An Abundant Woman

by Elizabeth Neff Walker

  “I'm sure ours is every bit as good!"

  “Mmmm,” I said doubtfully. “Perhaps the problem isn't as great here, but I'm sure I've read that it exists. I'd be very surprised if a town like Madison didn't need experienced teachers to help with adult illiteracy. Many of our retired schoolteachers volunteer their time to worthy projects like that."

  Never much for subtlety, I would have told her exactly what I thought she should do, except that Sophia Granger would probably have become stubborn as a mule if I pushed any further. And since I'd finished my meal, I could see no reason to linger. “See you tomorrow,” I said, by way of excusing myself.

  Cliff's amused gaze fell on me when I rose to leave.

  Chapter Six

  There's nothing as exhausting as minding other people's business, so I sat down in my windowseat and refreshed myself by watching the changing light in the garden. Which reminded me of my own garden, and I was sorely tempted to call Nigel to check whether he'd made the arrangements we'd spoken of. Which would have annoyed him, of course. Fortunately it was the wrong time of day to call England, anyhow, and I told myself I would call Saturday, when it had been a week.

  But thinking about home made me a little restless, and I decided to take a walk around the immediate vicinity of Mayfield House. As I was approaching the front door, Cliff called to me from the communal living room, where I found him talking with Jack Hunter. Cliff motioned me to sit down opposite him, on one of the wing-backed chairs.

  “I won't be around this weekend,” he said, “because of a family get-together, but I think Angel would like me to arrange something more for you to do than sit in your room. And here Jack was telling me that he's going to Oconomowoc this week-end without the kids. That area would give you a real taste of Wisconsin, and Jack has tons of room in his house."

  Obviously Cliff was a worthy opponent. All I'd said was that he might give his wife a little free time, and look how he was repaying me. If he meant to embarrass me, he certainly accomplished his goal. Jack looked as though he'd swallowed a walnut whole.

  “Nonsense,” I declared firmly. “There's plenty to do in Madison for someone who's just arrived. And there's no reason on earth poor Dr. Hunter should have a companion dropped on him."

  “Well, I ... it's not that I wouldn't enjoy having you along, if...” The man was so taken aback he couldn't think of a single reason not to have me. “You're welcome to come, Dr. Potter, but I wasn't planning anything special. Canoeing, hiking, maybe fixing one of the windows."

  His gaze at Cliff was a plea for help, at which Cliff merely cocked his head and grinned.

  “Don't give it a thought,” I said, frowning at my host. “Cliff is merely getting even with me for suggesting that he isn't perfect."

  “I am perfect,” Cliff protested, a devilish gleam in his eyes. “Not everyone can see it. Some people, for instance, believe I'm not holding up my end of my familial obligations. But look what I've just done: I've found you a delightful plan for the week-end. Just what my overburdened wife would have wished."

  “Your overburdened wife would have far preferred your arranging a few hours off for her to spoofing poor Dr. Hunter into thinking he had to take me off with him somewhere."

  “Poor Dr. Hunter,” said poor Dr. Hunter, “is far from understanding this entire conversation. I presume it has nothing whatsoever to do with me."

  “Right,” I said.

  “Wrong,” Cliff said. “If I were to go home and tell Angel I'd arranged for Amanda to spend the weekend at Hunter's place in Oconomowoc, she'd be impressed."

  “Not if she knew how you'd done it, and that poor ... that Jack had been thoroughly embarrassed by your methods."

  “I was not thoroughly embarrassed,” Jack insisted. “I was simply taken unawares. Of course I'd be happy to take Amanda with me, if she should want to go."

  “That's very kind of you,” I said, “but I have other plans."

  “Oh, sure,” Cliff drawled. “She's going to ride that bike on the wrong side of the street, and call England, and read the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Services’ dull and forbidding manual for the next few days."

  “You're riding the bike?” Jack asked. “You can get on it by yourself now?"

  Cliff looked entirely puzzled by this. “Of course she can get on it by herself, but she hasn't figured out that our traffic is opposite England's yet. I damn near ran over her."

