The Lady and Her Doctor (7 page)

(What was odd to him was the way she could say “Mother's” so easily.)

Mother, Miss Folsom said, had probably eaten Austen's cooking many times. The Endicotts had been most particular, so Austen must be a splendid cook. She so enjoyed cooking. Austen had told her that she had gone on cooking after she knew she had heart disease but she had been forgetful about her restrictions and had become very much worse so that she had been forbidden to work, poor old creature.

“She's not the only poor old creature in Queens General,” he said. “The place is lousy with them.”

“I know!” She turned to him. “Could I help? It is going to be—
hard
,” she said. “It will be twice as hard if I have too much time on my hands.”

“Just while you're stuck in that house,” Milton said. He could see she couldn't leave tomorrow; it would look funny. (She had a lifetime in front of her to live, he thought.) “Why don't you go out and work on the grounds there? That's good healthy work, and they sure could stand it!”

“But I like them that way,” she said.

“Oh, they'll tear it all up anyway, when they build—”

She said, as if it didn't matter, “That's right. Do you know what I should do on the grounds though? I should see that the Victorian garden is preserved. I should see it is set up somewhere—like the herb garden at the Cloisters. That should be preserved. I will work on that, yes.” She clapped her hands. “I know now why I sat down next to Austen!”

“Why?” She looked ten years younger all of a sudden. She was holding out her hand so that he could see her black glove. “Why?”

“Because her gloves were darned like mine.”

Why the poor kid, Milton thought. Now he remembered noticing—before—that her stockings often had a sewn-up run in them. He hadn't seen a sewn-up run since Caesar was a pup. Jenny wouldn't sew up runs; Jenny threw runnered stockings away the way she shoveled the two glazed yellow eyes of egg yolks into the garbage can. Milton was so sorry for Miss Folsom then that, without thinking was it the right thing to do, he took his hand off the wheel and pressed it against her thigh, and she took her hand and helped press his hand against her thigh, hard, meaning it. He saw that her eyes were that darker blue again, so it was going to be all right. She had asked to work in the hospital with him. Her hand was pressing his hand. It was going to be all right. “No more darns,” he said, smiling at her. “You can count on me, you know that now, don't you?”

“I know I can.” She put her hand up to her forehead. “I knew I could from the beginning. It was only Mother who was dubious about you, Dr. Krop. It was Mother who made me telephone you and—break up our partnership this noon.”

“What?”

“Her ghost. Her ghost walked—up and down—not clanking chains, just pursing her lips the way she did when she didn't think much of an idea. Her nostrils always pinched, her mouth pursed—After you left Mother kept walking up and down with that dubious expression, telling me I was being a credulous fool to put myself in your power. Isn't that preposterous—Mother? Under the circumstances?”

Under the circumstances, he told her, the quicker she got rid of her mother's house and got out the better.

“It is not my mother's house, it is my house.” Her nostrils pinched. Her mouth pursed. “It is my house, Dr. Krop.”

Chapter II

Milton should have guessed that Jenny would go and see Sloane. The evening before Jenny had been waiting up for him when he came home from an A.M.A. meeting. She had already opened up the Hide-a-Bed and made it up for him and was lying on it in her nightgown with what looked like Buddy's school sweater thrown over her shoulders. The thought of Jenny lying on his bed, warming the sheets for him, made him uncomfortable and he frowned at her. “Lie somewhere else, can't you?”

She didn't stir. “Where were you, Milt?”

“Did you need me?”

“No, as it happened, I didn't, but if I had needed you I wouldn't have known where to reach you.”

“Well, as it happened, I took in a meeting at the A.M.A.”

“That's right,” she said, sitting up. “I forgot. A.M.A. meeting tonight, I forgot. Anyhow, you weren't at a meeting last night. You were at the Haunted House.”

“For the love of Mike, Jenny, don't talk like the other biddies. It's not a haunted house.”

“Well,” she said, stretching her leg, pointing her toe, “you haunt it.”

