Look at the Birdie (26 page)

“All right,” said Henry.

Karpinsky went to the gas burner, lit it, put water on. “I have a swell job now,” he said. “Suppose you heard.” He was no more overjoyed by this belated piece of good luck than Henry and Anne had been.

There was no response from Henry and Anne.

Karpinsky turned to look at them, to guess, if he could, what it was they expected from him. With great difficulty, rising above his own troubles, Karpinsky caught on. They had had a soul-shaking brush with life and death, and now they wanted to know what it had all meant.

Karpinsky, ransacking his brain for some foolish tidbit of thought to give them, surprised himself by finding something of real importance.

“You know,” he said, “if we had fooled her last night, I would have considered my life at a satisfactory end, with all debts paid. I would have wound up on skid row, or maybe I would have been a suicide.” He shrugged and smiled sadly. “Now,” he said, “if I’m ever going to square things with her, I’ve got to believe in a Heaven, I’ve got to believe she can look down and see me, and I’ve got to be a big success for her to see.”

This was profoundly satisfying to Henry and Anne—and to Karpinsky, too.

Three days later, Henry told Anne he loved her. Anne told him she loved him, too. They had told each other that before, but this was the first time it had meant a little something. They had finally seen a little something of life.

The office of Dr. Leonard Abekian was in a bad part of Chicago. It was behind a false front of yellow brick and glass block built out from the first floor of a narrow Victorian mansion whose spine was spiked with lightning rods. Joe Cunningham, treasurer of a bank in a small town outside of Cincinnati, arrived at Dr. Abekian’s office by taxicab. He had spent the night in a hotel. Joe had come all the way from Ohio, under the impression that Dr. Abekian had had phenomenal successes in curing sterility. Joe was thirty-five. He had been married ten years without fathering a child.

The waiting room was not impressive. Its walls were goose-fleshed pink Spackle. Its furnishings were cracked leatherette and chromium-plated tubes. Joe had to put down a feeling that the office gave him at once—a feeling that Dr. Abekian was a cheap quack. The air of the place was little more impressive than a barbershop’s. Joe put down the feeling, told himself that Dr. Abekian was too absorbed in his work and too little interested in money to put up an impressive front.

There was no nurse or receptionist at the waiting room desk. The only other soul in the room was a boy about fourteen years old. He had his arm in a sling. The nature of this solitary patient disturbed Joe, too. He had expected to find
the waiting room filled with people like himself——childless people who had traveled great distances to see the famous Dr. Abekian, to get the final word on what the trouble was.

“Is—is the doctor in?” Joe asked the boy.

“Ring the bell,” said the boy.

“Bell?” said Joe.

“On the desk,” said the boy.

Joe went to the desk, found a bell button on it, pressed it, heard a buzzer ring somewhere deep in the house. A moment later, a harried-looking young woman in a white uniform came in from the back part of the house, closed a door on the wailing of a child. “I’m sorry,” she said, “the baby isn’t well. I have to go back and forth between him and the office. Can I help you?”

“Are you Mrs. Abekian?” said Joe.

“Yes,” she said.

“I talked to you on the phone last night,” said Joe.

“Oh yes,” she said. “You made appointments for yourself and your wife?”

“That’s right,” said Joe.

She referred to an appointment pad. “Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Cunningham?”

“Right,” said Joe. “My wife had some shopping. She’ll be along. I’ll go in first.”

“Fine,” she said. She nodded at the boy with his arm in a sling. “You go in right after Peter here.” She took a blank form from the desk drawer, tried to ignore the squalling of the baby in the back of the house. She wrote Joe’s name at the top of the form, and she said, “You’ll have to excuse the distractions.”

Joe tried a shy smile. “To me,” he said, “that’s the most beautiful sound in the world.”

She gave a tired laugh. “You’ve come to the right place to hear beautiful sounds like that,” she said.

“How many children do you have?” said Joe.

“Four,” she said. And then she added, “So far.”

“You’re very lucky,” said Joe.

“I keep telling myself so,” she said.

“You see,” said Joe, “my wife and I don’t have any.”

“I’m
so
sorry,” she said.

