by Mary Gordon
And Beatrice knew that they were right, that was the terrible thing about them, their unquestionable Tightness. Right to clear out, break in, burn, tear, demolish, so that the health of the world might be preserved.
She sank down deeper. She was there with those who wallowed, burrowed, hoarded, their weak eyes half-closed, their sour voices, not really sour but hopeless at the prospect of trying to raise some objection, of offering some resistance. They knew there could be no negotiation, since they had no rights. So their petition turned into a growl, a growl that only stiffened the righteousness of their purpose. “Leave me alone” is all the ones who hid were saying. They would have liked to beseech but they were afraid to. Also full of hate. “Leave me alone.”
Of course they wouldn't be left alone. They couldn't be. Beatrice understood that.
The skin around her eyes felt flayed, her limbs were heavy, her spine too weak to hold her up. “Leave me alone.” The sweetness of the warm darkness, like a poultice, was all that could protect her from the brutality of open air on her raw skin.
She and the man downstairs breathed. In and out. She heard their joined breath and, underneath that sound, the opening of doors, the rush of violent armies, of flame, of tidal wave, lightning cleaving a moss-covered tree in two. And then something else below that: “Cannot. Cannot. Leave me alone.” Unheeded.
She turned the light on in the bedroom. She put on a pair of turquoise sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt. On her feet she wore immaculate white socks and the white sneakers she'd varnished to brilliance with a product called Sneaker White she'd bought especially. She put on earrings, perfume, but no lipstick and no blush. She walked out of the apartment. She knew that Peter, in the back with the children, wouldn't hear the door close.
She walked down the dank, faintly ill-smelling stairs to the apartment situated exactly as hers was— 3A— and rang the bell.
He opened the door a crack. The stench of rotting food and unwashed clothes ought to have made her sick, but she knew she was beyond that sort of thing.
She looked him in the eye. “I need to talk to you,” she said.
He shrugged, then smiled. Most of his top teeth were gone and the ones that were left were yellowed and streaked. He pushed the lock of his blondish hair that fell into his forehead back, away from his eyes. Then he took a comb out of his pocket and pulled it through his hair.
“Make yourself at home,” he said, laughing morosely.
There was hardly a place to stand. The floor space was taken up by broken radios, blenders, ancient portable TVs revealing blown tubes, disconnected wires, a double-size mattress. Beside the mattress were paper plates with hardened sandwiches, glimpses of pink ham, tomatoes turned to felt between stone-colored slices of bread, magazines with wrinkled pages, unopened envelopes (yellow, white, mustard-colored), sloping hills of clean underwear mixed up with balled socks, and opened cans of Coke. There were no sheets on the mattress; sheets, she could tell, had been given up long ago. Loosely spread over the blue ticking was a pinkish blanket, its trim a trap, a bracelet for the foot to catch itself in during the uneasy night.
A few feet from the mattress was a Barcalounger whose upholstery must once have been mustard-colored. The headrest was a darker shade, almost brown; she understood that the discoloration was from the grease of his hair when he leaned back. She moved some copies of Popular Mechanics and some Styrofoam containers, hamburger-sized, to make room for herself to sit. She tried to imagine what she looked like, in her turquoise sweatsuit, sitting in this chair.
“I came to warn you,” she said. “They're having a meeting. Right now in my apartment. They want to have you evicted.”
He laughed, and she could see that his top teeth looked striated, lines of brownish yellow striping the enamel in a way she didn't remember seeing on anyone else.
“Relax,” he said. “It'll never happen. They keep trying, but it'll never happen. This is New York. I'm a disabled person. I'm on disability. You understand what that means? Nobody like me gets evicted in New York. Don't worry about it. I'll be here forever.”
She looked at her neighbor and gave him a smile so radiant that it seemed to partake of prayer. And then a torpor that was not somnolent, but full of joy, took hold of her. Her eyes were closing themselves with happiness. She needed rest. Why hadn't she ever known before that rest was the one thing she had always needed?
She saw her white bathroom floor, gleaming from the lake of bleach she had poured on it. Just thinking of it hurt her eyes. Here, there was nothing that would hurt her. She wanted to tell him it was beautiful here, it was wonderful, it was just like home. But she was too tired to speak. And that was fine, she knew he understood. Here, where they both were, there was no need to say a word.
But he was saying something. She could hear it through her sleep, and she had to swim up to get it, like a fish surfacing for crumbs. She couldn't seem, quite, to open her eyes and she fell back down to the dark water. Then she felt him shaking her by the shoulders.
“What are you doing? What are you doing? You can't do that here.”
She looked at his eyes. They weren't looking at her kindly. She had thought he would be kind. She blinked several times, then closed her eyes again. When she opened them, he was still standing above her, his hands on her shoulders, shaking them, his eyes unkind.
“You can't do that here. You can't just come down here and go to sleep like that. This is my place. Now get out.”
He was telling her she had to leave. She supposed she understood that. She couldn't stay here if he didn't want her. She had thought he'd understand that what she needed was a place to rest, just that, she wouldn't be taking anything from him. But he was treating her like a thief. He was making her leave as if she were a criminal. There was no choice now but to leave, shamefully, like a criminal.
