He was watching Emily as he might have watched a hummingbird hovering over a cannibal plant, one of those horrible flytrap things that grew in tropical jungles. What chance would the hummingbird have against the sudden, cruel closing of the plant’s spiked petals, its animal-like ferocity of purpose?
An overpowering surge of terror swept over Durkin’s wife, tightening the muscles of her throat. Will, don’t—she wanted to scream. Don’t punish the children because you hate me. Or because you hate yourself. Don’t, Will, please—
Robert failed to notice the trembling of his mother’s hands, failed even to observe that his stepfather had not budged an inch from his attitude of sharp-eyed observation.
For a moment the adult world was blotted out for Robert—blotted out completely. He knelt and stared through the cottage window as his sister had done, resting his hand on the arching trellis.
It was not a doll house to Robert. He took far too much pride in his budding masculinity to admit for an instant that he could be interested in a doll house. No—it was a cottage, small, white and very beautiful. He pictured himself as having a wife and children of his own and coming home every night to just such a cottage.
“You look tired,” his wife would say. “You’d better rest a bit—then we’ll have dinner.” He could picture himself going into the bathroom and turning on the hot water. Later he’d open the windows wide to the night air. He’d hear crickets chirping as the children clustered about him.
But so complex and subtle are childhood identifications that he could also think of himself as still a boy, living with his sister in a cottage just as small, white and beautiful, but set adrift on a pirate-perilous sea remote from his stepfather’s mockery.
With a swift, defiant gesture Robert reached in through the window, and grasped the crude doll replica of himself. He lifted it out, jarring the parent dolls slightly.
“Excuse me, Mom,” he said.
To the replica of his stepfather he offered no apology.
Durkin’s lips whitened, and for the barest instant a defeated look touched his gaunt face. From thought to attitude he had the whip hand over his stepchildren. Yet even when his power could not be questioned he found himself a shunned and forgotten man.
Fury turned the living flesh and bone of his face into a stone mask with features so sharp that his wife recoiled as if feeling the cruel rasp and bite of them against her cheeks.
Cursing softly, Durkin swung about and went striding toward the kitchen door without a backward glance.
All through dinner he was silent, completely ignoring his wife, and raising his eyes only to stare out the kitchen window at the bare yellow earth he could at least bend to his will. Even when the children excused themselves, and ran out into the yard again he remained sullenly uncommunicative.
In an attempt to make conversation Helen Durkin said: “Will, it came over the radio right after you left. They’re making some more of those atomic weapon tests. Remember the last time—how the explosion shook the house?”
“So that’s where the flash came from!” Durkin muttered. “I saw it when I stopped at the gas station to get my battery checked. I figured it was just heat lightning.”
“Robbie saw it too,” Robert’s mother said. “It means a lot to a boy to know he’s living in an age like this. In some ways Robbie is a man already, Will. A boy born a hundred years ago had to remain a child every waking hour. But not Robbie. Robbie was born into a different kind of world.”
Her eyes flashed with stubborn pride. “Robbie has real strength inside of him, Will. He’ll make a mark for himself in the world. He’ll grow up knowing what atomic energy means. He won’t age and dry up before his time. You ought to be proud of him, Will.”
Abruptly Durkin pushed back his chair and stood up, his eyes grown sharp again from watching the children playing in the yard. He had avoided looking at his wife, but now he permitted his gaze to linger for an instant on her pinched and sallow features, in a scrutiny so mocking it made her almost physically ill.
Your brats hate me, his eyes mocked. One of these days I’ll catch them off guard and give them a lesson in discipline they won’t forget in a hurry.
She knew what he was waiting for. He was hoping they’d stop playing just long enough to cast a look toward the kitchen door filled with unmistakable hate. He was hoping to emerge beneath the darkening sky, and see Emily turn away her head, remembering the loving father she had lost, and the harsh, unbending man who had come to take his place.
She knew that he was waiting only for that. He was the kind of man who had to have an excuse to justify his every act of cruelty. Some oddity in his makeup made self-justification as necessary to him as breathing.
With a chill foreboding she watched him turn, and go striding out into the yard.
The children had been kneeling on opposite sides of the doll house, but they got up the instant they saw their stepfather approaching. Robert looked guilty, and his sister’s face mirrored his guilt.
“You ate your lunch mighty fast,” Durkin said. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing,” Robert said.
“What kind of answer is that?” Durkin demanded, his face turning ugly.
“We were just playing house,” Emily said, quickly.
“Then why did you get up so fast when you saw me?” Durkin asked. “Is there something in that house you don’t want me to see?”
Robert shook his head, his eyes on the ground.
“Speak up! I asked you a question.”
“We were just pretending,” Robert said.
For an instant the man and the two children stood with the doll house between them. They were each aware that
