by Sol Stein
Run? Where to?
Into the bushes, over a hedge, quietly, then close to the house he could hear his father’s voice and Thomassy’s voice, arguing. Up the drainpipe? They wouldn’t hear him because of the noise they were making. But the cop would hear him.
Around the back, he lifted the metal cellar door, glad it wasn’t kept locked. He slipped down the stairs to the cellar, carefully lowering the metal door so it wouldn’t bang shut. He came up through the kitchen and into the living room. His father, his mother, and Thomassy all stopped talking.
He followed his father’s right hand as it reared back and came around in a half-circle, the palm open, smashing into the side of his face. He felt the pain jab up into the top of his head, and the thought flashed through his mind that he should pack a case and go off with the kraut somewhere.
“You’re a shit,” his father said.
Urek looked to his mother, hoping for something.
“I’m dropping the case,” said Thomassy.
Urek felt a family alarm, his, his father’s, his mother’s. Without Thomassy they were unprotected.
“Please, Mr. Thomassy.” His mother was finally speaking.
“Be a sport,” the father fumbled. “I’ll see the kid behaves.”
“Yeah,” said Urek.
“You shut up,” said his father.
“You know what he’s done now?” said Thomassy quietly.
Clearly they didn’t.
“He tried to kill the other kid in the hospital.”
“He what?”
“He cut the tube going down the boy’s throat.”
Thomassy took the father’s arm before he could strike again. “Hold it!”
The father subsided, a gray bag collapsed of wind. Thomassy let his arm go and turned to Urek.
“You were in enough trouble already. What the hell did you do it for?”
All three waited for an answer.
He had no answer he could articulate.
Paul Urek, feeling no strength in his arms, slipped his belt from his pants, folded it in two, and then swung the folded strap against the boy’s upraised arm again and again and again, Urek yelling, “Cut it out!” but defending himself only with his arms, the mother crying out, and finally Thomassy shouting, “For Christ’s sake, stop!” The puffing man no longer swung his rage against his son. He turned to Thomassy, saying, “Please, please, you got to handle this case, maybe he should get out of school and get a job, or enlist, or go to a nut house, maybe that’s where,” and then at the very top of his strident voice, “I don’t know what to do!”
Thomassy took the strap out of the father’s hands and put it down on a table.
“Looks to me like he’s in a nut house already.”
Urek’s mother spoke seldom. Now she said, “I beg you, Mr. Thomassy, help Stanley.”
“I’ll pay you anything,” said the father, a comment Thomassy ignored.
“I beg you,” Mrs. Urek repeated, holding her hands out like a frightened peasant woman entreating aid. “He’s my only boy.”
“You have all of you got to do everything I say,” Thomassy said.
Mr. and Mrs. Urek nodded, then looked at their son. He nodded too.
“Okay,” said Thomassy, just as they all heard the sound of a car drawing up.
Paul Urek opened the door,” a belittled man. The policeman who had gone for the warrant was striding toward the house, followed by Chief Rogers.
The cop who had guarded the door shouted toward them, “The kid’s in there, I could hear his voice!”
Thomassy stepped forward with assurance. “Everything’s under control,” he said.
Chapter 13
Ed sat back against two propped pillows. The bed rose under his knees, then sloped to the foot, where his chart hung for the inspection of the white-coated men and women who came by in shifts, flicking a glance toward him (to see if the bed was occupied? to see if he was alive?). Ed thought it would make you feel better about what these people were doing to you (pills, tubes, temperature, pulse, needles) if they’d pretend you were really there.
The new waitress in Walker’s Diner was like that. She took your order, brought your food, wouldn’t notice if you had two heads. He’d had breakfast there with Lila—it was a great illicit feeling to have breakfast in a diner instead of at home—and Lila, when she’d seen the glazed look of the blonde waitress, said, “Meat,” and the waitress answered, “What kind, honey?” and Lila said, “Human,” and the waitress said with her pencil, “Just point to it on the menu, honey.”
“If I’d made enough trouble,” said Lila, “she would have looked at me.”
School was the same. When a new term started, thirty kids would be looking at the teacher to see who he was, was he worth learning from, did he seem smart or interesting or just a time-server. Did the teacher look at his new students, wondering which of these teen-age nobodies was a potentially interesting person, maybe even now? If someday Japhet, Edward made a breakthrough in the teacher’s own field, would the teacher then say that kid was in my class, I taught him, I got him interested in this subject? They won’t remember what I look like even, they’ll make it up, invent what I was like. Or had the magic show and the newspaper story changed that? Was he now the kid magician who got beat up, rescued from anonymity by what? Alcoholics Anonymous get driven there by drink after being driven to drink by anonymity: Look at him, he’s a drunk, look at him, he’s an alcoholic, see how he avoids touching booze. Maybe Urek’s not so bad, he’s picking on me. Only see, I end up in the great hospital specialty. Patients Anonymous.
His father said hospitals had to be impersonal, so much death and misery passed through them they couldn’t be efficient if they thought of patients as people. Could generals be efficient if they thought of the troops they were sending into the bush or out on patrol as real people? Hospitals aren’t any more efficient than armies, are they?
