Medicine Men

by Alice Adams

  “Well, now you may be anyway. Think of it that way. Compensation, in spite of yourself,” and he laughed again.

  “I don’t especially want to be rich. I don’t even like rich people.”

  “I knew you’d say that.”

  Molly smiled, acknowledging predictability, but isn’t everyone? she thought. More or less predictable? And anyway, how did Matthew know all that much about her opinions? She tried, and failed, to imagine a Paul-Matthew conversation concerning her character. They simply did not have such intimate, personal conversations. (It was Molly’s belief that most men did not, but how could she know for sure?) Paul and Matthew went back to Montana together, where they had both grown up, for trout fishing, sometimes cross-country skiing in the winter. In August they liked to hike along rivers, the east fork of the Bitterroot; they made camp and cooked, and they drank, back in Paul’s drinking days. “But what do you talk about, in all that time?” Molly had once or twice asked Paul. “We talk about the trout, they’re very absorbing. And of course I tell him all about you, every single tiny most personal detail,” he teased. “I told him you were oversexed.” “Oh Paul, honestly, I’ll tell him you are too.”

  Molly involuntarily smiled, remembering silly times with Paul, but then she wondered, Just what had he said, if anything? Molly’s the original knee-jerk bleeding-heart left-winger? She hates the rich, even the ones who don’t vote. Could Paul have said all that? It was not even true. Not quite.

  Nor was it entirely true that she hated money, of course not. When she gained a little weight it would be fun to buy some great new clothes, and in the meantime she could order some from catalogues. Size 4—a terrific size on paper, but she was actually skinny, all bones, she knew that.

  And she could at least double the money she sent to good places, Food-Not-Bombs, Open Hand, New Start, St. Anthony’s. She and Felicia could even start their own food and shelter operation, which they had discussed from time to time.

  And when she felt well she could travel again; all those trips with Paul had whetted her appetite. All she had to do was to get well. To eat.

  Partly to get away from this unwelcome drift in her thoughts—eating problems, which often seemed hopeless—she asked Matthew, “How on earth did you do this, double my money?”

  “Mostly luck. There was a company I knew about, and so. Mergers—bonds—corporate earnings—” Seeming to notice then that Molly’s attention had wandered off, he stopped. “You don’t really want to know.”

  “Maybe I don’t. I find that stuff so hard to understand.”

  “And basically not interesting, right?”

  “Well, I guess not. But it is interesting to you?”

  “Unfortunately it’s become all I know anything about, really. Joanne always tried to educate me in the law, but that didn’t work out too well.”

  Why was he speaking of Joanne in the past tense?

  Matthew answered this obvious but unasked question. “I guess we’re splitting up this time,” he said. “I mean, for real. Never divorce a lawyer, it’s murder.”

  “I already did. Henry Starck.”

  “Oh, that’s right, I forgot.”

  “Actually, he’s very nice. He is very nice,” Molly felt compelled to add.

  Some ancient Hebraic law, she believed that she had heard somewhere, dictated that a widow should marry her husband’s brother, and she thought, I’m glad I don’t have to do that. In some ways Matthew is almost as ungiving, conversationally, as Henry was. Besides, she further thought, Paul and I weren’t entirely married anymore.

  She had to go down to Mt. Watson for a follow-up visit.

  Dave had called, seemingly in a spirit of forgiveness, to say that it must be time for her to see Bill Donovan, and that he thought he could make time to take her down. He was trying for a tone of general disapproval, Molly could tell, but his voice was still enthusiastic, eager: he wanted to go back to Mt. Watson.

  Molly felt a little mean, depriving him of this pleasure, as she told him, “Thanks, but Felicia said she would.”

  This was not true, but how would he find out? Though he must have caught something in her voice, for he said, “Are you sure? I don’t think you ought to drive that far alone. Not yet.” He sounded disappointed.

  In fact driving down alone was exactly what Molly intended. Felicia, quite out of character, was sick. Besides which Molly wanted to make the trip alone.

