Little Stalker

by Jennifer Belle

  “Computers are always downloading,” I repeated.

  “Yes.” He abruptly walked into his office and shut the door. Then he opened it again and came back to Irmabelle’s desk. “We got a computer and it never worked. That thing caused us more problems . . .” He pointed to a word processor that must have been from the early eighties. Irmabelle even had one of those tiny koala bears from the eighties clipped to the cord.

  The phone on Irmabelle’s desk rang and my father answered it. “Dr. Kettle,” he said. The phone kept ringing. Then he pressed a button. “Dr. Kettle.” He pressed a few more buttons. “Dr. Kettle. Dr. Kettle.” Finally he hit the right one and had a brief conversation with someone.

  He looked down at the green-ruled appointment book and scrawled a name in between all the other names that had previously been written by Irmabelle in perfect schoolteacher script. He hung up. “Life goes on,” he said.

  I unloaded the six cans of Diet Pepsi I had brought to get me through the day.

  The doorbell rang. “Get the door,” he said, and disappeared into his office like an actor, in his case vaudevillian, waiting in the wings as the house filled. I went to the door to rip the tickets.

  A tiny old man stood in the lobby.

  “Well, hello,” he said to me. “Where’s Irmabelle?”

  “She’s not in today,” I said.

  “Isn’t today Friday?”

  God forbid his exciting routine be interrupted.

  I turned and walked toward the waiting room and told him to have a seat. Then I went to Irmabelle’s desk and looked at the appointment book to see who he was.

  Morris, Casper. F.S. Almost all the appointments in the book had the letters F.S. next to their names, which meant flu shot, which meant they were old.

  His chart was already on my father’s desk so I got his index card from Irmabelle’s little tin file box. Morris, Casper. Medicaid. Age: 87. Marital status: other (widowed).

  I walked back into the waiting room. “You can go in now,” I said.

  “What’s that?” he asked, pointing behind me.

  “What?” I asked, turning around. “What is what?”

  “Nothing, I just wanted to get a look at your caboose.”

  I turned back to face him. “You can go in now,” I said.

  He shuffled into my father’s office. “Have you got a card trick for me today, Doctor?” he asked. A few minutes later they both came shuffling out again.

  “Will you help me with my zipper?” he asked.

  I assessed the situation. It was his jacket zipper. His fingers were knotted like nautical rope. One of his fingernails was purple. But the zipper of his jacket was at eye level with his other zipper. His nether zipper. I put my hands up in front of me like a surgeon entering the O.R. after scrubbing. I approached the patient, bent my knees, and was just about to pull up the zipper, when he put both his hands on top of my head and pushed my face into his crotch. I stumbled down to my knees, surprised by the force of it, the round hard tips of his fingers in my thick hair, my face against his pilling old-man pants.

  “Whoops,” I said, managing to get free and stand up again. I noticed that “whoops” was something I had been saying a lot lately. If someone’s child fell on the street, I said “whoops.” If I was raped in an alley somewhere, I would probably say a polite “whoops.”

  “Will you be here next week?” the old man asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “If you’re here next week, I’d like another appointment.”

  "That won’t be necessary,” I said. I decided not to bother with the twenty-five dollars now, I could always bill him. I just wanted him out of the office.

  I ignored him as he left and picked up the phone to call my machine in case Hugh Nickelby had called. He hadn’t.

  The phone rang and I answered it. “Dr. Kettle’s office,” I said. It was my father calling from the other room.

  I walked into his office and he told me to sit in the patient chair. “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “I was just practically raped by your disgusting patient,” I said.

  “Rape is nothing to joke about, Rebekah. I don’t think a real victim of rape would appreciate your remark. I couldn’t give him a Viagra prescription big enough to facilitate that.”

  “Maybe Irmabelle knew how to handle having her face shoved in a man’s crotch but I don’t.”

  “Oh, come on, he’s just a lonely old man. Now, aside from that, how are you enjoying your job?”

