The Man on the Third Floor

by Anne Bernays

  Phyllis said something. “What did you say?”

  “I said, what if she dies?”

  “She isn’t going to die.”

  “How do you know? You don’t know.”

  I repeated what I’d told her. This seemed to upset her and she pulled away. Where was Barry? I wanted him to hold me the way I had held Phyllis. I wasn’t strong enough.

  “It’s the not being able to help her,” Phyllis said.

  I nodded. I asked her if she would like some coffee. She shook her head. We sat down in the waiting room. There were others waiting, whose presence I felt rather than saw. I was aware of shuffling and sighing. A child was asking his parent the same thing over and over again without apparently getting any answer. It was far too hot, and the air was choking with disinfectant that irritated my nose. Every so often ghosts slipped by in the hall. I told Phyllis I was going to get some air and please to fetch me if Dr. Cooper came back. “I’ll be right by the front door.”

  Barry had the car parked smartly against the curb a few feet from the door. I looked in: He was asleep, his head just barely down on his chest. I knocked on the window. He looked up: “How is Kate?”

  I told him we didn’t know anything yet. “They took her off somewhere. Why don’t you go home? We’ll probably be here all night.” Barry refused, saying he’d rather wait. I reached inside the car and caressed his head. This simple gesture aroused me and I was ashamed; I didn’t want Barry to know. I was a flawed man, a worthless person, an animal. I thanked him, and assured him I’d let him know about Kate as soon as we did. Then I went back to the waiting room.

  Phyllis was sitting rigidly in her plastic seat. A magazine lay on her lap, unread. I sat down next to her and said, “This is truly awful. I wish we could do something.”

  “We wait,” she said. You couldn’t help admire her grit.

  “Mr. Samson?”

  The man the voice belonged to stood directly in front of me, where I had fallen asleep sitting upright. I opened my eyes and saw Dr. Cooper’s buttons eyeing me. Phyllis was on her feet.

  “You can see your daughter now,” the doctor said.

  I asked him what was wrong with her.

  They had drawn spinal fluid he told us, and found that it was, as he had suspected, meningitis. “It’s the more severe manifestation of the disease, but there’s a happy side to it; we now have antibiotic medicine, chiefly penicillin, to target the bacteria. It usually does the trick.” He made it sound as if he were adding salt to something tasteless. “I’m not going to pretend for your sake that this isn’t a very serious illness. Before the war, she might not have pulled through. But these miracle drugs . . .” He moved his head up and down to indicate, I suppose, that modern medicine was miraculous. They would have to keep her in the hospital at least a week. He went on to say he would inform Kate’s school, for this was highly contagious.

  Phyllis said, “You said we could see Kate.”

  “Yes. She’s sleeping,” Dr. Cooper said. “She’s had a somewhat rough night. I suggest you take just a peek at her, not try to wake her.”

  “Is she going to be okay?” I asked. The three of us stood stiffly outside Kate’s private room. My left hand, inside the pocket of my trousers, played with my keys.

  “Well,” he said, “In a relatively few cases there’s some impairment, because of the infection you see, in the brain. A slight hearing loss, some cognitive difficulties.” He was reciting, as if he had memorized the textbook. Abruptly, he pulled himself back. “But we don’t have to think about that now. That probably won’t happen.” I looked at Phyllis glaring at Dr. Cooper, who seemed unable to say anything unambiguous. “Aside from this, she should have a complete recovery. But it will take some time. She’ll have to stay home from school for a couple of weeks. Regain her strength.”

  I had no idea what time it was. The corridor was lit, but for all I knew it could have been ten or one a.m. or six in the morning. I looked at my watch: two-thirty. What had happened in the hours since we brought Kate to the hospital? I was tired, my body screamed tired, my head was heavy on my neck. I think I stank of perspiration. The doctor opened the door to Kate’s room. It took a moment before my eyes could make her out on the bed. Kate lay on her back, one pillow beneath her head. An IV dripped something into her left arm. A nurse sat on the room’s only chair with some knitting in her hands. She looked up and nodded at us. She began to get up. But Dr. Cooper told her, “Please don’t get up. You just stay right there.” To us: “I’ve asked for a special nurse to come in and sit with her for the next couple of nights. I assume you don’t object,” Dr. Cooper said.

