The Doctor's Daughter

by Hilma Wolitzer

  “Oh, grow up,” I muttered after the beep. Then I called Scott, who worked the late shift at Tower on Fridays, and of course I woke him up. “Ma,” he bleated. “God, what time is it?” He sounded as if he were being smothered with his pillow.

  “Time to rise and shine, sunbeam,” I sang, eliciting another, more protracted groan. He’d hated my saying that when he was a child, too, so why was I needling him after waking him up? Before I could stop myself, I added, breathlessly, “Scotty, Dad can’t find one of his paperweights, the blue-and-white swirly one? You didn’t happen to see it when you were here, did you?”

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing. Go back to sleep. Forget it.”

  “God,” he said again. “What is it, Friday?” And seconds later I could hear that unmistakable even, open-mouthed breathing. Well, at least he hadn’t asked me for any more money.

  I took a shower, remembering not to use talc or deodorant afterward. Then I sat down in my terry robe at the computer again. I logged onto the Internet and asked Google to search out Thomas Roman and Leaves. There were pages and pages of hits. Someone named Buddy Thomas was selling “genuine” Bible leaves, with authentication from the Roman Church; a college fraternity home page posted news: “ Roman leaves, Thomas replaces him as Prez;” a literary site offered poems by Thomas Hardy, including “The Roman Road” and “During Wind and Rain,” with the line “How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!” And so on. What did I expect to find, anyway? Some of Tom Roman’s letters to my mother were written more than forty years ago; he might be dead by now, too, and I had no idea what I would do if I discovered he was still alive.

  But I refined my search, typing in “Leaves Literary Magazine” and “Thomas Roman,” carefully enclosing each phrase in quote marks, and came up with only one match, but a perfect one. Tom Roman—my mother’s Tom Roman, I was certain of it—lived in Vergennes, Vermont, now, and sold back issues of Leaves from his home. I hoped that wasn’t his sole means of support. I placed an order for all of the issues between 1961, the date of his earliest letter to her, and 1978, the year of her death, thinking, that should make his day. Then I opened the “contact us” link and began to compose an e-mail message. “Dear Thomas Roman, you don’t know me, but I believe you were a friend of my mother’s.”

  My fingers were still suspended over the keyboard, but I couldn’t think of what to say next. Should I mention my mother’s death? It would be a bizarrely belated announcement: “I’m sorry to inform you that Helen died twenty-seven years ago . . .” And maybe she had written to him about her illness and he’d figured the rest out for himself when he stopped hearing from her. Or maybe he’d seen a notice of her death.

  “How is your back?” he’d once written to her, and he’d called her “love.” Their exchanges were personal as well as professional, and there were so many letters from him in that folder. Could they have been more than just friends?

  Where had that idea come from? From my own wild imagination, no doubt. Asking after someone’s health was just plain courtesy, and love really a mild and not uncommon term of affection; my dentist’s assistant called everyone that. And I hadn’t read anything else that suggested a more intimate relationship between my mother and Tom Roman. But there might have been hidden messages, written between the lines, or other letters from him that she had destroyed. A little quiver ran up my spine as I envisioned those letters curling and melting in the flames of one of our Riverdale fireplaces, just as my father came into the room, carrying a Gibson and whistling Mozart.

  I was acutely aware of my beating heart, which seemed to be keeping perfect time with the cursor flashing on the screen. Then the phone jangled, and I deleted what I’d just written, hastily, as if I were the one destroying incriminating evidence. “Hey,” Violet said. “What’s your problem?”

  “Oh, you got my message. Sorry, I’m just overtired, I guess—I had such a weird dream. Listen, what are you doing today?”

  “Working. Why?”

  She was always working. I wanted to tell her that I was on the verge of some sort of psychological breakthrough. And I was going to say that I was frightened, and ask if she’d go to the radiologist’s with me, but I found myself unable to say any of that. She would probably end up nagging me again about seeing a therapist, which she’d been doing fairly regularly since my little outburst at lunch. “I don’t know,” I said lamely. “I thought we’d play or something.”

