Fortune's Hand (14 page)

He said slowly, “There was … I had … a brother like that. I never saw him. He died ten years before I was born. I suppose I never mentioned him, did I?”

Something blocked Ellen's throat, a paralysis, so that no words came. Robb's eyes were wide, as if they, too, were paralyzed, unable to blink.

“No,” she whispered, “you never did.”

“I never thought to. I never thought—thought—about him at all. Nobody talked about him at home. It was ancient history.”

You knew.… You knew
 … Her heart beat so! She thought it must burst and stop.

“If this hadn't happened, it would probably never have entered my mind again.”

Her little boy, her beautiful, damaged little boy!

Robb was looking beyond her toward the window, where a curtain, askew, had cut a piece of sky into a triangle. When he turned back, his silence asked forgiveness.

“What do you know about him?” she whispered.

“Nothing much. As I said, they didn't talk about him.”

“They must have said something.”

She saw that he was ashamed. He should be!
He had known, and this was his fault
.

“They must have, Robb,” she said furiously.

“Only that he was retarded.” His voice rose. “You want the full picture? Retarded! A bad case. He barely
spoke except for babble. And fortunately died of severe pneumonia a few years later. That's all.”

“Life can be very hard,” the doctor said. He was embarrassed. And in a hurry for them to depart. You couldn't blame him.

“But we have to face life, don't we? With courage and hope besides, I suppose. That's what they say, isn't it?” she answered bitterly.

“It may not be so bad. If it's a mild form—”

She interrupted. “But you don't believe it is. You made that clear. And I believe in expecting the worst. One's better prepared to meet it when it happens.”

Dr. Muller corrected her. “If it happens.”

“My wife and I always planned to have more children,” Robb ventured. “Will you give us your advice about that?”

“Please, no. Don't ask me. That's for you both to decide.”

“Well, can you answer this much? Can lightning strike twice in the same place?”

“It can. It has. For that reason, many people do hesitate to have another child. Many do not hesitate. And when their luck holds, of course they are glad they took the chance.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Ellen said. “We'd better start to the airport and go home. Robb has to go back to work. And there's nothing more anyway that we can do here now that we know the truth.” And roughly, she dried her eyes.

They shook hands. As Dr. Muller escorted them to the door, he added, “I'm sorry I have nothing better to
say to you after you've come all this way. The funny thing is that you have one of the most excellent people in the country, Philip Lawson, right in your home city. He's not an M.D., but a psychologist, on the staff at your university hospital. He runs a clinic for children with disabilities. I'm surprised you didn't go to him in the first place.”

“Nobody told us about him.”

The doctor shrugged. “Too bad, although not too late. I don't say he'll have any more to tell you about the cause or prospects than you've already been hearing. What he can do is guide you and the child through the years to come. You'll need a steady arm to lean on. I'll speak to him about you if you like.”

Outdoors the brilliant day was painful. Ellen wanted darkness, a little space with the door closed. And she asked herself, What am I do to? Last week, when the earthquake struck, those people must have felt like this, standing there in the ruin and rubble. But no, a house, even a town, can be rebuilt, while my baby—

“Let me hold the kid, Ellen,” Eddy offered. “Your arms must ache.”

Robb came to attention. “Thanks, Eddy. I will.”

“You two have both had enough today. Let me take my turn, unless he'll cry. I'm a stranger.”

“He won't mind,” Ellen said. “If he wants to cry, he'll do it no matter who's holding him. And if he's being calm, he won't care, either. Sometimes I think he doesn't even know who is holding him.”

“I'm sorry nothing worked out today,” Eddy said. “It's tough. Must seem like going through a maze, one
turn after another, and coming up against a wall. Are you going to see this man Lawson at home, or doesn't it seem worth the bother to go through it all over again?”

“We'll go.” Robb gave a long sigh; it had been a long day. “As you said of Ellen, she—and I—will go as far as China if we must.”

