Testing the Current

by William McPherson

  “I’ll take you back to bed,” his father said, putting his arm on Tommy’s shoulder. He pulled Tommy toward him and guided him down the hall. “Why did you use the boys’ bathroom?”

  “The light was on,” Tommy said.

  “Just a minute.” His father went into his room and grabbed the bathrobe that went with his pajamas. They were maroon silk. Tommy’s mother had given him the set for Christmas. “Is he all right?” Tommy heard his mother ask. “Yes, he’s fine. I think he’s a little better,” his father replied, and slipped into the robe as he took Tommy back to bed. When his father noticed how wet the pillow was, he got a fresh pillowcase, and put him in clean pajamas, too. That was nice of his father.

  “Pull up the shades, Daddy,” Tommy said. Mr. Wolfe’s coin glinted in the amethyst night. Then his father sat down on Tommy’s bed and rubbed his legs because Tommy said they ached. He wrapped them tightly in his blanket, the blanket Tommy had had ever since he could remember, whose satin binding that he loved to touch was frayed beyond repair, and the blanket so worn, too, that his mother had said it would have to go soon. Tommy didn’t use it as a blanket; he just took it to bed with him sometimes. He would get rid of it soon; he was too old for baby things. His father gave him another of Dr. Randolph’s pills—“just to be on the safe side,” he said—and continued rubbing his legs, making them warm, until Tommy stopped shivering and fell asleep. He didn’t know when his father left his room.

  Tommy didn’t feel so sick the next day, but Dr. Randolph came by in the afternoon and said he’d have to stay in bed for a few days anyway. He had a light case of the measles, Dr. Randolph said, and he’d have to keep his shades drawn and his lights out, and he couldn’t have any company except for his family. “You may not feel so bad today, Tommy,” he told him, “but measles are a serious business. You mustn’t have any lights, and you mustn’t try to read.”

  “Can I play at my desk?”

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Randolph said, “you can’t play at your desk, either. You’ve got to stay in bed with the lights out. But don’t worry. You’ve got a mild case and it won’t last long. You’ll be fit as a fiddle by New Year’s.”

  New Year’s! It was practically a whole week away. What would he do? Well, there wasn’t much he could do. He just lay in his bed and slept, and when he was awake he thought about his Monopoly set and the desk he’d gotten for Christmas. John carried the desk upstairs and set it up in the hall outside his bedroom, so he could see it when the door was open. He wasn’t supposed to play at it, but as the days wore on he sometimes did, if no one was there. For a while he lay on his back with his legs in the air and pumped, pretending he was riding a bicycle. He examined the red spots on his stomach and chest, trying to decide if there were more or less of them, if they were getting bigger or smaller. He listened to the comings and goings of his parents and his brothers and their friends; someone seemed always to be going in or out the door, and he wondered if they thought it was like a magical doorway to an enchanted forest, too. Mrs. Steer came to see him, even though he wasn’t supposed to have any visitors but family. “I’ve had the measles, Tommy,” she said. “I’m not afraid. But I can’t let Amy come over. No children allowed.” She laughed when she said it. Tommy thought about the Steers’ Christmas tree, which he hadn’t gotten to see with the candles lit, but Mrs. Steer told him that he’d be better by New Year’s Day and that he could come over after Mr. Treverton’s open house; she would light it for him then. And toward the end of every afternoon his mother, when she came home, would smooth his sheets and fluff his pillow and begin to read to him by the light of a small lamp that she had shaded so the beam of light fell only on the book in her lap. Her face and the rest of the room were in shadow. Tommy loved to have his mother read to him, and he would poke her if she dozed off, as she sometimes did. Then she would open her eyes with a start and pick up where she’d left off.

  “‘Many strange creatures live among these weeds wherever they drift,’” she read. “‘One of the strangest is a little fish.’”

  “That’s Fingerfins,” Tommy said. He already knew the story.

  His mother continued reading. “‘Some call him the mouse fish because he is small, and always hiding in the weeds, and others call him the Sargasso fish.’

  “He sounds like you, Tommy. Sometimes you’re like a little mouse fish hiding in the seaweed.

