Warm Wuinter's Garden (42 page)

Bill walked to his car gingerly. He eased
himself backward onto the seat in imitation of arthritic old men in
the parking lots of malls and supermarkets. When he finally was
settled in, he let out a big sigh.

The sound of the motor catching startled
Bill. He suddenly realized that all the planning he had done for
this day had failed to include the next six hours. In his script he
had gone from recovering in a darkened room to responding to
Dilly’s panicked, “My God, what happened to you?” with a single,
sweet, whispered word, “Vasectomy.” Now, he discovered he had a
whole evening that he had to get through before he could whisper
his victory cheer. He chided himself for his poor management. He
couldn’t go home yet. He cringed at the thought of Roger running
up, as he often did, to give him a wild hug. What protection would
he have against Kate wanting to sit in his lap for a quick story or
to share a few minutes of TV? Although it hadn’t happened lately
because he had been too busy, he knew enough of the ironic
tendencies of fate to know that those things would happen tonight
if he went home too soon.

As he sat in the car with the motor running,
Bill considered his possibilities. If he went into Boston to the
office to pass the time, there would be colleagues, working late,
wondering where he had been all day. He was too sore to sit all
night in the car or in the close quarters of a movie seat. He tried
to imagine himself at some friend’s house chatting, but he couldn’t
see himself on any of his friend’s sofas and he had no idea of what
he would want to talk about except the growing pain in his groin.
He certainly didn’t want to talk about what he had done to himself.
After going through his alternatives, he decided to check into a
motel. There would be peace and quiet, a bed and ice.

When he was told that a single room would
cost him seventy-two dollars, Bill found that his hand resisted
passing his credit card over to the curt clerk. Seventy-two dollars
was almost a month of lunches. He would be paying fifteen dollars
an hour for the use of a bed.

Without quite letting himself know where he
was going, Bill drove to the nearest Route 128 entrance,
aggressively merged his way into the bumper-to-bumper stream of
cars travelling in the break-down lane, and just after six o’clock
found himself in front of Nita’s law office.

The front door was unlocked, but the
reception area was empty.

“Nita?”

“Yes?”

Her hello was warm but a bit puzzled as
though she recognized the voice but couldn’t quite place it.

“It’s Bill.”

“Hi, Bill. C’mon back.”

Again, from her tone, he wasn’t sure that
Nita knew which Bill was there.

“Bill. My God. How are you?”

“I was in the area and thought I’d drop by.
Never seen your office.”

Nita’s eyes gave a quick sweep around the
spartan room filled with yellow file cabinets, a fax and copying
machine before the ends of her mouth pulled down.

“What do you think? Rich, not gaudy? I’m kind
of a techno-esthete. Let me finish getting this fax off. Take a
look around. Library’s back there and so’s my office. I’ll just be
a sec.

The library walls were nearly filled with
various series of seriously bound books—in burgundy with gold
lettering, in black and silver with red lettering, in red and brown
with white lettering. Bill thought that all the books were better
looking than the standard engineering references. In one corner was
a computer terminal and printer. He looked at the output spilling
from the bail and realized Nita used the equipment to access some
kind of database. Seeing the paper covered with arcane
abbreviations made Bill feel, for the first time ever, a connection
to his sister-in-law. He often did the same kind of electronic
search. Feeling that connection motivated Bill to leave the library
and find Nita’s office.

Bill stood leaning against the door frame to
try to find some relief as he looked at where Nita worked. Gray
carpet patterned with a small rose triangle. White cube desk. Black
and chrome chair. A white, probably birch, table with brushed steel
legs. Two tall, thin stainless steel vases on either end of an
ebony-topped credenza were filled with white-tinted dried grasses.
There were neatly stacked piles of paper on both the birch table
and on one end of the credenza. In the middle of the credenza, four
accordion files, rust colored and fully expanded, reminded him of
building materials, perhaps brick pediments. The top of Nita’s desk
was clear of files. Bill nodded. A second thing they had in common.
As Bill looked at the console telephone, he realized that he needed
to use it. He walked back down the gray and pink wall-papered
hall.

