by Linda Wolfe
In a short while he shrugged, made a bored face at the phone and turned to Ben, sliding the hand that was holding the receiver down across the mouthpiece. “Rockefeller Institute,” he whispered. “Again. But I told them they’d never get me and Greeley on the same platform.” A moment later he returned his attention to the phone and lifted his fingers so that he could speak into the mouthpiece. “No. There’s nothing to explain. I just won’t do it.”
Ben waited for Sidney to finish his conversation, busying himself by admiring the graceful room with its carved plaster moldings, French windows, crystal chandelier and tiled fireplace. It had been the parlor once. A turn-of-the-century apartment. But by the time he and Sidney had taken over the lease, it had already been converted into a professional suite. This big front room was the one Ben had always loved. But from the very beginning of their occupancy it had been clear whose room it was. Sidney’s. Ben had moved into the small back office.
Just as well, he thought. Sidney needed space. Needed it the way a fish needs water. He had converted one of the suite’s two bathrooms into a lab—though he had one at the hospital too—and had taken over the file room for his research notes. The patients waited in line to use the single bathroom. The medical files had been awkwardly squeezed in behind Cora’s front desk. And still he complained of lack of space. He was always expanding. He had even run out of room for his elaborate collection of Milton Avery water-colors and Raphael Soyer drawings. They were competing for wall space behind his desk with his numerous diplomas, honorary degrees and testimonial plaques.
“Okay. Got to go,” Sidney was saying at last. He signed to Ben that he was about to terminate the call. “You get back to me. If you get him off, I’ll be there.” Hanging up, he shook his head vigorously. “Damn sycophants. They know Greeley’s recent work sucks but they keep inviting him anyway.” Then he shrugged and smiled at Ben. “Well, no matter. Let’s get back to the ring. I’d like it to be a surprise. I don’t want Claudia to know I thought it up myself.”
Ben nodded. Sidney stood. And Ben started to leave. Naomi had gone out of his mind. Sidney’s affairs, grander than his own, made his own concerns grow indistinct or vanish altogether. But as he approached the door, he remembered and said, “Hey, Sid. I wanted you to do me a favor. See a patient of mine who needs an IUD.”
Sidney made a groaning sound.
“She’s an old friend or I wouldn’t bother you on the spur of the moment,” Ben continued. “Naomi Golden. Remember her from King Street?”
Sidney shook his head.
“Well, anyway,” Ben persisted. “How about it?”
“Why the hell didn’t you mention it sooner? Jesus. I already gave you ten minutes. I’m due at Midstate at two.”
“I started to,” Ben said, “but we got going about the ring.”
“Yeah, well all right,” Sidney grunted. “Tell Cora to get your friend ready and I’ll be along in about fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks. See you at dinner.”
“Dinner? Oh, Jesus. I meant to speak to you about that.”
Ben began to rub at his palms with his fingers. Ashamed of his nervous gesture, he thrust his hands into the pockets of his white jacket where his right hand made comforting contact with the pill vial. He closed his fingers around it, worrying it the way a Greek worries his beads.
Sidney pushed back his chair and came around his desk. “Maybe we’d better put it off,” he said. “I’ve got to take an early flight to make the NIH meeting tomorrow.”
Ben stared at Sidney in dismay. “You might have made up your mind a little earlier,” he said, trying not to reveal how hurt he felt. But his voice betrayed him. He stammered a little. “Not—not at the last minute.”
“Oh, forget it. We’ll have dinner,” Sidney said gruffly.
Ben backed down. “No. It’s okay. If you’ve got to get up early, let’s skip it.”
Sidney’s lips opened in a forced smile. He clapped Ben on the shoulder. “I was just kidding. There’s no problem, as long as we make it an early night. I was just fooling about calling dinner off.”
Ben felt a familiar fury rise within him. Calling the dinner off was one thing; kidding around about it was worse. “It was just a joke, old buddy,” Sidney was saying. “I wouldn’t call tonight off. Claudia’s got something she’s dying to tell you.” He squeezed Ben’s forearm. “Besides, Mulenberg’s coming too and I’m counting on you to keep him out of my hair. You’re the tactful one, everyone says so.”
Ben began to feel better. What difference did it make whether Sidney had been serious or joking as long as he didn’t cancel. “Thanks again,” he smiled, relieved. “You can count on me.”
