It frightened her to think her daughter might be slow-witted; she'd seen such children over the years, never able to dress themselves or achieve even the most rudimentary skills. Survival was the paramount need in Fancy's mind, so the fear that her daughter might never be able to fend for herself was more terrifying than she could admit to anyone, even Chance. It wrenched her heart to see Fan's struggles to complete the most ordinary of acts. She thought the baby somehow sensed her own deficiencies and tried so hard, just to reassure her doting father.
Chance would hear no word of complaint about her progress. "Why the hell should every child born have to do everything exactly the same," he'd thunder every time Fancy tried to broach the subject. Fan was so delicate, how could anybody expect her to do the things bigger, stronger children could? Didn't Fancy see how unfair such expectations were?
"She's slow, Chance. Truly slow... I'm afraid we'll have to deal with the fact that she may never catch up with other children her age. She'll need special help... we'll have to find someone who knows what to do about her needs..."
Chance's wrath could be kindled easier by the subject of Fan than by anything else. "How can you say such a thing about your own child, Fancy? That's a mean-spirited thing for a mother to say."
Fancy bit her lip at the fear in Chance's eyes.
"But she can't do anywhere near what other children her age can, Chance. You've got to listen to reason about this. Blackjack is a year younger and far more capable and agile."
"God damn it, Fancy, Blackjack's a boy. You just can't compare them. That's not fair to Fan. Besides, even if she's not as strong as he is, she talks better than any little child I ever heard of."
Fancy shook her head despairingly, for even the girl's precocious speech was inappropriate for her age. It seemed to Fancy that the gods, seeing how shortchanged the child was in other ways, had tried to compensate with this strange linguistic largesse.
Chance lifted his daughter from her crib and hugged her protectively; her eyes glowed at his touch, no one loved her like her daddy did. Agitatedly Chance walked up and down the Chinese carpet, the wobbly blond head cradled on his shoulders, which were set in the granite stance that told his distraught wife he would not be moved.
All during the first two years of Fan's life, Fancy marveled at the endless patience Chance showed the child. When she teethed, he was the first one at her cribside to lift her into comforting arms... when the croup kept her and the household sleepless for three nights and days, it was Chance who left his bed to keep watch in the nursery, much to the annoyance of the nursemaid.
"When she cries, I want her to be picked up, do you understand me?" he told the nanny.
"That only encourages a child to cry more, Mr. McAllister," she said quite reasonably. "A baby learns very quickly what gains attention and this child is coddled far too much."
"I want my daughter to learn that the world is a warm, safe place, Mrs. McArdle," he replied in a tone that brooked no argument. "I want her to learn that she's loved so much that when she cries, she'll always be comforted, when she's sick, she'll always be cared for, when she's hurting, there's one of her kin right there to protect her. If you can't handle teaching my daughter those very simple principles of life in this household, then I suggest you find other employment."
Even Mrs. McArdle had to admit she'd never met a child with a sweeter disposition. When Fan was two, she finally learned to crawl; it strained her body to a pale purple color to do so, but her determined and ceaseless effort eventually moved her across the nursery floor. When she got where she was going, she would stop to catch her labored breath and smile a secret smile of infinite achievement. Her asthma kept her from making major forays, but she loved the warmth of the fireplace and would drag herself, panting with the effort, as close to the hearth as she could manage. Chance had an extra fireplace installed in the nursery, so his daughter would never need fear the cold, for it had a tendency to tinge her skin a spectral blue.
The doctor said her heart was weak as a sparrow's, and that it wouldn't do to become too attached to a child who wasn't likely to see school age, but Chance told Fancy the man was never to set foot in their house again, and she had to find another doctor.
Fancy sensed a deep, unspoken sorrow in Chance whenever he'd been with Fan, but for some unfathomable reason he was reluctant to share it with her.
"I love her, too, Chance, but I see how hard life is going to be for her and I think we have to face the fact that Fan may never be right-minded."
