by Alice Adams
When he came, Matthew had kindly brought a very large blue potted hydrangea, so big in fact that it was hard to see him behind it. He said, “I hope you like them too. Hydrangeas. I know some people think they’re sort of low-class—Paul did as a matter of fact. But I think the blue’s really great. Some sea connection, I guess. Maybe I’m just a water freak. I think so, actually.”
“Why don’t you put it on this table, and come sit down for a minute?”
He did as she said, with a crooked shy smile in her direction—a smile, she noted, that was very much his own, not Paul’s. Paul was never shy. Molly noted that, as she had before, and she had too a sudden new thought, which was: Matthew isn’t boring, he’s just shy and nice, and I’m not very used to either one.
They were talking about the discomforts of flu, Molly’s, and were about to move on to those of divorce, Matthew’s from Joanne, when a lot of noise from downstairs announced to Molly that Felicia had dropped by. The front door banged open and there followed a sustained burst of animated conversation in Spanish between Felicia and Rosa, the cleaner. And then Felicia’s light footsteps, hurrying down the hall toward them.
Molly watched as, at the door, Felicia saw Matthew, whom for an instant she took to be Paul. A quick tiny gasp, and then, still before Molly could speak, Felicia said, “Oh, you’re Matthew, I’ve heard so much.” She laughed and went over to him.
As Molly was murmuring, “Matthew—Felicia.”
Matthew had stood, and said, “Felicia. I’ve heard of you too.”
They both laughed, and Felicia came to kiss Molly, and to inquire: “How are you, really?”
Then they all talked about the weather for a while: the rains had begun, it seemed very early this year, maybe they would let up sooner than usual? In February, maybe?
Tactful Matthew soon got up to go.
“Amazing, how much alike they look,” Felicia observed, once he had gone.
“Yes.”
“Very alike, and in a way not,” Felicia mused. “I get an idea that Matthew is nicer than Paul is—was?”
“Very much so, actually,” Molly told her. And then she began to tell what it was surprising she had not said before—to this close, kind, and trusted friend. She said, “You know in some ways Paul wasn’t nice at all, he just looked kind and warm. I never said this before, somehow I couldn’t, but we were talking about splitting up when he got killed. I’m pretty sure we would have. So having him die like that was really—” She paused, unable to explain. (Her whole body seemed to ache, and her head.)
“Complicated,” Felicia filled in softly. “God. Ambiguous.”
“Yes. And then all that money I didn’t really think I should have. And even if we were fighting I cared a lot about him, a lot. I for sure didn’t want him to die. It was terrible.”
“Oh, Mol, I’ll bet.”
“Dr. Shapiro was a terrific help.”
“One good doctor.”
“You mean I haven’t made a match between you and Dr. Macklin?”
Felicia laughed. “No, you haven’t. I think he’s meant for you, and I’m sure he’d agree.”
How did Felicia know that, or why did she think that? But Molly was more or less used to Felicia’s witch intuitions, and sometimes she had crazy flashes of her own. “How about you and Matthew?” she said, and she improvised, “He was terribly taken with you, I could tell.” On the other hand, maybe he really was.
But, “Oh no,” Felicia instantly answered. “If anything, it should be Matthew and you, a sort of Old Testament arrangement. Weren’t widows supposed to marry the brothers? Or then there’s Henry Starck. Could you see him again?”
“I doubt it. No. Anyway, Paul. I’m just getting to the point where I can think about it a little clearly. I mean accept all the different truths: I loved him a lot, we weren’t happy together, couldn’t make a marriage together. And I was devastated by his death. And because of it now I have a lot of money. You see what I mean, it is complicated. And then getting the goddam cancer in my goddam sinuses. I almost have to make a connection.”
“I would, I’m sure. Connect.”
Molly laughed a little. “A doctor wouldn’t, probably. That’s something they don’t do, have you noticed? They don’t connect.” She asked, “Do you hear from Sandy?”
“No, thank God. But I worry about hearing from him.”
