Middle Age (42 page)

Your special nature
.

At a distance Lionel heard Camille speaking with their daughter as if nothing were wrong. What a good, gracious woman Camille was! He hid his burning face in his hands. What the hell had he done? Was it irremediable? When he lowered his hands, his mouth was twisted in a grimace like laughter. It was a gargoyle-mouth, wracked in pain.

A  ! Through Saturday-morning traffic on Route W

Camille drove a mile and a half to the emergency clinic of the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter north of Salthill-on-Hudson, the bleeding, writhing, whimpering dog beside her on the passenger’s seat of the Acura. At the clinic, where she’d taken Apollo for treatment some months before, there was a youngish veterinarian on duty, a Dr. Lott, who seemed to remember her, and stared in amazement as Camille carried the injured dog into the examining room heedless of the fact that her clothing was blood- and urine-stained and that the dog in her arms, in agony, was
Middle Age: A Romance



alternately licking her hands, and snarling and snapping at her, and wagging his stump of a tail. Fiercely Camille whispered, “You will
not die
. You
will not die
. I swear!”

But the veterinarian, after a quick examination, recommended putting the dog down. It was a male, badly injured; hind legs, spine, spleen; the external bleeding could be stanched, but there was internal bleeding, which would require emergency surgery. “It could be very expensive, Mrs. Hoffmann. And it isn’t very practical.” Camille was prepared for this. She drew herself up to her full height, and fixed both Dr. Lott and his young woman assistant with a look of absolute determination. “No. This dog will not be

‘put down.’ Do what you can to save him.” Dr. Lott said, frowning, “But whose dog is this? Where did you find him? He has no tags, no collar.” It seemed to Camille that the dog, strapped onto the aluminum examining table, understood these words, and lay panting and shivering in apprehension, looking at her. Quickly she said, “It was meant to be, that I rescue him. He was struck by a minivan on West Axe Boulevard and left to die and at that precise moment I happened to be there, I was a witness, it must have been for a purpose, Dr. Lott! There are no coincidences in the universe—unless everything is a coincidence—which can’t be so! You must save this dog.” Camille was breathless, her voice rising. Still the veterinarian was shaking his head, and looking grim. Again he told Camille that the surgery would be very costly, and he couldn’t guarantee that the dog would survive; and Camille said loudly, “Dr. Lott, I will pay you.

Whatever it costs. I will not give him up,
this was meant to be
.” The veterinarian was staring at Camille as if, until that moment, he’d never fully looked at her before. He was a vigorous youngish man in his early forties, accustomed to telling others what to do, especially women; Camille’s presence made an impression upon him. How visible Camille felt, suddenly.

And how good the feeling.
Now I am no longer a man’s wife, I don’t need to
be a woman, either
.

W    , what had he done!

Fled the house on Old Mill Way.

Free! He was free. His heart swelling with happiness like a balloon close to bursting.

At last, he would join the two halves of his life. No more hypocrisy. No more subterfuge.
Bring her into the light, you must bring her into the light
.



J C O

You must give birth to her
. By degrees Lionel had come to believe that his friend Adam Berendt had advised him. The dream-vision of the cave.

Adam’s voice.
No shame
.
Never again
.
Bring together the broken halves of your
life
. His family and friends would understand, when they met Siri. When they saw how transformed Lionel was, in love. “In love for the first time in my life.” For years, for decades!—he’d been a living mummy. Speaking mummy-words, enacting mummy-desires. Until at last his body had rebelled, bringing him pain, stabbing pain, dull aching brooding pain in his neck and upper spine, until he’d been nearly paralyzed. Unconsciously he’d come to despise himself. But now, he was a new man. Since Siri entered his life he’d become a new man. They would understand, his family and friends; and they would forgive him. In time, the more generous would rejoice with him.

In the steel-green Lexus that held the road like a tank Lionel drove south on W to the soaring George Washington Bridge. In a transport of joy he drove. In bliss. He took the upper level of the bridge, crossing the wide river that glittered below like shaken foil. Adam Berendt had not died in that river for nothing!

Through the girders of the great bridge a luminous full moon shone, a staring eye.

“Siri, darling! I’ve left Salthill.”

“ I   a coincidence. Adam has brought me here.”

The badly injured dog was in surgery. Hopeless, it was hopeless! Yet Camille had hope. She tried to sit in the waiting room, but soon stood, and paced about. Apollo, that good dog, was nervous, too, but sat obediently on his haunches, his anxious intelligent dog-eyes fixed upon Camille, as if the fate of the strange dog, and his own fate, rested with her.

