“That was about two years ago,” Dr. Kaufman said. “A little more than two years ago. She spent over a year in a British hospital before they let her come home.”
Emmett watched the other girl, safely across, stop to tug down her dress and then come toward the diner with the taut short steps necessitated by the exaggerated heels of the sandals she was wearing. She walked with her whole body. Then she was inside, sitting down across from him. It occurred to him belatedly to wonder what she had been doing across the road, there being a filling station with a plainly marked restroom next door to the diner, but he did not ask.
The counterman came to the booth with hamburgers and coffee, replacing Emmett’s empty cup with a full one, and went back to the counter where he lit a cigarette and stared moodily at a newspaper. The man to whom he had been talking had left. The counterman found a pencil in a pocket of his apron, folded the paper back on itself, and began to work the crossword puzzle.
Dr. Kaufman said, “Excuse me. Miss Bethke, Mr. Emmett. Miss Bethke is a private nurse.”
The girl nodded her acceptance of the introduction, biting into a hamburger which she held with both hands.
Dr. Kaufman said, “You see, Mr. Emmett, her experiences left Miss Nicholson—I won’t bother you with jargon—but it left her for a long time unable to face the demands of ordinary society. She spent a considerable time in the hospital after reaching this country, thinking up new symptoms with amazing ingenuity so that she would not have to give up the security of the institutional routine. When her parents took her home and tried, as they naively explained to me later, to get her to take some ‘interest in life,’ she tried to kill herself. Rather clumsily and ineffectually; Miss Bethke caught her almost in the act of swallowing the capsules of seconal, which I have no doubt is what Miss Nicholson intended to happen.”
The nurse nodded her bright untidy head. “She made a noise like an elephant getting back to bed. As if that wasn’t enough, she knocked over the bedside table.”
“She did not want to die, you understand,” the doctor said. “She merely did not want to have to cope with the effort of living. She wanted to return to the hospital. I advised a quiet sanatorium, plastic surgery, dentistry, and, of course, diet and rest. Not until she could have some confidence in her appearance and had regained a certain amount of strength did I make an effort to discover the roots of her insecurity feelings; and then I ran up against a blank wall, Mr. Emmett. She has forgotten everything that happened between the time she was taken by the Gestapo, and the time she arrived in Hofstadt, a period of some three months.”
“Everything except a name,” Miss Bethke said quickly.
“Yes,” the doctor said, “of course. A name. Kissel.”
“Reinhard Kissel,” the girl said. “Dr. Reinhard Kissel.”
Dr. Kaufman said, “At first, of course, we thought that this Kissel had been the cause of the traumatic shock Miss Nicholson had received while in the hands of the Gestapo, which had caused her to withdraw as far as possible from contact with life. Later it developed that, on the contrary, she wanted to meet this man Kissel to reassure herself about something that had happened, to which he had been a witness…” He bit cautiously into his hamburger, chewed and swallowed, wiping his fingers on a paper napkin. “What she wants, in other words, is for somebody to tell her what happened during the three months she was with the Gestapo. This in itself will not necessarily help her to remember the parts that her consciousness has suppressed, but it will make her feel safe in beginning to try to remember.”
The nurse had cleaned her plate and was redefining her mouth with dark lipstick. She looked up. “Perhaps,” she said. “But doesn’t it depend on what Kissel says, rather?”
The doctor frowned. The girl pressed her lips together and then smoothed the lipstick with the tip of her forefinger, watching the results in the mirror of her compact. “I mean, Kissel might say something that wouldn’t help the patient at all, mightn’t he?”
