The Lady and Her Doctor (2 page)

First Dr. Krop started the Studie, then, accidentally on purpose, turned and “saw” Cissie Parker standing there, looking at him again the way he used to look at the Browning girl. He waved, leaned over and opened the door. Since the Parkers had moved into the apartment house, he must have given her fifteen, sixteen rides to the subway, but today she hesitated, color flared in her blond skin and she touched the blond hair on the right side of her small head uncertainly, then turned back and glanced up at the apartment house, at her window, Milt saw, at her mother who was leaning out of the window. Her mother was shaking her head, then Cissie shook her head at him but he said, “Get in,” and she did. She would do anything he told her to. If the Browning girl had condescended to notice him enough to tell him to lie down on the dirt road and let her mare ride over him, he would have done it, and that's how it was with Cissie. He knew this even though he had never said more than hello and good-by to the kid.

Cissie usually gave a performance getting in the Studie and he usually enjoyed every wriggle of it, the leg show with chorus of gasps and flutters—He was always being shown women's legs, having their swollen bulk, their varicose veins, their ulcers and burns and bruises thrust at him. Cissie's concern with any disarrangement during her scramble into the car, the way her thin hands with the red nails touched and patted and repaired before she turned to him and gave him the Browning-girl look, always moved him by its very silliness, but today Cissie just plain climbed in. He liked the smell of her, compounded of every cosmetic ad she fell for, the perfumes of her deodorant, her bath powder, the stuff she sprayed on her blond hair to keep it in place, her lipstick, her pancake make-up. Today all her perfumes seemed fainter, as if her mother's disapproval had blotted them. Today Cissie sat biting her lip and, as the car moved off, glanced back nervously toward the window of her apartment and forgot to do all her little settlings and flutterings. “So your momma didn't want you to take a lift,” he said.

“No, Doctor.”

She seemed to think she had said enough, sitting quietly, denying him the sparrow act, the smell of her perfumes, all the things he would never have. “Why not, if you don't mind my being nosey?”

“Well, it's you're a married man,” she said. “We didn't know you were a married man. We don't know the neighbors yet, so nobody told us. I don't know—I figured she was your nurse, because of course I saw her around. Mrs. Krop. I don't know, I thought she was your nurse. Mom said I shouldn't think so much, I should find out.”

Jenny was Mrs. Krop and Buddy was Buddy Krop and there was also little Maureen Krop. If Jenny had told Cissie's mother that she was Mrs. Krop, it was the truth and there was no reason Mrs. Parker shouldn't think she was his wife, but Cissie shouldn't have thought so. That she should think so—How could she think so? Milton started the car. She had a nerve! Who gave her the right to think he would marry Jenny, a woman like Jenny! Leaving out the four years she had on him, not even counting that. He saw Jenny as he had left her in the pink frilly thing—in any of the frilly stuff she wore out of office hours because, as she said, she'd had her bellyful of uniforms. If this kid here really looked at him the Browning-girl way she couldn't think he would marry a woman like Jenny, so he turned nasty. He wanted to hurt her. “You mean a married man can't give a single girl a couple lifts to the subway, is that it? Have I ever done anything else? Have I in any way propositioned you?” he asked. He pulled over to the curb and stopped the car. “Get out,” he said, “go on, get out.” He remembered how his mother used to put a dark cloth over the canary's cage when she wanted the bird to shut up; that was the effect of his anger on the kid. So long, Cissie, he thought. Married to a woman like Jenny, he thought. Beloved Husband of Jenny, it said on Phil's tombstone. When the time came, Jenny might as well save herself the expense of another stone and just tell Phil to shove over and plant him there alongside. No one in the whole world would know the difference, he thought. (Not Cissie.) No one in the whole world would know the difference, and neither would he, he thought. The life and death of Milton Krop. Which was which?

He had been heading toward Eighty-fifth, the Cohens', but, reaching the corner and too close to it to do it right, he made a U turn. Not a U turn, he thought, a worm turn. Even a worm turns, he thought.

When Milton came back into the foyer, there were a couple of tenants at the mailboxes. He looked in his, but it was empty. As he put his key into the lock of the front door, he heard Maureen's voice just inside, not her reciting voice, but the usual high thin whine. (“Murine,” Buddy called his sister. “Murine for sore eyes, Maureen for sore ears,” Bud said.) Murine was in the hall whining while Jenny held her firmly with one hand and with the other wielded a hair brush on her daughter's brown hair. Murine was anxious to get to school. “Where's the mail?” Milton asked.

“I got it. You got a letter, Uncle Miltie. Mom, pul-lease! Let go, I'll be late, Mom!”

Jenny stopped brushing and released her daughter. “O.K., run along, Maureen. Look out crossing.”

“Yes. Good-by, Mom. Good-by, Uncle Miltie.”

He said, automatically, as usual, “Don't call me Uncle Miltie.” Then he remembered. “Don't call me Uncle Miltie, just call me Pop!” Maureen looked interested, but Jenny shoved her toward the door and she left. “Where's my mail, Jenny?”

“Mail? What Maureen said you got, you mean? An ad. Nothing. How come you're back, Milt?”

“I came back for my mail. Where's my mail, Jenny?” She was walking down the hall, away from him, her hips firm in the thin robe.

“Mail! From drug houses and an ad for a new car. I threw them away. You're not in the market for a new car, are you, Milt?” She turned into the kitchen and began brushing the crumbs off the table. “No kidding, Milt, what did you come back for? You couldn't have made your calls yet.”

“No kidding, I came back for my mail. You know what happens to people who tamper with the U.S. mails, Jenny?”

She had a temper. “Yes, and I know what happens to people who ask for it, Milt!” He stood there with his hand outstretched.

“I'll call the Equitable and find out,” he said. “Give it to me, Jenny.” She had hidden the letter in the electric percolator which needed rewiring. It had been opened. That didn't surprise him, of course. While he read it, Jenny went to the sink and began washing dishes noisily, but she heard when he crumpled the letter up because she turned around and faced him. She was crying.

“Why did you have to get more insurance, Milt? Why did you have to ask for it?”

He opened the garbage pail and tossed the letter into it. “I had to know. For sure. I feel so good, Jenny—tachycardia, that's all. If they gave me the additional ten thousand, it would mean it wasn't that certain.” He let the lid of the garbage can fall. “Well, they didn't.” He kicked the can. “Now I know.”

“What for know? What for know?” Jenny came and stood in front of him. First she pounded her fists against her strong thighs, then against his chest. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “I saw your application. I called Equitable, Milt. I begged them to tell you you could have the insurance. I begged them on bended knees. I'll sign a paper saying I don't get a penny of it, I said. I'll write out the premium checks, I said; they wouldn't do it.” She looked at her fists. “But what for know, Milt? What will you do now you know?”

He said, “What do you think? Rob a bank.”

“Something crazy!” She rubbed her hands together because they ached from pounding at Milton. “I won't be able to watch it again, Milt, not again!”

“The death of you, Jenny? Me,” he said heavily, “me! Not you! Listen to me, the one thing I'm not going to do now I know for sure is go on this way until I drop in my tracks. Wake up. Make my calls. See the patients in the office. Go to Queens General, come back here. Pay the rent, pay the bills, pay what insurance I did get before they got smart on me—that's what I won't do.”

She said, “Milt, don't talk like that, Milt. That's all you can do. Not for me, believe me, and not for the kids—for yourself. You got to work, go on working. You should do more work—on Phil's stuff that you dropped, for example, you should take it up again, Milt.”

“Sure.”

“Yes, sure.” She began to wring her hands. “Milt, please, I know what it does to a man. I went through it with Phil, didn't I? Oh, my God, they make such a song and dance about the condemned criminal in the death cells, how they know to the minute when it's going to happen to them—How about when Phil found out about himself? Phil wasn't a criminal, and you're a good man, too. I know what I'm talking about, Milt, so listen to me for your own good.”

“Stop trying to run me, Jenny. Your idea is I should wear blinders and go on in harness until I drop. Well, that's not my idea. And listen,” he said, remembering, “I have another bone to pick with you.” He pointed toward the window, toward the sidewalk outside where Cissie had stood each time he had offered her a lift. “What the hell do you mean telling people you're my wife?”

“People? Mrs. Parker. And I didn't tell her I was your wife.”

“Mrs. Krop.”

