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“Glad to.”
They shook hands gravely, and the clear wind blew through the open window. They shook hands for almost a minute, the boy smiling up at the old man and thanking him.
Then, laughing, the boy raced the doctor downstairs and out to his car. His mother and father followed for the happy farewell.
“Fit as a fiddle!” said the doctor. “Incredible!”
“And strong,” said the father. “He got out of his straps himself during the night. Didn’t you, Charles?”
“Did I?” said the boy.
“You did! How?”
“Oh,” the boy said, “that was a long time ago.”
“A long time ago!”
They all laughed, and while they were laughing, the quiet boy moved his bare foot on the sidewalk and merely touched, brushed against a number of red ants that was scurrying about on the sidewalk. Secretly, his eyes shining, while his parents chatted with the old man, he saw the ants hesitate, quiver, and lie still on the cement. He sensed they were cold now.
“Good-by!”
The doctor drove away, waving.
The boy walked ahead of his parents. As he walked he looked away toward the town and began to hum “School Days” under his breath.
“It’s good to have him well again,” said the father.
“Listen to him. He’s so looking forward to school!”
The boy turned quietly. He gave each of his parents a crushing hug. He kissed them both several times.
Then without a word he bounded up the steps into the house.
In the parlor, before the others entered, he quickly opened the bird cage, thrust his hand in, and petted the yellow canary, once.
Then he shut the cage door, stood back, and waited.
The Marriage Mender
In the sun the headboard was like a fountain, tossing up plumes of clear light. It was carved with lions and gargoyles and bearded goats. It was an awe-inspiring object even at midnight, as Antonio sat on the bed and unlaced his shoes and put his large calloused hand out to touch its shimmering harp. Then he rolled over into this fabulous machine for dreaming, and he lay breathing heavily, his eyes beginning to close.
“Every night,” his wife’s voice said, “we sleep in the mouth of a calliope.”
Her complaint shocked him. He lay a long while before daring to reach up his hard-tipped fingers to stroke the cold metal of the intricate headboard, the threads of this lyre that had sung many wild and beautiful songs down the years.
“This is no calliope,” he said.
“It cries like one,” Maria said. “A billion people on this world tonight have beds. Why, I ask the saints, not us?”
“This,” said Antonio gently, “is a bed.” He plucked a little tune on the imitation brass harp behind his head. To his ears it was “Santa Lucia.”
“This bed has humps like a herd of camels was under it.”
“Now, Mama,” Antonio said. He called her Mama when she was mad, though they had no children. “You were never this way,” he went on, “until five months ago when Mrs. Brancozzi downstairs bought her new bed.”
Maria said wistfully, “Mrs. Brancozzi’s bed. It’s like snow. It’s all flat and white and smooth.”
“I don’t want any damn snow, all flat and white and smooth! These springs—feel them!” he cried angrily. “They know me. They recognize that this hour of night I lie thus, at two o’clock, so! Three o’clock this way, four o’clock that. We are like a tumbling act, we’ve worked together for years and know all the holds and falls.”
