FullReads

Billy pushed back his limp bangs.”I want to fly in an airplane and be a newspaperman like Mr. Ferris.” He added with sudden assurance, “That’s what I would like to do when I am big.”

Bailey said,” I thought you wanted to be a d
octor.”

“I do!” said Billy.”I would like to be both. I want to be a atom-bomb scientist too.”

Elizabeth came in carrying in her arms a baby girl.

“Oh, John!” she said. She settled the baby in the father’s lap.”It’s grand to see you. I’m awfully glad you could come.”

The little girl sat demurely on Bailey’s knees. She wore a pale pink crêpe de Chine frock, smocked around the yoke with rose, and a matching silk hair ribbon tying back her pale soft curls. Her skin was summer tanned and her brown eyes flecked with gold and laughing. When she reached up and fingered her father’s horn-rimmed glasses, he took them off and let her look through them a moment.”How’s my old Candy?”

Elizabeth was very beautiful, more beautiful perhaps than he had ever realized. Her straight clean hair was shining. Her face was softer, glowing and serene. It was a madonna loveliness, dependent on the family ambiance.

“You’ve hardly changed at all,” Elizabeth said, “but it has been a long time.”

“Eight years.” His hand touched his thinning hair self-consciously while further amenities were exchanged.

Ferris felt himself suddenly a spectator—an interloper among these Baileys. Why had he come? He suffered. His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years. He felt he could not bear much longer to stay in the family room.

He glanced at his watch.”You’re going to the theater?”

“It’s a shame,” Elizabeth said, “but we’ve had this engagment for more than a month. But surely, John, you’ll be staying home one of these days before long. You’re not going to be an expatriate, are you?”

“Expatriate,” Ferris repeated.”I don’t much like the word.”

“What’s a better word?” she asked.

He thought for a moment.”Sojourner might do.”

Ferris glanced again at his watch, and again Elizabeth apologized.”If only we had known ahead of time—”

“I just had this day in town. I came home unexpectedly. You see, Papa died last week.”

“Papa Ferris is dead?”

“Yes, at Johns-Hopkins. He had been sick there nearly a year. The funeral was down home in Georgia.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, John. Papa Ferris was always one of my favorite people.”

The little boy moved from behind the chair so that he could look into his mother’s face. He asked, “Who is dead?”

Ferris was oblivious to apprehension; he was thinking of his father’s death. He saw again the outstretched body on the quilted silk within the coffin. The corpse flesh was bizarrely rouged and the familiar hands lay massive and joined above a spread of funeral roses. The memory closed and Ferris awakened to Elizabeth’s calm voice.

“Mr. Ferris’ father, Billy. A really grand person. Somebody you didn’t know.”

“But why did you call him Papa Ferris?”

Bailey and Elizabeth exchanged a trapped look. It was Bailey who answered the questioning child.”A long time ago,” he said, “your mother and Mr. Ferris were once married. Before you were born—a long time ago.”

“Mr. Ferris?”

The little boy stared at Ferris, amazed and unbelieving. And Ferris’ eyes, as he returned the gaze, were somehow unbelieving too. Was it indeed true that at one time he had called this stranger, Elizabeth, Little Butterduck during nights of love, that they had lived together, shared perhaps a thousand days and nights and—finally—endured in the misery of sudden solitude the fiber by fiber (jealousy, alcohol and money quarrels) destruction of the fabric of married love.

Bailey said to the children, “It’s somebody’s suppertime. Come on now.”