“How much do you charge to haunt a house? That was a joke, wasn't it, son? Lie somewhere else, will you?” She had red nail polish on her toes.

Jenny jumped off the bed and smoothed the blanket. Her hands had more flesh on them than Miss Folsom's had, and, of course, red polish.

“What do you charge to haunt a house, Milt? You must have made twenty visits since the old lady died, but I gather you don't charge anything or I'd have had a decent bill to send on the first. What gives, Milt?”

He should have guessed that when he wouldn't give Jenny any satisfaction she would go and find out for herself. Sloane told him right off that Jenny had come barging in that morning when he was safely making his calls.

Sloane said, “She called you ‘Milt.'”

“Well, my name is Milton.”

“Milton, yes, John Milton.”

“Milt isn't as bad as what her kids call me. You can guess what they call me!” She couldn't, apparently. “From on television? Radio? ‘Uncle Miltie,' you know.” But Sloane had never heard of Milton Berle. “Well, I never heard of John Milton. Who's John Milton?” She told him. She put her hand over his eyes.

“Blind Milton! ‘When I consider how my light is spent ere half my days in this dark world and wide.'”

The sense of the quotation hit Milton suddenly. “When I consider how my light is spent ere half my days—” He took the hand off his eyes and held it to his cheek. “Why did you say that?”

“Why, why? I don't know any more of it. Milton—
John
—isn't my boy!”

“Why did you say that to me? What did Jenny tell you about me?” They were in the small room downstairs which was where they generally stayed. It had four big windows, clear glass, not stained like some of the others, so it wasn't as dark. The walls weren't panelled in here and it wasn't as crowded with big old dark furniture and breakable knickknacks. Here there were books on the tables and a mending basket (like the one his mother used to have) and a bowl with colored wools in it and some blue knitting Sloane was ripping out spilled over the side; it was more homelike here and he didn't mind this room as much as the others. “Tell me what Jenny said, Sloane.”

“She told me the circumstances in which your brother had left her and the children and how you had nobly stepped in and supported them. Your sister-in-law had apparently heard some gossip. You have been seen coming in here—although by whom—”

The women at the gates weren't blind, deaf and dumb, he told Sloane. “That's by whom.”

“It would seem that you are blind, deaf and dumb, blind Milton—about women, anyhow. You are a babe in arms where women are concerned. You are apt to mistake sympathy for love. A lot more of the same, she told me.”

No, Jenny wouldn't have told her about him because you didn't tell patients about their doctor's life expectation. Unreasonable or not, patients didn't like a doctor who—well, physician, heal thyself, the saying went. How could you heal them, patients thought, if you couldn't heal yourself? No, Jenny cared too much about her bread and butter to spill about him.

“So Jenny thinks I've never been in love? I don't know from nothing?” Blind, blind Milton, she whispered, and because the quotation had really sent him, because she had quoted it as if she knew, because he did feel close to her, like her, he began talking about the Browning girl. If he had tried to make love he'd have done a lousy job, probably, but this way, with what the poem did to him, with talking about the Browning girl—Sloane must have been able to hear his sincerity because when he stopped she laid the hand he had been holding against his lips, which was a soft, a real girl kind of thing to do.

“And I remind you of her—Browning?”

The brown mare, the Browning house, the parties, the convertible, the four-car garage, this one could have those things by lifting her little finger. Côte D'Azur, she could have that. “You reminded me of her from the first,” he said.

“Your sister-in-law—”

“Jenny!” Jenny didn't consider how his light was spent. Jenny had to run him. Down to the ground. What did she want, Jenny? What was she putting her two cents in for? “My sister-in-law doesn't happen to know you have a nickel to your name. She's afraid you'll take the bread out of her mouth, my sister-in-law!”

“She told me about her boy—the plans she has. I could help with the boy.”

“No,” he said roughly, “none of that.”

“I could help out with your sister-in-law.”

That was a laugh, pay him off by giving Jenny money! “None of that.”

Now she kissed the palm of his hand. “What can I do, then?” And when she saw how she had startled Milton by taking the initiative that way, going straight to the point, she began to laugh.

