Permanence (16 page)

“Am I the only patient you’ve slept with?” I whisper.

Doctor holds me too tightly, hurting my hands.

“I have to know,” I say. In the distance, at the opposite end of this bridge, I can see a man walking toward doctor and me.

“Will you believe me if I say there was no one else?”

“Yes or no?” I beg.

The strange man comes closer.

“And what difference would it make in the long run?” he answers, unsatisfactorily.

“Yes or no?”

The strange man is even closer and I can begin to make out a face as it appears for me in the pale overhead lamp light.

“You place undo importance on the past.”

“Listen!” I scream. “Yes or no?”

The young, strange man tosses a glare at doctor and me as he passes by. Then, like a ghost, he disappears along a side street and into the darkness.

The small white bandage that covers the stitches on doctor’s lower lip makes his normal, expressionless face even more mechanical looking.

“If you have to know, I will tell you the truth. But only if you believe me.”

“I will,” I whisper, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. I have little choice but to believe him.

“Never, until you. I’ve never made a habit out of sleeping with my patients.”

“And I can believe you?”

“You must believe me, or this will never work.”

“None of this is my business,” I say. “I’m sorry for prying. Your past is your past. It needn’t concern me.”

“You have every right,” admits doctor, “considering what we’ve been though together; considering how I feel about you.”

The rats move across the rocks, in and out of the light and into the river, making little splashes.

“What happens when we get back home?” I ask.

“We have work to do when we get home.”

“And there will be no more talk about love?”

“There will be some problems.”

“Professional or personal?”

“Both,” says doctor.

“Then let’s not ruin anything we have right now.”

“I never wanted to,” says doctor, lifting himself from the metal railing. He turns to me and takes hold of me by the shoulders. “When I told you I loved you in Venice just a few days ago,” he says, “I meant it…and I mean it now. But I shouldn’t have said anything. Not because it is bad ethics for a psychiatrist to fall in love with his patient, but because I know, as your doctor, that you are not ready for love.”

“I need love, just like anybody else.”

“But from me?”

“I need you; I need to be with you. That’s why I came here. If that’s not love, then what is?”

“What we have together is dangerous,” says doctor, coughing a deep, chesty, sickly cough. “What we have is nothing like the love you shared with Jamie and your baby. And there are other complications now, as well.”

I peel doctor’s hands away from my shoulders. I turn to the river.

“Let’s not talk anymore,” I say. “Not tonight.”

Doctor coughs, bringing his hand up to his mouth. In the lamp light I can see the spot of blood on doctor’s hand, blood that is the result of his deep cough.

Together, we see the blood.

But doctor quickly wipes the blood away with his handkerchief. He turns to the river.

I grab hold of doctor’s jacket. “My God,” I say. “What is wrong with you?”

Doctor turns back to me. “You’re right,” he says. “Let’s not talk anymore. Sometimes it’s best not to talk.”

Then doctor walks ahead of me, away from the river where the rats run in and out of the light, with the cars speeding by along this cobblestone road in historic Florence, in the night. Soon, we will travel to Rome together. But we are not the same people. We are not the same people we were even a few days ago. We are never the same people we were. Ever.

Rome

Two days later, we travel to bustling, cosmopolitan Rome.

Doctor seems bored, but somehow happy or at peace with himself. He does not smoke cigarettes while we rummage through dozens of shops that make up the business district of this sophisticated but ancient city.

I wonder if I have really gotten through to him—the patient to the doctor.

We share pastries while sitting on the Spanish Steps, throw coins into the Trevi Fountain, snap photographs—still lives. Doctor and I busy ourselves in order to avoid the questions that go unanswered. Will we continue to love one another? Will we ever be truthful to one another about the physical problems that threaten doctor’s life, and about my pregnancy? How long will we have together? What will happen to me if doctor must leave me?

We act like tourists.

I toss coins into the basin of the Trevi Fountain but avoid making wishes, although I say nothing of this to doctor.

We do not talk about us anymore.

We sleep together, but we do not make love.

