“And in return?”
“In return I want the same custodian privileges that you had. He can visit you, you can take him on vacations . . .”
“But you have to approve, right?”
“It’s the best thing for him, honestly. He’s been paying for our mistakes for too many years now.”
“Will he live with you?”
“I think a private school’s the best thing for him. Until he’s got a solid home to come to.”
She held out her hand, and Jay held it and shook it. Brewster brought over a sheaf of papers and an open fountain pen.
“You’ll have to sign all three copies.”
“That’s the story of my life - signing things in three places. Won’t the judge have to approve?”
“We’ll deal with that,” Clay said.
“I got into this hole, and I’ll have to dig my way out.”
“I’ll help you any way I can,” Jay said.
She took the money and walked over to Sports, who opened the door for her. She shoved the money in his face, and it fell to the floor.
“Here, take it and get out of my home.” He stopped to pick up the money and paused at the door, his mouth twisted in a grimace, his lips moving soundlessly, and then he left.
The weeks that followed were the happiest Neal had ever known. Terry and he discussed his schoolwork, and for the first time he had the satisfaction of knowing that someone took an interest in what he did and what he would make of his future. The only difficulty he encountered was in getting to and from school, for he was unable to transfer in midterm without losing half a year. Jay dropped him at school in the mornings, but in the afternoon he was forced to take a long subway ride across Manhattan.
On a bitingly cold crisp afternoon towards the end of February, he was surprised to find Terry waiting for him in the lobby of the hotel. Her eyes bulged, and she seemed tired and pale.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“I’m not an invalid, just because . . .” she broke off in midsentence as though distracted by some thought that she could not express, and she shifted uneasily against the marble column she had been leaning against. “Let’s go to Schrafft’s for a hot chocolate,” she said, taking him by the arm. “I remember when I was a kid I used to nag my father till he thought he’d go mad to take me there.”
They walked down Lexington Avenue, and the late afternoon sun fed out slivers of light that brightened up the ice-covered pavements.
“Bracing walks, ta-da, and all that,” she trilled. “Hey, you’re going too fast.”
“Sorry.” He hated to displease her, and he realized that he had acted thoughtlessly, for it was slippery. “We could’ve had it sent up.”
“You’re not adventurous today.”
“I got ninety-five on my algebra exam.”
“The only thing I can remember about algebra is that rate times time equals distance. How’s that?”
“Very good,” he said, smiling broadly, for he liked the way she always implied that he was cleverer than she.
“I’m afraid your father wouldn’t know one end of an equation from another, but he can add, boy, can he add.”
He pushed open the revolving door and about a hundred old ladies in strange, furry hats, and woolly dresses and long silk scarves, stared at them. Neal felt himself flush as he followed Terry to a corner table.
“What were they looking at?” he said.
“Us. We don’t look like brother and sister, and you’re too big to be my son, so they must have thought - Well, she’s got a lover. A good-looking little boyfriend. And that gives them enough conversation for another party.”
“Aw Terry, you’re kidding?”
She held his hand tightly in her fist and squeezed it.
“You’re sweet, Neal.” She opened her handbag and fished out something that appeared at first glance to be an advertisement, and passed it to Neal who looked at it cursorily.
“What’s this? A school or something?”
“A school or something? Dear boy, it’s Carlisle . . . the school. There are a handful of them in the country: Groton, Andover, Horace Mann, Lawrenceville, and Carlisle.”
“What’s it got to do with me?”
“Wouldn’t you like to be able to go there?”
He picked up the menu and glanced at it for a moment, as the waitress hovered over them.
“I’d like a hot chocolate and a grilled-cheese sandwich,” he said.
“Twice,” Terry said. “Well, Neal, tell me what you think? Your term’s over in ten days and they’ve accepted you for their spring term.”
“They have? How?”
“I wrote to the principal about a month ago, explained our situation, and he got in touch with your high school and they forwarded your record.”
“Why there? It’s in” - he picked up the prospectus – “Burlington, Vermont. I’ll have to live there.”
