"Judith Merril - That Only A Mother" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

comfortable thing to wear during the last few months. With a surge of pure
pleasure, the letter and newspaper forgotten, she realized she was on the next to the
last button. It wouldn't be long now.
The city in the early morning had always been a special kind of excitement for
her. Last night it had rained, and the sidewalks were still damp-gray instead of
dusty. The air smelled the fresher, to a city-bred woman, for the occasional
pungency of acrid factory smoke. She walked the six blocks to work, watching the
lights go out in the all-night hamburger joints, where the plate-glass walls were
already catching the sun, and the lights go on in the dim interiors of cigar stores
and dry-cleaning establishments.
The office was in a new Government building. In the rolovator, on the way up,
she felt, as always, like a frankfurter roll in the ascending half of an old-style rotary
toasting machine. She abandoned the air-foam cushioning gratefully at the
fourteenth floor, and settled down behind her desk, at the rear of a long row of
identical desks.
Each morning the pile of papers that greeted her was a little higher. These were,
as everyone knew, the decisive months. The war might be won or lost on these
calculations as well as any others. The manpower office had switched her here
when her old expeditor's job got to be too strenuous. The computer was easy to
operate, and the work was absorbing, if not as exciting as the old job. But you
didn't just stop working these days. Everyone who' could do anything at all was
needed.
AndтАФshe remembered the interview with the psychologistтАФI'm probably the
unstable type. Wonder what sort of neurosis I'd get sitting home reading that
sensational paperтАж
She plunged into the work without pursuing the thought.
February 18
Hank darling,
Just a noteтАФfrom the hospital, no less. I had a dizzy spell at work, and the
doctor took it to heart. Blessed if I know what I'll do with myself lying in bed for
weeks, just waitingтАФbut Dr. Boyer seems to think it may not be so long.
There are too many newspapers around here. More infanticides all the time, and
they can't seem to get a jury to convict any of them. It's the fathers who do it.
Lucky thing you're not around, in caseтАФ
Oh, darling, that wasn't a very funny joke, was it? Write as often as you can,
will you? I have too much time to think. But there really isn't anything wrong, and
nothing to worry about.
Write often, and remember I love you.
Maggie.
SPECIAL SERVICE TELEGRAM
February 21, 1953
 22:04 LK37G
From: Tech. Lieut. H. Marvell X47-016 GCNY
To: Mrs. H. Marvell Women's Hospital, New York City
HAD DOCTOR'S GRAM STOP WILL ARRIVE FOUR OH TEN
STOP SHORT LEAVE STOP YOU DID [IT] MAGGIE STOP LOVE
HANK
February 25
Hank dear,
So you didn't see the baby either? You'd think a place this size would at least