Henry uttered one brief syllable that adequately disposed of Wickersham and the deadline. “All right—who had it first?”
“Why … Ma … no. Not Marie. The Widget and her doll. Then Marie and her melodrama. Then Carole and her … then Carole.”
“The Widget, huh?”
“What are you driving at?” I snapped, seeing the vitreous sheen of stubbornness slip over Henry’s eyes.
“Marie’s always going over to your place, isn’t she?”
“Henry, you’re crazy! Contagion, for a … mental disorder?”
“She had it first, didn’t she?”
“She’s just a kid!”
Henry looked at me levelly. “Just a kid. Would you say that if the three of them came down with scarlet fever and she was the first to have it, and the three of them had been together so much?”
“Now look,” I said, trying to keep my voice down. “I hope I’m wrong about what you’re driving at. But there’s nothing wrong with my kid, see?”
“You fellows lose something?” said Wickersham.
We literally jumped, used as we were to the Wick’s cat-footing techniques. Henry stared at the big man, and his feet carried him back to his bench by pure reflex.
Wickersham stood there, teetering a bit on the balls of his feet, his big hands behind him. Suddenly his great still face broke, and his white, even teeth showed in a grin. Then he turned and walked out.
“To him,” muttered Henry, “something is funny.”
I said, “Sometimes I’m sorry he pays the kind of money he does.”
We worked, then. If the Wick had tried, he couldn’t have picked a sweeter moment to interrupt us. I was just on the point of achieving a thorough-going burn at Henry, with his goofy insinuations about the kid. Henry’s glum and steady concentration at his bench kept me just under the blow-off point until it really began to hurt. Not another word passed between us, although I did drive him home as usual. But his words stuck.
“Widget,” I said after dinner, “you’re being very silly about this doll.”
“Hm-m-m?” she said innocently.
“You know what I mean. Mummy says you’ve been talking her ears off about it.”
“I want my doll again, that’s all. Mrs. Wilton told Mummy that whenever she wanted anything from her old man, she just talked and talked about it until he gave it to her to shut her up.”
“Widget! You shouldn’t listen to that kind of thing!”
“Listen? Did you ever hear Mrs. Wilton talk, daddy?”
I laughed in spite of myself. Mrs. Wilton whispered at about a hundred and thirty-five decibels. “Widget, don’t change the subject. If I could get you a doll like that, I would. Don’t you know that?”
“You did, though. I had the doll.”
“Darling, you didn’t have the doll. Truly you didn’t. I would certainly remember about it, but I don’t.”
She opened her mouth to speak, and I braced myself for the blast of denial. I knew the symptoms. But instead her eyes filled with tears, and she ran out of the room to the kitchen, where Carole was doing the dishes.
I sat there feeling frustrated, feeling angry at myself and at the child. I tried to piece together the murmur of voices from the kitchen—the Widget’s high and broken, Carole’s soft and comforting—but I couldn’t. The temptation to march in there and defend myself was powerful, but I knew that Carole was more than competent to handle the situation.
After what seemed like months, Carole appeared at the living-room door. “Stay out there and eat it all up, darling. There’ll be more if you want it,” she called back, her voice infinitely tender. Then she swung on me with sparks flashing out of her eyes.
“Godfrey, how can you be so stupid?” she said scathingly.
“What’s the matter?”
“Oh, you idiot,” she said, sinking tiredly into a chair. “It wasn’t bad enough to have the child in the grip of a dangerous fantasy; you had to make it worse.”
“I don’t see that it’s particularly dangerous, and I don’t see how I made it worse,” I said warmly. “Otherwise you may be right.”
“Don’t be sardonic,” she said. “It doesn’t suit your silly face. Oh darling, can’t you see what’s happened?” She leaned forward and spoke to me gently. “The Widget hasn’t been unhappy about this thing. She’s been bothered, and she’s bothered me, but that’s nothing I can’t take.”
“And what did I do?”
“You presented her with a new aspect to her problem. At first the doll was the important thing, but it wasn’t overly important. But you have loaded her up with an insoluble abstract.”