  “It’s not my job, Dad. I’m just helping you out for a few days.” I’d just wait until I could intercept his bank statement and then help him find someone else.

  “It’s not a bad profession. Medical assistant. When there’s downtime, in between patients, you can do some writing at your desk,” he offered. I imagined myself hard at work under the little plaque Irmabelle had nailed to the wall that said: EVERYONE BRINGS JOY TO THIS OFFICE—SOME WHEN THEY ENTER AND OTHERS WHEN THEY LEAVE.

  We just stared at each other. My head started to pound.

  “Do you have any vitamins here?” I asked. “I don’t think I’m absorbing enough nutrients.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” my father said. “What quack did you go to this time?”

  “I happen to know for a fact that I’m lacking potassium.”

  “So, let’s draw your blood and if that happens to be the case, I’ll give you a prescription for a potassium supplement.”

  “I don’t need bloodwork.”

  “Yes you do,” my father said. “In this office, we draw blood. We don’t hit a gong, or throw tea leaves, read palms, or stand on our heads, or chant, or stick needles all over ourselves, or pray to Allah for a diagnosis. We draw blood and then we analyze the results. I’m sorry if that’s too old-fashioned for you. If you would like to join me in the examining room, I would be happy to do a complete work up. And if you like you’re welcome to ring a little bell and light a candle while I’m doing it or meditate or call your psychologist or anything else that makes you feel more comfortable. Come on, why not humor your old dad? Afterwards you can go get Ralphed or have your tongue read . . .”

  “It’s not ‘Ralphed,’ it’s ‘Rolfed.’ ”

  I remembered the milk pooling at my nipples and Anita Stefano yelling about the obstruction in my brain, and I thought maybe I should let him do it.

  I sulked while he pushed up my sleeve and tied a rubber band around my arm, unwrapped a needle and took vial after vial of blood. I looked away, which disgusted him. When it was over, he hit my knees with his little hammer. “This is so stupid,” I said.

  “Yes, medical science, what a scam. Now, take off your shoes and stand on the scale.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I want to make a note of your weight in your chart,” he said, as if every girl just allowed her father to weigh her.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then come into the kitchen and I’ll show you how to work the centrifuge. You put in the counterweight and then set the dial for twenty minutes.”

  Luckily the doorbell rang so I didn’t have to learn that. I went to answer the door. It was a skinny Hispanic girl, definitely under thirty, standing behind an old woman sitting in a wheelchair. “This is Mrs. Williams to see Dr. Kettle,” the girl said.

  I ushered them into the waiting room and the girl stood at the counter limply holding some sort of insurance card. I took the card as if I had taken hundreds of cards before that one. It said Medicaid Blue-Cross BlueShield, the only insurance my father still took. I unclipped the koala from the word processor cord and put the Medicaid card between its tiny claws and stood it up on the desk.

  The girl sat down as far away as possible from where she had parked the old woman, I noticed, and picked up a copy of Oprah Magazine. My father had only had Time and The New Yorker in his office for years, so the Oprah Magazine surprised me. It must have been one of Irmabelle’s modest demands.

  My father poked his h
ead out of his office and said, “Mrs. Williams.”

  The girl and I both just sat there. I thought it was pretty much beyond the call of duty for me to have to wheel her in there. But the girl didn’t make a move. She tapped her fake nails, painted blue-white with pale pink stripes, on the arm of her chair. Finally I said, “You can take your grandmother in now.”

  “She’s not my grandmother,” the girl said. “I’m her home health aide.”

  Mrs. Williams herself just sat and stared straight ahead.

  My father came out again, this time all the way into the waiting room, said hello to the home health aide, and then pushed the old woman into his office and shut the door.

  The girl pulled out her cell phone and made a call. It was worse than being in an elevator with someone. I was trapped there having to hear her side of an inane conversation. “So what if I took her? I didn’t take her nowhere bad. I think it’s good for her to see other places. She liked going to Brooklyn. She’s never left Manhattan.” She pronounced Manhattan like Manha—an, whizzing through the word like a taxi going through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. I found a PROZAC FLUOXETINE HYDROCHLORIDE pad in Irmabelle’s drawer, ripped off a piece of paper, and drafted a sign.

