," she said. "If you want me to come with you, of course I will. Dad can look after Sam."

"Right," he said. "Fine. I'll work straight through and I'll meet you there. You remember the time?"

"Around eight?"

"Good," he said. "I'll see you then. And try to be up for it, okay?"

"I'll try," she said, but he had already hung up.

***

She stayed another hour, whittling away her call-backs and trying to arrange for the use of 
some military parachutes she hoped to work in as style in her next set of windows. Just after four she locked her office and picked up an apricot torte in the store's bake shop, dropping it off at the apartment before going to get Sam.