Doctor. The concept galvanized her. She gathered Michael’s heavy, lifeless weight in her arms, stood up, and staggered toward the house. Daisy met her at the door. She took his legs—so thin and bony! the left shin scraped and bleeding—and together they got him into the day parlor and laid him on the sofa.
“The doctor’s coming, he’s on his way. Where is he hurt?”
Where! She didn’t know! She started to cry. Daisy stilled the futile fluttering of her hands over Michael’s body and examined him herself.
“His arms aren’t broken,” she declared, moving them. “Legs are fine.”
“Why can’t he wake up?” Sara whimpered. Stroking his wet hair, she felt it—a lump nearly the size of a tennis ball on the left side of his head. “Oh my God, my God.”
“I don’t think it’s so bad,” Daisy said quickly. She pulled the afghan from the back of the couch, spread it over him, and tucked it in at the sides. “Sit down now, Sara, you’re going to make yourself sick. There’s nothing to do but wait. Honestly, I don’t think it’s that bad!”
She stayed where she was, kneeling on the floor by Michael’s head, holding his hands. His face was so pale, his lips white. The shallow rise and fall of his narrow chest became the focus of all her senses. “Darling,” she kept whispering, and “Please God, please, please, please, God.”
The doctor came. She didn’t hear his name. He told her to move back, please, and she scooted sideways on her knees a few inches. He pulled a chair close to the couch and sat down. He was big and burly, white-haired, and she winced every time his enormous, blunt-fingered hands touched Michael’s body.
“That’s a big one, isn’t it?” he rumbled, gently skimming the bump on Michael’s temple with his fingertips. “Round as a goose egg. He’ll have a little headache from that, won’t he?”
She was literally biting her knuckles; she couldn’t form a question because she was too terrified of the answer.
“Has there been any vomiting?”
She shook her head violently.
“That’s good, that’s a good sign. Well, well, what’s this?”
“What?” she croaked.
“Look here. He’s broken his collarbone, hasn’t he? Now, don’t worry, that’s all right, that’s not serious.” He glanced around for Daisy and sent her a warning look.
She went to Sara and put her arms around her shoulders. “He’s all right, honey, the doctor’s saying he’s all right. You have to try to stay calm.”
She gathered up all her courage. Her voice shook ludicrously, but she got it out. “Why won’t he wake up? Please, please, tell me the truth.”
“Hush, Sara, let him listen.”
The doctor was pressing his stethoscope to Michael’s puny chest. Next he opened the boy’s white eyelids and stared down into his pupils. He looked at his teeth, moved his jaw carefully, then his head, palpating the vertebrae at the back of his neck. “What’s that, now?” he said when he’d finished, pulling his glasses to the end of his big nose and peering at her. “Why won’t he wake up? Because he’s got a bump on his head and he’s not quite ready to. Shouldn’t be much longer, though. Stand back a little now, I’m going to straighten this bone.”
It was the setting of the bone that woke Michael up, with a lusty howl of pain that sent Sara veering toward hysteria again. She shook off Daisy’s restraining arm and ran to him, oblivious to the doctor’s grumbled, “Here now, give him some room to breathe, can’t you? Oh, all right, I’m finished.”
Her tears dried up at the sight of Michael’s. She smeared his cheeks with her fingers and her lips and smiled down at him. “How do you feel, darling? You’re all right now, the doctor says so. Do you remember what happened?”
“Fell out of the tree.”
“That’s right. That was a silly thing to do, wasn’t it?
He nodded, then flinched. “Head hurts, Mum.”
“I know.” She pressed a soft, soft kiss to his forehead. “Better?”
“Yes.” He tried to smile, but his eyes flickered closed and he drifted off again.
She threw a look of panic at the doctor.
“He’s fine,” he assured her as he straightened the contents of his black bag. “He fell out of a tree, bumped his head, and broke his clavicle. He’ll be running around like a wild Indian in six weeks.”