“That’s why my wife and I have come to see your husband,” said Joe.

“I see,” she said.

“We came all the way from Ohio,” said Joe.

“Ohio?” she said. She looked startled. “You mean you just moved to Chicago from Ohio?”

“Ohio’s still our home,” said Joe. “We’re up here just to see your husband.”

She looked so puzzled now that Joe had to ask, “Is there another Dr. Abekian?”

“No,” she said. And then she said, too quickly, too watchfully, too brightly to make Joe think he really had come to the right place, “No, no—there’s only one. My husband’s the man you want.”

“I heard he’d done some wonderful things with sterility cases,” said Joe.

“Oh, yes, yes, yes—he has, he has,” she said. “May—may I ask who recommended him?”

“My wife heard a lot of talk around about him,” said Joe.

“I see,” she said.

“We wanted the best,” said Joe, “and my wife asked around, and she decided he
was
the best.”

She nodded, frowned ever so slightly. “Uh-huh,” she said.

Dr. Abekian himself now came out of his office, shepherding a mournful, old, old woman. He was a tall, flashily handsome man—flashy by reason of his even white teeth and dark skin. There was a lot of the sharpness and dazzle of a nightclub master of ceremonies about him. At the same time, Dr. Abekian revealed an underlying embarrassment about his looks, too. He gave Joe the impression that he would have preferred, on occasion anyway, a more conservative exterior.

“There must be something I could take that would make me feel better than I do,” the old, old woman said to him.

“You take these new pills,” he said to her gently. “They may be just what you’ve been looking for. If not, we’ll try, try, try again.” He waved the boy with the broken arm into his office.

“Len—” said his wife.

“Hm?” he said.

“This man,” she said, indicating Joe, “this man and his wife came all the way from Ohio to see you.”

In spite of herself, she made Joe’s trip seem such a peculiar thing that Joe was now dead certain that a big, foolish mistake had been made.

“Ohio?” said Dr. Abekian. His incredulity was frank. He arched his thick, dark eyebrows. “All the way from Ohio?” he said.

“I heard people from all over the country came to see you,” said Joe.

“Who told you that?” he said.

“My wife,” said Joe.

“She knows me?” said Dr. Abekian.

“No,” said Joe. “She just heard about you.”

“From whom?” said the doctor.

“Woman talk,” said Joe.

“I—I’m very flattered,” said Dr. Abekian. “As you can see,” he said, spreading his long-fingered hands, “I’m a neighborhood general practitioner. I won’t pretend that I’m a specialist, and I won’t pretend that anyone has ever traveled any great distance to see me before.”

“Then I beg your pardon,” said Joe. “I don’t know how this happened.”

“Ohio?” said Dr. Abekian.

“That’s right,” said Joe.

“Cincinnati?” said the doctor.

“No,” said Joe. He named the town.

“Even if it were Cincinnati,” said the doctor, “it wouldn’t make much sense. Years ago, I was a medical student in Cincinnati, but I never practiced there.”

“My wife was a nursing student in Cincinnati,” said Joe.

“Oh, she was?” said the doctor, thinking for a moment that he’d found a clue. The clue faded. “But she doesn’t know me.”

“No,” said Joe.

Dr. Abekian shrugged. “So the mystery remains a mystery,” he said. “Since you’ve come all this distance—if there’s anything I can do—”

“They want children,” said the doctor’s wife. “They haven’t had any.”

“You’ve no doubt been to many specialists before coming all this distance,” said the doctor.

“No,” said Joe.

“At least your own family doctor, anyway—” said Dr. Abekian.

Joe shook his head.

“You haven’t taken this matter up with your own doctor?” said Dr. Abekian, unable to make sense of the fact. “No,” said Joe.

“May I ask why not?” said the doctor.

“You’d better ask my wife when she comes,” said Joe. “I’ve been after her to go to a doctor for years. She not only wouldn’t go—she made me promise I wouldn’t go, either.”

“This was a religious matter?” said the doctor. “Is she a Christian Scientist?”

“No, no,” said Joe. “I told you—she was a nurse.”