  Please refrain from cell phone usage due to interference with medical equipment. Thank you.—Dr. Kettle

  I was pretty pleased with the sign. I felt I had really captured my father’s voice.

  “I’m not taking no food,” the girl said into the phone. “It’s not my fault she wants to eat all that cereal.”

  While she wasn’t looking I quickly reached over and taped the sign to the side of the reception counter that faced the waiting room.

  When she looked up I tapped it with my pen.

  “I have to go,” she said into the phone. She hung up and picked up the Oprah Magazine.

  The sign was so effective, I thought I would try to come up with some more signs.

  Then my cell phone rang and I didn’t know what to do. I really wanted to answer it in case it was Hugh Nickelby.

  It was Ivy Vohl trying to get me to give her the blurb. “Ivy,” I said, “can I call you back later? I’m actually at my father’s office right now. I have to go run the centrifuge.” The home health aide was staring at me. “I’ll call you back,” I said.

  “Actually I’d like to make an appointment to see him. Does he take insurance?”

  “No,” I said. “Look, I’ve really got to go.”

  “How’s Monday at three?”

  I looked at Monday in the appointment book. “Three’s taken,” I said.

  I told her we were booked for months and then finally gave her a ten-thirty appointment so I wouldn’t be in the office.

  “Maybe I’ll bring Isaac with me.”

  “Who?”

  “Isaac Myman, the man who wants to meet you. He bought your book.”

  “Oh, well, I won’t be here. I’m just helping my father out for a few days.” I made a mental note to convince my father to get caller I.D.

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to talk on no cell phones,” the home health aide said.

  “I have a special medical cell phone,” I said.

  “I’m going to go outside for a minute,” the girl said. “But I’ll be right back.”

  About ten minutes later my father wheeled Mrs. Williams out of his office. He pushed her into the waiting room. “Where’s the woman who was with her?” my father asked.

  “She said she’d be right back.”

  For the rest of the day, Mrs. Williams sat in the waiting room. She didn’t move except when I brought back a pizza from Mimi’s, and she ate three slices, taking tiny bites.

  She refused to speak.

  “Where do you live?” I asked her. But she just stared straight ahead as usual. “I’m sure that girl will be back soon.”

  I studied her silvery white hair cut into a pageboy around her square face. She had wide fleshy cheeks and jowls but her body was thin.

  “I guess we’re both stuck here,” I said. It was like an omen for me, to see her sitting there like a zombie. That was what I would become if I stayed with my father for even another hour at this “profession” as he had called it. It was as uncomfortable as having a houseguest. I felt guilty for not trying harder to entertain her, but she was so quiet that I went for long stretches completely forgetting she was there and just sat in my own wheelchair— Irmabelle’s chair had wheels too—loudly sighing for no reason when my father disappeared into the bathroom for an hour after lunch.

  If I hadn’t come up with the no cell phone rule, her home health aide might not have left.

  I looked through her chart—four thick folders rubber-banded together—but there was no emergency contact information.

  My father finished his last appointment and stood at Irmabelle’s desk. “I’m going to go see a patient in the hospital, and then I’m going home from there,” he said. “There’s no time for our Friday ritual.”

  I felt enormously relieved. I had no idea what our Friday ritual was but I had a feeling it was Satanic and involved vacuuming.

  “Mrs. Williams is still here,” I reminded him. “And by the way, how does she go to the bathroom, because she’s been sitting there for five hours.”

  “Depends,” he said.

  “On what?”

  “It’s the name of an adult undergarment.”

  Talking to my father was always like who’s on first.

  “She’s perfectly capable of going to the bathroom by herself if she wants to. Look, Toots, would you mind taking her home? Her address is on her chart. She lives on Eighty-sixth Street, right around the corner from your alma mater. The doorman will let her in,” my father said. He wrote down her address on an IM-ITREX SUMATRIPTAN SUCCINATE pad and handed it to me. “Leave a note asking the aide to call us, and if we don’t hear from someone by tomorrow, we’ll have to call Bellevue. I’ll have the service page me if anyone calls. So that’s it, you’re done.”