He closed the door behind her. Although her back was to the door, she felt he was closing it in her face and she felt the force of it exactly on her face as if his hand had struck it. She stood completely still, her back nearly touching the brown door.
She couldn't move. She couldn't move because she could think of no direction that seemed sensible. But the shame of his having thrown her out propelled her toward the stairs. She wondered if she could simply walk out of the building as she was. With no coat, no money, nothing to identify her. But she knew that wasn't possible. It was winter, and it was New York.
She walked up the stairs. She stood on the straw mat in front of her own door. She'd have to ring the bell; she hadn't brought her keys. Peter would wonder where she had gone. She didn't know what she'd tell him. There was nothing to say.
She didn't know what would happen now. She knew only that she must ring the bell and see her husband's face and then walk into the apartment. It was the place she lived and she had nowhere else to go.
My Podiatrist Tells Me a Story
About a Boy and a Dog
He says things to me like “There's no reason why you should feel any pain,” and “I'll take care of everything.” Why wouldn't I like seeing him?
I first went when I had something called a plantar wart beneath my left big toe. I thought it was called a planter's wart. “A lot of people think that and they're wrong,” he said. “But you're a writer, you're interested in words, so you should know the truth.” He draws me a diagram of the part of the foot called the planta. “I don't want you to imagine people walking around with shovels in their hands, putting plants into the soil,” he said. “Because it's not the truth.” I was glad to learn what he had to tell me; now I correct other people, for his sake and in his name.
His daughter plays the French horn in a symphony orchestra. But she's decided she wants to be a vet. To get into veterinary school, “which is already, you understand, very difficult in itself,” she has to take more science courses. She lives in Boston. She told him she would take the courses in the local community college.
“ ‘Darling,’ I said to her, ‘veterinary school i
s very hard to get into, true or not true?’
“She said what she had to say: ‘True.’
“ ‘So what's the best, and I mean the very best place in Boston to take courses?’
“She said what she had to say: ‘Harvard.’
“So I said to her, ‘You're my daughter and I want the very best for you. And I can give you the best. So: Harvard.’ She thanked me profusely. I can't tell you how profusely she thanked me. She's enjoying her courses very much. Though, of course, they're a challenge.”
On the bus home, I try to imagine what it would have been like to have a father who said, “I want the very best for you and I can give you the best.” My life would have been wholly different.
It's not well known that the subspecialist most consulted by women over forty is the podiatrist. Over the years, many of us have been doing terrible things to our feet. High heels. Pointy toes. Damaging ourselves for vanity. For sex? From fear or from desire? A desire to please whom?
When I went to see him because of the plantar wart, he shaved my calluses, which, he said, were painful in places because of my gait. “Now everybody has a gait,” he said. “Everybody's gait means something. In your case, problems. I can take care of them.”
He shaved the bad calluses with a very sharp knife, a knife that looked as if it would have to hurt. I stiffened, thinking of my feet, those tender loaves. I've always liked my feet. Sometimes I think of them as my best feature. My second toe is longer than my first; for the Greeks, this is a sign of beauty. Also my toes make, on the top, a fanlike shape that I never look at without pleasure. So I didn't want anything happening to my nice feet. But he said, “You can trust me, I won't hurt you.” I didn't believe him: I was looking at that knife. I waited for the shock of pain, which did not come. More than that: over the next days, I noticed that I was free from, if not pain, then a discomfort that had been so habitual I had assumed it was apart of life.
So of course I agreed to come back every three months, to keep myself in the state to which he'd brought me. Besides, he told me stories.
It began when I asked him how he became a podiatrist.
“Long story,” he said. “Interesting story, or at least I think it's interesting. Since you're a writer, maybe you'll think it's interesting too.”
As he began to speak, his eyebrows, which always had a tendency toward verticality, stood upright like two fuzzy letter Is. His small mouth, which I had seen in two positions— cheerfully amused in conversation, or concerned while holding an afflicted foot— became neutral: a vessel of information only.
“It goes back to when I was a child. You'll be surprised to hear it. But it goes back to an accident.
“So I can give you a background, so you can understand, you have to know something about my family.
“My father was a successful doctor. We were what you might call wealthy. Definitely wealthy. We lived in New York. It's not like it is now. One day, I was in my father's office with him, playing. By accident, a beaker of acid tipped over and burned my leg, right through to the bone. I became a cripple. And I'd been quite an athletic boy.
“As you can imagine, I grew downhearted. And my father was very guilty because he'd failed to cover the beaker of acid. So he devoted himself to me. He did everything. Built a gym in the basement— we had a brownstone, as I told you we were wealthy— and hired all kinds of teachers for me. Physical education. It was a struggle, but I persevered. And he was with me, urging me on. The thing about him, he was firm but kind. He took me to a podiatrist, who took excellent care of me. So I became interested in the subject, starting, of course, with my own case. The rest of my family became doctors, but studies were hard for me. If I were young now, I'd be called dyslexic.
“But I found the work I love. So you see how everything works out.”
