Medicine Men (6 page)

He whispered, “I love you a lot.”

“I love you too. Don’t die in an accident. It wouldn’t be worth it.”

But he had, and though he had wanted out, insisted on their separation, he either forgot or neglected to change the insurance. And later that silly, smart-ass, heartfelt conversation played and replayed in Molly’s battered brain.

And she was rich.

“He wrote me such a nice note that I had to give him your phone number.”

Felicia spoke that on-the-surface illogical remark to Molly a few days after her party. Knowing Felicia, Molly saw what she meant: the nice gesture of David Jacobs’ thank-you note had made it harder than usual, even, for her to say no, and so she had given him Molly’s phone number, presumably asked for in the note.

But Molly told her, “I wasn’t exactly attracted to him.”

“You don’t like bald?”

“It’s not bald so much as those teeth. But actually it’s not his looks at all. Something else about him, I don’t know. I don’t think I’m very receptive now. Yet.”

“You’re really not. I think he’s sort of cute.”

“Oh Felicia. You and doctors.”

This conversation, like most between these two friends, took place on the phone. They generally spoke every day; their actual visits were far more rare.

“Oh, I know.” Felicia sighed, but happily, self-approvingly. “You’ll be happy to hear I met this really attractive guy in Seattle. Not a doctor. A professor.”

“But you’ve done that. Professors.”

“But this one’s not even married.”

“I suppose you’ll tell Sandy he’s gay. If he comes around.”

She laughed. “How’d you guess?”

“Felicia, he’ll catch on, and he’ll kill you.”

She laughed again. “I don’t think so. He thinks, Why should I want anyone but wonderful him?”

“That’s what O.J. thought.”

“Oh,
please.
What I need is a new line of work, I think. I’m trying to get more hours at Open Hand.”

Felicia did volunteer cooking and delivery at Open Hand, the organization that takes food to people bedridden with AIDS. Molly asked, “You’d like that? That would make you almost full time.”

“I’d love it. All I’d need would be someone to support me. Anyway, how’s your allergy or whatever?”

“Not so great. When he took me home the other night, your friend Dave Jacobs said I should see an ENT person.”

“You probably should. Ask Macklin. Do you think you’ll go out with Dave, when he calls?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” It was true that Molly didn’t know. She thought she would wait and see how she felt when he called. If he called.

“He takes a little getting used to,” Felicia told her, adding, for no reason, “He was really crazy about his wife.”

“This is Dave Jacobs. Dr. Jacobs, we met the other night—I took you home from Felicia’s party? I was wondering if you were free for dinner on Thursday. There’s a nice place here in Mill Valley, if you don’t mind driving over …”

Having received that message on her machine, Molly called back and got his tape, and said that she was busy on Thursday. She said to Felicia, “And I do mind driving over—it’s too far for someone I don’t even know. And then the drive home.”

•  •  •

The second call came a week or so later, and this time he caught her at home.

“You’d really better see someone about those sinuses,” he said after Molly had said she was busy again, on the night that he suggested.

“I guess I should.”

“You sound terrible. Who’s your internist?”

“Douglas Macklin.”

“Oh, a very good man. Not the best, but very good.”

“Well, even if he’s not the best, I’ll call him.”

Surprising herself—she did not usually follow orders—Molly did call Dr. Macklin, who agreed that she should see someone. She should be seen, is how he put it. He would call a Dr. Beckle, and then she could call Beckle and make an appointment.

Dr. Beckle turned out to be away at a conference for the next two weeks, which seemed very long for a conference; Molly wondered about that. But in the meantime her allergy or whatever seemed in mild remission.

Dave Jacobs called her again, and again she was busy. And that was a fact that they were to argue about, among many other facts and opinions: his having called Molly three times before she could (or would) go out with him. “I’d never call anyone again who turned me down three times,” he swore. “Never. I’ve got too much pride.”

But he had, Molly knew that he had. She remembered remarking to Felicia, “Wouldn’t you know. I’m not at all interested, and so he calls and calls. Sometimes I think men are very predictable.” Making such negative generalizations, Molly always automatically exempted Paul—who indeed would not
have called, not have been turned on by someone who was clearly not turned on by him.

