A Father for Philip

by Gill, Judy Griffith

  “Try what?” Philip sounded suspicious.

  Jeff selected an apple from the basket. “Si’s feeling bad about you not liking him very much. I told him that you like him all right… Aren’t scared of him, or anything, just a bit shy, and he said that to prove it, if you’d give him an apple, he’d feel better. Now, ordinarily I would never give him another one this close to his suppertime, but just this once, I’ve agreed. Take this over to him, will you, please?”

  Jeff held out the apple to Philip who backed away, his face going pale. “No! I don’t want to! He’s too big!”

  “Steady, now,” said Jeff. “That’s what Si thought you’d say. He’s smarter than I thought he was. He suggested that maybe if I picked you up and held you while you fed him the apple, he wouldn’t look so big to you. You want to try it that way?”

  “No! No!”

  “Okay, Phil. No need to shout. He understands, don’t you Siwash?”

  The horse whickered softly and withdrew his head and neck.

  “I have your birthday present here, Philip,” Jeff told the child, giving him a warm hug around his shoulders. “I couldn’t find one in any of the stores I went to, but Siwash had an extra one. He said I could give it to you. It’s from both of us. Like it?”

  Philip took the heavy horseshoe into his hands and smiled up at Jeff, his eyes aglow, partly from having the gift, and partly from the knowledge that even if he didn’t want to go too close to Si watch, Jeff was not going to say he was a sissy. “Sure I like it! Come on Jeff. Let’s get the cabin finished so we can hang it up.”

  Presently Philip said, “What time is it, Jeff? I have to feed Casey at five-thirty.”

  “Twenty after, sport, so you better make tracks. See you tomorrow?”

  “Yup. Tomorrow, Jeff.”

  ~ * ~

  When Philip entered the clearing the next afternoon, the door to the stable stood open and neither Jeff nor the horse were to be seen.

  Much work had been done on the cabin. The ridge pole was in place and rafters had been strung across the opening between the two ends. Neat piles of cedar shakes stood on the ground, waiting to become a roof. Philip stood looking at the cabin, wishing he didn’t have to go to school. There was so much going on that he had to miss. He heard the gentle clip-clop of Siwash’s hooves and leapt through the doorway to be safe inside the cabin until the horse had been locked up in his stall.

  He heard Jeff talking to his mount.

  “Here we are, boy, home again.” Jeff gave no sign that he had spotted the brief flash of movement when Philip and darted into the cabin. “No, sorry, Si. You have to go inside. You know Philip will be here soon, and he’d rather not see you wandering all around the clearing. Now, Si! Don’t whine about it. Oh, come on now, you know I’ll give you an apple to make up for locking you in like a criminal.”

  When the bottom half of the Dutch door had been securely latched, Philip came out of the cabin. He walked over to the bushel basket of apples, selected one which he took to Jeff, who turned as if surprised to see the boy. He took the apple with a smile of thanks and fed it to the horse. Siwash chomped with vigor for a moment, swallowed noisily and looked around for more. Philip gave Jeff a pleading glance and asked, “Can he have just one more? It won’t spoil his dinner.”

  Jeff walked casually way. “He could, I guess, but I don’t have time to give it to him. Have to get the roof put on. Might rain any day now.” He climbed the ladder and began hammering shakes on the lower edge of the roof.

  Philip stood torn between his feelings of guilt that the horse had to be imprisoned and his fear of approaching it with an appeasement. Out of the corner of his eye Jeff saw guilt to begin to take the upper hand. He backed silently down the ladder. He seemed unaware of Philip’s halting progress toward the horse. However, when the child was but too short paces away and Siwash whinnied, Jeff was ready to catch the cannonball of boy who ran to him, yelling.

  Jeff held the shaking little body close for a minute and stood, the child still in his arms. “Come on, son. Like Si said yesterday, if I hold you up, he won’t look so big. Okay?”

  Philip drew in a long, shuddering breath and clung to the back off Jeff’s collar. “Okay, but I still don’t like him much. I just feel sorry that he’s locked up. Maybe another apple will make him happier.”

  “Hold it on the flat of your hand and don’t let those big teeth scare you. Horses never eat people. All they eat are oats and hay and apples and sometimes sugar, but that’s not good for them.” He talked gently and approached the horse slowly. “He likes carrots, too. Do you?”

