In the Palomar Arms

by Hilma Wolitzer

  The talk-show panel is composed of the host, a former d.j. who likes to play devil’s advocate; a psychiatrist, who is also the founder of a hospice; and a fundamentalist minister. “Tell me, Dr. Carroll,” the host begins, “do you think the taking of a human life can ever be justified?”

  The psychiatrist relates in detail requests from dying patients that break his heart because he feels morally obligated to grant them and is legally unable to do so. The minister speaks of God’s will, and the supreme plan that must not be interfered with. “Our time on earth is preordained,” he says. “Read your Bible.”

  “And what about suffering?” the host asks. Does Reverend Fuller think a benevolent God wouldn’t condone an end to human suffering?

  Reverend Fuller says that God doesn’t do talk shows, and we shouldn’t try to run His business, either. And if there’s an unnatural end to the mortal body, then the spirit assumes the pain, and assumes it for eternity.

  They throw names at one another: Karen Ann Quinlan, Freud, Christ, Lazarus, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. People call in on the hot line. A woman with throat cancer whispers hoarsely of her consuming desire to die. A man calls and matter-of-factly offers to help her. He’s helped many people. The host quickly takes another call. The question of abortion is raised, and that leads to a discussion of the general devaluation of life. Pollution. War. Assassination. The death penalty. Suicide. Genocide.

  Daphne drives and drives. She thinks of the fever of maternalism that overtook her that night at the Palomar Arms—how she tucked Miss Nettleson in like an infant, how she tried to force-feed Mr. Axel. The nurses, those angels of mercy, could sprout awesome wings and become angels of death instead. Could she ever help someone die? The voices on the radio are interrupting one another, are growing louder with conviction and offense. But Daphne is calm. Now the whole issue seems intellectual rather than emotional to her. Lacing Mrs. Shumway’s soup with real poison. Bringing it in a silver tureen instead of on a Styrofoam tray. Nursing them out as we nurse them in.

  She has passed Oxnard and the show is over. The eleven o’clock news comes on. Time to make mental contact with Kenny. She realizes that she’s driving in his direction, and if the physics of telepathy is like that of radio, their signals should be growing stronger. So she drives, thinking of him, and goes right by Malibu, where she had considered stopping.

  After the news, there’s music on the radio, and Daphne believes she’s passed some critical test. She experienced no anxiety during Pulling the Plug, other than a brief flutter at the end when the show’s title reminded her of that childhood fear of being sucked down the bathtub drain.

  The beach is out for today, unless she decides to try Venice or someplace like that. It’s clouding up, anyway, and she seems to be heading toward Los Angeles. Maybe she can drop in on Louise at work, or try calling one of her other friends again.

  Less than a mile off the freeway, she pulls into a shopping center and eats her lunch in the car. How good everything tastes, just like the fresh orange juice that morning. It’s as if her senses have been honed to a finer acuity.

  After she’s eaten, Daphne notices a health-food store and remembers her resolution to start taking vitamins.

  Except for the clerk, a rabbinical-looking man in his thirties, the store is empty. Has everyone abandoned the American quest for perfect health? When Daphne hovers near the vitamin and mineral display, confounded by the abundance, the clerk comes up behind her and asks if he can be of assistance. Daphne tells him that she was hoping to just get a regular supplement, you know: A, B, C, D, and so on. She wasn’t aware that the selection went all the way to Z, with zinc. Or that each letter offered so many choices. Why, under D alone, there’s dolomite, dl-methionine, and desiccated liver. Maybe she’ll settle for a standard one-a-day capsule. What would he suggest?

