THE M.D. A Horror Story

by Thomas M. Disch

  Judith smiled at Turnage, and explained: “We’re not allowed to discuss anything to do with tobacco at the dinner table. Or at any other time, really. Father finds it too upsetting.”

  “Upsetting? I like talking about tobacco. It’s how I earn my living, after all.” Turnage gave her just the sideways, mean-looking smile he’d given Morley Safer on the program. It had been such an expressive smile that they’d used it for the cameo shot at the start of the show when they previewed what each segment was going to be about. “Tell me, Mr. Turnage,” Morley Safer had asked, “if you had a teenage son or daughter, would you want them to take up smoking, knowing the proven consequences?” Turnage had answered, “The only proven consequences that I know about is that smokers get treated like second-class citizens when they’re on an airplane.” “I was referring to the warning that is put by law on every cigarette package,” Safer had said, “the warning that cigarettes are a danger to your health.” “Well,” Turnage had said, with that sneaky smile, “I don’t believe everything I read.”

  “You see, Father, I knew Mr. Turnage wouldn’t object to having a discussion. And really, there’s only one question I wanted to ask him, and that’s the one he avoided answering on the program. Would you encourage your own children to smoke?”

  Turnage gave her an exasperated look. “I don’t have any children, so I can’t say.”

  “Well then, how about me? I’m sixteen. You said on the program that you began smoking at that age. Do you think I should take up smoking?”

  “That’s a choice you’ll have to make for yourself.”

  “But would you, for instance, feel right about offering a cigarette from the pack in your shirt pocket? What are they? Marlboros, I think.”

  “Judith, really!” Sondra said. “Mr. Turnage is in the middle of eating his dinner.”

  “Listen, kid, you can have the whole pack if you want. I always take a carton with me when I travel, so I got plenty. Here.” He reached into his shirt pocket and produced the flip-top pack of Marlboros. He tossed them to her. “Catch.”

  Judith’s reflexes were fast but not accurate. She dropped the fork in her right hand and grabbed for the pack of cigarettes. The cigarettes ricocheted from her clutching fingers and landed in what remained of William’s dinner. Her water glass had been knocked over, dousing the tablecloth, and her fork had chipped the gilt edge of the dinner plate.

  “Judith,” Ben commanded, “go to your room.”

  She stared at her father. “Why? What did I do wrong?”

  “Never mind, just go to your room.”

  Sondra looked at Turnage, hoping he would have the good grace to take the blame for the accident, which had, after all, been his doing. But he seemed quite impenitent. He had retrieved his pack of cigarettes from William’s plate and was wiping the sauce off it.

  “This is grotesque,” Judith said, pushing back her chair. “This is truly grotesque.”

  Turnage took a cigarette from the pack, flipped the top closed, then thought better of it, flipped it open, and offered Sondra a cigarette.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said.

  “I’ll have one,” said William.

  “You will not!” Sondra snapped.

  “He’s a teenager now,” Ben said. “He should be able to smoke if he wants to. You were smoking at thirteen.”

  “No one knew any better when I was a kid,” Sondra protested.

  Meanwhile, ignoring Sondra’s proscription, Turnage had offered the pack of Marlboros to William.

  William took a cigarette and held it up to be lighted.

  As earlier, Turnage’s lighter would not produce a flame. Turnage kept snapping it futilely, until William said, “I think it’s out of gas. Let me go get some.”

  When William had gone off to get butane for the lighter, Sondra stood up from the table. “If you two gentlemen will excuse me, I think I’ll go speak to Judith.”

  “There’s still the birthday cake,” Ben reminded her.

  “Enjoy it,” she said curtly. Just before rounding the corner out of sight, she thought of a parting shot—to ask Turnage for the name of his wife’s lawyer. But she bit her tongue. She’d only once before risked an argument on the subject of divorce, and this would certainly be the wrong moment, with Turnage looking on as an umpire, to open old wounds. Best let sleeping dogs lie.

