Wonderland (51 page)

“Got a call that somebody tried to kill himself,” the ambulance driver was telling Jesse excitedly, “but Jesus, what a surprise! I almost puked! Had to carry him right out through the lobby of the Palmer House, bleeding like a pig!”

Jesse blinked.

It crossed his mind that he had not paid for the cheese sandwich he had eaten that night.

In a few minutes the bleeding was under control, the man hooked up; his trousers in a bloody clump underfoot, as if they had been part of him, amputated and discarded. Jesse felt as if he were being blown along on a rich gust of wind, an element that was boisterous and good. Around him were shaky, exhausted people. They looked sick. Almost as pale as the man on the table. But Jesse was lightheaded and he could not help gloating:
Nobody is going to die tonight if I can help it
. Mopping himself off, he looked around the messy room, its glinting metallic surfaces, its splatterings of blood that were like exclamation marks, and everything seemed to him manageable now, in his power, a sacred area he had mastered.
Nobody is going to die
.…

“Where did she go?” Jesse cried.

The young woman was gone.

They ran out into the corridor. She was gone. One of the nurses went down to a women’s lavatory but it was empty.

“Where did she go? What happened?” Jesse asked.

He had to make out the report with the help of the ambulance attendant and the man’s wallet, fished out of his bloody trousers. Jesse was writing up the report when Milton Kuzma came in.

“Jesse,” he said. It was more than a greeting. Jesse glanced up, a little confused. Milton was wearing street clothes and for an instant Jesse did not recognize him. “Jesse.… Everyone’s talking about what happened here; it’s really a mess, it looks like a mess.… But look, Jesse, there’s nothing to worry about,” he said, laying his hand on Jesse’s arm while Jesse tried to keep part of his attention on the report form, “the fact is I came over to get you because of Helene, but there’s nothing to worry about, everything is normal and regular.… Jesse? Helene started having pains a few hours ago and she called us, and Susan drove her to Women’s Hospital. She couldn’t get hold of you. It’s all right, Jesse, everything is under control, don’t worry.… Blazack knows about it and he’s on his way, at this time of the morning … I think that’s pretty damn good of him.… Jesse, are you listening? The contractions are close together now—so, Jesse—look, Jesse, I’ll cover for you now and you can go to the hospital. Women’s Hospital, right? You know what to do? I told the taxi to wait out back and he’s going to wait for you.”

“What did you say?” Jesse said, looking up.

“Put that thing down, come upstairs with me and take a shower and change your clothes. You’ve got enough time,” Milton said sternly. “Come on. There’s nothing to worry about but you’d better get over there as soon as you can. She’s a few weeks early.…”

Jesse could not understand what this man was talking about. It was strange to see him in this part of the hospital in ordinary street clothes; Milton looked diminished and trivial. He needed a shave.

“There was a girl here, a witness, who walked out,” Jesse said, dazed. “She just walked out. She had blond hair and blood all over.…”

“Come on, Jesse, let’s get you showered and fixed up. You’re going to be a father.”

“What?”

Jesse allowed himself to be led to the elevator. His eye was still sore. He began to rub it slowly. His hand was like a large clumsy paw now, just an ordinary hand, stained with drying blood.

“Susan is with her and Blazack must be there by now,” Milton said. “There’s a taxi waiting for you in back. I told him to be damned sure to wait. I’ve already paid him.”

“I forgot to pay you for that sandwich,” Jesse said suddenly.

“What sandwich?”

“It must have been a quarter,” Jesse said. “It was cheese.”

Jesse reached in his pocket to get some change, but Milt pushed his hand away.

“What, what? Jesse, you’re out of your mind!”

“But I owe you a quarter—”

Milt gripped him by the shoulders and shook him.

“Will you wake up! Will you listen to me? You’re going to be a father!”

Jesse stared at him raggedly. They were ascending in the elevator and everything was eerie and weightless. A father. A
father
. “Did you say a father? A father?” Jesse asked. A strange word. Strange sound. He could not remember having spoken it out loud before.
Father. Father Father
.

