Tender Loving Care

by Andrew Neiderman

  “That’s fine.”

  I walked past her and into the office. I didn’t hesitate even though there was something sacrosanct about his desk and his chair. The books, the papers, the tape recorder, all of his paraphernalia, were the icons of the new religion: psychoanalysis. But I felt betrayed by it all, and I was determined to strike back. I dialed Mrs. Randolph’s agency to speak to the man who signed the cover letter on her. Fortunately, he had just come into his office. His secretary put me on hold, and I sat in Dr. Turner’s chair. The feel of the soft leather imbued me with a sense of confidence. I could do this, I thought; I could be as strong and as professional as any doctor.

  When the man got on the phone, I introduced myself. He knew our case immediately, so I could go right to describing some of the terrible things Mrs. Randolph had done. In the beginning he sounded incredulous, but as I went on and on, that reaction changed. I told him I wanted her out of my house immediately. I explained about Dr. Turner’s absence and my need to speak to him directly. He listened, he apologized, and he promised to take quick action.

  I gave him my phone number so he could call Mrs. Randolph directly and order her to leave my house. He said he would do it. I told him I would mail him the check for the amount we owed to date, and he became even more cooperative. I had no reason to believe he wouldn’t do the things I asked him to do, but just to be sure, I went back out to Mrs. Greenstreet and had her call him to confirm that I was in the doctor’s office and that I was upset. She did so in her usual detached and efficient manner. After she hung up, I returned the file.

  “Now that it’s over, I can apologize to you,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I had to do things this way. Afterward, when Dr. Turner learns about everything, you’ll understand why I was so demanding.”

  “For your sake and for your poor wife’s sake, I hope you’re right,” she said. That woman wouldn’t give a crumb to her starving grandmother, I thought.

  But I was satisfied. I had come down to Dr. Turner’s office to demand action of him. That being impossible, I did the next best thing: I took action myself. I was feeling rather proud of myself as I left that office. I thought I had finally fought back the way a man should fight back. Mrs. Randolph would be defeated. She would have to leave my house and answer to her superiors. After Dr. Turner returned and discovered all of the terrible things she had done and how she had botched up poor Miriam, he would add to the furor. Maybe the agency would cut her from their rolls. Maybe she would be brought up on some charges.

  I expected that by the time I reached home it would be over. She would be packed and a taxi would have been ordered. I would say nothing to her. Miriam would be upset, of course, but once Mrs. Randolph left the house, I would take things back into control and make her understand why it was for the best. Afterward, we’d start anew and treat her in a sensible and medically correct manner. I was sure of it.

  When I got back into my car, I intended to go straight home. But along the way, I thought about the old music, Lillian’s big doll, and the tinkle of her chimes in the darkness. I thought about what had been done to my daughter’s memory, and I felt terribly sad and alone. The ultimate conclusion was that Miriam was still sick and Lillian was still gone. Mrs. Randolph had distorted all of it, but she hadn’t changed any of it. I decided to do something I hadn’t done for months. I turned off the main highway and headed up to the cemetery to visit Lillian’s grave.

  13

  * * *

  LILLIAN’S GRAVE WAS IN THE SAME CEMETERY AS MY mother’s and father’s. My father had always been very practical about such things. He purchased the equivalent of ten plots. I never took any interest in it and I ignored it, but when the need came up, I was grateful that he had done it. I think he did it more for my mother’s sake than anything else. It was very important to her that everyone be together. “You can’t hold hands six feet under,” he once said, but she chastised him so badly for that sacrilege that he never mentioned anything about it again.

  The cemetery belonged to the old Mountaindale synagogue. My father wasn’t much of a member, but he made significant contributions, and he was sure to attend services on the High Holy Days. Because of his farm work, he was rarely called upon to help fill out a minyan, the ten men needed to conduct services of any kind. He did go up to the cemetery a number of times to clear off the unused portion with his tractor-mower. I can remember going with him only once. I didn’t like riding on the tractor, and I had a terrible fear of the mower. My mother once told me about a little boy who was hiding in the tall grass. His father unknowingly cut him in half, she said. I think it was a story designed to keep me out of my father’s way, but nevertheless it had a tremendous impact.

