The Nakeds (12 page)

“Didn’t you move far away, Dr. Teller?” Eddie said. “My mom said that you’re not a Jew anymore or at least you don’t want to be one. She said that us Jews don’t really have a choice, though. We are what we are—that’s what my mom says.”

“Is that right?” Asher said.

“She said that you’re never coming back, that you’re running toward the hills.”

“Well, I—” her dad began, but he was interrupted by Eddie’s friend, who looked annoyed, standing by the teeter-totter with a hand on his hip, screaming Eddie’s name.

“I got to go,” Eddie said. And then over his shoulder, “I’ll see you at school, Hannah.”

As soon as Eddie left, Hannah asked her dad, “If my leg’s not broken anymore, what’s wrong with it?” She kicked at the air with her good leg and didn’t look at him, but stared straight ahead.

“These things take time,” he said.

And that was becoming the phrase she hated more than any other phrase because she knew it was a lie and that when people said
these things take time
they really meant
these things might take time
or
these things might not happen at all.
What they were saying is that you needed to be patient regardless, and Hannah thought that was wrong because people shouldn’t be told to wait for what might never come. It was like waiting for her dad to call out to her from the other room when he wasn’t even in the house, when he didn’t even live there anymore.

MARTIN WAS
walking toward the nurses’ station and thinking about Penny’s hips. And then there they were, and the rest of her too, coming down the hall. There she was in her white nurse dress and boxy nurse hat and spongy nurse shoes. Just as he was imagining her naked, she approached, slapping his chest playfully with patient charts. “What are you thinking about, Marty?” she said, coyly.

He shrugged, smiling.

“Thought so,” she said, smiling too.

He asked about the boyfriend she had mentioned the last time they had talked.

“He doesn’t love me anymore,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Then he’s a fool,” he said.

“Peter doesn’t listen to a single thing I say. I’ll be talking about a patient and he’ll be staring at his fingernails like he’s never seen them before, or he’ll be reading the instructions on the coffeemaker. He makes the coffee every morning and still he’ll be studying those stupid instructions like they’re the key to his damn future.” She paused. She looked at him. “One door closes and another one . . .” her voice trailed off.

“What do you mean?” he said, although he knew exactly what she meant.

“There’s you standing here,” she said.

•  •  •

Did it occur to Penny that he was the one who hit Hannah that morning? He wasn’t sure. He thought that maybe she’d thought of it and then pushed it away, that she didn’t admit it to herself on any conscious level, or maybe she admitted it but, as is the way with attraction, was able to ignore it or pretend it wasn’t so, so that only the good feelings surfaced. Obviously, Penny knew he was a guy who kept coming around the hospital even though he didn’t want anyone to know he was coming around, and that he had left gifts for Hannah, although he didn’t want anyone to know that he had left those gifts.

Penny had told him that gift-givers always wanted credit and that they rarely left gifts without some sort of card or note attached. She said that not wanting credit was one of the most attractive things about him.

“Wait,” Penny said now, stepping in front of Martin to get to the little gate that gave her access to the nurses’ station. She tapped the gate open with a swaying hip and dropped her charts on the counter. She walked over to the far side of the station, and then stood on her tiptoes, getting something from a top shelf. He watched her calves flex and thought about kissing her. She pulled a white bag from the shelf and scooted it over to him.

“What’s this?” He opened the bag and immediately smelled cinnamon. “You remembered,” he said.

He liked the way her face was older than his face, with faint lines that only made her more beautiful. He liked the way she talked and walked. He liked what she knew about bodies—and how she talked about her patients. He liked her optimism, the fact that she believed they were very near curing cancer when everyone knew that they were nowhere near curing it. And he liked the way she talked about curing cancer, saying
we,
as in
we’re
very close—as if she herself, Nurse Penny, was at the forefront of the research. “We’re just this close,” she said, putting her two fingers an inch apart.

“You keep coming around here,” she said. And again, “You’re pretty like a girl, Martin Kettle.” She used both his names which seemed to him old-fashioned or charming, and her face wasn’t like any face he knew, certainly not Margo’s face, which seemed like a dumb girl’s next to Penny’s.

“Why nursing?” he asked.

