The Touch

Sylvia Nash

"Ba?"

Where is he? Sylvia wondered as she scanned the backyard from her work area off the hothouse that served as her arboretum. He almost invariably started off each day watering the trees in the hothouse. But the trays under the pots were dry and he was nowhere in sight.

Strains from Vivaldi, left on the stereo since last night, filled the air. Sylvia put down the chopsticks she had been using to loosen the soil around the ezo spruce bonsai before her and brushed her hands. The ishi-zuki was ready for transplanting and she needed someone to help her. The tree's new Fukuroshiki pot was layered with stone and soil and waiting for the tree. All that was missing was Ba.

Normally she would de-pot and transplant a tree by herself, laying it on its side, pruning the longer, heavier roots, then replacing it in its pot after freshening the soil. But the ishi-zuki was special. She had spent too many years working, watching, and waiting while she trained the roots of this little tree to grow over and around the rock upon which it sat to jeopardize it by trying to transplant it without assistance. If the stone fell free of the roots, she'd never forgive herself.

"Gladys?" she called. "Have you seen Ba?"

"Not this morning, ma'am," the maid answered from the kitchen.

"Come on, Mess," she said to the cat curled up in the sun by the door. "Let's go find Ba."

The cat raised its head and looked at her for a moment through slit eyes, then went back to dozing. Mess didn't like to move much. She had grown fat and lazy since the day Sylvia found her as a kitten and brought her home. Someone had bundled her and her four siblings into a trash can bag and dumped them in the middle of the road in front of Toad Hall. Mess, the only survivor after the bag had been run over by a number of cars, had truly been a mess when Sylvia had freed her—shaking, terrified, splattered with the blood of her brothers and sisters. To this day she would not go near the road.

Sylvia picked up her cup of coffee and walked out into the back. The forsythia were in full bloom, splashing buttercup yellow here and there around the awakening yard. Beyond the greening lawn was a narrow strip of sand; beyond that was the Long Island Sound, lapping high at the dock. Far on the other side lay Connecticut's south shore. A breeze blew the briny smell of the water across the yard and sighed through the willows that ringed the property. That sound—the wind in the willows—and the sight of this old, three-storied house looking like it had been transplanted whole from a Georgia riverbank had left her no choice but to buy the place and name it Toad Hall.

As she neared Jeffy's fenced-in play area, she saw two mallards standing before him, quacking softly. He used to feed the ducks, laughing like a little madman as they chased the bits of stale bread he threw to them. This pair probably thought he was the same old Jeffy. But he wasn't. He ignored them.

The ducks flew off at her approach. She thought she saw Jeffy's lips moving and she rushed over to him. But she heard nothing. He was still squatting in the grass, still rocking back and forth endlessly, totally absorbed in the bright yellow of the dandelion he had found in the grass.

"How's it going, Jeffy?"

The child continued to stare into the flower as if he had found the secrets of the universe there.

Sylvia pulled a box of Nerds from her smock pocket and squatted beside him. She had found Nerds the most suitable for her purposes because they released their flavor instantaneously and were not filling. She pinched one of the tiny candies at the tip of her thumb and forefinger and held it ready.

"Jeffy!" she said, pronouncing his name in a crisp, sharp tone. "Jeffy!"

His head turned a degree or two in her direction. At the first increment of motion, her hand darted out with an accuracy born of years of experience and pressed the Nerd between his lips. As he bit into it, she called his name again in an attempt to get him to turn a few more degrees her way.

"Jeffy! Jeffy!"

But he turned away again, back to the dandelion. Another half-dozen repetitions of his name elicited no response.

"Maybe you don't like Nerds anymore, huh?" she said. But she knew it wasn't the candy. Jeffy was slipping away. After doing so well for years with the operant techniques, he had become resistant to the therapy since sometime around the first of the year. Worse than that, he was regressing, slipping deeper and deeper into his autism. She didn't know what was wrong. She provided a structured environment and continued working with him every day…

Sylvia swallowed hard past the constriction in her throat. She felt so helpless! If only…

She resisted the urge to hurl the candy out into the Sound and scream out her frustration. Instead, she tucked the Nerds back into her pocket. She would try a full-length operant therapy session with him this afternoon. She straightened up and gently ruffled the golden hair of the child she loved so much.