"How can you even think such a thing about your own child, Fancy? If she's slow, we just have to find better ways to teach her. By the time she goes to school, she'll be all caught up."
"Will you never listen to reason about that child, Chance?" Fancy said with exasperation. "I love her just as much as you do, but you're spoiling her to death with your constant attention. We can't let her grow up thinking everybody's going to kowtow to her forever just because she's sick. That won't do anything but give her an incentive to stay that way."
"For chrissakes, Fancy, you can't think that baby is pretending illness just so she can get extra coddling?"
"No, of course not. But we've got to find a way to help her stretch her own wings, Chance. Her life is going to be hard enough without our spoiling her into immobility."
"What are you trying to say?"
"That you're so wrapped up in her the rest of us are lonely... and I'm so afraid for you, Chance. Afraid you'll love her so much you won't survive if something happens to her." There. She'd said it aloud. The worst fear. Chance's expression softened, the vulner- ability peeked out from beyond the mask of confidence he'd constructed.
"I know it's hard for you to understand how I feel, Fancy," he said wearily. "Sometimes I don't understand all of it myself. But Fan's my first child, my baby... I know, I know, there's Aurora—but you can see how she's kept me at arm's length, never given me a minute's chance to be her daddy. But Fan... she's all mine to take care of. Sometimes I try to think how my daddy would be with her, if he were here. He was a strong man, Fancy, strong and rough-hewn in some ways, but you've never seen anybody capable of tenderness like my daddy was. He could nurse a broken bird like it was the most important creature in this world... if he loved you, you knew nothing on this earth could ever harm you, because it'd have to get through him first."
Fancy heard the love and respect in her husband's remembrance and the unspoken fear for his child.
"Hart always said what killed him wasn't the diphtheria... it was the knowledge that he hadn't saved my mama. God Almighty, Fancy, but he loved my mama." Chance hesitated, as if afraid to voice the rest aloud.
"I'm so afraid for my baby, Fancy. So afraid I won't be able to save her when the time comes... you know, sometimes I think she's just like you, without all your competencies, just a frail little girl who needs a powerful lot of taking care of, and in return, she loves me all there is. She lets me in, Fancy... in ways neither you nor Aurora ever have."
The fire crackled beside Fancy, the sounds of sap-sparks bursting like firecrackers into the pained silence between them. Not knowing what in the world to say, she crossed to Chance's armchair and took him in her arms and the two frightened parents of a damaged child simply held each other to fend off what they feared.
Blackjack toddled into his sister's nursery and smiled at her through the bars in her crib. He could do so many interesting things that Fan could only long for. She reached her nearly translucent fingers out of the crib bars and Blackjack closed his sturdy hand around hers and squeezed it tight. He liked to touch this living dolly, to get things for her that she couldn't reach. He knew
Daddy loved to talk to Fan and hold her; sometimes, he would let Blackjack hold his sister, too, just as if he were grown up.
"A man takes care of the women in his life, son," Daddy would say. "They're not strong like we are, so we have to be real gentle with them and keep them safe from harm. The kinder you are to your sisters, the bette
r sort of man you'll grow up to be." Blackjack worshiped his father; whatever Chance said was gospel to the little boy who looked like a small mirror image of the man and who loved him with absolute devotion.
Blackjack wished his sister could get out of her crib more to play. She was awfully old to still be sleeping in a crib and there were plenty of games he knew she'd be good at if only she were stronger. On impulse, he handed her a playing card from the precious deck his father had given him. Fan held it in her hands, staring at it with interested eyes, then she said "Pretty," and bit off the corner to see if it tasted good too.
Blackjack grabbed the card back from Fan's mouth hastily. Even if he loved his sick sister, she wasn't allowed to eat the cards Daddy had given him.
Chapter 71
Chance lay back against, the tree and watched the two little children play at the edge of the stream. Fancy had admonished him not to let Fan play in the chilly water, but they were having such a happy time splashing around. Blackjack held his sister's hand so she wouldn't go too far; his little-boy laughter pierced the sharp spring air like a bell-peal, and Fan's sweet giggle sounded to Chance like a benediction. She'd managed to get to be three years of age, against everyone's predictions. Her asthma seemed better than it had, and she could walk now, even if it was with difficulty.
