The Ladies' Man (12 page)

Kathleen purses her lips into a tight “No.”

“Are we eating in?” asks Lois.

“I haven't given it a second's thought.”

“You rest,” Lois says to Nash, “and we'll wake you for dinner. We'll get Chinese food. Do you like Chinese?”

“Yes, I do,” says Nash. “Although I'll understand if you want it
to be sisters only, a family dinner. A celebration of life. I'd be happy with a tray in my room.”

“Don't be silly,” says Lois. “Richard will be back and he'll want a report.”

Kathleen shakes her head. “Harvey Nash. In our house. At our table.”

“May I use your phone?” he asks.

S
enior Deputy Sheriff Dobbin has spent the second part of his afternoon trying to serve divorce papers to a psychiatrist who is never home and who has no receptionist at work. He waits in a hallway outside her modest office, through two cycles of patients: a college-age student, female, kohl-eyed and hostile, then what appears to be a bag lady, who leaves with several waiting-room magazines.

Richard politely asks a wire-rimmed young man in a suit and ponytail—the doctor's four o'clock—to tell her she has an official visitor from the Commonwealth. The patient looks suspicious, then annoyed: It's his fifty minutes with Dr. Hornick, so fuck off, pal.

As the ponytailed four o'clock leaves, Richard slips into the beige waiting room. At five past five, he calls out, “Hello?” and gets no response. At eight past five, a plain woman with lank brown hair, parted in the middle, comes out carrying a briefcase and a lumbar-support pillow.

“Dr. Deborah Hornick?” Richard asks with a pleasant smile.

She hesitates—a strange man in her waiting room, after all. But she has done enough psych rotations in jails and hospitals to feel that this rather dashing man in the camel-hair overcoat and leather watch strap is no threat; is merely a new detail man, possibly a regional manager for Burroughs or Pfizer.

“And you're …?”

“Senior Deputy Sheriff Dobbin. Are you Dr. Deborah Hornick?”

“Yes,” she says, frowning after a long pause.

Richard reaches inside his overcoat and brings forth folded documents.

“No!” she says, stepping away. “I'm not taking those.”

“Take them,” he says. “You've been served. Even if I drop them at your feet, you've been due-delivered.”

“I'm refusing them,” she says.

“Which is pointless.”

The doctor stamps her foot. “I'm not giving him the Wellfleet house. He thinks it's his because he bought it before we were married.”

“Which has nothing to do with when you take these papers.” He leaves them on the coffee table and moves toward the door before stating—his standard advice to those who argue their case before him—“I'd get myself an excellent divorce attorney, and I'd be sure I showed up in court.”

Now Dr. Hornick takes the papers with a purpose, and that is to shake them in Richard's face. “This is what you do? Ambush people in their private offices without their permission?”

“I left you messages,” he says evenly. “You could have called me back. If you had said, ‘I leave for work at six forty-five
A.M.
,' I'd have been at your house at six-thirty, at your convenience. That's what I do.”

“Sneak up on people?”

“If necessary,” he says. “And most people are a lot less gracious than I am.”

The doctor's voice turns even shriller. “Do you get pleasure from this? Does it make you feel important, like a private eye?”

Richard says, “What're you so angry at me for?” He stops, smiles at the prospect of what he'll say next. “Isn't this what the psychology books call displacement?”

Dr. Hornick opens her mouth, but is momentarily silenced.

“You're a psychologist, right?” he continues.

“Psychiatrist—”

“Same thing. You should be a little nicer to people, Doc, especially
complete strangers who are just doing their jobs. There are a lot of nut cases out there, and one of them might want to run a key along your paint job while you're inside helping your patients feel better about themselves.”

Dr. Hornick says, “Fuck you.”

“Mark your calendar,” says Richard. He reaches over and gives the papers a little pinch and shake as if they were the cheek of an adorable baby.

Imperturbable Deputy Sheriff Dobbin is furious—
furious
—with Kathleen over her assault on Nash.

“You're like a punk who can't control himself,” he yells. “You acted like a thug. Like a crazy woman. Like a crackpot. Literally.”

“
Okay
, Richard,” says a weary Adele. “We get your point.”

“Kathleen! Of all people. I don't get it. I do
not
get it.”

“Why get hysterical? There's nothing you can do now, and she's not going to do it again.”

Lois is sitting apart from her sisters and brother at a stool next to the phone, studying a take-out menu. “That's the same argument people make when a wife murders her husband,” she observes. “ ‘She's no threat to society because he was the only one in danger.' ”

“You keep out of this,” says Adele. “You waltz in here without a clue to what calamities have occurred, you take sides, and appoint yourself the family spokesman: ‘Stay for dinner, Harvey. I insist.' ”

Kathleen is keeping silent, because she knows she is guilty as charged. Another thought bothers her and that is: How will I spin this tale for Lorenz on Monday? What version of today's assault will paint me as a reasonable and amiable woman, rather than one who throws things?

The phone rings, and it's for Adele. Richard gets up from the table and crankily takes his six-pack of beer from grocery bag to crowded refrigerator. Adele murmurs into the receiver that she is fine, and will be in on Monday.

“You're lucky,” Richard starts in again when he sits down. “You're goddamn good and lucky that you didn't give him a concussion.”

