Dear Doctor Lily

by Monica Dickens

  He was a lonely guy who had been in the nut house, or it might have been gaol. Ida wasn’t too sure. She told him about Jackson, so he would know it was all right with her if he’d been inside. But he stuck to his story of being in Bridgewater State hospital for some kind of breakdown. He said they had kept him there illegally, and his congressman had to fight to get him out.

  Now he lived with his mother, and drove a taxi. He was a lovely young man really, with clean brown hair and brooding eyes and a pale romantic scar at the left side of his mouth to remind him of Bridgewater and the kitchen officer who didn’t count the knives. Ida and Shirley had met him in a bar down by the wharf. He had gabbled to them for an hour, and then got so paralytic drunk that Shirley had to drive him home to Fairhaven in his own taxi.

  His mother opened the door, wearing a wrapper, and he fell into the front hall. Could Ida and Shirley help? His mother shook her head and smiled at them politely. She moved to Mike’s front end, dragged him forward by his arms until his feet were clear of the door, and then shut it.

  After that, they kept seeing him around. He was quiet and pulled in to himself sometimes. Sometimes he couldn’t get the words out fast enough. He pushed through the gate in the picket fence of Aunt Gertrude’s house once in a while, and wanted food, or coffee, or a glass of wine, as if he didn’t already have a mother in Fairhaven, doing a full-time job for him, it seemed.

  Lily invited Ida to come to Cape Cod on a July Sunday to see the house she and Paul were so excited about. Mike was there when Ida got the call, and he said, ‘I’ll drive you and the kids down.’

  ‘You’ve not been invited, pet.’

  ‘Cab drivers don’t get invited. They just drive.’

  ‘Mike, I can’t pay –’

  ‘Don’t insult me.’

  ‘I can drive myself to the Cape.’

  ‘In that heap?’

  There was nothing wrong with Ida’s Plymouth Horizon, but he wanted to drive her to the Cape, so she let him. He didn’t look like a New Bedford cabbie. You could take him anywhere.

  It was disappointing that he acted so strange at Lily’s. He didn’t want to go to the beach, or eat any of Lily’s fine cold lunch, except some potato salad and most of the pickles. He wouldn’t have a beer with Paul, or pay attention to any of the children, or even the friendly dog. He sat apart, wearing heavy boots that would give his mother stinking socks to wash, and would not take off his sweatshirt.

  ‘Bit of an awkward cuss,’ Lily said on the beach. ‘Who is he, Eye? What are you up to, anyway?’

  ‘Nothing, for once. He’s a friend of me and Shirley.’

  Ida closed her eyes. On the New Bedford public beaches, she always wore a man’s shirt over her bathing suit, but on this empty shore, she could lie spread-eagled in her old-lady’s flowered suit with the draped skirt, which was the only thing she could get in her size.

  A few boats went past, and some of the family who owned the beach were at the far end, well away from this sheltered place under the breakwater rocks. Maggie and Bernie were swimming, and old Fred was messing about on a rubber raft, with Cathy pulling him around, and tipping him off, so that he had to dog paddle in the shallow water until he could climb on the raft again, screaming abuse at Cathy.

  All aggressive males had deep, hysterical fears, in Ida’s vast and wearying experience. Swimming was one of old Fred’s.

  ‘Like it here?’ Lily did not lift her head.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘It’s our favourite place, mine and Paul’s. I used to think no beaches should be private. Now that this is ours to use, that’s different.’

  ‘Snob.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You got it made.’

  ‘I’m so lucky, Eye. Now that I’ve got this wonderful job in Boston, I’ve got everything.’

  ‘That’s what you said when you got Paul, when you got a baby, when you got a house in the suburbs, when you got a place on the Cape. So now what? A lover would be chic’ Ida pronounced it ‘chick’, which she knew was wrong, to stress the difference between them.

  ‘Don’t be duft.’ Lily smacked the mound of Ida’s meaty thigh. ‘We ought to see each other more often.’

  ‘No we didn’t. We stay friends this way.’

