The Carpetbaggers

by Robbins, Harold

  The light from the lamp on his desk shining up onto his face made him look even more handsome than usual. She stood in the doorway, staring at him. She felt her heart pumping strangely within her. "But I do worry about you, Doctor. You work too hard."

  "I’ll be all right," he said in a toneless voice. He turned to look at her and their eyes locked and held. It seemed as if she were spinning into a swirling vortex deep in his gentle brown eyes. She felt a trembling in her legs and placed her hand on the doorjamb quickly, to support herself. No words came to her lips; she stared at him, speechless.

  "Is anything wrong, Miss Denton?"

  It took a desperate effort for her to shake her head. "No," she whispered, forcing her eyes to turn away. "No." Suddenly, she turned and ran toward the stairway.

  She wasn't even aware that he had come after her until he caught her in the doorway of her apartment. The warmth of his hand touching her shoulder came through the thin robe. "Are you afraid of me, Jennie?" he asked harshly.

  She looked up into his face and saw the anguish in his eyes. A curious weakness came over her and she would have fallen if he had not been holding her. "No," she whispered.

  "Then what is it?"

  She looked down, not speaking, the warmth from his hand beginning to radiate into a fire inside her. "Tell me!" he urged, shaking her.

  She looked up at him, the tears coming into her eyes. "I can't."

  "You can, Jennie, you can," he said insistently. "I know what you feel. You feel the same things I feel. I can't sleep without dreaming of you, without feeling you close to me."

  "No. Please! It's not right."

  His strong surgeon's hand held her chin. "I love you, Jennie," he said. "I love you."

  She stared up into his eyes, seeing his face coming closer and closer, then his mouth pressed down on hers. She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the fire envelop her. Abruptly she tore her face away. She backed into the apartment. He stepped in after her, kicking the door shut with his foot. "You love me," he said. "Say it!"

  Her eyes were wide as she stared up at him. "No," she whispered.

  He stepped forward again, his strong fingers digging deep into her shoulders. "Say it!" he commanded harshly.

  She felt the weakness as his touch flowed through her again. She couldn't turn her face from his eyes. "I love you," she said.

  He pressed his mouth to hers again and kissed her. She felt his hands inside her robe, his fingers on her back unfastening her brassiere, her breasts rising from their restraint, the nipples leaping joyfully into his hands. A shiver of ecstasy raced through her and she almost fell. "Please don't," she whispered, her lips moving under his. "It's wrong."

  He picked her up in his arms and carried her across the room to the bed. He placed her on it gently and knelt beside her. "When a man and a woman are in love," he whispered, "nothing they do in the privacy of their own home is ever wrong. And this is our home."

  He pressed his lips down on her mouth again.

  Tom looked across the table at the kitchen clock. It was a few minutes past ten. He folded his newspaper. "I guess she won't be coming now," he said, "so I might as well be turning in." He got to his feet. "The boys down at the Alliance tell me I’ll be making supervisor any day now, so I better get my sleep. It won't do for me to be showing up late to work."

  Ellen sniffed contemptuously. "If ye keep listenin' to them communists down at the Workers' Alliance, you'll be lucky even to hold your job with the WPA."

  "They're in pretty good, you can't deny that. It was them that got me onto full time instead of half time and you know it. It's them that's for the working man."

  "Communists are heathens," she said. "Father Hadley told me they're against the church because they don't believe in God. He says they're only playing up to the workin' man until they get in power, like in Russia. Then they'll close the churches and make slaves out of us all."

  "What if they are?" he asked. "I don't see Father Hadley getting me a job or paying our bills. No, it was the Alliance that put me to work and saw to it I earned enough to pay rent and buy food. I don't care what Father Hadley calls them, as long as they do good for me."

  She smiled bitterly. "A fine family I have. A husband who's a communist and a daughter who never has the time to come home."

  "Maybe she's busy," Tom said lamely. "You know it's a responsible position she's got. Didn't the sister at St. Mary's say, when she graduated, that she was very lucky to be working for such an important doctor?"

