Philip went home to tell Maggie the good news that he had been chosen as Dean of the Medical School. No news had ever seemed so trivial.
He stood on the front steps and looked around. Wide lawns, old trees, a solid, established neighborhood. No murders here, no molested children, no scandals of any kind. He took a deep breath and went inside. He found Maggie’s note on the kitchen counter. “I’m leaving you. I’ll come back when I can, if I can.” He knew what it must say even before he read it. Nonetheless he read it several times. And then he sat down to think.
Maggie slept, and when she woke she took another drink, and then she slept some more. Eventually, one way or another, it would end.
Philip was determined to remain calm. “Please let her be all right, all right, all right.” He muttered this over and over as he sat, trying to think, and after a while he realized he was praying. Anything, he said to himself, so long as she’s all right.
There was no point in phoning the police. He could scarcely say she was a missing person, since that was her explicit intention, nor could he say he was worried about her because she might be drunk or on pills or just plain suicidal. Nor could he think of anybody else to call. Beecher? Dixie? The kids? Not on your life.
He got in the car and drove down to Harvard Square. Maybe he would see her walking or see her car. He drove to Somerville and then to Medford and then out to the shopping mall. Seven o’clock, so of course nobody was around. Just people going home. He drove over past the Stubbses’, but there was no sign of her car, and he couldn’t find the courage to knock and say, Help me, I’ve lost Maggie, she’s left me. He drove by the McGuinns, the Fioris, the Aspergarters. He was driving home when he thought of the Kizers. Surely she wouldn’t go to Dixie at such a moment. But who knew? Who knows? He drove to Winchester and cruised by Woodlawn. Hal’s Mercedes was in the long driveway, but there was no sign of Maggie or her car. He drove home.
There was a message on the phone machine. He punched the play button and waited, hoping, but it was only Beecher Stubbs with a message for Maggie. I haven’t seen you in ages, we must have lunch, and on and on. He was angry and frightened and he wanted to cry, but he had no tears and besides he had to keep his wits about him, he had to think what to do next.
He thought of calling Cole. Cole was the one she would tell, if she were to tell anybody: I’m leaving him, Cole. He screwed Dixie Kizer and he’s a self-satisfied shit and I’m through with him. And Cole would say, It’s been my experience, Mother, that trouble of this kind starts in bed. Are you and Father having trouble in bed?
It was nine o’clock now. He phoned Cole and got the roommate, the intern. A male. “Cole isn’t here,” the roommate said. “I don’t know where he is, but it’s still early so I presume he’s at the lab.”
It would be six o’clock at Berkeley, and Emma would probably be at dinner, but he called her anyhow just to ask how she was doing.
“I’m studying, what do you think I’m doing. Is something the matter? Is this about Mother? Or are you just checking up on me?”
Maggie was fine, he said. He just wanted to say hello to his own daughter and hear how she’s doing and was that so strange?
“Let me talk to Mother.”
“She’s out,” he said. “She and Beecher Stubbs went to a lecture. I’ll have her call you tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
“Well, you take care,” he said.
There was a pause and then she said, “If you’re checking up on me, Dad, if that’s what this is all about, you might want to know I’ve broken up with Bubby.”
“Well, that’s good. I’m glad to hear it.”
“He’s a dork. All men are dorks.”
“Well, you take care,” he said again.
“God,” she said, “when will you realize I’m a grown-up?”
Philip paced the living room for a while. He went to his study and shuffled the papers on his desk. He went upstairs to the bedroom and looked through her closet. All her clothes seemed to be there, though the stash of drugs she kept under her shoes was missing. The liquor was still in the cereal cabinet but that didn’t mean anything since you could get booze anywhere. She was off on a bender, that must be it. “Please let her be all right,” he said aloud, and he was aware that this time he was praying.
He thought of phoning up motels and asking for her. Is a Mrs. Tate registered there? Would they tell him? Would they put him through? And then what would he say?
