Something To Be Brave For

by Priscilla Bennett

  “You cut the carotid,” I said.

  “I nicked the carotid.” His face grew red. “Anyone could have. If you ever—”

  Just then Gillian and Claude came out.

  “That was a close call and a brilliant save, Jack,” Claude said.

  I tried to recall seeing brilliance but could see only blood.

  My father laughed. “Kept you on your toes, did it? There was a little extra excitement today, but we handled it,” he said, throwing me a dark look.

  Gillian was stone-faced. “Katie, you were awfully brave,” she said. “That was… a tough case. Are you feeling all right?”

  I was about to answer, when Claude said, “Gillian’s right, darling. I’m so proud of you.”

  “Yes, yes,” my father said briskly. “Very proud. Let’s change and grab a bite before our next case. Want to join us, Katie?”

  Was he cracked? Eat after that?

  “I wish I could,” I lied, “but I have to find a dress. The wedding is creeping up on me. Thank you, Claude.”

  “I know you’ll find the perfect one,” Claude said.

  “I’ll call you for lunch,” Gillian said, hugging me.

  “See you for dinner,” Claude called over his shoulder. “We’ve got something to celebrate. And your mother said she was doing her favorite rabbit.”

  Animal parts in a thick brown sauce. My stomach tipped over the edge. I reeled across the hall, shoved open the door to the women’s room, flung up a toilet seat, fell to my knees on the chipped tile floor, and bent over the bowl, vomiting.

  4

  Late Fall 1994

  “Don’t go,” I said, looking into Claude’s face shadowed by the first of the blue morning light.

  “I’d like to stay like this forever,” Claude said, stroking my hair. “But you know I can’t. Take good care of yourself while I’m gone. I booked you a massage, and the fridge is stocked with your favorites.”

  “You’re so good. I’ll miss you terribly,” I said, pressing into him.

  “Not as much as I’ll miss you.” He kissed me and then rolled away, looking at the bedside clock as the liquid digital numbers slid time forward. “Don’t forget the extra starch in my shirts at the cleaner’s, and your dress needs to go to the dressmaker.” He smiled. “That five pounds you’ve lost has really made a difference. I’m so proud of you.”

  I smiled, thinking for the hundredth time how happy I was to be his wife.

  Claude finished dressing, attaching his beeper to his pinstripe pants and slipping his cell phone into the pocket of his suit jacket. From across the room where I lay curled under the covers I admired my handsome young husband. How quickly he moved from being a simple, naked human animal to a suited-up professional. It seemed effortless for him.

  “My polyhedron,” I’d called him once, in bed.

  “What?” he’d asked.

  “Polyhedron, because you have so many sides.”

  He’d laughed and called me a clever little girl, reminding me of my father calling me his little girl when we ice-skated on Coleman’s pond, his hand squeezing mine as I gripped his for dear life and spaghetti-legged alongside his sure, even strides.

  At the front door, Claude held me tight for an extra few seconds. He was crisp in his clothes; I was still frumpy, and soft with sleep. “Oh, I forgot,” he suddenly said, releasing me. “You don’t need the car, do you? Your father wanted me to drive him to the meeting in New York.”

  “No, of course not. I have everything I need.”

  “You’re all I need,” he said. Then he turned and walked down the steps to the street. At the curb he turned and called, “I’ll call you later, darling, so please be home.”

  “I’ll be here. Drive carefully. I love you.”

  Affection had been in short supply in my childhood, and Claude had given me loads of it and also taught me how to feel comfortable in bed – how to be unafraid of sensation, even new sensation. It came as naturally as a new language after taking the total-immersion course, and God, did we immerse.

  I waved to him now as my father’s heads-through-windshields series flashed in front of me. “It only takes one accident and your face can look like this,” he would say, flipping the photographs one after the other in front of me to discourage me from getting into the wrong car with the wrong boy – or maybe any boy.