  The boy next door, Tony, who looked like thousands of dark young Portuguese in New Bedford, came to the beach with them, and was at the house for lunch. He and Bernie got along famous. While Isobel was giving Maggie and Fred rides on the pony, Horace, the boys went down to Tony’s house. He let Bernie ride his trail bike, and they went off into the woods on the other side of the railroad with some other boys.

  In the afternoon, Lily had a call from the place where she worked. A crisis at Crisis. She flew in when Paul called her, and made rather a big thing of shutting herself in her bedroom with the phone for ages, and then coming out, lifting her bangs away from her frowning forehead and shaking her head in a responsible kind of way, so they would all see she was a big wheel in the rescue business.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘We have to go,’ Ida said, to show she wasn’t impressed. She rounded up Maggie and Fred and got Bernie out of the barn, where he and Tony were on the trapeze. Mike was already in his taxi, listening to the radio.

  ‘I’m so glad you came.’ Paul said goodbye warmly. Maybe he’d been scared they were all going to move in again. ‘So great for Lily.’

  ‘Not for you?’ Ida couldn’t resist saying it.

  ‘Stop that,’ Lily said. ‘He’s on to you. You can’t embarrass Paul.’

  She made a joke of it in a way that had them all resuscitated as friends, and went some way toward tidying up the mess of that crazy time when Ida had squatted on them with newborn Fred, and had to clear off in the night, like a thief.

  In the front seat of the uncomfortable Chevvy, Ida asked Mike, ‘You like her?’

  ‘She’s okay. She didn’t like me.’

  Ida thought, ‘No wonder,’ but said, ‘Sure she did. She likes everybody.’

  ‘Doesn’t make it worth much, then.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Ida thought. ‘You kids have a good time?’ she called to the back seat.

  ‘When can we come again?’ Fred asked.

  ‘Three or four years.’ That was about the speed of her and Lily’s get-togethers.

  ‘Tony invited me to visit any time,’ Bernie said. ‘I could come out on the bus, he said, when his uncle cuts the hay.’

  ‘You do that, son.’

  Maggie said, ‘I want a pony. I want a horse like Horrid.’

  Isobel was quite good at riding now, and she had planned how she would show off a bit on Horace, jumping the small fences in the back field, to impress the kids from New Bedford, who probably had never seen a horse anyway.

  She wanted Tony to ride too, but he was too big for the pony, and not allowed to ride Daddy’s horse that he’d got for the summer, although he looked after him and Horace when Isobel’s family wasn’t here.

  She went twice round the field, with no refusals, except nearly at the bottom fence; but with any luck, the watchers were too far away to see Horace stop dead and then leap straight up one side of the jump and down the other, with Isobel landing on his neck.

  When she got back to the gate, Bernie and Tony had gone off somewhere. Isobel was wild. She slid off Horace and jerked his rein, poor pony, to get his head up from the grass.

  ‘Gimme a ride,’ Maggie was clamouring.

  ‘He won’t like it.’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t care,’ Cathy had to say. ‘He let Sally and Brad ride yesterday. When he got sick of it, he just put his head down and they slid off.’

  ‘Gimme a ride.’

  Maggie had grown a bit more sensible since she had wrecked Isobel’s bedroom, although her eyes still didn’t both look at you at the same time.

  ‘Do you mind, honey?’ Maggie’s mother asked. ‘And Fred too, maybe? Gee, you ride so good, I can’t believe it.’

  But Ida’s praise was no
use to Isobel.

  She gave Maggie a ride to show how nice she was, in spite of everything, and she let Cathy lead Fred around the top part of the field, but she had to run out and grab the pony, because he started to trot and Cathy let go and Fred screamed.

  When she was taking Horace’s tack off by the gate, the boys had still not come back. Isobel started to cry, with her face against the pony. Her mother saw, and came up and took the saddle, and they walked to the barn alone together.

  Isobel let the reins trail on the ground, because she felt so draggy, and Mud said, ‘Don’t –’, then thought better of it. They sat on a hay bale in the dusty feed corner, and Isobel had a good cry, while her mother held her tightly.

  ‘Tony’s almost grown up, you know,’ she said. ‘I know he’s your best friend, but he’s bound to have other friends too. You don’t mind about Wayne and Ritchie and all that crowd he goes with?’

  ‘No… no… I don’t know.’

