The Doctor and the Diva

by Adrienne McDonnell

  Then, abruptly, he wrestled loose and stood up. “Caroline,” he said. “I can’t—I can’t let this happen.”

  Reddening and flustered, she got up, too. Leaning her back against a wall, she looked at him, a glint of bitterness in her stare. Many men must have melted at the sight of her prettiness; was he the only one who’d ever rebuffed her? A light rain tapped at the windows. She swaddled herself in her wraps and stabbed the air with her umbrella as she rushed off into the night.

  “So Caroline came to visit you,” Amanda Appleton said. “She told me that she stopped by.”

  Ravell said nothing. Amanda walked through his flat, looking around at the doorways draped by rope portieres, at the clawed feet of his oak table, and at the pillows plumped on his bed.

  “She says she’s worried about you,” Amanda said, “but I suspect she has designs on you.”

  Ravell shrugged. Amanda did not ask for an accounting from him. In fact, she appeared amused by the notion that Caroline had been here. Amanda turned on the glass Bordeaux lamp, and she stepped back to admire its jewel colors—the topaz and orange, and the royal purple of the stained-glass grapes. She asked if Caroline had noticed the lamp: had he told Caroline that the Bordeaux lamp had been a present from her, from Amanda?

  When Amanda kissed him, there was an edge of spite to the kiss that had not been there the previous week. She locked her legs around him and pushed her bones against him with a kind of greed, as though she were sparring with somebody. She may have scrutinized the pillow next to his for extra creases made by another woman’s head. This only sharpened her lust.

  “They must all want you,” Amanda said. “Your patients.”

  “Hardly,” Ravell laughed.

  “They lie with their husbands and think about you.”

  “When they hear my name, they remember the agony of childbirth,” he said. “They hope I’ll never darken their doorstep again.”

  After this, Amanda came more frequently to his private residence. She had a key, and whenever he came up the stairs, he could not predict if she would be waiting for him. One evening he arrived to find Amanda seated in his leather chair, wearing nothing but a corset laced so tight that her breasts seemed to swell and overflow from the top of it.

  “I’ve been here for ages,” she said.

  “I’ve got an infant to deliver in less than an hour,” Ravell lied. “I’ve just returned home to grab a couple of cold pork chops from the icebox.”

  Amanda pulled at his suspenders, lowering them from his shoulders.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Ravell brushed her hands away. “There simply isn’t time.”

  She fell back, stung. “I’ve become tiresome to you, haven’t I? Is it my age—is that what bothers you?”

  “Age has got nothing to do with it.”

  One Monday evening when he expected that Amanda would be coming, he walked the streets of the Back Bay until it grew so late he knew she would need to leave. After nightfall pedestrians became anonymous; the row houses lit up from the inside like stage sets. No one noticed him as he strolled along the strip of parkland that divided Commonwealth Avenue. While passing Peter and Erika’s home, he slowed his gait, his breaths suspended as he gazed at five stories of windows that glowed from within. At a third-floor window he caught sight of Peter’s silhouette near the toucan’s cage. Peter lifted his elbow, his arm extended to offer a perch for the bird.

  Ravell took care not to lurk; he moved past slowly but steadily. He wished the season were not winter, but summer. If it were July, their windows would be thrown open, and the vibrations of her voice might be heard.

  Dear Hartley, he wrote later that evening to his boyhood friend who owned the coconut plantation near the coast of South America. Perhaps in November, I will embrace your long-standing invitation to visit your part of the world. Lately I have witnessed a good deal of sadness in my practice. It has become difficult to shrug off the sorrows I’ve seen. Besides, the needs of certain members of the fairer sex can exhaust a man’s spirit. . . .

  A hand clattered against his back-door window. He dropped the pen, glanced up, and saw Caroline Farquahr flash a wave. She had no key, and he had not seen her since the evening she’d fed him brown bread sweetened by molasses and dates. Ravell snapped his head down, rereading what he had written to Hartley, sorry that he had glanced up and met her eye. Why had he not drawn the curtain over that window?

