Random Winds

by Belva Plain

  He walked to the edge of the terrace and leaned on the balustrade, looking downward on Italianate descending terraces, an imitation of the Villa d’Este outside of Rome. And this ostentation, to which he had grown moderately accustomed, chilled him now as it had when he was young.

  Beyond the terraces lay rough and marsh grass, out of which the peepers were still trilling. They would still be there a thousand springs from now, long after the terraces had been worn away and the balustrades crumbled. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” He thought: I ought to be full of hatred, but I’m not. And isn’t that strange?

  It began to rain and he heard the chauffeurs behind the shrubbery scurrying to the cars. From the deep shelter of the doorway, Martin stood in a trance of exhaustion, watching the branches dripping in the squall, watching the steady rain. It was almost tropical, the way it fell, so fast that it seemed not to be moving at all, as if it were a solid, luminescent curtain hanging between himself and the outer world. He thought again: I ought to be full of hatred. Why am I not?

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Claire said. “What have you been doing out here in the rain?”

  “It’s letting up. I’ve been smelling spring in the air.”

  “I thought surely you’d be where the food is. They’ve got great lobster mousse that’s like nothing Esther feeds you at home. Why, what’s the matter?”

  “Will you not get excited if I tell you?”

  “You look white. Are you sick?”

  He told her. She leaned against the wall as if she had been struck.

  “No! I don’t believe it! I simply don’t believe it!” “You can believe it. It’s true.”

  “The bastards! The lousy bastards! It’s because of that case, isn’t it? You betrayed the club, the good old boys, the old school tie!” She began to cry.

  “Ah don’t, Claire! It’s not worth it.”

  “Yes it is! It is worth it! Oh, I could murder, I could kill them all! It’s immoral, it’s obscene. And I’m so helpless.”

  “Don’t, Claire. Don’t take it so hard.”

  “But, Dad, you earned it! You earned it.”

  I did, he thought. By God, it hurts. Like a knife, it hurts. Punishment, because I did what I know, and they know was decent. Yet it doesn’t seem as much of a punishment as I would have said an hour or two ago it would be.

  And he reflected, “Do you know, I’m not as crushed as you’d expect?”

  “That’ll come later.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why? All your life, as long as I’ve known you, I’ve heard about the neurological institute.”

  “So it’s come to pass, hasn’t it? It’ll flourish and I’ll work in it, without the status and the name, that’s all.”

  “That’s all? Well, I’m crushed, if you’re not! Why don’t you get out and fight? Why doesn’t Mr. Moser get out and fight for you?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good. He did fight. And one has to learn how to lose with a little dignity.”

  “That’s Eastern fatalism. Resignation. That’s why they never accomplish anything in those countries. They’re resigned to misery and loss.”

  “I shan’t be miserable, my dear. Anyway, I didn’t speak of resignation. I spoke of acceptance, and there is a difference.”

  “Yes? What?”

  “You accept what you can’t change. A good thing to learn, Claire.”

  “You mean I need to learn it?”

  He thought—or perhaps he only imagined?—a certain bitterness. And he answered gently.

  “I only mean, it’s a good philosophy. Use it as you see fit.”

  Claire rested her head against the stone. With eyes closed, her face was classic. It was eloquent. How blessed he was for having this daughter! He mustn’t let himself be too proud of her, or too careful of her if he could help it. For there was nothing that couldn’t be taken away. He should have learned that by now. He thought then, Maybe, after all, I’ll have more time now. Forgo the glory, but forgo the endless committees and the dreary wasteful paperwork, too. More time to teach—to teach Claire. More time for the quiet lab, the way it was all those years ago in London, down in the basement with old Llewellyn.

  And he stood wistfully looking out at the trees, dripping slowly now that the rain had stopped, and at the sequined lights along the shore.

  Claire murmured, “You know who’s going to be furious about this? Mother.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes. You know she always says you were born great. Annointed, you’d think, the way she talks.”

  “She still talks about me?”

  “Not about you the man, but about you the doctor.” “How is she?” Martin asked. “I don’t inquire often enough.”

  “She’s fine. Making money hand over fist. Busy all day and half the night.”

  From somewhere in the room beyond came a bright gust of laughter. Curious, Martin thought, but I’m never part of the laughter. I’m on the outside rim of the circle looking in, and always have been.

  “What are you going to do?” Claire asked, just as Moser had.

  What did they think he was going to do? “Go home, for one thing,” he answered.

  “All right then, let’s get out of here.”

  “Shouldn’t we go in and say good night and thank you?”

  “Ah, the hell with them,” Claire said. “In that crowd we won’t even be missed.” She took his hand, and they went together across the grass.

  Book Six

  TIME

  AND

  TIDE

  Chapter 32

  All that winter Jessie had been admonishing, “You’re overworked. You don’t even rest on your days off, what with running around on errands for those children of your father’s.”

  Quite truly, Claire, like every other intern, was overworked. It was not uncommon to go twenty-four hours without sleep and, when sleep came, it was like being drugged. Once she had been so exhausted, she’d started to laugh at nothing and hadn’t been able to stop. Yet all that was to be expected. No one ever complained with any seriousness.

  But as for the children, well, Jessie was simply jealous of them! Ever since Hazel’s death, Claire had felt poignantly their need for patient hours of childish things: museums and walks and ice-cream treats. A life of Martin’s kind was inevitably paid for by the family. He tried to care for his children but it was very hard: he had so little time and, never having been with them all that much, his beginning attempt was bound to be awkward.

  Now, too, since her own—loss, should one call it euphemistically?—she had felt more sharply not only the children’s needs, but also some new need within herself. The wholesomeness of children, still so removed from the ugly agonies of adulthood, gave basic comfort. It was like warm food, like milk and bread after sore sickness.

  All this crossed her mind one free morning while she stood in the operating room watching Martin at work. He had suggested that she ought to witness as much neurosurgery as possible, so as to get a head start on next year. So she stood now among a group of residents, interns and even some fourth-year students who liked to wander into the operating rooms where big names were at work. Her eyes went from one face to the other: all wore the absorbed expression of total interest and respect. Her eyes went to Leonard Max and rested kindly on him. He had been so devastated by Martin’s defeat that he had sworn he would refuse to work under the new man from California. Fortunately, for the sake of Max’s fairly young career, Martin had been able to dissuade him from such beautiful, impractical, fierce loyalty.

  And Claire felt a thrill of pride: strip a man of title—as they had—but it made no alteration in his true value, and even the enemies, those who had stripped him, knew it and had to acknowledge it.

  Now she watched the small vertical line between Martin’s brows as he worked with the loupe. With utmost delicacy, with excruciating concentration, he labored among the most minute nerves of a leg that had been man
gled in an accident. The process was exhausting to watch. She could barely imagine what it would be like to do it. Not until the procedure was finished was she aware how her hands had been clenched, how painfully the muscles of her neck had tensed.

  She waited in the corridor for Martin. The nurse at the charge desk looked up with a pleasant remark.

  “Pretty soon we’ll be seeing you up here every day.”

  “Next year.”

  “What a privilege to learn from your father! Nobody needs to tell you that, I’m sure. I’ve known him since I was capped. Downtown at Fairview it was, that’s where I started and he was an intern. Yes,” she reflected, “he used to come up and watch Dr. Albeniz, just the way young people come to watch him now. He was one of the greats, Albeniz was.” And taking her sheaf of charts, she went down the corridor.

  A privilege, Claire thought. Not a day passed without someone, some nurse or intern or clerk in the clinic or even her mother, reminding her of the privilege. She had begun to be tired of hearing it.

  They sat at lunch in the doctors’ dining room. The paper napkin, on which for her benefit and instruction Martin had diagramed the morning’s procedure, lay alongside Claire’s plate.

  “Well,” he said, “enough of that for today. Got any plans for the weekend?”

  “Thought maybe I’d join you and the kids and go skating on Sunday afternoon.”

  “Sure, fine. But I meant—social life is what I meant.” His smile was anxious.

  “Oh, I’m going out Saturday night. Maybe Friday, too, if I still feel like it when the times comes.” She knew he wanted to ask, but wouldn’t ask, with whom she was going and how she liked him, and was she doing anything foolish again?—he hoped not! He wanted, of course—parents always wanted—to be told that their child was safe, was happy. And feeling sudden compassion for his anxiety, she added gently, “Don’t worry about me, Dad. I’m really, really fine.”

  She was rewarded by the relaxing and brightening of his face. “That’s all I ever want to hear,” he said.

  “And I’m not doing anything foolish.”

  “I know you’re not.”

  Actually, the opportunity for doing anything “foolish” had scarcely presented itself, certainly not as frequently as Martin might be thinking. There had been relationships since Ned, of course there had been. One didn’t live in a convent! Yet there was no life in any of them. She had relapsed into the years before Ned, to that era of intelligent, agreeable men, most of them inevitably doctors, who didn’t reach her. The current companion, Patrick Moore, had considerable charm with his Irish sparkle and cheer, but even he was petering out and they both knew it. She supposed she was waiting again for the feeling she had first had on that hill in Devon.

  Martin shoved his chair back. “Well, I’m off.”

  “Back to the office?”

  “No, it’s Tuesday. The neuropathology conference.”

  “Oh, of course, I have the GYN clinic.” Finishing her coffee, she watched him go down the room, saw nods and a few greetings exchanged on his way. Perry Gault, among others, did not look up as Martin passed. That anger would remain, no doubt of it. And she wondered how deep, actually, the wound must lie in Martin, how deep the multiple wounds, the whole affair of the institute. It was plain that he gave himself now completely to teaching and to his own long solitary hours in the laboratory. These things that he loved he would talk about with eagerness. About the wounds he would not speak, and one had to respect his privacy.

  The clinic and emergency rooms were already filled. In the corridors waited babies, the sick, the old and the healthy who had brought them here. A small Puerto Rican stood up and smiled.

  “Hello, Mr. Filipe,” Claire said.

  “This time I brought my daughter Angela, Doctor.”

  “Good. I’ll tell Dr. Milano. She’ll see her in a few minutes.”

  Dr. Milano was a handsome woman in her forties, who seemed able to manage with great calm a large practice as well as a household of two teen-agers and a husband. From her Claire was gradually absorbing a manner and feel for the ill.

  “Mr. Filipe’s outside. He’s brought his daughter, can you believe it?” Claire said as she went in.

  Dr. Milano smiled. “I can believe it. It’s happened before.”

  Mr. Filipe had made a memorable scene only a few months ago when his wife had died. She had been a patient of Dr. Milano’s. The man’s grief had been one thing, but his fury at Dr. Milano had been another, a fury based on the fact that women had no business practicing medicine and that if Dr. Milano hadn’t been a woman, Mr. Filipe’s wife wouldn’t have died. A woman should stay home and raise kids. Everybody knew that. A doctor should be a man.

  It had taken a good deal of effort and some hours before he had been quieted. But something, time or goodness knew what, had done an effective job, because here he was actually back again, bringing his teen-age daughter for treatment.

  “You’re the one who won him over. You know that, don’t you, Claire?” Dr. Milano said. “Oh really,” Claire began.

  “Yes, yes you did. You have a way with people that’s very warm, my dear. Well, let’s begin, shall we? I have to quit at three. I’m going up to do an abortion. Want to see it?”

  Oh no, Claire thought. Oh no! “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen one,” she said.

  “Well, then, it’s time you did. All right, start calling them in.”

