Doctor's Wife

by Brian Moore

  “I don’t know, Owen. It’s complicated. Most of the time I feel very happy. I feel alive in a way I never felt before. But the other night I woke up feeling suicidal. I think I know why. It was because I was still unwilling to face up to what’s happened to me. I was still looking for some way out. Some way I could go on feeling like this but not having to pay for it. Now I know that’s not possible. I’ll have to pay. I’ve accepted that.”

  “And how will you pay, tell me?”

  “I don’t know. But I know that I can’t go home again. That part of my life is over.”

  “It’s not over,” Dr. Deane said. “What nonsense! You can’t just will your husband and child out of existence.”

  “I wonder. People escape from their lives. Did you ever read those newspaper stories about the man who walks out of his house saying he’s going down to the corner to buy cigarettes? And he’s never heard from again.”

  The waiter brought a fresh glass of beer. “The point is,” Dr. Deane said, “you’re not a man, and you haven’t disappeared. In fact, you might find it pretty difficult.”

  “Women disappear, too.”

  “And what would you live on?”

  “I have my Consuls and those other shares Kitty left us. They’d give me a start for a few months. My shares are still in your name, aren’t they?”

  “They are,” Dr. Deane said. “Do you want me to sell them, is that it?”

  “Yes, please. You could send me the money.”

  “So this new man of yours isn’t able to support you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I’m sorry.” Dr. Deane tasted his beer. “Sheila, what’s wrong? Were you not happy at home?”

  “Are you happy at home? Is anyone?”

  “Do you mean because of the Troubles?”

  “Oh, God, no. The Troubles, you can’t blame the Troubles for everything. That’s become our big excuse. We have the Troubles. They’re the only thing we believe in any more.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you, Sheila.”

  “The Protestants don’t believe in Britain and the Catholics don’t believe in God. And none of us believes in the future.”

  “That’s a very gloomy prognosis, I must say.”

  “What do you believe in? Do you believe that if you live a good life here on earth you’ll go to heaven? Do you believe in politics? Do you believe in trying to make this world a better place to live in? In Daddy’s day, people believed in those things. The present made sense because they believed there would be a future. Nowadays, all we believe in is having a good time. Isn’t that true?”

  “Is that why you decided to do this? Because you want to have a good time?”

  “No. It happened to me.”

  “But it won’t last,” Dr. Deane said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “It is the point,” Dr. Deane said. “Now, look, don’t be cross, but Kevin could be right. This decision of yours could be a sign of mental illness.”

  “Like Ned? Oh, for goodness’ sake, Owen!”

  “All right, but the fact is, his trouble started with a love affair.”

  “Look, there’s no comparison.”

  “Then let me say something else. Ned had a nervous breakdown. But he’s not the only one. It’s quite possible that we have a weakness of that sort in our family.”

  “Who had one? Who else?” Suddenly she was frightened.

  “Kitty.”

  “Kitty?”

  “It was just after you were born. She became suicidal, it seems. Anyway, she spent three months in Purtysburn Asylum.”

  “But isn’t that something women have sometimes after a baby, a suicidal thing?”

  “Postpartum depression. Yes. But I don’t think it was that in her case.”

  She leaned forward and closed her eyes. The traffic noise seemed unnaturally loud. “Is that why you came?” she said. “To frighten me?”

  “I came to help you, if I can. I’m worried about you.”

  “So you think I might be going through some sort of mental breakdown?”

  “You may be doing what analysts call ‘acting out.’ “

  “You don’t think it’s possible that I just fell in love?”

  “Yes, of course,” Dr. Deane said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re all right. Look, who is this chap? Could I meet him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Are you ashamed of him?”

  “He’s an American. He’s ten years younger than I am. We’ve only known each other two weeks and we’re living together. He wants to look after me. He wants me to come to America with him and marry him. Or not marry him. It’s up to me. That’s all. I’m sure this will just confirm your damn diagnosis.”

