The Lady and Her Doctor (8 page)

“You gathered right, goosie, goosie, gather! Whither don't you wather! But you gathered wrong if you thought you were throwing a monkey wrench into the works this time. You gathered wrong if you thought if you went over there and made a poor mouth Sloane would have nothing to do with me!”

“Who?”

“Sloane. Sloane Folsom.”

“Sloane!”

“It's a very high-class name, in case you don't know. Sloane Krop to be!”

Her face became red. Jenny had parted her hair to touch it up. Milt could see her scalp turning bright pink, like an infant about to cry, he thought.

“Milt—I saw her. Sure I went to see her because I had to make sure it was like I suspected. You suddenly paying attention to her this way, since the day I broke it up with the Parker kid. Aw, Milt, you told me yourself—a nothing, a mouse, a born old maid. You said that yourself. You said she never had a word to say for herself. And now I saw her, Milt—I saw for myself she's not for you, Milt. It's crazy. It's just rebound, Milt, that's all. She's not your type girl. It's all on account of what I did with the Parker kid, rebound and revenge on me!”

Milton smiled, picked up his comb, pulled the damp cotton off the rattail and flushed it down the toilet.

“Why do you want to cut off your nose to spite my face, Milt? Hair pulled back, no make-up. I know what you like, Milt! Not like the little Parker kid—And don't think for a minute this one is weak and helpless just because she never has a word to say for herself. Maybe the reason she isn't married is men aren't fooled so easy.”

“I can handle her.”

“So you say.”

“Without any help from you.”

“Milt! Don't act as if I was your enemy.”

“I only said stay out of my hair. I can get along without your help. I don't want your help.”

“It's nuts to marry her.”

“It's nuts she should marry me is more like it.”

“Who are you telling that to? I saw her, Milt. Who do you think she is, the Venus de Milo?”

“I think she is Sloane Folsom, that's who I think.”

“Please think it over, Milt. Please don't rush into this.”

“This is so sudden, you mean, Jenny? That's for the bride to say. I'm not asking you to marry me.”

“Don't be so fresh!” She began to cry and turned away. The peroxide was running down her forehead so she turned to the sink and began mopping it up with absorbent cotton, getting herself under control. “I'm glad we got the double Hide-a-Bed, Milt.” (I told you so!) “That's one good thing, I'm glad I wouldn't listen to you with your single, single! I'll put Bud's things in with mine and she can have Bud's closet. Your wife. If you'd rather, you two can have Bud's room and he can sleep in the waiting room—only he's so sloppy with his things—Well, what I'm trying to say is we'll make out, Milt, if that's what you want.”

“Already putting Dr. and Mrs. Krop where you think we should go, huh?” He walked out into the hall and gestured for her to follow him. “Nobody's asking you where we should go. Come on, sit down. You're going to get the shock of your life, Jenny.” He marched into the consultation room and sat behind his desk, motioning Jenny to take the patient's seat. He picked up the letter opener that said Merck and Company on it and tapped his palm with it, like a big businessman. “All set? Hold tight. We're not going to move in here.”

“You're going
there?
To the Haunted House?”

“For the time being,” he said, “for the time being!”

“But what about when they take it away? The bank? Whoever owns it?”

“Nobody's taking it away. I'm giving you all this, Jenny.” He waved with the letter opener at the desk, the chair she was sitting on, the secondhand examining table he and Jenny had enameled, the old-fashioned glass instrument case, the third-hand diathermy, the fluoroscope he had just finished paying out for on time. “It's all yours. You can save this stuff for Bud, but if you'll take my advice, you'll get rid of it. Now this is what I'm going to do.” He paused to savor that. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had been able to say, “This is what I'm going to do.” “I'm going to turn over what I have in the bank to you. Every penny, because you'll need it. The insurance—well, being in your name, when the time comes, you get it. If you can get anything for my lousy practice, you're welcome to it, although I doubt that. In other words, Jenny, everything I have is yours—except me.”

“You haven't got good sense, Milt.” She leaned forward earnestly. “How will you live? What will you do? What is this, a marriage or a suicide pact?” She banged her hands down on her strong thighs. “If you ask me—which you're not—that's what I'd nominate your Sloane for—the girl I'd choose to commit suicide with! No, seriously, Milt, how will you live?”

