The Lady and Her Doctor (10 page)

And he had been so shocked that he said what he was thinking. “Well,” he said, “a girl who's always reading poetry!”

She began to laugh, “Oh, darling Milton, perhaps you should read some poetry, too. Say, Baudelaire—but no, because he is supposed to be wanton. Read the Sonnets—but everyone knows what Shakespeare is full of, besides quotes. No, you should read John Donne—”

She knew, of course, that he didn't know John Donne from a hole in the wall.

“He was a seventeenth-century divine. A clergyman, Milton. A minister! Yes, he's the one for you to read.” She began to recite: “Come, Madam, come … off with those shoes—” She pushed herself up from the sand, scrambled around and started yanking off his shoe. “Off with those shoes, Milton!” Her eyes were dark blue, her voice curled, cuddled. When she saw Milton's face, she flung his shoe over her shoulder and threw herself down on top of him, tickling him to make him laugh. “Does it want wose-colored silk shades on the lamps? Does it want to turn the wamps down, one by one? Does it like the curtains
dwawn?
”

No man could stand that sort of kidding, naturally, but that was anger, for Christ's sake! And what a hell of a thing, he couldn't help thinking, what a hell of a thing!

He did not know that when, as right after the beach episode, he made some reference to her mother, saying in this case that, for the love of Mike, neither of them should take any chance of being hauled into court right then, that he was punishing her, bringing her to with a bang, frightening her so that she would become helpless and feminine and look up to him and remember what he had done for her and cut out the horseplay, but he had to do it quite often. Even when she sobered up, though, she would not discuss the future. This time was time out, she said, and he guessed it was supposed to be; he had to give in, but when the honeymoon was over, when they were an old married couple, he would start the ball rolling. He knew some poetry himself, John Milton, if not John Donne. He knew, “When I consider how my light is spent ere half my days.…”

After that one warm day on the beach, it rained three days steadily. Sloane liked to walk in the rain and when he said they shouldn't, they would catch cold, she said surely, as a doctor, he knew better than that. “What does one catch cold from, Doctor?” They walked in the rain three days; in the damp gray that followed it, three more days. They ate the meals the staff prepared for them. Sloane read herself poetry out of the brown books she had brought. (A decent library—the one deficiency in Cousin Etta's lovely place, according to Sloane!) They played some honeymoon bridge and Sloane played the piano while he read the newspapers. He did not want to read newspapers but there was nothing else to do and, except for the ads and the obits, he read them through.

Today Sloane played the piano even longer than usual (“Chopin, Milton,
cum
Sloane,
cum
Cousin Etta's piano!”) so he finished the news sections. It occurred to Milton, sitting on the bleached cretonne chair, that besides the news and the obits, there were the entertainment section and the society news. (He would never again have to leave his name at the box office in Loew's!) His wife, it occurred to him, was society, if she chose to be, wasn't she? She had the name and the dough. And there was also, he remembered, turning the pages quickly, Apartments for Rent. Surely he could now discuss where they were going to live? He waited until Sloane finished the number she was playing, although he didn't know whether it was the finish or whether she just stopped, and he suspected that Sloane wouldn't call what she was playing a “number.” He folded the paper, tucked it under his arm and went and sat next to Sloane on the piano bench, giving her a playful shove with his hip. He took up one of the thin hands which was no longer quite the mushroom color it used to be and began to spread the long fingers apart, first because then she couldn't start playing the number again, and second because she liked him to touch her. (You “touched” people for a loan, he thought; well, he was going to “touch” her, all right. It was about time.) He pushed her four fingers together so roughly that she swung her head round and stared. “Sloane, we've been here a week,” he said. “Let's give Cousin Etta's place back to the Indians. It looks like more rain and I'm sick of rain, I'm sick of wet sand—”

“We'll go home tomorrow,” Sloane said. She freed her hand. “All we have to do is pack and—oh, better tell Edwards so Mrs. Edwards doesn't plan to feed us—and their tips. Let's see.” She sat playing one note with one finger while she went into deep thought. Then she stopped playing and said, “Five dollars.”