“Of course,” said the doctor. “I forgot.” He shook his head. “But she did agree to see me—under the impression that I was a famous specialist.”

“Yes,” said Joe.

“Amazing,” said Dr. Abekian softly, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Well—since you haven’t even seen a general practitioner, there
is
a chance I can help.”

“I’m game—God knows,” said Joe.

“All right—fine,” said the doctor. “After Peter, then, comes you.”

When young Peter was gone, Dr. Abekian called Joe into his office. He had a directory open on his desk. He explained it. “I was trying to find,” he said, “somebody with a name remotely like mine—somebody who might be really famous for handling cases like yours.”

“What luck?” said Joe.

“There
is
Dr. Aarons—who’s done a lot with a psychiatric
approach,” said Dr. Abekian. “His name is vaguely like mine.”

“Look,” said Joe, patiently, earnestly, “the name of the man we were coming to see, the name of the man who was going to do so much for us, the name wasn’t Aarons, and it wasn’t a name we could very well mix up with another name, because it was such an unusual name. My wife said we should come to Chicago and see Dr. Abekian—A-b-e-k-i-a-n. We came to Chicago, looked up Dr. Abekian—A-b-e-k-i-a-n—in the phone book. There he was—A-b-e-k-i-a-n—and here I am.”

Dr. Abekian’s sharp, gaudy features expressed tantalization and perplexity. “Tst,” he said.

“You say this Aarons uses the psychiatric approach?” said Joe. He was undressing now for a physical examination, revealing himself as a chunky man, with muscles that looked powerful but slow.

“The psychiatric approach is meaningless, of course,” said Dr. Abekian, “if there’s anything physically wrong.” He lit a cigarette. “I keep thinking,” he said, “this whole mystery has to have something to do with Cincinnati.”

“I’ll tell you this,” said Joe, “this isn’t the only crazy thing that’s happened lately. The way things have been going, maybe Barbara and I ought to go over and see Dr. Aarons no matter what the physicals turn up.”

“Barbara?” said Dr. Abekian, cocking his head.

“What?” said Joe.

“Barbara? You said your wife’s name was Barbara?” said Dr. Abekian.

“Did I say that?” said Joe.

“I thought you did,” said the doctor.

Joe shrugged. “There’s one more crazy promise down the drain,” he said. “I was supposed to keep her name a secret.”

“I don’t understand,” said the doctor.

“Who the hell does?” said Joe, showing sudden fatigue and exasperation. “If you knew all the fights we’ve had this past couple of years, if you knew how much I had to go through before she’d agree to see a doctor, to find out if there was anything we could do…” Joe left the sentence unfinished, went on undressing. He was quite red now.

“If I knew that?” said Dr. Abekian, himself a little restless now.

“If you knew that,” said Joe, “you’d understand why I promised her anything she wanted, whether it made sense or not. She said we had to come to Chicago, so we came to Chicago. She said she didn’t want people to know what her real name was, so I promised I wouldn’t tell. But I did tell, didn’t I?”

Dr. Abekian nodded. Smoke from the cigarette in his mouth was making one eye water, but he did nothing to remedy the situation.

“Well—what the hell,” said Joe. “If you can’t tell a doctor the whole truth, what’s the point of going to one? How’s he going to help you?”

Dr. Abekian responded not at all.

“For years,” said Joe, “Barbara and I were about as happily married as two people could be—I think. It’s a pretty town where we live, full of nice people. We’ve got a nice big house I inherited from my father. I like my job. Money’s never been a problem.”

Dr. Abekian turned his back, stared at a rectangle of glass block that faced the street.

“And this no kid thing—” said Joe, “much as we both want kids, not having ’em wouldn’t be enough to break us up. It’s this doctor thing—or was. Do you know she hasn’t gone to a doctor for
any
reason? For the whole ten years we’ve been married! ‘Look, sweetheart,’ I’d say to her, ‘if you’re the reason we can’t have children, or if I’m the reason—it doesn’t make any difference. I won’t think any the less of you, if you’re to blame, and I hope you won’t think any the less of me, if I’m to blame, which I probably am. The big thing is to find out if there’s anything we can do.’”