He swept Pat off her feet and deposited her in a chair with a thud. He loved to carry her around the house; she suspected it was an unconscious revenge for all the years she had dragged him from place to place against his will. Or maybe it wasn't unconscious… Rubbing her posterior, she made a hideous face, trying to hold Mark's attention. It was in vain. His first move, after a long starving night, was always toward the refrigerator.
After a moment fraught with suspense, Mark looked up from the paper. His smile had vanished.
"Kathy or her old man?"
"What do you-"
"Which of 'em is it? How sick? Is she all right?"
"How did you know?"
Mark handed her the note. For the first time Pat saw what was on the other side of the paper. She cursed her own good manners. If she had folded it, instead of trying to show Josef she trusted him… Kathy had begun a theme on economic theory. Her name was neatly inscribed in the upper-right-hand corner.
"Oh, damn," Pat said, and then took pity on her distraught son. "She's fine, Mark. Really."
"I'll cook breakfast," Mark said. "You talk."
So she told him. She and Jerry had lied to Mark often enough, when he was too young to bear pain lightly- when a neighbor's dog, adored by Mark, had been hit by a car, when a pet hamster had been devoured by Albert in an absentminded moment. But, as Jerry had always said, never lie if there's a chance you'll get caught.
Mark almost burned the bacon as he listened. He interrupted only once, when she mentioned drugs.
"No," he said flatly. "Not Kathy."
"How can you be so sure?"
"I'm sure. Nobody but high-school kids takes LSD these days, and…" Mark stopped, giving his mother a wary look. They had had this discussion before, and it always ended in a fight, because Mark maintained no one over forty knew anything about drugs, and then Pat would demand how he knew so much. This time they were both too preoccupied with other issues to pursue a minor one. Mark went on indignantly, "Damn it, Mom, how can you suggest theories like that when it's obvious what happened?"
"You mean-"
"Friedrichs. I knew that old pervert was-"
"No." It was Pat's turn to be positive. "I know. Wait, you haven't heard the rest of it."
She left out only one thing-her own dream, which had so oddly echoed Kathy's nightmare. When she finished, Mark's eyes were shining and his face had the queerest look, half excitement, half wonder.
"She was awake, when she saw it?"
"Of course she wasn't," Pat snapped. "She dreamed she woke up. I've had that happen in dreams, so have you."
"So she dreamed she woke up. Tell me again what she dreamed she saw when she dreamed she was awake."
"Now, see here, Mark-"
"Please, Mom. In detail."
Pat sighed. "Oh, all right. I haven't got the strength to argue with you.
"Kathy said she was lying on her side facing the window." Pat spoke slowly, trying to reproduce, if not the girl's exact words, the mood and the atmosphere. "She wakened with a start, the way you wake when some loud, unexpected noise jars you out of sleep. She said she could feel her heart beating. It was a frightening sensation. She lay still for a moment, wondering what had awakened her and why she felt so alarmed. She saw the curtains-filmy white dacron-moving in the night breeze, like ghostly figures. But she knew that wasn't what had frightened her."
"Go on," Mark said urgently.
"My scrambled eggs are getting cold," Pat said, taking a bite. "Besides, I'm trying to remember exactly… She was cold, horribly cold. The window was open only a few inches, but she felt icy air envelop her body, as if it slid under the blanket to get at her. With the cold came a mindless terror, and a conviction that something was in the room."
"Something or someone?"
"She said 'something, " Pat admitted. "She couldn't see clearly, but she imagined a kind of curdled shape in the shadows. She was afraid to call out. If a thief had sneaked into the room, an outcry might alarm him and cause him to attack her. She said she and her friends had discussed what they would do in such cases, and had decided the safest course was to pretend to be asleep. Thieves don't usually attack people unless they-"
"Never mind the crime lecture," Mark interrupted. "We've discussed it ourselves; what defenseless citizen hasn't, these days? It wasn't a burglar that woke Kathy."
"I don't know that and neither do you," Pat said. "She did decide to remain still-which wasn't a difficult decision, because she couldn't have moved if she had wanted to. Then… then the objects in the room began to move around."
This was the part of the story that bothered her most. All the rest could be explained away. So could this, of course, as a product of dreaming; but…
"Small objects at first," Pat went on reluctantly. "Papers on the desk lifted and scattered. That could have been the wind. But wind couldn't have shifted a pair of china figurines or pulled books from the shelves-or moved the lamp on the bedside table.It… it's a rather heavy lamp, with a bronze base. She had chosen one of that type be cause the dainty porcelain types fall over easily, and don't give enough light to read in bed."
Mark paled visibly. Pat knew he was thinking of Kathy's lovely little face, with its fragile bones and delicate skin. The lamp had been lying on her pillow, where her head had rested. At best, it would have bruised and cut her.
"It didn't hit her," she reassured him again. "She moved when it started to topple. She remembers running and screaming, nothing more; not even her father grabbing her."
Mark started to speak; then he closed his mouth and cocked his head. Pat knew the look, and was on guard when he said craftily, "She's probably lying, to protect her father."
"You don't believe that any more than I do. You're trying to distract me, and I only wish I knew what from. Homework? Did you finish that paper? Is that why you're up so early, hoping to get it done before class? If you think I'm going to type it for you, at this hour-"
"The paper has been turned in," Mark said, in injured tones. "I have to get to school early, that's all. I told Jim I'd help him with his math before class."
"You mean Jim told you you could copy his homework. Get going, then. I'm so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open. I'm going to bed."
Mark insisted on helping her upstairs, as if she were a hundred years old. She sank into dreamless slumber the minute her head hit the pillow.
II
It was late afternoon before she woke, and she probably would have slept longer if Albert had not settled down on her stomach. He did that when he decided it was time for his slothful humans to arise and feed him.
Pat heaved the cat off, and got up. The house was quiet, so she knew Mark wasn't in it. He had returned from school, however. The dishes piled in the sink and the splashes of spaghetti sauce on the stove told her that. She got herself a cup of coffee and drank it, glancing through the paper as she did so. Then she went outside.
The first thing she saw was her son's back. He was sitting on top of the fence that separated their house from that of the Friedrichs'. She was too far away to hear what he was saying, but she could see that he was talking; his head bobbed up and down, and once he waved both arms in an eloquent gesture that almost sent him toppling off the fence.
The grass needed cutting again. Pat waded through it toward the fence, her mouth set. She moved silently, but some sixth sense warned Mark of her approach. He turned a tousled brown head toward her, and before she could speak he said in dulcet tones, "I'm not breaking the rules, Mommy. My feet aren't touching the forbidden ground."
"Smart mouth," Pat said.
There was a giggle from the other side of the fence, and a voice said, "Hi, Mrs. Robbins. Isn't it a pretty day?"
"Hello, Kathy. How are you feeling?"
"Fine." A wide blue eye appeared in a crack between two boards. "Dad said I didn't have to go to school. But I feel great. I wanted to thank you for what you did last night."