_All Len had to hear was the old gag: "We've never lost a
father yet." His child was not even born and it was
thoroughly unbearable!_
* * * * *
Len and Moira Connington lived in a rented cottage with a small yard,
a smaller garden, and too many fir trees. The lawn, which Len seldom
had time to mow, was full of weeds, and the garden was overgrown with
blackberry brambles. The house itself was clean and smelled better
than most city apartments, and Moira kept geraniums in the windows.
[Illustration]
However, it was dark on account of the firs. Approaching the door one
late spring afternoon, Len tripped on an unnoticed flagstone and
scattered examination papers all the way to the porch.
When he picked himself up, Moira was giggling in the doorway. "That
was funny."
"The hell it was," said Len. "I banged my nose." He picked up his
Chemistry B papers in a stiff silence. A red drop fell on the last
one. "_Damn_ it!"
Moira held the screen door for him, looking contrite and faintly
surprised. She followed him into the bathroom. "Len, I didn't mean to
laugh. Does it hurt much?"
"No," said Len, staring fiercely at his scraped nose in the mirror. It
was throbbing like a gong.
"That's good. It was the funniest thing--I mean funny-peculiar," she
clarified hastily.
* * * * *
Len stared at her; the whites of her eyes were showing: "Is there
anything the matter with you?" he demanded.
"I don't know," she said on a rising note. "Nothing like that ever
happened to me before. I didn't think it was funny at all. I was
worried about you, and I didn't know I was going to laugh--" She
laughed again, a trifle nervously. "Maybe I'm cracking up."
Moira was a dark-haired young woman with a placid, friendly
disposition. Len had met her in his senior year at Columbia,
with--looking at it impartially, which Len seldom did--regrettable
results. At present, in her seventh month, she was shaped like a
rather bosomy kewpie doll.
_Emotional upsets_, he remembered, _may occur frequently during this
period_. He leaned to get past her belly and kissed her forgivingly.
"You're probably tired. Go sit down and I'll get you some coffee."
Except that Moira had never had any hysterics till now, or morning
sickness, either--she burped instead--and anyhow, was there anything
in the literature about fits of giggling?
After supper, he marked seventeen sets of papers desultorily in red
pencil, then got up to look for the baby book. There were four
dog-eared paperbound volumes with smiling infants' faces on the
covers, but the one he wanted wasn't there. He looked behind the
bookcase and on the wicker table beside it. "Moira!"
"Hm?"
"Where the devil is the other baby book?"
"I've got it."
Len went and looked over her shoulder. She was staring at a drawing of
a fetus lying in a sort of upside-down Yoga position inside a
cross-sectioned woman's body.
"That's what he looks like," she said. "_Mama._"
The diagram was of a fetus at term.
"What was that about your mother?" Len asked, puzzled.
"Don't be silly," she said abstractedly.
He waited, but she didn't look up or turn the page. After a while, he
went back to his work. He watched her.
Eventually she leafed through to the back of the book, read a few
pages, and put it down. She lighted a cigarette and immediately put it
out again. She fetched up a belch.
"That was a good one," said Len admiringly.
Moira sighed.
Feeling tense, Len picked up his coffee cup and started toward the
kitchen. He halted beside Moira's chair. On the side table was her
after-dinner cup, still full of coffee ... black, scummed with oil
droplets, stone-cold.
"Didn't you want your coffee?" he asked solicitously.
She looked at the cup. "I did, but--" She paused and shook her head,
looking perplexed.
"Well, do you want another cup now?"
"Yes, please. _No._"