Seventh Avenue (60 page)

His throat
tightened
,
and he handed the buff-colored pages back
to her.

“
Do you want to get rid of me?”

“
Oh, boy, of all the silliest. . . . The only reason I thought of it
was that my father went there as a boy, and any boy who graduates
from Carlisle can have his pick of colleges. You’re a bright boy, and
they’ll give you the best education you could possibly get.”

He considered her
point
but remained unconvinced and suspicious. She peered straight at him, and he knew she
was being
honest, and that her interest and concern were genuine. But again he felt
isolated, unwanted.

“
We’re going to have a particularly nasty court case in about a
month and I want you well out of the way.” She sipped her hot
chocolate
,
and he rubbed his hand along the rough-cast wall, his chin
dropped into his fur jacket. “Neal, I
care .
. . I care about what happens to you. When this is all over, we’ll buy a
house
,
and you can
choose between going to Carlisle or living with us. Try it for a term.”

“
Does my father know?”

“
No, not yet. But the judge suggested that you go to a private
school. You can build a new life, and meet new friends.”

“
I have friends.”

Her face eased into a
smile
,
and she pointed to his untouched
sandwich. He lifted it to his mouth reluctantly.

“
You’re not being forced to do anything. I leave it entirely to you. If you want to go, you can. If not, then we’ll have to work something
else out. I only want to save you from facing a lot of unpleasantness.”

“
Is it your husband?”

She threw her hands in the air with faint irritation and pursed her
bloodless lips. He stared at her face as the color drained from it.
Her skin was shiny
,
and her green eyes became larger.
Her hand
shot to her
stomach
,
and she gasped.

“
Neal, I’ve got to get to the
hospital .
. . money in my
bag .
. .
just
leave
it.” Her voice was barely
audible
,
and she rose as though
drunk, and staggered against her chair, knocking it over into the aisle.
Neal rushed over to
her
and supported her back because he was
afraid she might fall. He threw a dollar on the table and led her to
the door.

“
I’ll get a taxi. Sit down.” He pointed to a chair by the cashier’s
desk.

“
Can’t sit,” she murmured. “Fast, Neal.”

He rushed through the revolving door and dashed for a taxi
that
was cruising along, but just as he gained speed, he felt himself slipping. His legs shot out ahead of
him
,
and he crashed to the ground.
He lay there for a moment, dazed, and rigid while the high buildings
whirled round his half-open eyes; the taxi driver had caught his signal and came over to him and lifted him off his back.

“
Boy, that was a
beaut
. You okay?”

Neal was speechless, then he remembered Terry waiting in the
restaurant.

“
Wait, you’ve got to take us to the hospital.”

He ran past the man and brought Terry out. Her face had turned
ashen
,
and she could hardly keep her eyes open. The driver helped
her into
the taxi
and waited to be told where to take them.

“
Terry, Terry, which hospital?” Neal asked with a screeching urgency.

Her forehead was
wet
,
and when she opened her eyes they were
glassy and her lids flicked over them.

“
Sutton Clinic,” she said breathlessly.

The taxi cut across Lexington Avenue through the mainstream
of rush hour traffic. Every few seconds the driver slammed his hand
on the horn, and the blaring sound gave the ride an eerie quality
that
increased Neal’s helplessness.

“
What should I do, Terry? Tell me,” he pleaded.

“
It’ll be
awright
, kid. Have her there in five minutes.” The car
shot through a red light and a great caterwauling whine of horns
echoed through the streets. He pulled over at a small nondescript
building on Sutton Place and helped Terry out of the car. Neal rushed
after them, but a nurse barred his way.

“
All right, young man, I’ll look after her now.” She lifted Terry’s
arm and put her large white starched arm under her back and limped
with her to a room. Neal crept along the
corridor
,
and Terry opened
her eyes and her mouth contorted into the suggestion of a smile.

“
Terry, I’ll go to the school, I will.”

“
Goo’ boy,” she said through twisted dry lips. “Call your
fath
. . .”

Jay and Neal ate a hurried dinner at a small drugstore near the hospital, and Neal was driven back to the Central Plaza by Jay’s chauffeur. They had been asked to leave the hospital as Terry’s labor
pains were irregular, and the intervals between them instead of decreasing had lengthened; the obstetrician had assured Jay that his
alarm was touching and expected, but that neither Terry nor the baby
were in any danger. All this information, delivered in a dry, clinical,
patrician voice by Dr. Mill, instead of calming and reassuring him,
served only to increase his sense of guilt and anxiety. Legally he had
no rights whatever to the child, as Terry was still married to
Mitch
,
and she was listed on the register as Mrs. Michell Lawson. It was
a peculiarly uncomfortable position. To kill time and fortify
himself
,
Jay wandered into a small, dank, foul, little bar, off Sutton Place.
Half a dozen bar flies too far gone and too apathetic to turn their
heads, stood at the scratched mahogany bar. A single woman in her
thirties with mascara stains
riven
in her hollow cheeks asked him for
a match. She asked him to buy her a
drink
,
and he
did. Then
she informed him that her apartment was “a stone’s throw away,” and he
said in a grim, nervous voice:

“
Be a lady and don’t push your luck.”

