I had no appetite and stuck with toast. Ditto Dan, who looked absolutely exhausted after his night in the chair. We said little during breakfast—our conversation restricted to the checklist that Dan made up of things we’d have to do immediately to get ourselves out of that damn motel.
Still, the Pelham bush telegraph was seriously up and running, because by the time we reached the doctor’s office, a mere three-minute walk from Miss Pelham’s, a small welcoming party was already in place. I knew Nurse Bass from our previous visit—a very tall, very thin woman in her late thirties with permanently exhausted eyes and heavily chewed fingernails. But the other two were strangers. Nurse Bass was all business, telling Dan how she had heard Dr. Bland complain about leaky pipes at home in the past, how she was willing to look after Jeffrey during the day over the coming weekend so we could get ourselves sorted out, and when he had a minute to spare this morning, there was a ten-year-old boy in a nearby parish who was complaining of bad stomach pains, which could be appendicitis, and if he wouldn’t mind doing a house call . . .
“Looks like you’re going to have to bunk upstairs for a while,” the nurse said, turning her attention to me. “It’s not much—and I’ll admit it, I kind of didn’t look after the place when I was living there. But still, it wasn’t much before I moved in. And Billy here . . .”
Billy was a chunky guy in his early thirties with a wild mop of carrot-colored hair, a cliff of big buckteeth, and a goofy grin on his face. He was dressed in paint-splattered overalls and a Red Sox cap.
“Sure still isn’t much up there,” he said, interrupting her. “Sure needs some money spent on it.”
“Money’s something we don’t have much of,” I said. I felt a light but telling kick on the leg from Dan, who jumped in and said, “What Hannah means is . . .”
“No need to explain,” said the short woman, “’cause I know what it’s like, just out of med school, on an intern’s salary, with a baby, trying to make a start somewhere. Heck, that was my brother’s situation when he came back to Pelham to start his practice here.”
She pumped my hand vigorously, then did the same to Dan.
“Delores Bland, by the way. Bet you folks slept real bad last night, ’cause no one sleeps well at that motel. But hey, into every life a little rain must fall, and the good news is I’ve got our insurance man on the job right now at the house, and I’ve just sent a telegram to Ben in Africa, telling him what happened, and I know that if you have to spend some money fixing up the apartment, the practice will reimburse you, ’cause that apartment’s gonna be a good rental investment once it gets yanked into the 1970s, and hey, if you’re looking for some entertainment tonight, well the production I saw of Li’l Abner at my school . . . just as good as Broadway, I tell you. Not that I’ve ever seen a Broadway show, but still . . .”
Nurse Bass rolled her eyes and said, “Sorry to interrupt your life story, Delores, but I’ve got kids to get back to. So if you wouldn’t mind . . .”
The doctor’s office was located in a plain two-story clapboard house. There was an old-style open staircase at the back of the building. We all trooped up it to a door that was just about hanging on to its hinges and a torn mosquito screen. When we walked inside, my first reaction was, “Oh God . . .”
The apartment was very, very small: one cramped bedroom, a living room that was around twelve feet square, an alcove kitchen with vintage appliances (including a twenty-year-old fridge with the cooling element on its roof), and a bathroom with rusty drains. The wallpaper was peeling in places, all the furniture was sagging, all the ceilings were low, and there was a general aroma of dampness emanating from the threadbare carpet.
“This isn’t great,” Dan said.
“Well, can’t say I disagree with you,” Delores Bland said. “The problem is, you’ve got to live in town. That’s the deal . . .”
“I know,” Dan said quietly. An agreement had been made between the municipal authority of Pelham and their resident doctor that he would live within the town limits, so as to be permanently on call and within a five-minute drive of most residents.
“Let’s go back to the house,” I said, “and see if there’s any possibility that the damage might not be as bad as . . .”
Delores Bland shook her head. “Architect told me this morning there’s no way this place’ll be habitable for months.”
“Well, surely there’s somewhere else in town that’s rentable,” I said.
“Nope,” Nurse Bass said.
“Are you absolutely positive?” I asked.
“Small place, Pelham,” she said. “Everyone knows when anything’s up for rent. And there’s nothing right now.”
“Would it be okay to talk to the architect directly?” I asked.
“If it makes you feel better, Mrs. Buchan,” Delores Bland said.
So we walked over to Dr. Bland’s waterlogged house. The architect was there. He was named Sims; a rail-thin man in his late forties, with horn-rimmed glasses, a tattersall shirt, a clip-on tie.
“Came by here months ago to do a survey for a new back porch that the doctor’s wife wanted,” he said, “and told her then and there that the place needed new plumbing. Wish they’d listened to me.”
“Are you absolutely certain, Mr. Sims, that the house is out of bounds for us?”
“The water damage is extensive. And coupled with the dry rot that I’ve found everywhere . . . well, put it this way: I hope Dr. and Mrs. Bland have a very comprehensive insurance policy. They are certainly going to need every available penny to put things right. I’d say the work will take three months. Maybe more.”
As we all walked back to the apartment, my eyes scanned the six or so shops and offices that lined Main Street. There wasn’t a real estate agent in Pelham.