Milton asked whether she thought she was John D. Rockefeller. “Five dollars now is a dime then,” he said.

Sloane smiled. Cousin Etta would be annoyed if they gave too much. It would set a bad precedent. He must leave that sort of thing to her, she said. Overtipping was a sign of social insecurity. Since it apparently bothered him to give five dollars, she would attend to it herself. She put both hands on the keyboard again, but he wouldn't let her start playing.

She said, “You're sick of Chopin, too, poor Milton!”

“No, I want to read you something.” He found the ad in the paper and read it. “How does it sound to you?”

“Duplexes always sound like Monsieur Jourdain to me, Milton.”

“Huh?”

“A ‘duplex' apartment. Monsieur Jourdain, Milton.
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
, Milton, being so amazed to discover that he had been talking prose all his life. Duplex means stairs. Why pay for stairs in an apartment?”

He could see that she might have had her bellyful of stairs and began to read another. When he finished he asked where she thought they should live until “everything was settled.”

“At home,” she said. “Of course.”

He laughed. “Kid, you're like a little bird!”

“A what?”

“A little bird, I said.” Bird? No wonder she thought she hadn't heard straight! Cissie Parker was the little bird, the ducking, dipping, flirting sparrow. This one (I got it!) an eagle—with that beak! After swimming, when she came out of the water—because she wouldn't wear a swimming cap any more than a nightgown or lipstick—and her hair was plastered. A bald eagle, he thought while he repeated what he had told her, anyhow. “Like a bird, a little bird who was kept caged up so long—and then when the door opens and it's free, the bird can't believe it. The little bird just sits there in the cage until someone boots it out. Well, I'm the one to give you the boot! You're free, kid! You don't have to stay cooped up in the old dump any more. The Haunted House!”

“Is that what they call it?”

What did she care what they called it.

“Milton, not yet. We can't leave yet.”

“Not yet? ‘When I consider how my light is spent'—John Milton, you told me that! Listen, I don't want to settle down in the Haunted House!”

She took the paper from him and studied the ad he had read her. “Sutton Place—but, don't all your patients live in the vicinity?”

“When we came here I told Jenny to tell my patients I was retiring.” She looked shocked, now
she
looked shocked! “You wouldn't worry about them if you knew them. The clinic patients you saw are a horse of a different color, Sloane. They're really sick and they're really grateful; them I won't give up, but what I thought I'd do was take a rest from practice. We can live wherever we want because I can start practicing wherever we are. Sutton Place, why not?” (He had no intention of practicing, but figured it was smarter not to say so. One step at a time.)

He shook his head at her playfully. “Now, listen, kid, you know it's true you can love a rich girl as much as a poor girl, don't you? I do,” he said, smiling at her. “Well, it's also true you can cure rich people as well as the poor slobs. They get just as sick as the poor slobs, Sloane.” She hadn't unbent an inch. “You remind me of my mother—was she romantic about doctors! As a matter of fact, Sloane, I haven't saved one life since I've been in practice. It's just a case of making a dollar like any other job, so let them take their psychosomatic bellyaches and their varicose veins and their ingrown toenails to someone who needs their three-buck office visits!”

She left the piano and walked to the window, turning her back on him, tracing the path of a raindrop down the pane, and began to talk about working for nothing. Certainly he no longer needed to support himself, that was true. She began on the charity work the Folsoms had done, apparently they had gone around handing out doughnuts and coffee to the underprivileged on the
Mayflower
. That was O.K. with him. He let her talk until she ran down, then he said, fine, fine, but since she agreed he was no longer tied to the neighborhood, they didn't have to stay where they were. It didn't have to be a duplex and it didn't have to be Sutton Place—wherever she liked. He held up the paper: Central Park South, Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, if you didn't have to worry about the rent, there were apartments all over.