  At ten a.m. the massage therapist called and canceled, telling me she was coming down with a cold, so I finished the neighborhood errands and bought Claude’s favorite French-roast coffee as a little surprise gift, placing the packet of beans on the foyer console table for him to see, first thing, when he came home.

  I’d stopped looking for a job altogether once the hurried plans for the wedding had taken center stage. And even after the wedding, I hadn’t returned to my job search at all; it was as if the life I’d imagined – working in a gallery with glossy, blonde floors and track lighting – had been neatly replaced with this life, which I could see even more clearly, because it was real. I was putting off working for some indefinite future time. I wasn’t living at home anymore – I had solved that problem. I wasn’t my mother and father’s little girl, I was Claude’s, and I was free to do as I pleased.

  “What do you need to work for? I don’t want a career woman for a wife – just take care of me. Or come help out in the office part-time,” Claude suggested, and I happily agreed.

  I was going out later, but I hadn’t told Claude I was planning to see Gillian later; I wanted his focus to be on the conference and not on me. It was important that he perform well for my father. And a part of me I didn’t question was hungry for the slight but real sense of autonomy my girls’ day out would bring. Gillian and I had planned to see an old movie, just the way we used to on Nantucket – this time, at the Brattle in Cambridge.

  When I heard Gillian beep the horn, I ran out to her car.

  “Hop in, and take a look at this,” Gillian said, handing me a photo album. “It will help bring you up to date on the family and what I’ve been up to.” We were both eager to get re-engaged in each other’s lives.

  I opened the album to the first page of glossy photos.

  “Your parents look great… Nantucket’s best sailing school awards… and look at you – Harvard Medical School graduation with your brother and sisters. I always loved being with your family. I never wanted to go home.”

  Gillian glanced over. “It was probably more fun for a kid at our house – if you liked noise! Oh, flip that over. There I am in Ghana with my AIDS patients – loved that trip – and here are a few pictures for you. What a great wedding!” Gillian said. “Even if you were a child bride.” I looked down at the photo of Claude helping me cut through the three-tiered cake, his lily of the valley sprig stuck straight in his lapel, my baby’s breath crown askew. Neither of us had wanted a church wedding, so we’d married at my parents’.

  “Stop teasing me. I’m a grown woman now. Hey, keep your eyes on the road,” I said. “You don’t want heads-through-windshields, do you?”

  “What?” she said, laughing.

  “Nothing, just Dad’s old line.”

  “I remember, at your wedding,” said Gillian, “the way even old stoical Jack teared up after he brought you to Claude at the fireplace. I saw him turn and sort of pat his eyes with his handkerchief. It was really affecting.”

  “Yes, it’s a wonder he didn’t have a nurse there so he could order her to bring him a handkerchief.”

  “What?” Gillian glanced over at me.

  “Nothing… and yes, I’ve never seen my father cry. Hm. I suppose it was because I was leaving home for good. Maybe they were tears of joy.”

  “Wow – Jack can’t catch a break today,” she said, laughing.

  “Oh, I’m just irritable, I guess. Sorry!”

  “It’s okay, you’re entitled.”

  She shifted the tone of the conversation.

  “Where’d you go on your honeymoon again?”

  “Bali, and it was
better than I’d even imagined. All we did was make love, eat delicious food, beach, nap, eat delicious food and make love. Since we’ve been back, Claude’s work has been non-stop. How’s your work going, by the way?”

  She was laughing. “Well, not quite as fun-filled as that! But working with your father is a challenge. He’s the best surgeon I’ve seen. I love the reconstructive work in particular. I’ve been doing a lot of congenital deformities and burns. Cleft lip and palate is my favorite at the moment.”

  “That sounds so weird: ‘Cleft lip and palate is my favorite.’ ”

  “Yes, I suppose it does,” Gillian said. “Are you thinking about what you might want to do?” she asked.

  “Do?”

  “You know. A career.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said lightly. “Something in a gallery, I guess.”

