The Lady and Her Doctor (11 page)

“You stop that, Milt!”

“She's blushing,” Milt said. “O.K., I'll stop that. Near Trenton, New Jersey, isn't it? Then Bud can go to Princeton, that's in New Jersey. Bud can be a Princeton man!”

“You don't have to make fun of Bud, Milt. Bud never did you any harm.” Nor me either, she thought. “What are you going to do now the honeymoon's over?”

“Well, when the house is sold, we intend to travel.” He reached into his pocket and drew out an official-looking envelope, handing it to Jenny, who took it but kept it in her hand, staring at it. “Look in, look in,” Milt said. “I'll bet you never saw a passport before!” He pulled the envelope away from her and showed the passport to her. “We're going to France—the Riviera, Italy, Spain, Paris, London, Rome, Naples. Did you ever hear the saying, ‘See Naples and die? That's me; see Naples and die happy!”

“Milt!”

“Where's your sense of humor, Jenny? And remember that is strictly between you and me.”

“You haven't told her yet?” When he shook his head, she wondered if that was funny, too, Milt's not telling his own wife. She didn't know. She had thought and thought—what else did she have to do these days, for heaven's sake—but she hadn't come up with any answers. She still knew there was something funny about it and she still didn't know what. She was still sure the girl had killed the old lady and that Milt had it on her, but if he wasn't afraid of the cops—if there was no poison they couldn't find out, if there was no such animal—“You leaving soon, Milt?”

“When the house is sold.”

“But you told me she had a firm offer?”

So he told her what Sloane had told him, except putting Sloane's words into his own mouth. The offer was not the last offer. You did not take the first offer. People like the Folsoms got their money by hanging on to real estate until the right moment. Jenny certainly was no businessman, had no head for business. You didn't jump when a firm raised its little finger, you didn't look too anxious. For the time being, they were going to stay just where they were. Make themselves comfortable. Psychology.

“In the Haunted House? I wouldn't live in the Haunted House for all the psychology there is. I'd rather stay here.”

He said, “And that's how much you know, Jenny! What you call a Haunted House is a genuine museum piece. It is historical, Jenny! For example, there's one room—well, an ancestor of my wife's was in the shipping business to China, Hong Kong. There's one room with the furniture he ordered made for him in China at the time. I'm not saying it's beautiful, Jenny—and it's certainly not comfort you get.” (The seats were made of marble inlaid with mother-of-pearl, for God's sake!) “But stuff like that has to be preserved.”

(The decorator said: combination of Victorian taste and Chinese craftsmanship produced marvels of transcendental monstrosity which should be seen to be believed. The decorator, picked by him so he couldn't accuse Sloane of putting him up to it, had said a lot of things which had to be heard to be believed, but he had heard them so he had to believe that it would be sacrilege to touch this house, useless to tone it down, impossible, in fact. Mrs. Krop, the decorator said, bowing toward the other room where Sloane had gone, is one of the heroines of fashion—
fantaisiste
. Mrs. Krop (my dear Doctor) makes her own style. “I would as soon touch this house,” the decorator said, “as cover up that face with—pancake—
pancake!
I would as soon hang flowered chintz here as obscure that miraculous hairline with curls!” The decorator said that Sloane was a real beauty although she could certainly walk down the street and not get a single whistle—“except mine, when I was young enough, and yours, of course!” Then he put his glasses on and looked at him with his eyes hanging out. “Oh,” he said, “not your whistle, either, Doctor? What a pity,” he said, “what a dreadful pity!”)

“We wouldn't touch the house, Jenny. In fact, when we sell, we're going to give a couple of the rooms, walls and all, to a museum!” Jenny's eyes were hanging out now the way his had when he first heard this. “Of course it's more comfortable since we got servants.” He hoped she wouldn't ask questions about these, and she didn't. She thought all you had to do to get servants was pay their wages. He hoped, what with the decorator and the museum and the servants and the passport, that Jenny would talk on the other side of her face about the Haunted House.

