Tender Loving Care

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Maybe after the nurse goes,” I said. “The doctor’s expecting some real progress by then. I think that would be for the best.”

  “Sure, sure. You know, sometimes Alice takes your route rather than over the Quickway when she goes into Woodridge. She always means to stop, but—”

  “It’s understandable.”

  “But just let us know when though, huh? Don’t forget. It’s something we both want to do. Tracy and Lillian practically lived in each other’s houses there for a while.” He smiled. I knew he was just trying to be friendly, but I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t even look at him. I was grateful for Mr. Kasofsky’s passing remark. It gave me an avenue for escape.

  “Nice day’s work there, Michael. Welcome back,” he said. I thanked him and continued to get my things together. Charley went back to his own window.

  I couldn’t believe how nervous I was on my way home that night. I went shopping, I turned on the radio, I thought about the day’s work; but all I could think about was Mrs. Randolph in her room. How quickly it had become “her room.” Nothing within it had been changed radically. The linens, the rug, the wallpaper, all of it was the same. Aside from the toiletries she had laid out on the dresser and the sight of her suitcases standing neatly in the corner near the closet, there wasn’t anything that specifically identified the room with her.

  And yet when I walked past Mrs. Randolph’s closed door or looked up at her window, I could feel her presence. The door and the window did look different now. Anything she touched became part of her. I knew she was wearing Miriam’s dress the night before, but even though she might have returned it to Miriam’s closet by now, it would never again be Miriam’s dress. I could never look at it and not think of Mrs. Randolph, especially her smooth neck and enticing bosom.

  The nurse had a kind of power over things. She consumed them. I wondered what it must have been like for her husband, and I wondered if they divorced because she was too possessive, too domineering. Suddenly it became important to find out, to know more about her and learn details that would flesh out a picture. I felt that if I knew her as a person, as an ordinary human being with problems and background like anyone else, she would be less intimidating. I chastised myself for not going down to the agency and researching her more from the start. I had been too lazy, and just like most people, I had left it up to doctors and medical bureaucrats.

  It wasn’t unusual. How many people go interview their surgeons before they let them operate on them? We shop around for someone to lay carpet or repair leaky faucets, but when it comes to doctors and nurses, we go by the “faith,” the faith in the magic of medicine. The doctor had invested his nurse with the “power.” She was his minister. Like the disciple of some high priest, the nurse had been sent to my house. I wasn’t bowing down to her so much as I was bowing down to him through her.

  Maybe that was why I was driven to know her as a person. Only when she was brought down to my level would I feel comfortable and secure. I wished for an opportunity to walk with her away from the house, away from Miriam and the shadow of Lillian, so she could tell me her troubles and her problems. I would listen sympathetically. I was sure that afterward, when we went back into the house, I would feel better about her and tolerate the things she was doing and had to do.

  It was a little past five o’clock when I drove in and parked the car. The dog began barking, but I ignored it. I wanted to give full concentration to my single objective: my impending conversation with Mrs. Randolph. I tried to anticipate the dialogue, how I would begin, how insistent I would be for satisfactory answers. In deep thought, I hurried into the house.

  Just like the night before, Miriam appeared in the hallway by the kitchen as soon as she heard my entrance. She was dressed in her full apron again. This time she wore a white blouse and blue skirt beneath it. I recognized both garments as being quite old, predating our marriage. They were part of what we had boxed away in the attic. The skirt, far too short for today’s fashions, made her look silly. She had more modern, up-to-date clothing. Why was she doing this?

  “Do you have everything, Michael?”

  “Yes. You haven’t worn those things for ages. Where did you dig them up?”

  “My closet, Michael. Where do you think?” She spun around. “Mrs. Randolph likes them.”

  “Your closet?”

  “Just set everything in the dining room. We’re eating a light supper so we’ll eat in the kitchen. Mrs. Randolph says no booze for you tonight,” she added, waving her right forefinger at me.

  “Oh she does, does she? I suppose she’s upstairs staring at the wallpaper.”

  “That’s no way to put it, Michael. When you learn more about it, you’ll be more respectful.”

  It was practically a reprimand and so unlike Miriam. Even the expression on her face was uncharacteristic. Her eyes were as intense and as piercing as the nurse’s. Her posture was different too. She was stiffer, and her shoulders were up. She looked taller, harder. I felt a greater distance between us. Her voice had been so cold and her words so sharp.

  “I see,” I said. I was taken aback and could think of no appropriate response. She wasn’t interested and she didn’t wait. She looked at her watch.

  “You have a little time before you meet with Mrs. Randolph. Why don’t you change and wash up? Get into something comfortable for the exercises.”

  “Exercises?”

  “Of course, Michael. Honestly, sometimes you do act like a farmer. Oh, and don’t say anything to Lillian about the party. We want it to be a surprise.”

  “Who’s we?” I said, but she had already turned to go back into the kitchen. I stood there staring at the doorway, listening to her work in the kitchen.

  These weren’t Miriam’s words, I thought. These weren’t Miriam’s ways. She wasn’t improving; she was changing and she wasn’t changing back either. This wasn’t the Miriam I knew before Lillian’s death. This woman was a stranger.

