Medicine Men (18 page)

She whispered back, “Sometimes I hate doctors.”

Dave called and she told him, “I really think I’d be better off in the hotel. This hospital food, and the television—I can’t sleep.” She knew that she must not say, I hate it here, it’s horrible.

“How would you get back to the hospital for your treatments?”

“Taxis! They’re all over!” Molly had not in fact seen a taxi
in the area, but at this point there was no lie that she would not have told.

“I’ll talk to Shepherd.”

Then suddenly, in a bursting open of her doors, the next afternoon, good fortune arrived in the person of Felicia, windblown and tanned, with her ravishing smile, fair hair a beautiful tangle. She was laughing, out of breath. “God, you’re right! What a terrible place! I had to ask all these directions and everyone tried to lose me.” She laughed again. “Even the hills down here are hideous! Southern California!”

They stared at each other, and then Molly laughed too. “You’ve come to rescue me!—or at least take me back to the horrible Hilton.”

“Sure! And I’ll do it in style! I’ve got my father’s new Lexus, they’re in Jamaica.”

Dave had in fact called Dr. Shepherd, who, with more alacrity than Molly had so far seen, signed her out. “Lucky for you your friend showed up to take you,” he remarked. “There are no cabs. But maybe you noticed.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Half an hour later, standing in the middle of Molly’s hotel room, Felicia stated, “This is one of the most depressing rooms I ever saw. Even the view. Such ugly hills, and that billboard.” And then she asked, “Don’t you want to sort of unpack?”

After a moment, and to her own surprise, Molly answered, “No,” and she began to smile—which felt unfamiliar, as though she had not used just those facial muscles in weeks. She said, “You know, there’s really no reason to stay here? I could just check out, and you could take me home?”

“But—” But Felicia was smiling too, not really making an objection. “But why not!” she then said. “Great!”

“Could we possibly drive up the coast, do you think?”

“Sure. Highway Five is really deadly.”

“I
know.
”

At the coast the fog had lifted, and there, below the furrowed, dangerous cliffs was the roiling, fierce bright sea, all brilliant greens and blues—wild free water. Molly, dozing since they had left the hotel, since Alta Linda, came wide awake, exhilarated, and very slightly afraid.

She said, “Of course there’s no reason for me to have any more radiation.” She knew that she was talking to herself; metaphorically, she was whistling. “After all, I had six weeks of it at Mount Watson, and another week here.”

“Seems like a lot. I wonder if we’ll see any whales—this is the season for them.”

“It’s so beautiful,” Molly breathed. And then, “Dave will be totally furious.”

“Let him be furious. He’s an angry person. And he left you alone in that ghastly place. Really, was seeing his mother all that important?”

“Well, it was, but it’s also been going on like that for years.” Molly suddenly laughed. “He’s probably back in the hotel by now. Big surprise.” (It turned out later that this was exactly the case: Dave came back earlier than he had said he would: “I left my
mother
, just to take care of
you
.”)

“Big surprise for him.”

They both giggled like high school girls, there in the fresh clean salt air, sun-streaked, smelling of sea.

But in addition to the childishness, that foolish triumph, even more strongly Molly felt a clear and adult certainty: she had taken charge of her own life, she had listened to her own clear inner voice. She had freed herself, at least temporarily, from the ruling tyrants, from Dave, from doctors.

From hell.

“Childish! Irresponsible! I don’t see how a woman of your age and general intelligence could be so—” Dave’s tirade went on and on—with occasional lulls, small pauses for meals and other necessary business—for several days.

According to him, Molly had greatly inconvenienced, and
alarmed
, everyone at Alta Linda Hospital, and almost everyone at the Alta Linda Hilton, never mind that she had checked out, given credit cards, all that. She had not said exactly where she was going. She had, as he said, alarmed the hospital and the hotel—
not to mention
what she had done to Dave himself, and his mother, who was much too old for such shocking surprises. And his sister. Also old.

Although Molly was not feeling very well, she made what seemed to her quite logical responses: only for one night had anyone not known her whereabouts, the night when on the way home (driving up the gorgeous, glorious coast!), she and Felicia had stopped off at the Mission Inn, in Carmel. Which was hardly hiding out. Both the hotel and the hospital had her home address; why did they need to know where she was the next day? Why did Dave’s mother need to know anything at all, or his sister?

