Evening of the Good Samaritan (6 page)

He was saying: “… And this fellow is so puffed up with his own importance—an importance that doesn’t mean anything to him unless he can make sure other people see it—that he goes around like a peacock exploding his tail.”

Elizabeth Fitzgerald said, “Exploding his tail; that’s an extraordinary image, Alexander.”

“Damn near good, isn’t it? Where was I?”

“Exploding a tale,” she said.

“Elizabeth, for heaven’s sake,” Fitzgerald said.

“Exactly,” Winthrop said. “You never get him on the phone that he isn’t talking to somebody else at the same time. He’ll get me on the wire for some damn fool thing. It won’t make sense to me. Then all of a sudden I’ll realize he’s got somebody sitting next to him he wants to impress with his own importance. That’s taking advantage, let me tell you.”

“There are people like that,” Fitzgerald said. “May I cut you another slice of beef, Alex?”

“Thank you, Walter,” he said expansively. He even winked at Martha when their eyes met.

Having been in her father’s study when Dr. Winthrop returned his call the day before, she knew very well he was talking now about her father and to her father. But before her father would understand—or maybe it was just before he would admit understanding, for she could remember the cold sweat on his forehead and it was glistening again now—Dr. Winthrop would have had to name the subject of the call, Marcus Hogan. She looked down at her plate and loathed the man opposite her as never before. A cat got that kind of satisfaction out of pawing a wounded mouse.

She glanced then at her mother and caught there a truly withering stare in Dr. Winthrop’s direction. Martha had never loved her mother more. Dr. Winthrop caught the look of wrath then, too, for he said, speaking to no one in particular, “He’s out in California now, this fellow I was talking about, by the way.”

“A good place for him,” Fitzgerald said. “California’s the land of fourflushers. Let me have your plate, Alex.”

Afterwards, when Martha was packing and her mother brought up her freshly laundered blouses, Martha said, “I don’t like Dr. Winthrop much, do you, mother?”

“He’s one of your father’s closest friends.”

“I don’t think he’s a friend of papa’s at all. I think he’s making fun of him all the time.”

Her mother looked at her a moment across the white counterpane. Then she said, “You haven’t lost your gold cufflinks, have you?”

“I can’t wear them. Do you like him, mother?”

“I don’t see that it matters at all. Why can’t you wear them, Martha?”

“Mother Josepha says they’re too ostentatious.”

“How extraordinary!”

“You don’t like him, do you?”

Her mother lifted her chin ever so slightly. “On the contrary, I like him very much.”

Martha pushed her clothes into the suitcase; what odds if they were wrinkled? The only important thing was to get out of the house, even if it meant the long drive with Dr. Winthrop. Her mother had lied to her, a deliberate, calculated lie. And worse, she must know that Martha knew it was a lie.

“I suppose I could get you a pair of mother-of-pearl links—such as your father has for his dress shirt. Could you wear them?”

“That would be fine, mother.”

“I’ve never thought gold especially ostentatious, except possibly in teeth.”

Martha did not even look at her. She closed the suitcase and took it from the rack. If it were not a lie, she thought, it would be even more terrible.

Dr. Winthrop was waiting at the foot of the stairs. Reaching him, she gave her suitcase into his hand and watched him pass it along to the chauffeur. She wished she could ride up front with Michaelson. He had been a coachman before automobiles were popular, and he loved to talk about horses.

But on the drive north, Dr. Winthrop brought up the subject of Marcus Hogan. “I suppose you’ve met the young man your father’s taken a shine to?”

“Dr. Hogan? Yes, I met him.”

“Were you favorably impressed?”

“It was a casual meeting, but I thought he was very nice.”

“Not arrogant?”

“More aloof, I’d say.”

“Whatever that means.”

“Reserved.”

“Ah-ha. That’s a woman’s distinction for a man who doesn’t make love to her on first acquaintance.”

Martha did not say anything. This was typical of the things Dr. Winthrop said to her when they were alone. She was aware of being watched out of the corner of his eye.

“A good looking fellow, would you say?”

“I think so.”

“I’d take your opinion for gospel any day.” He reached over and took her hand in his, lifting it from her lap to the seat between them. “What does your mother think of him?”

“I don’t think she has met him.”

“You don’t think?—Didn’t you even talk about him together? I thought that was what women talked about all the time—men.”

Martha said nothing.