“Yes, I will save you! I will save you all.” In the lavatory Camille had washed as best she could, ridding her hands and forearms of the dog’s blood, but her clothes, which were expensive sporty Ann Taylor clothes, cotton-knit beige trousers and matching jacket, were irrevocably stained.

Ruined. Camille saw how other customers in the partly filled room looked at her. In other circumstances Camille would have been mortified, but now she scarcely cared. Most of these individuals had dogs on leashes, or cats in carrying cases, and were anxious themselves. A woman whom Camille knew slightly, who’d brought in her bulldog to be examined,
Middle Age: A Romance



asked why Camille was at the clinic, and Camille told her about the abandoned, injured dog—“His name is Shadow. Out of nowhere he came, and he came to
me
.”

The woman, stroking the wheezy bulldog’s head, told Camille she knew exactly what Camille meant.

So nervous! In her stained and smelly clothes, her hair disheveled, Camille paced about the waiting room. She did not much resemble a Salthill millionaire’s wife. At the rear of the room she could hear the barking of dogs in an adjacent kennel. A disjointed chorus of barking, never-ending barking, as in mirrors reflecting mirrors to infinity. “So much animal sorrow,” Camille sighed, “and who is responsible?” She spoke to no one in particular. The barking dogs tore at her heart. Animal sorrow, animal suffering. Had she made an impulsive, selfish decision, to try to keep the dog alive? Alive for
her?

Adam, too, had taken in homeless animals. Apollo had been one of these, abandoned by the roadside. Adam had left the Rockland County Shelter thousands of dollars in his will.

It is not a coincidence, you’ve brought me here
.
Oh
,
Adam!

Shadow would survive the surgery, which lasted for seventy minutes.

Never would he fully recover the use of his hind legs, Dr. Lott explained, but at least he was alive—“For now, Mrs. Hoffmann.” After six days in the clinic, Shadow was released into Camille’s care; she was presented with a bill for over two thousand dollars, and without hesitation she made out a check for this amount and a second check, for four thousand dollars, to the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter. The receptionist rose immediately to summon Dr. Lott, who came to shake Camille’s hand, and to stare at her in wonderment. “Mrs. Hoffmann! Thank you.”

Said Camille firmly, “No, Dr. Lott. Thank
you
.”



H’     innocently, with the girl’s
touch
.

Scarcely had he seen her, falling in love. His head wracked in pain as in a demonic halo. She was no one to him: “Siri”: a young woman therapist assigned to Lionel Hoffmann, purely by chance, at the Park Avenue Neck and Back Clinic. She was an angel of mercy in white nylon. Chaste as a bandage, and of as much interest to him, initially. (Though Lionel’s sensitive nostrils quickly detected her subtle nutmeg scent, which seemed



J C O

to arise from her skin, and from her remarkably thick dark hair fastened in a coil at the nape of her neck.) “Siri” was primarily her hands: deft, gentle, skilled, patient. During their session she said little except to murmur when Lionel stiffened or winced in pain—“Mr. Hoffmann. Please try to relax.”

Not in reproach but gently. As one might admonish a small child, for his own good.

For weeks, unless it had been months, years, Lionel had been aware of quick stabbing pains in his neck. Since the previous summer the pain had gradually increased until it resembled icicles radiating downward from his neck into his upper spine; and, with alarming frequency, upward into the base of the skull. Lionel would wake dry-mouthed to the terror he had a tumor there. Of course, a tumor! Like a tiny seed it would take root in his flesh, it would grow, and grow, and suck his life from him. In one of the medical texts published by Hoffmann Publishing, Inc., he read about the
cerebellum:
that part of the brain that regulates equilibrium and the coordination of muscular movements.
Injury or organic disease in the cerebellum
may produce such symptoms as a staggering walk, palsy, slurred speech, chronic
malaise
. There were days when Lionel could barely hoist himself from bed.

He was only fifty-three years old!

With guilty anxiety Lionel thought of his younger brother, Scott.

Dead at thirty-six. Moldering in the grave for how many years. To Scott, fifty-three would have seemed old. Fifty-three would have been old. “But I’m not ready to die. I haven’t yet
lived
.”

