Possibly to stop all this random drift, to bring herself back to Henry, there but distant in his visitor’s bedside chair, Molly began to tell him what she had done—or to try to. “I ran out on some very special treatments,” she told Henry. “Proton therapy? The machines down there at Alta Linda—a totally ghastly place, by the way—these machines cost fifty million dollars. Can you imagine? But I just couldn’t stand it there, I really couldn’t. I was getting sicker and sicker and they were talking about a feeding tube. ‘Intubation’—isn’t that a horrible word?”
“But you really just ran away from there?” Henry was smiling, and Molly remembered how pleased she used to be when she could amuse him.
“Well, a friend of mine, Felicia—you must meet her—she came to see me, and I drove back here with her. By the coast, so beautiful, absolutely ravishing—”
“Are you sure you didn’t need to have those treatments, though?” Henry was now frowning slightly, a more familiar expression. His lawyer look.
“What I really think is that I never needed any of them,” said Molly earnestly. “I’m quite sure terrible Dr. Donovan got it all. I don’t know why, I’m just absolutely sure that he did. The whole goddam green golf ball—did I explain about that?”
“No, I don’t think you did.”
“Well—Henry dear, I keep falling asleep. Would you mind—could you come back?”
Instantly on his feet, “Very easily, in fact,” said Henry. “What I didn’t quite get around to telling you is that I’m moving out here.” And with the lightest irony he added, “At last.”
Once Henry was gone, for no imaginable reason Molly felt
much better, not sleepy at all, so much better that she thought, Why on earth am I lying here in bed? I’ll never get well like this.
And so by the time Dave arrived—having dropped in, just as he threatened—Molly was up, freshly showered and dressed, and making a cup of tea for herself in the kitchen. She offered him some.
“I’ll make it. Shouldn’t you be in bed?” He was scowling.
“No, I’m spending too much time in bed, it can’t be good for me. I was thinking I’d take a walk.”
Dave’s frown deepened. “I really don’t think you’re quite strong enough. Unless—let me go with you.”
“Well, maybe I won’t go. Probably you’re right, I’m really not quite ready.” She said, “So amazing, Henry—my first husband—came to see me.” She added, “He says he’s moving out here.”
“Just to be near you? How nice.”
“Oh, Dave, really.”
Was Dave a little crazy? Molly wondered this as he scowled again, but then she thought, No, not crazy, just more than a little hostile, and especially to me. Is this only because I don’t love him? Suppose I were wildly in love with him, would he hate me less, or more? She sighed, and wondered how Dave had actually felt about Martha, his wife, or—for that matter—about his mother or his sister.
After he had finally gone, she was indeed too exhausted for a walk.
Late that night, after Molly had been sound asleep for a while, her downstairs buzzer sounded, waking her up. Her watch said 2:22. No one would come to see her at that hour, of course not. Unless: Henry, seized with a longing for her? But he would not; he was not an impulsive person. More likely some passing drunk—and Molly thought then of whoever, whatever
homeless person came nightly to Felicia’s garden. Sandy? And could Sandy have rung at her door? At the sheer unlikeliness of this she tried to smile. But she was frightened, lying there alone in the dark, half waiting for her buzzer to sound again. It was a long time before she could go to sleep.
“Short for Alicia, some silly Italian family nickname. But she’s such a great girl. And she was so nice, you know, helpful, touching me there, and even with her mouth—”
“But aside from this problem, you’re feeling generally okay? No chest pains, or dizziness?” Jesus Christ, the things patients expect you to listen to! Why did he have to hear about this man’s goddam prostate? WHY? Just because this dumb jerk was originally his patient, came in for his annual checkup, and dumped all this prostate garbage right out on Sandy. As though he didn’t have certain problems of his own. As though he didn’t have, in fact, his own prostate to worry about.
“I feel fine,” said the patient, Mr. Blank. “I just can’t get it up.”
It is like a bad joke: a doctor who has a known medical condition but who will not go to the appropriate specialist, a urologist, to have it checked out. Who is in fact afraid of possible surgery. Very funny. How Felicia would laugh if she knew. How Connie would laugh. (Although it is not true that either woman would laugh; they are both too kind. A woman will kill you with kindness, if you let her.)
“I can’t get it up, and my life isn’t worth living like this,” said the patient, the bald stupid jerk, who should have been satisfied with his functioning mitral valve.
“Come on, man, of course it is. Sex isn’t all that important,” said Dr. Sanderson authoritatively as he stood to end the interview, and ran a self-assuaging finger through his own thick virile hair. He had just remembered that he had to go to a party that night with Connie. For AIDS, or some damn thing. He said, “I’ll see you next year.”
“Right. And thank you, Doctor, thank you very much.”
For what? Sandy smiled, his large friendly farewell smile, and gave a parting wave. Asshole—who cares if he’s impotent?
“… and nothing happened to me. I mean, there I was, lying next to this
blonde
, this bodacious babe, and very nice too. I could tell she was intelligent, and she was squirming around, she really liked me, she was ready, wanted to do it, but on my side, nothing. Limp as a dead mouse, and just about as interesting. The spirit was willing—willing hell, in my head I was raring to go, but nothing, Doctor, nothing. Not one stir. Tell me, Doctor, is it going to stay like this? Because if it is, I’m telling you, I’m heading right off the bridge, I mean it. So tell me, Dr. Sanderson.”
“Well, as you know, the prostate’s a little out of my line. I’m not at all an expert there—”
“Come on, you know more than I do about that stuff.”
“Well, the prognosis is usually pretty good, especially these days. I don’t have exact figures at hand. But since there was no malignancy—”
“Just tell me what usually happens. I mean, I expected some trouble with my wife, we’ve been pretty much out of the loop for a lot of years now, but when I met Licia I thought—”
“Licia? What an interesting name.” Short for Felicia? Jesus Christ, would she? Fucking bitch.
• • •
“What a handsome couple, you two! So handsome, looking so young, both of you, really fit. You’ve heard the old saw about couples getting to look alike?
Well.
What a handsome couple!”
Sandy felt as though he had been hearing those words all night, an infernal chorus in this party from hell—or, rather, in hell—hell being a nine-million-dollar mansion on Pacific, full of doctors, his colleagues, and their wives. No visible or identifiable girlfriends, though of course these days some of the women were doctors too. Black tie and tickets at a thousand per, and word was out from the Medical Society that they had all better show their faces, and their dollars. And their wives. “Handsome couple”: that is what all these people said to Sandy and Connie—meaning no evil, probably.
There were some guests who were not doctors, of course; not many doctors were willing to shell out a grand for a benefit, these days. And the first people Sandy saw—Sandy and Connie, that is—the first to say, “What a handsome couple,” were (wouldn’t you know?) a really handsome, younger couple, Josh and Susie Flood, parents of Felicia. Looking good themselves (but why shouldn’t they?), looking very very good. Susie looked very young, in a way that such small fair women can; at a distance she looked about the age of Felicia. And very unlike Felicia, thank God—except that as she smiled just then, Sandy saw a shadow of Felicia’s smile, some similar aligning of facial muscles around the mouth and at the corners of her eyes. He had no idea what if anything Susie knew about him—whether, that is, she had the least idea about him and her daughter. Felicia had never mentioned confiding in her mother or, for that matter, talking very much to Susie at all.
He watched as Susie and Connie greeted each other with those ridiculous social female air kisses. So hard to tell how women really feel about each other, what they think, what they
know. Josh Flood was big and good-looking, in good shape but hair getting a little thin on top (something Sandy always noticed). His face a little too pink—blood pressure? He could be a candidate all right.
“You two look so terrific—handsome couple!” chorused Susie and Josh, with their big white smiles.
Twenty years ago, when open heart was still large news, greetings at such big parties were different—greetings to Sandy, that is. In those days it was you, you, singular you.
Sandy
, looking terrific. None of this “handsome couple” stuff. But back then, of course, Connie was fat and usually sloshed, standing erect but barely so, with a visible effort. Whereas Sandy himself was—well, what was he, actually, what that he is not now? He was trim and lively (still is!), a first-rate surgeon, and more than competent in the sack. The trouble was, these days there are too many guys around of whom the same things exactly could be said, too many young studs (let’s face it, younger than he was), and God knows too many doctors. As bad as lawyers, almost, Sandy believes, although still a shade more honest. All doing open heart as a routine procedure, and transplants too. Nothing remarkable about a skillful surgeon now.
