Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09 (2 page)

 
          
Leiber
looked around the room. “I didn’t hear—”

 
          
She
stared at the library door. “In there,” she said, slowly.
Leiber
crossed the room, opened the door and switched the library lights on and off.
“Not a thing.” He came back to her. “You’re worn out.
To bed
with you—right now.”

 
          
Turning
out the lights together, they walked slowly up the soundless hall stairs, not
speaking. At the top she apologized.
“My wild talk, darling.
Forgive me. I’m exhausted.”

 
          
He
understood, and said so.

 
          
She
paused, undecided, by the nursery door. Then she fingered the brass knob
sharply, walked in. He watched her approach the crib much too carefully, look
down, and stiffen as if she’d been struck in the face. “David!”

 
          
Leiber
stepped forward, reached the crib.

 
          
The
baby’s face was bright red and very moist; his small pink mouth opened and
shut, opened and shut; his eyes were a fiery blue. His hands leapt about on the
air.

 
          
“Oh,”
said Dave, “he’s just been crying.”

 
          
“Has
he?” Alice
Leiber
seized the crib-railing to balance
herself. “I didn’t hear him.”

 
          
“The
door was closed.”

 
          
“Is
that why he breathes so hard, why his face is red?”

 
          
“Sure.
Poor little guy.
Crying all alone in the dark.
He can
sleep in our room tonight, just in case he cries.”

 
          
“You’ll
spoil him,” his wife said.

 
          
Leiber
felt her eyes follow as he rolled the crib into
their bedroom. He undressed silently, sat on the edge of the bed. Suddenly he
lifted his head, swore under his breath,
snapped
his
fingers. “Damn it!
Forgot to tell you.
I must fly to
Chicago
Friday.”

 
          
“Oh, David.”
Her voice was lost in the room.

 
          
“I’ve
put this trip off for two months, and now it’s so critical I just
have
to go.”

 
          
“I’m
afraid to be alone.”

 
          
“We’ll
have the new cook by Friday. She’ll be here all the time. I’ll only be gone a
few days.”

 
          
“I’m
afraid. I don’t know of what. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I guess
I’m crazy.”

 
          
He
was in bed now. She darkened the room; he heard her walk around the bed, throw
back the cover, slide in. He smelled the warm woman-smell of her next to him.
He said, “If you want me to wait a few days, perhaps I could—”

 
          
“No,”
she said, unconvinced. “You go. I know it’s important. It’s just that I keep
thinking about what I told you.
Laws and love and protection.
Love protects you from me. But, the baby—” She took a breath. “What protects
you from him, David?”

 
          
Before
he could answer, before he could tell her how silly it was, speaking of
infants, she switched on the bed light, abruptly.

 
          
“Look,”
she said, pointing.

 
          
The
baby lay wide-awake in its crib, staring straight at him, with deep, sharp blue
eyes.

 
          
The
lights went out again. She trembled against him.

 
          
“It’s
not nice being afraid of the thing you birthed.” Her whisper lowered, became
harsh, fierce, swift. “He tried to kill me! He lies there, listens to us
talking, waiting for you to go away so he can try to kill me again! I swear
it!” Sobs broke from her.

 
          
“Please,”
he kept saying, soothing her. “Stop it, stop it. Please.”

 
          
She
cried in the dark for a long time. Very late she relaxed,
shakingly
,
against him. Her breathing
came
soft, warm, regular,
her body twitched its worn reflexes and she slept.

 
          
He
drowsed.

 
          
And
just before his eyes lidded wearily down, sinking him into deeper and yet
deeper tides, he heard a strange little sound of awareness and
awakeness
in the room.

 
          
The sound of small, moist, pinkly elastic lips.

 
          
The baby.

 
          
And
then—sleep.

 
          
In
the morning, the sun blazed.
Alice
smiled.

 
          
David
Leiber
dangled his watch over the crib.
“See, baby?
Something bright.
Something pretty.
Sure. Sure.
Something
bright.
Something pretty.”

 
          
Alice
smiled. She told him to go ahead, fly to
Chicago
, she’d be very brave, no need to worry.
She’d take care of baby. Oh, yes, she’d take care of him, all right.

 
          
The
airplane went east. There was a lot of sky, a lot of sun and clouds and
Chicago
running over the horizon. Dave was dropped
into the rush of ordering, planning, banqueting, telephoning, arguing in
conference. But he wrote letters each day and sent telegrams to Alice and the
baby.

 
          
On
the evening of his sixth day away from home he received the long-distance phone
call.
Los
Angeles
.

