The Doctor's Wife

by Elizabeth Brundage

  Lydia examined the photographs. The child, who was three, didn’t look right.

  “She’s got Down’s syndrome,” Patty explained. “I guess that’s just the way the Lord wanted her. But we still think she’s beautiful.”

  “She is beautiful, Patty.”

  “I’ve got three others. All girls, can you believe that? Oldest one’s in college. You have any children yet?”

  Lydia shook her head. Unexpectedly, something kicked over in her belly and her throat went tight. Then, from somewhere deep, she heard herself admit, “We lost a baby, once.” It was something she’d never told anyone. “My husband didn’t want it,” she said.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” Patty said.

  Lydia felt tears streaming down her cheeks. “I don’t know why I just told you.”

  “I’m so sorry, honey.”

  “I was fourteen.”

  Patty shook her head and took Lydia’s hand. “Sometimes we go through things, Lord knows why.”

  “It’s been ten years but I still think about it.”

  “You never forget a loss like that, honey.” Patty squeezed her hand.

  “And I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

  Lydia and Patty became good friends after that. They ate lunch together in the employee lunchroom. They smoked together outside. Lydia never seemed to have cigarettes and Patty always gave her one. Patty smoked Salem Menthols and Lydia liked the taste of them. Patty was almost like a mother to her. Several weeks went by and one afternoon on one of their cigarette breaks Patty glanced around covertly and lowered her voice to a raspy hush. “We’ve been wanting to ask you to join our group,” she said. “A couple of us from church.”

  “What kind of group?” Lydia said.

  “From church. Let’s don’t talk about it here. Can you come to a meeting tonight?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

  “Well, let me give you some of our literature. You can read up on our cause and let us know.” Patty’s eyes were a blazing shade of blue, and the expression on her face made Lydia think the woman was capable of anything. “I thought, well, when you told me—” She stopped suddenly. “Here, it’s pretty self-explanatory.” She handed Lydia a pamphlet on pink paper. “I know you’re committed to leading a good Christian life.” Lydia glanced at the pamphlet. The cover had a picture of a pregnant woman on it with a crucifix drawn across her belly. The cross turned into a dagger at the bottom, heading for the woman’s womb. The woman’s head had the special tilt of the Virgin Mother, only there were tears falling from her eyes.

  “We’ve got a lot of interesting people involved. Educated people. People from the college. I think you’ll be impressed. You know Reverend Tim. Well, he’s our leader. He’s just a wonderful man. I’ve been involved for a few months now. It’s changed my life.” Patty paused, trying to put the intensity of her feelings into words. “Suddenly everything made sense. It was like I woke up one day and I didn’t question anything, I just knew what I had to do.”

  After work, Lydia drove over to the church and found Patty in the big room they used for recreation. “Good for you for coming, Lydia. Come over here and have a seat.”

  “Thank you.”

  A few other people were already there, people she recognized from Sunday service. Somebody took her hand and showed her where to sit. It was the woman from the beauty parlor in town. Lydia had always been afraid of the woman and had never gone into the shop because of it. But now she was sitting right next to her, and it felt all right. Some of the people had brought their kids and they were off to the side on the floor, coloring or doing homework or playing with toys. The walls of the room were pistachio green, and the chairs were uncomfortable metal and made fart noises whenever you moved. People would look at you with scandal in their eyes. Lydia noticed Reverend Tim standing in the corner, talking quietly to a man in a postal uniform. He had his hand on the man’s shoulder in what seemed to Lydia as a gesture of comfort. Patty came over and sat down next to Lydia and squeezed her hand. Reverend Tim walked over wearing an easy smile. He had a boyish face under his yellow baseball cap. He had on a crisp white oxford shirt, khaki pants, and penny loafers. “I see we’ve got a newcomer,” he said, smiling at Lydia. “Well, that’s just great. Welcome, Mrs. Haas.”

  Reverend Tim sat down at the front of the room and began to talk. She could see he had on argyle socks. “I just hoped we could share our perspectives on things,” he said, “in an informal manner.” He cocked his head and smiled as if he were somewhere far away for a moment. “Life is full of chaos, I know you all feel that from time to time. The complexities we face drive us to make certain choices. One man chooses order, another chooses disorder. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t see too many happy people around. You think the system works? Well, then, explain the confusion I see on your faces. Explain to me the bitterness and dissatisfaction. How can a person be content if they can’t trust their government to do the right thing? How can an individual be content living in a society that condones the murdering of innocent children?” People had given up, he said. They didn’t have anything to believe in. There was no real trust, no real devotion, no purity of expression. “What this world needs is for us to get down to basics. If you’re a man, go out and work. Support your families. Provide for the people you love. And if you’re a woman, well, then use your blessed gifts and raise your children. Raise up your children like flowers under the sun. Be fruitful and multiply and you will be blessed and Jesus will reward you.”

