Turnabout

by Thorne Smith

  “Yes,” added Sally, solicitously. “What you need is a nice long rest.” She took a sip from the bottle, then passed it on to Tim. “Would you like to lie down for a moment before you go on? Must get over that shaking. You’re not addicted to drugs, are you, Doctor?”

  This time the physician’s clucking was not only excited but also bitter. He pawed at the air.

  “Please go away,” he said, in a pleading voice. “Don’t talk to me now.”

  “It’s drugs, I’m afraid,” murmured Sally, going to the door. “Something should be done.”

  When Sally had closed the door, the doctor turned to Tim and spoke in a deadly voice.

  “Lie down on that table,” he said, “and for God’s sweet sake, Mrs. Willows, stop fluttering about.”

  Tim looked at the table suspiciously.

  “What are you going to do to me?” he asked.

  “That’s my business,” replied the doctor coldly.

  “Not entirely,” replied Tim. “I’m in on it, also.”

  “Are you going to lie down on that table?” demanded the doctor, advancing on Tim with a distracted look in his eye.

  “Suppose I don’t?” Tim temporized.

  “Suppose you don’t what?” continued the doctor.

  “Lie down on that table,” Tim replied.

  “If you don’t lie down on that table, do you know what I’m going to do?” asked the doctor.

  “I don’t know,” replied Tim.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” said the doctor, licking his dry lips. “I’m going to damn well hurl you down on that table, Mrs. Willows. I’m going to get you down on that table if it’s the last thing I do on earth.”

  “Oh, Doctor!” exclaimed Tim coyly.

  The doctor stood clucking at Tim.

  “Get down on that table,” he grated.

  Momentarily overawed, Tim hitched himself upon the table and sat there swinging his legs.

  “Be reasonable, Doc.,” he said. “Let’s talk this matter over.”

  “Flat on your back,” replied the doctor implacably.

  “Just give me a hint,” Tim pleaded.

  “Down there, down,” answered the doctor.

  Tim sank back on the table.

  “After all, Doctor,” he said, “I’m not exactly a dog. Not quite.”

  The doctor extended his hands.

  Exactly thirty seconds later Sally was startled by the sound of a maddened scream, followed by a tremendous crashing of glass. Once more the scream was repeated, then gave way to Tim’s deep-throated roaring. The door burst open and the doctor hurtled out with a look of congealed horror on his face. Immediately behind him appeared an infuriated Tim. With one hand he clutched at his clothing and with the other he carved great slices of air with a wicked-looking operating knife. The doctor jumped behind Sally and clung to her for protection.

  “Speak to her, Mr. Willows,” he chattered. “Reason with her if you can. The poor woman has gone mad.”

  The shock of suddenly confronting himself restored Tim to his senses. He halted and looked accusingly at the doctor.

  “Of all the things to do with a body,” Tim exploded, pointing the knife at the trembling man. “Of all the low-life tricks. He might be a doctor, but he’s certainly not a gentleman.”

  “She doesn’t understand, Mr. Willows,” hastily put in the doctor. “She’s just like a savage.”

  “What did he do?” asked Sally.

  “What did he do?” repeated Tim indignantly. “What didn’t he do. That guy did plenty. What a way to carry on. You’re a fast worker. Doc. I’ll have to say that much for you. But life is not all play, Doc. You’d better remember that.”

  “I thought you knew,” explained Sally. “You poor dear.”

  “Poor dear, hell,” snapped Tim. “I almost murdered the man. It’s a nice time to tell me about it.” He looked at the doctor and a grin spread over his flushed face. “Sorry, Doc.,” he said. “There seems to have been a slight misunderstanding. We were both right according to our standards.”

  By this time the doctor himself was in need of medical assistance. Between them they dragged him to his study and dumped him down on the sofa. He was making ineffectual passes at the air with a pair of limp hands. Sally brought the bottle from the almost demolished laboratory and she and Tim took a drink. Then they stood looking speculatively at the doctor.