  "Yes, but she still should come home once in a while. I'm willin' to bet she hasn't been to Mass since she left St. Mary's."

  "How do you know?" Tom asked angrily. "St. Paul's ain't the only church in San Francisco."

  "I know," she said. "I feel it. She doesn't want to come see us. She's makin' so much money now, she's ashamed of us."

  "And what has she got to be proud of? With you preaching religion at her all the time and the boys on the street still sniggering and laughing behind her back when she walks by? Do you think that's something to make a young girl want to come home?"

  Ellen ignored him. "It's not right that a girl should stay away like this," she said stubbornly. "We both know what goes on up there on the hill, with everybody sleepin' with each other's wives and the drink. I read the papers, too, ye know."

  "Jennie's a good girl. She wouldn't do a thing like that."

  "I'm not too sure. Sometimes a taste of temptation is like a spoonful of honey. Just enough to sweeten your tongue but not enough to fill your whole mouth. And we both know she's tasted temptation."

  "You still don't believe her, do you?" he asked bitterly. "You'd rather take the word of those two hoodlums than your own daughter."

  "Then why didn't she go into court? If there wasn't just a little truth in what they said, she wouldn't have been afraid. But no, she takes the thousand dollars and lets herself be labeled a whore."

  "You know as well as I why she didn't," Tom answered. "And you can thank your church for it. They'd not even come into court to say she was a good girl. No, they were afraid the boys' parents might not like it and cut off their weekly contributions."

  "The church sent her to college. And they found her this job. They did their duty."

  "Then what are you complaining about?"

  She sat there quietly for a moment, listening to him drop his shoes angrily to the floor as he undressed in the bedroom. Then she got out of the chair and felt the hot-water heater. A hot bath would soothe her aches and pains a little; all this damp fall weather was bringing out her arthritis. She took a match and kneeled down beside the heater. Striking the match, she turned the pet cock. The flame caught for a moment, then died out in a tiny yellow circle. She looked up at the meter. They were out of gas. The red flag was up. She got to her feet and walked over to her pocketbook. She opened the small change purse and searched through it. She had no quarters, only nickels and dimes. For a moment, she thought of asking Tom for a quarter, then shrugged her shoulders. She'd had enough of his blasphemous tongue. She'd do without her bath. She could take it in the morning, when she came back from Mass. She went into the bathroom and used the last of the hot water to wash her face. Tom was standing in the kitchen when she came out, his chest bare above his trousers. She swept by him silently and closed the bedroom door behind her.

  Tom went into the bathroom and washed up noisily. Suddenly, the water went cold. He swore and dried himself quickly, then fished in his pocket for a quarter. He reached up and put the quarter into the meter, then watched the red on the dial disappear. He nodded, satisfied.

  In the morning, he'd turn on the heater and in a few minutes, he'd have enough hot water for his shave. He went into the bedroom, leaving the door open behind him, unaware of the slight hiss coming from under the heater.

  He draped his pants on the chair and sat down on the bed. After a moment, he stretched out with a sigh. His shoulder touched Ellen and he felt her turn away.

  Ah, the hell with h
er, he thought, turning on his side, his back to her. Maybe the commies were right with their ideas of free love. At least a man wouldn't have to put up with a woman like her.

  His eyes began to feel heavy. He could hear the soft, even sounds of her breath. She was asleep already. He smiled to himself in the dark. With free love, he'd have his pick of women. She'd act different then, all right. His eyelids drooped and closed and he joined his wife in slumber. And death.

  Jennie sat up in the bed, clutching the sheet to her naked body and staring with wide, frightened eyes at the woman who stood in the doorway. On the other side of the bed, Bob was already hurriedly buttoning his shirt.

  "Did you think he'd leave me for you?" she screamed at Jennie. "Did you think you were the first? Hasn't he told you how many times I've caught him like this?" Her voice grew contemptuous. "Or do you think he's really in love with you?"

  Jennie didn't answer.

  "Tell her, Robert," his wife said angrily. "Tell her you wanted to make love to me tonight and when I refused, you came running over here. Tell her."

