"Perhaps we could make arrangements with your employer for a leave of
absence...."
The doctor broke off as the door suddenly burst open and a nurse
charged into the room. She was an uncommonly homely woman whose face
would have been attractive only coming down the stretch in the fifth
at Pimlico. Her cap was askew and her red mane had gotten loose from
its moorings. Breathing heavily, she pulled up abruptly in front of the
desk and glared furiously at the doctor.
"I quit!" she bellowed, banging her fist down on the desk. "I will not
be referred to as that splay-footed, cold-fingered old nag! Especially
not by any mere infant!"
"Miss Klatt!" the doctor said sternly. "We're in conference with a
patient!"
"I don't care if you're in Tucson with Marilyn Monroe!" the nurse
yelled. "I'm quitting. In fact, I've quit. If it's a nurse for babies
you want, then okay, but if you're looking for a verbal punching bag
for a three-hour old comic, you can damn well look somewhere else!"
"Miss Klatt!"
"Phooey!" Miss Klatt responded hotly. "Just call me up sometime to
come back to work and listen to my hollow laughter. And as for that
new-layed egg you call a baby, you'll find him in his crib in the
nursery!" And with that she turned on her heel and stalked from the
room, slamming the door. There was a moment of horrified silence.
"Oh, dear!" one of the doctors said distractedly. "Oh, dear!"
The pinkish doctor leaped out of his chair. "Holy smoke!" he yelled.
"Did she say she put him in the nursery?"
He raced for the door, and his five colleagues rose hastily and
followed in his trail. Lester jumped up and followed after.
"Hey!" he hollered. "Hey, wait a minute!"
* * * * *
Lester arrived in the viewing room only a step behind the doctors.
Already, it appeared, quite a crowd had assembled in the room, a
random mixture of staff members and visitors. There was an excited
murmuring, along with a general tendency to back away from the viewing
panel. The doctors had stopped in their tracks just inside the door,
in a collective attitude of stricken dismay. For a moment Lester was
completely at a loss to discover the cause of all this, then a voice, a
very small but distinct voice, echoed over the speaker.
"And you, too, fatso!" it said sharply. "Just what do you think you're
staring at?"
Lester became aware of a large, dark-haired woman who suddenly gasped
and backed away. Her lips worked feverishly over words that would not
come.
"It's an invasion of privacy!" the voice continued furiously. "I stand
on my rights! And I'll sit and lie down on them, too, if I have to! I
demand a private room!"
During this pithy bit of dialogue, Lester edged cautiously through the
ranks and peered into the brilliant inner reaches of the nursery. At
first he saw nothing of particular note, then, slowly his gaze, moving
along the first line of cribs, stopped at the one just left of center,
where its infant occupant appeared to be sitting boldly upright,
shaking its small pudgy fist at the window. The baby's face was quite
red, and its tiny eyes glittered with a furious intelligence that was
distinctly upsetting. If Lester's senses had not failed him, this was
the originator of the angry voice.
"And what are you nosing around for, stupid?" the baby asked hotly,
darting a swift glance in his direction. "I suppose you have never seen
a baby before? How would you like it if every time you looked up from
your bed you were faced with a lot of dough-faced, low-grade morons
gaping at you through a plate glass window? Talk about goldfish!"
For a moment Lester was too startled to move. Then, laggingly, his eyes
moved to the name on the crib, and he stiffened sharply. The name,
plain as a day in May, was _Holmes_!
"Wha--!" Lester said, unable to grasp the situation or any part of it.
He whirled about to the doctors and found them in hasty retreat toward
a doorway at the far end of the room.
"Hey!" Lester yelled and took out after them.
He raced along in their wake down a narrow hallway and through another
door, into a small room full of electric sterilizers. Instantly upon
arrival, the doctors went quickly to the business of donning masks.
"Now just look here!" Lester cried, but the doctors were already in
retreat toward an inner door with a glass port-hole through which could
be seen the nursery. Lester shoved after them, but was held back.
"You can't come in without a mask," one of the doctors told him, then
slammed the door in his face.
"I'm getting sore!" Lester said. He swung about, found a discarded mask
lying on a white porcelained table and slipped it on. Adjusting the
strap, he hastened into the nursery.
He was greeted by a deafening din as he shoved through the door. Thirty
odd babies, suddenly roused, had taken up the cry in shrill discord.
Intermingled with this was the disgruntled rumblings of the doctors and
the outraged mouthings of the truculent baby.
"Well, high time!" the infant yelled. "Get me out of this Bedlam before
I lose my temper! How do you expect anyone to get any rest in a room
full of howling brats!"
