by Jill Barnett
“Laurel.” That was all, and the moment stretched out between the two of them, neither moving nor speaking, curiosity and expectation as taut as pulled taffy. “Are you going to make me stand here?”
“I should close the door in your face.”
“Probably.” He placed one hand on the door frame and looked down at her. His aftershave was English Leather, his sport shirt laundered in Tide, and if she hadn’t known better, she might have thought she could smell trouble in his blood.
“Why are you here?”
“I want to talk to you about Cale.” On the surface he was cocky and all Jud. Beneath she saw the truth: his frustration, the underlying jitters of someone unhinged. Cale told her they hadn’t patched up anything, and when he spoke of Jud, it was with bitterness that echoed more empty than angry.
“Come on in.”
He stood in the middle of her small living room, taking up too much space. “Nice place.”
“It’s a rental apartment. It’s all beige.”
“I like beige. Too much color makes me nervous.”
“I didn’t think anything made Jud Banning nervous.”
“Then you don’t know me very well.”
“No. I don’t.” She didn’t want to see him as human and vulnerable. It was better if he was something else altogether. “You want something to drink?”
“Scotch would work.”
“I have a bottle of wine, but I’m not offering it,” she said in a cranky tone. “I can’t buy alcohol. Remember? You can have lemon or peppermint iced tea”—he made a face—“sparkling water, root beer, or Coke.”
“I’ll have a root beer. Got any ice cream?”
“Yes. You want some?” She opened the refrigerator and took out two long-necked bottles of root beer.
“It was a joke, Laurel.”
She popped the tops off and handed him a bottle. “With you it’s hard to tell when you’re joking.”
“I’m lucky to have any sense of humor with Victor for a grandfather.”
“Cale’s always funny.” Why did she do that?
“Yes. He is. Has been since he was a little kid.” Jud paused and took a drink. “How is he doing?”
“You could ask him yourself.”
“He’d have to return my phone calls. I stopped by the dorm, but he’s always gone. We haven’t heard from him since he packed up and went to school.” Jud laughed. “Two weeks early.”
“What makes you think I’ve heard from him? Your grandfather set down the law—he doesn’t want me to see him.”
“I know my brother. He’s not going to do what Victor wants.”
“And if I have seen him, are you going to tell your grandfather?”
“I’m sorry you were caught up in that.” He didn’t sound sorry. It had taken time to forget the look on his face that afternoon in the kitchen. Even now, she could feel her skin flush. She picked up the food cartons she’d brought from work and put them in the fridge. “Your grandfather threatened to have Cale thrown out of school anytime. Apparently if you have enough money, you can make someone’s life or ruin it.”
“Victor would run the world if he could.”
“Hand me those last two cartons.”
“What is this? Chinese food? I thought you were a chef.”
“Well, well. You’re moving up a notch. You didn’t call me a cook.”
He finished the root beer and set the bottle down. “I had nowhere to go but up.”
“That’s true.” She opened one of the cartons. “We make experimental meals like this. One of the perks of my job is free food. Chicken ballotine. Sausage and corn-bread-stuffed onions. Fresh river salmon poached in white wine. Julienne carrots with haricots verts and wild mushrooms. Sliced Anjou pears in kirsch and honey cream.” He was looking at the food with the same starved look of the rangy dogs at the back door of the restaurant kitchen. Don’t do it, Laurel.
He took a carton from her. “It smells incredible.”
“There’s enough for two.”
“Are you asking me to stay for dinner?”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“Okay. Set the table.” She dropped two plates in his hands and put the food in bake ware to heat in the oven, then set two wineglasses on the table and uncorked her precious imported bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse.
“You don’t have to open that for me.”
She pulled out the cork and sniffed it. “Oh, that’s nice. I’m opening it for me. If you behave, I might let you share.”
Dinner was surprisingly comfortable. He was interested in her life, her choices, and her work, and told her funny stories about his antics with Cale. But when the phone rang, the silence between the rings felt louder than the phone. They both knew it was Cale, who sounded exhausted. She felt horribly guilty and staggered her way through a quick conversation, with his brother sitting three feet away.
The moment she hung up Jud said, “I’m not going to say anything to Victor. Cale’s dream is to be a doctor. Hell, I’m the one who asked Victor to help him get in.”
“You?” It just came out that way, surprised and accusatory, all in one loosely spoken word.
“I love my brother, Laurel.”
“Maybe you should tell him that. It could help. I think the reality of school is a lot harder than he thought it would be.”
“Ah, the assurance of youth.”
“And you’re so old.”
“In some ways, I’m years older than Cale.” His meaning was difficult to pinpoint. There were too many ways she could take that, some dangerously suggestive. She wondered exactly what he’d meant.
“I came here to find out if he was okay.”
“He’s exhausted, but he loves it.” If that was why Jud had come, he had his answer.
“I’d better go.” He stood and pulled out his car keys. At the door, he stopped. “Since my pigheaded brother won’t call me, would you mind if I call you to check up on him once in a while?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.” He walked across the street and hopped in a great little classic red MG, waved, and drove off.
