by Sally Mandel
“You’ve done quite a job out here. I’m proud of you,” he said, enjoying his magnanimity.
“Brian helped.” Her voice was cold.
That was all, just “Brian helped.” She came out here and plunged right ahead with all these plans, picked out a ludicrous-looking motel with pink walls—pink, for Christ’s sake—and stuck their daughter in some room back in the boondocks at least four miles from the nearest elevator. Jesus, he’d never have stood for it, and here he complimented her on the fantastic job she had done without even so much as a small choke on his words, and what did he get for his effort? No pleased smile, no tender flush of delight at his praise, not even a polite “thank you.” Come to think of it, she hadn’t even kissed him when he got off the plane.
They stopped at a red light, and he turned to look at her, his face red with self-righteous anger.
She met his gaze. Her face was filled with wrath, too, but hers was tight-lipped and stony. Walter’s jaw dropped, and his voice sounded more astonished than irate.
“Well, what the hell is the matter with you?”
Margaret’s eyes narrowed. “A lot is the matter with me,” she said, mimicking him with heavy sarcasm. Horns started bleating behind him, and in his flustered state, he pressed down too hard on the acelerator and lurched forward, tires squealing.
“How impressive,” she murmured.
“Now, look,” Walter said, “I’ve had about enough of this.” He pulled the car off the road and onto a side street lined with jocular-looking palm trees with fat trunks. He switched off the motor and turned to glare at his wife. She was looking straight ahead, but he could see the crimson spot on her left cheek.
“Spit it out, Margaret,” he said, and waited.
Finally she turned to him. “I don’t like the way you talk to me … I don’t think you’re respectful or polite, and you are most certainly not sympathetic.”
He waited again. She was having a hard time, he could see that, stopping and starting between words and twisting the strap of her handbag.
“I try to be pleasant, and you always have some … remark. You are damn rude, that’s what you are.”
Damn? Did his Margaret say “damn”? Hell must be freezing over someplace in the universe if Margaret just said “damn.”
She paused to pull herself together, but she was close to tears. He could see her chin quiver.
“What did I say?” he asked.
“Everything you say to me!” she wailed.
Walter was shocked at the passion in her voice. She began to cry, and between gasps she sputtered out something about the princess and the pea and her ass and the way he always humiliated her in front of other people with his smart remarks.
Finally, after a deep breath, she said, “I didn’t mean to cry. I don’t want to, and I’m going to stop. Right now.”
Walter reached a hand out and laid it gently on her shoulder. He felt the muscles grow rigid at his touch. She looked at him now. Except for the red-rimmed eyes and the wet cheeks, you would never guess there’d been any emotion in that face for weeks, or months. Maybe ever.
“You should listen to yourself sometime,” she said coolly.
He took his hand off her shoulder and started the car. “I’ll try to watch it.”
He pulled away from the curb, veered sharply to avoid a little towheaded boy on a skateboard, and moved out onto the highway again, driving fast.
Chapter 28
Sharlie sat in her wheelchair, gazing curiously at the psychiatrist. Rather than pull the curtains against the sparkling sunshine, Dr. Rosen leaned against a bookcase to the left of the window so her patient wouldn’t be staring directly into the blinding light. Sharlie regarded the relaxed figure, wondering how old she was. In her midthirties, at least. An M.D. with a psychiatric specialty. And who knew what esoteric degree one needed to treat potential transplants—three years’ internship with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
“What are you thinking over there?” asked Dr. Rosen with a smile.
“Nothing much.” Sharlie looked out the window. She could hardly ask Dr. Rosen her age, nor could she admit to the curiosity. Far too personal. “I guess I was wondering what kind of preparation one needs for the kind of work you’re in.”
Dr. Rosen said, “Funny. You looked so sad and young just now, I thought perhaps you were missing somebody.”
Sharlie shook her head, but felt a sudden lump in her throat.
“Tell me about Brian,” the doctor said.
Sharlie thought a moment, then said, “Well …” Nothing more came out. She said, “Well,” again and started to laugh.
“What?” asked Dr. Rosen.
“It’s as if you just asked me to explain the creation of the universe. I don’t know where to begin.”
“All right, let me be more specific. Or …” She swung around in her chair to face Sharlie more directly. “Let’s try it this way: What’s the first word you think of when you hear me say Brian?”
Sharlie sat still, her eyes flickered, and then she shook her head.
“I distinctly saw a word go past,” the doctor said.
“Brown.”
“Brown,” Dr. Rosen repeated.
“Well, it isn’t a very … romantic … word. I wanted to think of something like clouds or roses. But brown? How embarrassing.”
“Why?”
“Well brown is, well … kind of disgusting.”
“How disgusting?” the doctor prodded.
“Maybe it’s his initials.”
“Brian Morgan,” Dr. Rosen said. “Okay.”
Sharlie laughed. “It’s absurd …” And then the words began to flow. “He’s got that warm curly brown hair that feels so good. It’s a safe word, too—reliable.”
Dr. Rosen watched Sharlie’s fingers curl around one another as she spoke of touching Brian’s hair.
“He’s always wearing brown wool clothes when I visualize him, like the first night I met him … the first conscious night, that is. The very first time I was unconscious, and he could have been wearing silver lamé for all I knew.”
Dr. Rosen asked her about it, and Sharlie told her the whole story, from the taxi ride to Saint Joe’s, right through to the California trip.
“And now he’s here with me, and I haven’t any idea what to do with him.”
“You don’t mention sex.”
“Oh. Didn’t I?” Sharlie knew she hadn’t pulled off the casual response. She began to blush. Dr. Rosen continued to watch her, and Sharlie stammered, “Well, I can’t say as it’s exactly a platonic relationship … oh, God, that’s ridiculous, I nearly raped him, to tell you the truth. I mean, if I’d had any idea how to go about it … but he jumped right in, and … oh, dear … I mean, he took over, and basically it was very … basic.” She faltered to a stop, feeling like an adolescent fool. After a moment had passed and the doctor hadn’t responded, Sharlie said, “You know, I don’t think I’d be any use on those talk shows where women discuss their mastectomies or sexual fulfillment. I can’t even talk about it with a psychiatrist all alone just the two of us.”
“You think it’s necessarily easier just us two?”
“No, I guess not.”
“All right. There’s no need to tell me all the details. But I’d like to know how you believe sex fits into your life, into your relationship with Brian. And how you think it will be after the operation.”
“Sex is important. I would have said, to him, but I know it’s just as important to me. Maybe even more so, and I haven’t even experienced … everything … yet.”
“You mean orgasm.”
Sharlie nodded, grateful for not having to say it herself. She felt stripped.
“Nice girls like it, too, Charlotte,” Dr. Rosen said, and Sharlie thought immediately, What about you, doctor? Do you like it? Maybe you’re a nymphomaniac or a lesbian. No, impossible. Psychiatrists, like parents, never do such dirty things. They r
eproduce out of a sense of duty, prolonging the species. Certainly never, never for gratification. Not lady psychiatrists, anyway.
“Do you feel inhibited by your illness?”
“Uh, yes,” Sharlie said with difficulty, wishing they could move on to another topic. “But not as much as I would have thought. There’s more a feeling of not caring what happens to me. My attraction to him is very … powerful.”
“Do you think the holding back is more an emotional response than fear for your physical safety?”
“Yes,” Sharlie said.
“Would the operation change that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see how it could, unless I got the heart of a nymphomaniac or something.”
The girl’s skin had turned ashen all of a sudden. The sun’s rays filtered through the gardenia branches and cast sinister shadows across her face.
Dr. Rosen got up. “I’m sorry we have to stop, but you need some rest.” She came around behind Sharlie’s wheelchair and put her hand on the thin shoulder.
“We’ll get you fixed up, Charlotte,” she said softly, then wheeled her out and called for the nurse’s aide to take her back upstairs.
Chapter 29
Margaret lay by the pool in the hot midaftemoon sun. She could hear cars whizzing past on the expressway and thought that the sound had become part of the inside of her head—the whirring rush of California. How unlike New York’s din, the jolting stop and start, loud screechings of brakes, howls from irate drivers, obscenities and laughter and screams of terror and joy punctuating the daily ritual. She missed the excitement of it, but the steadiness of California’s zipping pace was probably soothing under the circumstances. It wasn’t every day one’s daughter sat perched on the edge of a heart transplant.
It’s really my doing, she thought. I encouraged it, I pushed her. Walter might have even dropped the whole thing and let Sharlie drift off into death. He’d fought so hard for her all these years—maybe he was finally just too tired.
But there was Brian, too, of course. She had a partner in guilt there, and that was comforting. Someone else who refused to let Sharlie die in peace, who nagged and prodded and cajoled until the poor girl had to give in just for a few minutes’ respite. Margaret knew that while she lay there listening to the low buzz of cars speeding past, Sharlie heard the hum of voices—do it, do it, reach out—so you’re tired, tired of pain, tired of fighting, tired of trying. Force yourself this one last time—have to, for me, for us, for mother, for Brian, if you love us … Hummmmm.
Margaret was frightened. More terrified than she had ever been in her whole life, but it was different terror this time. She’d always been afraid. Afraid of her father, afraid of Miss Newhouse, afraid of doctors and servants and waiters and even children. Maybe even especially children, because she always thought that with their own special antennae they knew about her. Nothing was hidden from the round, penetrating eyes of a child. There was never any chance of hiding from Sharlie, of course, but she was always a frighteningly perceptive creature.
Margaret sighed and rolled over, enjoying the sudden heat baking her back. She pulled herself up on her elbows and surveyed the pool area. One other person, a young man, a boy really, probably about sixteen years old, in one of those tiny bikini bathing suits that shows every bulge.
He was cleaning the pool with an elongated butterfly-net contraption, and as he slowly swept along the surface of the water, the long muscles in his arms rippled and his body glistened in the reflection of the turquoise liquid. No hair on his body at all—or perhaps it was so blond it just didn’t show.
The boy was intent on his work, and Margaret decided he wouldn’t bother looking at a postmenopausal, decrepit old wreck like herself. So she loosened her bathing-suit straps carefully. Just as she tucked them between her breasts, she looked up to see the boy staring at her with hungry admiration. She was startled, she could only stare back at him foolishly while the whirring noise from the expressway intensified to a roar in her ears. Finally the boy dropped his eyes and walked back toward the motel. But as he turned, Margaret saw the minute rayon swimsuit straining with the boy’s erection. For one moment she wondered how the young brown hands would feel on her breasts, if they would be soft and gentle.
Through her sun-baked sensations of guilt and sardonic self-contempt, Margaret realized she had never before allowed her waking imagination to consider a sexual encounter. After all, she was an old lady already. And yet … and yet … the boy had stared at her so ravenously. His bathing suit could barely contain all that youthful lust.
Suddenly the old anger surfaced like a silver blade, slicing up into her conscious mind. Walter had gradually killed that precious part of her over the years, with his heavy body suffocating her, trapping her beneath his pounding hips, all her tender dreams of romantic kisses ground into the sweaty sheets as his teeth pressed against her mouth and he crashed into her most secret, sensitive center, intruding with pain and scraping heat. She had known he wanted to please her. He always used to ask how it had been for her, and she would say, “Fine. It was fine.” But after a while he didn’t ask her anymore. He would come to her bed occasionally, an uninvited gate-crasher who had spoiled the party for her for the rest of her life.
Would those young brown hands feel cool on her burning skin?
Chapter 30
“Hey, Harvey, don’t let me down,” Diller said into the phone. “I’ve been everywhere except the zoo, and I’m going to raid the ape cage if I can’t come up with something in a day or so.” The voice at the other end grumbled in Diller’s ears. “Harvey, I don’t think you understand. Her father’s good for a few mil, and if I pull a miracle, we might just have ourselves a research center.”
The voice grumbled some more. Diller smiled. “Gotcha right in the old test tubes, hey buddy? See what you can do for me. Find me an organ full of piss and vinegar and I’ll set you up in a nice quiet lab for the rest of your life.”
He hung up the phone and passed his hand across his face, yawning. He’d been up until three last night with the Davis baby—four hours inside the heart of a two-month-old infant. He liked the challenge of working on babies. He still got a kick out of rebuilding a newborn child, giving it a chance for life—more so than some of the old farts he worked on who really ought to donate their money to medical research instead of tossing it away on expensive operations that only prolonged the agony for another few months. But after hours of rearranging valves the size of an ant’s eyelash, he’d just as soon perform his next operation on a full-grown elephant.
What the hell was he going to do about her? She was fading in and out, and each day there were longer outs than ins. He’d gotten so desperate he’d even talked with Elizabeth Rosen about the girl’s will to live, hoping that the psychiatrist would tell him she’d hang on a little longer. But Elizabeth was far from encouraging—as he’d already discovered was her tendency in several respects. She said she was beginning to question whether they should perform the surgery even if they found a donor—ambivalence toward heart transplantation, confusion about her future, guilt and despair toward the people she loved, all conspiring to sabotage a successful recovery.
Damn, damn, dammit. There just weren’t all that many millionaire’s kids who needed Diller’s particular skills, and if he blew this one, there might never be another chance to finance the center.
He picked up the phone again and asked the operator to connect him with Dr. Vogel in Phoenix. Maybe Phil had found him a flat EEG since yesterday.
Brian ran down the hallway with legs that felt as if they were functioning in slow motion. His body ached from the desperate effort to push them faster. Letters formed words inside his head, as if from a typewriter: Why is it you can never find a doctor when you need one? No, that wasn’t right. It was something else. A postman. A doorman. What?
After what seemed like hours of propelling himself through white emptiness, he slammed against the desk at
the nurse’s station. Nurse Wynick glanced at his face and, before Brian could open his mouth, took off at a run toward Sharlie’s room. He kept pace alongside, and she snapped, “The button, man. Don’t waste time coming to get me. Push the button.”
“Broken,” he puffed, and they entered the room where Sharlie lay unconscious, gasping, as if she’d been the one doing all the dashing around, when she’d only sat up in bed to brush her hair. Her cheeks were pale blue, and her lips were filmed with froth.
Brian watched helplessly from the foot of the bed while Nurse Wynick hooked up the oxygen. After a moment he heard himself say, “Please, please …”
Nurse Wynick glanced at him, read the frustration in his face, and handed him the phone. “Get them to page Diller,” she said.
Once again they all sat in the waiting room down the hall from ICU. Walter shoved jigsaw puzzle pieces around on the coffee table, but after five minutes of collecting the edges he said, “Oh, screw this,” and scrambled everything together again. He glanced at Margaret, but she didn’t look up from Sense and Sensibility. Brian was staring out the window, his face sorrowful—a young man turned middle-aged practically overnight. Walter had known it would happen. Didn’t he tell them all? God damn women. God damn them all.
They get their hooks into you. What if Sharlie’d been a son? First of all, no son of his would have gotten stuck with Margaret’s weak genes. Probably a strapper like young Brian over there. Poor Sharlie was Walter and Margaret jumbled up and reborn in the most unlucky amalgam.
Holy Christ. If he’d had a son, the kid might have inherited Walter’s healthy body and Margaret’s sexlessness. Jesus, he might have been a raving fag.
Walter forced himself to begin arranging jigsaw pieces again. He would not sit around and whine to himself about what might have been. For all he knew, it could have been worse.
But what could be worse than that beautiful little girl lying in there unconscious? He felt an obstruction in his throat and closed his eyes against the water burning behind his lids. What’s the matter with me? he pleaded. Can’t think anymore, can’t plan anymore, can’t face the future. Suddenly I’m a heap of Jell-O—no guts.
