Other Plans (21 page)

“I'm glad you came, Henry. We'll do the best we can for you. Put you through the standard tests, blood sample, everything. Then we'll do a biopsy.”

“How long will that take?” He leaned forward. “The biopsy, I mean.”

“We'll rush it through. A couple of hours, maybe.” A buzzer sounded. Ben answered. “Yes. All right. I'll be right down.”

Ben got up. “I have to leave you now, Henry. Mrs. Adams will look after you. If you need anything, ask her. I'll be back as soon as I can.”

“Ben. Just one thing. I want you to promise me you'll give me the straight goods. I don't want any half truths. What I mean is, I trust you, Ben. I'll believe whatever you tell me. Just don't hold anything back.”

“Have I ever?” Ben said.

Alone, he prowled Ben's office, checking the pictures of the children and Ann, lined up in a tidy row on the desk. They were a good-looking bunch. That was what he wanted, wasn't it. The truth.

“Can I get you anything, Mr. Hollander?” Mrs. Adams's seemingly disembodied head peered around the doorjamb. He started to say no, thanks, then reconsidered. “If you wouldn't mind, a couple of aspirin would be a help. And do you have anything to settle the stomach? I had lunch on the plane.” They exchanged a smile of mutual understanding about airline food. She brought him two aspirin tablets in a paper cup and some pink, syrupy liquid for his stomach. She handed him a spoon and said, “One tablespoon should do it.” He went into the small lavatory off Ben's office and took the medicine, washed it down with some water. When he came out, she was waiting, her eyes a brittle blue in her lightly suntanned face. Mrs. Adams was what his father called “a fine figger of a woman.” Built of firm flesh, roundly contoured, her face, under its pouf of white hair, was young-looking. Pushing fifty, he thought. Older than I am. He had never thought of age as much as in the last few weeks. It irritated him that he'd fallen into the habit. Mrs. Adams was the best-looking nurse he'd seen recently.

“How nice you and Dr. Nilson are old friends,” she said, smoothing her crisp uniform over her rather formidable front. “He works so hard, it's nice for him to see folks from home. We feel very lucky to have him here with us. He does a fine job.” She tilted her head, obviously expecting some rejoinder from him.

“He's the best there is,” he said. “I'd say that even if we weren't friends.” He stole a look at his watch. How much longer would Ben be?

“My family is originally from Ohio,” Mrs. Adams said, as if he'd asked where she was from. “In Dallas, almost everyone is from someplace else,” she explained. He nodded, looking out the window. He already felt better, glad he'd made the trip. It was a tonic just to be here, in Ben's office. Mrs. Adams excused herself and he began to pace, stirring up the orange carpet. Obviously new, it covered his shoes lightly with orange fuzz. He bent to wipe them clean with his handkerchief. Then he went to the window. The skyline of the city stood out as sharply as if it had been cut out of black construction paper and pasted against the brilliant sky.

I've had a good life, he thought, bending over again to get a spot of orange he'd missed. Vertigo, the result, no doubt, of last night's excess, overcame him, and he straightened, still dizzy. I'm middle-aged. There you go again. Age, age. But you are. There's no escaping that. My father is old. My father will go on forever. He's indestructible. There are lots of things I haven't done, places I haven't been. I've never been in a war. Or a battle of any kind, except with myself. I've never seen the Piazzo San Marco. Or China. Or the rain forests of Brazil.

He was cold. It must be that damned air-conditioning. In February. He sat down and cradled an issue of
Science Today
against his stomach, thinking he would read it in a minute. It comforted him to know he had something to do to fill the time.

At last Ben returned, saying he'd made arrangements for some X-rays. They would also do a biopsy, and if he'd follow Mrs. Adams, she'd show him where to go.

“We'll do our best, Henry.” Ben laid a large warm hand on him. “I'm assuming Ceil knows you're here.”

“No,” he said. “I haven't told her anything.”

Ben's face suddenly developed the wrinkles it hadn't had before. “Oh, Henry, that's not right,” he said sadly, sounding, somehow, exactly like his father. It was what his father might have said. “Ceil's a strong woman,” Ben said. “Very strong. She can help you through this. It's not fair to leave her in the dark. Why didn't you think you could tell her?”

