Eric [antikvár]

Good friends have said, "But how did it begin? You must have seen it coming." No one could have seen it coming. This had been a summer like many others. We live in a small Connecticut town in a house just a block from the beach, so our vacations are usually spent at home, swimming, picnicking, patching up small boats. And the front hall that September was, as usual, full of sand, mysterious towels that didn't belong to us, and an assortment of swimming fins, soccer balls, and basketballs. Like many mothers, I was half longing for school to start, half dreading it. Our twenty-year-old daughter, Meredith, had been married for two years and livéd a thousand miles away. Now Eric, seventeen, was packed and ready to go off for his freshman year at the University of Connecticut. We would still have fourteen-year-old Mark and ten-year-old Lisa at home. With Eric gone, there would be fewer kicked-off shoes in the living room, fewer crumbs and Coke bottles scattered around. Yet now and then, a glimpse of him running past our bedroom door would start me feeling wistful. One late afternoon as I went through the house watering the plants, I found Eric stretched out on the living room couch. I knew he'd been running earlier up at the high school track, yet there was something now in his languid sprawl that made me pause. It was rare to see Eric lying down. "Mom," he said, "I don't feel right. I haven't got it when I run. And my head hurts a little." Scarcely more than a week ago he'd had the complete physical for entering freshmen-blood tests, X-rays, the works-and he'd passed it all without a single hitch. "Does your throat hurt? Or your stomach?"