We visit the ancient Coliseum and the Roman ruins. We visit Saint Peter’s and are ushered quickly through the Catholic opulence of the Vatican. Coming out of the Vatican, we see a beggar sitting with his back up against the wall that surrounds the mammoth compound. Doctor stops, reaches into his pocket, and tosses the man some lire. The man gives us a startled look, his eyes wide and mouth gaping open. He springs up from his cardboard box bed and runs away.

We climb the staircase Jesus climbed in His judgment with Pilot—the set of white marble steps having been transported to Rome from the Middle East during the time of the early Christian crusades. These are the steps the women of Rome climb one step at a time, not with their feet but from their knees. They dress themselves in mourning black and clutch rosaries, whispering prayers. The women are believers.

Doctor and I walk. We avoid automobile transportation in the interest of protecting our lives.

Rome is very warm, even in the fall. In the heat, I wear short skirts, t-shirts, and leather sandals with straps that wrap about my ankles for support. Doctor removes his gray jacket and slings it over his arm. I keep my silver pillbox around my neck, allow it to dangle near my heart. I touch it with my forefinger and thumb when I walk.

Doctor is short on energy so that we must stop every few minutes for him to catch his breath. Once or twice he coughs into a handkerchief. When he does this, I look away. I try to ignore the emotions that cruise through my body like the blood through my veins. Something is terribly wrong, but I act as though everything is normal.

Now, when I consider doctor’s sickness, there is no question about what I must do about the life I carry.

I feel the heavy heat of Rome throughout my body.

Doctor and I hold hands and walk slowly and steadily throughout the ruins of Pompeii. Displayed for us are the grisly plaster castings of the men, women, children, and dogs who, caught within the unexpected volcanic eruption from Mount Vesuvius, were buried beneath layers of volcanic ash. According to the tour guides, when the flesh of the people disintegrated, a perfect hollow casting was made of their bodies, molded into the solidified ash—a mold of the body at the exact moment of death.

We move on quickly, away from the plaster bodies.

We carry bottled water with us at all times to combat the heat. Doctor spontaneously bleeds from the wound on his lower lip. He cleans the wound with a handkerchief soaked with bottled water. He replaces the small bandage, carefully, with a fresh bandage. We see a doctor in Rome. The Roman doctor offers my doctor a clear salve to apply once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and again in the evening. “Please stay away from the hot sun,” instructs the Roman doctor, in perfect English.

Once again, the two doctors confer amongst themselves, behind closed doors.

Once again, I am an intruder.

But I will say nothing more about doctor’s smoking or about his bleeding. At night I have been dreaming of fire and smoke. I have been dreaming of my parents, the last time I saw them alive. I see my mother placing me in bed. I smell her body, hear her whispering voice. But before all that, I see my father. I see his face, withdrawn and serious. He appears to me from a time when he was not working, when his business was bankrupt, and when he and my mother were arguing behind closed doors about the house and cars and everything else that was to be taken away. My father gave up his life for his business. Now it was all gone and he had nothing. He wasn’t thinking straight. He was being plagued by the demons—the voices in his head that threatened to take everything away. The voices were, perhaps, real and imagined. How could my father think straight when suddenly, everything that gave his life meaning had vanished?

So I remember the last time I saw my father. He was seated in the kitchen. He was staying up for a while. He was drinking, alone. He said he wanted my mother and me to go to sleep. He would be up soon enough. Then I kissed him good night, although he never asked for a kiss. But he said he loved me, and I believed him, because he was my father.

Helpless

Doctor and I celebrate our last night in Italy with a cocktail inside the bar of our hotel in lively, cosmopolitan Rome. This is the place with the long, stainless-steel bar that runs the entire length of a narrow room with slate flooring, plaster walls, antique tin ceiling, and Casablanca fans that revolve too slowly to be affecting. From the wide picture windows of this bar you can look out in the moonlight and onto the patio with the tables and the Cinzano umbrellas and, in the distance, the darkness broken by white headlights from the cars going into the city and the red taillights from the cars that are leaving.

