Wednesday

Wednesday shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I—I’m afraid to. Not of marriage. Of babies. I don’t think a person like me ought to have a baby.”

“Nonsense! Is there any scientific reason why you shouldn’t? What are you afraid of—it’ll be a monster?”

“I’m afraid it might be… anything. I think with my body being as—as funny as it is, I shouldn’t take chances with a child. Dr. Lorington thinks so too. Besides, there’s the poem.”

Fabian put down his drink. “Poem? What poem?”

“You know, the one about the days of the week. I learned it when I was a little girl, and it frightened me even then. It goes:

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go,
Friday’s child is loving and giving—

And so on. When I was a little girl in the orphanage, I used to say to myself, ‘I’m Wednesday. I’m different from all other little girls in all kinds of strange ways. And my child—’ ”

“Who gave you that name?”

“I was left at the foundling home just after New Year’s Eve—Wednesday morning. So they didn’t know what else to call me, especially when they found I didn’t have a navel. And then, like I told you, after the Greshams adopted me, I took their last name.”

He reached for her hand and grasped it firmly with both of his. He noted with triumphant pleasure that her fingernails were hairy. “You’re a very pretty girl, Wednesday Gresham.”

When she saw that he meant it, she blushed and looked down at the tablecloth.

“And you really don’t have a navel?”

“No, I don’t. Really.”

“What else about you is different?” Fabian asked. “I mean, besides the things you told me.”

“Well,” she considered. “There’s that business about my blood pressure.”

“Tell me about it,” he urged. She told him.

Two dates later, she informed Fabian that Dr. Lorington wanted to see him. Alone.

He went all the way uptown to the old-fashioned brownstone, chewing his knuckles in excitement. He had so many questions to ask!

Dr. Lorington was a tall, aged man with pale skin and absolutely white hair. He moved very slowly as he gestured his visitor to a chair, but his eyes rested intent and anxious on Fabian’s face.

“Wednesday tells me you’ve been seeing a good deal of her, Mr. Balik. May I ask why?”

Fabian shrugged. “I like the girl. I’m interested in her.”

“Interested, how? Interested clinically—as in a specimen?”

“What a way to put it, Doctor! She’s a pretty girl, she’s a nice girl, why should I be interested in her as a specimen?”

The doctor stroked an invisible beard on his chin, still watching Fabian very closely. “She’s a pretty girl,” he agreed, “but there are many pretty girls. You’re a young man obviously on his way up in the world, and you’re also obviously far out of Wednesday’s class. From what she’s told me—and mind you, it’s been all on the positive side— I’ve gotten a definite impression that you look on her as a specimen, but a specimen, let us say, about which you feel a substantial collector’s itch. Why you should feel this way, I don’t know enough about you to say. But no matter how she rhapsodizes about you, I continue to feel strongly that you have no conventional, expected emotional interest in her. And now that I’ve seen you, I’m positive that this is so.”

“Glad to hear she rhapsodizes about me.” Fabian tried to squeeze out a bashful-type grin. “You have nothing to worry about, Doctor.”

“I think there’s quite a bit to worry about, quite a bit. Frankly, Mr. Balik, your appearance has confirmed my previous impressions: I am quite certain I don’t like you. Furthermore, I don’t like you for Wednesday.”

Fabian thought for a moment, then shrugged. “That’s too bad. But I don’t think she’ll listen to you. She’s gone without male companionship too long, and she’s too flattered by my going after her.”

“I’m terribly afraid you’re right. Listen to me, Mr. Balik. I’m very fond of Wednesday and I know how unguarded she is. I ask you, almost as a father, to leave her alone. I’ve taken care of her since she arrived at the foundling home. I was responsible for keeping her case out of the medical journals so that she might have some chance for a normal life. At the moment, I’m retired from practice. Wednesday Gresham is my only regular patient. Couldn’t you find it in your heart to be kind and have nothing more to do with her?”

“What’s this about her being made, not born?” Fabian countered. “She says it was your idea.”

The old man sighed and shook his head over his desktop for a long moment. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense,” he said at last, dispiritedly. “Considering the somatic inaccuracies and ambivalences.”

Fabian clasped his hands and rubbed his elbows thoughtfully on the arms of his chair. “Did you ever think there might be another explanation? She might be a mutant, a new kind of human evolution, or the offspring of creatures from another world, say, who happened to be stranded on this planet.”

“Highly unlikely,” Dr. Lorington said. “None of these physical modifications is especially useful in any conceivable environment, with the possible exception of the constantly renewing teeth. Nor are the modifications fatal. They tend to be just—inconvenient. As a physician who has examined many human beings in my life, I would say that Wednesday is thoroughly, indisputably human. She is just a little—well, the word is amateurish.”

The doctor sat up straight. “There is something else, Mr. Balik. I think it extremely inadvisable for people like Wednesday to have children of their own.”

Fabian’s eyes lit up in fascination. “Why? What would the children be like?”

“They might be like anything imaginable—or unimaginable. With so much disarrangement of the normal physical system, the modification in the reproductive functions must be enormous too. That’s why I ask you, Mr. Balik, not to go on seeing Wednesday, not to go on stimulating her to thoughts of marriage. Because this is one girl that I am certain should not have babies!”

“We’ll see.” Fabian rose and offered his hand. “Thank you very much for your time and trouble, Doctor.”

Dr. Lorington cocked his head and stared up at him. Then, without shaking the hand, he said in a quiet, even voice, “You are welcome. Goodbye, Mr. Balik.”

Wednesday was naturally miserable over the antagonism between the two men. But there was very little doubt where her loyalties would lie in a crisis. All those years of determined emotional starvation had resulted in a frantic voracity. Once she allowed herself to think of Fabian romantically, she was done for. She told him that she did her work at the office—from which their developing affair had so far been successfully screened—in a daze at the thought that he liked her.

Fabian found her homage delicious. Most women he had known began to treat him with a gradually sharpening edge of contempt as time went on. Wednesday became daily more admiring, more agreeable, more compliant.

True, she was by no means brilliant, but she was, he told himself, extremely pretty, and therefore quite presentable. Just to be on the safe side, he found an opportunity to confer with Mr. Slaughter, the senior partner of the firm, ostensibly on personnel matters. He mentioned in passing that he was slightly interested in one of the girls in the secretarial pool. Would there be any high-echelon objection to that?

“Interested to the extent of perhaps marrying the girl?” Mr. Slaughter asked, studying him from under a pair of enormously thick eyebrows.

“Possibly. It might very well come to that, sir. If you have no ob—”

“No objection at all, my boy, no objection at all. I don’t like executives flim-flamming around with their file-