The Man on the Third Floor

by Anne Bernays

  “You don’t have to jump down my throat,” she said.

  I muttered an apology as I slipped into bed beside her. I could feel her heat although none of our body parts were touching.

  “That man at the reception I was talking to? He works at the station. He told me he was pretty sure I had the job.”

  “Congratulations,” I said, wondering if she expected me to kiss her goodnight. She smelled like lavender, for me a very seductive odor. The guilt was draining away and a rush of benevolence came over me. Two people loved me. Most of us have only one, at best. I knew with perfect clarity that some might view my little arrangement as sick; but far from feeling sick I was energized by the variety of sexual experience open to me. It made me think hard about a lot of things I would not have had I lived as an ordinary husband and father. For example, after long consideration, I had decided that men and women used their brains differently. Even though Barry was queer, he thought like a man, he used his brain like a muscle. Most women didn’t do this and I was pretty sure they couldn’t have even if they wanted to.

  CHAPTER 6

  Barry’s mother developed a fast-moving blood disease; and after living with considerable pain from it for nearly a year, died. I wanted to go to her funeral, but Barry persuaded me that my presence there would raise eyebrows, if not suspicion: did I want to take that risk? Barry was gloomy for weeks after his mother’s death. I tried to cheer him up by telling him about the latest triumphs and flubs at Griffin House, but he wasn’t interested in listening. My Sundays did not improve; all my words were under lock and key inside my head. The children, now awash in adolescence, had many friends, some of whom they brought home for a visit behind closed bedroom doors or, just as often, went out with, to the movies or ice skating at Gay Blades. Blue laws kept stores closed on Sunday so shopping was not an option. Kate and Henry were street-wise partly because Phyllis and I were more permissive than most parents. We agreed on this, as we did on several other basics. It was ironic (a much-abused word, but apt in this case) that here was a person with whom I shared key notions of how best to navigate through life, and yet I couldn’t work up the requisite enthusiasm to love her the way I should. Sometimes, especially when I was tired or anxious, her round smooth-skinned face, her round smooth-skinned arms (thank god they were hairless; nothing repels me like a woman with hairy arms), her Renoiresque body, set my teeth on edge and I had to walk out of the room to keep from throttling her. It wasn’t until I brought Barry into my life that I felt any real warmth toward my wife. A paradox? Not really, because when I fell in love with Barry I no longer had so much invested in my relationship with Phyllis, so I could more easily ignore the irritations that invade every marriage.

  As for letting the children make a lot of their own decisions, it paid off because they seemed to know their way around a city considered by some a very wicked city indeed. They knew what to avoid—seamy neighborhoods, deserted streets at night, invitations from strangers—and what they could count on to be safe. When I was about their age, I shot my BB gun at a man’s hat and hit it; and when I was fifteen, I had sex with my cousin in her bedroom in Woodmere, Long Island while her parents were at a funeral. I wondered what all the fuss was about, but Ella seemed to enjoy it very much. I suppose, this being the early nineteen twenties, I was somewhat before my time in the sex department. There was a small scare when Ella’s period was late but it turned out to be a false alarm. God only knows what would have happened to Ella if she had got herself knocked up. A trip to Denmark to get it “taken care of”?

  I also filched coins from my father’s overcoat pocket from time to time as it hung in the downstairs closet—never more than twenty-five cents at a time—and bought pulp magazines like Doc Savage and Black Cat at the neighborhood cigar store. These were items that my father would not allow in the house, so I had to stuff them in my pants before I ran upstairs to my room. Phyllis and I rarely questioned our children the way a lot of nervous parents did. “Where were you?” “What were you doing yesterday afternoon?” “How did your dress get dirty?” and so on. So long as they were healthy, went to school every day, did their homework, and didn’t seem to be hiding some awful secret, we let them more or less alone. Kate said she wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up, and Henry said there were no lady lawyers. Henry wanted to be a physicist like J. Robert Oppenheimer.

