by Belva Plain
Jesus, Martin thought, will this business never end?
“The thing is, I just don’t know what to do, Dr. Farrell. And I haven’t got anybody to ask. Some of the girls say one thing and some say the other. And it seems to me what they say is all according to whether they like Dr. Gault, and it seems most of them do. Or else what they tell me depends sort of on my looking out for myself and not getting the doctors offended with me. And it seems the doctors are mostly all sticking up for Dr. Gault. So I’ve come to ask you what I should do.” She finished, balling the wet handkerchief in her palm.
It surprised him that out of this confused narration, a single threat could emerge so quickly and clearly. He had no hesitation at all in replying to this troubled, honest, childish girl.
“Why,” he said softly, “you must just tell the truth, mustn’t you?”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” he repeated.
Explanations and justifications would only confuse her some more. What she had come for was plain direction, as when a child, needing to obey, asks to be told what to do. When she had thanked him, too apologetically and too effusively, she went out. Strange how easy it had been to tell her what she must do and so difficult to tell himself what he must do!
He opened the window. The night air washed over him, bathing his hot face. Then he turned on the record player where a record had been left, the Reformation symphony. For long minutes he stood listening, while his unfocused eyes rested on the sky over the river. The music was a shaft of light. It was a great plea and answer. And in some absolutely crazy way it seemed his father’s voice was mixed up in it.
Suddenly everything was very simple.
He went to the telephone book. A pleasant young man from Harvard Law School would live somewhere in Manhattan, on the East Side. Yes, here it was. Might as well do it now, get it over with before the morning and be able to sleep tonight. I’m very tired, he thought again. I haven’t slept well in so long. And he picked up the telephone.
“This is Dr. Farrell,” he said. “I’m sorry to disturb you at home, but I’ll be brief. I’ve made my decision. It’s a painful one. I want you to know that it is, and I should hope perhaps you might find a way to tell Dr. Gault it is. But I cannot, I simply cannot, help you. I couldn’t do it and rest.”
Chapter 31
Martin, having changed from operating clothes to street clothes, looked in for a moment at the door of the doctors’ lounge. It reminded him of the passing glimpses he’d had of London clubs where old men napped on brown leather chairs. The walls held Piranesi etchings of broken classic columns with vines trailing over the stumps. Why did dentists and doctors always seem to go in for broken classic columns?
Young Simpson, he of the good cheer, called out, “Going back to the office so late, Martin?”
“No, waiting for my daughter. We’ve a party on the Island.”
“Enjoy yourself,” young Simpson said.
Going down on the elevator Martin felt the smile still on his mouth. It was remarkable how even the most casual proof of being liked and accepted could freshen and support a man. As for enemies, you could hardly get through life, he supposed, without garnering some. And he thought regretfully of Perry, who having won his case without Martin’s help, now ignored him whenever they chanced to pass; of others, too, whose greetings, if any, were noticeably cool.
In the lobby he waited for Claire. The rotunda was solemn, like an edifice of ancient Rome. A new bronze plaque, glossier than the rest, displayed the names of the most recent benefactors. He was standing there reading the names almost mechanically when his daughter appeared. He watched her before she saw him. Her face was set in gravity; as soon as she saw him it bloomed into a smile. Real or assumed? he wondered.
“Reads like Dun & Bradstreet, doesn’t it, Dad?”
“I don’t like this lobby,” he said. “It’s pompous. The institute will have quite a different feel.”
She patted his shoulder as if to say: I know it will be the zenith of your life. They went out into a benign spring afternoon and walked toward the parking lot.
“Up to the second story already,” Claire observed as they passed the new construction at the end of the block.
“Right on schedule. Yes, we ought to be functioning a year from this month.”
