Priscilla didn’t know quite what to do.
The girl she visited each week was certainly not her daughter, not the Penny she had known. But still, could she submit this poor distracted creature to electric shock three times a week, perhaps more? Could she do this to her own daughter? And yet, and yet, she wasn’t really her daughter. She no longer recognized anyone, nor did she seem recognizable, her face had changed somehow, changed from the face of someone Priscilla had known and loved to the face of a stranger. She did not know what to do. She turned to God, as she had so often in the past, and she prayed for guidance. The people at the hospital had told her the electric-shock treatments might help her daughter, might bring her to the point where they could at least talk to her. “We cannot help her unless we can communicate,” they had said, and now she communicated with her God and asked Him to show her the way.
She prayed formally, in a language she had evolved from the time she was a child, a highly stylized language, which she considered fitting and proper for discourse with the Lord. She prayed formally, but she prayed openly. If Priscilla Soames ever showed what was truly in her heart, she showed it to her God.
My Lord Jesus, she prayed, look upon me with pity. I need Your help, dear God. Please. I am cold. I am alone. I need Your help. Do not let me lose her. I do not mind suffering. I have never complained about the suffering. But I cannot bear the thought of losing her. I have been good. I never wished to be a mother, You know that, You remember my prayers, You remember the terror in my heart. But I have borne him children, I have given him daughters though I know his true desire was for a son. Forgive me, I do not mean to judge. I have been a good mother. I do not plead sacrifice, though I have sacrificed, still I do not plead sacrifice. I beg only for direction, help me, please, help me.
I am cold. I am alone.
I am a cold woman. I know this, dear God, it is the way I am. Oh my God, I have never held a baby’s foot in my hand and kissed the toes. I am cold. I know this. He has never said so. He is so simple sometimes, like a child himself, he has never complained, but I know he feels this in me, I know he feels this core within me which does not bend, which never yields. Love is divine, I know this, love is divine. He is so kind to me. He was so gentle, but he is a man of God, and I am cold.
I must, I wish, I must touch another human. Help me, oh please, help me. I cannot lose her, too. I have lost my younger child, how golden her hair was, and her smile, her eyes would light and she would rush to my arms and I would hold her tight against my breast. “Mandy,” I would say, but the name was alien to my tongue. “Amanda,” I would say, “Daughter,” cold, and the arms would sense, the eyes would cloud, but oh, oh, the golden sight of her hair, to kiss the top of her head, to hold her in my arms and kiss the top of her head freely without shame, I am so cold.
I was cold to him at first, tall and proud with his books under his arm. “I am a divinity student, Miss Bailey,” delivering the words with an aloofness of purpose, “I am a divinity student,” and I studied him with appreciative awe, but I said even then to myself, “Do not love him, do not love this man.” Ahh.
Ahhh.
I was a girl once.
She bit me once. Penelope. She bit my breast and the shock of it! I stared at her in my arms, my first child, I could feel her tiny teeth! I laughed. And then I cried. I put her back in her crib. I did not want her to see me crying.
God, help me. Please. Please!
She is my daughter. I know, I know, she is mine, I should not have let them take her from me.
I do not know myself sometimes, dear Lord. I hear myself saying things, and I do not know this person. I look at this grown-up person saying things, I do not recognize her. And no daughters.
I swear, I swear to You, I was not trying to create myself again in my daughters, I swear this to You. I did not interfere, she wanted to play piano, there was no money, You know that, there was none. But we gave her lessons, she played so well, I felt I would burst when I heard her play, but I never said. I watched only, and I listened, but I did not touch her hair. I did not interfere. I did not want Priscilla Soames twice again. They were new, so new, and smelling sweet as rain, both new, my daughters, my babies, I wanted them to be themselves.
Nothing.
Nothing now.
A daughter who has said to my face the things I only dared to say to myself, alone, said them aloud. They ring in my ears, they echo in my ears, said them to me aloud. I have lost her now. I have no daughter Amanda.
Penelope.
Help me, dear God. Should I let them do these things to her? Should I let them? But if she cannot talk, then how will they help her unless they do these things? My daughter, let me touch your hand.
Dear God, I once ran barefoot in the grass. I once picked a daisy.
Gillian saw her father suddenly and only from a distance. There was a brisk October breeze blowing through the city that day, and it attacked the eyes and made them water. Squinting against the wind, she wasn’t at all sure that the tall, redheaded man was actually her father. Or told herself he wasn’t. And then knew the man was Meredith Burke, knew without question, and watched him without shock, watched him as she would a slightly ridiculous figure in an old-fashioned movie. He had taken the young woman’s arm in a manner so courtly Gillian almost laughed aloud. He was leading her through the promenade, past the banks of shrubs, toward the golden statue of Prometheus overlooking the restaurants and the ice-skating rink. He did not see Gillian, and she pretended not to see him, but she remembered with sudden clarity her mother’s words — “What is there to say about my Meredith Burke and his little blond bookkeeper? What is there to say, Gillian?” There was nothing to say now, either. She watched them dispassionately and thought they made a striking couple, her father with his deep-red hair, and the girl’s head bent close to his as they walked, a bright natural blonde, very striking. How young she is, Gillian thought, he looks so old beside her. She felt curiously abandoned. She watched her father, and then quickly looked at the people on the sidewalk, wanting to know suddenly if they had all seen Meredith Burke and his bookkeeper, if they were as aware of him as his daughter was, and then silently condemning him for choosing a place as indiscreet as Rockefeller Center. She left quickly, seeking the shadowed anonymity of Forty-eighth Street.
She called him at the shoe store the next day. He didn’t recognize her voice at first.
“This is Gillian,” she told him. “Your daughter.”
“Well, Gilly!” he said, his voice booming onto the line. “Now, what a surprise!”
“How are you, Dad?”
“Fine, just fine. And yourself?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“Well, that’s marr-velous, Gilly. It’s good to hear your voice.”
“Dad, what are you doing for lunch today?”
“Why? What is it, Gilly?” he said. “Is something wrong?” There was a curious concern in his voice. She wondered for a moment whether the concern was for his bookkeeper or his daughter.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said quickly. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Oh? Who, Gilly? A young man?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause on the line. “Shall I have my shoes shined? Will he be proposing?”
“No, I don’t think so. I just wanted you to meet him.”