The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow Read Free Page A

offer was turned down and meanwhile St. Martin's took Sam? Or worse, if things worked out the other way around? He was panicked for the moment as he waited for the agent to say something. Maybe they were trying to do this thing backwards. Maybe they should hold off on the apartment until they heard from the school. But the agent was clearing his throat.
    "I trust you and Mrs. Cooper understand that, even should your offer be accepted, everything is contingent upon the approval of the Co-op board."
    "Of course," Hal said testily. Did this guy think he was an idiot? But the delicate balance of his good humor had been upset. He plunged into a nervous depression, convinced that no co-op board in the world could sit in judgement of him and fail to find him wanting.
    ***
    All through the breakfast he kept obsessing about the board, and nothing Peggy said could pacify him.
    For the rest of the day they could talk about nothing else—so many things to get done, so many possibilities for it all to go haywire—their offer rejected, the bank refusing to make the loan, the co-op board arriving at the opinion that the Coopers weren't good enough to live within a mile of East Ninety-fifth Street, let alone in a building with a deep green canopy. Worst of all, what if the admissions officer at St. Martin's signed her name to a letter telling them, ever so politely, to take their kid and get lost? It could happen. Everything could happen. It could all come clattering down.
    ***
    But it didn't. In the coming weeks it was like the double promotions all over again. Everything went their way in a steady, seamless sweep of imponderable good luck. First word that, yes, the owner was willing to accept their offer. Then Citibank granted their loan application. The next night the Coopers got a babysitter and took a taxi uptown to meet with the board, and everything was just fine—not the least bit dicey. The "board" turned out to be a group of ordinary affluent New Yorkers, and not once did any one of them ask a question that either Hal or Peggy might conceivably regard as awkward. Nor were there any side-wise looks that were likely to make Hal feel as if working as a publicist was the most contemptible profession on earth.
    Two days later they received a letter by messenger. The board would be happy to have the Coopers. Only hours later they received a call from the admissions officer at St. Martins, a Mrs. Wendell-Briggs, the imposing woman who'd sat silently by while a first-grade teacher had tested Sam, the same woman who'd every so often turned her patrician face to Hal and smiled comfortingly, as if she quite understood and sympathized with the particular agonies of his ordeal.
    "We're in!" Peggy sang out when she was certain the telephone receiver was safely back in place. "Hey, everybody!" she shouted from the kitchen, "Sam Cooper is a St. Martin's boy!"
    Hal came from the bedroom to collect Sam and hoist him onto his shoulders for a ride into the kitchen, and there the three of them danced around in the cramped space grinning like loons with no room to fly.
    "What a guy!" Hal proclaimed as he jogged up and down with his son on his shoulders.
    "Hurray for Sam!" Peggy chorused in reply—suddenly remembering the bottle of champagne she'd stuck in the fridge weeks ago, hoping for just this occasion.
    She produced the bottle. Hal put Sam down. He got out a towel and popped the cork while Peggy got glasses—three of them, the ones they saved for guests.
    "Champagne for the old scout here?" Hal said, frowning comically.
    Peggy smiled gloriously. "A little won't hurt."
    "To Sam, the St. Martin's man!" Hal toasted.
    "To you, son," Peggy said as the three of them lifted their fragile glasses.
    ***
    They went to bed early that night, exhausted from the shower of good news, but not too tired to make love. And for a moment Peggy even thought about leaving her diaphragm in the night table. After all, why not two little Coopers, another child as