She slept like a log that night and right through her alarm. When she left for work the next day, a large box wrapped in glossy white paper with a big red bow sat on her front porch. Inside was a case of expensive French white wine with a handwritten card.
Dear Jailbait,
Thanks for not throwing me out on my ear. This is for you. So you won’t have to lie again about leaving your license at home.
—Jud
It was another week before Laurel could meet Cale. He didn’t want her riding the bus. Although the campus was safe, the surrounding areas weren’t, so they chose to meet at the beach.
His truck pulled into a lot and Laurel walked away from the sand. “Well, hello, stranger.”
“Hi, babe.” His voice was raspy and sounded just as tired and wrung out as he looked—older and thinner, his hair dull and his skin sallow. He hadn’t shaved. She was caught off guard when he kissed her hard, harder than she expected or wanted. She couldn’t breathe and tried to move, but he pinned her against the fender, her protest muffled by his tongue. When he finally pulled his mouth away, it was only to say, “I want you so badly.”
“Cale. Wait.”
“What?”
“We’re in public here. Come on.” She straightened her clothes, annoyed. His hands had been everywhere. He looked at her like, What’s wrong with you? She pulled him toward the blanket spread on the sand. “I packed dinner for us.”
“I don’t want food. I want you.”
“You look like you need food more than you need me. You’ve lost weight.”
He yawned. “I’ve been too busy to eat.”
“When was your last meal?”
“What time is it?”
“Four.”
“‘What day is it?”
“Wednesday.” She laughed.
“I ate a banana last night.
I think it was last night.”
There were fatigue lines on his forehead and around his mouth and eyes, which were bloodshot. He wasn’t walking steady and all but fell on the blanket, then lay there with his arm flung over his eyes. Within seconds he was asleep.
Awkward and alone, she sat cross-legged in the sand and watched the gulls overhead. Shouts came from a volleyball game down the beach, and a pair of black dogs raced to catch Frisbees in the air. Near the water, a couple—clearly in love—flew a kite in the shape of a dragon, the long dark green tail rippling over the surf She wanted to feel that way again, laughing and playful. A cool breeze swept in with a wave. The salt air stung her swollen lips. She didn’t like the way he’d touched her, as if love were a necessity instead of a gift. What was wrong? Was it him, or her?
Beside her, he slept soundly. She watched the rise and fall of his chest and remembered resting in his arms.
Today, his touch was brutal, not tender. Desperation edged in his voice and motions. This was not her Cale. This wasn’t love, soft and sweet and forever.
She couldn’t watch him sleep, this sudden stranger, and unpacked the food. Crab-stuffed deviled eggs, a loaf of fresh bread, some thinly sliced roast beef with slivered horseradish, and fruits with soft cheeses. She opened a beer and set it in the sand next to him. “Cale?” She shook his arm.
He jackknifed up. “What? Laurel?” He groaned, then just looked at her blankly. “Sorry.”
“Come eat.”
He wolfed it all down with no time for talk. But she didn’t feel like eating anything and used her few bites to keep from having to say something. How odd that she had nothing to say to him. When had that happened?
Behind an amber sky, the sun balanced on the water, turning it deep purple and the breeze cooler. The air was thickly pungent with salt and seaweed, and the wind whipped up, spitting sand on them. He lay on his side, one arm propping himself up as he finished off his beer. “We should go soon.”
“When do you have to be back?”
“Eight thirty.” He yawned, then offered her his hand. “Come on. I’ll take you home.” A few minutes later they were in the truck, driving toward her apartment. He patted the seat. “Come closer, babe. You’re too far away.” He swung one arm over her shoulder, the other on the wheel, and the sky was a dark ink blue when they pulled up to her place.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Seven twenty. Where’s your watch?”
“I haven’t got a clue. Somewhere between the labs, the library, and the lecture halls. Seven twenty? We have time. Let’s go inside.”
“Don’t you think you should sleep?” She didn’t tell him that she wanted to be alone.
“I need you, not sleep.” He pulled her up the front steps and unlocked the door. Inside, he was on her in an instant, pulling at her clothes and sucking on her neck and mouth. She closed her eyes, scared, because she started to flinch at his touch. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t feel anything wonderful. He pushed her to the bed and was all over her, in her, on her.
He was on some kind of sleep-deprived edge. What he was doing to her felt panicked, so she lay there very still, and because she had loved him, let him take what he needed from her, while her mind said over and over, This is not love, this is not love . . .
It didn’t last long. He fell off of her and onto the pillow, sound asleep in seconds while she lay there, an emotional mess. Love had been so easy before. Her passion was gone, lost, and could she find it again? She didn’t melt at his touch. Yet he was wonderful, she knew that. What cold, frigid thing possessed her? Her love was suddenly a thin emotion, like smoke from an old fire that dissipates into the air.
At eight o’clock she woke him. From the front door she watched him drive away, aware she was glad he was gone, and wondered what kind of love can just suddenly stop. Maybe it was just time apart. Pressure? The weather? It was painful to think that maybe she needed to end it, and could not imagine saying good-bye to him.
In bed, she slept hard, woke up in a tight ball, her hands in fists. She stumbled to the shower on numb legs, and with the water running over her, she cried for no reason.
