Cabin Fever - Page 67/118

Joe did not take the matter seriously, though he was disappointed at

having made a fruitless trip to San Jose. He did not believe that

Marie had done anything more than take a vacation from her mother's

sharp-tongued rule, and for that he could not blame her, after having

listened for fifteen minutes to the lady's monologue upon the subject

of selfish, inconsiderate, ungrateful daughters. Remembering Marie's

attitude toward Bud, he did not believe that she had gone hunting him.

Yet Marie had done that very thing. True, she had spent a sleepless

night fighting the impulse, and a harassed day trying to make up her

mind whether to write first, or whether to go and trust to the element

of surprise to help plead her cause with Bud; whether to take Lovin

Child with her, or leave him with her mother.

She definitely decided to write Bud a short note and ask him if he

remembered having had a wife and baby, once upon a time, and if he never

wished that he had them still. She wrote the letter, crying a

little over it along toward the last, as women will. But it sounded

cold-blooded and condemnatory. She wrote another, letting a little

of her real self into the lines. But that sounded sentimental and

moving-pictury, and she knew how Bud hated cheap sentimentalism.

So she tore them both up and put them in the little heating stove,

and lighted a match and set them burning, and watched them until they

withered down to gray ash, and then broke up the ashes and scattered

them amongst the cinders. Marie, you must know, had learned a good many

things, one of which was the unwisdom of whetting the curiosity of a

curious woman.

After that she proceeded to pack a suit case for herself and Lovin

Child, seizing the opportunity while her mother was visiting a friend

in Santa Clara. Once the packing was began, Marie worked with a feverish

intensity of purpose and an eagerness that was amazing, considering her

usual apathy toward everything in her life as she was living it.

Everything but Lovin Child. Him she loved and gloried in. He was like

Bud--so much like him that Marie could not have loved him so much if she

had managed to hate Bud as she tried sometimes to hate him. Lovin Child

was a husky youngster, and he already had the promise of being as tall

and straight-limbed and square-shouldered as his father. Deep in his

eyes there lurked always a twinkle, as though he knew a joke that would

make you laugh--if only he dared tell it; a quizzical, secretly

amused little twinkle, as exactly like Bud's as it was possible for

a two-year-old twinkle to be. To go with the twinkle, he had a quirky

little smile. And to better the smile, he had the jolliest little

chuckle that ever came through a pair of baby lips.