A Long Island Story

by Rick Gekoski

  I’ll write some more, maybe tomorrow, and get this in the mail this afternoon. I’m starting to feel sick too, thinking about this. And that’s what I have to do, isn’t it, think about it until I’m ill? You too, wade through the sick feeling and come out the other side? Only: where is that?

  Addie

  She noticed that she hadn’t signed off with ‘Love’, though it hadn’t been withheld intentionally. Of course he would think it had. Perhaps he’d be right? She looked at the bottom of the page and found room to put something fond, and personal. It would fit just fine, but after some thought she left it as it was.

  Anyway, with Becca sick she ought to call him, needed to. She hated the telephone, inhuman, mechanical, it distorted both voice and person, and though she would make calls if necessary she tried to avoid it. Michelle, unsurprisingly, was always on the phone to her many friends with babies. How was this one doing, or that? Colic? Teething? Who was pregnant again, who had her period, as if the menstrual cycle was the key creative process of human life.

  Addie shuddered. She hated her periods, couldn’t bear being on the rag, felt physically and emotionally cramped every month, had pre-menstrual tension so severe that she often had to take a few days off, stuff herself with tranquilisers and shun human company. Ugh.

  Michelle loved it, all that stuff, basked in it, talked to her young mother-friends incessantly. Pregnant! Again? Lucky you!

  That was what the phone was for, that narishkeit. But calling Ben, after dinner was over, that wasn’t personal, that was business, family business. If she had something to say, real and in her own voice, she’d write another letter. She picked up the phone reluctantly and dialled the number. The phone in the apartment rang several times, ten times, rang some more before she put it down. Past eight and he was not home yet? Or come home and gone out?

  Never mind. If the little one was worse in the morning, after the doctor came, then she’d ring Ben at his office. The receptionist at the department office was always frosty if she rang asking for him, asked if it was an emergency. No personal calls were allowed.

  In the night Becca was restless, crying out in her sleep, troubled by nightmares, querulous, damp, unsettled. Addie came to her several times with a bowl of cold water and a washcloth, with which she gently removed the perspiration caused by the fever and the night humidity. The air was cloying, painful to inhale, hardly fit to sustain life; it burbled in the lungs, unwilling to release oxygen as well as water, hostile.

  ‘I had a bad dream!’ Becca said.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. It’s just a dream, they go away cos they’re not real, are they? I bet you don’t even remember it!’

  ‘I do so!’ She scrunched up her face. ‘It had a dog.’

  ‘Well, that’s nothing to worry about then, is it? We like doggies!’

  ‘It wasn’t a doggie. It was a dog!’

  She took the cloth and ran it slowly over Becca’s legs, treasuring and inventorising the finely wrought structure of flesh and bone, the smoothness, the predictable regularity, went down to her feet and ankles, renewed the cooling moisture, tested the tiny, moving toes, so perfectly formed, so adorable, the arch of the foot, the sole as soft as it had ever been, since her tiny days in the crib. So perfect, so perfectly formed, so utterly satisfying. So reassuring. Becca gave herself up to the ministration, sighed with pleasure, a little gurgle at the back of her throat, began to go back to sleep, content for this one perfect moment to have her mother’s love, entire, unambiguous, hers alone.

  The next morning her temperature had gone up to 102 and her sore throat had worsened. Jonathan Rose said he would prefer to come to see her at home – why was that? – they should expect him in the late afternoon, sometime after his office closed at four. In the meantime it was best to give her plenty of liquids, perhaps some soup to keep her strength up.

  It was unspoken: even Perle, who had a whole universe of disasters floating in the forefront of her imaginings, could hardly allow herself silently to acknowledge this fear. In the morning Maurice, dressed in suit and tie on his way into the city, sat at Becca’s bedside and held her hand as she drifted in and out of consciousness.

