Living Room (36 page)

“I know.”

Mary called Al, told him.

“She called me from somewhere just a while ago,” said Al. “She wasn’t coherent. I couldn’t figure out what she wanted or why she called.”

“What do we do?”

“She took my car, I’ll rent one and drive down.”

“Maybe we should give the license number to the police.”

“She was in a cab. She parked the car somewhere. I’ll get dressed.”

“Do you want to meet here or at her place?”

“Her place.”

“You sound awfully nasal, sure you’re well enough?”

“My fever’s down.”

Twenty minutes later Al called Mary back. “Mary, I got dressed. I’m pretty shaky on my feet. I’d better not drive. I’ll take the train. Any news?”

“No.”

“I’ll call you from Grand Central.”

*

Twitchy left her station in the lobby of Shirley’s apartment to make a phone call from the corner booth. She got through to Montefiore and asked for Mr. Hartman’s room. Mrs. Bialek answered.

“Is Shirley Hartman there?” asked Twitchy.

“Why should she be here?” said Mrs. Bialek.

“If she shows up, would you—”

Mrs. Bialek had hung up.

*

By a circuitous route, Shirley had reached Times Square, and slowed her pace as she reached west Forty-second Street. If this was the most dangerous block in the world, maybe someone would assault her, stab her for her purse, knife her for no reason at all. She could feel the sweat on her face and under her arms. The leather jackets eyed her. Three black girls stopped their talk to stare at the invader. A passing nervous white man raised his eyebrows at her. Take him up to a hotel room, see what he would perpetrate? Probably a cop. A young boy bumped into her, laughed. She clutched her purse. He laughed again. She went into the drugstore on the corner, slumped into the phone-booth seat. A man with a tattoo showing over the top of his tee shirt leaned against a counter, staring at her. She dialed Dr. Koch’s number.

The voice belonged to an answering service. “The doctor is busy with a patient. What is your name and number please?”

“Shirley Hartman. I think it’s an emergency.”

“One moment please.”

It took forever. The man with the tattoo sauntered over to the phone booth, held up a twenty for her to see. She shook her head. Undiscouraged, he went back to his station. He was willing to pay more for this one.

Finally, the operator’s voice. “Dr. Koch says to call again and he’ll pick up.”

Before she could hang up Shirley blurted, “I don’t have another dime.”

“Can you get change?”

“The tattoo is watching me.”

“What did you say?”

“It’s okay, I have a quarter, I can use that.”

She hung up. The tattoo took a step forward. Quickly she took the receiver off the hook and placed her call, the quarter making a desolate bong.

“What’s the matter?” said Dr. Koch.

“Can you see me?”

“I have someone with me, and someone else waiting. What’s the matter?”

She couldn’t talk.

Then Koch said, “Come over now. I’m almost finished. I’ll give the next patient a different appointment.”

“I’m afraid to leave the phone booth.”

“Where are you?”

She told him.

“What are you doing down there, even in daylight it’s dangerous. Go straight out, get a taxi, come here, will you?”

She hung up without saying anything, left the phone booth, headed for the street fast, the tattoo following. Luckily, a taxi had stopped for a red light on Eighth Avenue. She got in, and only then realized there was another passenger in the cab, a middle-aged man with a briefcase.

“What’s up?” said the startled man.

“Hey,” said the taxi driver, “I’ve got a fare, can’t you see?”

“Please,” said Shirley. “That man’s following me.”

The tattoo was stooping to see inside the cab window. The light turned green.

“Let’s go,” said the briefcase. The driver shrugged his shoulders, took off north.

“I’m going to the Coliseum, miss,” said the briefcase. “I’m late already. You can have the cab as soon as he drops me off.”

“Thank you,” she said.
Why had she just not walked out into Forty
-second Street traffic, some car would have gladly killed her? Why drag Koch into this?

“Are you ill?” the briefcase asked.

“I’ll be all right.”

The briefcase got out at the Coliseum, waving at her as if to a friend.

“Thank you,” she mouthed the words through the glass.

“Where to, lady?”

She gave Koch’s address. The cab zoomed off, taking a route through Central Park.

*

At about that time, Arthur Crouch thought of calling the police Missing Persons Bureau. He would find it very difficult giving a description of Shirley over the phone that would be recognizable to others.

*

Two fire engines were blocking the street on which Koch had his office. She paid the driver, got out, and walked toward the office, stepping over hoses. A fireman’s voice stopped her. “Hey, you can’t go there!”

“My doctor’s office,” she said.

He shook his head, motioning her back.

Shirley took off, a broken-field runner, holding her purse, avoiding the tangle of hoses, hoping she wouldn’t break an ankle, the fireman shouting after her. She made the hallway breathless, again felt the sweat, this time everywhere.

Dr. Koch was just showing someone out, a woman who glared at the preemptor. Without a hello, Koch motioned Shirley into his office, shook his head, said “How are you?”, wagged a finger at her, then seeing her state, sat beside her and held her hands like a lover or a father and said, “Tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Describe what happened since this morning, one thing at a time.”

“I think I’m trying to kill myself.”

Not a flicker. “What comes to your mind?”

“Oh please, I don’t want to play analytic games.”

“Shirley, you’re too intelligent for me to play games. How did you mean to do away with yourself?”

“The Staten Island ferry. Jumping.”

“Not very clean.”

“Wouldn’t matter.”

