"Let me hear you say that in another week of sleep-torn nights, m'dear," said Chuck wryly. The twins had different internal clocks.
"Ha," Pat said with some disgust. "With all the professional help around here, you have to have a priority rating to get close to one of them."
Peter moved over to the couch to sit beside her. He touched the child's head where it rested on her arm, cupping the downy scalp in his big hand, his thumb hovering over the fontanel and its gentle pulse. With fingertips, he "read" Carla's face and one waggling arm.
"There are advantages to being blind. I can truthfully say to Cecily that she grows not a day older." Peter smiled gently. "She's truthful, too, and tells me of her wrinkles and graying hair, but I don't see them, any more than I can see the changes they say have occurred all around me. Visual time has stopped forever for me, and I 'see' only my memories." His hand cupped the warm little head. "I've seen a lot of babies. I know what one usually looks like…" What he didn't say was palpable in the room. Esther wasn't the only who made hurried use of a Kleenex.
Chuck cleared his throat and remarked with a broad professional pomposity, "I assure you, sir, your daughter is most beautiful for one so newly born, which, truthfully, isn't very beautiful. She is losing the lobster shade of red, her chin has come forward, the head bones are gradually assuming a normal…"
"Charles Henderson, how can you?" cried Pat, outraged. "Carla is a perfectly beautiful child. Ignore this clinical lout, Peter. He's just plain jealous."
"Truer word was never spoken," Chuck said in a doleful tone.
"Couldn't you have made an honest woman out of any of them," I asked, plaintively, "and acknowledged a child or two?"
Chuck negligently waved aside my suggestion of wholesale philandering. "A baby for A, a baby for B, but never, oh never, a baby for me," he warbled slightly off pitch.
"Oh, you mean, 'always the deliverer, never the delivered'?" asked Pat, all innocence as she deftly burped Carla over one shoulder.
"You can say that about Ali here, not me," said Chuck with simulated indignation.
"Thank heavens you're here," said a voice at the door. "I got home only half an hour ago, and your number doesn't seem to ring."
We all turned.
"Dr. Dickson!" cried Peter, rising to his feet, since he had identified the voice before we could turn to see who could possibly have got past Wizard. "Trust that dog to know our friends."
"Indeed, indeed. Wizard and I are the best of good friends. Such a magnificent beast, such intelligence, such sympathy. I wish I could get along as well with some of the human members of my congregation as I do with Wiz."
Peregrine Dickson, the minister of my Presbyterian church, entered the room, simultaneously mopping a perspiring face and shaking each of our hands with a warm but firm grip. He was a medium-sized, middle-aged, slightly overweight, slightly balding man, but only his physical appearance was mediocre or slight. His whole personality exuded inexhaustible good humor, patience, and empathy, and his kindly face, with alert twinkling eyes, was well wrinkled with laugh lines.
"My dear Peter, how happy I am for you! Allison, my dear girl, but I'd expect you to help!" He shook my hand, passed on to Esther, and grasped Chuck's hand so that I had to make an introduction instead of an explanation. Then Perry Dickson was bending over Carla. "What a remarkable handsome baby! Her sister sleeps? Twins! Well, my word, my smart Pat never does things by halves, does she? I always like to baptize twins. I feel it puts me ahead two steps in the Good Book instead of the usual one. But what an extraordinary resemblance," and he paused, backing off slightly from Carla and narrowing his eyes much as a painter does for perspective. He looked at Pat with an expression akin to awe. "However did you manage that, Pat? But bless you for carrying through with it and giving Peter and Cecily the children. Is Cecily resting?" He looked about hopefully and then collapsed beside Pat on the sofa, mopping his sweating face with his limp handkerchief. "I shouldn't wonder. Such a hot, close day."
At that point Esther appeared with a glass of lemonade for him.
"Thank you, Esther. You are always beforehand. Really, it seems as if I've been hurrying for hours. It's a relief to get here and sit!" Dr. Dickson took a sip or two and then put his glass down to continue his monologue. "I was overcome with joy for you, Peter, when I heard the news. After all, I did baptize you, did confirm you, did marry you, and now I shall be able to start that comforting cycle with the new generation…"
Perry Dickson could rattle on so engagingly that you didn't have time to organize your own thoughts or rebuttals. I was beginning to realize that Perry was telling Peter that the irregularity of the children's births would be no bar to their admission in church.
"Perry," I tried to get a word in edgewise, "I don't think you've heard what…"
"Tut, Allison, I hear everything, you know. Someone always tells me. As I'm a minister, there is always something they think I should hear. That may be one reason why I am impelled to talk so much, so no one else will have a chance to tell me something they think I ought to know.
"In this instance, a kind parishioner - she is very charitable… with her purse - actually telephoned me at the Retreat House with such an exceptional interpretation of a really unexceptional occurrence," and he smiled sweetly at Pat, "that I realized I had better return forthwith. I was already packed when Father Ryan phoned."
"Father Ryan?" Peter and I exclaimed together.
Beside me. Chuck shuddered, groaned, and covered his eyes with his hand. "We're in trouble with the ecclesiastical as well as the secular?"
"Oh, I hardly think so. I assure you. Father Ryan gave me no details, but he was so emphatic that I return because of the… tone… of the gossip…" And now Perry Dickson faltered, as though in the rush the truth had not had a chance to catch up with him. He looked blankly at me, only I didn't know how to start.
"Then you do not believe. Dr. Dickson," Peter asked deliberately, "that the children are mine and Pat's?"
"Good heavens, no!" Perry Dickson lifted voice, eyes and hands upward in horrified repudiation of the thought. Then he gave Pat the kindest possible smile. "I can only hope, Patricia, that you were indiscreet just to give Peter and Cecily the child they've longed for."
"He simply hasn't tumbled," said Chuck to the rest of us, almost annoyed.
"I haven't what?" and Perry looked at the solid sofa as if it were expected to collapse under him.
"Pat was not indiscreet. Dr. Dickson," said Peter in his quietly emphatic way. "She is not an illegitimate mother. She acted as the host-mother for Cecily's and my progeny." And he gestured toward Chuck and me.
"She was… the… host? Mother?" Perry's face was absolutely still. He held his breath while the words made sense to him. He blinked his eyes once, twice, and then gave such a triumphant crow that Carla jerked partially awake and whimpered. "Exogenesis?" His eyes went so wide that his brows joined his receding hairline. "Exogenesis!" He grabbed at Chuck for reassurance, and, grinning, Chuck nodded vigorously.
"Exogenesis documented and done!"
"Exogenesis! Exogenesis!" Perry said in wild excitement. "Oh, absolutely magnificent. Patricia! My dear girl, greater love hath no woman! My dear child!" He was embracing her in an excess of emotion. He pumped Chuck's hand, grabbed Peter in an exultant hug, all the while mumbling "exogenesis" in every sort of tone, from excited, incredulous, and relieved to prayerful.
While we were still grinning delightedly at the effect of our revelation on the good doctor, he collapsed again on the sofa, fanning himself with the soaked handkerchief. "Oh, my dear people, my dear, dear friends…" Then he clapped his hands together and stared down at Carla. "Well, that would, of course, explain it. Wouldn't it?" Then another thought struck his reeling brain. "Oh, good heavens, poor Father Ryan!" At that exclamation. Chuck started to howl with laughter. "Whatever will he say? Oh, my word!" There was, however, an unholy look of gleeful anticipation in Perry's eyes despite the humble dismay in his voice. "This is going to strike him at a very fundamental point in his dogma. How ever is he going to explain this away? Oh, my dear friends, how could you?" As if we'd achieved only to discomfort Father Ryan.