"Shut off that loudspeaker!" one of the doctors yelled, and a colleague
rushed to a switch on the wall.
* * * * *
Lester wedged himself determinedly into the fast-closing knot around
the crib. He shoved his face through an opening between two white-clad
shoulders and looked up at the doctor across from him.
"How is he doing that?" he asked.
The infant in the crib looked up at him wearily. "Another one," he
commented. "That makes seven. Seven come eleven and not a brain in the
lot. What do I have to do to get a private room in this butcher shop?
Clear out, you underlings, and send me the manager!"
"You're going to get a private room!" the doctor across from Lester
said shortly. "You're going to get one if I have to build it myself."
He scooped the infant up in his arms.
"Well," the baby said, falling back importantly into the crook of the
doctor's arm, "that's more like it."
Again straggling after the doctors, Lester followed them from the
nursery, through the outer room, down the hallway and into a room
marked _Private_. There the baby was placed on an adult-sized bed,
where it sat up majestically against the pillow and watched with a
jaundiced eye the unmasking of those assembled.
"The human race," he commented, "is certainly not an attractive one.
You jokers make up as ugly a crew as ever blotted the horizons of
hell. Not to mention that nurse you sent me. What a horror that one
was!"
"She quit the hospital, you'll be delighted to know," the doctor said,
bristling.
"And thereby provided the medical profession its greatest single
advance in years," the infant retorted blandly.
"You didn't have to insult her," the doctor said.
"Somebody had to," the baby said, the absolute soul of reason. "No one
with a face like that could go without insult much longer."
The doctor opened his mouth to reply, then glanced around uneasily at
the others. "It's ridiculous, arguing with a mere infant like this," he
murmured. "I feel like a fool."
"Don't be alarmed," the baby said mildly. "You also look like a fool.
And I think that clears up your status most conclusively."
"Is he really doing that?" Lester breathed incredulously. "Isn't it
just some sort of a trick or something?"
The baby shot him a quick glance. "Who's that?" he asked.
"Your father," the doctor said bitterly. "Heaven help him."
"That!" the baby said, disbelievingly pointing a finger at Lester.
"Good grief!" He eyed Lester more closely and with an evident lack
of satisfaction. He shrugged fatalistically. "Well, as long as you're
here, there's a little matter I want straightened out. I happen to know
that you and your wife--my mother, I suppose--are planning to name
me Frederick Lester Holmes. I've thought it over and decided I can't
permit it. The name is entirely too commonplace. I wish to be called
Anstruther Pierpont Holmes, which is more consistent with the position
which I mean to attain in life." He subjected Lester to another lengthy
and critical stare. "Since you are my father, you may refer to me
as A.P., so as to achieve an absolute economy of time spent in
communication between us."
Lester clutched blindly at the foot of the bed in an attempt to
maintain his equilibrium; suddenly he felt as though his knees had been
set on swivels. The room appeared to be leaping about with a will of
its own.
"Grab him!" a voice yelled close by. "He's going into shock!"
* * * * *
Five days later, Lester sat in the corner of the hospital room,
maintaining a morbid silence while the nurse finished packing Ginny's
bag. Ginny dressed now and looking pretty, though somewhat drawn, sat
in a wheel chair with the infant A.P. held gingerly, as one might
hold a small A Bomb, in her lap. All of them watched tensely as the
nurse snapped the catch on the bag and left the room. The instant she
was gone, Lester was on his feet. He approached the wheel chair and
levelled a warning finger under A.P.'s negligible nose.
"I don't know how the newspapers got wind of this," he said, "but I
definitely suspect you. The hospital promised to keep it quiet. If any
of those reporters get to you, just keep your big mouth shut. Maybe you
want to be a side show attraction, but your mother and I don't!"
"Nuts," the baby said briefly.
Lester raised his glance to Ginny. "And if they ask you anything, just
don't answer. And try not to cry."
"Oh, Lester!" Ginny said tearfully. "What will the neighbors think?
They'll say we're not normal, and that he's a--"
"A monster," Lester supplied. "And they'll be right."
"You don't need to talk about me as though I weren't here," A.P. said
evenly. "I can hear every word you're saying."
"Can't we just stay here in the hospital?" Ginny pleaded. "Just a few
more days?"
"They won't have him," Lester said, casting A.P. an accusing glance.
"He's tried to reorganize the entire hospital. Three nurses, two
doctors and five internes have given up the profession, and six
patients stole wheel chairs and left without notice. They've given us a
deadline until noon to get him off the premises."
"Inefficiency," A.P. said tersely. "Everywhere you look, inefficiency.
It's appalling."
"And so are you!" Letter snapped.
"My father!" the infant said, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. "What
irony!"