  “I didn’t make any diagnosis.”

  “Well, anyway, that’s the situation. I am like the man who went out to get cigarettes and didn’t come back. Forget about me. Oh, yes. Sell my shares, will you? I’ll write you a letter soon and let you know where to send the money. Will you do that?”

  “I’ll sell them as soon as I get your letter. All right?”

  “Thanks. Now, I want you to go home, Owen. There’s nothing you can do here. You think I may be mad. I know I’m not. So let’s say goodbye. Nicely.”

  “Oh, come on. Let’s at least have dinner together.”

  “I’m sorry. I have a date.”

  “Well, could I join you?”

  “No.”

  And then, ashamed, she reached across the table and took his hand. She squeezed it. “I’m sorry, Owen.” But at that moment she saw, fifty yards away, Tom Lowry, standing at the Métro entrance, watching them. How dare he spy on her. She had told him to wait for her in the flat. But, angry as she was, at the same time she felt an excitement at seeing him. She let go of her brother’s hand and said, “All right, if you’re not going till tomorrow, I’ll have breakfast with you. I’ll come around to your hotel about eight.”

  “Good. Sheila, I have to phone Kevin tonight. What will I say to him?”

  “Tell him it’s no use.”

  Dr. Deane bowed his head. “What about Peg, is she around?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Maybe she’ll have dinner with me. You don’t mind my getting in touch with her, do you?”

  “She’s your friend, too,” Mrs. Redden said. She found Ivo’s phone number and wrote it down for him, handing him the scrap of paper as she stood up. “All right. What’s your hotel again?”

  “The Angleterre.”

  She bent down and kissed him on the cheek. “See you in the morning,” she said, and went quickly out into the street, mingling with the passersby. She walked to the curb, waited with the crowd, then, as the light went green, hurried across the square to reach the midway traffic island, where, as the second traffic light went green, she went on to the safety of the pavement on the far side of the square. Then turned and saw that Tom, who had followed her, was stranded on the traffic island by a red light. He glanced at the oncoming automobiles and sprinted out inches ahead of the traffic. She felt her heart jump in fear, until he reached the safety of the pavement. When he ran up to join her, she held him to her. “You might have been killed!”

  And then, holding him, remembered her brother. She turned and looked back across the expanse of square to where he sat. As she did, her brother waved to her. Slowly, she raised her arm and waved back.

  Chapter 13

  • Next morning, after breakfast with his sister, Dr. Deane took the bus to Orly. He had given up smoking three years ago, but when he arrived at Orly he went into the duty-free shop, bought a carton of Gauloises, and ripped open a package. The first puff made him dizzy. Inhaling, he went to another counter and, in penance, purchased bottles of Chanel toilet water for his wife and two daughters. Then, still smoking, he entered the bar and ordered a brandy-and-soda. He had thought of phoning Agnes from the airport to let her know he was on his way home, but afte
r drinking the brandy, he ordered another and decided he would make the call when he stopped over in London. Halfway through the second brandy, he changed his mind and asked the barman where the telephones were. But as he started to walk to the phone booth, the flight to London was called.

  So that was that. He would have to decide later just what to tell her. He was certainly not going to tell her that he had lost his temper and shouted at Sheila. That was just what Agnes would like to hear. But, still, that was what he had done. What sort of a way was that to try to help people, shouting at them? I should have gone off to the Louvre this morning, looked at some pictures, and gone back again this afternoon to apologize to her. A doctor should never try to treat his own family. It doesn’t wash. If my father had been a medical man, what would he have done? What would he have said to her?

