composition of it contained ample evidence of his gentleness and
sensitivity. His hazel eyes were capable of conveying amazingly subtle
degrees and mixtures of emotions. Six years ago, at a university symposium
entitled “Abnormal Psychology and Modem American Fiction,” where Carol had
met Paul, the first thing that had drawn her to him had been those warm,
expressive eyes, and in the intervening years they had never ceased to
intrigue her. Now he winked, and with that wink he seemed to be saying:
Don’t worry;
O’Brian is on our side; the application will be accepted; everything will
turn out all right; I love you.
She winked back at him and pretended to be confident, even though she was
sure he could see through her brave front.
She wished that she could be certain of winning Mr. O’Brian’s approval. She
knew she ought to be overflowing with confidence, for there really was no
reason why O’Brian would reject them. They were healthy and young. Paul was
thirty-five, and she was thirty-one, and those were excellent ages at which
to set out upon the adventure they were contemplating. Both of them were
successful in their work. They were financially solvent, even prosperous.
They were respected in their community. Their marriage was happy and
trouble-free, stronger now than at any time in the four years since their
wedding. In short, their qualifications for adopting a child were pretty
much impeccable, but she worried nonetheless.
She loved children, and she was looking forward to raising one or two of
her own. During the past fourteen years—in which she had earned three
degrees at three universities and had established herself in her
profession—she had postponed many simple pleasures and had skipped others
altogether. Getting an education and launching her career had always come
first. She had missed too many good parties and had foregone an
unremembered number of vacations and getaway weekends. Adopting a child was
one pleasure she did not want to postpone any longer.
She had a strong psychological need—almost a physical need—to be a mother,
to guide and shape children, to give them love and understanding. She was
intelligent enough and sufficiently self-aware to
realize that this deep-seated need arose, at least in part, from her
inability to conceive a child of her own flesh and blood.
The thing we want most, she thought, is always the thing we cannot have.
She was to blame for her sterility, which was the result of an unforgivable
act of stupidity committed a long time ago; and of course her culpability
made her condition harder to bear than it would have been if nature—rather
than her own foolishness—had cursed her with a barren womb. She had been a
severely troubled child, for she had been raised by violent, alcoholic
parents who had frequently beaten her and who had dealt out large doses of
psychological torture. By the time she was fifteen, she was a hellion,
engaged in an angry rebellion against her parents and against the world at
large. She hated everyone in those days, especially herself. In the
blackest hours of her confused and tormented adolescence, she had gotten
pregnant. Frightened, panicky, with no one to turn to, she tried to conceal
her condition by wearing girdles, by binding herself with elastic cloth and
tape, and by eating as lightly as possible to keep her weight down.
Eventually, however, complications arose because of her attempts to hide
her pregnancy, and she nearly died. The baby was born prematurely, but it
was healthy. She had put it up for adoption and hadn’t given it much
thought for a couple of years, though these days she often wondered about
the child and wished she could have kept it somehow. At the time, the fact
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