It’s the world that has changed, Sandy concluded; he has not, and he glared around at the rich, familiar, but suddenly inimical party, the myriad smooth, well-tended, self-satisfied, intelligent (but rarely brilliant) faces. The snobbish, judgmental eyes, and careful mouths. He had then a moment of truly hating all those doctors, and their expensive wives.
If he had not been a doctor, he would have been a carpenter, something that Sandy has never told anyone, but it is the truth. For a year there, back in Cedar Falls, everything was going very badly for him. He was worried, terrifically worried, obsessed over acne and masturbation (surely linked?), chemistry and baseball. At that time he had one and only one comforting
friend—God knows not his parents, or his shitheel older brother, Durham (Durham! his mother was nuts), now a successful broker in Davenport. Sandy’s friend was an old retired guy named Alton Smith, who lived on a shack on the river, near the falls, and who used to be a carpenter. He still had a great set of tools; in fact, that was all he had. Alton’s wife had died, and his house was wiped out when the river flooded, but he still had his tools, his saws and hammers and lathes, and all sorts of nails, many thousands of nails. And he had a lot of lumber scraps lying around, lengths of boards and pilings, some dragged in from the river, driftwood, nice colors. He would let Sandy knock stuff together, and talk about ideas for building things. Sandy made drawings of houses, but he never wanted to be an architect, as Alton suggested; he liked doing things with his hands, and that was what he did well.
Alton was short and fat, red-faced from booze and blood pressure, probably, and he wore outrageous clothes. Sandy never wanted to run into him in town, to be seen with Alton. (However had they met? Sandy could not remember.) But out there in the woods, by the river, Sandy had a wonderful time; he loved all Alton’s stories of houses he’d built, his descriptions of special kinds of wood and how he’d come by them. Alton never mentioned his wife or anything about his personal life, and that was fine too. The last thing Sandy wanted was intimate revelation—which is still pretty much how he feels, come to think of it.
In a very quick but fully realized fantasy, then, Sandy imagined a whole other life for himself, the one he might have had if he’d stayed at home in Cedar Falls, and gone to school there and learned from Alton to be a master carpenter. In this life, he builds a big house for himself, for himself and his family, a broad spreading house along the riverbank, with flaring wings and graceful porches under the eaves. And his wife is large and blonde and generous, with ravishing jewel-blue eyes and an endless appetite for sex—with him. And some round blonde sexy-bottomed
baby daughters, who all look like their mother—who is, of course, Felicia.
What actually happened was that after a year or so of knowing Alton, going to see him, Sandy’s acne cleared up, he masturbated more and worried less. And he also began to have girls. A pretty new teacher gave him an A in chemistry, and he started playing tennis, instead of baseball. All of which led eventually to Harvard Med, and to Connie. And San Francisco, and a big house that Joe Esherick designed, on Green Street. And kids with big drug habits and little black children, living in Oakland. (How many kids does Genevieve have by now? Katie? He should know, and he doesn’t dare ask Connie.)
At just that moment, as though to remind him, and as though he needed reminding, a black waiter with a tray of champagne glasses brushed past, as handsome as O.J., and as masked, almost no expression. Hey,
boy
, Sandy would like to say. Not so fast there, keep that up and you’ll still fry.
Instead, he simply tapped the waiter’s arm and very coldly, very politely took a glass of champagne from the tray.
He was drinking too much. Feeling the too-familiar pressure on his bladder, Sandy wondered, Has it been half an hour? Forty-five minutes? Oh, at least an hour,
please.
A perfectly normal interval between pisses, for a man of his age.
Emerging from the bathroom, Sandy saw a woman whom he thought he knew approaching, but no name came: small and dark, pretty, sort of sexy. Jewish? No, Irish. Some young doctor’s wife, of course. Mt. Zion, probably. What in hell was her name? They’d talked at a party once, even flirted a little.
“Oh hello, you look wonderful, great to see you—see you later, don’t let me keep you!” Smiling and laughing, they said these things to each other. And five minutes later Sandy remembered her name: Jane Stinger, she was married to that smart little ENT man, who was Jewish. Mark Stinger. Patients didn’t
like him, nurses either, Sandy had heard. He himself had never exactly taken to Stinger, Sandy realized; like most short men, Stinger was pushy, not very polite. You could say he didn’t know his place. Sandy smiled to himself as he thought this—a forbidden thought, certainly not PC. He could not have said it to Connie—or Felicia, come to think of it.