Back in his office, he told Naomi that Sidney would see her in fifteen minutes. “You were gone so long,” she said. “I thought maybe you were never coming back.”
“Would you have minded that?” He felt unexpectedly flirtatious.
She gave him a surprised look and said sincerely, “Yes. I’ve really enjoyed seeing you again.”
He buzzed Cora, asking her to take Naomi over to Sidney’s side of the suite, and promised Naomi he’d stop by in a few minutes.
He thought about her all during his examination of his next patient, anxious Mrs. Rogers whose periods had grown annoyingly profuse. He ought to ask Naomi out for dinner. Or a drink, he mused. His life had become a tight, airless circle. The hospital. The office. An occasional tête-a-tête at Sidney and Claudia’s. Mrs. Rogers groaned. Withdrawing gloved fingers, he said, “Okay, you can straighten up now,” thinking that if only he had someone else to fall back on, he wouldn’t be so easily thrown by Sidney’s teasing threats of rejection.
“Are the cysts getting bigger?” Mrs. Rogers asked.
“I’m afraid so,” he answered quietly.
“You gotta cut them out?” She looked on the verge of tears.
“No. Not yet. We’re going to watch them. Wait and see’s the best policy. Don’t worry, sweetheart.” She looked grateful at his information and when he called her sweetheart, she blushed. Not all his patients liked the familiarity of endearments and unlike some of his colleagues, he had learned to tailor his use of affectionate language, suiting it to each individual woman. Mrs. Rogers clearly had enjoyed it. She was smiling at him contentedly, her cheeks pinkening with a surge of nostalgia. It must have been years since anyone had addressed her so intimately. He helped her off the table with a generous hand.
Why was it that he could be so successful, so instinctual, with patients? Yet so uncomfortable and constrained with the women he saw outside the office. Would it be true with Naomi too? Finished with Mrs. Rogers he headed down the corridor to Sidney’s side of the office. What would happen if he took Naomi out? He liked her liveliness, her directness. But then he began to think it through. Most likely he’d only fail at getting into bed with her. He always failed at getting into bed with women these days.
Sidney said he was simply picking the wrong women. Middle-class women. What he needed was someone like Sidney’s own wife, Claudia. Money was an aphrodisiac, Sidney always argued. Especially old money. Once, shortly after he’d married Claudia, he’d shown Ben around his new wife’s family’s summer compound on a rocky Massachusetts coast. In silent, unused bedrooms, he’d opened for Ben carefully polished mahogany armoires and brass-handled chests. He’d pulled out photographs and letter albums. Pictures of Henry James in Italy with Claudia’s great-grandmother. Witty greeting cards and thank-you notes of equally revered distant cousins. “Sexy, huh?”
Ben had nodded, understanding this hidden fraternal advice. He hadn’t bothered to remind Sidney that he’d had his share of failures with pedigreed as well as plebeian women. Once Sidney offered advice, Ben always gave it fresh consideration.
Sidney and Naomi were still in Sidney’s examining room. The door was slightly ajar. Tapping on it lightly, Ben entered the room, saying, “Hi. How’re you two getting on?” to Naomi. But she barely acknowledged him. Sidney was standing ov
er her pink-sheeted, spread-eagled body, saying tutorially, “If you wanted an IUD, you should have come directly to me.”
Naomi looked tense. Her feet in the stirrups, she no longer displayed any of the garrulous confidence she’d shown in Ben’s office. Looking at her, he remembered how often even the most blasé of women had told him that the gynecological position filled them with an almost inexplicable terror.
“Will it take long?” Naomi was asking Sidney as he measured her, her lips set in a wide smile, more propitiatory than sincere. Sidney turned away. “Will it hurt?” she asked, still smiling fixedly.
Sidney slammed a drawer and bent over her, holding in his hand a tiny plastic loop ornamented with minuscule hairs and, before the words were quite out of Naomi’s mouth, inserted the loop. Ben saw Naomi blanch and clutch her stomach as if trying to push away the searing cramp the IUD sent twisting through her. Her body jerked for a moment, fishlike. Then at last Sidney answered her, his voice seeming to come from a long distance away. “Who are you to ask for pleasure without pain?”