  I put all the birthday party things on the dining room table and walked upstairs. Mrs. Randolph’s door was closed, as I expected it would be. I paused there for a moment, envisioning what she was doing behind it. I knew something about meditation, having studied about Far Eastern religions in school and read about the new transcendental groups. There was a big one in South Fallsburg that had bought out one of the older resorts and turned it into an ashram. They chose it because it was well secluded for their religious meditation.

  What I didn’t know was that the medical community, Mrs. Randolph embodying a certain segment of it, had embraced meditation as a method of treating the mentally disturbed. Later, she would tell me it served as a tranquilizer with none of the side effects drugs often have. I wasn’t critical of it; I was just surprised.

  I looked at my watch. It was just five fifteen. I did have a half an hour before our so-called appointment. The time she had given me had become something official. It made her seem more professional, more important. It turned a mere bedroom into an office. What would I find next: Mrs. Greenstreet sitting at the dresser taking notes? I shook my head. I’d have to wait. What else was there for me to do but what Miriam told me to do? I would shower and change.

  I began undressing when suddenly I remembered what Miriam had said downstairs about her clothing. How could she get so mixed up about it? I wondered. Out of curiosity, but also out of what had become an inexplainable fear, I went to her closet. When I opened the door, I found a whole row of different garments. It consisted of most of her old clothing. She hadn’t thought they were even worth giving away because “no one would wear things so out of style.’’ I pulled some of the clothing toward me. All had been ironed and pressed. It was eerie. I stood there for a moment feeling as though I had been thrown back through time, feeling as though nothing had really happened since these garments were in the closet. When I walked out of this room, the world would be as it was ten years ago. I thought about my own clothing.

  “No,” I said, “they couldn’t have.”


  I went to my closet quickly and was relieved to find that nothing had been changed. Still, an explanation was in order; I would demand one. I rushed to shower and then put on a light short-sleeve shirt and a pair of old slacks. I decided to put on a pair of old sneakers, too. I would try to appear as “laid back” as most of those people who came up to the Catskill meditation sites and walked along the country roads as if they were in a trance.

  It was five forty. I looked at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was, despite my determination not to be intimidated. My hair was brushed, but I had missed a few spots shaving this morning, and my teeth weren’t as white as I would have liked them to be. I wasn’t as worried about my appearance the night she arrived. What was going on in my head?

  I looked at my watch again. It was five forty-three. I would be as prompt and as correct as a nurse taking the pulse of a critically ill patient. Maybe I was overdoing it, but I went to her door at five forty-four and stood there with my wrist up, watching my second hand go around on the watch.

  When it hit the twelve, I knocked.

  7

  * * *

  DRAPED IN A BRIGHT BLUE DASHIKI, MRS. RANDOLPH opened the door. The loosely fitting garment hung nearly to the floor. Falling from her shoulders, it ballooned around her, making her look immense, formidable. I was not prepared to find her in what was usually a man’s tribal robe. I saw her breasts move against the material and then disappear within its folds. Her arms hung out of the dark, cavernous sleeves. I felt like reaching in to find her body. She hovered before me like a blue, imposing spirit who had just appeared.

  In contrast, I was small, flimsy, even fragile. I was afraid to step forward, afraid she would envelop me and smother me in the hills and valleys of her puffed up body. Her white uniform of authority had been replaced by a large, blue physical presence that in some ways was even more overpowering.

  Her face radiated with the energy and force. The blue was in her eyes and her skin. She was unmovable, demanding. I wanted to back away and meet her at another time, another place. I searched frantically for the right words of escape, but I could not speak or move. I could only wait for her to command me. She did it with a gesture, stepped back, and waited for me to enter her room. I took a deep breath and moved forward. As soon as I did, she closed the door behind me. I had the definite feeling that she had entrapped me.

  I went right to the chair in the right corner and sat down. She brushed her hair back with the palms of her hands and sat on the bed to face me. The dashiki flowed around her, and her naked feet hung just above the floor. Somehow, maybe because the garment covered so much of her, her bare feet and uncovered ankles became erotic and suggestive. She patted some of the dashiki down between her legs and sat up straighter. I pressed myself against the back of the chair. I couldn’t believe how hard my heart was pounding. I wondered if she could tell.

  “Miriam thinks you’re teaching me how ... how to meditate,” I said, forcing a smile. My cheeks felt as stiff as they did when they were sunburnt; the corners of my mouth moved reluctantly, like soft plastic about to crack. She didn’t change her expression: an unemotional, thoughtful gaze that caused me to squirm and cross my legs.

  “That wouldn’t be so bad for you. You don’t realize how high-strung and nervous you are. I’m sure it’s a result of all that has happened and is happening; but nevertheless, it’s true.”

  It was as if an oracle had spoken. Her tone was condescending, mechanical.

  “Maybe when it’s over, I’ll go to a doctor,” I said and smirked. She was undaunted.

  “To begin with, I think we have to do away with this idea of it ever being ‘all over.’ It’s not like curing the measles or chicken pox. You can’t expect things to return to exactly the way they were before.”

