Dr. Macklin, who was very fond of lawyer jokes, told Molly two new ones—new to him, that is—and since she liked him she laughed appreciatively, and she said, “Those are good but I still like the lab rat one the best.”
“Oh yes, that’s a classic. But tell me how you’re feeling. Really,” and he frowned slightly, in his kind, concerned way.
“Well actually not too great. I guess it has to do with physical weakness but I just feel mildly depressed a lot of the time. I wonder what really happened to my head when they were doing
all that. I sleep all right but I have terrible dreams that I can’t quite remember—they slide away like fish when I try. I don’t feel the kind of desperate unhappiness I did when Paul was killed, just sort of low-grade despair, like flu.” As she said all this, it occurred to Molly that she should be saying it to Dr. Shapiro, and she thought, How like me to tell my symptoms to the wrong doctor. I used to tell Dr. Shapiro about my sinus problems.
Dr. Macklin’s frown had increased. “You know you’re pretty much describing how I felt about a year ago,” he said. “My separation. We’re still working it out.”
This was the first time Molly had heard of a separation, but she smiled sympathetically.
“What helped me a lot, though you may not like the idea of this,” he said, “was Paxil. It seems to work for some people who have no luck with Prozac, which I’d tried. I could give you just the very smallest dose, if you wanted to see how it goes.”
“Uh, should I ask Dr. Shapiro? Too?”
“Of course. Talk to him, and then give me a call.”
Macklin divorced—would he remarry? Molly had really never thought of him in that way, but now she did, and she thought, He’s quite attractive, really, and very nice, for a doctor. On the other hand, responsible doctors, which he certainly is, do not involve themselves with patients, so I can just forget it.
“Paxil might be worth a try,” said Dr. Shapiro. “Take it for a few weeks, see how you feel. Though you know that in a general way I don’t like those drugs.”
Almost as soon as she started it, the Paxil made Molly’s nightmares disappear. All gone—in fact no more dreams at all.
But, curiously, without dreams she slept considerably less well; her sleep was thin and ragged, unsatisfying, unrestful. She also experienced a slight increase in nausea, and eating problems—conditions that she did not immediately connect with Paxil.
“I just read where it says ‘Possible Side Effects,’ ” Molly told Dr. Shapiro. “And it mentions nausea. Isn’t that an odd pill to give someone who’s already nauseated? And insomnia, it mentions that too. Don’t doctors read the small print?”
“You’re quite right, it certainly may not have been a good idea,” he agreed. “It did seem worth a small try. Macklin meant well, and I did too. But I’m very glad you decided to give it up.”
She asked him, “Do you know if Dr. Macklin is really divorced? I had this wild idea that I could introduce him to Felicia.”
He smiled—knowing and amused and affectionate. “I’m sorry, I don’t keep up with doctors’ marital status.”
“I really don’t understand how doctors’ minds work,” Molly told Matthew, a few days later. “To give a nauseated person a pill with that as a possible side effect? Sometimes I think they don’t think.”
“They don’t think in the way that other people do” was Matthew’s considered view. “They seem more narrow in focus.”
“Exactly,” Molly said. “Remember, in
Howards End
, ‘only connect’? They don’t put things together. Doctors don’t. Don’t see a whole picture. I think that’s what sometimes gets them into trouble.”
“One of the things.” And then Matthew added, in his sober, conservative way (at those moments very unlike Paul, who was rash), “I’m not sure that you want to hear this, but you’re looking
really good. I was thinking, maybe we could go for a hike sometime? Would you be up for that?”
“Sure,” Molly told him, with what she feared was evident lack of enthusiasm. She felt well enough, she thought, but she didn’t want to spend quite that much time with Matthew—alone, she thought.
Felicia was so sick, and sick for so long, that her mother, not given to visits, came to see her. Susie, in perky new pink polka-dots, bearing an enormous bunch of bright-pink roses, which perfectly matched her dress, and saying to her daughter, “Oh
dear
, how can I always forget that you have your own roses? A whole garden full of them!”
They both knew why it was that Susie did not remember; they knew that Susie’s prime concern with gifts of flowers was that they should go well with whatever she was wearing—she could hardly think about the contents of a recipient’s garden. And too, as she herself would have quickly pointed out, she was so rarely at Felicia’s house that for all she knew Felicia could have converted to total zucchini by now.