  The founders of the synagogue couldn’t have chosen a more beautiful spot for their cemetery. It was off a side road about two miles from the hamlet of Mountaindale. They located it at the top of a hill. Standing at the gate of the cemetery, I could see well off across the Shwangunk Mountain range. The blue ridges went on endlessly to the horizon. Some people claimed that on a very clear day they could see northwest into Pennsylvania. There was a forest of cool pine trees behind the cemetery and clear, but overgrown fields below it.

  I stopped at the foot of the hill. There was a clearing used for parking there, and it was just a short walk up the gravel road to the cemetery itself. The morning dew hadn’t yet dried so the tall grass still had a sheen in the sunlight. All of the leaves were at their peak rich green. The quiet setting, the gradually warming air, the clean, fresh odors, all contributed toward a calming of my spirit. For the moment at least, the turmoil was behind me, left within the hubbub of traffic, telephones, and concrete. Here in the sanctity of Nature, I could kneel beside Lillian’s tombstone and truly communicate with her. There would be none of the nurse’s insanity; there would be only the merging of our spirits. I would sense her and she would sense me.

  I passed through the gate and gazed at familiar names. The cemetery was well manicured, the gravesites trim. Many tombstones were topped by small rocks indicating the number of visitations by relatives and loved ones. The sight of that made me feel somewhat guilty about my infrequent visits. I turned down the path that led to our family’s section. My gaze was on the ground before me; I had a mind cleared of thoughts. As I drew closer, however, I began to tremble because my sorrow was awakening.

  I saw my mother and father’s stone first. They shared a large one and had separate footstones delineating their dates of death and Jewish names. Then I looked to Lillian’s stone, a smaller stone, and stopped dead in my tracks.

  There, draped over the small monument, was a white cloth hiding Lillian’s name and dates. The cloth, in the form of a large sock, covered all the information and made the stone look blank. The sight of it put me into such a shock that I could barely move. It took a few moments for me to realize what Mrs. Randolph had done.

  She had come up here one day when I was at work, probably, and covered the monument. She had done it either to torment me further or to continue the illusion that Lillian was not dead. Maybe she thought I would bring Miriam up here eventually to reinforce the reality of Lillian’s passing. I knew she did it, and I knew I could confirm it by checking with the taxi cab companies to find out which one had brought her here.

  When the initial surprise ended, I charged forward in a rage and pulled the material off the stone. I crushed it into a ball in my hands and then stomped on it. Screaming, I kicked it and kicked it until it was smeared with dirt then flung it away. I stroked the stone soothingly, muttering softly to Lillian. In my mind the nurse had terrorized her even in death. I imagined that the stone was a link with the world of light, that the dead had contact with the living through it, and that the nurse had blinded my Lillian and left her in total darkness when she put that sheet over the stone.

  I spoke to Lillian the same way I had when she suffered a nightmare. I imagined her crying, her little tears streaming down her cheeks. I felt her tiny hands clasp my neck and
her face press against mine. I kissed her eyes and her hair and filled her with strength and happiness again. I told her I would be here more often now and I would never leave her alone so long again. I told her that the bad woman who had done this terrible thing was soon to be gone forever.

  I felt the fear and unhappiness leave her. She was calm again and able to sleep comfortably. For a while I simply lay there over her grave, my head against the stone. When I sensed her slipping away, back to her place of rest, I stood up. I looked over at the damn sheet again and cursed. Then I kissed the stone and headed back down the path. I was very eager to get back to the house and be sure that Mrs. Randolph was leaving. I was determined to throw her out physically if I had to. Nothing else crossed my mind all the way home.