  “‘This is to be the tale of a Sargasso fish,’” she went on, “‘who hatched out from one of the many eggs laid in the weeds by his mother.’” Well, of course his mother hadn’t hatched him from an egg in the weeds. She’d carried him next to her heart, like everyone else. Tommy had found that out. He’d seen a lady who was very fat, and Jimmy Randolph had told him that where she was fat was where the baby slept. Jimmy’s mother had told him that ladies carry their babies next to their hearts until they’re born. Tommy’s mother didn’t know that Tommy knew that. “‘He and all the other little creatures who lived in every drifting clump made a sort of floating town, a City of Sargasso Weed.’” Like his very own town, Tommy thought; like his very own island floating in the river. The river was frozen now, and Tommy supposed it never looked much like the Sargasso Sea anyway. “ ‘This little fish had hands!’

  “What did I tell you, Tommy?”—his mother looked up from the story—“If you were a little fish you’d be just like this one. ‘And that is why we call our hero Fingerfins.’”

  Tommy loved the story. He made his mother read it many times. He thought it was his favorite book, and though his mother wouldn’t allow him to look at the pictures now, she would describe them, and he could recall each one from before he got sick. He never got tired of hearing about Fingerfins, whose grandfather tried to eat him but Fingerfins got away by puffing up so big his grandfather couldn’t get him in his mouth. “His own grandfather tried to eat him?” Tommy asked. What kind of a grandfather was that, he wondered, and if Fingerfins’ grandfather would eat him, why wouldn’t his father, but Fingerfins’ father wasn’t a character in the story. Well, that wasn’t like Tommy. If anybody tried to eat him, he couldn’t puff up any bigger than he was, which wasn’t very big. All he could do was run. He could run pretty fast. Or maybe he could make them laugh and forget it. It would be fun to be able to puff up big, Tommy thought, and surprise everybody.

  And then there was the lantern fish. “‘Daylight hurt their eyes,’” his mother read, “‘and so they could only come to the surface of the sea at night. On their dark bodies many spots glowed in the night. Each had an extra bright cluster of lights just in front of its tail. The ladies of the party wore their lights on the upper side, the gentlemen had theirs underneath.’” Tommy giggled. His mother told him to stop being so silly or she wouldn’t read any more, so Tommy didn’t giggle but that didn’t stop him from thinking it was funny.

  When his mother had finished the story—it was a fairly long story—Tommy pleaded with her to start over but his mother said, “No more today, Tommy. My eyes are worn out, and I think I’ve learned Fingerfins by heart. I’ll bet you have, too. It’s time for your dinner. I’ll see if it’s ready.” She took the book with her; she was afraid he would turn on the lights and read it, otherwise. His mother could be quite smart, Tommy thought, but Fingerfins could be clever, too. Though he had many adventures, some of them terrifying—like when his grandfather was about to swallow him, and when he was caught by the scientists who wanted to label him—he always managed to escape. Nobody ever ate him, and nobody captured him for good. It helped that he was small and hard to see. He was colored very like the world of weeds he lived in, the book said, and had tatters hanging from his skin which looked like torn and ragged weeds. As long as Fingerfins didn’t move, he was fairly safe. Tommy practiced being as still as he could. He couldn’t go very long without moving.

  In a few minutes, Tommy’s mother brought his tray. He had all his meals in bed, and she always stayed with him while he ate his dinner. At first she didn’t want him to sit up, so
she tried to spoon the food into his mouth while he was propped up on two pillows, but she spilled it all over his pajamas and the pillow too, and finally she relented and let him sit up and feed himself, which Tommy was perfectly capable of doing. When he was sick in bed he always got a straw in his glass, but the straw would bend and then he couldn’t get anything through it. One day his mother came home with straws that were pleated like an accordion so they bent easily. Tommy liked those straws, but his mother saved them for when he was sick; he couldn’t use them at other times.

