“You’re beautiful,” said Ben.
“My chin sticks out. My nose is too big.”
“That’s not true. I love you the way you are.”
“‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment,’” said Marsha. “‘Love’s not love which alters when it alteration finds.’”
Love? True minds? Marsha always made Ben feel as if an exquisite wild animal had developed a taste for him; he felt honored, excited, and afraid.
“And our third model is wearing—” here little gasps of delight sprang up from those nearest the door through which she was entering—“a satin and tulle wedding dress with fitted bodice—”
Marsha began to weep. “I’m sorry, Ben. I always cry at weddings.”
Ben did not see the bride, only heard her pass in a rustle of satin as Marsha leaned toward him.
“Ben, let’s get married. They’re not drafting married men. You wouldn’t have to go.”
“I’m not afraid of going,” he said. “In fact, I’m thinking of enlisting.”
“You’re crazy!” said Marsha. “You want to go out and get shot up?”
“If we enter the war, somebody’s got to go,” he said.
“Look here. My stepfather could find you a job in a defense plant. He knows a lot of people. You’re not being unpatriotic if you don’t go.”
Ben put down his knife and fork. With all the interruptions, he had scarcely touched the fish.
“Marsha, I just think we shouldn’t get married till you finish high school. And till we can get through a whole month without fighting.”
“Everybody fights. It’s perfectly normal. You always put the blame on me. You don’t trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
The Jell-O and tea arrived. Marsha shoved it aside.
“If we were married we wouldn’t fight. That’s what we fight about—getting married.”
“Marsha,” Ben said, folding his napkin, “there’s no way I can eat all this.”
“Leave it,” she snapped.
“I’ll ask the waiter for—”
“You don’t ask for a doggy bag at Hudson’s. Leave it. I’m having a chocolate sundae. I’m addicted to chocolate. I have to have it every three hours.”
An elderly woman in a wheelchair caught Ben’s eye. The young boy pushing her toward the door was her grandson, perhaps. Ben saw himself pushing her, forever and ever, chained to her helplessness. Freedom. Oh, God, I’m addicted to freedom.
“What are you thinking?” asked Marsha.
“I’m thinking that I’m addicted to you.”
It wasn’t what he’d meant to say.
“If we were married,” said Marsha, “you could have me every three hours.”
A spasm of terror made him shudder. He would grow old like the ancient woman in the chair, and her grandson would grow old, and Marsha’s body in time would turn on itself, turn bent and shapeless. Panic swept through him.
“I can’t wait three hours,” he said.
Marsha grabbed her purse and her jacket.
“Come on. I know a place we can go.”
The waiter, seeing them rise, hurried over with the check. Though she usually added it and checked it to the penny, now Marsha left a fistful of bills on the table and walked quickly out of the dining room. Once in the corridor they ran for the elevator.
“Basement, please,” said Marsha, to the heavyset girl in the maroon uniform, who shifted on her stool and pushed the lowest button: B.
“Here’s where you find the real bargains,” Marsha said, as they got off. “The same names as upstairs, but without the labels. My mom used to bring me here the week before school opened and buy all my stuff.”
Ben followed her, past counters heaped with blouses, sweaters, brassieres, scarves. Women were reaching for things, pinching them, rubbing them between their fingers. Marsha turned abruptly down a small corridor, passed the door marked LADIES, and stopped at the door next to it: EMPLOYEES ONLY. She opened it.
“Come on,” she urged. “It’s all right.”
He followed her, his mouth dry, into a small room.
Nothing here but a chaise and a low table. For magazines. But there were no magazines. Through the thin walls he heard toilets flushing.
“Nobody ever comes in here,” she said, throwing her purse and her jacket on the floor.
When he unbuttoned her blouse, his hand met something cold and smooth. The leather cap dropped at his feet.
“It’s yours,” she said. “I took it for you.”
“Oh, Marsha.”
“Nobody caught me. Nobody ever catches me.”
8
Dear Doctor Well
EVERYBODY HAD A CURE for her.
