A Morning Like This

by Deborah Bedford

  “You’re going to want to take this guy to the emergency room. His nose could be broken.”

  This is ridiculous. He’s a little boy who’s gotten hit by a ball. A minute ago, everything was fine.

  “Do you want me to drive you, Abby?”

  “No. No. I’ll be okay.”

  Everyone crowded around, asking Braden questions.

  “Can you breathe through your nose?”

  “Can you see? How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Do you feel like you need to throw up?”

  The power of suggestion. Braden’s face went ashen. “Ken,” Abby said. “Don’t ask him any more questions. Just carry him to my car.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to go to St. John’s with you?”

  “I’ll be fine. We handle things like this at the shelter every day.”

  But as Abby started up the car and steered them toward Broadway, her hands were shaking. Because even though Abby was experienced with confrontations and emergencies, with her own son it felt like a different thing.

  “Keep your head forward, Brade. Don’t swallow.” She grabbed a box of tissues from the floorboard and tossed them across to him while he held the ice bag against his nose. Within minutes, blood-soaked Kleenexes littered the seat.

  “I can’t help it, Mama.”

  “Are you dizzy, honey? Do you feel like you might faint?”

  “No…Yes…I…I want Dad. Where is Dad?”

  “You know your dad,” Abby said with more confidence than she felt. “He’ll get here as soon as he can.”

  At the hospital the minutes passed in a slow march as Abby waited with Braden in the admittance area and Braden fought against tears, struggling to breathe through his swollen nose. The peas in the bag had melted to mush and his foot jiggled with pain as Abby answered a barrage of unnecessary questions. Name. Address. Place of employment. Insurance company. To make matters worse, the admittance clerk kept stopping to answer the phone.

  “Look. Don’t you have these things on record? My son is in pain.” Abby could scarcely bear this, seeing Braden hurting without any help. I’d like to take that stupid computer screen and hit you over the head with it.

  “I’m sorry. I cannot admit him until we have this complete.”

  Then, to add insult to injury, they wouldn’t give Braden a drink of water. “Sorry, kiddo,” the nurse told them. “No drinking and driving. Dr. Meno says we’ve got to get X-rays first. You can’t drink until we know what’s going on inside that head of yours.”

  “He can’t even have a sip?” Abby said as a nurse pushed him in a wheelchair. “He’s thirsty.” If David were here, he’d make them give Braden a drink of water.

  They rounded a corner and, as if this very thought of David had conjured him up, here came her husband, stepping out of a side door, rolling down his sleeve.

  “Dad!”

  “Braden!” One odd, awkward pause. David’s eyes shone with fear. Abby decided he must be worried sick about his son.

  “Oh, you’re here.” She raced forward. “Thank heavens.”

  “What are you—”

  She grabbed his forearm. “I knew they’d tell you at the ball field to find us here.”

  “The ball field? Oh.” For one moment, it almost seemed as if he was struggling to understand. “Oh. Oh, yes. Braden’s game.”

  “He got hit in the nose. Did they tell you that? We’re getting X-rays. They won’t let him drink anything until they know if it’s broken.”

  David began to follow his family, leaning low as a nurse wheeled his son along the corridor. “Braden. Buddy. Let me see.”

  Braden removed the latest tissue. “It hurts.”

  “Oh, my.” A regretful laugh. “It doesn’t look very good, either.”

  “Where were you, Dad? Where were you? You almost missed the whole thing. I was batting.”

  At David’s pause, Abby turned toward him again. A flush had risen on his neck. She had an odd sensation that David felt guilty about something. The sad, set expression in his eyes made him look rigid and bereaved, almost old. Strong frown lines etched the outline of his mouth. He kept staring at the bloody cleats in Abby’s hand as if he’d never seen them before.

  He answered his son cryptically. “Some days are harder than others. This one has been harder than most.”

  “David, what’s wrong?”

  He turned defensively toward Abby. “I never said anything was wrong. I just said it was a hard day.”

