The Lady and Her Doctor (29 page)

“Go home. I've got to talk to you before you talk to Sloane.”

“Don't worry, don't worry! Why don't you trust me? I told you there's nothing to worry about. She's so sorry for you, Milt. She wants to help you keep busy so you won't brood over it. She wants to be intelligent about your work, so I'm just talking to her about the clinic, how you conducted the experiment, the placebo, stuff like that.”

“Jenny, can't you understand English? To hell with that. I'll tell you what I'm worried about when I see you. Remember when we had it all fixed you should call and say Bud was sick and I should come over right away? I want you to use the same gimmick so Sloane won't know I'm talking about her to you, see? It's the same thing as that time all over again, only worse. You've got to turn right around and go home!”

“Milt, I can't! Listen, Milt, I'll see Sloane Tuesday, then, not Monday.”

“No.”

“You honestly want me to—”

“I want you to. Jenny, you're always yapping about how much you'll do for me. Well?”

“All right, Milt.”

“I'll call you tomorrow morning when I go out for the Sunday paper, around ten, and make all the arrangements.”

Jenny remembered, while she tried to get Maureen to stop her bawling, that Milt hadn't even said thanks. (The fact that Maureen was drawing a crowd made her even harder to stop than usual.) Bud didn't bawl, of course, but his disappointment over canceling even such a tame weekend made Jenny realize how little Bud had, how rarely he went anywhere. And his sports jacket was too tight in the rear now he had his shabby old coat hung over his arm, she saw that. Bud's rear in the tight sports jacket, as he walked away from his wailing sister and tried to be nonchalant, did it. Jenny could see no reason why Milt (who hadn't even bothered to say thank you) should expect her to disappoint both her orphaned children, maybe make Uncle Frank change his mind about letting them live with him. Milt hadn't offered her or the kids any of this money he was going to have. She simply did not see why she shouldn't at least go to Uncle Frank's as planned.

They could come home early tomorrow instead of waiting until Monday morning when Uncle Frank expected to be driving into New York with a load.

SUNDAY MORNING

Jenny had forgotten how cold a bedroom could get in the country. Lying on a big double bed with a room to herself for a change, without Maureen in the bed in the opposite corner, singing or playing games or practicing dance steps lying down, Jenny decided the whole darn thing might be a fake. She simply did not believe now any more than she ever did that Milt was so concerned about his wife that she had to get out of the warm bed on a Sunday morning, into the cold room, and hurt Uncle Frank's feelings leaving the minute they arrived. Lying there, hearing the farm sounds outside, feeling twenty years younger, Jenny decided it could just as well be that Milt wanted her to call him and say he had to hurry over, Bud was sick, for reasons of his own!
Cissie
, she thought. Ten to one, she thought, this has something to do with Cissie and not with Sloane at all! Couldn't it be that Milt wanted to see Cissie again today? Couldn't it be he thought because his fool sister-in-law was so darn loyal to him, he could make a bigger fool of her than she was with his mysterious telephone calls and his arrangements?

Jenny felt hot all over, all of a sudden; sudden sweat tickled and stung her armpits, like hot flushes, only it wasn't a hot flush. (She wasn't Methuselah!) It was what happened to her when she felt that Milt was trying to put one over. It always affected her like that to think that Milt, Milt, felt he was so darn smart and she was dumb enough so he could put one over on her!

She had not yet told the poor kids that their visit was to be cut short and instead of driving in with Uncle Frank they would have to make the dreary trip by train and subway, so she didn't have to tell them she had changed her mind.

And she didn't have to tell Milt, either. Thinking he could use her and the kids, too, for his monkey business with Cissie! If he had only been a man and come out with it, Jenny thought. If he had confided her the honest truth instead of making up a lot of hogwash, she would do anything for him, kids or no. This way—it was Milt's hard luck. It would teach Milt a lesson, she thought.

