Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

But then her sleep would not come. Perversely her mind crept out of her languorous body. It crept downstairs and saw the others at the table together. Her place was empty. Her father hesitated before grace, as he always did if one of them were not there. He asked, “Where is Joan? Is she ill?”

“Let the child rest,” her mother answered comfortably. “This is her vacation — let her be.”

So they went on without her. But they missed her and she knew they did. The meal was not complete. They were not wholly fed unless they took their meal together. Her mind came creeping upstairs and into her body again. It urged her body lying inert, her eyes closed. She found herself thinking, I miss them, too. I’d rather have breakfast with them than all alone. I want to be in my place among them.

Suddenly she leaped up, wide awake, and dashed off her nightgown and darted under the shower in the bathroom. She turned it on full, a cold stinging rain against her. She whirled around and received it upon her breasts and let it rush to her feet; and turned and caught it upon her shoulders and down to her heels. She wrestled an instant with the thick towel, passing it this way and that over her body. She drew her garments over her head and buttoned the few buttons, quickly and slipped into her stockings and shoes and brushed the length of her hair out and twisted it. She ran to the table laughing, the tendrils of her hair still wet.

They looked at her joyously. “I thought you were going to sleep this morning!” her mother cried gaily.

“I didn’t want to miss anything,” she answered. “I suddenly felt I was missing something.”

“You sure would have missed these muffins,” Francis shouted. “I’m seeing to it you miss as many of ’em as I can manage.” He reached for a hot one as Hannah passed them, smiling and flattered.

They were all cheerful with her coming. Each one began speaking for himself and of his own thoughts except the mother, who must listen to them all. But each had needed the circle complete before which to speak. Her father ate with appetite today, pondering on the day before. He looked up in the midst of the chatter to ask his wife, troubled at a thought, “Mary, did you think there were as many out as usual yesterday?”

She answered him at once, although her eyes were still merry among her children. “Yes, I did, Paul — considering the time of the year. People like to take trips and picnics in weather like this.”

But he was not wholly comforted. He murmured, “The church members ought to remember their duty. The service ought to be necessary to them — as necessary for their souls as food for their bodies.”

“Oh, but, Father,” Joan broke in. “Don’t you think food for the soul comes in other ways, too? I know I find it in music — in beauty everywhere—”

Her father’s grave face grew a little more grave. He compressed his lips into patience before he answered with certainty, “These things do not lead to the knowledge of God. There is but one Saviour, and He is the Crucified.”

Now Rose lifted her secret heavy-lidded eyes and flashed them at her father and dropped them again, musing. Beyond Rose’s blond young head Joan looked into the garden and there she saw the glowing newly opened roses and the summer lilies in the border. The lemon lily was wide open. She forgot what her father said. After breakfast she would go out and dip her face delicately into the lily, as the hummingbird did when he discovered it. She remembered from summer to summer the fragrance of the lemon lily; among a hundred scents and perfumes she knew that clear single sweetness. But such knowledge, her father said, was not the knowledge of God. She turned to her mother impatiently.

“Mother—” she cried.

But her mother was not ready to hear her. She was listening to her son and her face was troubled.

“I don’t see why I can’t, Moms,” he was arguing. His dark beautiful face grew darker and somehow still more beautiful. Red rushed into his dark cheeks and he bit his lip to crimson. “All the fellows are going. Why, even Ned Parsons is going and you’re always holding him up to me — Gee, I’ve already asked my girl.”

“I don’t like your going off to that dance hall,” she answered stubbornly. “Your father is the minister.” She paused and pressed her full lips together. They were shaped exactly as her son’s were. Then she asked with constraint and in a different voice, “What girl have you asked?”

Now he was determined to punish her. “Why should I tell you if I can’t take her?” he muttered. He really had not asked a girl. But he wanted to hurt her.

“Oh, Frank,” she breathed, beseeching him, “don’t be so — You know I want you to have good wholesome fun. But I can’t think this is good for you.”

“That’s not the reason,” he retorted. “It’s because Dad is the sacred minister. Gosh, I’ve been hampered all my life because Dad is the sacred minister!”

But now his mother’s mobile face changed. She could be angry even with her son.

“If you’re half as good a man as your father, Francis—”

“I hope I’ll die before that,” he said between his teeth.

“Where do you want to go, son?” his father inquired. He had heard nothing, but now he looked up suddenly, aware of some discord.

“What’s the use of asking anything?” the boy broke out against his mother, ignoring his father. “I ought to do like the other fellows and not tell — I’m a fool for telling!”

Now he had the victory over his mother. Above all else she wanted him to tell her everything. She dreaded the hour when there would be silence between them, the silence of trivial surface speech. She clung to him as he still was. When he was stormy, and rebellious at least she knew what he was, and as long as she knew him he was still hers. But she perceived that she was holding him now only from day to day, even from hour to hour. She gave way before him, frightened lest this was the last hour.

“I’ll see about it,” she said.

He understood her and he grew amiable at once and turned to his father. “There’s a new place to eat and swim about three miles down the south road and a bunch of us thought we’d go down tonight for supper and stay a while afterwards.”

“I see,” his father said vaguely. It occurred to him nowadays that he should take an interest in his son’s life, now that he was sixteen — or was it seventeen? At any rate he was ceasing to be a child. When they were children it was natural that their mother should care for them. But Francis was no longer a child.

“Your — ah — studies are over?” he asked politely.

The mother broke in impatiently, half ashamed for him before the son. “Paul, don’t you remember we went to the closing exercises a week ago?”

“Yes, my dear, I do,” he replied mildly, looking at her with his clear blue distant gaze. “But I thought there was something said about Latin to be done this summer.” He brightened suddenly and seemed to come nearer. “I might be of help there,” he said with diffident eagerness.

“Or I could,” said Joan, smiling mischievously.

The boy broke out into rich laughter, “Gee, I’ll have to work yet with a bunch of teachers right in the family! Now don’t you speak, Rose!”

“I?” said Rose, looking up out of mists. “Oh, I couldn’t — Besides, I’ve promised Father to take a special catechism class for little girls this summer.”

“I’ve promised him a month’s vacation, Paul,” the mother said. Then she beamed unexpectedly upon him. “But it’s dear of you to help him — I know he’ll be glad—”

“Oh, sure,” said the boy gaily, satisfied, and pushing away from the table.

So the meal came to an end and they were knit together again by it. Their lives parted now and each went his way, but three times a day they were knit together again bodily. The body was their tie, the sameness of their blood and flesh. They met together and ate and drank and they renewed their flesh and their blood. They rose refreshed and ready to live apart for a while. In the search for what they wanted beyond the body they lived alone. But they would come together again and again, so they were never lost in loneliness.