  When he was within an arm’s length of Siwash, Philip held out the apple on a shaking hand. The horse took it gently and munched, drops of juice splattering from his jaws. He whinnied softly and Jeff whispered to Philip, “Say ‘you’re welcome, Si’. He was thanking you.”

  Obediently, Philip said, “You’re welcome, Si.”

  ~ * ~

  Thursday and Friday afternoons were just about exact repeats of Wednesday. Siwash was locked up with many sincere apologies from Jeff and given an extra apple by Philip, for the inconvenience.

  Then came Saturday...

  ~ * ~

  Saturday morning was sunny and bright, a perfect June morning and Eleanor woke with her head feeling worse than ever. It was totally stuffed up and her chest ached, too. Her vision swam as she sat up and she held her head in her hands until she felt it settle down a bit. Philip was in his room, with Casey in bed, she judged from the sounds of merriment pouring forth. Oh, these summer colds, she lamented. They hang on forever and ever. She sneezed and climbed wearily from her bed. How am I going to get through the weekend with Philip home all day? she wondered. If I didn’t feel so terrible, I’d get in the car and go and see the doctor. I should ask Bill to take me, but with Kathy so pregnant and carrying twins she didn’t like to take Bill away. Besides, Dr. Grimes didn’t hold office hours on Saturday, which could mean hours in the ER of the hospital, an hour’s drive away, spreading her germs around to everyone else. And she truly did feel too terrible to go anywhere, so she dropped the idea of seeking medical help, and instead sat slumped at the table drinking tasteless coffee and nibbling at sawdust toast while her son packed in two bowls of cereal, a boiled egg and an orange.

  “Mom!” called Philip loudly from two feet away, with his mouth full of half chewed orange, “can I take Casey into the woods today?” After grimace of pain, which Philip took for the forerunner of her refusal, he added, “To play with Jeff. He’d like to see him, Mom. I know he would. Huh, Mom? Huh?”

  “Philip, don’t yell! Remember to use your indoor voice in the house. My head hurts. I told you, Casey’s too small yet to walk all that way.”

  “I’ll put him in my bike basket and I won’t let him fall out. I’ll ride real slow and careful. There’s lots of room for him to play in the clearing now. It’s big. It goes all the way to that bend of the creek before it turns back this way. It used to be just a little place, Mom, with the dogwood tree at the edge, but now the dogwood’s right out in the middle and the cabin’s just beside it, so there’s lots of room and he won’t get lost.”

  A little clearing with the dogwood at one edge, Eleanor thought in agony. So that’s his favorite place to play. I might’ve known. Then quickly, before he could shatter her skull and before she began to shed tears which she knew were close, Eleanor said, “Go ahead, then. But look after Casey and be home for lunch.” She really should teach him to tell time, since he hadn’t gotten the message when his teacher had told the class about telling time. If she bought him a watch…

  “Can I pack a lunch? Can I, Mom? Huh?”

  “No!”

  And Philip scooped up his pup and scampered away.

  When he was out of sight, Eleanor let the despair and desolation wash over her. The clearing, as Philip called it, her glade. The place where her love had first found her, the place where her child had been conceived, her special place had been taken over by a sm
all, noisy boy and an imaginary playmate, and now, a puppy. Something in her mind told her to think about it for a few minutes. Something Philip had had said needed consideration, but her mind refused to function.

  Eleanor put her head down her arms in the mess of crumbs from breakfast and wept. As she cried she did not hear the screen door squeak open, and the first inkling she had that she was not alone was when a muffled gasp of sound sucked in over bared teeth disturbed her just as an arm slipped around her and her head was pulled onto a masculine chest.

  “What’s the trouble, Ellie?” Grant asked. “I found I couldn’t stay away and wait for you to call me, so I came back. Just in time, too, it seems. Don’t cry, Ellie. What is it? Did you miss me?”

  Ellie sat back from Grant, wiped her face with the backs of her hands, and said, “I don’t know, Grant. Maybe. I’m just feeling horrible. I’m sick. My head aches. I hurt all over and my sinuses are all plugged up. And I was sitting here just feeling lonely.”