“Actually, Raleigh was quite marvelous. So intelligent, and he seemed to me a really kind person. And the fact that everything about Boston that we all took for granted, really everything about us, was so new to him then, that was charming. He seemed very wide-eyed, and at the same time so wise and strong. I was sure he could do anything in the world, and I knew the older doctors were really impressed. He was wonderful. He still is in his way a wonderful man, I know that. Very possibly I’m the one who went wrong—certainly all that drinking. But I’m not supposed to think that way, am I?”
The man on the line, whomever Connie was having this conversation with, made a brief, ambiguous noise of response—ambiguous to Sandy, that is, as he more or less accidentally listened in; he had picked up the phone in his study and there it was. There was so much other noise in the house at that moment, somewhere a vacuum cleaner and out in the garden an extra-loud leaf blower, no wonder they could not hear the click of Sandy’s pickup. But who on earth was she talking to in this intimate way, raking up the long-dead past in which he was “wonderful,” if wide-eyed? The other person was a man, his one small sound had told Sandy that much. Not that bitch Jane Stinger or some other eager lady listener (like many men, Sandy feared and hated women’s conversations, and was consumed with curiosity about them). Could she possibly be talking to a lawyer? If so, he did not see the point in all these intimate, personal details; on the other hand, these days, who knew?
“I’ve heard good things about him,” said the man—the lawyer? The voice was raspy, maybe alcoholic. Harvard? He sounded like it.
“When can I see you?” the man asked Connie, not sounding businesslike but eager. Could they—could Connie, possibly—?
A sudden strong urge to urinate caused Sandy to put down the phone. He hoped the vacuum would drown out that sound too.
Oh Christ, if only he could pee!
He had to see someone, obviously. This prostate problem and now exacerbated by this goddam flu.
He thought, There must be a way to get into Felicia’s house without tripping the alarm. And a way to kill Felicia without getting caught—a doctor should be able to do that. He thought, I could be waiting when she comes home, and get her before she goes into the house, before she’s turned on the alarm. Maybe I could talk her into letting me in? Say we should try to be friends, be civilized?
He could make what military men call a surgical strike. Only his really would be surgical, or would that be a mistake?—a signature, as it were? A surgical strike indeed.
But would killing Felicia make him feel better or worse? He did not know; he only knew that the very idea made him even more tired and sad than he already was.
It would be much easier, he thought with a small ironic smile, much easier just to stay home and put a knife to old Connie. Which if she is talking to a lawyer, I absolutely will, he thought.
Connie said, “That damn vacuum, it’s hard to hear you.”
“I said, when can I see you?”
“Was that a click on the line?”
“I didn’t hear it. Is your—is Raleigh in the house?”
“I think so, but he’d never listen. He’s very honorable, in his way.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Look, can we meet tonight? Can you come over?”
“Oh, darling Henry, yes.”
Jane Stinger, her divorce from Dr. Mark well under way, moved tidily and very happily to a small cottage on a hilltop in Mill Valley. Built as a visitors’ annex by the two men who owned the much larger main house, the little cottage was neat and spare; its living room’s big glass wall gave a lovely view of far-off hills and gr
aceful neighboring trees, redwoods, eucalyptus—there was even a palm tree adjacent to the house. Inside, the kitchen was small but handy, her bedroom small and the guest room smaller still, the living room more generous but still quite small. Jane, however, loved this diminution, plus the corresponding vast increase in the available outdoors. For one thing it was precisely the opposite of what she had had with Mark in Seacliff; there the large house with its decks and balconies had covered, or almost, the big city lot. How lost she had felt in that house, how lost and alone—and sick; she associated all that space with drinking and subsequent illness. Her fault, of course, no one had made her drink, and certainly Mark had always urged against it. But there seemed no other way to fill such inner emptiness, such spiritual solitude.
In any case, this new arrangement for living, including a long, broad swimming pool, which her generous landlords urged her to use, seemed to Jane a part of the healthy picture that was now her life: a life without drinking and without mean little Mark; an outdoor life of hikes and swimming, and meetings. She even planned to get a dog, a big golden, she thought, which Dick and Brian, the landlords, said would be all right, they liked dogs too. Mark hated dogs almost as much as he hated cats (and people, Jane had secretly thought).
