Unknown - The Genius

In business he never second-guesses himself; in life he has no peace.

The car rolls across the gravel, slows, comes to a halt. Bertha gets out but he is impaled on regret.

“Get out of the car, Louis.”

He gets out of the car.

The superintendent’s name is Dr. Christmas. Though normally full of good humor, today he has a bilious look about him.

“Mr. Muller. Mrs. Muller. Did you have a pleasant drive?”

“Where’s my daughter,” Bertha says.

They pass through the lobby. Louis allows his wife to take the lead, and she does, pushing out in front of everyone else, as though she knows where to go. Her daughter. Preposterous. An insult to the effort he has expended over the last twenty years. The girl has never been hers, not since the moment they parted company on the delivery table. But does he really want to claim that the girl is his? If so, then that makes her his responsibility; it makes everything that has happened his fault.

Dr. Christmas has decided to turn their walk into a tour, pointing out the Home’s prouder features, such as the hydrotherapy rooms, with their hippopotamus-sized tubs and stacks of linens. They perform more than a thousand cold wet sheet packs every year.

“Recently we’ve had some success with insulin treatments,” he says, “and you’ll be pleased to know that thanks to your—”

“What I will be pleased to know,” says Bertha, “is where my daughter is. Until then I am not pleased to know anything.”

They walk the rest of the way in silence.

Or—not silence. From other rooms, other floors—from far away on the grounds—muffled by concrete and plaster, oozing through ducts—come the most ungodly sounds. Screams and weeping and a jagged laughter that stands Louis’s hair on end, and a variety of noises that no human being should be able to produce. He has heard these noises before but they never fail to unnerve him. They do not have a daughter, they have a son; Bertha has repeated this mantra enough, forcing him to recite it with her, and he has come to believe. Thus every visit to the Home brings fresh horror.

Their child, their real child, David—he is growing up handsome and articulate, a model young man. At thirteen he has already read Schiller and Mann and Goethe in German, Moliere and Racine and Stendhal in French. He plays the violin and has a knack for mathematics, especially as applied to business. While it is true that education at home has left him shy around other children, he is nonetheless charming toward adults, fully capable of engaging in conversation with men thirty years his senior.

By comparison, what hope does the girl stand? Bertha made the pragmatic choice, and she made it without hesitation, excommunicating her from her heart, something Louis has never quite managed to do. And yet what has he done except wallow in self-pity? Where has all his suffering gotten him? Surely it hasn’t improved the girl’s lot.

Thank God David is away, visiting his mother’s relatives in Europe. Louis shudders to imagine inventing excuses for this afternoon jaunt. Mother and I are going for a ride in the countryside. Mother and I need to take the air. More than anything, Louis hates to lie to his son.

As far as he can tell, David remains unaware of the girl’s existence. There was that one awful night, eight years ago, when Delia left the door unlocked and the girl wandered downstairs, attracted by the sound of the radio. For a time Louis had wanted to put a radio in the girl’s room, but Bertha had exercised her veto. A radio would serve no purpose, she argued. The girl wouldn’t understand anything, and the noise might draw attention. Instead they gave her picture books and dolls, which seemed to occupy her. But Louis knew that books and dolls weren’t enough, a suspicion borne out when she appeared. If Bertha had only listened to him and bought a damned radio, the girl might never have come calling, none of this ever would have been necessary… .

That awful night; the arguments that followed. He lost them all, with one exception: he managed to get rid of Delia, whom he had always considered indolent, sensuous, and untrustworthy. Even Bertha had to admit that leaving the door unlocked constituted grounds for dismissal. Although no longer employed, Delia remains on the payroll. Her continued silence costs Louis seventy-five dollars a week.

David has never said anything about that night, never asked about the girl. If he somehow discerned her identity—and Louis cannot imagine how he would have—then he seems to have forgotten all about her. They are safe. Hundreds of lies, each one thin, but layered until their accumulated strength allows passage across the chasm.

Dr. Christmas holds a door. Bertha and Louis sit on one side of the desk. On the other side is a seedy-looking fellow with an ostentatious pocketwatch. Christmas locks the door and takes the remaining chair.

“Allow me to introduce Winston Coombs, the Home’s resident legal counsel. I hope you won’t mind if he sits in on our little meeting. As a matter of course, I—”

“I don’t see my daughter anywhere.”

“Yes, Mrs. Muller. I have every intention of—”

“I came here with one purpose, and that is to see my daughter and what you idiots have managed to do to her.”

“Yes, Mrs. Muller. I would however like to inform you that—”

“I don’t care what you would like. This is not the time for you to express preferences.”

Says Coombs, “If I may—”

“You may not.”

“Mrs. Muller,” says the superintendent, “all I’d like to do is reassure you and your husband of our intention to take the appropriate punitive measures toward the young man responsible, and—”

Then Bertha says something that surprises Louis. “I don’t care one bit about him. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t exist. I want to see my daughter. I demand to see her, this instant, and if you continue to do anything other than take me to her I will call my own attorneys, who I can assure you will make Mr. Coombs very sorry that he ever entered the profession.” She stands. “I take it you don’t have her in that closet.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then walk.”

They exit the building and step onto the back lawn, neatly mown and hemmed in on three sides by trees. Golden light pools in the grass. They follow a stone path into the woods. Fifty feet hence they come to a small house enclosed by a whitewashed fence, a place new to Louis and certainly to Bertha.

Dr. Christmas finds the correct key from a clanging set and holds the gate open for Bertha, who pushes past without a word. The house requires another key, which requires another minute or so of noisy fiddling. Bertha taps her foot. Louis stuffs his hands in his pockets and gazes up through the leaves at the bloody sky.

“And here we are,” says the doctor.

In the foyer they are met by a nurse, who stands as Bertha enters.

“This suite is reserved for patients during their most sensitive or stressful episodes,” says Christmas. “And our finest staff—”

Bertha does not wait for him to finish but goes on to the next room. Louis is close behind, bumping into her when she stops short on the threshold.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, God.”

Louis looks over his wife’s shoulder and sees his daughter. She is lying on a cot, wearing a blue gown through which her belly bulges visibly. Her entire trunk, already short and squarish, looks ominously distended. She blinks at them woozily.

Louis would like to step into the room, but Bertha is gripping the doorposts. Gently, he pries her hands free and enters. The girl sits up, watching him curiously as he drags a chair to her bedside and sits.

“Hello, Ruth.” She gives a bashful smile when he touches her cheek. “I’m very glad to see you. I’m sorry I’ve been away so long. I don’t know what’s kept me.”