She had a flash of an old dream—Jeffy running across this same lawn toward her, a big smile on that round little face, his arms open wide for her as she lifted him up, laughing, swung him around, and heard him say, "Do it again, Mommy!"

It faded as suddenly as it had come. It was an old dream, anyway, browned and crumbling at the edges. Better to leave it undisturbed.

She studied Jeffy for a moment. Physically, he seemed fine this morning. No fever, no sign of a problem in the world since he had awakened. In fact, he had immediately gone to the refrigerator upon arising. But Sylvia had guided him out here to make him wait a bit before breakfast, just to see how he was acting. She had called the school and told them he wasn't going to be in today.

She turned and glanced toward the garage. The big double door was open but there was no sign of life. Then she heard Phemus' familiar bark from the west side of the house and went to investigate.

As Sylvia rounded the near corner, Ba came around the far corner, carrying the new tree. The sight startled her. When the twenty-foot peach tree had been delivered from the nursery two days ago, it had taken three men to off-load it from the truck. Ba now had his arms wrapped around the burlap-wrapped rootball and was carrying it by himself.

"Ba! You'll hurt yourself!"

"No, Missus," he said as he put it down. "Many fishing nets were heavier when I was a boy."

"Maybe so." She guessed hauling in fish-filled nets every day since boyhood probably would leave you pretty strong. "But be careful."

She noted that Ba had dug up a rather large section of the lawn.

"What time were you up this morning to get so far already?"

"Very early."

She looked again. No doubt about it. The plot was large— considerably larger than necessary for the planting of a single tree.

"Flowers around the tree, don't you think, Missus?" Ba seemed to be reading her mind.

"A flower bed. Yes, I think that would be nice."

She glanced at the older peach tree thirty feet away to the south. That too would need a flower bed to even things out. Maybe this year, with two trees to cross-pollinate, they would get some peaches.

She watched him dig. For a man who had grown up on the sea, Ba had a wonderful way with growing things, and an innate aesthetic sense. He had known nothing about yard work when he had first come here, but had learned quickly and well. He had also become a proficient assistant in her bonsai arboretum, wiring branches and pruning roots with the best of them. And since taking over as her driver, he had become a crack auto mechanic. There didn't seem to be anything he couldn't master.

She helped him slide the burlap-wrapped rootball into the hole in the center of the plot. As he began to back-fill, she saw the crude bandage on his arm.

"How did you cut yourself?"

He glanced at his forearm. "It is nothing. I was careless."

"But how—"

"Please do not worry, Missus. It will not happen again."

"Good." She watched him tamp down the soil around the newly planted tree with the flat of his shovel. "You seem to have an awful lot of dirt left over."

"That is because I have added peat moss and a special root food."

"You shouldn't fertilize a newly planted tree, Ba."

"This is a special food that will not burn the roots. I learned of it back home."

"What is it?"

"That is a secret, Missus."

"Fine. Meet me in the arboretum as soon as you're finished."

Smiling and shaking her head, Sylvia turned and headed for the backyard. Secret root food… but she let him have his way with the yard. He did an excellent job and she didn't believe in tampering with success.

She pulled Jeffy away from his dandelion and set him up with breakfast. Gladys had made him a bowl of Maypo and he attacked it. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with his stomach this morning.

As usual, Alan had been right.

Wandering back into her work area, Sylvia stood and considered the ishi-zuki from a distance. The gallery was really anxious for this one. Someone called at least twice a week asking when they could expect delivery.

Who'd have ever thought her hobby would make her the latest Big Thing with the New York art crowd and celebrity set? You weren't anybody, dear, unless you had a tree sculpture by Sylvia Nash somewhere in the house.

She smiled at how innocently it had all started.

The art of bonsai had fascinated Sylvia since her teenage years. She had come across a book on the miniature trees and had been touched by their delicacy, the sense of age about them. She decided to try her hand. She found she had a knack for the art, and after many years of working at it, became quite adept.