“But you’ll have about four and a half months for vacation and we’ll spend the time together.”
His throat tightened, and he handed the buff-colored pages back to her.
“Do you want to get rid of me?”
“Oh, boy, of all the silliest. . . . The only reason I thought of it was that my father went there as a boy, and any boy who graduates from Carlisle can have his pick of colleges. You’re a bright boy, and they’ll give you the best education you could possibly get.”
He considered her point but remained unconvinced and suspicious. She peered straight at him, and he knew she was being honest, and that her interest and concern were genuine. But again he felt isolated, unwanted.
“We’re going to have a particularly nasty court case in about a month and I want you well out of the way.” She sipped her hot chocolate, and he rubbed his hand along the rough-cast wall, his chin dropped into his fur jacket. “Neal, I care . . . I care about what happens to you. When this is all over, we’ll buy a house, and you can choose between going to Carlisle or living with us. Try it for a term.”
“Does my father know?”
“No, not yet. But the judge suggested that you go to a private school. You can build a new life, and meet new friends.”
“I have friends.”
Her face eased into a smile, and she pointed to his untouched sandwich. He lifted it to his mouth reluctantly.
“You’re not being forced to do anything. I leave it entirely to you. If you want to go, you can. If not, then we’ll have to work something else out. I only want to save you from facing a lot of unpleasantness.”
“Is it your husband?”
She threw her hands in the air with faint irritation and pursed her bloodless lips. He stared at her face as the color drained from it. Her skin was shiny, and her green eyes became larger. Her hand shot to her stomach, and she gasped.
“Neal, I’ve got to get to the hospital . . . money in my bag . . . just leave it.” Her voice was barely audible, and she rose as though drunk, and staggered against her chair, knocking it over into the aisle. Neal rushed over to her and supported her back because he was afraid she might fall. He threw a dollar on the table and led her to the door.
“I’ll get a taxi. Sit down.” He pointed to a chair by the cashier’s desk.
“Can’t sit,” she murmured. “Fast, Neal.”
He rushed through the revolving door and dashed for a taxi that was cruising along, but just as he gained speed, he felt himself slipping. His legs shot out ahead of him, and he crashed to the ground. He lay there for a moment, dazed, and rigid while the high buildings whirled round his half-open eyes; the taxi driver had caught his signal and came over to him and lifted him off his back.
“Boy, that was a beaut. You okay?”
Neal was speechless, then he remembered Terry waiting in the restaurant.
“Wait, you’ve got to take us to the hospital.”
He ran past the man and brought Terry out. Her face had turned ashen, and she could hardly keep her eyes open. The driver helped her into t
he taxi and waited to be told where to take them.
“Terry, Terry, which hospital?” Neal asked with a screeching urgency.
Her forehead was wet, and when she opened her eyes they were glassy and her lids flicked over them.
“Sutton Clinic,” she said breathlessly.
The taxi cut across Lexington Avenue through the mainstream of rush hour traffic. Every few seconds the driver slammed his hand on the horn, and the blaring sound gave the ride an eerie quality that increased Neal’s helplessness.
“What should I do, Terry? Tell me,” he pleaded.
“It’ll be awright, kid. Have her there in five minutes.” The car shot through a red light and a great caterwauling whine of horns echoed through the streets. He pulled over at a small nondescript building on Sutton Place and helped Terry out of the car. Neal rushed after them, but a nurse barred his way.
“All right, young man, I’ll look after her now.” She lifted Terry’s arm and put her large white starched arm under her back and limped with her to a room. Neal crept along the corridor, and Terry opened her eyes and her mouth contorted into the suggestion of a smile.
“Terry, I’ll go to the school, I will.”
“Goo’ boy,” she said through twisted dry lips. “Call your fath . . .”