  Phyllis began to cry.

  “She’s going to get better,” Dr. Cooper said. “I wouldn’t lie to you. I have every expectation that the antibiotic will do the trick.”

  Phyllis approached the bed. She said Kate’s name softly. There was no response.

  Dr. Cooper said they had given Kate a painkiller to blunt the pain of the spinal tap. She wasn’t likely to wake up until daylight, if then. He suggested we go home and get some rest. Phyllis protested saying she wanted to spend the night in Kate’s room. The doctor wasn’t happy about this, but Phyllis dug in her heels and finally Cooper backed down. “I’ll see if I can have a cot brought in for you. This goes against my better judgment.”

  “Why?” Phyllis said. She pulled off her hat and went to hang her coat in the tiny closet. “Mothers want to be with their sick children,” she said. “It should be normal procedure.”

  Dr. Cooper caught my eye and sent me a message that said something like, God protect me from hysterical women. I wouldn’t play ball with him; I thought Phyllis’ point was extremely well taken.

  “As long as you’re here,” I said to Phyllis, “I think I’ll go home for a few hours. I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

  Barry was an angel. He listened for several minutes without commenting as I talked about how Kate’s illness was my punishment for leading a wicked and decadent life.

  Then he said, “And why is Kate getting punished? She’s the one who’s sick, not you. What did she do to deserve this? Honestly, Walt, why are you bringing this back to yourself? I mean look, your daughter has this terrible disease and all you can think about is what did I do. You didn’t do anything, this has nothing to do with you.”

  “I’m sorry I said that. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t even have thought it. What’s the matter with me?” What he said to me was as stunning and painful as a bullet in the chest. I could hardly breathe.

  “She’s going to be okay—right? Why are you beating yourself up?”

  THEY KEPT Kate in the hospital just under two weeks, antibiotics dripped into her arm for days on end. I left work early during this time, bringing some work with me in the event that she was sleeping. At first she was too groggy to recognize me. But after a couple of days she managed to say “hi” in a weak little voice and try to smile. Every couple of hours a nurse came in to take her temperature and blood pressure, and ask her a few simple questions like who’s the president of the U.S. of A. And what month comes after June and what was her middle name. Various friends, including Fred Forstman, ailing himself, had sent flowers and get-well messages. The flowers stood in chunky glass vases on the dresser and windowsill, some of the flowers drooping. An enormous, rococo bouquet was delivered from a Madison Avenue florist with a sweet note from Mary and Edgar Fleming. Charlie McCann sent a tin of chocolates from Sherry’s.

  I watched for signs of mental difficulties or hearing loss and was much relieved not to find any. Phyllis came every day and we often sat together and talked quietly while our daughter slept. I’d read that a child’s sickness frequently drives parents apart. In our case it was just the opposite. For once, both of us seemed to be focused on something other than ourselves. I guess Barry’s remark to me in the car had a salutary effect, and I no longer viewed Kate’s illness as my own personal punishment—except for the times I slipped back and beat m
yself up.

  But while Kate continued to recover without apparent setback, I was profoundly shaken by nearly losing her. I couldn’t imagine anything more terrible than your child’s death, not even running someone over in the street, or seeing your lover shot. I know I would have given my own life to save hers. I was so shaken that for months after she came home from the hospital I woke up around three in the morning, trembling and covered with sweat. It was as if the notion of mortality had passed me by until Kate fell sick. Where had I been? What had I been thinking? I had been complacent and stupid. Abruptly, everything shifted and I found myself in a constant state of anxiety. I tried to shake free of it but, like your shadow on a sunny day, it followed me everywhere. Sometimes I thought that if I escaped my present life and disappeared into another place, like a Mexican seaside village—bringing Barry along with me, of course—the anxiety would disappear as well. I tried hard to hide the chaos and I think I did pretty well at this, but Barry noticed something. “You’re awfully jumpy these days.” I determined not to let him see how upset I was.