  “It started out lousy. I could tell. Something was wrong this morning.”

  “Look, Ab. We’ve got Braden to take care of. I’m not prepared to go into it right now.”

  “Did you have a late meeting or something?”

  He hesitated again. “Yeah. Something… came up.” He scrubbed his son’s grimy hair. “How about you, sport? Wow, I’m sorry. Did you lose a lot of blood?”

  “Yes. Lots.”

  David grasped Abby by the arm, taking charge, and she relaxed against him. “Did you do okay?” he asked her, drawing her shoulders close.

  “No,” she said, her voice finally calming. “I didn’t. I needed you.”

  Lies. Lies.

  One led to another, the falsehoods growing around him like snarled vines.

  David sat on their sofa with the huge mass of Brewster curled into knotwork at his feet, alternately holding ice against Braden’s swollen nose and reading aloud The BFG, Braden’s favorite library book from school.

  He’d promised Braden he wouldn’t miss this game. Beside’s being late, David had avoided the ballpark because he couldn’t bear playing the part. The part that had been his own life yesterday. The part that would have left him faking it, rooting for his son with his arm draped across Abby’s shoulders while beneath it all he counted the cost of infidelity.

  The telephone rang constantly tonight. At first, each time, David swayed forward on his feet, desperate to answer the calls himself. He was certain it would be Susan Roche inquiring about the test. But the questions all came from people concerned about Braden: team parents, friends from church who had heard about the accident, Ken and Cindy Hubner, and even the little girl named Josey who had a horrible fourth-grade crush on Braden and made Braden’s ears turn red each time anybody mentioned her name.

  Word of Braden’s calamity had traveled around town in less than two hours.

  “Thank goodness it wasn’t fractured,” he heard Abby saying over and over again to everybody who phoned. “He got walloped in the nose, I’ll tell you that much. It scared us to death. But nothing’s broken. Of course it was terrifying, but he’ll be okay.”

  David squirmed on the sofa, his voice droning on with the Roald Dahl story, his heart lurching within his chest every time he heard his wife speak the words.

  I don’t know, Abby, if he’ll be okay or not. I don’t know if you’ll be okay. Maybe, after today, our family won’t ever be okay again.

  “Dad,” Braden said. “When you read aloud, you have to read like you’re interested in the story. You’re making it boring.”

  David read another two paragraphs before he gave up trying. “Sorry. Guess I’m not much in the mood to read tonight.” He lay the book, upside down and open, beside them on the couch. Once again, he replaced the ice bag on his son’s septum. “How’s the nose feeling, sport?”

  “I still can’t breathe through it.”

  “You ought to get some rest now. I’ll bring down your sleeping bag.”

  Dr. Meno had suggested they keep a close watch on Braden tonight, letting him bunk on the floor, waking him up every twenty minutes to make certain he hadn’t suffered a concussion. David knew that by morning Brewster would have edged Braden so far to one side that the dog would have a better part of the sleeping bag than the boy.

  Once David had spread out the gigantic down bag and Brewster had indeed claimed a spot on it, father and son voyaged to Braden’s bedroom and lugged out armfuls of extra pillows.

  �
�There you go. How’s that?”

  “Good.”

  David punched one last pillow into shape as Braden climbed in. “Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  “How can they be bedbugs?” Braden said. “This isn’t a bed.”

  “Okay. Sleeping bag bugs, then.” With a light kiss on his son’s misshapen, bruised nose, David zipped the bag up to his chin so Braden would feel like he’d been tucked in.

  “Dad?”

  David bent low over him, worried that Braden might be woozy. He kept looking at things like Abby’s old pink cardboard jewelry box and David’s stack of Money magazines on the floor as if he’d never seen any of it before. “What?”

  “I like sleeping in your room.”

  “You do?”

  “I like the way it smells. The smell of Mom.”

  A melancholy grin. “I don’t see how you can smell anything through that nose.”