  It’s as if he’s been waiting all his life for her arrival. He pulls two stools from behind the counter, and they sit facing one another. He tells her that his name is Carl, and asks what hers is. He tells her about lecithin and its dramatic effect on that killer, cholesterol; how L-tryptophan persuades you into healthful sleep; and that another amino acid, phenylalanine, controls the appetite and stimulates the memory at the same time. Even women her age, whose major need is iron because of monthly loss, should start thinking about the thinning of the bones that comes with menstrual cessation. Daphne’s entire hormonal life whizzes by. Dolomite, yes, E, and a complex time-released composite of the various B’s. C, of course, but how much, and what kind? Protein-coated? With bioflavonoids? With hesperidin? He lifts a handful of her hair and remarks that it looks healthy. Daphne knows that her hair is always at its best after a vigorous shampoo. She glances down at the lustrous strand in his palm and would have to agree—it does look healthy. But he says that a proper chemical analysis would probably inform her otherwise. She could leave him a few hairs if she’d like, plus some nail clippings, and a urine sample. A friend of his, who works in a holistic lab, would give her a break on a complete survey, with Carl’s intervention.

  “I eat a pretty balanced diet,” she says, remembering skipped meals, junk-food binges.

  “Believe me, Daphne,” he says. “Most commercially prepared food is designed to shorten your life. Read the labels,” he advises, “for ingredients, for recommended daily allowances. And then remember that those are government standards, anyway. Think about the government a little, Daphne,” he says with a grievous smile.

  The hand he’s holding, so that he can have a better view of her nails, is starting to get sweaty. She draws it away and puts it against her chest, where that awful pressure is beginning. “Thanks very much,” she says. “But I’m actually only passing through.”

  “Where are you from, Daphne?” he asks.

  “Indianapolis,” she says, standing up, and Carl nods. “The accent gives you away. Pure Midwest. Well, I’ll just have to guess your nutritional needs for now.” He starts pulling various jars and bottles from the shelves.

  She watches with growing alarm. “I’m a little short on cash,” she murmurs.

  “We take Master, Visa, American Express, and Diners Club,” he says. “Even a personal check from you, Daphne.”

  She needs to get out of here, to get some air, so she gives him her Visa card without further argument, and then thumps her fingers on the counter while he moves in slow motion to process her purchase.

  Despite Carl’s declaration of trust, he still calls in for confirmation of her credit status. After he makes her promise to leave those organic samples the next time she’s passing through, he lets her go, fifty-six dollars poorer, and with the weight of good health in her arms.

  Back in the car, she realizes that twelve o’clock has come and gone without a thought of Kenny. She imagines his mental waves moving restlessly overhead, longing for their connection, like a spirit searching for its lost body. If Kenny had been thinking of her strongly enough, wouldn’t she have been stirred into sensing it? She knows it’s only a playful exercise in distraction, but she’s disappointed anyway.

  Daphne makes her phone calls from a supermarket, and discovers that neither of her friends is at home. She drives to the bookstore in Beverly Hills that Louise manages, and is told that Louise has just left for lunch with a salesman. For a while, Daphne wanders the aisles of the store, opening books at random and reading first lines: “The summer my father died, I plucked out all my eyelashes.” “So you want to lose twenty pounds by Christmas!” “There were three bullet holes: a small one in the neck; a larger, gaping wound in the abdomen; and a space he could see right through, where her eye, probably a perfect match to the staring blue one, used to be.”

  There are other browsers turning pages, picking books up and putting them down again. Daphne wonders if either of the two attractive women in her aisle could be Joy, if she’s ever passed her unknowingly on the street, or if they ever waited side by side in their cars at the same traffic light. Will they meet someday, inadvertently, when Dap
hne and Kenny are a public couple, and Joy the outsider? The woman she’s looking at looks back, and smiles. Daphne flees the store.

  Sherman Oaks isn’t very far away. Kenny should be at work, marking the passing hours with their telepathic communion. Even if Joy wasn’t in the bookstore, she’s probably somewhere in Beverly Hills seeking her own kind of solace. Daphne just wants to see the house, and then go right by it.

  She gets directions to their street from the gas station attendant who fills her tank. When she enters the neighborhood, it’s as if she’s crossed the border, illegally, into a foreign country. It seems peaceful here; the landscaping is orderly; the houses handsome and well kept. There are signs establishing residency: The Kaplans, Minetti, The Petersons. Abandoned tricycles and toys in driveways indicate life going on behind the curtained windows. Children have been called home to lunch, for naps. Letters and newspapers poke out of the mailboxes.