“They’re so beautiful,” Felicia told her mother. “And they just match your dress. Maybe you could put them in something in the kitchen?”
While her mother was in the kitchen Felicia dozed off, just long enough to dream that Susie was not there—she was alone, and so it was with a little surprise that she woke to see her mother carrying in a bunch of roses in a vase. Somewhat sleepily she said, “Oh how pretty. They just match your dress.”
“Darling, you said that before.” Susie frowned. “Do you think you’re really all right?”
“Well, I’m not, not really. This goddam flu.”
“Sweetie, you must see a doctor. I’ll get Harry DeGroot, if I have to bring him here myself.”
“Mother, please don’t call Harry DeGroot—you know how I feel about those socialite doctors.”
“Well! And Raleigh Sanderson, such a great friend of yours for a while, wasn’t he? What’s ever happened to him, by the way?”
“Oh Mother, I honestly don’t know.” This was more or less true. Felicia still was hearing strange unpredictable sounds in her garden at night, at varying intervals, about which she still hesitated to call the police. But she was never entirely sure that it was Sandy, although in a way she was sure, it had to be Sandy. She also did not really know her mother’s true view of her own alleged friendship with Sandy. She had wondered: Did other women really talk more to their mothers? Would some other woman say, We had this terrific affair, but then he hit me? Molly had never talked much to her mother, Felicia knew, but then Molly’s mother was an alcoholic. And her own mother was a very silly woman, a silly woman with moments of insight, even of stray humor.
All that Susie ostensibly “knew” about Sandy and Felicia was that Felicia had worked for him for a time, and had liked him very much. Sandy and Connie were close to but not precisely
in
Susie’s social set, Susie and Josh’s group being just a little younger, a little more stylish—God knows they were stylish.
Felicia’s immediate problem, not unconnected to the larger problem of Sandy, was that, lacking him, she had in effect no doctor to call. “You’re a healthy young woman,” he always said. “I think these yearly checkups with so-called internists are highly overrated. If something goes wrong I’ll find a real specialist for you. In the meantime, if you feel a cold coming on, just
call me. I’ll know what to do, I promise. And in your case I make house calls.”
So that now, with what seemed a very bad and persistent case of flu, so much aching, such entire fatigue—she had no one to call.
Molly had several times said that Felicia should call her doctor, Douglas Macklin, and Felicia herself was not at all sure why she resisted this suggestion. Very likely through some really irrational association, like linking Dr. Macklin with poor Molly’s dreadful tumor, the cancer about which she persisted in making her black (and some not very funny) jokes.
And so, resolutely, Felicia now said to her mother, “I think I’ll call Molly’s doctor. Macklin, Douglas Macklin.”
“What a nice name. But I’ve never heard of him.”
Well, that’s a good sign, thought Felicia, and she closed her eyes, and went halfway back to sleep.
“I’m really glad you’re not working for that Raleigh Sanderson anymore,” her mother said as Felicia half-asleep thought, She does know. “Very bad news, that man. I’ve seen him operate at parties. Of course I don’t mean really operate, you know? But I never thought about it that way, actually. Most doctors
are
operators, you know?” And Susie giggled with pleasure, amused by herself, as usual.
Or had her mother really said anything at all? Quite possibly Felicia had only dreamed it, for when she opened her eyes her mother had gone, and the room was full of the scent of her bright-pink overblown roses.
One of the many things that Felicia would never tell her mother, nor even Molly, was the
strangeness
, the extreme oddity of her feelings as she lay there at night sometimes and heard the faint sound of those footsteps in her garden. She was not frightened, though perhaps should she have been? To herself she excused this possibly irrational fearlessness on the grounds that so
far Sandy had done nothing dangerous, and if he meant to harm her, then what was he waiting for? Far stranger, though, than her lack of fear was the fact that she was truly turned on—no other clear way to describe it. She lay there aware of gathering blood, of heat, in her groin. Of moisture, even.
So crazy, she was obviously feverish. Or, she wondered, is this how battered women respond to men who beat them? Does this explain why sometimes they stick around for more? More likely, she thought, they are just too scared to move, and a really frightened woman would not be turned on. This is part of my fever, she thought.