“… a
father
?” Jesse whispered.

One spring day in 1955, Jesse was taking his daughter Jeanne to a pediatrician on Adams Street when he saw someone he recognized. He thought he recognized her: a woman waiting to cross the street, her face in profile. He had seen her somewhere before. His heart tripped suddenly; there was an intimacy between him and that woman, something that had happened under stress, nagging and unforgettable … yet he could not quite remember.

He paused to stare at her. She wore a fawn-colored spring coat, tailored and simple, and the flesh of her legs seemed to ripple in the cool spring air of Chicago, muscular and smooth. Or did he imagine this? Her flesh seemed to shiver as if she were aware of him. She wore no gloves. No rings. She wore no hat either—her long, thick blond hair was ruffled by the wind, and as Jesse watched she reached up to press it down against the side of her throat in a gesture that seemed somehow familiar to Jesse.

Had she been a patient of his?

His daughter tugged at his hand. “Daddy …?”

Jesse was still watching the woman. He saw that his attention had
begun to draw her attention, that she glanced nervously toward him. Yet their eyes did not meet. She glanced away, troubled. And yet her face seemed to be turned toward his, lifting itself toward his gaze like a flower drawn by the sun, the petals ripening.

A striking woman. A surprise: as if Jesse had known her when she hadn’t been so beautiful.

Jeanne was nudging his legs.

“Just a minute, honey,” Jesse said.

She pressed against him and pulled at his hand. Ready to cry. All morning she had been crying off and on because she hated Dr. Leventhal. “It’s all right, Jeanne,” Jesse said gently, vaguely, while he tried to figure out where he had met that woman and whether she might remember him. He wondered if she might be the wife of a doctor. But no, he didn’t think so. He didn’t think she was anyone’s wife.

It angered him that he could not remember her.

At the hospital he had the reputation of a man who remembered everything. He could remember patients’ histories, medical records, charts, though he had seen them only once; he could keep miscellaneous items in his head for weeks. If a patient was readmitted after having been out of the hospital for several months, Jesse could recall at once the oddities of the case, the patient’s name and family.… He was unable to explain this talent of his, which was nothing he had especially desired or had trained himself in, but he was certain of it; it was permanent. And yet this woman was a puzzle to him.

Now she glanced at him, as if accidentally. She saw Jeanne. A kind of smile appeared on her face—tentative and cautious—and as the light changed from red to green she made a movement to step off the curb.

“Wait,” said Jesse suddenly, “wait—”

The woman stared at him. She hesitated. Jesse said hello, forcing himself to smile at her, to comfort her—what a beautiful face this young woman had! “Hello, I think we’ve met,” he said. He was so accustomed to ugly people that this girl’s beauty was a pleasure to him. He did not want to lose her so quickly.

She said nothing. She looked frankly and curiously at him.

“I’m Jesse Vogel. Don’t you remember me?”

He put out his hand. The gesture was so direct that she almost
returned it; she almost shook his hand. She stood very still, looking down at Jeanne, up at Jesse again, trying to figure out who this man and his daughter were, her expression still cautious. She had a very fair face, framed by heavy blond hair that was brushed back from her forehead and fell loosely onto her shoulders. It was a thick, exaggerated style. It had the effect of weighing her down. Her face was oval, the bones of her cheeks prominent and somewhat emphasized by the clear, whitish air. Her nose was long, pale, almost white at its tip. There was an impersonal, almost unhuman waxiness to her nose and chin. But her cheekbones were high and fair and of a good color, and her lips were darkened in the bright red style of the day, outlined and filled in with a shade the color of berries. She was a tall woman in her late twenties.

She laughed to disguise her confusion. “Should I know you?” she said.

An airy, girlish voice. Jesse did not recognize it.

“Yes, I’m Jesse Vogel. Dr. Vogel,” he said, “and this is my little girl, Jeanne. But you’ve never met Jeannie.… You and I have met, don’t you remember me?”