Winthrop added, “She thinks his father’s a handsome old coot.”

Martha doubted her mother had ever used those words in her life. She withdrew her hand on the pretense of having to blow her nose.

Dr. Winthrop said, “I suppose every father doing a young man a good turn is looking to the future of his own daughter.”

“I’m sure papa didn’t have that in mind,” Martha said.

“The bigger fool he, then.”

“My father is not a fool, Dr. Winthrop.”

Winthrop moved again to better look at her. “You’re every bit as pretty as your mother.”

“My mother is beautiful,” Martha said, intending it as contradiction. ‘Pretty’ seemed such an insipid word.

Dr. Winthrop gave a brief, impatient shake of his jowl. “Your mother is beautiful and your father’s a wise man. You’re the luckiest girl in America.”

“I think so.” Martha knew her retort to be rude, but she did not care.

“Well, you’re right on half the count anyway.”

Martha, contemplating his meaning and sensing the contempt in it, felt the sudden sting of anger. “I love my father very much, Dr. Winthrop.”

“And don’t you think I do? How else could we put up with his vanities and inanities?”

She looked directly into his eyes. “I don’t like you.”

He gave a short laugh, a sound more of surprise than of mirth. “You’ve got courage, girl. I’ll say that for you. You’re your mother’s daughter.”

“And my father’s.”

“Oh, yes. Perversity’s child out of patience.”

Anger quicker than any other emotion brought Martha to tears. She could not hold them back, but she muffled the sound of them for some time. At the first sniffle, Dr. Winthrop began to fuss, making all sorts of horrible noises meant to soothe her. “Dear girl, I was only teasing you. I always tease you, I’m afraid.”

He put his hand on her thigh and gently patted it, quite truly forgetting himself. Martha plucked his hand up and flung it off like something alive. “If you touch me again …” she said, and caught her breath. She had no words with which to finish such a thought.

Winthrop was upset with himself, but retreat or apology was impossible. “What will you do? Tell your father?”

Martha said, “God damn you.”

“Well, well,” he said, feeling relieved—almost justified—“I’ve heard a lot of things to recommend a convent education, but this is just about the best one of all. Yes, indeed.” He maneuvered himself forward in the seat and tapped on the window separating them from the chauffeur.

Michaelson slid open the panel and said over his shoulder, “Yes, doctor?”

“You will stop at the next North Shore station, Woodland Park, is it? Miss Fitzgerald wishes to take the train from there.” He sat back. “Yes, indeed, the best one of all.”

Martha interlaced her fingers and closed her lips tightly lest she say the word. The closer they came to the station, the surer he was, she thought, that she would apologize.

Finally he said, “You’ll have to explain to the sisters …”

She said nothing. Nor would there be any need for explanation. She would not be late.

Then as they parked at the station and the chauffeur took her case, Winthrop said, “Your father will not thank you for your heroics, Martha.”

She stepped out of the car and then turned round and said to him, “I’m sorry if I offended you, Dr. Winthrop.” But she took her suitcase from the chauffeur and went quickly into the station.

D
R. HOGAN SCOWLED, TAKING
the infant’s hand in his and separating the fingers so that he might draw enough blood from one of them to put under the microscope. He saturated the cotton and wiped the finger clean. The smell of alcohol in its purest form had a great deal to recommend it, for his office was heavy with the smell of humanity in a far from pure condition. The scowl was intended to concentrate the attention of the parents on their sick child; they tended, once in his office, to give the child over to his concern so that they could devote themselves to the abuse of one another. He hoped to get them out without having to share in their family recriminations. He had neither the energy for it, nor, he sometimes feared, the love.

“Now, young fellow, this is going to hurt you more than it does me. That’s because I know it’s for your own good.” To the mother he said, “We’ll hear from him now.”

“Oh, doctor, if only he’ll squeal, it’ll be music to my ears.”

It was a hoarse rasp, the baby’s sound of protest.

Marcus quickly drew his specimen into the pipette. He was his own nurse and technician. “Brave lad,” he said.

“Sure, what can you tell from that? Take some blood, man,” the father said.

“Don’t be telling the doctor what to do, Donel. The child needs all the blood he’s got, poor thing.”

“He’s an O’Shaughnessy, damn it! Full-blooded, every man child of the clan!”

Marcus grinned and stored his specimen. If he had taken a milliliter more, O’Shaughnessy would have passed out at the sight of it. “Wrap him up well, but not until you’re ready to go out. I’m going to write a prescription for you.”