But after Greg's death, she neglected them and one of her prized trees died. She had pruned and wired that particular little five-needle pine for years, transforming it from an ordinary collection of needles and branches into a graceful living work of art. Its loss seemed all the more tragic after losing Greg. It sat in its pot with its needles turning brown, its roots rotting, beyond salvage. When the needles dropped off, only a naked trunk would remain.

Then Sylvia remembered seeing a demonstration of a laser technique used to sculpt heads and busts. She investigated, found a place that did it, and had her dead tree, pot and all, laser-sculpted from a laminated block of oak. She was delighted with the result: The outer needles were sharp, the intricacies of the bark and even the moss at the tree's base were all preserved forever. She painted it, and set it back in its former spot among her other bonsai. It needed no watering, no pruning, no wiring. It was perfect. Forever.

And that would have been that had not Christmas a few years later found her without the slightest idea of what to give half the people on her list. Her gaze had come to rest on the laser-sculpted bonsai and the idea struck her: Why not take one of her favorite bonsai to the laser studio and have a dozen or so replicas run off? Why not indeed? A unique personal gift.

And so it became an annual routine to favor certain special people in her life with a laser-sculpted bonsai. Probably it would have gone no further if she hadn't decided to use one of her experimental trees as a model.

That particular tree had been a lark, really—a mixture of bonsai and topiary techniques. She had allowed a rather tall boxwood to grow wild while letting it acclimate to its pot. For some reason, its cylindrical form had reminded her of a skyscraper, so on a whim she began pruning and shaping it into the form of the Empire State Building. She had ten laser-sculptures made from it and gave them away for Christmas. By the end of January there was a Manhattan art gallery owner knocking on her door, begging to speak to her. He went on and on about the Empire bonsai, literally cooing about its "subtle melding of the man-made and the natural," her "stunning brilliance in using the latest in modern technology to preserve an ancient art form," and so on. He oohed and ahhhed as she toured him through her collection and actually eeked when he saw her sokan tree with the double trunk on bottom growing into the New York skyline on top.

Since then, once a year, she issued a strictly limited edition of one hundred sculptures of one of her bonsai. She signed and numbered them and made the gallery charge an astronomical amount for each. She didn't need the money, but the high price tag and the limited supply made them all the more sought after. She had had numerous offers—extremely generous offers—for the original living trees from which the copies had been cut. She turned them down and refused to hear any counteroffers. No one other than Sylvia herself would ever own or care for her trees. Bonsai culture was a delicate, time-consuming task that took skill, practice, and devotion— not for amateurs.

Take the ishi-zuki, for instance. How could she allow some clown with a fat wallet, who thought all they needed was a little watering like a house plant, entrust them to his maid for care? Especially this one. The leafy area had been pruned into the shape of a neat little Cape Cod house, which was supported by a gently curved trunk whose roots were clasped tightly around a supporting rock. This tree spoke to her. Selling it would be unthinkable.

But she would gladly sell replicas, and people were waiting in line to buy them.

Which made her Someone to Know.

Sylvia knew she really didn't fit in with the celebrities who bought her sculptures and wanted to meet her and invite her to their parties. Sometimes it seemed to her that she didn't fit anywhere. But she accepted the invitations and maintained tenuous contact with the rich and famous, staying on the fringes, riding along, waiting for something interesting to happen. She used them for some of her nights. The nights could be a hellish burden at times. Jeffy and her trees and her investments filled the days, but the nights went on forever.

Last night had been an exception, however. It had proved far too short. Alan's presence had injected a special kind of life into the old house, warming it, brightening it. She could so easily get used to having him come home to her every night, kissing him hello, touching him—

She shook off the thought with a touch of irritation. No sense getting lost in that little fantasy. She had had that kind of life once, in a tiny garden apartment downtown.

She caught herself. She hadn't thought of the old apartment in years. Those memories were supposed to be locked safely away for good. That kind of life was gone for good, as were the Sylvia Nash and the man who had lived it together. The man was dead, and the Sylvia Nash of today no longer wanted or needed that life. She had built a new one from scratch. The old Sylvia was gone. And no one was going to bring her back.

