THE LAST DAYS OF SUNSHINE
"Mommy, can you come to Show 'n' Tell with me this morning?" Greg wanted to know, about a week after Bobby and Sue had come home from the hospital. Bobby was fussing a little and Alice was preparing a bottle for the two-week-old baby.
"What for?" Sue asked. Despite the speed of Bobby's birth, she was exhausted, the fatigue lingering, and she thought her recovery was going more slowly than it had after Greg and Peter had been born. But she was determined to take as much care of Bobby as she could without foisting it off on Alice, who had enough to handle with the two older boys, the housework and cooking, and the dog.
"Well," Greg said earnestly, "yesterday Vicky Gray brought her hamster to school so everybody could see it and how she takes care of it an' stuff. So I thought today I'll bring you an' Bobby to school, and you can show how you take care of him."
Sue laughed and winced when the movement jostled some sore spots. "Honey, I'd like to, but Show and Tell isn't the place for a baby as little as Bobby," she explained. "And I'm still hurting a lot from when Bobby got born, so I have to stay home and get all the rest I can. The doctor told me so."
Peter had turned three several weeks before Bobby's birth, and Greg was now six and almost done with his kindergarten year. He was a good student, Sue and Mike had found, although occasionally he had a tendency to come up with unworkable ideas such as the one he had just proposed. Both Greg and Peter had been thrilled to get another brother, and their excitement had been almost too abundant: at one point Peter had nearly overturned the cradle that Thomas had carved for Bobby, and Greg kept trying to think up some way to show off his new baby brother to his classmates at school.
"Rats," Greg mumbled, snapping his fingers the way he'd seen people do on TV. Or at least, he tried to snap his fingers, but he hadn't quite gotten the hang of it yet. He made three or four fruitless attempts before blurting, "Aw, phooey. Alice, how do you snap your fingers?"
Alice handed the bottle to Sue and grinned at Greg. "It's easy once you know how, but it takes practice to get it right," she said. "You ready for school? I'll show you on the way." The doctor had insisted that Sue stay off her feet unless it was absolutely necessary, so now Alice walked Greg to school each morning.
"Okay," Greg said with a sigh and turned toward the kitchen doorway. Then he stopped short, causing Alice to half fall over him. "I know! Alice, you could bring Bobby to school, so Mommy can do what the doctor says!"
"No," Sue and Alice chorused in perfect harmony, and Alice rolled her eyes for good measure. "Come on, Greg, it's time for school. You need to give me some warning before you stop cold like that—I almost ran over you." Sue chuckled and Alice tossed an encouraging grin at her over her shoulder. "Be back in a jiff, Mrs. Brady." Sue nodded and turned back to Bobby, while Peter sat in a chair atop two telephone books, laboriously feeding himself some of Alice's special oatmeal.
"Doing okay, son?" Sue asked indulgently, glancing up from Bobby for a moment.
Peter nodded industriously and swallowed, then said, "Mommy, can Bobby have Alice's oatmeal? It's real good and he'll like it a lot."
"I'm sure he will someday, but right now he's much too little," Sue explained, smiling at him. "Bobby's so little that all his stomach can handle right now is milk." She had a sense of déjà vu and suddenly remembered telling Greg the same thing about Peter, and grinned to herself.
"This is yummy," said Peter. "Mommy, why doesn't Daddy eat oatmeal?"
"Daddy never liked oatmeal," said Sue, who had this in common with her husband. Both she and Mike knew full well that oatmeal was good for them, but as kids they'd never developed a taste for it and had grown up eating pancakes, waffles, cornflakes, scrambled eggs and bacon. "I guess maybe if Alice had been there to make it when Daddy and I were growing up, we'd like it."
"Yeah, everybody should like Alice's oatmeal," Peter proclaimed. "Yum, yum."
"Try not to spill it," Sue said, as Peter plunked his spoon into his bowl again. "You want the oatmeal to go in your tummy, not on your shirt."
Peter paused and examined his shirt, then beamed at his mother. "Not on my shirt, Mommy, see?"
"I see," Sue said and smiled again. Bobby shifted a little in her arms and she turned the smile on her baby, noticing that already his light-brown hair was falling out and darker fuzz was beginning to show underneath. He'll take after us dark-haired Bradys after all, Sue thought contentedly.
Alice returned within half an hour and began to gather dishes to wash; Peter was running around the backyard with Tiger, and Sue had put Bobby down to sleep for a couple of hours or so till his next feeding time. About to settle herself down on the sofa to read a magazine that had arrived in yesterday's mail, she saw something on Mike's makeshift drafting table and edged over to take a look. Mike usually showed her the projects he brought home, though he hadn't mentioned this one.
It was a house plan, she realized, studying it. It had a lovely, spacious kitchen, a den to watch TV or play games, and an incredible soaring living/dining room with a fireplace that also backed into an adjoining smaller room. In one corner of the huge room was a flight of stairs. Sue wasn't very good at interpreting blueprints, but she knew enough to know that whoever owned this house-to-be was one lucky son-of-a-gun. She smiled down at it and then made her way back to the sofa to rest and read while she could.
At supper she remarked casually, "That's quite some house you're designing in there, honey. I really envy the future owner of that place."
Mike paused in the midst of taking a bite of meatloaf and stared at her. "Hm?"
"I saw the blueprint on your drafting table," Sue said and blinked, stricken with a thought. "Oh, my gosh, I hope I wasn't intruding on anything."
Mike seemed to realize what she was talking about and laughed, forking the bite into his mouth. "Oh, that. Well, as a matter of fact, that's quite a feat, envying yourself."
"What?" Sue said blankly.
