Roland had read up on mongoloids, and had learned that they were singularly still in the womb. “No, he’s not kicking as yet!” Roland remembered Jane saying half a dozen times to well-meaning friends who had inquired during her pregnancy. “Maybe he’s reading books already,” Jane had sometimes added. (Jane was a great reader, and had been a scholarship student at Vassar, where she had majored in political science.) And how different Jane had looked then! Roland realized that he could hardly have recognized her as the same person, Jane five years ago and Jane now. Slender and graceful, with lovely ankles, straight brown hair cut short, an intelligent and pretty face with bright and friendly eyes. She still had the lovely ankles, but even her face had grown heavier, and she no longer moved with youthful lightness. She had concentrated herself, it seemed to Roland, upon Bertie. She had become a kind of monument, something mostly static, heavy, obsessed, concentrating on Bertie and on caring for him. No, she didn’t want any more children, didn’t want to take a second chance, she sometimes said cheerfully, though the chances were next to nil. Both Roland and Jane had had their blood cultures photographed for chromosome count. Usually the woman was “the carrier,” but Jane was not deficient of one chromosome, and neither was he. By no means had she a chromosome missing, which might have meant that one of the forty-five she did have carried the “D/G translocation chromosome” which resulted in a mongoloid offspring in one in three cases. So if he and Jane did have another child, they would be back to the one-in-seven-hundred odds again.
It had more than once crossed Roland’s mind to put Bertie down, as they said of dogs and cats who were hopelessly ill. Of course he’d never uttered this to Jane or to anyone, and now it was too late. He might have asked the doctor, just after Bertie’s birth, with Jane’s consent, of course. But now as Jane frequently reminded Roland, Bertie was a human being. Was he? Bertie’s I.Q. was probably 50, Roland knew. That was the mongoloid average, though Bertie’s I.Q. had never been tested.
“Rollie!” Smiling, Jane lay on her back now, propped on her elbows. “You do look exhausted, dear! How about a hot chocolate? Or coffee if you’ve really got to stay up?—Chocolate’s better for you.”
Roland mumbled something. He did have to work another hour at least, as there were two more returns to wind up after Schultz’s. Roland stared at his son’s—yes, his son’s—toad-like body, on its back now: stubby legs, short arms with square and clumsy hands at their ends, hands that could do nothing, with thumbs like nubbins, mistakes, capable of holding nothing. What had he, Roland, done to deserve this? Bertie was of course wearing a diaper, rather an oversized diaper. At five, he looked indeed like an oversized baby. He had no neck. Roland was aware of a pat on his arm as his wife slipped past him on the way to the kitchen.
A few minutes later, Jane set a steaming mug of hot chocolate by his elbow. Roland was back at work. He had found Schultz’s Time Deposit interest payments, which Schultz had duly noted in April and in October. Roland finished Schultz and reached for his next dossier, that of James P. Overland, manager of a restaurant in Long Island. Roland sipped the hot chocolate, thinking that it was soothing, pleasant, but not what he needed, as Jane had informed him. What he needed was a nice wife in bed, warm and loving, even sexy as Jane had used to be. What they both needed was a healthy son in the room across the hall, reading books now, maybe even sampling Robert Louis Stevenson by now, as both Roland and Jane had done at Bertie’s age, a kid who’d try to hide the light after lights-out time to sneak a few more pages of adventure. Bertie would never read a corn flakes box.
Jane had said she would sleep on the sofa tonight, so he could work at his table in the bedroom. She couldn’t sleep with a light on in the bedroom. She had often slept on the sofa before—they had a duvet which was simple to put on top of the sofa—and sometimes Roland slept there too, to spell Jane on the nights when Bertie appeared restless. Bertie sometimes woke up in the night and started walking around his room, butting his head against the door or one of his walls, and one or the other of them would have to go in and talk to him for a while, and usually change his diaper. The carpet would look a mess, Roland thought, except that its very dark blue color did not show the spots that must be on it. They had sedatives for Bertie from their doctor, but neither Roland nor Jane wanted Bertie to become addicted.
