The Lady and Her Doctor (18 page)

Milton stumbled out of the telephone booth walking right by Cissie at the counter.

She had calmly expected him to kill her sister.

The sister had calmly expected him to try to kill her.

They were the pair, the birds. Folsom birds. What a pair, he thought.

Jenny, too, he thought. Jenny figured he was a killer, too. Nothing would convince Jenny he wasn't a killer.

All of them, all the girls knew more about Milt Krop than Milt Krop. All the girls knew Milt Krop was a killer. Well, he thought, could be they were right, at that.

His hands were on the door of the drugstore but they were on Sloane's throat. He had her down, his knees on her chest. As he choked her, he banged her damned head against the floor.

He told all of them, striding along the street, his coat flapping like wings, what happened when you gave a dog a bad name. Maybe they didn't know that, the girls!

Cissie stood at the soda fountain, the folded-up straw hanging from her fingers. Then she saw that the doctor had left his doctor bag in the telephone booth.

When the doorbell rang again, Jenny got off the Hide-a-Bed and hurried to the hall, muttering that it was a busy night for a change but not meaning that she minded because she thought it was Milt again. “Mrs. Parker!”

“Yes, it's Mrs. Parker,
Mrs
. Krop!”

That was a sly dig at her for the time she had let Mrs. Parker think she was Milt's wife. “Please, Mrs. Parker, I had enough out of you. It's been a busy night.”

“I just want to know one thing.”

“Ask Information, I'm not Information.”

“You're a mother. You have a mother's feelings. All I want to know is he still here. The doctor, is he still here?”

“I don't see what business—”

“Yes, business! My Cissie likes chocolate ice cream. Whenever she got sick and took her medicine like a good girl, I'd send her papa out for a pint of chocolate ice cream. If her papa was alive today I wouldn't be here in your place begging you to tell me one little thing. If I had my man to look after this! After I talked to you before, I went to get my Cissie ice cream from the Greek's. They have home-made. Two blocks. It didn't take me fifteen minutes by the clock and she's gone. I came up and I called her, ‘Cissie, Cissie,' and she's gone.”

“Call the Stork Club, then.”

“Cissie's not at any Stork Club. She said she wasn't going and I know Cissie, wild horses wouldn't drag her there. All I'm asking is if he's gone, too!”

“If I tell you my brother-in-law left, you'll figure he was with Cissie. You're hysterical, Mrs. Parker, that's what you are!”

“He left, he left! I knew it!”

“He left. He went home to his wife where he belongs, that's where he went. He came to see his sister-in-law and he had supper here—lamb stew—and then he left like a respectable married man.”

“Cissie must have seen him leave, I tell you. She must have followed him!” Mrs. Parker started to open the door, but Jenny pulled her back.

“It's a free country, think what you like, that's your privilege, but that's all is free. You can't run over to my brother-in-law's house and tell his wife—”

Mrs. Parker began to cry that she didn't know what to do, she was out of her mind. The last thing she wanted was to make trouble. “All I want is Cissie should be happy. She has this fine steady boy. He has a good job in a shoe factory, Assistant Manager. He's crazy for Cissie. I don't want to make trouble!”

“You're going to have trouble without making it if you're not careful!” Jenny pushed up Mrs. Parker's coat sleeve and took her pulse, not timing the beats, just shaking her head as if it was rapid and irregular. “I am a mother, right. I have a mother's feelings, right; so come in here.” Now Mrs. Parker was sitting on Milt's Hide-a-Bed. Jenny stooped and scooped up both Mrs. Parker's thin legs. She then sat on the Hide-a-Bed and took Mrs. Parker's wrist again. “You're going to lie right there until your heart is down to normal. You're not sixteen any more; you want your Cissie to be an orphan on both sides?” She was going to keep Mrs. Parker there as long as she could. The way the poor thing was now, she would run straight to Milt's wife. Jenny was positive that Cissie had done just what her mother figured. Mrs. Parker attempted to sit up. “I'm a nurse, don't forget. I know whereof I speak.” You could still see where Cissie got her looks. Mrs. Parker was forty-five, anyhow; she'd had a hard time from the look of it; her coat hadn't cost more than fifty bucks new; but even so, if you came right down to it, Mrs. Parker was better looking lying there with her hair gray a lot and crying than the wonderful girl Milt said he was in love with!

