Private Practices (20 page)

“You must be Naomi,” Claudia said, even before he'd introduced them. Her face was paler than usual and although her blue eyes were clear, the lids were puffy. Nevertheless, she rallied to the social necessity of greeting her brother-in-law's girlfriend. “I've heard a lot about you,” she said in a quiet voice. “I'm so glad we're meeting at last, even if it did have to be at a time like this.”

Naomi's manner was equally gracious, he noted with pleasure. For all her occasional awkwardnesses and lapses of style or forethought, she could always be counted upon for warmth and empathy. “Yes,” she was saying to Claudia. “I feel so bad for you. I understand Dr. Mulenberg was a good friend of yours.”

“Of so many people,” Alithorn interrupted, looking over Naomi's head. “Did you ever see a crowd like this one?” he added, speaking to no one in particular but shaking his head proudly as if taking personal satisfaction in his old friend Mulenberg's popularity. Then, “I see some seats!” he announced and waved to a man in one of the front pews who was standing and beckoning at him.

“Better get them,” his wife worried.

“Right!” Turning toward Claudia he said, “We'll save you and Sidney some space,” and moved briskly toward the front of the chapel.

Naomi glared at his retreating back. “What a rude man,” she exclaimed to Claudia. “Just offering to save seats for you and Sidney. Not for Ben and me.”

“I'm sure he didn't mean to exclude you and Ben,” Claudia tried to soothe Naomi. “Come on, let's all go and join him.” But Ben shook his head. “No, he meant it all right. He doesn't socialize much with his staff but Sidney's always been his fair-haired boy.”

“Where
is
Sidney?” Claudia interrupted, suddenly realizing how late it was getting. “He said he was coming with you.”

“We had an emergency in the office,” he lied, embarrassed to tell Claudia the truth of why Sidney hadn't come. If Sidney wanted to tell her the truth, that was his business. And most likely he would tell her. But looking at her swollen eyelids, and remembering how long she had known Mulenberg, he was sure that if he were Sidney, he'd never do it.

Claudia nodded, accepting his explanation, and turned toward Naomi. “Did you see the body?” she asked.

“No. We didn't have time. We only just got here.”

“She had him laid out in his pajamas.” Claudia's voice, as always, was well modulated and controlled, but Ben thought she looked indignant. She gestured with her chin toward the front of the chapel where Marilyn stood in a tight huddle with her two daughters, their heads bent in intense conversation.

“Marilyn said that Harry was the kind of man who had hated pretension and convention when he was alive,” Claudia went on, “and that he'd have wanted none of it in death. She said he'd have wanted to be laid out just the way he looked when he died.”

“Well, I suppose there's something to that,” Naomi said. “From what Ben's told me, he was an unpretentious sort of man.”

“Yes,” Claudia said. “But I find it a little strange.”

Naomi wrinkled her forehead and Ben watched the two of them. He couldn't help comparing them and noticing that although Naomi was a very good-looking woman, she did seem a little used-up, a little shopworn, when standing next to his youthful, glamorous sister-in-law.

Claudia saved him from his disconcerting thoughts by saying, “Harry looks pathetic. And just a little bit ridiculous. I had the craziest notion when I looked at him. I thought that Marilyn wanted him to look that way. That she was taking her revenge. Do you know what I mean, Ben?”

His eyes narrowed. In Sidney's presence, Claudia rarely revealed her perceptions. Just then a hush began to fall over the chapel. One of Mulenberg's daughters had stepped to the front of the room and was signaling for quiet. Claudia slipped away and went to join the Alithorns, sliding noiselessly into the aisle seat of their pew, and Ben and Naomi remained among the now even more swollen ranks of standees.

“My mother and my sister and I are all very grateful to you for coming,” the young woman said, her arms swinging shyly at her sides. “You all knew and loved my father and you know deep in your hearts what a special person he was. He was an informal man who hated pomp and circumstance, a man who loved life and hated death, which he fought with a passion in others and in himself.” Ben leaned forward, listening with absorption, trying to catch the young woman's soft-spoken words. Then her voice quivered for a moment and she glanced at her mother who was sitting, blue-gray head bowed, in the front pew.