“Damn the bastard!” Roland muttered, meaning James P. Overland, whose face he scarcely remembered from the two interviews he had had with Overland months ago. Overland hadn’t prepared his expenses and income nearly as well as the commercial artist Schultz, and Roland’s colleague Greg MacGregor had dumped the mess on him! Of course Greg had his hands full now too, Roland thought, and was no doubt burning the midnight oil in his own apartment down on 23rd Street, but still—Greg was junior to Roland and should have done the tough work first. Roland’s job was to do the finishing touches, to think of every legitimate loophole and tax break that the IRS permitted, and Roland knew them all by heart. “I’ll settle Greg’s hash tomorrow,” Roland swore softly, though he knew he wouldn’t. The matter wasn’t that serious. He was just goddamned tired, angry, bitter.
“Guh—wurrr-rr-kah!”
Had he heard it, or was he imagining? What time was it?
Twenty past one! Roland got up, saw that the bedroom door was closed, then nervously opened the door a little. Jane was asleep on the sofa, he could just make out the paleness of the blue duvet and the darker spot which was Jane’s head, and she hadn’t wakened from Bertie’s cry. She was getting used to it, Roland thought. And why not, he supposed. Before “Goo-wurr-kah” it had been “Aaaaagh!” as in the horror films or the comic strips. And before that?
Roland was back at his worktable. Before that? He was staring down at the next tax return after Overland (to whom he had written a note to be read to Overland by telephone tomorrow if a secretary could reach him), and actually pondering what Bertie had used to utter before “Aaaaagh!” Was he losing his mind? He squirmed in his chair, straightened up, then bent again over the nearly completed form, ballpoint pen poised as he moved down a list of items. It was not making any sense. He could read the words, the figures, but they had no meaning. Roland got up quickly.
Take a short walk, he told himself. Maybe give it up for tonight, as Jane had suggested, try it early tomorrow morning, but now a walk, or he wouldn’t be able to sleep, he knew. He was wide awake and jumpy with nervous energy.
As he tiptoed through the dark living room towards the door, he heard a low, sleepy wail from Bertie’s room. That was a mewing sort of cry that meant, usually, that Bertie needed his diaper changed. Roland couldn’t face it. The mewing would eventually awaken Jane, he knew, and she could handle it. She wasn’t going to a job tomorrow. Jane had given up her job with a U.N. research group when Bertie had been born, though she wouldn’t have given it up, Roland found himself thinking for the hundredth time, if Bertie hadn’t had Down’s syndrome. She would have gone back to her job, as she had intended to do. But Jane had made an immediate decision: Bertie, her little darling, was going to be her full-time job.
It was a relief to get out into the cool air, the darkness. Roland lived on East 52nd Street, and he walked east. A pair of young lovers, arms around each other’s waist, strolled slowly towards him, the girl tipped her head back and gave a soft laugh. The boy bent quickly and kissed her lips. They might have been in another world, Roland thought. They were in another world, compared to his. At least these kids were happy and healthy. Well, so had he and Jane been—just like them, Roland realized, just about six years ago! Incredible, it seemed now! What had they done to deserve this? Their fate? What? Nothing that Roland could think of. He was not religiously inclined, and he believed as little in prayer, or an afterworld, as he did in luck. A man made his own destiny. Roland Markow was the grandson of poor immigrants. Even his parents had had no university education. Roland had worked his way through CUNY, living at home.
Roland
was walking downtown on First Avenue, walking quickly, hands in the pockets of his raincoat which he had grabbed out of the hall closet, though it wasn’t raining. There were few people on the sidewalk, though the avenue had a stream of taxis and private cars flowing uptown in its wide, one-way artery. Now, out of a corner coffee shop, six or eight adolescents, all looking fourteen or fifteen years old, spilled on to the sidewalk, laughing and chattering, and one boy jumped twice, as if on a pogo stick, rather high in the air before a girl reached for his hand. More health, more youth! Bertie would never jump like that. Bertie would walk, could now in a way, but jump for joy to make a girl smile? Never!
