by Linda Wolfe
Most of the funeral guests in the pews had now left the chapel and were crowding out onto the landing, waiting for the elevators. He helped Naomi back into her jacket, watching the offending violet blouse disappear into navy sobriety. “I have to get back to work immediately,” she said, fastening the buttons. “I’ve got that appointment I told you about and I have to leave work a little early.”
“What appointment?” He had been so absorbed in his own thoughts that he couldn’t make the transition back to her concerns, though he could tell from the sound of her words that it was a matter they had already discussed.
“With my ex-analyst,” she prompted him. “Remember?”
He nodded. “Yes. Of course.” She had mentioned it to him several times. In fact, he was paying for the appointment. Of late, whenever he had prodded Naomi about marriage she had said wistfully that she wished she could discuss it with her ex-analyst, who might help her overcome her anxieties in this area, but that she couldn’t afford to go. He had promised her the money. “Good,” he said, remembering. “I’m glad you’re finally going.”
“Stupid to do it on the day of a funeral,” she murmured.
“Don’t be silly. Life goes on.”
“I could stay a while longer, I guess. I mean, if you want me to. If you’re feeling blue.”
“No. I didn’t really know Harry that well. And I should be getting back to work right away too.”
They left the chapel. He had lost sight of Claudia but when they emerged from the elevator into the lobby, he spotted her again. The Alithorns had departed but she was talking now to a few other of Sidney’s colleagues. They all treated her so appreciatively, he noticed, watching them stand in a semicircle with Claudia at its center. Was it because she was Sidney’s wife or because she was so beautiful?
“Ben?” she said in a low voice before he could be certain, and broke away from her admirers. He stopped walking although Naomi was propelled forward by the crowd. “Are you going back to work right away?” Claudia asked.
The whiteness of her beauty seemed dazzling and for a moment he felt he could barely answer her. “No. No, I’m just seeing Naomi to a cab,” he managed after a long pause.
“Come back for me, okay? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”
“Sure. Sure.”
He was astonished, as if a wish he had made had been granted.
“It’s about Sidney,” Claudia said when he returned to her, her voice so muted it was more a breeze than a sound. So she too had noticed. He felt inordinately glad. Her words meant that he and she could, together, work out a plan of action. The idea delighted him. Claudia was glancing around at the crowd still lingering in the lobby. “Let’s go outside. Can you walk me to work? The museum’s only a few blocks away.”
He nodded eagerly and they slipped through the revolving doors onto the street and began walking east in silence. He looked forward, seeing in the distance the tall treetops of the park and above them an expanse of azure sky. But Claudia kept looking back, glancing over her shoulder until at last they had left all the funeral guests far behind them. Then she said in an uneasy voice, “Sidney’s taking drugs. Barbiturates. Not just at night but in the daytime too.”
“I know,” he said at once, wanting to help her by agreeing with her without delay.
But his agreement only seemed to upset her further. “But how could you have known? Sidney told me about it last night, but he said no one knew. He said he’d been very careful and that no one could possibly suspect.”
“I figured it out,” he answered vaguely.
“That’s disturbing,” Claudia said. “I didn’t know until he told me, and I live with him. Oh, I always knew he took a few Nembutals at night when he couldn’t get to sleep. But I never dreamed he could be taking the stuff in the daytime. What made you think of it?”
“I just did. Why does it worry you so much?”
“It’s very simple,” she said. “If you figured it out, then others will too.”
“Not necessarily,” he reassured her. “Or at least not right away.”
“God, I hope you’re right.”
“What worries me,” he confessed, plunging into an anxiety he had touched on with Mulenberg, “is not that people will find out, but that even once they do, it may not matter to Sidney. He might not care what people say. He might ignore them. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to get him to stop.”
Claudia leaped at his words, her voice becoming more emphatic. “I’m sure you’ll find a way. That’s why I decided to tell you, even though Sidney made me swear I wouldn’t. I can’t reason with him, but I expect you can.”
He didn’t feel nearly as confident about his ability to affect Sidney’s thinking as she seemed to, yet he wanted to encourage her trust. “I see. Yes,” he said slowly.
“You’ve got to help him, Ben.”
“Yes, of course. How could you imagine otherwise?”
She was pleased. “You’ll work on him? Reason with him?”
“Certainly. I’ll get after him this afternoon.” But Sidney would be disagreeable and argumentative when he confronted him with knowledge of his addiction. “Or first thing tomorrow morning at the latest,” he added.
“Thank you, Ben. I’m counting on you.”
“You can,” he promised. Then he said, “Tell me what else Sidney told you. Did he tell you how much he was taking?”
She shrugged. “No. He wouldn’t say.” Her eyes swept past his face to a brownstone across the street and she added, “We mustn’t tell anyone else. It’s too horrible.”
He shook his head from side to side and sighed. “It is horrible. But in a way I can understand it. He’s probably going to lose his grant, you know.”
Claudia stopped walking and stared at him. Suddenly, she began to twist the strap of her large leather handbag around her wrist. He had never before noticed that she had a single nervous habit.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong? Didn’t you know his research was in trouble?”