O’Shaughnessy, following him to his desk, watched him, frowning more deeply at every symbol. “Is it expensive, that medicine, doctor?”

“Not very.”

“What you’d think was cheap ’ud bankrupt the likes of us, sure.”

“I’ll give you a requisition on the clinic pharmacy,” Marcus said.

Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, a pale, undernourished woman who was somehow nourishing—at Marcus’s last count—six children, said, “Oh, I don’t think you’ll need to do that, doctor. I’ll manage, Donel.”

“She has the devil’s own fear of charity, doctor, and getting it all her life without knowing it.”

“It isn’t the charity offends me. It’s them social workers—you’d think it was coming out of their own pockets.”

“I don’t think a bottle of cough medicine will bring them down on you,” Marcus said.

“But he’s working now, doctor.”

“Working? Oh, I’m working, true enough, but you’d never know it from what they pay a man—ninety-six dollars a month.”

“He’s on the W.P.A.”

“Good,” Marcus said.

“Ninety-six dollars a month,” O’Shaughnessy repeated. “And you know what it says on the check? It says: ‘The Treasury of the United States,’ it says. Wouldn’t you think they’d be ashamed to write a check the size of that on the Treasury of the United States?”

Marcus laughed and gave the prescription and requisition to the mother. “Bring the child to the clinic next Monday unless the fever kicks up again. In which case, you’d better call me.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

He went to the outer door with them. They had come a long way by streetcar—from the West Side downtown and to the South Side—to offer a child into his care that might die without ever saying a word to prove he had speech, or who might live to become, by grace of his oratory, mayor of Traders City. The near West Side was notorious for those extremes. They had come to him because, he supposed, of a momentary meeting of his eyes with the mother’s over a child at the clinic: she had seen there something she must have taken for compassion. He had meant it for no more than reassurance. But people take what they must have to live.

“Will we pay you now, doctor?” Mrs. O’Shaughnessy said.

“Don’t be insulting the man,” her husband said. “He’s not like the quacks in our neighborhood, setting up to bleed the poor in more ways than one. Economic royalists—of an international complexion—if you know what I mean.” O’Shaughnessy began to warm to his own rhetoric. “They’re the first to vote for the spending of millions, but the last to pay their own taxes. I’ve a book I’d highly recommend you read, doctor. It’ll open your eyes to what’s going on in the country today. I’ll bring a copy along to you the next time. Well, good day to you.”

“That will be two dollars,” Marcus said quietly.

“Eh?”

“You heard the man and he’s right. If you’ve money to be sending away for books, you’ve the money to pay him his fee.”

“Two dollars,” O’Shaughnessy said, subdued. “And seven cents each, both ways, it’ll cost us twenty-eight cents carfare besides.”

“You could have gone to one of the quacks in the neighborhood and saved the carfare,” Marcus said evenly.

O’Shaughnessy took several folded bills from his pocket and separated two of them from their sparse companions. Marcus’s sarcasm was quite lost on him. “I’d rather pay twice the amount to an Irishman.” He handed Marcus the money with a flourish. “God bless you, Doctor Hogan.” He slapped his hat on his head and walked proudly out of the office in front of his wife who followed after him, carrying the baby.

Marcus swore softly, locked the office door and returned to his desk long enough to put the two dollars into a tin box, and to enter the amount in his cash book. He scanned the week’s entries, totaling them almost simultaneously.

“By God,” he said aloud to himself, “this week I made more than O’Shaughnessy.” His good humor restored, he picked up the phone and called Dr. Winthrop’s secretary for an appointment.

T
HE OFFICE OF THE
Health Commissioner of Traders City was in the basement of City Hall, and it was scarcely more elegant in
decor
than the furnace room, the door to which was only a few yards away. The hickory benches and tables, at which were filled out complaints, petitions and justifications—those on the level not to be settled across a luncheon table, that is—were yellowed with age and pocked with marks of indelible lead. The only decoration on the pale green wall was a large calendar provided by a purveyor of ice, lumber and coal. One would not have been likely, appraising the office, to suppose that the man who ran it owned an art collection recently estimated to be worth six hundred thousand dollars. Winthrop himself was more at ease in the office than in the midst of his art collection, if truth be told. He loved politics and where better could a man keep his ear to the ground than in the basement of City Hall?