The Doctor's House

by Ann Beattie

  “That sounds like a good idea,” I said.

  “It’s the Cambridge way.”

  “I wouldn’t indict a community because you have such severe personal problems,” I said.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he said. “You’re this bent out of shape because I didn’t call for a couple of weeks?”

  “Whether you believe this or not, once I knew you were safe, I didn’t want you to call.”

  It was what I had been thinking about Jim Burnham, too: the fewer calls, the less complexity, the better. It was all I could do to deal with real crises. I had not slept well since Mary Catherine had been hospitalized. Just that day, she hadasked me, as we were having tea, whether Jim had called, and I had realized she had her own fantasy going about the two of us. I had all but told her to drop the subject.

  “I don’t believe you didn’t want to hear from me,” he said.

  I raised my eyebrows, suggesting that he would do well to believe it. If Jim Burnhamhadgotten in touch again, I would have said the same thing to him. I lifted the chicken onto the platter and handed Andrew a carving knife. Finally he got up and stood in front of the platter. As he used the knife to remove one of the chicken’s thighs, I had a sudden image of him as a boy, standing at the stove, intently cooking our breakfast eggs. He was squinting with the same concentration. From behind, his shoulders were slightly stooped. Still, I was determined not to sympathize with him. I said: “Can you imagine . . . no: you can’t. But if youcouldimagine anything from anyone else’s point of view, could you see that it is dismaying to hear, over and over, that your brother, the person you have considered yourself closest to, is a person who uses and abandons women, letting those supposedly nearest and dearest to him deal with the fallout? But those people can take care ofthemselveswhen the wife of their brother’s good friend comes over and explains how an affair with Andrew ruined their marriage. Or if they’re off for an abortion—surely your sister, who will never have a child herself because her husband is dead, can offer consolation at no personal expense. Do you see what I’m talking about? It’s a compulsion, Andrew. I don’t know what it’s about. Maybe just incredible ego. But this quest you’re on makes no sense at all. All the women you’ve looked up have been nuts, by your own admission. What’s in it for you? You used to have alife that wasn’t just about dating girls from the past. You used to date women from work. Women from—” I had no idea how he’d met most of them. “FromBoston,” I finished.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about my life, if it upsets you so much,” he said. “If you spent a little more time in the world, you might be surprised that it’s not only the people in my life who have problems. What am I supposed to do? Stay at home like you, put myself under house arrest? You think people never make mistakes? You think that if you turn up the music and go from the chair to the table, and the table to the chair, that’s a sort of incantation that will keep the world at bay? Well, I have a job. I have friends. I have lovers. I make mistakes, yes, but no more than other people. Take a survey, Nina,” he said bitterly. “I dare you to meet enough people to take a survey.”

  The telephone call from Eugenia Manzetti came as a surprise. She was in Boston for a wedding, and she wondered if we could get together for lunch. She had gotten my number from Sylvia Richards. I had no idea how Sylvia knew the number. Sylvia Richards had been another one of Dr. X’s conquests. She was the subject of the last big fight my mother had with my father before he died. She had been particularly hurt because she had considered Sylvia—another person with a drinking problem—her friend, until Sylvia confessed her long-ago affair. I wouldn’t have known, except that my mother felt so bad about some of the things she’d said to my father, as he lay dying in the hospital. She told me on the phone, trying to instill guilt because I had not rushedto the hospital when his condition worsened. I tried to think why Eugenia Manzetti—Mrs. M—would call me. It didn’t take long to decide it must have to do with Andrew’s looking up her daughter, even though she’d said nothing about that on the phone. Eugenia—though she’d asked me to call her by her first name, Mrs. M came more naturally—had not sounded upset, but I still had my suspicions.

  When I went to the restaurant of her hotel, I saw that she had put on an enormous amount of weight. She had on a navy blue dress with a white eyelet collar, and she wore bright red lipstick. I could feel the smear of oily lipstick she left on my cheek.

