grips with the truth for the first time. You saw it before anybody else.
Whatever I said that night, please don’t hold it against me. I’m not the
same guy any more.”
“You’re forgiven,” Jack said. “Where are you?”
“At the hospital. I want to stay as close to Sunny as I can.”
“She’s still in labor?”
“Yeah. Pretty rough.”
“Want some company?” Jack said.
“Sure do.”
“I’ll be over in half an hour. With cigarettes.”
“Good boy, Jack. Thanks.”
“I’m coming too,” Laura said as Jack hung up the phone.
“Honey, it’s turning into a damn convention. The Rothelis are with him
and I expect the Pringles will show up later.”
“This baby meant the world to Sunny, Jack,” Laura said. “If anything
happens to it.... Well, June went to pieces over her first, and she
might do Sunny more harm than good. I want to be there just in case.”
Laura’s affection for Sunny had an undoubted erotic tinge. But at that
moment she didn’t even consider it. Her concern was quite selfless. Jack
saw there was no arguing with her and surrendered good-naturedly.
They drove over to Wesley Memorial Hospital, taking a carton of
cigarettes, apples, a pint of scotch, and a plastic pacifier for the
baby.
“Nine weeks early,” Laura mused. “That’s not too bad, you know. Betsy
was four weeks early and she was almost six pounds.”
“Yes, but you didn’t quit eating. And you weren’t lost on the desert,
either.”
She fell silent, wondering about it.
They parked their red Volkswagen two blocks away and walked to the
hospital, taking the elevator up to the maternity waiting room. They saw
Page first, talking to a handsome middle-aged couple that Laura knew at
once must be the Rothelis.
They approached with caution. Page hadn’t warned them whether the
Rothelis knew yet who he was and it seemed highly unlikely that they
did. Page was badly sunburned, the skin still red across his nose and
cheekbones; it had been cruel exposure for his fair skin, and it must
have been as bad for Sunny’s.
Page and Ben Rotheli stood up and Page gripped Jack’s hand hard with
emotion. Jack was absorbed for a moment in matching the features of
father and son. The resemblance was subtle. If you knew about them, you
saw it. If you didn’t know, and weren’t looking for it, it would escape
you.
“June ... the baby?” Laura said.
“Not yet,” June said, shaking her head. The strain of the wait showed in
her eyes. Impulsively Laura put a warm hand on June’s and squeezed it,
thinking how hard June must be trying to control herself now, for
everyone’s sake.
“It’ll be all right,” Laura said. “My little girl came early, too.”
“Did she?” June said eagerly, and they launched into comforting
woman-talk.
“She’s been in true labor about ten hours,” Page told Jack. “She’s
pretty weak after two days on that damn sand. It’s incredible how many
pints of water you lose in that heat.”
“I believe it.”
“The pains started then, actually,” Page said. “But it was false labor.”
“How’s it going now?” Jack asked.
“Settick says she’s got a lot of natural stamina. The baby’s alive. They
can hear its heartbeat. They’re giving Sunny injections of saline
solution to speed things along.”
“Thank God for Dr. Settick,” Rotheli said with feeling. “He took right
over when he got here. One of the other doctors told us he was doing a
brilliant job. If anyone can bring her and the baby through, he can.”
Page nodded agreement without a show of jealousy. His opinion of the
young obstetrician had been drastically revised when he understood that
Sunny’s life might be in his hands.
“She’s got to be all right,” he told Jack. “The baby comes second.”
“You can always have more kids, Page, but you’ve only got one Sunny,”
Ben said gently, putting a hand on Page’s shoulder. Jack realized then
that Ben and June still did not know that Page was Roger Rotheli.
“June, I’m going down for a sandwich,” Ben told his wife after a minute.
“Can I bring you anything? We haven’t eaten since we got here eight
hours ago,” he said to the Manns.
“Go along with him, June,” Page said. “We’ll get you right away if
there’s any news.”
Reluctantly, June let herself be persuaded, largely because Ben seemed
to need her company. She had no appetite herself. She was so tired, her
face so like Sunny’s, that Page, watching her walk out, felt a great
warmth for her.
He sat with the Manns in silence for a minute.
“Have a cigarette,” Jack said finally, offering Page the carton. “It’ll
calm your nerves.”
“Thanks.” Page opened a fresh pack and lighted one. “What I really need
is a wake-up-and-swing pill,” he chuckled. “After that desert vacation
and this baby business, all I want to do is lie down on the floor and
sleep for a week.”
