Cynthia appeared in the doorway; one of her mother’s fancy handkerchiefs was folded in a triangle and tied bandit-fashion around her face, an eighth of an inch below her eyes. To get the cup of bouillon from the doorway to the night table took a full minute of breathless balancing.
I removed the thermometer from my mouth. “Thanks,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” and she fled to the hallway.
“Cynthia?”
“Yes?” She turned just her head.
“Cynthia … Don’t you want to hear if I have a temperature or not?” It was not the child’s fault, of course, that she had had her juices set for her father just when I happened to come along. I had certainly been willing till now to let her take whatever attitude she chose toward me. But softened by my condition, feeling as kind as I felt weak, and suddenly lonely too, I wanted Cynthia’s suspiciousness to disappear. I wanted her to fit into the orderly world of my illness.
“Well,” I said, “it’s almost a hundred and two. It’s not good, but it’s better.”
Masked as she was, I couldn’t make out her expression. She put in an obedient thirty seconds, then cleared her throat and told me, “I once had a hundred five.”
“Yes?”
“Markie once had a hundred three.”
“Cynthia, let’s be friends, all right?”
“I’m friends,” she said, and, shrugging her shoulders, went off to bed.
I was still sipping bouillon when Sissy came home. She went past my door, and then came back and stuck her head in.
“Wha—?” she said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I thought you said something.” She leaned against the door, a trench coat covering her white hospital uniform. “I’m sorry, you know,” she said. “I wish you’d tell her I’m sorry.”
“What?” I said. The only opinions I had of the girl were those I had inherited from Martha.
“That I’m sorry.”
“Sissy, I don’t know what you’re sorry about. I really don’t.” Sissy’s appearance, my confrontation with Cynthia, and the effort of drinking the bouillon combined all at once to make me intensely fatigued. But Sissy seemed to have no idea that the reason I had been in bed all day was because I wasn’t feeling well. I suppose working in a hospital produces a certain amount of insensitivity to suffering.
“Look, I didn’t mean anything,” said Sissy, settling in, “It’s her place.”
“Sis, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m supposed to move,” Sissy announced, looking hurt that I hadn’t known right off. I managed to recall now what Martha had told me way back in the morning.
“Well,” I said vaguely, “I’m sorry.”
“Some stupid thing I said I suppose. Like I don’t even remember and still I’ve got to move.”
“It must have been pretty awful.”
“It was an argument. I don’t see what I have to move about!”
“Sissy, you better not stay too long. Apparently I’ve got a communicable disease. I’m really not up to all these moral issues.”
“I mean she doesn’t have to jump down my throat!” And she left the room, seeing that I was no help.
And finally Martha, in her blue Hawaiian House uniform, sitting on the edge of my bed.
“Better?”
“I was … I don’t know how I am now.” I had been awakened by her presence in the room.
“You feel warm again.”
“You better watch out — you’ll catch it.”
“I’m a mother. I’m immune by law.”
“Yesterday,” I said, after a moment, “was my birthday.”
“Really?”
I had just thought of it. “I’ve just remembered,” I said, “that it was.”
“Happy birthday. Are you pulling my leg?”
“No.”
She lay down beside me, on top of the covers. “Only for a minute,” she said. “I’m sleeping with the Christmas tree. We bought a Christmas tree, Markie and I. It’s a birthday tree for you, how’s that? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been in a fog for about a week.”
“How old does it make you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Splendid.”
“Your daughter brought me bouillon. We had a little talk.”
“She’ll calm down,” Martha said. “She’ll get used to you.”
“Oh, she was fine.”
“Maybe you ought to go back to sleep.”
“Do you want to sleep with me?”
She smiled. “I’m sore, and you’ll die, and we’ll both have to be buried by Dr. Slimmer. But that was nice, Gabe, so … Gabe, was I selfish and aggressive and thoughtless?”
“No, you weren’t.”
“It’s a pleasure, you know, your being sick.”
“This is how people decide to become invalids. Everybody just appears in doorways with soup and kisses, and the rest of the time you daydream and sleep. Except very early in the mornings — what’s your maid doing here at dawn? She scared me nearly to death.”
“She says she likes to travel at five because that’s the only time the streets aren’t dangerous. Maybe she’s right. She’s actually not much more misguided than anybody else I know. Gabe? Gabe, I reached some conclusions today.”
“Yes?”
“No conclusions really, just a few simple truths. Just your staying — it’s so nice and different. It changes us. Going to sleep with a man and not waking up with him is really pretty frightening. It stinks. I’m not a kid any more.”
“I don’t know how much more of that four A.M. business I could have taken anyway. I think this fever may be some psychosomatic form of surrender. When I get better, we’ll have to work out some new system. There’s no law that people have to make love at night—”
“There isn’t, except it might not have been too genteel starting right off with afternoons. Honey, I’ve got a little boy running around all day.”
“Then,” I said wearily, “we’ll have to work out something. I don’t know.”
“Go to sleep now,” she said. “Don’t worry about strategy. Take a pill.”
I leaned toward Martha, for I wanted just to touch her.
“No, no, go to sleep … Gabe — listen, last night I said the hell with it. I said I had rights. I said this to myself. You make me feel I have rights. I do care for you. I won’t be like that again.”
“It wasn’t bad, Martha.” Then I said, “It was only strange.”
“I scared myself.”
“Oh, not so much,” I said, smiling. “Not so much.”
“A certain amount, yes.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“I’ve got to watch myself. I’m a mother of two.”
“Four. There’s Sissy and there’s me.”
“Sissy’s going.”
“She wants to stay. She came in and told me.”
“Did she take her clothes off, the little nudist?”
“What happened?”
“I told you. I came to see some simple truths.”
“She said she’d said something.”