The Doctor's House

by Ann Beattie

  “Jeeez,” Hound said, waving his hand in front of his face as if he’d just been set upon by flies. “I’m supposed to reportwhat you said to theshrink. He’s not going to believe you came up with a response like that before I even asked my question.Jeeeeeez,” he said again, gripping the table with his fingertips. “Give me a break here. It’s not about love.”

  “What is it?” I said, a little abashed.

  “It’s that I’d like it if you didn’t call me Hound. It makes me feel like a dog.”

  I couldn’t help myself: I doubled over, laughing. The waitress knew better than to set my drink in front of me. She put both glasses in front of him and went away quickly. “Oh, God, forgive me,” I said, “I mean, if you’re serious, then . . .” Laughter overwhelmed me again, and this time he leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Yeah. Funny, huh?” he said.

  I grabbed his hand. “Henry,” I said earnestly. “From now on, it’s Henry.”

  “Well, you know,” he mumbled. “You say ‘Hound,’ and most people conjure up a dog. The shrink said, ‘Why do you go around with a nickname like that? Why not wear a sign that sayskick me?’”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “You don’t feel like maybe something is going to be different between us? Like it was just a nickname and suddenly you see how hypersensitive I am, taking everything too seriously?”

  “I can understand not wanting a nickname,” I said.

  “If I can be totally honest, I feel a little naked without the nickname,” he said.

  This was the person Mac had once pronounced on by saying he was too nice for this world, and—behind Hound’s back—also saying that because of that, the world was sure toget even. That hadn’t happened—he’d been treated no worse than most, better than a lot—but my husband’s empathy for Hound, his matter-of-factness about seeing Hound’s future when he didn’t see his own death . . . my frustration was with Mac for seeing wrong. Seeing wrong and then being done in, himself, by a world that proved people wrong if they thought they could anticipate anyone’s destiny, including their own. Hound—niceHenry—was muddling along, consoled more than he let on about a condo in Arlington. That was what middle-aged excitement had come to, and my husband was gone.

  My research, the day I found out from Henry that Andrew was okay, had consisted of information gathering about dirigibles. Going into the library, I had only the sketchiest notion about them; emerging, I could have told anyone who asked that “blimp” and “dirigible” were interchangeable terms, but that the construction of the interior caused variations in them because of the ballonets—the technical term for air bags—which determined the blimp’s shape. I had already written a note about the distinction, lightly, in pencil, as a note to theYou fill inauthor, who had now come up with a muddled piece about alternate forms of travel. I considered, as a little joke, suggesting to the author that he talk about witches and brooms.It was October, and the air had started to get colder. The light had changed. I walked home, worried about my brother, reflecting—as I had a bit, lately—on what a reclusive, odd existence I led. I thought, again, about myfather—whom I could now think of only as Dr. X. When I got home, I opened the gate slowly so it wouldn’t squeak and almost tiptoed past the big house. Inside, Mary Catherine was recovering from another episode in which she’d lost consciousness. Thirty-five years old, seemingly in fine shape, and now the doctors were puzzled. Justin had been sent to his aunt’s. Wanting distraction, I hit the play button of my answering machine before I even took off my coat. The scarf I was wearing was Henry’s: it had become my new favorite thing, an adult security blanket. So I was thinking about Henry when I listened to the message from New York—complicated: I’d have to call the editor, Angie, back—and then Henry’s voice came on: “Hey, this is Hound. Jeeez! What did I say that for? Look at what I put my friends through, then I . . . listen: there was a message on my machine, so I wanted to let you know he’s all right. He left it in the middle of the day, and he didn’t try my work number, either, so you can bet he didn’t really want to talk. Jeeez—he up and quit his job. He’s got some mumbo jumbo about relocating out west. How long is this tape? He’s with that girl, and there’s more, so call me. I’ll be home around eight. Got to see the shrink and now probably waste the whole damn session talking about thinking of myself as Hound.Jeeeeeeez.”