  “Better ring for the maid,” said Tim in a low voice. “There doesn’t seem to be any secretary knocking about. I thought all doctors managed a secretary by some hook or crook.”

  “She’s sick,” gasped the doctor, his professional pride forcing him to speak.

  “She would be,” replied Tim. “Bathe his temples, Sally, with that grog. He’d chatter the neck off the bottle if you tried to give him a drink.”

  “Make a try at it,” whispered the doctor. “Don’t waste the stuff. It’s good.”

  “What thrift,” said Tim admiringly.

  “All right now?” asked Sally, after she had succeeded in feeding the man a drink.

  “Better,” whispered the doctor.

  “Then I guess we’d better be going,” she continued, rather lamely. “We’ll come back another time for that examination.”

  “Okay, Doc.?” asked Tim.

  They left the doctor clucking wildly on the sofa.

  “A most embarrassing experience,” observed Tim as they quietly let themselves out of the house.

  “What I want to know is,” demanded Sally, “how do you expect to have a baby if you won’t let a doctor come near you?”

  “By long distance,” replied Tim. “Or like a woman of the Stone Age. I feel like eating some pineapple.”

  Chapter 10

  Tim Seeks Enlightenment

  A few days later, after wolfing down a robust breakfast, Tim decided to call on his old friend, the village barber. Alfredo had lots of children, children without rhyme or reason. Mrs. Alfredo was always having a baby or about to have a baby or just getting over having a baby. She was in the baby business and seemed able to turn over her stock with surprising regularity and speed. Tim would speak with this Alfredo and pump him about babies. He would inquire into babies, their production and their upkeep. Sally would be surprised at his vast range of information. At the same time he would have his hair trimmed, or rather, he would have his wife’s hair trimmed as a pretext for acquiring wisdom. For the moment Tim had forgotten that in his metamorphosed form his old friend, Alfredo, would hardly recognize him.

  He slipped on one of Sally’s smartest coats and crammed a small black felt hat carelessly on his head. Then he left the house, taking the lunging Dopey with him.

  There was a touch of spring in the air and the snow was melting fast. The distant hills were coming through and the sun lay warm upon them. Soon they would arouse themselves from their winter slumber and take steps about getting green. It was quiet along the neat, well-ordered suburban street. Tim felt the quietness. It got inside him. He breathed deeply and stood at the curb, looking about him. He would like to efface all of the houses in sight as well as all of the persons who lived in them. Dopey lunged Tim across the street, then paused himself to investigate nothing much. The dog was too strong for Tim in his female body. Tim suspected that Dopey knew it and was prepared to take advantage of his knowledge. Yes, it was a nice suburb, mused Tim. That was just the trouble with it. It was too damned nice. But the spirit of the people was not so nice. It was too imitative, too acquisitive. A man had to have exactly what his neighbor had, or better—better if it could be managed. And a man had to live in a certain section or else exist under the burden of a steadily growing inferiority complex. It was sad about that. There were decent men and women living in other sections. Tim liked many of them. But there they were. They were just not on the in, and that was all there was to it. And women had such a way of lording it over their less fortunate sisters. It was cruel and it was senseless. He was glad Sally was not that way. She bought her meat wherever she
liked. It was not her method, like so many of her friends, to establish prestige through the butcher or baker. Yes, this suburb would be better with a lot of revisions and deleting. All these real estate people with their quaint ideas and parky minds. Restricted developments and all that. They thrived on snobbery. And in New York the bread lines were twisting round corners. Men standing bleakly in the cold for the privilege of remaining miserably alive on the surface of a world that had no use for them. Yet the bread lines had thoughts and feelings. They were composed of human beings, men who wanted things and who missed things and who watched others live through eyes that were too distantly hopeless even to express envy. And right here in Cliffside men and women were making themselves miserable merely because they could not afford a car as good as Sam Jones’s or a radio as fine as Bill Smith’s or a home on Upper Clear View Road. It was all out of proportion. Tim realized that he himself was a selfish individual, but at least he didn’t get all hot and bothered about those things. Give him a bottle and a book and leave him alone, that was all he asked. He realized that as an individual he could do nothing about the bread lines. He couldn’t even help materially one individual member. But he was aware of their existence. That was a start, anyway. Idly his thoughts drifted and absently he delivered a sharp kick on Dopey’s adamant rump. The dog made no protest. Tim rather suspected the beast enjoyed an occasional kick. It gave him to feel he was being noticed. Tim wondered if he was always going to be a woman, if life from now on was going to be just one baby after another. He knew he would never be clever about not having babies. He was altogether too careless and shiftless. He sighed from deep self-commiseration and started off down the street.