He got in the car again—it was nearly ten o’clock now—and he drove to Harvard Square and doubled-parked while he ran into the Motel 6. At the reception desk he said, “Excuse me. I’m supposed to meet a woman who’s registered here, I think she’s here, and I’m not sure whether she’s registered under her married name, which is Tate, or if she uses her business name, which is Cole. C-o-l-e, Cole. Could you check that for me?”
He was saying too much, he sounded fake.
The kid at the desk didn’t seem to recognize fakery, or didn’t care, since he turned away from the miniature TV he was watching and, without a glance at Philip, punched up the computer and, sighing, said, “Cole, Cole, Cole,” and ran his finger down the screen. “Nope.” And then he checked Tate. “Nope,” he said, “sorry ’bout that,” and turned back to his television set. “This is so great,” he said, smiling at the television, as Philip left and went out to his car.
He checked every hotel and motel around Harvard Square and then he moved on to Memorial Drive and he even tried one motel in Boston. Defeated, he returned home. There were no messages on the answering machine.
He showered and went to bed and lay there awake.
He was sleeping soundly, though, when the phone rang. The room was full of sunlight and the phone kept ringing and for a second he realized something terrible had happened but he couldn’t remember what it was. Then it all came back to him.
“Yes,” he said, snatching up the phone.
It was Beecher Stubbs and she sounded very unlike herself.
“Philip,” she said, and her voice was slow, tentative. “I’m calling about Maggie. I got a call from Maggie and frankly, Philip, I don’t know what to do. And Calvin doesn’t know what to do. We decided we should call you.”
“Yes,” he said.
“She’s not well, Philip. She’s very bad, poorly, I think.”
“Yes.”
“She’s at the Ramada Inn. In Revere.”
“Thank you, Beecher,” he said, about to hang up.
“Wait, Philip. Wait. It’s like this. She said she was ill, Philip. She said she had left you and you didn’t know where she was and I wasn’t to tell you, but that she was drunk—it’s the word she used, Philip, and I’m sorry to say that she sounded as if she might be—and that she needed help. And this is the problem, I don’t know whether I’m betraying her, her confidence I mean, by telling you this or whether you should know and you should do something about it, and Calvin doesn’t know either.”
“Thank you, Beecher. I can never thank you enough.”
“She’s in Room 124, Philip. And Philip? She’s registered under the name of Dixie Kizer.”
Philip was silent.
“We love you both, Philip,” Beecher said. “I hope she won’t feel I’ve betrayed her.”
* * *
Philip went straight to Room 124 and knocked on the door. There was no answer. A cleaning woman came out of Room 133 pushing her cart of linens and Philip called to her, “I’ve come out without my key. Could you open my door for me?” He indicated the room with one hand and with the other he reached for his wallet. He gave her a big smile. The woman shook her head, frowning, but she opened the door for him and took the ten-dollar bill he held out. “Have a nice day,” he said. She gave him a look.
Inside, he locked the door and put on the chain. The room was dark and smelled sour. The television was on, with the sound off, but there was no one in the bed watching it and there was no one in sight anywhere. He went around the bed to the bat
hroom. She had vomited on the tile floor and he turned away from it quickly and shut the door. That was when he saw her, lying between the bed and the wall, her nightgown hitched up above her thighs, her face contorted. He knelt beside her. She was breathing roughly. He took her pulse. He felt her neck, her cheek, her forehead. She would be all right. She was lucky she had thrown up.
He pushed hard against the bed and moved it farther away from the wall. He lay down beside her. He touched her hair.
“Maggie,” he said, very softly.
He took her hands in his and held them against his chest.
He lay his forehead against hers.
He closed his eyes.
After a long while he felt her hands move in his, and he felt her pull away from him.
“It’s okay,” he said. He was whispering.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. There was a moment of panic as she tried to see where she was, what she was doing here, and then her eyes clouded and she gave a little smile.