We have come to know the bartender and the piano player as well as you can know anyone who serves you drinks and plays music for you in the five days since we’ve arrived. That is, the two men greet doctor and me with ear-to-ear smiles and seem eager to please whenever we come into the bar for cocktails. While the bartender is an older, gentle, heavyset man, the piano player is a thin, chiseled-faced man of middle age, who is well dressed and well groomed. Although the man seems well mannered, he looks at me with piercing eyes, while the bartender looks at me with eyes that convey an honest friendliness.

The piano player breaks into a jumpy rendition of “New York, New York” when we come into the bar after a supper of grilled steak and fried potatoes. Like most native Italians, the piano player assumes that because we are from America, we are also from New York City. He stares at me long enough to make me feel uncomfortable, so that I consciously fiddle with the silver pillbox that hangs from my neck by the hair-thin, silver chain.

After doctor orders martinis for us, I excuse myself and head down the single flight of stairs into the empty hotel lobby and through the door to the woman’s lavatory. Later, I come back out into the lobby and there is the piano player standing outside the door of this lavatory, near the staircase that leads back up to the bar. The piano player smiles his now familiar, piercing smile. I return his smile nervously and attempt to get by him without touching him. But he grabs me by both arms and pulls me into him.

“
Bella
,” he says, attempting to swing me around the floor as though dancing. “
Bella
,” he repeats, bringing his face into my neck, kissing. “
Bella
.”

I feel the sting at my neck and the snap of the chain. My pillbox falls to the carpeted floor. I try to pull away, but I can’t move at all. This chiseled-faced man slips his hand between my legs, running his fingers up against my thigh. I close my legs tightly on his cold, callused hand. I free my hands and push his face away, scraping his cheek. I scream while he covers his face with his hands.

Quickly, I bend over and retrieve my pillbox. Then I run back up the flight of stairs, two at a time, screaming for doctor. But doctor is already at the top of the stairs, standing beside the bartender. The piano player is close behind me. When he reaches the top of the landing, doctor pulls him into the bar by his jacket lapels. The bartender follows, attempting to pull doctor and the piano player apart. But the bartender loses his balance and the momentum of doctor and the piano player forces him onto the floor. Then doctor swings at the piano player. He misses. The piano player swings back and manages to hit doctor squarely in the fact. Doctor drops like a stone and remains there on the floor, staring wide-eyed up to the ceiling. He is bleeding profusely from the mouth. I scream again, and several people gather at the entrance to the bar.

The bartender returns to his feet, runs back behind the bar. Just as quickly he returns to the floor. In his hand is an object that resembles a policeman’s nightstick. He holds the nightstick out for the piano player to clearly see. The piano player has a jagged gash that runs the length of his check. I can feel the piano player’s skin between my fingernails.

The piano player raises his hands in mock surrender. He is smiling, a great ear-to-ear smile. His hair is disheveled and flattened. His tie is crooked, the ball of the tie running up his neck like it’s choking him. His shirt is hanging outside his trousers. He winks at me. I feel nauseous. I feel my stomach. I fear I might vomit. The piano player walks slowly backward, toward the door that leads out to the patio.

“I leave,” he says. “I go now, for you.” He drops his hand and points his index finger at me. He laughs and disappears through the doors and into the night.

Now, I am kneeling over doctor, where he is lying on the floor. He is bleeding very badly from the mouth. His freshly applied bandage and salve has become smeared along his bottom lip. The lip is swelled to twice its normal size, the color of his flesh purple and black. I slide my arms around his torso. He positions his elbows and manages to lift himself off the floor, if only slightly. He holds my hand, squeezing hard. His hand is wet and cold, shaking. He coughs up blood. In my free hand is my pillbox, broken away from my neck. Lodged inside my fingernails is the piano player’s facial skin. Doctor is bleeding onto his shirt. The bartender comes to us with a bottle of mineral water. I take the mineral water away from him and attempt to give doctor a drink. But doctor pushes the bottle away.