  “Don’t you have anything else to do?” Violet said, the ant scolding the grasshopper. “How are the books coming, Doctor?” The question was sardonic and sincere at the same time. Years ago, when I abandoned my own writing, Violet was dismayed, but when I took up editing, she’d deemed it a reasonably healthy defense mechanism.

  “Stop calling me that,” I said. “The books are coming along fine, I guess.”

  “You guess? Don’t you know?”

  “Yes, yes, I do. They’re going swimmingly, they’re going like gang-busters, like a house afire!”

  “Jesus, Allie,” Violet said. “Call me back when you’re feeling civil again, okay?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry. It’s probably only a little distemper. I haven’t had my shots. And then there was this stupid dream . . .”

  “All right then, you’re forgiven,” Violet told me. “I’ve got to go, anyway.” And before I could say anything else, she hung up. The phone rang again immediately, and I picked it up and said, “Talk about civil.” There was a significant pause before a man’s resolutely cheerful voice said, “Good morning, ma’am! How are you doing today? I’m calling on behalf of your neighborhood Cancer Care drive—”

  “Sorry, can’t help you,” I said, briskly. “I have cancer myself.” Then I shut off the ringer on the phone and went back to the computer and wrote, “Dear Thomas Roman, I am writing a memoir about my mother, the late Helen Brill. You published some of her poems in your journal Leaves between the early 1960s and the late 1970s. I’ve just ordered back issues for that period, which might include work of hers that I’m not aware of. If you can offer any personal remembrances, anecdotes, etc. about her, they would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Yours, Alice Brill.”

  I was definitely getting better at this, at prevaricating and putting out bulletins from my fevered brain. To atone for the former, I picked up my journal and actually wrote a few brief lines about my mother—about her handwriting, the sound of her footsteps, her doubled self at the dressing table mirror—the stuff of a beginning workshop exercise, elements of character, that sort of thing. And I made notes on a couple of incidents: the broken glass on Halloween, a picnic in Chilmark made dramatic by a thunderstorm.

  I remembered the only time I’d ever seen my mother angry with my father. She had been at her desk, working, and he called her name from another room. When she didn’t answer right away, he called again, impatiently, and she yelled, “For God’s sake, Sam, what do you want?” I think we were all astonished by her outburst.

  I read back what I had written; it wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t really good, but I recognized the particular pleasure of having set something down. Then I yawned; what an exhausting morning it had been. I might have been doing manual labor instead of hanging around in my bathrobe, doodling and being rude on the phone and sending self-conscious e-mails to strangers, like a latter-day Herzog in drag. I stretched out across the bed and settled Ev’s pillows and mine all around me in a makeshift nest. My eyes closed against the bars of slanted light coming in through the blinds. I told myself to just get up and get out of there, but it was like talking to Scott on a school-day morning, trying to force an inert object into action. Time to rise and shine, sunbeam. Five more minutes, Ma, he used to beg. Five more minutes, I agreed, and slid swiftly down the tunnel into sleep.

  When I woke, the room was in shadow, and I could see the mute and frantic red pulse of the answering machine across the room. I was afraid to look at the clock and even more afraid of playing my messages. But I
finally did both. It was almost four o’clock, and there were three messages. The first one was from Marsha at the doctor’s office. “Ms. Brill,” she said in the severest of tones. “It is twelve thirty, and you are now half an hour late for your appointment. Please call me immediately.” The second message had come in twenty minutes later. “Hello. This is Mrs. Hernandez, the eighth-floor nursing supervisor at the Hebrew Home for the Aged. Please call me in reference to your father, Samuel Brill.” The third call was a hang-up, the ensuing hum laden with ominous possibilities.

  I had missed my mammogram, which was something like missing a plane that might have gone on to crash. I wondered what Mrs. Hernandez wanted. She seemed to be obligated by law or malpractice insurance to inform me of anything untoward in my father’s life, from an ingrown toenail to his sudden death. Her voice was always the same—level and courteous—no matter what she was reporting, and I felt my heart swoop a little, the way it used to when the school nurse phoned about one of the kids.

