Free Gentleman's Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson

I dreamed it.”
    He went out into the hall. Quietly he opened the door to Tom’s bedroom. In the dim light from the doorway the slight mound under the blankets seemed motionless. He went to the bed and leaned down. Even and strong, the boy’s breathing came up to him. For a moment he remained, listening.

CHAPTER FOUR
    W ILL SHE—DAD, will she die? ” Phil turned, saw the stricken eyes watching him. He wanted to ease that look away, lie if necessary to replace it with confidence. But always he’d played it the other way, and he would now. Answers had to be answers.
    “She’ll die sometime, just the way you will or me or Aunt Belle or anybody. But maybe it won’t be for a long time.”
    “Oh, Dad.”
    He put his hand on Tom’s head, ruffling the dark hair.
    “The doctor said she might be fine for years if she’s careful. She’s pretty old, and all the packing and unpacking tired her too much.”
    Tom moved closer. Phil pushed the lever of the toaster down. The ticking sounded very loud.
    “Scram into some clothes, Tom.” He gave him a shove toward the door as if they were roughhousing. “Then you can set the table. We can run this place between us, I bet.”
    “All right.” He started to leave, then stopped. “Oh, gosh, Dad.”
    “It’s scary, Tom, I know. I was scared last night, too. But we’ll take care of her, and she might be just fine till you’re grown up and married and have kids.”
    The shoulders relaxed. Phil heard him tiptoe down the hall. “Nothing to worry about.” A dozen times Dr. Craigie’s words had come back. With them had come again the four-in-the-morning silence of the sleeping city around the lighted bedroom, the knowledge that between her first calling out and her second, there’d been the time to dream, to wake, to ponder the sense of peace and continuing life, all unknowing that across a dark hall a dying had begun.
    “People with hearts outlive everybody else, if they take care,” Dr. Craigie had said. The quotation marks around “hearts” had been cheery, a comfortable dismissing. “It may prove to be what we call false angina instead of the true angina. She’ll sleep well now, and you keep her in bed for a few days, and then we’ll get her to the office and really see. Angina is actually a symptom rather than a disease— some circulatory deficiency, perhaps, or a kind of anemia of the cardiac—well, no use getting too technical this time of the night, Mr. Green, is there?”
    No, don’t get technical. Be calm, pleasant, willing to be routed out of bed, reassure the patient that the sensation of dissolution was merely part of the clinical picture, like the choking off of air, the sword in the arm.
    “I never minimize in a sickroom,” his own father had once told him. “I don’t frighten, but I don’t minimize.”
    Perhaps Craigie didn’t either. John Minify had called him “one of the best in New York.” Perhaps the suave voice was only a mannerism, acquired, too.
    I must call Kathy, he thought, and break tonight.
    The day sped remarkably. There was a curious ease to this kind of work, something like that week on Guad, with the mind nailed to the automatic directions for the next step. Life could be a simple thing of small actions on a string. Cook this, get the tray ready, take it in to her, straighten up this room, that room, phone the market, wash dishes, keep Tom quiet, go in now and talk to Mom, she’s awake again, get Tom to bed, wash the dishes. No time for big thinking, no time for foreign policy, losing the peace, badgering your mind. Just do this, then do that. Easy.
    It was the first day since he’d got the assignment that he had stayed clear of sifting and seeking. It was a little like desertion, but for cause. At nine in the evening, with Tom gone to bed and no further chores to do, he still avoided the waiting morass. There was no use; he was too tired to think. He had telephoned Kathy to explain why he could not see her. She gave him