  I was relieved. First, because he’d heard from Andrew, and second, because I’d expected worse. Now that I knew he’d reported in, I could let myself become angry. Andrew’s actions seemed tiresome, compulsive, impossible to sympathize with. All the womanizing, as well as my willingness to listen to his stories, had made me introspect. The person I found inside me was a person intent upon hiding out, not asdifferent from her mother as she’d like to think. Though I’d assumed our mother had become a drunk in order to be a stay-at-home, there was also the chance that the desire followed the drinking. Afraid that I’d been genetically encoded to hide, I forced myself to put my coat back on and take a late-afternoon walk.

  I wore a heavier jacket with Henry’s scarf. As I went toward the square, I noticed how much things did not change in Cambridge. Mac and I had moved there because it was close to his school, but I didn’t doubt that I had stayed on—in the house, with all the memories—because Cambridge existed in a sort of perpetual time warp: the plain but pretty long-haired girls; Birkenstocks worn with socks in winter; the backpacks; the street performers, scruffy and overly animated. There were signs that it wasn’t twenty years ago, such as the proliferation of coffee places. I went into my favorite, needing a jolt of something. I looked around and decided that another big change was the babies. The long-haired girls pushed strollers now, or carried a baby in a Snugli. People were getting married younger, again. Having babies earlier. Or later: there was a woman in her midforties with an infant. All around me, women with babies. They must have been there, too, the day Serena met me on the way to her abortion. I had developed the habit of not noticing, unless a child shrieked in my ear. The truth was, a handsome dog sometimes got my attention, but I barely noticed people, let alone babies. Cambridge, being so crowded, with so much activity going on, conspired to let you tune out.

  One particular publishing house in New York was keen on getting me to move there to take an in-house job. Itwould be an adventure, and certainly it would be even easier to disappear in New York than in Cambridge, but I always turned the suggestion aside, as if it were a joke. After several failed attempts during the last year, my friend there had finally said, quite nicely, as if I would surely take no offense, “If it reassures you, everybody who works here is nuts, Nina. You could definitely continue to be the Mystery Woman.”

  It was an insulting remark, but she was also right. I was a mystery to myself, most of all. Tethered to my brother, always fearful about how much I resembled my mother, I acted like my family existed purely as a curse put on me.

  I finished my chai tea, went outside, and bought a frivolous fashion magazine that I tucked in the deep pocket of my jacket. The sky was blue-gray, not a blimp in sight. My mind did a little riff, from conjuring up the Goodyear blimp, to my friend in New York, who was always wishing me “a good rest of your day” on the phone as her sign-off. Right: and a good rest of my life. Angie was an intelligent woman; it was too bad she’d been corrupted by society’s formulaic sign-off banalities. I thought about it again as I got closer to home: good rest of your day, good rest of your life, good funeral, good afterlife. The notion of an afterlife did not compute at all. All that was left of my husband was in the house: this many years after his death it consisted only of his massive desk, which I had never felt comfortable sitting at, preferring the kitchen table, and some descendants of the plants he’d grown under special lights. At least he’d had a hobby, which was more than I could say for myself.

  My friend in New York, Angie, had an ex-husband who had recently moved to Cambridge to work for an ad agency.She’d given me his number and asked me to call him. She said he knew
no one in the area; he’d gone to Cambridge not only because that was where he could find a job, but also because his daughter from his first marriage was in graduate school at Harvard. Angie seemed to have only kind thoughts about her ex-husband. The way she told it, they had decided to divorce because every summer he wanted to spend his vacation sailing, and Angie hated to sail. By the time she disembarked the second year, in Camden, Maine, she’d known the marriage was over. Was it possible that things really happened that way? So capriciously, but so simply, at the same time? Maybe that was the way things happened: you decided something, and then found a reason for it. Feeling a little sorry for the man who had been left because he liked to sail, I flipped through a folder and found his business card. She had sent it to me recently, clipped to a manuscript, her handwriting covering the small card in lavender ink:Jim is a neat person and could use a friend! Call!

