From: BEWalton17@aol.com
Message-ID: <5be4662c.36718ac5@aol.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 16:12:37 EST
Subject: Ql: The Enemy (chapter 3)





                          CHAPTER THREE
     They reached the house as the rain started.  It wasn't a
steady rain, and Sam had a feeling it wasn't going to be.  It was
the kind of falling mist that promised to be around for days.  It
might cough up some heavier moments or allow a moment of sun now
and then, but it was settling in for the long haul.
     House was perhaps too modest a word for the structure they
pulled up to.  Ruthie lived in a Tudor that bordered on the
palatial.  Ivy, dead in the late fall weather, crawled up around
the first floor windows, and a huge oak tree shaded the front lawn.

Ornate cast iron furniture graced a small flagstone patio that was
partially concealed behind a screen of bushes near the door.
     Sam had a feeling Al and Nate were a little closer in their
estimation of her finances than she was.
     Ruthie pulled into the circular driveway and cut the engines.
     The drive had only taken twenty minutes, but to Sam it had
seemed forever.  Ruthie had snapped off the radio not five minutes
from the restaurant (cutting Pat Benatar off a few lines into
"Shadows of the Night," one of the few songs Sam remembered fondly
from the era), and the car had been as silent as a tomb ever since.

Even Nate had kept to himself.  Somewhere in the last few miles, it
had become apparent that Ruthie was shaking violently.
     Al reached forward to touch her arm, and she pulled away as if
struck.  She freed herself of her seatbelt, pushed the car door
open, and tore across the lawn.  She tripped over one of the
chairs, righted it, then stumbled up the front stairs.
     Sam got out of the car.
     Ruthie was having trouble making the key fit in the front
door, and Sam reached around her to help.  He pushed the door open,
and she ran inside and up the stairs that were immediately across
the hall.  A door slammed somewhere above him.
     Al, carrying Nate, started after her.  Sam was glad to see
that there was genuine concern in his face, but thought it would be
better for all of them if he kept himself scarce for awhile.  Sam
reached out and put a hand on Al's shoulder.  "I'll go," he said.
     "No, I -- "
     "I said, I'll go."
     Al started to argue, then nodded.  In his arms, Nate looked
very small and very frightened.
     Sam followed Ruthie up the stairs.
     The only door on the second floor that was shut was at the end
of the upstairs hallway, and Sam guessed that Ruthie was behind it.

He opened it slowly.
     It was definitely the master bedroom.  It was decorated
tastefully in powder blue, with dark wooden furniture and sheer
curtains, but the size itself was enough to seem ostentatious.
     Ruthie was sitting on the edge of a king size bed, looking
lost and tiny against the backdrop, trying to stop a steady flow of
tears.  Sam sat down beside her and put an arm across her
shoulders.  A brief but powerful attraction surprised him when he
touched her.  He shook it off; there were more important things to
worry about.
     The small kindness was too much and she broke into loud,
braying sobs, the tears of a woman who did not cry often and had
never developed a demure way to do it.  Sam held her and rocked her
gently until she had calmed somewhat.
     She pulled away and took in a shaky breath.  "I'm sorry, Sid,"
she said.
     He kissed her forehead.  "You don't have anything to be sorry
for."
     "I hate to cry."
     "It's okay."
     "No it isn't.  I hate to cry and I won't do it."
     "Alright," Sam said, moving closer to her and putting his arms
back around her.
     "I always knew this would happen.  Always."
     "Ruthie -- "
     "I want to stop this, Sid.  I want to go down there and act
like a grown-up."  She sniffed back a tear.  "I feel like such a
baby.  But I can't stop.  I feel like my whole life is coming
down."
     "Ruthie, it's okay to feel hurt.  You're human."  He rubbed
her shoulder.  "And your life isn't coming apart.  You can handle
this.  I'll help you."
     "I never wanted it to happen like this."
     "I know."
     "I just don't know what I did wrong."
     Sam had seen her do many things wrong, but he didn't think it
was the right time to bring them up.  "You didn't do anything
wrong."
     "So why does he want to leave?"
     "Sometimes a little boy just needs to be with his father.  For
a role model."