  Caroline saw how he stalled, reluctant to open his door to her. She knew that he had not returned her smile with his own—she noticed how he had jerked his head away, and that only made her smack the pane harder.

  Finally he got up to answer. As soon as he unlocked the door, she turned her body sideways to fit through the narrow opening, and she sliced past him. He closed the door behind her. She opened her lips, ready to spit flames.

  “First you threw me over, and now it’s Amanda.”

  He ran one finger under his tie, loosening it, not responding.

  He heard a snag, a pause in her hard, enraged inhalations. Caroline paced for a moment and halted. “There’s somebody else, isn’t there?” She placed her palm on her jutting hip. “Could it be that singer we heard last spring at Mrs. Gardner’s palazzo? I remember how eager you were to run to the stage door for an extra glimpse of her.”

  Stunned, he stared at the floor. With open hands he rubbed his face and wiped his features, as though to cleanse himself. “To be completely honest, I’d prefer to be alone at this time in my life. Celibate.”

  “You?” she scoffed. “Celibate? From what Amanda tells me, you won’t be happy staying celibate for long.”

  17

  During the days that followed the baby’s birth and death, memories replayed in Erika’s mind, spreading like fire across a night sky. The scenes burned through her sleep and woke her while the moon was still up. She watched the same nightmare hour unfold over and over—the one with a very young doctor yanking the stethoscope from his ears, declaring that he must be going deaf; the sound of Ravell’s tread on the stairs; the tie that flew like a long tongue around Ravell’s neck as he raced into her bedchamber.

  She saw the little girl again, the weary half-moons under the baby’s closed eyes after her long day of being born and dying. The baby’s head fell back in surrender, her tiny lush lips parted.

  Peter’s memory flared with similar scenes, and at night he molded himself protectively around Erika. Whenever she slid from the bed, his body jerked awake. His hands followed her waist and he whispered anxiously, “Where are you going?”

  “To the bathroom,” Erika said. “Only to the bathroom.”

  When her eyes opened in the dark on the second night, she sat up, startled by sensations her body had never known before. Milk spurted from her nipples, droplets wetting her midriff and her forearms. Milk soaked the sheets. She dabbed at the leakage and licked it from her fingers and found the substance strange—sticky and sweet.

  She pulled the chain and snapped on the lamp next to the bed and woke Peter, knowing he would be as amazed by the sight as she was. “It’s the milk,” she said, staring down at nipples that wept and left her torso glistening.

  Her breasts had never been so ripe, so enormous. She might have hired herself out as a wet nurse. “Do you want a taste?” she asked Peter.

  A look of curiosity passed over his face. With one finger he wiped opaque drops from her arm, and he tasted. “Sugary,” he observed.

  Papa came to visit while the fresh horrors of labor flashed through her still, and she spared him no detail. Her father listened with the tender interest he showed his patients.

  Magdalena came to call, her arms laden with gladiolas and chocolates and Caruso’s latest recording, which she promptly set upon the gramophone. Magdalena had never borne a child. Every time Erika alluded to her ordeal, Magdalena interrupted with a funny anecdote.

  “Have you heard that Dame Nellie Melba is suing a newspaper over a bad review of her singing?” Magdalena said. “Thi
s time I must say she’s got a good case. It turns out that the newspaper published a review of a performance that had been canceled. The critic had written his terrible review in advance!”

  Erika had difficulty concentrating on Magdalena’s words. How, she wondered, could Magdalena speak of such frothy things? Doesn’t she realize, Erika thought, that two days ago a dead baby was wrenched from between my legs and taken from my body? Her mind was crowded with those visions, and her thoughts could not make room for anything else.

  Her recollections were violent, and through the haze of scenes, Ravell moved unforgettably. A thousand times she watched the shock freeze his features as he rushed into the bedchamber and saw her lying there. Erika held the warm swaddled bulk of the baby against her chest, murmuring, “Oh, she was sweet—” Ravell went away wordlessly, not wanting to linger at the scene.