Nell, who had once dated a Christian Scientist, sent her pamphlets which explained that she was God’s perfect child and therefore the paralysis was an illusion. On one of the pamphlets was scrawled a message: “Sounds crazy—but worth a try!”
Mrs. Lieberman sent her a newspaper clipping about a polio patient who painted “The Last Supper” on velvet, holding the paintbrush between his toes.
Hal ordered her copies of “Nuts May Save the Race” and “What is the Matter with the American Stomach?” from the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where he went once a year on a private vacation to enjoy the company of vegetarians and celebrities in search of their lost youth.
“That’s where I’d like to take you,” he said. “They’ve got heated pools. Just like Warm Springs. Look what Warm Springs did for Roosevelt.”
Helen brought the advertisements that still arrived in the mail for Grandpa, even though he no longer practiced osteopathy. Oh, praise the benefits of Dr. Herrick’s sugar-coated vegetable pills, a blessing to the afflicted, and Dr. Herrick’s Red Pepper Plasters, which restore health and vigor to the weak, and Dr. Herrick’s Pain-Killing Magic Oil, which for forty years has been a merciful friend to the suffering and is not of an oily nature and is very pleasant! There were also pamphlets for people who found themselves cutting teeth in their elbows or who were born with special problems such as four-inch tails.
“A four-inch tail!” exclaimed Helen. “Clare, things could always be worse.”
Mrs. Clackett, the grocer’s wife, sent her half a dozen back issues of The Herbalist’s Almanac, which her husband gave to all his customers at Christmas. Clare read the testimonials, keeping a sharp eye out for cases similar to her own. “Dear Doctor Well: I wish to sincerely thank you for your Wahoo Bark of Root. I can hardly believe it was so effective.” But what was Wahoo? “Dear Doctor Well: Since I have been taking Black Haw I feel so much better. I do not have those bearing down pains and I shall continue to praise Black Haw.”
Clare couldn’t be sure if she had met Black Haw before, under a different name. When she found the names of herbs she knew, it was like coming across the name of an old friend in the newspaper. Grandpa had told her about the herbs and about the love affairs between sicknesses and their cures that started when the first Headache met Pennyroyal, and Sprain called for Wormwood, and Loss of Appetite demanded Sarsaparilla, and Cramps took Skullcap to bed, and Cankers rejoiced in Golden Seal, and Fevers cooled toward Slippery Elm. He introduced her to good friends, silent friends, named Boneset and Periwinkle and Life Everlasting, who traveled where she could not go, bustling through the trade centers of the brain and resting in the crepuscular chambers of the heart, rowing through secret canals in the ear, or floating between the islets of Langerhans by the dark continent of the liver. The blessings of Juniper and Ginger were upon her always. Grandpa asked her, “What did God give us for the healing of nations?” and she answered, “The leaves of the tree of life,” and he said, “Correct. Take a penny from the jar. Take two. That was a hard one.”
A nurse’s aide named Ginny chose Clare for her special project. She wore a pale blue uniform and was planning to lose fifty pounds in the near future. She stopped by every morning to help Clare dress and every afternoon to see what new magazines Hel
en might have brought. She sat by Clare’s bed, flipping the pages, deciding what ads she’d ask Clare to cut out for her: Merle Oberon or Claudette Colbert maybe, for Woodbury Cold Cream. Life always had those nice conversation ads that were so useful for amusing bored patients.
“Here’s one we can do, Clare. You read the general. I’ll be the general’s daughter.”
“Me? The general?”
“Or maybe you’d rather be the daughter.”
“I’ll read the general,” said Clare.
Ginny drew a chair close to the bed and cleared her throat. “The General Joins the Regulars!”
GINNY: My dad, the general, is a man of few words and strong determination.
CLARE: When you get into trouble, face the enemy and fight it out.
GINNY: You and your pitched battles with constipation! Did it ever occur to you to find the cause of your trouble? Dad, come down to breakfast; I want to show you something.
CLARE: Now, what’s the miracle?
