Эд Макбейн - Love, Dad

Sean shook his head.

Connie did not press him for an answer. He was avoiding the N sound, with which he’d been having surprising difficulty during the last several sessions. Mark fished in the deck until he found a “sink” card. It was now Sean’s turn. He looked at Connie.

“Do you have a thailboat?” he asked.

“It’s... s-s-s -sailboat,” Mark said.

“I know what it is,” Sean said.

“Then say it right,” Mark said.

“He’s trying to say it, aren’t you?” Connie said.

“Yeth,” Sean said.

“You mean yes,” Mercy said.

“In fact, I do have a sailboat,” Connie said, and handed Sean the card.

“Thee?” Sean said. “She d-d-did have one.”

“She had a sail b-b-b-boat,” Mercy said, “n-n-not a thail b-b-boat.”

“Do you h-h-have a thissors, too?” Sean asked.

“I have a scissors, too,” Connie said, handing him the card. “Would you like to try saying it again for me?”

“Thissors,” Sean said.

“Scissors,” Connie said.

“Thissors.”

“Well, we’ll try it again later, okay? What card would you like next?”

“Why c-c-can’t he say s-s-scissors?” Mercy said.

“It’s just a word that gives him trouble,” Connie said. “We all have words that give us trouble. I can never say antidisestab... see what I mean? I always trip on it.”

“That’s not even a word!” Mark said, laughing.

“If Mrs. C–C-Croft said it, then it’s a w-w-w-word,” Mercy said.

“She d-d-didn’t say it. She only t-t -tried to say it.”

“Antidisestablishmentarianism,” Connie said in a rush. “There, I got it!”

“See?” Mercy said. “She g-g-got it.”

“That’s some... w-w-word, all right,” Mark said, shaking his head.

At the end of the session, little Sean came to her and said, “Mrs. Cwoft, I f-f-feel so b-b-bad I can’t get it,” and she hugged him close and said, “No, darling, it’ll come in time. I promise you.”

At Columbia, where she’d studied for her master’s all those years ago, there’d been a professor who’d once remarked that the prime requisite of a speech pathologist was patience. He had written the word on the blackboard in huge block letters: P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E. She thought about him on the drive back to Rutledge. It was going to take somewhere between two and three years to successfully conclude treatment with her three eight-year-olds. She wasn’t there to treat symptoms, no, there were too many therapists who successfully treated a stuttering problem only to discover that the client had “voluntarily-involuntarily” replaced the earlier symptom with a far more serious physical symptom like hysterical aphonia — the loss of speech entirely. One therapist (not a pathologist like Connie; in the speech rehab game, a therapist qualified for certification with a B.A., a pathologist with an M.A.) had come to her in total astonishment when one of her clients lost his stutter only to become hysterically blind. Symptom migration was a common result of impatience. Patience, Connie remembered. P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E.

It would take two years at best with these kids. She sometimes felt only despair, the end result of immediate gratification constantly postponed. With Jamie’s work, it was different. He took a picture, he developed it and printed it, he realized his goal within days, sometimes within—

She stepped on the thought before it ballooned into the anger it normally triggered. It had been too many years. You couldn’t get angry over something that had happened — or failed to happen — all those years ago. Not if you wanted to preserve whatever it was you already possessed. What do I already possess? she wondered.

They were married in February of 1951. Jamie was almost twenty-five, Connie was not yet twenty. She was still a virgin on their wedding night, and she wept the first time they made love. Jamie held her in his arms and comforted her, and told her he would love her till the day he died. Connie wept into his shoulder, the sexy white silk nightgown she’d bought expressly for their honeymoon bunched above her waist and stained with blood.

She was still only nineteen when she got pregnant in March, a month after their wedding. Jamie had by then taken a job with a commercial photographer in Peekskill, some eighty miles from Poughkeepsie and a long commute back and forth every weekday, but the plan was for Connie to finish her sophomore year at Vassar before they moved into the city. She could not understand how she’d become pregnant. She had used the diaphragm religiously and according to the instructions given her at the Margaret Sanger Clinic in New York, and she simply could not understand how it had failed her. In April 1951, when she learned definitely that she was going to have a baby, abortions were illegal in the United States; moreover, they were dangerous and expensive. In the small garden apartment they were renting near the school, they discussed their plans.

It had been understood between them that they would have no children until they were both established in their separate careers. Connie wanted to be an actress; she had, in fact, already applied to both the Actors Studio and the Vodorin Workshop for possible enrollment in the fall. That was before she got pregnant.

“You can still finish out the term,” Jamie said.

“You don’t think I’ll be showing?”

“No, no, this is what? April, right? You’re still only a month pregnant...”

“Pregnant, Jesus,” she said, and shook her head.

“So June’ll be three months, that’s all. You won’t be showing at all.”

“I hope not. Because I’d feel like an idiot, you know.”

“I know.”

“In class, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“Doing Voice of the Turtle or whatever, and having this big belly sticking out.”

“You won’t be showing yet, hon.”

“So I’ll finish the term, and then what?”

“Well... I don’t think you’d be able to start anyplace else in the fall, do you?”

“No.”

“I mean...”

“No, it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“The baby’s coming...”

“December.”

“Yeah, so.”

“Yeah, I’d be in my sixth month by the time classes started, I don’t think Igor Vodorin would particularly appreciate...”

“But, you know, once the baby’s born...”

“Yeah, then what?”

“You could, you know...”

“Yeah, what?”

“Well...”

“I think I can kiss it goodbye, Jamie.”

“No, not necess—”

“Yeah, I think so. I don’t think they mix, Jamie. Acting and babies.”

“You know, by then I may be earning good money as a photographer, we could get someone in to take care of him — or her — and you could...”

“I find it difficult to believe there’ll really be a him or a her, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, there’s a baby growing inside me, Jamie, do you realize that?” she said, and suddenly clutched her belly with both hands. “But I... you know... I really don’t feel anything about it, or for it, or... I just feel annoyed , I guess. It’s just an annoyance, Jamie. I don’t want a fucking baby, do you want a baby?”

“No, but... honey, this doesn’t... it doesn’t have to mean the end of all our plans, you know. You can still go to acting school once the baby’s old enough to...”

“Sure.”

“A year or so, I guess would...”

“Sure, leave an infant with a stranger.”

“Lots of women...”

“Sure.”

“Honey, I’m sorry. I wish I...”