The Lady and Her Doctor (16 page)

“Wherever you see her. You could invite her to your hotel.”

“I will see her precisely nowhere. She is at liberty to interpret my antisocial behavior any way she chooses, but I am not going to see Sloane until—I'll see Sloane in court, in other words.”

“You're off your rocker, Lady Constant. Listen, the day you have the proof in your hands how off-your-rocker you are—in three weeks when they finish the examinations, give me a ring, then I'll tell you why.”

“That will be the day,” she said. “Good-by, Dr. Krop.”

Milton walked to the window and pulled the blind all the way up, the way he had never been able to pull it when he slept here on the Hide-a-Bed. The raw new buildings opposite, the rather narrow street didn't look so bad with the blinds all the way up.

From the hall Jenny called, “You finished talking on the phone, Milt?”

“I'm finished talking.” He wondered why Lady Constant had changed her mind, but, whatever it was, now he had three weeks.

“Can I come in?”

“Are you asking?”

“I'm asking.”

Milton swung around. Jenny was standing there holding the chair she had pulled next to the Hide-a-Bed as if she didn't know where to put it. She apparently decided to leave it where it was and to sit on it.

Jenny repeated, “Well, I'm asking, Milt.”

“Since when do you ask to come in a room?”

“Don't keep me on pins and needles, Milt. That's not what I'm asking and you know it. Milt, you were just going to tell me about her sister-in-law, the lady.”

He scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah? Well, saved by the bell, boy!”

“Milt—”

He sat on the Hide-a-Bed opposite her. His knee hit her knee hard as he sat but although Jenny winced she did not move, as though it was necessary to show him how much she could take. “Am I finished talking on the phone—as if you didn't know! My dear sister-in-law Jenny, don't you think I know you listened in? All that bushwah about how I can trust you—listening in on a private telephone conversation! That should show me I can't trust you any further than I can throw a piano!”

“Now, that's not so, Milt!”

“No? Well, I won't argue with you. Suddenly I'm starving. Can I have a bite, Jenny?”

“Suddenly you're starving!”

“My appetite has returned—with a bang, that's right!”

“You come here like it's your last day on earth, Milt—like the bloodhounds are after you—and then you find out they are after you and you're starving, suddenly! All right, so I listened in! For your sake and your sake only I listened in. That woman is having the mother's body exhumed and your appetite comes back!”

“You don't get it, do you?” He stood up and stretched lazily, hulking over Jenny. “It's Greek to you, isn't it?” He shook his head at her, smiling. “Come on, Jenny, Jenny, I thought you knew everything. You don't know everything? Well, I'll tell you, then. As I've been telling you since the first time I mentioned my wife to you, there's nothing to it. Listen—you had the same wild idea the sister had—”

“Has
, don't you forget,” Jenny said, looking up at him. “Has!” She gave him a light push and he stood up. Looming over her like that she couldn't talk to him the way she talked to Bud, and she had to. “Milt, I heard.”

“Put it on ice.”

“Milt, you can tell me to put it on ice, but you can't tell that one, her sister! She's out for your blood, Milt, you need me now.”

“My good angel!”

“You need me, Milt.”

“Angels at my head and feet.”

“Not her.”

“My good angel, my bad angel!” He saw how she planted her feet wide apart on the floor, strong. “My good angel with the long nose she's always sticking in my affairs.… All I want, angel, is for you to keep the nose out!”

“Milt, at least tell me what you won't tell her until after the autopsy!”

“You want to be
told?
” He put his little finger into his ear and shook it to clear his hearing. “You can't figure it out yourself?”

“No more riddles, Milt. I can't get the first one—how come you're not worried. Don't give me another one!”

“No riddle, no riddle, it's very simple. All I care about is Sloane's not finding out about the wild ideas some people have. Now I got the sister to promise she won't shoot her mouth off, and you won't, either, will you, Jenny?” She shook her head. She wouldn't go to Sloane, he knew that, the last one in the world Jenny would go to was Sloane. “So it's all right, now, see? Now, will you feed me or not?”