  Jennie stared at him. His face was white and he didn't look in her direction. He grabbed his coat from the chair and walked over to his wife. "You're all upset. Let me take you home."

  Home. Jennie felt a sick feeling in her stomach. This was home – his and hers. He had said so. It was here they had loved, here they had been together. But he was talking about someplace else. Another place.

  "I'm always upset, aren't I, Robert? Every time you promise it will never happen again. But I know better, don't I? All right," she said suddenly, her voice hard and cold. "We'll go. But not until you tell her."

  "Please, dear," he said quickly. "Another time. Not now."

  "Now, Robert," she said coldly. "Now – or the whole world will know about Dr. Grant, the quack, the abortionist, the great lover."

  He turned and looked back at Jennie on the bed. "You'll have to leave, Miss Denton," he said huskily. "You see, I don't love you," he said in a strained voice. "I love my wife."

  And almost at the same moment that the door closed behind him, there was an explosion in an old tenement on the other side of the city. After the firemen pulled the charred bodies from the fire, they gave their verdict. The victims had been fortunate. They were already dead before the fire started.

  9

  Charles Standhurst was eighty-one years old when he met Jennie Denton. It was eight o'clock of a spring morning in 1936 and he was in the operating room of the Colton Sanitarium at Santa Monica. He was the patient just being placed on the operating table and she was acting as Chief Nurse in Surgery.

  He felt them place his legs over the stirrups and quickly arrange a sheet so that even if he moved his head, he could not see his lower half. When they had finished, he saw her come from somewhere behind him and walk down to the foot of the table. She lifted up the sheet.

  He felt a moment's embarrassment at the impersonal manner in which she scrutinized his private parts. After five wives, countless mistresses and more than forty children that he was sure about, only eight of whom were the result of his marriages, it seemed strange to him that anyone could look at him in such a detached manner. So much life had sprung from that fountain.

  She let the covering fall around him again and looked up. A glint of humor flickered in her intelligent gray eyes and he knew that she understood.

  She came around to the side of the table and reached for his pulse. He looked up at her as she studied her watch. "Where's Dr. Colton?"

  "He'll be along in a minute. He's washing up."

  She let go of his wrist and said something to someone behind him. He rolled his eyes back and caught a glimpse of another nurse. Feeling the prick of a needle in his arm, he turned his head back quickly. Already, she was taking the small hypodermic out of his arm. "Hey, you're fast," he said.

  "That's my job."

  "I am, too."

  Again that smile in her gray eyes. "I know. I read the papers."

  Just then, Dr. Colton came in. "Hello, Mr. Standhurst," he said in his jovial manner. "Did we pass any water today?"

  "Maybe you did, Doc, but you know damn well I didn't," Standhurst said dryly. "Or they'd never have got me back in this slaughterhouse."

  Dr. Colton laughed. "Well, you've got nothing to worry about. We'll have those kidney stones out in a jiffy."

  "All the same, Doc, I'm glad we've got a specialist doing it. If I left it up to you, God knows what you'd cut out."

  His sarcasm didn't disturb Dr. Colton. They'd known each other for too long. It was Charles Standhurst who'd advanced him most of the money to start this hospital. He laughed again.

  The surgeon came in and stood beside Dr. Colton. "Ready, Mr. Standhurst?"

  "Ready as I’ll ever be. Just leave something for the girls, eh, Doc?"

  The surgeon nodded and Standhurst felt a prick in his other arm. He turned his head and saw Jennie standing there. "Gray eyes," he said to her. His second wife had had gray eyes. Or was it his third? He didn't remember. "I suppose you wouldn't take your mask off so that I could see the rest of your face?"

  Again he saw the glint of humor. "I don't think the doctors would approve," she said. "But after the operation, I’ll come visit you. Will that do?"

  "Fine. I've got a feeling you're beautiful."

  He didn't see the anesthetist behind him nod. Jennie leaned over his face. "Now, Mr. Standhurst," she said, "count down from ten with me. Ten, nine, eight- "

  "Seven, six, four, five, two, nine." His lips were moving slowly and everything seemed so comfortable and far away. "Ten, eight, one, three… six… four… one… two…" His voice faded away.

