Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

Claws.

Tear out the eyes with the rush of the wind on a wintry summer day in summer sky, on fairy feet, oh maiden fly, Penny-ellow-pee, Penelope.

Dead sea and ironbottom sound aloud a crowd of chowder eaters I love you and I will be home soon you are probably as fat as a house now the things I will do to you I love you my penelope your husband Frank Robert Randolph SM 2/c USS Barton DD 599 c/o F.P.O. San Francisco, California, born her of claws.

Sea wash squash the dead sea hero squad the dears the lovely dears of dd squadron number squash the sea.

Lulu had a baby his name was Sonny Jim.

They are looking at the girl with claw eyes the murderers.

It was the beginning of March.

She had been in the hospital for almost a year when they decided to perform the operation. Priscilla went to Sandstone, and they explained very patiently to her, told her all about this thing called a prefrontal lobotomy. The operation would be performed by a neurosurgeon, they told her, a consultant on the hospital’s staff. A sharp instrument would be pushed into a portion of her brain, severing certain connections between the brain and the autonomic nervous system. The patient...

“No!” Priscilla said immediately.

The patient would experience no pain. There was no great danger in the operation, little more than what one could expect from an appendectomy. But if the operation were successful...

“No!” Priscilla said again.

If the operation were successful, they might have their daughter back, Penny might be able to go home again. They understood it was a difficult decision for parents to make, but they had been unable to reach Penny at all, and the operation might help her. They did not mean to imply there would be no changes. Penny might tend to be a little silly at times, passive, vague. She would not be like her previous self, not like the person they once had known. But she would be quieter, and calmer, and perhaps they could take her home. It was a difficult decision to make, yes, but perhaps they could take her home. She would not be the same, no, but perhaps they could take her home.

“And if the operation fails?” Priscilla asked.

“She’ll be no worse off than she is now, Mrs. Soames.” The doctor paused. “Nothing else has worked. We’ve tried everything.”

“If... if it works, will she know us again?”

“Yes. If it’s successful, she’ll recognize you, talk to you.”

“Does it often work?”

“We’ve had good results. Of course, you must understand...”

“Yes?”

“This would not be a cure, Mrs. Soames. Your daughter won’t be the same. I can’t mislead you into thinking she’d be the way she was before her illness.”

“I understand.” Priscilla nodded. “How can I let you put a knife into her brain?” she asked, not looking at the doctor, staring at her clenched hands in her lap.

“Mrs. Soames,” the doctor said gently, “your daughter is suffering. I can’t begin to tell you how much she is suffering. If there’s a chance that we can relieve her of her pain, her total sadness, if there’s only the slightest chance that we can bring her at least a small measure of peace...” The doctor shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

Priscilla was silent for a long time. Then she sighed deeply and looked at her husband and said, “We must, Martin.” She turned to the doctor. “Yes,” she said. “If there is a chance, yes, do it. God forgive me, do it.”

Penny seemed much better after the operation. When Priscilla and Martin went to see her, she smiled blankly and said, “Hello, Mother. Hello, Dad.” She seemed so much better. A little slow perhaps, a little vague sometimes, and occasionally she would laugh or giggle unexplainably, but she seemed at least to have found that small promised measure of peace.

“Kate,” she said once.

Priscilla leaned forward.

“She would like Amanda and Connecticut.”

“We’re taking care of Kate for you, dear,” Priscilla said.

Penny seemed puzzled. “Can’t you send her to Amanda?”

“I... I don’t know if Amanda would... would want her, Penelope. She’s pregnant, you know. Your sister is pregnant.”

“Oh, don’t tell me about being pregnant,” Penny said, and laughed. “Kate would like Connecticut.”

“My dear, you’ll be coming home soon,” Priscilla said. “You can care for your daughter yourself.”

“My daughter, yes,” Penny said, and she nodded. “And the sewing machine.”

“What, darling?”

“What?” Penny said, smiling at her mother.

“Did you say...?”

“I said Kate would like Connecticut.”

“Perhaps,” Priscilla said. “But, dear, when you come home...”

“I think it’s sad,” Penny said.

Her mother stared at her wordlessly.

“Don’t you think so?”

“What, darling? What is?”

“About Kate.”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Well, it’s a nice day,” Penny said. She seemed very thoughtful for a moment. Then she turned to her father and asked, “Do you still have the black hat?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“Wear it when you come. It makes me laugh.”

Martin Soames wore his black hat the next time they went to visit Penny, and she laughed and told him it would be good to come home again, had they heard from Amanda? She giggled.

“I wish I were a lobster,” she said suddenly.

Four weeks after the lobotomy was performed, Penny attacked the nurse who was making her rounds with evening sedations. She hit the woman from behind, striking her at the base of her neck, and then catching her throat between her fingers and attempting to strangle her. A startled patient in the next bed pushed the alarm button, and three attendants subdued Penny and placed her under restraint once more. The next day, she wet the bed repeatedly and had to be removed from it forcibly when they wanted to change the sheets. She kicked over a night table and rushed with her head bent at the stomach of a burly attendant, slamming him against the wall and almost fracturing his arm. They thought it was the end. They sighed and glanced at each other with the utter despair of men who have tried everything they know, men who are fighting a terrible enemy, retreating constantly, weaponless now, utterly routed.

And then suddenly, the next morning, Penny smiled cheerfully and said, “Hello, Dr. Donato, how are you this morning?” and she asked when they would send her home, and she asked how her mother was, and how her daughter Kate was, and she said again, “It would be nice for her in Connecticut.”

They took off the jacket.

She tried to hang herself with the bed sheet that night. The next day, she refused to eat. Her eyes had glazed over, and a look of constant and indescribable horror was on her face, a tortured persistent look, the look of a woman trapped in a burning room with no escape. She began to soil herself again. She sang bawdy lyrics at the top of her lungs, she swore, she spat, she reviled God and the universe, she trembled with fear and screamed in rage. In ten days’ time, her intellectual and emotional deterioration was almost total; she had become again the patient they had first admitted to the hospital, silent, uncommunicative, lost.

The director called Priscilla and asked her to come. He told her what had happened and then he shook his head sadly and said, “There is nothing more we can do. Nothing.” He spread his hands helplessly. “Nothing. Your daughter will probably remain hospitalized for the rest of her life.”

They drove home in silence that night, the Reverend Martial Soames and his wife Priscilla.

After a long while, Priscilla said, “It is God’s will.”

Martin did not answer.

She went into the house and took off her hat. She paid the baby sitter and then she went upstairs to look at the child Kate asleep in her bed. She almost reached out to touch her hair, but her hand would not move. She went downstairs again and sat at the drop-leaf desk for a long time. In the church, Martin was playing the organ. Priscilla nodded, picked up a pen, and began writing the most difficult letter she had ever had to write in her life: