THE M.D. A Horror Story

by Thomas M. Disch

  “I guess if I’ve waited this long, I can wait a few hours longer. Whatever you say.”

  “Thanks. Now slip the phone back to Mother, and I’ll have her let you in.”

  The connection did not survive the phone’s return trip through the mail slot, and Madge had to wait for her mother to redial and Gail to reconnect. Time enough to collect her wits and settle her nerves. There was no reason in the world to suppose Lance had come back on her account, no reason to suppose they’d even like each other again after ten minutes together. Love was like some damned sliver of frog tissue in a tenth-grade science class: the frog may have been dead who knows how long but the tissue still twitches when it gets zapped.

  “Madge?” her mother whined, the moment she had got through the switchboard again. “Madge, he’s still out there.”

  “Mother, you know Lance. Why make such a fuss? Just let him come in and use the toilet. For heaven’s sake.”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  “Mother, you don’t trust anyone.”

  “Oh, very well!” After a spell of silence, Mrs. O. announced, “It’s not working, I can’t get that thing to unlock the door.”

  “That’s strange, you never have trouble with the security system when there’s a delivery.”

  “It must be broken.”

  “What did you press?”

  “Just what’s written down on the pad. Oh-five-two-four-nine-nine.”

  “Mother, I’ve explained before: you’ve got to punch in today’s date. The number on the pad is from three weeks ago.”

  “So tell me what numbers I’m supposed to use.”

  “Oh-six-one-four-nine-nine.”

  “Wait, wait, one at a time.”

  Within five minutes, Madge had talked Mrs. O. through the process of releasing the security bolt on the door. She felt the same glow of high-tech accomplishment an air traffic controller must feel after coaching a passenger in landing a 747.

  Lance took the phone from Mrs. O. just long enough to say, “Thanks. See you later.” Just four words as he ran for the toilet, but it was as though she’d felt his hand touch her in the dark.

  Back in room 38, she had to beg out of the dinner invitation, offering her mother’s health as an excuse and saying nothing about Lance’s sudden reappearance. She wanted to see him again before she broadcast the news.

  William seemed skeptical about Mrs. O.’s purported indisposition. He probably assumed that Madge was being tyrannized by her mother, a reasonable assumption. Before he left, he wanted to know everything she could tell him about Robert Corning, and while she told the story, he kept playing with his Mark Cross pen, screwing the ballpoint tip in and out nervously.

  “From all you say his life’s been hell,” William said with a thoughtful frown. Then, with a faint smile and a tap of the gold pen on the man’s bare shoulder, “But now that he’s here, he may get well.”

  Madge smiled, and repeated one of Henry’s favorite stock phrases, “You’re a poet, William, and you don’t even know it.”

  When he’d left Madge looked down at the inert body of Robert Corning and felt an overwhelming sadness and sense of futility. All these years of moving limbs and kneading flesh that could not move or knead her in return. All these years without love.

  63

  Dinnertime was sacred in the Michaels household, in theory. But like so much else nowadays that was supposed to be sacred, its day-to-day ritual observance was left to the women and children. Two nights out of three Lisa would preside over a rite attended only by Jason and Henry and their nanny. William’s absences were dictated by the demands of MDS, even, in a sense, by history, both higher priorities than hearth and home. But when Judge did not appear at dinner it wasn’t because he was away from the house (by the terms of his parole he couldn’t be); it was simply to accommodate his and Lisa’s mutual aversion. The only way Lisa could keep from seeming a wicked stepmother was to reduce direct contact to a minimum. Let the boy spend all his time at the screen of his monitor, interfacing with his cartoon prophet Brother Orson. It was too late, in any case, for Judge’s rough edges to be smoothed by the civilizing influence of dinnertime conversation. As well try civilizing thistles.

  But this evening William was to be home for dinner, and he was bringing Judge’s grandfather with him (the only person in the world, Lisa suspected, who actually liked the boy). Lisa had gone to her stepson’s room and laid down the law. He would be at the dinner table at seven-thirty, and he would dress properly. Not that Judge ever dressed any other way. Indeed, more than one of his fights with Lisa had been over his objections to the immodesty of her wardrobe, which was such a droll reversal of the usual sartorial standoff between the generations in suburbia that sometimes Lisa, for her own amusement, dressed on purpose to provoke him. It wasn’t hard: a bare shoulder would do the trick, or jeans that hugged her ass too closely.

  So tonight they would have a family dinner by the book. William had phoned from the limo that he and Ben were already en route; Henry and Jason were being scrubbed and polished by their nanny; and Judge, from within the fastness of his bedroom, had acknowledged her summons. In the kitchen Dorey was in a whirl of varied purposes, as the venison roasted and the soup simmered and the celery root soaked in remoulade, and here, in what Lisa liked to think of as the atrium (because of its showy, energy-saving skylight), Lisa was trying to achieve a balance between opulence and excess in the arrangement of the bushels of roses William had gathered from the garden this morning. A holocaust of roses.

  Such profusions might represent an overflow from the morning’s other pleasures (they’d been rutty as two goats all through the weekend), or they might simply reflect William’s sometimes naive faith in conspicuous consumption. Lisa was not herself averse to immodest display, but only when there was an aesthetic program behind it. William spent money like a televangelist or a third-world dictator, and he just stuffed roses into anything that held water. It was Lisa’s executive duty as an upper-middle-class wife to protect her spouse from such self-parody.

  When the roses had been recomposed to best effect, Lisa sat down and did a quick skim of the news, avoiding obits and shortages and other material in the category of depressing, and scouting out interesting local crime stories. The Buster Johnson child abuse case from nearly a year ago was still in the news, and there was a wonderful clip of Johnson’s ex-wife fuming at the judge in front of the courthouse. Then a story about an unidentified (because decapitated) corpse presumed to have been murdered, which had been deposited in the parking lot of the House of Pancakes on Lake Street. The dumping of mutilated (and untraceable) plague victims on roadsides and back alleys had become so common that the body had almost been carted off routinely to the big crematorium at the State Fairgrounds without having been tested for ARVIDS. Lisa felt she’d scored points against the Zeitgeist, since she’d already proposed to two of her friends, both mystery buffs, that the easiest way for a murderer to dispose of a corpse these days was to chop off the head, bury it or freeze it, and leave the carcass for the municipal health authorities to take care of. She had the printer make a print copy of the story so she could document her perspicacity.

  While the printer purred, Lisa shot a spritz of soda into a snifter and let the cable choose the news by its own set of priorities. It switched to 39, the live news channel, and the first image on the screen was a mural map of Mille Lacs Lake with an anchorwoman in front of it in a flame-bright yellow-orange blouse, and speaking in a tone of voice reserved for serious trouble. “Senator Burton’s allegations, if they prove to be true, spell big trouble for Twin Cities medical miracle maker Dr. William Michaels and his prestigious research foundation, Medical Defense Systems. MDS spokesperson Valerie Bright denies that the foundation and its board have committed any inproprieties. But questioned about the Northwestern Development Fund, Ms. Bright was less forthcoming.” The newscast cut to a close-up of Valerie Bright wearing her invincible Nutra-Sweet smile and painted thick as a de Koo
ning. “There is nothing in what Senator Burton says that in any way reflects on the conduct of MDS. Obviously, he is looking for any pretext he can to keep the state’s project out of the area he represents in the state legislature.”

  “Does Dr. Michaels have a financial interest in the three companies Senator Burton cited?” an unseen reporter insisted, and even before Ms. Bright could begin to equivocate, Lisa could feel it coming. Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls, no indeed.

  She’d told her brother, when he’d involved his own company in the undertaking, that he was moving too fast. But the prospect had proved irresistible, and Jason had taken the plunge, and he’d brought in other major investors, banks and retirement funds, all desperate to invest in the one growth industry in a collapsing market: death.

