Winston K. Marks

“ The easy familiarity he enjoyed with men of the slightest acquaintance was something he could never establish in his own home with his own wife and his own daughters. Fate, as if to further confound him, had presented Bertrand with four daughters.
Of all these females, Rolanda, Aileen, Grace, Norma and Annie, only two month-old Annie was currently making sense to Bert Baxter. ”

“ Now the voices were silent except Rolanda's occasional soft words to him. Again he enjoyed his liquid meal and slipped into delicious slumber with the shades drawn.
Voices awakened him. A man's voice mingled with his wife's.
"In here, doctor. We managed to carry him to bed, and he hasn't awakened yet."
Baxter heard the words with mild interest but no comprehension. The man's voice came through the wall of the nursery from the next bedroom, a low rumble of pleasant sound. "No sign of physical impairment. Resembles a catatonic trance. Strange. Heartbeat is rapid, light—respiration, too. ”

“ Baxter was on the verge of slipping into a doze, but it brought his eyes open.
The two o'clock feeding!
He loved Annie dearly, but it was high time she was omitting the late feeding. It meant rousing Rolanda, who never heard the call. It meant lights and commotion, short tempers, bottle-banging in the kitchen. It meant disturbing the other girls, which occasioned a slipper-shuffling parade to the bathroom with attendant flushing, tap-turning, glass-rattling and ostentatious whispering that turned the hall into a rustling snake-pit.
Don't wake daddy! He has to get up early. ”

“ Yes, Bert Baxter could anticipate his male customer's requirements, objections, moods and buying habits with an almost clairvoyant insight. But give him a woman! He was licked before she opened his catalog.
Women found him attractive enough. His six-foot-four, square-jawed athletic prowess had given him the pick of the class of '29, including the statuesque Rolanda. But to marry a woman and to understand her were different matters: the former ridiculously easy, the latter bewilderingly impossible. ”

“ There was the unpleasant business of a diaper change, during which he became sharply aware of hunger. He yelled lustily for food, and soon he was sucking hungrily on a deliciously flexible rubber nipple that yielded an ambrosia of warm sweetness.
A jumble of clear, high voices chirped familiarly in his ears, but he paid no attention to the words as such. His bath was delightful, although he sneezed violently at the talcum dust afterward. ”

“ For a week Rolanda became increasingly hostile for no apparent reason. Baxter felt that the tension that grew between them was in some way connected with Annie, but his wife never spoke of it. Never a particularly demonstrative woman, she became even colder, and often he caught her regarding him with an enigmatical look of suspicion. ”

“ Annie cried out.
Baxter withdrew instantly, feeling somewhat guilty. Then he tried again.
Annie screamed.
Rolanda came down the hall, paused at his door and said, "What do you suppose is the matter with her tonight? She always drops off."
Without waiting for an answer, she passed down the hall to the nursery and comforted Annie to sleep. Baxter tried no more that night.
It was the same each time he tried thereafter. Abruptly, Annie had become irritable, intolerant of his probing. How she could understand what was happening mystified Baxter, but he was determined to retain contact. ”

“ He sensed the peace that settled through her, and the same peace flooded through him, a rare sensation of security, understanding and blind trust.
Annie slept. Baxter slept.
And then it was Saturday morning. Baxter stayed abed, yielding the bathroom to his three teen-age daughters. Annie was still asleep, too, so Rolanda was stretching leisurely beside him like a long, pink cat. Noticing the time, she raised to an elbow and viewed him with some concern. "No golf this morning? Aren't you well, Bert?" ”

“ It is high time that Annie began skipping her night feeding."
But her eyes were narrowed cat-slits, and Baxter felt a positive warning in them. He felt that since creation, probably no man had actually penetrated a woman's brain to probe the willy-nilly logic that functioned there:—functioned well, for somehow things got done, but functioned in such a topsy-turvy manner as to drive a serious male insane if he pondered it too long. ”

“ Annie, where are you?
A soft, nonverbal little response touched his wracked brain, inviting him to return. He concentrated, blocking out the muttering voices around him....
"—can't keep a man his size alive indefinitely with intravenous—better phone Mrs. Baxter—call a priest, too."
He made it. He was back in the crib. Rolanda was pulling up the nursery shades terminating his nap. The phone was ringing.
"Be right back, sweetheart," Rolanda said. "Mother has to answer the phone." ”

“ The memory of his urgent, silent pleading with her came back, and he smiled to himself. If it were only that easy, he thought.
He had a strenuous day driving out to a rural school district and rounding up five members of the athletic board to complete a nice contract for basketball equipment. He dribbled an Abernathy & Crisp basketball around the gym twelve times for the coach, lugged four sample cases of uniforms up a flight of stairs, and made uncounted round trips to his distantly-parked station wagon for afterthought items to satisfy inquiries. ”