  He took a seat at the far end of the table and let her cry for a few more minutes and then leaned over and touched her forehead with his hand. “You have a bit of a fever, Ellie. I sure hope you’re not coming down with anything contagious.” The concern she heard in his tone was not for her, but for himself, and that made her fall apart all over again. He brought her a box of tissues.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You know this isn’t like me. I’ve been trying to keep going for Philip’s sake, and now I’m just too tired and miserable to go on. I feel so alone.”

  “You don’t have to be alone, Ellie,” Grant said. “If you’re lonely, remember it’s you own doing. You don’t need to keep yourself in a position where you have no one to help you when you’re sick and can’t go on. You could lean on me, let me take over today and every day. I need you, too, Ellie, and you need me. Admit it. Start the proceedings. Do it now.”

  She wondered dimly why he didn’t reach out to hold her. She would have loved to be held. A nasty little voice told her she’d have welcomed a comforting hug from Bill, from the mailman, the FedEx guy, anybody. But Grant was here. He was offering surcease from the solitude her own conscience kept her locked in, but the offer, without the physical support, seemed hollow. Right. Germs. Grant had an almost pathological fear of germs. She understood that. Really she did, but if he cared, as he claimed to do, surely he could get over it for just long enough to hold her for a moment or two?

  Eleanor shivered and Grant did touch her then, taking her elbow, placing the other arm around her, lifting her from her chair. She slumped against him, knowing that if she hadn’t been so sick, so weak she would’ve insisted on standing on her own two feet, unaided.

  “Come on,” he said. “You go lie down and I’ll clean up in here. Really, Ellie, it’s not like you to let things go so badly. Your house is a mess.”

  “I’ve been sick,” she protested.

  “So? Haven’t you taught the kid how to wield a broom or wipe the table?”

  “He makes his own bed.”

  “And not very damn well,” Grant said with a snort as he led her past Philip’s room. “If a member of my housekeeping staff made a bed like that, I’d fire here and—”

  “Philip is a little boy. A child! He’s not ‘housekeeping staff’. Oh, don’t. Leave it,” she added when he would have untied her bathrobe. “I’ll keep it on, I’m cold, Grant.”

  Dimly, Eleanor heard the rattle of dishes, the hum of the vacuum cleaner over the carpet in the hallway and living room. She could hear the sounds of doors opening and closing and knew Grant was picking things up, putting them away, tidying the house. The knowledge that when she did feel like getting up, she would do so to clean house, was comforting. She dozed until he brought her a cup of tea.

  “It’s so nice to be looked after,” she said, giving him a sleepy smile and then sneezing, slopping the tea into the saucer. Grant snatched it from her as she wound up for another sneeze and put it on the bedside table. He pulled the easy chair away from the side of her bed, sat down and looked around complacently.

  “This is the first time I’ve actually been in this room, Ellie. I like it. Should we keep the place for odd weekends when we want to get away?”

  “What?”

  “When we’re married, Ellie. Come on, don’t play dumb with me. You said you missed me.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. You said you’d been lonely. I don’t want you to be lonely anymore, Ellie. I don’t want to be lonely myself. We’re good together. You have to admit that.”

  “But I haven’t agreed to marry you. I can’t,” she said. “Could you bring me some more aspirin, please, Grant? God, but my head hurts! Even my eyes ache.”

  He brought it to her, along with a glass of water, handing it to her from arm’s length. “Maybe you should go to the hospital.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “Who’d look after Philip?”

  “I would,” he said. “Probably do him a world of good.”

  She recoiled at the thought. “No. I’m not that sick.” She lay back down. “I should have asked. How did your plans go in Kamloops?”

  He snorted and sat again in her chair. “They fell through.”

  “I’m sorry. What will you do now?”

  His gaze shifted away from her. He studied the toes of his wingtips. “I have… other options,” he said, then slapped his hands on his knees and stood. “But don’t you worry about that now. Get some rest. I’ll stay here and look after things till you’re feeling better.”

  She thought about arguing, but merely closed her eyes. It was easier not to buck Grant at this point. He believed what he wanted to believe, and she didn’t have the physical or emotional stamina to make him see reason.

  “I’m going to make some lunch for you in an hour or so, and you are going to eat every bit of it. Where’s the kid?”