“The Rothelis don’t know who you are yet, do they?” said Laura.
“No.” He sighed a cloud of fresh smoke. “I can’t even think about that
now. Not till Sunny’s out of danger.”
“I thought we’d see the Pringles here,” Jack said.
“I didn’t call them. They don’t know we’re back, and Mother’s
bedridden.”
“Still quarreling?”
“Oh, that’s not it. You see, they haven’t met the Rothelis, and this
seemed like a lousy time for it, with all of us so worried. It’d drive
me nuts to have them on my neck.”
Jack bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “How the hell did
you get lost in the desert?” he asked.
Page told him in a voice that was grim.
* * * * *
He had arrived out in Los Angeles in the early evening and driven a
rented car to Los Feliz Avenue. Sunny’s apartment was one of the scores
lined up in neatly landscaped rows on the big avenue. He picked out her
number behind a waving palm frond, and then had to spend twenty minutes
finding a parking spot.
Her rooms were on the ground floor in the back, surrounded with freshly
watered orange day lilies, their leaves weighted with water diamonds. It
was a perfect setting for her.
Page knocked on her door and waited several minutes. He could hear her
walk across the room finally and stop by the door.
“Who is it?” she said and her voice struck joy and relief into his
heart. But he was afraid to answer for fear she would keep the door
locked. Then what could he do—break in a window?
“Brian?” she said, sounding more alert this time.
Page had no way of knowing Richie Settick’s brother’s name. He only knew
Sunny seemed to be expecting a man and his sudden anger triggered the
voice out of his throat. “Sunny? It’s me, darling. Page.” Silence. “Let
me in.” Again, silence. “Sunny, can’t you hear me? Darling, let me in.”
Very slowly the door opened. Sunny’s face, heart-catchingly lovely,
gazed out. They studied each other warily. She put a protective hand
over her stomach, Richie’s warning ringing in her ears.
“How did you find me?” she said and he saw the alarm in her big eyes.
“Your mother,” he said softly.
She appeared shocked at this, but she didn’t question it. “What do you
want?” she asked.
“I want you,” he whispered.
“Dr. Settick said—”
“I know what he said. I talked to him.”
“Did you hurt him?”
“No. He gave as good as he got. He’s a good man, damn him. Sunny, please
come back with me.”
“To live with you?” She looked at him with yearning, resenting his
intrusion, his threat to her child, yet knowing that if he wanted her
back as his _wife_, she would go.
“Can we talk about it?” Page said.
“That’s all we’ve done. It hasn’t helped much.”
“We’ve only shouted at each other,” he said. “Sunny, don’t make me stand
out here in the dark. Anybody could hear us. I feel like a damn Fuller
Brush man.”
“You stay right where you are and tell me what you want from me, Page.”
“I want to take you on a honeymoon,” he said, coming closer to keep it
private. “We’ve never had one. I thought we could take our time and see
the West and ... maybe settle this thing.” He hadn’t known when she
opened that door what he would say to her. But suddenly he had found the
words.
“And fall smack into the same old ugly rut when we got back,” she said.
“I sit at home for months while you make up your mind you can’t live
without me. Then we meet for a few agonizing hours and yell and hurt
each other and make dreadful, guilty love because your real name is
Roger Rotheli. And then home I go to sit and weep for another few
months. Or have a miscarriage.” Her voice rose and he hushed her with a
worried stare.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” she finished more quietly.
Abruptly he pushed his way in, moving so fast she hadn’t time to thrust
the door between them. He took her in his arms and kissed her. For all
his strength and passion, he seemed like a child begging her to make up
his mind for him.
She returned his kisses helplessly. “Page,” she murmured while he hugged
her and he shuddered at the tears in her voice. “I will not tell you
what you should do.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Not with words,” she conceded. “You’re asking another way. But darling,
you have to face this alone. I’ve made up my mind; now you make up
yours. Either you take me back or you leave me. You can’t have it both
ways.”
“Help me,” he whispered into her shoulder, admitting his dilemma at
last. “I can’t live like this. I’m so lost, Sunny. It all seems clear to
Dad. And it seems just as clear to you. Only you’re on opposite sides of
the fence, you two. I’m at dead center and you’re both pulling on me
till I’m coming apart at the seams. I can’t move one way or the other.”
“Climb off the fence, Page,” she pleaded.
“Say you love me,” he said, searching for comfort, trying to forget
everything but Sunny’s presence.
She stroked his head and let her random tears fall unchecked. “You’ve
known that all along, and it just makes things worse.”