Naomi went rigid with fury. “Why didn’t you warn me? Prepare me?”
Sidney said, “Would it have made any difference? You came in asking for something. You got it.”
“But still,” she said.
“Lie still,” he said.
And then Sidney passed Ben, striding, and was out the door. He was often brusque with patients, but he had been particularly short with Naomi. It was his fault, Ben blamed himself. He should have known better than to ask Sidney for a favor. But for a moment he considered catching up with his brother and making him turn to see the alarm still lodged in Naomi’s dark eyes.
Then he let Sidney go. After all, Sidney’s attitude was probably correct. He’d done all that had been asked of him. Besides, he often said that it was Ben’s elaborate coddling of his women that had kept him delivering babies. Instead of delivering research.
Moving toward Naomi, who had straightened out her legs and adjusted the sheet, he decided, as he always did, that most likely Sidney knew best. Yet as he offered Naomi his hand in getting down off the table, he felt melancholy once again, and it was all he could do to stop brooding and speak to her. “How are you feeling now?” he asked in a voice so low he almost couldn’t hear it himself.
“Better,” she said ruefully. “No thanks to your brother.”
He felt sorry for her. Forcing himself to raise his voice, he said, “My brother doesn’t bother with the bedside manner, but he’s right, in a way. After all, it’s an inessential ingredient.”
Naomi stared at him. “To you,” she said. “Not to me.” She waited for him to make some reply and when he didn’t, went on, “Sidney’s just as arrogant as I remember him.”
It was hopeless to expect a stranger to grasp that Sidney couldn’t be judged by ordinary rules. That he was a brilliant man, perhaps even a genius. Leading Naomi to the pink-striped cubicle where she had left her clothes, he merely held out his hand and said abruptly, “Well, come see me sometime if you ever change your mind and want a baby.”
She was hurt and turned away from him, ignoring his hand. When he went back to his own office he knew that once again, as so often, he had said something foolish, inappropriate. Although the two hours he had sworn to wait before taking one of his pills had not yet elapsed, he drew the container from his pocket and, hurrying, poured himself water. Then he pried open the lid of the vial, extracted a pill, and put it on his tongue. He drank it down with a gulp that was more a bite than a swallow.
Claudia Zauber was dressing. She had rushed home from the photography museum where she worked in the afternoons, made the hors d’oeuvres for the dinner, and started the stock for the fish casserole. Mulenberg was coming. And Ben. She had to hurry. She’d asked Sidney to be sure to tell Ben to come early so that she could tell him their news privately.
He was entitled to getting it that way, she thought, toweling herself dry after her quick shower. Of course, Sidney should have been the one to tell him. But it was typical of him to leave such personal concerns to her. He was always too busy. Too bored, really, by the demands of tact. When she had first mentioned to him that they ought to break the news to Ben privately, and gently, Sidney had asked, “Why?” and only this morning he had told her that he had forgotten why they were having Ben to dinner tonight.
“To tell him about the baby,” she had reminded him. “Otherwise he might guess it. My breasts are getting bigger already.”
Sidney had groaned, “I’m too tired for company tonight. Can’t we call it off?”
Concerned, she had said, “He’s bound to feel jealous, depressed. We’ve got to tell him about it in a way that won’t make him feel left out. You’re all he’s got, Sid.” More than the brothers themselves, Claudia understood Ben’s dependency on Sidney.
She felt it too. There was about Sidney, for all his gruffness, his temper tantrums and self-absorption, an excitement that made life lived near him vivid and life lived away from him bland. Even after five years of marriage, Claudia felt an excited anticipation about his coming home and wondered whether they would make love tonight, after their guests had gone.
Eager, she dabbed Givenchy on her throat and between her breasts, and then held the blow-dryer to her blond, glistening hair. She would have to pay special attention to her appearance now that she was pregnant, she thought. It was terrible the way some expectant mothers just let themselves go.
Her own mother had done it, growing overweight while carrying her. Keeping the extra weight afterward. Thickening. Turning matronly. Not edging into motherhood but retreating into it and ceasing to show interest in her husband. Studying her pale-skinned body in the mirror, Claudia promised herself that no matter how child care preoccupied her, she would never let Sidney slip away from her sexually. She had seen the results of her mother’s avoidance of her father, his alcoholism, his mistresses, his need, in the end, to degrade both mother and daughter. A shiver ran through her body despite the heated air the dryer was expelling, and she reached for her Japanese kimono, wrapping it tightly around her still-slender waist before beginning to apply her makeup.