"Come on over here," the father called lazily. He preferred taking these two out without their nanny, who hovered too close for his taste, and who didn't offer the slightest bit of whimsy. "It's time to make up stories." Both children squealed their delight, nobody in the world told stories like their daddy. Chance saw his son start forward, then reach back for his sister's hand; even though he was just a toddler, Blackjack seemed inordinately protective of his sister. Fan looked at her brother, adoration in her fey eyes. The little boy slowed his own steps patiently while she made her awkward way, one foot dragging, as it always did. Seeing that both children were barefoot, Chance felt a momentary pang of conscience about Fancy's admonition, so he rose and retrieved their shoes from the bank of the stream. Hastily he pulled the little stockings up over his daughter's feet, they were cold as icicles and slightly blue; he chafed them to get the blood circulating, then laced up the high-buttons and helped Blackjack on with his boots.
Leaning back against the tree, Chance took one child into the crook of each arm and let them nestle against him. He felt Fan shiver and shifted to shelter her.
"Come on over to this side, son. Your sister's cold and it's up to us men to keep her warm." For an instant the memory of Fancy lying between him and Hart came vividly to Chance... was there ever a way for a man to shield the women he loved from all that life doled out? He brushed the unwanted thought aside and formed a circle around the two children with his own body.
"Tell me a 'once a time...' Fan lisped. She had a remarkable facility for language, far beyond her years, but her speech had idiosyncrasies, shortcuts only Chance and Blackjack seemed intuitively to understand.
"Once upon a time," Chance began, casting about in his mind for the perfect tale. "There was a little girl named Dewdrop..." Blackjack tugged at his sleeve to remind his father to include him.... "And she had a brother named Beau. Beau loved his sister so much that he would do anything she asked him, and one day in January, when the snow was high as the tops of the pine trees, Beau saw his sister crying. 'Why are you crying?' he asked her and she said, 'Because I'm very sick and there are no flowers left in the world. If I had a flower, I could get well.'
"So Beau put on his golden armor and set out to find the flowers. Now, he glittered so brightly that the snow melted in the garden and the sunflowers thought spring had come, so they poked their sleepy heads up through the frozen ground to see the shining little boy.
" 'My sister needs you,' Beau told the sunflowers.
" 'But if you pick me now, before my time, I'll die,' the sunflower whispered.
" 'But you'll be loved so much it will be worth it,' Beau said. 'To give your life to do a good deed is the noblest death of all.'
"So the sunflower agreed to go with Beau to save his sister."
"But Dewdrop died," Fan completed the story unexpectedly. "And they buried her with the flower. And Beau stayed by her grave forever and ever." Chance was struck to the heart by the strangeness of this little child, whom he loved so much. Maybe being bedridden so long had given her a macabre turn of mind.
Both children looked immensely satisfied with her depressing finale.
"I'd say that turned out to be a pretty sad story, wouldn't you?" Chance said, hugging his children against the chill wind that had arisen. "In my rendition I was planning to have everyone live happily ever after."
"When she died, Dewdrop went to live with the eagles, Daddy, and she learn to fly," Fan persisted.
"She did, darlin'? How do you know that?"
Fan fixed her pale blue eyes on her father's, it seemed to him for a moment that he could see straight through her to the sky.
"Remember when I couldn't walk, Daddy? I think then... if never I can walk, maybe learn to fly. So I watch the birds, and the eagles do it best. Everybody has wings in my dreams."
Chance was terribly disturbed by what Fan said, so he scooped up both children and held them close. The day was growing colder and he suddenly needed to go home and get Fan to the warmth of a fire.