  So for the hell of it, I did, thinking he might like to come by for a drink. It would be something different, since—leaving aside business calls—I couldn’t remember the last time I had called anyone who wasn’t already a friend. Jim Burnham was not home, though. His answering machine picked up just as I was about to hang up. I thought about leaving a message, but decided against it. I was already backpedaling. If I was in the mood for socializing, I could wait until eight and see if Henry wanted to get together, or I could go visit Mary Catherine.

  When the phone rang, I looked at it suspiciously. It might be Andrew, and I didn’t want to hear about his latest exploits.I hesitated a moment, then picked it up on the chance it might be Henry. Instead, it was Henry’s wife, Kate. It was one of the few times she had ever called me. They were still living apart, though they spent weekends together and had begun seeing a marriage counselor. “I’m embarrassed that I never call you except when I want something. That time I had you look up that word in the thesaurus. The time I asked if I could park in your neighbor’s driveway.”

  “How are you?” I said. “Cut to the chase: what’s the favor?” I tried to say it lightly. I didn’t know her well, and had never felt drawn to her—though that might have been because I knew she caused her husband so much grief.

  “I was wondering whether we might get together.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t want to put you in the middle or anything, but I’ve been thinking that in some ways you might know my husband better than I do. You know we’re thinking about giving it another try,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, he’s been unhappy without you.”

  “He has?”

  “Sure he has.” It was only fudging a little: he was unhappy without their boy, but I didn’t think he’d go back just for that reason.

  “Could we have lunch?” she said. “I’m free all week, because Max is with his father.”

  “What are you doing now?” I said.

  “Right now?” She sounded alarmed.

  “I’m not doing anything,” I said. “Actually, I was going a little stir-crazy earlier.”

  “Well, I don’t mean to call and impose myself,” she said.

  “You’re not,” I said. “Not at all.” I gave her directions to the house. The coffee shop where I’d met Serena had developed bad associations for me now. And I’d always considered lunch a waste of time. I hoped she didn’t assume I had any insight into her troubled marriage, though. Or any particular insight about her husband. She’d never sought out my company before, preferring not to come along on any of my outings with Andrew and Henry, but I was in a strange mood, and I was willing to hear whatever she had to say. My friendship with Henry went back years—longer than she and he had been married.

  When she came into the house she seemed so nervous that I wondered whether the bottle of wine I opened for us was a good idea. Kate was windblown. Her hair, one of her best features, was tousled and curly. She had on dark pink lipstick, but no other makeup. I realized for the first time that I was still wearing the sweatpants and stretched-out turtleneck I’d worn to Widener. She was wearing black pants and a white shirt. She looked like someone from one of the pages of the magazine I’d bought earlier. I poured each of us some wine and gestured toward the sofa.

  “Is this something I shouldn’t be doing, coming here to talk to you?” she said.

  “Why shouldn’t you talk to me?”

  “Well, because it’s always seemed you were more his friend than mine, and maybe this could seem like I’m doing something behind his back.”

  “It’s all right to talk to me,” I said.

  “Did I offend you? I mean, I envy you, being the Three Musketeers. My best friend lives in Idaho, and the peoplefrom work I knock around with . . . I mean, I like them and all that, but I don’t feel terribly close to them.”

  “I don’t have many friends, myself,” I said. “It’s nice to see you.”

  “Good wine,” she said. My matter-of-factness—though I did not feel particularly calm—seemed to have put her at ease.

  “Thanks,” I said. It was one of several zinfandels I’d bought after copyediting a piece on new California wines. The wine was very good.

  “Could I come right to the point?” she said.

  So much for hoping she didn’t have a particular agenda. “Why not?” I said.

  “Well, I . . . I really feel like I’veoffendedyou.”