  He lifted the bedclothes and examined her moist limbs anxiously, arms, legs, sheened in sweat but otherwise as they should be. Perle handed him a washcloth she’d dipped in cold water and he placed it delicately on the child’s forehead, rubbed it round slightly, then lifted it to do the same to her cheeks, lips, chin. Becca twisted her head to the side, no. Hurt, he took it away, put it on the bedside table and sat looking rather helpless, uncertain what to do. He was impatient by nature, and if he was going to be involved he needed to do something, not just sit and wait, for what?

  Perle touched him on the shoulder, urging him up, and out, and on his way.

  He looked at her, his face pale, sweating already in the morning heat, his pupils slightly dilated.

  ‘You don’t know what this does to me,’ he said.

  She didn’t reply. In a few moments he was gone, and soon she heard the engine of the car start up. He had no business that she knew of in the city, he hadn’t mentioned anything; she had a hunch – she always regarded her hunches as shrewd – that he was going to see their friend, Meyer Levy, a macher who worked at Beth Israel. Just for a visit, maybe a drink, he’d say, nothing special, catch up on things, have a chat.

  In the living room Addie was sitting, staring out the window. ‘It’s ridiculous, I know, it’s stupid. What are the chances? Ben always says that. Million to one, millions, even now with this outbreak . . .’

  Perle sat down next to her. ‘Well, somebody gets it. Lots of somebodies, Khas-vesholem.’

  Jake had been forbidden in the kids’ bedroom, slept on a camp bed next to Addie, had already helped himself to an ice cream instead of cereal. No one noticed.

  ‘I want to see Becca,’ he said, his tone petulant, aggressive and frightened at once. ‘I could read to her.’ He sucked on his ice cream as if it were a comfort blanket. Transitional object was the term. Transition from what to what, via the Good Humor man?

  ‘Why can’t I?’

  Addie rose and gave him a quick hug, not too fiercely, reassuring.

  ‘We don’t know if it’s contagious, don’t want you to catch it too,’ she said. ‘Best wait until the doctor comes, then we will know what it is. I think it’s just a touch of strep throat, you know, like you had last year?’

  ‘Is she going to be OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course she is, darling, of course. It’s nothing.’

  Perle was rummaging in a lower drawer of the desk, pulling out an assortment of yellowing files, neatly labelled in her regular, reassuring hand. She selected one and took it outside to the porch, where Addie could just see her emptying the contents onto the table. Newspaper and magazine articles, from the look of them, cut out, stapled.

  Addie went to the kitchen to pour two glasses of cold tea from the pitcher in the refrigerator, added some ice and a sprig of mint, and went outside to join her mother, placing the glass beside her as she perused a newspaper article.

  Perle nodded her thanks.

  ‘It’s from the Times a month or two ago,’ she began.

  ‘Mother, I don’t want to know. It makes things worse. I wish you’d put those damn things away, they’re poisonous, they do no good.’

  ‘It’s best to know, maybe we can learn something . . .’

  ‘If we could do something, Dr Jonathan would have told us.’

  ‘You never know, I remember reading this and it said something about the early stages. You remember Marion and Herschel had a boy? About Becca’s age . . .’

  ‘Have a boy, Mother! Have! His name is Isaac!’

  ‘You should see him now, God forbid. Their lives are over.’

  When Jonathan Rose arrived at a quarter of five, Becca was much the same, but Perle and Addie were a lot worse. They greeted him anxiously, trying to stay calm, but to a doctor’s eye – to anyone’s eye – they were
in a barely controlled state of hysteria. He’d seen a lot of it recently in the parents of young children.

  They ushered him through the kitchen.

  ‘You’d like maybe a cup of nice tea?’ Perle asked, without her usual enthusiasm.

  ‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a look at the patient.’

  He pulled up a chair by the side of the bed, wishing that the women would leave him with the little girl, who had clearly been infected by their hovering anxiety.

  ‘Becca,’ said Addie, ‘it’s the doctor to see you. You remember Dr Rose?’