  And she liked it very much, driving down in the clear bright unusually warm February weather—though almost all weather was unusual these days, Molly had noted: droughts and floods, heat waves in December, and snow and freezing days in June, in California. All as random as cancer seemed to be, and as extreme, and often as unwelcome. But the day was beautiful. Molly admired the New England look of the reservoir, with its slope of evergreens down to the shore, and even some of the houses on those expensively subdivided lots (one acre each) looked pleasant. She thought, I could live down here? But with all that money I could actually live anywhere, in Barcelona or Venice, in Paris, Prague, or Trieste.

  Once back in the halls of Mt. Watson, though, and more specifically in the waiting room, Molly no longer felt romantic or adventurous, or even very rich. She was just a patient, as guilty and anxiety-burdened, as close to panic, the longer she waited, as all the rest.

  After about half an hour, during which she thumbed through some old Times and Newsweeks, the nurse announced that Dr. Donovan could see her now.

  “Dr. Jacobs isn’t with you?” was Donovan’s greeting, along with his big bluff smile. Molly thought that if she were a nicer person she would later tell Dave that she had been asked that question; being missed by eminent doctors would surely please him.

  “No, he isn’t” was all she said; no explanation seemed necessary, or actually possible. She had no idea what they had made of that relationship, hers with Dave.

  Once she was in the examining room, in that chair, interns and residents swarmed around Dr. Donovan as he again, for his audience, recounted his feats inside her head. “When we’d opened her up and some of those brains moved over—”

  Had he really said that? Yes, he had. Molly could not have made it up, but she could stop listening to anything further that was said along those lines, and she did. How handy it would sometimes be, she thought, to be able to faint at will. Except that in this present instance, here and now, if she fainted they would probably clap her right back in the hospital.

  “How do you feel about the shape of your nose?” Bill Donovan asked.

  Knowing this to be perfunctory, that she was supposed to say, Oh, it’s better than ever, I always wanted a small nose, Molly more truthfully told him, “It’s all right. I think I liked it better before.”

  “If you ever want to fix it—”

  “Look, the last thing in the world I want is another operation.”

  Everyone smiled at that sentiment; it was apparently understandable even to them, the doctors, although Bill looked not wholly pleased.

  He next said, conversationally, “I hear you escaped like a little bird from Alta Linda. Can’t say as I blame you. Depressing place. But if you were my wife I think I’d turn you right over my knee.”

  “How lucky for both of us that I’m not.”

  After a startled moment Bill managed to laugh, a gruff semi-guffaw. And Molly was as startled as he that she had actually said that. It was the sort of thing she usually thought of later, and wished to have said. How brave of me, she thought. How out of character.

  On the drive home, though, she fell back into a more familiar self-critical mode. She should have asked more questions. She should have complained about not feeling well, about her nausea. And she should have asked in a general way about effects of radiation: how long did they continue, usually? Even if it would have been hard to break into that web of doctors’ conversation, she should have tried; she should have questioned and complained. It was all very well to have these conversations with Felicia about the general i
nsensitivity of doctors, but some of it was really her own fault. You get what you ask for, has often been said, and you don’t get what you don’t. That is perhaps an unreliable rule (surely she had not asked for the green golf ball), but in this case, talking to doctors, it seemed to apply.

  Felicia stayed sick. “Nothing real,” she said to Molly, on the phone, “just lousy feelings in my head. It could be the weather. Some allergy.”

  “Or it could be a nice green tumor. You too can have a golf ball.”

  “You won’t laugh if I actually do.”

  “That’s absolutely true, I won’t.”

  For her dinner alone, Molly made her favorite single-person meal: a large bowl of pasta, angel-hair, with butter and garlic and scallions. Parmesan. A small green salad, a glass of white wine. A little bread, nice and fresh and chewy.

  She was chewing on the good bread, looking out to the peaceful vista of gardens behind her house, and thinking that since she would have all that money, what she most would like was a leisurely trip to Paris, so reliably beautiful, fantastic food, and the art, the river, and the trees. As she happily imagined all that, something suddenly went wrong within her mouth. She bit on something hard; at first she thought it was a little stone in the bread—how amazing. But then she spit it out and saw, small and white, a tooth. Her own, and her tongue discovered the gap: a lower front tooth.

