The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow (7 page)

"There
is
an item I might be interested in," she said. "What would a decent string of pearls run me, considering?"

"We're talking wholesale," the fat man said, and winked.

"Right," Peggy said. "Just a ballpark figure."

"Something good? Two grand. Cash."

She was astonished she'd let it go this far. She stood there looking at him, amazed she'd ever asked.

"I could have it for you in a week," the fat man said, sucking feverishly at his cigarette.

"Sorry," Peggy said. "That's way over my head."

"No trouble," the fat man said. "Believe me, darling, I get bitches like you in here all day long."

The fat man swiveled on the stool and flicked his cigarette butt into the empty paint bucket that stood against the wall.

***

Outside, Peggy checked the time. She had forty-five minutes to pick up Sam. She trotted the rest of the way to the subway entrance and paced nervously up and down the platform, all thoughts of her work completely dispelled. She was focused completely on Sam—her heart jumping with fierce anticipation at seeing him, at hearing his description of how it all went the first day.

It was crazy how it came to her at a time when other things should have been on her mind.

She had the idea the instant she saw Sam among the first group of boys to appear at the top of the stairs, his back pack slung rakishly across one shoulder. All right, the timing was wrong. But everything else about it was right.

Peggy stored it away in he mind for use later on, and as Sam came hopping down the stairs, she was there at the bottom of them, ready with outstretched arms to fold her son inside.

***

She waited until they were around the corner and out of earshot of the other mothers. It was all she could do to wait that long.

"How'd it go, sweetie?"

"Great!"

"No problems?"

"It was great, Mom. I really love that school."

"Terrific," Peggy said. "And what about your teacher? What's she like?"

"Miss Putnam?"

"Is that her name? I thought it was going to be a Mrs. something, the one that talked to you the day you went with Daddy. Mrs. Booth, wasn't that her name?"

Sam swung his back pack onto his other shoulder. "She's the teacher for the other section."

"I see," Peggy said. "So you have Putnam. That's nice. What's she like?"

"Nice," said Sam, skipping a little to keep pace.

"That's good," Peggy said. "But don't you want to describe her to me?"

"She's just this lady," Sam said. "You know. She's just nice."

"Well," Peggy said, "I mean is she tall or short or what? Draw me a word picture, okay?"

"I don't know," Sam said, knitting his brow for an instant and then shoving the whole question aside. "She's tall, I guess. I mean, I don't know, Mom. She's taller than you are."

"Taller than Daddy?"

"Golly, I don't know," Sam said. "It's hard to tell. Maybe."

"Isn't there something else about her that would help me see her? You know, does she wear glasses or anything? Isn't there something that stands out kind of?"

Sam shrugged, and Peggy could see it was useless.

"Maybe," he said. "I don't know. I don't remember. I'll take a better look tomorrow, okay?"

"Sure," Peggy said. "Tomorrow's plenty of time. It's just that Mommy wants to know all about everything, you know?"

She figured she'd pushed him enough. Maybe after supper she'd ask again. But wouldn't Sam recognize a face he'd drawn? And anyway, what was there to stop her from having a look herself? Tomorrow, when she walked Sam over, why not just pop in and introduce herself?

"So you like her," Peggy said. "Your new teacher."

"Oh, sure," Sam said. "She's really great."

***

Sam was polishing off a snack of milk and cookies and Peggy was sorting through the day's mail when the telephone rang. It was Hal. He was calling from his office to say he'd be home late, to go ahead with supper without him.

"But this is Sam's first day at school," Peggy said. "I want you to hear all about it."

"When I get home," Hal said. "That's time enough."

"But aren't you interested?"

"Of course," he said. "It's just I've got this hassle here right now. Kiss the old scout for me and tell him I'll be home as soon as I can."

"Please try to make it before bedtime," Peggy said.

"I will, I will," she heard him say, and then she heard him hang up.