“Poor Philip,” she said.
“It’s all right. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
“You poor bastard.”
“I love you. I love you,” he said. He put his arms around her and drew her close. He said nothing else.
After a while she said, “I’m a drunk.”
“It’s all right,” he said.
“I tried to kill myself.”
“You’re here,” he said. “You’re alive. You’ll be all right.”
She lay in his arms, silent.
“Maggie?” he said. “Take me back?”
She moved away a bit but she said nothing.
“Will you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please?” he asked. “Take me back?”
FOUR
18
The big news that autumn was old Gaspard’s daughter. Suddenly, just before the case went to trial, Helena “Tippi” Gaspard dropped the molestation suit against her father. At first Ms. Gaspard—she insisted reporters call her Tippi—would say nothing about her reasons for dropping the suit, but after a short while she gave a telephone interview to the local paper admitting that her father had never molested her in the technical sense. The technical sense? Reporters wanted to know what that meant. They requested another interview. They requested an interview with old Gaspard. They requested an interview with her psychiatrist. Tippi refused, and Gaspard refused, and the psychiatrist was said to be out of town at a conference. A couple weeks went by with no further requests from reporters. Tippi called a press conference to announce that she was suing her psychiatrist, a Dr. Lila Koren. The local television station requested a live interview. Tippi agreed and spent a lot of time preparing: she got herself a new hairstyling and a Mizrahi suit and she practiced her story in front of the mirror. She was a new Tippi. For the first time in her life she was lively and talkative, with disturbing anecdotes about Dr. Koren’s psychiatric techniques, her deliberate distortion of facts, her conviction that all fathers were by nature child molesters. Did Dr. Koren actually say that? Well, practically. That was her message. That was her mission. That was her plan to take over the world. Dr. Lila Koren had no comment; the whole thing was too absurd, she said. Sally Jessy Raphael called and invited Tippi to appear on a television special called “Women Raped by Psychiatry,” but Tippi said she would have to think about that. There were the legal aspects of the case to be considered and besides she had heard on the sly that Somebody Very Big in talk shows might be calling her, in which case … well, she said, she would have to take a rain check. Everybody was talking.
Everybody was talking about the Gaspards, and only a few people were talking about the Tates. And thank God for that, Aspergarter said, because he, for one, did not want to go through the rigmarole of searching for and appointing a new Dean. He had earned his retirement and he wanted out of the job. He wanted to relax and read books. And Philip would make an excellent Dean. Excellent. He genuinely liked Philip. Philip was, he said, a strange, highly principled, nearly brilliant young psychiatrist who had genuine gifts for administration. And of course, Aspergarter said, he wished Maggie the best. He was very fond of Maggie and she was being very brave about her problem.
Maggie’s problem, though anything but secret, was very little talked about. Her many friends were protective and, despite her tart tongue, she seemed to have no enemies at all.
There were whispers, of course, that something awful had happened, a debauch at some motel or a fling with some raunchy bartender or something sexy and exciting that really wasn’t believable, but nobody had any facts except that Maggie may have been at McLean Rehab to dry out and she may have moved into an apartment in downtown Boston during late September. Just for a while, a week or two, and then she went back home to Philip and they patched it up. There was no doubt about the fact that she was in A.A.
In fact, much of the speculation was true. Maggie had signed herself into McLean for a minimum of two weeks but left after eight days, distraught, and determined this would never happen again. She found the place a prison, with lots of meetings to make you feel good about yourself, and vitamin shots and healthy food and smiling, smiling, smiling attendants. She couldn’t bear it. She wanted her own bathroom and some privacy and something or someone … she didn’t know what. Because of the way she had signed in, she had to petition Philip to sign her out. She did, and he did, and at her request he found her a furnished apartment and he helped move her in. “Don’t call,” she said. And so she entered her new life.