     Ruthie uttered a short, humorless laugh.  "A role model? 
Albert?"
     Sam assumed from her tone that Sid would not normally have a
kind word for Al, but he was unable to take his role that far. 
"He's not such a bad guy," he said, doing his best not to sound
overly defensive.
     Ruthie pulled away, and wiped her eyes.  "I know that, Sid. 
Albert's been my best friend for" -- she thought about it, did some
math, and smiled ruefully -- "thirty years.  Thirty-one next
spring."
     Sam was momentarily speechless.  Thirty years?  Al was not a
young man, but thirty years, at this point in time, would still
take him back to his teenage years at the latest.  Sam hadn't known
that any part of his childhood had survived into adulthood.  Thirty
years.  Ruthie couldn't be more than forty.  No wonder he'd noticed
a child-like element when she spoke of their relationship.  It had
been forged when they were children.
     "Albert's a terrific guy," Ruthie went on.  "A lousy husband,
but a terrific guy."  She shook her head regretfully.  "But let's
be serious.  If Nate were your son, would you pick Al as a role
model?"
     The only answer Sam could think of was, in the end, the only
one that counted:  "Nate's not my son.  He's Al's son."
     Ruthie looked down; there was nothing else to be said about
it, except what she insisted was not true -- that Nate was not, in
fact, Al's son, any more than he was Sid's.  Sam was glad to see
that she didn't resort to this.
     "Besides," Sam said, "maybe having Nate there will help calm
him down."
     Ruthie smiled, and this time there was a real, if somewhat
bitter, humor in it.  "I thought that when Nate was first born,"
she said.  "It worked.  For about three months."  She shook her
head and looked into a corner near the door.  "No.  Except for the
Navy and Beth, Al's attention span is nil."  Her voice managed to
be gentle and loving at the same time it was cold and
disillusioned.  She sighed.  "The novelty of fatherhood will wear
off fast."
     "I don't think you're really being fair," Sam said, although
a grudging part of his mind had to agree with her.
     Ruthie turned back to him; her eyes -- She has incredible
eyes, he thought randomly -- seemed injured.  "Whose side are you
on, anyway?"
     Sam didn't answer.  The tears came again, sudden and fierce,
and he put his arm back around her, and tried to soothe her.
                               ***
     During his doctoral thesis argument at MIT two years ago, Al
Calavicci had made a ball bearing disappear.
     It didn't sound like much, and it hadn't actually looked like
much.  He'd set up the energy fields, pressed a button, and the
tiny piece of steel had simply popped out of existence.  There was
a clicking sound across the room, as it fell onto the tiles and
rolled to a stop against a cabinet.  The trip had been
instantaneous, and Al's thesis, titled "Using Quantum Tunnelling to
Beat the Energy Barrier in Faster-than-Light Travel," had been
immediately pulled from general campus access and tucked away in
NASA's archives.  Now they wanted to see if he could do it again,
with something bigger.  Like a colony ship.  
     It was called Star Bright Project, and if it worked, it was
going to write the future's history.
     And it was classified to the nines.
     No way in hell had Sid Weiss guessed the name.
     Sid was an unlikely choice for espionage -- a kindergarten
teacher wasn't exactly anyone's top choice as a cover story; it
would hardly put him in reach of valuable information -- but he did
have one stellar qualification: he had conveniently married the
woman Al had lived with through his entire MIT career.  Al was sure
that Ruthie herself was under surveillance, a situation for which
he was genuinely sorry, but it was possible (not probable, but
possible) for Sid to slip by unnoticed.
     But it didn't add up.  Al, who had spent more time under cover
behind the Iron Curtain in the sixties than he had spent under the
covers with his wife (who had been under the impression that he
just spent a lot of time on sea duty), could usually spot even good
lies, and Sid's had been an amateurish mess.  If another government
or an industry wanted to plant a spy, it wouldn't make sense to
plant a clumsy one.
     Al set it aside.  He could quietly investigate the situation
later, so he wouldn't be ruffling anyone's feathers if he was
wrong.  Right now, the important thing was that Sid Weiss, whatever
his other qualities, had a way of making Ruthie feel emotionally
safe, and she needed that.  The rest could all be left alone for a
few days.