  The anesthetist looked up at the surgeon. "He's under," he said.

  They all saw it at the same time, looking down into the cavity the surgeon had cut into his body – the mass of brackish gray covering almost the entire side of one kidney and threading its way in thin, radiating lines across the other. Without raising his head, the surgeon dropped the two pieces of matter he'd snipped away onto the slides that Jennie held under his hand. She gave the slides to a nurse standing behind her without turning around. "Pathology," she whispered.

  The nurse left quickly and Jennie, with the same deft motion, picked up two hemostats. The assisting surgeon took them from her hand and tied off two veins as the surgeon's knife exposed them.

  "Aren't you going to wait for the biopsy?" Dr. Colton asked from his position next to the surgeon. The surgeon didn't look up. His fingers were busy probing at the mass. "Not unless you want me to, Doctor." He held out his hand and Jennie placed a fine curette in it. He was working quickly now, preparing to remove the infected kidney.

  Colton hesitated. "Charles Standhurst isn't just an ordinary man." Everyone around the operating table knew that. At one time or another, the old man quietly lying there, could have been almost anything he'd wanted. Governor, senator, anything. With more than twenty major newspapers stretched across the nation and a fortune founded from oil and gold, he'd never really wanted anything more than to be himself. He was second only to Hearst in the state's pride for its home-grown tycoons.

  The surgeon, a comparatively young man who'd rapidly become one of the foremost GU men in the world and had been flown out from New York especially for this job, began to lift out the kidney. The nurse behind Jennie tapped her on the shoulder. Jennie took the slip of paper from her and held it out for him to see. She could see the typed words plainly.

  Carcinoma. Metastasis. Malignant.

  The surgeon sighed softly, and glanced up at Dr. Colton. "Well, he's an ordinary enough man now."

  Mr. Standhurst was awake the next morning when the surgeon came into his hospital room. If he paid any attention to the teletype clicking away in the corner, it wasn't apparent. He walked over to the side of the bed and looked down. "I came in to say good-by, Mr. Standhurst. I'm leaving for New York this morning."

  The old man looked up and grinned. "Hey, Doc," he said. "Anybody ever t
ell you that your old man was a tailor?"

  "My father was a tailor, Mr. Standhurst."

  "I know," Standhurst said quickly. "He still has the store on Stanton Street. I know many things about you. You were president of the Save Sacco-Vanzetti Society at City College when you graduated in twenty-seven, a registered member of the Young Socialists during your first year at P. and S., and the first surgeon ever to become an F.A.C.S. in his first year of practice. You're still a registered Socialist in New York and you'll probably vote for Norman Thomas for President."

  The surgeon smiled. "You know a great deal about me."

  "Of course I do. You don't think I'd let just anybody cut me up, do you?"

  "I should think you'd have worried just a little knowing what you do about me," the doctor said. "You know what we Socialists think of you."

  The old man started to laugh, then grimaced in pain. "Hell! The way I figure it, you're a doctor first and a Socialist second." He looked up shrewdly. "You know, Doc, if you voted the straight Republican ticket, I could make you a millionaire in less than three years."

  The doctor laughed and shook his head. "No, thanks. I’d worry too much."

  "How come you don't ask me how I feel, Doc? Colton's been in here four times already and each time he asked me."

  The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Why should I? I know how you feel. You hurt."

  "I hurt like hell, Doc," Standhurst said. "Colton said those stones you took out of me were big as baseballs."

  "They were pretty big, all right."

  "He also said I’d be wearing this bag you hooked into me until the kidney healed and took over again."

  "You'll be wearing it quite a while."

  The old man stared at him. "You know, you're both full of shit," he said calmly. "I’ll wear this in my grave. And that isn't too far off, either."

  "I wouldn't say that."

  "I know you wouldn't," Standhurst said. "That's why I'm saying it. Look, Doc, I'm eighty-one years old. And at eighty-one, if a man lives that long, he gets to be a good smeller of death – for anyone, including himself. You learn to see it in the face or eyes. So don't bullshit me. How long have I got?"