“I don’t think so,” her husband said. “His grasp is firm and strong. He has good hearing and his eyesight appears to be all that could be desired. Did you notice how his eyes followed me every moment?”
“I wasn’t looking at his eyes!” Sally whispered, her voice tight with alarm. “Why are you trying to frighten me, Jim? If Tommy wasn’t a normal, healthy baby do you imagine for one instant they would have placed him in my arms?”
“That is a very sound observation,” Sally’s husband said. “Truth is truth, but to alarm you at a time like this would be unnecessarily cruel.”
“Where does that put you?”
“I simply spoke my mind as the child’s father. I had to speak as I did because of my natural concern for the health of our child. Do you want me to stay and talk to you, Sally?”
Sally shook her head. “No, Jim. I won’t let you torture me any more.”
Sally drew the baby into her arms again and held it tightly. “I’ll scream if you stay!” she warned. “I’ll become hysterical unless you leave.”
“Very well,” her husband said. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
He bent as he spoke and kissed her on the forehead. His lips were ice cold.
For eight years Sally sat across the table from her husband at breakfast, her eyes fixed upon a nothingness on the green-blue wall at his back. Calm he remained even while eating. The eggs she placed before him he cracked methodically with a knife and consumed behind a tilted newspaper, taking now an assured sip of coffee, now a measured glance at the clock.
The presence of his young son bothered him not at all. Tommy could be quiet or noisy, in trouble at school, or with an A for good conduct tucked with his report card in his soiled leather zipper jacket. It was always: “Eat slowly, my son. Never gulp your food. Be sure to take plenty of exercise today. Stay in the sun as much as possible.”
Often Sally wanted to shriek: “Be a father to him! A real father! Get down on the floor and play with him. Shoot marbles with him, spin one of his tops. Remember the toy locomotive you gave him for Christmas after I got hysterical and screamed at you? Remember the beautiful little train? Get it out of the closet and wreck it accidentally. He’ll warm up to you then. He’ll be brokenhearted, but he’ll feel close to you, then you’ll know what it means to have a son!”
Often Sally wanted to fly at him, beat with her fists on his chest. But she never did.
You can’t warm a stone by slapping it, Sally. You’d only bruise yourself. A stone is neither cruel nor tender. You’ve married a man of stone, Sally.
He hasn’t missed a day at the office in eight years. She’d never visited the office but he was always there to answer when she phoned. “I’m very busy, Sally. What did you say? You’ve bought a new hat? I’m sure it will look well on you, Sally. What did you say? Tommy got into a fight with a new boy in the neighborhood? You must take better care of him, Sally.”
There are patterns in every marriage. When once the mold has set, a few strange behavior patterns must be accepted as a matter of course.
“I’ll drop in at the office tomorrow, darling!” Sally had promised right after the breakfast pattern had become firmly established. The desire to see where her husband worked had been from the start a strong, bright flame in her. But he asked her to wait a while before visiting his office.
A strong will can dampen the brightest flame, and when months passed and he kept saying “no,” Sally found herself agreeing with her husband’s suggestion that the visit be put off indefinitely.
Snuff a candle and it stays snuffed. A marriage pattern once established requires a very special kind of rekindling. Sally’s husband refused to supply the needed spark.
Whenever Sally had an impulse to turn her steps in the direction of the office a voice deep in her mind seemed to whisper: “No sense in it, Sally. Stay away. He’s been mean and spiteful about it all these years. Don’t give in to him now by going.”
Besides, Tommy took up so much of her time. A growing boy was always a problem and Tommy seemed to have a special gift for getting into things because he was so active. And he went through his clothes, wore out his shoes almost faster than she could replace them.
Right now Tommy was playing in the yard. Sally’s eyes came to a focus upon him, crouching by a hole in the fence which kindly old Mrs. Wallingford had erected as a protection against the prying inquisitiveness of an eight-year-old determined to make life miserable for her.
A thrice-widowed neighbor of seventy without a spiteful hair in her head could put up with a boy who rollicked and yelled perhaps. But peephole spying was another matter.
Sally muttered: “Enough of that!” and started for the kitchen door. Just as she reached it the telephone rang.
Sally went quickly to the phone and lifted the receiver. The instant she pressed it to her ear she recognized her husband’s voice—or thought she did.
“Sally, come to the office!” came the voice, speaking in a hoarse whisper. “Hurry—or it will be too late! Hurry, Sally!”
Sally turned with a startled gasp, looked out through the kitchen window at the autumn leaves blowing crisp and dry across the lawn. As she looked the scattered leaves whirled into a flurry around Tommy, then lifted and went spinning over the fence and out of sight.
The dread in her heart gave way to a sudden, bleak despair. As she turned from the phone something within her withered, became as dead as the drifting leaves with their dark autumnal mottlings.
She did not even pause to call Tommy in from the
