WAYNE PRENTISS DID not sleep on the cake. But he dreamed. He woke up in the middle of the night out of the dream. It had been a nice dream. He couldn’t understand why he woke up feeling uneasy.
In his dream, his mother was a different kind of woman. She was strong, not frail. And she was wise instead of cute. In the dream, she was friend and mother to Margy, Reenie, Marie and Ruthie and the other girls in his office. There was always one or the other, usually Marie or Margy in the house. His mother brooded over them and tried to solve their little problems. And the girls loved her and confided in her. And he felt happy and unbound.
Yes, it had been a pleasant dream. He couldn’t understand why he was so disturbed about it. He switched on his bedside light, got up, went over to the closet and got his cigarettes out of his coat. He went to the window and stood there smoking. He looked down on the deserted tree-lined street. In the nighttime it had a glamor and a mystery that it never held in the daytime.
He finished the cigarette and went back to his bed. As his hand went out to the light chain, he heard the click of the light going on in his mother’s room across the hall. His first instinct was to complete the act of turning off his light, getting back into bed and pretending to be asleep. But he didn’t have it in him to deceive anyone.
He was again at the window when she came in. He had moved as far away from his bed as he could simply because he didn’t want to have a sitting-side-by-side-on-the-bed talk. She wore a lavender flower-sprigged dimity dressing gown with lace at the neck and wrists. All her clothes were made by an old-time neighborhood dressmaker according to Mrs. Prentiss’ designs. All carried out the mood of a lovely and gracious lady of a bygone time.
“What is it, son?”
“Nothing.”
“But you can’t sleep.”
“I slept.”
“A dream wakened you.”
“Yes.”
“Was it a bad dream?”
“No. It was a very nice dream.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ve already forgotten it,” he lied. She sat on his bed. “Remember,” she said, “when you were a little boy and cried out in your sleep I’d come to you and tell you a story?”
“I remember.”
“It was a story of a boy with a selfish sweetheart. The sweetheart demanded that the boy bring her his mother’s heart as a proof of love. And the foolish boy cut out his mother’s heart and ran with it to his sweetheart. But he stumbled and fell and the mother heart spoke and said: ‘Are you hurt, my son?’”
“Yes, I remember the story.”
“But you’re too grown up now to be soothed by a story.”
“Yes.”
Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Always yes. Everything she asks me, he thought, I answer, yes.
“There’s something wrong,” she said. “I won’t be able to sleep all night worrying about you.”
“It’s nothing, Mother. I had a heavy day at the office, I guess. I thought a cigarette would calm me down. That’s all.”
“You’re keeping something from me.”
“Nonsense!” he said firmly. He took her hand. “Come now. I want you to get your beauty sleep.” He took her to the door of her room and kissed her cheek.
He went back to bed and turned out the light. He lay awake a long time. Then he began drifting into sleep. He lay face down and spoke into his pillow. “I hate you, Mother,” he whispered fiercely. “I hate you!”
And in the morning, he couldn’t remember whether he had actually said that horrible thing or whether he had dreamed he said it.