The Lady and Her Doctor (35 page)

Jenny finally found Milt standing at the gate of the cemetery, still holding onto the old woman, and hurried to him. Milt saw Jenny but his eyes passed over her as if she was nothing to him, stared right through her and made her so furious that she came right out with it even though she meant to keep her mouth shut while the old woman was around. “If you're looking for the Duchess, Milt, she's gone back in a Rolls-Royce—1935 model—with some tatty old ladies. More royalty, no doubt! Crowned heads, no doubt!” She smiled at Mrs. Austen in a democratic way. “Anyhow, I figured they were crowned heads because their hats fit so peculiar—I figured they must have their royal crowns on underneath.”

“Very funny,” Milton said. He waved and the big black Cadillac pulled up and he opened the door and handed Mrs. Austen in.

Jenny tugged at Milton's sleeve. “They made her ride with them, Milt; she wanted to ride with you, I think—but not because she's so crazy for your company, Milt! You're the one crazy if you think that.”

“I'm not crazy.” Milton tried to pull his sleeve free and get into the car.

“I'm coming with,” Jenny said. “Don't try to stop me this time, I'm coming with. I got my reasons, Milt!”

He decided it wasn't worth another scene, shrugged and let her step into the car.

Milt made no move, so Jenny introduced herself to the old woman. The doctor's sister-in-law. What an awful thing. Awful. A young woman like that, her whole life in front of her.

Mrs. Austen said, “Yes, madam. Yes, madam.”

“I always think though it's worse for those left behind. Milt—Dr. Krop looks terrible!” Take pity on him. Don't hurt Milt.

“Yes, madam.”

If there was any guarantee she'd never say anything but “Yes, madam, no, madam,” to the Duchess, but then she'd probably talk plenty to royalty. “I'll bet the doctor hasn't had a square meal since it happened.”

“He has not, madam. No.”

“It's only to be expected,” Jenny said hastily, catching Milt's glare. “He should get out of that house more. You know what? Milt, Mrs. Austen certainly hasn't had time to fix a meal today and a funeral takes it out of you—it would be a charity to Mrs. Austen if you came to my place for a meal, Milt.” She leaned across and smiled at the unsmiling Mrs. Austen. “I know how a woman is—if she can have a cup of hot tea and a slice of bread and butter and go to bed that's O.K., but not with a man, isn't that right? Well, I have a nice pot roast all fixed with browned potatoes just the way the doctor likes it. Maureen will have the table set—Mrs. Austen, at a time like this, isn't it so? There's nothing like having kids around to cheer you up. They bring it home that life marches on. The doctor has been a father to my kids, Mrs. Austen. They'll be beside themselves to see their Uncle Miltie again. So, is it settled, Milt? You ask the chauffeur to drop Mrs. Austen at your place and then come home with me?”

“No.”

“No! I talk and talk and ‘no'! Maybe that's why! Milt, if I shut up? That's a bargain, Milt, I'll shut up if you come. The doctor made a good bargain, right, Mrs. Austen?” Not knowing what to answer to that, “No, madam” or “Yes, madam,” the old lady turned to Milt and again Jenny saw—it stabbed her to the heart—that she hated Milt like poison. The minute she looked at Milt the hate showed up. It wasn't difficult to keep quiet after that look, and anyhow, the ride back to her place was much shorter than out from the funeral parlor. No longer decorously trailing the hearse, the Cadillac could show what it could do. When the car stopped, Milt—in such a hurry to get rid of her, Jenny thought—opened the door, not even moving! “You got to see me to my door,” Jenny said. “What kind of manners will Mrs. Austen think you have, Milt!” She said it like a joke, but Milt knew her well enough to know she wouldn't budge unless he escorted her.

As they approached the apartment house, Jenny turned and looked at the old woman sitting stiffly in the car, her back like a rod, her black hat straight across her head. Jenny said softly, “Why does she hate and despise you, Milt? What does she have on you?”

