The Sandman by Robert Ward Read Free Book Online Page A

simply Heather-worshippers. But he had been wrong, and if she came back, he would show her that he could care, given a chance to do it his own way. He really would have to introduce her to Peter Cross.
    “Sarah will be coming home soon, Beau,” Mrs. O’Shea said. You better be getting a move on to eat dinner. I’ve laid out your tuxedo.”
    “God,” Beauregard said. “That’s the last thing I feel like wearing. And where is Sarah anyway?”
    “Taking her ballet lesson, sir. She’s a regular little demon. She says she’ll be in City Center in two years.”
    “And I will,” came a voice from the door.
    “Talk about timing, darling. I believe you will,” said Mrs. O’Shea.
    Beauregard looked up to see his blond, gracefully beautiful daughter smile at him. Her blue eyes, her perfect skin, her long thin face—she was already a beauty. Like Heather.
    “Daddy,” she said, racing across the room and kissing him.
    He held her to him and kissed the top of her head. She even smelled like Heather, and he felt all his tenderness blooming forth from within. That and his intense loneliness. He sighed deeply and patted her head.
    “Don’t tell me to clean the room, Dad,” Sarah said, as Beauregard tucked her into bed. “I already feel guilty about it, and I will devote all tomorrow morning to getting the books put back in the cases and the records back in the jackets and the dust from underneath the floor and the dolls put back on the dresser, and the lipsticks and powders put back into their containers, and all that other stuff.”
    Beauregard sat on the edge of her bed, smiled at her and shook his head.
    “You, my dear, are … how would Mrs. O’Shea put it … ever so charming.”
    “I get that from you, Dads. I get being sloppy and other stuff from Mom.”
    “A lot of it is good stuff,” Beauregard said, rearranging her quilt.
    “Dad?” she said.
    “Yes.”
    “Do you like Miss Shaw very much?”
    “Yes,” Beauregard said. “I like her very much.”
    “Oh,” Sarah said.
    “But not as much as your mother,” Beauregard said. “I don’t like anyone nearly that much.”
    “Oh,” Sarah said.
    Sarah laughed a little and picked up her copy of Catcher in
the
Rye.
    “Next week she’s coming back, Dad.”
    “I know,” Beauregard said.
    “Dad, do you think maybe …”
    “I don’t know,” Beauregard said. “We still have problems. Big ones. But I hope …”
    She squeezed him so tightly that he was shocked by her strength. He patted her blond head, and when she loosened his neck, he put his big hands on her shoulders and then wiped the tears away.
    She sat back on her pillow, and Beauregard kissed her on her nose.
    “Good night, Sarry. I love you.”
    “Love you, Dad,” she said.
    Then he shut the door and headed down the hall where Mrs. O’Shea was waiting with his topcoat. His hands and wrists felt as if they were prickled by needles, and when he looked into the hall mirror, he saw a face that was not a doctor’s or a theater-going sophisticate’s. He saw a father’s face, and he thought it was the nicest and yet most frightening of all the other faces combined.

6
    “I don’t think we can get any closer, sir,” the gradstudent cabbie said apologetically to Beauregard as they pulled up half a block away from the Booth Theater on 45th Street.
    Beauregard regarded the huge black limousines in front of him and shook his head. He was still tired from the day’s trials at Eastern and he wondered if he shouldn’t just tell Rodney Epstein, Interpersonal Development Major at NYU, to turn around and take him right back to his apartment. But then he thought of Lauren Shaw, her smile and her grace, and he smiled at Rodney and reached into his wallet.
    “Thanks a lot,” Rodney said. “Listen, I enjoyed sharing space with you.”
    “Right, pal,” Beauregard said. “Your space is my space.”
    “Out of sight,” Rodney said.
    Beauregard shut the cab door and watched Rodney back into an alley