The Homemaker · Part III · Chapter 11 (2/2)

But as a matter of fact Teddy never had been near scarlet fever or anything else contagious. And even if he had, weren’t there ways of dry-cleaning and disinfecting that would leave the personality of the toy intact? You didn’t have to soak it in a tub of soapy water. What was the matter with wrapping it in an old cloth and baking it in the oven, as you do with bandages you want to sterilize. If anybody had had the slightest idea that Stephen felt as he did.⁠ ⁠… But nobody had! And that was the point.

He saw it now. Nothing turned on the question of whether Teddy should or should not be cleaned. That purely material matter could have been arranged by a little practical ingenuity if it had occurred to anybody that there was anything to arrange. The question really was why had it not occurred to anybody?

What was terrifying to Lester was the thought that the conception of trying to understand Stephen’s point of view had been as remote from their minds as the existence of the fourth dimension.

And even now that the violent shock of this little scene with Stephen had put the conception into his brain, how under the sun could you ever find out what was felt by a child who shut himself up so blackly in his stronghold of repellent silence?

Why had Stephen so shut himself up?

The question was as new to Lester as a question of the cause of the law of gravity. It had never occurred to him that perhaps Stephen had not been born that way.

But even a sullen stronghold of badness was better than that dreadful breakdown of human dignity. Lester felt he could never endure it again to have Stephen look into his face with that slavish, helpless searching of his eyes. No self-respecting human being could bear that look from another.

Could there be human beings⁠—women⁠—mothers⁠—who fattened on it, fought to keep that slave’s look in the eyes of children? He turned from this thought with a start.

Well, what good did all this thinking do him? Or Stephen? What could he do now, at once, to escape out of this prison and take Stephen with him?

With a heat of anger, he told himself that at least he could start in to make Stephen feel, hour by hour, in every contact with him, that he, even a little boy, had some standing in the world, inviolable by grownups, yes, sacred even to parents.

He breathed hard and flung out his arm.

For the first time he desired to get well, to live again.