His father said hospitals charged too much because they were inefficient. But were they any more inefficient than the phone company, or the railroads, or the other institutions that had you by the short hairs because you needed them and you had no alternative? Freedom, his father had said, was the availability of alternatives. Hospitals were not free institutions.
“Hi,” said the head looking at him over the top of his chart.
White jacket, white pants, bushy hair, full sideburns, stethoscope, big peace ring on finger, name tag “Karp.”
“Hi,” said Karp again. “How do you feel?”
“About what?” said Ed.
The doctor looked up over his stethoscope. “About your health.”
“How do you feel about your health, doctor?”
“Look,” said the doctor, “you’re in the hospital, I’m not in the hospital.”
“If you think you’re not in the hospital, doc, you’re in trouble.”
The doctor laughed. “I asked how you feel.”
“Oh,” said Ed. “I thought you were just discussing how I felt about health, and I wanted to know how you felt about health, to see if we had a philosophical basis for a discussion.”
The doctor laughed again. “Hey, who are you?”
“It says on the chart.”
“You got a pretty good sense of humor for a kid, Japhet.”
“It’s nice to be appreciated by an adult.”
“How come you’re putting me on?”
“Well, I need to get some information. How come you look like Woodstock instead of medical school?”
“I wasn’t born looking like either. I went one place and my father sent me to the other.”
This time Ed laughed. “I thought all you medical-school types were members of the crew-cut generation.”
“Thanks. What do you want to know?”
“Well, my own doctor won’t tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Like, am I going to die?”
Young Dr. Karp paused for just a split second. “Eventually.”
“Well,” said Ed, “that doesn’t make me especially different, so why am I still in bed, I mean, can you tell me something about why I’m still here?”
“They haven’t told you?”
“Who’s they?”
Dr. Karp’s eyes passed over the chart again, reverse chronological order. He looked up, glanced at his watch to make sure he had time, then sat down on the edge of the bed.
“You don’t look like a kid that picks a fight.”
“I got picked.”
This doctor enjoyed laughing.
“Okay,” said Karp. “You seem to have some trauma, damage, on your neck. That’s no problem. And in your throat, that was a problem because of the swelling, possible broken blood vessels, difficult to see in there.”
“A real pain in the ass.”
“Wrong,” said Karp. “Actually, it’s much easier to see inside the other end of the alimentary canal. We have something called a proctoscope.”
“Sounds great.”
“You get used to it.”
“You’ve just talked me out of a medical career.”
“Do you or don’t you want to know—”
“I do.”
“In throat trauma there’s an actual danger that the tissues swell up so much you choke to death, maybe while trying to eat. The X-rays show no permanent damage to the trachea, which is lucky. You ought to be out of here in a couple of days more.” He got up to go.
“I appreciate the information.” Ed paused. “Doctor?”
“I’m listening.”
“How did you feel when you cut up cadavers in medical school?”
Karp sat down again. Then, thoughtfully, “I hated dissections. At first.”
“But you got used to it.”
“Listen,” said Karp, “I’m going to come back and see you again when I’m not making rounds.”
He smiled and shook Ed’s hand. “Just don’t get into any fights.”
“Does that include self-defense?”
“Nobody wins,” said Karp. “Not even in self-defense.” He held a thumb up as he went out the door.
After a while, two nurses came in to shift Ed to a rolling bed as they had two days ago.
Ed said, “I can get over onto it myself.”
“You’re not allowed to,” said the older nurse.
“It’s got something to do with the hospital’s insurance policy?” said Ed.
They were unlaughable. Not everyone was like Karp.
They shifted him to the rolling bed clumsily, then wheeled him up to X-ray, where he went through the same uncomfortable procedures; then they wheeled him back down and transferred him to his own bed again.
“Can I turn on the television for you?” asked the younger nurse.
“No, thanks.”
Was the nurse offended by his refusal? He tried to make amends by asking her for a deck of cards.
“Oh, solitaire,” she said.
He didn’t contradict her. A few minutes later a nurse’s aide brought a deck of cards. He slipped them out of the case gingerly, getting the heft and feel of the particular deck the way a gambler might. He held the pack high in his right hand to see how steady he was.
Holding the pack between thumb and forefinger, he cut the cards with one hand by letting the bottom half drop, and then, in a maneuver that had once cost him many hours of practice, lifted one side of the bottom half up until it passed the side of the top half and landed neatly on top.
Ed then passed half the pack over to his left hand, which he thought of as his second-hand hand, the hand that would never measure up to the right. As he had developed his sleight-of-hand, he had been able to teach the clumsy left hand to cooperate, but always the right hand, not to be outdone, was a step ahead in agility.
Now with half the pack in one hand, his eyes shifting from one to the other, Ed slowly cut both half-packs with each hand at the same time. For a second he thought the cards might spill. They didn’t.
He hadn’t lost his touch.
Now, more quickly, he repeated the maneuver, gaining certainty as well as speed. When he looked up, a stranger was watching him from the door.
“Could you please do that once more?” asked the man.
Ed felt sheepish, wondering who the grandfather was. What kind of accent was that?
“Please?”
Being watched while performing was expected. Being watched while practicing made him feel queasy.
