Dr. O’Hara had been married, but she didn’t have any children. James thought that had something to do with her going into obstetrics. She’d been divorced for about six years now, but she didn’t have anything good to say about men. He’d gathered, from bits and pieces of conversation, things he’d overheard and things he’d been told, that Dr. O’Hara’s husband had treated her pretty badly. Not hitting her, or abandoning her, or anything like that, just ordinary bad treatment between two people. She had paid the cost of sending him to law school, working as a waitress at night and a checkout girl in a supermarket during the day. Waitressing was better money for the hours, she’d said, but the supermarket job was a steady income, and had the benefits, too, the medical insurance. Her husband—James didn’t even know what his name was because she never named him, and had gone back to her maiden name after the divorce—went to school. During the summers he couldn’t work, at first because he had to write his paper for law review, because if you were on law review then you got a better job, and then because he was offered a position clerking for a judge that didn’t pay anything but had a lot of prestige. Then, once he’d graduated, he was working six, seven days a week, to beat out the other new lawyers in the company he’d joined. He said he didn’t want children yet, he wanted a house instead, and a Mercedes, he wanted to enjoy himself after all that work; then he said he wanted to marry someone else.
Dr. O’Hara had gotten her own lawyer when he did that, and she said she’d really put the screws to him. Let him pay for her to go to school now, that was her attitude. She wasn’t too proud to use him the way he’d used her. She sounded like she didn’t like him a bit. If she’d talked to him like that, James could see why he wanted to be married to someone else.
Except for when she talked about her ex-husband, Dr. O’Hara was a pretty nice person, sort of anxious but with a good sense of humor, and she really cared about her patients. James figured, the guy must have been pretty much of a snake. He’d thought, a couple of times, of saying to Dr. O’Hara, “Look, you didn’t get the only bad one. My mother got one too.” But he didn’t, even though knowing that made him feel better. It might not make her feel better.
James was filing and thinking—the filing made easy because all he had to do was go through the big drawers from front to back, finding the right folder—when the phone rang. Until he left the office—at which time he would notify the answering service to pick up the calls—James was responsible for answering the phone. He leaned over the desk, pushed down the flashing button, and picked up the receiver. “Doctors’ office. May I help you.”
“Hello, doctor. I don’t know if I got a problem, but I thought, I maybe might call.” It was a man’s voice, rumbly and deep, spewing off its words so fast James didn’t have time to interrupt and say he wasn’t the doctor. “It’s probably nothing, but I haven’t been able to urinate for almost two days now. Is that serious?”
James wasn’t any doctor, but that didn’t sound good. The man didn’t sound good either; he sounded under too much control, he sounded frightened.
“What’s your name anyway?” the man asked.
“James, but—”
“Listen, Dr. James, I know I’m not one of your regular patients, but I wondered. If you could tell me. If I might should come in. Or go to a hospital. Or what. I don’t have a doctor—I haven’t been to a doctor for—since I can’t remember when. But I think I’m running a temperature, see, only I can’t find where my wife put the thermometer. She’s off at Ocean City for a few days. So, what should I do?”
“Dr. Landros is on call. Let me get in touch—”
“I don’t feel good,” the voice rumbled. Some people, James had learned, always didn’t feel good; but this voice didn’t sound like that kind of person. This sounded like the kind of person who when he said he didn’t feel good meant he felt terrible.
“I’m not a doctor,” James finally got in. “I’m just—”
“See, my wife took the car so I’m out here alone. Please, can’t you think of something?”
Yes, James could: He needed to get the man’s name, address, and phone number, then track down Dr. Landros. But he could hear panic in the voice.
“I read a book once—” he began.
“I don’t need any book. Unless it’s a medical book.”
“Travels with Charley,” James just continued, trying to get his calm voice through the man’s panic. “And the writer’s dog couldn’t go to the bathroom.”
“Okay. You think I should call a vet?” The voice sounded as if this was a reasonable suggestion. The man must be even more panicky than James had thought.
“So he gave him tranquilizers, and a drink—to relax him.”