Jay and Neal ate a hurried dinner at a small drugstore near the hospital, and Neal was driven back to the Central Plaza by Jay’s chauffeur. They had been asked to leave the hospital as Terry’s labor pains were irregular, and the intervals between them instead of decreasing had lengthened; the obstetrician had assured Jay that his alarm was touching and expected, but that neither Terry nor the baby were in any danger. All this information, delivered in a dry, clinical, patrician voice by Dr. Mill, instead of calming and reassuring him, served only to increase his sense of guilt and anxiety. Legally he had no rights whatever to the child, as Terry was still married to Mitch, and she was listed on the register as Mrs. Michell Lawson. It was a peculiarly uncomfortable position. To kill time and fortify himself, Jay wandered into a small, dank, foul, little bar, off Sutton Place. Half a dozen bar flies too far gone and too apathetic to turn their heads, stood at the scratched mahogany bar. A single woman in her thirties with mascara stains riven in her hollow cheeks asked him for a match. She asked him to buy her a drink, and he did. Then she informed him that her apartment was “a stone’s throw away,” and he said in a grim, nervous voice:
“Be a lady and don’t push your luck.”
She mumbled something indistinct - he wasn’t even sure that he understood - about being a lady. He moved away from her and waved to the barman for a refill. His temples pulsated irregularly, as though his skull had hiccups, and he studied the movement in the grimy mirror behind the bar. His face was drawn, and his eyes had that bloodshot haze that two drinks always gave to them. He realized with some irritation that he had begun to look his age. In the mornings he seemed older, for even though his hair hadn’t thinned it was flecked with gray, and the lines on his face had set like stone. He lifted the whiskey and threw his head back. The woman accosted him again as he was about to leave, and he had to walk around her.
“You got the concession here? Well, ten or twelve years ago, I would’ve thought ‘maybe,’ but I’m getting too old for this sort of thing.”
Outside it was snowing. A thin, razorish flurry of white snow drifted through the dark night, whirling eddies that slashed at his face and eyes like small glass splinters. He held up his hand to shield his face, and walked the long block, keeping close to the darkened stores where grimly sculptured stalactites jutted out from above the rolled sun awnings. It was cold, and the street was deserted. It had that peculiar hollow silence that he thought must be similar to the death state. His shoes made a scrunching sound over the powdery snow covering the tegument of ice. He shook his collar when he got into the warm anteroom of the hospital, and stomped his feet on the perforated black rubber mat. The nurse had her head down over a magazine as he approached.
“You’re not the same one as before,” he said.
“It’s the night shift,” she explained. “Visiting hours are over.”
“My . . .” he stammered. “There’s a Mrs. Lawson, who’s going to have a baby.”
“You the father?”
“That’s right.” She got up off her haunches, and put a long cardboard strip that said ‘YOUR PLACE’ in the magazine and closed it. “It’s down the corridor. Dr. Mill’s waiting to see you.”
The nurse knocked on Terry’s door, and the doctor opened it. His angular face was pinched and rubicund, as though nature had deprived him of his rightful physiognomy. He had a long thin nose over which a pair of tortoiseshell glasses slipped whenever he moved his head.
“I’ll come into the corridor with you,” he said.
Jay twisted his head to look over the doctor’s shoulder at Terry, but his view was blocked. The doctor closed the door and lit a cigarette.
“Is she all right?”
“Not very well, I’m afraid.”
“You don’t mean to say . . .”
“No, but there were complications, and she’s in a delicate condition.”
“She won’t die?”
“She shouldn’t. We’ve given her medication. I think she’s picked up a virus of some kind.”
“Don’t you know?”
“If we did we wouldn’t call them viruses.”
“She’s given birth, hasn’t she?” He felt his muscles tense as Dr. Mill avoided his gaze. His lips were dry. His eyes blinked uncontrollably. The walls of the whitewashed corridor appeared alive with strange moving animals. “Well, tell me,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“The baby had cyanosis.”
“Is it dead?”
“I’m very sorry to tell you that she is.”
Jay slumped against the wall, and his shoulder made a dull thud. He pushed himself off the wall with his left hand, and the doctor pointed to a wooden bench a few feet away.
“Let’s sit down.”
“Does Terry know?”
“No, she was given an anesthetic, and when she wakes we’ll give her a sedative. She won’t know till tomorrow.”