  Isobel couldn’t explain it. She didn’t have to, because Mud shut up after that and just held her, and they sat together and played with each other’s fingers, and mixed their hair together.

  ‘They’ll be looking for us,’ Isobel said, when she had dried her face.

  ‘I don’t care. I want to be here with you. I love you so much, Iz, I can hardly stand it. Why do I ever want anything else? Why not just be a mother?’

  Isobel’s heart was warm and spreading, like a cake expanding in the oven.

  ‘But you love your job,’ she said.

  ‘I love you and Cathy a thousand times more.’

  ‘But we do need the money,’ Isobel said sensibly, ‘if we’re going to do all the things we want to around this place.’

  ‘Lily! Lily! Telephone!’

  ‘Oh, my God – I’m on call. Sorry, darling. Turn Horace out, would you, and check the water tub.’

  Mud was gone.

  Isobel looked past the open door to the small window where she had stood on the stone block last year and seen inside the barn. She looked at the rough, rubbed post at the end of the partition, where she had seen her leaning.

  Once when she was mad with Mud for getting tied up at Crisis and sending Anita round to be there when they got home from school, Isobel had gone out to her father when she saw his car come home. In the garage, while he was checking on some seedlings on the bench under the window, Isobel said, ‘You want to know something?’

  ‘You bet.’ When she didn’t speak, he turned round. ‘Well, what is it?’

  Isobel turned her head away. She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t want to tell him now, and spoil his smiling face, but he insisted, ‘Tell me,’ so it was his fault.

  She told him about seeing her mother and Harry in the barn. She didn’t quite know how to tell it, not really knowing what it was all about, but his smile did vanish, as expected.

  ‘Why are you making up this story?’ Her father caught hold of her arm, but she backed away.

  ‘Because it’s true.’

  ‘Why do you have to lie so much, darling?’ He wasn’t even angry, because he didn’t believe her.

  ‘No one believes me when I do tell the truth, so what’s the point?’ No, wait a minute. That sounded as if what she had told him wasn’t true either. He took his briefcase off the bench, and Isobel followed him to the door that led to the kitchen.

  ‘But Daddy –’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  He didn’t believe it anyway. No point in going on.

  When Lily told Ida about her work at Crisis, Ida had said, with the tougher, bolder laugh that was part of this new phase of her life, ‘I was wondering why you hadn’t told me what to do lately. Now you’ve got all these other sad-sack customers. That should keep you quiet.’

  Quiet! That was what Lily’s life had been when she thought it was hectic, having to fit in the comparatively peaceful answering service with the needs of Paul and the children. Crisis had turned her life into a maelstrom. She loved it.

  Martha was energetic and effective and enthusiastic and without fear. She had a confident way of assuming that people would give her money and contacts and publicity, and they did. She expected a lot from the volunteers and the staff, and she got it. Sub-standard volunteers were ruthlessly disposed of. Those who made the grade did their utmost for the callers, and would do anything for Martha. So would Lily.

  Her job involved helping to train the new volunteers who answered the phones, seeing clients who came in, following up their progress and sometimes arranging professional help. She took her share of the many phone calls, and bolstered up the volunteers when they were anxious about someone desperate, or fed up with the sex callers who used their number to ply their lonely trade.

  Sometimes Lily went out to see somebody who couldn’t or wouldn’t come to the centre. Richard Spence, failed businessman, was holed up in a cheap motel room, ashamed to go home, and afraid to go out. Lily had also been to see Louise, after talking to her on the phone many times, and found her a small frail person in shrunken jeans, with delicate features that could change expression in the flash of a thought.

  When she was a little girl, Louise had invented a companion for herself, one long summer when her parents were abroad. He was an eight-year-old boy called Gerald, who was now a dominant part of her life and wouldn’t leave her. The trouble was that while Louise was twenty-six, Gerald was still a ruthless and demanding eight. Her suicide attempts had usually been because Gerald ordered them. She could live quite normally for a while, with her son Damon, and then suddenly Gerald would take over and wreck everything.

  Lily had seen him one winter afternoon. The Crisis centre was in a converted terrace house in a back street of Boston. Louise lived not far away, and she would often drop in for a chat. It tickled her that-Lily was English, and she would bring in buns and want a pot of tea made.