GINNY: No miracle at all, just a crisp toasty breakfast, Kellogg’s All-Bran. If your trouble is the kind that’s due to lack of proper “bulk” in the diet, All-Bran will really correct the cause of it. But you should eat it every day and drink plenty of water.
CLARE: This tastes like a million. If All-Bran can make me join the regulars, I’m enlisting for the duration.
“There’s a Sanforized ad we could do, if you’re feeling up to it,” said Ginny.
“No, thank you,” said Clare. “But if you want to cut anything out, go ahead. Take the whole magazine.”
To her relief, Mrs. Thatcher arrived with Clare’s braces. She acknowledged Ginny with a curt nod, then knelt and buckled Clare’s legs into place.
“Now, Clare, get up by yourself, the way I showed you.”
Clare twisted around in her chair, shifting her weight to her braced legs.
She took one crutch and hoisted herself up on it.
She reached for the other and tucked it under her arm and adjusted her weight.
Now she was standing, facing the nurse.
“Are we ready to see the world?” asked Mrs. Thatcher, and she glided around to Clare’s right side.
The tip of the crutch edged forward on the smooth floor as Clare put her weight on it. Mrs. Thatcher pushed her foot against the tip to keep it from slipping.
“Right crutch, left foot—left crutch, right foot,” she sang out. Clare’s braced legs clattered across the floor. “Let’s walk to the playroom in the children’s wing. It’s at the end of the hall.”
A large paper turkey eyed them from the door of the glass partition that separated this end of the corridor from the children’s rooms. By the time Clare reached it, the muscles in her arms were trembling.
“We’ll rest a few minutes,” said Mrs. Thatcher. “I’m sure braces don’t have to be so heavy. Someday, someone will find a way of making them lighter.”
Leaning on the door frame, Clare watched a little boy in a blue bathrobe walking up and down the hall, pushing the big metal frame that supported his I.V. The tube from the bottle snaked up his sleeve and disappeared.
“Ready?” said Mrs. Thatcher, taking Clare’s arm.
In the playroom they found Ginny, reading the magazines on the coffee table. Most had lost their covers and some of their pages as well. An empty milk bottle and a scattering of clothespins—oh, who could have left them on the table, these tokens of home?
“Clare, let me help you into one of the straight chairs,” said Mrs. Thatcher. “The settee is like quicksand. I’ll be back in a few minutes. You can ask Ginny if you need anything.”
Ginny grunted and went on combing her short brown hair with her fingers. On a high shelf out of everyone’s reach, behind a sign which said Don’t Touch, the radio played continuously: two women were arguing.
“Ma Perkins.” Ginny yawned. “Doesn’t it play anything else?”
The boy on the I.V. sat down at the table between Ginny and Clare and cleared a little space among the magazines and began to drop the clothespins into the milk bottle, raising his hand higher each time to increase the difficulty.
“Is that fun?” asked Clare.
“It teaches patience,” said the boy. “I have a hole in my heart.” Seeing that Clare was impressed, he asked, “Do you know how big your heart is?”
Clare shook her head, and he held up his fist.
“Your heart is as big as your fist and it grows at the same rate,” he told her.
On his pale chest, just above his half-buttoned pajama top, two gold medals gleamed.
“Did you get those medals in the gift shop?” asked Clare.
The boy shook his head. “My mom gave them to me. I don’t know where she got them. This one’s St. Anthony and this one’s St. Joseph.”
Noting that she wore none, he opened his bathrobe a little wider and showed her a paper medal pinned to his pajamas that read
HERO: I HAD MY SHOT TODAY.
“Maybe,” he said, “you could get one of these.”
“But I haven’t had my shot.”
“I’ll ask the nurse to give you a medal anyway,” said the boy.
“She can wear mine,” said a voice none of them recognized, and they all turned in surprise.