She was still tracing raindrops. “That's precisely the point, Milton, dear, there are apartments all over. Common.” Her voice quivered. “But houses like mine are not common. Oh, surely you don't think it's chic to be a mob? Our house is us, Milton. Emerson said it: ‘Insist on yourself; never imitate.' I assure you, Milton, the really fashionable thing in New York is a big house like ours!”

A big house, he thought, like the Brownings' house. With the grounds fixed up. Landscaped. He saw a long line of cars stretching from the big iron gate to the front door as he had once seen them at the Browning place in Brookfield. The Browning girl and her father had been standing in the lighted doorway that evening with the door open behind them, welcoming the guests. That night he had been driving past in the Ford, but this time he would be the one standing in the lighted doorway of the big house with his Browning girl standing there with him. Class. All the lights in the house would be on. He had never seen the Haunted House really lighted up, nor had anyone else. All the biddies would come crowding to the gate to find out what was going on in the Haunted House. One of them would tell Jenny, of course, and she'd come running quick enough. She'd see him standing in the doorway, home-town boy makes good. There would be flowered curtains in the window and rugs so deep the old floors wouldn't creak every step you took. He would have a tux made to order, or tails, as the case might be. “May I have the pleasure of the next dance?” Did anyone say that except in books? Jenny would say, “Poor Milt,” the way she did, and one of the biddies would look at her like she was nuts. “
Poor
Milt?” It might not be a bad idea to stay where they were until they went to Europe. “Well, O.K.,” he said, “but there'll be some changes made! We'll get a gardener and a couple.” He pointed to the piano. “Live it up in the Haunted House, presto changeo! Can you play, ‘There'll Be Some Changes Made'? It's not Chopin!”

“Changes?”

“You're so used to the dump you don't even see it, Sloane. My God, the taste!” He described what he thought the Browning house must have been like on the inside. He had seen what he thought it was like in the
House and Garden
magazines Jenny bought secondhand for the office. Chintz, bright color, comfort.

“Preposterous,” Sloane said.

“What's preposterous is staying there like it is; that's what's preposterous!”

“Milton, I do assure you—”

“Assure me, nothing!”

“In its manner, the house is a gem. I assure you.”

“Ha ha ha.”

“Are we quarreling? Our first quarrel? I don't want to quarrel with you on our
honeymoon
, but you mustn't be so conventional, Milton, darling!”

“Some honeymoon!”

“Milton, call a decorator to see the place; ask him. That's fair.”

“I'll pick the decorator. I'll ask him. I'll pick the best.”

“Yes, darling, do. Now I want to be conventional,” she whispered. “How does it go? ‘I like quarreling because it's such fun to make up.' Make up, Milton!” She ran to him.

Her hands were icy from the cold windowpane, her voice throbbed, her eyes gleamed; he held her off. “You'll do whatever the decorator I pick says? Promise me?”

Later he thought that it was the wife who was supposed to want something, a mink coat, a diamond, a new car, and it was the man who wanted her to “make up” and it was the woman who “made up” after the man promised her whatever she wanted, but they left Aunt Etta's place immediately after lunch, and he could forget about making up in the excitement and relief at leaving Long Island.

Milton did not see Jenny for two weeks. Then he thought he should and drove over after lunch on Friday, before going to the clinic. Jenny, who was alone, came to the door in her pink fluffy robe, which she never would have done while there were patients to consider. She put her hand to her breast.

“Milt! What's wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong. Why should anything be wrong?” He laughed at her expression. “Don't tell me you still have that crazy idea of yours? Did you think the cops were after me so I came running to you? Well, there are no cops and if there were I wouldn't come here running, so get that out of your head. This is just a social call. How are the kids?”

“They miss you, Milt. We all miss you.”

“That's nice. You have to leave to be appreciated, I guess. What else is new?” She told him that she was going to stay on in the apartment until the school term was over and then, if she could get Maureen to agree—she hated to give up her tap class and all her little friends—go live with an uncle she had in Trenton who would keep them free if she kept the house and cooked for him. “The uncle who's a widower?” Milton whistled.