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"I'll be darned if I go back to Grace's house ever again," Joyce said one evening as we drove home from a bridge party. And so, not knowing we were victims of a familiar behavior pattern, we launched ourselves into Stage II.

We dropped all social contacts. Whenever we received an invitation, it seemed easier to beg off -- we had to take care of Eddie.

Taking care of him was a major job. From birth, he lacked the instinct to take nourishment. We frantically forced milk and baby food down his throat to keep him from starving. But after two years, we were proud of our accomplishments. He still could not walk or talk. But he was eating.

When his fourth birthday came around, Eddie had learned to walk. The three of us had a birthday party for him. The highlight came when Joyce placed a cake with four lighted candles before him. We waited, hardly daring to breathe, until he leaned forward and solemnly blew out the candles.

"Darling, he did it!" Joyce fairly screamed. "He blew them out!"

Tears rolled down her cheeks. I could only guess at the hours she had spent with him, practicing this simple act. I smiled to show my pleasure, and Eddie watched with his vacant, other-world expression.

But even patience and courage must be limited by human endurance. Joyce was fast approaching the breaking point. She was 20 pounds underweight, and actually looked older than her mother.

I made my first visit to Dr. Green since the night he had told us of Eddie's condition. When I told him about Joyce, he shared my alarm. He advised placing Eddie in a special school. He named several and I filed the idea for future use.

A few days later, Eddie slipped out of the house while Joyce napped. It took her an hour to find him sitting on a curb three blocks away. "He might have been killed," she told me over and over. "He might have been run over by a truck and killed!"

I stroked her tangled hair, its shine lost long ago in her preoccupation with Eddie, and Joyce gradually relaxed.

"Darling, you must get some rest," I said. "It won't be for long, but let's place Eddie in a special school where they build an environment designed to . . ."

Joyce sprang from my arms. "No," she cried. "You'll never take Eddie from me!" Then she ran to his room and locked the door from the inside. For hours, only the singsong of a lullaby reached me. I knew she was holding Eddie on her lap, rocking him.

Two days later, Joyce contracted pneumonia and Dr. Green rushed her to the hospital. "I'm going to keep her there for a two months' convalescence," he said to me. "You get Eddie in one of those schools I told you about."

That was how Eddie was placed in the school of exceptional children. Like Eddie, each lived in a special world of his own. But instead of attempting to train them for the world we know and adapt to, the teachers had created an environment in which the exceptional child was the norm.

Meantime, rest and care worked their curative powers with Joyce. After two months, we brought her home. During her absence, I had engaged Mrs. Jordan, a practical nurse, to relieve Joyce of housework and keep her company during the readjustment period. And those first weeks after my wife came home were in many ways like the first months of our marriage.

We went to church, to the theater, to parties. Once a week we visited Eddie at the school. I believed Joyce had now accepted Eddie's idiocy. Only one worry remained for me.

"I want you two to have more children," Dr. Green had said. "The only way Joyce can be happy is by lavishing her love on other children."

When I considered my own desires for a large family, I knew nothing could please me more. Joyce once had shared these desires. But with Eddie's birth she changed. At first she argued she was too busy with Eddie to have more children. Later I sensed in her frigidity the determination never to have another child.

In all outward respects, Joyce seemed fully recovered, although the fixation against more children remained. Then Eddie's fifth birthday came. Joyce asked me to bring him home for the week end. "I'll take him back Monday morning," she said.

It seemed a harmless request, and I agreed. But when I came in from work Monday evening, I found the house dark. Mrs. Jordan was not there. I went upstairs. The door to Eddie's room was locked.

"Joyce, are you in there?" I called. No answer.

I heard footsteps, then the click of the lock. In the dim light I saw her standing in the doorway, holding him in her arms.

"Eddie isn't going back," she said quietly. "He wants to stay with me. He's much happier here -- aren't you, Eddie?"

"Where is Mrs. Jordan?"

"We don't need her now. I told her she could go."

When I phoned Dr. Green, he advised me to leave her alone. "Joyce's mind may be permanently injured if you take Eddie from her now," he said.

For the next few weeks, Joyce acted as if the period of her illness and recovery were blanked from memory. Once again, I saw her fade. Her hair hung straight and unkempt. Sometimes I heard her coughing long after she went to bed in Eddie's nursery, where she had set up a cot beside his crib.