No need to stir the boy up again tonight, the doctor told her; he’d return in the morning and put a bandage on to immobilize that shoulder. Meanwhile, keep him quiet and keep the room dark. Call him if she observed vomiting, convulsions, or severe headache. Now, now, he didn’t expect any of that, but those were the things she should watch for. If the boy got hungry, feed him, whatever he would eat. But he’d probably sleep most of the time, and that was the best thing for him.
After the doctor went away—Buell was his name, she finally heard—she moved a chair to the head of the couch and sat down in it to wait. Daisy sat with her at first, but Sara couldn’t talk yet and she couldn’t eat any of the food Daisy offered to make her. So after an hour or so, Daisy gave her a hug and went home.
A little later Sara roused herself to call Ben. He wasn’t at his club or his office; she finally reached him at home, where he’d gone to pick up some papers, he told her. He took the news of the accident unemotionally—perhaps because Sara was numb and exhausted and her recitation of it was unemotional. She felt glad to hang up and go back to Michael.
At eight o’clock he woke up again, complaining that he was thirsty. She gave him a drink of water, then coaxed him into eating a half slice of bread. Every bite he swallowed was like a weight being lifted from her shoulders. “I was trying to keep the birds dry,” he muttered drowsily.
“What, darling?”
“There’s a nest in the willow tree, Mum. I put the umbrella over it so the birds wouldn’t get wet.” Then he fell asleep.
Sara cried for ten minutes. Then she felt like laughing. That scared her, so she got up and went to the kitchen to find something to eat.
On the way, she heard knocking at the front door. Halfway down the hall, she saw who it was through the glass, in the glow from the porch light. Her footsteps quickened and she threw open the door. “Alex! Thank God!”
It wasn’t the greeting he’d been expecting. “I should’ve called first,” he began. “I won’t come in, I just wanted to see you and tell you—”
“For God’s sake, come in.”
She took his sleeve and pulled on it. He thought she wanted him inside so that no one would see him from the street, because his coming here could compromise her. Then he saw her face—flushed with illness or excitement or something else, eyes red-rimmed, her mouth drawn with tension. “What is it, Sara, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Michael! No—he’s all right. He’s hurt but he’s going to get well.” She reached for his hands when she saw the fear in his eyes. And at last, after all the hours of worry and torment, a little comfort began to seep into her soul and warm it. “Come and see him. Please—would you like to? He’s in the back parlor.” It was important to her for some reason that Alex see him. Holding his hand, she led him down the hall to the rear of the house.
She’d put a cloth over the lamp on the table to shade it. In the soft yellow light, they stood over the sofa together, watching Michael’s sleeping face. Sara whispered the terrible story in short, halting sentences, using the words of fear and desperation she hadn’t been able to say to Ben. Alex felt chilled to the bone. He gripped her hand tighter as he saw it all in his mind, and he found it impossible not to think the unthinkable, imagine a different and horrible ending. “I wish I’d been here,” was all he could say when she finished, and she whispered back immediately, “I wish you had too.”
She bent over to brush the pale hair back from her son’s forehead, reluctant to leave him yet. “They say you don’t know how you’ll react in a crisis until you’re in the midst of one,” she murmured, straightening. “Well, now I know. I fell to pieces, Alex. I was completely
useless. If it hadn’t been for Daisy, I know I’d still be rocking him in my arms in the back yard right now. In the rain.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’d have pulled yourself together and done everything that needed to be done.”
“You can’t know that. How do you know?”
“Because you would have.”
“That’s no answer.” But it comforted her immeasurably.
She kissed Michael one last time. She felt startled, and strangely moved, when Alex bent down and kissed him too, with a gentleness she’d never seen in him before. Then she led him out of the parlor and into the kitchen.
“I was about to make some tea. Will you have a cup with me?” He said yes, and she set about lighting the gas stove and putting the kettle on. But her hands shook so severely when she took the cups and saucers down from the cabinet that she almost dropped them. “Goodness!” She laughed shakily, surprised; she thought she’d finally gotten her nerves under control.
“Sit down and let me do it,” he ordered, pulling her away from the counter and backing her toward the big kitchen table.
