The Hours Count

by Jillian Cantor

  “Come on, now. I don’t mind at all,” he said. “David and I will keep each other company while you go vote, won’t we, David?”

  No one ever offered to watch David, and here this man, this doctor, was practically begging me to do it. David stared up at Jake’s face, his eyes open wide, I thought, with curiosity. I also thought if he could speak he would tell me that, yes, he would much rather count the taxicabs with this man than walk farther into the throng of noisy people with me. Another wave of nausea came over me. “You’ll only be out on the steps?” I said, meeting Jake’s eyes again.

  Jake nodded and reached out his hand. David hesitated for only a second before taking it, and I wondered if maybe Ethel was right about this whole therapy idea and if Jake might even be able to help David. David was definitely taken with him, I could tell. And David was normally taken with no one.

  I stepped into the library all alone and suddenly I felt weightless. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone into a public place without David, without having to navigate the contours of his anxiety and silent tantrums.

  “Who’s that?” my mother asked, and I realized she was standing next to me again.

  “Just a friend of Ed’s.” My voice didn’t even catch on the lie. “He offered to watch David while I voted.”

  “He must be quite a good friend,” my mother scoffed. And I pursed my lips tightly together so I wouldn’t say what I was thinking, that she could’ve offered to watch him for a few moments given that she was his grandmother, after all. But she wasn’t afraid to tell me why she didn’t like to be alone with him or how his silence and his kicking for attention made her nervous. I wondered how she was going to feel about the new baby and if she might be willing to help me more if the child was usual, as she called it, like Susan’s girls, who she was willing to ride a train to watch. I thought about Ethel’s boys, about how different Richie and John were, such opposites in every way. But I pressed my lips tightly together, not wanting to think how impossible it would be if there was another baby just like David.

  My mother was none the wiser, nor did she seem to notice that I had my hand on the wall to steady myself. She leaned in and kissed my cheek. “I’ve already voted and I can’t wait for you. I’ve got to head home. You know Bubbe Kasha can’t be left alone for long and you’re taking forever. Really, Mildred . . . Choose Dewey if you want to choose the winner.”

  I simply leaned in to kiss her back and quickly got in line.

  AFTER I CAST my vote for Truman, I walked back outside and scanned the steps. I didn’t see Jake and David and I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Had Jake been lying? And Ed, too? Maybe the thought of a new baby had only made Ed resolve to get rid of David even more. Was Jake somehow connected with Zelda Weiss and here to take David from me? And I had given him away so easily, just like that. I was so stupid.

  I ran down the steps, calling for David, unable to catch my breath. And then I saw them down on the sidewalk below, standing by the door of a taxicab, Jake pointing out something to David and David seeming to listen intently and calmly in response. I exhaled and ran toward them and I quickly grabbed David’s hand.

  “Oh, there you are,” Jake said, his voice sounding so calm and easy as if he watched children like David every day. Did he? In an instant, I felt calmer, too, and I knew my thought at the top of the steps had been silly. Jake was telling the truth when he said he was no friend of Ed’s. Of course he wasn’t. Everything about them seemed so completely opposite. I could barely even imagine them having a conversation, much less a friendship.

  Jake smiled and small wrinkles showed up around his eyes. Maybe he was older than I first thought when I met him, maybe older than my thirty years, but not by much. He still seemed young and much too attractive to be a doctor, much younger than the old, stodgy Dr. Greenberg.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Jake asked and I shook my head. “Do you know what the problem is?”

  “The problem?” I repeated, though I knew perfectly well what he meant. But I was not going to tell him what Dr. Greenberg had told me, that I was the problem. I was too cold. I’d ruined him. And now I was going to do it again with another baby, maybe only to hang on to David. How stupid and selfish I had been to get rid of my diaphragm. Who was I helping? David? Myself? I imagined another little boy just like him floating into the world and freezing in my coldness and failures as a mother.

  “Hey there.” Jake put his large hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” I shook my head again, but I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. “Do you have time now? Maybe we could go somewhere quiet and talk.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, pulling out of his grasp and holding on tightly to David’s hand. “I have to get back, get dinner ready.” I was holding back tears, and I didn’t want this man with his kind eyes to see any more than he already had.

  “Tomorrow then?” he said quickly. I didn’t understand why he seemed so eager to talk with me, why he was being so nice. Maybe he saw David as a patient, though from his card I guessed he was in private practice and there was no way I could afford to pay his fees. I highly doubted he would offer a sliding scale like Ethel said the Jewish Board of Guardians would. “I’ll meet you outside your building at ten a.m. tomorrow. Okay?” he said.

  “How do you know where my building is?” I asked, feeling suspicious of him again. Was he really this kind? Was anybody really this kind?

  “You told me that night after the Rosenbergs’ party, remember?” he said gently. I remembered how I’d snapped at him when he’d offered to escort me back inside. He put his hand on David’s head and patted it lightly. David didn’t react, but he didn’t squirm away either. “Just meet me tomorrow,” Jake said, and then he turned and walked down the street before I had a chance to tell him no.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, in our apartment, Ed refused to turn off the radio. He was waiting for news of who won the election, and all I heard over David’s persistent kicking of the wall was that Wallace was dreadfully behind and that Dewey was in the lead. My mother was right, and I wondered if she could be right about the killer fog, too. Maybe I would walk outside tomorrow morning and it would be hanging there on the street, or maybe I wouldn’t even make it that far. Maybe it would be thick and deadly enough that it would float up and engulf us, suffocate us, even up on the eleventh floor.