“Just once?” asked the man.
“Oh, sure,” said Ed.
First he cut the pack single-handedly with his right hand. Then with his left. Then simultaneously with both hands.
The old man seemed genuinely enchanted. “Very good,” he said, pulling up a chair by the side of the bed, sitting closer than a stranger usually would. Why was he looking without saying anything more? Ed felt that he was supposed to talk, but didn’t know what to say.
“Your parents said I could visit you. I’m from New York. My name is Koch, with a ‘ch,’ Gunther Koch. I came up on the train this morning. I really don’t trust myself to drive any more long distances. Around the city is all right, not thirty miles straight. My reflexes are not what they used to be.”
What did this guy want?
“I have been doing a study,” Koch continued. “I am interested in your case.” He saw Ed’s puzzled look and continued, “Never mind, it’s not important for now. This cutting the cards, that is all skill? I mean, there’s no trickery?”
“No,” said Ed.
“Why do you think people like to watch magic?”
Every once in a while someone asked Ed how he did a particular trick. The code was strict: tell no one anything. But a few times the code had seemed unimportant, as when his father had asked him about the rope trick. When he had explained the mechanics, the expression on his father’s face was one of disappointment. How a trick was done always brought less pleasure than seeing it done and being mystified. Knowing how made the spectator seem foolish for not having guessed. The explanation always seemed obvious, simple. And explaining a trick made Ed feel uncomfortable because it took not just the puzzlement but the magic away, made it all seem so ordinary.
His mind had been drifting. “Excuse me,” he said.
He found himself explaining what he had just been thinking about to Koch, but it came out simpleminded, not precise as it had seemed to him when he was thinking through the answer.
“Perhaps I can help,” said Dr. Koch. “In psychiatry…”
So that was his bag.
“When we analysts talk to each other about cases, it seems routine because the problems people have seem unique to them, great personal pain, and we see the explanation often so much alike for people who think that they are alone in the world with their differentness. The explanation of therapy is boring, not only for us but the patient too, especially the patient. Perhaps magic is the same?”
Maybe this Dr. Koch was all right.
“When I was young,” the doctor went on, “Houdini was a big name. I mean, even his name was important. I hated to hear that his name was Ehrich Weiss. Anybody could have such a name. But Houdini, that is almost extraterrestrial, perhaps satanic, godlike, out of the ordinary. Such a man would be tied up in chains, put in a box, the box lowered into water, and we hoped he would not die, perhaps we hoped he would die but fought against our hope, and he never disappointed us. He always escaped. My wife Marta used to love it, I used to love it. We’d talk about it afterward, theories, the chains were specially made, there was an air tube, no, an air tube wasn’t possible, but I believe we really didn’t want to know. The real explanation had to be disappointing, don’t you agree?”
“Oh yes,” Ed said. He had never discussed magic this way before, with anyone.
“According to the paper,” said Dr. Koch, “the last trick you performed—you don’t like me to call it a trick?—the last thing you did in your show at the school was with a guillotine, yes? Is it supposed to have a secon
d blade?”
“If I tell you, it will disappoint you.”
A smile flecked the corners of the doctor’s mouth. “Right, do not tell me.” The doctor held two fingers against his lips, reflecting. “Why do you think the Urek boy tried to kill you?”
The nurse who interrupted them asked Dr. Koch to leave the room for a minute. She took Ed’s temperature, felt his pulse, had him urinate in a bottle, marked the chart.
When Dr. Koch came back in, he was at once apologetic. “I did not mean to bring up an unpleasant matter so abruptly.”
“That’s all right,” said Ed. Then, after a moment, “Is it important—I mean, for whatever you are studying?”
“I cannot tell yet. It may be.”
Ed liked the doctor’s uncertainty. Or was it honesty?
“You are thinking,” said Dr. Koch.
“I try never to do that in school,” Ed said.
“Oh?”
“If they catch you thinking, they say your mind is wandering.”
“What were you thinking?”
“About you.”
“Good or bad.”
“I guess good.”
“You were going to tell me why the Urek boy…”
Ed explained to the doctor how Urek’s gang ruled the locker rooms at school and how Ed had defied them by buying a lock they couldn’t hacksaw through.
“Well,” said Dr. Koch, “that certainly gives Urek an economic grievance against you!” Dr. Koch reflected a moment. “That doesn’t, however, account for the fact that you were attacked the night of the magic show.”
“No.”
“Something triggered that boy’s response.”
Lila was standing at the door, a yellow embroidered headband on her hair, a yellow blouse, and jeans.
“Hello,” she said.
Ed thought she looked beautiful.
“Hi. This is Dr. Koch. Dr. Koch, this is my friend Lila.”
Dr. Koch disengaged his heavy body from the chair and struggled up to shake Lila’s hand elaborately. He seemed embarrassed.
“We were just talking,” said Dr. Koch.
“Don’t let me stop you,” said Lila. She curled herself up on the foot of Ed’s bed.
“I was saying,” said Dr. Koch, “that something triggered his action. Most actions are in some ways a reaction to something. His was to your performance, would you say?” He looked at the girl. “We were talking about the Urek boy.”
