“Oh, I couldn’t!” Tears welled in Katherine’s eyes, but the doctor raised his hand.
“She’d receive decent care. Do you understand that her illness is only the result of an accident? You’re young; there is no reason why you can’t have healthy, normal children after this. When you do, you’ll find yourself increasingly hard-pressed to give this abnormal child the attention she’ll require every day of her life. You owe it to the child, to your prospective children—and, I need hardly say, your husband—to put this unfortunate occurrence behind you.”
Katherine wept and refused. The doctor wanted to speak to Bert, too, but he never put in an appearance. He was nowhere in sight when Katherine carried Bette Jean out to the truck. They waited another half-hour before he came up the street, unsteady, and climbed into the cab. He’d had a drink or two. It was a long ride back, in the dark.
When they understood the diagnosis, Bert and his parents argued at once that the only sensible thing to do would be to follow the doctor’s advice and place Bette Jean in an institution. Katherine screamed her refusal, wrote a tearful letter to Mother. Mother received the news with her customary stoicism and responded by inviting Katherine to bring Bette Jean to New York for Christmas, thoughtfully sending money for the train fare.
It was almost Heaven. No boarding houses anymore: a fashionable apartment nowadays, because Anne’s name was in lights on Broadway, and there was talk about Hollywood. And, oh, the Metropolitan Museum! The bookstores! The music! The shows! Katherine took Bette Jean to Central Park to watch the ice skaters, and Bette Jean stared and stared from her arms in wonder, never cried at all.
But there were telephone calls, there were letters and visits from all her aunts and uncles, who’d loaned Mother money over the lean years, who’d shaken their heads over The Divorce. Every one of them told her to put Bette Jean in an institution, for the sake of her marriage if nothing else. After the latest such call she put down the phone and wandered disconsolately out to the sitting room, where Anne had Bette Jean on her lap at the big Steinway piano and was pretending to play a duet with her. Bette Jean was whooping in delight. Mother looked up from her book, peering at her over her glasses.
“And what did your Uncle James have to say?”
“Just—more of the same.” Katherine glared at Mother. She wanted to seize Mother by the shoulders and scream at her, but what could she say?
If you hadn’t gotten The Divorce, I’d never have been in such a hurry to get married to the first handsome boy I met. You never once explained it to us. You never once apologized. Not you. Why should you apologize, when you were entirely the offended party?
Oh, when will I ever escape from
your
life?
Instead, Katherine sank down by Mother’s chair. She drooped forward and leaned her head on Mother’s arm, wanting to cry.
“They want me to put her away and let strangers care for her,” she said. “They say it’ll be more convenient. They say I’ll forget about her when I have another baby.”
Mother stared straight forward.
“Don’t do it, child,” she said at last. “The human heart doesn’t work that way.”
Katherine raised her head, thinking:
What would you know about human hearts?
“You’d regret it the rest of your life,” Mother said. “Believe me, daughter. Our emotions don’t answer to reason.”
Bette Jean caught a cold on the train going back; she was feverish and wailing when Bert picked them up at the train station. Katherine sat with her in the rocking chair beside the kerosene heater, rubbed her tiny chest with Vicks VapoRub, desperately fought off pneumonia. She slept sitting up with the child’s head cradled on her shoulder. Bert bought a steam vaporizer and set it up beside them, with the pan of water and eucalyptus oil simmering over its little flame. It was a week before she felt safe leaving Bette Jean long enough to attend to any chores.
Scattering feed for the chickens, she looked across at the pen where she’d kept the black one and saw that it was empty. When she questioned Bert he looked away, and said at last:
“Ma had me kill it. It couldn’t hardly walk, Katherine, you know that.”
She wouldn’t let him see her cry. She went into the house. Bette Jean was awake, and her eyes tracked to follow Katherine as she came close and sat down on the edge of the bed.
Ma-ma.
Katherine was so shocked she just sat staring. After a moment the voice came again, odd and artificial-sounding as a doll’s but with a note of pleading. Bette Jean’s mouth was slack, did not move, but her eyes were intent.