At this moment the nurse returned and the unhappy trio fell into a
forced silence.
"The reporters," the nurse said uneasily, "they've gotten into the
hallway somehow." She followed Lester's apprehensive gaze to the baby.
"They want an interview--with all three of you."
Lester sighed deeply. "Oh, well," he said, and taking hold of the wheel
chair he shoved it forward.
The crush began at the door. A dozen reporters, at the first glimpse
of the wheel chair, crowded toward it. A red-faced young man with a
touseled crop of black hair stuck his face aggressively down next to
A.P.'s.
"What do you think of the political situation, kid?" he yelled.
The little company froze, and there was an instantaneous hush. Lester
exchanged a glance of speechless horror with Ginny as their infant son
observed his inquisitor with a scathing stare and parted his cherubic
lips.
"Goo," A.P. said with flat disgust. "Goo, goo, goo!"
* * * * *
The ensuing week passed torturously. It was unthinkable, of course,
that there should be a nurse--or any outsider for that matter--in the
house during Ginny's recuperation. Therefore, it was necessary for
Lester to take a leave of absence from the bank and remain at home. As
a substitute angel of mercy, however, Lester found himself singularly
lacking in certain basic qualities; he was constantly beset with an
alarming impulse to do violence to the weak and helpless. On the
seventh day he cracked.
"I don't care!" he cried, storming into Ginny's bedroom. "I don't care
if he is my son! I'm darned if I'll take any more guff off of him!" He
banged a half-empty feeding bottle down on the bureau. "Everything I do
is wrong! I give him his formula and he gives me a dissertation on how
to prepare lobsters Newberg! I can't stand any more of it!"
Ginny accepted this tirade from her bed with distressed uncertainty. "I
know, dear," she said gently. "Last time I was up I went in to see him,
and he told me I was wearing the wrong shades of lipstick, powder and
rouge, and that I ought to comb my hair away from my face if I want to
resemble anything human at all."
"And he wants to rebuild the house!" Lester fumed. "He says it's
non-functional! It's like living with Hitler, I tell you!"
"Now, dear," Ginny said softly. "We wanted a son."
"A son, yes," Lester said, "but not a pea-sized Einstein." He held out
a hand. "What are we going to do, Gin? We can't keep him hidden away
forever. Mrs. Hilliard from next door was over again this morning. I've
run out of excuses."
"Oh, don't let _her_ in!" Ginny said. "With that wart on her nose I
can't imagine what he'd say to her! And she'd blab it all over town.
The newspaper people would be after us again. We'd be an object of
curiosity all over the world!"
Lester sagged into the chair in the corner. "We'd never have another
moment's privacy." He closed his eyes wearily. "I feel like passing out
arsenic instead of cigars."
"We'll just have to keep him hidden as long as we can," Ginny said
hopelessly. "If anyone sees him we'll have to explain that he learned
to talk prematurely."
"We'll never get away with it," Lester said. "His language is too
darned premature."
"I don't know why this had to happen to us," Ginny lamented. "It
couldn't have come from my side of the family. We've none of us ever
been very bright."
Lester looked around at her sharply. "Neither have we," he said.
"Then where did it come from?" Ginny asked.
"Not from heaven," Lester said firmly. "That's certain."
* * * * *
The second week passed, and Ginny recovered sufficiently to be up and
about. With apprehension, she relieved Lester of his duties with A.P.
Her worst fears, she learned, had not been unfounded.
"He wants the stock reports," she reported to Lester in the kitchen.
"Did you give him that copy of Forever Amber?"
"I did," Lester said dully.
"But why, for heaven's sake?"
"To keep his mind off the house," Lester said. "He's got it all
redesigned. Refinanced, too. In his head."
"He's got so many things in his head," Ginny said. "It's terrifying.
I'll never get used to it."
"Don't worry about it," Lester said. "We won't be seeing much of him as
soon as he learns to walk. He explained it all to me. He's going into
some sort of business that will take him into higher circles. I think
he's planning to be a financial shyster of some sort."
Ginny dropped into the chair opposite him and gazed at him dimly from
across the table. "I thought it was going to be so nice to be a mother,
to have something that depended on me and looked up to me."
"I know," Lester said. "We've just got to face it, though, A.P. is
less a child than we are. He's a full grown adult and he doesn't intend
to indulge us by pretending to be a baby. I know it's impossible,
but...."
Both of them stiffened as a knock sounded sharply at the back door.
"Mrs. Hilliard!" Ginny hissed. "Don't answer!"
"Don't worry," Lester said.
The room filled with silence as both of them sat absolutely quiet.