  While Kate recuperated at home, I left work early to sit with her each afternoon. A classmate who lived nearby brought her homework so she wouldn’t fall too far behind in her studies. She had lost some weight and her cheeks were sallow, but you could tell her health was improving because she was restless and kept asking when she could go back to school.

  On the fifth day of this I said, “Henry tells me you have a boyfriend.”

  Kate flushed. “I do not have a boyfriend. Henry’s a liar.”

  “Well,” I said, “I guess maybe I got it wrong.” I was pretty sure I hadn’t got it wrong. Though Henry was something of a snitch, lying wasn’t one of his strong suits. He loved his sister but I guess he couldn’t help being envious of her pale beauty and her popularity at school. Smart children like Henry, especially if they don’t look like young Adonises and aren’t good athletes, have a serious disadvantage at school.

  “Henry doesn’t know anything about me.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” I said.

  “And where was I supposed to have met this so-called boyfriend?”

  “At a dance at Trinity last fall.”

  “I’m going to get him!” This was a steely side of my daughter that seemed to have emerged since her illness.

  I told her having a boyfriend was nothing to be ashamed of. “You’re certainly old enough to be the apple of some boy’s eye.”

  In a tone I’d never heard her use before, she asked me if we could drop the subject. She opened a math book and took up a pencil and a pad of paper.

  “I can take a hint,” I said.

  “Besides,” she said, just as I was about to leave the room, “you’ve got a boyfriend. Why shouldn’t I?”

  CHAPTER 7

  The movie camera lovingly memorializes in slow motion that moment when the wrecker’s ball, after drawing slightly back, hurls itself against the brick wall, smashing into it, collapsing the wall and sending a huge veil of dust and rubble into the air.

  After Kate confronted me in that minatory way, the ball hit me square in the chest, taking away my breath. I looked at her steadily and saw she wasn’t kidding. Amazingly (because I was so stunned), I still considered my options. One: pretend I didn’t hear what she had just said. Two: ask her to explain herself, and perhaps put her on the defensive. Three: act as if she were joking and say something like, “Well, doesn’t that just put us in the same boat?” None of these options was especially attractive. I looked at her intently the way you might look at a tiger in the zoo—an apt image except that there were no bars between us; we were equals.

  Kate looked back boldly; there was no mistaking what her eyes said: I know about you and Barry.

  But instead of making her move, Kate retreated, just why, I’m not sure. Maybe she wanted to keep me twisting there. “I’ve got to finish this math, Dad,” she said, as if nothing at all had taken place. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  And all this time I had been worried that Grete or Marie would discover my secret, and that one of them would shake me down to keep quiet about it. I should have been worried about my own beloved daughter. She might tell anyone. It was inconceivable that a fifteen-year-old girl could keep a secret as provocative as this one. I shouldn’t expect that she would be able to. Who would she tell? Her mother.

  I left the room trying not to let my distress show. I walked downstairs like a man in his dotage, light-headed with anxiety, slow and tentative, each step seeming to punctuate the precariousness of my situation. Ten minutes earlier I had been a relatively free man, now I was trapped. I felt almost heedless, the reality of the situation giving me another opportunity to make changes. I went down to my study, shut the door and sat down at my desk. There was a bottle of Scotch handy. From this I poured myself several fingers and swallowed it down in a gulp. I was grateful how much and how quickly this helped.

  I told myself that although I acted irrationally from time to time, I was as capable as the next educated man to employ reason. I considered: suppose Kate told her mother what she had accused me of. Phyllis might not believe her, denial being the powerful state of mind that it is. Ask the daughter what makes her think so. The daughter can’t come up with evidence that counts with the mother. The mother dismisses the daughter as a fantasist. The daughter slinks off. Or, what if the mother believes the daughter? Justifiably angry, she asks me to “please leave my house.” That would remove one choice, with only one left: to leave. With Barry, of course—if he would come with me. We could move somewhere like San Francisco or Provincetown or Key West. Was this rational? Who could tell until afterwards—and then it would be too late.