  As I pulled into the driveway, I thought the house was deceptively peaceful looking. But when I parked the car, I noticed that the window of Lillian’s room was closed and the curtains drawn tightly the way they were before Mrs. Randolph came. For a moment I wondered if the taxi had already come and Mrs. Randolph had left. Inwardly, I hoped that was so. Despite my anger and desire to tell her what I really thought of her, I would rather there were no major confrontation.

  The moment I entered the house, I knew she was still there. Her suitcases were at the foot of the stairway. I closed the door and Miriam came from the kitchen quickly.

  “Oh, Michael,” she said, “Michael. Something terrible has happened. You’ve got to do something. Mrs. Randolph’s agency called and told her to return. She has to leave right away.’’

  “Where is she?”

  “Up in her room. Lillian will be heartbroken.”

  “No, Miriam, she won’t,” I said looking at her as intensely as I could. She paid no attention to me.

  “Please, Michael, call Dr. Turner. He can do something about it, I’m sure.”

  “Dr. Turner’s not here. His brother died last night. He won’t be back for a few days.”

  “Oh no, Michael. What will we do?”

  “We’ll get along without her, dear, just as we did before.”

  “But Lillian ...”

  “Lillian will be all right.”

  “Oh, Michael.” She began to cry. I embraced her and kissed her softly as I led her to the living room.

  “Just rest for a few minutes, dear. I’m going upstairs to have a few final words with Mrs. Randolph. Did she call herself a cab?”

  “Not yet. I told her to wait until you returned. Where were you?” she asked sitting down. “Why weren’t you here when that agency man called? You could have said something.”

  “I had to get some things in town.”

  She considered me for the first time since I came in. “You look terrible.”

  “I slept in these clothes, Miriam. Don’t you remember what happened last night?”

  “Lillian was terribly afraid. I remember that. I had to let her sleep with me.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Mrs. Randolph said it was OK.”

  “I’d expect that. I’ll be right back,” I said. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “Please, Michael, do something.”

  I nodded and left her sitting there. To keep myself strong as I walked up those steps, I concentrated on all the terrible things the nurse had done to us during her stay here. I thought about the way she had gained control of us, ordering me about by using Miriam and our love for Lillian. I thought about the stupidity of hooking up that television set and getting that dog. I remembered the horror I felt when I first saw the wheelchair. I recalled the night she pretended to be Lillian in Lillian’s room and how I had pleaded with her to end it. I realized how close to madness I had come because of the eerie and ghastly things she had done with the doll and the wheelchair.

  And then I thought about sex and how she had used it as a weapon to defeat and manipulate me. She used our weaknesses against us, escalating her attacks on us every day until she thought she had us completely within her control. Thank God I had realized it all in time and taken action, I thought. Thank God it was all going to end.

  When I reached the top of the stairway, I started toward her room. But out of the corner of my eye, I caught her standing to my right. I spun around and confronted her in Lillian’s doorway. She was still dressed in her immaculate nurse’s uniform, and she was smiling. Her look of confidence and calm caused me to pause. I had hoped that after she had been chastised by the agency director and ordered out of my house she would look more humble and defeated. I expected her to be angry, but not strong.

  “Looking for me, Michael?” she asked.

  “I was hoping you would be gone by the time I returned.”

  “I bet you were.”

  “I just came from the cemetery,” I said. I paused to see if that would bring a reaction in her, but she didn’t change expression. “They don’t know how sick you are. They don’t know the half of it, but they will. I promise you that.”

  “I wonder who really is the sick one here.”

  “I don’t want to discuss it. I just want you to leave this house like you’re supposed to.”

  “I’ll leave, but not before Miriam learns the truth about you and what you’ve done to her.”

  “What are you talking about now? What truth?”

  “The truth about this childlike, half-catatonic state you’ve kept her in all this time. I was planning to bring her out of it my way, slowly and carefully, but you’ve ruined that. Somehow,” she said nodding, “I knew you would. So now, I’m going to have to do it abruptly. I owe it to her, you see,” she added, smiling wider. “I can’t leave her here with a madman and just walk out and forget about her.”