Fancy always said it was the day Chance let them go wading, when Fan caught the cold that became pneumonia, but no one knew for sure. All they did know was that her breathing grew labored, and the cold that would have been minor for another child deepened into lung inflammation. Fever brightened Fan's eyes until they looked like pale blue stained glass; her tiny lungs were so filled with phlegm, every breath became an agony. Chance would have breathed for his daughter if he could, would have died in her place, but the gods don't give that latitude to parents.
Fancy struggled day and night for weeks to save her child, after the doctor had long since shrugged his shoulders at the futility of the effort. She begged Magda's help, then railed at her for failing, and looked accusingly at Wu whose medicaments had not made any difference. Both the Gypsy and the Chinese knew the little girl had passed beyond the power of mortals, so they simply endured the fury of the frenzied mother and the anguish of the guilt-ridden father. They stayed close because they feared to leave Chance and Fancy alone with the dying child.
Fancy's desperation drove her to meanness. "You've killed her," she accused her husband. "Why couldn't you listen to me when I asked you not to let her go near the water? Why can you never listen when I ask anything of you?"
Chance answered out of grief and terror. "What do you care, anyway? You never loved her the way I did. You would have packed her off someplace where people put their slow-witted children, if I hadn't shamed you into keeping her."
"How could you even think such a thing? I never once considered such a terrible thing. If you'd left her to me and Mrs. McArdle none of this would have happened."
They flayed each other over the child's sickbed until Magda finally lost patience and growled, "Fools! Would you kill her with your petty war? Look at her eyes, she is begging you to love each other. Her pain is greater than yours... can you not be unselfish long enough to let her die in peace?" The Gypsy strode from the room, Wu followed wordlessly, and Fancy and Chance, defeated by the truth, knelt down beside Fan's bed too numbed by sorrow to fight each other, or death, any longer.
"Sad, Daddy..." the little girl murmured once, a dreadful wheezing sound; the phlegm rattled ominously behind her small words and neither parent knew if she spoke of their sorrow or her own. She said no words at all to Fancy.
Chance saw his father's death in the child's struggle to breathe, and thought his heart would burst with grief. Fancy, white-faced in the knowledge of her failure to save her baby, unrelenting in her blame for Chance, never spoke a word of comfort to her husband, for the wrath that filled her could have murdered the world.
It was Chance who held his daughter in his arms as her
breath whispered out to find Death, a small sound, like the cry of the wind. Fancy, despairing, reached out to close the eyes death had glazed, but Chance snatched Fan away from her grasp, and clutching her to his heart, he carried her from the room to sob out his anguish, leaving Fancy to face her grief alone.
Her heart was a stone in the breast that still remembered the baby lips that had sucked so softly, so short a time ago. "I will never forgive you for this," she called after him, the words chilling everyone who heard them. "You took her away from me in life, and now you've claimed her in death, and I will never, ever forgive you."
Dear Bro,
We buried our little Fan, day before yesterday, God rest her sweet soul. Fancy wanted to send you a wire, so you could try to get home for the funeral, but I didn't want to do that. No one should come home to sorrow... home should be where love and happiness wait for you. I guess I'll never really get over the feeling of comfort there always was for us when Mama and Daddy were alive. Remember, Hart? I've been remembering so much, these last terrible days.
You never knew my little girl—I'm real sad about that, bro. She was never long for this world—I guess I always knew it—and that's why I fought so hard against anybody who tried to make me see... especially Fancy. Something happens to you when you have a child, I can't explain. You grow bigger and wider, so you can care for it—you feel older, wiser, more responsible, less selfish. You remember kindnesses your own parents did you and you want to do everything right.
I failed in a lot of ways, I expect, bro, but not in the way Fancy thinks. I never meant to endanger my baby, it didn't seem possible that letting her dip her little feet in that stream could take her from us like it did. She loved the water so... I'll carry it with me to the grave, bro, that I didn't protect her when it counted. There was this story Fan told me about a little girl who died and afterwards she went flying with the eagles up in heaven. I guess I'll never see an eagle that I won't see my little girl in its flight. Pray for me, will you, bro?
Paint the Wind Page 49