***

She stayed angry with him all through supper. But then she reminded herself that it was Hal's first day, too, and she was ashamed of herself for pressuring him. Tons of work must have piled up while he was away. Yet it was the same for her, wasn't it? Didn't she have a new job, too? And hadn't things also backed up on her desk while they were in Pensacola? But she'd made time, hadn't she? Didn't Sam come first?

She cleared the table and left the dishes in the sink, and then she took Sam into their new living room and read to him, listening between sentences for Hal's key in the door.

She didn't hear it.

At last she gave up and marched Sam off to his room. It was while she was helping him into his pyjamas that she remembered.

"You get to do any drawing today?"

He shook his head. "We had assemblies and songs and things like that. Miss Putnam said to leave our things in our cubbies."

"I see," Peggy said, wondering how to begin. She looked at her watch. "You want to wait up a little longer for Daddy?"

"Is it okay?"

"Maybe another half-hour." She opened the backpack and took out his things. "And you could draw a little—since you didn't get a chance today."

She sat on the bed while he flipped through his pad for a fresh sheet.

"Tell you what," Peggy said when she saw the pen poised over the page. "Draw me. Draw Mommy."

"You bet," Sam said, and began.

When he was finished, he put down his pen and carried the pad over to the bed.

"Oh, honey, that's really wonderful," Peggy said, no longer able to stop herself. She had to know. "Except don't you think I'd look prettier with a necklace?"

"Necklace coming up," Sam said, and went to seat himself at his worktable again.

***

When the eleven o'clock news was over and he still wasn't home, she lifted the phone to try Hal's office. But what good would it do? The switchboard would be closed and she didn't know the new direct number.

Peggy lowered the receiver, kicked off her shoes, and went to sleep with her clothes on. It must have been after three that she was vaguely conscious of his presence in the room, his familiar rustlings in the dark. When she felt him busy at her body—his hands turning her, Hal's gentle labors working off her dress, then pantyhose, her bra—Peggy tried to make herself wake up. But a thousand ropes pulled her back down into sleep again, even as she felt her hips lifted and her panties slipping from her legs.

"Darling," she heard Hal say as if he whispered from a faraway room, but somehow it got mixed up with another faraway voice and the image of a fat man sitting on a stool.

***

When the alarm went off, Peggy got up without looking back at the bed. She closed the bathroom door before she turned on the light, then sat down on the toilet and let her head down into her hands. She was reaching her hand out to the faucet to run cold water on her wrists when she saw it. It was draped over the tap, twisted into three loops to keep it from sliding off into the sink.

She stood up and slipped it into her hand. The chain was slender and gold, and the cameo that was suspended from it a faint, luminous pink. She looked at it, then hung it from her neck and looked at herself reflected in the mirror, the cameo like a third pale nipple newly risen between her breasts.

She trembled with a feeling that was like a great crashing of noise which no one but she would ever hear. For a long time she stood staring at herself, until fear and excitement made her turn away, still so stunned that she never saw the word he'd scrawled in soap across the glass.

FORGIVE

***

Forgiveness was the last thing on Peggy's mind as she raced Sam through breakfast and got him dressed for school, doing everything as quietly as she could so as not to disturb Hal.

"We'll just let Daddy sleep and do the best we can," Peggy said when there was nothing left but the necktie. Hal had tied the damn thing yesterday. She knelt in front of him and chewed at the inside of her cheek. After five or six tries she got something that looked as if it might pass.

"Take a peek," she said, and turned him to the mirror. "You approve?"

He touched his fingers to the knot and loosened it a little from his neck.

"It's just like Daddy's," said Sam, appraising his mother's work.

"That's what I say," Peggy said, getting to her feet and taking the St. Martin's blazer from the closet. After inspecting it closely for lint, she helped him into his jacket. Then she took another look.

"Pretty spiffy, Professor Cooper."