  Dr. Deane walked out toward the waiting plane, thinking of his father and his father’s great friends, Dr. Byrne and Chief Justice McGonigal, remembering their arguments about Shaw and Joyce, about Mussolini’s policies vis-à-vis the Vatican, and the morality of Ireland’s neutrality during the war. Not intellectuals, but men who read a lot, who loved discussion and despised golf, who never cared about the size of their house or the make of their motorcar. That older generation, passionate, literate, devout, still seemed to him more admirable and interesting in their enthusiasms and innocence than the later generation which claimed him as its own. His father would have made mincemeat of Sheila’s arguments. His father would never put pleasure before principle as Sheila did, especially in an affaire du coeur. But then, as Sheila said, that older generation lived in the certainty of their beliefs. That was the point, exactly the point. If this were 1935 and Sheila were my father’s younger sister, the whole discussion would have been conducted in the context of sin. I can talk about it only in the context of illness. My father would have talked of the moral obligations involved. I can only surmise the emotional risks.

  And even then, wasn’t I on thin ice? Do I know that she is ill? Of course not. In my opinion what she’s doing could endanger her mental health and cause her grief and remorse. But do I know that for certain? All my opinions are reversible. They say that’s a sign of intelligence, but is it? Fifteen years ago people like me read Freud as if we had found an answer. He seemed a genius. Today I am not so sure. Yet when I spoke to Sheila this morning my mouth was full of phrases from psychoanalytic textbooks, comfortable, because they offer an explanation which fits my prejudice. “Acting out” and “fugue state” and so on, and so forth. All out of books. Books have been my substitute for life. What do I know about a woman in love? Damn all. She looked happy, didn’t she? I can tell myself till I’m blue in the face that she’s in her manic phase, but I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m a gynecologist. Why did I get mixed up in this business?

  I suppose because of Ned. The only hell I do know about is the hell of Ned’s nervous breakdown. And how can you explain that hell to a person who believes she’s happy? Who is—what was it she said?—”in a state of grace.”

  The stewardess waiting at the top of the ramp looked at his boarding pass, smiled at him, and said to sit anywhere in tourist. There were so few people traveling that he had a row of three seats all to himself. He removed his hat and placed it beside him, on top of his copy of the Times. Last night at dinner that Yugoslav said this American boy is head over heels in love with Sheila. What was it, he said? “Falling in love is a crime usually committed by innocent people. So they rarely get away with it.” Very aphoristic, the French. Except that he is not French.

  But Peg Conway thinks the whole thing will end next week when Sheila gives up her flat. I hope so, but I don’t believe it. I think she’s a bolter: she’ll run off with this boy. There’s that strain of oddness in our family, an instability. Ned and Kitty, and now Sheila. And don’t forget Yours Truly. No, I am not forgetting Yours Truly.

  When the plane took off he sat up, rigid, his hands gripping the sides of his seat. The cloud was thick all the way up and he was sure the left engine sounded as though it were out of whack. Once he would have been saying an Act of Contrition at this very moment. But now he remembered some remark of Agnes’s about opening a dress shop if anything ever happened to him. Which was nonsense, she had no business sense at all, she could never run a shop. The plane began to shake. If I crash now, Agnes will blame Sheila for my death.

  But then the plane came up to an empty blue sky and the seat-belt sign went off. That strain of oddness in our family. If Sheila had any sense she’d know there’s nothing but trouble ahead for her. As the old women back in Donegal used to say of a pregnant unmarried girl, “Now, she’s crying the laugh she had last year.” And Sheila will do the same thing. I told her that. I said, “You’re behaving like a selfish silly woman, how long do you think this will last? In ten years’ time,” I said, “you will look like this boy’s mother.”

  Of course I was shouting at her by then. Home truths that should have stayed at home. Before that, damnit, we were having a reasonable discussion. Before the shouting I said to her, “You talk about being happy now. But I wonder. Are we supposed to be happy in this life?” And she laughed and accused me of still being a Catholic. But I said to her, “No, seriously, do you think it’s possible for anyone to be more than intermittently happy in life? Continual happiness just isn’t a possible state for anyone with a brain in their heads. If you were happy all the time, you’d have to be selfish and insensitive about all the unhappiness around you. You’re happy now, I grant you. But I don’t think it can last.”