“Just say it, Sunny. My darling, darling Sunny. Please.”
“I love you,” she said. “I love you, _Roger_.”
She shocked him rigid. He stared at her to see if she meant to hurt him.
She was bravely serious.
“Good night, my darling brother,” she said, and closed the door softly
in his astonished face.
* * * * *
Neither of them slept. Page, stripped of his pride and wavering between
two identities, sat down shamelessly on Sunny’s door mat and spent the
night watching the stars.
He wanted to be up there where there were no riddles, no flesh and
breath, no incest. Nothing but the fire-punctured dark; nothing but the
flow of Infinity.
Our love will last in spite of everything, he thought. The only question
is, will it hurt more if we’re together or apart?
But he already knew the answer. He couldn’t fool himself any longer. The
real question was the one she threw at him as she shut the door: was her
brother brave enough to live with her? Take his sister for his wife?
Could he survive the horror and scorn they might have to face? Conquer
his fear and make her the strong, loving husband she needed?
He let it spin around in his head, a crazy carousel that had no starting
place and no stopping; just endless indecision.
* * * * *
Sunny lay on her bed and watched the moonlight slide across her ceiling.
Perhaps, being a woman, her decision was easier than his. Her love was
her life. It didn’t matter whether she was Page’s sister or not. Alone,
she didn’t know who she was. With Page she did know and she was
unafraid.
Her heart dilated with love and pity for him. But if I make this
decision for him I’ll be open to a lifetime of blame, she thought.
Whatever goes wrong with us he can blame on me. No, if there’s any
fault-finding, we’ll have to share it.
But she went cold at the thought that he might leave her again, whipped
by his fears.
Sunny didn’t realize that Page had spent the night only fifteen feet
from her bed until she heard him talking in the morning. His voice came
clearly through her front door. She dropped her toothbrush and ran to
let him in.
The door opened on Page and George Pringle, and it wasn’t any happy chat
they were having. They fell silent at the sight of her, as, she looked
from one to the other in surprise, convinced that Pringle must have come
along to prod Page into saying good-by to her.
“Won’t you come in?” she said frostily. “I might have known Page would
want to face his wife with a chaperone.”
Mr. Pringle got the point: Sunny had not left Page out of any noble
desire to end their illegal marriage. Silently he ushered Page inside
ahead of him, taking off his hat as he followed. Sunny shut the door and
turned to face them, arms folded and eyes contemptuous.
“I didn’t expect this,” she said. “Page has always been brave enough to
come calling by himself until now.”
“Sunny!” Page flared.
“Page had no idea I was coming,” Pringle said.
“Really?” Sunny said sarcastically. “Well, you seem to have timed it
perfectly. Congratulations. I suppose you also got my address from my
mother?”
“Don’t misunderstand, Sunny,” Pringle said. “Your mother loves you, and
she’s very worried about you. I couldn’t tell her the truth.”
“You’re too generous, Mr. Pringle.”
“I know I’ve lost your affection because of this thing,” Pringle said
regretfully. “And it grieves me. I’ll tell you the truth, though it has
given me a great deal of pain. Lucia feels as you do, my dear: that you
and Page should—should live together as man and wife.” His gaze dropped.
It humiliated him to admit this, yet it might win him her goodwill.
“Mother said that?” Page asked, disbelieving.
“Yes. I was most unhappy, as you must realize. But I felt I had to come
here, in spite of her objections, when I learned that Page had followed
you, Sunny. I felt that I had a duty to help you two.”
“You have a duty to leave us alone. We don’t need your help!” Sunny
declared. “We just need each other.” Pringle at that moment was her
worst enemy. “I know exactly what you want to tell us, as if it weren’t
already branded on our brains: We are _brother_ and _sister_.” She gave
the words a hard punch that made them almost unbearable to hear, and
suddenly found herself weeping.
Pringle stood alone in the center of the room, embarrassed, unsure, full
of smothered love. He didn’t know how to proceed. He only knew he cared
enormously for his “children” and he thought he was morally right. “I
love you both,” he said hesitantly, trying to reach them.
“Then have mercy on us!” Sunny said.
“But I’m afraid you’ll end up together again.”
“We haven’t made any decision yet,” Page said.
“You coward!” Sunny shot at him, forgetting for a second what havoc that
word had wreaked the last time she used it. Her eyes darted to his
mutilated left hand. Quickly he made a fist of it.
“Do you really think you can keep each other and live normal lives?”
Pringle said incredulously.
