Doctors (66 page)

“Him? Who’s him?”

“Our child—my son. The one that we’re busily conceiving.”

“How about Miraculous?” she asked. “It would be very appropriate.” Then she quickly added, “And Miracula if it’s a girl.”

“It won’t be a girl,” Palmer assured her.

“It may not be anything at all,” Laura said.

“Well, I’ll face that problem when I have to,” Palmer answered. “Meanwhile, you don’t mind these little exercises in procreation, do you?”

“No,” she said, “but I’d prefer to think of what we’re doing as making love.”

“Of course we are. That’s the beauty of the whole exercise.”

Laura paused for a minute. She was happy for the first time in a long while and did not want to break the mood. And yet she could not keep from asking, “Palmer—why this sudden urge to procreate? I mean, it’s too late to keep you from going to Vietnam.…”

“That’s just the point, darling,” he replied. “To be brutally frank, I’m frightened about not coming back.”

A fortnight later, Laura was driving him to the airport.

“You know, you still haven’t explained to me exactly what you’ll be doing over there.”

“Because I honestly don’t know, Laura. That’s why I’m going for a week of briefing in Washington. Outside of Washington, actually—at the fabled estate of Senator Sam Forbes. There—I shouldn’t even have told you that much.”

“Forbes is a Hawk’s hawk,” she commented.

“I knew you’d say that. In any case, please keep it confidential. We won’t even be allowed to call out.”

“Oh—and will his lovely debutante daughter Jessica be there as well?”

“Darling, she’s an empty-headed social butterfly—a two-watt bulb.”

“Yeah. But how are her other assets?”

“I won’t even dignify that with a reply, Laura.”

They rode on in silence for a while, reaching the end of Storrow Drive and plunging into the Callahan Tunnel. In the midst of what seemed an endless, dimly-lit tiled bathroom, he returned to the most pressing issue of the day.

“Can we name him Palmer?”

Laura nodded. “Only if it’s a boy,” she said blankly.

Flight 261 to Washington was already boarding. There was only enough time for a hasty goodbye, a final fleeting exchange of thoughts.

“Laura, tell me again—did you really stop taking the Pill?”

“Yes, I swear.”

He smiled, turned, and strode onto the plane.

The small apartment was more crowded than ever. Not only had the Panthers gained some new recruits, but others had flocked there on learning that the principal speaker would be the Yale “Soul Surgeon.”

Bennett’s heart was pounding. He was not even sure how he would begin until he was actually standing in front of them. But an almost supernatural voice brought forth the words.

“I believe that every black man in America should get a square deal and a fair deal. As the Constitution says, ‘
all
men are created equal.’ ” He now approached the minefield. “But
equal
does not mean superior. We are no worse than any other people—but we are no better, either.”

“What the hell you talkin’ ’bout?” a voice called.

“That rag you call our paper blames the black man’s troubles on so-called ‘Jewpig Fascist Zionists.’ ”

Cheers of approbation. “Right on, brother!” “Kill the Jews!”

Bennett tried to remain calm. “Just why exactly have you singled out this ethnic group for annihilation?”

“Oh, man, don’t you dig?” called out another angry voice from across the room. “The Jewpig is the slumlord, the pawn-shop owner, the man who takes your car away if you’re a little late in making payments—”

Bennett all but lost control.

“Now hold it right there, brother!” he shouted angrily.

His outburst brought a sudden silence to the room. But a silence that crackled with electricity.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” Bennett began. “Some Jews may be slumlords but, goddammit, so are some blacks. And there are plenty of Jews
helping
our cause. How about Goodman and Schwerner, those two kids who got killed by the Klan in Mississippi?”

There was universal agitation.

“Dr. Landsmann,” Chairman Simba said with deliberate formality, “I don’t think the brothers know where you’re coming from.”

Bennett was drenched with sweat as he tried to continue.

“My father fought and died in World War Two because he had respect for what this country stood for. And he had to take more shit than any of you guys could ever dream of. Not just
segregated units, or ‘colored only’ bathrooms—but if one of his soldiers got shot, the Red Cross had to give segregated
blood.