“—only trying to do the right thing. Nip it in the bud. When she found out he wasn't married—Never once, not since she was born, did my Cissie talk to me like that!”

But Cissie couldn't have taken it, Jenny thought. Cissie wasn't strong like she, Jenny, was. A little thing. What did Cissie know what it was like to be a widow with kids?

“It costs a fortune to go to the Stork Club, but Cissie wanted to go. All she has to do with Sidney is say. The sky's the limit where Cissie is concerned with Sidney!”

Jenny glared at the weeping Mrs. Parker; Stork Club, her and her Stork Club! Oh, God, if the girl was with Milt. If they were standing in the shadows, somewhere, close together and him with that wife he was so much in love with, ha ha—And him with a couple of years at most to live. Like the article said about teenagers and the atom bomb. Oh, God! You couldn't keep your nose out like Milt wanted—a little silly kid like Cissie Parker. A—a teenager like Milt! You couldn't!

“Doctor,” Cissie called, almost breathless from having chased him, “Doctor, oh, please!”

Then Milton heard her. He turned and watched her, so caught by the way she moved that he didn't notice what she was carrying.

Cissie held it toward him. “In the telephone booth—you forgot your doctor bag.”

“What's that?” He noticed the bag. “Yeah, that's right, I did!” Forgot his medical bag, forgot he was a medical man. Looking up from the bag to Cissie's face, to her worshipful eyes, to her Browning-girl eyes which said he was wonderful, marvelous; he could do anything, she thought, so he could do anything. He was a doctor, he had forgotten that. Maybe Sloane wasn't so smart thinking she could laugh at a doctor. Maybe that wasn't the same as laughing at an ordinary man, maybe a doctor could have the last laugh. Certainly he still didn't know yet how he could kill Sloane because even though it would give him the greatest satisfaction to put his hands around her throat and choke the life out of her, to bang her damned head against the floor, that wouldn't be enough to burn for. He still didn't know, even though he had that suicide note all prepared, even though he had the best possible motive for Sloane's committing suicide—remorse over having “killed” her mother, suicide while of unsound mind—he still didn't know, but for the second time that day, Cissie, standing like that, looking at him like that, made everything O.K. “Aw, Cissie!” he whispered.

After a little while, she pushed herself away from him, shoving both her hands against his chest. “Why did you marry her? Why did you have to marry her? Momma says for the money. She says if you're so perfect why would you marry a wife for the money?”

He transferred his bag to his left hand and stretched out his right one, smoothing back her soft hair. “Did you think that was why, Cissie? You know better than your mother, don't you?”

“I told Momma, no! Then, why?” she asked, waiting confidently to be told.

And he would tell her and she would tell her momma and her momma would tell the world. “I'll tell you, Cissie. Not what your mother thinks—or my sister-in-law Jenny, who thinks she knows everything—you have the right to know, Cissie. Why? Because I pitied her so. ‘Poor little rich girl,' did you ever hear that expression? Because I'm so sorry for her, poor kid. I was pretty sore at you. Why didn't you have faith, Cissie—thinking Jenny was my wife! Why shouldn't I help her then? Be of some use to humanity, that's why. They think they know it all!”

“Momma,” Cissie whispered, nodding.

“They don't know. You know who knows, Cissie? Whoever's lived with my wife—in the same house, I mean. We had this cook, Helga, she quit the job today. Helga knows the real reason even if she's only an ignorant woman. She came to me today and she asked was I a mental doctor—a kind of private psychiatrist for my wife. My wife's a little—unbalanced, Cissie. That's why I married her and spend all my time and knowledge on her. You just saw me on the phone. I was talking to my wife. Did you notice she hung up on me, twice? She's hysterical. I told her to take another sedative—to quiet her. My God, I was only visiting my own sister-in-law for once, having lamb stew, for the love of Mike! But she won't take sedatives unless I'm in the house with her. She needs me, see, Cissie? I have to stand by there. For example, she's scared she'll overdose herself—you know why? Because she half wants to. That's psychiatry, Cissie; you wouldn't understand. She's scared to death of what she might do in a wild moment—because the desire is there, do you see?” She nodded uncertainly, taking in every word. “I have to go now.”

“Not yet! You thought I'd forget you. I can't forget you. I'll never forget you.”

“You have to, Cissie, and I have to go now.”

“Not yet. Oh, I want to be with you once, just once!”