She tinted her cheeks and lips a pale pink but eschewed any eye makeup, preferring a natural look. Then she got dressed. But Sidney was late and so was Ben. Restless, she began applying a clear polish to her already shiny nails. When the doorman rang her to announce Dr. Mulenberg, she realized that Sidney must have forgotten to tell Ben to come early.
Ben, his head on his arms and his arms on his desk, awakened slowly, dreamily, and felt content, but a moment later he saw his watch and anxiety flooded his mind. Why hadn’t Sidney awakened him? It was seven-thirty. What time were they supposed to go to dinner? He couldn’t recall, but surely they were late by now. Pushing into his examining room, he splashed his face with water at the sink. His limbs felt bloodless and numb. He moved heavily down the corridor to Sidney’s office. But it was already locked. Sidney must have gone to the hospital. He’d best get himself uptown on his own. Quickly. But his legs still felt weak. He went back to his own office and wrestled his way into his overcoat.
Outside, on the street, he waved listlessly at several cabs. They sped past him despite the fact that their lights indicated they were available, and he grew increasingly nervous. Sidney would be annoyed at his lateness. He’d made a point of saying he wanted an early night. He moved off the sidewalk, out into the gutter, and waved his arm more strenuously. At last a cab stopped for him. Lethargically, through the window, he gave Sidney’s address, his words slurred, and sank motionless into the back seat.
“Fifth and where?” the driver asked irritably.
“Ninety-fifth,” he managed a little more clearly, realizing he was not yet in full control of his speech. He sat forward and tried to concentrate on gaining the control, flexing his fingers and murmuring to himself. Then he practiced smiling and frowning. By the time he was in the elevator that opened directly into Sidney and Claudia’s foyer, he had mastered his
lethargy. He stepped briskly out onto their Bokhara carpet, as alert and agile as he ever was.
“Hi, love.” Claudia, wearing a sleeveless silvery dress was coming down the hallway to help him off with his coat. Behind her, in the living room, he could see Harry Mulenberg—ensconced in his wheelchair in front of the fireplace. There was no sign of Sidney. “Sid’s on the phone,” Claudia announced. “And Harry’s growing restless. It’ll be better now that you’re here.” Giving him a cool familial kiss on the cheek, she added, “I was hoping you’d get here early. I have some news for you.”
“Sidney said you did. What is it?” he asked, his mind abruptly turning to unhappy possibilities. Were she and Sidney going off to Europe as they had done last winter? Were they moving? Were they buying the sprawling suburban house that Sidney had long dreamed of owning? He tried not to chide himself for always anticipating, whenever people told him they had news for him, reports of distance and separation.
“I can’t tell you now,” Claudia sighed. “It’s for your ears alone.” She glanced toward the living room. “Can you stay late?”
Could she be pregnant, he wondered as he indicated his availability with a nod. But no, as far as he knew, Sidney didn’t want children, not at this busy stage of his career.
“Harry and Marilyn have separated,” Claudia said, interrupting his thoughts. She took his coat and hung it in the spacious closet.
“I heard. Poor Marilyn.”
Claudia shrugged. “She’ll get over it. They should have done it years ago.” Then, “Be nice to Harry,” she whispered conspiratorially and brushed her fingers against his hand, her touch so light that for a moment he thought he had imagined it.
In the living room Mulenberg greeted him and Ben sat down near him, trying to do Claudia’s bidding—though it wasn’t his behavior Claudia was worried about, he knew. It was Sidney’s. The old man was the only person in their circle who persisted in treating Sidney as if he were still just a fledgling doctor. Not the eminent researcher he had become. And it made Sidney furious. But Claudia was a meticulously hospitable person. And because Harry Mulenberg had been her gynecologist before she had met Sidney, and had been Sidney’s mentor back in the days when the brothers had first come to the hospital, she always insisted that for old times’ sake, they ought to entertain him. “Didn’t you tell me they told you to go easy on alcohol?” she asked Mulenberg as he held up his empty wine glass. “Haven’t you drunk enough for one lifetime?” She looked at his drawn face with concern.