Mama.
Trembling, Katherine reached out and took Bette Jean’s hand. Her little fingers, long and white, were ice cold. Katherine raised them to her lips and kissed them.
It was so strange she wouldn’t think about it, but it kept happening; little silent greetings, complaints, questions, observations. Nobody else heard them.
It’s the stress,
Katherine told herself.
It’s being shut up here with the Lovelands. I’m going mad like Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey.
She found herself wandering in the direction of Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey’s residence one morning, hoping for comfort, hoping the visit would reassure her of her own normalcy. She carried Bette Jean with her; she never left her alone with Mrs. Loveland anymore.
The music this time was Rimsky-Korsakov’s
Scheherazade
, rolling out like clouds of attar of roses or patchouli, wildly out of place in this country of red clay roads and split rail fences. As Katherine came up on the front porch, the music stopped and she heard Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey shriek: “Mustardseed!
Hide!
”
“It’s only me, ma’am. Katherine Loveland,” she said cautiously, raising her voice. A moment later and Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey opened the door. She looked paler, thinner, crazier.
“Why, Mrs. Loveland, how delightful to see you! All is well, Mustardseed. Do come in! And who is this charming young lady?”
“This is my daughter, Bette Jean.” Katherine stepped inside. There was no sign of the older children; the new baby in the apple box might have been Mustardseed, except for the fact that Katherine could see a wraithlike toddler crouching behind the Victrola.
“Oh, what exquisite eyes she has!” said Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey, holding out her arms. Reluctantly, Katherine let her hold Bette Jean, who went to her without complaint. Katherine swallowed hard.
“She’s…”
“Unique, yes, I can see that,” said Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey, smiling at Bette Jean. Bette Jean stared at her and then smiled back.
“It’s all right,” said Katherine, waving at the child behind the Victrola. “Are the others out playing?”
Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey’s face twisted for a moment. “Why, no,” she said. “They are, in fact, attending a special school now. For remarkable children. The county is providing their scholarships. I do feel the void, of course, but… I haven’t introduced my youngest! Little Ariel. He was an unexpected blessing. Yet they are all blessings, are they not?”
“Of course,” Katherine murmured.
“What glorious hair, as well,” remarked Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey, stroking Bette Jean’s curls. “Mustardseed’s might as well be dandelion down, mightn’t it, Mustardseed? Do come out and be sociable, now; we are amongst friends.”
Mustardseed stood up and trotted over. He leaned on Katherine’s knee, startling her, but she patted his head. He looked up at her out of pale eyes sharply focused.
“Has she tried to speak yet?” said Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey.
“Only to me,” said Katherine. “I mean… I understand her… she sort of…”
“Oh, I comprehend,” said Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey. “What a rare gift!
Communication de pensées
, they call it, you know. Thought transference. The mind, unfettered by the demands of the body, refines and expands itself beyond the abilities of the common mortal intellect. As they say the blind develop extraordinary musical gifts. Nature compensates, you see.”
“I’ve heard that said,” said Katherine. Her own mind shoved the idea away reflexively—clairvoyance, for heaven’s sake!—and then, with hesitance, considered again. What if there
were
some truth to it? Why should it be sane and rational to believe in angels in Heaven, and not in something like this?
“Indeed. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ ” said Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey. “Angels and ministers of grace do defend us, or so I truly believe.” She leaned forward and patted Katherine’s hand. “It keeps one from despair.”
She got a book on clairvoyance out of the library, on one of their trips into town, but it had been written by a fairground charlatan. Its claims were ridiculous. Still, Sigmund Freud seemed to have believed that something like mind-reading had existed, or so the charlatan stated. Katherine tried to research the matter further, but the little town library had no books by Freud at all.
“Looks like it’ll be another hard winter,” said Bert, at the breakfast table. He watched Katherine spooning grits into Bette Jean’s mouth. She had outgrown the high chair, and Katherine had converted one of the kitchen chairs with cushions and clothesline.
“Better hope that baby doesn’t get another cold,” said Mrs. Loveland, setting a plate of ham on the table. “You’ll be up all night wiping snot out of her nose. And if you don’t keep her setting up, it’ll turn into double pneumonia.”