  Except for wheeling this old wagon all the way to her apartment, I thought.

  This seemed like very bad luck for my first day. I thought of how my ex-shrink used to tell me that Rabbi Hillel said if you’re not on your own side who will be. I looked at Mrs. Williams staring blankly through her large glasses. “I don’t think I can do that,” I said. As soon as I said it, I thought I saw a glimmer of something ripple in her watery old-lady eyes. I wondered if I had hurt her feelings.

  “Alright, then just stay until Carlos comes to pick up the bloods and then you can go. Don’t forget to switch the phones over to the service before you leave.”

  “What are we going to do with Mrs. Williams?” I asked.

  “Leave her there and I’ll come back to deal with her later tonight. ” He walked over to the corner of the waiting room and turned on an old wooden standing lamp. “Shut off the rest of the lights when you go. We’ll leave this one on for her. There might be a radio in your room you can turn on for her.”

  My room was what the X-ray room used to be when we lived there before it became my father’s office. It had been our apartment until I was twelve.

  When I came back into the waiting room with the radio, my father had left and Mrs. Williams was still just sitting there. Carlos came and left with my blood. I plugged in the radio on the floor next to the lamp and tuned it to WQXR.

  “The doctor will be back for you in an hour,” I said. I shut the door behind me and stood in the lobby unable to move for a minute. I was remembering something.

  The summer I was twelve, when my father’s office was still our apartment, I went to a theater camp called French Woods. When I came home, I whipped out my key and opened our front door. The place was completely empty. No furniture, pictures— there was absolutely nothing in any of the rooms. I stood in my parents’ empty bedroom in shock. They had moved out. They hadn’t told me. They didn’t want me to know. I was completely alone.

  I didn’t know what to do. I only had eight dollars left, after
the cab I’d had to take home when my parents forgot to pick me up at the bus. I figured I would sleep on the floor in my empty bedroom that night and then figure out where to go from there. Or maybe I would live there for a while. I could babysit for money and food, you could always eat when you babysat, even if it was just peanut butter. I wondered how long it would be until the new owners took over our place.

  My father had always said if I got lost, I should stay put and he would find me, so in case it had all been a mistake, I spent the next three nights lying on the floor in the living room. I had decided against my bedroom because it was too dark, and the living room faced the street where there were lampposts or whatever those things were called. For three nights I cried that I was alone and not back in my bunk with Catherine, Melissa M., Melissa P., Lena, Jenny T., and Jenny R. in their beds around me, breathing in the seeped-into-the-woodwork smell of Fabergé, Nair, and Off. But I was determined to make it on my own. I could have called my Uncle Russell, but I was just too mad and I didn’t feel like explaining that my parents had left and stolen all of my stuff.

  I listened to Guys and Dolls, the play I had starred in, on my Walkman and tried to think about what I had thought about all summer: It is the last day of camp and Nester Perez kisses me before I get on the bus, and he tells me he will call me when we’re back in the city. Only it was a lot harder to imagine because the last day of camp was over and Nester Perez hadn’t kissed me, and now I was lying on the floor and there wasn’t even a phone anymore.

  I am Anne Frank, I thought. I am Jo March when she goes off to work, before she meets Professor Bhaer. I am Laura Ingalls in the episode where she runs away up the mountain. But I hadn’t run away—my family had run away from me.

  I subsisted on Mimi’s and bagels and tap water, only allowing myself to splurge on one Tab a day which I savored on a bench in the park, and waited until Saturday when my babysitting job for the Rands would start up again.

  On the fourth morning I awoke to see my father standing over me with two strange men carrying his examining table.

  “What are you doing here, Toots?” he asked.

  “I thought we lived here,” I said, burning with anger. “I’ve been here alone for a week!”