     Al was worried about her; ever since the divorce -- no, since
their marriage -- she'd been edgy.  He didn't know why; until
they'd tried being married, their relationship had been one of the
best in Al's life, and, he'd thought, in hers.  It didn't make any
sense at all.
     "Pop?"  Nate was sitting at his work table in the living room,
practicing his alphabet.  Always a preternaturally calm child (a
trait that must have come from his natural father, since he surely
hadn't inherited it from Ruthie or learned it from Al), he'd
quieted quickly after Ruthie and Sid went upstairs.  He kept
looking at the ceiling, and asking if Pop thought Mama was okay,
but he'd borne up, and now his concern was simple concern.  Al
wasn't sure if this was normal or not, but he was grateful for it.
     Al turned to him.  "What is it, kiddo?"
     "Do you think Mama will come down soon?"
     "I think it'll be a little while."
     "Oh."  He looked down at his paper, disappointed.  "I finished
my alef-bes.  I wanted to show her.  I did it without looking at my
book."
     Al shrugged.  "Well, you can show me, can't you?"
     "It's Hebrew."
     "Okay, so I won't know if you got it right."  Nate held out
his paper, and Al took it.  The letters were a little out of
proportion with each other, but each was meticulously formed and
most were perfectly square.  Beyond that, Al didn't know how to
judge it; the idea that this might be a problem in the future
flickered through his mind, then flickered out.  How hard could it
be to find someone to teach him his letters?   "It looks pretty
good to me.  Nice and straight."
     Nate looked at him expectantly, then remembered that nothing
else was coming.  "Thanks."
     "Can you write your name with this?"  Al handed him the paper.

"I'd like to see what 'Calavicci' looks like in it."
     "There's no 'ch-' letter in Hebrew."
     "So how do you spell your name?"
     "Natan ben Ruth," he said.  "Nun, tav, nun... "
     "I don't know the letter names, Nate."
     "Oh, yeah.  Sorry."  He looked up at the ceiling.  "Can I go
up to Mama?"
     "No.  I think you need to give your mama a little space today,
okay?"
     "Why is Mama mad at us?"
     "Because she loves us."
     "If she loves us, then how come she made us divorced?"
     "I don't know, Nate."  Al shook his head, not wanting to think
about this too much.  "I really don't."  
     "Are you sad about it?"
     "I'm sad about anything that takes you away."
     "Are you sad that it took Mama away?"
     Al closed his eyes slowly, and opened them again.  "Why don't
you color for awhile, kiddo?"
     "Okay."  Nate bent dutifully over his papers, and picked up a
blue crayon.  "I'm going to draw a picture of Mama.  Maybe then she
won't be mad."
     "I think that's a great idea."
     "Will you draw with me?"
     Al smiled, and edged in behind the little table beside his
son.  He chose an orange crayon.  "What do you want me to draw?"
     Nate shrugged.  "I don't know.  Draw whatever you want."  He
paused and smiled, a little embarrassed.  "Sometimes I draw stuff
I want, and pretend like if I get it right, it'll turn real."  He
laughed.  "I mean, I know it won't, but maybe it will.  I've never
gotten anything all the way right yet, you know.  But it's a fun
game."
     "It sure sounds it."  Al drew a few directionless loops. 
"What kinds of things do you draw?"
     "Just stuff."
     "What kind of 'stuff'?"
     "I drew Chester when I was at your house.  I put him on the
refrigerator."
     "Oh."
     "Are you going to draw Beth?"
     Al's crayon broke.  "Where did you hear that name, Nate?"
     He looked up, frightened.  "I was awake one time, when I was
little, and you and Mama were fighting.  Mama said you always loved
Beth more than her."
     "Oh, Jeez.  I'm sorry.  You shouldn't have heard that."
     "Who is Beth, Pop?"
     "She's a lady I was married to a long time ago.  I loved her
a lot."
     "Where is she now?"
     "I don't know."  He busied himself with finding a new crayon. 
"You think maybe we could talk about something else, paison?"
     "I'm sorry."
     Al sighed and crumpled Nate's hair, then kissed his forehead. 