In any case, she was more than a little aroused, and she lay there in the scent of all those roses remembering—not Sandy furious, hitting her, bruising her face, but Sandy the incredibly sexy man with whom she had spent all those long amazing hours, those hours and hours, having extraordinary sex. Doing it over and over, in different ways, in this very bed. She remembered how with him she came, and came again, and again. His cry of triumph when after all that he came too, deep inside her.
Felicia even smiled. No wonder she was turned on, and not really frightened, remembering.
Douglas Macklin was very nice, Felicia thought, and sort of sexy—though not at all her type, thank God. And, though he did not as a rule make house calls, he had come there to see her; very probably Molly had twisted his arm, somehow, exaggerated the gravity of Felicia’s flu. Maybe he and Molly would eventually get together? Molly had said that he was recently divorced.
Lately, Molly had mentioned Matthew Bonner, Paul’s brother, somewhat too often, Felicia thought. She thought: If Molly tells me that she’s really in love with Matthew or even just sort of involved, I can’t stand it, I really can’t. Paul was bad enough, and this one could easily be worse, this supposedly boring brother. He probably only pretends to be dull, and underneath
is as mean and dangerous as Paul had been—or as Felicia thought he had been. Anyone that attractive had to be mean, in her experience.
“I guess flu is the best diagnosis I can come up with,” said Dr. Macklin, with his pleasant, cheerful smile. He had examined her discreetly; Felicia felt a mutual awareness of the sexiness of their situation, or she thought she did—alone in her house, she in a semi-sheer nightgown.
He said, “It has gone on a long time, and you have had a lot of fever, but I think it’s on the way out. No real point in starting you on antibiotics now.”
“Oh no, taking them makes me feel awful. Unless I eat a lot of yogurt. Would you like some tea or something?”
“Actually I’d love a glass of water. Can I get you anything?”
“A glass of Clamato? It’s my new addiction, there’s some in the fridge.”
“In that case I’ll join you.”
He came back with the two glasses, and sociably they sipped at the cold tomato juice.
He said, “You must be happy to see Molly looking so well.”
“Oh, really! I think she looks great. Still sort of thin but of course I envy that,” and she smiled as she thought, He’d be very
nice
in bed, very thorough. Caring and kind—and how come no one like that really turns me on?
“We were all very worried,” said Dr. Macklin, frowning, and perhaps with more feeling than he had intended. And then, as though to change the subject, with much less interest he said, “Nice place you have here. It’s okay for you, living alone?”
“Yes, usually I love it. But lately this very odd thing’s been happening.” And she told him about the late night prowler in her garden. “Usually, he, uh, urinates,” she finished.
“Some poor old guy with a prostate problem,” said Dr. Macklin. “Honestly, though, you should let the cops know.”
“I guess I should.” Giving him her most honest, wide-blue-eyed look, “I will,” Felicia said, knowing perfectly that she would not. It was Sandy, out there prowling. Checking on her. How embarrassing if cops came and found him there! And he couldn’t get into her house without tripping the alarm, as he knew. “But I always turn on the burglar alarm,” she told Dr. Macklin piously.
He said, “Molly’s place must be quite nearby.”
“Well actually it is, it’s just up the hill.” As she gestured, Felicia noted that the doctor’s glance followed in the direction, as though Molly’s house and perhaps she herself were visible.
As Felicia thought, Oh.
She asked him, “You don’t like living alone?”
His smile twisted to one side as he said, “I’m getting used to it. You know, I was married a long time, and now I’m not. I’m getting into Progresso soup—all that.”
“You can use Progresso for a pasta sauce,” Felicia told him, and she explained just how.
Polite but totally uninterested, Dr. Macklin thanked her, and their conversation languished. He got up to go.
She thanked him for coming, and he told her that he hoped she’d feel much better soon; he was sure she would.
She asked, “And from now on, Molly will be okay?”
Looking a little grim, he promised, “Yes, she will.”
“Isn’t he really nice?” Molly asked. “Did you like him?”
“Yes, very nice. And so good of him to come over. I think I’m much better.”
“You don’t sound very interested.”