  By this time Phyllis had gone back to work. It didn’t surprise me to find out that she was quite good at her job, and although she started out as a volunteer, in a short while she was bringing home a weekly paycheck. Her boss, Arnie Brill, sounded a lot like my former boss, Fred Forstman, a voluble, curious autodidact. As she had threatened, she was home just about every night for dinner, during which she overflowed with stories about Arnie. Apparently, he was on some unspecified “list” which meant he might be called to testify at the McCarthy hearings in D.C. I knew several people in publishing or television or some aspect of show business, who were either vaguely or explicitly harassed by certain men in Washington who seemed—defying both good will and common sense—to think that movie actors and radio commentators and the like were active in a “red menace.” Looking back, I didn’t take the threats as seriously as I probably should have. Phyllis was a fervent ally of her boss. Together they had produced a couple of radio shows that satirized the irrationality of McCarthyites. I said, “Is that such a good idea?” Her answer was, “Is free speech a good idea?”

  During one of our cocktail hours in late March, Phyllis, in her breathless mode, told me that Arnie Brill had been called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee—HUAC, an ugly sound.

  “They’re going to ask him if he ever was a member of the Party.”

  “And was he?” I asked.

  “I think for a week or two in his early twenties. Everybody was.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “We’re not talking about you,” she said. “Those two shows we did last year apparently stepped on some very sensitive toes. I’m beginning to wish we hadn’t done them. No, I didn’t mean that. I’m glad we did them. Somebody’s got to speak up.”

  I asked her what Arnie had to worry about. It wasn’t going to be a picnic but what exactly could they do to him?

  Phyllis explained that it wasn’t a question so much of what they could do to him, but what he would do when they asked him to “name names,” meaning rat on his friends and former friends. They were diabolical that way; they wanted to make their witnesses squirm. “If he gives them the names of men who were with him in the Party he’ll feel terribly guilty. If he refuses, they’ll cite him for contempt. It’s a no-win situation.”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  She didn’t know. He was agonizing over this. I wondered what I would have done in the same circumstances. I didn’t know either. I asked her if Arnie was sure he was going to be called. Pretty sure, she said. It was just a matter of time. “It’s a terrible time,” she said. “Ike doesn’t want to do anything. Ike could say something but he just doesn’t. He waits and sees how things are going to sort themselves out. That’s not right, Walt, the president could stop this!”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said.

  She told me I was just as bad as our passive president. Ike should be impeached, she went on. By this time she had reached the outer limits of common sense so I just shut up.

  As I said to Barry, later that evening, “You can imagine Macbeth getting impeached, maybe, or Stalin, but Eisenhower? You might as well try to impeach Gandhi.”

  For the next few weeks Phyllis seemed distracted. She was coming home later and later and skipped a few dinners altogether. Kate complained that her mom was neglecting her and Henry. I must say it wasn’t bad having dinner with the two of them without Phyllis’ sharp comments.

  I talked to Barry about the person I was now calling “the new Phyllis.”

  “I should think you’d be pleased. Now you can watch Ed Sullivan without her telling you that you’re just
a middle-brow. No, I forget myself, he’s on Sunday. She’s here on Sunday.”

  “I know I should be delighted,” I said, wondering why I wasn’t. Why should I care if she’s more absent than present? Should I care? “I’m confused,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” Barry said. “It’s nice to have choices, isn’t it?”

  KATE CAME home from school a few weeks later and went straight to bed. Barry was at home and reported that she looked “ghastly.” He met me at the front door. “I think she needs to see a doctor.”

  “Where’s Phyllis?”

  “She’s still at work,” he said. “I tried calling her but she’s in some meeting or something.” He raised his eyebrows. “Grete’s very worried.”

  Barry should have told the person on the phone that it was an emergency and pulled her out of her fucking meeting or whatever it was, but I didn’t tell him this. I never wanted to argue with him. I took the stairs two at a time. Grete was standing near Kate’s bed. “She’s not good, Mr. Samson,” she said. “She feels like she have a bad fever. I go now.”

  I thanked Grete and bent over my daughter. Her eyes were closed. She was under the covers but apparently had not removed her clothes, except for her shoes. Her bedside radio was on, but it had slipped out of its frequency and was emitting only static. I turned it off. I said her name. She didn’t stir. Her face was flushed and blotchy and her hair had separated into damp strings. My knees went soft.

  I said “Kate!”

  Without opening her eyes she made a sound but it wasn’t a word.

  “What’s the matter, honey?”

  She touched her head. “Hurts.”

  I put my palm against her forehead. It burned. “You have a fever,” I said. “I’m going to call the doctor.”

  Henry came to the door of Kate’s room. “What’s she got?”

  “A headache. Did you just get home from school?”

  Henry nodded and then said it wasn’t like any headache he ever saw. More like she had been hit over the head by a hammer. I told him I could do without his comments, his sister was sick, couldn’t he see that? Meanwhile I soundlessly cursed Phyllis for not doing her job as the mother. I was angry, scared out of my wits; I’d never seen anyone so young so stricken. The idea that she might die was so terrifying I found that I could hardly breathe. I told Kate I would be right back, though I’m pretty sure her ears were not transmitting, and called Phyllis’ number at work. The girl on the other end said, “I’ll see if I can locate her.” “You damn well better locate her,” I shouted, “and now, not in ten minutes, but right this minute! Schnell!” The shouting obviously did the trick: Phyllis was on the phone within a couple of minutes.

  “What’s the emergency, Walt. I was in an important meeting!”

  “Kate’s sick. She can’t move. Come home. Right away.”

  “Call Dr. Cooper,” she said.

  “I put in a call.”

  Phyllis said she’d be right home. “I hope I can find a cab. Or can you send Barry to pick me up?”

  This would involve a trip twice as long as a cab ride—assuming she could get one near her office below Wall Street. “I’ll send him,” I said.

  As soon as I hung up Dr. Cooper called. “I’ll be right over,” he said. Instead of reassuring me, his urgency made me more anxious. I went back upstairs to wait for the doctor, who arrived at the house within an hour. He put his bag down on the floor and went into the bathroom to wash his hands. The only motion coming from Kate was her breathing, quick and shallow. He came back with a towel still between his hands. “Let’s have a look at you,” he said to the unresponsive Kate. Dr. Cooper was roughly my age, maybe a year or so older. He wore gray flannels and a muted tweed jacket, a uniform of sorts: Ivy League education, top medical school, almost limitless power over his young patients and their families. He didn’t seem to get the point of the few jokes I had told him, so I had long ago stopped trying to make him smile or laugh. He was a good, thorough physician. We didn’t call each other by our first names, though he had been seeing Kate and Henry since they were infants. The doctor sat down on Kate’s bed and gently peeled back the covers to listen to her heart. Her eyelids fluttered. He asked her to open her mouth. He stuck a tongue depressor into it. She gagged and her eyes began to water. He asked her to touch her chin to her chest. She couldn’t. I knew this to be a bad sign. Polio? He reached into his bag and pulled out a thermometer which he slipped between her lips. He wrapped his hand around her wrist and consulted his watch. Stillness took over. But my heart was beating so fiercely I was sure Dr. Cooper could hear it. After about three minutes, he removed the thermometer. “Well,” he said, “It looks like she’s running a slight fever.”

  I asked him how high it was.

  “Just over a hundred and three,” he said.

  “What do we do now?” I said. “What do you think it is?”

  Dr. Cooper looked at me as if I were a slow student. “Could be almost anything,” he said, as he stowed his tools in the black bag and snapped it smartly shut. “I don’t like to guess at this stage.”

  “It’s serious though?”

  The doctor avoided looking at my face, “As I said, it could be any of a number of things.”

  “Polio?”

  “We can’t count that out. I’d like to get this young lady into the hospital.”

  “You mean now?”

