The Lady and Her Doctor (24 page)

Austen folded her lips. “Madam goes through everything.”

“Madam can forget once in a lifetime, so you can forget it, too! Come on, forget it, Mrs. Austen!” Her lips were still bluish; she licked them with a pale tongue.

“Dr. Krop, I am sure you mean well, but, please—my good name, sir! Dr. Krop, at Mrs. Vinton's a valuable piece of silver, a silver and crystal epergne, disappeared—I beg you to call the police in before I leave this house today!”

The suitcase was lying open for the cops. The old woman was lined up for inspection by the cops. “Now, Mrs. Austen, this isn't Mrs. Vinton's house, is it? You got a different madam now and this madam doesn't want to call any cops in and insult you!” The bluish lips were saying, “Madam? Madam?” silently, the head wagged. “Yes,
madam!
”

“I will talk to madam, sir.”

He stepped in front of Mrs. Austen. “That you will not!”

“Sir—”

Even though Milton knew how Sloane and Mrs. Austen felt about yelling from one floor of the house to the next, he went to the head of the stairs and yelled for Sloane to tell Mrs. Austen, “with her own lips,” that she wanted Mrs. Austen to forget it and had no intention of calling in the cops. “Just tell her, Sloane! Sloane!” he called, reminding her by his tone what the cops could mean.

“That's right, Mrs. Austen,” Sloane said.

Mrs. Austen seemed to be shocked into immobility; then her head, which had been wagging, nodded. She whispered to Milton, “I forgot how she was, Doctor, I forgot!”

Nuts, she meant. Psychotic, suicidal. Milton had forgotten also how hard he had worked to make Mrs. Austen think so; it was coming in handy, now. He had the crazy feeling that it meant so much to the old lady that without her thinking that about Sloane, she might have called in the cops herself. “Go on, shove the suitcase back under the bed and rest up for your night out and forget the whole thing!” The way the old lady looked at him, the way her mouth curled, she could have been Sloane standing there looking at him as if he was dirt, saying, “You don't understand. You don't understand!”

“How is she?” Sloane asked, without moving.

“She'll live. Now come on downstairs.” He took her wrist but she pulled it away, which meant “You don't understand.” “Kid,” Milton said, “I'm going to give you a sedative. Get some sleep; when you wake up this will be a thing of the past.” She took the sedative and Milton closed the door on her and went downstairs by himself.

When she heard Dr. Krop walking downstairs, Mrs. Austen, sighing, went over to her suitcase, smoothed down the sheet of tissue paper which covered her “things” and closed the lid, leaning on it. She fastened the left-hand clasp and it immediately sprang open, nicking her palm. Because she was so shaken, so miserable, not quite certain, that is, whether she was standing on her feet or her head, the springing lock scratching at her palm felt like Tawny. Tawny used to do that, spring at her playfully, not scratching hard—he wouldn't scratch hard—but nicking that way, and Mrs. Austen sat on the bed next to the suitcase and began to cry, wishing Tawny, her orange Tom, was with her again, knowing he never would be, knowing that this place could not be a home any more than her furnished room had been a home, knowing that this wasn't a real job because madam had only hired her because madam wasn't—
quite
—feeling that with madam not
quite
it wouldn't last anyhow, and that soon it would start all over again: the dole, the investigators, the questions, the furnished rooms. She heard her own helpless sobbing as an outrage, the last terrible wicked letting-down of her standards, and she reached out and undid the right-hand clasp of her valise and, shaking with the sobs, felt in among her “things.” Mrs. Austen had packed and unpacked the valise so often that she knew where everything was without needing to see, knowing just where she had laid each of her “good” things carefully wrapped in venerable tissue paper, the hand-made lace collar from her mother, her mother's bits of Meissen china, the six pairs of kid gloves Mrs. Vinton had given her, one pair each Christmas, the Italian silk camiknickers from Mrs. Vinton's silly niece to get on her good side which were too young, the cat's-eye pin which was supposed to have brought her good luck, and way down underneath, right under the bottle she wanted, the length of fine Irish linen Mrs. Vinton had brought her from Ireland that she was saving to be buried in. Mrs. Austen took the linen out and then the bottle. She wiped her eyes to read the label and make sure it said
CAUTION
.
POISON
.
DO NOT OVERDOSE
,
NO MORE THAN THREE PILLS DAILY
. The bottle was almost full of the red wicked-looking pills because she had only taken six, one each day; then when she had told Dr. Krop at the clinic how they upset her stomach and didn't help her chest pains any, he told her to stop. Since it didn't help the chest pains, there was no point in putting drugs into her system and upsetting it, he told her. The pills hadn't helped. Nothing had helped, not madam, not the last hope she had. Nothing. Nothing would ever help and she was tired. Mrs. Austen tipped the pills into her palm and counted out twelve. Twelve little red devil pills. The thought of swallowing more was too nauseating to contemplate, and if three was the most you should take in one day, twelve at once should—

