Best Friends (38 page)

“Peter's making a video next. Daddy offered to let him use his equipment.”

“You mean let Peter film—?”

“In his studio. He's got a regular studio, you know. Cameramen, cinematographers, grips, the works. It's fortunate, because that way Peter can get a professional product.”

I knew what she was talking about, of course: the famous studio in the Valley, where Daddy Rose made his pornographic films. Sally had never been there. She had only an inkling where it was; its location was as clothed in secrecy as a mistresses' apartment. But now her attitude was different. I imagined her parking in the lot beside a low cinder-block building painted an inoffensive tan. I saw her sitting on a stool in a cavernous room, holding up cue cards for her husband, the beds and harnesses and dildoes tossed in a pile out of view of the camera. “Are you going to go up there when Peter films it?”

“Not while I'm pregnant. Although I wouldn't be pregnant, would I, if it weren't for sex? Of course, they always use condoms.” Sally's laugh was tinged with sarcasm, giving me a second of hope, but when she continued, her tone was serious. “Peter and I had dinner last week with Lee Smith, have you heard of her? She's a literary critic-at-large for
Rolling Stone,
Peter knows her from way back, and she said she thought the label of pornography was a class thing. Cultivated people read erotica, not porn. It's the hoi polloi that look at dirty magazines.”

“That's interesting,” I said politely. I was pretty tired of the subject.

“Who's not interested in sex?” she said. “Who would be here if not for sex? People talk about it very freely to a pregnant woman, did you notice that?”

No, I had not noticed that. People didn't talk freely to me, Dr. Mann of Lisbonville, Ohio, great with child and silence and clearly unattached. People talked to me as if they were frightened of the things I might blurt out.

“WHY NOT THIS SPRING ?” she said during another conversation.

“I'll probably wait till the baby's born now.”

“It's been almost a year, Clare. You haven't been here since my wedding.”

“I'm tired of traveling. You haven't been to Ohio very often.”

I think I was trying to goad her. I imagined what she might say: “Are you punishing me somehow? Do you feel like I betrayed you by getting married?” Or “Don't you like me anymore?” Or “Remember when we used to share a half gallon of ice cream back in college? What's happened to us since then?” I wanted something definite, confrontational, something to prove to me she cared. But:

“Yeah,” she said softly, her voice filled with regret.

“Is Peter still playing Beethoven to your belly?”

“Mozart. Beethoven's a little too mature for Peter. Yes. And Peter talks to it. Want to talk to it? Since you won't see it in person for a while. I can hold the phone on my tummy for you.”

Oh, my, I thought.

“Talk to the baby,” Sally said. “Tell it you're its only auntie. Here.” The sound went muffled, and I realized she'd moved the phone.

“Hi, little baby,” I said. “This is your aunt Clare speaking. How do you like it in there? Are you looking forward to being born? Your mother and I used to . . .” After a bit, I started to enjoy it.

Suddenly I heard air through the phone, and Sally's voice returned. “Peter just walked in. I don't want him to think we're crazy.”

“How can he think we're crazy when he plays Beethoven to your belly?”

“Mozart. That's a point. Okay.” She put the phone back, and I talked to the baby some more.

“We're not crazy, Peter,” I heard her say in the distance.

 

 

 

I WENT BACK TO HAPPYVILLE to spend my mother's birthday at her apartment (I let infectious disease cover for me that time), and when I was at the supermarket picking up candles, who should I run into but Dr. Danforth.

He knew me right away. “Why Clare Ann,” he said, “you're all grown up.” Aury was sitting in the grocery cart, looking clear-eyed and calm, as she always did with adults. “This must be your little girl.”

“Aury,” I said, and before Dr. Danforth could look blank, I rushed in to spell it. “She's two and a half.” We chatted a bit; he was retired, his wife had had a kidney removed for cancer. “I'm an internist now,” I told him, pleased to watch his eyes crinkle upon hearing this news (he'd always had a nice smile). “I specialize in AIDS.”

That surprised him enough that he moved quickly to another question. “Is your husband in medicine?”

“I'm not married.”

“Oh,” he said, puzzling, “not married.” Aury tilted up her chin and studied his face; Dr. Danforth reached out and abstractedly patted her hair.

“Your father embezzled from us, you know,” Dr. Danforth said, as if this were all he could think of to say. “Did you know that?”

“I suspected it.”

“I've thought about it for years. We didn't pay him enough. I was always sorry to see him go.” He aimed his words at Aury. “We never found another manager as good as your grandfather.”

Aury tugged on my sleeve inquisitively.

“He's Dr. Danforth, Aury.” I looked back at him. “My dad embezzled for me. He embezzled for my college tuition and to pay my plane fare for a trip to California.”

Dr. Danforth smiled apologetically. “We never pressed charges. You went to Oberlin, didn't you? Expensive school.” He paused. “He was a good man, Clare Ann.”

“Thank you.”

We parted awkwardly. Give my best to your mother, to your wife. So good to see you after all these . . . you look well.

 

 

 

I MIGHT AS WELL have been a nun. It wasn't a conscious decision; I just stopped looking for partners. After a while, I sort of de-sexed myself. I'm not the first person that's happened to; it certainly happens with some of my patients. Aury was getting to the age of awareness, and I didn't want to expose her to men coming and going from our home. And, frankly, most of my patients had been infected through sex—subconsciously, that probably affected me. Then there was the matter of Sid's brutal magazine. I think it's accurate to say it hurt me. Without a partner, all I could do was masturbate, which is what people buy those magazines for, so whenever I thought of masturbation, I remembered those awful pictures.

