The Lady and Her Doctor (20 page)

Milton's foot had just touched the fourth from last step so he could see Sloane's black nothing-dress in the sitting room. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the black moving toward him but pretended he was unaware of her and turned to his right into the seasick dining room. The door to the pantry was open and, as he approached the table, Mrs. Austen came out of the pantry. She was wearing a gray-and-white striped dress, probably some kind of cook's uniform, he decided, but, no kidding, more like a costume. He wondered as he said good morning when it dated from. (Austen fitted into this house like wallpaper on a wall!) Mrs. Austen asked what he wanted for breakfast and he asked for orange juice, two scrambled eggs—wet—and crisp bacon and two cups of coffee. Austen never wasted words on him anyhow, although she had been gassing away with Sloane earlier, so she nodded and started back toward the pantry, but halfway there, turned and reminded him not to forget the salt on his eggs. “Don't you worry about that,” he said. (Let me do the worrying!) As he pulled out his chair, he heard Sloane behind him.

“Good morning, Milton. Did you sleep well?”

“Sure thing.” He studied her. “From the look of you, I wouldn't say you did.”

“No, I didn't sleep. I want to give you something, Milton.”

She started backing out of the room so he followed her. She went to the desk and took an envelope from it and handed it to him. “What's this?”

“Please read the note.”

It was the same stationery she had used before. It made the same rustle, the money sound, “—to say that my husband, Milton Krop, had absolutely nothing to do with the death of my mother … when Dr. Krop arrived it was a
fait accompli
—” Milton hit the foreign words with his forefinger, showing them to Sloane. “What's that?”

“Accomplished fact,” she explained. “I should imagine I wrote
fait accompli
because I expect Amory to be the one to read it. I will change that. I'll rewrite the whole thing, Milton; what I want is a document to prove—I want you in the clear,” she said.

Milton said, “You're out of your mind,” in a normal tone of voice and then heard the words he had said and remembered the open pantry door. “You're out of your mind, Sloane!” he repeated, but much louder, as if he were being driven out of his. Snapping the letter against the air, Milton started back to the dining room.

“It seemed sensible to me, Milton. Since I can't do what you suggest, I must be fair to you. Where are you going?”

“To eat breakfast. Get some food inside me.” He marched to the table, ignoring Sloane, who had followed him and had one finger to her lips to remind him of the open pantry door. “Fair to me,” Milton said. “You call that fair to me?” He took the letter and tore it down the center, then across, then across, making as much noise as possible doing it so that the old woman wouldn't miss it.

“It seemed to me the best solution—”

“Best solution! Best solution! You listen to me, will you? Your life isn't your own, you hear me? You hear me, Sloane? You can shut me out of your room but I'm still here! You're married to me now, don't forget that, so what happens to you happens to me! ‘Fair to me!'”

“Milton—”

He now acknowledged her signals that Mrs. Austen was in the vicinity. “I don't care who hears me, I'm your husband and we two are one, as they say. What happens to you happens to me and I'll shout that from the housetops!” He fell into his chair and put the torn bits of paper on his bread-and-butter plate. “Mrs. Austen? You ready with that orange juice? Why don't you have some breakfast, Sloane? I'll bet you had some black coffee.” When Mrs. Austen came in he asked her whether madam had had more for breakfast than a cup of black coffee and when she indicated that was all, asked for some eggs and toast. “Pay no attention to the madam, Mrs. Austen. A person doesn't sleep all night and then has nothing but coffee—an empty stomach gives some wild ideas, Mrs. Austen.” He glanced at the torn bits of paper and then deliberately pulled some matches out of his pocket and set fire to them. If Austen didn't think it was a suicide note he'd burned, he'd eat his hat.

This time when Mrs. Austen went into the pantry, she closed the door after her. Mrs. Austen was too high-minded to eavesdrop, Milton thought. It wasn't her fault she had heard all she had; damn right, it was Milton's fault! He said to Sloane, “Now what?” She smoothed back her hair as if her head hurt her. “What do we do now I've turned down your first idea? Nothing? Your sister is in New York and she's suspicious but we do nothing about it?”