She mumbled something indistinct - he wasn’t even sure that he
understood - about being a lady. He moved away from her and
waved to the barman for a refill. His temples pulsated irregularly, as
though his skull had hiccups, and he studied the movement in the
grimy mirror behind the bar. His face was
drawn
,
and his eyes had
that bloodshot haze
that
two drinks always gave to them. He realized with some irritation that he had begun to look his age. In the
mornings he seemed older, for even though his hair hadn’t thinned
it was flecked with gray, and the lines on his face had set like stone.
He lifted the whiskey and threw his head back. The woman accosted
him again as he was about to
leave
,
and he had to walk around her.

“
You got the concession here? Well, ten or twelve years ago, I
would’ve thought ‘maybe,’ but I’m getting too old for this sort of
thing.”

Outside it was snowing. A thin,
razorish
flurry of white snow
drifted through the dark night, whirling eddies
that
slashed at his
face and eyes like small glass splinters. He held up his hand to
shield his face, and walked the long block, keeping close to the darkened stores where grimly sculptured stalactites jutted out from above
the rolled sun awnings. It was
cold
,
and the street was deserted. It
had that peculiar hollow silence
that
he thought must be similar to
the death state. His shoes made a
scrunching
sound over the powdery snow covering the tegument of ice. He shook his collar when he
got into the warm anteroom of the hospital, and stomped his feet
on the perforated black rubber mat. The nurse had her head down
over a magazine as he approached.

“
You’re not the same one as before,” he said.

“
It’s the night shift,” she explained. “Visiting hours are over.”

“
My . . .” he stammered. “There’s a Mrs.
Lawson
,
who’s going to
have a baby.”

“
You the father?”

“
That’s right.” She got up off her haunches, and put a long cardboard strip
that
said ‘
YOUR PLACE
’ in the magazine and closed it.
“It’s down the corridor. Dr. Mill’s waiting to see you.”

The nurse knocked on Terry’s
door
,
and the doctor opened it. His
angular face was pinched and rubicund, as though nature had deprived him of his rightful physiognomy. He had a long thin nose
over which a pair of tortoiseshell glasses slipped whenever he moved
his head.

“
I’ll come into the corridor with you,” he said.

Jay twisted his head to look over the doctor’s shoulder at Terry,
but his view was blocked. The doctor closed the door and lit a cigarette.

“
Is she all right?”

“
Not very well, I’m afraid.”

“
You don’t mean to say . . .”

“
No, but there were complications, and she’s in a delicate condition.”

“
She won’t die?”

“
She shouldn’t. We’ve given her medication. I think she’s picked
up a virus of some kind.”

“
Don’t you know?”

“
If we did we wouldn’t call them viruses.”

“
She’s given birth, hasn’t she?” He felt his muscles tense as Dr.
Mill avoided his gaze. His lips were dry. His eyes blinked uncontrollably. The walls of the whitewashed corridor appeared alive with
strange moving animals. “Well, tell me,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“
The baby had cyanosis.”

“
Is it dead?”

“
I’m very sorry to tell you that
she
is.”

Jay slumped against the wall, and his shoulder made a dull thud.
He pushed himself off the wall with his left hand, and the doctor
pointed to a wooden bench a few feet away.

“
Let’s sit down.”

“
Does Terry know?”

“
No, she was given an
anesthetic
, and when she wakes we’ll give
her a sedative. She won’t know till tomorrow.”

An overhead light with a green metal band around lit the area by
the bench.

“
Died, just like that?”

“
It was a combination of circumstances. A malformation of the
heart which wasn’t detectable in prenatal examination, and when
we attempted to do something, an obstruction was also discovered.”

“
Did she live at all?”

“
For about five minutes.”

“
Can I see her?”

“
I don’t think it’s a very good idea.”

“
But one of us should, and she can’t.”

The doctor nodded his long thin face, and the nurse came up to
them.

“
I’m just going to take Mr. Blackman
along .
. .”

In a small room on the second floor adjacent to the operating
theater
,
Jay saw the child. The room had no tables and no chairs, only
a scratched metal dolly
that
was used to wheel patients. It was the
emptiest room he had ever seen. The child was wrapped in a white
sheet,
only its head exposed. The face was a sickly bluish
color
,
and
it hardly seemed human. He lifted the sheet and looked at the body
which was slightly lighter in color than the face. It resembled a small
rubberized mummy. He lifted
the hand
,
and the doctor said: