Fortune's Hand

by Belva Plain

  “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.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1983

  Robb 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 ele
ctrocuted 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?”

  That was true, but on the other hand, there are the people, even Jasper in my office, Robb told himself, who console and advise the opposite: “Send the boy away now where he can be cared for by professionals. Don’t martyr yourselves, Robb. You deserve a life, too. Send him away.” But they are not his father. They don’t see the sweetness in his poor, innocent face, in his baby words, and his delight in an ice cream cone.… He read on.

  “I hate myself when I’ve been cranky toward Robb and when I know he wants to make love and I’m too tired. Sometimes even when I don’t want it, I pretend. I hate myself when I have shocking thoughts. I despise myself for having wished Penn would die and relieve us all. The crazy thing is that I still love him so. Every night I pray that he may never, never suffer, that he will be cared for after we die. Phil says it isn’t crazy at all, that most people are full of my same conflicting emotions, although most people won’t admit them.”

  You, too, Robb MacDaniel, how many times have you not wished the child would die and give us some freedom? Think about last month at that black-tie event, with Ellen so beautiful in black lace, with the music, the dancing together, the first time in God knows how long, and then the message—a rare one for Mrs. Vernon, who must have come to the end of her patience—“Come home. Penn just pulled on the tablecloth, all the dishes are broken, there’s cocoa on Julie’s dress and she’s crying, and now Penn’s fallen on the stairs.”

  So he wasn’t hurt, only bruised, and a thing like that can happen to any child, but still he is always the spoiler. And that night was the straw that breaks the camel’s back … You ought to stop reading, Robb. This is not your diary.

  “Julie is afraid she will get sick like Penn. I assure her that it isn’t going to happen, isn’t possible. I look at her, so radiant, with all her burgeoning skills, with a book under her arm, or at the piano intent on her lesson, or racing on her bike to her friend’s house, where they will laugh and eat and squabble. Then I look at Penn and try to imagine that he might have been doing all those things, and I am just so angry. The tragic irony of it all is that every day he looks more and more like Robb.”

  He bent over the desk, staring at the words, and the words stared back, leaping from the page as if they had been written in red ink.

  “How could he have forgotten? How could he? Phil says it’s quite understandable that an unpleasant thing, a thing that happened before he was born, would be buried away.”

  “Thank you for that, Phil, anyway,” Robb muttered to himself, and read on.

  “Phil and I drove out to that residential school he talked about. It’s a beautiful place, a good four hours’ drive each way up in the hills. But it costs a fortune. I was staggered by the price. I told Phil we can’t possibly afford it and never will be able to. Robb’s not the kind of lawyer who makes a fortune any more than my dad does. Anyhow, we don’t want to send Penn away. We want to keep him as long as we can, forever, if we can.”

  With some resentment Robb was thinking “This Phil seems to know a lot about my business,” when Ellen came up behind him.

  “What on earth are you doing?” she
cried.

  “Reading your diary. Don’t scold. I know I have no right to, and I apologize.”

  “I have no secrets. It doesn’t matter.”

  “But you’re angry. You don’t have to hide it.”

  “Not angry, at least not about the diary. I’m exhausted. And yes, I guess I am angry.”

  “At me. I know.”

  “I didn’t say that! At fate.”

  She fell onto the sofa. It needed no more than a glance to tell him that this had been a terrible day; her stocking was torn, her face flushed, and her blouse gapped where a button was missing.

  “A hard day,” he said, meaning to sound sympathetic. Instead, he heard himself sounding lame.

  “Ask Mrs. Vernon about it.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “He had one tantrum after the other. Phil says it’s rather like the way an infant gets frustrated when he cries and can’t say what he wants. I let Julie eat her dinner at her friend Sue’s house to get the poor child out of Penn’s way. The only thing that quiets him when he gets like that is food. Phil says these children sometimes tend to overeat, but we mustn’t give in. It’s just patience and more patience, he says. Eventually, as Penn ages he’ll be able to express himself more easily and we won’t see these tantrums.”

  “When did you start to call him ‘Phil’?”

  “Why? What difference does it make?”

  “No difference. I merely asked.”

  “He’s the best friend we’ve got, for God’s sake. He’s our anchor. Don’t you see that?”

  “You don’t have to be offended, Ellen. What did I say?”

  “You seem to be accusing me of something.”

  He dropped his briefcase on the floor. Only then did he realize that he had been gripping it ever since he had walked into the house.

  “I hate the way we claw at each other,” he said.

  “I didn’t think I ever ‘clawed’ at you.”

  “It’s true it’s not too often, but that’s because you’re holding things in. You’re not being truthful with me. I didn’t know you ‘pretended’ when I made love to you.”