  He had not become an obstetrician to pull dead, lavender-faced babies out of women’s bodies. Knowing him, she suspected that he went home, sat on the edge of his bed with elbows on his knees, and hung his head.

  The next morning he entered her bedroom very early, as a father might do, and stared at the closed drapes. In about two months I will examine you again, he said. By then everything will be clearer, and we can discuss the future and whatever decisions we ought to make.

  All her life she had been curious to know what pregnancy and childbearing would be like, and now she knew. Her womb had held a baby who was perfectly made. That gratified her—to know that her body had given root to all the proper parts of a child.

  A miracle to have grown her, even if the little girl did not live. What was missing? As the weeks passed, whenever Erika saw parents with baby carriages during a stroll in the Public Garden, she was baffled. What had sparked their offspring to breathe, to squirm? The daughter she and Peter had had looked the same as those infants, yet their daughter had no more life than the Chinese figurine on the mantel whose porcelain black hair required dusting.

  Only three weeks after the delivery, Erika stood before a tall oval mirror and cinched a pink belt snugly, her waist as narrow as it had ever been. So this was to be her consolation, then: the little girl had been kind to her body. No one would have guessed that she had ever been pregnant.

  She was free now to book her passage for Italy. (“You’ve got your chance back,” Magdalena pointed out. “Why not seize it? Just raise the sails, and get away.”) During the labor, when the baby’s death first became apparent, for a few shameful seconds relief had passed through her, because all the freedom she had loved so well had rushed suddenly, miraculously back. But the relief had lasted only that long—seconds.

  Now that her womb had been emptied of the child that had kept her from all her plans, it was no longer Italy she thought about. Only the devastation of it filled her—the shock, like a rape. Fate had robbed her, left her reeling—not quite a woman until she got back what had been taken from her.

  Now she wanted—as desperately as she had ever wanted anything—to go back and do it properly. She knew she had the power of it inside her, buried deep. Given another chance, she felt she could make it come out right. How could she devote herself to anything else until she had finished this, until her womb made a living, laughing baby?

  As she walked down Commonwealth Avenue, about six blocks from her home, she paused on the frozen strip of land across from Ravell’s office. She envied the female patients who came and went.

  It would not be proper for her to enter his office, not until her appointment in several more weeks.

  She sat at the piano and sang Schubert’s “Erlkönig” over and over, like a madwoman, her fingers galloping over the keys like a horse scrambling at night through a storm. She sang about the terrors of a child who verged on being snatched by Death. She repeated it so many times that she expected the servants to enter the music room and make her quit, but nobody did. She played and sang until her vocal cords grew sore and her shoulders collapsed.

  Perhaps the Lord was a Great Artist who designed the plots of people’s lives, she thought; perhaps when old age brought her a more aerial view of things, she would understand why this had happened. For now she could only guess. Maybe this will enrich my voice, my art, she told herself, after she’d pulled her fingers away from the ivory keys. That was the irony: for an artist, the worst and most painful thing could also be a gift.

  18

  Four men waited on the sidewalk outside his practice as Ravell returned from attending a birth. It was just past seven A.M. and the office was not due to open for another half hour. He had been looking forward to ducking upstairs to his apartment for a swift change of clothes before the first patient arrived. He had hoped to enjoy a scone with honey, to rest his head against the back of his leather chair—just for a few minutes—and close his eyes.

  The moment he saw the four men, he understood that something was amiss. One gentleman raised a cane and pointed it at Ravell, and the other three, all dressed in black overcoats and top hats, turned to face him. With their feet apart and their hands behind their backs, they blocked the sidewalk. White breaths issued from them like steam from the mouths of dragons.