“Please, Miss Bethke.” After a moment, the doctor went on. “When I saw that my efforts to establish communication with the patient—in the psychoanalytical sense, of course; she never actually refused to talk to me—were meeting with violent resistance and were, in fact, retarding the whole process of recovery, I realized that I would have to be satisfied, for the time being, with a partial cure, as a surgeon might leave a shell splinter in a man’s body if the operation of removing it seemed too hazardous. I can say that I have been moderately successful. For the past few months Miss Nicholson has been living at home, driving about a little, accompanying her parents downtown occasionally, and even doing simple errands alone. You understand, Mr. Emmett, she wants to be cured, with reservations. She wants to be a normal person as long as no one asks her to reveal the source of her abnormality. Today—” he glanced at his watch, “—or, rather, yesterday, she took the plunge of attending a cocktail party given by one of her mother’s friends. I was rather encouraged by her willingness to undertake this ordeal. However, unfortunately or perhaps it may prove, fortunately, a young man who had had a little too much to drink was allowed to question her about her experiences, upsetting her so thoroughly that she ran out of the house and drove away. Miss Bethke followed and called me while Miss Nicholson was cashing a check. We have been keeping the patient in sight, trying to work out some way of taking advantage of her action without subjecting her to undue risk.”
“Taking advantage…” Emmett murmured.
Dr. Kaufman smiled. “We have learned that a Dr. Reinhard Kissel, recently admitted to this country, is teaching at a small college near Denver. With Miss Bethke’s help, I have arranged that the patient should learn about it—”
“It was in Time magazine,” the nurse said. “I left it where she could see it. She cut the piece out and keeps it in her purse.”
“But if you know that Kissel is in Denver…?”
The doctor nodded. “I might have had her confronted by Dr. Kissel, true. But it was our last resource, and I did not want to waste it. I wanted her to want to see him, to put it clumsily. Even now, I don’t want to let her know that she is not entirely on her own. It is a most hopeful sign that she should take the, for her, reckless step of driving across the country; it shows that at last she has developed a strong desire to learn the truth about herself. I don’t want to distract her in any way.” He drained his coffee mug and returned it to the exact center of the ring it had already left on the painted table. “On the other hand, of course, she is my patient and I am responsible for her safety. Which is why I’ve taken the liberty of approaching you and examining your credentials, Mr. Emmett, and of divulging as much of Miss Nicholson’s medical history as I have.”
He sat back and offered his cigarettes first to the nurse, who accepted, and then to Emmett, who refused, finally taking one himself. Emmett watched him light the nurse’s and his own, feeling a little as if the lights of the diner had suddenly brightened, like the lights going up in a theater after the fall of the curtain. He had an impulse to rise and stretch his legs and walk into the lobby for a drink of water. He was aware of the counterman in the corner, having difficulty with his crossword puzzle; and he heard, outside, the rising whine of a car leaving the town at well over the legal speed limit and accelerating to still higher speeds as it swept past. The diner was alive with the constant flicker of lights on the highway. He was back in the present again, looking across the table at the small compact doctor, and at the nurse with the shining untidy yellow-brown hair. He thought that it was a pity to waste a nurse like Miss Bethke on a female patient.
The doctor said, “I am going to take a chance on you, Mr. Emmett, that may cost me my career. It would not look well, if anything should happen, for me to have abandoned my patient to a stranger she picked up on the highway. On the other hand, if either Miss Bethke or I were to force our company on her at this point, she might very well relapse into her former attitude of resistance. It’s a risk I do not want to take…”
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br /> Emmett said, “Well, what do you want me to do?” He was not greatly impressed by the sight of the doctor pretending to argue aloud a decision he had obviously already made.
Dr. Kaufman took a card from his wallet and wrote an address on it. Emmett read the name he already knew: Paul Frederick Kaufman, M.D.; and the address: Estes Hotel, Denver.
“Merely make sure that she reaches Denver safely, Mr. Emmett,” the doctor said. “Call me at that address when you get there and I’ll arrange to have her watched over from there. Try not to let her get too tired; if you can persuade her to stop at a hotel tomorrow night, do so. See that she doesn’t try to live entirely on hamburgers and Coca-Cola. And if she wants to talk, let her.”
Emmett frowned.
The older man smiled. “I won’t ask you to reveal any confidences, Mr. Emmett. It’s quite possible that she may be willing to talk to a stranger; we very often tell strangers things that we would never admit either to our family or our doctor. But once the dam has broken, so to speak, my task in the future will be easier. You can consult your conscience as to what you wish to pass on to me. Of course I will appreciate any clues you feel free to give me.”