Cale studied until his neck ached, his eyes blurred, and his spine felt frozen into the shape of a comma. Through histology and physiology, he drank gallons of coffee and chewed peppermint gum to swipe the fuzz of caffeine from his mouth. He ran on Yuban and Wrigley’s, thought axons and glutamine transferase.
Med school was hard—a phrase too simple to encompass his reality of it, which felt as futile as trying to write on water. Even the best instructors crammed every bit of information they could into a slim hour; it was too much to absorb, much less remember. On top of the lectures, labs, and impossibly confusing exams, the powers that be elected to introduce first-year students to clinical experience in a hospital setting at Good Samaritan, to learn from watching how things were accomplished—done well or badly—from simple to life-threatening.
His induction to the surgical ward was put in the hands of a third-year med student, a surgical clerk, with a voice like Minnie Mouse and the bright demeanor of a Miss America contestant. Cale’s first visual lesson began with an alcoholic woman who lay moaning on a stretcher as a team of residents tried to insert a central line.
While Minnie narrated this wild ride, the poor patient had curled into a fetal position, dehumanized and still moaning pitiably, as the annoyed resident team concentrated only on the procedure and, once completed, on congratulating themselves. No one thought to touch the woman, the first lesson ingrained into the mind of a med student—make contact, find a reason to touch the patient, take their temperature, blood pressure, anything, but make that contact.
As the residents left, Cale took the patient’s hand, brushed the damp hair from her face, and spoke quietly until the nurses took her away. He turned to Minnie. “I can’t believe that.”
“Wasn’t that great?” she said, sans pom-poms. “I’m hoping to get to try one or two lines before I finish here.”
I love medicine, whipped cream, and world peace, he thought, disgusted. The cold ugliness of that scene stuck with him all day. Later, he went to a meeting with his clinical tutor, Ed Strovich, a man he genuinely liked and respected. Strovich was standing at the elevator talking to a stout gray-haired woman in a housedress. Back in his office, Ed set down a tray piled with sticky baklava and pushed it toward Cale. “Have some.”
“God, that tastes good.” Cale ate two more pieces while he told Ed what he witnessed that morning.
“One of the great questions in medicine is how you, as a doctor, will choose to approach it. A couple of months ago, I had to run syphilis tests on that Greek woman who just left.”
“She’s got to be in her mid-sixties,” Cale said. “It must have been a false positive.”
“I asked her if she was faithful to her husband, and she swore in God’s name she had been, so I asked about her husband, who’d had a stroke four years before and was impotent. I assumed the test was wrong, but before I retested her, I asked her the tough question: if she’d been sexually assaulted.”
“I don’t think I would have thought to ask a woman in her sixties that question.”
“Sadly, women are raped at any age. It’s the hidden secret in too many retirement homes, especially state-run facilities. One thing about practicing medicine is it doesn’t take long to see the underbelly of life.”
Ed Strovich didn’t sugarcoat medicine and didn’t malign it. He just gave you the truth.
“She had never told a soul and was deeply humiliated. It happened right after they immigrated here from Greece. She barely spoke English, and was afraid of the police. In her heart, in her head, she wasn’t unfaithful. I explained she would have to be retested after treatment. She cried then because she had no money to pay for the first tests, so I told her there would be no charge. She just brought me this.” He pointed to the plate.
“Like the country doc paid in chickens and pigs.”
/> “Who probably sleeps better than the rest of us. God knows he eats better.” Ed leaned back in his chair. “You don’t have to be like those men you saw today, Cale, although you’ll get used to seeing that kind of medical practice first-hand. But you can be exactly the kind of doctor you want to be. The best advice I can give you is to try to light your own way.”
Ed’s words were the first positive ones he’d heard in weeks, and gave him some color of hope and a fresh enthusiasm for medicine, something outside of pancreatic acini and intestinal villi, for what he had always envisioned as his way of medicine. What he wanted to do, he could do.
Later that night, parked outside of Laurel’s restaurant, Cale told her the stories and how he felt, the good and the bad. She was his sounding board. He wondered if she knew how important she was to him. He told her things he could never tell anyone else, because she wouldn’t judge him.
“Do you think they treated that woman badly because she was an alcoholic?” Laurel asked him.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Doesn’t make it right.”
“No. It doesn’t.” Her hand was bandaged. He hadn’t noticed before.
“What happened?”
“I had trouble concentrating all day. I cut myself, burned the bread, and dropped the soup on the floor. I think Richard would have liked to get me as far away from him as possible.”
“Well, I’ve missed you. Being without you is hell. But someday it’ll all be worth it.” He turned on the radio to a hit by Jay and the Americans. “Come a little bit closer,” he said. “My nights have been way too long.”
She moved over and he put his arm around her and began to whistle. He wasn’t tired anymore.
“You’re really happy, aren’t you?”
“Tonight I am,” he said. “I’m with you.”
Back at the apartment, he carried the conversation for most of the night, telling her about his life at school and relating stories. She didn’t talk much. He drank a bottle of wine that slowly put him at peace. He lay sprawled on the sofa, his head in her lap.