  “Don’t you go near her anymore. You’ve done enough damage.”

  “I don’t think I was the one who did the damage. Let’s go back to the accident. She has to remember it in detail now, and the one detail she has to be made to recall was that Lillian’s head went smashing into that windshield. She was killed instantly, and there is no longer any time to pretend anything else.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh yes, thanks to you. And now you might wonder how I am going to bring this reality home to her. How can I convince her of something in a few moments when her mind has spent months refusing to admit it?”

  She paused. Her eyes widened with excitement, and she clasped her hands and then rubbed the palms against each other as she went on.

  “Here’s where I’ve been brilliant,” she said, “not that you would ever appreciate me. How carefully I’ve been drawing her deeper and deeper into her own illusion, using it to direct her this way and that.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Yes, but what you don’t know is I have always had things planned out, mapped to perfection. Take the wheelchair, for example, that was an ingenious stroke. Because of it, I could get Lillian out of this confining room. I could strengthen Miriam’s link with her fantasy and make Lillian do real things. We took her on walks. That’s where the doll came into it. One of your friends almost ruined that when his wife rode by and saw us, but you were so gullible, so easy to fool. I couldn’t trust you with the truth. You wouldn’t have understood. But it was a brilliant touch, wasn’t it? It was, after all, something Miriam associated closely with Lillian. Her doll, a doll you purchased because it reminded you of her. What irony!” She laughed.

  “You’re despicable. I might just go to the police and press charges against you.”

  “For what? Come on now, we both know that what I did would have helped Miriam if you would have stayed out of it. You were never really interested in helping her.”

  I thought I would strike her. My fists were clenched, and my teeth were pressed hard against each other. She kept up that self-satisfied smile and stood there in Lillian’s doorway.

  “But back to the problem,” she said. “How am I going to get Miriam to face up to the fact that Lillian is dead? Simple. I’m going to kill the doll. She’s transformed Lillia
n into the doll. She even slept with it last night.”

  “What do you mean, kill the doll?”

  “Well, how did Lillian die, Michael? Where was the fatal blow? Now you’re speechless?” The smile left her face. She stepped to the side to permit me to look into Lillian’s room.

  If there was any doubt in my mind that she was a vicious human being, that doubt was immediately wiped away. She had placed Baby Walk-Along on Lillian’s bed and dressed it in clothing similar to the clothing Lillian wore on the day of the accident. I was amazed at her attention to detail and how much information she had drawn from Miriam. She must have spent hours talking to her, making mental notes, and making Miriam relive minutiae.

  I took a few steps to the doorway, drawn by a morbid curiosity to see what she had done with that doll. When it came fully into view, I gasped. She had smashed in the doll’s forehead and smeared the head and face with red liquid that looked like blood. It was so realistic that for a few moments I was thrown back to the accident. I had to bring my hands to my face.

  “It’s good, isn’t it?” she said, that insane tone of pride in her voice. “It’ll work. I tapped it once with this sledgehammer of yours I found in the basement,” she added pointing to the tool against the wall just inside the door. “It’s important to be realistic,” she said in a maddeningly happy sounding voice. “And now, it’s time for me to do what I was sent here to do—cure Miriam.”

  “No,” I said, barely louder than a whisper.

  “Miriam,’’ she shouted.

  “No, don’t do this. It’s not curing her; it’s killing her.”

  “You should have thought of that before you interfered with me. Miriam.”

  “No, don’t—”

  “Are you calling me, Mrs. Randolph?”

  Miriam was at the foot of the stairs. I began to panic. I stepped out with the intention of telling her to go away, to go back into the living room, but the nurse went to Lillian’s bed and lifted the doll into her arms. She held it like one might hold a dead little girl. She pressed it to her body. The dye smeared the front of her uniform and the doll’s arms dangled freely. I moved back toward her.