Three days a week Jane drove into town to work; on the other days she walked down to the village on various errands. There was an exceptionally pleasant bookstore with a coffee shop attached, where she could sit outside and read and drink herbal tea.
An exemplary life, then, as Jane remarked on the phone to her friend Connie Sanderson. “It’s like a reward, something I’d always wanted but didn’t know quite how to go about getting.”
Therefore, when Jane came down with what she was at length forced to recognize as flu, she was furious, outraged. For a week or so she angrily refused to give in to it, to call a doctor (God forbid a doctor) or to go to bed.
Running into Brian in the market, though, she admitted, “Actually I don’t feel too well. I guess some kind of flu.”
“You look fairly terrible,” he said. “You’d really better call a doctor. We can’t have a new tenant dying on the premises. Look, Dick and I have this guy whose office is just down the hill. And so far he seems okay.”
That night Dick brought her some homemade chicken-barley soup, and he too encouraged Jane to go to their doctor. And the next day Jane, feeling much worse, called and made an appointment, and went to his office.
Anticipating a doctor more or less in the image of Brian and Dick, a nice intelligent young gay man, friendly and sympathetic—in every way a nice change from mean macho Mark—Jane was a little surprised to find a tall, oldish bald doctor, censorious rather than friendly, but seemingly intelligent. Still, she responded positively, at first, and she knew enough doctors to be suspicious of friendliness, or too-ready sympathy; this man was neither especially friendly nor sympathetic.
He examined her and asked a few routine questions, and she liked him well enough until his closing speech, when he said, “Well, we’re seeing a lot of this, and there’s not too much we can do about it. Plenty of rest and liquids—”
At which point Jane boiled over with accumulated years of rage, at Mark and at his profession in general, at most of the doctors she had ever met. Plus which she felt really terrible and was in no mood to hear that nothing, really, could be done. And so she burst out, “What you mean is that you guys still can’t do anything about something that happens all the time, like flu. You’re great on some kinds of cancer, especially the kinds that most people never get, but you don’t do too well with normal, ordinary unassuming misery. Liquids and rest! How come you didn’t even mention chicken soup? No Jewish mother, I guess. Or vitamin C, for God’s sake. Give me a break! I was married to a doctor for twenty years, I’ve heard all that crap.”
To Jane’s vast surprise, this doctor grinned: Was he nuts, did he really go for abuse? His teeth were large and white, forbidding in their brilliance.
“As a matter of fact, I did have a Jewish mother,” Dave Jacobs told her. “And, of course, Mark Stinger. I didn’t make the connection. If I were you, I’d go home and have a double martini. And then some chicken soup.”
“I don’t drink,” Jane stated, unsmiling (he was grinning enough for both of them). “I’m an alcoholic. Recovering in AA.”
TWENTY-THREE
The urologist whom Sandy went to see at last, Dr. Fink, was an unfortunate-looking man. Looks-deprived: would that be the PC phrase? Sandy didn’t know; he had to smile, though, at the thought of what he would have said to a patient who complained about a doctor’s looks—especially a urologist, for Christ’s sake. Some damn-fool dumb broad with a leaky bladder.
Fink had thin red hair, a freckled reddish face, and a big red bulbous freckled nose (did the guy have freckles on his dick too? Probably, thought Sandy, with a secret snicker). Fink’s hands were small (small hands small cock, Sandy had heard, and he imagined a tiny, freckled tool). His own hands were long and strong and shapely. Surgeon’s hands. Extra-large surgeon’s hands.
But Fink was supposed to be the best in town, in urology; all the other doctors went to him when it got down to the nitty-gritty—which is just where Sandy thought he himself was, right then. Well, of course he was, or he wouldn’t be here. Still, those hands? Thank God for rubber gloves.
Fink’s manner was not so great either. The way he put things. What he said was “Christ, man, you mean you never felt that lump?”
“I don’t spend a lot of time with my fingers up my ass.”
A pause as Fink continued to probe, which did not feel good. “Try to relax,” said Fink (the jerk!).
And then, straightening up, he said, “Of course we could try surgery,” in his stupid wheezy voice. As though Sandy had never heard of surgery. Jesus!