“I can’t think at all, God damn it,” Page said. “I’m paralyzed until you
get out of here!”
Pringle hesitated a moment and then went to the door. “All right,” he
said. “But if you can’t separate on your own, I warn you I’ll do all I
can to separate you myself.”
The three of them looked at each other for a second. “The hell of it
is,” Sunny said to Pringle through her tears, “you really do love us. I
believe that.”
“My children, I love you very much,” he said gratefully. “That’s why I’m
here.”
They watched him turn and go in silence. Sunny had always been fond of
her father-in-law, since their first warm meeting, and she regretted the
hard words she had spoken. Yet she had had to say them.
16
For several moments after Pringle departed, Page and Sunny did not
speak. Sunny was too proud and hurt to start begging again and Page was
still too mixed up to declare himself. But Pringle had stated the
challenge for them now, and a decision had to be taken.
They were afraid of losing the fragile tie Pringle’s presence had bound
between them, and suddenly they spoke each other’s names at the same
instant.
“We seem to have a talent for that,” Page said, smiling. He went to her
and touched her hair. “Come with me, Sunny,” he said fondly.
“Right now? Without knowing where we’re going or how we’ll end up or—”
“How can we know that now, darling? We’ll figure it out while we’re
traveling. We’ll get to know each other all over again.”
She had sworn she wouldn’t go back to him until he made it formal and
final that she was his wife for the rest of their lives. But, like her
mother, she was made to yield. She still hoped she could bring him
around as long as she was physically close to him.
He saw her indecision and clasped her tightly to him. “Sunny, it’s the
only way. We can’t leave the thing hung up.”
And she began to understand what he wanted: a chance to test himself and
his temper and his nerves; to test his love in different places with
different people; to see how he and Sunny made it together, confined
with each other in a motel room or a car twenty-four hours a day. Maybe
it would work. If it convinced Page he could take it, Sunny was willing
to try it.
“All right,” she said finally. “But if this doesn’t do it—”
He interrupted her with a kiss. She could feel him fighting himself,
trying to keep things fraternal. But they went radically out of bounds
in a matter of seconds. His mouth opened on hers and he began to rock
her with his hips. He tried once more to stop, burying his face against
her neck and shuddering with the effort. Then she heard him murmur
helplessly, “Oh, the hell with it.”
“That’s the spirit, darling,” she whispered, laughing softly. “After
all, if it’s going to be a honeymoon....”
Page swung her up in his arms and carried her to the unmade bed. He
stretched out with her, and the weight of his big body made her groan
with pleasure.
“Oh, God!” he exclaimed, moving over. “The baby!”
“Baby wants more,” she told him, green eyes twinkling. Reassured, he
embraced her again. “Mmmm,” he whispered. “Pepsodent.”
Sunny laughed again and hugged him in a spasm of pure joy. When he began
that silly intimate teasing that always led to love, she knew what he
was feeling and she was temporarily sure of the world.
* * * * *
“We’ll have to call Mom and Dad,” Sunny said later.
Page looked up from the map he was examining. “They’ll only worry,” he
said. “Let them think we’re still out here till we show up in
Hillsburg.” He tickled her beautiful face. “When are we going to tell
them about me, honey?” he asked.
Sunny looked at the ceiling, bristling all over with alarm. “Never, I
hope,” she said with forced calm.
“Is that fair? I’m their own child, their first-born son.”
“It would kill them,” Sunny said. “Page, believe me, they couldn’t love
you more if they did know ... and the knowledge might destroy Mother.”
“On the other hand, it might make her very happy,” he said. “Women are
peculiar creatures. I can’t help it, darling, I think they ought to
know. My step-parents know. Don’t my real parents deserve the truth at
least as much?”
“Not when it’s so painful.”
“You’re exaggerating,” he said flatly, and she saw that he was not going
to give in. But thanks to Richie Settick, he was afraid to press the
argument. Instead he would file it away and fetch it out to fluster her
with in a day or two.
He folded the map and said, “Let’s get going, honey. I’ll help you
pack.”
She obeyed him docilely, glad it was Page giving the orders now and not
Settick. “Poor Richie will worry himself sick when he finds out I’m
gone,” she said. “So will Brian. That’s his brother, darling. The doctor
I’m seeing out here.”
“Well, let them worry,” Page said with heartless satisfaction. “Damn
country is infested with Setticks and they don’t care how I worry.”
Sunny made him call Hillsburg before they left. She told the Rothelis
they would be in Los Angeles another couple of weeks, and allowed June
to think they were reconciled.