“Your suggestion was—”

“Preposterous. O.K. Say no more, my lady! No, don't tell me why it's preposterous, I don't want to hear. Let's talk about something else. Talk about the weather? Like winter, the weather. How is it with Mrs. Austen, will it work out? Everything settled, wages, hours? Same as Helga? Same days off, Thursdays and every other Sunday?” This was what he had to know, Austen's time off, because that figured in it. Mrs. Austen, Sloane told him in a dead kind of voice, her eyes looking past him, was to have the same wages as Helga and the same days off with one exception. Because, with her salt-free diet, she couldn't eat out in restaurants and because she had nowhere much to go, she preferred every Sunday, but would stay both Thursday and Sunday until she had her dinner. All that was left of Mrs. Austen's family and friends had emigrated to Canada, which was where she wanted to go to end her days, but which was too far, obviously, for days off. That was all Milton heard:
immediately after her dinner Thursdays and Sundays
. That was all he needed to hear because Thursday would be the day.

Mrs. Austen came in again and Milton caught the look she and Sloane exchanged and it gave him a scare. Two kindred spirits. He waited until she had gone and then warned Sloane that even though Mrs. Austen was grateful as hell about this job, she was only human after all. “I think it would be a bad mistake to get chummy, if you know what I mean.”

Her nose went into the air. “I do not know what you mean.”

He entwined his second and third finger. “I wouldn't get too chummy.” Sloane's eyebrow went up and she repeated the word “chummy” as if it was a dirty word, while, for example, he wouldn't say what she was now saying to save his life: “mistress.” The relationship between a servant and a mistress was a complicated one and did not include becoming chummy, she was saying. Milton shrugged. “I wouldn't know, would I? East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.” As far as he was concerned, that was all right. He didn't want to meet the servant or the mistress at all—except on Thursday. Today was Saturday; Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

It was still too early for the lights to be on, so the bulbs in the Loew's marquee were a dull dirty yellow, but they did spell Thursday (Thursday to Saturday: Gregory Peck in
Moby Dick
) and that was enough to light the bulbs for him, Milton thought. He walked on toward the Schulte's next door, feeling in his vest pocket for the dime he had put there. He had not intended to go out and telephone Jenny yet, but he just hadn't been able to wait it out. He and Sloane had supposedly been working on the grounds, digging out the good specimen plants to be shipped to some old relative of hers somewhere, but Sloane wasn't working. She was clipping the bush he had dug to lessen the shock of transplanting and he could hear the shears, click then pause, click then pause. He could feel that she wanted to talk to him again. Since Saturday he had managed to hold her off, sleeping each night in the next bedroom, saying “May I” and “Not at all.” He had dammed her up, pretty well, and he knew why: he wanted to keep what had happened on Friday fresh in his mind; he wanted to remember how she had hung up on him, what she hadn't said but what she meant. He had staved Sloane off in order to keep strong enough to do it and perhaps he was now calling Jenny early for the same reasons. He wanted Jenny to start telling him what to do and what not to, to get that fresh in mind, because if he didn't have the strength, in three short weeks he'd be back with Jenny telling him again, back on the old Hide-a-Bed until death do us part. Milton put the dime in and dialed the old number; what he would say was, “Jenny? This is Milt!” What he actually said when Jenny picked up the phone was, “Jenny?”

Jenny herself said, “Milt, what is it?”

“When can I see you?”

“Any time. Now.”

“I mean alone. No offense, but without Bud or Maureen.”

“Sure, without the kids. I can send Maureen to her friend Tessie.”

“There's Gregory Peck at Loew's; does Maureen go for Gregory Peck?”

“At this stage she goes for anything in pants. Milt, this isn't just a social call, is it?”

“Not a social call, no. I want you to help me, Jenny.”

“Oh, Milt!”

Leaped at the chance, Milton thought. Like a shot. She thought he was coming to throw himself at her feet and confess. (She thought he could kill—Milt Krop! She thought he could kill but she thought he didn't know from nothing; he could kill but he couldn't wipe his own nose. Women!) “This is what I want you to do, Jenny. Listen carefully: Call me right after dinner. Right after, get it, that's important. Get the kids off to the early show. I'll see Sloane answers the phone then and you tell her you want me to come over right away. Right away, do you get it?”

“Why? I mean if she asks—”

“She won't. She's not nosy like some people. I didn't mean that, Jenny. She won't ask because she's kind of wrapped up in her own troubles right now; if she asks say it's about Bud.”

“Him being an adolescent, all the stuff you read in the papers nowadays.” Jenny was thinking about Milt, really.

