Read The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow Online
Authors: Quinn Sinclair
He smiled. He spread his hands as if to shrug.
"Pegs, honey—I honest to God don't know what's happening to you. All I know is something is."
She saw the smile as a smirk, the gesture as a lie.
"It's not me, Hal. It's you," she said.
She felt she was competing against the clock now, a runner pitted against the speed of his own heartbeat. The rain, Hal, the weight of the scalding fluid that thundered for release, everything stood like a colossal wall between her and the undoing of the drawing Sam had made of his Miss Putnam and the class.
"I want Sam out of that school. We have to withdraw him. We have to do it right away."
"Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, Pegs. Let's not start on that again." His face closed down, and he hunched himself forward, his manner serious, grave, his mien that of the person elected to be the grown-up in the room. "Let me lay this on you one more time. I want that school for my son. I want him in the world St. Martin's represents; I want him to have the kind of education it provides; I want him to go to the kind of college it prepares kids for; and most of all, I want you to get off my goddamned case about it. People all over this city would
kill
to get their kids into that place, and all you can do is piss and moan about it. Really, Peggy, I think you're coming a little unglued. There is absolutely no reason for any of this bullshit you're slinging at me!"
"There is!" She was screaming.
When she saw him jump out of his chair and come quickly around the desk, she couldn't help herself—she recoiled in fear. But then she saw he was only going to close the door.
He returned to his place behind the desk, shaking his head from side to side and puffing out his cheeks as if nothing else could possibly express the magnitude of his shock.
"You realize this is an office? You realize you're making a spectacle of yourself in my goddamn office?" he hissed, his voice barely rising above a whisper.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Really, Hal, I—"
"Maybe you should see someone. Maybe, what with the move and everything, we've both been under too great a strain."
"No," she said. She got to her feet. When she stood up, it was as if her swollen bladder had to be lifted after her, hauled up an impossible distance. "No," she said again, "you don't understand."
"Then
make
me understand," he said, looking up at her.
She studied his face, tried to read the truth in his eyes. Was he really pleading with her? Or was it all a monumental con?
"Where did you get that necklace?" she suddenly asked.
She saw him look back down at his desk as though the answer was somewhere among the chaos of papers that covered it.
"It's a long story," he said. "I'll tell you when you've calmed down."
She said nothing. She turned her face to the window, to the fury of the rain against the glass.
"I've got to go," she said.
"You'll get drenched. At least wait until it eases up."
"I can't," she said.
She was at the door when he stopped her, called her name. She turned to face him again. He looked so different to her now, so changed, not Hal at all anymore.
Without another word, she stepped out into the hall.
She hurried to the ladies room—and stayed there fifteen minutes, long enough for him to give up if he'd gone looking for her at the elevators. Maybe
it was the crazy thoughts that rush through your head when pent-up urine finally rushes from your body—but as she yanked down her pantyhose and briefs and then let go, she had the queerest feeling that it was Miss Putnam he'd been talking to when she'd caught him murmuring into the telephone.
***
The streets were awash. The instant she stepped off the curb to search the uptown flow of traffic for a free cab, a delivery truck cut in close to her and splashed a wave of water over the front of her dress. She was soaked through—drenched, just as he'd said.
Peggy stood for a moment, limp with feelings of impotence and frustration, like a child in a world of grown-ups who all rode cozily in cabs. Then she gave up and set off to work her way home by subway, drying out by the time she'd made it to the Ninety-sixth Street stop, getting soaked again as she walked the block and a half to her building.
She pressed the button for the elevator, stepping away from the puddle that was forming at her feet and starting a new one just as big. When she got off on eight, she waited until the elevator door had shut behind her, and then she stripped out of her things, dropped her clothes on the vestibule floor, and fished her keys from the bottom of her handbag.
With one naked foot she held the door propped open while she reached back and bundled her wet things under her arm. She left her shoes in the foyer, carried everything else to the little laundry room off the kitchen, and then, shivering slightly, she retraced her steps, cursing Hal when she saw the empty suitcases still lying in the hallway that led to the back. He
knew
she wasn't strong enough to lift them onto the top shelf of the storage closet. He
knew
he had to do that for her!
FORGIVE
She used to think she could forgive him anything, forgive him for leaving a million suitcases lying on the floor. But maybe there were some things too terrible to forgive.
She hadn't yet reached the doorway to their bedroom when she heard it—and stopped dead in her tracks. At first she thought it must be the rain, a kind of trick the rain played against the fancy brickwork that bordered he windows. But then, a second later, she realized that neither water nor wind could make a sound like that, and that it was coming from inside the apartment itself.
She stood listening, trying to hear it over the pounding of her heart, the roaring sussuration of her breath.
It was rhythmic, a steady, muted
swinging
sound, as of something moving relentlessly back and forth in the bedroom. The rocker! It must be the bentwood rocker at the foot of the bed! Yes, that was it—there was someone in there in the rocking chair, someone rocking back and forth.
She crept closer, her toes inching along the bare floor, her naked body inclined as far forward as she dared. When she got as far as she needed to look and make sure, she stopped and held her breath.
She could just see it around the edge of the door frame now, the tip of one wooden arc rising and falling, the toe of a shoe dark against the light field of new beige carpet.