  Every evening before he had to go to sleep, Rose brought him ginger ale and a dish of the custard that Mrs. Steer had made for him. It was better than the custard his mother made. “Perhaps she puts more sugar in it,” his mother said. “I think it’s sweeter.” Maybe she did; it was better, anyway. One good thing about being sick was that he didn’t have to eat what he didn’t want to, though he wasn’t allowed to eat what he wanted to eat, which was fruitcake and orange juice. He could have the orange juice but not the fruitcake. It was too rich, his mother said. Twice Rose let him have some, though. It was easy to get around Rose. She was sleeping in the maid’s room now and using the bathroom in the cellar. She wasn’t allowed to use their bathrooms because his mother said you never knew where she’d been and you could pick up germs from toilet seats. That was why his Aunt Clara always carried a pair of white cotton gloves when she was traveling, and never sat on the toilet seat, either. She used the gloves only for going to the toilet. That way her hands didn’t have to touch the handle on the door or on the toilet either, and she suggested to Tommy’s mother that she do the same thing. Aunt Clara was very fastidious, his mother said. Tommy’s mother didn’t go that far, but she never used the toilet in the cellar, either. None of them did; it was just for the help. Tommy thought probably you could pick up a lot of germs down there. The bathroom was dark and dank, and there was usually a spiderweb in the corner. Tommy really hated spiders. He didn’t even like daddy long-legs, and they were harmless, not like the black widow, which was poisonous and you died if it bit you. Like Mr. Wolfe’s Gila monster, Tommy thought. It didn’t have to eat you to kill you, the way the bears did; it just had to bite you. It didn’t even want to eat you. What did it want, Tommy wondered; just to be mean? It was interesting that Mr. Wolfe spent so much time around such dangerous animals. When Tommy had asked him why, he laughed and said, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Tommy didn’t know if he liked Mr. Wolfe or not. He didn’t like it that he’d come to the house Christmas Eve, because then they’d had to entertain Mr. Wolfe instead of listening to his mother read “The Night Before Christmas.” But he had liked Mr. Wolfe’s movies on the Island last summer, and he liked his silver dollar well enough, but not so much as his mother did. She would see it on Tommy’s windowsill and say how nice it was of Mr. Wolfe to give it to him. “Isn’t Mr. Wolfe a nice man, Tommy?” she would ask. “He’s certainly nice to you.”

  One good thing about having to lie in bed and be sick was that even David was nice to him. Sometimes David would come into Tommy’s room and sit on the chair and talk to him very nicely, without teasing him at all. He would even straighten his sheets, and then his bed would feel cool instead of hot and rumpled. But David wasn’t home very much. If he wasn’t working at the plant, he was out with Margie. They spent a lot of time at Bob and Laura Griswold’s with Daisy and Phil Meyer. They were all very good friends—“too good,” Tommy’s father said. Tommy’s father thought Daisy was pretty, but he didn’t think she always behaved properly. When you were married, you were supposed to go out with married people—“birds of a feather,” Tommy figured—and when you weren’t married you went out with people your own age who weren’t married either. But not everybody was married. His Uncle Christian wasn’t married, and who did he go out with? His Aunt Clara and Uncle Andrew, probably, because he lived with them and worked for Uncle Andrew. Mr. Treverton wasn’t married but he had been; his wife was dead, like Mrs. Addington’s husband. And Mr. Wolfe wasn’t married, and he went out with Tommy’s parents. Everybody in Tommy’s house went out practically every night, and every afternoon, too. John was probably whispering sweet nothings in Emily’s ear; that’s what Emily called it when they whispered. “What did he say?” Tommy would ask. “Sweet nothings, just sweet nothings,” Emily would reply in her high fluting voice, batting her eyes. That was very irritating; Tommy wanted to know, and “sweet nothings” gave him scarcely a clue. It was silly besides. Tommy’s mother was never silly. She laughed, but she never giggled. She seemed always the same—unlike David, who was more like his father. They could both be in a terrible mood for weeks at a time, and then, unpredictably, something would turn them around. It didn’t usually happen at the same time, though, and you never knew what did it. Of course, it was hard to tell what put them in a bad mood in the first place. Sometimes Tommy thought it was each other. His father was certainly in a bad mood when David didn’t go back to college, and David wasn’t very happy either, because he had to work in the drum factory at the plant and he said the drum factory was the worst part of the whole place, it was so boring. Tommy used to think they made drums there, and it seemed nice that his father made drums, but it turned out they weren’t that kind of drums. They were steel barrels, but they called them drums, and when the drums were made they went to the packing room where they were filled with the chemicals that were made in the furnaces, and then they went to the shipping room, where they were put on trains and sent away. Tommy thought the furnace room would be the scariest place to work. It was dangerous, and Tommy’s father didn’t let David work there. Besides, you had to know what you were doing to work in the furnace room, and Tommy’s father thought David didn’t know what he was doing a lot of the time. He knew how to play tennis and golf and dance with the girls, his father said. He didn’t know how to study or work, but he’d better learn. That’s what he was doing at the plant, learning to work. David told Tommy that the men at the plant called his father “Black Mac,” but not to his face. No, Tommy thought, they’d better not call him that to his face. He wouldn’t like it, and if he didn’t like something, you knew it. But his father loved his work, and he worked all the time. “If you don’t like your work, quit,” he would tell people, and he said it as if he meant it. But David didn’t like his work, and his father wouldn’t let him quit. It was strange. His father also said, “You can’t beat fun,” and fun was what his mother said they were having at all the parties they went to while Tommy stayed in bed, in the dark, waiting for New Year’s.