  He answered with the tiniest trace of impatience in his voice. “It’s the prudent thing to do. We’ll run some tests. Now I don’t want you to jump to any conclusions before we get the results. For all we know it may simply be a bad flu. There’s a lot of that going around right now. Or mononucleosis.”

  Phyllis burst into the room, still wearing her coat, hat, and gloves. “Darling child! How are you?”

  Henry, who was lurking in the doorway, said, “I don’t think she can answer you, Mom.” No one paid any attention to him.

  The Samson family circle was complete, all of it in one small bedroom, the air filled with emotions swirling, most of all—except for the object of it—anxiety over the unidentified thing which had grabbed Kate by the throat. Phyllis sat down on the bed and stroked her daughter’s cheek saying, “Poor baby girl, you’ll feel better soon.” She bent to kiss Kate’s cheek. She kept murmuring to her poor baby girl, over and over again. Kate opened her eyes with what looked like a huge effort and smiled wanly. Did she know how sick she was?

  I left the room with Dr. Cooper—what was his first name anyway?—and walked him down to the front door where Barry was holding his coat and hat. I thanked the doctor who said he would be waiting for us at New York Hospital. “Please get her there as quickly as you can.” Everything he said to me intensified my anxiety.

  I think I must have gone into some kind of emotional overdrive. Phyllis and I managed to get Kate out of bed and to her feet, where she wobbled back and forth. Phyllis put a bathrobe over her shoulders. She whimpered. “Oh oh, my head . . .”

  “We’re taking you to the hospital, darling,” Phyllis said. “You’ll feel better in no time.”

  “Throw up,” said Kate and she did, down the front of her clothes and robe, moist, green vomit. She stood there, trying, I think, to understand what was happening to her.

  Henry said “Yuk.”

  Phyllis yelled at him to go get his robe for Kate. “You’re a heartless boy,” she said. “Do what I say! Now!” Henry fled.

  Barry was ready with the car. He had turned on the motor. He looked grave. Leaving Henry behind, Phyllis and I climbed into the backseat with Kate between us. Her eyes were closed, her head lolled against the back of the seat. She gave off heat you could feel down your side. I asked Phyllis what she thought it was.

  “Hush,” she said. “Kate can hear us.”

  Barry was driving a lot faster than he usually did.

  Phyllis said, “Dr. Cooper should have called an ambulance.”

  For the first time ever, Barry spoke to her from the driver’s seat. “This is a
lot quicker, ma’am. I can get you there in less than ten minutes.”

  My mouth had gone so dry I couldn’t speak. I looked at Kate, who seemed to be drifting off somewhere we might not be able to retrieve her from. The idea that she might die was monstrous but real, as if you had been told that an object in outer space was heading straight for our planet. You believe it, you can’t believe it, you believe it. The heat from Kate’s body penetrated my coat, my suit, and my heart. I held her limp, moist, hot hand and, although I had no faith in God or at this moment in anything else I prayed. Please don’t let Kate die. I’ll do anything if you’ll keep her alive, anything, even give up Barry.

  We arrived at the emergency entrance of the hospital in less than ten minutes. I jumped out of the backseat—no eye exchange with Barry, no wasted motions—and reached back into the car to help Kate. She couldn’t stand so I picked her up in my arms and carried her through the front door, which Barry held open for us. Dr. Cooper, in a crisp white coat, was waiting for us beside a rolling gurney and a young man to push it. Cooper told me to put Kate on the gurney. Phyllis tried to help but there was nothing for her to help with, so she just fluttered and talked to Kate in a soft, pleading voice. As soon as Kate was safely aboard, the young man started to steer her off down the hall. Dr. Cooper said, “Why don’t you two have a seat in the waiting room?” He pointed. “I’ll come out and get you when she’s finished.”

  I thought, finished what? Doesn’t he mean until he’s finished? Things were not making sense.

  Phyllis said, “Hold me.” I spread my arms and took her body between them. She made a gasping sound and let her head fall against my chest. I told her everything was going to be all right, aware of how fatuous this sounded, but what else could I say?