“What?” Milt said. “
Her?
”

“
Her
. Why does she hate and despise you? It's peculiar. She swears all kind of stuff to the cops that shows them you're kosher, Milt, strictly on the level, but she hates and despises you.” There was that smell to Milt, she got it so strong now because he hadn't been around for so long; she drew in her breath. “If I was the only one that thought it was peculiar, Milt, it wouldn't matter.” She nodded vigorously. “You got to listen to me, Milt.” All she got out of him was a shrug of his shoulders that she could go ahead and talk. “Milt, I didn't push myself in with you because I have no pride. I have pride, I have pride, but not where you're concerned, Milt. I didn't ask you home for a pot roast. Because of
her
.” She pointed toward the car. “The Duchess noticed also.”

“You don't say? Noticed what? For your benefit, Jenny, once and for all, and for Lady Constant, also—it just so happens that Austen always was and always will be a sourpuss. She just happens to have been born with a sour pickle in her mouth. Listen, I've seen her around for four years at the clinic in Queens General off and on and I never yet saw her crack a smile and neither did anyone else.”

“She hates you, Milt. Why?”

“Why? She hates the whole world.”

“The world will get by, the question is you.”

“I'll get by. By the nineteenth I'll be out of the house and so will Mrs. Austen.”

“Does she know that?”

“Of course. She's just staying on until the nineteenth.”

“Then she'll be out on her ear?”

“Out on her ear? I'm giving her two months' salary. Out on her own two feet. She's no relative of mine.”

“So she's no relative, so what? She's an old woman, isn't she?”

“She'll get back on Social Security or Old Age or whatever she had before.”

“And she's not a well woman, either.”

“The clinic will handle that.”

“Milt, Milt, what's the matter with you? Maybe that's why she gives you those looks—if looks could kill! Because maybe, as the Duchess said, she told the truth as she had seen it, but—but, Milt! She helped you plenty, don't you forget that, and now you've got to help her, not throw her out on her ear! You've got to make that old woman love you like a son!” The reason the Duchess was taking the look Mrs. Austen gave Milt so big must be that it was all she had to go on and he wants to leave the old lady flat so the Duchess can ask questions to her heart's content!
The Duchess thought Milt murdered her sister!
“Believe me, Milt, the last thing you should do is leave the old lady flat in New York City. Where's her home town?”

“I don't know. Canada, somewhere. What do I care?”

“You care, you care, Milt! Milt, you're a rich man now. You know what rich people do with their faithful help? They don't just leave them flat! An old woman like that—from the clinic—a cardiac! They just don't throw them out, Milt, they give them a pension. The old lady knows that, if you're too ignorant, Milt. You got to go to your lawyer tomorrow and fix it legally so she has a little income that will make her independent for life and make her go back to Canada, that's the thing you have to do. ‘In gratitude for her faithful services'—I've read that lots of times in the paper! That's exactly what you better do—a man in your position!” She flicked a bit of lint from his coat collar. “If you know what I mean, Milt!”

He set his chin stubbornly and reached for the door. “No, I don't know what you mean.”

“Milt, you do! A man in your position! That's all I can say. Leave it at that.”

He managed a laugh and shoved the door open. “Now I've heard everything! Something you don't say!” But damned if she wasn't right for once. Of course he didn't want the old lady hanging around when he couldn't be here to watch her. The reason he hadn't thought of it himself was he grudged giving her anything because of the way she had never shown him any respect, the way she had never hidden that she thought he was dirt.

“Milt. My last word. Give her a pension.”

“The way you're talking—or rather, the way you're not talking—why bother with a pension? ‘A man in my position'—why don't I take her for a ride; after all, dead men tell no tales? Why don't I take Lady Constant for a ride? Hell, all of you, all three of you?”

“Milt! Milt!” She walked into the vestibule.

He forced himself to be angry rather than frightened. “You, too, remember! ‘A man in my position,' whatever that may mean! You're driving me nuts! The police give me a clean slate. I can leave the country. I can do anything I want; it's O.K. with the police, but with you—‘Milt! Milt!' Why do you look at me that way? ‘Milt! Milt!'” He grabbed both her arms. “What's going on in that head of yours?”

She pulled her arms back and his hands pressed against her side, her breasts. She closed her eyes, feeling faint. Her voice came out unlike itself, soft. “Milt.”

“What's going on in your head, I say! You have the facts! Sloane had this delusion she killed her mother because she wasn't right in the head. Because she was insane, she killed herself on Sunday. Those are the facts!” He pulled his hands away from between her arms and her firm body whose warmth came through the cloth of her coat.