“Milton, Milton,” Sloane said. “Wake up, Milton, you've been asleep. Napping. After lunch. It's two o'clock. What can you have been dreaming of? You're at home. I'm Sloane. Your wife. Your bride of six weeks. It's November twenty-sixth and two o'clock and time to go to the clinic. I'm going with you.”

He shook his heavy head.

“Just today, Milton. I have to talk to you.”

He lumbered upstairs and she followed him into the bedroom, waiting there while he washed up, standing behind him while he brushed his hair and changed his jacket which had become rumpled because he must have slept so restlessly. (What had he been dreaming of?) On the stairs, going down, he was about to ask Sloane what she wanted to talk to him about, but she put her long finger over her pale mouth.

She began talking as soon as they got into the Studie. “She's leaving. Helga.”

He belched.

Sloane said that was a most appropriate response considering Helga's cooking. “No two weeks' notice, Milton; an annunciation, while you were napping.”

“So long, Helga, then. Call the agency.” She shook her head, meaning this was useless. “Call another agency.”

“No use, Milton. I knew it was no use the moment I saw the look on the little faces of the first man and wife when I showed them through the house. Oh, Milton, when I showed them the servants' quarters—like two Queen Victorias!”

“Come again?”

“They were not amused. They didn't even unpack their luggage, remember? And you telephoned the agency and since the man and wife hadn't returned and reported, the agency was most apologetic and bewildered. They simply couldn't understand, could they, and I said to you, ‘They will, Oscar, they will.'”

“Come again?” It wasn't so cold but everybody was walking like winter.

“Something Whistler said to Oscar Wilde. The point is, darling, I told you then.”

“You told me, you told me!” The stove had settled it for the next couple, a combination coal stove and range. Sloane said Cook used to love it—Cook was Swedish and adored her coffee, and could keep a pot of it on the back of the stove and have a cup whenever she felt like it—and the woman of the couple looked at her man and said, “She
was
Swedish, madam? Passed on, madam? Perhaps she had too many cups of coffee.” Maybe it hadn't gone quite like that but it was the story they now told each other. Anyhow, the man of that couple had worn a white coat and looked more like a lab assistant than a butler. And then Helga had arrived with the other woman to do the cleaning and serving; then the other woman left and now Helga was leaving. “Maybe you told me, but I don't see that solves anything.”

“It settles the question of calling another agency, Milton. None of them have servants to offer, not real servants.”

“I think you're glad Helga is leaving.” He swung the Studie around the corner grimly, the rubber making more or less the sounds he would like to be making. “Well, I give up. What do you suggest?”

“You really give up? Splendid. Now, as I have told you, only genuine servants will do for our house—and I have one. I can get us a real cook. She'll know how to manage any char we can pick up and then we'll be all right.”

“Swell. Why didn't you say so in the first place?”

“We had to finish with agencies first, Milton, darling. The cook I have in mind was trained at old Mrs. Vinton's. You don't know Mrs. Vinton, but she was the last chatelaine in the United States. She would come down to the kitchen every morning and go over the menu with the cook, weigh out what was needed and lock up all the rest.”

“My God,” Milton said.

“How I wished I could do that with Helga, Milton! Anyhow, this particular cook is accustomed to working in a kitchen like ours on a stove like ours in a house like ours. She is used to our ways. She would look down her nose on the kind of employer that the Helgas respect, and vice versa.”

“Then our troubles are over. Grab her.”

“Well, there is a drawback.”

“Aha!”

“Milton, you actually said ‘aha'! All right, I'll be serious, but I am so glad to get Helga out of the house that I could dance for joy. Now, I do think it can be worked out but you must tell me if it can.”

The “real servant” she meant turned out to be Austen! Old Austen from the clinic! Old sourpuss!

Sloane, talking very fast the way she did when she wanted to convince him, winding him in her words the way she could, said, but Austen would be so grateful; if Austen could get a job again it would rejuvenate her.

