Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“Are you observant?” she asked seriously.

“I noticed you , didn’t I?”

“Do you notice anything different about the way I’m wearing my hair?”

“No,” he said, surprised, and turned to look more closely.

“I’m just checking. I’ve worn it this way always.”

“It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful, Gillian.”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“Why do you always think I’m joking when I say you’re beautiful?”

“Because I know I’m not,” she said, suddenly shy. “But it’s nice that you think so. It’s terribly nice, David.”

When they got back to the apartment, Gillian immediately busied herself with pencil and paper.

“What are you doing?” David asked.

“I’m making up my own Egyptian hieroglyph.”

“Why?”

“If Cleopatra could have one, why can’t I?”

“All right, go ahead. I want to hear the end of the Yankee game.”

“I hate baseball,” Gillian said. “Only boors are interested in baseball.” She shushed him as he began to protest, and continued working on her drawing, her tongue caught between her teeth, her brow knotted in concentration. She tried to show him the completed sketch in the middle of an eleventh-inning rally. David put her off until the excitement had died down, and then studied her work.

“Where did you find this?” he asked with an air of shocked discovery.

“Why, it just came through, sir,” Gillian said, immediately falling into the role of the apprentice. “I was simply sitting there, sir, when this papyrus scroll was put on my desk. I looked for the page after the title page, but there was none, and page ninety-seven was obliterated by ibis feathers. I thought I should call it to your attention at once, sir.”

“I’m glad you did,” David said sternly. “This girl, what was her name? We’ll have to fire her at once.”

“Which girl is that, sir?”

“The one who obliterated page ninety-seven.” David paused, thinking. “Iris, was that it? Iris something-or-other?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Ibis. Ibis Feathers. She used to be a stripper in Union City before she joined the library, sir.” Gillian paused. “We put her in the stacks, sir. She stacks very well.”

“Very well,” David said. “Do you realize the importance of this find?”

“ Is it important, sir?”

“Miss Rourke, I can’t—”

“Burke, sir.”

“Yes, of course, Burke. Miss Burns, I can’t begin to tell you about its importance.”

“Try, sir.”

“Sit down on my lap here, Miss Barnes, and I’ll—”

“Burke, sir.”

“Yes, of course, Burke. Sit down, Miss Byrd, and I’ll tell you all about it.” Gillian curled up in his lap and threw her arms around his neck. “Mmmm, yes, where was I?” David said.

“The papyrus roll.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you, Miss Bikes.”

“Burke.”

“Burke, Burke, I can’t seem to remember that name. Well, Italian names always throw me. Forgive me, Miss Buggs. The papyrus roll. Is it seeded papyrus or onion papyrus?”

“I didn’t notice, sir. A little of each, I think.”

“In any case, it should go well with ham.”

“Is that a dig, David Regan?”

“No, my dear. The last dig I was on was in Australia in 1912. Found a Zulu skull. Remarkably preserved.”

“She’s very good, too,” Gillian said.

“Who’s that, my dear?”

“Zulu. Zulu Skull. A marrr -velous stripper. Not as inventive as Ibis Feathers, but remarkably preserved.”

“Yes, well of course she—”

“Are you happy?” Gillian asked suddenly. “David, are you tremendously happy?”

“I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life,” he answered.

They tried to reach Penny with drugs first.

They started with the barbituric acid group, shooting her with ten grains of sodium amytal intravenously, varying the administration with oral, intramuscular, and rectal doses, gradually increasing the dosage to fifteen grains. She would scream whenever they hit her with the needle. She would claw and scratch, and they would grab at her arms and her legs and hold her down while the hypodermic was plunged into her arm. The physicians and attendants began to dread that time of the day when Penny Randolph would be taken out of her restraining jacket in preparation for her injection. The narcosis seemed to have nothing but the most minor temporary effect on her. She still refused to eat. She still would spit at anyone who came anywhere near her, hurl obscenities at patients and staff. The moment the jacket was removed, the moment they took it off to get at the veins on her arm, she became assaultive. Once, she seized the hypodermic from the doctor, smashed it on the table top, and attempted to slit her own throat with the broken shard.

By the beginning of September, when Matthew and Amanda moved into the Talmadge house, the hospital staff had already tried veronal, paraldehyde, and hyoscine, and had switched to sodium nucleinate in their treatment of Penny. When they realized this wasn’t helping her at all, when they recognized they were no closer to establishing the communication they so desperately desired, they abandoned drug therapy completely, and called Priscilla Soames the next day to ask for permission to use electric convulsive treatment on her daughter.

Priscilla didn’t know quite what to do.

The girl she visited each week was certainly not her daughter, not the Penny she had known. But still, could she submit this poor distracted creature to electric shock three times a week, perhaps more? Could she do this to her own daughter? And yet, and yet, she wasn’t really her daughter. She no longer recognized anyone, nor did she seem recognizable, her face had changed somehow, changed from the face of someone Priscilla had known and loved to the face of a stranger. She did not know what to do. She turned to God, as she had so often in the past, and she prayed for guidance. The people at the hospital had told her the electric-shock treatments might help her daughter, might bring her to the point where they could at least talk to her. “We cannot help her unless we can communicate,” they had said, and now she communicated with her God and asked Him to show her the way.

She prayed formally, in a language she had evolved from the time she was a child, a highly stylized language, which she considered fitting and proper for discourse with the Lord. She prayed formally, but she prayed openly. If Priscilla Soames ever showed what was truly in her heart, she showed it to her God.

My Lord Jesus, she prayed, look upon me with pity. I need Your help, dear God. Please. I am cold. I am alone. I need Your help. Do not let me lose her. I do not mind suffering. I have never complained about the suffering. But I cannot bear the thought of losing her. I have been good. I never wished to be a mother, You know that, You remember my prayers, You remember the terror in my heart. But I have borne him children, I have given him daughters though I know his true desire was for a son. Forgive me, I do not mean to judge. I have been a good mother. I do not plead sacrifice, though I have sacrificed, still I do not plead sacrifice. I beg only for direction, help me, please, help me.

I am cold. I am alone.

I am a cold woman. I know this, dear God, it is the way I am. Oh my God, I have never held a baby’s foot in my hand and kissed the toes. I am cold. I know this. He has never said so. He is so simple sometimes, like a child himself, he has never complained, but I know he feels this in me, I know he feels this core within me which does not bend, which never yields. Love is divine, I know this, love is divine. He is so kind to me. He was so gentle, but he is a man of God, and I am cold.