“Especially doctors,” Felicia told her. “Egos like armored trucks. I often wonder which came first, the ego or the doctor.”

“That’s a good question.”

The next call from Dave Jacobs mentioned concert tickets, and then dinner. On a Sunday. Since Paul, Molly had found Sundays the hardest days to get through; also, a concert sounded like a proper date. What the doctor ordered, so to speak. And she was free. She said yes.

She wore a red dress. “You knew red was my favorite color,” he later told her, grinning and pleased.

“No, of course I didn’t.” From the start, almost, Molly was driven to combat with Dave, no matter how frivolous the issue.

Driving to the concert, Dave asked about her health, and she said that it seemed to have improved, but that she had made an appointment with Dr. Beckle, the ENT man.

“
Alfred
Beckle?”

“I think so.”

Dave Jacobs began to laugh—an actual chuckle. “Must be the same one. He got into an interesting malpractice case a few years ago. Some patient who was a homosexual claimed that his throat was ruined. You know, for sex. He wasn’t Deep Throat anymore.”

“Oh, really?” Molly could not bring herself to laugh at this, early training (laugh at men’s jokes) notwithstanding. Nor could she understand, either at the time or later on, just why he had told that story. She guessed that some gay-bashing was intended: those dirty people who do dirty things. But also a more general bashing of patients: crazy people who sue over crazy issues.

The concert, however, was a joy: chamber music, Schubert and Boccherini, Mozart. Dave Jacobs had liked it less. “I only
really go for Bach,” he confessed. “My wife and I used to go down to Carmel every year. The Bach Festival.”

Getting the car out from the parking lot, fumbling with the ticket, getting onto the street and off to the restaurant, parking it there—all that seemed unusually difficult, and when Dave Jacobs said, “You wouldn’t believe how long since I’ve done all this. Martha did most of the driving in town,” Molly again felt a certain sympathy—even as she thought the word “dependent.” Obviously he and his wife had things worked out in some way, as had Molly and Paul, who took cabs to most concerts and walked home. This was in its way Daves “first date” too, as awkward for him as for Molly, and he did seem to be working at it.

“Sunday night a lot of places are closed. I’d forgotten that,” he said, and Molly was touched, as she imagined him calling around. Taking trouble.

His final choice had been unlucky: a bright new on-the-waterfront brasserie-type place, lots of high polish and white linen. Already very popular with very young people. Molly was the oldest young person there, so to speak—and Dave was simply old.

Maybe for that reason, their combined advanced ages, the greeter seemed to take pity on them, seating them in the quietest possible corner window table, with a view of the bay and the new tall palms that lined the Embarcadero.

“How about a nice martini?” Dave asked, and before she could say, No, a glass of white wine, please, he added, “You’re not one of those white-wine-only Yuppies, I hope?”

“Actually, a martini sounds good. Straight up, with a twist.” That was how Molly had drunk martinis with Henry, all those years ago, and it did sound good.

“Good for your health,” the doctor said, with that grin. “Cure your cold, or whatever it is that you’ve got.”

Whatever it was that Molly had was coming back on her in full force, and it occurred to her to wonder if it could be doctors that she was allergic to—a thought that she was to continue to
have for a very long time, in various forms. She felt, then, terrible. Heavy in her head, especially her nose. Heavy everywhere. Exhausted. It was comforting to have a doctor so close at hand, in a way; it would have been much more so if she had liked him more.

And obviously this needs some explanation, the fact that Molly continued to see and eventually to be involved with, to go to bed with, a man whom in many ways she did not like. She castigated herself for that involvement, hating to use illness as an excuse, which sounded so wimpy. But that was certainly a part of it, and more so as she got sicker, and sicker. Also, Dave did come along fairly soon after Paul, and although with the kind strong help of Dr. Shapiro (and maybe some inner strength of which she was occasionally aware), Molly had been getting stronger, oddly enough that made her lonelier. Or maybe just more aware of the lack of human (male) touching in her life. Sometimes she had thought that just a mouth to kiss would do it, or a large male back to hold in the night. Sex was almost secondary, though she surely missed that too, a lot.