She might as well not have spoken. Dave, never a good listener,
on this occasion chose not to hear or to acknowledge a word she had said. Were all or most or many doctors poor listeners? Molly and Felicia had discussed this question, and had only, fairly, decided that both Dave and Sandy listened poorly, if at all. However, the same could even be said of nice Dr. Macklin, and certainly of Dr. Gold, the dentist. Dr. Shapiro listened, but then that is what he did: shrinks listened.

“…  as well as danger to yourself. Possible recurrence … best possible medical opinion … fifty-million-dollar machine, perfectly aimed and accurate … take advantage … never expected any thanks … danger to the brain stem … don’t know how lucky you are …” Even his strong teeth looked menacing, and his shining head.

But I only left a few days early, I’d already had a lot of their perfect radiation. Molly did not even bother to say this—again. Nor did she really listen to whatever he was saying. Perhaps from him she had learned (in which case she should indeed be grateful) to tune him out, so that his words had no meaning, and the sound of his angry voice as he paced her bedroom barely grazed her tired consciousness. She stroked the sleek purring black cat by her side and she wondered, How could anyone possibly not like cats? Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler—Dave. Well, it figures, she thought.

At other times, though, she felt that he was probably right, and that she was in fact irresponsible, a causer of trouble. Ungrateful, as her parents had more than once pointed out. And in church, the General Confession: “…  done those things which we ought not to have done, and left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us.” The Confession resounded in her mind, especially that last: no health in us. For, as though in punishment for her flight, her misdeeds, she felt worse and worse. Barely sustained by vitamin pills and chicken soup (Felicia’s, homemade), she was not getting appreciably stronger, or better, so far. She lay weakly in bed. She slept fitfully, poorly, plagued by bad dreams.

“My mother’s worse,” Dave told her. “My sister. You can’t live here alone. I wish you’d put that goddam cat down—he’s probably feeding you germs.”

But Dave’s voice was beginning to fade out, even as he said, quite clearly: “…  move in here? You don’t have good sense. You have to be taken care of … get married?”

At this Molly came out of her fog to say very distinctly, “But we don’t even like each other.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.”

But sometimes, and for increasing lengths of time, she felt all right. She could bathe and dress and walk around in her living room, admiring that bright spectacular view, the bay and the melodramatic bridge, all that water—or from her bedroom she could look out onto her deck and think of more flowers. Of going to a nursery, planning and choosing, even working a little in all that potted soil.

She was all right being up for a while, but then she had to get back into bed, or at least to lie down there. She felt that she was magnetized by her bed, in love with it; going to bed was her true and only aim in life these days.

Felicia said, “Sandy must be stalking me, I know it. I couldn’t just happen to see him as much as I do. But who could I complain to? He’d deny it, and as he knows, he’s perfectly safe. I’d sound such a fool if I went to the cops about Dr. Raleigh Sanderson. They probably even know who he is. Oh, this is interesting: I also saw Connie the other day. Remember Connie, the fat Boston drunken wife?—the perfect excuse for Sandy, and for me? Well, I knew who she was, somehow, but so thin, I couldn’t believe it. I have to say, she really looks good. A lot better than he does, actually.”

“Where’d you see her?”

“At the Cal-Mart, down an aisle, so we weren’t exactly confronted with each other. But I’m sure she recognized me too. Anyway, she looks great. Do you have to be an alcoholic to join AA? I thought I might try.”

Molly laughed. “I don’t know—you could give it a whirl.”

“Connie just looks like a very nice, not very happy woman. When I think how I used to bad-mouth her, so terrible. I guess I was just excusing myself. With a lot of loud talk, so I wouldn’t hear any inner guilty voices. Well, I’d never do that again. Not that that’s going to do poor Connie any good. Though I’m hardly the only one.”

They were sitting in Molly’s bedroom, Molly in bed, Felicia in the bedside chair. And Felicia’s warm presence was cheering to Molly, no matter what she was talking about. Molly felt a little stronger, and the soup that Felicia had brought, this time a fish broth, was especially good. Molly actually was able to sip it with no effort—and for dessert there was a little pot of baked custard.