When Milt went out to get his paper—ten o'clock—and nobody answered, he would know she hadn't turned straight around and come back to the apartment. He would know that she had put her kids and what they wanted before what he wanted, and if he had the sense he was born with, he'd know that was only right and decent, and he'd know (Jenny stretched under the warm covers) that he couldn't fool her with his stories about how important it was and Monday wouldn't do.

Milt could like it or Milt could lump it. Monday would have to do!

SUNDAY 6:30 P.M.

Lady Constant looked with loathing at the untidy hotel room, impatiently kicked aside her fur stole which had dropped onto the floor, went to the bed where Day was lying nursing a spent highball and stood over him, hands on hips. “Day, are we going to the Thomases' or are we not?” She looked at the traveling clock on the bed table. “Pretty soon that will be a purely academic question, Day! On your insistence, I spent practically all yesterday in this damned room waiting for the good doctor to return my telephone call. I mort-u-ally wounded Aggie's feelings by backing out of the weekend to do so.”

“Since he
is
the good doctor. Amory, since he didn't murder your mother as you now realize, call him again.”

“It turns my stomach.”

“Humble pie does that, sweetie.”

“It's not that. I don't know, Day—Yes, I do! ‘I do not love thee, Doctor Fell, the reason why I cannot tell.' Even if I was wrong about Mother, I still do not love thee, Dr. Fell!” Day shrugged and looked into his empty glass, not at her. “You are shameless, Day. It is shameless to crawl to him to get the money and you know it.”

“I know it. You know it. Very well.”

“It is not very well. Here Sunday is almost gone and I have spent it calling him at intervals and being told he is not at home when I know damn well he is!”

“Once more.”

“I will not,” she said, sitting on the bed and reaching for the telephone. “Once more and then we go to the Thomases'?” She dialed the number. “I don't know why I put up with you, Day. This once more and then we will go to the Thomases' do, and I will figure some nice clean way of getting some funds—like going on the streets! They're not answering, Day!”

Milton heard the telephone and waited for Mrs. Austen to get it, but it kept on ringing. Then he remembered that she was up on the third floor, dolling up to go out, he thought.

On the third floor, Austen heard the telephone. It would be madam's sister again and she would only have to say nobody was at home.

Sloane, who was sitting at the desk, remembered that Austen had gone upstairs. She didn't want poor old Austen walking down; on the other hand, she couldn't concentrate with the telephone ringing. She pushed the chair back and found Milton. Whispering, as though Amory could hear her, she asked Milton to speak to Amory, to make her stop telephoning, put her off; then she ran back into the small sitting room again and slammed the door. (As if Amory could reach in otherwise.)

Milton answered the telephone as Sloane had asked him to because there was one chance in a hundred it might be Jenny.

“Hello? Dr. Krop?” Lady Constant nodded and, behind her, Day sat up on the bed. “I telephoned you on Friday, Dr. Krop, to eat humble pie. The results of the exhumation—the exhumation was finished on Friday—mother died of heart disease. If one can apologize for such a thing, I apologize.” She waited but there was no response. “Obviously you weren't concerned about what they found or you would have called me back, wouldn't you? Well, that's what a clear conscience does for you!” Day squirmed around and showed her his grinning face. He touched the corners of her mouth, directing her to put a smile in her voice. She slapped his hand away. “Well, interested or not, you and Sloane are in the clear, Dr. Krop—and I am in the doghouse for having cost the borough whatever it does cost to do all the extensive and completely conclusive tests I have been assured they did on poor Mother.”

“I see.”

Lady Constant shrugged at Day and made a “now-what” face.

“Go on,” he whispered. “Continue.”

She continued. “I could go on apologizing but I am certain you'd be disinterested.”

“A hundred per cent,” Milton said.

Lady Constant could tell that he was about to hang up. “But, why, Dr. Krop? Why disinterested? Have you forgotten? When I last saw you—when I first and last saw you, Dr. Krop—you made me promise that I would telephone you the moment I made sure you weren't a murderer. Which is why I telephoned on Friday. You assured me that once I knew this, you had something you wanted to discuss with me. Well, now we may discuss it, may we not? I am right here in my little room waiting to talk to you about it.”