“You’ll be in Denver?”
“Yes. By tomorrow night, probably, if I can get plane reservations.”
Emmett sat rubbing his mouth thoughtfully. “She isn’t,” he asked, “apt to go into convulsions or anything like that, is she?”
Dr. Kaufman laughed heartily. “Oh, no. The worst that can happen is that she should suddenly lose her nerve.” He reached for the card and wrote on it again. “Her parents’ address and telephone number. If she should become panicky at finding herself, so to speak, alone among strangers, get her a hotel room and call Mr. Nicholson long distance. He will either get in touch with me or make arrangements himself for having her brought back.”
Outside a big truck double-clutched, shifting into high gear. The roar of its exhaust died away to the west.
“It is, of course, a great deal to ask, Mr. Emmett,” the doctor said carefully. “I realize that you probably did not plan your trip to include the duties of a male nurse.”
Emmett said without enthusiasm, “It’s all right. I just don’t want to have her start screaming in the middle of Omaha and find myself in jail charged with white slavery.”
“I think there’s very little chance of that,” the doctor said, laughing.
Emmett did not laugh. “And I didn’t like that part about her trying to kill herself, either.”
“I think I can guarantee that she will not try it again. It was, as I explained, only a protest against being put into a situation she was not yet ready to face.”
Emmett sighed. “O.K.,” he said. “I’ll deliver her to Denver. After all, I didn’t have to pick her up in the first place, did I?”
The counterman, seeing them rise, put away his pencil and came over, collected, went to the cash register, and returned with the change. They walked to the door. The girl in the black dress turned and put her hand on Emmett’s wrist.
“Be nice to her, Mr. Emmett.” She smiled and patted his wrist lightly. “But not too nice.”
He watched them walk away toward the Chevrolet sedan parked on the gravel. He could see the white gleam where her snug dress had split behind the shoulder. He knew that he liked neither of them very well, for no personal reason. But they had taken the girl named Ann Nicholson apart in front of his eyes. She was no longer a girl and a human being, she was a case for the medical journals. He felt a sense of loss. He had begun to like the girl named Ann Nicholson.
The man in the lunchwagon looked up irritably as Emmett came back inside.
“Coffee to take out,” Emmett said. “Sugar and cream. And a doughnut.”
The man filled the order and stood in front of Emmett, fitting the cover to the cardboard cup. “Must have been kind of a rough party,” he said. “Wouldn’t mind switching with the little guy.”
“You and me both,” Emmett said mechanically.
“Funny how the big girls always go for the peewees. Say, do you know a five-letter word… Never mind, I’ve got it.” He took out his pencil and hurried to the corner. “Twenty cents,” he said. “Just leave it on the counter, Mac.”
Emmett looked at the quarter in his hand, grimaced, put it down, and went out. The highway was, momentarily, quite deserted. He crossed. The filling station attendant was asleep in the chair behind the desk, an empty Coca-Cola bottle on the floor beside him. He roused enough to count up the bill and make change. Emmett carried the cardboard cup and the oilpaper-wrapped doughnut carefully across the concrete to the greasepit and looked into the car. The girl was asleep in the rear, her face turned to the back cushion, one stockinged foot escaping from the blanket. He stood quite still until he had made sure that she was breathing evenly. Then he put the cup on the floor, the doughnut on the seat, and looked down the highway in the direction the Chevrolet had taken. He took the keys and went around to the trunk, opened it, moved the bags, and found the jack handle, a bar of iron about a foot long. Not, he thought, that I don’t trust him, or believe what he told me, but I’ve read too many stories that started out like this. The girl awoke as he backed off the ramp. He gave her the coffee and doughnut and drove slowly until she had finished.
chapter FIVE
The headlights of an approaching car looked suddenly pale in the early morning twilight and abruptly he could see, to the left, in the distance, a dark band of cottonwoods marking a river. He watched the headlights come towards him along the endless highway and vanish, leaving the dark approaching mass of the other car, the driver of which had apparently also realized that daylight had come. Emmett switched off the lights of the convertible as the car whipped past. The convertible roared on through the chill morning air. It was an effort to think of stopping; of getting out, walking, shaving, eating. He glanced at the mileage indicator and made a rough subtraction. Better than four hundred fifty, he thought with a certain pride. He divided the miles by the hours in his head and got an average of fifty-five approximately.