“Well,” the young woman resumed in an even quieter tone, “Mother and Dad talked often about how he wanted to pass from this world. He wanted no words said over him. No religious ceremony. No fuss. I know that a number of those of you present wanted the opportunity to say a few words about Dad, and talk about his accomplishments and your memories of him. But it isn't what he would have wanted. My mother is absolutely certain of this. And so, that's all. This is what he would have wanted. Just to have you gather and remember him silently for a moment and then get on with your lives.”

There was a stunned silence in the chapel. No one moved, not realizing at first that this was all there was to be of the funeral service. Mulenberg's daughter, glancing at her mother and at her elder sister who was already helping Marilyn into her raincoat, had to call out, “Thank you again. Thank you for coming. The interment will be for the family only.” Only then did people understand that she meant them to rise and start filing out through the doors they had just entered. “We do appreciate your having come,” the young woman added flatly.

Ben was dazed and upset. He had wanted to participate in mourning Mulenberg, in hearing him eulogized and praised, in contemplating his virtues and accomplishments. To have been denied that formality made him feel cheated, and he was certain now that Claudia was right about Marilyn. She
had
wanted to cheat his friends, and even the dead man himself. It was a demonstration of hatred. Although most likely Marilyn herself was unaware of it. Most likely she'd thought she was just being fashionably unconventional. And certainly she'd fooled most of the people in the chapel. Behind him Ben heard a woman speaking, her voice low. “Well, it was unorthodox. But she had a point. He was that sort of guy. Always telling dirty jokes.” A man answered the woman, saying, “Yes, I guess so. I guess it suited him.”

Suddenly he searched for Claudia in the crowd filing out of the pews. She was, he thought, so much more sensitive, so much more interesting than he had ever given her credit for being before. She had understood and guided him to understanding Marilyn's deviousness, the insidious way in which she had manifested her hatred. Naomi saw only the surface of things. Her world was black and white. She loved or she hated; there was no middle ground for her. Claudia was different. More complex. More subtle. He couldn't help feeling that she and he had a great deal in common.

Most of the funeral guests in the pews had now left the chapel and were crowding out onto the landing, waiting for the elevators. He helped Naomi back into her jacket, watching the offending violet blouse disappear into navy sobriety. “I have to get back to work immediately,” she said, fastening the buttons. “I've got that appointment I told you about and I have to leave work a little early.”

“What appointment?” He had been so absorbed in his own thoughts that he couldn't make the transition back to her concerns, though he could tell from the sound of her words that it was a matter they had already discussed.

“With my ex-analyst,” she prompted him. “Remember?”

He nodded. “Yes. Of course.” She had mentioned it to him several times. In fact, he was paying for the appointment. Of late, whenever he had prodded Naomi about marriage she had said wistfully that she wished she could discuss it with her ex-analyst, who might help her overcome her anxieties in this area, but that she couldn't afford to go. He had promised her the money. “Good,” he said, remembering. “I'm glad you're finally going.”

“Stupid to do it on the day of a funeral,” she murmured.

“Don't be silly. Life goes on.”

“I could stay a while longer, I guess. I mean, if you want me to. If you're feeling blue.”

“No. I didn't really know Harry that well. And I should be getting back to work right away too.”

They left the chapel. He had lost sight of Claudia but when they emerged from the elevator into the lobby, he spotted her again. The Alithorns had departed but she was talking now to a few other of Sidney's colleagues. They all treated her so appreciatively, he noticed, watching them stand in a semicircle with Claudia at its center. Was it because she was Sidney's wife or because she was so beautiful?

“Ben?” she said in a low voice before he could be certain, and broke away from her admirers. He stopped walking although Naomi was propelled forward by the crowd. “Are you going back to work right away?” Claudia asked.

The whiteness of her beauty seemed dazzling and for a moment he felt he could barely answer her. “No. No, I'm just seeing Naomi to a cab,” he managed after a long pause.