  “I just can.”

  “I see.”

  “G’ night, Dad.”

  “Good night.”

  David had just climbed up from all fours and was heading to turn out the lamp when Braden’s unsteady voice stopped him again. “Dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to wake me up every twenty minutes all night long?”

  “Yes.”

  “To make sure my head’s okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “That means you’ll have to wake up every twenty minutes, too.”

  “That’s right.”

  “All night long?”

  David switched off the reading light and stopped with his hand on the doorjamb, staring back at the opalescent length of boy spread out on the floor. “I don’t mind doing it, you know. It’s worth it to make sure you’re safe.”

  No answer came in the stillness, only the arrhythmic breathing of the child and the panting of the dog.

  “Maybe I’ll stay awake all night,” David said. “That way I can be waiting every time the next twenty minutes goes by. How would that be?”

  “Good. Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “What would happen to me if I didn’t wake up?”

  “Well, we don’t—” David paused. He had to think about that one. What did happen? What exactly would they do if something happened to Braden? “We don’t know.”

  “I’m scared to go to sleep.”

  David went back and crouched beside his son on the floor. “Here.” He unzipped the bag. “Roll over.” He shoved Brewster, damp warm breath and all, aside and lifted Braden’s pajama top. With an immense hand, he tenderly touched skin as treasured and newfound to him as the day this child had been born. “I don’t want you to be afraid.”

  He worked his callused fingers in circles on Braden’s back, stopping just beneath small shoulder blades that jutted like bony wings. As he etched shapes with his fingers—figure eights and stripes and big Ws—David captured all the love he knew for this one child and held it within himself. His devotion to his son at that moment felt almost too delicious to absorb or grasp. It was so familiar that he’d almost been missing it, as if a wall had come between them because he saw his son every day and so never really saw him at all.

  It hurt, just wanting to not miss things he knew he was missing. Just wanting to see things that he saw, yet didn’t see.

  Go figure, he thought. Go figure feeling that way about your kid.

  The misery that had been waiting in the recesses of David’s heart came full upon him, powerful, all encompassing. He couldn’t help imagining Susan’s Samantha, wraithlike and happy, the child in the school picture he’d looked at for the first time today. He envisioned her expectant wide grin, the strand of stray hair blown across her face as if she’d been running in the wind.

  “I love you, Dad,” Braden whispered again.

  “Hey. Come up here a minute. I know you’re almost asleep. Let me give you a hug.”

  David gathered his son in his arms and held him there, so close and hard he could feel Braden’s heart beating. He kissed him on the top of his head, in the midst of the wheat-yellow cowlick that would never lie down no matter how Abby tried to slick it. He buried his face into the dusty sweet scent of boy as if he could bury himself away from the world and from the bad moves he’d made.

  “Will you bring me my baseball glove, Dad? I can’t sleep without my glove.”

  “Sure. I’ll go get it. Hang on.”

  David rose to his feet, his knees cracking, and passed through the hallway where moonlight sifted onto the floor through thin curtains. He went quietly through the kitchen where Abby bent to load the dishwasher, her silhouette an arabesque over rows of white, dripping dishes. He went to her and wrapped his arms around her from behind, treating their relationship suddenly as a priceless, breakable thing.

  “Hey,” she whispered, leaning into him, the smell of dish detergent wafting from her arms.

  “Love you,” he said, kissing her neck.

  “I’m not turning around,” she said, laughing. “If I do, I’ll get your neck all soapy.”

  Abby, there’s something I need to tell you. Abby, honey, I’ve made a horrible mistake.

  Once she found out, he would never be able to take back the truth.

  David left her and went to find Braden’s baseball mitt. He delivered it to his son, who was already snoring through swollen nostrils. Then David circled the living room, moved soundlessly beside the wall, invisible, like a character in a Thornton Wilder play. And saw rooms in his house as if he hadn’t seen them before. As if they weren’t real to him anymore. As if they were already slipping away.