He was into the next town before he could make up his mind to stop, and out on the plain again. There was a haze along the horizon but the sky was clear overhead. The sun began to get into the eyes of the drivers going east. He could see them squinting behind their windshields. There was a railroad parallel to the highway. He saw the tanks and the loading platforms in the far distance and then the town. The convertible seemed to crawl when he got it down to forty. He rejected one filling station as being too dirty, another as being too close to the center of town, and pulled in at the third, beyond a small block of stores and a restaurant; he sat, unable to move, listening to the motor idling quietly. He switched it off, rubbed his eyes and his neck and moved his mouth about in his face.
“Fill it,” he said to the youth in army trousers who came up. He groped for the gas-tank key in the glove compartment, dropped it, picked it up, and held it out. “Ethyl,” he said. Then he turned his head stiffly to look at the girl.
“Miss Nicholson,” he said. She was sound asleep. She had not wakened when he stopped for gas at three. Her head was jammed against the leather armrest, the blanket drawn up to her chin exposing both her stockinged feet at the other end of the seat.
“Miss Nicholson,” he said. He turned painfully and hesitated, looking at her. It was always embarrassing to wake up a stranger from a sound sleep; it was not quite fair to look at anybody you did not know well before they had got themselves assembled for the day. He poked gingerly at her shoulder. “Miss Nicholson.”
She stirred and her breath caught and she sat up abruptly, staring at him. After a moment she pushed the tangled hair back from her face with one hand and the panic went out of her eyes.
“Oh,” she said.
“Morning.”
“Good morning,” she said, and rubbed her arm across her eyes and yawned. “Where are we?”
“Somewhere in Nebraska.” He had looked at the name of the
town but he could not recall it.
“What happened to Iowa?”
“It wore out,” he said.
She laughed and pushed the blanket aside and looked at her wrinkled gabardine skirt and the rumpled thin satin blouse pulled out at the waist. He turned away and heard her begin to tidy herself behind him.
“You should have waked me,” she said. “You shouldn’t have driven all night.”
He did not answer but crawled across the seat and let himself out. She found her shoes and pushed the folding seat forward and climbed over it. Something slid down, bounced, and rang on the oil-stained concrete: the jack handle he had put beside him on the seat. Ann Nicholson stepped down and, her purse and jacket clutched to her, stood staring down at the short ugly length of metal. Then she looked up at Emmett, her face shiny and pale beneath the disheveled light hair.
Emmett bent down and picked up the iron bar. “Run along and wash your face,” he said, throwing the handle back into the car.
He was aware of her hesitation; then her heels went across the concrete, slowly at first, then almost running. The attendant came up and spoke to Emmett, who, after a moment, turned on him sharply.
“Put the damn thing on the hoist. Grease. Never mind the oil. And get that crap off the windshield, will you? There are more damn bugs in this country…!”
He jerked his suitcase out of the trunk and carried it over the concrete island supporting the pumps, across the other drive, and around the station to the door at the side. Inside, he locked the door and stripped to his underwear, put his suit away neatly on the patent hanger inside the suitcase after brushing it off, and his shoes into a blue drawstring bag, changed his socks, pulled on a pair of flannel slacks, and stuck his feet into a pair of worn brown moccasins with rubber soles. Then, in his short-sleeved undershirt, he turned to look at himself in the mirror. The face that stared back at him looked greasy with sleeplessness, the eyes bloodshot from night driving, and the black hair hung lankly down onto the bulging forehead. Listen, he asked the mirror, listen, do I look like the kind of guy who would murder a sleeping girl with a jack handle. The mirror said, yes, he did.
The Steel Mirror Page 3