There was a second knock, more insistent this time. As it died out, the
silence fell again. Then it shattered.
"Hey, you two!" A.P.'s penetrating voice yelled from the nursery. "Get
on the ball with that reinforced feeding! I'll never grow up if you're
going to starve me to death!"
"Oh, Lord!" Lester groaned. Instantly there was a third knock that
fairly rattled the hinges. "You get rid of her. I'll take him the
bottle."
"And make sure you have the formula I worked out!" the voice from the
nursery commanded. "I don't want to waste any more time in this wicker
cage than I have to!"
When Lester returned to the kitchen he found, with a thrill of horror,
that Mrs. Hilliard, a steely glint in her eyes, had forced her way
inside. She was a solid woman with a square figure, a square face and
undoubtedly a square heart to match, which Lester was certain lay in
her bosom like a small granite cornerstone. The wart on her nose was
twitching with resolution. Ginny stood, cowed, beside the open door.
"Ginny Holmes," Mrs. Hilliard was saying, "we've been friends ever
since you moved here. I was the first one inside your door to welcome
you to the neighborhood, and I resent being treated like a stranger
now. After all, I only want to help out."
"But, Mrs. Hilliard ..." Ginny tried to say.
"I know you don't want me to see the baby," Mrs. Hilliard went on. "You
certainly made that plain enough. And although I don't know why, I can
guess. Everyone in the neighborhood has guessed by now."
"Why what do you mean, Mrs. Hilliard?"
"It happened to a cousin of mine; the child was hopelessly malformed.
But it's no reflection on you, dear. It's just one of nature's
tragedies, and you have to learn to accept it gracefully."
"But, Mrs. Hilliard!" Ginny gasped, her eyes wide with astonishment,
"it's nothing like that!"
"And you'll find that everyone in the block is just as sympathetic as
I am. We've all wanted to tell you how sorry we are, but if you won't
admit it, or even let us see the child...."
Lester drew himself up in the doorway. "Mrs. Hilliard," he said
firmly, and the woman turned, giving him a square, hard look. "Mrs.
Hilliard, please put your prying mind at rest. If you want to give the
neighborhood a report on our baby, then all right!" His face was fast
becoming a dangerous red. "Just step this way!"
"Lester!" Ginny cried.
But Lester was beyond caution. "We call the baby A.P.," he said, "but
you may address him as Mr. Holmes." Mrs. Hilliard cast him a curious
glance. "Come right along, Mrs. Hilliard!"
"Well ..." Mrs. Hilliard said, then selfrighteously started after him
down the hall.
* * * * *
As they entered, A.P. was busy reading, the book propped up against
the side of his crib. His bottle hung rakishly from the corner of his
mouth, balanced across his shoulder. At the sight of the approaching
trio, he looked around and frowned. Mrs. Hilliard stopped short as the
baby pointed a chubby finger in her direction.
"Who," A.P. asked in measured tones, "is that? Or should I say 'what
is that?'"
Mrs. Hilliard made a small wheezing sound and looked around uncertainly
at Ginny.
"This is our neighbor," Lester said recklessly. "Mrs. Hilliard."
"Well, why come dragging her in here?" A.P. asked. "Surely it can't be
milking time already." He regarded Mrs. Hilliard more closely. "She's
certainly nothing to inflict on a mere infant."
"Well!" Mrs. Hilliard managed to wheeze.
"Quiet, wart nozzle," A.P. said imperiously. "You have one of those
voices that grate on my nerves."
Mrs. Hilliard whirled on Lester. "Lester Holmes! Is this some sort of
joke?"
"If it is," A.P. said, "it's entirely on you, madam. How any woman
could get that bowlegged in a mere sixty years is quite beyond me."
"Sixty years!" Mrs. Hilliard cried. "Bowlegged! Ginny Holmes...."
"Oh, shut up," A.P. said disgustedly. "Get out of here and let me
read. I'm just at the part where she locks him into her bedroom and
slips the key down the front of her dress."
"Well!" Mrs. Hilliard snorted. "I certainly will get out of here! And
I'll never set foot in this house again."
"That'll be a great relief to the foundations," A.P. observed affably
and returned to his book and bottle.
Ginny cast Lester a glance of pure fury, then turned away. "Mrs.
Hilliard!" she cried. But already that outraged lady was down the hall
and making rapid time toward the back door. Ginny ran after her. "Mrs.
Hilliard!"
"Let her go!" Lester called out, following along the hall. "Forget it."
In the kitchen, Ginny turned on him, a nasty glint in her eyes.
"There!" she said hysterically. "Now, you've done it! She'll tell
everyone!"
"No one will believe her," Lester said defensively. "They'll just think
she's gone off her nut."
