clerks as a general rule, but if it’s handled quietly and ends in matrimony, it could be an excellent thing for the office. I’d like to see you married, and steadied down. It might give the other single people in the place some sensible ideas for a change. But mind you, Balik, no flim-flam. No hanky-panky, especially on office time!”
Satisfied, Fabian now devoted himself to separating Wednesday from Dr. Lorington. He pointed out to her that the old man couldn’t live much longer and she needed a regular doctor who was young enough to be able to help her with the physical complexities she faced for the rest of her life. A young doctor like Jim Rudd, for example.
Wednesday wept, but was completely incapable of fighting him for long. In the end, she made only one condition—that Dr. Rudd preserve the secrecy that Lorington had initiated. She didn’t want to become a medical journal freak or a newspaper sob story.
The reasons why Fabian agreed had only a little to do with magnanimity. He wanted to have her oddities for himself alone. Sandra he had worn on his breast, like a flashing jewel hung from a pendant. Wednesday he would keep in a tiny chamois bag, examining her from time to time in a self-satisfied, miserly fashion.
And, after a while, he might have another, smaller jewel…
Jim Rudd accepted his conditions. And was astounded.
“There is no navel at all!” he ejaculated when he had rejoined Fabian in his study, after the first examination. “I’ve palpated the skin for scar tissue, but there’s not the slightest hint of it. And that’s not the half of it! She has no discernible systole and diastole. Man, do you know what that means?”
“I’m not interested right now,” Fabian told him. “Later, maybe. Do you think you can help her with these physical problems when they come up?”
“Oh, sure. At least as well as that old fellow.”
“What about children? Can she have them?”
Rudd spread his hands. “I don’t see why not. For all her peculiarities, she’s a remarkably healthy young woman. And we have no reason to believe that this condition—whatever you want to call it—is hereditary. Of course, some part of it might be, in some strange way or other, but on the evidence.
They were married, just before the start of Fabian’s vacation, at City Hall. They came back to the office after lunch and told everyone about it. Fabian had already hired a new secretary to replace his wife.
Two months later, Fabian had managed to get her pregnant.
He was amazed at how upset she became, considering the meekness he had induced in her from the beginning of their marriage. He tried to be stern and to tell her he would have none of this nonsense, Dr. Rudd had said there was every reason to expect that she would have a normal baby, and that was that. But it didn’t work. He tried gentle humor, cajolery. He even took her in his arms and told her he loved her too much not to want to have a little girl like her. But that didn’t work either.
“Fabian, darling,” she moaned, “don’t you understand? I’m not supposed to have a child. I’m not like other women.”
He finally used something he had been saving as a last resort for this emergency. He took a book from the shelf and flipped it open. “I understand,” he said. “It’s half Dr. Lorington and his nineteenth-century superstitious twaddle, and half a silly little folk poem you read when you were a girl and that made a terrifying impression on you. Well, I can’t do anything about Dr. Lorington at this point in your life, but I can do something about that poem. Here. Read this.”
She read:
Birthdays, by B.L. Farjeon
Wednesday looked up and shook the tears from her eyes. “But I don’t understand,” she muttered in confusion. “That’s not like the one I read.”
He squatted beside her and explained patiently. “The one you read had two lines transposed, right? Wednesday’s and Thursday’s child had the lines that Friday’s and Saturday’s child have in this version and vice versa. Well, it’s an old Devonshire poem originally, and no one knows for sure which version is right. I looked it up, especially for you. I just wanted to show you how silly you were, basing your entire attitude toward life on a couple of verses which could be read either way, not to mention the fact that they were written several centuries before anyone thought of naming you Wednesday.”
She threw her arms around him and held on tightly.
“Oh, Fabian, darling! Don’t be angry with me. It’s just that I’m so—
Jim Rudd was a little concerned, too. “Oh, I’m pretty sure it will be all right, but I wish you’d waited until I had time to familiarize myself a bit more with the patient. The only thing, Fabe, I’ll have to call in a first-rate obstetrician. I’d never dream of handling this myself. I can make him keep it quiet, about Wednesday and all that. But the moment she enters the delivery room, all bets are off. Too many odd things about her—they’re bound to be noticed by some nurse, at least.”
“Do the best you can,” Fabian told him. “I don’t want my wife involved in garish publicity, if it can be helped. But if it can’t be—well, it’s about time Wednesday learned to live in the real world.”
The gestation period went along pretty well, with not much more than fairly usual complications. The obstetrical specialist Jim Rudd had suggested was as intrigued as anyone else by Wednesday’s oddities, but he told them that the pregnancy was following a monotonously normal course and that the fetus seemed to be developing satisfactorily and completely on schedule.
Wednesday became fairly cheerful again. Outside of her minor fears, Fabian reflected, she was an eminently satisfactory and useful wife. She didn’t exactly shine at the parties where they mingled with other married couples from Slaughter, Stark and Slingsby, but she never committed a major faux pas either. She was, in fact, rather well liked, and, as she obeyed him faithfully in every particular, he had no cause at all for complaint.
He spent his days at the office handling the dry, minuscule details of paper work and personnel administration more efficiently than ever before, and his night and weekends with a person he had every reason to believe was the most
Near the end of her term, Wednesday did beg for permission to visit Dr. Lorington just once. Fabian had to refuse, regretfully but firmly.
“It’s not that I mind his not sending us a congratulatory telegram or wedding gift, Wednesday. I really don’t mind that at all. I’m not the kind of man to hold a grudge. But you’re in good shape now. You’re over most of your silly fears. Lorington would just make them come alive again.”
And she continued to do what he said. Without argument, without complaint. She was really quite a good wife. Fabian looked forward to the baby eagerly.
One day, he received a telephone call at the office from the hospital. Wednesday had gone into labor while visiting the obstetrician. She’d been rushed to the hospital and given birth shortly after arrival to a baby girl. Both mother and child were doing well.
Fabian broke out the box of cigars he’d been saving for this occasion. He passed them around the office and received the felicitations of everybody up to and including Mr. Slaughter, Mr. Stark and both Mr. Slingsbys. Then he took off for the hospital.
From the moment he arrived in the Maternity Pavilion, he knew that something was wrong. It was the way people looked at him, then looked quickly away. He heard a nurse saying behind him: “That must be the father.” His lips went tight and dry.
