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“His breath is a little labored,” Minas announced. “It would probably be best to put him in an oxygen tent for part of each day.”
“I don’t have no oxygen tent,” Branwyn said.
She was sitting on the bed with both boys. Thomas was in her lap, while Eric nestled up against her thigh. At one point Eric raised his head and looked at Tommy. He brought his hand down with some force against the recently liberated baby’s head. Thomas didn’t cry but merely frowned at the pain.
Branwyn grabbed the offending forearm and said, “Eric Nolan, you are welcome in my house but only if you are kind to my son, Tommy. Do you understand me?”
Eric’s face twisted into agony. He was about to let out a scream.
“I don’t want any’a that yellin’ in my house,” Branwyn said, and Eric’s expression changed into wonder.
“I had an oxygen tent brought over to my place for Joanne when she had pneumonia last year,” Minas said. “Why don’t you come and stay with us until young Thomas here has built up his strength?”
Branwyn thought about saying no, but Tommy needed a doctor and it was plain to see that Eric needed a mom.
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Mother and child moved into Minas Nolan’s home the next morning. Branwyn expected to stay there only until Tommy could live without an oxygen tent. Minas gave her her own room and told her that he’d like to take her out for dinner the first night she was there.
Tommy and Eric were sleeping peacefully and Ahn had Dr. Nolan’s beeper number. Branwyn hadn’t eaten in the last twenty-four hours and so she said, “Okay.”
Over sausages and catfish served at the table at Fontanot’s kitchen, Minas said, “I am very attracted to you, Branwyn Beerman, but I don’t want you to feel any pressure. I have you in my house so that Thomas can heal. And it doesn’t hurt that you’re the only person who can make Eric stop his crying.”
“So you don’t mind if I sleep in my own bed?” Branwyn asked.
“No, ma’am.”
She smiled, and Fontanot delivered a plateful of homemade corn bread.
That night they went to Minas’s room. From that day on Branwyn dressed and kept her clothes in her own bedroom, but she always slept with the doctor — though three or four nights a week she sat up with her son. Thomas was very sick for the next eighteen months. He came down with pneumonia 2 1
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and a dozen other minor and major infections. He suffered from high fevers every other week, but between the ministra-tions of Minas and Ahn and Branwyn he survived. By Thomas’s second birthday, Minas declared that the former bubble boy should be able to live a normal life.
Branwyn offered to move out a week later.
“If you want me to bawl like Eric I guess you can,” Minas said.
And so Branwyn stayed on. She kept her job at Ethel’s Florist Shop. Minas taught her how to drive and bought her a blue Volvo.
Eric was jubilant. He broke glasses and windows, the dog’s leg, and three bed frames just being a “force of nature,” as Branwyn said. Meanwhile, Thomas made his way quietly through the large house, watching his foster brother and other wild things, like insects and birds and trees.
Thomas didn’t cry much, and he always stood aside when Eric came hollering for Branwyn. He got colds very often, and even the least exertion made him tired. Eric pushed him sometimes but that was unusual. As a rule the big son of Minas Nolan showed kindness to only Branwyn and Tommy.
It wasn’t that he was mean to his father or others but merely that he took them for granted. People were always bringing him gifts and complimenting his size and handsome features.
He learned things easily and dominated other children on the playground and later at school.
Thomas loved his brother and mother. He was also very fond of Ahn, who often sat with him when he was sick, and Minas Nolan, who liked to read to him from the red books on the top shelf in the third-floor library.
Eric had scores of cousins, four grandparents, and more uncles and aunts than either he or Thomas could count. At 2 2
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least one of these relations brought Eric presents every week.
They never gave Thomas anything, nor did they pay much notice to the little black boy.
He didn’t seem to care though. He’d spend hours wandering through the flower garden finding rocks and sticks that he’d bring to his mother. There in her room, they would make up stories about what kind of treasure he’d found.
Afterward, when Eric’s family had gone, the robust blond child would ask Thomas about what he and Branwyn had done. He’d sit on his tanned haunches listening to the soft words that Tommy used to tell about his adventures with pebbles and twigs.
Every now and then Branwyn’s mother, Madeline, would come over for lunch, usually when the doctor was away.
“Does that man ever intend to make a honest woman outta you?” Madeline would say to her daughter, and before Branwyn could answer, “Not that I think you