“She’s much stronger,” said Katherine. Mrs. Loveland grunted, shaking her head.
“Some night, she’s just going to stop breathing,” she said.
Mama, careful. Careful.
A long letter from Mother: Anne had been offered a contract at RKO studios in Hollywood. Mother had quit teaching and was going out on the train to look for an apartment for them. It promised, she said, to be quite an adventure for a lady her age.
Katherine sat reading the letter over, uncertain how she ought to feel. She had a momentary vision of red taillights winking, receding, leaving her in darkness.
Mama.
Bette Jean was staring at her, and one little white hand beat against the blanket with a motion like a leaf fluttering.
Mama!
Katherine went into one of her trunks for writing paper and a pen. She began to write, hesitantly at first and then swiftly, with decision.
Mother sent the money. Katherine made it easy on Bert; it was only for the child’s health, after all. She needed a warmer climate. They both knew it would end in a divorce, but the word had lost its power over Katherine. Bert was so relieved he became kind, attentive, made the last days almost nice.
The journey was interminable on the train, but her heart was singing the whole way. Bette Jean sat propped beside her, in her best dress. With her tiny feet stuck out before her in their patent leather shoes, she looked more like a doll than ever. She whooped and moaned in excitement, staring at everything, fascinated; and the silent voice kept up its running commentary too.
Mama, nice! Mama happy now?
They came into California and Katherine felt as though she’d escaped into her books at last, because it all looked like a Maxfield Parrish illustration: the smooth golden hills crowned with stately oak trees, the glimpses of Spanish-style houses with their red tiled roofs and white walls, the green acres of orange trees in blossom. The fragrance came through the windows of the train for miles.
“We’re going to Hollywood, Bette Jean!” Katherine told her. “We’ll see all the movie stars. We’ll be together, and we’ll never be cold anymore, and this is such a beautiful place, don’t you think? Are we about to have adventures?”
There was a wordless sense of affirmation. Bette Jean’s little face was slack, her limbs useless; but her thoughtful soul looked out and wondered. What was so strange in the idea that she might have found some way to communicate? In a world so full of heartbreak and disappointments, why not indulge in a little irrational hope?
As they neared the station, the porter came to see if she’d need any help getting Bette Jean down to the platform.
“Well, hello, Miss Big Eyes!” he said, bending to look into Bette Jean’s face. “My goodness, that baby’s got pretty eyes.”
“Thank you,” said Katherine, smiling.
“My sister’s boy was born like her,” he said, standing straight and pulling down Katherine’s suitcase.
Katherine started to say,
Oh, I’m so sorry.
She paused and said: “They’re a blessing from God, aren’t they?”
“Yes, ma’am, they surely are,” the porter replied. “And I surely believe they’re sent down here to Earth for a good reason.”
Katherine stepped down from the train, with her daughter and her suitcase. She had come to the land where miracles happened to ordinary people. She lifted Bette Jean to her shoulder and walked away down the platform, into the sunlight.
“Push that lighter over here, will you, Dick?” said Madame Rigby, out of the corner of her mouth.
“Right away, ma’am,” said her assistant, hopping up from his workbench. Four paces from Madame Rigby’s chair stood a squat column on casters, the top of which was surmounted by the little tin figure of a grinning devil, standing amid a heap of painted coals. “May I wind him for you?”
“Sure,” said Madame Rigby, not looking up from her task.
Dick pushed the column within her easy reach and, fitting a crank into its socket just under the devil’s left hoof, wound it three or four times. The devil shivered briskly, as though waking; then, tilting its head and winking once, it thrust its pitchfork out. There was an audible
click
and a tiny jet of flame danced on the centermost tine of the fork.
Dick, who had not worked for Madame Rigby very long, applauded in delight. Madame Rigby scarcely noticed; she merely leaned over until the tip of her cigarette touched the flame. Two or three puffs obscured her in smoke; when it cleared, Dick saw that she was once again preoccupied with the work before her.