“What happens when someone wants to sell or rent a place around here?” I asked Nurse Bass.
“They put up a sign.”
Back inside the apartment, I felt my despair accelerate. But I reined it in by trying to stay focused on the task at hand. So I asked Billy if he could completely repaint the place, take up the carpets, sand and stain the floorboards, and install a new kitchen with new appliances. By the time I had finished the list of must-dos he was grinning from ear to ear.
“No problem, ma’am,” he said. “The more work the better.”
Delores Bland spoke directly to Dan.
“You do realize, Doctor, that the practice won’t be able to pay for any of this until the insurance claim is settled. But once Billy gives us a written estimate, and I’ve written to my brother and gotten his agreement . . .”
“Okay,” he said to Delores Bland. “We’ll pay for the initial work and the practice can reimburse us.”
“Dan, that could take weeks . . .” I said.
Dan clasped one of my wrists and asked Billy, “How long do you think it will take to get the work done?”
“’Bout a week.”
“Fine. And my wife will want to discuss things like colors and kitchen fittings and the like. Isn’t that right, Hannah?”
I nodded.
“You’d best be making that house call now, Doctor,” the nurse said.
Dan turned to me and said, “This shouldn’t take long. I’ll meet you back at the motel.”
He headed off, as did Delores Bland, promising to get back to me as soon as she heard from her brother. Billy turned to me and said, “There’s a carpenter in Bridgton I know, and we can also get all the appliances at the Sears there.”
“Might you be able to call the carpenter and see if he’s free this afternoon?”
“Sure can.”
“Then as soon as you hear from the guy, please come by the motel and we’ll head off to see him. I want to get all this started straightaway.”
“Fine by me,” Billy said, flashing me another of his goofy grins.
I brought Jeff back to the motel—and waited for Dan to return. I waited to hear back from Billy. And I kept looking at the confines of
this motel room and thinking: I want to run away now.
Jeffrey, thankfully, remained asleep. I paced the room, wondering what I could do next, but I knew that things were temporarily out of my hands. Billy finally called after two hours and said that the carpenter was in, and he’d be by to pick me up in thirty minutes.
“I’m going to have to bring my son along,” I explained.
“Fine by me,” Billy said. “I like babies.”
But Dan showed up a few minutes later, looking drawn and tired.
“Sorry that took so long,” he said, “but the boy did have acute appendicitis, and I accompanied him to the hospital in Bridgton, where they’re probably operating on him right about now.”
Dan said that he’d be willing to bring Jeff over to the office for the afternoon if I wanted to get some sleep. I explained that I was heading off momentarily with Billy.
“You’re working fast,” he said.
“What choice do we have here?”
“That wasn’t meant to sound like an accusation.”
“I know. I just need to jump down your throat today.”
Dan laughed.
“I don’t blame you,” he said.
There was a knock on the door. Billy was standing outside.
“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” he asked.
Billy drove a beat-up Plymouth station wagon that dated back to the mid-sixties and looked a bit like a moving garbage dump. The two front seats had been splattered with paint and assorted other liquids. The rear seats and the trunk were piled high with decorating apparatus: old paint cans, dirty brushes, bottles of turpentine, filthy drop cloths, a ladder, assorted tools, an ashtray overflowing with compacted butts, and around five empty giant-sized Awful Awful containers scattered on the floor.
“You seem to like Awful Awfuls,” I said, attempting to make conversation.
“They’re real good,” he said, then fell silent.
“What’s your favorite flavor?”
“Caramel . . . with an extra scoop of malt.”
Silence.
“Maybe we can go there after we get done with the carpenter and Sears,” I said.
“Sounds good.”
Silence.
As I came to discover, Billy was unable to initiate chat. He’d respond to questions, then he’d lapse into his own head again, that harmlessly eccentric grin as permanently fixed to his face as the ever-present L&M cigarette clamped between his stained teeth. Through persistent questioning, I did learn that he’d been brought up in Pelham, that he was an only child and his dad had left his mom when he was very young. He’d been sent away to a school “for kids like me” when he was around eight, and with the exception of vacations, he had spent the next ten years in assorted special schools around the state.
“When I was eighteen, my uncle Roy gave me a job in Lewiston. Roy runs a decorating company there. Does plumbing too. Worked with him for three years. Taught me lots.”
“Why’d you come back to Pelham?” I asked.
“Mom got sick, needed me here. And Lewiston’s a city . . . well, sort of a big town, I guess. But too big for me.”
His mother died around a year after he returned home, and in the five years since then, he’d set himself up as the one and only decorator/plumber in Pelham.
“Not a lot of work around town, but when a place needs sprucing up or a pipe bursts, they call me.”
“Did you ever fix the pipes over at the Bland place?”
“Never asked. Doc Bland kind of did all that stuff himself. Real jack of all trades, the doc.”
“And obviously not much of a plumber.”
Billy laughed—a loud, barking laugh.
“Ain’t gonna answer that question, ma’am.”
“You must call me Hannah.”
“Okay, Hannah, ma’am . . .”