“But it’s a big one,” Fink stupidly, inexorably went on. “You probably know the risks.” He gave Sandy a pale-blue, blinking look from behind his bifocals.
Yes, I’ll be impotent, you dumb prick. Sandy did not say this, he only grunted. But of course they both knew. And then there’s sometimes some degree of incontinence: how come this Fink or whatever he calls himself didn’t mention that?
Fink cleared his throat wheezily, and looked away. Still blinking, he murmured, “And then there’s the possibility of some degree of incontinence.”
In other words, you can’t get it up and you wet your pants a lot. Or you diaper up, hiding those things and the stained underwear from the maids and your goddam nosy sympathetic wife, like you used to with the lipstick on handkerchiefs and shirt collars. And, further back, the rubbers you hid in your sock drawer, out of sight of your mom.
To Fink, Sandy said, “I’ve heard tell.”
Fink then leaned back so that his leather chair creaked. Showing off his ugly chest, his wide-striped shirt and purple tie. Purple with red hair? As Felicia would say, Please, gimme a break!
“What I usually recommend,” Fink pontificated, “is some time down at Alta Linda. They’re doing some great prostate stuff down there.”
“Alta Linda! That scumbag hellhole of a hospital from hell? Christ! Have you ever been down there? Ugliest place in the world, full of old creeps in wheelchairs—cancer—”
“But I always—” Fink was weakly explaining.
“So do I! I send CA patients down there all the time. But that’s not the same thing.”
This fact that he himself would not necessarily go to a place or undergo a treatment that he had often recommended to patients was so obvious to Sandy that he felt no need to explain. And certainly not to this horribly dressed Jewish quiz kid.
The truth was—no matter what he had said to various patients, including Felicia’s friend, that Molly Bonner—Sandy would rather die than go to Alta Linda as a patient. And, as Sandy thought this, he further thought, somewhat wryly, It may come to that.
Going down in the elevator, for some reason he found himself thinking intensively about O. J. Simpson. He got off, is w
hat Sandy was thinking. And Nicole did not get by with sleeping around—blonde spoiled bitch. But then he had to remind himself of several obvious facts: One was that O.J. had much more money than he did, although luckily he himself was not exactly poor. Not without resources. But O.J. was black, with a wild black lawyer, lots of lawyers, and a bunch of blacks on his jury. Suppose he, Sandy, had a jury full of doctors—straight, non-Jewish doctors? They’d hang him, they’d love to. He knew that.
Besides, he had no real intention of doing anything so violent and ugly to Felicia.
Jesus, he must be going more than a little crazy, even to be thinking along these lines.
Besides, if he did go after Felicia—or after anyone, for that matter—he would know exactly where to put the knife. Very cleanly, with no mess.
In Felicia’s kitchen, she and Matthew West were listening breathlessly to certain sounds from her garden, both familiar and frightening to Felicia. To Matthew, an almost welcome diversion: he found Felicia, her breasts and her eyes, somewhat overwhelming.
Felicia said, “I just don’t really know who’s out there. I thought I did but now I’m not so sure.”
If he had been his brother, if he had been Paul, Matthew thought, he would have rushed out into the dark to see what or who was there, and then rushed back into the house, heroic, to attack this lovely voluptuous blonde with kisses, fierce embraces. Or that is how Matthew always imagined Paul’s behavior; Paul had never especially boasted, and was certainly not given to sexual boasts. Also, Matthew depressingly thought, if he were Paul he’d be dead, instead of sitting here half-gassed with this beautiful sexy woman, ogling her breasts like a schoolboy.
The evening had begun very innocently, at Molly Bonner’s. Matthew had called to ask if he could come by to see her, and she had said sure, and that there might also be her friend Felicia Flood, whom Matthew had met a few times before. Fleetingly—Felicia seemed usually in a hurry. But they were both very faithful visitors to Molly, it seemed. Felicia, this afternoon, had brought a big pot of fish soup for Molly’s supper. But Molly had said, with a small weak apologetic laugh, “Felish, I just can’t. I think I’m having an attack of the vapors or something. You know, it comes and goes. But today I just can’t eat.”