  We talked with the awkwardness of two people who didn’t really know each other, which made me feel as if I was with Jim Burnham, whom I’d not heard from again. It was chitchat, which I had never had any talent for.Impatient for the conversation to take off or, more likely, turn to Andrew’s latest escapade, I made a preemptive strike. I said: “My brother and I have had a falling out. If there’s anything you want to say about him, I should tell you that I don’t discuss him any longer.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. M said. “Well, I don’t think there was anything I particularly intended to say.”

  When I said nothing in reply, she began to talk about the old neighborhood. She segued into her husband’s death, and how much her life had changed. What would that be like, I wondered: to have your husband become an old man and then die, without your ever hearing a knock on the door?

  She fiddled with her wedding ring, which she still wore. “I’m so glad I got up my courage to call,” Mrs. M said. “Youshouldn’t bother young people, you should let them fly the coop once they’ve grown, but I really do remember you so clearly. You were such a thoughtful girl, and so talented, too.”

  My face must have registered my surprise.

  “Of course you were. I always used to wonder how you’d combine your many talents.”

  “Are you sure you’re rememberingme?” I asked.

  “Of course. And it was such a pity that your parents didn’t take the interest they should, though I do believe that old adage that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, and every parent lives in something of a glass house, I think. If nothing else, we’re transparent to our children.”

  She ordered a cheeseburger. I asked for chicken salad.

  “IlikedJosie, I certainly was fond of that girl,” Mrs. M said as soon as the waitress turned away, as if we’d already been discussing Josie all along. “And of course, that poor child’s health. You know, when she was operated on some of the boys started calling her ‘the Dead Girl,’ as if going into the hospital meant certain death. I’m not superstitious, but it upset me that they went around saying that. I’m glad she and Alice have become reacquainted as adults. You can’t make children be friends with someone just because you like that child, that’s something a mother learns.”

  The restaurant was nearly empty, except for two Asians eating at a corner table and a few businessmen talking earnestly.

  “But I don’t want to talk about Josie,” she said. “I’m interested to hear more about you. From what you told mewhen we spoke, it sounds like you’re a research librarian who also writes?”

  “That’s pretty much it,” I said. “Most people doing what I do are on the Internet. I’m old-fashioned. I like to go to the library to do my research.”

  “I was fascinated by that piece inThe New Yorkerabout the card catalogues getting thrown out,” she said. “It was written by that man who wrote the book about phone sex.” She took a sip of ice water. I started to feel less anxious, because I’d figured out that she did not expect answers to her questions; in fact, the way her eyes glazed over as she hurried to the next statement made me think that she would be unhappy if we did stop to discuss anything.

  In her own peculiarly animated way, Mrs. M was as adept as my mother at shutting out what she didn’t want to hear.Having a real exchange had always been what my mother liked least; she never wanted to know what you thought, or anything that happened in your life. Neither did she ever seem to introspect about her own. Though perhaps she had had some willingness, if the topic was impersonal; she had briefly gone to school to stud
y nursing.

  “I think back to those girls—it’s terrible of me, but I always assumed the boys would turn out fine, one way or the other, but I worried about some of the girls,” Eugenia said, as the plates were brought to the table. “If I ever found myself in Chicago, I’d like to see Andie Bornstein again. Such obvious talent as a painter, and her parents only paid attention to her brother. I do wonder if she continued to paint.”

  Andie was someone from high school whom, to my knowledge, Andrew had not yet screwed. That was my onlyclear association with the name. Eugenia was enjoying her cheeseburger, plopping French fries in her mouth like a late-night slot machine player.

  She wiped her lips. “Josie Bower was so upset that they called her ‘the Dead Girl.’ Well: I was an adult, and I was upset, myself, that those nasty boys called me ‘the Witch’!”

  “You knew about that?”

  “Everyonealwaysknows a nickname that’s said behind their back,” she said. “You know, your brother was one of the boys who defended her. He was quite friendly with that other bully for a while, that redheaded boy whose father did everyone’s taxes. I think they stopped being friends because he was so mean and he wouldn’t stop picking on Josie.”