“I don’t have tranquilizers. We don’t have things like that.”
“Look,” James said. “I’ve got to get off the phone and find the doctor for you. If you have a drink and, I don’t know, sit in a hot tub and—the writer rubbed the dog—”
“That hurts,” the voice said, small and ashamed.
“Let me have your name, and your telephone number, and where you are,” James asked.
“Herbert Wilkinson,” the voice obeyed, and rattled off information that James wrote down. “Did that work for the dog?”
“Yes, but—”
“We’ve got whiskey. I already took aspirin.”
“That’s good,” James said. “I’ll find Dr. Landros, it won’t take long. She’ll be in touch with you as soon as she can, either on the phone or she’ll come out.”
“She? It’s a woman?”
“She’s a doctor.”
“I guess. Yeah, okay. How long will it take?”
“I don’t know,” James said.
“What about you, will you be there? Where you are now? In case . . .”
“I’m not a doctor,” James repeated. Then he thought he understood. “But I’ll be here. Can you hang on for a little while longer?”
“I guess.” The voice sounded more confident. “The dog was okay?”
“The dog was okay,” James said. “It was nonfiction.”
“It’s just that—I mean, what if I explode or something.”
James couldn’t pretend to know about that danger. “I’ll find the doctor.”
“Okay, Dr. James. I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere,” he made a rough joke, “unless it’s to my eternal reward.”
“You don’t sound that bad,” James answered before he thought, just saying exactly what he was thinking.
“I don’t? I guess I don’t. Okay. Thanks, Dr. James.”
“I’m not—” James started to say, but the man hung up.
James called Dr. Landros’s home first, but nobody answered. She wouldn’t be out on her boat, because she was on call, so he didn’t worry. He called the restaurant where she would have gone for a crab-cake sandwich, what she called her Saturday celebration. She had been there, but had left twenty minutes earlier. So James called Tydings grocery store, where Dr. Landros did her shopping. “Millie? It’s James Tillerman. Is Dr. Landros there?”
“Just leaving,” Millie said. “How are you all?”
James didn’t have time for Millie’s usual slow conversation. “Can you catch her? It’s an emergency.”
“An emergency? You want her for an emergency,” Millie repeated the information. “Hold on, James. I’ll try.”
Impatient, James listened. The receiver clanked down on the countertop. Then he heard not much of anything, until a distant door banged and Dr. Landros’s voice came on. She didn’t waste any time. “What emergency?”
James told her what the man had told him, and what he had told the man. He gave her the number. She didn’t even say thank you. “Got it, James,” she said, and hung up.
It wasn’t until James had called the answering service to tell them the man’s number where Dr. Landros could be reached that he sat down at the desk and buried his face in his hands.
What had he been thinking of? That was j
ust like him, wasn’t it. Somebody says I’m sick and he talked about something he read in a book. Just because John Steinbeck’s dog . . . It could hurt a human being to drink whiskey and sit around in a hot bath, maybe, if there was something wrong with his bladder, or something.
All alone in the office, thinking of what he’d done, James groaned. He didn’t blame Dr. Landros for being angry at him.
He read so many books, anyway, who knew what was true and what false? As if life were a book, real life. What if the man died? What if James—acting like himself and talking about books he’d read, when there was somebody really sick—had told him the wrong thing, the exact wrong thing, and he died?
James didn’t know anything, and especially nothing about the human body. There was so much to know and he only knew what they’d taught in school biology and health courses. He knew something, he guessed, but not much. He knew just about nothing compared to how much more there was to know.
James did the only thing he could think of. He was just waiting for Dr. Landros to call in, or to be able to call her and find out if the man was all right. In the meantime, all he could think of to do was walk into the doctor’s office and look over the shelves of medical books there. At least he could find out if he’d given dangerous advice. It took him a while to find the right book, but once he did he took it back to the desk in the waiting room. There, he opened it and read, waiting.