“What, sweetheart, are you driving at?”
“What, sweetheart,” she mimicked, “do you think the child was crying about just now?”
“Search me. Disappointed about the final realization that her doll was a figment, I suppose.”
“Nothing of the kind. She was crying because she had lost something more important than the doll. You see, beloved, strangely enough she trusts you. She believes you. She believes you now; but then if what you so solemnly told her is the truth, she is wrong about the doll.”
“That was what I was after.”
“But she knows she is right about the doll!”
“The doll idea is nonsense!”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s real enough to her. As far as she is concerned, the doll conception is the evidence of her senses. That’s a tangible thing. The only evidence she has against it is your word. That’s an abstract. She wants to believe it, but to do so she would have to deny a concrete realization. It isn’t in human nature—normal human nature, that is—to choose, through faith, a fact when its alternative is supported by direct evidence.”
“Oh … oh. I begin to see what you mean. So she’s lost—”
“Both. Both her doll and the completeness of her belief in you.”
Her lower lip suddenly seemed a little fuller. “The way Marie and … and—”
I looked at her and thought of cat-footed Wickersham and his amused “Lost something?” and about then was when the thing began to get me mad.
All morning there was a coolness between Henry and me. I kept my nose pointed at my bench, and so did he. His suggestion that my Widget had in some way infected Carole and then Marie still griped me, and obviously his resentment of Marie’s condition was aimed at the Widget through me. It wasn’t cozy.
He broke the ice. At a little after noon he came over and nudged my elbow. “Let’s go eat.”
“I’ve got my lunch here. You know that.”
He hesitated, then went back to his locker. I suddenly felt like a heel. “Wait up, Henry.” We usually ate in the shop, but when we wanted some beer with it, we dropped around to O’Duff’s, around the corner. I shut off my soldering iron and oscilloscope and joined him at the door.
After we were settled in the grill, munching sandwiches, Henry came out with it. “Look,” he said, “I’m willing to drop what I said—if you can suggest an alternative. You ought to be able to. The whole thing’s so crazy anyhow. It might be anything.”
I grinned at him. “Heck, Henry, I know why you picked on that contagion angle. It was the only common denominator. Now, instead of jumping to conclusions, suppose we figure out a solider one.”
“Suits me,” he said, and then, “Godfrey, I hate to stay mad at anyone!”
“I know, I know,” I smiled. “You’re a good apple, Henry, in spite of your looks. Now let’s get to it. When did our women-folks get this affliction, and how? What was it—time of day, environment, or what?”
“Hm-m-m. I dunno. Seems as if they got it outside somewhere. Marie walked into my house with it. I think you said the kid had it when you got home that evening?”
“Yeah, and Carole had been out. Hm-m-m, Widget in the afternoon, Carole in the evening—what about Marie?”
“She was late home that first night, the night she climbed all over me congratulating me for the Humphrey B
ogart act.”
“Where had she been?”
“Uh? I dunno. Shopping or something, I guess.”
“Call her up and ask her.”
“O.K.—wait. No, Godfrey, I don’t want to remind her of it.”
“I see your point. Uh—maybe we don’t have to.” I thought hard. One of the Widget’s odd little mispronunciations was running around in my head. “Giggum pinafore,” I said vaguely.
“What?” snapped Henry, startled.
I grinned. “Hold on—Uh … oh. Got it! I got it, Henry! The cormium hemlet!”
“And I’ve got athlete’s foot. What are you gibbering about?”
I grabbed his arm excitedly and spilled his beer. “Carole took the kid into the beauty shop for a shampoo. The Widget told me herself that she first remembered her talking doll under the cormium hemlet—chromium helmet. She fell fast asleep under the hair drier. And … that’s it, Henry!… That night Carole first acted up, I started to mug around—I said she smelled good. She drew back a little and said, ‘Wave set. Don’t muss me.’ Now, when Marie came in late that night, hallucination and all, could she have just come from—”
“The beauty shop!” said Henry. “Of course!” He pondered, while the beer ran over the table and dripped onto his trousers. Suddenly he leaped to his feet, turning over my beer. “Well, gee! What are we waiting for?”