He had never seen Austen grateful for anything. The other patients pretended to be. They said thank you and that you were the best doc and they were so glad they got you; maybe they said that to all the docs, but it went down good. Not Austen. She never praised and she never begged. She sat on the bench as if she were in church and never gave an inch. As far as she was concerned, she was supposed to do what the doctors told her to and the doctors were supposed to tell her. Tit for tat. He realized, trying to see Austen as their cook, that he really disliked the old woman. “Now wait a minute, Sloane—hold your horses! Austen can't be a cook for anyone any more, Sloane. She hung on to her last cooking job and got into real trouble with edema. She's on a strict salt-free diet and being a cook for people who can eat anything, you're bound to slip. And then she's got to keep off rich food, keep her weight down.”

“But that's all to the good,” Sloane said. “You've put on weight yourself with Helga's cooking; it will be all to the good not to have rich food. So if we cast our bread upon these particular waters, Milton darling, it will return a hundredfold in non-calories. And now I'll tell you our salt-free scheme. You must say if it will work or not.”

There was to be no salt at all in the kitchen so that there would be no possible chance of an oversight. The old silver salt shaker on the table would be the only salt there was and they would salt their food themselves at the table. That made no difference to the taste. It was nonsense to say it did! Simple? Foolproof? The solution of old Austen's problem, and Austen the solution of their problem! “You say, Milton. It is your decision.”

What else could he say? Sloane was right; they would never get anybody decent to work in the Haunted House and if he didn't agree it was back to Sloane's cooking. Eggs and more eggs and bread pudding for dessert.

“Oh, splendid! Let me go in and tell her.” They had reached Queens General.

“I'll tell her.” Quietly, so none of the others would know. God, what they'd say if they knew! “I'll tell her you want to see her out here and then you can explain the whole thing.”

Sloane smiled, “That won't be necessary.”

“You had this all fixed up between you?”

“Dear Milton, nothing can be ‘fixed' without your approval. I told you that the first time I saw her I instinctively recognized her type. We gravitated toward one another, but that is all.”

“I give up,” Milton said, and that was how he felt. He gave up. His hands were tied.

“All you have to do is tell Mrs. Austen Barkis is willing.”

“Who is Barkis?”

“You, Milton. Oh, Dickens! Just tell Mrs. Austen to come, bag and baggage, as soon as she can manage.”

“You go on home, Sloane. You could catch the bus on the corner. I'm going to be two hours.”

“I'll wait.” She opened her purse. “See?”

Other women carried a million things in their pocketbooks—perfume, lipstick, eyebrow pencils, mascara, pretty handkerchiefs—but his wife had a book of poetry stuffed into hers. “I see. O.K.”

Chapter IV

At five o'clock when the clinic was over and they came into the house, they saw Helga's two valises, just beyond the two suits of armor. They heard Helga's steps from the taipan room, where she must have been waiting for them. Sloane said, “You deal with her, Milton,” and dashed past him, running along the hall and up the stairs.

“Doctor,” Helga said.

“Just a sec. Sloane,” he called, “Sloane, hold on, there!” She stopped at the half landing where the bronze woman with the torch in her outstretched arm lighted the stairway for Sloane and challenged him. “Hold on. If anything is due Helga—” I haven't got ten bucks, he meant, and hoped Sloane would understand and not make him say it in front of Helga. Sloane shook her head that nothing was owing and continued upstairs. Helga waited until Sloane reached the top, then came closer to him, smelling of perfume, whispering confidentially.

“She wouldn't give me a reference. What do you think of that, Doc? The madam wouldn't give me a reference—as if a reference from her—” She saw Milton's expression. “I mean in a case like this—”

“What do you mean, ‘in a case like this'?”

“Well, Doctor—I mean coming into the kitchen throwing fits! You're not supposed to use paper towels, for example, to wipe out pots with. Rags, she said, and you had to scrub and boil them and use them again. And saving electricity. And if you should run out of butter! Wait until madam sees the reference I'm going to give her at the agency! If she thinks Mrs. Roberts will send anyone else to work in this lunatic asylum she's got another think coming! Reference!”

Milton jerked his head toward the door. “Get out, go on! I've heard enough out of you.” When she didn't move, he started toward the stairs, but she moved after him.