She started inching back, her breath stopped in her chest, her arms crossed instinctively over her breasts.
The telephone in the kitchen! Or no, just get out; don't risk it. The elevator. Ring for the elevator! But she was naked.
She wanted to turn and run, scream, do something fast. She kept moving backward, the tiniest, quietest steps . . .
The voice stopped her. It was a man shouting.
"Is someone there? Pegs, kitten, is that you?"
She sat huddled on the living room couch, clutching her robe around her while Val poured her a second bourbon and continued his explanation. She barely listened. She was glad he was here, but it didn't matter why. Still, he kept listing the reasons—how much he wanted to see their new place, how he'd been so uneasy about the way she and Hal had treated each other in Pensacola. Was something wrong in their marriage? Didn't they both understand what a treasure they had in Sam and how it'd be a damn shame if anything came along to bust things up?
He was worried. He wanted to do what he could. Would money help? Was that the trouble? Maybe they were overextended. He didn't have much, but whatever he had was theirs—and of course, he could always borrow more.
She did her best to reassure him, and she tried to change the subject.
"But how did you get in, Pops? You scared me half to death."
"The super."
"He just let you
in?
I mean, how could he be sure you were my father?"
"Do I look like a criminal? Besides, he put a good one to me."
Peggy looked up from her drink. "He what?"
"Man said, 'If you're Mrs. Cooper's father, then describe the machine you invented that your grandson's always talking about.' Looks like old Sam's pretty impressed with that contraption." He grinned, reached out his hand and lifted her chin. "Listen, kitten, I just want you to know there's nothing in my power I won't do if you need me."
She'd been holding it in. But the look on his face, the one eye masked by the oval of black, cracked what strength she had left. She let it out, crying as if she'd been practicing for this moment all her life. He petted her and tried to quiet her, but she threw herself back down on the couch and wept until the ache in her chest made her stop.
"How about another hooker of bourbon?"
She shook her head. She felt hollowed out, too weak to speak.
"You want to tell me what's eating you, Pegs?"
Again she shook her head.
"I'm an okay listener, kitten. I've seen some things in my time. I doubt there's anything you could tell me that I haven't seen or heard before."
"No," she said, sitting up, rubbing at her face with the heels of her hands. "You wouldn't understand."
"Try me," he said. "That's what I'm here for."
"I can't," she said as if she was strangling.
He nodded and touched the top of her head. "Okay if I hang around for a few days?"
She knew if she tried to speak just yet, she'd collapse into tears again. So she hugged him to give him his answer, and then she took his hand and showed him to the room she knew would never be redone as a nursery for a little Abigail or Amanda. Creating a new life wasn't anything Peggy was thinking about anymore.
What she
was
thinking about was how to save the life of the child she had.
***
It was still drizzling when they left the apartment and went together to get Sam. She wanted it to be a happy time for Val and a happy time for
Sam, but every step closer to the school was like a fist closing tighter on her heart.
When they stood at the bottom of the stairs waiting for the doors to swing open and the boys to start coming out, Peggy studied the faces of the other mothers who stood around with little rain hats and slickers and umbrellas at the ready. She knew none of these people, and she had the feeling she never would. It wasn't like the way it had been when Sam was in nursery school, all the mothers reaching out to each other for friendship and support. These women were different. They seemed so closed in, so shut off from ordinary needs, from simple companionship. Wouldn't most of the ones waiting be first-grade mothers, too? Which ones had sons who also went each morning to face Miss Putnam, to sit in one of the desks Sam had drawn before he'd even seen what they looked like? Would any of them believe her story? Was it something only a mother could take seriously?
Peggy stepped away from her father, moved a bit closer to the woman standing nearest.
"Hi," she said, touching the woman's elbow lightly, "I wonder if I might introduce myself. I'm Peggy Cooper—and this is my dad just up from Florida."
"Potter," Val said, putting out his big, brown hand. "Val Potter. Pleased to meet you."
"Hello," the woman said vaguely. "Are you visiting New York?"
"That's what I'm doing," Val said, smiling broadly, still holding onto the woman's hand.
"That's nice," the woman said, drawing her hand away and facing Peggy again. "You have a boy in first grade, I believe?"
"Sam," Peggy said. "And yours?"
"Yes," the woman said, turning away slightly, as if to check the doors.
"Does he have Miss Putnam?" Peggy said.
"Yes, thank goodness," the woman said, not looking back at Peggy. "I understand she works absolute wonders, whipping the little savages into St. Martin's boys before they get off on the wrong foot."
"You mean she's a lot better than Mrs. Booth?" Peggy said.
The woman turned her face back to Peggy, and then briefly glanced at Val, as if swiftly measuring him in some way. She seemed about to say something, but then she turned away again just as the doors banged open and the first ranks of boys began their joyous descent down the stairs, hands out to test the density of the rain that still fell from an ugly sky.
***
When they got back home, Peggy made cocoa for Val and Sam, then put a plate of Lorna Doones on the breakfast table and sat and listened to their excited exchange. She was comforted for the moment by the craggy timber of her father's voice, by her son's musical chirps of enthusiasm. This surprise visit was going to be as much of a tonic for Sam as it was for her. The unnerved and intimidated little boy she'd taken to school in the morning had vanished under the benign influence of his grandfather's presence.