“Come back for me, okay? There's something I'd like to talk to you about.”

“Sure. Sure.”

He was astonished, as if a wish he had made had been granted.

“It's about Sidney,” Claudia said when he returned to her, her voice so muted it was more a breeze than a sound. So she too had noticed. He felt inordinately glad. Her words meant that he and she could, together, work out a plan of action. The idea delighted him. Claudia was glancing around at the crowd still lingering in the lobby. “Let's go outside. Can you walk me to work? The museum's only a few blocks away.”

He nodded eagerly and they slipped through the revolving doors onto the street and began walking east in silence. He looked forward, seeing in the distance the tall treetops of the park and above them an expanse of azure sky. But Claudia kept looking back, glancing over her shoulder until at last they had left all the funeral guests far behind them. Then she said in an uneasy voice, “Sidney's taking drugs. Barbiturates. Not just at night but in the daytime too.”

“I know,” he said at once, wanting to help her by agreeing with her without delay.

But his agreement only seemed to upset her further. “But how could you have known? Sidney told me about it last night, but he said no one knew. He said he'd been very careful and that no one could possibly suspect.”

“I figured it out,” he answered vaguely.

“That's disturbing,” Claudia said. “I didn't know until he told me, and I live with him. Oh, I always knew he took a few Nembutals at night when he couldn't get to sleep. But I never dreamed he could be taking the stuff in the daytime. What made you think of it?”

“I just did. Why does it worry you so much?”

“It's very simple,” she said. “If you figured it out, then others will too.”

“Not necessarily,” he reassured her. “Or at least not right away.”

“God, I hope you're right.”

“What worries me,” he confessed, plunging into an anxiety he had touched on with Mulenberg, “is not that people will find out, but that even once they do, it may not matter to Sidney. He might not care what people say. He might ignore them. I don't think it's going to be easy to get him to stop.”

Claudia leaped at his words, her voice becoming more emphatic. “I'm sure you'll find a way. That's why I decided to tell you, even though Sidney made me swear I wouldn't. I can't reason with him, but I expect you can.”

He didn't feel nearly as confident about his ability to affect Sidney's thinking as she seemed to, yet he wanted to encourage her trust. “I see. Yes,” he said slowly.

“You've got to help him, Ben.”

“Yes, of course. How could you imagine otherwise?”

She was pleased. “You'll work on him? Reason with him?”

“Certainly. I'll get after him this afternoon.” But Sidney would be disagreeable and argumentative when he confronted him with knowledge of his addiction. “Or first thing tomorrow morning at the latest,” he added.

“Thank you, Ben. I'm counting on you.”

“You can,” he promised. Then he said, “Tell me what else Sidney told you. Did he tell you how much he was taking?”

She shrugged. “No. He wouldn't say.” Her eyes swept past his face to a brownstone across the street and she added, “We mustn't tell anyone else. It's too horrible.”

He shook his head from side to side and sighed. “It
is
horrible. But in a way I can understand it. He's probably going to lose his grant, you know.”

Claudia stopped walking and stared at him. Suddenly, she began to twist the strap of her large leather handbag around her wrist. He had never before noticed that she had a single nervous habit.

“What is it?” he asked. “What's wrong? Didn't you know his research was in trouble?”

Her eyes began to fill with tears. “He said something about it a while ago. I didn't believe him.” She continued to play with her handbag strap. “He said one night that I couldn't afford to believe him.”

“Well, it doesn't matter. He'll come out of it all right, and out of this pill business too.”

“I wonder.”

“Sure he will.”

Claudia pursed her lips, and then she murmured, “I suppose. Yes, I suppose you're right.”

She didn't want to discuss Sidney anymore, she told him as they reached the park and turned up the wide street that bordered it. It was making her too upset. Harry's death had really disturbed her, and now all this worry about Sidney was getting her down even more. Could they just be quiet for a while? She wanted to clear her mind, wanted to think about the things she had to do when she got to work. “Okay,” he said. “Sure. Whatever you say.”