  I thought wryly that Andrew’s defense of Josie had not been part of Josie’s essay. Had she even known? I wondered. I had an image of Andrew holding the flowers. Our father placing them on her bedside table. All of it a seduction. All of it meaning something other than what it seemed.

  “Alice has always had such good manners, but that’s different from being courageous, of course. She never rushed to Josie’s defense, and she still feels bad about it, she was telling me the other day. But here we are talking about a dead girl who lived, when I’ve come to hear about you.” She leaned across the table. She said: “Tell me the truth. Is it exciting, living in Cambridge?”

  I almost laughed, it was so unlike what I was expecting. I forced myself to be serious. I explained that it was a place—like San Francisco, like Paris—you couldn’t disabuse people of romanticizing, because it had a charming facade that made it seem at once open, yet mysteriously remote. I spoke on thesubject of Cambridge as if I were responding to the lame writer’sYou fill in. Perhaps this was how people talked at lunch, I thought. Perhaps this was why I avoided getting together with them.

  “Alice’s husband is having a midlife crisis,” she said. “He has wanderlust. That expedition with that socialite to the Himalayas, where so many people died climbing that mountain. . . . I gave him the book, and it made the exact opposite impression from what I hoped. He loves an adventure. He’s off on his motorcycle even in the worst kinds of weather. I think she’ll divorce him,” Mrs. M said. “Between you and me.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “But I said to Alice, I said, at least he says good-bye. You remember poor Patty Arthur? Such a lovely girl in high school, and she goes off and leaves a letter for her husband that she’s tested positive for HIV—just disappears. She left her little baby with a baby-sitter, wrote a note, and vanished! So I suppose you could also say poor husband.”

  I stopped eating.

  “Josie and Alice had been back in touch with her—at least, until she disappeared. I must say, in my day, the doctor having to talk somebody’s wife into taking a penicillin shot when the husband had caught syphilis was the most shocking thing imaginable, but then you look at Patty and you wonder: When she wrote the note—what kind of person must she be, to do that?”

  I stared at her. It was another rhetorical question, so no answer was required.

  “Am I a horrible old woman, gossiping? Josie told Alicethat Patty had seen your brother recently, so I assumed you knew.”

  He’d seen her? I thought that telling me about everyone he’d looked up from the past was part of his game. Then it hit me: Andrew saw Patty Arthur. My mind raced, yet at the same time it stood still. It was an all too familiar feeling. I had had it the many times I’d overheard our parents’ fights. I’d had it when I’d looked through the chain pulled across the front door of the carriage house. Mac had insisted I never open the door without attaching the chain. I could remember carefully putting on the chain as whoever was on the front step repeatedly knocked and said my name. Looking into the policeman’s face, I’d had the same stomach-sickening realization I had now. It was as if I was being swept upward, my weight not enough to keep me on the ground. I’d had it, also, the night I’d gradually become aware of the lights revolving around my bathroom ceiling, at first convinced they were some dizzy projection of my mind, slowly realizing they signaled something bad happening over and over, whether or not I shut my eyes.

  But I was in a restaurant; I was not airborne.Open the door, Nina, everything’s going to be okay, Mary Catherine’s husband had said. He had been standing at my door, wanting to reclaim his son.

  Our plates were cleared, a grape still impaled on my fork, as we ordered coffee. Rather, Eugenia ordered coffee and I nodded numbly. I was overwhelmed by fear, but it got all mixed up with Patty’s preoccupation with Morocco. Morocco’s mountains were the tallest in North Africa: the Atlas mountains. There were earthquakes in Morocco. My mind wouldn’tstop fixating on useless facts. Gazelles ran wild in Morocco. Macaques, which many people mistakenly thought were birds, were actually a kind of monkey.