“We wouldn't want to have it on our conscience if anything happened to my wife, Cissie!” He shook his head at her gently. “I can't tell you what it means to me to get this chance to explain to you how things were, Cissie.”

“I can't see you ever?”

“Go on home now, Cissie. No, you can't see me.” Cissie did what he asked her to, started home. Cissie would always do what he asked her to; a word from him was all she needed. Milton watched her slowly moving off and could tell from her back that she was crying. “Cissie,” he called. She turned to him and she was crying.

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to know. It's funny, I don't know—what's your real name, Cissie?”

“Cecilia.”

“‘Does your mother know you're out, Cecilia?'” He would not move toward her, touch her again, but he didn't need to touch her. “Does your mother know you're out—” he sang.

“You're so good,” Cissie sobbed. “You're so good—”

“A saint? You're the saint, Cissie. St. Cecilia, little Saint Cecilia with the golden hair!” Even in this light, without touching her, just because his hand moved out he could see her color change, just seeing his hand; then she sobbed and moved away. Milton stood and watched the way she walked until he couldn't stand it and then started toward the Haunted House again. He held his wrist watch out under the next street light. Back by nine.

By nine o'clock Mrs. Parker had fallen asleep on the Hide-a-Bed and Jenny went and stood by the window. If she went outside this room, Bud or Maureen would want to talk to her and she needed some peace right now, so she just stood there quietly until she saw Cissie on the sidewalk outside the apartment house. Because she had been thinking the word “peace” when she saw Cissie, Jenny thought, “Peace, it's wonderful!” That was from Father Divine. Who remembered Father Divine any more? Peace, it's wonderful, she thought, not because of Father Divine, but because of Cissie's ecstatic face seen under the two lights in front of the house, because of the way she was walking. Jenny turned to Mrs. Parker. If Mrs. Parker saw her daughter Cissie with that face on her, no amount of talk from Jenny was going to convince her that Cissie hadn't been with Milton or that Cissie would ever go to that Stork Club with that Sidney boy. Moving as quietly as possible, Jenny crossed the room, opened the door and went out of the apartment, intercepting Cissie in front of the self-service elevator. “Hello, Cissie, no use your going up to an empty house. Your mother is in my place.” She laughed. “Don't look at me that way, I didn't kidnap your mother, she came in my place under her own power. In fact I couldn't stop her!”

“Is Momma sick?”

“At heart, sick at heart—maybe in the head. Maybe she's sick in the head, Cissie. She came to my place because of my brother-in-law, Dr. Krop. I believe you heard that name before?”

“Why should she go see you?”

“Come on in and ask her. You ask her and then she'll ask you. Sauce for the goose. You ask her why she's in my place and she's going to ask you where you've been. She went to get you some ice cream and when she came back you were gone, so she came in my place to see if my brother-in-law left so she could put two and two together.”

“Oh.”

“She put two and two together. Did she get the wrong number?”

“Of course.”

I hope you can kid your mother better than you can kid me, Jenny thought; you're not much of a liar with your thoughts showing through that blond skin of yours! She kept talking, however, to give Cissie time to get a story together, because someone had to watch over such a little fool. (A pair of fools!) “Your mother's been lying down in my place, she was in such a state. She'd have run straight to my brother-in-law's wife the state she was in!”

“How awful! How awful! You must excuse Momma. I don't know what's got into her. All she is is upset because I wouldn't keep a date, that's all. She got herself all worked up over nothing. Can I see Momma now?”

Jenny opened her door, waved Cissie in and pointed out the door to the waiting room. “Help yourself. I'll be in the other room.”

“Thank you,” Cissie said fervently. “I can't tell you how I thank you!”

She had forgotten how sore she was at me, Jenny thought. All is forgiven. All is forgiven, why? With a girl, for one reason only, because all must be O.K. All made up. All forgotten. But Milt's wife couldn't be forgotten, could she? But divorced. Jenny told herself she mustn't let her imagination run away with her. She told herself to stop biting her nails, shaking her big hand in the air; she had bitten the pinky one off, to the quick. Quick, a divorce, she thought, why not? On what? she wondered. In what? The two-year old suit from Howard's? The old Studie? Her hand stopped waving in the air, went to her hip; she looked like a virago, warning an imaginary Sloane, “You stupid or something? The devil makes mischief for idle hands, you never heard that? You can't keep a doctor's hands busy digging ditches in your old yard, don't you know that? If you don't get Milt some real work to do—soon—”