Free After the Fire by Belva Plain Page A

followed her with a question.
    “Are you all right, Hyacinth?”
    “Why, yes. Yes, I'm all right.”
    There, as always whenever Francine was resolute, were the two vertical lines between her eyes.
No, not now. Write to them.
    “You and Gerald—you get along well together, don't you?”
    It was a mother's prerogative to ask, wasn't it? And some sort of answer was required, wasn't it?
    “Oh, we have our little spats,” she admitted.
    Francine was judging her. For a moment she seemed to hesitate. Then cheerfully, she agreed. “Little spats. Yes, it would be pretty queer if one didn't.”
    Hy was in bed when Gerald came back and stood in the doorway.
    “What was the meaning of that talk at the table?” she asked as she sat up.
    “That I had been thinking things over and realized that I was terribly wrong. I'm ashamed, and I'm here to apologize.”
    “Yes? What changed your mind so suddenly?”
    “It's not sudden. It was my first response yesterdaythat was sudden. There wasn't any thinking behind it, no thinking at all. I'd had a hard day, as you heard. I was tired, which is no excuse. I couldn't possibly, now that I think about it, couldn't possibly have meant what I said. That's why I'm apologizing.”
    He looked as if he were in pain. Everything was all mixed up. Her eyes began to fill, and she didn't want
that
business all over again. Angrily she wiped them with the back of her hand.
    “I've made you suffer,” he said.
    “That's true.” When he moved toward her, she put up her hand. “No, not yet. Do you really want this baby? Because if you don't, you know, I'm going to have it anyway. Without you.”
    “I'm ashamed,” he repeated. “Hy, please. Please understand. I beg you. I panicked. I was thinking about time and money and everything. But now, yes, I do want it. All the way back from the hotel just now, I've been thinking how we'll manage it. There's space enough in this room for a crib. He—she—won't be much more than a year old when we leave here, and then we'll have plenty of room. The carriage can go in the hall. It'll be a tight fit, but that's not important. Oh Hyacinth, forgive and forget! Please, darling, you can forgive it and forget it. You know you can.”
    Given time, thought Hyacinth, a cut heals. The injury that first bleeds red becomes a white scar and ends as a faint indentation in the flesh.
    Her boy was born with no trouble at all before the dawn of a fine June morning. After a welcome sleep, sheawoke to feel noon; the sun glittered and the public golf course in the park across the road was already filled. People dressed in primary colors were dots on the green as in a Brueghel landscape, she thought with pleasure. Close to her window, a locust tree was dripping a rain of creamy blossoms. And in the nursery down the hall slept a husky baby with a crown of black hair.
    “A handsome boy,” the nurse said when she brought him into Hy's room. “He looks like his father already.”
    “Gerald, Junior,” said the father. “We'll simply call him Jerry, with a J so there'll be no confusion.”
    The name was not Hyacinth's choice, but as she of all people had to remind herself, what's in a name? The important thing was that Gerald was already rejoicing in his son. He was jubilant.
    “Look at him! Look at the long legs! And what a pair of shoulders. A beautiful head, too, for a newborn. You can see the bone structure even now.”
    As Hyacinth fed the baby, Gerald sat there watching the process while shaking his head as if in disbelief.
    “Mother and child. What a picture. The most common sight in the world, yet always new, always a miracle. Well, I hope life will be good to him. Your parents were thrilled, weren't they?”
    “Oh, yes. Francine had been wanting a boy, after all my brothers' daughters.”
    “I think I've got some real news for you, Hy. Grump—excuse me, I guess I really should say Dr. Grumboldt—knows we plan to go back east, so he gave me a contact that might be just