For the sake of some obscure and foolish dignity, Martin tried to keep the jubilation from his voice. Two months ago they had laid the cornerstone, a great chunk of mauve brown marble set in a row of granite. There had been a committee to select the artifacts which in some distant, unimaginable century would be uncovered; the city might be rubble and ruin by then. And as always, Martin thought of the schoolboy poem: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
Anyway, Braidburn’s text had gone in, he’d seen to that. Now almost fifty years old and much outmoded, it was still worthy of honor as the great pioneer. Outmoded! Every five years a text became outdated, so fantastic was the explosion of medical knowledge, a proliferation like leafage in a rain forest!
Thinking aloud, which he often did when in Claire’s company—it pleased him that she found nothing odd in his doing so—he said, “It’s the most challenging intellectual field of all, medicine. More than any science, as far as I’m concerned, including space exploration. What’s more important than humanity? Each step, each advance whets your curiosity so you have to go on to the next. I sometimes imagine a composer must feel like that when a symphony unfolds in his head.”
And for some reason Judy Wister popped into his own head, the skinny, trustful little thing who had lain down beneath his hands. He recalled the lawyer, that well-dressed, affable young man who had told him, “You’re a man of probity, Doctor, after all.” Probity!
The suffering, he thought, you could never rid the world of it! Even on this brief walk, in these few blocks, you saw its symbols: a dirty old woman mumbling to herself; a lost, bony mongrel foraging in a trash can; a drained young man, sallow-cheeked, climbing up out of the subway.
How we are driven! We prate of free will and of course it is a fact, but what of accident, chance meeting, timing, health, the very luck of the genetic draw? On another day, for instance, Hazel, even given what she was—and I don’t suppose either she or I really knew what she was—might not have done what she did. It was just that moment, that particular day. He could think of it now, could even talk about it, although he seldom did, without that terrible choking inside.
They got into the car and Martin took the wheel. Claire sighed. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to the Mosers’ little shindig.”
“You’re doing me a big favor. I like to show you off, you know. Besides, it doesn’t hurt you to become known. The world doesn’t beat a path to anyone’s doorstep.”
“The people you meet at their place—they’re all such wastrels.”
“The Mosers are decent people,” Martin protested.
“They may be, but the crowd you meet there just isn’t real. You get the feeling, at least I do, that everybody’s out for something.”
“We’re all ‘out for something.’ We all want recognition, to stand out from the crowd.”
“Don’t mind me,” Claire said. “The fact is I’m starved and I get cranky when I’m starved.”
Martin said, “The crankiest of all was your grandfather. He had an appetite like a bear.”
“Well, that’s another way I’m like him then. You always say I’m like him.”
Martin looked over at her. “Yes, you are, rather. You don’t give a darn how you’re dressed. You’d better catch that button, it’s hanging by a thread.”
“Oh damn!” she said. She pulled off the button and stuffed it in her pocket. “You know, I think I would have liked the way he lived: simple, no pretenses.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. It was a life so hard you couldn’t begin to imagine it.”
They drove along in silence for a mi
nute or two, during which with swift recall Martin saw again the snowfields and poor dark houses, felt the brutal cold, heard the voice of the kind ascetic, so devoted to his work, and of the wife who paid her full share for that devotion.
Claire asked, “Did the orthodontist send you the report on Marjorie’s teeth?”
“Yes. She needs the work. They’ll start next month. You’ve been so awfully good to the kids, Claire, with all you have to do. Do I thank you often enough?”
“You don’t have to. They’re good kids. Peter’s sweet and so serious and Marjorie’s a housewife, already.” Claire sounded amused. “I swear she knows more about keeping a house in order than I ever will.”
“She’s like—” Martin began, and stopped. For an instant he had forgotten that Hazel was dead. He thought of something. “I forgot to tell you. You know that man from Salt Lake City I operated on last winter? The one who owns half a copper mine? Well, I got a letter from him today. I’d been talking to him about the institute, and he hadn’t said a word, but now in a letter he wants to know how much we’d need to pay for an operating room. An entire operating room! Imagine!”
“A true G.P.,” Claire said.
“A what?”