It was a good day to start a trip: clear and fair and warm. They drove
east on the San Bernardino freeway. Page wasn’t used to the recklessness
of Los Angeles’ drivers, and he wasted some breath swearing at them.
They got off on Route 66 in the town of San Bernardino and traveled
north over the Cajon Pass toward the beautiful high desert country.
Sunny loved the great green mountains and blue vistas, the flat white
tape of highway pasted over the hills, the cactus and the Joshua trees.
By late afternoon they were near Apple Valley on the desert,
thirty-five-hundred feet above sea level. The air was brittle-clear and
cooling fast as the sun descended. Apple Valley was five miles off the
main road, and they turned in to spend the night.
They got a room and had dinner at the Apple Valley Inn.
“I haven’t eaten so much in months,” she laughed. Page clasped her hand
across the table and smiled at her.
“And Settick told me the mere sight of me would give you a miscarriage,”
he snorted.
“It nearly did,” she said, sobering.
“Did I make up for it?” he asked, and she nodded. They were serenaded
during dessert by an ambulant trio who took them for newlyweds until
they spotted Sunny’s maternity dress. Their embarrassment sent her into
gales of laughter.
Later they walked around the hotel grounds, hand in hand in the
starlight. And then went to bed and made love and slept like winter
squirrels until ten the next morning.
They decided to skip breakfast and drive a while before they ate. It was
clear and warm with the promise of real heat by noon. They went only
thirty-five miles before Sunny announced she was starving.
“You see? I’m a good influence on your appetite,” Page said.
They stopped at the next place they saw: a little hamburger joint
outside the town of Barstow. Sunny ordered two hamburgers and a beer.
“Shouldn’t you be drinking milk?” Page said.
“Not when there’s beer around. I’ll drink a quart of milk for lunch, I
promise.”
“You’re happy, aren’t you, honey?” he said, smiling at her.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” she grinned.
* * * * *
Their breakfast was almost gone when George Pringle came in. He made his
way toward their table, watching them with worried eyes. Sunny gasped
when she saw him, awed by his determination.
“Sit down, Page,” she told her angry husband, who was half out of his
seat, “or I swear to God I’ll have this baby right now. In your lap.”
He sat down.
Pringle hesitated a second and then sat next to Sunny.
“Children,” he began, but Page interrupted.
“We are not children,” he said sharply. “If you’d ever get that into
your head it’d solve half our problems.”
“I thought I’d lost you for a while when you turned off 66,” Pringle
said, avoiding for the moment the urgent subject that brought him there.
Sunny put a hand on his arm. “Mr. Pringle, we won’t go through this
again with you,” she said. To her surprise, instead of arguing he put
his head in his hands in a gesture Page had made familiar to her. It
dramatized the profound influence Pringle had had on his unruly
step-son.
“I couldn’t let you get away without trying once more to make you see
reason,” he sighed, looking up.
“You just make me see red,” Page retorted.
“There’s no need for cruelty, Page,” his father said.
“Cruelty?” Page said skeptically.
But Pringle meant it and his face showed it. He looked for the first
time like an old man. Page felt a guilty shock to realize he was not the
only one who was suffering. He had never let himself think of George
Pringle as a vulnerable human being like himself. He cherished the
mental image of a cold, correct, remote man. It was an image Page had
formed in his early childhood and one that had long since ceased to bear
any resemblance to his step-father. It had suited Page to think he could
lash out at Pringle without hurting him. Now the hurt was vividly
visible and Page had a good long look at it. His shame and surprise
quieted him.
“Do something for me, Dad,” he asked. “Go back to Los Angeles and take
the next plane home, before we end up enemies. We’ll call you when we
get back and let you know what we’ve decided.” The affection he had
always felt for Pringle was reasserting itself for the first time in
many years, at this odd time and place. It shook Pringle up and moved
him to surrender. Perhaps if he yielded now he could salvage that love
Page still felt in spite of everything. Perhaps it was worth more than
the strict morality he was trying to force on the younger man. Pringle
trembled inwardly with self-rebuke. He was becoming as soft and
sentimental as Lucia! But he couldn’t stop himself.
“All right, Page, if it has to be that way,” he said with misgivings. He
seemed too tired, too irresolute, to keep battling with them. There was
nothing more he could do and he even sensed that he might drive them
back together if they teamed up against him in their resentment of his
meddling. He left them at last, proud and silent but with a noticeable
slump in his back.
* * * * *
“So he left you in peace?” Jack asked Page. “Have an apple.”