“Yet he could write me the day before he died that he had seen atrocities more terrible than anything our people have ever known. He saw the Nazi death camps—”

He was cut off by buckshots of abuse. “That’s a load of shit,” and even “Hitler didn’t kill enough!”

Bennett was quickly losing all control. But he had to finish.

“After my father died I was adopted by a Jewish couple who were both survivors of those camps. With their own eyes they saw their little daughter taken to be gassed and the rest of their family burned in ovens. Has anybody
here
gone through that?”

Mouth parched and cheeks wet, he nonetheless managed to conclude.

“I came here to tell you that we blacks don’t have a franchise on suffering. And that
every
Jew is not our enemy. Because if we believe that, we become our
own
worst enemy.”

He paused and then said quietly, “Just think about that, brothers.”

Bennett let his eyes come into focus, looking at the spectators for a reaction. They were immobile. In fact, the only movement in the room came from his own hands, now trembling with emotion.

The chairman, in an expressionless voice, asked, “Are there any comments?”

A man in the back raised his hand.

“I would like to say to our distinguished visitor: Fuck the Jews, and fuck
you.
”

Though the crowd remained motionless, Bennett was suddenly frightened. He had an eerie sense of otherness that made him feel he was seeing all this through distorted mirrors.

As he began walking toward the door, a path of people split before him like the Red Sea.

Barney first learned the news when he arrived at the hospital. John Warner, one of his junior residents, came rushing toward him shouting, “Livingston, have you seen today’s
Times
?”

“No,” replied Barney dryly. “Have we set some new record for napalming children?”

John, a hawkish Republican, ignored Barney’s jibe.

“Didn’t you go to school with Peter Wyman?”

“Yeah,” Barney replied, “but it’s not something I like to boast about.”

“You will now,” the resident asserted. “Look.”

He handed Barney the paper. In the lower left-hand corner was a picture of Peter in a white coat. He had the usual smug smile on his face, although fewer hairs on his head.

The story announced, “New Clue to Cancer Structure Found” and the subheading “Young Harvard researcher invents pioneering technique in genetic engineering.”

Barney studied the paper and thought, He kept telling us how bright he was. Maybe we should have believed him. After all, it says here he’s already published sixteen papers and a zillion abstracts.

But he sure likes publicity. I mean, his findings won’t be published for another six months. So is this press conference just to give the Nobel people more time to get familiar with his name?

Anyway, he rationalized, Peter’s not got everything. I mean, there’s no mention of a wife or kids.

But then Barney’s superego challenged
him.
Who are you to throw stones, Dr. Livingston? Where are the wife and kiddies waiting in
your
glass house? To which his ego responded, give me time, I’ve got to finish this residency, start up a practice. Besides, I’m almost married.

Barney was intending to bring the subject up with Emily that evening.

Theirs had been a whirlwind courtship that had traveled the whole spectrum of American sporting life: football, basketball, boxing, baseball, hockey, tennis, and track and field in Europe. (That August during a meet at Malmö in Sweden, he was even able to spend two days interviewing the retired “Ironman,” Emil Zatopek, for the final chapter in his book.)

They were synchronized, they were symbiotic, they even jogged at the same pace.

If this was not the kind of match made in heaven, it would at least be as durable as Astroturf.

Barney was weary of merely helping other people achieve happiness and decided it was time to try it himself. After all, he had endured much ribbing the year before, at his brother Warren’s wedding to Bernice (“Bunny”) Lipton—who was halfway to being a lawyer herself.

During the reception an uncle from Houston even castigated him, demanding, “When can we expect to get some pleasure from
you
, Barney?”

At the time he had been tempted to say, speaking as a
psychiatrist, that if all marriages were as idyllic as his uncle painted them, his couch would be empty save for the occasional schizophrenic.

Indeed, as he himself had written in the
Journal of Modern Psychiatry
, during these troubled times the marriage relationship had almost come to mirror the malaise of the external world. But, as the unprofessional side of him well knew, marriage was best described by Dr. Johnson as “the triumph of hope over experience.”