“Grateful Patient. And you’ve certainly had loads of them, if anyone has.”
They were riding now along a maze of highways, past clusters of apartment houses twenty stories high; and these clusters were like islands in a sea of cars. This crowding gave Martin a vague melancholy. Then glancing over at Claire, he realized that the melancholy was because of her …
There was something remote about her these days. Oh, she was talkative as always, enthusiastic about her future with him, and so appreciative! But there was—something. No use asking her to talk about it, because she would refuse. Just as I, he thought, am unable to talk about Mary. Especially now, after Hazel—Sometimes a thought leaps, a thought of seeing Mary again, and my mind clamps down, just shuts down sharply. So it must be for my daughter, with Mary’s son!
Apartments gave way to grids of tiny houses, row on row and all alike among flat fields, with no trees. Baby carriages and tricycles were scattered on their tiny lawns. Each house must hold at least two tiny children; and in each house a woman was living a life so different from Claire’s—He wondered whether she would indeed ever have a child, and if not, how the lack would affect her. He would have liked to talk to her about that too, but he dared not.
The suburbs became the exurbs. There was restful space between the houses. Behind brick walls and wrought iron gates the overarching trees were budding so that the land was veiled in pale green lace. When Martin’s car rolled up the Mosers’ driveway it came to a stop among Mercedeses and Rolls-Royces. Chauffeurs stood about talking. From the water side of the house a choir of peepers piped and trilled. And Martin, moved by some old nostalgia, stopped to listen.
“Another spring,” he said. “Every year I’m glad I’ve lived to see it again.”
Hundreds of daffodils were scattered over the lawn. “Naturalized,” Claire observed, and Martin thought: Where did I see this before? In some place far off—and suddenly remembered the lawn in Cyprus and Pa saying, “They don’t just grow like that. Somebody put them there.”
It was warm. The press of people, the fires under the great carved mantels and the good Scotch produced this hearty warmth. The chatter might be a silly waste of energy, as Claire had remarked, but it was good, nevertheless, to be here. Martin stood with his little plate of canapés and his drink, listening to tag ends of three conversations at once.
“He gave two floors to the new wing in Tulsa. Oil people, of course,” someone said.
“My wife’s cousin is on the board of directors, and that helped. Frankly, his grades weren’t all that good.”
“There wasn’t time for a wash-and-set between lunch and my tennis lesson.”
Claire had found a young couple whom she knew. They were at the far end of the room. Martin was relieved that she had found people her own age to talk to. Most of the people here were too old for her, as he had known they would be. He watched her in her quiet dress standing among all the bright silk plumage. Distinguished. The authentic article, he thought, wanting so much for her. Academic honors, yes, those she had; and he was so proud, thinking of that. But she needed someone, he thought again; she oughtn’t to be alone. Men ran after her, he knew they did; yet she didn’t seem to care about any of them—
Bob Moser came up with a drink in hand. “Having a good time?”
“Very. It’s a spectacular party, as always.”
“I’d like to talk to you for a minute if you don’t mind. Let’s go in the library, it’s quiet there.”
They sat down. Moser’s head was framed by a row of golf trophies, and above them a shelf of smooth leather-bound sets. He seemed to be studying Martin. There was an odd pause which Martin found necessary to fill.
“This house was meant for parties,” he observed pleasantly.
“Yes,” Moser said. He took off his glasses, revealing tired eyes. “I suppose this isn’t the right place for what I have to tell you. I had thought of ringing you on the phone, but one can’t talk properly on the phone. And then I thought we might go out to lunch together, except that you’re so busy.”
Martin waited attentively.
“We’ve been friends for a long time, Martin.”
Martin nodded.
“Christ! I don’t know how to start.” Moser’s mouth made a queer twist as though he were about to cry. “I feel, I feel the way you must feel when you have to tell a family the patient has died.” The familiar open face closed up and Moser shut his eyes.