  Yet I called Marsha back first, and began offering excuses and apologies before she could uncoil and strike. “Marsha? It’s Alice Brill. Gosh, I feel absolutely terrible. Believe me, I didn’t forget my appointment. I just woke up this morning feeling so achy, I went right back to sleep. It was like a stupor, I must be running a fever.” Feel my head, I think I’m burning up.

  When I was a kid, it was just the sort of easy lie that was bound to bring on suitable punishment. If you cut school and explained that your grandmother had died, well, then, your perfectly healthy grandmother dropped dead in her kitchen the very next day. I put one hand to my cool forehead and then to each of my neglected breasts in an irreverent genuflection. And I listened, in the requisite docile silence, as Marsha reprimanded me, advising that I would have to pay a no-show fee and couldn’t possibly be rescheduled for another three months. That heartless bitch; did she want a note from my mother?

  If my father were alive, I thought, she’d fit me in a hell of a lot sooner. If my father were alive. Maybe I really was sick. I meant, of course, if he were still practicing, but that didn’t make much sense, either. I’d never taken advantage of so-called professional courtesy, and even now I didn’t make a plea for special dispensation by mentioning the thickening in my breast. I simply accepted another appointment—in mid-September, a different season—practically promising to engrave the date in my flesh.

  Then I called Mrs. Hernandez back, trying to ready myself for anything she might have to tell me. On other occasions, she had called to report that my father’s hearing aid was missing again or that he was developing a cold, but this was Friday the thirteenth, after all. It took a while to reach her, she wasn’t at her desk, and when she picked up the phone at last, I blurted, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, everything’s fine,” she said. I could hear assorted screams in the background that seemed to contradict her. “Your father asked me to call you.”

  “He did?” Although he’d claimed at times that he had been trying to reach me, that always proved to be delusional before this, some sort of ESP he imagined we shared. “What about?” I asked anxiously.

  “He wanted you to bring him something when you visit. Let’s see,” she continued, rustling some papers. “I wrote this down someplace. Ah, here it is. Dr. Brill would like some decent notepaper. I offered him one of my pads, but he turned me down flat! That’s the way he put it, by the way— ‘decent’ notepaper.” She chuckled, like a doting grandmother.

  I was pleased and mystified. That sounded like his old authoritative self, but I couldn’t imagine who he’d want to write to. “Are you sure it was my father?”

  “Oh, it was him, all right, honey. You’d think he was in the operating room, asking for a sponge. Demanding it, I mean.”

  “Well, thanks, Mrs. Hernandez, thanks very much. And please tell him I’ll bring him some stationery tomorrow.”

  It had been a day of letters, if not exactly a red-letter day. I went back to the computer to check my e-mail. There were two messages; both of them had come in while I slept. The first one was from Michael. “Dear Alice, Re: Caitlin’s nickname, I was thinking of ‘Cake,’ because Joe couldn’t say her name when he was a baby. Yours forever, Michael.”

  The other message was longer and more like a genuine letter. “Dear Alice Brill, You have given an old man a truly lovely surprise. I’m so glad you’re writing about your mother, a dear friend and a fine poet, and I will think long and hard (a necessity these days, I’m afraid!) about your request for specific remembrances of her. In the meantime, thanks for your order of all those back issues of Leaves. It’s always good to have a new reader. Sincerely yours, Tom Roman. P.S. I’ll flag the copies with Helen’s poems for you.”

  9

  Ev said that my father probably wouldn’t even remember asking for it, but the next morning I went shopping for what he might consider “decent” notepaper, with the proper weight and texture and color—white, of course, but the right cast of white. His request delighted me because it was specific and because it sounded so rational, although I still had no idea whom he intended to write to, if anyone at all.

  When I was a child, my mother always helped me to choose birthday or Christmas gifts for my father. Left on my own, I would have selected some novelty-store item, a giant golf-ball pencil holder or a tie that lit up when you pressed its knot, but she steered me firmly toward more conventional and conservative alternatives at Saks or Brooks Brothers, like cashmere socks and rep-striped ties that didn’t dare do anything unexpected.