“My name is Maggie and I’m an alcoholic,” she said as she paced around the new apartment, and by the time she got to her first meeting, she had accepted that fact as something she would live with and control. Accepting it—“I’m an alcoholic”—did not make the days, and especially not the nights, any easier. She woke up each night with horrible dreams. She was drunk on the motel-room floor, she was drunk and naked and dancing on the stage at Buck’s Neon Palace, she was drunk and lashing out at the smiling attendants of McLean or at Philip or at Dixie Kizer. But she went to her daily meetings and forced herself to say her name was Maggie and she was an alcoholic, and by the end of the week she was ready not only to face the truth but to tell it.
It was her fifth meeting. “My name is Maggie and I’m an alcoholic,” she said. Her voice sounded very loud in the room. People shuffled. Somebody coughed a lot. Some man said, “Welcome home, Maggie.” She cleared her throat. “This is my first time talking about it, about the problem, about”—she had to force herself to say it—“about my drinking problem.” Having said that much, she was able to say a great deal more. She muddled through her story and said it was a nightmare to be here and then she sat down. Somebody applauded and the chairman thanked her and she looked around, startled, because she saw for the first time not just a bunch of drunks but a group of people who seemed to be genuinely on her side. She smiled and they smiled back. Still, she could never really be one of them.
Two weeks later she returned home to Philip.
“Will you take me back?” she said.
“It’s the other way around,” he said.
She let herself be kissed and then she drove back to the apartment and picked up her clothes. Philip was at work and she ran a hot tub and soaked in it, with no pills and no booze and—could this be true?—no desire for any.
She might, after all, be truly home.
Philip negotiated these weeks like a sleepwalker. He went for advice to Calvin Stubbs, to his old buddies McGuinn and Fiori and, once he found out that she was Maggie’s psychiatrist, he went to Leona Spitzer. They all told him the same thing. It was Maggie’s problem. You may be part of the problem, you may be the excuse she uses from time to time, but the problem is hers, Philip, it’s hers, not yours, it’s hers, hers. He had never felt so useless in his life.
He did, however, what they urged him to do. Nothing much. Keep out of her way. Let her make all her decisions. Don’t provoke her, don’t spy on her, don’t c
over for her. And, Leona told him, get yourself off to Al-Anon. He did.
What struck him first about Al-Anon people was how many of them seemed to hate the person who had driven them there. “My alcoholic,” one man said, referring to his wife, contempt in his voice. And a woman responded, “My alcoholics—I’ve got two of them, both my mother and my father—my alcoholics are exactly the same. They lie. They’re the best liars in the world. They can hide liquor anywhere. Sometimes I want to kill them. Frankly, sometimes I just wish they’d drink themselves to death.” Philip got up and left. But he came back. Gradually he began to see that for a long time now he had felt the same way. She was in a trap, yes, but her trap had created a nightmare for him. He too was trapped. And he hated her.
He didn’t hate her, he only wished she wouldn’t do this to herself, he only wished he hadn’t driven her to it. Had he? No. Yes.
He hated her and he hated himself and for a moment he was tempted to say “Why me? Why us?” But he knew the answer was “Why not?” and that was called fate or life or God’s will, but whatever it was, you had to live with it.
He didn’t hate her and he didn’t hate himself. He just had forgotten how to hope. He would have to learn to hope.
Maggie had left McLean, and she had left the apartment in Boston, and she was home again: wasn’t this cause for hope? He was afraid to hope. But he hoped nonetheless.
At Al-Anon they warned him to expect a relapse. There was often a relapse. A 75 percent chance of a relapse. Count on it. Thanks a lot, he said.
But he continued hoping and he continued going to meetings and if this wasn’t hope, it was as near as he was going to get.
One morning at breakfast, though he had intended never to do this, he made the first move. He reached across the table and took Maggie’s hand in his and said, “I love you. I do.”
And she said, “Thank you, Philip,” which wasn’t quite as much as he expected. But by now he had learned to expect little, to be grateful for anything.
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