  Mrs. M didn’t seem to notice that I’d been transported. She had delivered her surprising news, and now she wondered aloud whether dark chocolate creme brulee might not be a bit much. I couldn’t think of dessert. Desert had ones, dessert two. Of course Andrew had not slept with Patty Arthur. Of course not. Wasn’t that always what he said, except for those times he looked away and spoke vaguely, giving me to understand that he had?

  After our coffee, before we left, I took down her number and promised to call if I ever visited Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh! I could recite facts about Pittsburgh, too, but I was still wandering through Morocco—the real Morocco, obliterating Patty’s imaginary, young girl’s fantasy. As I put my pen and the piece of paper in my handbag, I wondered if Eugenia had any idea how unlikely a visit from me would be, but decided that pretending we might meet again elsewhere was only a social form: no harm in pretending. Outside she kissed my cheek, telling me, again, what a remarkable person I was. “Remarkable” was probably a kind word. I was a zombie. Andrew had seen Patty Arthur? She had been married, had a baby? She was sick, had disappeared?

  Walking down the street, I had an image of the bed in Patty Arthur’s room: the pillows in their various shapes and fabrics. Then I remembered Andrew leading the way into the kitchen, remembered what it had felt like to straggle behind him, with her in the middle. My mind jumped to another scene: my bike fallen over, my hands on the handlebars topull it upright. The whole world had changed, and I was supposed to bicycle home. It was as futile as standing outside in your silly nightgown while a crisis unfolded. My bike had two wheels, and I was the third. I had been the third wheel all my life—so afraid of being unwanted, that except for the time I was with Mac, I kept to myself. I was always happier seeing Hound on my own, without Andrew. Without his wife, either. And those pleasant but awkward evenings, tagging along with Serena and Andrew. I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to go along, but couldn’t help myself.

  I walked some distance before I called Andrew from a pay phone. He was back at his job, where they had forgiven his disappearance, not only because he was so good at what he did, but because when you worked with people your own age, everyone assumed that midlife crises were as common as colds.

  He was not there, his secretary told me; he was at lunch. She loved to give disappointing news. If Andrew was out, or busy, the measured, false regret in her voice had a tingly quality that betrayed her pleasure in disappointing me. Years ago, he had had a brief affair with her. He’d told me that one of the things she held against him was that he was more devoted to his sister than he was to her.

  I walked to the subway, not sure if wind or mise
ry made tears roll from my eyes.

  Seen, I thought. “Seen” was so often a euphemism for having sex.

  Whereas “had coffee with,” as I’d told Hound’s wife, was not in my life a euphemism for anything.

  His secretary did not pick up when I called from home; hegot the phone on the first ring, sounding harried. “I heard you called. I’m glad you’re speaking to me again,” he said. “I’m just about to walk into a meeting, though. Can I call you back?”

  “It’s about Patty Arthur,” I said.

  There was a silence. “Patty Arthur,” he repeated. “Okay. What about her?”

  “You never told me you’d seen her.”

  “I got the idea you were a little exasperated that I was looking up some old friends—or did I get the wrong impression, when you called my seeing people a compulsion and presented yourself as Goldilocks, with women coming over to huff and to puff and to blow your house down.”

  “Andrew—did you have sex with her?”

  “As more of my ongoingquest, you mean? Part of mycompulsion?”

  “Just answer the question,” I said, so light-headed I was dizzy.

  “Can I get back to you to discuss my sex life in about fifteen minutes?” he said.

  “Andrew—do you know that she’s sick?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She disappeared,” I said, not able to get to the point.

  “Disappeared?” I had his attention. “How would you know that?”

  I wanted to tell him what I knew, but I didn’t want to say the words. When we were younger, I had never needed to use words. I had used my eyes; I had been able to communicate with him by making the smallest gesture. I had let him know I was sad by disappearing from his sight, but othertimes I had drawn close, attached myself to him even when we didn’t touch. I remembered, suddenly and ridiculously, the pound cake—the special pound cake, with the cake server lying beside the cake stand—Patty Arthur’s white lie about who had made it; the cake’s thin white icing. Then I saw my bicycle again, on its side in the grass. Andrew’s was still standing.