“Because it’s a good thing to do with your life,” she said, looking like she meant it. “I was thinking about becoming a veterinarian because I like animals, but, you know, I like people more.”

Martin smiled.

“I know you wait tables at your parents’ restaurants, but what else? What are you going to be?” she asked him.

He shrugged and turned away, looking toward the hall where a patient on a gurney was struggling with a couple of orderlies. It was nearly one a.m. and Martin asked why the guy was even awake.

“They’re on their way downstairs,” she said, twirling a finger by her ear to indicate the guy was crazy.

“Oh,” Martin said.

The guy was trying to get up off the gurney, he was screaming about his wife, who, Penny told Martin, had long been dead.

“I want to see my wife,” the patient said, and then he fell back on the gurney and seemed to fall asleep.

“What do you want to be?” Penny asked again.

Martin thought about the question.

I want to be a better man.

I want to be the man who didn’t hit the girl.

I want to be who I was before I hit the girl.

I want to be a man who hit the girl and then got out of his car to make sure she was breathing.

I want to be a man who didn’t hit the girl, but stopped by the side of the road, and held her, a man who gave her mouth-to-mouth and brought her back to life.

“I’ll probably go into the restaurant business. Like my dad. It’s in my blood,” he said, trying to sound convincing. He took a bite of the cinnamon roll, which wasn’t warm, but it was tasty anyway.

A buzzer went off and Penny jumped to attention, looking at the blinking panel in front of her, figuring out what patient, what bed. “Mrs. Ryan probably wants a pain pill,” she said. “She had spinal surgery a few days ago. Sweetest woman. Hardly ever complains. I’ll be right back.” Penny snatched a chart from the counter. “Wait here, eat that,” she told him over her shoulder.

When she returned from attending to Mrs. Ryan, Martin asked her questions about Hannah and Penny answered them. She told him that Hannah had just turned seven, on July 16, and that she’d gone through a lot: a ruptured spleen, a fractured femur. And worse, something too complicated to explain was wrong with her leg, Penny said, something more serious that would afflict the girl forever. Hannah would limp really badly or, more likely, never walk again. When Martin heard that, he felt sick and guilty all over again. He took a step back. It was one thing to hit the girl, but another to maim her for life.

“Do you know her, Marty?” Penny said, suspiciously. “I thought you said you didn’t know her.”

“I don’t,” he said, adamant.

“Hmm,” she said.

“I swear,” he insisted.

“Don’t swear.”

“My sister, Sandy, knows her, that’s all.”

“Feels like something else,” she said.

Martin got himself together, made himself stand up straight and look her in the eye. “It’s just sad if the kid can’t walk—will never walk again. Any kid,” he said.

THIS TIME
, there was no music, no crackers or soft cheese, no little meatballs to stab with toothpicks. From where Hannah stood eavesdropping in the hall, she could see the coffee table, an unopened bottle of wine, and two empty glasses. Dr. Seth’s jacket was thrown over the arm of the couch, his black leather doctor bag at his feet, and his shiny shoes. She could see her mom’s shoes too, trendy platforms, her pretty ankles crossed. And she could see the shag carpet that, despite her mother’s mad rush to vacuum, looked tired, matted down, and dirty.

Earlier in the day Dr. Bell had removed her cast and made her another one, which was brand-new, bright white and smooth.

Earlier, Hannah and Nina were hopeful for a good ten minutes, thinking that Hannah’s foot was all straightened out.

Despite the twisting of the little wheel at night, despite the fact that Hannah never forgot, not once, to do it, her foot turned and moved right before their eyes, flopping back out, the toes pointing away from Hannah and her mother and Dr. Bell too, as if they knew they were guilty and were trying to get the hell out of there.

“I don’t know what will happen to her,” her mom said now. “If that ridiculous cast didn’t work, why would this one?”

“These things take time,” Dr. Seth said.

Hannah rolled her eyes. Why was everyone saying the same dumb thing?

“I need to talk to you, Nina,” he said then.

“The house finally sold,” her mom said, cutting him off.

“Good, good,” he said, absently.