“I don't want to talk to you,” Milton said. “Not interested.”

“He hung up.” Lady Constant held the phone toward Day so he could hear, then put it into the cradle, got off the bed and took the highball glass out of Day's hand. “That's that. He doesn't want to talk to me. Not interested.” She set the glass down near the clock. “Too late—but not too late for the Thomases'. Come on, Day, I've done my best, and that's that.” She went to the littered dressing table. “I'm going to put on my face and when I'm through if you're not off that bed and ready to come with me, I'm going alone, and in that case, I assure you when I do go on the streets, you won't see a penny of it!”

Day said, “I don't understand. What happened? He was eager enough before.”

“I have done trying.” She renewed the faint blue line on the edge of her upper lids, drew back from the mirror, nodded and then began to gather up her handbag from the chair, her gloves from inside a red hat and her furs from the floor. Day reluctantly left the bed. He was the kind of man who could lie around in a suit all day, shake himself and be perfectly groomed; it was one of his talents.

“Just time to get to the Thomases' before our arrival looks like sour grapes. Fanny is allergic to being second-best hostess, the hostess with the leastest.”

Milton did not even see Sloane standing a little way off from the telephone. She was wringing her hands and it was that which caught his attention; he looked at her sullenly.

“You hung up on Amory! You've made her angry with us!” She hurried to him, her face white. “Call her back, Milton! Apologize!”

He walked away from the telephone. “
You
call her up.”

“I can't. I cannot. I would if it were possible, but I can't. Milton, please, you must see that it is dangerous to make her angry with us until the papers are drawn up! All this time you insisted Amory must be propitiated, you were all ready to run to her with my money to sweeten her—Now, when tomorrow I am going to the lawyer's, when in just a few days we will have all the money tied up so she can't get her claws into it, you do this!” She ran after him, caught at his jacket.

“Let go of me.”

“Milton, you're angry with me now, but you will come to see I'm right. I promise you will, so please telephone her and smooth this over.” She looked into his indifferent face and stamped her foot. “Don't be so stupid! Call her at once! Don't be such an abysmal fool!”

He didn't even trouble to repeat that he had disassociated himself from what she wanted.

“Milton, at dinner—when Austen goes out, we will go over all of it again. When we are alone here, I know I can convince you, but the whole thing will be jeopardized if you make Amory so angry she does something—” she made a gesture “—desperate.
Official
. I have been sitting all day yesterday and today trying to figure the Foundation out with no help from you. You've wandered in and out of this house all day long as if it weren't your concern more than mine! I can't stand it,” she said, beginning to cry. “I can't stand it!” She threw her hands over her face. “It is for your sake, Milton—what is best for you, too, and you simply won't see it!” Then Sloane saw Austen's shadow trying to back away upstairs again, and that was too much. Sloane ran sobbing past Austen, upstairs.

Milton saw Austen, too, but what did he care? He walked away from her, away from her pursed lips, her shaking head, her frown as she watched Sloane run bawling up the stairs. What a setup it would have been, Milton thought. Perfect. “
I can't stand it! It is for your sake, Milton. What is best for you!
” Sloane screaming at him that she couldn't stand it. The old woman was certainly thinking Sloane was suicidal again. She would certainly have decided it was all the phone calls from the sister that set Sloane off. Perfect, and everything washed up once and for all because that bitch Jenny, that damned stubborn mule, decided for the last time to run things her own sweet way!

There was no reason for Milton to head for the front door and grab his coat and walk out of the house except that he had been facing that way, away from old Austen, from Sloane upstairs. It was not until he approached the iron gates that he had the flash, the inspiration. After that, he did not dare run until he was out of sight of any of the windows in the Haunted House. After one block, he had to slow down again because what was the sense of dropping dead on the street, what was the sense of that, now, so that it took him ten minutes to reach the drugstore, sweating and breathless.

“I am sorry,” the desk clerk said. “Lady Constant's room does not answer, sir.”

“She's got to answer. This is Dr. Krop. This is important, do you hear me? She's got to answer!”