  New Year’s Eve was the biggest party of all. There was a dance at the country club, and at midnight everyone would pop champagne and the corks would fly into the big Indian canoes that were suspended from the ceiling. Mrs. Steer said the canoes were full of corks and God knew what else. This year Mr. Wolfe was taking Tommy’s parents and some other people to dinner before the dance. He was going to be in town most of the winter and he wanted to do something nice for his friends, his mother said. Because Mr. Wolfe didn’t have a wife to plan it, Tommy’s mother had to give him a lot of help. One day after lunch she went to the hotel where he was giving his dinner to look at the menu and wrap the favors. Favors were little presents at each person’s place, and they all had to be wrapped. Tommy thought Mr. Wolfe should have asked someone who liked to wrap more than his mother did, and who was better at it, but it was nice of his mother, Tommy thought, to help Mr. Wolfe with his party. She’d spent a lot of time on it. She’d helped him pick out the favors and order the flowers, the sort of things that had to be done when you were giving a party. Sometimes a favor might be a bar of special soap for the ladies or a tiny bottle of perfume, his mother said. For the gentlemen it was going to be a lighter. “Daddy doesn’t use a lighter,” Tommy said. “He likes safety matches.’

  “I’m sure he’d love to have a lighter,” his mother said. “They’re so much cleaner.”

  It was a lot of work to give a nice party, and Mr. Wolfe’s dinner had grown
so that it was now quite large. The Sedgwicks had decided to give a cocktail party beforehand, and Tommy’s mother persuaded his father to give a big breakfast after the dance. Yes, it certainly was a lot of work, his mother said, and when she came home in the late afternoons she was tired but she would read to him nonetheless, and sometimes she talked about what she might or might not wear New Year’s Eve. “Should I wear Grandmother’s pearls?” she asked him; but she didn’t. Not that night. She’d worn them to the Sedgwicks’ on Christmas and several times since, but she decided they didn’t look best with her new black chiffon dress. She showed the dress to Tommy. It looked very pretty.

  And Dr. Randolph was right. By New Year’s Eve Tommy was better. In the morning he played at his desk, and that afternoon he was allowed to go out for a while, and then Jimmy Randolph and Amy Steer came over while his mother was out putting the finishing touches n Mr. Wolfe’s party and they played Monopoly on his new set. Tommy beat them both, too.

  It was very cold that day, but warm inside the house. Tommy could hear the furnace running all the time, and the radiators were too hot to touch. Rose set pans of water on them to keep the air from drying out. By nightfall it was storming. Playing at his desk, Tommy could hear the wind howl around the corner of the house. He went to his front window and stood there, watching the snow swirl around the trees on the roof, making them fade into the whiteness, reappear for a moment, and fade again. Sometimes he could not see the dark trees at all, only the glow of their lights, blurred and fuzzy in the snow. He looked down. The snow was so fine it had blown under the edge of his storm window and was piling up in a little drift against his pane. It was a bad night to go out, Tommy thought, but his parents didn’t mind. They were used to the weather.