  She had better phone Jason right away. He was in Boston and a Minnesota state senator’s news conference would probably not command the same immediate media attention. There might not be anything Jason could do at this point, maybe nothing he would want to do. It wasn’t a crime to make money, after all. There had been fortunes made during the AIDS crisis by those (including William) who had recognized its investment potentials. The Mille Lacs project had already acquired so much momentum mere scandal might not be able to derail it. At least that seemed the best hope for the moment and the tack to take with William.

  The phone rang. Could it be telepathy, was Jason calling her?

  No such luck. It was Her Holiness Judith Winckelmeyer. To Lisa’s mind Judge’s mother was as much of a trial as Judge himself and for much the same reason. They both acted as though anything they might have to say to you was just a parenthesis in their permanent long distance conversations with God. Judith’s God had somewhat better manners than Judge’s, enjoining her sometimes to seem to listen to other people. But finally there was no reasoning with either of them.

  “Judith, how nice of you to call, where are you?”

  “I’m at the bus station.”

  “In Minneapolis? Or…?”

  “Tampa. Is Judge there? I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Judge has his own phone line. Don’t you have the number?”

  “Of course. But it’s always busy.”

  “He must be interfacing with Brother Orson.”

  “Still? After all the stories there’ve been?”

  “He won’t listen to anything anyone says on TV. Except for Brother Orson, of course. In him his faith is perfect.”

  Judith sighed. “That’s so like William.”

  Which seemed (Lisa thought) an odd remark. “Like William?”

  Judith had no answer ready to hand, and Lisa let it go by. She asked what she most wanted to know. “Are you coming here?”

  “I wish I didn’t have to.”

  Which meant Judith was under orders from her god and not to be argued with.

  “When?” Lisa asked. “By bus?” Of course, by bus, since Judith was opposed on principle to air travel because of the carbon-emissions-per-passenger-mile ratio. She asked only because she enjoyed rubbing Judith’s nose in the sillier consequences of her high-mindedness.

  “Yes, by bus. It doesn’t take that much longer, and it’s safer. As long as I get there before the Fourth. I’m worried about Judge.”

  The Fourth of July was Judge’s birthday. He would be eighteen.

  “How’s that? Do you think he’ll self-destruct? Commit new acts of arson? I think he’s grown out of that, Judith. Kids go through these stages. Murder, perhaps. But that will be less of a danger once he’s moved out of here. For both of us.”

  “Has he said that’s what he means to do?”

  “He hasn’t threatened me in so many words. But it’s there in his body language.”

  “I mean leave home. Did he say he’s moving away?”

  “I think that that goes without saying. Judge isn’t happy here. He considers all Willowville a prison, and it is, for him. For two years almost he’s had to keep within a half mile of this house when he hasn’t been in school, and I know from my own experience that there is nothing to be done within a half mile of this house but mow lawns. The boy’s stir crazy. Anyone would be, but for him it’s a little worse, because none of us share his fixation with his ridiculous prophet. None of us, to be perfectly truthful, like him. Except possibly for your father.”

  “You can say that and ask me why I’m worried?”

  “Do you think your appearing here is going to be a bright candle on his birthday cake? The last I heard you and Judge were not on speaking terms.”

  “But he can’t refuse to see me. Not while he’s a minor and I’m his mother. After the Fourth I’m afraid it’ll be too late. He’ll be swallowed up by the Orsonians and I’ll never see him again.”

  “Speaking of religious organizations, Judith, how is the convent?”

  “It isn’t a convent, Lisa. It’s a community of sharing.”

  “I imagine Judge would regard the Orsonians much the same way, don’t you? If that’s what he opts for. He might just as easily go into the Marines. His sense of the approaching Apocalypse has a large guns-and-ammo component. You should see him practicing with his throwing knives.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Oh dear, indeed. But come and see for yourself. As you say, for two more weeks he’s still a captive audience. Do you know when your bus gets into town? Shall I send our car to pick you up?”