(He had been telling himself every time he saw her not to rush it. Three weeks was nothing, he had told himself, he'd ruin everything if he rushed it, he had to go slow—and now—) His face showed his thought. She pointed at his face.

“What a fix it has been in, hasn't it?” she asked. “Literally
The Doctor's Dilemma
. Shaw,” she said, “Uncle Miltie Shaw, darling! The poor, poor doctor's been between Scylla and Charybdis. Certainly if you—couchezed avec a good girl you should make it right. But if the girl is in mourning—if the girl is rich.… But darling Milton,” she whispered, “I am not really in mourning. Oh, there are bad dreams, darling, when I need you near me because you know, because you're the only one—and there are … other dreams when I also need you near me.” His mouth was hanging open and she put her hand under his chin and gently closed it. “Don't bother puzzling it out, dear blind Milton—will you marry me?”

He sat with his arm around her and squeezed her to him. She leaned her head against him and he could smell the faint odor of her hair. She must shampoo it with Ivory soap, he thought. Ivory soap, for the love of Mike! Because that was one more thing he didn't understand about her. She was wearing the same old black dress and her hair skinned back the same old way and no make-up. Having asked him to come to see her right after lunch, having known what she was going to talk about, how could any female woman do so little to make herself attractive to a man? He could imagine what Cissie Parker would have done in similar circumstances.

“Yes?” Sloane asked.

He must have looked as if he was going to say something. “You know what I'm going to give you for an engagement present?”

“Not a ring, Milton, please. I don't ever wear jewelry.”

“I couldn't afford to give you jewelry.” He got off the sofa and knelt in front of her, taking her face between his two hands. “What is it you don't have? Anyhow, as far as I can see, you don't have it. What is it every other girl beginning at twelve years of age has? What did the Browning girl have that you don't have?” She couldn't seem to guess. He whispered, “A lipstick.”

He was engaged. He hadn't fumbled the ball. He had to tell someone. He wondered what the women at the gate would say if he told them. He should tell them, he had one of them to thank for passing on the good word to Jenny. Mrs. Levinson, probably. He nodded to Mrs. Levinson and asked about her Michael, then got into the car and turned its nose toward home.

Home, hell!

Because he was excited, he didn't ring the bell but used his key and let himself in. The minute he opened the door there was a kind of scurry along the back hall, a door opened and was immediately closed. He got there quickly enough to see that it was his closet door she had opened and shut. Jenny was standing in the entrance to the bathroom.

“Oh, it's you,” she said, “that's O.K. I thought it was Bud.”

He flung his closet door open and reached up for the suitcase and felt to see if she had left the straps undone, but if she had opened them, she had fastened them again.

Jenny had come away from the bathroom and was standing right behind Milton. “What do you want out of the valise, Milt?”

“What did you want in my closet? My God, all the privacy I have in this place is in this closet, but you have to stick your nose in there, too!”

She said, “Now, listen here, Milt—” but then remembered that he had to be handled with kid gloves. “Now, Milt,” she said, and reaching into the closet took out a bottle, showing him that it was peroxide. “All it was, I was touching up my hair, Milt. When you came in I figured it was Bud, so I wanted to quick hide the evidence.” She held the open bottle of peroxide under his nose so he could smell it. “It's dumb, but I don't want Bud to know I touch up my hair a little.”

He closed his closet door, shoving her back away from it.

“I won't go near your closet if it's so private. I thought you just kept clothes there. In the future, I won't go near it. You can put away your own clean socks and B.V.D.'s if that suits you better, Milt.” She smiled at him. “I don't poke my nose where it doesn't belong.”

“Don't you? Oh, boy!” But he was in a good humor. “Okay to come in?” He followed her to the bathroom.

“Sure, come in, Milt.”

She had wrapped absorbent cotton around the rattail of his comb, he saw, but he should worry now about the way nothing was sacred to Jenny. “Oh, don't you poke your nose where it doesn't concern you!”

She laid his comb down on the sink and faced him. “I gather she told you I went there this morning.”