  “That's an exaggeration,” I assured Jack, who was looking alarmed. “I carelessly didn't notice Cliff when I was pulling into the driveway this afternoon. I've lived in America before and driven extensively on the continent. I'll get used to it."

  But Jack knew that riding a bike was all new to me, and his eyes narrowed. “You'd do better to practice out of town where there isn't so much traffic,” he said. “There's a bike at the lake that you could use. And you'd have plenty of time to read the dull manual, and call home. It's not like I don't have a phone there."

  “Thank you, but I'd prefer to stay right here."

  “Oh, don't be so stuffy,” Cliff teased. “Jack's not going to bite you. Oconomowoc is a delightful area, and Jack's place is an old family retreat that everyone I know would give their right arms to own."

  “He's exaggerating again,” Jack said. “But the area is perfect for escaping from city life and disagreeable departmental stresses."

  I glared at Cliff. “So you've been bruiting about my problems at the University, have you? And I thought I had a big mouth. Give Angel my regards,” I said as I propelled myself out of the wing-back, no mean feat in a chair that one sank into like a boulder on a pillow. “I'm going for a walk."

  “Now, wait,” he protested, but I didn't. I can be as stubborn as the next person, especially when I suspect that I'm as much at fault as he is.

  I had reached the sidewalk and decided to turn left when I heard the door thud shut and hurried footsteps behind me. Assuming it was Cliff, I refused to slow my page. But it was Jack who came bearing down on me.

  “We haven't finished our discussion,” he said, falling into step beside me.

  “Certainly we have. There's no reason on earth why you should take me to this retreat of yours. Cliff was just paying me back. Sometimes I can't resist telling people what to do; it's a horrible failing of mine."

  “Like telling me to see a psychiatrist?” he suggested, only partially teasing. “I did, you know. Yesterday. She had no hesitation in diagnosing me as clinically depressed. Gave me a prescription for Prozac straight off. Don't they usually do tests or talk to you for hours? She said it would be a few weeks before the drug was really effective."

  “It has to build up in your system for maximum benefit.” It surprised me a little that he was being so open, but I liked it. “Prozac has been a blessing for a lot of people.” With very little effort I could have come up with the names of about two dozen—family, friends, colleagues, patients. For a lot of them the medication had made a permanent change in their lives, almost always for the better.

  Jack walked beside me, his gaze abstracted, his hands clasped behind his back. Only the hair at his temples was lightly touched with gray, the rest was a wiry brown, trimmed fairly close to his head but looking thick and healthy. He had eyes of a deeper blue than most, almost violet in the evening light. His mouth turned down slightly at the corners when he wasn't talking or interacting with someone, but the cast of his face was inherently strong and trustworthy. If you'd seen him in the supermarket, you'd have known he was a responsible, and probably highly intelligent, man.

  “I've taken Cliff to Oconomowoc, one weekend when Angel was out of town at a conference."

  “Who took care of the baby?"

  His brows drew down in concentration. “Her mother, I think."

  I sighed. “That's just the kind of thing he needs to rethink. Angel should be able to count on him in those situations."

  Jack snorted. “Amanda, you don't know a thing about their arrangements. Maybe Ange
l doesn't trust him with the kid."

  “Exactly!” I smiled triumphantly. “Which makes it necessary for her to do all the arranging and shifting and compromising. She has no choice, does she? If Cliff pulls the incompetency defense, he forces her to carry the whole burden."

  With a wave of his hand he dismissed the topic. “That isn't why I mentioned that I'd taken him to the retreat. I was trying to point out that I've had people stay up there with me before, and there's no reason why you shouldn't come."

  “There's no reason why I should. Cliff is a man. What would your neighbors think if you brought a woman up there?"

  “Who cares what they think? It's none of their business."

  “Oh, sure. And the next time you take your kids, some neighbor will ask, ‘Who was the woman up here with your father in the spring?’ People are curious."

  He regarded me with a rueful expression. “You know very well you wouldn't let that kind of gossip bother you. Why do you think it would bother me?"