Twelve should
help
, she thought, almost smiling.

Mrs. Austen tipped the pills from her palm to the pin tray on the dresser so they wouldn't roll and went to the bathroom down the hall with her glass, waiting patiently for the water to stop running brown, returning to her room with the glass of water.

She swallowed the pills methodically, two at a time. “One, two—buckle my shoe,” memory said. “Three, four, shut the door. Five, six, pick up sticks.” She took eleven only. “Ten, eleven, go to heaven.”

“My God, forgive me,” Mrs. Austen whispered, and shoving the suitcase aside, lay down on the soft bed with the length of fine linen over her, her arms clamped over it so that madam, poor soul, would understand she wanted to be buried in it.

Milton had his dinner by himself. Alone, he could forget Emily Post and which forks for what. You would think that some of the things Sloane did—planting her elbows on the table for instance—would have made Emily Post throw a fit, but he knew damn well Sloane thought she had perfect manners and he didn't have any. He tried not to see any of the seasick pictures on the dining-room walls. On the Riviera, he thought, you probably ate out on terraces a lot. Moonlight would turn the food pale, pallid, but on your tongue, the way Sloane had said about the soup in the French restaurant, it would break into a riot of flavor.

Milton did not even think of Mrs. Austen again until, at ten, he went upstairs and woke Sloane. Sloane thought of Mrs. Austen the first thing, and it wasn't until she said something about Mrs. Austen being out that he remembered that she hadn't gone out. (Surely he hadn't been that far “out” himself so he wouldn't have heard her going by the dining room?)

Sloane shot up in the bed and began to wring her hands. “She didn't go out! She didn't go out!”

“So what?”

“Please go up there! Please!”

He was kind of annoyed and told Sloane the way she was acting you'd think the old lady might have committed suicide—and Sloane was nodding “yes” at him, nodding! “Because we wouldn't call in the cops, you mean? I never heard of such a thing! Because we wouldn't call in the cops!”

Sloane shoved her hair back and glared at Milton. “Even you have heard of hara-kiri, Milton? That particularly atrocious way of committing suicide, and why? Because one has lost face, Milton, you've heard of that?”

“Mrs. Austen is no Japanese.”

“She is a servant, a servant, a servant! To be trusted is her
raison d'être
, her stock in trade! We have made her lose face!”

Mrs. Austen's “good name”! Milton started out of the room. Fast.

The old lady must have been asleep, because when he knocked and came in, she was sitting up in bed staring at him as if he were a ghost. “It's me, Mrs. Austen. You all right?” She stared around the room. “You're in your own room, Mrs. Austen. You must have dropped off. It's after ten. You missed your evening out, I guess, but probably a nice long nap is the best medicine you could have taken, right?”

“Medicine?”

“I didn't mean real medicine, Mrs. Austen, that was just a manner of speaking. You're not awake yet, are you?”

She said, “Not real medicine! I'm awake, sir.”

If looks could kill! Milton considered asking the old woman what she had against him, what had he done, for the love of Mike? The “good name” business had upset her so much, she appeared to be in such a state, that for once she might forget herself and tell him, but then he thought: Ishkabibble. Hell with her, and went downstairs. He considered asking Sloane to ask Mrs. Austen what she had against him, but that would be asking for trouble; there was no telling what the old lady might tell Sloane once she broke down and got started. He said to Sloane, “You tell her yourself you wouldn't call in the cops, but that makes no difference. It's my fault even if it's your doing. That old woman hates my guts and I've never done her any harm! She never did have any use for me—but what have I done now? When I went up there, Sloane, she gave me such a look! Well, ishkabibble! I should worry. What can she do? Sue me?”