“I am Mrs. Krop.” She touched his arm, stroked his sleeve. “I'm your dead brother's wife, Milt.”

“Don't I know that? Have I ever forgotten that?”

She shook her head, “No, Milt.”

“‘No, Milt!” Maybe you wanted me to forget it.”

Her face turned bright red. “You don't know what you're saying, but don't, Milt!”

“Well, I didn't marry you,” he said, feeling his own face burn, turning his face so Jenny couldn't see it. “Fed you, dressed you, slept you, but I didn't marry you, and I wasn't going to marry the Parker kid, either, so what did you have to break it up for? You didn't have to break it up. What was it?” he asked. “Some rides to the subway in the mornings. Why did you have to break it up? There was nothing between us, I tell you. The weather. The New Look in styles. The morning headlines, a little kidding. Nothing.”

She said, “The first time I saw Phil in the hospital, they sent me up to his lab with a specimen. He said, ‘What is it, nurse?' And I told him what it was; that was all Phil and I said and it wasn't nothing, Milt. You shouldn't do it to the kid, Milt, because she's only a kid, that's all she is.” Jenny rubbed her palms down her robe. “It isn't good to be a widow, Milt.” She flung one hand out. “It isn't—nice—”

As Milton walked away from Jenny he heard the telephone ringing, but he wouldn't pick it up. “Still, like muffled drums, are beating funeral marches to the grave.” Now he knew. Well, now he knew. (He had known before, but now he knew.) “Well, what will you do now you know,” she said. “I know what it does to a man,” she said. “Work,” she said. “Go on working. Work harder,” she said. “Drop dead working!” He began to pace up and down in time to the beating of his heart.

Jenny had to clear her throat several times before she could produce her “nurse” voice for the telephone. “Miss Folsom?” she said. “Immediately?” She rolled her eyes at Milton. “Is it an emergency, Miss Folsom? I'm asking because you said it was an emergency when you called the doctor out of his bed at 3
A
.
M
. and there was no reason for it.”

Milton, pacing, couldn't help listening to Jenny. (He had been trained to listen.) He had thought it was a good idea, since he couldn't come running with a hypodermic every time the old lady thought she had pain, to give her a bottle of placebo. The label on it was purposely impressive.
CAUTION. POISON. DO NOT OVERDOSE.
The last emergency call from the Haunted House had been when the old lady had taken a placebo and become violently nauseated, scaring the girl to death. If this was going to happen every time the girl gave the old lady a sugar pill, he better take them out of their hands.

“Miss Folsom, the doctor is out on his calls, right now. I can try to reach him if you're certain—”

Jenny would be mad as hell if she knew he had given the old lady the bottle free, dispensed it himself because she was such a miser and raised such a stink about what druggists charged. Jenny thought patients respected a doctor more if they had to plunk down good money for the druggist; she thought if he didn't come running the old lady might scrape up at least what his other patients paid him.

“I really don't think I can reach the doctor, Miss Folsom. He'll see your mother around noon at the earliest. That's the best I can do.”

The best she could do for Miss Folsom, anyhow. Jenny didn't like the way Miss Folsom talked. What did he care what Jenny liked? What did he care about Miss Folsom? Jenny put down the phone and walked over to him. He could tell from her expression that she was going to try to forget what had happened, try to con him into just going on.

“You didn't eat any breakfast, Milt. Come on and have a cup of coffee and a piece of toast at least before you make your calls.”

Because she had asked him to have coffee, Milton walked out of the kitchen and down the hall.

“Halloran, Demitric, Cohen, Antony and the Haunted House, Milt. O.K.?”

Because she had told the girl in the Haunted House he wouldn't get there until noon at the earliest, Milton decided to go there first. The least he could do, he thought, now that he knew, the least he could do was stop doing exactly what Jenny told him to do.

When he parked in front of the big iron gates, he saw that, as usual, when it was at all possible to keep kids out, there were the baby carriages parked on the sidewalk. The
Kaffeeklatsch
was in full force, sitting on the canvas camp stools they had brought, their backs against the iron fencing. There was nothing but cement here for the kids to play on, but here at least the kids could see the grass and bushes and trees behind the gates. Dr. Krop took his medical bag from the car and locked the car door.