He had no idea how much time passed before a scratching at the lock interrupted his appalled recognition of how many things could go wrong with the human excretory system. It was the scratching, and a clicking noise, that distracted him. Without thinking, James fell from the chair to the floor. Fear seized him, at the first faint sound, and it held him as the sounds continued. His whole body was cold, sweaty cold. If it was someone breaking in, because they thought doctors had drugs . . . if it was someone crazy on drugs, you didn’t know what they’d do, they’d cut you to pieces for no reason at all. James had read about it. He crawled under the desk, curling himself up in the kneehole. His heart was thumping away and he had no idea in his head except being afraid. He closed his eyes, listening. “Oh no, oh no. Please, no,” his mind said, over and over. The noises stopped.
He heard the door open. Footsteps, hesitating. Whoever it was didn’t even close the door. A fresh current of air found James out easily where he was hunched there in the blindness of closed eyes, trying to be invisible. Whoever it was, moving slowly into the room, wasn’t even thinking enough to close the door. James’s jaw hurt and his stomach was holding so tight against breathing that those muscles hurt. He felt like he was shaking. “Oh please no.” He opened his eyes.
He kept his eyes fixed on the flat panel of wood that was the front of the kneehole—trying not to see anything, hoping whoever it was would just steal something and go away—he didn’t want to see anything because if he couldn’t see anything then nothing could see him—but he couldn’t help noticing something moving, feet coming toward the desk. Shoes.
The doctor’s shoes, her legs.
The air emptied his lungs in a rush and his head banged up against the underside of the desk. How could he be such a jackass? Jerk, dork, wimp—James started to crawl backward out of the kneehole. Weenie. Ashamed, he was so ashamed. Not overly heroic, he said to himself sarcastically. Not too brave. But that, he thought, backing out, was just what he was like, wasn’t it? All confident and acting big when it was only thinking and books, but anything physical—like baseball even—anything physical and he was no good at all. He stood up.
“Ah, Dr. James,” Dr. Landros greeted him. “I saw your bike. I wondered where you’d gotten to.”
“I didn’t hear your car,” James mumbled. “I told him I wasn’t a doctor.”
“You thought I was somebody breaking in?”
James waited for her to start laughing at him.
“Well, it’s a hazard. One of the hazards of the medical profession. I don’t blame you for hiding out. It makes good sense.”
That made James feel better, except that he knew it wasn’t common sense that made him hide. It was fear. “What about Mr. Wilkinson?” he asked.
Dr. Landros didn’t answer. “I see you’ve been doing some research on your own.”
“I’ll put it back,” James said. He took the book and followed her into her office. He replaced it on its shelf. Dr. Landros had pulled out a new file folder and a blank patient information sheet. She sat down at her desk.
“Did I tell him something dangerous?” James asked. “I guess I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t mean to.” He stood in front of the desk, ready for a scolding. He just wanted to know the truth.
“He’s all right. I got out there and he was jaybird naked, lying in the bathtub, drinking whiskey. You shouldn’t have told him anything, James.”
“I’m sorry. I won’t ever again. I’m glad I didn’t hurt him.”
“Although what you told him was right enough, if that’s worrying you. Didn’t do any harm, and gave him the feeling he was doing something about it. You were lucky. You read the right book.”
“I promise, I never will again.” James waited. “He’s okay now?”
“Temporarily. It could be one of several things—well, you were reading up on symptoms, you must know that. I’m sending him up for testing Monday. His wife came home, in the middle of this—they’d had some kind of a fight and she’d gone off to her sister’s, so the whole thing could even be psychosomatic. But whatever, it’s given him a scare. I don’t know, James, men act as if—all of their manhood is in their penis. Everything that makes a man a man. I can’t believe men are so foolish.”
What was she doing talking to him like this? James thought. It was . . . you didn’t . . . and what did he know about manhood anyway, what did she think he knew about it. Not much, he felt like telling her; but more than she did, because he was one. “Yeah, well, if they do, they do,” he answered grumpily, because he didn’t see why anyone should be looked down on just because he was male.
Dr. Landros stared at him, then she started laughing. “That’s right, put me in my place.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t. Besides, I think you’re right to object, if that’s anything to you: I’ve got to be careful not to be sexist. So I’ll try. Isn’t it time for you to go home? You’re a glutton for work—I don’t know where you get your endurance from. Go on home,” she said, adding—just as he reached the doorway—“Dr. James.”