He savored that. “How will I live? How will I live? I'll tell you, Jenny: I'll live. At least I'll begin to live before I stop.” He pointed at Jenny with the letter opener. “You call this living? I don't call this living. But now—Jenny, Sloane is a rich girl, an heiress. They are offering $110,000 for the house, Jenny, and that's just the beginning. She's loaded, get that through your head!”

Jenny put her hand to her head as if his command were an impossibility. “But I saw her,” she said flatly. “What are you giving me, Milt? Rich? I saw the Haunted House. Rich! Loaded!”

“Her mother was one of those misers, Jenny. You read about them in the papers all the time—like those brothers, you know. Poor kid!”

“Poor kid—she's kidding you, Milt, she saw you coming! She's taking you for a ride and you're falling for it!” She leaned forward, staring into his face. “No?” He shook his head and something about him made her believe it. “She's an
heiress
? She's rolling in it?” They sat there like that, staring at each other, Jenny blinking, Milton smiling. When Bud shouted for Jenny, they both jumped. Neither of them had heard the door opening.

Bud, having come home from school, wanted something to eat. (He wanted something to eat every day right after school. He said they starved them in that lunchroom.) Jenny hauled herself out of the chair, completely exhausted. “O.K., Bud, I'm coming.” She didn't even ask Bud why he couldn't fix something himself, which she usually did, but, needing time to think, hurried into the kitchen.

Bud said, “Hey, Mom, what's with your hair?”

Jenny was bent over the kitchen table stripping what was left of the chicken they had had last night. She was frowning.

“What's with your hair, Mom?”

“A touch-up. Peroxide,” she said. “Shut up, will you, Bud?” She didn't even notice that Bud wasn't surprised. He had known about the touching-up for years; so had Maureen.

“Mom, put mayonnaise.”

Sighing, Jenny got the mayonnaise. Three weeks ago Milt would have laughed in her face if she had said he would want to marry the girl in the Haunted House. Milt hadn't known she was any heiress then. Two dollar calls, for heaven's sake. Three weeks ago—he was that way about the Parker kid three weeks ago and that was for sure. The day the old lady died in the Haunted House. Yes.

“Will you please give over that sandwich, Mom? I'm waiting.”

“Shut up, Bud.” That had been the day the old lady died, yes. That had been the day the letter came from the Equitable saying they wouldn't insure Milt. The same day. First the letter and then Milt being sore at her because she tried to keep him from knowing and getting desperate—

“But I'm starving, Mom.”

“Here,” she said, shoving it at him. When Bud stared because this wasn't like Mom, the way she was acting, Jenny picked up the chicken sandwich and slapped it into his hand. “Pour a glass of milk yourself. Go on to your room, son.” He stared at her. “I said go eat it in your room, Bud. Turn on your radio. Do some homework for a change. Go on. Maureen will be back from school in a minute and then I won't be able to hear myself think. She has choir but she'll be back any minute.”

“You got something there, Mom.” Because he was still staring at his mother while he poured the milk, Bud spilled some of it on the floor, but even this didn't bring Jenny to. Bud spread the milk over the floor with the sole of his shoe and then went into his room.

Jenny lifted the chicken carcass, set it down on the table again, stared at a thickish piece of white meat left on the breast and, pulling it off, began nibbling at it. The day the old lady in the Haunted House died—because of the letter from the Equitable that morning, Milt hadn't been what you would call himself. (Her heart gave a thump and she wiped the grease off her hand on the kitchen tablecloth and pressed her breast.) She had known what it would do to him, to know. She herself had told him, “You'll do something crazy, that's what!” So anything could have happened that day that might not have happened other times. A crazy man. Who knows what a crazy man will do?

So Milt arrived at the Haunted House that way and it's touch and go with the old lady. The girl is hysterical, the girl is crazy, too, that day, don't forget that. When she had telephoned for Milt to hurry over, she had been hysterical, the girl. The girl, Sloane (what a name!) lets it out, or the old lady talks about the money she has. Some way Milt finds out there is money there. He is at the end of his rope and the girl is hysterical.