  Becca looked up, her face red and feverish, fear in her eyes. The last time she’d been to his office he’d given her a shot . . . something, some word . . . it made you not get a disease. She hated it, cried and tried to pull away, but he pinned her firmly but gently to the examining table and pushed the needle into her tushy. She’d howled.

  And here he was again, with his black bag. Full of things to stick into you: into your mouth, or your bottom. She hated him.

  He had a nice voice, quiet, and a friendly smile. He put his hand to her forehead, left it for a moment, looked at Addie. Lovely eyes, lovely smile.

  ‘101.2 two hours ago,’ she said. ‘Much the same.’

  ‘You’re giving her aspirin and plenty of water?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He opened his bag and took out a tongue depressor.

  ‘This will help me look at that sore throat,’ he said. ‘Open wide.’ Becca did, a bit, and then more as the stick entered her mouth; he pushed it back and she gagged, pulled away.

  ‘Let’s try again,’ he said comfortably. ‘No hurry. Just open as wide as you can, I want to see if your throat is red. Does it hurt?’

  She nodded, opened her mouth ostentatiously, improbably wide, a good girl.

  He bent to shine his pointy little light into the back of her mouth. The back of his neck was covered in fine black hairs, silken almost, not nearly so thick as those on his head, mired in the wet like those tiny veins in the leaf of a tree.

  ‘Ah yes, I can see it now. That must hurt!’

  The girl nodded bravely, solemn.

  ‘Addie gives me ice to suck,’ she said.

  Addie? He looked over at her, hovering by his side, so close they might have touched had it not been so humid, might have stuck together, almost. Addie? Why? Huntington kids were ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ kids, none of this first-name nonsense.

  She saw the thought cross his face. The hell with it, let him figure it out, thought he was so smart. Anyway, him with his fancy Jonathan. Not John or Johnny, oh no, God forbid. Jonathan. She didn’t say anything, nor did she withdraw the proximity of her hip to his shoulder, moved forward slightly, touched.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m going to write a prescription for some antibiotics. You should pick them up first thing in the morning. That should cure it in a few days.’

  ‘It?’ said Addie.

  ‘Just a touch of strep throat, nothing to worry about. It’s been going around.’

  She’d known it, really, but the relief into which she was submerged, like a cold current, was unexpected, welcome, rather startling. Strep throat! Thank God, if there was a God, may he be thanked. No! There was. Thanks be to God! She paused, guilty. What would Marion and Herschel have said? Or Isaac? Abandoned as they were, helpless and suffering.

  ‘I think I’d like that cup of tea now, if it’s still on offer,’ Jonathan said, turning to Perle, who beamed at him as if he were the Messiah.

  ‘With maybe a piece of cake? Some strudel? I made it just this morning.’

  ‘Irresistible!’ he said, turning the full force of his charm on to her, holding her eye, referring no doubt to the strudel but perhaps, who knows, maybe to herself as well. Such a gentleman! She wondered if he was married. He must be, what woman wouldn’t have such a man? She blushed, simpered, straightened her dress, left the room on unsteady feet.

  Addie was already leaving the room, stopping only to give Becca a quick hug, tuck her in. She’d forgotten how oily Jonathan was, his silly faith in his own attractiveness. In fact, he was supremely unattractive, merely an actor. Like most doctors. No, that was wrong, most of them didn’t bother to act. Like most lawyers then.

  As they sat under the awning, she felt a terrible weakness and started to cry gently but inexorably, not sobbing, but her eyes filling and refilling, and she had nothing to stem the flow but her sleeve, which she used unselfconsciously. She could feel him yearning to put his arm around her for comfort, perhaps something else, more.

  ‘Here we are then!’ said Perle gaily. Gaily? She sounded near as damn it gay, but gay was not in her register. Coquettishly, could that be it? Your humble servant, sir, eyes-down curtsey, blush, simper.

  If you’d put a tongue depressor down her throat, Addie would have vomited. Jonathan basked, still, dangerous, showed his teeth.