 
          
“
Alice
?”

 
          
“No,
Dave. This is Jeffers speaking.”

 
          
“Doctor!”

 
          
“Hold
onto yourself, son.
Alice
is sick. You’d better get the next plane home. It’s pneumonia. I’ll do
everything I can, boy. If only it wasn’t so soon after the baby. She needs
strength.”

 
          
Leiber
dropped the phone into its cradle. He got up, with
no feet under him, and no hands and no body. The hotel room blurred and fell
apart.

 
          
“
Alice
,” he said, blindly, starting for the door.

 
          
The
propellers spun about, whirled, fluttered, stopped; time and space were put
behind. Under his hand, David felt the doorknob turn; under his feet the floor
assumed reality, around him flowed the walls of a bedroom, and in the
late-afternoon sunlight Dr. Jeffers stood, turning from a window, as
Alice
lay
waiting in her
bed, something carved from a fall of winter snow. Then Dr. Jeffers was talking,
talking continuously, gently, the sound rising and falling through the
lamp-light, a soft flutter, a white murmur of voice.

 
          
“Your
wife’s too good a mother, Dave. She worried more about the baby than
herself. . . . “

 
          
Somewhere
in the paleness of
Alice
’s face, there was a sudden constriction which smoothed itself out before
it was realized. Then, slowly, half-smiling, she began to talk and she talked
as a mother should about this, that and the other thing, the telling detail,
the minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour report of a mother concerned with a
dollhouse world and the miniature life of that world. But she could not stop;
the spring was wound tight, and her voice rushed on to anger, fear and the
faintest touch of revulsion, which did not change Dr. Jeffers’ expression, but
caused Dave’s heart to match the rhythm of this talk that quickened and could
not stop:

 
          
“The
baby wouldn’t sleep. I thought he was sick. He just lay, staring, in his crib,
and late at night he’d cry. So loud, he’d cry, and he’d cry all night and all
night. I couldn’t quiet him, and I couldn’t rest.”

 
          
Dr.
Jeffers’ head nodded slowly, slowly. “Tired
herself
right into pneumonia. But she’s full of sulfa now and on the safe side of the
whole damn thing.”

 
          
David
felt ill.
“The baby, what about the baby?”

 
          
“Fit
as a fiddle; cock of the walk!”

 
          
“Thanks,
Doctor.”

 
          
The
doctor walked off away and down the stairs, opened the front door faintly, and
was gone.

 
          
“David!”

 
          
He
turned to her frightened whisper.

 
          
“It
was the baby again.” She clutched his hand. “I try to lie to myself and say
that I’m a fool, but the baby knew I was weak from the hospital, so he cried
all night every night, and when he wasn’t crying he’d be much too quiet. I knew
if I switched on the light he’d be there, staring up at me. “

 
          
David
felt his body close in on itself like a fist. He remembered seeing the baby,
feeling the baby, awake in the dark, awake very late at night when babies
should be asleep. Awake and lying there, silent as thought, not crying, but
watching from its crib. He thrust the thought aside. It was insane.

 
          
Alice
went on. “I was going to kill the baby.
Yes, I was. When you’d been gone only a day on your trip I went to his room and
put my hands about his neck; and I stood there, for a long time, thinking,
afraid. Then I put the covers up over his face and turned him over on his face
and pressed him down and left him that way and ran out of the room.”

 
          
He
tried to stop her.

 
          
“No,
let me finish,” she said, hoarsely, looking at the wall. “When I left his room
I thought,
It’s
simple. Babies smother every day. No
one’ll
ever know. But when I came back to see him dead,
David, he was alive! Yes, alive, turned over on his back, alive and smiling and
breathing. And I couldn’t touch him again after that. I left him there and I
didn’t come back, not to feed him or look at him or do anything. Perhaps the
cook tended to him. I don’t know. All I know is that his crying kept me awake,
and I thought all through the night, and walked around the rooms and now I’m
sick.” She was almost finished now. “The baby lies there and thinks of ways to
kill me.
Simple ways.
Because he knows I know so much
about him. I have no love for him; there is no protection between us; there
never will be.”

 
          
She
was through. She collapsed inward on herself and finally slept. David
Leiber
stood for a long time over her, not able to move.
His blood was frozen in his body, not a cell stirred anywhere, anywhere at all.

 
          
The
next morning there was only one thing to do. He did it. He walked into Dr.
Jeffers’ office and told him the whole thing, and listened to Jeffers’ tolerant
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