Milton stepped aside with exaggerated politeness, like a little gentleman, and waved her through the door first. She obeyed him and started up the hall to the kitchen, Milton following. When she turned and looked back at him he grinned with the exact same face he always had when he thought he'd put something over on her. She felt old and tired and the smell of the lamb stew coming from the kitchen turned her stomach, but that was all to the good since it would mean there'd be more for Milt. Milt had his appetite back. All Milt was worried about was his wife, his Sloane. (What a name for a girl!) Not the sister, not the cops, just his wife knowing. “Milt, I'm asking the same as her sister did—why is it so important your wife doesn't know?”

“Come on, Jenny, it's what makes the world go round—love! You see, Jenny, that's what you don't understand. For instance, you think Sloane's a mutt for looks. Well, there's looks and looks—It's too bad you don't know French.”

“You do?”

“I'm picking up a little for when we go abroad. There's such a thing as
beauté du diable
. There's such a thing as despising how they look in Vogue!”

There's such a thing as Cissie Parker, Jenny thought. She would have stopped outside the kitchen door and tried once more to get Milt to talk, but he reached around her and shoved the door open. The kids were sitting at the table, poor kids.

Milton said, “Hello, Maureen—Bud. Say, Bud, how did that song go you used to sing until it came out of our ears? ‘I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love'?”

Bud blushed. “I don't know what you mean, Uncle Milt.”

“How he's going to get through med school with a memory like that! ‘I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love—with a wonderful girl—' That's the idea, Jenny. At ease, Bud!”

Buddy's ears turned a bright red. “Listen here, Uncle Milt!”

“Stop riding Bud, Milt!”

“Bud's good angel! Well, stick to Bud, Jenny, and it will be O.K.” Milton sat in the chair which used to be his, picked up Maureen's knife and fork and drummed on the table with them to the tune of “I'm in Love.” “Jenny,” he said, “I'm starving, no kidding. My mouth is watering for that lamb stew.”

“Honest, is it, Uncle Milt?”

“Honest.” He rubbed his belly. “Why shouldn't it?”

“But, Uncle Miltie, it's just lamb stew. You could eat steak every day now you're rich, Uncle Miltie!”

Bud said, “Steak!”

“Don't rich people eat steak every day, don't they, Mom?”

She was at the range, turning the light up under the pot of stew, and didn't answer.

Bud said, “No, dopey, not steak. They eat everything under glass.”

“What's that, ‘under glass,' what does Bud mean ‘under glass,' Mom?”

Jenny said sullenly, “I never did know. Ask your uncle.”

“Yeah, ask Uncle Milt, Maureen; maybe he knows, maybe not!”

Maureen forgot about “under glass” and shoved her chair back and ran over to her uncle and leaned against him coquettishly. “Gee, Uncle Miltie, I been missing you a lot. You're my real uncle, not like Uncle John in Trenton. I don't wanna go live in Trenton and never see you again, Uncle Miltie!”

Bud said, “Well, I do! Anything is better than hanging around here. Anything to get away from here, if you ask me.”

Jenny, putting Milton's full plate in front of him, said, “You ate enough, Bud, why don't you go on outside with the gang?”

“No, thanks. I wouldn't go out for a million bucks tonight. If they see his car parked outside, they'll just start in on me the minute I get out. No, thanks!” He shoved his chair back, glared at Milton and left the kitchen, banging the door.

Milton said with his mouth full, “I didn't drive here so my car isn't outside but what's all that about, Jenny?”

“I know, Uncle Miltie! They say, ‘How's your Uncle Milton D. Rockefeller, M.D.? Was that your millionaire uncle in his gold Studebaker I saw, Bud? Was that your uncle's millionaire wife I saw in the supermarket pinching the vegetables until they screamed?' Bud doesn't like it when they say those things, but I say ‘sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me!'”

“That's enough, Maureen. You ate enough, too. Go on in and get your dresser drawer tidied up like I asked you ten times!” Reluctantly Maureen left. “Don't blame Bud, Milt. I guess he shot off his mouth before his friends when you got married. It's only human nature, and they just get back at him. Of course the kids get it from their folks—your ex-patients, Milt. They didn't like it when you gave up practice that way. If you'd moved to a duplex on Park Avenue, they'd understand that, but when you live in the Haunted House and they see you working in that yard there like a ditch digger in overalls, they don't like it that you seem to rather dig ditches than be their doctor.”