"It's okay."  He picked up a dark crayon that was labelled
"midnight blue."  "Now, what should I draw?"
     Nate thought about it carefully.  "Could you draw space?  Then
maybe we could play that we were there."
     "You got it."  Al scribbled a dark background onto his paper. 
"What should I use for the stars?" he asked.
     Nate reached under the table, and pulled up a red plastic box.

He rummaged around for a minute, then pulled out tube of glitter-
glue.  "How about this stuff?"
     "Perfect."  Al started dotting the glitter onto the page,
shaping the Big Dipper, and Cassiopeia, and Leo.
     "Star light, star bright," Nate chanted softly under his
breath as he worked on his own project.
     First star I see tonight, Al finished in his head, and looked
back toward the stairs.
     Star Bright Project.
     No way in hell was it a guess.
                               ***
     After two hours, Ruthie had finally cried herself to sleep. 
Her arms were wrapped tightly around her pillow, and her face was
buried in its silken sham.
     Sam brushed her hair back from her cheek, and kissed her
temple gently.  She sighed in her sleep.
     Why am I here?
     He didn't know.  Al had yet to make an appearance, and Sam was
starting to worry, for real.  This one was too close to home.
     Ruthie shivered on the bed, and drew herself into a tight
ball.  She reached for the covers, but they were still tucked into
the mattress.  Sam rolled her carefully toward the middle of the
bed, turned down the covers, and managed to get her tucked under
her silk sheets without waking her.  He tiptoed out of the room,
and closed the door gently behind him.  
     The sun was setting in the open hallway at the top of the
stairs, where four narrow windows let in shafts of red light
between tall bookcases.  He glanced at the books on the shelves,
not really taking them in.  There were leather-bound books with
Hebrew lettering on the spine, beat up paperbacks that looked like
Harlequins, an encyclopedia, a Dickens collection... He scanned
them all, but kept his distance, despite their promises of new and
interesting worlds.  From downstairs, he could hear Al and Nate in
the kitchen, laughing as they tried to put together some kind of
meal.
     He went down to join them.
     The kitchen was L-shaped, like the house itself.  A small
dinette opened onto the entranceway, then veered left into wide,
cheery work area, with a window above the sink (also looking west
into the sunset), and two more in the back wall.  Everything was
labelled in large block letters, presumably to help Nate with his
reading.  Beneath the English, the words were written over in
Hebrew, Yiddish (at least he assumed it was Yiddish), Polish, and
Italian.  Sam was glad to see that the Italian had not been added
on by Al during a short visit; the neat lettering remained constant
throughout the lists, which meant that, whatever Ruthie's
insecurities might be, she was seeing to it that Nate wasn't losing
touch with the things Al had given him.
     Nate was kneeling on a high stool in front of the stove,
stirring a pot of red sauce.  The noodles boiled on the burner
beside him.  He looked up.  "Is Mama sick, Sid?" he asked.
     Sam shook his head.  "She just needs to get some sleep."
     Al came into the kitchen from a room off to the right. 
"Ruthie's sleeping?"
     "Yeah."
     Al nodded and sighed.  "I worry about her.  She's never been
like this.  You look after her alright, don't you?"
     "She's not a child," Sam said automatically.
     Al gave him an unreadable look, then gestured toward the
stove.  "Nate and I were making some pasta.  You want to join us?"
     "Sure."
     Al leaned over the sauce and tasted it experimentally. 
Cooking was one of the things he did well -- Sam had vague memories
of eating at Al's -- that surprised nearly everyone.  Sam expected
to eventually hear a story about how he once ran away from the
orphanage and apprenticed to a master chef.  Al's brow furrowed. 
"It needs something."
     "Noodles?" Nate offered.
     Al laughed.  "I think that's just right.  It needs noodles. 
You want to get out some plates, pal?"
     "Sure, Pop."  Nate jumped down from the stool and dragged it
across the kitchen to the bank of cupboards.  
     Sam followed.  "Do you need some help?"
     Nate shrugged, and climbed back onto the stool, then from the
stool onto the counter.  "Meat plates or milk plates?" he asked
over his shoulder.  
     Al turned.  "Your mom's keeping kosher?"