  Chapter Five

  Everywhere David went that week, he noticed little girls.

  When he strode out for his morning jog, treading along with the burden of his heavy heart, he happened past a little girl who was digging her heels in and hanging on to a dog leash for dear life, pulled along by a golden retriever at least twice her size.

  When he spelled one of the tellers in the window at the bank, a little girl rode into the drive-thru with her family, smashed her nose against the glass, and stared at David with huge dark eyes while her father scribbled out a check. He whisked her a Dum-Dum lollipop along with her father’s cash.

  While traveling on the Village Road, he glanced into a cow pasture and saw three girls in inner tubes bobbing along an irrigation ditch, their bare toes flinging up bead-strings of water. They grasped hands whenever they came within reach of one another, shrieking and throwing or ducking clumps of wet weeds.

  At last, David could stand it no longer. During a rare lull in his office, he dialed Information on his phone and gave the mechanical voice on the other end all the information he could remember. A listing in Siletz Bay. On the coast of Oregon, near Lincoln City.

  There could be so many reasons not to find it. A single woman alone could very well be unlisted, or indexed under a different initial. He wouldn’t put it past Susan to be carefully hiding herself away.

  “Please hold for the number,” the dehumanized voice said.

  David scuttled his desktop for a pen.

  Moments later, he was punching in the Oregon number with great boldness, thinking how pleasant it felt to be the one who chose to do right, the one taking the upper hand. But the instant he heard the childlike, sun-shiny voice on Susan’s answering machine, his bravado failed him.

  “Hey! You’ve reached the house of Samantha and Susan Roche. Don’t hang up, just leave us a message at the—”

  Beep.

  And that was all.

  He sat incapable of response, shocked to have heard Samantha’s voice. She sounded so young. So guiltless. A hollow opened inside of him that later, when he took time to think, would draw him down and drown him. After hearing the machine hang up, David dialed the number again. And waited, trying not to listen during the short message he knew would come, before he stammered, “Susan. Listen. It’s David Treasure calling from Wyoming. I… just hadn’t heard anything, a
nd I wanted to check in.” He took precious seconds during the recording, measuring his words in case someone might be listening. “Please, Susan.” Another long, desperate pause. “I need to know what’s happening. Get me at my office,” he said. “Don’t call me at home.”

  After that, whenever a message or a phone call came in at the bank for him, David leapt at it like a pouncing cat. “Hello? Yes. Oh, yes.” And every time, when it wasn’t Susan, a pendulum swung in his chest, knocking the air out of him with disappointment and frustration and fear.

  When a knock came on his office door just after noon, David rose to meet it, his arm outstretched, adrenaline stinging his skin. But it was only Nelson Hull, David’s best friend and pastor of the church, with auburn hair ragged around the edges and, no matter how he tried to tame it, poking in every direction from his head. Everywhere he went, Nelson always looked a bit electrified.

  “I’m in the mood for mountain climbing,” Nelson said after they’d shaken hands. “How about partnering with me. Let’s have a go at the Grand this afternoon.”

  David opened one drawer, then another, looking for his Palm Pilot. “I’ll have to check my schedule. I don’t know if I can get away.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “My PDA.”

  “It’s right there,” Nelson said, pointing. “Lying on your desk in front of you.”

  “Oh.” They both stared at it for a moment before David asked, “Isn’t it too late to start up? There’s no way we’d make it to the top.”

  “Come on, buddy. Save me. The copy machine’s gone out and they can’t finish the bulletin for Sunday. There’s the mission’s conference next week and the elders meeting tomorrow morning and Theresa March can’t find enough toilet paper rolls to build the walls of Jericho for children’s church. It is nuts over there.”

  David was warming to the idea. “I guess we don’t have to go all the way, if we don’t want to.”

  “Maybe only to Upper Saddle. Let’s go far enough to use the ropes, if we can.” Nelson grinned. “I snuck into your garage on the way over. I grabbed your stuff, too.”