“And this really weird thing’s been happening
again
,” Felicia continued, and she frowned in a concentrating way. “I told you: Someone comes into my garden at night, not always at the same time but every night—God, I’ve got to get a new gate put up back there, one that locks. Anyway, he comes in and he walks around a little, and then, then he takes a leak, he
pees
—honestly, that’s what he must be doing. I can hear it. Sometimes I think it’s sort of funny, but then I don’t, and I’m scared.”

“Sandy, do you still think?” But even as she said this it sounded unimaginable to Molly: Sandy, Dr. Raleigh Sanderson, performing such a personal, private act as urination out in the open air of someone’s garden, late at night?

“Well, of course at first I thought it’s got to be Sandy. But now I’m not so sure. It just doesn’t seem like his kind of gesture. He’s too much of a snob, if you see what I mean. He wouldn’t do something so ordinary. So lowly.”

They both laughed, and Molly choked a little on her soup.

“Just eat,” Felicia told her. “Don’t try to talk, just listen, and finish your soup.”

“Yes’m.”

“Sometimes I think it’s some poor homeless person, and I should leave some food out for him. You know, some battered old guy who’s made my garden part of his nightly rounds.”

“Felicia, you’ll end up feeding the world. One of those women who adopt about thirty children, and God knows how many dogs and cats.”

“I’d like that. It’d be a lot better than getting married, I think.”

“You could do both, you know. Get married
and
have children. People do.”

They laughed as Felicia said, “Oh, you’re so conventional. Anyway, with the men I seem to pick I’d better not. Will would probably teach them to shoot their way through kindergarten.”

“Felicia, this is the best baked custard I ever had. Honestly. Beats my mother’s all hollow.”

“It’s so great to see you eating. Honestly.”

Somewhat later, after Felicia had gone, Molly’s phone rang, and she answered. “Hello?”

“Hello. Molly? Molly, this is, uh, Henry Starck.”

“Henry! Henry, how amazing. Where are you?”

“Well, I’m here. I mean I’m in San Francisco, at the, uh, Mark Hopkins.” A tiny pause. “I hope you don’t mind my calling?”

“Of course not! I’m so glad—”

Their somewhat perfunctory conversation took longer than one would think, and then Molly remembered that they had always brought out in each other this tendency toward an over-elaborate politeness; it was something they had in common. So that almost any exchange between them took forever, and got nowhere, really. This time it inevitably took quite a while for
Molly to explain with the delicacy they both required that she was more or less indisposed (how lucky, she thought, that she did not have some grossly indelicate illness—although any cancer, come to think of it, was fairly gross), and that she was more or less housebound. Recovering. And it took more time for them to agree that Henry would come to see her. That afternoon.

The first surprise with Henry was how very well he looked. Molly remembered him as pale and worried, a too-thin, old-young man. Only ten years older than she, he had looked and seemed much older (“a very good candidate for a father fix,” Molly had told Dr. Shapiro, describing Henry and that marriage). But now—he had somehow dropped off years. He was heavier, almost sleek, with a healthy tan and filled-out cheeks. A more confident, weightier walk, and clearer eyes.

“Actually,” he explained, in response to her more than polite exclamations of pleasure: how nice to see him looking so well, and so young! “Actually, I too am recovering. Things got a little hairy, in terms of booze—did anyone tell you I’d married again, and that didn’t work out at all? Basically she was an alcoholic too.” (The word had great emphasis: his alcoholism had never been stated between them before.) “But when things fell apart I was the one who went to AA, which turned out to be the best move I’d ever made. I’d been to a lot of doctors but they were no help at all.”

Henry talked for quite a while about how much better he was, even recovering from so much anger at his parents, and come to think of it at everyone, including her, Molly, his former wife. Molly was aware that her attention wandered.

Her mind drifted here and there, quite idly. She wondered if she and Henry could marry again, now that he was so well, and she was almost well; would he like to get in bed with her right there and then, possibly? Not for sex, she knew that she was not up to anything so strenuous, just for lying there and touching. But maybe not. She wondered if she would ever see Dave again, and then she remembered that he had called that very morning
and said that he might drop in later, just to see how she was doing, “even though I’m no longer on your case,” he had added, with heavy irony. He had spoken to Dr. Shepherd—and others—at Alta Linda, had tried to explain her actions. How surprised Dave would be if she remarried Henry Starck.