"They'll come here!" Ginny cried. "The reporters and everyone! I don't
want to be known as the mother of the most insulting baby in the world!"
"Neither do I!" Lester said distractedly. "I mean I don't want to be
known as the father!"
"_What!_" Ginny gasped, her eyes growing wide. "You mean you're going
to tell everyone you're not the father?"
"Now, I didn't say that!" Lester yelled. "I only meant that...."
"I wouldn't put it past you!" Ginny said furiously. "Put all the blame
on me. I can certainly see where that child got his evil disposition!
Your whole family has always been shifty! I should have known!"
"Shifty!" Lester flared. "My family, shifty! What about your brother,
Delmar? Did you ever bake him a cake with a file in it, like he asked
you to?"
"You leave my family out of this! You know it was an accident that
Delmar got arrested!"
"Hah!" Lester said. "That's a hot one, that is! And you call my family
shifty. At least they're not locked up."
"But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be!" Ginny hollered. "That
crazy father of yours!"
"Not to mention that witch you call 'mother!'"
"I guess she's got your number all right!"
"I'm warning you, Ginny, I can't stand much more. I'm under too much of
a strain!"
"_You're_ under a strain!" Ginny laughed wildly. "Just who had that
baby, I'd like to know?"
"You did!" Lester shot back. "And there's your answer to what's wrong
with him. I should have married Fanny Gantner. My father always said
so, and he knew women!"
"I'll say he did! He knew all the women in town!" Suddenly Ginny began
to cry. "So that's what you're always thinking when you look at me like
that! Fanny Gantner! Well!" Suddenly she spun around and ran from the
room.
Lester sank into the chair at the kitchen table and ran a trembling
hand over his face. "It's too much," he muttered. "It's too much for
human flesh and bone to stand." He put his arms down on the table and
leaned forward, resting his head on the backs of his hands. There was
a momentary stillness which was almost instantly broken by a series
of racking sobs from the bedroom. Then there was the sound of A.P.'s
shrill voice.
"Rot!" the infant howled. "Drivel!" There was the sound of a book
dropping to the floor. "I'm sick of this paltry fiction. If you two
cases of arrested development can bestir yourselves from your childish
bickerings, one of you go out and get me the financial news!"
Lester, even with his eyes closed, suddenly saw a great searing flash.
He jerked back in his chair, got up and marched rigidly to the back
door. Outside, he walked down the drive to the garage, got into the car
and slammed the door.
It was more than too much. Obviously his wife considered him shifty and
unreliable, and his child thought of him only as a blithering ninny
only to be ordered about. Well, in that case, he knew what to do about
it. He started the car, backed down the drive and started down the
street.
* * * * *
The Hickentrope Hotel was the sort of establishment where the
management was not chary of guests without luggage. Lester sat in one
of the Hickentrope's uninspiring rooms, stared at the puce colored
walls and thought dark thoughts, until it was time to turn out the
lights, stare at the darkened walls and think puce thoughts.
He blamed himself somewhat for having left Ginny alone when she'd
only barely risen from her sick bed, but swift on the heels of this
recrimination came the thought that if she wasn't able to manage
properly, A.P. would be only too happy to tell her how. Besides, she
could always telephone her mother, even though Mrs. Feeney had sworn,
on the day of their wedding, never to enter her daughter's house.
Finally, Lester began to speculate on the probable consequences should
A.P. and Mrs. Feeney be brought together under the same roof and,
with the picture of this happy disaster in mind, he eventually dozed
off.
In the morning, after the first barber's shave he had ever experienced,
Lester made his way to the bank. He was dreary-eyed and low in his
mind, but he managed to withstand the ironical congratulations of his
co-workers with a fixed and aching grin. When Mr. Painter, the bank
manager, asked him bluffly about the new heir, he had half a notion to
tell him just to see the silly smile wilt from his vapid face.
Lester retired soberly to his window, arranged his cash drawer and got
down to business. It was nearly noon, in the midst of the deposits of
a neighborhood bakery shop, that Miss Sward, Mr. Painter's secretary,
appeared at his shoulder to tell him that his wife was on the telephone
and wished to speak to him on a matter of urgency.
With a feeling of triumph that Ginny had capitulated so rapidly and so
easily, he completed the bakery's deposits, closed his window and made
his way back to the office and the telephone. Keeping his tone distant
but nonetheless magnanimous, he said hello.
"Lester!" Ginny's voice came tartly over the wire, "Who are all those
people?"
This was not precisely the approach Lester had anticipated. For a
moment he was taken aback.
"What people?" he asked finally.
"You know very well what people! All those people at home. Who are
they, Lester?"