  In the mirror she saw that she could fit it back in, but of course there was no way to affix it. And without it she looked comic, a Halloween pumpkin instead of Humpty-Dumpty. Or, when not grinning, she looked sad and terrible.

  Dr. Gold, the dentist (“the sententious dentist,” Molly had sometimes called him to Felicia), rubber-gloved hand in her mouth, began by saying, “Doesn’t look too good. Lot of tissue damage that I can see right off. Radiation, bad stuff for your teeth and gums. You must have had quite a lot of it.” He replaced his hand with a clamp that was rather like a horse’s bit.

  He said, “The wife and I are just back from Baja, and the prices there are not great, I tell you. Every night, a twenty-dollar cab ride from our hotel to some restaurant? Those guys have caught on quick, believe me. Of course you can’t blame them, but still we’d counted on some bargain to make up for Paris last fall. But the restaurants too, Stateside prices. Of course we were going to the recommended ones, probably pretty fancy for your average Mexican, and actually not too many Mexicans there, just the help. And tourists. Germans and French, not so many Japanese as you see most places. I’m going to have them make you something they call a flipper, nice new tooth on a little piece of plastic, fits right into your mouth. Later we can talk about a bridge. Of course the problem is that some more of those teeth could go. I just don’t like the look of those gums.”

  Dr. Macklin, who was very fond of lawyer jokes, told Molly two new ones—new to him, that is—and since she liked him she laughed appreciatively, and she said, “Those are good but I still like the lab rat one the best.”

  “Oh yes, that’s a classic. But tell me how you’re feeling. Really,” and he frowned slightly, in his kind, concerned way.

  “Well actually not too great. I guess it has to do with physical weakness but I just feel mildly depressed a lot of the time. I wonder what really happened to my head when they were doing all that. I sleep all right but I have terrible dreams that I can’t quite remember—they slide away like fish when I try. I don’t feel the kind of desperate unhappiness I did when Paul was killed, just sort of low-grade despair, like flu.” As she said all this, it occurred to Molly that she should be saying it to Dr. Shapiro, and she thought, How like me to tell my symptoms to the wrong doctor. I used to tell Dr. Shapiro about my sinus problems.

  Dr. Macklin’s frown had increased. “You know you’re pretty much describing how I felt about a year ago,” he said. “My separation. We’re still working it out.”

  This was the first time Molly had heard of a separation, but she smiled sympathetically.

  “What helped me a lot, though you may not like the idea of this,” he said, “was Paxil. It seems to work for some people who have no luck with Prozac, which I’d tried. I could give you just the very smallest dose, if you wanted to see how it goes.”

  “Uh, should I ask Dr. Shapiro? Too?”

  “Of course. Talk to him, and then give me a call.”

  Macklin divorced—would he remarry? Molly had really never thought of him in that way, but now she did, and she thought, He’s quite attractive, really, and very nice, for a doctor. On the other hand, responsible doctors, which he certainly is, do not involve themselves with patients, so I can just forget it.

  “Paxil might be worth a try,” said Dr. Shapiro. “Take it for a few weeks, see how you feel. Though you know that in a general way I don’t like those drugs.”

  Almost as soon as she started it, the Paxil made Molly’s nightmares disappear. All gone—in fact no more dreams at all. But, curiously, without dreams she slept considerably less well; her sleep was thin and ragged, unsatisfying, unrestful. She also experienced a slight increase in nausea, and eating problems—conditions that she did not immediately connect with Paxil.

  “I just read where it says ‘Possible Side Effects,’ ” Molly told Dr. Shapiro. “And it mentions nausea. Isn’t that an odd pill to give someone who’s already nauseated? And insomnia, it mentions that too. Don’t doctors read the small print?”

  “You’re quite right, it certainly may not have been a good idea,” he agreed. “It did seem worth a small try. Macklin meant well, and I did too. But I’m very glad you decided to give it up.”

