50

On October 28, at 8:50 A.M., the senior nanny, Nanny Willmott, asked to see Mrs. Barton. Mary Barton, in bed, was studying the new fashions in W, trying to resolve the political risk of whether or not it would generate more power if she switched dressmakers, weighing what the consequences could be if she put one foot wrong in the delicate but necessary shift of her weight as she climbed higher toward the top of the tree.

“Good morning, ma’am,” Nanny Willmott said, curtseying as required, pronouncing “ma’am’ as “mom.”

Mary Barton put the paper aside. “Good morning, Nanny Willmott,” she said. “How are my boys this morning?”

“That’s just it, ma’am. In the past week or so, Baby Conrad has been either mewling too much of his time or sleepy when he shouldn’t be.”

“You mean as compared to Angier?”

“Angier is just right, ma’am, as Baby Conrad always used to be.”

“Is it something we should worry about?”

“Not by itself, ma’am. But when I change his diaper, it seems to be that there is something wrong with Baby Conrad’s right leg. And although Baby Angier has been pulling himself up in his crib and in his playpen to stand on his two chubby little legs, Baby Conrad cannot stand, ma’am. We’ve stood him up with his little hands on the railing, but he falls right down upon the mattress.”

Mary Barton threw off the covers and got out of bed. “We’ve got to call the doctor.”

“I think perhaps a specialist, ma’am. A neurologist.”

“Get him ready. I’ll be in with you as soon as I am dressed.” Mary Barton picked up the phone and called her husband.

“Charley, the baby—Rado—Nanny Willmott says something is wrong with his right leg.”

“Well, Jehoshaphat, Mary, call the doctor.”

“Not just the doctor, Charley. You’ve got to get the best neurologist in the country over here. Nanny Willmott is very worried.”

“I’ll call you back.”

Barker’s Hill Enterprises controlled a company that operated 391 hospitals across the country. Charles Barton got its board chairman off the golf course in Palm Springs by grace of an electronic beeper.

“Yes, Mr. Barton?” the chairman said, out of breath.

“Mr. Farb, you can do me a great service. My infant son needs a neurological examination, and I want the best. I want you to get on the phone and in conference with your best people, call me back within ten minutes to tell me the name of the best child neurologist in New York and to say that he is—as you talk—on his way to my house in New York. We’re in the book.”

“A house call, Mr. Barton?”

“The baby cannot be moved. Call me.”

Charley called Mae back. “He’ll be there in about a half an hour. I don’t know his name but he’ll tell you.”

“He makes house calls?”

“This one does,” Charley said grimly.

“Are you coming over?”

“I can get there in about forty minutes. Now, please—take it easy—we’re on top of everything.”

Dr. Norman Lesion, who carried an alphabet of degrees and medical honors and who understood tax shelters better than the secretary of the treasury, also could analyze the panic and dismay in Farb’s voice from faroff California, and he reasoned instinctively that any medical condition that could shake up a man like Farb this much had to be worth a silo full of money. He sat for a moment in his Mercedes with the MD plates, parked in the No Parking zone in front of the Barton house and calculated to within thirteen dollars and some change what his eventual fee would be. He got out of the car, climbed the broad steps and rang the Barton doorbell at Sixty-fourth Street twenty-three minutes after he had taken the call from Farb. He was led to the nursery, where Mary Barton and the two nannies awaited him. Mary Barton explained the problem. Angier Macy Barton was standing in his playpen, jolly-jaunty, grinning and drooling. Conrad Price Barton lay on his back in the same playpen, listless.

“We’ll have him up on the changing table, please,” the doctor said. Nanny Willmott made the transfer deftly. She disrobed the baby. Dr. Lesion began his examination, which took him eleven minutes. When it was over, he said he’d like to talk to Mary Barton. She took him into an upstairs sitting room.

“Has the baby had an accident in the past two months or so, Mrs. Barton?”

“No. I don’t know. I mean, I can’t—not that I know of, doctor.”

“Your baby nurses are reliable women?”

“Unquestionably.”

“It seems quite certain the baby must have had an accident of some kind.”

Mary Barton thought of her cousin, Rocco, and of his hamhanded wife. She thought of Rocco’s short, simian arms and his clumsy hands like bear paws, covered with hair. She saw Rocco, again, as he shot Al Melvini.

“What is it, doctor?” she said, wanting to die.

“A child’s brain is especially vulnerable during the first few months of life,” Lesion said, slowly and carefully. “If an injury occurs at that time, it can result in a dysfunction that mainly affects the motor performance.”

“But—”

“It is possible—I cannot say until we run our tests—that your baby is suffering from a form of spastic cerebral palsy”—Mary Barton drew in her breath so sharply as to straighten herself in the chair; she caught her lower lip between her perfect white teeth—“which is characterized by hemiparesis, partial paralysis of the leg on one side. In addition to the weakness, the baby’s right leg is thinner and smaller than normal.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Motor function can be improved, however, and the success rate is high if the treatment begins early.”

“You can make him normal again?”

“It is too soon to say that, Mrs. Barton. Right now, I’d like to have him admitted so that we may possibly forestall epileptic seizures.”

“Epileptic seizures?” She wasn’t able to follow this man. “Isn’t there any way that surgery—”

“It’s just too soon to think about surgery, Mrs. Barton. What we must do now is to watch the baby carefully so that we may be sure that there will be no fixed joint and limb deformities—or even a more severe functional disability.”

Charley came into the room. Mary Barton introduced the doctor. “It’s terrible, Charley,” she said. “Terrible.”

Charley sat down and stared at Dr. Lesion.

“Somewhere, somehow, there was an accident,” the doctor said. “The baby fell, or was dropped, or was struck sharply near the left frontal lobe of his head. There may be clotting. Depending on when the accident happened the infant may be suffering from either acute, subacute, or chronic subdural hematoma.” He sighed, wishing he did not have to look at them.

Mary Barton decided she would stay at the hospital in the room with her son. At nine-fifty that night, she and Charles Barton sat in a waiting room that was down the hall from the suite where Baby Conrad had been billeted. They were alone in the room, under harsh fluorescent light, facing each other in chairs, their knees touching.

“Nothing has turned out the way I thought it would,” Mae-rose said.

He reached out and took her hand. “What the hell, Mae—what does?”

“I don’t mean just the baby—no one can know what is going to happen to children. I mean everything. We’re here and everyone else is gone. My grandfather, my father, your father, Aunt Amalia. They were there, but now they aren’t there anymore.”

“Well, we’re here. And we know mostly what we’ve got to do.”

“It just should have been different. What the hell. Good night, Charley.”