  Whenever my father received one of these gifts, he’d make the standard fuss, for which I was a pathetic foil. “My, my, what can this be?” he would begin. What could possibly have been in that flat little box besides a tie? But I’d go along with the game by making him guess. And he would wink at my mother and say, “An umbrella? A pair of skis?” to which I’d say that he was getting either warmer or colder, or just dutifully shake my head and giggle. Then, uncovering the tie, he’d exclaim, “Aha! Well, this is very handsome, indeed. Thank you, Alice.” And my mother and I would exchange satisfied smiles, although I’d imagine for a wistful moment what he might have said about the one that sparked and flickered like a swarm of fireflies.

  I found the perfect notepaper at a small place on Madison Avenue, and I bought fifty sheets and twenty-five matching envelopes. It was very elegant and very expensive, which gave me a moment of perverse pleasure. He’s demented, I reminded myself, even as I told the salesclerk that the paper was a present for my father, a retired surgeon, who lived in the country now. And I pictured what she must have been picturing: a dignified, tweedy gentleman, as curved as a comma but able and sound, tending his vegetable garden, or sitting in a book-lined den reading Trollope. I didn’t know why I’d invented that more palatable image of my father for a casual stranger, or why I’d lied to Tom Roman in my e-mail, about writing a memoir of my mother. Maybe it was just convenient, or comforting. And it seemed like a harmless enough habit, not unlike writing fiction.

  When I got to the nursing home, my father had other company. Violet’s parents were sitting with him in the solarium, looking ancient and spiffy: Leo in his crested blazer, Marjorie dressed for the cocktail hour. I had been thinking of calling Marjorie, ever since I’d gone through my mother’s folder, to see if she knew something significant that I didn’t know about the poems or about my mother’s private life. I still couldn’t shake the sense that she was connected in some way I didn’t yet understand to that bad feeling in my chest.

  As soon as I walked into the solarium, Marjorie and Leo hauled themselves out of their seats, as if I were there to relieve them of guard duty and had arrived late. Leo even looked at his watch. “Hello and goodbye,” he said.

  They didn’t leave right away, though, as I had hoped they would. “Alice, dear,” Marjorie said in her confidential whisper, “don’t you look lovely.” She brushed my hair off my forehead, stared critically at me, and then let it drop back. Hopeless, her
expression implied. “You’re wearing it longer,” she observed before turning her attention to my father in his chair. “And doesn’t Dad look well?” The question was like a poke in the ribs; no wonder I’d put off calling her. And no wonder Violet needed all those years on the couch.

  My father was wearing an unfamiliar and unlikely yellow plaid flannel shirt, with a conspicuous brown stain under the pocket; he could easily have been mistaken for a retired lumberjack. Someone had mixed up the laundry again. I noticed that his ears had sprouted fur, and there were sticky crumbs of sleep in the corners of his eyes. “Yes,” I said, bending to kiss his cheek, “you look great,” and certainly no one was hurt by this latest lie, least of all him.

  Leo cleared his throat. “Let’s get this show on the road,” he told Marjorie, clasping her shoulder with one hand and patting my father on the back with the other. “Take care of yourself, sir,” he boomed. “We’ll see you in a couple of weeks, God willing.”

  “Goodbye, Sam darling, goodbye, Alice dear!” Marjorie called, blowing kisses to us as they walked toward the elevators, like a passenger on a cruise ship pulling out of the harbor. An old woman in a wheelchair a few feet away blew kisses back to her. My father hadn’t made a sound.

  I’d wanted the Steinhorns to leave, but once they were gone I felt strangely forsaken. And it was hard to distinguish between the usual anxiety this place brought on and that special misery I lugged everywhere lately. I took the package of stationery from my tote bag. “Daddy, I brought the notepaper you asked for.” When he didn’t respond, I tore the foolishly lavish wrapping paper off myself and opened the box. “Look,” I said brightly. “Is this the kind you wanted?”