Why was the girl hysterical? Because of her mother's condition? Since when? Jenny thought. The girl had called up before that day thinking her mother was on her deathbed—two weeks before that day at three in the morning when the old lady had a drug reaction and the girl telephoned Milt emergency, was she hysterical then?

Like fun she was hysterical then! Jenny stared at the clean white skeleton of the chicken and shivered. Ten minutes before hadn't she said to Milt that this sounded more like a suicide pact than a marriage? If it
was
a kind of suicide pact—like psychic, she thought, like second sight! Of course, she thought, of course! Convulsively she tried to swallow the chicken meat because the skeleton of the chicken had become the skeleton of the old woman from the Haunted House. She felt a wave of nausea and ran to the sink to spit the chicken out, rinsing her mouth. Then she ran back to Milton in the consultation room. “Milt,” she said, swallowing because the chicken corpse would not go down, “Milt!” She had to put her hand over her mouth because her lips trembled so. “Milt—I feel funny. Milt, I know you think I'm always patting myself on the back—but have I ever said I'm like psychic, Milt? Like second sight? Well, that's how I feel now, like second sight!”

He had been doodling with the letter opener on the blotter. “That's a new one. What's it got to do with me?”

“Everything, Milt. Suddenly—suddenly you're marrying this girl. Girl—she must be thirty!”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Maybe. Three weeks ago you didn't know she existed, suddenly you're off to Buffalo. Suddenly she's rich. No, you don't have to be psychic, people won't need to be psychic to smell there's something funny going on! I've got to talk to you privately, Milt. You've got to listen to me. A minute, Milt!” She went to the door of the consultation room and called her son. When he answered she said that she and Uncle—Milt, she and his uncle wanted to have a private talk about the condition of a certain sick patient—private, and they didn't want to be disturbed. “When Maureen comes,” she said, “you tell her go make herself one of her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and leave us alone. Strictly alone, Bud, I mean it.” Jenny closed the door, then opened it. “Bud, say I said she can have a Coca-Cola today instead of a glass of milk. It's all right with me, say; she doesn't have to come banging in here.” She closed the door. “That will hold Maureen. She'll be in seventh heaven if I let her have a Coke between meals.” She sat in the patient's chair. Milt still drawing circles with the letter opener worried her—it was like Bud when he should be paying attention for his own good—and she reached for it but Milt pulled it away and shook his head.

Milton didn't even bother looking up. He drawled, “Well, we're private. When is the séance going to start, Mahatma Gandhi?”

“It starts now, Milt. She did it. Sloane.” (How can you call a girl “Sloane”?) “The old lady was D.O.A. but you find out the girl did it. You find out she's an heiress. You tell her you'll cover for her because what have you got to lose? You were fit to be tied that day, Milt, so you figure if the police find out—and maybe they won't, maybe no one ever will—but if they find out, you can end it then, both of you, a suicide pact as I said before. You think: a short life and a merry one. You're a doctor, after all, Milt, there's always morphine.” Now he was at his prescription pad with the letter opener, but listening. He was listening, all right. “What do I care about the old lady, Milt? From all I know about her, whatever she got she probably deserved. Anyhow, she's dead and buried. Rest in peace,” Jenny said, shivering, feeling with her tongue for any remaining bits of chicken.

“Amen.”

“It's you I'm thinking about, Milt, you should know that. Look, I should worry what the girl did or didn't do; I'm no eager beaver running to the cops. I'm not my sister's keeper in other words.”

“Just your brother-in-law's keeper in other words. Jenny, if I did what you think I did I should be behind bars. You should go to the cops with your second sight, Jenny, not to me.”

“Milt!”

“Go to the cops. Put up or shut up.”

“You know you have nothing to fear from me, Milt.”

“My good angel, my good angel!”

“Yes, your good angel. If I'm your good angel, maybe she's your bad angel. Sloane.” She stroked the desk because he would not let her touch him. “Listen, Milt, I saw her. You're putty in her hands, Milt. ‘Ha-ha-ha,' he says! Milt, you're too used to me. My bark is worse than my bite and that's what you're used to. I talk. So when you meet up with a girl like that, you naturally think because she doesn't say much—Milt, with me you know what I'm thinking, do you think you know what she's thinking? Like fun, Milt! With me you know where you stand. Like fun you know where you stand with a girl like that, Milt!”