  She asked him, “Do you know if Dr. Macklin is really divorced? I had this wild idea that I could introduce him to Felicia.”

  He smiled—knowing and amused and affectionate. “I’m sorry, I don’t keep up with doctors’ marital status.”

  “I really don’t understand how doctors’ minds work,” Molly told Matthew, a few days later. “To give a nauseated person a pill with that as a possible side effect? Sometimes I think they don’t think.”

  “They don’t think in the way that other people do” was Matthew’s considered view. “They seem more narrow in focus.”

  “Exactly,” Molly said. “Remember, in Howards End, ‘only connect’? They don’t put things together. Doctors don’t. Don’t see a whole picture. I think that’s what sometimes gets them into trouble.”

  “One of the things.” And then Matthew added, in his sober, conservative way (at those moments very unlike Paul, who was rash), “I’m not sure that you want to hear this, but you’re looking really good. I was thinking, maybe we could go for a hike sometime? Would you be up for that?”

  “Sure,” Molly told him, with what she feared was evident lack of enthusiasm. She felt well enough, she thought, but she didn’t want to spend quite that much time with Matthew—alone, she thought.

  NINETEEN

  Felicia was so sick, and sick for so long, that her mother, not given to visits, came to see her. Susie, in perky new pink polka-dots, bearing an enormous bunch of bright-pink roses, which perfectly matched her dress, and saying to her daughter, “Oh dear, how can I always forget that you have your own roses? A whole garden full of them!”

  They both knew why it was that Susie did not remember; they knew that Susie’s prime concern with gifts of flowers was that they should go well with whatever she was wearing—she could hardly think about the contents of a recipient’s garden. And too, as she herself would have quickly pointed out, she was so rarely at Felicia’s house that for all she knew Felicia could have converted to total zucchini by now.

  “They’re so beautiful,” Felicia told her mother. “And they just match your dress. Maybe you could put them in something in the kitchen?”

  While her mother was in the kitchen Felicia dozed off, just long enough to dream that Susie was not there—she was alone, and so it was with a little surprise that she woke to see her mother carrying in a bunch of roses in a vase. Somewhat sleepily she said, “Oh how pretty.
They just match your dress.”

  “Darling, you said that before.” Susie frowned. “Do you think you’re really all right?”

  “Well, I’m not, not really. This goddam flu.”

  “Sweetie, you must see a doctor. I’ll get Harry DeGroot, if I have to bring him here myself.”

  “Mother, please don’t call Harry DeGroot—you know how I feel about those socialite doctors.”

  “Well! And Raleigh Sanderson, such a great friend of yours for a while, wasn’t he? What’s ever happened to him, by the way?”

  “Oh Mother, I honestly don’t know.” This was more or less true. Felicia still was hearing strange unpredictable sounds in her garden at night, at varying intervals, about which she still hesitated to call the police. But she was never entirely sure that it was Sandy, although in a way she was sure, it had to be Sandy. She also did not really know her mother’s true view of her own alleged friendship with Sandy. She had wondered: Did other women really talk more to their mothers? Would some other woman say, We had this terrific affair, but then he hit me? Molly had never talked much to her mother, Felicia knew, but then Molly’s mother was an alcoholic. And her own mother was a very silly woman, a silly woman with moments of insight, even of stray humor.

  All that Susie ostensibly “knew” about Sandy and Felicia was that Felicia had worked for him for a time, and had liked him very much. Sandy and Connie were close to but not precisely in Susie’s social set, Susie and Josh’s group being just a little younger, a little more stylish—God knows they were stylish.

  Felicia’s immediate problem, not unconnected to the larger problem of Sandy, was that, lacking him, she had in effect no doctor to call. “You’re a healthy young woman,” he always said. “I think these yearly checkups with so-called internists are highly overrated. If something goes wrong I’ll find a real specialist for you. In the meantime, if you feel a cold coming on, just call me. I’ll know what to do, I promise. And in your case I make house calls.”

  So that now, with what seemed a very bad and persistent case of flu, so much aching, such entire fatigue—she had no one to call.