  “You haven’t offended me. I just hope you don’t think I’m a good resource about your husband. We really aren’t the Three Musketeers. My brother’s decamped for somewhere out west with his new girlfriend, and Henry knows it’s upset me, so he’s called a couple of times.”

  “Hound,” she said.

  “He asked me not to call him that.”

  “I never did call him Hound,” she said.

  Having no idea what to say, I waited.

  She crossed her legs. “Where did you say your brother was?” she said.

  “I’m not sure. Somewhere out west. If he hadn’t called Henry, I wouldn’t even know that.”

  “He’s thoughtful, isn’t he?”

  “I presume you mean Henry.”

  “Henry. He has such a low opinion of himself, though. An inferiority complex.”

  She was right. He did. I said: “It’s unfortunate.”

  “And I haven’t helped him,” she said.

  So this was going to be a confession.

  “In that I made the mistake of sleeping with his best friend,” she said.

  I had been about to take another sip of wine. I didn’t.

  She looked at me. I could not quite decipher the look. Was she puzzled that she’d confessed, or puzzled to have done such a thing in the first place? “Andrew?” I said, needing to make sure.

  “Yes. He’s his best friend, isn’t he?” She looked unhappy. “I thought you knew,” she said, taking a sip of wine. “When you’re guilty, you assume everyone has X-ray vision.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “It was a mistake,” she said. “You can’t be seduced if you refuse, right?”

  I decided not to answer.

  She slid down in the chair, looking away from me. “He’s out west?”

  “So Henry says.”

  “He told me you and he had had some sort of fight. You and Andrew, I mean.”

  I tried to think how to summarize my frustration and anger with my brother. “He’s been looking up girls from high school,” I finally said. “It’s his new hobby. I got sick of hearing about it.” As soon as I spoke, I realized that the information might have offendedher.

  “If I thought my son would grow up to be like Andrew, I’d kill him,” she said.

  I wondered how much she was going to say. Andrew and Henry’s wife: didn’t it just figure.

  “It happened some time ago. When Henry went to Chicago. Andrew was worried about Max. Max had a fever, and it wasn’t going down. Andrew came to check on things.”

  “Is this what you came to tell me?”

  “I can’t tell what you think of me,” she said suddenly. “There were times whe
n I thought I should have everybody over. Before what happened between us, I mean. I thought: Why don’t I invite Andrew and his sister over to the house? But Henry was so proprietary, and something just . . . I just decided to prove to him that I wasn’t jealous of his having a friendship with a woman. Which I really wasn’t jealous about. I mean, I very well might have been. I was always a little intimidated by you.”

  “Intimidated,” I said, singling out the important word.

  “For no real reason!” she said. “Because you lived on your own and you seemed to have such an interesting job. I felt very insecure years ago. I saw a psychiatrist, myself. Oh, you’ll think I’m an alcoholic and that Henry and I are these pathetic people who rely on shrinks to—” She stopped talking.

  “I don’t disapprove of people seeing shrinks,” I said.

  “No. No, I’m sure you don’t,” she said. “I think the other thing is that I have a brother, myself, and we don’t get along. You know: you have such a devoted brother, and my own husband likes you so much. I mean, I wasn’t jealous of you, exactly. I was more envious.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “My husband died,” I said. “I have no romantic relationships, I’m estranged from my mother, who’s in a nursing home because alcohol rotted her brain, and I have a philandering brother—I’m sorry: I don’t meananythingpersonal by that. But it’s a little hard for me to think of myself as intimidating.”

  Kate put her fingers to her lips. “I’m—” She cleared her throat. “I probably shouldn’t have come over here and dumped all this on you. Believe it or not, I had some notion of coming here to apologize. This was just my way of apologizing. When I’m in my right mind, I don’t think anybody has a totally enviable life. I came here thinking I should apologize for never having made an effort to know you, and then it seemed like I needed to apologize for sleeping with your brother.” She looked at the floor. “That bastard,” she said softly.