Sex was not a life-enhancing activity in my book.

 

 

 

“IT'S ASTONISHING how something so small can change your life. He's only eight pounds. He weighs less than a bag of flour. But he's an entire miniature person. He's all there! You know that, after Aury.”

“What's he doing now?”

“Oh, you know. He loves to nurse. He likes to look at me. His eyes are wobbly, and his neck is wobbly, I have to steady his head in my hand, and then he looks right up at me.”

I could see it. I felt a sharp pang, half wanting another child.

“Who does he look like?”

“He has my mother's eyes. And his head is square, like mine. And he has this little round tummy that reminds me of Peter.”

Incredible that she should find Peter's round stomach appealing. “I bet he's really cute.” The baby's name was Ezra, after Esther; it was too early, Sally said, to name a child after Ben.

“He looks like a little old man. Do you want to talk to him? I'll put the phone to his ear.”

 

 

 

SALLY AND PETER had a bris for Ezra, eight days after his birth, but I missed it. Only Sally's father and a a few of their neighbors came.

“What about Aunt Ruby?” I asked.

“I didn't invite Aunt Ruby.”

“You don't have that many relatives,” I hazarded.

“We don't need Aunt Ruby.”

I went out three months later, leaving Aury with my mother.

Ezra was a wonderful, larky baby. He had a thick head of dark hair, a huge smile, and dimples; it was possible to look at him and forget that Peter had played any role in his creation. When I spoke to him, he craned his neck and his arms and legs whirligigged.

“He knows you!” Sally said. “See, he knows you!”

“He's certainly animated.” I couldn't pick him up fast enough.

“You see those kids in the mall and they're too well behaved, they stand there like zombies. Too much television.”

“I don't think you'll have to worry about that with Ezra.” He was flirting with me, turning his chin away and looking up at me on a slant. Was Aury a zombie? As long as she was treated like a grown-up, she was certainly well behaved.

“Do you miss your work at all?”

“I talk to the office every day. I went in last week and took a depo. I have a trial in six weeks, but it'll settle.”

I cooed at Ezra between questions, gave him big openmouthed smiles, and made my mouth into an “O.” No, Aury was not a zombie; she was definite.

She had a will. “What about your welfare women? Are you missing any trials with them?”

“Trials?” Sally sounded surprised. “I've never done a trial with them.”

“I thought you were doing more work with them. I thought you'd cut back your office hours and were doing more for the legal clinic.”

“I do a ton for the legal clinic, but it's all phone work. The lawyers there call me up and I give them my opinions. I don't actually see their clients.”

“Really? I . . .” But I wasn't sure what I'd thought, or why I'd thought it. I'd pictured Sally getting out of her Volvo in her stylish clothes and striding into a lobby filled with battered women. So tell me, Mrs. Morales, on what date did your husband break your right arm? Mrs. Jones, were you aware your boyfriend had other children he'd abused?

“It wouldn't be efficient for me to see clients. The lawyers and the legal aides see them. They get their stories, and then if the lawyers have questions, they call me. I'm a consultant.” Sally grinned at my obvious surprise. “I'm an eminence gris. See?” She grabbed a hank of her hair and waved it at me; there were, to be sure, strands of gray.

I had no idea she was that respected. She was only thirty-four. Maybe she would make judge. “Did Peter ever make that video at your father's studio?” I asked. Where that question came from, I'll never know.

“Oh sure. It's good. I'll let you watch it.”

“Did you go to the studio with him?”

“No. Peter went up at eight on a Saturday morning and came home at ten that night.”

“Did he say what the studio was like?”

Sally shrugged. “A normal studio. Like a TV newsroom. I think Peter was disappointed. He did say there was a poster of an erect penis on the door to the men's room. And assorted beds.”

We looked at each other and laughed.

“That reminds me,” Sally said, “Daddy wants you to have breakfast with him while you're here.”

“Breakfast?”

“The new meeting meal. Haven't you heard of a power breakfast? He wants to take you out. He asked specifically. I know you don't care for him, but he's been peculiar lately. I hope you'll go.”

“How do you mean, peculiar?”

Sally hesitated. “He's not his definite self. I ask him what he's been up to, and he can't say. I thought he was trying to do more video business, but he seems to be working less, not more. I thought he might have a girlfriend, but he never mentions anybody. He spends a lot of time just driving around, but he often drives near here and doesn't visit. And that's odd, especially now that I'm home on leave. I thought he'd be ecstatic about Ezra, especially with Ben gone, but he's really remote with him. He never offers to hold him.”

“Is he depressed?”

“When Daddy gets depressed, I expect activity, not lassitude.”

Lassitude, ah. I got a jolt of joy, a small electric shock, as I always did hearing one of Sally's precise words. I wondered if there was anything I did that evoked such a response in her.

“Did I tell you he's put his house on the market? It's true. I don't know if it'll sell, it seems like he's asking a fortune, but it's a prime piece of real estate.”

“Where would he move?”

“He's got his eye on a place in Malibu, up in the hills, not far from here. He wants that ocean view, remember? All of a sudden he has to have it. It's the only thing he gets excited about anymore. Ocean ocean ocean.”

I missed my patients. In California I couldn't stop worrying about them. They all died. AZT was a nice medicine, it helped, but then it started reminding me of Bactrim, the nice medicine for urinary tract infections that wasn't totally benign, the drug I'd complained about to Mark Petrello years before. With AZT, some people's blood counts dropped, or they got headaches or threw up, and then there were people it didn't seem to do a thing for, good or bad, who continued their steady downhill slide.