  Judith gave the details of her arrival on Wednesday morning, and Lisa agreed not to give Judge advance warning of her visit. Little as she liked Judith, Lisa rather looked forward to seeing the two of them at loggerheads. The immovable object versus the irresistible force. A perfect match.

  There was still time to call Jason. She dialed the number of Fein, Schechner & Joseph, and was routed to Jason’s home line, where a machine answered.

  “Jason, if you’re there,” Lisa said, shouting down her brother’s recorded voice, “please pick up. It’s important.”

  “Lisa,” he said. “I know why you’re calling. You heard about that Senator Burton. Am I right?”

  “I didn’t think you would have heard so quickly.”

  “My spies are everywhere.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “Do you mean will it sink the project? It could. But I doubt it. There are too many people involved, too much money already in the pipeline. But there’ll be some kind of scandal. And it looks like William will bear the brunt of it. That guy Burton has done his homework. In fact, he’s dug up some stuff our own staff never knew about. Some of William’s earliest real estate deals in that area go back to ‘86. How old would he have been in ‘86?”

  “Is that a serious question? Am I supposed to get a calculator?”

  “He was nineteen, in his first year at medical school. An orphan. Where’d he get almost half a million to buy a bungalow colony?”

  “You probably know better than me. He had some insurance money from his father, he was lucky on the market, and he got out before the crash. William occupied Ground Zero of the American Dream. How do you think I was wooed so quickly?”

  “I always thought you married him for his pheromones.”

  “What I’m worried about, Jason, is if things do turn sour, what kind of trouble could William find himself in? What does he stand to lose, if his project is scuttled?”

  “In that let-us-hope-unlikely event, just about everything. Except MDS. And if there’s a real scandal, he might even lose control there.”

  “Jail?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “A project on the scale of the Mille Lacs Lake thing requires cooperation at every level of government. Money buys cooperation. But I would bet that William has kept from becoming directly involved in that side of things. William is smart, he’d see to it that he’d have deniability.”

  “Jason, would you be an angel and call Mother and explain the situation and tell her I may be bringing the boys to the Berkshires for the Fourth. Possibl
y for the rest of the summer.”

  “Are you thinking of a preemptive divorce?”

  “I don’t know. I might leave him. And if I do, I shouldn’t dally. As Lady Macbeth says, ‘If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.’”

  “You mean you want the settlement made before he’s gone bust?”

  “That would seem a reasonable objective.”

  “He’ll know why you’re doing this, Lisa. It’s transparent.”

  “I’ve never told him how to run his business. The marriage is my business.”

  “And what about ‘For better or worse’?”

  “Jason! Whose side are you on?”

  “Just curious. Okay, I’ll talk to Mother. I hope it doesn’t have to come to that. I like William.”

  “And so do I. Enormously. He’s as bright as anyone I’ve ever known, and he’s good company, and he’s actually quite good in bed, though rather more athletic than tender. We have what you might call aerobic sex. And as a parent he’s been concerned and responsible, and the boys are undoubtedly fond of him. Though I wouldn’t say they were that close. William and I have brought them up on the English model, and their nanny is probably the largest adult presence in their life. If she were to leave, Jason and Henry would be desolated. But William’s absence would affect them not much more than the discontinuance of their favorite TV show. I’m exaggerating, of course. But not that much.”

  “It sounds like you’ve been considering this for a long time.”

  “I suppose in some ways I’ve had it in mind from the day we got married. Or engaged, rather. We neither of us ever claimed to be in a condition of romantic passion. We discussed the practical, assets-and-liabilities side of what we were doing.”

  “But it doesn’t sound like you’re intending to have a similar discussion this time.”

  “No, I confess it, I’m a coward. I’ll discuss it with him once it’s a fait accompli and I’m with Mother. And I’d better not discuss it any longer now with you. William will be home any moment. Give my love to Abigail, but don’t say a word about this to her. It all may come to nothing.”