“Why would anyone want to do plastic surgery on a navel?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t the vaguest idea. Maybe an accident. Maybe a disfiguring birthmark in that place. But there will be scars, let me tell you. She had to be born with a navel”
Rudd went back to his desk. He picked up a prescription pad. “Let me give you the name of a good psychiatrist, Fabe. I’ve thought ever since that Sandra business that you’ve had some personal problems that might get out of hand one day. This man is one of the finest—”
Fabian left.
She was obviously in a flutter when he called to pick her up that night, so much more of a flutter than a date-with-the-boss would account for, that Fabian was puzzled. But he waited and gave her an ostentatious and expensive good time. Afterward, after dinner and after the theater, when they were sitting in the corner of a small night club over their drinks, he asked her about it.
“You don’t date much, do you, Wednesday?”
“No, I don’t, Mr. Balik—I mean, Fabian,” she said, smiling shyly as she remembered the first-name privilege she had been accorded for the evening. “I usually just go out with girl friends, not with men. I usually turn down dates.”
“Why? You’re not going to find a husband that way. You want to get married, don’t you?”
Wednesday shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I—I’m afraid to. Not of marriage. Of babies. I don’t think a person like me ought to have a baby.”
“Nonsense! Is there any scientific reason why you shouldn’t? What are you afraid of—it’ll be a monster?”
“I’m afraid it might be… anything. I think with my body being as—as funny as it is, I shouldn’t take chances with a child. Dr. Lorington thinks so too. Besides, there’s the poem.”
Fabian put down his drink. “Poem? What poem?”
“You know, the one about the days of the week. I learned it when I was a little girl, and it frightened me even then. It goes:
And so on. When I was a little girl in the orphanage, I used to say to myself, ‘I’m Wednesday. I’m different from all other little girls in all kinds of strange ways. And my child—’ ”
“Who gave you that name?”
“I was left at the foundling home just after New Year’s Eve—Wednesday morning. So they didn’t know what else to call me, especially when they found I didn’t have a navel. And then, like I told you, after the Greshams adopted me, I took their last name.”
He reached for her hand and grasped it firmly with both of his. He noted with triumphant pleasure that her fingernails were hairy. “You’re a very pretty girl, Wednesday Gresham.”
When she saw that he meant it, she blushed and looked down at the tablecloth.
“And you really don’t have a navel?”
“No, I don’t. Really.”
“What else about you is different?” Fabian asked. “I mean, besides the things you told me.”
“Well,” she considered. “There’s that business about my blood pressure.”
“Tell me about it,” he urged. She told him.
Two dates later, she informed Fabian that Dr. Lorington wanted to see him. Alone.
He went all the way uptown to the old-fashioned brownstone, chewing his knuckles in excitement. He had so many questions to ask!
Dr. Lorington was a tall, aged man with pale skin and absolutely white hair. He moved very slowly as he gestured his visitor to a chair, but his eyes rested intent and anxious on Fabian’s face.
“Wednesday tells me you’ve been seeing a good deal of her, Mr. Balik. May I ask why?”
Fabian shrugged. “I like the girl. I’m interested in her.”
“Interested, how? Interested clinically—as in a specimen?”
“What a way to put it, Doctor! She’s a pretty girl, she’s a nice girl, why should I be interested in her as a specimen?”
The doctor stroked an invisible beard on his chin, still watching Fabian very closely. “She’s a pretty girl,” he agreed, “but there are many pretty girls. You’re a young man obviously on his way up in the world, and you’re also obviously far out of Wednesday’s class. From what she’s told me—and mind you, it’s been all on the positive side—I’ve gotten a definite impression that you look on her as a specimen, but a specimen, let us say, about which you feel a substantial collector’s itch. Why you should feel this way, I don’t know enough about you to say. But no matter how she rhapsodizes about you, I continue to feel strongly that you have no conventional, expected emotional interest in her. And now that I’ve seen you, I’m positive that this is so.”
“Glad to hear she rhapsodizes about me.” Fabian tried to squeeze out a bashful-type grin. “You have nothing to worry about, Doctor.”
“I think there’s quite a bit to worry about, quite a bit. Frankly, Mr. Balik, your appearance has confirmed my previous impressions: I am quite certain I don’t like you. Furthermore, I don’t like you for Wednesday.”
Fabian thought for a moment, then shrugged. “That’s too bad. But I don’t think she’ll listen to you. She’s gone without male companionship too long, and she’s too flattered by my going after her.”
“I’m terribly afraid you’re right. Listen to me, Mr. Balik. I’m very fond of Wednesday and I know how unguarded she is. I ask you, almost as a father, to leave her alone. I’ve taken care of her since she arrived at the foundling home. I was responsible for keeping her case out of the medical journals so that she might have some chance for a normal life. At the moment, I’m retired from practice. Wednesday Gresham is my only regular patient. Couldn’t you find it in your heart to be kind and have nothing more to do with her?”
“What’s this about her being made, not born?” Fabian countered. “She says it was your idea.”
The old man sighed and shook his head over his desktop for a long moment. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense,” he said at last, dispiritedly. “Considering the somatic inaccuracies and ambivalences.”
Fabian clasped his hands and rubbed his elbows thoughtfully on the arms of his chair. “Did you ever think there might be another explanation? She might be a mutant, a new kind of human evolution, or the offspring of creatures from another world, say, who happened to be stranded on this planet.”
“Highly unlikely,” Dr. Lorington said. “None of these physical modifications is especially useful in any conceivable environment, with the possible exception of the constantly renewing teeth. Nor are the modifications fatal. They tend to be just—inconvenient. As a physician who has examined many human beings in my life, I would say that Wednesday is thoroughly, indisputably human. She is just a little—well, the word is amateurish.”
The doctor sat up straight. “There is something else, Mr. Balik. I think it extremely inadvisable for people like Wednesday to have children of their own.”
Fabian’s eyes lit up in fascination. “Why? What would the children be like?”
“They might be like anything imaginable—or unimaginable. With so much disarrangement of the normal physical system, the modification in the reproductive functions must be enormous too. That’s why I ask you, Mr. Balik, not to go on seeing Wednesday, not to go on stimulating her to thoughts of marriage. Because this is one girl that I am certain should not have babies!”
“We’ll see.” Fabian rose and offered his hand. “Thank you very much for your time and trouble, Doctor.”