  This afternoon, she was fairly peaceful and ordinary. Then Lily said she had to leave her to make a phone call.

  ‘Will you be all right for ten minutes?’

  Louise did not answer, and Lily saw her face change in an instant from an animated young woman to a sulky, devious small boy, mouth obstinate, eyes sliding back and forth, looking for trouble. Even her body looked different. She sat with knees apart and small feet planted. She thrust her hands into the sleeves of her sweater, and hunched over.

  ‘Louise?’

  Louise-Gerald got up and went out of the small back-room, down the passage, knocking against someone with an armful of books, and banged through the door, out into the street.

  Lily ran after her and found her standing stubbornly in the middle of the street, which luckily was not busy. Cars swerved round her. Students on bicycles wobbled, a van driver shouted, a car’s brakes screamed.

  ‘Pretty stupid way to get yourself killed.’

  Lily pulled her out of the road. Louise stared at her as if she did not know her.

  ‘Come in and get your coat.’

  Indoors, Louise began to shudder and shake. Martha put her on a couch and wrapped a blanket round her. Louise, half herself, half still Gerald, wanted Martha to call Dr Reed, and then burrowed her head in a cushion and refused to talk to him.

  Martha, who always knew what to do, talked to the psychiatrist, and then called Louise’s saintly neighbour and asked her to fetch Damon from school, a favour she often had to do when Louise was disorganized.

  Louise fell asleep. Lily sat by her and did some paperwork. When it was time for her to leave, to be back before Cathy and Isobel got home, Martha said, ‘Damn,’ and ran a hand roughly through her short stiff grey hair, still flecked with its original reddish-brown. ‘I thought you could take Louise home.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I know. The kids.’ Martha was irritated, which wasn’t fair, because these hours were agreed between them. ‘I can’t take her myself, because I’ve got a meeting. Andy’s too new, and Fran is scared of Louise. I wish – oh well, off you go, little mother.’

 
Lily, who admired Martha, drove home too fast, upset, not with Martha, but with herself for having somehow failed, in a way she couldn’t help.

  She told the volunteers in training not to get too emotionally involved, but for herself, it was a bit different. She believed she could get close to people in trouble without losing her judgement or strength.

  Paul was proud of what she was doing, and did not complain – much – about her preoccupation with people like Richard Spence, Louise and Peter and Rocky, and whoever was a current concern.

  ‘Do you ever think you need these jokers more than they need you?’ he asked reasonably, when she had spent two hours after dinner making calls to clients from home.

  ‘Oh, God, do you feel neglected? Don’t you know that you and the girls and our life together come first? Always. Remember that.’

  ‘Oh, I will,’ he said solemnly.

  Before the Cape Cod house was bought, Lily had been able to give a large part of her weekdays to Crisis. When the house was theirs, she caught herself sometimes resenting its demands. There was a tremendous lot to do in planning and supervising repairs, painting the bathroom yellow, scrubbing out the kitchen accumulation of years, buying basic furniture and curtains and rugs and china and saucepans, taking stuff down that could be spared from Newton.

  The Judge was still away from court on sick leave. Since he had made the house possible, Lily tried to get him to come to the Cape, but he came only once. He felt cold, although it was a warm weekend. The children and their friends thundered in and out on the bare wood floors. He couldn’t risk eating lobster. When he went outside to see what Paul was doing on the fences, he fell over a rock. The fog horn sounded all night. It was too much for him.

  The scandal over the two black youths and the man who died of a heart attack had been overlaid by many others, and forgotten by the public, but the hurt of it was not forgotten by Even Steven. His health did not pick up. He was seventy-two. He thought he might have to retire soon. Lily had found Mrs Meggs to be a live-in housekeeper, with a television set for her room that was half the width of one wall. The Judge hated her.

  Every weekend, Paul worked outside with Tony, repairing fences, making a new gate, shoring up the barn, starting to do some rough work on the neglected land. Tony’s father bulldozed out dead trees to be sawn into logs. He brought up his cultivator, and Paul started a vegetable garden and a few flower-beds near the house. Next year, they would tackle the tufted grass at the front and sides and start a proper lawn.