“All right. I won’t sit down, though.” She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering.
“Are you cold?”
“No, I couldn’t be. It’s stuffy in here.”
“But if you’re cold—”
“No, it’s stuffy. Open the door, will you?”
He did, and the moldy scent of wet earth wafted in through the screen. The rain had stopped, but the sound of water in the gutters was still a soft, steady gurgle.
She told him where the milk and sugar were, the tin of biscuits, the plates and napkins. She apologized for not having any lemons. He worked smoothly and efficiently, more at home in a kitchen than most men would be, she imagined. She liked to look at his hands; they were lean and strong and sensitive-looking—an artist’s hands. “Do you cook for yourself in your little house on the beach?”
“Sometimes.”
“Too bad you don’t have your Mrs. Wiggs to cook for you. Michael loves your house, by the way. Did you know he rode his bicycle all the way out there by himself about a fortnight ago? To leave you a message about our walk. Oh yes, of course you knew, you must have gotten the message.” She put her hands on the sides of her face and pressed.
“What do you take in your tea?”
“Sugar. I’ll do it—oh. Thank you, yes, one. Ben takes four, can you imagine? Sometimes Michael drinks ‘cambric’ tea—I tell him that’s what it is but really it’s just hot water and sugar. And lemon.”
“Will you sit down to drink this?” He held out a steaming cup.
“I won’t, if you don’t mind. I’m too keyed up.” Leaning against the table, she set the saucer aside and held the hot cup in both hands because her fingers were freezing. “I wonder if I’m still in shock.”
He thought she was. He took a sip of the hot, strong tea. “When I was about eight, Sara, I thought it would be a fine idea to jump on the freight train that rode so slowly—I thought—past my grandfather’s lettuce farm every day at noon. So one day I did it.”
“What happened?”
“I broke my leg in two places, fractured my hip, and punctured a lung.”
“Alex!”
“The thing is, in three months I was fine again, perfect, as if nothing had ever happened to me.”
She set her cup down carefully. “I know, children are wonderfully resilient. Even the doctor says in six weeks Michael will be completely well. I know all that, and I know accidents happen to everyone’s children and you can’t—let—yourself fall apart. But this hurts. This hurts too much. Oh lord, I’m starting again. I hate to cry.” She dashed at her cheeks with the back of her wrist. “I protect him too much, I know it. I’m not a good mother.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“No, it’s true, you don’t know. I love him too much, it’s not good for him. When I thought he was hurt, when I thought he might die, I wanted to die too. Because he’s all I have. So I—try to shield him from everything, and it’s wrong, but I can’t help it. And he’s so good, he’s so kind and loving—” she turned around, struggling not to cry but unable to stop talking. “He deserves the best, the absolute best of everything, and all I can do is love him, it’s the only thing I can give him—”
“Sara, don’t do this.” He hesitated, just for a second, then put his hands on her shoulders. As soon as he did, she dissolved into helpless weeping. Her whole body shook with deep, racking sobs, and she kept saying something he couldn’t understand. He turned her gently and put his arms around her. For a second she stiffened, but then she leaned into him heavily, hands fisted against his chest, shuddering. Finally he made out what she was saying.
“Ben’s going to send him away.”
He stroked the wet hair back from her cheek. “What do you mean? Send him where?”
“To Germany. A mil-military school.” Her mouth felt gluey; she could hardly talk. She swallowed painfully. “I think he’s lying. I think. I think he’s trying to sc-scare me. Oh God.”
He held tighter, appalled. It couldn’t be true; Cochrane couldn’t send his own son away without Sara’s consent. He’d terrorized her somehow, that was it. Alex murmured against her hair and pressed his hands gently up and down her backbone. Gradually she quieted, but the tears wouldn’t stop. He took out his handkerchief and put it in her hand.
“Pardon me,” she muttered. “You must think…” She stopped to wipe her eyes. “I don’t know what you must think.” She put her hand to her throat; it ached, and there was a lump there too big to swallow.