Sam grinned, delighted in spite of himself. Peggy grinned back at him, for the first time reckoning with what was surely behind that lovely, freckled face. A force, something strange and unimaginable, a kind of power whose reach could possibly go anywhere, whose limits might not even exist. It made her afraid—and also wildly exhilarated. Her son, this child, her own flesh and blood: it was as if he were an instrument able to shape space and time itself.

It couldn't be true—but it was!

Peggy studied her son for a moment more, searching the large, round, coppery eyes, so seemingly innocent, so willing, so mild. Or course it was true. It had to be. But did
he
know? Was it possible to have a power like this and not even know it was in you?"

"Honey," she began, groping her way, her loving eyes fastened on his, "when you draw, do you feel something funny ever?"

He looked at her blankly.

"Huh?"

"You know, baby—I mean, the things you draw, how do they come to you and stuff like that? Is it always the same?"

She waited for him to say something. But she could see that the more she waited, the more she was making him uncomfortable. When at last he broke away from her gaze and started nervously yawning, Peggy laughed to cover the tension and handed over the backpack.

She watched him pack it with his drawing things, the Jumbo pad still opened to the page that showed a handsome, short-haired woman with an oval pendant suspended from a thin chain that encircled her graceful neck. The woman was smiling, and to make certain anyone could see it was Peggy, Sam had inked in three deft arcs to either side of the drawn-back lips.

Peggy felt like a schoolgirl herself—giddy and expectant—as she walked Sam to school that morning. And there was no doubt about it—it was the thing that rode ever so lightly and radiantly on her chest that made Peggy feel so utterly delirious and hopeful, as if each step brought her another small distance closer to some inexpressibly momentous event. She felt charmed—and dangerous—like a woman pregnant with a baby she knows is destined to rule the world.

She laughed at the thought, its terrible absurdity. And when Sam looked at her questioningly, Peggy made a kind of rueful face as if to suggest that she was sorry for having broken the sweet silence of the morning bathed in the cool vapors of cleansed autumn air.

The baby
has
been born, she said to herself, taking a tighter grip on Sam's small hand as together they turned the corner onto Fifth.

***

No one stood at the top of the stairs waiting to extend another official greeting this morning. Nor were there more than a few parents visible, and these ventured no farther than the bottom of the stairs, where they stood uncertainly for a moment as their sons briskly mounted the marble steps and passed swiftly into the building.

"You run ahead," Peggy said before they reached the first step.

She knew a kiss would embarrass him, so she touched Sam's shoulder and then sent him on his way. She knew that following him up the stairs would be just as tough on him—so she stayed where she was until he was well inside before climbing the steps and entering between the wide doors that were kept flung back for those boys still to come before the first bell.

Inside, straight-backed, solemn-faced boys of all sizes were scattering in every direction—some disappearing down hallways to either side of the large, domed room she stood in; some rising noiselessly along the winding staircases that rose to the left and right of the massive door lying directly opposite the entrance.

The door was marked
 OFFICE
,
the word formed into a length of brass that looked as if it had been forged by medieval artisans. Peggy moved across the floor and knocked. When there was no answer, she pushed the door open.

The room was empty. But within instants the door behind her opened and a plump woman with eyeglasses propped unsteadily on top of her Gibson Girl hairdo bustled inside and deposited a pile of manila folders on one of the two desks that faced each other in the center of the room.

"Excuse me," Peggy said. "My son's a new boy and I was hoping . . ."

"Name?" The plump woman said as she arranged the folders into stacks.

"Excuse me," Peggy said. "I'm sorry. Perhaps I shouldn't have—"

"Name?" the plump woman said, looking up from the folders and smiling.

"Mrs. Cooper, Mrs. Harold C. Cooper."

"Your
son's
name," the woman said, pushing at her hair and then reaching to the desk for a pencil.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Peggy said. "Sam. Samuel Cooper. He's in first grade."

"One P or One B?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Putnam or Booth?" the woman said, no longer smiling.

