The Doctor's Wife

by Elizabeth Brundage

  “It’s just the drugs.” She lights a cigarette off the first and gets up, roams the room like a restless animal. “You don’t remember me, do you?” He doesn’t move, concentrating on focusing. His heart twisting. His mouth like he’s swallowed warm sand. “Jack’s party. We had a conversation in his kitchen.”

  Jack?

  “I cut myself. My husband was so embarrassed. He nearly knocked my teeth out when he got me home.” She laughs and then it slams into him: Lydia Haas, the painter’s wife.

  Yes. “I remember,” he manages. “In the kitchen.”

  He’d gotten paged and went to use the phone. She was at the table, doodling on a pad of paper the way a child draws, her mouth tight, making flowers, hearts, rainbows, gripping the pencil awkwardly.

  “I was drinking vodka,” she reminds him. “There was a great big knife and I went oops with the big knife, didn’t I? I went oops,” she says in a baby voice.

  He hadn’t done much, he recalls. Wrapped her up with a napkin, then went and found her a Band-Aid.

  “I liked you right away,” she says. “You listened to me. You put your ego in your pocket. You weren’t a big show-off like your wife.”

  “It was a fun party,” he says just to keep her talking.

  “No, it was not fun.”

  “Why not?”

  She goes quiet suddenly and shakes her head, then stands up and begins to gather her things. Their visit is over. A slow deep agony flourishes in his ribs. His breathing is shallow, labored. Just the turn of his head sends the pain down his spine.

  “Why?” he says, his voice a ragged whisper. “Why are you doing this?”

  “He told me to,” she says in a singsong voice. “For the ghost in my womb.”

  “Ghost?” he spits uselessly.

  This makes her quiet. She stands up, weaving slightly. “I don’t want to talk about my ghost right now. Anyway, you wouldn’t understand.”

  “I will,” he says. “I’m a doctor. I understand about ghosts.”

  She turns, her face in the shadows.

  “There was somebody else, wasn’t there? You had help getting me here.”

  “No.”

  “I remember someone. A man’s voice.”

  “You don’t have to worry about him.”

  “He may tell someone. The police.” He cannot disguise the hope in his voice.

  “No. Not even a remote possibility. I’m very thorough, Michael, that’s something you need to realize about me. When I set my mind to something. No loose ends.” She drops the cigarette to the floor and puts it out with her shoe. “The car wasn’t supposed to catch fire. That was my little bonus.” She smiles. “See what I mean? No loose ends. No tattletales.”

  It comes to him that he is completely at her mercy.

  “You need to rest now.” She climbs the stairs.

  “Please, don’t leave me here.”

  “You’ll be fine, Michael. Don’t be a scaredy-cat.”

  He remembers his hands, bound together at the wrists. “Untie my hands at least.”

  “Not yet. You need to sleep and you won’t do that if you have your hands. Try to remember that I know you, Michael, I know the way you think.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “In a strange way, we’re almost like family.” She laughs. “Now, get some sleep.” The door slams and locks.

  I will not sleep, he tells himself. But he can’t hold on. Shivering, he feels himself sinking into the smothering darkness.

  11

  ANNIE SEARCHES Michael’s drawers, the pockets of his trousers, looking for something she may have missed, some courier of fate that may have predicted his death, but finds nothing. She topples over the basket of laundry and searches the pockets of Michael’s dirty pants. A slip of paper comes out in her hand. There’s a name on it: Theresa Sawyer.

  She hears a car crunching up the driveway and glances out the window. It’s Bascombe’s blue cop car. She hurries downstairs and opens the door.

  “They’ve completed the autopsy,” he tells her. “Dr. Singh wants to see you.”

  “I’ll get my bag.”

  She leaves the children with Christina and they ride into Albany in Bascombe’s car. The weather is treacherous, all sleet and freezing rain. “Not exactly four-wheel drive,” he says, trying to make a joke. She attempts a smile, but her heart pounds and she’s afraid she is going to cry. Sleet pierces the windshield, and it begins to hail. The bare branches of the trees are clawlike, monstrous. The sky is unusually dark, tinged with a watery fluorescence. Bascombe turns off the expressway and weaves up to the hospital. People hurry down the sidewalks under umbrellas as the hail pummels them with menace. It is a strange scene, the yellow hail like an alien presence. Bascombe glances at her. “Hail fucking Mary.”