I dropped a bill on the table, and hurtled after him, collaring him at the door. “Hey, cut it, Jackson,” I puffed. “Wait for all the facts, f’evven’s sakes. Unless I’m mistaken the place in question is the one known as Francy’s—”
“Yeah, on Beverly Street. Let’s go!” He was jittering with anxiety. Only then did I realize the pressures he had built up over this thing. But of course—Marie never did have the tact that Carole had. She must have pounded his ear by the hour. “But Henry—the place is closed. Out of business. Kaput!”
“It is? How do you know?”
“Carole told me last week. It’s handy to both our houses—that’s why Marie and Carole used it. But they didn’t like it. Management changing all the time, and stuff.”
“Godfrey—what are we gonna do?”
I shrugged. “Get back to work, that’s all. Get on the phone there and stay on it until we find out who owns that place, and if we can get in to look it over.”
“But gosh—suppose they’ve shipped all the equipment out?”
“Suppose they haven’t. It only closed a couple of days ago. Anyhow—got any other ideas?”
“Me?” said Henry sadly, and began to slouch back toward the lab.
The Widget met me at the door when I got home that night. She put a finger on her lips and waved me back. I stopped, and she slipped out and closed the door.
“Daddy, we’ve got to do something about Mummy.”
My stomach ran cold. “What’s happened?”
She took one of my hands in both of hers and gave Carole’s smile. “Oh, Daddy, I didn’t mean to frighten you. Nothing’s happened, on’y”—she puckered a little. “She cries alla time—or almost.”
“Yes, monkey, I know. Has she said anything?”
The Widget shook her head solemnly. “She won’t. She sits lookin’ out th’ windy, and when I come near she grabs me and runs tears down my neck.”
“She hasn’t been feeling very well, darling. But she’ll be all right soon.”
“Yeah,” said the Widget. She gave a strange, up-and-sidewise glance that brought back what Carole had said about the child’s loss. “Widget!” I snapped: and then, seeing how startled she was, I went down on one knee and took her shoulders. “Widget—don’t you trust me?”
“Sure, Daddy,” she said soothingly. I once heard a doctor say to a patient, “Sure you’re Alexander the Great,” in just that tone of voice. “So Mummy will be all right soon.”
“That doesn’t make you any happier.”
Her clear gaze was searching. “You said she would be all right,” she said carefully. “You didn’t say you would make her all right.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.” I stood up. “Turn off the heat, Widget, and stick around.”
I found Carole in the kitchen, moving briskly. I could see right away the unusual fact that the chow she was rassling up was of the short-order variety. She probably hadn’t started on it until I wheeled into the drive, which just wasn’t normal.
She smiled at me with the front of her face and missed my hat when I tossed it.
“ ’Smatter, cookie?”
“Nothing,” she said, and put her arms around me and began to cry.
I put my face in her bright hair. “That I can’t take,” I said softly. “What is it, darling? Still the thing that’s gone?”
She nodded, her face pressed deep into my shoulder. It was some time before she could speak, and then she said, “It gets worse and worse, Godfrey.”
“Just exactly what has changed, Carole?”
She shook her head in a tortured way, her eyes squinched shut, and twisted away from me. She stood with her back to me and her fists on her cheeks, and said, “Everything has changed, Godfrey. You, and I, and the Widget, and the house, and the way people talk. Once it was all perfect, lovely and perfect, and now it isn’t. I don’t know how, but it isn’t. And I want it back the way it was!” The last words were a wail, the broken voice of a youngster who has lost his jackknife and was convinced until then that he was too old to cry.