  Broken record time.

  “I just haven’t taken the plunge. Everything’s been so, I don’t know, chaotic.” For some reason, I didn’t want to tell her I just wanted to take care of Claude.

  Or that you were ducking out without permission today.

  “Well, you’ll figure it out,” said Gillian. “Just make sure you love what you do. That’s the key. Ah, here we are,” she said, turning onto Brattle Street.

  She insisted the movie was her treat. “I haven’t seen you since the wedding,” she said. “You change plans more often than I do, and that’s saying a lot.”

  “It’s just that I’m so happy.”

  We were a block from the movie house, strolling, taking our time.

  She studied me for a moment with her slow, foxy smile. “You are, aren’t you?” she said. “It’s really something. But I guess it took getting Claude out of town for us to have our little afternoon date,” she said. “Right? But now that we’ve reignited our old movie tradition, nothing will interfere with it again. You can be madly in love with the guy, but he has to let you have friendships, or else it’s basically slavery.”

  “Believe me, Gillian, my marriage to Claude is nothing like slavery. And excuse me, but do you really think I need to hear a lecture?”

  “What? Well… yes, if you put it that way, I guess I do.”

  “Well I don’t.”

  We’d stopped walking. People walked around us, glancing at our faces.

  Gillian broke the silence.

  “I’m sorry, Katie. I know I can get preachy.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “Okay, but… but I just see you, I don’t know, sitting on the shelf somehow. I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “What do you need to know? And why? I’m in love with my husband, and I’m doing what he wants me to do.”

  I hadn’t meant to say it, but now it was out. Gillian stared at me.

  “And what I want to do,” I continued, lamely. “I love him, can you understand that?”

  “Yes, of course I can. Love, love, love! As long as you’re both happy, three cheers for wonderful love!”

  We stood facing each other on the sidewalk, grim-faced, and suddenly we both burst out laughing. Then the laughter subsided, and I saw that Gillian’s eyes were damp. Mine were, too. She took my hand.

  “Katie, I’m sorry. I am happy for you, you know that—”

  “I do.”

  “And I just want you to be you.” She rolled her eyes and gave a theatrical sigh. “Oh God, why can’t I ever shut up!”

  We laughed again, and this time the laughter ended in smiles. We hugged tightly.

  “Don’t ever shut up,” I said. “Please?”

  *

  Once we’d found our seats, I said, “I’ll get the popcorn. Your usual?”

  “Absolutely. Extra large, double butter, and we’re sharing like we used to.”

  “Got it.”

  When I returned with the popcorn, we settled and waited for the show to begin.

  “What’s the medical meeting in New York about?” she asked.

  “Oh, Dad’s presenting a paper on his ‘Callahan Flap’ and receiving another award.”

  “Your father hardly needs Claude there in order to present his own invention. Anyone doing reconstructive surgery these days gives your father all the credit.”

  “Yes, but Dad added Claude’s name.”

  “Wow – that’s quite a gift. I just can’t imagine Claude leaving you without a car. What if there was an emergency?”

  This annoyed me. I wasn’t fourteen anymore.

  “I never thought of that, but – well, I’d call you if I had a problem,” I said. “Besides, it’s my fault, I agreed to it. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “I just love the inside of this little theater – sticky floors and all,” Gillian said.

  “It’s a law. Sticky floors are mandated in all old theaters. If the floor isn’t sticky, they have it professionally stickied.”

  Gillian smiled and shushed me and we squeezed fingers as the house lights dimmed and the screen came alive. The credits for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt rolled…

  Later, in the car, we talked about the movie. In the story, Joseph Cotten’s character Charles is suave and charming toward his young niece, Charlotte. She idolizes him, and thinks him so much more worldly than everyone else in her sleepy little all-American town. Of course she has no idea that he is a psychopath and a murderer.

  “So, from a medical standpoint,” I said, “Do you think there’s evil out there? True evil?”