In any case, he and Emily would be different. They had a wonderful relationship, open and aboveboard. And though happy in each other’s company, they each had a life beyond the household. It would bring that perfect equilibrium that marriage seeks but rarely finds.

He broached the subject to her over a late dinner at her apartment after they had seen the Lakers make mincemeat of the Knicks. The menu consisted of Zabar’s finest take-away delicacies. Which meant that all Barney had to do was chill the wine and open it. After filling her glass and then his own, he raised a toast.

“To happily ever after—or more appropriately—Emily ever after.”

“After what?” she smiled.

“After marriage.” he replied.

Her glass stopped halfway to her mouth. And though she tried to hide it, Barney caught a hint of melancholy in her expression.

“What’s the matter, Em? Did I say something wrong?”

She nodded. “ ‘Marriage’—”

“—is the wrong word?” he finished her thought.

“It is for me. I think you’d make a lovely husband.”

“Well, then, why can’t I be
your
lovely husband?”

Her eyes were downcast and she was shaking her head.

“No, Barney, no,” she repeated, “it just wouldn’t work.”

“Is there someone else?” he asked, the frightening thought just occurring to him.

“No, no,” she protested.

“And don’t you at least care for me?”

“Of course. Do you even have to ask?”

“Then why, Emily?
Why?
”

She took a sip of wine and answered. “I can’t be a wife. I’m ruthless, selfish, and ambitious.”

But now the girl who had just referred to herself as insensitive
and hard was weeping copiously. “You deserve better, Barney.”

“That’s crap.”

“No, it’s true.”

Barney felt like a man who had gone out to plant a rose-bush, put his shovel in the luxuriant soil, and suddenly struck a piece of unyielding stone.

There was no mistake about it. Emily’s “no” meant absolutely not.

“Hey, look, forget my whole proposal. I withdraw it. This offer is void where prohibited, which happens to be everywhere. But might I ask you for something on a less contractual level?”

“What?”

“Move in with me. I’ll make an office for you in the extra bedroom. We can be singular by day and plural by night. And if you don’t want to come home for any reason you won’t have to bring a parent’s letter. Now is that fair enough, my little bird who won’t be caged?”

Emily did not answer. She merely leapt up and threw her arms around him tightly, sobbing all the while.

As he hugged her with a matching affection, his mind could not close his office door. For an analytically perceptive voice was saying, Something’s odd. Now, Doctor, can you figure out just what it is?

“I’ll come over tomorrow and help you pack your stuff,” he said.

“Thanks for understanding,” she whispered in a tone of profound gratitude.

As they stood there in each other’s arms, Barney could not help wondering, What am I supposed to understand?

Peter Wyman was a controversial figure. He was perhaps the only man ever to receive a degree from Harvard Medical School who outspokenly loathed sick people.

During his first year of postgraduate fellowship he was disdainful of his laboratory colleagues and demonstrated only a semblance of civility to Professor Pfeifer, his boss and patron. Pfeifer had not hired Peter as his assistant on the basis of his charm. Rather, he knew Wyman was a precious resource and was loath to let the enemy get hold of him (the enemy being everyone else in the field).

But Pfeifer had assumed that a clever boy like Peter knew the rules of the game: You help me to the podium and when your
time comes I’ll reach down and help pull you up. Meanwhile I’ll see to it that as an Assistant Professor you live comfortably on federal grants and get to work in what is arguably the best biochemical laboratory in the world.

Peter was by nature mistrusting. Aware of his own lack of scruples, he assumed that everyone else would be equally without conscience. In other words, he was his own best friend. And his own worst enemy.

He had discovered the “Victoral factor” while doing research to corroborate one of Pfeifer’s own hypotheses. He therefore felt it was his and his alone. And no sooner did his first control studies yield promising results than he went to the Medical School’s trumpet section—the Press Office.

Director Nicholas Kazan was delighted by what Peter told him. Rather than calling a press conference, he recommended that they invite the medical editor of
The New York Times
up for lunch at the Ritz and give an exclusive to the paper of record.