“We’ll be able to buy the house in Long Beach now. Long Beach has sidewalks. And there’s a house I’ve already got picked out. It’s got a cottage in the back for a housekeeper, or maybe I’ll rent it out to a college student, someone to drive Hannah to school.”

Hannah couldn’t see Dr. Seth’s face, but she could tell from his silence that he wasn’t giving her mother what she needed, the sort of attention he’d given to her when Nina stood by Hannah’s hospital bed, when he didn’t really know her yet.

“I need to get home by dinnertime because Evelyn’s cooking. And my daughter has a summer-school project she needs help with.”

“I understand,” she said.

“The kid’s always waiting until the last minute—she’s like her mother that way.”

“Sure,” she said. There was a long silence. “Could you look at the air conditioner before you leave, Seth? It’ll just take a minute.”

“I don’t think I . . .”

“Please,” Nina said. “It’s so hot. It’s terrible for Hannah in that cast, stuck in the house all day.”

“I don’t know much about air conditioners,” he said.

“It’ll just take a minute. Please,” she said.

Hannah peered around and saw that her mom was wearing hot pants, the short, silky tie-dyed things that embarrassed Hannah. She had the same ridiculous outfit in red and blue. Dr. Seth had said that he liked the blue outfit better than the red one, and so her mom had been buying lots of blue these days. Blue blouses and blue nightgowns and blue jeans and blue T-shirts. She heard her mom get up from the couch and she heard Dr. Seth get up too. She heard him sigh. She heard her mom leading him into the family room to look at the air conditioner, and so she followed them.

“Hey there,” her mom said.

“How are you doing?” Dr. Seth asked, turning to glance at Hannah. “Getting around on those things OK?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Hannah’s doing really well. I’m so proud of her,” her mom said.

“Don’t know much about air conditioners,” Dr. Seth said again.

“Please,” Nina said. “Just look at it.”

“Let’s see here,” he said. He was huffing and sighing and sweating. He shook his head.

Nina offered to get him a screwdriver, but he refused. “Asher left his tool kit in the garage,” she said. “If you—”

He exhaled heavily, obviously burdened.

“His tools are there and I’m sure—”

“Hey, listen,” he interrupted her.

“OK, you don’t need it.” She held up her hands. “OK, OK. You don’t need to use his tools. I understand.” She was nervous, talking fast—time was running out and she had so many words to say. “You’ll do just fine with what we have here. I’m sure you will. You’ll make do. If anyone can do it, you can. I know you. You’re so smart,” she said, “you can do anything.”

“Look, I need to tell you—” he began.

“Don’t say it,” she said.

“No, I need to—”

But she cut him off again. “Please,” she said. “Please, Seth. Please, please.” She looked as if she was about to cry, her eyes welling up.

Hannah felt sorry and embarrassed and angry at her mother. She went back to the living room and tried not to listen to them, but she couldn’t escape their words or her mother’s voice cracking or Dr. Seth’s voice becoming louder and deeper and more impatient.

And moments later, he was banging on the air conditioner with a fist. He was looking hard at Nina. “I’m going to tell you something,” he said.

Nina said nothing. She sat down at the dining room table and didn’t say a word.

“I’m a doctor, a surgeon, a professional, not a technician—you’re going to need to get someone else to fix this damn thing.”

“Seth,” she said. “Please,” she said.

He ignored her, stomped back to the living room, where he ignored Hannah too, and picked up his black bag from the carpet.

“I can’t fix it,” he said at the front door, and somehow, it was certain, he couldn’t fix anything. And he wouldn’t be back again even to try.

MARTIN AND
Penny sat together on a bench in the nurses’ locker room. It was dinnertime at the hospital and Penny was on her break. They could hear orderlies rolling their carts down the hall and the muffled voices of visitors saying good-bye and making their way to the elevators.

Martin warned her. He told her he was leaving California and had no intention of ever coming back. He admitted he’d been saving his tips for years in a shoebox underneath his bed. “I want to start fresh,” he said.

“Start fresh, huh?”

“If I were willing to stick around, it would be for you,” he said.

“Me?” She perked up, hopeful.

“
If
,” he stressed. He shook his head. “
If
I were willing to stick around. But I’m not. I can’t. It was a decision I made before I met you.”