Besides, Alan Bulmer was taken.

Still, it was a nice, respectable little fantasy, as long as that was all it remained.

After all, she thought with a wry smile, she had her reputation to consider.

She went back into the kitchen. Jeffy was still at the table, scraping the bottom of his bowl. She pulled it away and gave him his glass of milk.

"Okay, guy," she said, lightly running her fingers through his curly hair as he drank his milk in huge gulps. "We're going to clean you up and get you over to Dr. Buhner's before his office gets too crowded."

Jeffy didn't look at her. He had finished his milk and was busy staring into the bottom of the glass.

"Someday you're going to talk to me, Jeffy. You may not know it yet, but someday you're going to call me 'Mommy.' She kissed him on the forehead. How could she feel so intensely about someone who did not acknowledge her existence? "You are, damn it. You are!"

The modern, brightly lit waiting room was crowded with people of all ages, shapes, and sizes. The receptionist said that Dr. Bulmer had penciled in Jeffy's name and they would get to him in a minute. Two of the children had started screaming at the sight of Ba, so he left to wait in the car. Sylvia seated herself next to a polyester princess who eyed her Albert Nipon suit with barely concealed hostility.

Wouldn't fit you anyway, honey, she thought as she snuggled Jeffy in against her on a seat and waited.

A little girl, no more than four or five years old, with blue eyes and straight blond hair, came up and stood before Jeffy. After looking at him for a while she said, "I'm here with my mommy." She pointed to a woman across the room engrossed in a magazine. "That's my mommy over there."

Jeffy stared over her left shoulder and said nothing.

"My mommy's sick," she said in a louder voice. "Is your mommy sick?"

She might have been a piece of furniture for all the notice Jeffy took of her, but her voice was attracting the attention of the other waiting patients. The room grew perceptively quieter as they waited for the reply that would never come from Jeffy.

Tense and watchful, Sylvia bit her lip, trying to think of a way to defuse the situation. The little girl, however, did it for her.

"My mommy's got diarrhea, that's why she's here to see the doctor. All the time she keeps going to the bathroom."

As the waiting room rippled with restrained laughter, the woman with the magazine, her face now red with embarrassment, came over and led the little girl back to her seat.

Jeffy neither laughed nor smiled.

It wasn't long before they were called back to an examining room. She sat Jeffy on the paper-covered table and undressed him down to his training pants. He was still dry. Jeffy would use the bathroom if it was convenient, but if he was absorbed in something or away from home, he simply went in his pants. The nurse took a rectal temperature, said it was normal, then left them to wait. Alan entered about ten minutes later. He smiled at her, then turned to Jeffy.

"So you made it through the night, Jeff? No more bellyaches? How about lying back and letting me check the old tummy."

As he went through the examination, he kept up the chatter, as if Jeffy were just like any other eight-year-old. That was what had immediately attracted Sylvia to Alan as a physician—the way he treated Jeffy. Most doctors in her experience had examined him thoroughly and gently, but never spoke to him. They would talk to her but never to Jeffy. True, he wasn't listening and wouldn't respond, so why talk to him? She had never noticed it until that day she brought him to see Alan after he had fallen and his elbow had swollen up. Sylvia had been sure it was broken and had been about to rush him over to her Uncle Lou's office when she remembered that he was out of town that day. But his former associate, Dr. Bulmer, had been available. They had been introduced briefly in a hallway of her uncle's office when the two had been partners and she didn't know anything about him except that her uncle had said at the time that he was "pretty sharp." Anyplace but an emergency room, she had thought, and had consented to letting the new guy examine Jeffy.

That one brief visit had been a revelation. Jeffy's autism didn't faze Alan at all. He had treated Jeffy like a real human being, not like some sort of deaf, dumb, blind block of wood. There was respect in his attitude, almost reverence—this was another human being he was treating. It wasn't an act, either.

She had sensed that it came naturally to this man. And for just a second, as Alan had lifted him off the table, Jeffy had hugged him.

That had been it. From then on there had been no other doctor for Jeffy. Only Alan Bulmer would do.