  “Make him be quiet,” Ed said, turning up the radio, leaning in closer to listen, and blowing a thick cloud of cigar smoke in my direction. The smell of it nauseated me even more.

  “He doesn’t like the radio,” I told Ed. “He’s not going to stop kicking the wall until you turn it off.” I wasn’t telling him something he didn’t know, but still Ed shook his head and blew another cloud of smoke in my direction. I coughed and almost gagged and had to stop myself from vomiting right there on the couch. I walked to the window and took a few deep breaths to calm myself, and then I walked back to the couch and told Ed for what felt like the hundredth time, “This is why we need a television.”

  “We’re not getting a television,” he said, and he leaned over and turned the radio up again.

  11

  The next morning, it was not so much a decision to take the elevator down to the street and meet Jake at ten a.m. as it was a necessity.

  I felt exhausted, having barely slept from the noise of Ed’s radio and David’s kicking and thrashing, and then when Ed finally turned the radio off, I heard him talking on the telephone, as he sometimes did at night when he thought I was asleep, talking to his political friends about their loss, I guessed, because I heard him use words like liberal and Russia. When he finally made his way to bed, I lay as still as I could, trying to pretend I was asleep so Ed would go to sleep, too. But the combination of his vodka, his cigars, and his disappointment over the election meant he would not go to sleep that easily, and I felt his hand on my thigh as soon as I felt the weight of his body hit the mat
tress. “I’m not feeling well,” I said. And then when he persisted, I added, “There is already going to be another baby, Ed.”

  “You have been to see the doctor?” Ed slurred his words, his breath thick with vodka.

  “Not yet.” I closed my eyes. I felt a dull ache low in my stomach, and though I was exhausted, I couldn’t fall asleep. I lay in bed wide awake, staring at the ceiling, wishing I could simply dream the new baby away.

  But this morning, in the pale light of the day that shone in through the living room window, I knew that was a ridiculous and terrible thought. The clock on the coffee table approached ten, the dull ache in my stomach persisted. David cried and kicked the floor, now out of sheer exhaustion. I knew we had to go downstairs to meet Jake. I knew I had to do something.

  I let David press all the buttons in the elevator on the way down as I wondered if Jake would be out there on the sidewalk the way he said he would. But even more I wondered if he really could help us, help David. Would that change everything? If David could begin to speak and become normal, would Ed begin to love him the way Julie loved John—and Richie, too? I felt a glimmer of something small in my chest, a quickening of my heartbeat. But as we hit the ground floor I wondered even if Jake could help, why would he want to?

  Outside, the day was brisk and I’d forgotten our coats. The street was crowded. Men rushed by in hats that covered their eyes; women walked by in small groups, pushing strollers. I stared at them with a quiet longing. I didn’t see Jake at first and I shivered in the cold, but then David tugged on my arm, pulling me to cross the street, and I spotted a man sitting on a bench, reading a newspaper. There he was. At least, I thought it was him. He had on a brown derby that shadowed most of his face and a thick long brown coat.

  We crossed the street and the man put his paper down, tipped his hat, and smiled. It was Jake, and I felt an immediate sense of calm, though I couldn’t say why. Maybe just because he’d seemed to understand David yesterday the way no one else ever did, or even wanted to, but me. Or maybe because I was so very tired, my stomach aching—my head aching now, too—that it was just a relief to understand I was not going to be alone, even if only for a few short moments.

  Jake folded his paper under his arm and stood. “They were wrong last night,” he said. “Dewey didn’t win. Truman won.”

  “Oh.” I felt a smug sense of satisfaction that Ed’s man hadn’t won and that mine had. And also that my mother had been wrong. She seemed wrong about that silly fog, too. The day was cool, but with a cloudless sky.

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d come.” He smiled, presumably to show his pleasure that we had.

  “Me neither,” I said.

  He laughed. “I’m glad you did, though. It’s cold out here. Should we go get a cup of coffee?”

  I hesitated, now wondering how it would look if anyone were to see us having coffee, not so much that I was with a man who was not my husband, though Ed would not be at all pleased should he ever find out, but that I was with a doctor, a psychotherapist. Ethel had sworn me to secrecy when she told me how she was taking John to therapy as if there were something inherently wrong about paying for something like that. Not that I was paying for anything. At least, I didn’t think I was.

  “Is there somewhere more private?” I asked. “Your office?” Then I quickly added, “Though I’m sure I can’t afford your fees.”

  “My fees?” He shook his head. “Oh, no, you don’t have to worry about that.” He paused. “I’m just setting up here in New York and I’m afraid I don’t have my office together yet. We could go to my apartment and talk there, if you’d like. It’s not too far. Just down Market.” He cleared his throat. “That’s where I’ve been seeing all my patients so far.”