He managed a shrug. “I don't know. I didn't want to worry her. Ceil's against ailments, infirmities.” It was the wrong thing to say to a doctor. He realized that the minute he'd said it. “She never gives in to aches and pains and doesn't think others should. I thought it would be easier, all the way around, better if she didn't know. At least until there was something concrete I could tell her. Why worry her until I'm certain of what it is?”

“She's your wife, Henry. I think it would have been easier for you, if not for her, if she knew what you've been going through.”

“I'll tell her the minute I get home,” he said. “Bad news or good, I'll tell her.”

The technician this time was a Mexican with gold showing in one front tooth. The man, whose English wasn't very good, said little and understood everything. His hands were small and wide, very quick and deft in spite of their stubbiness. There was no occasion for conversation, though once or twice he patted Henry on the shoulder, as if to reassure him. When he'd finished taking the X-rays, Henry thanked the man, who said, “You bet, boss. Have a good day.” Then he went out and Henry was alone again, feeling that there is no aloneness quite like that of being in a hospital examining room, waiting for the word.

He studied the palms of his hands. His lifeline stood out clearly. He wondered what the next step on the agenda would be.

“Dr. Nilson will see you now,” a beautiful black nurse said briskly. What had happened to Mrs. Adams, he wondered. “Follow me, please,” the nurse said, and he did as he was told. Her hips were very trim and she moved like a dancer, he thought, following her down the hall. She would have been a knockout if there'd been any warmth in her eyes.

He got on the elevator with the nurse and saw the old man in the wheelchair a split second too late. The man, tiny, seeming to be made of bleached papier-mâché, made indistinct squawking noises at Henry, telling him something. The male nurse pushing the chair said, “Smile and nod your head. He knows what he's saying, even if no one else does. He likes it when people respond.” So Henry did as he was told.

God, don't let that happen to me, he thought, don't let my family ever see me like that. That's the way they'd remember me. Making noises like a parrot.

Before she got off at five, the nurse told him to ride the elevator to six and Dr. Nilson would be waiting. “I'll push the button for you,” she said.

Slightly addled by this time, he rode the elevator all the way up, then down to the lobby, where he got off, bought a roll and Life Savers in the coffee shop, then strolled around as if he were in a resort hotel waiting for his wife to come down so they could go off together to see the sights. Then he boarded another elevator and rode it up to Ben's floor.

18

“Hey, John Boy.” Leslie slouched in the doorway. “You alone?” She only called him John Boy when she was feeling frisky. She knew he hated it.

“No, there are eight or ten guys here with me, turkey.” He pushed aside the mounds of books and magazines to make room for her.

“I alvays haf time for one so beautiful as you, Mother Walton,” he said. Les sprawled, flinging one of her long legs over him, pinning him in place. “You are my captive,” she said. Les had big feet, made bigger by old-fashioned high-top basketball sneakers, a holdover from her high school days. She always wore them when she was home. They were very ugly, but they had class, she'd once told him. “Are you aware, Johnny, that there are things in life that combine ugliness and classiness? One of life's imponderables.” He loved it when she said stuff like that. Half the time he didn't believe her, but the other half he did.

“Emma said I should kiss you good-bye for her.” Les leaned over and planted a juicy kiss on his cheek.

“Quit it.” He scrubbed at the wet spot with his hand. Last night he'd gone to his room, put on his camouflage suit, and waited, reading the same page in
Madame Bovary
over and over without remembering a single word. He'd only read
Madame Bovary
after reading Woody's short story about her and the guy in the leisure suit. Woody had it all over M. Flaubert, as far as he was concerned. Emma hadn't showed. Emma, his Emma, not Flaubert's and Woody's Emma. It had struck him as a coincidence of the most enormous magnitude that Madame Bovary's first name was also Emma. It had endeared the fictional Emma to him, although she wasn't an endearing character.

