The Mask

Chapter 1

   Across the somber gray clouds lightning followed a jagged course like cracks on a china plate. In the unsheltered courtyard outside Alfred O' Brian's office, the parked cars glimmered briefly with hard-edged reflections of the storm light. The wind gusted, whipping the trees. Rain beat with fury against the three tall office windows, then streamed down the glass blurring the view beyond.
     O'Brian sat with his back to the windows. While thunder reverberated through the low sky and seemed to hammer on the roof of the building, he read the application that Paul and Carol Tracy had just submitted to him.
     He's such a neat little man, Carol thought as she watched O'Brian. When he sits very still like that, you'd almost think he was a mannequin.
He was exceedingly well groomed. His carefully combed hair looked as of it had received the attention of a good barber less than an hour ago. His moustache was so expertly trimmed that the halves of it appeared to be perfectly symmetrical. He was wearing a gray suit with trouser creases as tight and straight as blades, and his black shoes gleamed. His fingernails were carefully manicured, and his pink, well-scrubbed hands looked sterile.
     When Carol had been introduced to O'Brian less than a week ago, she had thought he was prim, even pissy, and she had been prepared to dislike him. She was quickly won over by his smile, by his gracious manner, by his sincere disire to help her and Paul.
     She glanced at Paul , who was sitting in the chair next to hers, his own tensions betrayed by the angular position of his lean, usually graceful body. He was intently watching O'Brian, but when he sensed Carol was looking at him, he turned and smiled. His smile was even nicer than O'Brian's, and as usual,  Carol's spirits were lifted by the sight of it. He was neither handsome nor ugly, this man she loved, you might even say he was plain, yet his face was enormously appealing because the pleasing, open 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 Modern 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 she would 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 anytime in the four years since their wedding. In short, their qualifications for adoting 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 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 conceieve a child of her own flesh and blood.
     The thing we want, she thought, is always the thing we cannot have.