Rodin's Debutante

by Ward Just

  The doctor filled a syringe with something, then pushed it home into the boy's biceps, withdrawing it at once. This should help the pain, he said to the boy. And then he asked, What is your name?

  Robert, the boy said.

  Last name?

  Jones, he said.

  The doctor raised his eyes fractionally and grunted.

  They call him Topper, Lee said.

  You know him?

  We met once, Lee said.

  Last name Jones?

  I don't know. I doubt it.

  The doctor turned again to his patient. How did this happen?

  Topper moved his shoulders and said something unintelligible. Meanwhile the doctor poured sulfa into the wound along with something else, unknown to Lee. He worked with skill, patiently without being slow about it. The expression on his face was bothered. All this time Lee was staring at Topper, thinking they were engaged in some unusual and perverse transaction. The boy's eyes kept shifting away and back again. His face had acquired a dull sheen in the brightness of the overhead light. He said in a slurred voice, Am I going to make it?

  You have a deep wound in your chest. The angle of it is strange. There's very little blood. I don't know how deep it is or where it's gone. I don't have the facilities to treat it properly. The wound must be x-rayed and I don't have an x-ray. I was supposed to have one but I don't. I want you to stay quiet until the ambulance comes. I am going to look at one of my medical books. Dr. Petitbon turned to Lee and said quietly, Stay with him. Behave properly.

  Topper watched the doctor move to his desk in the corner and take down a heavy book from the shelf above. Then he closed his eyes and his body seemed to relax though his breathing was heavy. Turn and turnabout, Lee thought. And then the boy's hand moved so that it touched Lee's. He thought this was involuntary but could not be sure. The boy's hand was clammy and soft to the touch. He looked peaceful in repose but still his hand did not move. Anyone looking at him would believe he was dying. Lee looked at the chest wound, an inch or so below the heart. He wished he knew more of anatomy, the exact placement of the heart and whatever organs were below it. The liver? Kidneys? The boy's breathing was louder now and irregular. Lee heard Dr. Petitbon mutter something and close the medical book. At the same time the boy's eyelids flickered open and with no sign of recognition. He moved his mouth as if to speak but no sound came. Lee thought to himself how quickly and completely the unfamiliar became familiar and the personal so profoundly impersonal. Lee had the idea that the boy would die on the table and he knew he did not want that to happen.

  The doctor said, Lee, open the safe and get me morphine.

  Lee did as he was told and the doctor stood quietly a moment, indecisive, the vial of morphine in his palm. He moved his hand up and down as if weighing the vial, testing it; and then he put it aside.

  The doctor moved closer to the boy on the table and said, Are you in pain?

  The boy shook his head, but that too could have been involuntary.

  The doctor said to Lee, Hold his hand.

  Lee took the boy's hand and squeezed it gently, with no response. He said, Can you hear me, Topper? When the boy stirred but slightly, Lee said in a voice not his own, I think we're losing him.

  We're not losing him, the doctor said. Not yet. He bent again to look at the chest wound, raising the bandage to inspect the cut, the width of a knife's blade. There was very little blood and he supposed that was a good sign. Lee noticed Topper's fingernails were bitten to the quick and filthy. His knuckles were filthy. Lee wondered what had happened to him, a gang fight or a vendetta of some kind. Maybe Topper had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, a common circumstance in Chicago. Infantry officers called it a meeting engagement. Lee remembered his own pain when the knife's blade entered his skin below the right eye and the sting when it sliced through his cheek and the evident pleasure on the boy's face. But that pain was nothing compared to the pain that came later, when his adrenaline lapsed.

  Where is the goddamned ambulance? the doctor said quietly, as if he were thinking out loud. He looked at his watch and sighed heavily. This boy belongs in a hospital and he belongs there now. I don't know what more to do.