  Having no pithy answer to that, I countered, “Look, Jack, I'd be in the way. You have plans for the weekend, things you want to do. If I went you'd think you had to entertain me."

  “No, I wouldn't. I'll do precisely what I expected to do, except in the evening, when I'd just have read a book, anyhow. It'll be nice to have someone to talk to.” He shrugged a little uncomfortably. “It's actually better when I'm not alone too long. I get to brooding."

  “Obviously Cliff has hit on the perfect solution for you,” I said, mocking him gently for resorting to this tactic. “You just hadn't realized you needed someone to keep you company."

  He grimaced. “If you don't want to come, you don't have to. I'll be leaving after dinner tomorrow, barring any medical disasters at the hospital. It's not a long drive, less than an hour. The house isn't primitive, but I've always liked to keep it simple—no formality or fancy furnishings. There are five bedrooms and a sleeping porch, and usually enough food around to not starve before I go shopping."

  We had made almost the full circle of the block, and were heading toward Mayfield House again. Jack looked down at me in a speculative way. The evening light softened his slightly stern features. “It wouldn't be a big deal, Amanda. You don't have to decide now. Let me know tomorrow evening if you like.”

  There were scattered lights on in our building. It felt comforting to know I'd already settled into my new home. Jack unlocked and held the front door open for me. “I'd enjoy having you along, Amanda. Think about it."

  “I will,” I promised, though I knew the answer had to be “no,” if only because of Cliff's intervention. Never in a thousand years would Jack have thought of inviting me to go along, and that had to be my guiding principle. Otherwise I'd be taking advantage of his courtesy, something I had no intention of doing.

  Which was a pity, because the scheme had, the more Jack talked, sounded appealing to me. Nigel and I spent several weeks each year at a cottage near Ullswater in the Lake District. I would sit for hours by Aira Force where the waterfall slid under a stone footbridge and plunged seventy feet into a wooded glen. The seclusion, the escape from London, the physical and mental freedom, all refreshed me in a way no other experience could do.

  But, good heavens, everything in Madison was new to me, and certainly different from London. I had my own space in Mayfield House where I could think my way through the dilemma I was posed in the OB/GYN department. I could read their weighty manual and digest the important differences in our systems. Obviously this was much the better way to spend the weekend, I assured myself as I entered my room and closed the door. And married women simply didn't go wandering off alone with single, attractive men ... did they?

  * * * *

  On Friday Sarah Jamison was my guide, introducing me to her colleagues, her residents and students, and to a number of patients with interesting findings. The department chair appeared on several occasions to quiz me the way they do American residents. This was the kind of treatment one might have expected her to give a GP in from the countryside, rather than a consultant and senior lecturer from a major teaching hospital in London.

  Despite my enormous annoyance, I answered her thoughtfully with how we would handle a similar situation at home. When she challenged me on an issue, I regarded her with surprise. “But surely, Dr. Hager, the ECPC guidelines are quite clear on this. Data-based research from a variety of countries has proved that use of corticosteroids for women threatening preterm delivery should be increased."

  “We realize that, and were pursuing it long before the ECPC guidelines were adopted,” she said, her nostrils flaring slightly. “But each case has to be determined on its own merits. The guidelines serve best for local doctors who haven't changed their practice since they left training and don't have the advantage of being in an environment where they are constantly kept up to date."

  Sarah was not going to allow me to fight this battle on my own, apparently. “Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth has to be a goal at our university level, too,” she protested. “If we want practitioners in the U.S. to change their methods, we have to start with the doctors we're training."

  Dr. Hager's eyes narrowed at Sarah. “We're always attempting to improve on existing practice, and we'd do that with or without ECPC. Our goal is safe mothers and babies, which requires nothing less than the most exacting care for the high risk patients we handle."

  “Exactly,” I said, trying to smooth matters over. “Implementing the ECPC has taken time in England as well as here. All of us are trying to root out the obsolete practices and the old wives’ tales that have no place in obstetrics."