“Come out here,” I said gently, leading her into the living room. We sat on the couch together and I put my arms around her. “Darling, listen. I think Henry and I are on the track of this thing. No … no; don’t. Pay attention.” I told her all about how Henry and I seemed to have the thing pinned down to the beauty shop. “So this afternoon we got on the phone to find out who owned the place. We called general agents and the Chamber of Commerce and three guys named Smith. All blanks. We may or may not have a lead; to wit, four phone numbers that did not answer and one that was busy. Point is, we think that this goofy business isn’t as mysterious as it pretends to be, and we think we can crack it.”
She looked at me with all the world in her eyes, and poked my nose gently with her forefinger. “You’re so sweet, Godfrey. You’re so darned sweet,” she said, and without the slightest change from the shape of her smile, she was crying again. “Whatever you do, you can’t bring back the lost thing—mine, and the Widget’s doll with the g-giggum pinafore, and Marie’s Henry-the-Hero. They’re gone.”
“You’ll forget that.”
She shook her head. “The farther away, the more it’s lost. It’s like that; don’t you see?”
I leaned back a bit from her and looked at her. Her cheeks were a little hollow. I had only known her to be sick once in all these years, and her cheeks got like that then. I tried to look ahead, to see what would happen; and the way she had changed in these few days was frightening; so what would happen to her if this went on?
Almost roughly I put her by and got up. “I can’t take any more of this,” I said. “I can’t.” I went to the telephone and dialed.
“Henry?”
“Is Henry there?” came Marie’s voice tautly.
“Oh … hello, sis. No, he isn’t.”
“Godfrey, where’s he gone?”
“Dunno. What’s up?”
“Godfrey,” she said, not answering. “Did he really hit Wickersham?”
Cautiously, I said, “If you say so.”
“I don’t know what to do,” she said desolately. “I saw him do it. But I can’t understand why he is still working for Wickersham. I can’t understand why Wickersham would have him, or how he can work for the man after what happened.”
“Now look. You haven’t been trying to get him to quit?”
“Well, I—”
I saw Henry’s domestic economy going down in swift spirals. “Hands off, kiddo. I’m telling you, sit tight, and don’t push that kid around. Hear? He’s got enough on his mind as it is.” It was the old big-brother rough-stuff
. I knew she needed it and I knew Henry couldn’t do it.
“But where is he?” She sounded petulant but quelled.
“Probably on his way over here,” I said on a wild guess. “I’ll look out for him, don’t worry; and I’ll keep you informed. You curl up and unlax.”
“All right, Godfrey. Thanks, honey.”
Carole looked at me quizzically. “I’m hungry,” I said. She gave me a wan smile, and a mockery of the mock salaam she used to tease me with. “Yes, master,” she said and went out into the kitchen.
I was suddenly conscious of the Widget’s level gaze. She stood by the hall door with her hands behind her, teetering a bit on her toes the way I used to before I realized she had picked it up.
“Are you just mad,” she inquired, “or are you going to do something?”
“Is there always a difference?” I asked icily.
She annoyed me by hesitating. “Mostly—not,” she said reflectively. Suddenly she was tiny and soft and helpless. “Daddy, you got to fix this!”
“Don’t worry, bratlet. Mummy’ll be happy again. Just you see.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Mummy’ll be happy again.” She looked extremely wistful as she spoke, and I suddenly got what she was driving at. “Aha! What, young lady, do you expect to get out of this?”
“Me?”
I laughed and held out my arms, and she ran into them. “Sweetheart, I will make you a promise about that doll. I won’t get it for you unless I can get it for keeps. Understand? There’ll be no more of this having-not-having, any more, ever.”
And for once in her life, she kissed me instead of saying anything.
We sat down to a snack of toasted cheese and cocoa just as a violent knocking sound preceded Henry into the room.
“I—” he began between breaths.
Carole said clearly, “Beat it, Widget, darling. Take your plate; I’ll take your cup. We’ll fix you a party in your room.”
Henry sent her a grateful look as she and the child left the room, and then burst out, “Godfrey, it’s worse—much worse. Another single day of this and Marie and I won’t have anything left. Godfrey, she won’t leave it alone. She doesn’t think about anything else but that crazy Wickersham deal. I’ve got to bust this thing open—or I’ll bust.”
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