  Voices in the waiting room told them that the ambulance crew had arrived. Lee opened the door and they entered with a stretcher and an oxygen mask. Lee and the doctor moved Topper from the examining table to the stretcher, the doctor explaining the wounds and what he had done. The attendants listened without apparent interest. One of them put a stethoscope to the boy's chest and announced that the heartbeat was irregular but appeared to be strong enough. They put the oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, then muscled the stretcher through the waiting room and into the ambulance outside. Lee and the doctor stood on the sidewalk in the cold and watched them go, the bleat of the siren beginning at once. They waited until the ambulance turned the corner and the street was silent once again.

  Dr. Petitbon said something Lee did not hear.

  Lee said, Pardon?

  Who was that boy? How do you know him?

  He was the one who cut me, Lee said.

  So you took some revenge, the doctor said.

  Yes, I did. I'd do it again.

  We don't do that here, the doctor said. That's not one of the rules of my clinic, taking revenge on the patients. What in God's name were you thinking?

  Have you ever been cut?

  That's beside the point, the doctor said.

  Not to me. It hurts like hell.

  I'm sure it does, the doctor said. And that's still not the point.

  I gave the tourniquet an extra twist, that's all.

  With the boy helpless on the table.

  I didn't see him as helpless. I saw him as my enemy.

  Do you still see him as your enemy?

  Lee thought a moment, remembering fingernails bitten to the quick. No, he said finally. It's not personal anymore.

  Well, the doctor said, that's a start.

  I wanted him to know that I was there and that I remembered. But I did my best. I tried to help him.

  My clinic is not the street. The street is something else. You have no conception of the street in this city. These boys grow up with nothing. They have nothing except the street where they go to meet other boys who have nothing. Dr. Petitbon turned away, shaking with rage. His voice had risen an octave. He was a short man with a small head covered tightly with oiled wavy hair. He was slight of build, soft-spoken, elusive of manner, dapper in his own way. But now he seemed undone, perspiring heavily. He seemed to want to say more but did not know how to go about it. Dr. Petitbon stood in the doorway looking at the ceiling, opening and closing his hands. He said, I'll let you know if he lives.

  I hope he does, Lee said. It's over now.

  All right, the doctor said. I'll clean up the examining room. You take care of reception. And we'll go home.

  He turned to go back inside, his shoulders bent, his eyes now downcast. He looked defeated. Lee guessed the doctor was no more than thirty, thirty-five years old. He had never thought to ask. Dr. Petitbon always had a worried expression and spoke a musical southern idiom in such a way that his words were often lost. Pearl had said he was originally from Louisiana, the bayou country, come north to find opportunity. Of the doctor's personal life Lee knew nothing. He wore a wedding ring but never spoke of a wife or children. He went about his work with thoroughness and concern but did not appear to derive pleasure from it, medicine a chore like any other. Lee wondered if he was one of those men who had gotten into the wrong business and by the time he realized what he had done it was too late. The one thing Lee knew for certain was that the doctor liked a drink of scotch at the end of the day, sometimes two scotches. Money did not seem to interest him. His suits were well worn and he drove a black Chevrolet coupe, prewar.

  Lee straightened the chairs and tables and the magazines on the tables, National Geographics and the Reader's Digests. The papers on top of his desk were scattered and he colle
cted those and put them away. Something was missing but he did not know what it was. Then he remembered the two boys who had arrived with Topper. What had happened to them? They had left no trace of themselves in the reception room. Lee sat at his desk and lit a cigarette and thought about what Dr. Petitbon had said about the street. The way he spoke, the street sounded like a foreign country with its own laws and customs, a totalitarian regime of enforcers, and the clinic a refuge like Switzerland, except when the enforcers paid a call. The doctor had a right to be furious about the tourniquet. Of course his sympathy would lie with his patient. The fight wasn't fair. But it wasn't fair the first time, either. Lee decided then that he wasn't cut out for clinic work, too many frightened people in one room at the same time. They were frightened and suspicious of unfamiliar surroundings. The patients looked through Lee as if he were a pane of window glass. Even so, he vividly remembered his turn of mind when the personal became impersonal; maybe that was what people meant when they talked about professionalism. A professional was never shadowed by doubt and sought the comfort of the impersonal. But that was not Lee. The truth was, he had no future at the clinic, which he now saw as a claustrophobic zone with no resemblance whatever to Switzerland. True, he had seen a side of life he had never seen before—as if that would be a consolation to the patients. A round of applause, please. Lee put his cigarette in the ashtray and stood up. Time to go home. He looked into the examining room and saw Dr. Petitbon pouring a glass of scotch. The doctor said good night without looking up or offering a nightcap.