When his Emma hadn't come back to visit him again, he'd had a serious discussion with himself and decided he was going to quit horsing around with girls for a while, settle down, and lead a celibate life. Anyway, anyone else after Emma would be a letdown. That he was sure of. Idly, he wondered what stories of rape and lust on the eastern seaboard Grace Lerner's niece had carried back with her to Seattle. She probably made him out to her chums as a regular Jack the Ripper. What did he care. Next time he had a sexual experience, he figured he'd aim for someone without any experience at all. And looking for same. He might even put an ad to that effect in the
Village Voice
. “Young, experienced male, looking for young, inexperienced female, willing to learn.” That ought to bring down a barrage of replies on his head. He'd probably have to rent a post office box to handle them all.

“That Emma is something else,” he said nonchalantly, feeling the blood run out to the tips of his ears, an embarrassing habit his blood had that he couldn't seem to control.

Leslie gave him a bear hug.

“You're having hot flashes. Don't feel bad. She has that effect on lots of men older than you, if that makes you feel any better. She's a siren.” He smelled Leslie's peppermint breath. In the old days, before college, or B.C., as she called it, Leslie's nickname had been Peppermint Patty. P.P. Les brought up her other leg and arranged it tidily over his, pinning him to the mat.

“She put the moves on you, John?” she asked cosily.

“Take your big fat feet offa me!”

“Did she? Come on, did she?” He was sorely tempted to level with Les, but he didn't. The time wasn't right. Maybe in five years, ten years, when they were both grown up and unshockable, he'd tell her. Not now.

After a brief tussle, Les let him go. He sprang up and away from her, scuffling through the pile of papers on the floor. He needed space, needed time to regain his composure, after his first foray into the world of real live sex. He felt bruised and used and also exultant at having achieved the loss of what was euphemistically called his maidenhead. What did they call it when a woman seduces a man? Plain old seduction, that's what. Forget maidenhead. How could he lose what he never had.

“She ever call that Ralph character back? Was he the guy in the red Toyota? Or was that the married geek? Poor guy, calling her four times in one day and she doesn't even call him back. She doesn't care how she treats people, does she?” He smiled, thinking of poor old Ralph and how shamefully she'd treated him.

“What's she doing in North Carolina anyway?” he asked.

“Riding to the hounds,” Les said. “Listen, John, I want to ask your advice on something very important.” This was what she'd come for. She was suddenly tense, watching him.

“I charge two hundred a day plus expenses,” he said, borrowing a line from Rockford. Looking at her he realized that she wasn't in the mood for any more horsing around. “Shoot,” he said, overwhelmed. Leslie didn't ask him for advice very often. This was the first time, as a matter of fact. Les usually had all the answers.

“I've been seeing a lot of Michael Varney.” She lingered over the name. “You remember Michael?” He shook his head no. “You do so! You met him last fall when you and Mother and Daddy were in New York. We went to the theater. You remember.”

“Oh, yeah, okay,” he said, not really wanting her to go on in this intense way about a total stranger. Well, almost total. “You mean the long drink of water. Is that the dude?”

“He's tall and dark and fit, not a long drink of water.” Her voice tripped lovingly over the adjectives that best described Michael. “He lives in Boston. He's an engineer. And he's got this terrific job offer to go to Saudi Arabia to work for a couple of years. The pay is fantastic.”

“Yeah,” he said sourly, “and there's a good reason for that. Saudi Arabia is the pits. The climate, everything. They have to pay people big bucks to lure them there. That's what I hear.”

Leslie tugged at her sweat shirt, frowning. “It's not
that
bad,” she said.

“I'll tell you one thing, women are definitely second-class citizens there.” He was angry without knowing why. “I saw a TV documentary about Saudi Arabia, and it didn't make me want to rush over there, even for the big bucks they dish out, that's for sure.” Why were they talking about Saudi Arabia, for Pete's sake? “Yeah, so, anyway, go on. I'm listening.”

“I want to go with him,” Leslie said softly. “He wants me to go with him. It's only for two years. That's what his contract's for. It'd be a terrific experience.”

“Two years can be an awful long time,” he prophesized gloomily. Then the full import of what she was planning hit him and he turned to face her. “You telling me you want to leave school and go to that place with this guy I don't even know? A place where they put women down like you wouldn't believe. Is that what you're saying?”