Her Uncle Lou had been a little miffed when he learned about Alan examining Jeffy, but that had been nothing compared to the explosion that had occurred when she transferred Jeffy's records to Alan's new office.

And now she watched Alan as he pushed and tapped on Jeffy's abdomen again. He kept getting better-looking as he got older. The little touches of gray flecking the dark brown hair of his temples didn't make him look older, just more distinguished. He was built the way she liked a man, tall and lean, with those long legs and piercing dark brown eyes…

"You're fine, Jeff," Alan said as he sat him up. "But you're getting pudgy." He sat on the table, put his arm around Jeffy's shoulder in a casual gesture of affection, and turned to Sylvia. "He's got a lot of air in his intestines. He eats fast?"

"Like a vacuum."

"See if you can slow him down."

"Easier said than done."

"And either cut back on the amount he's eating or increase his activity."

"Maybe I should enroll him in Little League," she said with the slightest edge to her voice.

Alan winced at her sarcasm and sighed. "Yeah, I know. 'Easier said than done.' "

That was another thing she liked about Alan—they could communicate. After years of caring for Jeffy together, they had become attuned to each other regarding the rare ups and many downs of life with an autistic child.

"I'll try," she said. "Maybe I can take him for walks."

"Will he come?"

"Sure. As long as I take him by the hand and Ba's not there."

"Ba?"

"Ba spoils him terribly. Carries him all the time. Jeffy's legs don't work when Ba is around."

Alan laughed. "Well, whatever you can get him to do will help."

Sylvia pulled Jeffy's clothes back on while Alan scribbled in the chart.

"I want to thank you for coming over last night," she said, remembering the thrill she had felt upon opening the door and seeing him there. "I'm sorry it was for nothing."

"It wasn't for nothing. We both slept better."

"Speaking of house calls: Do you make them on lonely widows?"

She loved to watch him blush. He didn't disappoint her.

"As a matter of fact, yes. There's a little old lady not far from here who's bedfast after a couple of strokes. I see her once a month."

"What about younger ladies?"

"Depends on the problem. The home is a lousy place to practice medicine."

She stifled a smile. Poor guy. Trying so hard to remain cool and professional.

"What if she's got an itch only you can scratch."

He smiled with the slightest trace of malice. "I'd tell her to take a bath. Or maybe a cold shower."

She laughed. She was so glad that for all his old-fashioned propriety and almost stuffy integrity, he still had a sense of humor.

"By the way," he said into her laugh, "is that invitation to your party this weekend still open?"

"You can make it?" A buoyant sensation came over her.

"Yes, we can. I thought we were busy but we're not."

"Wonderful! Nine o'clock. Semi-dressy."

"We'll be there."

"Great. Then I can sneak you upstairs and show you some of my erotic Japanese etchings."

He looked squarely at her, his expression tinged with annoyance. "You know, one of these days I just might call your bluff."

Don't you dare! The phrase leaped to her lips but she bit it back. "Who's bluffing?" she said as she opened the examining room door and ushered Jeffy out. "Good luck in Washington. See you Saturday night."

As she walked up the hall, she wondered at the stab of panic she had felt when Alan had mentioned calling her bluff. She didn't want that. She was aware that much of the attraction was based on his inaccessibility. It made him unique among so many of the men she knew—such as some of Greg's friends and the husbands of her female friends who had come around to "comfort" her after Greg's death. Their idea of comforting, however, seemed to require a bed. That had been an eye-opening time in her life. She'd had her share of flings since then, but not with any of them.

Alan had turned a deaf ear to her frequent offers. And she knew he was attracted to her, which made the little game all the more charming—and Alan all the more honorable.

But why did she do it?

She never could answer that question. Alan was the only man she teased so, yet she respected him more than any man she knew. So why make him squirm? Why tempt him? Was it because she knew he was safe? Or did she want to bring him down somehow, prove that the shining knight had feet of clay?

No. She did not want to prove that!

Then why did she so enjoy teasing him?

The questions went 'round and 'round, with never an answer.

She wondered if there might be something wrong with her— a wire crossed somewhere in her psyche—but brushed that uncomfortable thought away.

It was all in fun, she thought determinedly. All in fun.