  “Sally Willows,” a voice called.

  He turned with a frightened expression and saw, hurrying toward him, a woman who as far as he was concerned had never existed before. Evidently from the warmth of the kiss she gave Tim she must have known Sally quite intimately and liked her. Tim, poor soul, was not enough of a woman to know that the kisses women so liberally exchange with each other mean exactly less than nothing.

  “Hello! Hello!” cried the woman.

  Tim contented himself with one small “Hello.”

  “I’ve come back,” said the other. “Here I am.”

  “Are you sure?” Tim asked her.

  “Same old Sally, I see,” continued the unknown.

  “A trifle renovated,” replied Tim. “Perhaps ‘altered’ would be a better word.”

  “What’s all the news?” demanded the woman.

  “The same old thing,” said Tim easily. “Scandal and philandering and concealed animosity—envy and a touch of heartbreak thrown in for good measure. The merry whirl, you know.”

  “It’s dreadful how people go on,” the recently returned one contributed virtuously. “Of course Dan, my husband, doesn’t know this, but I met the grandest man while I was away. I was all on my own, you know.”

  “Yes,” said Tim, trying to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Dan was just grinding dumbly along while you met the grandest man.”

  “Dan loves his work,” declared the woman. “Couldn’t drag him away from it.”

  “Did you ever try the dragging process?” Tim asked mildly.

  “Don’t be horrid, Sally,” said the other. “Don’t you believe a woman should have her own life?”

  “Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” replied Tim. “I believe a woman should have at least nine lives, like a cat. And all the grand men she can handle. It merely occurred to me that if there wasn’t a husband knocking about in the background, stupidly loving his work or pretending to love his work, she’d have one hell of a time struggling through one life in the manner to which she was accustomed. It was merely a passing thought.”

  “No doubt about that,” agreed the other. “A husband is convenient at times.”

  “Around the first of the month,” suggested Tim, thoroughly hating this woman.

  “Yes,” said the woman. “What a horrible dog. Where are you off to?”

  “That’s not a horrible dog,” retorted Tim. “That’s the finest mixture of canine strains that ever perplexed a bitch. And if you’d like to know, I’m going to get a shave.”

  “A shave?” exclaimed the woman.

  “I mean a trim,” Tim hastened to reply. “Did I say a shave? How stupid of me. What I really meant to say was a trim, you know, the hair.”

  “I’ll walk along with you part of the way,” said the woman. “That is, if your dog will give me some of the sidewalk.”

  Dopey received another kick and moved slightly in advance, gratefully wagging his tail. He hated this stopping on street corners and talking to people. It made him nervous.

  “Did you ever have a baby?” Tim asked presently, with as much indifference as he could manage.

  “Why, don’t you remember?” said the woman in a surprised voice. “You came to see me yourself at the hospital.”

  “Did I?” asked Tim absently. “That was nice of me, but then I’m always doing nice things, and there are so many babies—too many.”

  The woman laughed.

  “You’re a queer little duck,” she said.

  “Aren’t I,” agreed Tim, “Did it hurt much, this baby?”

  “Why, didn’t you know?” asked the woman. “For days they thought I wasn’t going to live. I had septic fever and all sorts of complications.”

  Tim shrank within himself and looked at the pavement with scared eyes.

  “Are there lots of complications you can get?” he asked in a low voice.

  “You wouldn’t believe how many there are,” said the woman. “All sorts of things can happen.”

  Tim choked down a little gasp.