“So this is what I do, or try to do: treat the child and support the family. Sometimes the family, the parents, need more attention than the child,” said Philip Lawson, and smiled.

The clock on the wall behind him, a curious old clock that hung on a chain like a pocket watch, showed three. They had been there for an hour, and yet there was no indication of hurry on Lawson's part. Having shoved his chair back from the desk, he sat with long legs crossed. The legs were long because he was tall, as tall as Robb, and like him, had a wise and patient aspect. But unlike Robb's symmetrical, neat features, this man's were bold, with a prominent, aquiline nose. His body was relaxed, as Robb's seldom was.

These observations, irrelevant to the discussion as they were, flashed in a second through Ellen's head while the interview proceeded.

“No one has ever really been specific with us except to say that the outlook is bad,” Robb was saying.

“All right. An I.Q. from thirty-five to fifty is mild. By the late teens, such a person will do first-grade work. He will be six years old, so to speak. Between twenty-five and thirty-five, abilities are severely limited, and—”

Ellen held up her hand. “I guess that will do. Don't
you think so, Robb? If that's still not the worst, I don't want to hear the worst.”

“I agree,” Lawson said. “There's no point in rushing things. The future will unfold in its time. Meanwhile, think about the things you can do, not about the things you can't. As I said, don't push too hard. Mild discipline, good habits, and order are what you need. And peace in the house, especially for your other child's sake. It won't be easy.”

“I'm ashamed to tell you,” admitted Ellen, “that as I hear all this, I feel despair. I feel night falling around us, with no sun ever rising again.”

“Don't be ashamed, Mrs. MacDaniel. I'd be surprised if you didn't feel that way sometimes. Just don't feel that way all the time.”

With rueful pride, Robb said, “My wife is a writer and illustrator. Her first book was published this year.”

His words annoyed Ellen. They were foolish. Why should anyone care about her book?

But the doctor nodded. “That's good. It's good when a woman, who's always the primary caregiver in a situation like this, has another life besides.”

“I don't know how she's going to do it, the way Penn is.”

“You should have help, if you can afford it.”

“Yes, we'll have to.”

Perhaps Mrs. Vernon will come out of retirement if we pay her enough, Ellen thought. That means more expenses for Robb. But he knows what my work means to me.

It was time to leave. At the door she turned abruptly to speak.

“Doctor, please. I know I said I didn't want to hear the worst. But that was cowardly because, really, we ought to know it.”

The answer came quietly, and the doctor's eyes, extraordinarily blue and very gentle, met hers. “The worst? Eventually, barring miracles, a residential institution. But you knew that already, didn't you?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I knew it.”

R
obb came home late. Lights were on downstairs, while on the second floor, which was otherwise dark, only Penn's room was lit. Another nightmare, that meant, and Ellen was up there trying to soothe him. You wondered what fears might be storming and roiling in a mind that was apparently so vacant. You can help the normal four-year-old, you can show him that there is no tiger in the closet, then hold him, comfort him, and put him back to sleep. But what can you do for a child who can barely talk and never seems to understand what you say? His laugh was so foolish! Yet when you tried to amuse him, he didn't laugh. But you have to admit, Robb thought, there has been some growth. Most likely, Dr. Lawson says, he will advance to the level of an eight-year-old and stop there. More than three years to go … He sighed and went into the house.

The den, which with its stereo, books, and the flowers
that Ellen always kept there, was his favorite room. The great bay window overlooked the lawn, where a splendid beech had been standing for, it was said, more than a century. In the evening, after Julie was in bed, he had always enjoyed the best part of his day, talking there with Ellen, or listening to music, or having coffee after dinner.

Standing now in the doorway, he felt the difference with all its significance and gave a long, weary sigh. Penn's destruction lay everywhere: in the lamp, newly repaired but still cracked, with which he might have electrocuted himself, and in the water-stained circle on the carpet, where he had pulled over a bowl of roses. Ellen and Mrs. Vernon, between them, tried to keep an eye on him every single moment of the day, but there were bound to be a few minor disasters. I wouldn't want the job myself, he thought. My office is restful in comparison.

