… the erlking …

O,” ANDY HAD SAID FIRMLY—she could still see him idly stretched out on the porch of the Glaenzer boathouse where they had docked for the weekend, though Belle had still not forgiven them completely for running away without her authority—“we both had too unpleasant childhoods ourselves to want any kids. Not till we can give them more than we ever got. There was I, for instance, batted from Aunt Bertha to Mother to Dad to Uncle Tom—all detesting each other and taking it out on me in obscure ways. Then at school with the headmaster having written a history not as well-received as my father’s, so again I was the goat—Oh no, Effie, we don’t give the world any whipping boy. Even if we had some sort of security to offer him—”

“Can’t you just see those little embryos shopping around for security?” gloomily asked Effie. She had been hurt by his attitude as if her baby were already born and heard his father’s insults. She didn’t want to discuss it again, but brooded, and was surprised to remember her savage bitterness later when he played on the beach with two little towheads so gaily that their pretty mother said sympathetically, “What a pity Mr. Callingham has no little ones of his own!”

She remembered her desperate fear after he left her that he would in no time at all be the proud, even fatuous father of Marian’s child, for if Marian wanted it she would get it willy-nilly, and then everyone would say, “Only natural and rather splendid for a man to leave a woman who won’t give him a child for one who will.” … Trying vainly now to find the clear path she should have taken then as if finding it now would make her any happier, she thought, Yes, that was the answer, I should have had a child no matter what he said. If she had been less in love with him, less generous, and more concerned in clinching her own future happiness than his, she would have gone against his expressed wishes calmly and deliberately. Other women did, God knows, and were richly rewarded for selfishness. Wayward males, declaring violently against paternity, were forever being touched and flattered by some girl’s really not so romantic determination to express her own ego at any cost, they were flattered into permanent loyalty, finding a strange source of pride in the lady’s willfulness, as if this proved that their own charm was stronger than they realized if it impelled this urge in the woman. Their male independence once boldly expressed they were secretly well-pleased to be led back into the conventional haven.

For a long time after Andy had gone Effie thought, Thank God, it is only I who must bear this loneliness, there’s no one I need comfort when I have no comfort to give. But now she felt differently. She should have had the child. She would have had something, someone, her life would have been more complete, no one else could have claimed this trophy of love, either, it would have been hers, blind or crippled or lame, it would have been her very own as Mrs. Hickey’s little Tom was Mrs. Hickey’s own, someone to cherish while Hickey was in the hospital with his mustard gas lungs, someone, yes, little Tom, even with blue-veined hands, halting speech, lost blank eyes, braced hips, and shriveled legs, even so he was Mrs. Hickey’s own.

“I had it when I was fourteen,” Dennis said one day, watching Tom from Effie’s window. “I dragged my leg for a long time, but it’s not so noticeable now except when I dance. I always do a rhumba or some sort of stylish dip no matter what the music calls for. Maybe Tom’ll get over it.”

Tom was Mrs. Hickey’s, hers and no one else’s. White, thin-lipped, defiant little Mrs. Hickey waited for him outside the public school, stood outside beside the Special Bus when the first dismissal bell sounded, and a sudden high shrill shriek, many children’s voices blended into one cry of freedom, sounded louder and louder till the big doors burst open with it and all the little broken children stumbled out, on crutches, in braces, limping, fumbling, stuttering, the little Specials, their leaping cry at liberty as loud as the Regulars to be released ten minutes later. Mrs. Hickey, standing to one side of the gate so as not to embarrass Tom by betraying his need of her support, could single him out at once, swinging books along by a strap, twisted leg in silver brace dragging; she could see a bigger boy push him back and knock his head, laughing, against the wall, and she had to keep herself from rushing to his defense, she could see his lost blank smile, bewildered, uncomprehending, but she must not interfere, this was boy’s play, make a man of him, though so far as that went, he would never hit back, never, he was too gentle, and he only looked dazed at taunts. Not normal, the teacher had firmly told her, sub, she added briskly, and for the mother, facing clear-eyed skeptical educator, there was no use telling about the poem he wrote, a drawing he made, the toy airplane he built with his own weak little hands, but some of these days the teachers would be sorry, someday they would see how wrong they were.

“Let’s go home now,” said Mrs. Hickey as she always did, and took his hand. He blew along beside her skirts, frail, spindly leg dragging; passers-by looked curiously at his blank little face, they turned eagerly to watch him drag the distorted foot. His mother stared somberly ahead, oh, someday he would be a great poet, a great composer, an engineer, a president, look at Roosevelt, he would confound all the starers, the teachers, the cruel other children, he would astound them all, but for the present there is no kindness or understanding in all the world for a mother to beg or buy for those moments she cannot utterly surround him with her love, and hurrying along the street, half-carrying him, her fierce lonely love for the sad child flowed out of her and all around him and made her strong, Olympian, heroic, made the erlking himself, riding ever so close behind them, fade away into a dream, a legend only.

And Effie, at her window with the new curtains blowing, watched them unfastening the basement gate and she wished that Tom was hers, broken little boy that no one else would want or could take, something from Andy for her alone. She caught Mrs. Hickey’s quick proud smile as he locked the gate behind him without falling, and she envied Mrs. Hickey, envied her for a woman who had someone, something that no one else would ever claim.