Her eyes began to fill with tears. “He said something about it a while ago. I didn’t believe him.” She continued to play with her handbag strap. “He said one night that I couldn’t afford to believe him.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. He’ll come out of it all right, and out of this pill business too.”
“I wonder.”
“Sure he will.”
Claudia pursed her lips, and then she murmured, “I suppose. Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
She didn’t want to discuss Sidney anymore, she told him as they reached the park and turned up the wide street that bordered it. It was making her too upset. Harry’s death had really disturbed her, and now all this worry about Sidney was getting her down even more. Could they just be quiet for a while? She wanted to clear her mind, wanted to think about the things she had to do when she got to work. “Okay,” he said. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
He was enjoying being with her. She was still as graceful as ever and he was aware as they walked uptown that women as well as men turned and appraised her admiringly. She moved like a dancer and was clearly sturdy and strong, but her pale skin and reserved manner gave her a quality of noticeable and haunting vulnerability. He liked wondering if the people who looked at her thought she belonged to him.
And then, all too soon, they were across the street from the photography museum, waiting to cross. The branches of a tree overhead fluttered and cast delicate shadows across Claudia’s cheeks. He saw them as tiny scratches marring her beauty and grew excited at the notion. He wanted to touch the marks, to trace them with his fingers. He understood for a moment why Sidney tyrannized her. She looked vulnerable, yet she was impervious. One could never really hurt her because one could never really get inside her.
Then the traffic light changed and Claudia took his arm. Her thigh brushed against his and she gave him a sidelong glance. A moment later, in the middle of the crossing, she did it again, and this time
she hesitated for a moment so that he had to grasp her arm more tightly if they were to get to the other side of the street before the cars started moving again. When he touched her, his penis came erect.
“I excited you, didn’t I?” Claudia said as they stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the museum. Her eyes moved down to his groin. “Just like that?” she added, in a cool, distant voice.
He thought of denying it, but it would have been like denying his own name. “Yes,” he confessed. “I’m sorry. I was thinking about how beautiful you are.”
Claudia laughed. “Don’t be sorry. It’s flattering. I’m glad to know that men still find me desirable.”
He smiled and for a moment she seemed to sway toward him. Then she pulled away and darted up the marble steps of the small mansion in which the museum was housed.
Naomi was already at his apartment when he returned home from the office that evening. He had long ago given her her own set of keys to his place as, ever since he had offered to help her out with babysitters’ fees, she spent almost as many nights in the week with him as she did at home with her son. He went into the living room and saw her curled up in her usual position on his couch, a book in her hand and a gin and tonic in a tall glass on the cocktail table beside her. But for the first time since he had started sleeping with her, it did not delight him to come home and find her waiting for him. Still, he bent over her and kissed her and remembered to ask her how her consultation with the analyst had gone.
“It was marvelous to see him again,” Naomi said. “I wish you knew him. You’d like each other. I told him that, too. In fact, I told him all about you.”
Her final remark made him acutely nervous. Although he had encouraged her appointment, he didn’t much like the idea of a stranger’s passing judgments on him. He supposed that was why he had offered to pay. Naomi might have scraped together the money for the consultation sooner or later; his paying for it, which surely she would have mentioned to the analyst, might have given the man a favorable outlook toward him. But he couldn’t be sure. There was so much about himself that he disliked that the fact of being evaluated by others alarmed him.
As if reading his mind, Naomi said, “He said you sounded very good for me.”
Relieved, he sat down opposite her. “What else did he say?”
“He thought your willingness to have me see him was a particularly good sign. Hal used to try to discourage me from going and refuse to pay the bills.” Naomi sighed in remembrance and then went on. “Anyway, my shrink thinks that I really ought to give our relationship a chance by considering marrying again, since marrying seems to be what you want. He said that just because people have had one bad experience in marriage, it doesn’t mean they need to fear they’re going to make the same mistake next time.”
He smiled and in response she stood up and came over to his chair, settling down on the floor, her cheek against his knees. “He said that a good man is hard to find.”
He stroked her hair.
“And you are a good man,” Naomi continued. “I used to think you were too reserved, too distant for me. But you’ve been getting so much better lately. You’ve really been trying hard. And you’ve been wonderful about Petey.” She looked up at him, her expressive face appreciative. She was perspiring. The humidity in the air had brought beads of perspiration to her olive-toned forehead and was making her hair more curly and frizzy than usual. “I guess I could sublet my loft when the school term ends and we could try living together for the summer and then, assuming it works out, we could get married in the fall.”
Out of force of habit, he embraced her, pulling her up toward him and pressing his lips to her warm, moist forehead, but all the while he was thinking of Claudia’s cool, mysterious pallor.
“When is the end of the school term?” he asked at last.
“The end of June. I could sublet my place as of July first.”
“Okay.”
‘Is that all?”
“I mean wonderful. Fantastic.”
“That’s better.”