     "Just at home.  It was Sid's idea."  He nodded toward Sam.
     Great, Sam thought.  I'm supposed to know how to keep kosher. 
All he knew for sure about the Jewish dietary laws was that they
were complicated and involved a great deal of salt.
     Al wrinkled his nose at Sam, with a malice that was somehow
not as playful as his gesture warranted, then turned back to Nate. 
"You weren't supposed to be keeping kosher down at my house were
you?"
     "No."
     "Honest?"
     "Honest."  Nate looked at the cupboards again.  "Meat or
milk?"
     Al shrugged.  "Well, there's no meat," he said.  "Meat spoils
good sauce.  You can keep it chunky with tomatoes and peppers and
things."
     Nate opened another cupboard and pulled three plates off a
rack labelled "Milchik," which Sam recognized from the German
Milch, or milk.
     Nate giggled.  "Maybe we should put it on Mama's trayf
plates."
     "Trayf plates.  Now that sounds like your mother."
     Nate and Al laughed together.  Sam smiled, and made a mental
note to find a Yiddish dictionary on one of the bookshelves, so he
would have some idea what he was smiling at.
     Nate set the plates carefully on the counter while he climbed
down, then picked them up again and brought them to Al.  "What kind
of sauce is this?"
     "Tomato."
     "I mean in Italian."
     "What's tomato?  I can't remember."
     "Pomodoro," Nate answered without pause.  Sam was blown away
by his quick recall, but Al and Nate both took it as a matter of
course.  Nate looked disappointed.  "You mean it's not something
special?"
     "Sure it is.  It's salsa di pomodoro a la Calavicci."  Al
tasted the sauce again.  "I think it needs more basil."
     "Ho fame, Papa," Nate said impatiently.
     Al turned to him, a little irritated.  "I know you're hungry,
but you have to wait 'til it's done."  He turned back.  "And Sid
doesn't talk Italian.  It's not nice to use a language around
someone who doesn't know it.  Talk English or mama-loshen."
     "Es fardreest mir, Sid," Nate said.
     "Why don't we stick to English," Sam suggested, rather than
cast suspicion by asking what mama-loshen was.
     Al cast him a reproachful glance.  "You can at least accept
the kid's apology, Sid."
     Sam felt the blood rise to his cheeks.  Of course, it was from
the Hebrew for "mother tongue."  Mama-loshen was apparently another
word for Yiddish, although Sam didn't want to guess why, since it
wasn't the language of a native land.  Maybe Nate just called it
that because Ruthie had taught it to him.  "I'm sorry, Nate.  I
accept your apology.  But let's stick to English, please.  I'm kind
of tired to jump around like this."
     "Okay," Nate said, cheerfully enough.  "Hey, Sid, guess what?"
     "What?"
     "Papa said he's going to teach me how to fly a plane when I
get a little bigger.  You don't have to be sixteen or anything."
     "That's terrific."
     Al smiled over at his son.  "We've got a lot of stuff to do
together, pal."
     Nate grinned and nodded, and Sam wondered, What happened here?

Where is Nate now?
     Al picked a string of spaghetti out of the boiling pot with
the edge of a fork, and threw it at the wall.  It stuck.  "Noodles
are ready."
     "Should we wake up Mama?" Nate asked, looking through the
dinette, toward the stairs.  "She didn't eat at the restaurant,
either."
     "I don't think so, Nate."
     "Will she be better when she wakes up?"
     "Of course she will.  Won't she, Sid?"  Al piled spaghetti
onto the smallest of the three plates, and ladelled sauce onto it. 
     Sam nodded.  "She'll be just fine."
     "Could I kiss her goodnight before I go to sleep?"
     Al thought about it.  "I think that would be okay.  Just as
long as you're quiet."
     "Like a mouse?"
     "Just like that."
     "Then will you tuck me in, Pop?"
     "You got it."
     Nate glanced at the stairs one more time, sighed deeply, and
took his plate.
     Sam watched him disappear around the bend in the room, unaware
that he was being watched as well, by eyes not nearly as friendly.
     Eyes, that were, in fact, frankly mistrustful.
     The eyes of the enemy.