  “Neither do I,” she said. “Well, then,” I said. “If it doesn’t last and it leaves you more unhappy than you were before, is it really worth all you seem prepared to sacrifice for it?” And she said that it wasn’t something you could put a value on. She said, “Kevin used to tell me that life wasn’t all dancing in the dark. You know that old song. He said I was impractical, that I never faced facts. He was wrong. If I’d been impractical I’d never have married him. I’d have gone off to London or Paris and tried for a job, no matter how impractical that sounds. If I’d been romantic I would have tried for a different life.”

  “But you might not have found it,” I said to her. “Yes, that’s true,” she said. “But I would have tried. That’s what I blame myself for now. I didn’t try.”

  And, damnit, that angered me and I said to her, “I think you’re a bit late to try now.” I never should have said that. That’s when I told her she was a selfish, silly woman and about the boy being too young for her. I started shouting at her. What sort of way was that to try to help her?

  The stewardess came around offering duty-free cigarettes. He pulled out his Gauloises and lit up. What will Agnes say when she sees me smoking again? What will I tell her when I get home today? She’ll not keep it to herself. I might just as well say it’s all settled, say it was a dustup between Sheila and Kevin and that Sheila will be back next week, as per schedule. That’s what Peg thinks. I hope she’s right. Yes, I’ll tell Agnes that. Let’s leave it at that.

  Chapter 14

  • She lay in semi-darkness, the window open to the noise of night traffic along the Seine. His arms were around her, her head rested on his shoulder, and he was talking about the future as she might have talked about it were she his age and unmarried. “At any rate,” he said, “the next step, first thing Monday, is to go to the rue Saint-Florentin. You have your passport. It’s a British one, right?”

  When we make love he seems older and more experienced than me. Is that why he always plans our future after sex? Sex seems to give him authority. How does he know all those sex things that Kevin never knew? Do all Americans do them?

  “Once we’re in the States,” he said, “there’ll be no problem renewing the visa. We’ll simply apply for you to stay on as an immigrant. It can be done.”

  He sees our lives in terms of movement, of having enough money to go some place, of getting visas and jobs, of making a new start together. Yet he always of
fers me a chance to back out. Money in a New York bank in my name, a return ticket and no recriminations, “if you change your mind, Sheila.” Yesterday he said, “You never can force people, not really. In the end they do what they have to do.” But do they? I can’t bear to think of giving him up. If he felt the same way about me, would he ever say the words “if you change your mind, Sheila”? Maybe. He’s young, he’s American, he’s a man. He hasn’t made the mistakes I have. He’s not afraid, as I am. If he worries about Kevin coming after us, he never shows it.

  “Are you asleep?” he said. “Are you listening?”

  “Of course I’m listening. How much did you say it will cost to pay my fare to New York?”

  “Oh, about four hundred dollars.”

  “And the same to come back here?”

  “Right.”

  “And how much money do you actually have?”

  He laughed, and kissed her forehead. “So, you’re after my money.”

  “No, seriously. How much do you have? Two thousand dollars? Five thousand? Or what?”

  He was silent for a moment, counting. “I suppose I have about five thousand altogether. Somewhere in that area. I have about two thousand in cash and traveler’s checks, and the rest is in a savings account at home.”

  “Then you can’t afford to spend that much on me.”

  “What better way is there to spend it? Besides, I’m going to make money in Vermont. You’re speaking to the next acting manager of Pine Lodge.”

  “I have some money, too. Shares. They’re worth nearly two thousand pounds, I think.”

  “So we’re rich,” he said. “Turn around and let me lie up to your back.”

  Obediently she turned and felt him move in behind her, felt his penis stiffen. He kissed her on the nape of her neck and then, as he began to fondle her breasts, his fingers on her nipples, she heard a siren cry out, far below in the night traffic. Excited, she turned to him, taking his penis in her hand.