  There are no such clues at Kenny’s house—just the large numeral 9 on the front door. She parks diagonally opposite. There could be a car inside the garage. Molly and Steven might be eating or sleeping only yards away. And Joy? Daphne could knock on the door and ask directions to another street, or say she’s selling something: cosmetics, Bibles, vacuum cleaners. Vitamins. Money might pass between them. Their hands could accidentally touch. She won’t do it, certainly, and hardly understands the impetus for her fantasy. She has let one o’clock go by, too, she sees, without attempting communication with Kenny. Perhaps because she is so dangerously close to his family.

  Daphne sits in her car and stares at the house. The longer she looks, the less it seems like a real structure. It has started to flatten, to lose dimension. There are no people inside, or furniture, and she feels that there never have been. If she were to drive around the corner now, she would discover that 9 Shasta Drive is only a thin facade propped up on metal supports, like a movie set—a clever construction to fool the eye and the imagination.

  That’s why she has no immediate visceral reaction when Kenny’s Toyota speeds around the corner and comes to a skidding stop in front of his house. It must be another illusion, this one embodied by desire. Only when he opens the car door and gets out, leaving it swinging, does she start to open hers, ready to call to him.

  But he’s running away from her, as if she’s invisible, or the helpless figure in her own dream. He’s at the entrance to his house, alternately fumbling wildly in his pockets and pounding on the door.

  34

  IT’S PAST NOON, AND it occurs to Kenny that he’s hardly thought about Daphne today. The game of telepathy he’d suggested was only a silly scheme, something to say to her, something to keep a fragile thread of connection between them. He hadn’t ever meant to play. But now, when he does think of her, it’s with so much ardor that he’s shaken. He sees the sweet slope of her ass when she turns away to sleep, only making him want her again; the way her breasts eye him from the disorder of the foldout bed as he’s getting dressed. It would be so nice to call her and talk about that. Christ, if my love were in my arms …

  He rings Miss Oberon and asks her to try his house once more. It’s the fifth time since ten o’clock, and so far there’s been no answer. Steven has an earache and was up most of the night, whimpering with pain. Kenny heard Joy go into him several times, and he went to the door of the boy’s room himself at 3 a.m., offering to take over. But she’d said, “No, thank you,” with revulsion, as if he were a street creep trying to press a porno circular on her. When she left the room to get something, she made a great show of avoiding contact with him in the doorway.

  This morning, Steven was still cranky, and still running a low-grade fever, when Kenny was ready to leave for work. He couldn’t help himself—habit dies hard; he said, “Are you going to take him to Evans? I could stay home for a while if you need me.”

  She smiled at him, a curiously vacant smile, and she staggered a little, probably from fatigue. “I don’t need you,” she said with exaggerated evenness. “Steven doesn’t need you. Molly doesn’t need you. Get it?”

  Kenny might have been deaf, and expected to read her lips. He felt chilled, and when he tried to speak again, she went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

  As he’d attempted to tell Bench, Joy is an excellent mother. Alternately antic with the children and earnestly loving. Although she’s a vain woman, and her apple breasts have always been an important matter of pride, she had nursed both infants, without hesitation. She’d been a wonderful geyser of milk.

  Her current, bizarre behavior is only a way of avenging herself, of getting back at him. She’s probably at the pediatrician’s office right now with Steven and Molly. You could wait hours in that bedlam of screaming kids. If worse comes to worst, he’ll get in touch with her there.

  Miss Oberon comes in to say there’s still no answer at his house. Should she try again later?

  He tells her to go to lunch; he’ll take care of it himself. She reviews his schedule of afternoon appointments, and lays a few letters on his desk to be signed. He remembers that he never retyped the one he’d made into a paper airplane, and wonders what it said.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” Miss Oberon says, and she leaves.

  He hardly knows anything about her, except for her extraordinary secretarial skills, her tortuous sobriety. He idly suspects that she’s a virgin; even her glance appears closed, cautiously protected. She’s Daphne’s age, and has a decent enough figure, but in all the months she’s worked here he’s never really speculated on it, on what she might look like without the longish skirts she wears, that are usually the color of graphite, and the functional white blouses. At the bottom of all the letters she types, her initials, in lowercase, stand dutifully next to his bolder ones. Her note pad, though, is filled with the unbreakable code symbols of shorthand. She could be writing anything.