  Going through the gallery on the way to Judith’s room at the eastern end of the house, she heard footsteps on the staircase. Thinking it must be Judith, she veered right.

  But it was William, heading to his room.

  “You have lighter fluid in your room, William? When did you start smoking?”

  “No, Mom, nothing like that. I just wanted to get away from that creep Turnage. The same as you did, right?”

  “If you agree that he’s a creep, why did you ask him for a cigarette?”

  “I just wanted to see how far he’d go. I was thinking I’d have a choking fit after he lighted it, or something like that, and then I’d throw the lit cigarette in his food. It really ticked me off, the way he did that to Judith.”

  “I feel just the same, but please, William, don’t do anything to provoke a quarrel when you go back down there. Arguing with that kind of person doesn’t accomplish anything.”

  “Yes, Mother, you’re right. They should be shot.”

  She laughed. “Come here. Let me kiss you good night.”

  He came down the stairs, and they hugged, and she kissed him on the forehead and wished him a happy birthday, and even that became a joke to be shared, though this time without words. They just smiled at each other and nodded, and it was understood that a truly happy birthday was out of the question, but that people with good manners and a sense of humor would always pretend otherwise. She tried to think of something to say in parting that wouldn’t sound entirely cynical, a nugget of worthwhile grown-up wisdom, but all she could think to say was that as you got older, birthdays came to matter less and less. But she wasn’t sure if that was true, and decided that the kiss would have to do.

  36

  From the moment Turnage’s pack of Marlboros had landed on William’s dinner plate and he’d looked at the man and seen the satisfaction he’d taken in Judith’s misery, from that moment William knew the man would be his victim. He didn’t know how he would do it, since the man was already, by virtue of having shared the hot dish that Judith had prepared, blessed with perfect health, and though it was a theory he’d never put to the test, William was certain that anyone whom the caduceus affected for the good could not later be blighted by its power. Certainly the reverse was true: Ned was the living, drooling proof.

  Served with this spoon / Health is your boon. The words of the blessing had been as simple as that. It had seemed important that before he used the caduceus in any other way he should first inscribe some such all-purpose protective charm about his family circle. It was like vaccinating kids against polio and measles at the earliest possible age. So even before Sondra had come for him at the Obstschmecker house, he had found the serving spoon in a kitchen drawer and framed the little rhyme of the blessing. That Turnage should have been on hand to receive a portion of that blessing was sheer fool luck.

  He still couldn’t quite believe that he possessed such a power. Yet the evidence was hard to refute: Ned’s paralysis, Grandma O. going bald, the elms he’d preserved, the kids who’d lost their teeth eating the Halloween candy; even the continuing good health of Madge and Grandma O. Every test to which the evidence could be submitted confirmed the caduceus’s power. But what kind of power was it? Where did it come from? As a kid he had taken his dreams or visions of “Mercury” at face value, believing the way that only a kid can believe. And it was probably because of the strength of that faith that the caduceus had worked. But was the power in the caduceus, or in him? Maybe the caduceus was like Dumbo’s magic feather. Maybe he could fly without it. It would be easy enough to put that theory to the test. But even supposing the caduceus was so
mehow a necessary adjunct to his power, what a power it was! For the first time in history it would be possible to study the power of psychic healing scientifically. (And, necessarily, the opposite power, too.) It was an awesome responsibility.

  It might also be a lot of fun. It would be dishonest to deny that, though it was the danger in the present situation. It was fortunate, in a way, that the power had been in abeyance these last five years, for no child so young, however intelligent, could be trusted to use such power wisely.

  And now? At age thirteen?

  He looked at Turnage’s empty lighter, and smiled, knowing what he would do, and certain of its poetic justice.

  37

  When they’d been left to themselves, Ben Winckelmeyer allowed himself one small deliberate sneer at Turnage’s expense. There was a limit to how much grief anyone had to put up with in the name of good manners, and that limit had surely been exceeded.

  “If you’re truly desperate for a cigarette,” he said to Turnage, “there’s a lighter on the shelf on the wall just to the left of the front door. It’s basically there as decoration, but it probably works.”

