The Baby

Babysitter:
Nothing really happened, honest!

Mrs. Wadsworth:
Nothing happened? With your damn tit in his mouth, and you call that nothing? Lying b*tch!

Germaine Wadsworth:
You know, Scorpios really aren't cautious, just dangerous.

Mrs. Wadsworth:
Are you going to be Baby's new worker?

Ann Gentry:
I don't mind telling you, Mrs. Wadsworth, I made a special effort to get this assignment.

Mrs. Wadsworth:
Oh you did? And why is that?

Ann Gentry:
Well I, I heard about the case from one of the other workers, and it was impossible not to be interested.

Mrs. Wadsworth:
I see.

Ann Gentry:
I notice you call him Baby. And the case history doesn't show any other name; what is his real name?

Germaine Wadsworth:
Just Baby.

Ann Gentry:
What about the family income?

Mrs. Wadsworth:
Just what the county gives us for Baby.

Ann Gentry:
Your daughters, are they employed?

Mrs. Wadsworth:
Are my daughters... no, they help out the best they can, but it doesn't come to too much. Alba gives tennis lessons in the afternoon and Jermaine...

Germaine Wadsworth:
Once in a while I do a TV commercial.

Mrs. Wadsworth:
Sometimes I don't know how we make ends meet, but we always seem to manage.

Ann Gentry:
Isn't there any money from your husband's pension? Or his social security?

Mrs. Wadsworth:
Why no, how could there be?

Germaine Wadsworth:
[laughs] She thinks he's dead.

Mrs. Wadsworth:
[laughs] That man didn't die.

Germaine Wadsworth:
No such luck.

Mrs. Wadsworth:
It happened just before Baby was born. When I needed him most, he ran off and left us. But then all that's in the record.

Ann Gentry:
Oh I'm sure it is.

Mrs. Wadsworth:
My husband was a very weak man, Mrs. Gentry.

Germaine Wadsworth:
No character.

Mrs. Wadsworth:
None at all.

Ann Gentry:
And you've had no contact with him since he left?

Mrs. Wadsworth:
As far as I'm concerned, he might as WELL be dead.

Ann Gentry:
You do this every day, Mrs. Wadsworth?

Mrs. Wadsworth:
Have to, or the muscles'll go bad.

Ann Gentry:
His legs seem perfectly normal, I'm surprised he doesn't walk.

Mr. Fulley:
Ann, I'm not asking you to drop it, just pull back, compromise.

Ann Gentry:
Mr. Fulley, this case is full of compromise, and indifference, and criminal negligence, and we're responsible.

Mr. Fulley:
Ann, you exaggerate. Other workers have put time in on this case and they've come up with no significant results.

Ann Gentry:
None of those other workers spent enough time on the case to accomplish anything.

Mr. Fulley:
That's not true, one did, and...

Ann Gentry:
Yes, one did, and just when she was beginning to make progress, she disappeared.

Mr. Fulley:
People drop out of sight, it happens.

Ann Gentry:
Not very often.

Mr. Fulley:
Well the police looked into it, they were satisfied.

Ann Gentry:
But I'm not.

Ann Gentry:
When was the last time Baby was examined by a psychologist? Psychological tests to determine his mental range and physical reactions?

Germaine Wadsworth:
He had all those tests when he was a baby.

Ann Gentry:
But he must've had more tests since then.

Germaine Wadsworth:
No, there didn't seem to be any reason for it. Why?

Ann Gentry:
Nothing in particular, just a thought.

Ann Gentry:
Mrs. Wadsworth, if I could convince you that Baby is capable of growth and development, you wouldn't stand in his way, would you?

Mrs. Wadsworth:
Of course not, what mother would?

Ann Gentry:
Well then I think you should consider putting Baby into a special clinic for the retarded.

Mrs. Wadsworth:
Clinic? You mean like a hospital?

Ann Gentry:
Oh no, not like a hospital. It's a day clinic, more like a school, where Baby could be with other people like himself, it's really the best way, maybe the only way.

Ann Gentry:
I only thought...

Mrs. Wadsworth:
Maybe you think too much. When it comes to Baby, I do all the thinking.

Doctor:
What's your special interest in this case?

Ann Gentry:
Can you think of anything more horrible than being buried alive? Well that's what's happened to this client. He's been imprisoned by a kind of sick love. He's a normal full grown man, trapped with no way out.

Doctor:
There's something here I don't understand. If he isn't seriously retarded, then how do you account for the fact that he can't walk, talk?

Ann Gentry:
Negative reinforcement, some kind of consistent punishment to discourage him from normal learning.

Doctor:
That's a pretty serious charge.

Ann Gentry:
Well they're a pretty strange family, especially the mother. Each child is by a different man, and all of them abandoned her. Now the last one she was married to, Baby's father, and I think when he left, she never got over it. So she's taking revenge on the only male member of the family.