  “Then it was pretty awful?” he went on.

  “I wouldn’t go through it again for all of the money in the world,” the woman assured him. “And I’m fond of money, but I was lucky at that.”

  “How do you make that out?” Tim inquired.

  “The woman in the room next to mine died and the one next to her went mad,” replied Tim’s companion. “Stark, staring mad.”

  Tim felt that within a very few moments he would follow the example of the woman next to the woman who died.

  “Are the doctors kind?” he managed to ask after swallowing hard several times.

  “Mine wasn’t,” replied the other. “He was as cross and callous as an old crab. It’s quite ghastly,” she continued. “I’m glad it’s all over. Any woman who has the nerve enough to have a baby has my sympathy. It’s nip and tuck for her.”

  Tim had no use for the woman’s sympathy. She was burning him up. He parted with her on Springfield Avenue, and dragged Dopey, squatting sidewise, into the barber’s shop.

  He found Alfredo disengaged and, after elaborate courtesies, seated himself in the glistening Italian’s chair. Dopey delicately rested his head on a cuspidor and endeavored to forget everything by going to sleep. Tim was very much upset. His conversation with the unknown woman had sadly shattered his morale.

  “How are you to-day, Alfredo?” he asked in a weary voice.

  Alfredo paused in his occupation and looked slightly perplexed. Then he glanced behind him to discover if another customer had been speaking, a customer with a strangely familiar voice.

  “I am well, madam,” he replied at length. “You have been here before, madam?”

  The twice repeated “madam” served to remind Tim even in his preoccupied frame of mind that he was no longer the customer with whom Alfredo had been wont to deal. He smiled sweetly upon the Italian and spoke in a ladylike voice.

  “No, Alfredo,” he said, “but my husband, Mr. Willows, comes to you often. He has spoken to me of your family. Says you have a splendid lot of children.”

  Alfredo’s eyes and teeth did some fairly snappy sparkling upon the reception of this compliment.

  “Mr. Willows, madam,” he said. “He’s one fine man. One of my best. I like him very much.”

  “He advised me t
o come to you for a nice trim,” continued Tim, deciding that Alfredo himself was not such a bad fellow. “About your family now—is your wife well? No ill effects?”

  “My wife,” replied Alfredo complacently, “she make another baby now.”

  “How interesting,” observed Tim. “Does she find it very difficult?”

  Alfredo shrugged his shoulders rather discouragingly.

  “You know how it is, madam,” he said. “It is never good. Like death itself.”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” said Tim faintly, sinking a little in the chair.

  “It is always bad, madam,” continued Alfredo. “There is nothing good about it. The first time, she nearly died.”

  “O-o-o-o,” came shudderingly from Tim.

  “Did I hurt, madam?” asked Alfredo, pausing with poised comb.

  “No, Alfredo,” answered Tim, rallying in the chair. “Everything’s splendid. Go right on. You say she nearly died?”

  “Yes, madam,” continued the barber reminiscently. “My wife she was at the death. What suffering, madam. What anguish. It is always thus with the first.”

  “O-o-o-o-o,” gasped Tim, slumping miserably still farther down in the chair.

  “I’m sure I must be hurting, madam,” said Alfredo.

  “No, Alfredo,” answered Tim. “Not the way you think. You’re doing fine.”

  “It was torture, madam, torture,” resumed the begetter of many progeny. “She was on the wreck.”

  “What!” exclaimed Tim, starting up in the chair. “That’s painting the lily. She had this baby in a wreck?”

  “No, madam,” explained Alfredo. “Not in a wreck. She was on this wreck. How do you say—the torture wreck.”

  Tim’s thoughts dwelt broodingly on this mystifying but nevertheless chilling new item of awfulness.

  “Because she wouldn’t bear down?” he asked. “Is that why they did it?”

  Alfredo shrugged his shoulders uncomprehendingly.

  “I don’t know, madam,” he replied. “She was on it, the wreck.”

  “But they have no right to put people on wrecks when they’re going to have babies,” protested Tim.