“Don't spin any yarns, just say it's about Bud and shut up. The idea is to see me, not to tell her about adolescents.”

“I was just trying to get it to sound legitimate, Milt. Your wife is no fool, you know. How come all of a sudden I need to see you? How many times have I seen you since you married?”

“Let's not start that now.” The old Jenny. She knew best. “Now, do you have it straight?”

“Now, Milt—lis-ten!”

“That's what you say to me, ‘Now do you have it straight, Milt?' I wish I had a dollar for every time you talked to me as if I was a Mongolian idiot! What's sauce for the goose isn't sauce for the goosie goosie gander, is it?” She could get him so mad! (Even now. Today!)

“I have it straight,” Jenny said meekly. “I call the Haunted House—excuse me!”

“It's haunted,” Milton said. “Call right after supper.” Right after supper for Jenny would be seven-thirty on the nose because he had had evening office hours for so many years. It wouldn't occur to poor old Jenny that in the Haunted House he didn't even sit down to the table until seven-thirty, quarter of eight. He had made sure that by seven Austen would be ready to leave. She would have eaten her supper at the kitchen table and their dinner would be all ready, the leg of lamb he had asked for on the platter, the cold vegetables, the mashed potatoes in that keep-hot thing. Austen would come in and ask if everything was all set for her first night off. He would say good-by, then kind of look at the old biddy and stand up and say he would drive her to Roosevelt where they had the escalator so she wouldn't have to climb the long flight here. The old biddy would probably refuse, but he would insist—doctor's advice, she'd better take it. Sloane would almost certainly put her two cents in and make Mrs. Austen take the hitch; if she didn't, he could force it through.

On the way, he would ask Mrs. Austen whether Sloane had confided to her what had been troubling her this past week. Besides wanting to save Mrs. Austen the stairs, he had offered her this hitch to get the chance to find out; otherwise, as she well knew, he didn't like leaving the madam. Mrs. Austen might not want to admit she knew about him tearing up the “suicide” note and telling his dear wife that “that way was no way out, that she wasn't alone any more, what concerned her concerned him,” but she had overheard, all right, and his question would bring it to mind.

Drop Mrs. Austen at the subway.

Come back. Seven-fifteen. By seven-thirty telephone rings. “Hell,” he says. “No, you get it, Sloane. Every time it rings I think it could be your sister. You're handling that department now since you wouldn't take my advice. I'm not answering the phone when Mrs. Austen isn't here.” While Sloane was out talking on the phone, put the picrotoxin in the saltcellar.

Sloane reports Jenny needs him right away. Reluctant to go, but sees his duty and does it. He tells Sloane she better go ahead and eat; Jenny, he says, is nothing if not long-winded. “Wait a minute,” he says. Remembers that this is certainly after supper for Jenny. He takes up two pieces of bread and carves himself some meat off the leg of lamb. (Milt to Austen: “Now, I like leg of lamb, Mrs. Austen, but, funny, I like lots of garlic to hide the lamb taste. Lots of garlic on the lamb, Mrs. Austen,” he had ordered, and garlic covered a multitude of tastes!) While he carves himself a piece of lamb, like a little gentleman he carves a couple of slices for the madam. He puts the madam's slices on the madam's plate and puts his slices between the pieces of bread. He salts his—but not all of his. He holds his sandwich by the unsalted part. When he gets out of sight he tears off the poisoned portion and disposes of it. (A sewer?) The part he throws away he is supposed to have wolfed on the way to Jenny's, the rest he eats in Jenny's presence so that she can witness that he ate the same meat and bread Sloane did. (Let them analyze the rest of the joint, the vegetables—the whole damned supper!)

Without knowing it he had walked out of Schulte's and was standing in front of a jewelry store looking at diamond rings. He hadn't even known he was looking into the window, but when he turned away he could, by closing his eyes, see every ring on the tray. He could even pick out the square diamond with the little oblong ones on the side he would buy Cissie. Now that he was aware that he was walking, he couldn't go so fast but held back, looking in the florist's window—Funeral Wreaths a Specialty, now that was a handy little bit of information! He knew he should go back to the Haunted House, that he must keep up his act of not leaving the madam alone for more than a half hour at a time for Mrs. Austen's benefit, but now that it was almost finished it was even harder to do. He had to force himself to turn the corner and go home.