  Singh is expecting them. A yellow folder sits before him on the desk. Bascombe pulls out a chair for her, and Annie sits down. “I’ll come directly to the point, Mrs. Knowles. We have determined that the man they found near the car is not your husband.”

  As if someone has pulled a white shroud over her head, the room goes hazy and white. Her body spins. Did I hear him right? Singh’s obeisant assistant gets her some water.

  “The first indication was in his mouth. The deceased’s teeth are either completely decayed or missing. After consulting your husband’s dental records, we found that he was quite meticulous about his teeth.” Annie pictures Michael’s mouth, his white teeth and easy grin. “Once we got into the chest, we discovered a pacemaker.”

  “My husband didn’t have one,” she says softly, nearly disbelieving.

  “We traced the registration number on the cardiac device. The man who was burned in your husband’s car was a drifter from Utica. His name was Walter Ooms.”

  “Does that name mean anything to you, Mrs. Knowles?” Bascombe asks.

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “I made a copy of the report for you, Detective.”

  Bascombe takes the file. He puts on his bifocals and reads over the report. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “You’re quite welcome,” Singh says.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here.” Bascombe takes Annie’s arm, but she pulls away.

  “I need to see him one more time,” she says. “I need to make sure.”

  Without hesitation, Singh’s assistant pulls the body out and swiftly lowers the sheet. Annie stares at the burned body for a long time. Her eyes roam the outlines of his shape. “Did he steal the car?” she asks no one in particular.

  “Possibly,” Bascombe says.

  She turns toward him, shaking. “Do you think he’s alive?”

  Bascombe sighs, says nothing.

  She grabs hold of his arms. “Please, Detective, you’ve got to find him.”

  “We’ll do everything we can, Mrs. Knowles.”

  “No, that’s not good enough. Please. Please! You’ve got to find him!”

  Bascombe raises his eyes slowly, with pity, and pulls her toward him and holds her in his arms. This display of emotion overwhelms her and she starts to cry. “I will find him, Mrs. Knowles,” the detective promises. “I will find him.”

  PART TWO

  Flesh

  12

  ALBANY WAS A CITY that wept bitterly and did not apologize for its weeping, a city of pale brick buildings, faces like spoiled potatoes pulled from the dirt, acres of row houses, churches, firehouses, pale stricken faces, and faces yellowed like the pages of old books. Michael Knowles was the youngest of three partners in a small private obstetrics and gynecology group adjacent to the hospital, in the Medical Arts Building on Hackett Boulevard. St. Vincent’s Hospital was a sprawling edifice with overcrowded floors, overscheduled doctors, and discontented nurses. Dour nuns roamed the narrow corridors, which were painted a sallow shade of mustard yellow and reeked of paint whenever they ran the heat, which was almost always, no matter the temperature or season. The windows had been painted shut that summer, and the air-conditioning, which his
sed and chortled in earnest, wafted sticky malodorous air all throughout the building. Michael had been born there, as had his own children, and it was the oldest teaching hospital in the city, one in which many of the attending physicians, including himself, engaged in bedside teaching. He worked tirelessly, and when he left the office at the end of the day it was never without a heady sense of relief. Over the years, he had grown accustomed to the routines of private practice, the growing bonds he felt with the nurses and residents, the patients who looked to him for guidance. The satisfaction he felt in healing them. His patients were various and wore the scars of a complicated age. Some came with bruises, strange torturous marks. One patient had severe burns on her ankles; she was three months pregnant at the time. When he questioned her she shrugged dumbly, her apathy obvious as her cologne. She gave birth in the fifth month to a mangled creature the size of his fist. Abuse of one form or another was common, even routine. There were days when he questioned his whole existence. There were days when he wondered why he’d become a doctor and even regretted it. The work was often grueling and continually exhausted and frustrated him. But then there were good days, when a patient would confide in him, when she would share her deepest admissions and seek his advice. Or when he treated a difficult problem, either with drugs or surgery, returning the health that the illness would have devoured, watching pain vanish from a face that has been distorted by suffering, that made all the rest of it worthwhile. It was what kept him going.

  It was why he agreed to help Celina James.

  She paged him one morning in early August, just after he’d finished his rounds. He called the number and a woman answered the phone in a chipper voice. “Free Women’s.”

  “It’s Dr. Knowles,” he said. “Somebody paged me.”

  “Oh, yes, please hold for Dr. James.”