Alarmed, Martin asked, “Is anyone ill? What is it, Bob?”
“I wanted to be the one to tell you. I didn’t want you to get it coldly at a meeting or by letter or however they planned to do it.”
And suddenly Martin knew. He thought: It’s crazy, but I know what he’s going to say. He set his glass down and waited.
“You know Dr. Francis? Stanley Francis?”
“From San Diego. I’ve met him at meetings.”
“I understand he’s a good man, done some fine work.”
“Yes, he’s head of the department out there. Does a lot of teaching.”
“like you. Kind of a duplicate of yourself, if I may say so, only younger.”
“About five or six years, that’s all.”
“Yes. Well.” Moser got up from the chair. A large globe stood in a corner. He placed his hand over the top, the splayed finger covering the Bering Sea and the North Cape. He twirled the globe.
“Christ, Martin! I haven’t slept these two nights. It was decided—this is still confidential, of course, but the trustees had a meeting the day before yesterday and it was decided—the fact is—oh hell! They’ve offered the directorship of the neurological institute to Stanley Francis, and he’s accepted. That’s it in a nutshell.” And giving the globe a violent twirl so that it rattled as it spun, he walked away and stood with his back to Martin.
Martin trembled. The room had a feeling of unreality. The ripple of voices in the next room was suddenly remote, like fading voices heard when one’s hands are held over one’s ears.
“I see,” he said. “I see …”
Moser turned back to him. “New blood,” he said dully. “That’s the reason they gave to make it sound convincing. You can make anything sound convincing, can’t you? But it was yours by right.” His fist slapped into his palm. “You’re the one who dreamed of it and worked for it; your patients gave funds for it; you set up the teaching program, attracted the young men to train and be trained. It was yours.”
“Yes,” Martin said, feeling faint. “Yes, it was.”
“I’m sick!” Moser cried. “Sick over it! Jesus Christ, I tried! I tried! I was two hours in there fighting for you, Martin! And I want you to know the vote was very, very close. I don’t feel free to tell you who voted how, naturally, but—”
“You don’t
have to,” Martin said, breathing deeply. “I pretty much know.”
“I suppose you do. Well, you made enemies, Martin. What can I tell you? You made enemies. You threw it away.” Moser spoke angrily. “I don’t want to say it again, I don’t want to rub salt in the wound, but I can’t help it. You were a fool, a Goddamned fool!”
“You think so?”
“I know so! My whole life experience tells me so. Look out for number one, it says.”
“Maybe you’re right. At this point I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“Yes. But I’d still go to hell and back for you. What are you going to do?”
“First, get my balance. My head’s spinning.”
“Want another drink? Brandy?”
“No, that’s just what I don’t want, thanks.”
“Want to lie down?”
“No, no, I’m all right, Bob. I’ll be all right.”
“Want me to send Claire in?”
“No, no, I’m okay, Bob. Really.”
Moser looked doubtful. “Positive?”
“Positive. Just leave me. Please. Please.”
“Then I’ll go back in. And, Martin?” “Yes?”
“Maybe you can spare an hour for lunch with me one day, especially—”
Especially now that I won’t be working my head off for the institute, you mean? And Martin answered, “Sure, Bob, sure I will.”
French windows led to a terrace. They were ajar. After long minutes he got up from the chair and went outside. Light from the house stretched long gilded fingers among Moser’s cherished, nurtured trees. Beyond this small enclave of light and safety lay unknowable darkness, the menacing water gurgling on the rocks below the bluffs. And over all was the vast cold sky.
A world of danger. You get on a plane and it crashes in flames the way that one did last month, a plane full of vacationers with their cameras and new bathing suits. You go to swim in warm water and under that warm, bright indigo lurks a shark. You walk to the post office and the shoe repair shop doing your friendly, simple errands, while all the time a cancer grows secretly within you, corruption and death waiting quietly for their hour. It is a world of danger. You can depend on nothing except yourself, and sometimes not even on that.