Billy might not have been much of a conversationalist, but he certainly knew his stuff when it came to dealing with the carpenter. And he insisted—pleasantly—that we be given a “professional discount” on the white sink and toilet and tiles I’d chosen at Sears. After he’d won that argument and I’d paid for everything, we made a quick stop at Goodwin’s. Billy ordered two extra-large Awful Awfuls, drinking one there and downing the other on the way back to Pelham, chain-smoking between sips. Back at the motel, I found no one in the room, so I walked over to the doctor’s office—and was surprised to discover Dan alone.
“Where’s Jeff?” I asked.
“Nurse Bass said she’d take him for the afternoon, give me a chance to catch up on some paperwork.”
I sank down into the chair opposite Dan’s desk—the patient facing the doctor—feeling more tired than I had felt in . . . well, the truth was, I couldn’t now remember a moment since Jeffrey was born that I didn’t feel completely drained. But at this juncture in time, all I wanted my husband to do was to get up from behind his desk, walk around to where I was sitting, take me in his arms, and tell me everything was going to be all right.
But instead, he just sat there, tapping his pencil against a stack of files on his desk, waiting for me to leave him in peace.
“Have we made a huge mistake here?” I suddenly heard myself blurting out.
Dan stopped tapping the pencil.
“What do you mean by that?”
What I mean is: me . . . you . . . him . . . everything . . .
“I’m just talking nonsense.”
“You sure?”
I stood up.
“Maybe everything will look better after a night’s sleep,” I said.
“How did you get on with . . . what’s his name again?”
I brought him up to date on the situation with Billy.
“In his own strange way he seems to know what he’s doing. He’s promised to give me an estimate for his work tonight, but with the kitchen and the bathroom, we’re talking at least a thousand dollars, which is just about all the spare cash we have right now.”
“You heard what Delores Bland said: they’ll pay.”
“And if they renege on that, then what?”
“They won’t.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because I’m the doctor here, and Pelham doesn’t want to lose its doctor.”
His voice was perfectly calm and controlled, but the hint of steel was unmistakable; a quiet diagnostic authority that he now turned on me, saying, “Give me a half hour to get through this paperwork and we’ll take everything from there. And Nurse Bass is expecting you to pick up Jeff. Her house is second on the left down Longfellow Street.”
I left his office, hating the fact that he’d treated me like a patient.
Longfellow Street was a little side alleyway off Pelham’s main drag. Nurse Bass’s house was a small ranch-style structure. As I walked up the front steps, I heard a television blaring inside—the loud animated voices of Rocky and Bullwinkle. I knocked on the door. Betty Bass answered it. She had a cigarette in her mouth and Jeffrey in one arm, sucking away on a pacifier that I didn’t recognize as one of his own.
“Oh, hi,” she said.
“Thanks for looking after him.”
She just shrugged, then added, “My mom looks after my Tommy while I’m at work. You want to leave your kid with her, no problem.”
“That’s really nice of you,” I said.
“Did Billy get everything sorted out for you with the carpenter?”
“He certainly did.”
“He’ll get the job done well,” she said.
“We’re certainly counting on him.”
“He’s real okay, Billy, especially considering his . . . uh . . . problem, and everything else he’s been through.”
And she explained that Billy had been born with the umbilical cord around his neck, suffering brain damage as a result.
“’Course his mother really didn’t know how to cope with him. She was a total lush who kept having run-ins with the wrong kind of man . . . one of whom got real drunk one night when
Billy was around eight and beat him so bad they had to rush him to Maine Medical in Portland. Poor boy was on life support for a week—and when he came out of his coma, the state took him away from his useless mother and put him in special schools for the next ten years of his life. The only good thing that ever came of the whole damn business was what happened to the guy who landed Billy in the hospital. Three nights after the cops picked him up, he was found dead in his cell.”
“Did he kill himself?”
“That was the official story. Still, nobody asked any questions. As far as everyone in Pelham was concerned, it was the right ending to the story. And the amazing thing is, once Billy finished school and learned the decorating trade in Lewiston, he still wanted to come home to his mom. Mind you, by that point she was in a bad state—cirrhosis of the liver and all that. Still, she was delighted to have him back, and when she died two years later, Billy was pretty cut up . . . or as cut up as Billy ever shows. That’s the thing about that boy—doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, doesn’t think badly of anyone . . . which kind of makes him unique round here.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” I said.
Nurse Bass just smiled a dry smile at me.
The next morning, I showed up at Miller’s Grocery Store with Jeffrey. Miller’s was the only place to buy food in town—a real old-style general store. In addition to the usual tins and boxes of stuff, it also served as Pelham’s butcher, tobacconist, and newspaper shop. When I walked in, the woman behind the counter—in her early fifties, with a heavily lined face, wearing a smocklike apron, her hair in curlers, a cigarette in her mouth—nodded at me and said, “You’re Dr. Buchan’s missus.”
“Uh . . . that’s right,” I said.
I must have seemed genuinely surprised, as the woman said, “Don’t sound amazed. It’s a small town. Hear you’re not happy at the motel.”
“My name’s Hannah,” I said, changing the subject and proffering my hand.
“Yeah, I knew that,” she said, reluctantly shaking my hand.
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