"The owner of that house is going to be you and me, someday," Mike informed her, grinning. "So you're envying yourself, honey."
Sue's eyes grew enormous. "Really? My word, Mike, how are we ever going to afford the place? The living room's enormous—I'm sure it would be beautiful to see once it's built, but even I can tell how big that place is. It's a gorgeous dream, though, I'll certainly say that."
"It may be that the boys are grown and gone before we can afford it," Mike admitted, "but I want you to have a place like that, that you can go nuts decorating if you want. Oh, sure, right now it's only a dream, but that's how the best houses begin—dreams, visions, in the minds of architects." He grinned at her while Alice gave Greg and Peter each a new mound of mashed potatoes. "And this architect is in love with a fabulous, beautiful lady who gave him three terrific boys and is the greatest wife in the world, so that's why I'm designing that house. It's for you."
"It's beautiful," Sue said again, smiling a little helplessly. She wasn't sure she deserved this future showplace, but she loved Mike dearly for wanting to make it reality for her.
‡ ‡ ‡
Just around the time of Bobby's first birthday, Rick dropped in on Mike, Sue and the boys with a huge cat-ate-the-canary grin. "Folks," he said grandly, "I have met the woman I mean to marry."
Sue snickered, and Mike gave him a skeptical smirk. "No way, pal. Not Rick Brady, confirmed lifelong, marriage-scorning bachelor."
"Oh yeah, big brother, me," Rick said, nodding vigorously. "She is it, man."
Alice and Sue looked at each other as Alice was handing out highballs to the two brothers and a cocktail to Sue. Alice then peered at Rick and asked dryly, "Does it have a name?"
Mike and Sue both burst out laughing at Rick's pause, head-scratch and blinking, goofy look. Then Rick smiled, unusually sheepishly for so self-assured a man (Sue's private word for it was "cocky"), and said, "Okay, okay, so she doesn't even know I exist yet, and I don't know her last name, even. But I promise you, I'm gonna marry the girl."
"Do you know her first name?" Sue inquired.
"Well, yeah, naturally. I wouldn't marry a girl whose name I didn't know," said Rick indignantly.
"Right," Mike drawled and winked at Sue. "So what is her name?"
"Sharon," said Rick with a dramatic flourish, sitting up and leaning forward with an eager look on his face. "Isn't that the most fantastic name that ever existed? Shaaaaaaaron." He drew it out reverently.
"And where'd you meet this paragon of fabulosity?" Alice asked, in her usual tongue-in-cheek manner.
"On Flight 315 from Seattle to Los Angeles," Rick announced. "Just today. I just got back from that trip up to see my college buddy, Jim, and Sharon was one of the stewardesses. A vision in sky-blue, with gorgeous gold hair and the biggest blue eyes in the world. And leeeeegggs…aw, man, Mike, the legs on her. Spectacular. Incredible. Indescribable."
"A regular Miss America," Alice agreed, picking up her tray and heading back to the kitchen.
"And when Sharon and I get married," Rick went on, apparently oblivious, "we're gonna have great-looking kids—the best-looking kids in the family. Naaah, in the world. They'll be pals with your boys and Gordon and Patricia's girl, and we will be the most blissed-out parents alive."
"Well," said Sue, "make sure you let Sharon in on all this, okay?"
Mike grinned. "Do you have a way to let Sharon in on it?"
"Whaddaya mean?" Rick asked.
"I'm assuming you got her phone number," Mike said, highly amused. "It's kind of hard to marry a girl and have the world's best-looking kids with her if you don't even have her phone number."
Rick's face abruptly became suffused with horror and he groaned, so loudly that Alice half ran back in from the kitchen with a look of alarm on her face. "Aw, man, I'm so stupid," Rick wailed. "I didn't even get her number!! How'm I gonna find her?"
Sue smiled and remarked, "I guess you'll just have to book another flight and hope she's on it."
"You gotta be kidding!" Rick yelled, incredulous. "I'm serious here! I really have to find her!"
"Calm down," Alice suggested. "It's not as hard as you might think. Just take a day off and go to the airport and hang around there, and watch for her. If she doesn't show up, check at the reservations counter for the airline you flew to Seattle, and ask if they can find her."
"What if they can't?" Rick protested.
"It's easy, Mr. Brady," Alice said with a shrug. "Just give 'em that scintillating description you gave us, and they'll find her in no time at all." Again Mike and Sue burst into laughter. Rick gave them a fulminating look, shot Alice a glare and slouched so low in his seat that his knees were on his eye level.
"You people have no sympathy at all for a lovelorn man," he grumbled. "I knew I never should've come here. I knew Patricia would've made fun of me, but I really thought I could trust you, Mike."
"Oh, come on, Rick," Mike said, still laughing. "Well, she must really be something all right, if she made you totally forget to ask for her phone number. To tell you the truth, Alice's suggestion sounds like about the best idea going. What can you lose by trying it?"
"Not too much, I guess," Rick said, heaving a sigh. He slanted Alice a look from under hooded lids and down-pointing brows, and warned, "It just better work, that's all. Anyway…thanks for the drinks. Night." He got up and departed, and Mike and Sue looked at each other merrily.
"He's got it bad, all right," Mike chuckled. "I never thought I'd live to see it happen."
"I didn't either," Sue agreed softly, half smiling. "I'm glad I did, though. It's about time he settled down, that playboy. I only hope Sharon can handle him—if she bothers to give him the time of day, and if he ever finds her in the first place." Mike arose from his chair and helped Alice gather glasses, while Sue watched them and tried to maintain a poker face. She had another doctor's appointment tomorrow, and she dreaded the news she would receive.