CHAPTER SIX
JUNE
The following morning, true to his promise to Claudia, Ben tersely instructed the nurse who had replaced Cora to tell Sidney that he wanted to see him. The nurse was young and plump and pretty, with a freckled face and a full-lipped, pouting mouth. Sidney had hired her, saying she had excellent recommendations, but Ben missed the less-attractive, more-mature Cora, whose efficiency and maternal ways had been comforting to him. “Let me know as soon as my brother’s free, Miss Palchek. I’d like to speak with him,” he said.
“Call me Palsy,” the new nurse pouted. “Okay?”
He nodded, annoyed at her penchant for nicknames, and she went on, “He’s not here yet, Dr. Z. He called a while ago to say he’d be a little late.”
“Okay, Palsy. Just let me know when he arrives.” He started down the corridor but Miss Palchek half-stood behind her desk, whispering loudly, “Doctor? Could I ask you something?”
He turned back and faced her. She looked up at him with wide childish eyes. “I was expecting the other Dr. Z. at nine o’clock. And it’s nearly ten. I don’t know what to tell the people who are waiting to see him.” She gestured at the waiting room, which was starting to fill up.
“Tell them he’ll be along soon.” He felt troubled by her need for direction in so simple a matter. “He must have gotten held up at the hospital.”
Miss Palchek shook her head. “But that’s just it. The hospital’s been trying to reach him too. He isn’t there.”
“Try him at home.”
Miss Palchek pouted again. “I did. There was no answer.”
“Well, he could be at any number of places. Maybe he had to go over to Midstate. Didn’t you ask him for a calling number when you spoke to him?”
“Of course. But he said he couldn’t be reached.”
He shrugged. “Well, he must be on his way over, then. Just hold his calls and tell his patients he’s on his way. And let me know as soon as he arrives.”
Miss Palchek thanked him effusively. He dodged past her into his own office. When Miss Palchek finally buzzed him to say Sidney was in, it was past eleven.
By then the waiting room was dense with patients, some waiting for him, more of them waiting for Sidney. He hurried toward Sidney’s office and, coming up to the door, almost forgot to knock on it. But at the last moment he remembered how much Sidney hated to be disturbed without prelude and with the door already partly opened, tapped on its frame loudly to announce himself.
Sidney was standing at his big window, his back turned.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked, looking over his shoulder for just a second to make sure it was Ben who had knocked, and then resuming his stance at the window. He stood quite motionless there, as if he were absorbed by something he was watching, and didn’t turn again. His unresponsiveness made it difficult for Ben to launch into the subject he had come to discuss and at first he answered, feeling foolish, “Yes. It’s about … About your health. I’m worried about you.”
“My health?” Sidney still didn’t move. “What do you mean?”
“The barbiturates you’re taking,” Ben said, speaking directly at last, and waiting for Sidney to whirl around and deny his accusation. Standing straight, his back muscles tense, he was primed for a denial, prepared to argue with Sidney just to get an admission of his habit from him, let alone a plan for curtailing it. But to his astonishment, Sidney made no denial. Staring out the window, he said flatly, “So you know about it.”
Ben quickly cleared a space for himself on the chair alongside Sidney’s desk, scooping off the mail and setting it on the floor. “Yes. And I’d like to talk to you.”
“Sure. Say anything you like.” Sidney sounded exceptionally tranquil. “Claudia told you?” he asked, his back still turned, in the tone of a man asking a rhetorical question.
“No. Yes. Well, she said something about pills, but I had pretty well figured it out by then.�
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“Do you suppose anyone else has?” Sidney asked. But he didn’t sound worried, only mildly curious. At last he left the window and ambled slowly over to the desk, sitting down facing Ben.
Once they were face to face, Ben was startled. Sidney didn’t look well. Ben had thought back in the early spring that his brother had lost some weight, but now his diminishment was undeniable and disturbing. His cheeks were cavernous and his hazel eyes appeared larger and deeper-set than usual. Worse, they were dulled and expressionless. He was heavily sedated, Ben thought. His mind wasn’t tranquil but tranquilized. “No. No, I don’t think anyone else has figured it out yet,” he said sternly, “But it’s only a matter of time. You’ve got to give up the pills.”
Sidney half-smiled, his mouth opening, but his lips not curling. “Look who’s talking.”
“I don’t take them anymore,” Ben announced slowly. “Not at all. I gave them up last winter.” It was the confession he had postponed for months. “I didn’t want to say anything and then have to feel ashamed if I couldn’t stick to the decision.”
Sidney leaned forward, his forehead furrowing. “Was it difficult?” He sounded almost jealous and for a moment Ben felt gratified and generous.
“Not so very,” he lied, recalling the torment of his first sleepless nights and jumpy days, but hoping to encourage Sidney to do as he had done. “I did it cold turkey. But there are better ways. You ought to put yourself into a psychiatric clinic. Let them withdraw you. Or you could do it slowly yourself. Ten percent less a day.”
Sidney said edgily, “I know.”
“You just have to make up your mind to it.”