Jenny said softly, “I think you made Sloane think she killed her mother, Milt. Somehow, that day the old lady died a natural death, you made your—Sloane—think she killed her poor mother, that's what I think the facts are, Milt.”

“Just like that I made! Jenny, how?”

“Oh, Milt, if I only knew!”

“Then what?”

“Then you would listen to me! That's what! That's all! Then what do you think? Then I'd run to the cops and tell them?” She came very close to him. “Then you would realize I'm your only friend and you'd listen to me!” Milt turned away so that she could only see his ear and the side of his cheek. “My God, what a kid you are! Worse than Bud! You act like this was some kind of guessing game, Milt. ‘How?' The way you said that. If I guess, I win. I win the booby prize! Well, I can't guess how, I don't know how but maybe I do know something! Maybe I know what the last straw was, what drove her to it Sunday. Maybe not insane, maybe insanely jealous!”

“My God!”

“Look how innocent he looks! Yes, insane with jealousy. You heard what jealousy does to a woman! A woman can stand anything but not jealousy!”

“Jealous! Of you? Jealous of you, Jenny?” He turned back and saw how white in the face that got her. “Of you?”

Jenny tried to stop trembling. She could not stop trembling. “No, Milt, not me. Your Sloane called me up on Friday before she killed herself. I only realized later she was suspicious. You told her you would be with me. You thought she wouldn't suspect or check up and you didn't have the good sense to tell me first so if she called I'd go to bat for you. You don't trust me, Milt! You'd rather trust to luck she wouldn't check up, so I didn't back you up and you were out at the Stork Club with Cissie Parker. I did a little checking up myself, Milt! So what I think is maybe Sloane found out, too, and Cissie is who she was jealous of and it was little Cissie who was the last straw that broke the camel's back.”

“Cissie Parker! I'm in love with Cissie Parker!”

“Don't say that out here in the vestibule, Milt—anyone could come in. Milt, go on and send the old lady home in the car, come into the apartment where we can be private.”

“No.”

She saw that he would not let the old lady go to the Haunted House alone where the Duchess could stroll in and get to work on her. Good. “Then lower your voice, Milt.” She spoke very softly. “You're in love with Cissie Parker, Milt.”

“I'll show you how much I'm in love with Cissie Parker!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. As he did so another paper fluttered to the floor and Jenny bent and picked it up. “Give it to me. It's nothing. Give it to me.”

Before she gave the paper back to Milt Jenny saw that it was a kind of map of the
Queen Elizabeth
. “What's so private about that?”

“Who said private?” But he saw on Jenny's face that he had snatched it, that he had showed anxiety. “Okay, I'm embarrassed, can you understand that? I didn't want to act like a greenhorn when I get on that boat because I never set foot on a boat in my whole life!” He put the map in his pocket and opened up the reservation notification from the Cunard Line and waved it in Jenny's face. “If I'm in love with Cissie Parker then why am I going to France?”

Jenny fell back against the wall. Her hand went to her throat. She shook her head at Milton. “To France?”

“You're so sure I'm in love that's all you can think of. Yes, to France, that's what I'm trying to tell you.”

“No, Milt. Your wife told you no, Milt. You mustn't go. It will be the worst thing for you, Milt!”

“Should I stay with you?” He waved toward the door of the apartment. “I should stay put here and drop dead in harness? Nix. No.” He folded the letter and put it back into his pocket, then strode to the door and held out his hand for Jenny's key, but she wouldn't give it to him. “Milt! Milt!” He laughed at her. “Milt! Milt! Listen, Jenny, Milt knows what he wants and Milt can take care of himself. I can take care of myself, do you hear me?” She had moved up to him. “All I ask you, Jenny, is to butt out. Leave me alone. Keep your nose out of my business.” They stood close to each other in front of the apartment door silently. Jenny's eyes were big and full of tears. Milt swallowed, his hands went to her arms again but this time he pressed them against her side. “Ah, you mean well, Jenny, but every time you open your mouth, you put my neck in it.” He mocked her, but tenderly, pressing her arms tenderly. “‘Milt! Milt!' I'll be the death of you; I'll be the death of you! Jenny, Jenny, listen to me for once! Butt out, butt out or you'll be the death of me!”