The bartender laughed. “The only customers we get here at nine o’clock in the morning are from the hospital across the street.” His hand went down behind the bar and came up with a cigar. “Congratulations. Compliments of the management.”
“Thank you.” Daniel looked at the cigar. It had a gold-imprinted wrapper. IT’S A BOY!
“We also sell them by the box of twenty-five,” the bartender said. “Two dollars.”
“I’ll take a box,” Daniel said. “And let me buy you a drink.”
The bartender grinned at him. “I make it a rule never to take a drink before twelve o’clock. But this time I’ll make an exception. I’m from New York, anyway, and it’s twelve there already.” He poured himself a shot and put the box of cigars on the bar all in the same motion. “What’s the kid’s name?”
“Daniel. Daniel B. Huggins, Junior.”
The bartender raised his glass. “Here’s to him.”
They put away their drinks. Daniel ordered a refill. He drank half, then chased it down with some water.
“If you want to make any calls,” the bartender said, “there’s a phone booth in the corner.”
Daniel looked down the room, then shook his head. “I’ve got time,” he said, picking up his glass. “Give me another. You have one too.”
The bartender shook his head. “No, thanks, Mr. Huggins. I still have another eight hours to go. If I begin putting them away now, I’ll never make it through lunch hour.”
Daniel nodded. He pulled the wrapper off the cigar and lit it. He blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. It wasn’t bad. “Good cigar.”
“The kitchen’s open if you’d like some breakfast,” the bartender said.
Suddenly, Daniel realized he was famished. “Steak and eggs with hash browns.”
The bartender smiled and turned, yelling toward the kitchen in the back. “Hey, Charlie! Getcha ass out here and set a table. We got a live one.”
***
He bought a bouquet of spring flowers on the way back to the hospital. The door was closed as he came down the corridor. Cautiously he turned the knob and opened it.
Tess was lying in the bed, propped up by the pillows behind her. She had already put on some makeup and lipstick, but her skin seemed pale and almost translucent beneath it. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be resting, not paying attention to the nurse on the other side of the bed who was straightening the sheets.
He tiptoed quietly across the room and stood at the side of the bed, looking down at her. She opened her eyes. He smiled, holding the flowers toward her. “Congratulations, Mother.”
She looked at the flowers. “They’re beautiful,” she said. Her voice seemed to have no strength.
He kissed her. “How do you feel?”
“Okay,” she said. “Weak. I can’t catch my breath. It’s like there’s a band across my chest.”
“You’ll be all right after you get some rest,” the nurse said. “Sometimes the bandages we have around your abdomen make you feel like that.” She turned to Daniel. “I’ll put the flowers in a vase for you, Mr. Huggins.”
Daniel gave her the flowers, and they watched as she took a vase from the closet, filled it with water from the sink and arranged the flowers in it.
“Did you see the baby yet?” Tess asked.
“No,” Daniel answered. “Did you?”
She shook her head.
“The doctor said he’s a big one,” Daniel said. “Ten pounds four ounces.”
“My brothers were all ten pounds or more,” Tess said. She looked at the nurse. “Can we?”
The nurse smiled. “That’s just what I was about to do. I’ll be back with your son in just a minute.” She closed the door behind her.
Daniel pulled a chair to the side of the bed and took her hand. “I bought a box of cigars. Look.” He held one up. “See the band? It says, ‘It’s a boy.’”
She smiled wanly. “Were you here this mornin’ before I went upstairs?”
“Of course I was—don’t you remember? I even walked you upstairs to the operating room.”
“I thought maybe you did, but everything was so fuzzy. They gave me a shot before I went upstairs and I don’t remember too good.” She looked at him cautiously. “Did I say anything bad?”
He shook his head. “No. Only that you loved me. Maybe you think that was bad.”
“That was good.” She pressed his hand. “I do love you. You’ve always been so good to me.”
He laughed. “You didn’t treat me too bad either.”
The door behind him opened and the nurse came in carrying the baby, all covered with a blanket. She went around the bed across from Daniel. She lifted the cover from the baby’s head and held the infant toward Tess. “Mrs. Huggins, your son.”
Wonderingly, Tess took the baby. Gingerly, she moved him close to her and peered into his tiny face. She looked up at Daniel, a radiant smile on her face. “Oh, Daniel, he’s so beautiful. He looks just like…”
A sudden agony contorted her face. “Daniel!” she screamed. “Oh, my God!” The baby began to slip from her nerveless fingers, and Daniel caught it just as she slumped back against the pillows, a light froth bubbling from her mouth. She turned to look at him, her eyes bright and staring. Her lips moved as if she were trying to speak. Then her eyes went blank and her face fell sideways on the pillow, her eyes staring into eternity, her mouth open with the words she would never speak.
The nurse tore around the bed to his side, roughly pushing him out of the way as she hit a button on the wall. A bell began to ring in the hall outside the room. A moment later the room was filled with nurses and doctors; oxygen tanks were being rolled in with other machinery.
Daniel stood against the wall, watching them for a moment. The nurse looked up, catching his eye for a moment. He shook his head. “It won’t do any good,” he said to no one in particular in a flat voice. “She’s gone.”