An overhead light with a green metal band around lit the area by the bench.
“Died, just like that?”
“It was a combination of circumstances. A malformation of the heart which wasn’t detectable in prenatal examination, and when we attempted to do something, an obstruction was also discovered.”
“Did she live at all?”
“For about five minutes.”
“Can I see her?”
“I don’t think it’s a very good idea.”
“But one of us should, and she can’t.”
The doctor nodded his long thin face, and the nurse came up to them.
“I’m just going to take Mr. Blackman along . . .”
In a small room on the second floor adjacent to the operating theater, Jay saw the child. The room had no tables and no chairs, only a scratched metal dolly that was used to wheel patients. It was the emptiest room he had ever seen. The child was wrapped in a white sheet, only its head exposed. The face was a sickly bluish color, and it hardly seemed human. He lifted the sheet and looked at the body which was slightly lighter in color than the face. It resembled a small rubberized mummy. He lifted the hand, and the doctor said:
“We should go now.”
Jay dropped the hand, and the doctor ushered him out of the room. They walked down the stairs in silence, and their clapping footfalls made the quiet almost unbearable to Jay.
“Does a baby have a name in a case like this?”
“If you’d like to give her a name you can.”
“Celia. Can you put down Celia?”
“Yes, I will, but as I explained to you when Mrs. Lawson first came to me, the baby’s surname must be the mother’s because she is still married.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter now. A girl . . . I wanted a girl.”
They s
tood awkwardly by Terry’s door, and Jay turned the doorknob.
“I’d rather you didn’t go in. Until we’re absolutely certain we know exactly what she’s got, she shouldn’t be disturbed.”
“Can I stay all night?”
“You can, but there’s really no point. If there’s any change in her condition, they’ll phone me and we’ve got two doctors on duty all night. You ought to go home and try to sleep. If you come at about ten in the morning, I’ll be in a better position to give you more information.”
The city was encrusted with another layer of snow in the morning. A gelid, snarling wind lashed across the high buildings, and the sky color was a strange medley of slaty lead and magenta above the low-moving clouds. Jay sat in the back of the car, silent; his mind suspended in an eerie void. He had canceled all his appointments for the week, and although Marty had been sympathetic when Jay phoned him, he couldn’t remember what he had said or why he had hung up on him. The car headed over the Williamsburg Bridge down Delancey Street, but all Jay saw was the glass partition and the back of the chauffeur’s head. He and Neal had hardly spoken to each other on the ride to Brooklyn, and he was grateful for the boy’s tact and restraint. The car turned down Second Avenue and Jay recognized the small catering hall and restaurant where he and Rhoda had met. The name had been changed, and a small banner proclaimed: “UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT” and “Completely Air Conditioned.” He lifted a letter that he had not opened out of his briefcase. The return address - J. Parker and Associates - told him that it was from Mitch’s lawyers. They were probably demanding a meeting: “sit around a table and discuss this matter sensibly and informally.” The car turned into Sutton Place, and the chauffeur opened the door for Jay.
“The flowers are in the front,” the chauffeur said. “Shall I take them in?”
“No, I’ll do it. You can pick Neal up at four o’clock. I won’t need the car.” Jay took the flowers, three dozen roses, all yellow, her favorite color. He recognized the day nurse at the reception desk, and he forced himself to smile at her.
“Good morning, Mr. Blackman,” she said jauntily, and he felt a bit better. The corridor was just as austere and forbidding in daylight as it had been the previous night. As he followed her white uniform, he had a desperately shrinking sensation that made him cringe. He saw her white back and the walls, that he could not take in except in peripheral vision, were so white that they dazed him. The absence of color shocked him. Three men, one of them Dr. Mill, stood by the door talking in low conspiratorial voices, and he strained his ears to hear them. Like butchers waiting for the meat to come in, Jay thought. They stopped talking when they realized he was there. A short, balding man fingered his stethoscope in a nervous, revealing way and stared at him rigidly. No one was talking.
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