James just burst out laughing.
* * *
Riding his bike along the quiet roads, the air mellow around him as he rode through it, clouds chasing one another slowly across the sky and their shadows chasing themselves slowly over the flat land, James wondered along. His thoughts, wondering, followed one another, drifting like the clouds, almost aimless, maybe aimless, but maybe following the direction given by some invisible wind.
James rode into a breeze he made himself by riding along. He was feeling pretty good, so good he didn’t even mind the work of pushing the pedals, pushing the bicycle along. He’d helped somebody. He’d just said what he was thinking, just acted natural, and it had been a right thing to do. He knew he shouldn’t have given any advice, and he wouldn’t again, but he really liked the way helping someone made him feel. He wondered: Doctors made good money—they made good money and they helped people too. James felt pretty good about saying the right things to Herbert Wilkinson; he could almost imagine how it would feel to be a doctor and know what to do to really make a difference, the way Dr. Landros must feel.
James had never thought of himself as the kind of person who could do things and make other people better. What, he wondered, had he been thinking of not to realize that if you were as smart as he was you could really choose what to do? What had he thought all this smartness was good for?
He guessed maybe he didn’t mind being James Tillerman, didn’t mind being himself. No matter what other people, kids, thought of
him. He’d grow up, and being grown up would be easier; one thing about adults—he thought of the adults he knew—they seemed easier just being themselves. He’d be okay, if he didn’t get lost from himself along the way. Francis Verricker, he thought, had gotten lost. How, or why, James didn’t know, and he never would know, he guessed. But that didn’t matter for James. It was up to James to see that he didn’t get lost. James pedaled along, just feeling good.
Until he remembered that he was virtually cheating on that French report—more than virtually cheating, he told himself. Actually cheating. Even if Andy Walker had instigated it, and would do the actual act of cheating, James had gone along. Had helped out. Had done it. He tried to push the thought away and forget about it. But this time it wouldn’t go away. James slowed down, no longer eager to get home, or get anywhere. Because if he did that, that was the kind of person he was.
All right, he said to himself. That’s done. What’s done is done. But never again, he promised himself. I can’t do anything about that now, but I won’t ever again let myself do anything like that, not in any way.
The promise helped . . . some.
CHAPTER 11
Sammy leaned back in his seat and stretched his legs out. Ernie was up there babbling away about baseball. Sammy kept his face turned toward Ernie, so it would look like he was paying attention. He had the evaluation sheet in front of him.
Ernie’s was the second report of the day, following Shirley’s report on how the Chesapeake Bay was getting polluted. What Shirley said made Sammy uneasy, uncomfortable: How could people be so dumb? The dumbest thing of all was to keep on doing it, even after they could see the bad effects it had, cutting down the trees, and using fertilizers that ran off into the bay. He was glad when Shirley finished and sat down, even though he gave her high marks on every category of the evaluation sheet. You’d think, Sammy thought, that somebody, the governor or the president or someone, would just stop the destruction. You’d think that somebody who had the power, and was in charge, would do something.
It was almost a relief to have Ernie standing up there, looking like a potato, a couple of notecards in his hand. Ernie wasn’t nervous at all. It sounded to Sammy as if Ernie had spent maybe ten minutes, tops, looking up baseball in a little kid’s encyclopedia. It was a terrible report. Ernie would tell some fact, then look up and say something—usually something stupid—about that fact. After people stopped laughing he’d read off his next fact. “Baseball was invented in 1839,” Ernie said. He looked at the class. “Which was a pretty long time ago.” People giggled, because if there was anything stupider than Ernie acting like Ernie, nobody knew what it was. It was a joke, Ernie giving a report. Ernie was a joke. “In 1939 the Baseball Hall of Fame was opened, in Cooperstown, New York. That’s New York State, not New York City, in case any of you are wondering. Nineteen thirty-nine is a hundred years after 1839,” he added.
Sons From Afar Page 17