"Oh yes, of course," Peggy said. "Putnam. 
Miss Putnam. Actually, that's why I stopped in. You see, I was hoping that I might meet with Miss Putnam for a brief time since—"

"That won't be possible at the moment," the plump woman said, wheezing slightly as she stepped away from the desk and came closer. "But we quite understand your concern. Dr. Whalen, however, is very strict on this score. The school's policy is to schedule our parent-teacher conferences in November. By that time the classes have settled down. I'm sure you can appreciate our position."

The woman produced an index card from the pocket of her smock. For a crazy instant it seemed to Peggy as if the woman were about to write a ticket and cite her for some witless offense.

"Oh no," Peggy said, backing away a half-step, "I'm not asking for a conference or anything like that. I mean, I quite understand how busy the teachers are right now and all. It's just that I was hoping I might meet very briefly with Miss Putnam, seeing as how—"

The woman was smiling again, this time very broadly—and as she interrupted Peggy, she once more took a threatening step closer.

"I am so sorry," the woman said, advancing on Peggy, "but Dr. Whalen feels it's better all around if we hold these parent-teacher meetings at the appropriate time. Now if your son is having any sort of difficulty, I could set up an appointment for you to meet with our school psychologist."

"Oh my heavens, there's nothing wrong with 5am," Peggy blurted. What on earth was wrong with this officious, unhelpful bitch? Controlling herself, though—God forbid she should get the reputation of a troublemaker the very first week of school—she continued evenly, "No, there's absolutely no problem; Sam's first day seemed to go beautifully. It's just that, well, I'd just like to get a look at Miss Putnam, even if I can't have a full-fledged conference with her just yet."

The woman stared at her incredulously. "Get a
look
at her?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Peggy said, her composure suddenly shattered completely. "I said that all wrong. First-year parent jitters, I suppose. It's just that the way Sam was describing Miss Putnam, she sounded so sort of familiar to me, I thought—I mean, for a minute there, I thought . . ."

She did not know how to finish this sentence. As she struggled blindly on for some miraculous phrase to offer her a way out, Peggy could hear herself tumbling into worsening incoherence. She was suffocating with confusion, and all she could see was the woman standing there with her plump hand holding open the door and those eyeglasses teetering atop her great nest of ebony hair.

"I'm really very sorry," Peggy stammered. "I should never have asked you to bend your rules for me." And then, not caring about appearances anymore, she beat a mortified retreat. The next thing she knew she was back on the sidewalk again, her heart a fist that hammered to break loose from her chest.

"Dammit, dammit, dammit," she kept muttering to herself as she fought her way up the street and then turned east for the subway downtown.

***

At her office, she sat behind her desk and then moved to her art board and then went back to her desk again, too exasperated with herself to work. As she sat raging at herself, her anger began to flare in a new direction. It was the school that was at fault. Who the hell did they think they were, not letting her see her own son's teacher! The very idea! It was preposterous, treating a parent that way. Still, it
was
St. Martin's Academy, and wasn't that sort of structure and discipline one of the things it was famous for? No, she decided, calming down somewhat, it was her own fault, after all. She was the one who'd messed things up, handled everything so goddamned clumsily. How preposterous really to just barge into the office like that and expect an instant appointment. She'd have to think of a better way—that was all there was to it.

Hal! She suddenly remembered that in her agitation she'd completely forgotten to call the apartment to wake him up. She snapped up the phone and dialed. She let it ring. He was a heavy sleeper, and sometimes it took a cannon to jolt him out of sleep. When there was no answer, she hung up, waited five minutes, then called back.

She could hear the receiver fall to the floor and Hal fumbling to snatch at it and juggle it to his ear.

"I'm up, I'm up," she heard him say.

"Prove it," Peggy said.

"I'm up, I swear," he said. "You at work?"

"I'm here, but I'm not getting much done. What time did you get in last night?"

"I don't know," he said. "Late."

She pulled a note pad into reach and began doodling on it, drawing cubes of all sizes whose corners interlocked.

"Where were you? Were you at the office?"

She heard him yawn as if he was taking the time to cook up a story.