Then gently he hid the baby’s face in the blanket. “Come, my son,” he said, carrying the child with him into the hall.
Chapter 16
Daniel pulled his coat collar tight against his chest as he stood bareheaded in the slanting rain. The minister’s voice was as rich and full as if there had been a crowd of mourners instead of just one lonely man. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”
Daniel stared at the reddish mahogany coffin, the rain beading on its highly lacquered surface and dripping down its sides into the open, yawning grave beneath it. So small, so very small. Somehow it didn’t seem right. She had never been a small woman.
The minister’s voice stopped. He turned to Daniel. “You may add your own prayer,” he said.
“I was never very much of a praying man, Reverend,” Daniel said.
“It doesn’t matter; the Lord will hear whatever you say.”
Daniel took a deep breath. “You were a good woman, Tess. May the Lord make you welcome.”
The two gravediggers looked expectantly at the minister. It was their last job of the day and they were anxious to get it over with. The minister glanced at Daniel to see if he had finished his prayer, then turned to them and nodded.
Expertly, the two men moved away the steel poles on which the coffin had been resting, then began to lower it into the open grave until it settled with a squishy sound on the already water-soaked bottom. They reached for the shovels.
“I’ll do it,” Daniel said, stepping forward. In answer to the questioning looks: “Back home, we always buried our own.”
Silently, they stepped back and watched him. The feel of the shovel was good in his hands; it took him back in time. He was just a boy, and the mines were dark. He looked into the grave as the first shovelful of dirt fell upon the coffin and scattered over the flowers lying upon its closed cover. Soon she too would be covered by the dark. The rhythm picked up. The earth was rain-soaked and heavy, and soon he felt the sweat coming up under his clothing and with it a sense of lightness and strength. Suddenly he was once again toget
her with the earth. Then, almost before he knew it, it was over, the earth lying neatly in a mound over the grave.
He handed the shovel to one of the men. “Thank you,” he said. The man nodded without answering.
The minister walked back to the car with him. At the door of the car Daniel stopped and took a twenty dollar bill from his pocket.
“You don’t have to do that,” the minister said. “Forest Lawn has already included my services.”
“Take it anyway,” Daniel said. “I’m sure that someone in your parish could use the help.”
“Thank you,” the minister said. Daniel got behind the wheel of the car. “Don’t be bitter, my son,” he said.
“I’m not bitter, Reverend,” Daniel answered, starting the engine. “Death and I are not strangers. Nor will we ever be.”
***
He had to pull around the big black limousine parked against the curb in order to get into the driveway between his house and the next. He glanced at the chauffeur sitting imperturbably behind the wheel of the limousine, then ran through the rain to his open doorway.
There were neatly closed and tied cardboard boxes in the living room, stacked as if awaiting pickup. He walked through the empty room to the bedroom. Chris was there together with another woman—middle-aged, heavyset, with blond hair pulled neatly back on her head in a bun. They turned as they heard his footsteps.
Chris’s voice was without surprise. “There’s a fresh bottle of bourbon on the table,” she said. “Help yourself to a drink. We’ll be through here in a minute.”
He looked at her for a moment, his eyes falling to the open drawer of the dresser and the cardboard box next to it. The last bits and pieces of Tess’s clothing were being packed. Without speaking, he went back into the living room.
When she came into the room, he was standing at the window, staring into the rain, half-empty glass of whiskey in his hand. “Someone had to do it,” she said.
“You know, it was raining the first day we came to California,” he said. He turned to look at her. “Seems only fitting it’s raining now.”
“The Goodwill truck should be here in about a half-hour to pick up the things,” she said. “I’ve also ordered some new furniture for the baby’s room and a new convertible couch for the living room, one that turns into a bed.”
“I was the only one at the cemetery,” he said. “I never knew any of the friends she made while she was working, so I didn’t know whom to call. I never knew where any of her family back home were either.”
“The painters will be here first thing in the morning. They said they’ll need only a day. The new furniture will be delivered the day after.”
“She had nobody but me,” he said.
“Daniel,” she said sharply.
He looked at her.
“She had a son. Your son. But now she’s gone and there’s nothing that can be done about it. So get off it. You have a responsibility toward your son and you have to plan for it.”
There was pain in his eyes. “I’m scared. I don’t know where to begin.”
“I’ll help you,” she said. “That’s why I had Mrs. Torgersen come out here.”
“Mrs. Torgersen?”
“The woman in there. She’s an experienced baby nurse and nanny. She will take care of the child for you.”
He looked at her with a growing respect. “Chris.”
She smiled.
“Thank you.”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I love you. And that’s more than just fucking.”
He looked into her eyes for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I’m learning.” He reached for the bottle and poured more whiskey into his glass. “But I have other problems. I don’t know whether I can afford all this. I may have to take the job out here that Bioff and Browne offered me.”
“But you said they were crooks.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to be one.”
“You know better than that,” she said. “At least be honest with yourself. If you’re going to jump the fence, jump clean over it. Take a job with Uncle Tom. Don’t climb halfway up and try to straddle it.”