“Or kill him,” says Lois.

“I know,” says Kathleen. “We've been over this.”

“Don't you have any impulse control?” asks Lois.

“Apparently not.”

“I'd expect this from the other two,” says Richard. “But you? It's like hearing that Gandhi threw a punch.”

“It's beyond ridiculous,” says Lois.

“I must have had my reasons,” says Kathleen, “even if I can't explain what they were right now.”

Richard lowers his voice to a whisper. “Seriously. I don't know what we're dealing with here, temperamentally. He could be lying on Lois's bed right now planning his lawsuit.”

Kathleen shakes her head with conviction.

“You don't think so? You don't think I've seen every cockamamie suit filed against another person that could possibly be dreamed up? A guy who sits on a wad of gum in the Fleet Center and sues for damages?”

“I know that's what you see on a daily basis,” says Kathleen, “but it wouldn't be the case here.”

“Because?”

“Because—” She checks behind her before answering. “Harvey wants to ingratiate himself with us, and he isn't about to have me arrested.”

Adele is off the phone, announcing that that was Marty Glazer from Legal calling. Kathleen asks if she's mentioned him before, and Adele says, “No.”

Richard says, “Another admirer?”

Adele snaps, “His secretary happened to be in Development when you called, so she told him about the incident.”

“See,” says Richard, finally smiling. “Legal: an ambulance chaser. He probably heard ‘Maison Robert' and thought, ‘Hmmm. Maybe we can turn this into a corporate sponsorship. Or, at the very least, get them to send some croissants over during the fund drive to feed the volunteers.' ”

“Not Marty,” says Adele. “He's a mouse.”

“It was nice of him to call,” says Kathleen.

“Were you civil?” asks Richard.

Lois is disappointed. She'd been enjoying Richard's display of
temper, and doesn't want the conversation to slide back to good-natured brotherly chatter. “Do you think he's in any danger?” she asks.

“I doubt it,” says Kathleen.

Adele says, “Perhaps you should go in there and lay your hand on his brow?”

“Or just lie down next to him,” says Kathleen, “so you'll be the first thing he sees when he opens his black eye.”

Lois rustles the menu and ignores her sisters. Richard returns to the refrigerator and takes one of his beers. “Anyone else?” he asks. Adele says, “Me.”

Kathleen says, “Me, too.”

Lois is ignoring everything but the take-out menu from Szechwan City Limits. “How many dishes?” she asks.

“I'm not hungry,” says Adele.

“Don't go overboard,” says Kathleen.

“Go overboard,” says Richard. “I'll take the leftovers.”

“I'm wondering if we should get Peking duck, since there's five of us,” says Lois.

“In celebration of the return of Harvey Nash?” Adele asks.

Lois turns to Richard for the appropriate riposte, but gets only a shrug and a view of the base of his brown beer bottle. “I'm calling it in now,” she says.

A door opens down the hall. Adele, Kathleen, and Richard sit up straighter. For a minute, they hear only Lois, in loud, patronizing syllables, articulating her choices into the telephone.

Nash walks into the kitchen. The black half-circle under his eye is turning colors, and the welt on his cheekbone is weeping.

“Ladies,” says Nash, nodding formally. “Richard.” It is the first time he is viewing all three sisters together, and though he wants to weigh them against one another—to rate hair and freckled skin and three distinct bustlines on the same scorecard—he resists.

“Heard you had a little brush with the ferocious Kathleen,” says Richard.

Nash smiles charitably, the bad eye swollen out of alignment. “We've all done silly things in the heat of the moment that we regret.”

“You look like hell,” says Adele.

“And you'll be sure we get the pancakes and the plum sauce?” Lois barks into the phone.

Richard points with his beer bottle. “Did you put ice on it?”

“Your sister did.”

Lois greets Nash, then asks brightly, “Who's picking up the food?”

Richard says, “I just got home.”

“Don't they deliver?” asks Nash.

“Let's you and I go,” says Adele to Kathleen. “I could use some fresh air.”

Nash says, “If you'll permit me, I'd very much like this to be my treat.”

“Forget it,” says Richard.

Kathleen and Adele leave the kitchen with exaggerated dignity, chins held high like ballerinas playing soldiers.

Nash points to a vacated chair. Richard says, “Sure. Sit. She feels pretty bad. And it's so unlike Kathleen—”

“Why are you speaking for Kathleen?” asks Lois. “She should be saying this, not you.”

Richard wants to say, “Shut up, Lois,” but says only, “Lo? You weren't there today when Adele almost choked to death.”

“That's exactly—”

“And you weren't there when I called Kathleen to tell her what happened at the restaurant. You didn't hear her weeping into the phone.”

Nash produces a small gag of physical or emotional distress. “I envy you,” he explains.

“You do?” asks Richard. He slides Kathleen's untouched bottle in front of Nash.

“A big family, still close. Lots of siblings.”

“Sisters,” corrects Richard. “
They
have siblings. I have sisters.”

“How often do you get together like this?” asks Nash.

Richard smiles. “It depends on how much they like my current girlfriend.”

Nash is all ears. “You mean their standards are a little high?” he asks.

“Higher than mine.”

“He meets them on the job,” says Lois.