“I'm not digging ditches. I used to be a farmer, remember?”

“I remember you became a doctor the minute you could! I get it, Milt, you're in love with your wonderful wife and you're in love with the Haunted House, too. If I can swallow one, I can swallow the other!”

“Hold your horses, hold your horses, Jenny!” He began to mop up the stew gravy with a piece of bread.

“Sure—it's all for the time
being!
The time being! You know what they're doing around here, Milt? They're laughing at you. You're only getting what you deserve, they're saying. Her turning out to be a miser after you only married her for her money—Other people besides myself see her pinching vegetables and they think she's no beauty whatever you call it, either! In the supermarket, they imitate her!”

“That's European,” Milt said, hoping his face wasn't as red as it felt. “These people are too ignorant to know that's how the rich biddies do in Europe. They take a manservant to carry the basket, but they personally go to the market themselves and each apple and onion they buy has to be perfect!”

“Like those two brothers died in that filthy dirty house, that's what they say around here—”

“Jenny, look—” He put the sopped bread down, unable to eat another mouthful. “Don't be crazy, Jenny. The mother was, sure—but not Sloane; don't be crazy!” What he had eaten was coming up on him. “A thing like this takes time, Jenny. You got to have time to get over the mother's influence. Believe me, from what I heard the two of them could have eaten off what you scrape into that garbage pail, Jenny; well, it takes time to get over that. Sloane has to learn she can live it up with the money now. You know what she's like, Jenny? I told her. A little bird, like a little bird who's been in the cage so long when you open the door it takes time for her to catch on she's free, that's all.”

Jenny saw how he couldn't eat any more. Watching his face, she could almost taste the sour taste of regurgitation; she saw him blush, and thought: Maybe she's got time, but how much time you got, Milt? Like the kids with the atom bomb—what future? She must have made Milt some big promises to get him to help her with her mother. (Milt was a good boy.) But promises are cheap, she thought. What's going to happen if she won't live up to what she promised him?

“Mom! The phone is ringing!”

“Answer it, answer it!” She wiped her hands down her skirts as if, when they were clean, she could go to Milt and pull his head against her and watch over him.

“It's for you again, Uncle Milt!”

Jenny said, “That Lady, Maureen? Is it that same Lady again?”

“It's a man. He wants to speak to Uncle Miltie.”

“It's a man, Milt.”

“I'm not deaf, Jenny.” Milton went to the extension telephone. It took him a moment to realize that Dayton Mills was the man who had been in Lady Constant's room. “Hold the wire a sec, Mr. Mills.” Milton walked to where Jenny was standing and took her by the arm. Maureen watched with great interest as Milton walked her mother to the front door of the apartment. “You too, Maureen! Open that door. Step outside, Maureen. Now you, Jenny!”

“Now, listen, Milt!”

“This is the only way I know to keep you from listening in. Just stay out until I call you. It won't hurt you.” He shut the door in Jenny's indignant face and locked and bolted it, then returned to the telephone. “Yes, Mr. Mills?”

“I wanted to tell you that it was I who convinced Amory to do as you asked.”

“Thanks. Damn glad you did.”

“I was convinced that you weren't bluffing about not giving a hoot in hell that Amory had instigated this exhumation thing.”

“I wasn't.”

“Amory thought you might be stalling for time.”

“Three weeks? Did you have the Dramamine analyzed? Let me know.”

“One of these days Amory and I expect to be married.”

“Where's Lord Constant?”

“Sir Alfred? Amory and he have been divorced for years. Dr. Krop, providing of course that the exhumation shows nothing, if Mrs. Krop never finds out how—how far off the course Amory's suspicions went—she won't be prejudiced against Amory, will she? I told Amory that very strongly, and I put it to her that if she did what you wanted now, you would put in a good word with your wife and then Amory would have what is rightfully hers.”