  Then he said, I don't want you here anymore.

  Lee said, All right.

  The doctor said, I don't know how you got here in the first place.

  Lee smiled. I was invited.

  It was a mistake. You have no training.

  That's true, Lee said.

  Good night then, the doctor said. He gave Lee a long, troubled look and said finally, Good luck.

  You too, Lee said.

  Lee closed the door quietly and took a last glance around the reception room, the chairs and tables, the eye chart on one wall, the magazines, the ashtrays filled to overflowing. The space was not hospitable. No one could feel at ease there, or confident. Then Lee saw what was missing—the clinic's typewriter with its case, no doubt a final salute from Topper's friends.

  WHEN CHARLES FFORD returned to England to join the Foreign Office, Lee took up with Laura, moving in with her his junior year. Laura's apartment, small, crowded with books and secondhand furniture, was a gift from her parents, a symbol of feminine independence. They wanted Laura on her own but also nearby. Her father was a much-admired economist at the university, her mother a lawyer at one of the downtown firms. The apartment was her mother's idea. Laura's family, both sides, had lived in Hyde Park since the 1880s, a point of some pride. They thought of themselves as old Chicago, keepers of the city's pioneer conscience—always assuming the city had a conscience, Harold Nieman always added, a matter of eternal dispute. Laura called her parents by their first names and always had, even as a little girl. For Lee, that took some getting used to.

  Lee and Laura were serious from the beginning, serious enough so that Laura warned him that she would never, ever leave the South Side. That was non-negotiable. Her family was important to her, and her family had always lived on the South Side, in the Hyde Park house built by her grandfather. She thought Hyde Park, in its variety and tolerance, its civic spirit, was unique in America. Where else did the races exist so harmoniously? Certainly there was nothing remotely like it in the Midwest. Neither of the coasts held any attraction for her. She wouldn't mind visiting Europe but she could never settle there. So if Lee had any ideas about New York or Los Angeles or Paris or Rome he should tell her so that she could make other plans for herself. He was surprised at her vehemence, and charmed too. Her desire to remain where she was matched his desire to be someplace else, anywhere that was not New Jesper or the North Shore. Hyde Park was fine with him.

  Each Sunday they went to her parents' house for lunch, riotous affairs that usually lasted until late afternoon, the table crowded with physicists, economists, writers, labor leaders, and the polymaths who constituted the Committee on Social Thought. Harold Nieman was a wine connoisseur and bottle after bottle appeared, was consumed, and replaced at once. Lee was a popular figure at table, often contributing stories from his boyhood in New Jesper and later at Ogden Hall. He was surprised that many of the guests were aware of Ogden Hall and its eccentric founder. Only once, filled up with wine, did Lee tell the story of the death of the tramp and the assault on Magda Serra. He stopped short of describing his father's role in the—he supposed the word was containment. He never spoke of his sculpture—he was still not prepared to explain himself—nor of his volunteer work at the clinic. He had no idea Laura's father knew anything about it until one Sunday afternoon when he said, Tell us about the clinic.

  It's an ordinary clinic, Lee said. I don't work there anymore.

  I didn't know you had any medical training, Harold said.

  I don't. I logged them in and logged them out. A clerk, that's all. Except one time, Lee thought but did not say.

  Every night?

  Saturday and Sunday nights, a six-hour shift depending on the casualties.

  Well, then, why did you quit?

  The clinic was claustrophobic.

  Harold Nieman frowned as he opened another bottle of wine and filled glasses at the table. Everyone was silent, listening to Lee.