  They were all there for the same reason, and that comforted Lydia. They all had problems in their lives, and they wanted to fix them. They wanted to make a better world. It made them feel good about one another, and it encouraged them to move forward, without judgment, to a higher place, where they were closer to God, where they could feel His concentration, His warm, brilliant light.

  They went around in a circle, each one sharing a problem or concern in turn: an alcoholic wife, a drug-addicted child, a mother who’d gone senile. When they came to Lydia she began to stutter. She wasn’t comfortable sharing her problems with strangers. “My husband,” she began haltingly. “We don’t have the same religious views. He doesn’t understand my commitment to Jesus.”

  They nodded sympathetically, and to her relief nobody had any comments.

  After the meeting Reverend Tim came up to Lydia and took her arm. She felt a little nervous with him. He looked at her closely, examining the details of her face, and touched her shoulder. “I’m grateful that you’re with us, Lydia.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Forgive my candor, but you look like you could use a friend.”

  She felt her face going gray and hazy, like a TV screen full of snow.

  “Come down to the study, we’ll have a little talk.” He took her arm and looped it through his and they walked down the corridor like a newly married couple tingling with future plans. He had a crooked rhythm to his walk and she found herself adapting to it, slowing her body down, and she wondered how he had acquired the disability. She didn’t dare ask. They went into the study and sat down together on the couch. The upholstery was the color of applesauce and the Oriental rug spiraled in hues of green and blue. He touched her hand. “Mrs. Haas? May I call you Lydia?”

  She nodded.

  “I’d like to be able to help you if I can. If there’s something I can do, anything, please just let me know.” His was an ordinary face, boyish and sincere, the sort of face she may have seen before, at the supermarket, at the post office, at the five-and-dime. A scar the size of a fingernail hung over his left eye like an apostrophe, lending his overall appearance a sense of astonishment. Looking into his blue eyes, she felt peaceful, calm. “I’m sorry about your husband, that you’re not communicating.”

  “It’s hard sometimes, that’s all.”

  Reverend Tim smiled thoughtfully. “I’m proud of you, Lydia. Coming over here on your own. It’s not easy stepping outside your marriage for a la
rger cause, and I admire you for doing it.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “Marriage is a challenge for us all. You’re not alone. Try not to forget that.”

  “We’ve grown apart.” Her eyes blurred over with tears. “He doesn’t love me anymore.”

  She began to cry openly and he pulled her close, holding her like a father. Not her father, no, he’d never held her like that, but the way she’d seen fathers on TV hold their daughters, with sympathy and compassion. Lydia cried for several minutes feeling his strong hands on her back. It came to her, during those moments, that she could trust Reverend Tim, and she opened up to him. In a torrent of words she revealed things about her past, private things. Her childhood had been difficult without her mother, she told him. Her father scarcely let her out of his sight. He’d put cornstarch in her hair to dull the shine and dressed her in itchy wool clothes in the somber colors of the earth. He clipped stories from the newspapers and taped them on the walls of her room. One story was more awful than the next: murders, suicides, rapes, hurricanes, massive floods. Her father wanted to warn her, to frighten her, but those people, those victims, were like relatives to her. She knew their stories by heart. Reverend Tim listened carefully, showing little reaction. Suddenly, his beeper went off. “I’m needed at the hospital.”

  When she gave him a confused look, he explained that he was one of the chaplains.

  “It shouldn’t take long. Why don’t you come along?”

  She glanced at her watch; Simon would be expecting her at home. Reverend Tim squeezed her hand. “It may do you some good, you know. And it’ll give us more time together to talk. I’d really like to get to know you, Lydia.” He sat back and watched her for a moment. “You know, sometimes you’ve got to cross over to the other side. It’s hard, I know, but once you get there you realize that it was well worth the effort, the risk. I think we fear change the most in life, yet sometimes it’s just what we need to make us better people.”

  She didn’t know what to say to him. She nodded her head and followed him outside to his car. Like the gentleman he was, he opened the door for her and she got in. “We will do good work together, Lydia,” he said when he got into the car. “I had that sense about you when I first saw you, and I have that sense about you now. God bless you.”

  They left the church in Reverend Tim’s black Cutlass and drove together into Albany, down streets that seemed foreign to her, and strange. She did not often go to the city—Simon did not permit it—and for the first time Lydia felt that she was on her own, independent from Simon and his complicated life. Reverend Tim opened a bottle of water and drank from it thirstily, holding the bottle in his hand as he pointed things out to her. She felt as though she were seeing the world for the first time. “Jesus walks these streets,” he told her. “You look in the windows, you learn about this good country. Families sitting down together, saying prayers over plates of supper. Where does the chaos start?” He looked at her, waiting for an answer. She didn’t have one. “Right here.” He tapped his chest. “In your heart.”