  A moment later she came on the phone. “Hello, Michael.” Her voice brought on a swarm of memories.

  “Celina. I can’t believe it. What’s it been, ten years?”

  “Twelve, darling. Time flies when you’re having fun.”

  “How’ve you been?”

  “Dandy. And you?”

  “Working like a dog,” he said.

  “I’m intensely curious to see how you’ve aged.”

  “Badly,” he said.

  “I doubt that.”

  “All work and no play.”

  “Poor baby.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Actually, I have a proposition for you,” she said softly. She hesitated, then asked if he would meet her for lunch.

  He didn’t usually take lunch, but he supposed, for her, he could make an exception and told her so.

  “Oh, goody.” Her voice warmed with enthusiasm. “How about Lombardo’s, one o’clock?”

  “All right.” When he hung up he realized he’d broken a sweat. What could she possibly want from him? Standing there in the hospital corridor, he felt her presence return like a fast, alarming storm. They’d been lovers, briefly, during their residency and although it had been a long time ago he had not forgotten her.

  Their relationship had started at a party one of the residents had thrown: postcall intoxication fest—a lot of people drinking enormous quantities of gin out of stolen beakers. Celina was there with some girlfriends; he noticed her immediately. She had, he recalled, the lithe build of a dancer, an angular elegance. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her. They’d worked together in the ER a few times. Once or twice they’d shared a table in the cafeteria, shoveling their food down in the welcome silence. He had known she was from Albany, but unlike him she had not gone to the academy, and their paths had never crossed. Michael was two years ahead of her; she was a wide-eyed intern when they met, eager to please, a beautiful black face in a crowd of dreary, overworked white students. He’d heard she was the smartest in her class.

  Although he denied it in those days, Michael was a lightweight when it came to alcohol, but the liquor was a lousy excuse because he wanted her, there was no doubt about it. And much later, in the wee hours, they stumbled down the hall together and made love, rather savagely, in a stranger’s bed. The affair continued for a few months after that. They shared impassioned interludes in the call rooms between shifts, ripping off their scrubs for what they joyfully called stat satisfaction. And it was satisfying, deeply satisfying, until he met Annie. Convinced that Annie was the woman he wanted to marry, he broke off his relationship with Celina, explaining that he was returning home to Albany for his infertility fellowship and it would be too difficult to maintain a long-distance relationship. Several months later, after his and Annie’s engagement, he ran into Celina at a medical conference in Philadelphia. He didn’t like to think about it now, but they’d gone up to her room after a few drinks and taken a shower together, among other things. They had what he liked to think of as a sexual connection, nothing more, which was not to diminish his feelings for her; he admired her greatly, and considered her to be one of the best clinicians in their field.

  But Celina had a reputation that often got her into trouble. She flaunted her intelligence; in some circles she shoved it down people’s throats. Her arrogance offended people. The fact that she was African American and had clawed her way out of the slums of Arbor Hill to attend Harvard on a full scholarship meant little to her. She’d never liked Boston. He remembered her saying it was a city for white people. When she’d finished her training, she’d come back to Albany and, with the help of a handful of wealthy libertarians, started a small family-planning clinic, an abortion clinic, on South Pearl Street, in her old neighborhood, taking over an old dilapidated bowling alley. Upon its completion, the clinic inspired a prickly controversy among the city’s politicians.

  Lombardo’s was an Albany institution, a bustling Italian restaurant with a dwindling old-world elegance. Michael stepped into the narrow dining room with its black-and-white mosaic floors and red leather booths, murals of Italy on the walls. He spotted Celina immediately, sitting at a small table in the back and reviewing a stack of files. She was still beautiful, he thought, maybe even more so now. The only evidence that she’d aged was the pair of bifocals she wore on her nose, but she promptly removed them when she saw him. She’d acquired a woman’s sophistication, he thought, a penetrating gaze of wisdom.

  “Celina James.”

  “In the flesh.” She flashed her famous grin, and stood up and shook his hand. “You can do better than that, can’t you?”

  She clutched his arm and pulled him toward her for a kiss, and he lingered there at her cheek a moment longer than he should have. She smiled. “That’s much better.”

  “It’s good to see you, Dr. James.”

  “Been a long time. You look”—she paused—“married.”

  He laughed. “Do I?”

  “She looks good on you.”

  He slid into the booth and for a moment they sat there appraising each other.

  “I never thought you’d come back here.” I never thought I’d see you again.