  One of the passing residents caught the edge of my flowing tunic with his clipboard. The tug startled me and embarrassed him, but we both managed to laugh the matter off in a matter of seconds. When my attention returned to Dr. Hager, she was regarding me with something that looked very much like disgust. Before I could react to the expression, she abruptly left us.

  “Thanks for your help, Sarah.” I pushed back my short, wavy hair with a frustrated gesture. As we walked together toward her office, I asked, “What's going on here? Cliff Lenzini told me Hager has a reputation for being accommodating. Hardly the way she's behaved toward me. Do you understand why she's being so oppositional?"

  A flush rose in Sarah's cheeks, and she didn't meet my eyes. “It's embarrassing to explain,” she finally admitted.

  Enlightenment. This had nothing to do with Doug. “She has a thing about weight,” I said flatly.

  Sarah, blinking guiltily at me, nodded. “It's been obvious for years. We haven't had an overweight resident in our program since I've been here, and she's terribly hard on the medical students she can't avoid working with."

  Every fat person has run into that kind of prejudice, either subtle or overt. It made my heart sink every time. “So she thinks fat people are lazy, inefficient, and self-indulgent, huh? How unfortunate."

  Sarah, herself willowy slim, bit her lip. “It doesn't seem to matter how much research comes out showing the physical and genetic basis of obesity. She can't absorb it. So far no one has been willing to call her on it. I'm really sorry."

  So was I. “Not to worry. At least it probably means my boss doesn't have everything to do with Hager's attitude, though I still wouldn't put it past him to have written something unflattering."

  We continued down the hall, passing an empty conference room and several offices. My mind was turning over options, considering possibilities. But I was curious, too. “You seem particularly alert to the issue, Sarah,” I remarked.

  “My sister is bulimic."

  “Oh, dear. Is she getting help?"

  “Some."

  We had arrived at her office and she waved me in. Though the room was small, the visitor chairs were large and comfortable, just the way a pregnant woman would want them. There were bright watercolors of spring flowers vying for space with her diplomas on the walls. It was a cheerful space, warm and welcoming. Sarah took her chai
r behind the desk and sighed.

  “I wish I weren't so far away from my sister, and so damn busy.” She grimaced and pushed her shoulder-length brown hair away from her face. “Medicine is such a contradictory profession, isn't it? We go into it to help other people, and as often as not end up not being able to help the ones we most want to."

  I smiled in sympathy. “I like to think that help gets passed along. I give it to someone, someone else gives it to me and mine."

  “A heart-warming if slightly quixotic view of things,” Sarah said with a grin. “How do you philosophize about people with Dr. Hager's problem?"

  “I haven't had to deal with that so much in my career. Being a doctor has been an advantage, so far as the weight is concerned. You wield enough power and influence to neutralize the prejudice against fat. Usually.”

  Sarah looked troubled. “Lavinia is the only one I know around here who's so hostile about it. Makes me wonder if she had a weight problem earlier in her life or something. But you wouldn't think she'd be so judgmental if she had, would you?"

  “It doesn't follow, I'm afraid. American women seem to be especially terrified of carrying extra pounds."

  “No wonder.” Sarah raked her fingers through her hair again. “I hate sitting with my sister watching TV. Weight is the butt of at least one joke on every sitcom. And some of the models they use are so painfully thin, they look anorexic. We Americans are a strange lot."

  “It's not just an American prejudice.”

  She laughed and reached down to open a file drawer. From the back of it she took out a bulky file folder which she slid across the desk to me. “My obesity collection,” she said. “My sister Joan clips articles and ads and cartoons and sends them to me. They're quite impressive, especially in total.”

  She picked up newspaper accounts at random and read the titles to me: “Study Says Brain Chemical Linked to Weight Gain.” “Gene Discovery Reveals Why Folks Get Fat.” “Second Protein Is Found That Stifles Appetite: Substance in rats’ brains makes them eat much less.” “Protein Discovery May Help Obesity: Scientists say leptin receptors tell brain to suppress appetite."