The Lady and Her Doctor (26 page)

His mother believed to her dying day that his father had died because the doctor couldn't get to him in time. It was because of this, Milton explained, because of the memory of his father in the cow dung in the barn, that his mother had wanted them to become doctors, and the funny part of it was—as he now reconstructed, ten specialists in attendance couldn't have helped his father!

“Ah, Milton!” Sloane whispered.

“Mom had the farm clear and two hands and four strong kids. Making us all doctors was her—”

“Religion.”

“Mania, compulsion, the textbooks would call it! What any one person could do, my mother could do. She could have driven a dynamo with her will power alone, I tell you; four kids were nothing, a snap! She was quite a woman. I suppose your mother, or your nurse, your what-you-may-call-it, governess, told you fairy tales before you went to bed, didn't she?” (What did he care what her governess told her?) He saw his mother in the kitchen with the draft in the range making it go red, then pink, as if it were breathing, sitting there after a day's work near the oil lamp with her legs spread, wearing his father's shoes which she used for outdoor work and his father's dungarees, using, he now decided, what must have been his father's gesture of hitching up her pants. (And when one of them got out of line, she used his father's belt on them, too!) “My mother told us fairy stories too, nights in the kitchen: When all us boys would have our M.D.'s. When all us boys were doctors—the way she said that word it was a holy word, to my mother a doctor was holy! The fairy stories my mother told us was how it would be when we all were doctors! For instance, in sixth grade I wanted a chromatic harmonica—a kid in school had a beauty. God, how you want things when you're a kid at school! Well, she wouldn't get me a chromatic, but she'd tell me when I was a doctor I could have a gold harmonica. She used to say she'd live a thousand years with four sons doctors!

“She was fifty-five when she died. She was a woman, after all, and not a work horse, and although two of her kids were doctors then, they weren't magicians. Or holy.

“I don't need to go into what it took to get the four of us through medical schools. You can imagine. We were just ordinary guys, except for my brother Phil, no Phi Beta Kappas except for Phil, anything we learned we had to plug. Phil was the one should have been a doctor—like in the movies—dedicated. Dedicated until the day he died at thirty-nine which is why Jenny and the kids were left with exactly beans. Phil was too wrapped up in his research!”

“But, Milton, to be dedicated!”

“His kids couldn't eat on it. They ate on me. I took over Phil's obligations when he died. That's how we had been trained up to do: one for all and all for one, a regular Three Musketeers! We lived in that apartment near Sutton Place, don't forget. While Mom was alive she stayed on the farm. We could have made a good thing of it if Mom would have given up on one of us, even. But no! One of us had to go out every Saturday and put in a good eight, ten hours after classes and on Sunday. Come back to New York Sunday dog-tired and bone up for Monday's classes. Circles under the eyes, yawning—Some of the medics thought we had a high old time in our place weekends the way we'd stagger into the nine o'clock lecture Mondays, a regular love nest they thought we had—near Sutton Place! And vacations—I remember one Thanksgiving. In November you wouldn't think there'd be too much to do on a farm. I remember the ignition had gone bad on the truck. There was a patch had to go on the siding. The pigs had to have a new farrowing pen. I had promised Mom new laying-boxes for the hens. I remember listening to the fellows gassing about what they did Thanksgiving.

“Mom would cook up a lot of stuff and whoever went would hike back a load of food and we'd eat good the first half of the week. One for all and all for one! I tell you if the Reds were like the Krop boys—So we all got our M.D.'s! All four—and then there were three and then there were two. The Japs got Hut so he doesn't count. Phil and then me. The cheese stands alone! “There's something rotten in Denmark!” He struck his chest. “Me, Sloane! The cheese! I'm rotten, Sloane! I'm damaged goods! You know about high blood pressure? How it can run in a family? Pa, the boys—now me! The iron man! A regular peasant, right, Sloane?” He dropped the sheet which he had been clutching all along and flexed his right arm, then pointed to Sloane's face which had gone white. “I'm the last of them and soon there'll be none, that's what the man said, Sloane; then there'll be none!”