“It would to the people who tried to rescue you.”

“Nobody would know I jumped.”

“There are always people around.”

“I thought of the subway. It’d take just a second.”

“If you were successful. A policeman might stop you. Someone else might stop you. Did you, in your mind, imagine all of the details right through to the end?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

She couldn’t talk.

“Listen,” said Koch, folding his hands over his crossed knee. His eyes squinted, as if looking back through time in a reversed telescope. When he had Shirley’s attention, he spoke.

“The week that Marta died, from the moment she went into a coma until it was official, without hope for the first time, I pounded I my fists on the soft bed, I could not be consoled. When my rage began to subside, I thought about the syringe, something I use to quiet down a hysterical patient if talking doesn’t work. Give myself an overdose and be done with it! Sure, I have a lifetime of analysis and self-analysis, but the seeming simplicity of suicide”—he watched her reaction to the word—“was too attractive to resist.

“What stopped me was remembering an earlier period, just after my marriage in Vienna. I loved my wife very much and I was impotent, yes, for three weeks. Imagine, a bridegroom ashamed with his bride! I could have killed myself. I thought about it. When I thought it through it was clear that what I wanted was life not death.

“You see, Shirley, nearly everybody imagines suicide at one time or another. It’s a way of cleaning out the brain of everything but the question of life or death. Child, if you were walking in the street and a flower pot hit you on the head, that wouldn’t be constructive, you’d be dead. If you got smashed by a taxi, it wouldn’t be constructive. If a mugger knifed you in the heart, what good would it do? What you did, listen carefully, thinking over your own death, can be constructive. Let me get you some tea,” said Dr. Koch.

She shook her head and clasped his hand as if to keep him from floating away.

“It’s hard to think straight right now,” said Dr. Koch, “but it will all fit in place later. This
lifeschmerz
you’re going through, it can be a good sign. I don’t think you wanted to end your life, do you see the difference?”

She was hearing words, but not coherent sentences.

“This man I met at your party—”

“Don’t want to talk about him.”

“Okay, skip. Listen, Shirley, I know how you are about work, your career, your ambition, your fire, is there a problem with that again?”

“With all jobs!”

“Meaning?” Maybe he was getting through, he thought.

“My work is not work, it’s mostly make-believe people-and-paper shuffling that doesn’t make sense. If I can’t make a living outside that system, I don’t want
to…”
She checked herself. It didn’t matter.

“It could be,” he said, “you meet a man who doesn’t work at a regular job, you are attracted not only to him but to the idea of his life and
you…”

She was crying.

“I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

He left the room.
Let her cry it out. Talk is still the best sedative in the world.

When he returned carrying the cup and saucer, Shirley wasn’t there. He looked in the anteroom. The door was open. Not in the hallway either. She was gone.

*

She was on the uptown subway platform, waiting for the train to roar in from the tunnel, the train that went to her father’s house and also to Montefiore, where he now sat speechless. A thought crossed her mind. Al’s car, garaged near the office, would never be found. During the long drive to Meadowbrook and back the car had served her better than she had served it, creasing its side against the fallen tree limb. Suddenly the train was in the station, too late to jump in front of. The doors opened. Everyone on the platform was getting in. Before the doors closed, she stepped between them into the train.

She didn’t see a seat she wanted to sit in, anyone she dared to sit next to. Hanging from a strap, she felt the locomotion of the train, the terrible noise of its passage through the dark tunnels.

“Plenty of seats.” She opened her eyes. It was the conductor passing through.

She got out at the next station. A downtown train took her back. The garage attendant looked strangely at her when she pushed the five-dollar bill across the ledge with her parking ticket. Behind the wheel, she steeled herself, drove east to York Avenue, turned right at Fifty-second Street. There it was, the stone wall Margaret had used. She stopped the car, got out to examine the wall for the long-vanished evidence of the crash.

“Hey,” yelled a doorman, “you can’t leave your car there.”

Obediently, she got back in and drove
off.

When she reached her block, she saw no parking spaces, thought she’d double-park and tell the doorman. Then, at the same
instant that she saw Mary and Al standing in front of her building, Al spotted his car and came running toward it. For a split second, he thought she was going to run the car straight into him.

“Watch out!” Mary yelled, but Shirley swerved and kept on going. The irony of it, she had driven Al and Mary together again!

*

A harsh voice woke her. “Let me see your license.”

She blinked her eyes. “What time is it?” She glanced at her watch. It was after midnight.

“I said let me see your license,” the gruff voice grated. She fumbled in her purse, gave it to him.

As he examined it, he said, “A car is no place to sleep it off. Let me see your registration.”

“It’s not my car. A friend lent it to me.”

“Oh?”

She looked in the glove compartment. No registration.

The cop circled around the back of the car to get the plate number. He riffled through his book to see if it had been reported stolen. The woman’s face looked familiar. Had he seen it on a poster?

Just then Shirley remembered that Al kept the registration taped to the bottom of a Kleenex pack. She turned the pack in the
glove compartment over, breathed relief. She showed it to the cop.

“You better go home, lady.”

Shirley nodded. Her neck felt stiff.

She drove slowly to her house. The street was deserted except for a man walking his dog. No sign of Mary and Al. Someone was getting into a parked car across the street. When they drove off, she pulled into the space. The car was a bit too far from the curb. No matter. Wearily, she left it there and went up to her apartment.