He was missing Julie. A late homecoming meant that she was already asleep. Still and always, she was his heart. And he worried about her so! That scene yesterday was awful. All month the third-grade class had been collecting leaves and plants, pasting and labeling them in their nature notebooks. Julie's book deserved an A, her teacher said. And Penn had destroyed it. Poor little girl! But then, Robb asked himself, do you not have to say “poor little boy”? He wasn't naughty. And he wasn't even mischievous; he simply didn't understand.

The pathetic notebook lay on the desk where Ellen had been trying to bandage its wounds. He went over
to see how far she had progressed, when something else caught his eye, a thick book, a five-year diary bound in red leather. It was lying open. He had not known that Ellen kept a diary. Obviously then, she had not wanted him to know. Well, that was her privilege. A solid marriage did not require a loss of privacy. But she must have left the room in great haste to have let it lie open like this. And respecting her privacy, he moved to close it. Then something startled him so that he read it again and confirmed the date: last month.

“Julie asked me today whether she will have to take care of Penn when she grows up. She says she hates him because her friends don't like him. She says nobody has a brother like him. She's angry at us for having him. Yet I can see she is also confused by her own anger. I tried to relieve her worry, but it's hard to explain things like this to an eight-year-old child.”

Fully aware that he should not, Robb flipped pages backward. She had begun the diary when Penn was a little past two. Then Julie must have just started kindergarten. He remembered her first day and how proud she had been because she could already print her name and read some words.

“Julie says Penn is dumb. ‘Why don't we get another baby?' she asks me. ‘A nice one, and send Penn away?' God knows I would like to have another baby. But do I dare? It would be a sin to chance a thing like this again. I could cry. I do cry.”

A wife and husband must communicate, Robb thought. That's what they tell us. But we've said everything so long ago that can be said. So why repeat it? I
don't know anymore what I should allow myself to feel. I don't want to feel cold and old and tired, yet too often I do.

“I tell her Penn is a good boy and we must help him. As I talk I think, yes, help him, but how? With all our effort, the music box, the stuffed animals, and the rest, are we getting anywhere? It doesn't seem so. He doesn't really play with toys, only shoves them around. But Dr. Lawson says we must be patient.”

A few pages farther on, Robb read: “My God, but a nursery school like this one is light years away from the place where Julie was so happy! When I first saw this, I was appalled. It's hard to believe, but these children are even worse off than Penn. What patience the teachers must have!”

Their patience had borne some fruit, unless perhaps the change would have happened, anyway, Robb thought. Whatever the reason, though, now at four, Penn was finally toilet-trained and able to feed himself. They had never thought it would happen.

If only he had been able to continue at the school, maybe … maybe … But the school was eighteen miles away, which meant a double trip for Ellen everyday, and that was the least of it: Penn hated the car. It was impossible to drive while he climbed all over; restrained in a car seat he became frantic, thrashing and howling as if he were being tortured. And who could say that he was not in some way being tortured?

So the school had become impossible, and there was no other suitable school within reach. So now Ellen and Mrs. Vernon alone were in charge.

Sighing, Robb flipped more pages.

“I thought on that first day when Dr. Lawson predicted the future, that having this boy would be very hard on Julie. Yes, and it's hard on the rest of us, too. I try to work, but I haven't accomplished anything besides a couple of outlines and sketches that come to nothing. No enthusiasm, no energy, no time. I worry about Robb. He works long hours under much tension and comes home to another kind of tension. When I told Phil, he advised us to get out of the house together as often as we can—”

“Phil”? Since when has he become “Phil”? Robb wondered.

“Somehow whenever I leave his office, I feel revived. He has such a brave, kind, wise approach to life. He's realistic. There's no Polyanna stuff that only irritates me when people say things like how a child like Penn can unite a family and teach compassion, or how everything is a ‘learning experience.' How dare a woman talk like that to me while she's riding around in her station wagon with three or four healthy kids?”