  He turned down New Scotland and went over to the hospital, winding up through the parking garage to the very top. Out on the roof, he took her to the edge to look down on the city. The sky was purple with dusk. It was almost like a painting, she thought, with all the colors of the row houses: yellow, mint green, muddy brown. She suddenly thought of her husband, and it was as if someone were pinching her heart.

  Lydia followed Reverend Tim into the soupy warmth of the bright corridor. The receptionist nodded a greeting to him and he smiled importantly. Reverend Tim took Lydia’s arm and pulled her into the crowded elevator. She could feel Jesus peering down at them like an overgrown boy. If we are not careful, we will all break in Your clumsy fingers, she told Him in her head.

  They got off on nine, the critical care unit, and she followed him down the corridor to one of the rooms. “You’d better wait out here,” he said softly. He pulled several coins out of his pocket. “There’s a waiting room down the hall with a candy machine.”

  He went into the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. A woman lay in the bed, surrounded by her family; she was dead. Reverend Tim embraced an older man—the woman’s husband, Lydia imagined—while the two sons stood in their overcoats with their hands at their sides. Lydia wandered down the hall into the waiting room and found the candy machine. She fed the coins into the machine and purchased a PayDay bar, even though she had no appetite. The candy tasted like plastic, lumpy down her throat. She sat for a few minutes on one of the orange chairs. It was strange to be here with Reverend Tim. It was strange to be away from Simon for so long and she knew, when she returned home, there’d be a scene.

  She felt someone’s hand on her shoulder. Reverend Tim smiled down at her. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  They took the stairs down to another floor and she followed him over to a window that looked in on brand-new babies, all pink and bundled in little flannel blankets. Images of her own brief pregnancy flurried through her mind: her sickness, how Simon in the night had carried her to the car, how she’d woken up to see the sun glimmering on the skyscrapers, the countless silver windows, the countless rooms filled with strangers.

  “Now, this is what we’re all about,” Reverend Tim said gently. “They’re really something, aren’t they?”

  Lydia nodded, her eyes going moist.

  “I don’t care what anybody says, it’s a miracle every time one of these babies is born. A blessed miracle. I’ve dedicated my life to these children.”

  Looking at his face, bright with excitement, she had a queer feeling inside, a sense of deep purpose, as if she were in the presence of a saint. It made her want to sing and shout. She thought she might do anything for this man.

  He took her arm again and led her down the hall and around the corner to the neonatal intensive care unit. These windows had curtains, but they weren’t closed all the way. A baby lay in an incubator, its tiny body complicated with so many intravenous lines it resembled a marionette. “You see that child? Even in his compromised state he’s made a choice. Life over death. He’s begging Jesus for his life this very minute. That child’s life is in God’s hands, nobody else’s. Not the doctor’s. Not the parents’. If he dies, which may very well be for the best, it’ll be God’s decision. Nobody else’s.”

  Back in the car they drove for a while in silence. She was not uncomfortable with the silence. In this case it seemed appropriate, even meaningful. He rolled down his window, allowing the cool air into the car. They drove around Washington Park, working their way down narrow one-way streets, then twisted around to Muldeen Avenue. He cut the lights, pulled along the curb, and stopped in front of a small house with a screened front porch. A single lamp was lit on the second floor.

  He punched a number into his cellular phone, and when the person picked up he spoke in a calm, even voice. “Hello, Dr. James, it’s me again. Take a look outside your window.”

  Lydia could see a woman pulling aside the curtain. The lamp went off. “What do you want?” the woman shouted into the phone, loud enough for Lydia to hear.

  “Now, now, just settle down. We’re not going to get anywhere if we fight. I just wanted you to know that I’m out here for you, any time you want to talk. You know what we want you to do, Celina. You know it’s the right thing. Even your grandmother, if she were alive today, would tell you the same thing, wouldn’t she? She was the one who raised you. Not your mama. Your mama didn’t want you, did she? If it hadn’t been for your grandmother and her respect for Jesus Christ, you’d have been sucked out and flushed down the toilet. Now I heard you got yourself some help over there. But he won’t last long. I can promise you that.”

  “You stay away from him!” the woman shouted.

  Reverend Tim shook his head. “We just want you to stop, that’s all, ma’am. Stop killing those poor innocent children. And then we’ll leave you alone. It’s as simp
le as that. All you have to do is stop.”

  The woman on the other end was cursing now, and then she hung up. Reverend Tim gave Lydia a satisfied look. He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Thank you for tonight. Thank you for showing me that I can trust you.”