“Nita, could I make a quick call?”

“Sure, my office or the receptionist’s
desk.”

On the first ring Bill realized that he had
dialed before planning what he wanted to say. He considered hanging
up, but before he could make the decision, he was relieved to hear
a small formal voice, “Koster-Phelps residence. Katherine
speaking.”

“Hi, Kate, it’s Daddy. How are you?”

His daughter’s phone manners continued.

“Just fine, thank you. How are you?”

Bill looked down to his lap.

“Honey, tell Mommy I want to talk…”

He caught himself and started over.

“Kate, tell Mommy that I have to work late. I
won’t be home for dinner. I’ll see her later, and when I get home
I’ll be sure to come in and give you a nighty-night kiss.”

“That would be very nice, Daddy. Thank you
very much. I’ll give my mother the message.”

“Thank you, Kate. Bye-bye.

“You’re very welcome, I’m sure. Goodbye,
Daddy. I’ll know if you forget.”

“Forget what?”

“My night-night kiss, silly.”

“Okay.”

Bill was still reviewing how poor his
planning had been when Nita appeared in the doorway. He started to
get up from her chair. She shook her head before sitting down in
one of the two chairs that faced the desk.

“Quite a surprise.”

Bill wanted to switch seats. He knew he would
be more comfortable if he could be looking at Nita sitting in her
own chair. If she would change seats, he was sure he would know how
to begin to explain what he needed her to know. If he were sitting
in the other chair, the client’s chair, he was sure his throat
would not be so dry and the sharp heat he was feeling at the pivot
points of his jawbone would cool down enough that he could
speak.

As she stared at her petrified
brother-in-law, Nita remembered a phone call she had received on a
Sunday morning several weeks before. A stranger had picked her name
from the yellow pages. He was in jail. He needed someone to arrange
bail. His father was out of town. His family had just been through
bankruptcy so there wasn’t any ready cash around. However, as he
assured Nita, his family would be good for the money, but he needed
her to front him the ten percent to get him out. Nita had told him
politely that she never handled criminal matters and then hung up.
The thing that had recalled the memory was that several times in
their brief conversation the stranger had said, “Look, I’ve got a
situation down here.” As she looked at Bill, Nita waited for those
same words to be spoken and wondered whether her answer would have
to be the same.

Bill indicated the piles of paper with a
small wave of his hand.

“Looks like you’re pretty busy. Am I keeping
you?”

“No, it’s always this way. In fact, I’m in
pretty good shape. Long hours equals small piles. I was in an
office today, a huge office, three times this one, that had so many
piles of paper on the floor that I needed an Astaire to dance me
through. What’s up?”

“I was in the area.”

“You said.”

“I thought I’d stop in.”

“I’m glad.”

After each response Nita left the space
between them remain empty. She had learned in her first year of
practice that silence often was the best interrogator. She watched
Bill struggle to find the catalyst he needed to begin.

“Dilly’s fine. The kids, too.”

“That’s good.”

“That’s who I called. To let them know I’d be
late.”

“Do you have a meeting?”

A spasm of something Nita thought looked more
like pain than guilt spread across Bill’s face and then
disappeared.

“You okay?”

“Not quite. I had a procedure.”

Nita tried to keep her face balanced between
a non-committal look and concern.

“Mmmmmm.”

Bill twisted in the chair to get away from
some discomfort.

“Can I talk to you?”

Nita nodded

“Mmmmmm.”

“Times are tough. You know that.”

Bill was unclear how his opening was going to
get him where he wanted to go. He backtracked.

“Remember three, four years ago? Dukakis.
Ma$$achu$ett$ miracle. Always used dollars signs for the ss.
Everybody getting rich. And now, now. It happened so quickly. I’m
seeing people at work, good people, get laid off all the time. I
tell Dilly, but she doesn’t seem to want to understand. I’m forty.
She doesn’t work. Jessie will be in college in six more years. Then
Kate. Then Roger.
Then what
?”