  Gillian glanced over. “Well, you’re pretty philosophical today,” she said, putting the car into gear. “But taking your question seriously, I’d have to say… well, I don’t know what I’d say. My patients aren’t exactly filled with murderous thoughts. They’re lying unconscious on a table – at least if the anesthesiologist has done his job right, and God, I hope he has…

  “You know the Hippocratic Oath, of course. ‘First do no harm.’ A pretty good guide to behavior for anyone. But a psychopathic personality couldn’t care less about that, because psychopaths think of themselves first; and if they’ve gone and accidentally shown a little bit of their selfishness to the world, well, they recognize that they’d better rein it in, because their kind of selfishness, which can be extremely cruel, is not the way most people act. So maybe that’s what evil is: understanding compassion only in terms of how it makes you look to others. And knowing that when no one’s looking, you’re capable of doing anything to achieve your own gratification.”

  “Thank you, Professor,” I said, smiling. “It’s scary to think there are actually people like that. Poor Charlotte! She believed in good.”

  “Before I saw my first human heart, I really didn’t know what I was in for. Everything’s a shock, Katie. Everything big in life, that is.” She intoned in an ominous voice, “Prepare to be shocked,” and we both laughed.

  “I just love this day,” I said. “I wonder what’s playing at the Brattle next week. Maybe more Hitchcock, I hope. I love Notorious. Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant! There’s nothing better.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Gillian. “And then afterward, we can have a long, leisurely, sentimental conversation about the Nazis. Fun!”

  Again we both laughed, and I leaned back against the seat, feeling that I hadn’t had this much fun in a long time. But could that really be true? I’d been entirely happy. I had no complaints about my life with Claude, except for his occasional moodiness, and the brief periods when he wouldn’t speak to me.

  But everyone has those.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” Gillian said. “All that popcorn, and it just turns to air inside you. There’s a little place with fried—”

  “Oh, I can’t! Claude’s going to call, and I promised I’d be home.”

  “Well, he’ll call back, won’t he?”

  “I don’t want to worry him.”

  Gillian seemed about to say something, but must have changed her mind – we both remembered the storm clouds of a couple of hours ago. “We could go to your place and order in, then,” she said.

&nb
sp; “I’d love to, but I’m really too tired. I’ve been up since five a.m.”

  “All right, I’ll take you home,” Gillian said. “But next time, we’re having dinner. You’d better tell Claude in advance and get him used to it.”

  She dropped me at the curb, and I hurried up the steps to get out of the cold. As I put my keys and gloves on the console table and unzipped my coat, I heard a creak, then a snap in the flooring, and I jumped. Looking around, I saw Claude coming out of the living room.

  “Oh, it’s you!” I said, going up to him. “Honey, you scared me. You came back early. Is everything okay?”

  “I might ask you that question as well,” he said stiffly, and he pulled his arm away from my touch.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “Everything’s fine, sweetheart… Claude? Did things go okay at the meeting?”

  Claude spoke breathlessly and precisely, as if he were reading from a cue card. “The meeting was excellent. We gave our presentation first, and then your father received his award to a standing ovation. We saw everyone we wanted to see at the luncheon, so we decided the dinner would be a waste of time and drove right back. Where have you been?”

  “I… I went to the movies with Gillian. Claude, is everything—”

  “Where?”

  “The Brattle. In Cambridge.”

  “Small theater. Harvard Square. I took you there once to see The Philadelphia Story.” He still sounded like an announcer.

  “Yes… You held my hand for the first time,” I said. I smiled, but Claude just stared at me.

  “What did you see today?” he asked. He seemed out of breath.

  “Shadow of a Doubt.”

  “Don’t know that one. Did you enjoy it?”

  “It was terrific. And it was great to see Gillian. We hadn’t seen each other since the wed—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were going, Katie?”

  He pushed his fingers back through his hair.

  “Well, because Gillian called at the last minute. Sweetheart, I didn’t think you’d mind.”