I heard the bell ring for the end of lunch hour, and then I heard students hurrying through the hallway, talking loudly, shouting and laughing. The warning bell for the first afternoon class sounded. The hallway grew very quiet, and the second bell rang.
The nurse’s office door opened, but it wasn’t Mrs. Morris who stepped in first. I recognized the man from the few times I had been at Papa’s office. It was Mr. Maffeo, the office manager. Mrs. Morris came in behind him.
“Hi, Emmie,” Mr. Maffeo said. “I’ve come to take you home.”
“Home? Why? Where’s my mother?”
“She’s waiting at home,” he said, forcing a smile. “I made the arrangements at the office.”
“Why do I have to be driven home?”
“Your mother wanted that,” he said.
“Just go with Mr. Maffeo, Emmie,” Mrs. Morris said.
I rose slowly. “Something happened to my father?” I asked.
No one spoke.
No one had to speak.
And if they had, I wouldn’t have heard, anyway.
There was that much thunder roaring in my ears.
10
“I feel like he really was a soldier,” Mama said. She was speaking slowly, with little emotion. “It’s as if he was fatally wounded on some battlefield.”
“He was a soldier,” Mr. Maffeo said. There were more than a half dozen of Papa’s coworkers in the house. Someone had made coffee. Others who had been in Papa’s division at the firm had brought cakes and cookies and were organizing things in the kitchen. “It’s a battle to make a living these days. He was just as much of a hero as any soldier, Vivian, fighting to keep his family safe and comfortable.”
Mama nodded, but everything she did was mechanical. She was moving with a robotic demeanor, like someone who had lost all of her senses and her ability to think. I remained stunned and skeptical. This couldn’t be true.
Yes, Papa was overweight, and his doctor had been warning him about his cholesterol levels, but he never looked or acted seriously sick. Maybe he walked more slowly, and maybe he slumped over a little more than usual when he wasn’t thinking about his posture, but he was still my strong and firm Papa. I kept telling myself that this had to be a mistake. He had just fainted or something, and soon we’d get a call from the hospital telling us that he’d bounced back and he’d be fine.
The phone did ring many times, and almost every time, I looked up, expecting to hear how this was all just some bad confusion, but all of the calls were from friends and more coworkers who had learned what had happened.
“I want you to know that we look after our own,” Mr. Maffeo was telling Mama. “We’ll be there for you, Vivian. I have my secretary prepared to help on all the arrangements. You just jot down anything you want taken care of, and it will be done, calls made, whatever.” In a lower voice, he added, “I know Norton wasn’t close to his brother or his brother’s children, and we know your brother and two sisters are in France, but believe me, we’re your family and always will be.”
Mama looked at him with a very strange expression on her face. Was she about to say she had another daughter who lived here? I held my breath.
“Thank you,” she replied. “I’ll wait to phone my family in Paris.”
“If you want us to do it . . .”
“No, no. It’s something I must do myself. Merci, Nick.”
“Absolutely. Just call on us for anything else,” he said. He looked at the others and then stood and looked down at me. “You have a great deal on your shoulders now, Emmie. Look after your mother.”
Mama reached for my hand and smiled. “We look out for each other,” she told him. “Always have and always will.”
I started to cry. Until now, I was just as stunned as she was, feeling like the little boy who had his finger in the hole in the dike that in our case held back a flood of sorrow. Thick tears began to zigzag down my cheeks. They burned my face. Mama wiped them off with her handkerchief and then hugged me and rocked me. Everyone stopped talking and looked our way. I was uncomfortable showing my emotions in front of so many people, so I got up and went out to go to my room.
The moment I stepped out, it seemed as if I had gone completely deaf. All of the voices and sounds fell like shattered glass around me, and then it became so still that I could hear myself breathing as I ascended the stairs. I paused for a moment at the top and looked toward Mama and Papa’s bedroom. Papa hadn’t been sick and home from work very much, but I recalled one time when he had such a bad cold and cough that he couldn’t go to the office and couldn’t talk much on
the phone. Mama didn’t want me going into the bedroom. She didn’t want me to catch anything, but I did go to the doorway to look in on him. When I did, I saw he was asleep, and I remembered he looked so much smaller to me. She had the cover up to his chin, and there was a humidifier going. It made me smile to think how when Papa was sick, Mama treated him the way she would treat a child, and he put up with it, welcomed it.
“Men really are babies,” she had whispered to me. “If they had to go through the pain and discomfort to give birth, there would be no human race.”