Suddenly Roland burnt with anger. He stopped, pressed his lips together as if he were about to explode, looked behind him the way he had come, vaguely thinking of starting back, but really not caring how late it got. He was not in the least tired, though he was now south of 34th Street. He thought of throttling Bertie, of doing it with his own hands. Bertie wouldn’t even struggle much, Roland knew, wouldn’t realize what was happening, until it was too late. Roland turned and headed uptown, then crossed the avenue eastward at a red light. He didn’t care if he roamed the rest of the night. It was better than lying sleepless at home, alone in that bed.
A rather plump man, shorter than Roland, was walking towards him on the sidewalk. He wore no hat, he had a mustache, and a slightly troubled air. The man gazed down at the sidewalk.
Suddenly Roland leapt for him. Roland was not even aware that he leapt with his hands outstretched for the man’s throat. The suddenness of Roland’s impact sent the man backwards, and Roland fell on top of him. Scrambling a little, grasping the man’s throat ever harder, Roland tugged the man leftward, towards the shadow of the huge, dark apartment building on the left side of the sidewalk. Roland sank his thumbs. There was no sound from the man, whose tongue protruded, Roland could barely see, much like Bertie’s. The man’s thick brows rose, his eyes were wide—grayish eyes, Roland thought. With a heave, Roland moved the fallen figure three or four feet towards a patch of darkness on his left, which Roland imagined was a hole. Not that Roland was thinking, he was simply aware of a column or pit of darkness on his left, and he had a desire to push the man down it, to annihilate him. Panting finally, but with his hands still on the man’s throat, Roland glanced at the darkness and saw that it was an alleyway, very narrow, between two buildings, and that part of the darkness was caused by black iron banisters, with steps of black iron that led downwards. Roland dragged the man just a little farther, until his head and shoulders hung over the steps, then Roland straightened, breathing through his mouth. The man’s head was in darkness, only part of his trousered legs and black shod feet were visible. Roland bent and grabbed the lowest button of the man’s gray plaid jacket and yanked it off. He pocketed this, then turned and walked back the way he had come, still breathing through parted lips. He paid no attention to two men who walked towards him, but he heard some words.
“. . . told her to go to hell!—Y’know?” said one.
The other man chuckled. “No kidding!”
At First Avenue, Roland turned uptown. Roland’s next thought, or rather the next thing that he was aware of, was that he stood in front of the mostly glass doors of his apartment building, for which he needed his key, but in his left side trousers pocket he had his keys, as always. He glanced behind him, vaguely thinking that the taxi that had brought him might just be pulling away. But he had walked. Of course, he had gone out for a walk. He remembered that perfectly. He felt pleasantly tired.
Roland took the elevator, then entered the apartment quietly. Jane was still asleep on the sofa, and she stirred as he crossed the living room, but did not wake up. Roland tiptoed as before. The lamp was still on, on his worktable. Roland undressed, washed quietly in the bathroom, and got into bed. He had killed a man. Roland could still feel the slight pain in his thumbs from the strain of his muscles there. That man was dead. One human being dead, in place of Bertie. That was the way he saw it, now. It was a kind of vengeance, or revenge, on his part. Wasn’t it? What had he and Jane done to deserve Bertie? What had all the healthy, normal people walking around on the earth, what had they done to deserve their happy state? Nothing. They’d simply been born. Roland slept.
When Jane brought him a cup of coffee in bed at half past seven, Roland felt especially well. He thanked her with a smile.
“Thought I’d let you sleep this morning no matter what,” Jane said cheerfully. “No tax returns are worth your health, Rollie dear.” She was already dressed in one of her peasant skirts that concealed the bulk of her hips and thighs, a blue shirt which she had not bothered to tuck into the skirt top, her old pale blue espadrilles. “Now what for breakfast? Pancakes sound nice? Batter’s all made, because Bertie likes them so much, you know. Or—bacon and eggs?”
Roland sipped his coffee. “Pancakes sound great. With bacon too, I hope.”
“You bet, with bacon! Ten minutes.” Jane went off to the kitchen.
Roland felt in good spirits the entire day. Jane remarked on it before he left the apartment that morning, and Greg at the office said: “Miracle man! Did you win on the horses or something? Did you see that pile of stuff on your desk?”