“Dr. Vogel …?”

She brushed hair out of her eyes. Sighing as if exasperated with herself, or with Jesse, she bent to shake hands with Jeannie, “Hello, Jeannie Vogel,” she said in the same, airy, insincere voice. “How are you on this windy morning?”

Jeannie pressed against her father’s legs, shy.

“I’m afraid I don’t remember your name,” Jesse said.

“It’s Reva.”

“Reva …?”

She straightened, laughing. Her gaze moved away from Jesse and onto something behind him, as if she thought all this very crazy, very arrogant. It was clear that she was a woman not afraid of men, that she admired Jesse for his nerve. Jesse smiled deeply, grateful for her laughter and her good clean, even white teeth. Year of asking questions had given him the confident air of an authority who expects to be answered and who must be answered.

“Reva Denk. But I thought you knew me,” she said.

“Everything but your name.…” Jesse said.

Now they shook hands.

The girl drew her hand back nervously. People passed around them, strangers, nudging them closer together. Jesse felt as if he were close to an important revelation. But—but he could not quite understand what it might be—And now the girl was about to escape him, because there was no reason for her to hesitate any longer; the giddy momentum of their meeting had about run its course, and not even Jeanne’s presence could keep her talking to him any longer.…

“Well—good-by, Doctor,” she said.

She narrowed her eyes mockingly to let him know that he had taken advantage of her. Again Jesse’s heart tripped. But—but—

“It’s so strange that we’ve forgotten each other,” Jesse said seriously.

He did not smile.

The young woman backed away, no longer smiling, recoiling from his severity. She walked quickly away. Jesse watched her and saw her on the other side of the street, in a jumble of people, glance back at him once and then turn away.

She disappeared.

“Who was that? Why did we stop?” Jeanne whined.

Jesse stooped to pick her up in his arms, feeling he must comfort her. He was strangely excited. His mood was mixed up somehow with the whirling of the bright cool air and the hodge-podge of people around them, all of them strangers. No one knew. No one had seen.

He carried his daughter the half block to Leventhal’s office, talking in their private “pet-talk” to her, which pleased her and put all fear out of her mind.

The next morning. Seven forty-five. He was going over an unpleasant case with Dr. Perrault in Perrault’s office at the hospital.

At first Perrault sat facing the window, stubborn and squinting in the sunshine. He was a thin man with a cast of features that put Jesse in mind of a statue—a death mask, something from an earlier century, rigidly preserved. Very neat, thinning dark hair, combed back from his sizable forehead, always moist, as if he had just flicked a wet comb through it. There were pale but rather prominent veins on his temples, which jerked as he squinted into the sunlight. Finally he sneezed. Then he shoved his chair angrily over to the window and turned his back to the light. But now Jesse had to shade his eyes in order to look at Perrault.

“I am forcing you to go blind, eh?” Perrault said. He had a husky voice. “Excuse me. I sometimes forget that I’m not alone. It’s just as my wife says—I forget that I’m not alone in the universe.”

He moved his swivel chair impatiently over to the wall.

“Is that better?” he asked.

“Everything is fine,” Jesse said.

“Oh—fine! Yes, everything is fine. Of course.”

He let his hand fall heavily on the folder in his lap. A small bitter smile showed itself fleetingly. Perrault had handsome firm lips, the lower lip especially strong. His chin might have been the chin of a much larger man. There was a tightness about it, a severity, that made Jesse think Perrault was always holding himself back, holding his words back.

“Well,” Jesse said hesitantly, “there has been some improvement.… He should be dead by now.”

“Yes. Improvement. That is what we mean by improvement,” Perrault said slowly.

He had a deep, throaty voice, almost a whisper. Out of that intimate voice his soul sometimes leaped: Jesse tried not to flinch.

“We knew … we knew before we operated.…” Jesse said. There were certain words that were always spoken. Saying them was a ritual, a way of growing older. A way of growing fatherly.