“She can leave,” Sloane said. “I suppose she will, now.”

“Go on!”

“She'll leave, Milton, I assure you.”

“Ishkabibble, so she'll leave.” He didn't need her now, let her leave. Good riddance. “Get off that bed, Sloane, forget the old biddy; come on down and have a bite to eat.”

Sloane put her feet off the bed. “I hate letting her down.
Noblesse oblige
. I've failed her!” She held up her hand. “Please,” she said, “don't say ‘ishkabibble' again!”

If he got her downstairs, got her mind on something else, he might find out about the house deal at least. She was so miserable about her “
noblesse oblige
” that he had to hand her her robe, her slippers, a handkerchief from her drawer. It was his own idea to hand her a mirror and a lipstick; then they went downstairs.

Milton had left the table as it was, so, because Sloane kept sighing and shaking her head and acting beat, he had to clear the table a little, heat up the coffee, pour it into the silver pot and put some cold meat and salad on a plate for Sloane before he could sit down and start on the house deal. It was settled? Signed, sealed and delivered? Sloane nodded because she was eating. “Good!” He rubbed his hands. “So all we have to do now is go to the bank, get the money, hand what belongs to your sister over to her, and we can forget the whole thing.”

“Bank?” Her dark eyebrows shot up as if she hardly knew what a bank was.

“They're not going to give you the $110,000 in cash, are they? So we'll have to go to the bank, right?”

Now she laid down her fork and stared. Milton counted ten first and then, in a careful voice, went over it.

“My dear Milton—”

“You were just kidding me? You're not going to give her her share? You were just kidding me?” The drumbeats began in his ears, the funeral beats. He clutched the table.

“Milton, Milton, I am going to do precisely what I said, precisely what you wanted! Of course I'm not kidding!”

“Well, then?”

“I most certainly never said I would give Amory cash—preposterous!” Such an idea had never entered her head. How could he have thought cash? If he thought cash it only proved how little he knew how things were done. Certainly Amory never for one moment imagined that the money was going to be done up in a neat little parcel and tied in a pink ribbon and—

He had to talk loud to hear himself over the drumbeats, but he kept hold of himself. He said that Sloane seemed to be treating this as if there were nothing more to it than a little family argument between herself and her sister about some money which her sister felt was still coming to her!

“Precisely,” Sloane said. “Isn't that precisely what it purports to be? Be reasonable, Milton! Won't it defeat the whole purpose of your plan if we don't carry it out as if it was just that? A sum of money which Amory feels mother promised her and which I have now agreed she should have? What she had decided to give Amory was the difference between what Amory had received from her share of the house and what Sloane was getting for it now, correct? Yes, it had to be done to the last cent, accurate, yes! With Amory's lawyer acting for Amory and the family lawyer acting for them! Yes, there had to be all the red tape and papers signed, sealed and delivered—signed and sealed before delivery. Amory would most certainly suspect the worst if it were not done that way. “But how could you be so naïve? How could you be so infantile as to imagine that all that was necessary now was to trot to the bank and get the cash and tuck it into your little trouser pocket and trot over to Amory with it? Where are you going, Milton? Milton?” He stumbled out of the dining room and talking, talking, she came after him. “Wait for me, please!” She began cajoling. “Come, now, Milton, we mustn't leave the table this way tonight of all nights. We don't want to give Austen an excuse to leave in the morning, do we?”

He was walking as fast as he could. His legs felt like lead, he kept bumping into the edges of furniture, knocking against things as if he were blind. Blind Milton. “When I consider how my light is spent—” Sloane never had any intention of giving him cash. She had just let him talk about cash. She had never “dreamed” he meant cash. She meant lawyers and red tape and gold seals and he wouldn't get a smell of the money. Only an infant would have thought go to a bank. Nice crisp century notes. Fold the folding money. “Tuck it into your little trouser pocket and trot over to Amory with it.” And he had thought just that. (He blushed.) And he had thought that Austen would be relieved if they didn't call in the cops. And he had thought ishkabibble. And by next Thursday Austen wouldn't be there. He wasn't going to get a smell of the money this way and next Thursday Austen would be gone and the other way the whole thing depended on Austen. The autopsy report would come in. The two sisters would get together; no money, no Riviera, nothing,
precisely
nothing!