Her lips moved but no sound came. “Mil-ton, Mil-ton,” she was saying. She held out her arms and he came to them. She dropped to the floor, kneeling on the soft sheets, and dragged him down with her, rocking him, crying now, “Milton, Milton!” She whispered. “That's why when you came here and found Mother—What I had done—That explains how you dared take such a chance with your life with a stranger!”

He pulled out of her embrace. “Life? What life? Who're you kidding?” He grinned at her. “Now you won't be grateful!”

“Now I won't be suspicious!”

“When you said that poem to me: ‘When I consider how my light is spent'—Like a ton of bricks!” he said.

“My darling, my darling!”

He touched her tears with his fingertips. He wanted to eat her tears. Her closed eyes were beautiful to him, her wet mouth, her shaking body. “Now you see how it is,” he said. “Sloane. I want to live it up a little before I go. Sloane! Maybe I want to live it up for the four of us. Did you ever see a title of a book:
A Lust for Life?
I have a lust for life, Sloane! I didn't want to drop in my harness, making my calls, office hours, sleeping on a Hide-a-Bed. I'll sleep long enough on a Hide-a-Bed, do you see, Sloane? I never talked like this to anybody in my life!”

She took his face between her two hands. “You should have. What do you want?”

“Precisely,” Milton said, making fun of her word, kissing her, “precisely, precisely? I want to get on a big boat, Sloane. Walk up the gangplank. I want to lie in a deck chair and be fed tea by a steward. Sloane, I want to live like a travel folder! I want to get some real service—real servants! I want to be waited on hand and foot. I want someone to turn on the bath water for me. I want my chairs pulled out. I want my grapes served peeled! I want to eat the kind of meals you read about. Soft beds and soft winds. I want the sun to shine every day. I want to see flowers like in catalogs! You remember the pictures your sister sent? The villa in Antibes—the steps cut out of living rock, that's what I want!” He looked at her. “Sloane?”

“Not Sloane,” she whispered, “Ruth. From now on, Ruth. Whither thou goest—whatever you want!”

The envelope with the salt in it was in his pocket. When he got up to lock the door, he pulled off the jacket and hung it over the doorknob. It swayed a couple of times, it kicked a couple of times, like when a man is hanged, then it was still; then it was dead. Finished.

Chapter VIII

Milton hated to do it just a couple of hours after he and Sloane had gone down to the Cunard Line and reserved a suite on the
Queen Elizabeth
for the nineteenth. Two cabins and a sitting room! It was the slack season and Sloane could have gotten them just an ordinary cabin for two, but she wanted to do it right. She had done it right.

Milton hated to pick a fight with the suite fresh in mind but he had to, and he had picked on old lady Austen because wanting her out of the house was kind of buying life insurance for Sloane in a way, and it would be easier to work up a mad against Sloane about Austen than about anything else. Milton waited until old lady Austen brought in the dessert; then, when she went back into the kitchen, asked Sloane to give the old lady her walking papers today. Right off.

Sloane frowned.

“I have my reasons. Come on now, Ruth, Ruthie!” Milton put his hand over Sloane's as it lay in her lap, but she pulled her hand away.

“That's cruel and unnecessary. Surely, unless she leaves of her own free will, she can stay until we go on the nineteenth?”

“Give her a bonus, a big send-off, but o-u-t, now! Out tomorrow morning.”

“What possible reason can you have—”

“The best, believe me! I say the best, isn't that enough for you? Can't you take my word for something?”

“You must be reasonable, Milton.”

“Don't use that tone to me! Don't talk down to me as if I was halfwitted; I don't want any more of that!”

Sloane delicately pushed his compote dish nearer to him.

“And don't tell me when to eat!”

“Tell me why?”

“Why? All right, why should I have to live another one of my limited days in the same house with an old cow you said yourself hates my guts? Why should I? Who needs it? Every time she looks at me, she—if looks could kill—You know it's true! Who needs it?” Sloane was wagging her head “no” at him as he had known she would. “So the old lady comes first around here, is that it?”