"You were asleep when I got home," he said. "Otherwise, I would have explained."

"You might have called," Peggy said.

"Yeah," he said. "I should have, I know."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

She heard him yawn again.

"Where were you?"

"It sounds bad," he began, "but it's really not. The fact is, The Six came by while I was working there in the office and they just wouldn't let me alone, kept saying come—"

"Who's The Six?" Peggy interrupted.

"The Six? You're kidding."

She had no patience with this anymore.

"I'm not kidding, Harold," she snapped. "Who's The Six?"

She heard him make a sound as if to suggest her question was beyond belief.

"They're this
group
, honey—punk-rockers, our biggest item this season. You telling me you don't remember my talking about—?"

Again she interrupted him. She didn't want to hear his protestations anymore.

"The point is," she said, her voice hard now, "you were
not
in your office and you were
not
working. You were out with some idiot
kids
, and you did
not
call me to tell me or even think to talk to your own
son,
who, if I might remind you, had a very important day in his life yesterday. Now that's the point, isn't it, Harold?"

"But I
was
working," he insisted. "You think it's not work for me when I have to run around with these lunatics? Let
me
remind
you
of something, Peggy—let me just remind you that it happens to be my goddamn
job
to hang out with Manhattan's recording artists—"

"You could have called!"

"All right, all right!" He was shouting now. She couldn't remember when she'd heard him do that before. "I
didn't
call—and I'm goddamn sorry I didn't. But I gave you a goddamn necklace as a peace offering and I still haven't heard you say one fucking word of thanks!"

She didn't get a chance to answer. He slammed down the phone before she could say another word.

***

That night, at supper, they did not talk to each other. They talked to Sam. And when they ran out of things to say to him, silence closed over the table like a shroud. It was stifling, a thing that choked them where they sat until they rose from their chairs, gasping to breathe. But Sam stayed where he was, and when they turned back to see if he was coming, they saw his face clench and then collapse into tears.

"Sam
!
Baby
!"

It was Peggy who reached him first. She lifted him from his chair and held him to her, smoothing his hair as his wild sobs exploded against her chest.

"Oh, honey," she crooned, eyeing Hal over Sam's head, "Mommy and Daddy are sorry, sweetheart. Please forgive us. It's just that we're not feeling so well. That's all, baby. Come on, old 
scout, stop this now and everything will be all right. Okay?"

But the boy only shook his head furiously and pulled all the harder to hold himself closer to Peggy's chest.

"Now look," she said, pressing her palm against the back of his head, "the truth is Mom and Dad had an argument. But it's all over now, okay?"

"No!" Sam wailed, and shook his head back and forth as if trying to make something fall out of his ears.

"Oh, you silly," Peggy soothed. "Hal, honey, tell him."

"Hey now, old man," Hal said, lifting Sam into his own arms, "don't make Mommy and Daddy feel bad. We're sorry, and it's all over now, so quit it, hear?"

"It's
not
!" Sam cried out. "You don't
understand
!"

"What don't we understand?"

"She's trying to tell me what to draw!"

"
Who
is trying to tell you what to draw?" Peggy said.

"My teacher!"

"Miss Putnam?"

"Her!" Sam screamed, nodding his head as if they still hadn't understood.

"Put him down, Hal. Put him down," Peggy 
said, "and we'll all sit down at the table and talk this thing out."

"No!" Sam shrieked. "I want to go to bed!"

"Put him down," Peggy said.

But he wouldn't do it. She looked at her husband as he held her son. For the first time in a long time she sought the depths in his eyes. Something new was there, something she had never seen before.

"Hal," Peggy said, her voice very quiet now. "Did you hear me? I said put him down."

But still he would not do it. Instead, he heaved Sam a little higher against his chest and carried the boy from the room, his lips to Sam's ear, whispering, saying things that Peggy could not hear.

She stood there watching them go, her legs paralyzed, her heart suddenly crazily convinced that some secret had passed between them—and that if she knew what it was, it would make her afraid.