  So they came filing in, the old known faces and the new ones who would in all probability become familiar too. Most of these women’s troubles were not of the kind that could be solved overnight. One came to know them and their pains quite intimately before one was through.

  There was the diabetic girl whom they had warned against becoming pregnant. But her husband wanted children, so she had gone ahead anyway, only to produce a monster who, luckily for itself and its parents, had been born dead.

  Now came an unmarried, pregnant addict, accompained by one of her four children; this was a twelve-year-old boy, also plainly addicted. Outside the door he waited for his mother, as if afraid to let her out of his sight. He had sly, sliding monkey’s eyes. Like a monkey’s, too, were the dark sadness and the wordless questioning.

  And there was the girl who had been impregnated by her brother.

  And there was the girl whose infant was born with sore eyes from gonococcus.

  Was there no end to the ignorance, the helplessness, the need? Poor women, Claire thought. Poor women!

  All these foreigners, she thought, too. Sometimes it almost seems as if I’m not in America at all. The fact is, I really resented them at first. The language difficulty makes such a tiring struggle. And they’re so confused, so scared. And they mostly smell of garlic. But I should be ashamed! Afer all, they came here driven by the same needs that brought my grandfather out of his poor village. Oh, it’s a disgrace the way some people treat them! Clerks, lower middle class themselves, feeling superior because these people can’t speak English and have nothing, not even pride anymore, what they had of it having been knocked out of them. I spoke sharply to a clerk who was being nasty to some poor woman yesterday. Now she’ll have it in for me if she ever gets a chance. If I dared, and of course I don’t dare, I would say something to Dr. Norris, too, one of the few obstetrical residents who have no compassion for these women. He’s so arrogant, you’d think he was a vet handling a cow!

  In a curtained cubicle, Dr. Milano was examining a woman. On a straight chair near the desk where Claire was filling out a form, sat the woman’s friend, who had come with her. They both looked up at the sound of soft weeping.

  “Then she must be pregnant,” the woman said. “That’s why she’s crying.”

  Claire could have predicted the comments that followed.

  “She’s my sister-in-law. Her husband’s a devil. They have five kids already, and he don’t make enough to buy their shoes. Sometimes I help out, even though I can’t afford it, but the kids have to have shoes, don’t they? A
nd she’s all nerves, Doctor. She’s forty-two, and the boys are wild sometimes. I keep the two big ones at my house for a couple of days. She can’t manage, she gets so nervous, she cries. Doctor,” the woman pleaded, unconsciously clasping her hands, “she can’t have another baby! It will kill her or she will go crazy, either one.”

  Victims. Victims. Women and their children.

  “I understand,” Claire said. “Someday it will be possible to take care of things like this.”

  “But now what?”

  Claire shook her head gently. “Not now.” Except for the rich, and even they take a chance. And she thought, looking at the clock, at three I have to go upstaris and watch. God, I don’t want to. But I have to.

  The woman is covered with a sheet that has a hole where it lies on her abdomen. Why is she here? What ailment, pretended or true, permits the doing of this thing today?

  Dr. Milano has been overly rushed and that is Claire’s excuse for not asking her to explain. The truth is, Claire doesn’t want to ask.

  She is required to look. The area where the doctor is to work has been rendered antiseptic and has been anaesthetized. The doctor takes a needle. Claire has read what is to come, yet she trembles. The doctors plunges the needle into the abdomen, into the uterus where the baby lies growing in the warmth, in the dark. His head is bent; he rests so comfortably. Each day, each hour he expands into a complexity of fingernails, eyelashes, delicate, convoluted shells of ears … The doctor takes a syringe and injects the stuff which will, a few hours from now, contract the womb and force him out of his warm home to die.

  Claire’s fist is clenched on her mouth. My baby, too, she thinks.

  Dr. Milano looks up. Her eyes tell Claire she understands her questions. How can a woman, herself a mother, do this thing? Or how, when she has seen so many of the hungry, unwanted and abused, can she not do it?