And so, although at first she certainly did not want to do any of those things with Dave Jacobs, eventually she did.

Another way to put it would be to say that it is hard to say no to a doctor, when you are sick.

The martinis were very good. “I’d forgotten what a good drink,” Molly told Dave.

“I’ll make you some that are even better.” His grin. “Martha always said I could retire and be a bartender.” From the start, he had this way of quoting the most trite remarks from Martha as though they were gems, which Molly found both touching and boring—finally.

He talked a lot about Martha during that first dinner. About
ways in which he missed her, still. More things that she said. Her cooking. Her sadness that they had not had children. Molly did not get either then or later a sense of what she was like, what kind of woman, really, she had been. She thought it quite possible that Dave did not know either, and eventually she developed quite a few theories of her own about the character of Martha, which she kept mostly to herself. She never told Dave much about Paul, but then he didn’t ask.

“It was actually sleeping together that I missed so much. Next to each other,” Dave said, leaning forward to lower his voice. “Not just sex, although that too. But not having her with me in bed—that was the hardest to get used to. I honestly thought I couldn’t.”

“I felt that way too,” Molly told him. “For a long time I couldn’t sleep. Do you take pills or anything?” A doctor, he might have some great new surefire pill that she hadn’t heard about.

But, “Hell no,” he said. “I play tennis, and run. How about you? You don’t take sleeping pills, do you?”

“Not usually,” she lied. She knew that every night indeed was usually. But she was remembering the night when she found herself pushed over onto her side of the bed, and she realized that she didn’t have to do that. There was no one on the other side to make room for.

“Exercise beats pills or any so-called psychotherapy,” Dave told her, and she did not argue. “For a long time I wished I’d died too,” he said. “I don’t mean I was suicidal, I’m not a depressed person. I just wanted to be dead along with her.”

It seemed somewhat confused, this death wish coupled with a censoriousness concerning depression and suicide, but his very confusion was touching. What came through to Molly was genuine human pain, human love, and terrible loss. Molly felt that possibly she should clarify her own confusion, too: in her case it was not just mourning a loss through death; she was also hurt, still, that Paul had wanted out of their marriage. And so
they sat there, she and Dave Jacobs, a mismatched pair of mourners, swilling white wine and eating good fresh salmon.

It was still early when they got out, and so as they drove up in front of Molly’s building, she asked him in. He accepted, and then accepted a brandy, telling her with approval, “This is good stuff.”

As he not too subtly inspected her living room, some wayward instinct informed Molly that he was weighing her as a possible replacement for Martha, checking out her taste and especially her housekeeping habits. She wanted to say, Look, in some ways you’re a very nice man, but you shouldn’t bother with me. It won’t work out. I am not meant for you, nor you for me. Go and find some nice doctor’s widow, who will think you’re wonderful and cherish you into old age. Which I won’t.

But of course she said none of that, and only thanked him when he said how nice it all was.

“You do all your own housework?” A rather nervy question, really.

“No,” she told him. “There’s someone who comes in once a week. She’s not a very good cleaner but she’s so nice, I can’t fire her.”

“Martha wouldn’t have anyone, she was always worried about stuff getting broken.”

“I guess I don’t have anything that I care about that much.”

Their conversation, such as it was, then languished.

Looking at Dave’s face, his large strong nose and those exemplary teeth, so white and healthy, Molly had a very odd thought, which was: If he tries to kiss me good night I’ll probably hit him. Very odd: never in her lifetime that she could remember had she hit anyone, unless possibly as a small child—and she was by now surely old enough to say no without resorting to physical violence.

What was even odder was that within a few weeks she had developed a sort of sexual fix on Dave Jacobs; she really liked their kissing, when once it happened. Although in many ways
she did not like him, still, and had even thought of hitting. And only men did this, one used to think; only men had sex or wanted to have sex with women whom they otherwise disliked. But of course that isn’t true; like so many things, including hitting, women do it too.

But at the front door, that first night, Molly and Dave quite formally shook hands. No kissing, or hitting.