Telling himself the pain couldn’t possibly be a tumor, more likely just a pulled tendon, neck strain caused by playing tennis, racquetball, golf. (Not that Lionel had much time for these activities.) If you’re a middle-aged man who imagines himself “active”—“energetic”—you would wish to decode pain in reference to some form of masculine behavior. You would not wish to decode pain in terms of a sedentary life, a defeatist posture, the inevitable process of
aging
. You would not wish to decode drastically waning sexual desire, indifference to sexual stimuli (a beloved wife’s familiar body, for instance), inability to sustain a serious erection, to the inevitable process of
aging
.

It was Harry Tierney, whom Lionel saw occasionally at the Century Club, who directed Lionel to the Park Avenue Neck and Back Clinic. Lionel would not have brought up the subject, which was far too personal for him to discuss with Harry Tierney, except during their exchange of
Middle Age: A Romance



greetings Lionel winced with pain, and held his head at an odd angle.

Harry asked what was wrong, and Lionel told him he’d strained his neck playing golf, he thought; it was a pain that came and went; not severe, but it forced him to think about his health more than he was accustomed to thinking, and he resented it. Harry saw at once through Lionel’s pose of detachment and told him he’d better take the pain seriously. He gave Lionel the name of a “first-rate” orthopedist and suggested he make an appointment immediately. “Spinal trouble is nothing to ignore, my friend.

He’ll send you to a clinic for therapy, and they’ll save your life.”

How unexpected, how strange, that Harry Tierney should be speaking to Lionel with such apparent sincerity. As if indeed they were friends, or had been at one time. Tierney was known for his irony and cynical wit. In their Salthill circle, Lionel had avoided him, disapproving of the man’s jocose manner and his mock-cavalier tone with women, including Camille.

(And Harry’s own wife, Abigail. That wanly beautiful woman whom all the Salthill husbands contemplated, with a sort of lustful dread, from a discreet distance.) But Tierney behaved as if he respected Lionel, CEO of Hoffmann Publishing, Inc., which was flattering. Since leaving Salthill, divorcing poor Abigail and marrying a younger woman, Tierney looked like a younger version of himself, with darker (dyed?) hair and even a moustache, evenly tanned if somewhat lined skin, and oddly light, luminescent eyes that put Lionel in mind of a deep-sea fish’s eyes. There was something predatory yet crudely innocent about Harry Tierney, of whom Adam Berendt had once said
The man’s a bastard, like a scorpion’s a scorpion
.

Can’t help himself
. Adam’s sympathies had been entirely with Abigail, the left-behind wounded wife.

Harry was saying, tenderly rubbing his own neck, “If you’re in pain, Lionel, life shrinks to the size of a cocktail napkin. No matter how many millions of dollars you have. Save yourself!” Lionel smiled, uncertain of what they were actually speaking. Pain? Money? He didn’t trust Harry Tierney. Still, Harry seemed to be utterly sincere, and wasn’t drunk.

At the time of this conversation Adam Berendt was still living.

Though Harry Tierney and Lionel spoke of mutual Salthill acquaintances neither mentioned Adam, with whom it was generally believed Abigail had had a passionate affair of long standing. In parting, Harry laid an uncomfortably warm, heavy hand on Lionel’s shoulder, that made Lionel wince, for it smelled moist and urinous as a kidney, saying, “Remember me to Salthill, my friend! ‘That hell of a paradise.’ ” Harry laughed uproari-



J C O

ously as if he’d coined a brilliant aphorism, and Lionel was enjoined into laughing with him though he was offended.

That hell of a paradise:
what did Harry Tierney mean?

Lionel took Tierney’s advice, however, and made an appointment with the Park Avenue orthopedist Tierney recommended. He entered the doctor’s lavishly appointed office listing to one side, in a haze of throbbing pain that felt like neon tubing in his spine. The examination was brusque and brutal and within a few minutes tears streaked Lionel’s smooth-shaven cheeks. The orthopedist informed Lionel that his problem appeared to be “cervical spine strain” caused by the “overstretching” of neck muscles, the probable result of decades of “postural stresses”; the underly-ing tissues in his neck muscles, capsules, and ligaments, had been “severely strained,” and “scar tissue” had been formed. Lionel listened in fascinated dread. In these minutes he’d become vulnerable as an infant.
So long as it
isn’t malignant
.
So long as I will live
. “Is the damage—reversible?” Lionel asked anxiously. The orthopedist, a pink-skinned, pudgy man in his mid-forties, slightly mishearing as he scribbled a prescription for Lionel, said,