  “I’m sorry if I offended the little lady, but I don’t like to be put down on account of smoking. It’s a sore spot with me, for obvious reasons.”

  “Oh, I think ‘the little lady’ was happy to have an excuse to get away from us.”

  Turnage hesitated, then got up from the table to find the lighter in the foyer. He returned, puffing intently, one eye half-squinted against the smoke. Bogart himself could not have smoked a cigarette more solemnly.

  Though he knew he ought to leave well enough alone, Ben couldn’t resist baiting the man some more, and aimed for the sore spot. “Tell me, Dan, how do you feel about this business we’re in of selling addictive drugs? From an ethical point of view. Obviously, it’s something we can’t discuss with outsiders. But just between you and me, don’t you ever have qualms?”

  Turnage snorted a derisive double plume of smoke from his nostrils. “Qualms?” The inflection he gave the word summed up his ethical position: qualms, like quiche, were something real men don’t mess around with.

  “For instance,” Ben persisted, “do you ever worry about your own smoking?”

  “Do you worry about driving? Or your weight?”

  Ben nodded. “Certainly. But cars are a necessary evil if you want to live out here in the suburbs. I do what I can to minimize the risk—avoid the freeways, always use the seat belt, that sort of thing. Billy’s father got killed in a crash because he hadn’t buckled up. It can happen to anyone. As to my weight”—he paused to refill his glass from the bottle of Almaden—“my obesity may well be my downfall. My GP is always telling me I need to take off fifty pounds. Probably more like sixty now. Every so often I do go on a diet, and then fall off it.”

  “So how is smoking any different?”

  “Did I say it was? Though, in fact, it is different. Eating’s a necessity. Smoking is a gratuitous abuse of the cardiovascular system for the sake of a very doubtful pleasure.”

  Turnage took a defiant drag on his cigarette and, holding the smoke in his lungs, declared, “Seems a pretty real pleasure to me.”

  “Only because you’re addicted. Nonsmokers like Judith or William would have a toxic reaction from a single cigarette.”

  “Jesus, Winckelmeyer, I can’t believe I’m hearing this shit—from you, of all people. Addiction! Toxic reaction! You sound like some damned TV commentator. What is it with you? You smoke, your wife smokes, and you earn your living doing research for ATA. You’ve done more to disprove the Surgeon fucking General’s Report than anyone alive.”

  “My research has never dis-proved that there’s a link between smoking and the various illnesses to which it undoubtedly contributes. All my research has accomplished is to create a kind of smoke screen—no pun intended—for the industry. I’ve never imagined that anyone at ATA ever thought otherwise. Not at the executive level.”

  Turnage took this, as it was intended, as a personal insult, but he had no ready comeback. To argue the point would only confirm Ben’s suggestion that he lacked an executive degree of cynicism; to concede it would have been tantamount to admitting that all the denials he had issued as an ATA spokesman were part of a nationwide conspiracy of deception. It would have been like saying straight out to Morley Safer that, sure, smoking causes heart disease, lung cancer, emphysema, and birth defects, but what the hell, it’s a billion-dollar industry and nobody lives forever. That probably was his private opinion, but it was not for public consumption.

  Ben said it for him. “It’s an industry, Dan. Caveat emptor, right? And the devil take the hindmost.”

  Turnage tried to move to the moral high ground. “And that’s all you can say for the research you’ve done, that it’s a smoke screen?”

  “No, the research has sometimes been quite interesting. The work on tattoos, for instance. Fascinating results, and very suggestive for further research. Though not, in all likelihood, with funds from ATA. Their motive in funding any project has never been altruistic. I’m not complaining, mind you. ATA has been, in many ways, an ideal sponsor. They’re generous. They don’t meddle in the design of experiments, and don’t get fussed when they fizzle out, or even when they produce bad news.”

  Turnage scowled. “Yeah. Well, don’t think everyone in the Baltimore office can’t think of what to do with their money except write you out another fat check.”

