Mermaids on the Golf Course Read Online Free Page B

Roland and Jane had had their blood cultures photographed for chromosome count. Usually the woman was “the carrier,” but Jane was not deficient of one chromosome, and neither was he. By no means had she a chromosome missing, which might have meant that one of the forty-five she did have carried the “D/G translocation chromosome” which resulted in a mongoloid offspring in one in three cases. So if he and Jane did have another child, they would be back to the one-in-seven-hundred odds again.
    It had more than once crossed Roland’s mind to put Bertie down, as they said of dogs and cats who were hopelessly ill. Of course he’d never uttered this to Jane or to anyone, and now it was too late. He might have asked the doctor, just after Bertie’s birth, with Jane’s consent, of course. But now as Jane frequently reminded Roland, Bertie was a human being. Was he? Bertie’s I.Q. was probably 50, Roland knew. That was the mongoloid average, though Bertie’s I.Q. had never been tested.
    “Rollie!” Smiling, Jane lay on her back now, propped on her elbows. “You do look exhausted, dear! How about a hot chocolate? Or coffee if you’ve really got to stay up?—Chocolate’s better for you.”
    Roland mumbled something. He did have to work another hour at least, as there were two more returns to wind up after Schultz’s. Roland stared at his son’s—yes, his son’s— toad-like body, on its back now: stubby legs, short arms with square and clumsy hands at their ends, hands that could do nothing, with thumbs like nubbins, mistakes, capable of holding nothing. What had he, Roland, done to deserve this? Bertie was of course wearing a diaper, rather an oversized diaper. At five, he looked indeed like an oversized baby. He had no neck. Roland was aware of a pat on his arm as his wife slipped past him on the way to the kitchen.
    A few minutes later, Jane set a steaming mug of hot chocolate by his elbow. Roland was back at work. He had found Schultz’s Time Deposit interest payments, which Schultz had duly noted in April and in October. Roland finished Schultz and reached for his next dossier, that of James P. Overland, manager of a restaurant in Long Island. Roland sipped the hot chocolate, thinking that it was soothing, pleasant, but not what he needed, as Jane had informed him. What he needed was a nice wife in bed, warm and loving, even sexy as Jane had used to be. What they both needed was a healthy son in the room across the hall, reading books now, maybe even sampling Robert Louis Stevenson by now, as both Roland and Jane had done at Bertie’s age, a kid who’d try to hide the light after lights-out time to sneak a few more pages of adventure. Bertie would never read a corn flakes box.
    Jane had said she would sleep on the sofa tonight, so he could work at his table in the bedroom. She couldn’t sleep with a light on in the bedroom. She had often slept on the sofa before—they had a duvet which was simple to put on top of the sofa—and sometimes Roland slept there too, to spell Jane on the nights when Bertie appeared restless. Bertie sometimes woke up in the night and started walking around his room, butting his head against the door or one of his walls, and one or the other of them would have to go in and talk to him for a while, and usually change his diaper. The carpet would look a mess, Roland thought, except that its very dark blue color did not show the spots that must be on it. They had sedatives for Bertie from their doctor, but neither Roland nor Jane wanted Bertie to become addicted.
    “Damn the bastard!” Roland muttered, meaning James P. Overland, whose face he scarcely remembered from the two interviews he had had with Overland months ago. Overland hadn’t prepared his expenses and income nearly as well as the commercial artist Schultz, and Roland’s colleague Greg MacGregor had dumped the mess on him! Of course Greg had his hands full now too, Roland thought, and was no doubt burning the