A young man in a purple and gold varsity jacket was dangling a silver coin strung on a thread of elastic. He was tall, with an open face and blue eyes and reddish blond hair that was all cowlick and no style, and Clare recognized him at once. Everyone at school recognized him. Once when Clare dropped her wallet while she was trying to open her locker, he’d leaned down and picked it up. In the jostle and din between classes, he’d picked up her wallet and handed it to her. “You dropped your wallet,” he said. She was too flustered to say thank you. She managed a quick nod of her head and he disappeared down the hall. For weeks afterward, the sight of him made her tremble. She learned his schedule and looked forward to the few minutes between classes when their paths crossed. She watched him in the cafeteria and remembered what he ate and what he left untouched. She memorized his clothes and fell in love with the way he rolled up his shirt sleeves. Saturdays she watched him play, glad that he did not notice her in the stands. Once she’d stopped at Burney’s to buy a sweatshirt for Davy, and to her alarm Ben came over and asked, “Can I help you?” He looked right at her; he could see she was trembling all over. Help you? She turned and ran out of the store. Whenever she saw him on the street, she lowered her head, afraid he could hear her heart pounding. But always his gaze passed through her. Until this moment.
The little boy on the I.V. took the coin and studied it.
“That’s not a medal,” he said. “Gee, what a keen skull.”
Ben took the coin from the boy and handed it to Clare, who was so nervous she could scarcely hold it.
“It’s an antique,” he said. “Very rare.”
He was talking to her just the way he’d talk to anyone. Like we were already friends, she thought. The fluttering in her stomach subsided. In this dingy lounge, it seemed as if they really were friends, and she found herself eager to talk.
“It’s very unusual,” she said. She handed it back.
“Don’t you want to wear it?”
She was dying to wear it. But what good would it do? When he left, he would never come back, and she would look at it fifty times a day and want him to come back. She would tremble and want him all over again, this boy who had spoken to her only twice before: You dropped your wallet. Can I help you?
“No,” she said, “it’s yours. You keep it.”
Disappointed, he pocketed the coin. Then he glanced around the room and saw, as if for the first time, the paper turkeys taped to the walls in the corridor.
“Well, happy Thanksgiving,” he said, turning to go but not going.
“Today isn’t Thanksgiving,” said the boy. “What’s your name?”
“Ben.”
“I’m Toby. Aren’t you going to stay?”
Ginny put down her
torn copy of Beauty Secrets of the Stars; she hadn’t turned a page since Ben entered the room. Now she leaned across the table and asked, “Who are you here to visit?”
“My uncle. He’s seriously hurt. He’s got a broken leg.”
“In this place a broken leg isn’t serious,” said Ginny.
“How’d he break it?” asked Toby.
“Hit-and-run accident,” said Ben. “He was left in the road with a broken leg. They never caught the driver.”
“Just like you, honey,” said Ginny, nodding to Clare.
“A car hit you?” asked Ben.
“A baseball,” said Clare.
“If you ever find the guy that did it,” said Ginny, “I hope you take him to court for every penny he’s worth.”
“I bet he’s a Nazi,” said Toby.
“I bet he’s not,” said Clare. “We don’t have Nazis in America.”
“He could be a Nazi spy,” said Toby.
“To wreck somebody’s life and get away with it,” said Ginny. “It’s awful.”
“My life isn’t wrecked,” said Clare. “I’m going to study at home. I got accepted at Michigan for next year. Everybody in our family goes to Michigan.”
“What are you studying to be?” asked Ben.
“An artist.”
“You should get married,” said Ben. “A pretty girl like you.”
Ginny shot him a look: For God’s sake, shut up. But Clare did not flinch.
“It takes five minutes to get married,” she said. “And then what? You can’t just be married.”
“I could,” sighed Ginny. “I—”
A clatter in the corridor drowned her out.
“Dinner’s here,” she said and jumped up. “I’ll get the wheelchair.”
Without a word Toby pushed his I.V. out of the playroom and scooted down the corridor. After Ginny had lifted Clare into the chair, she drew Ben aside.
“You want to wheel her back to room three-fifteen? I think she’d like that.”
In her room Ben watched Ginny swing the arm of Clare’s table over her lap and set the tray on it.
“Enjoy your dinner,” she said and hurried out.
“Guess it’s time to go,” said Ben. He did not move.
Things Invisible to See Page 6
