Maggie.
SPECIAL SERVICE TELEGRAM
February 21, 1953 22:04 LK37G From: Tech. Lieut. H. Marvell X47-016 GCNY
To: Mrs. H. Marvell Women's Hospital New York City
HAD DOCTOR'S GRAM STOP WILL ARRIVE FOUR OH TEN STOP SHORT
LEAVE STOP YOU DID IT MAGGIE STOP LOVE HANK
February 25. Hank dear,
So you didn't see the baby either? You'd think a place this size would at least have visiplates on the incubators, so the fathers could get a look, even if the poor benighted mommas can't. They tell me I won't see her for another week, or maybe more—but of course, mother always warned me if I didn't slow my pace, I'd probably even have my babies too fast. Why must she always be right?
Did you meet that battle-ax of a nurse they put on here? I imagine they save her for people who've already had theirs, and don't let her get too near the prospectives—but a woman like that simply shouldn't be allowed in a maternity ward.
She's obsessed with mutations, can't seem to talk about anything else. Oh, well, ours is all right, even if it was in an unholy hurry.
I'm tired. They warned me not to sit up so soon, but I had to write you. All my love, darling,
Maggie.
February 29. Darling,
I finally got to see her! It's all true, what they say about new babies and the face that only a mother could love—but it's all there, darling, eyes, ears, and noses—no, only one!—all in the right places. We're so lucky, Hank.
I'm afraid I've been a rambunctious patient. I kept telling that hatchet-faced female with the mutation mania that I wanted to see the baby. Finally the doctor came in to
"explain" everything to me, and talked a lot of nonsense, most of which I'm sure no one could have understood, any more than I did. The only thing I got out of it was that she didn't actually have to stay in the incubator; they just thought it was "wiser."
I think I got a little hysterical at that point. Guess I was more worried than I was willing to admit, but I threw a small fit about it. The whole business wound up with one of those hushed medical conferences outside the door, and finally the Woman in White said: "Well, we might as well. Maybe it'll work out better that way."
I'd heard about the way doctors and nurses in these places develop a God complex, and believe me it is as true figuratively as it is literally that a mother hasn't got a leg to stand on around here.
I am awfully weak, still. I'll write again soon. Love,
Maggie.
March 8. Dearest Hank,
Well the nurse was wrong if she told you that. She's an idiot anyhow. It's a girl.
It's easier to tell with babies than with cats, and / know. How about Henrietta?
I'm home again, and busier than a betatron. They got everything mixed up at the hospital, and I had to teach myself how to bathe her and do just about everything else.
She's getting prettier, too. When can you get a leave, a real leave?
Love, Maggie.
May 26. Hank dear,
You should see her now—and you shall. I'm sending along a reel of color movie.
My mother sent her those nighties with drawstrings all over. I put one on, and right now she looks like a snow- white potato sack with that beautiful, beautiful flower-face blooming on top. Is that me talking? Am I a doting mother? But wait till you see her!
July 10.
... Believe it or not, as you like, but your daughter can talk, and I don't mean baby talk. Alice discovered it—she's a dental assistant in the WACs, you know—and when she heard the baby giving out what I thought was a string of gibberish, she said the kid knew words and sentences, but couldn't say them clearly because she has no teeth yet. I'm taking her to a speech specialist.
September 13.
•.. We have a prodigy for real! Now that all her front teeth are in, her speech is perfectly clear and—a new talent now—she can sing! I mean really carry a tune! At seven months! Darling my world would be perfect if you could only get home.
November 19.
• •. at last. The little goon was so busy being clever, it took her all this time to learn to crawl. The doctor says development in these cases is always erratic ...
SPECIAL SERVICE TELEGRAM
December 1, 1953 08:47 LK59F
From: Tech. Lieut. H. Marvell
X47-016 GCNY
To: Mrs. H. Marvell Apt. K-17 504 E. 19 St. N.Y. N.Y.
WEEK'S LEAVE STARTS TOMORROW STOP WILL ARRIVE AIRPORT
TEN OH FIVE STOP DON'T MEET ME STOP LOVE LOVE LOVE HANK
Margaret let the water run out of the bathinette until only a few inches were left, and then loosed her hold on the wriggling baby.
"I think it was better when you were retarded, young woman," she informed her daughter happily. "You can't crawl in a bathinette, you know."
"Then why can't I go in the bathtub?" Margaret was used to her child's volubility by now, but every now and then it caught her unawares. She swooped the resistant mass of pink flesh into a towel, and began to rub.
"Because you're too little, and your head is very soft, and bathtubs are very hard."
"Oh. Then when can I go in the bathtub?"
"When the outside of your head is as hard as the inside, brainchild." She reached toward a pile of fresh clothing. "I cannot understand," she added, pinning a square of cloth through the nightgown, "why a child of your intelligence can't learn to keep a diaper on the way other babies do. They've been used for centuries, you know, with perfectly satisfactory results."
The child disdained to reply; she had heard it too often. She waited patiently until she had been tucked, clean and sweet-smelling, into a white-painted crib. Then she favored her mother with a smile that inevitably made Margaret think of the first golden edge of the sun bursting into a rosy pre-dawn. She remembered Hank's reaction to the color pictures of his beautiful daughter, and with the thought, realized how late it was.