He pushed her hand away and put his fingers on the warm skin of her throat, stroking softly. “Put your head back,” he whispered. “Relax your shoulders.” She obeyed, more out of exhaustion than trust, he knew. He soothed her with his fingertips in slow, feather-light circles, one arm around her waist to steady her, and after a moment the tautness in her body began to soften. Her eyes closed. When she sighed, he put his lips on her throat where his fingers had been. Breathing softly, not moving. Her scent was lilac; she’d put some here, right here. His hand widened at the back of her head, tangling in her hair, cradling her. He moved his mouth to her jaw and followed the fine, fragile line to the base of her ear. A stray tear still glistened on her cheekbone. He touched it with his lips, tasted it. She said, “Oh,” indistinctly. Then she craned her neck, pushed against him, and twisted out of his arms.
She went to the stove and pretended to do something with the kettle and the gas ring. That could not have happened, she told herself; she’d misunderstood, misinterpreted his touch. And if she hadn’t, she must behave as if she had, because anything else was beyond possibility. But her body was in rebellion; her senses had misunderstood nothing. Physical desire might be unfamiliar to her, but it was not unrecognizable. So she fiddled with the tea strainer and kept her back turned, trying to think of something to say. “Would you care for—”
Alex put his hand on her arm. She made a half-turn toward him, and he pulled her the rest of the way around. In her eyes he saw all the reasons why he must not keep on with this. “Sara,” he breathed. A plea and an apology. Then he bent his head and kissed her.
She could have broken away again; he wasn’t forcing her. Each moment, each second, she made a new decision not to move. Shy, her hands crept to his shoulders, his neck, caressing him for the first time. His lips were warm and sweet; they tasted like tea. The feathery softness of his mustache tickled her. He kissed her in tender little sips, slow and savory, and the secretive sucking sounds his lips made did something extraordinary to the muscles in her abdomen. They held each other tighter in a quick, hard embrace, then relaxed again.
His restraint calmed her, although she sensed it was hard-won. The kiss that had never stopped started again. His fingers drifted to her temples, the hollows of her cheeks, her eyebrows, stroking her with such tenderness that she was afraid she might start to cry again. He whispered her name, and when his lips gently
urged her, she opened her mouth to him, submissive at first, then hungry. It amazed her that they wanted the same things, that what gave him pleasure pleased her, too. She had never been touched like this; her most womanly fantasies had never taken her this far. The seductive lure of surrender beckoned from a place inside she couldn’t even recognize. Anything, she thought with the part of her mind that could still think. Anything.
He had her pressed against the wall between the pantry door and the spice cabinet, and for the rest of his life he would think of her whenever he smelled the combined musks of thyme, marjoram, and cardamom. He heard himself humming to her, saying, “Oh, Sara,” and “Ah, lovely, lovely,” silly lover talk that he would not have thought could pass his lips. It was because he couldn’t believe he had her, that she was letting this happen. She was all and nothing that he’d thought she would be. He deepened the kiss, deliberately drugging her, his hands slipping down, down, caressing her throat and sliding lower, surrounding her breasts. He began a slow, concentrated exploration, thigh to thigh, stomach to stomach, his fingers teasing and soothing the heavy softness of her breasts in the scant space of warmth he’d left between them. Her quickening pants lured him on. She was like a virgin, so surprised at each sensation he gave to her. He felt himself spinning, dizzy, speeding toward something beyond his control, but he couldn’t let her go. He wanted to possess her, lose himself in her. At last it was prosaic necessity that made him murmur against her soft throat, “Sara, love, I can’t do this much longer standing up, is there someplace we can go?”
Too much. Too much pleasure, too new. And suddenly too much like pain. “No,” she said, pushed his hands away, and stepped out of his arms.
Reason flooded back in cold waves as soon as she was alone again, transforming what had just happened from inevitable to incredible. The temptation to blame him tugged at her for a moment, then skulked away, embarrassed. “Alex, I’m sorry,” she got out thickly, “I made a mistake. I beg your pardon. Shouldn’t have happened. My fault.” She waved all her fingers in the air, to erase it.
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