  An air of importance and high social position emanated from all four of them. Their hats and gloves were impeccable, and the smell of quality wool hung about their damp overcoats. The eldest of the foursome, a bald man nearing sixty, had hands that trembled. He appeared in need of a stiffening drink. Ravell recognized him as George Appleton, Amanda’s husband, but the man had never appeared so unbalanced, or so sickly, before. He could hardly look at Ravell. Next to him, a younger man whose hair was slicked with pomade glared at Ravell, the menace in his facial muscles unmistakable: the younger one was Caroline Farquahr’s husband.

  “Doctor Ravell?” The tallest gentleman stepped forward. “We wish to have a word with you.”

  Ravell unlocked the front door and led them through the stale air of the vacant waiting room into his office. His nurse had not yet arrived. As he went behind his desk, he motioned toward a coat rack and three chairs ranged along the wall. Ravell offered to bring another seat to accommodate the fourth man.

  “That won’t be necessary, thank you,” the tallest of the lot said. “We’ll keep our business here brief.” He explained that he was an attorney, and he pointed out that the man to his left was the brother-in-law of the governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. “We appear here with regard to a matter of great personal concern to all of us. At one time or another, each of our wives has been a patient of yours.

  “You stand accused of repeated attempts to seduce Mr. Farquahr’s wife,” the lawyer announced, “and though Caroline Farquahr has managed to resist, it seems that Mr. Appleton’s wife, Amanda, has been subjected to the same type of advances. In fact, Mr. Appleton’s wife admits to having succumbed.”

  Ravell’s collar felt soaked at the place where his hair touched it, but he did not dare to take a handkerchief and wipe the back of his neck. He stood before them and said nothing. He did not move.

  The attorney went on talking as Caroline Farquahr’s husband gave hard, sharp nods of satisfaction, his eyes never leaving Ravell’s face. Obviously her husband regarded this as his rightful bounty—to enter this office and watch the reaction of his prey.

  How long had they been lurking outside his office this morning? Ravell wondered.

  Even before the lawyer described the proceedings they intended to initiate against him, Ravell foresaw how absolute it would be, the shunning. He understood at once that this encounter was only the beginning. He heard only random words and phrases as the attorney went on speaking in dire terms: investigation . . . censure . . . Board of Obstetrics . . . American Medical Association . . . your license revoked . . . the possibility of criminal charges . . .

  He saw how patients would vanish from his waiting room. Even if female patients remained loyal, their husbands would forbid them from submitting to any examination by him. Even if he moved to another city or state, the venge
ance and righteousness of men like these would follow him.

  The foursome departed just as the first patients arrived. Passing through his waiting room, the four gentlemen gave the arriving females concerned, regretful glances—as though they disliked entrusting any woman to Ravell’s care, even for another day.

  After they’d gone, Ravell fell into his desk chair and turned to the window and watched the color blanch from the sky. In their indignation these men did not even suspect the worst breach Ravell knew he had committed—but God had already punished him for that.

  He suspected that it had been Caroline, not Amanda, who had sent the posse here. An arsonist—that’s what Caroline was, and she would not be satisfied until she’d hurled torches through the windows of his practice.

  Amanda’s frankness had always been a risk; she had no talent for lying. When confronted by her husband or a group of inquisitors, she must have found it difficult not to speak the truth.

  Dear Hartley, he wrote in his mind, Please disregard my recent letter about a visit next fall because you may be seeing me on your island of coconut palms far sooner than that. Everything has changed for me since I mailed my last letter. My career as a physician has unexpectedly ended. I must begin a new life as far away from this one as possible.

  19

  The barbershop smelled of men—the pungent spice of Havana cigars and rum and aftershave. White towels protected men’s clothing like bibs. Peter savored the camaraderie he felt whenever he stepped into the place. It was not simply an establishment where one paid one’s fifteen cents for a shave; the shop was more intimate than the Club, really. Men came and went daily and fell into reclining leather chairs and spoke their opinions and released their cares to barbers whom they trusted to draw sharp-edged blades across their jaws and throats.