“Now, Milton—”

He was out of the house flinging down the path before she could stop him. If he just didn't come back now, he could meet Cissie at the Stork Club at nine o'clock and Sloane would think it was because he was sore at her putting poor old Austen before him. He walked rapidly, not looking back at the house in case Sloane had decided to come after him, not daring to stop to take the car in case she should catch him. He began to smile because the old lady would be furious if she knew she had done him a good turn with the delay. He took off an imaginary hat and tipped it toward the old lady. “A thousand thanks, old thing,” he said.

Sloane wouldn't like him staying out but it would show her that she better live up to the letter of the law, better be R-u-t-h, that is, and no ifs, ands or buts about it! He would see Cissie again, one last time they would never forget, and he would teach Sloane a lesson. Two birds with one stone, the little yellow bird and the bald-headed eagle!

“Mrs. Krop? Jenny? This is Sloane. I hope I haven't waked you.”

“Waked me? My God, it's only ten-fifteen!” Jenny wanted to ask had the world come to an end that Sloane should telephone little old her, but for Milt's sake she didn't want to get Sloane sore at her. “No, of course you didn't wake me.”

“Good. How are you, Jenny? And the children?”

I'll bet she isn't sure how many children there are, Jenny thought resentfully. “We're O.K., thanks. How is Milt?”

At first, for a few minutes after Sloane hung up, Jenny felt good. It felt good to have Milt's high-hat wife call her up and give her condolences about Phil and all and ask her advice about Milt. It felt good to know that after Milt had told his wife how things were with him, she should turn to Jenny for help and advice; that she should tell her the plans she and Milt had and ask for Jenny's O.K. Then the satisfaction died down. There had been a funny little gap in the conversation that, now she came to think about it, rang a bell in Jenny. She had always had a feel for when she was being pumped. You couldn't count the number of patients she had nursed who had made those same funny little gaps when they wanted to pump her about something, prognosis, generally, whether the doctor had told them the honest truth or was he holding something back. Those patients, though, hadn't gotten anything out of her, not a thing, but she wasn't so sure, now she came to think about it, that Sloane hadn't. Jenny bit her knuckle; if only Milt would warn her! If only Milt would tell her what was what instead of holding out on her this way, she wouldn't open her big fat mouth and put her foot into it. Had that woman called for a different reason entirely? Had Milt told his wife he was going to be here this evening?

If Milt told Sloane he'd be here, then he's with Cissie, sure as shooting, Jenny thought. Did Sloane suspect about Cissie? It must be he was out with Cissie and Sloane had pumped her! Damn it, if Milt had only told her she would have sworn up and down he was there, made up some story about him taking the kids out for a sundae, but not even knowing he was out with Cissie or that he had wanted her to cover for him—

Jenny stood up, rubbing her wet knuckle down her skirt. She still didn't know if he was with Cissie!

“I'm doing this for Milt,” Jenny said to her mirror, clamping her lips tight on a piece of Kleenex to get the excess lipstick off. She looked at the lipstick thoughtfully, snapped her fingers and took out the unopened bottle of Chanel Five Bud had bought her for her birthday. Wiping the powder from the drawer off its Cellophane wrapper, she thrust it into her pocket, and walked quietly out of the apartment so that Bud, studying in his room, wouldn't hear and want to know what was going on.

First Jenny went outside the house to the edge of the sidewalk where, by craning, she could see that there were lights in Mrs. Parker's apartment, in what was the living room. Then, hurrying through the cold, she went back into the vestibule and pressed the bell that said Parker and it buzzed back. She took the elevator up.

By the time Jenny reached 4A, Mrs. Parker had the door open on the chain. Jenny waved at Mrs. Parker and the door promptly closed, but then Jenny, thanking the Lord for Mrs. Parker's healthy curiosity, heard the chain being taken off.

“Yes?”

Jenny tried to see into the apartment, craning over Mrs. Parker, who blocked the way. “I'm right, aren't I? Cissie is out, right?”

“Cissie is out but I don't see that's any concern of yours.”

“I wanted to make sure it was Cissie I saw leaving earlier.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the bottle of Chanel Five. “I came up because I want to give Cissie a little present, but I'm kind of embarrassed. I'd rather you gave it to her, if you don't mind, so that's why I waited until—”

“Cissie doesn't need your presents, thanks.”

“You don't give because it's needed. Because you feel sorry for what you did.”