  “Philip,” she said, deliberately stressing her son’s name, “is out in the woods playing. He has a puppy. I got it from Ralph Exley for Phil’s birthday. He’ll be back in time for lunch. Lately he’s had a built-in clock and comes home in time to feed Casey.”

  “Casey being the dog?” Grant said coldly.

  “Yes,” she nodded. “He’s a cute pup, Grant. You’ll like him.”

  “Not bloody likely,” he snapped. “Dogs aren’t my thing at all. You know that, Ellie. He better not get too attached to it. I won’t have a dogs in my home. They’re dirty, noisy and for the most part, untrainable.”

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing he lives in my home,” she said.

  “When we’re married, your home will be my home. Or, rather, my home will be yours, but there will be no dogs in it.”

  “So, if I were to marry you, you’d expect me to make him give—”

  Eleanor broke off as she heard the slam of the screen door, the pounding of footsteps across the kitchen floor which heralded Philip’s arrival. “Hey, Mom? Where are you?”

  Before Eleanor could answer, Grant stepped out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. “Shut up!” Eleanor heard him snarl.” Don’t you know your mother’s sick? All this noise isn’t going to make her feel any better. Get that mutt out of here, too. I just finished vacuuming the hall.”

  Grant’s voice faded and became indistinct as he went into the kitchen. Eleanor could hear her son’s piping voice raised in protest and the deeper rumble of Grant, still berating him. She swung her feet over the side of the bed, intending to go and intervene. She swayed dizzily as she came upright then sank back down onto the bed.

  No, she told herself. I have to let them have it out. I can’t interfere, if I do decided to let Grant help me raise Philip, I won’t be able to interfere each time I think Grant’s being too hard on him. We’d never have any peace. But how hard it is! Why can’t Grant have a little more compassion, empathy? Why? Why? She lay back down on her pillows and pulled the blanket up high around her shoulders, feeling dreadful as she listened to the muffled wrangling in the kitchen.
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br />   Presently Grant returned with neatly laid tray bearing a bowl of soup, crisp fingers of Melba toast and a tall cool looking glass of orange juice. There was a single spray of babies’ breath in a bud vase on one corner of the tray. “Here you are,” said Grant bracingly. “Sit up straighter and hold onto the tray while I fix your pillows.” He did so, keeping his face carefully averted from hers, she noticed, trying to feel amused, but managing to feel only an odd sense of contempt he truly didn’t deserve.

  “This is lovely, Grant,” she smiled, hoping to make up for nasty thoughts. “I don’t have the words to tell you how much I appreciate it.”

  “When you’re better, you can show me. In fact, it weren’t for my job… Care of the traveling public, you know… I’d make you show me right now! You look so kissable, Ellie, red nose and all.”

  “Oh, Grant, I know how you feel about germs, and I do understand.” As if Grant personally dealt with the traveling public. He did not. He had staff who took care of the hotel guests—unless they were VIPs. It was the same in the restaurant.

  “Germs, schmerms,” Grant responded. “I’ve a good mind to say to heck with the germs, and kiss you anyway.” He bestowed a loving look upon her. “It’s not every day the girl of my dreams agrees to become my wife.”

  “But I—”

  He interrupted. “After all, they’re your germs. What’s yours is mine” but Eleanor noticed he made no attempt to kiss her, for all his brave words.

  “Sort of, love me, love my germs?, she asked, tasting the chicken soup he had brought. It tasted like warm water, and when Grant gave her a smile and a nod, she went on, touching on the subject she had been wondering how to approach with tact. “Then don’t you think to could try to love my son a little, Grant?”

  “Oh, Ellie…” Grant sounded genuinely contrite. He rubbed a hand over his immaculate hair, mussing it, giving himself an oddly boyish look. “I just can’t seem to get through to him,” he said worriedly. “He doesn’t like me, you know, and that makes it doubly difficult for me to talk to him. I’ve never been good with kids, and knowing he dislikes me, resents me, makes it worse. The kid seems to get my back up every time he opens his mouth,” Grant said, then went on hopefully, “but it will all work out. All the boy needs is a little firm discipline, as I’ve pointed out before. Take lunchtime, for example, I had a salami sandwich made for him, and then he decided he wanted peanut butter. He put up a bit of a battle, but when he saw I meant business, he ate the salami. Now he’s gone outside to play.”