  Jake leaned down and said something to David that I couldn’t quite hear but I thought was something along the lines of How would you like to stop by my place and see the yellow cars I have there? David stood up straighter and easily took Jake’s hand, and then it seemed we had no choice but to follow Jake to his apartment.

  JAKE LIVED ABOVE Waterman’s Grocery, just down the street from Mr. Bergman’s shop, and I thought how we might stop and visit Mr. Bergman on the way home, though I imagined I wouldn’t tell Mr. Bergman about this. This visit with Jake. Whatever this was.

  I was certain Jake didn’t have the steam heat and laundry facilities we had in Knickerbocker Village, though Jake’s apartment was larger on the inside than I expected when I first saw it from the street. He had a back room—what I assumed was the bedroom—and a large front room and kitchen. The front room was peculiarly empty, holding only two armchairs and a tiny end table with wide spaces on either side between it and the chairs.

  “Sorry,” Jake said as we followed him inside. “As I said, I haven’t been in the city long and I haven’t had time to get things set up yet.” He had been here since at least September—Ethel’s party—and that seemed to me ample time to get furnishings together, but Jake appeared to be a bachelor and it always seemed simple things like decorating were so much harder for men. I was just assuming he was a bachelor anyway, as I couldn’t imagine a woman tolerating a home this barren, and he hadn’t mentioned a wife or any woman.

  “What brought you here?” I asked him.

  “Oh,” Jake said, “I came for work.”

  “For work?” That seemed strange since he didn’t even have an office yet.

  “Psychotherapy is a thriving business in New York City,” he said. “Or so I hear.”

  “And where were you before?”

  Before he had a chance to answer I heard a howling and a scratching—not David, an animal sound. I turned and there was a black long-haired cat, David’s hands wrapped around its thick tail.

  “David! No, don’t.” I ran to pull the poor animal out of his clutches and David got upset and began kicking the floor.

  Jake scooped the cat up and threw her in the bedroom. “I inherited her with the apartment, I’m afraid.” He bent down to David’s level. “Don’t feel bad. She doesn’t like me much either.” David continued to kick and refused to look at Jake.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “He doesn’t mean to. He just doesn’t . . .”

  “Shhh.” Jake put a hand on my shoulder. With his other hand he pulled a toy car from the pocket of his jacket . . . yellow. A taxicab. I wasn’t sure if he’d bought it special after seeing David’s fascination with taxicabs yesterday or if he always carried such things around in the pockets of his coat. Jake held it out deliberately close to David’s face, and David stopped kicking to take a look. Then he took the toy eagerly and ran his fingers over it as if he could feel the yellow and it soothed him.

  Jake motioned for me to have one of the two seats. I took the one closest to David, and Jake took the farther one by the window, though he pulled the chair closer toward me.

  “I’ve studied children like David,” Jake said so calmly and evenly as if to say there were more of them—many of them—that David and I were not alone. “Let me rephrase that,” Jake said. “I’ve studied other children who can’t or don’t speak.”

  “And?” I hung over the edge of the chair, suddenly aware of every sound: the cat scratching against the bedroom door, the customers clamoring for groceries down below. David running the toy cab back and forth and back and forth against the same hardwood floorboard. My stomach was really aching now, but at least my nausea had subsided a bit.

  “And some of them are vacant,” Jake said. “Sometimes you look into their eyes and you see nothing.” He paused. “But David isn’t like that, is he?” I shook my head and bit my lip to try and stave off my tears. “He’s inside there, but he can’t get out. He can’t figure out how to communicate the way the rest of us can. Something is misfiring in his brain.”

  “In his brain?” I murmured, thinking how different this sounded from what Dr. Greenberg had always told me, how he had placed all
of the blame on me and how much I loved or didn’t love David, and I’d so easily and willingly believed him. “You don’t think it’s my fault, then?” I asked Jake.

  “Not at all.” He leaned closer and put his hand on my arm. I became aware of how close he was sitting to me, how we were all alone in this empty space, and I shifted and pulled back slightly. “I see the way you are with him,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I forgot his coat this morning,” I said. “It’s cold outside . . . I’m too cold.”

  “Mrs. Stein . . .”

  I hated the way that sounded in his calm tone. That I was only Mrs. Stein to him. Only Ed’s wife. “Millie, please.”

  “Millie, no one is perfect,” he said. “But you’re not the reason why David doesn’t speak.” I wondered how he could be so sure. I wanted to believe everything he was saying, but he barely knew David . . . or me. “I believe I can help you. Help him,” he said. “If you’ll let me.”

  “But why would you do that?” I asked. “I already told you, I can’t pay you. I don’t have the money. And even if I did, Ed wouldn’t—”

  “I don’t want you to pay me. I just want to help you, and if it works—when it works—I want to publish a paper about my techniques.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, thinking about how Ed would react should he find out about Jake helping us or this paper. Maybe Zelda Weiss was beyond reach now with another baby growing inside me. But what would happen when Ed got angry with me again? What would stop him from calling her back. Or, worse, actually getting her to take David away? Her first visit had been only a warning, I was sure of that. Next time, I didn’t think we would be so lucky.