  But would I leave? Strong as my longing was to live openly with Barry, I couldn’t see myself giving up my job, my family—especially my two dear children—my creature comforts like membership in the Orange Club. For what? For sex, maybe once a day, if that, for twenty minutes with a man who might, at any moment, decide he’s had enough of a middle-aged, middle-class jerk? I was fairly sure that I would lose my job if the “scandal” was hinted at in that smarmy way of theirs by Leonard Lyons or Winchell in their gossip columns. Even though publishing was a refuge for assorted oddballs—alcoholics, oversexed men and women, and the effetes who kept their sexual preferences hidden from the outside world—and pretty much anything went so long as you delivered what you were paid to deliver, going public was a line one did not cross without consequences. Still, publishing wasn’t life, it was but a tiny, musty corner in a great big house. Nobody but those plying its trade gave a shit. You asked someone the title of a book they recommended to you and they could tell you. They might actually know the author’s name as well. But ask them who published it and they would go blank.

  If I ran away with a young man, I couldn’t expect to be forgiven by most of my old friends, classmates, acquaintances, wife, or children. Outcast! Was I basically weak or strong because I was reluctant to pull away from all things large and small that gave me my equilibrium? It mattered— I wanted to be strong. Didn’t it take more guts to stay, stick it out with my family?

  I realized, after pouring myself a second Scotch, that I had a pounding headache.

  Thinking about our little encounter later, I began to realize that Kate, rather than going straight to her mother, meant to keep our secret between the two of us. I wish I could articulate just how I knew this. There was something so controlled, so controlling about the way she looked at me; the look seemed to seal a pact.

  Hoping to extinguish my headache, I took two aspirin and waited for the pain to dissolve. My life had never before seemed quite so fractured. And not lost on me but underscored heavily was the fact that this was all my fault; I was architect and engineer. I couldn’t blame anyone else, couldn’t blame fate, couldn’t blame God, couldn’t blame my parents.

  THE FOLLOWING day I went to B. Altman’s on Thirty-Fourth Street and bought an oval aquamarine in an antique setting and a t
hin golden chain from which to hang it. It wasn’t all that expensive but it looked smart—classy but not showy. I thought it would suit Kate. I had it gift-wrapped, and as she handed me the package the saleslady told me that someone was a very lucky person. I thanked her.

  As soon as I got home I went straight to Kate’s room. She was sitting up in bed, wearing a sweater and plaid skirt. The color had returned to her cheeks and her hair was brushed so that it shone. I said, “You must be feeling a lot better.”

  “I can’t stand being sick anymore. I got dressed. Mom says I can go back to school next week. Why can’t I go tomorrow?”

  “I guess your mother asked Dr. Cooper,” I said. “We have to go by his orders. Here.” I handed her the box in its wrapping, which she immediately tore off. She opened the box, “What’s this?” she said.

  “A little something to let you know how much you mean to us, how precious you are. You realize that we almost lost you.”

  “Does Mom know you bought me this?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to tell her yet. I saw it in the store window and I couldn’t resist getting it for you. Don’t you like it?”

  “Yeah, sure I like it.” She still had it in her palm and was looking at it as if it might have something to say to her.

  Then she hopped off the bed and sat down at her vanity table, where she put the chain around her neck and fastened it. “How do I look?”

  I told her the stone matched her eyes. She grinned.

  All the while we were both aware of the thing neither of us would talk about. It lay there, a nasty beast hiding in the back of the closet, biding its time before springing out. Kate thanked me again, but didn’t move from where she was staring at herself in the triptych mirror.

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

  “I know that. Of course I didn’t have to. I wanted to. There’s the difference.”