  His thoughts are being diverted, and becoming more scattered. Where was he? Joy and the children. But he wants to go back even further, to settle into a pleasurable daydream. It was Daphne he was thinking about before, when he decided to try calling Joy again, a naked and sprawling Daphne, open everywhere to him. His groin begins to drum with need. He goes into the small bathroom right off his office and unzips. Oh, Jesus, he thinks, as he takes himself in hand. How pathetic. What lunacy. I have a beautiful, beautiful lover, and a beautiful wife.

  He can’t summon up either of them now. He’s in his own frantic grip and Daphne’s disappeared, and Joy won’t materialize—a freaky punishment for the crime of duplicity, for hurting his family. Where the hell are they? A child doesn’t die from a lousy earache because his father’s fucking around, because his father’s fallen in love. Cars don’t crash. Come on. Come on. Somebody. It has to be Miss Oberon, then, the last real image on his retina, slipping out of her leaden skirt. Oh, come on, the blouse, the tits. What’s her first name again? On her back, on her knees. Oh, take it, hurry up, oh, please, oh, please, oh, please.

  Dr. Evans’s nurse tells Kenny that Mrs. Bannister had brought Steven in first thing that morning. The boy’s ear was inflamed, and Doctor had prescribed an antibiotic and bed rest. Over a chorus of wailing babies, she informs him that his wife left the office before nine.

  Kenny dials his number again, and this time he lets the phone ring for a very long time. When he’s about to hang up, someone picks up the receiver but doesn’t say anything. Kenny says, “Hello. Hello! Joy? Steven?” He can hear breathing, followed by the bang-bang of the receiver knocking against a hard surface. “Hello!” he shouts. “Who is that?”

  Then Molly says, from a distance, probably talking into the earpiece, “Okay, goodbye.” A myna bird imitating bits of overheard human speech. And she hangs up.

  His relief is enormous. They’re home again; he’s willed them safely back into the shelter of the house, out of traffic accidents, hospitals, morgues. “Ha!” he says aloud.

  But why didn’t Joy answer the phone? She doesn’t encourage Molly to do that. So he
dials again, and this time Steven answers—a coherent, reliable four-year-old, full of important news. His ear hurts. He has yellow medicine. Dr. Evans gave him a jelly monster for being good, and Molly got a ring. She’s not allowed to put it in her mouth. Mommy is sleeping upstairs in the big bed.

  “Tell her Daddy wants to speak to her,” Kenny says. He starts to walk around his desk, with the phone pressed to his ear. The cord keeps reeling him back in. Nothing but silence; no footsteps, voices, not even the television. It’s taking too long. Could Steven have started to play, forgetting his errand as he climbed the stairs? Reliable, maybe, but still only four.

  Kenny keeps calling the boy’s name, and then Molly’s, just in case. He whistles into the receiver, a long, piercing shriek. His office door opens and Miss Oberon, just back from lunch, with her purse and a package in her arms, looks in. “Did you want me, Mr. Bannister?” she inquires, and he shakes his head, waving her away.

  Steven is on the phone again. Mommy is fast asleep.

  “Wake her,” Kenny commands, too severely, and Steven starts to cry. He bawls right into the phone, while Kenny tries to soothe and shush him. “I didn’t mean to yell, honey,” he says. “Steven? Come on, be a big boy.”

  “My ear hurts,” Steven sobs.

  “I know,” Kenny says. “I know. That’s why I want to talk to Mommy. I want to tell her to give you the medicine to make it better. Will you wake her up now?”

  “She won’t!” Steven says, and Kenny is like a mad dog on a short leash. “I’m coming home,” he says. “Don’t cry.

  He runs past Miss Oberon, who calls something after him. “No, no!” he yells, and keeps going. He takes the emergency stairs, two, three, four at a time, his shoes bonging on the metal steps. There are fourteen flights and his breath is so harsh and quick that he’s gagging before he gets to the final landing, and dying to be out of the dark, echoing stairwell. He lunges against the steel door that releases him into the glaring light of the parking lot.