Roland had, and he had expected it. Greg had worked till two-thirty in the morning, he said, and he looked it. The telephones, four of them, rang all day, clients calling back after having had questions put to them by Roland or Greg by telephone or by letter. Roland did not feel so much cheerful as confident that day. He felt calm, really, and if he looked consequently cheerful, that was an accident. He could remind himself that the office had gone through last year’s deadline, and the year’s before that, in the same state of nerves and overwork, and they’d always made it, somehow.
Roland wore the same trousers, and the button was in the right-hand pocket. He pulled it out in a moment when he was alone in his office and looked at it in the light that came through his office window. It was grayish brown, with holes in which some gray thread remained. Roland pulled the thread out and dropped the bits into his wastebasket. Had he really throttled a man? The idea seemed impossible at ten past four that afternoon, as he stood in his pleasant office with its green carpet, pale green curtains and white walls lined with familiar books and files. The button could have come from anywhere, Roland was thinking. It could have fallen off one of his own jackets, he could have shoved it into his pocket with an idea of asking Jane to sew it on, when she found the time.
It did cross Roland’s mind just after five o’clock (the office, including the two secretaries, was working till seven) to look at the Post tonight for the discovery of a body on—what street? A man of forty or so with mustache, named—Strangled. But Roland’s mind just as quickly shied away from this idea. Why should he look in the newspapers? What had it got to do with him? There wouldn’t be a clue, as they said in mystery novels. Sheer fantasy! All of it. A corpse lying on East 40th Street or 45th Street or wherever it had been? Not very likely.
In four days, the office work had greatly let up. Some clients were going to be a little late (their own fault for not having their data all together), and would have to pay small fines, but so be it. Fines weren’t life or death. Roland ate better. Jane was pleased. Roland showed more patience with Bertie, and he could laugh with the child now and then. He sat on the floor and played with him for fifteen and twenty minutes at a time.
“That’ll help him, you know, Rollie?” said Jane, watching them arrange a row of soft plastic blocks. Jane spoke as if Bertie couldn’t understand a word, which was more or less true.
“Yep,” said Roland. The row of blocks had a space between each block and the next and Roland began setting more blocks on these gaps with the objective of building a pyramid. “Why don’t we ask the Jacksons over soon?” He looked up at Jane. “For dinner.”
“Margie and Tom! I’d love to, Rollie!” Jane was beaming, and she
brought her hands down on her thighs for emphasis. “I’ll phone them tonight. It was always you who didn’t want them, you know, Rollie. They didn’t mind. I mean—about Bertie. Bertie was always locked up in his room, anyway!” Jane laughed, happy at the idea of inviting the Jacksons. “It was always you who thought Bertie bothered them, or they didn’t like Bertie. Something like that.”
Roland remembered. The Jacksons, like most people, were disgusted by Bertie, a little afraid of him for all Bertie’s smallness, as normal people were always afraid of idiots, unpredictable things that might do them harm. Now Roland felt that he wouldn’t mind that. He knew he would be able to laugh, make a joke, put the Jacksons at their ease about Bertie, if they went into Bertie’s room “to visit with him” the night they came. They never asked to, but Jane usually proposed it.
The Jackson evening turned out well. Everyone was in a good mood, and Jane didn’t suggest during the pre-dinner drinks time “saying hello to Bertie,” and the Jacksons hadn’t brought a toy for him, as they had a few times in the past—a small plastic beach ball, something inane, for a baby. Jane had made an excellent Hungarian goulash.
Then around ten o’clock, Jane said brightly, “I’ll bring Bertie out to join us for a few minutes. It’ll do him good.”
“Do that,” said Margerie Jackson automatically, politely.
Roland saw Margerie glance at her husband who was standing with his small coffee by a bookcase. Roland had just poured brandies all round into the snifters on the coffee table. Bertie could easily sweep a couple of snifters off the low table with a swing of his hand, Roland was thinking, and he realized that he had grown stiff with apprehension or annoyance.
Mermaids on the Golf Course: Stories Page 3