“Maybe I’d be better off if I brought the baby back East with me.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “What will you do? Keep the baby in a suitcase? And how will you take care of him?”
He didn’t answer.
“You have a perfectly good home here, and it’s a comfortable place for a child to grow up. And the way you move around, there’s no way for you to take care of the child. The best thing for you to do is go with Mrs. Torgersen. She’s got the experience to deal with all the things you know nothing about. She took care of my sister’s kids for years.”
“How much do I have to pay her?”
“It won’t be much. She wanted to come out to California. She’s had it with the cold and ice back East. She’ll take two hundred a month. My sister was paying her three fifty.”
“That’s twenty-four hundred a year,” he said. “I figure food and other expenses at least sixteen hundred, two thousand. That doesn’t leave me very much.”
“What do you need money for?” she asked. “The union pays your expenses while you’re on the road. And you’re always on the road.”
He took a sip of his whiskey. “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”
“Not all of it,” she said.
“What did you leave out?”
A touch of temper came into her voice. “If you’re too stupid to know, I’m not about to tell you.”
He was silent for a moment, searching her eyes. Then, abruptly, he turned away from her, back to the window. His voice was tight with emotion. “I’m not ready to talk about that yet.”
She walked to him and placed her hand gently on his arm. “I know that,” she said softly. “But in time you will be.”
***
Mrs. Torgersen was a take-charge lady. Just approaching fifty, she had been widowed twenty years before when her husband, a second mate in the merchant marine, had gone down with his ship, blown in half by a torpedo from a German submarine. She spoke an almost perfect English, only the faintest trace of her original Swedish sounding in her voice, and there was almost nothing she couldn’t do. Cook, sew, drive a car, clean house, laundry, garden. And she did it all with an efficiency that made everything seem almost effortless.
“You don’t have to worry, Mr. Huggins,” she said. “I’m a good woman, a responsible woman. I don’t fool around. I will take good care of your child. As if he was my own.”
“I’m sure of that, Mrs. Torgersen,” Daniel said. “I just want to make sure you have everything you need.”
“I can’t think of anything,” she said. “The house is very comfortable. I feel very good here.”
“Tomorrow morning, before we go to the hospital to pick up the baby, we’ll stop at the bank. I want to open an account for you so that you don’t have to wait for money each week,” Daniel said. “I’ll be moving around a lot, and there will be times I may not be able to send money as easily as I would like to.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Huggins,” she said. “And when you do come home, I can sleep on the new couch here.”
He smiled. “You don’t have to do that. I think I can stand it for a few days.”
She hesitated a moment before she spoke. “Is Miss Chris coming to the hospital with us?”
He looked at her in surprise. “I didn’t think of it. She never said anything about it.”
“You must excuse me, Mr. Huggins,” she said, almost apologetically. “But I have known Miss Chris for almost ten years, since she was fifteen years old. She would never say anything. But I think she would like to come.”
He nodded slowly. “Thank you, Mrs. Torgersen. I’ll ask her at dinner tonight.”
***
“No,” she said. “I’m going back to Chicago in the morning.”
He was surprised. “I thought—”
She interrupted. “I�
��m sorry. I’ve done all I can. I just can’t take any more.” She rose from the table in her bungalow and ran into the bedroom.
He followed her. She was standing in a corner of the room, her hands over her face. He put his arms around her shoulders and turned her to him. “Did I say something wrong?”
Wordlessly she shook her head.
“Then what is it?”
“I just took a good look at myself. I have to be nuts to put myself through the things I have.” She looked up into his face with moist eyes. “It was one thing to talk about our being together. But that was before I came here. It was almost in the abstract. But being here with you was not abstract. It was real. I saw your hurt. I saw your care. I love you. I know what you told me is true. That you need time. But I’m human. I hurt too much. I’ll be better off home, away from you. Maybe it won’t be as bad then.”
Silently, he moved her close to him and held her tightly. “I didn’t mean for it to be like this.”
“It’s not your fault. I did it all myself. You never said anything to make me think differently.” Her voice was muffled in his jacket.
The telephone began to ring. She looked up at him, then moved across the room and picked it up. “Hello?” she said into it, then listened for a moment. “I’ll tell him,” she said, putting the telephone down.
“It was Mrs. Torgersen. She said Mr. Murray just called and wants you to call him right back. He said it was an emergency.”
“I can’t stall any longer. There’s too much pressure on me.” Murray’s voice was taut. “When will you be back?”
“I can leave Sunday,” he said.
“Come to Chicago,” Murray said. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Okay.”
“Everything all right?” Murray asked. “What was it? A boy or a girl?”
Suddenly Daniel realized he hadn’t let him know what had happened. “A boy.”
“Congratulations,” Murray said. “Give my best to your wife, and I’ll see you in Chicago on Monday.”
He put down the telephone and turned to Chris. “Maybe I’d better go home,” he said heavily.
“No.”
He looked at her.
She met his eyes. “I told you I was nuts. No way are you getting out of here without giving me a farewell fuck.”
Memories of Another Day Page 31