I think of his quizzical, cheerful face, but a boy's version. The shock of burning acid. And his poor father. Of all fates, one of the worst: to be implicated in the pain of your own child. I think of the phys ed teachers, with slicked-back hair, mustaches, sleeveless T-shirts, tights, lace-up shoes. I think of the tutors. And the cheerful, quizzical boy, struggling to keep up.
I think of the brownstone, its shining floors, the hanging chandeliers, the smell of coal and laundry in the basement, turned into a gym.
On one of my visits, the patient before me has come with a standard poodle. I try to understand what's behind the decision to bring your dog with you to the podiatrist. The dog, unleashed, walks around the waiting room, nosing the magazine rack. I hear his master's voice: the voice of Yankee privilege, but suggesting the Maine woods: summers with no running water, bilberries for breakfast, a view from the porch of Daddy's “camp” of half the state. The owner of the dog is a foot taller than the doctor. He tells her he hopes she'll be comfortable, and she says she will be, of course thanks to “your very good work, my friend.”
I'm sure they aren't friends. Not like he and I are. I'm sure he doesn't tell her stories.
“Nice animal,” he says when I sit in the chair. “Very nice animal. I don't do surgery anymore, so I'm glad to have dogs around, as long as they're well behaved. And that one is a real prize. I didn't even know he was there.”
He says that everything I'm doing for my feet is exactly right and that the orthotics he made to be inserted into my shoes are working perfectly.
“Funny story about a dog. You want to hear a funny story about a dog?”
I say yes I would, very much.
“Every summer my family went and stayed in a hotel in the Catskills. My father was in New York, except for the weekends, and the rest of the family stayed there all the time. It was an excellent arrangement, suited everyone very well. Of course all meals included and the kitchen was top drawer. Every day, the chef would pack a lunch for me. Always the same thing, a chicken sandwich. He had a way of preparing chicken that I happened to like very much. I would take my lunch and my fishing pole and go down to the dock and fish for hours. Well, one day, I'm sitting on the dock and suddenly at the other end of the dock there's this very big dog. I mean she was big. I saw her looking at me and I looked at her and she didn't look dangerous, although she was so big. I wasn't afraid. I broke off a piece of my sandwich and left it on the dock a certain ways away from where I was sitting. After a while she took it, then she went back into the woods. Next day, same thing, she appears, I leave the piece of sandwich, she takes it and goes away. After a week of this, one day after she takes the piece of sandwich, she lies down next to me on the dock. Then she starts walking me back to the hotel every day. One day, we run into the owner's dog, a German shepherd, not a nice animal, a vicious animal. She takes one look at Brownie, puts her tail between her legs, and runs into the kitchen. I called the dog Brownie because she was brown. Even at that time I had a terrific imagination.
“Well, the end of the summer came and I begged my father to take Brownie home. But he said no, she was a country dog, a woods dog, she'd be miserable in the city, she'd pine away. Well, I was miserable, but what can I do? I get in the car and put my head against the seat and cry my heart out.
“Now, in those days, they didn't have the superhighways of today, so the fastest my father could go was forty-five miles an hour. After we'd been traveling about an hour and a half, my father yells out, “ ‘Oh, my God.’” We didn't know what happened. “‘Look out the back,’” he says. And there's Brownie, running along the side of the road keeping up with the car.
“So of course my father opened the door. The dog got in. She was so big she had to lie full length on the floor and still there wasn't room for her. She threw up, then she slept all the way home.
“Fortunately, we had a townhouse with a backyard, so she could sleep outside. We just left the back window open and she came and went as she pleased. It wasn't like now, with the crime, which is why I live in West-chester.
“My mother used to worry about me with my lame leg, but she knew she had to give me independence. You have to do th
at with a boy, and she knew it. So she let me walk to school if Brownie was with me. It was only two blocks away, and she watched me out the window. One day, she's looking out the window and she sees me walking into the street, not paying attention, and the next thing she sees a truck careening around the corner and she sees Brownie grab me by the waist and pull me to safety. I still have scars from the teeth marks, but I wouldn't be here to tell you about those scars if it weren't for that dog.
“She saved my life another time. I was back at the hotel, fishing, but not on the dock, by a creek this time. I was wearing waders and again not paying attention, because, let's face it, that was the kind of kid I was. I walk into the water to get the fish. I walk in too deep and the mud is very soft on the bottom and I don't have the strength in my lame leg to lift myself up because the boots are full of water. I start to be pulled under. The dog comes in and pulls me out. So that was two times my life was saved by that dog.
“Now I'm going to tell you something you didn't know. Until the 1930s, dogs were not licensed in the city of New York. So one day, the notice comes, and my father, who always did things very properly, makes an appointment with our vet, who's a patient of his, to have the dog examined for a license. Well, we go into the office and the vet takes one look at Brownie and gets a strange look on his face. He calls my father into a private office. He says, ‘Who does the dog respond to most?’ My father says it's me. The vet says, ‘We have to put a muzzle on the dog. I have to take some blood.’”
I don't want to hear any more of this story. I can tell what's coming next: rabies, and this miraculous dog will have to be put down. I think of the little boy with his lame leg in his too-big room in the townhouse where everyone's heels clatter too loudly on the wooden floors.