  ‘How delicious it looks,’ he said. ‘Thank you! And I am so sorry you have had this scare, everyone is on tenterhooks these days, half my visits now are from frightened parents with perfectly normal, normally ill, children . . .’

  Addie was still wiping her eyes, and Perle handed her a napkin from the tray. Poured cups of tea, handed round slices of cake.

  ‘Have you had many . . . you know . . . cases yourself, in your practice?’

  ‘A couple,’ he said. ‘It’s frightful.’

  He clearly wanted to end there, was unwilling, perhaps unable, to say more.

  ‘But,’ said Perle, ‘you doctors see everything. This is so different?’

  She knew it was. He knew. He knew she knew. He gave in.

  ‘No. This is like nothing I have experienced. It’s a plague. Like something out of a Hieronymus Bosch picture of souls in torment . . .’ He looked up, afraid the allusion might be missed. ‘You know, the sixteenth-century Dutch painter . . .’

  Perle looked blank but impressed, satisfied to be given such a scholarly allusion.

  ‘Fifteenth-century,’ said Addie.

  He continued, irritated but undeterred. ‘Like a visitation from a malign being who twists and distorts and deforms – you would hardly believe what this disease can do – and there is nothing, literally nothing, to stop its progress once it is established, or to alleviate the pain, minimise the self-loathing that deformity brings with it . . .’

  His eyes, those gorgeous brown sympathetic doctor’s eyes, brown with a touch of hazel, had misted up. He had seen too much, assimilated it only partially, unprepared by his medical training or internship for a visitation of this magnitude and malignity.

  He would not wipe his eye, nor accept the proffered napkin, just sat, wished to say no more, had exposed himself too thoroughly, foolishly, risen to the bait.

  ‘How can we help keep the children from being exposed?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, finishing his large bite of strudel, wiping the stickiness from his upper lip, ‘you live in Harbor Heights Park. Which beach do you use?’

  ‘Brown’s Beach,’ said Perle.

  ‘I’m surprised to hear it. You should – may I speak frankly? – you really should know better. There have been stories in The Long Islander, and we know the water is polluted, and that infection is caused by faeces in the water supply. That beach should have been closed years ago!’

  Addie and Perle lowered their eyes, ashamed but not compliant.

  ‘The authorities have tested the water,’ Addie said. ‘There was a report. And we only allow the children to swim at high tide. So far no one has been infected!’

  ‘So far,’ he said, more sternly than he had a right, presumptuous really, but they had been thoroughly frightened and were fully aware that if Becca had caught polio Brown’s Beach might have been responsible. She would have been. And her mother.

  ‘Well,’ said Jonathan, finishing his tea and pastry more quickly than strictly necessary, ‘I must be going, thanks for the hospitality.’

  He rose from the table and turned to the two women, w
ho were in the process of standing up.

  ‘If it were my children,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t let them within a hundred yards of that cesspool!’

  They knew, they knew. But most days they didn’t have a car, and the beach was only a ten-minute walk up and down the hill. There was nowhere else to go. And the town council and medical authorities had tested the water. It was safe!

  So why were they so frightened, and so guilty?

  Sensing this perhaps, and unwilling to leave the bruising atmosphere that he had created, Jonathan paused before taking his leave. A bit audaciously perhaps, certainly unexpectedly, he took Addie’s hand in a manner ill-suited to shaking and said, ‘In a couple of days I’d like to see her again . . .’ Was there a pause, a slight hesitation before her? He meant you, surely if imperceptibly.

  ‘Perhaps you might come by the office on Thursday, just to keep me up to date? Becca should be on the mend by then, but if not do bring her as well.’

  Next to her Perle was standing still, nodding idiotically, as if in approval of a coming betrothal.

  ‘I’ll give you a call,’ said Addie, detaching her hand. ‘It was good of you to come.’

  It wasn’t, of course, it was his job, though he could have insisted that mother and child come to his office.

  Maurice returned a couple of hours later, delayed by rush-hour traffic on Northern State, bustling and bursting with good news.