The last was said so emphatically that Nita
was sure it wasn’t rhetorical, yet it wasn’t obvious what answer
Bill expected.

“It goes fast.”

Bill nodded, pleased that she understood.

“I have to think of everybody. Nobody gets to
have everything they want. There are limits. Things have to be
planned. We have to manage things. A family’s like a business.”

Nita nodded.

Bill pushed back from the desk before
slumping back down in the chair.

“Someone has to manage it. Dilly does a great
job, you know that, I know that, with today and tomorrow. There’s
no argument there. And she’s always thinking about everybody’s
health, right?”

“Mmmmmm.”

“But you can’t have one without the other.
You’ve got to have both, right?”

“The other being?”

Bill stared at Nita in disappointment. He
wondered when she had drifted away from him. He shook his head at
the Koster women’s inability to follow a train of thought. He had
come here because he thought that Nita was different.

“The money.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Where’s the money? I’m forty. I’m
fifty-five, at least, before Roger graduates from college. I’m
sixty-one before the mortgage is paid off. If we have a baby right
now I’m sixty-two before it’s out of college.”

“Dilly wants another baby?”

Bill’s head jerked up and down in angry
affirmation. At the instant he realized he was driving to Nita’s,
he had been positive, despite their years of vague relations and
infrequent conversation, that she would understand the situation.
He was sure he had made a good decision when he discovered she used
a data base and kept a clean desk. But, now, he was growing angry
that she was making him take so many words. He suspected that, like
Dilly, she was being consciously obtuse.

“You don’t?”

Bill nodded.

“You’ve talked?”

Again, a nod.

“No resolution?”

A slow shake of Bill’s head.

“It’s causing problems?”

As he nodded Bill felt his sense of
well-being begin to return. Perhaps she did understand.

“Big or little?”

“Pretty big.”

“Divorce big?”

“Maybe. But, I don’t really think so.”

“I couldn’t represent you. Conflict of
interest. Is that what we’re talking about?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“Vasectomy.”

As he heard himself say the word, Bill
thought it sounded like a race car speeding past him.

“Lot of my clients have had one. Easy.
Simple. Pretty safe. Not too many mistakes. Take away the worry.
Have you talked to Dilly about it?”

Bill shook his head sadly. Nita was
completely missing the point of what he was saying. He wondered why
the Koster women had so much trouble understanding him. The
throbbing in his groin made him shift his legs to try to find some
comfort.

“We talked for months. We got nowhere.
There’s no room for compromise. There’s no mid-point between a baby
and no baby. You can’t keep it for ten years and then give it away.
In business there are fixed and variable costs. In the short run
almost everything is fixed. In the long run everything is variable.
Not a baby. It’s a fixed cost for at least twenty-two years and
probably more. I don’t want that. I can’t do that. I don’t want to
be sixty-five with no money but social security. That’s no way to
live. In business you’re supposed to keep prudent reserves. If we
have another baby that wouldn’t happen.”

“What if Dilly worked?”

“She doesn’t want to work. She wants a baby.
She wants to take care of something, but for some reason, the three
kids and me and the house and the yard aren’t enough. I thought the
same thing. I thought a job might take up that need. If it were the
right job. I’ve asked her about working a couple of times. Told her
a job would be good for her. I know Lise told her she should think
of going back to school. Get her degree, then, teach. Then she’d
have plenty to take care of. We talked about it several times, but
she kept insisting that it had to be a baby. I can’t do it.”

“So, you’re thinking you want a
vasectomy?”

Bill slapped the tops of his thighs in
frustration and instantly regretted it.

“No, dammit. Jesus!”

His nose began to burn as his thoughts
cauterized it. Nita’s concerned stare slipped out of focus as his
eyes welled with tears.

“Had one. Did it. Just had one.”

Bill patted his legs.

Nita’s silence was from wonderment rather
than strategy.

“I just came from the doctor. I couldn’t go
home. It’s too early. I didn’t know where to come. For some reason
I thought I could come here.”