  “I realize that. I meant when your stay here is no longer necessary.” I could be exacting too, if I had to be. Obviously, with someone like her, I had to be.

  She continued to stare at me and then nodded. She slid herself back some on the bed so that she could rest herself against the headboard. The dashiki tightened around her and her breasts became fully outlined, the nipples pressing upward to create two pointed caps. When she moved her arms, there was a distinct rippling across her bosom as her breasts carried the vibrations. The dashiki moved up her ankles and revealed more of her legs. She folded her hands on her lap, and I pressed my upper teeth gently against my lower lip. My mouth was filling with saliva, creating a salty warmth.

  “Well,” she said, “on the phone you spoke about the need for answers.”

  “Yes. I am confused about some of the things that are going on here, about the way you ... we, are catering to Miriam’s ... illusions. I mean, I imagine you are in close contact with Dr. Turner, but—”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Well, you didn’t check anything with him today. I know,” I said quickly, aggressively. “I called his office myself and he’s gone.” Her eyes became smaller immediately and a whiteness appeared around her mouth as she drew her lips in.

  “I was going to tell you that, myself, Mr. Oberman. Dr. Turner’s brother has suffered a serious heart attack. But I suppose since you called his office you know all about that.”

  “I don’t really know all about it,” I said looking away. I felt somewhat embarrassed by my obvious attempt to trap her in a lie. “His receptionist, Mrs. Greenstreet, is not exactly the most talkative and friendly person I’ve spoken to.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” she said. I realized she had been checking with Dr. Turner, which probably meant he sanctioned most of what she was doing. I was confused and annoyed, but I was determined to press on for some satisfaction.

  “All right,” I said, taking great pains to keep my voice controlled. I was afraid I would stutter or my vowels would shake. “I don’t understand why we are supporting Miriam’s illusion. It seems self-defeating.”

  “We’re not supporting Miriam’s illusion; we’re supporting Miriam. I don’t have to tell you how fragile she is, how close to a total withdrawal from reality. Before I arrived,” she said leaning forward slightly, her eyes wider, warmer, “she was just about gone. You did everything in this house. She sat around knitting and humming and living completely within the soft walls of a dream. It didn’t take me long to analyze what was going on, how you were tiptoeing around her, afraid to touch her. I’ve seen it before. She was floating around this house in a fog and you were simply sustaining it. It would go on until one of you broke down completely. That’s right,” she added quickly and pointed at me for emphasis. I suppose I had a look of skepticism. “You were in danger as well. I know. Don’t think you are somehow immune because it is Miriam who suffers so openly. You suffer, too, but you contain it and try to bury it in work and in support of her. Isn’t that so?”

  “Yes,” I said. It was more of a whisper. She was overwhelming. I felt as though I were being tossed about the room, waved through the air like a streamer. To think I had come here to challenge her, to make demands. In a moment she had torn me open. I felt exposed, helpless, as she continued her pursuit.

  “And what is Miriam like now?” she asked, sitting back, her arms folded across her breasts. “She’s up and about. She’s working in the house; she’s off drugs completely. In short, she’s returning to some semblance of reality, becoming an active, contributing individual again. Isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But we’ve continued her illusion and, as you say, supported it.” She smirked in disdain.

  “Isn’t that true?” I asked. I was beginning to wonder myself. Did all that I thought happened these past few days happen, or was I caught up in some weird nightmare? Mrs. Randolph spoke with such confidence and self-assurance that she made me doubt my own eyes and ears.

  “Yes and no. If I had contradicted her from the start, she would have simply turned me off, shut me out. My effectiveness would have been negligible. There would have been no point to my b
eing here. But because I have humored her with a certain sincerity, she has permitted me to enter her world. The greater grasp I have on that world, the greater are my chances of changing it. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, but not with confidence.

  “Look,” she said sitting up straight and away from the headboard, “if Miriam were institutionalized and believed Lillian were there with her in the same room, do you think her doctors and nurses would insist it wasn’t so and force her to see that no one else was in that room?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well then?”

  “But some of the things seem a bit too much. I mean, a birthday party—”

  “We won’t actually have it.”

  “Why did we start with it? It’s bizarre.”

  “She wanted it. Did you want me to say, ‘Your daughter’s dead; what’s the point?’ ”

  “Miriam said you suggested it. That it would be good therapy for Lillian.”

  “That’s part of her mental defense mechanism at work. She’s using me now, don’t you see? If she has me endorse something, you’re sure to go along with it.”

  “You make it sound as though she’s conniving, actually thinking and planning things out.”

  “Don’t underestimate her intelligence just because she is going through a mental aberration. Many people confuse a lack of intelligence with mental illness. One has nothing to do with another. In fact, an intelligent person who becomes psychotic can be quite a challenge for doctors and nurses.”

  “What’s the end result? I mean, how do we come to some conclusion?”

  She hesitated before answering.

  “We end with the reliving of the tragedy.”

  “How so?” I pressed my back against the chair and straightened up. Her dramatic pause had started my heart beating fast again.

  “One night,” she said, her eyes in a glaze as though she could see into the future, “the accident must happen again.”