  Ben realized he’d gone too far. Turnage was not on the ATA Board of Directors and probably never would be, but he was on confidential terms with all of them. He should not be provoking him for no better purpose than his own amusement.

  “Oh, I realize that,” he said placatingly. “It’s a shame that there are so many curtailments on the direct PR side of the budget. I know MIMA’s research gets better funding because of the situation.”

  “Well, it can’t be helped,” Turnage conceded. He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Anyhow, I should be heading back to the hotel. Sorry if I put a damper on the birthday party.”

  William took this as his cue to appear with the birthday cake, its fourteen candles already burned down to within a half inch of the frosting. Ben tried to estimate from this how much of his conversation with Turnage the boy must have overheard.

  “You’re not going without a slice of birthday cake, are you, Mr. Turnage?” William asked.

  “Sorry, but I’ve got… uh, an early flight.” He looked to Ben for help. And truly, the man was helpless. Without his own car, in one of the outermost suburbs of the city, he was at his host’s mercy. A taxi might take half an hour to get to the house. But to expect Ben to act, at just this moment, as his chauffeur… Even Turnage must appreciate that that would be asking a bit much.

  Ben was kind. He took the keys to the BMW from his pocket and placed them on the table. “Here’s the keys to the car. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t drive you back. Just leave the keys at the Hyatt reception desk, and I’ll have Mrs. O’Meara pick them up in the morning.”

  Turnage took the keys with a look of astonished gratitude. He was the sort of man, Ben supposed, who enjoyed a jealously monogamous relationship with his own car. “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

  William blew out the candles on the cake without any ceremony and set it down on the table. “Don’t forget this.” He reached into his pocket and took out the lighter. “The butane wasn’t where I thought it was. It was in the kitchen. That’s why I took so long. Sorry. But it’s working now. See.” He snapped a light from it and handed it, flaming, to Turnage, who responded to the stimulus of the flame with wonderful automatism, flipping open his pack of Marlboros, tipping a cigarette from it, and lighting up. As he did so, a glance passed between Ben and his stepson that was as good as a writ of execution. Turnage was an asshole, their glance declared, and should be got rid of with all deliberate speed.

  Even so, it was another five minutes before Turnage, with directions as to how
to get back onto I-94 and when to exit from it, had driven off and it was possible to offer William an apology for a spoiled birthday.

  “Actually,” William said, “it got so I was enjoying it. When Turnage threw his pack of cigarettes at Judith and it ended up in my potatoes, that was straight out of the Three Stooges.” He poised the cake slicer over the birthday cake. “Small, medium, or large?”

  “Medium. But shouldn’t we sound an all-clear so Judith and Sondra can join us?”

  “Mom’s gone to bed, I think. And I was going to bring a slice up to Judith myself a little later.”

  William plopped down slices of cake on two rose-festooned dessert plates that generally ornamented the sideboard in the far corner of the nameless and useless space between the kitchen and the dining area. The house was full of such wide-open, anomalous spaces that served no better purpose than to display pricey trash of the sort that served as prizes on “Wheel of Fortune.” The Chinese-style umbrella stand in the foyer, the (electric-powered) grandfather clock in the gallery, the étagère in Sondra’s bedroom with its tiers of Steuben “collectibles.” Sondra bought all these white elephants under the impressions they were objets d’art, but it was Ben who cherished them as the glitzy, gloating assertions of affluence they were. Art had nothing to do with it. Sondra had a natural instinct for defining the Winckelmeyer level of income and the Winckelmeyer position in society by whatever she bought, and he loved her for it. He loved her for other reasons, as well, and he loved his home, and his children too (though with some reservations), and he had reached that precise stage of mellow drunkenness when his love extended beyond his immediate sphere of prosperity and embraced all Nature. “This is really delicious cake, isn’t it?” he said, slicing into its spongy brown flesh with the side of his fork.

  “Mmm,” William agreed with his mouth full. Then, “You must be telepathic.”