  You weren't mistreated?

  No, no, Lee said. Dr. Petitbon was very decent. He drank more than was good for him but he was a decent man. A troubled man, I think.

  He drank in the clinic? the writer James Ball put in.

  Not on the job, Lee said. After work. Scotch mostly.

  It's never a good idea, drinking at the office.

  He thought it was, Lee said. The work was difficult. His equipment was substandard.

  Tell them about the x-ray, Laura said.

  We didn't have one, Lee said. The x-ray was always on order but it never arrived. Dr. Petitbon was flying blind most of the time and the clinic was always crowded. But it was better than nothing to the people who needed it.

  You said claustrophobic, Harold said. What do you mean, Lee?

  Airless, Lee said. I was out of place there.

  It's understandable, Harold said. Sick people—

  To sympathize is not always to understand, Lee said.

  I beg your pardon? the writer Ball said.

  Lee did not reply to that.

  What kind of cases did you get? Harold asked.

  All kinds. Pneumonia, the common cold, broken legs, hypertension, unwanted pregnancies, suspicious growths. One time a boy came in and died in front of us, a bad heart. There were cuttings also.

  Saturday nights were the worst, I suppose, Harold said.

  Usually, Lee said and changed the subject, to everyone's evident relief.

  Walking home arm-in-arm that night, Laura asked Lee why he did not mention the boy Topper, and Lee said that he had yet to reconcile the matter. He hated the scar on his face. Laura said she didn't mind, she'd become used to it. The truth was, she sort of liked it. The scar gave character. It hurt like hell, Lee said. One minute he was standing in the doorway to his studio and the next he was on his back and the minute after that the damnedest pain he ever felt, except later when it was worse. At any event, Topper seemed to have survived his own wounds. They had both survived, so you could say that was the end of it, only it didn't seem like the end of it to Lee. Let it go, she said softly and squeezed his hand. You're right, he said. I'll try my best. She said, Try harder, and he had to laugh at that.

  They were bound for Lee's studio. She often came with him at night, reading her philosophy books while he worked, looking up now and again when the tap-tap of his mallet reached a certain rhythm. That meant he had forgotten she was there and she could watch him without feeling self-conscious about it. In the studio she was su
rrounded by his black marbles, ten of them now. Three more and he would have enough for a proper show, if he could convince a gallery to give him one. Lee had told her he worked better when she was in the room, although much of the time he forgot she was there. That was all right. He felt her presence subconsciously. He never asked her opinion on works in progress, only the finished pieces. It took Laura a while to distinguish among them. They were variations on a theme, rounded forms with a slash high to low, the differences quite subtle. One thing about them, they were indisputably from the same hand. Each marble seemed to cause a different emotion in the viewer. All of them required a concentration that she did not always have and did not believe was normal; seeing beneath the skin of things was never simple. She would sit for many minutes looking at a piece before she ventured a thought. One or two of them were enigmatic in the extreme and she could make no coherent response except to say she was easy with enigma, though enigma was not a particular virtue in Hyde Park. On this night, looking up when the tap-tap ceased abruptly and Lee stepped back from his worktable, she rose from her chair to join him, her book still in her hand. I believe it's done, he said, what do you think? She stared at it hard for five minutes, then turned away and burst into tears, her face buried in her hands. Startled, he took her in his arms and they rocked back and forth a moment. Lee did not speak.

  I have a scar too, she said at last.

  He knew every millimeter of her body and the only scar he had seen was a little one on her thumb, a childhood mishap.

  She said, I had an abortion when I was sixteen. The doctor hurt me. You can't see the scar, it's inside. I know it's there.

  Laura, Laura, he said.

  I was reminded of it, she said and offered a bleak smile. Number Ten reminded me.

  Lee smiled back. His pieces were not named. After Number Ten would come Number Eleven.

  Do you mind? she said.

  Of course I mind, he said softly, and when her eyes filled with tears he went on, I don't like to see you hurt.

  The abortion, she said.

  I don't care about that, he said.