The Lady and Her Doctor (6 page)

“That is my sister Amory,” she said. “Amory lives in Antibes.”

It was the first he had heard of any sister. No wonder. The sister lived on the Riviera, this one stayed home, “among the cinders,” like Cinderella. “You stayed here and were the good kid. Like Cinderella.”

“My sister had ways of prying money loose, Dr. Krop. Amory has had every penny out of Mother that was coming to her. She doesn't inherit.”

“I see.”

“So you see that it could mean trouble.” She moved a step closer. “It is because of my sister that I cannot accept your help. She will come back, I assure you. She won't accept this.”

“Why not? I don't get it. She knows your mother was sick. She knows people with hearts like your mother's die every day. Your mother could have died any day. Any doctor will tell your sister that. Let her ask any doctor—even a French one.” Now he moved closer, staring into the girl's eyes. “Listen,” he said, “if that's all, I'll handle her.”

“Handle her?” She blinked, then stared.

“I'll take care of your sister if she comes around, I promise you that. Don't give your sister another thought.” He moved closer. “Don't worry, don't worry,” he whispered. She moved away and he frowned. “O.K.,” he said, “let's face it. We don't know each other and we don't know what a jury would say about what happened here this morning. You have provocation, Miss Folsom. You could tell how your mother treated you. Take the jury for a tour of this rock pile. Show them. Maybe a jury with no personal interest would say not guilty, temporary insanity; you don't know that and you don't know whether you'd rather trust those twelve men or me, isn't that it? I might have a very personal interest.”

“Dr. Krop!”

“No, let's face it, let's face it. Between this morning and now, you thought about that. You thought if you let me do this you'd put yourself in my hands. I'd have a hold over you. You thought that, admit it.”

She said calmly, standing her ground, “Yes, of course I thought that.”

This voice she used now was dry. She had squeezed all the panic and fear out of it. That's what money did, he thought. The minute I closed the front door after me and she calmed down a little, she realized that now she owned it all and that changed the picture. The Folsom estate. “That's what you thought, you admit it. After all, what do you know about me? That I'm an accredited, competent physician? I could be a—excuse me! I could be a big you-know-what for all you know.”

“Yes,” she said, “you could be.”

“You're forgetting one thing, though. The minute that death certificate goes out, you have something on me. It works both ways. And let me remind you of one thing more. This should show you! Whatever I might do from now on, Miss Folsom, this morning—with no ax to grind—I saved your life! And you know how I happened to be able to save your life? Because I didn't come here
after
the other patients the way Jenny told you I would. Mrs. Krop. I was right there when she told you I couldn't get around to you until after noon, and the reason she told you that is Jenny doesn't have much use for you or your mother.” He rubbed his thumb against his fingers in a money gesture. “As far as she knew and I knew, the Folsom estate paid us the sum of two dollars per call whereas my other patients paid three-fifty to five bucks. But I came here first for one reason and for one reason alone—because you've had my sympathy right along. Because before I knew a thing about you and your mother having more than two bucks between you—plus some books of poetry, Miss Folsom—I figured the banks were just letting you stay on in this house until they threw you out. Before it meant anything to my possible advantage, Miss Folsom, I came here first—for your sake!” He had gotten himself all worked up and when she didn't move, he did. Out of the room, into the hall, right to the telephone. Then he called her. “Get the cops,” he said. “Call them up now. I'll tear up the death certificate.” He heard her coming across the room, down the hall, and stared at the telephone he was holding toward her. So that was that, he thought, that was that. He hadn't been able to handle it. He had fumbled the ball. They had passed it to him but he couldn't hang on to it. When she reached him, he set the telephone down so he could dial “O,” then handed the receiver to her.

“Police?” she said. “Is this the police? This is Sloane Folsom.” She spoke slowly with her eyes boring into his face and he stood there giving her stare for stare. Hell with her. She told the police the address of the Haunted House. “There are some boys climbing our fence,” she said. “Trespassing, yes. Please see that they leave. No, officer,” she said, “I can't chase them myself. My mother died this morning in this house.” She cleared her throat. “I said my mother died this morning so.… I will call out to them, officer. I'll say the police are coming, but if they don't leave I will call you again and then—” She set the receiver down without taking her eyes off him. “I did not distrust you, Dr. Krop. It was Amory—it was my sister, and if you will take care of her—”

Her voice faded away. She began to tremble, with increasing violence. He could hear her teeth chattering and she turned so pale he was sure she was going to pass out. When he came to her this time she clung to him and he picked her up and carried her to the room with the money desk in it where there was a couch and laid her on it. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, her skin moist. When he put his hand to the front of the black dress to loosen it, she grabbed his hand; then she used her other hand to pull him down to her.

At first he thought, “Gratitude.” She had tested him and not found him wanting as the saying went. “That's O.K., gratitude,” he thought, feeling her teeth as she pressed her lips against his in gratitude; then he thought, “Oh, well, hysteria.”

Then he said to himself, “I'll be damned. Well, I'll be damned. Well, I'll be damned.”

He said, “Look, don't blame yourself for this, Miss—say, I can't go on calling you Miss Folsom, can I?”

She looked up at him with her light blue eyes, now darker than he had ever seen them, and then closed her eyes. “Sloane.”

“Sloan,” he repeated. “Well, don't blame yourself for this, Sloane. Don't get thinking you're some kind of freak. I mean—believe me, I'm a physician and I know what I'm talking about. This sort of thing happens under strain more often than you think, even to shy kids like you. Reading poetry … Like they say, people are funny, Sloane.” She kept her eyes closed. “You get my point, don't you? What happened to your mother—the shock, the scare and all—and making up your mind about me—this—what just happened—this is part of the—release from tension, that's all, chalk it up to that.”

She opened her eyes wide and he saw that they were lighter blue again and that now she was smiling. Her lips twitched.

She said, “Oh, yes, release from tension.”

“Well, all I wanted to say was these things happen. I wanted you to know these things happen.” He wished, now that she seemed more herself again, she'd pull down her skirts and button up, but she didn't move.

“Ah,” she said, smiling up at him, not moving though, “how funny you are! How sweet. Do you think with my mother's murder—do you think that Lady Macbeth was worried about the germs on her hands?” She held up her hand and then slid it into his shirt where it was unbuttoned, laying her palm flat against his bare chest. “Unseemly,” she said, “
ungemütlich
. How sweet you are!”

“What?”

“Never mind. Hold me,” she said, “you're sweet. Hold me.”

So he held her. “O.K.,” he said, “O.K., now, O.K.” He told himself that it certainly was one way of breaking the ice, wasn't it?

He dropped Miss Folsom at the funeral home and then drove off and parked a block away while she brought the death certificate in so Joe Dinton could go ahead. She returned to the car in about fifteen minutes and when he asked her whether Joe had asked any questions she said, with assurance, no, of course not, as if nobody would ever question her. They started back toward the Haunted House and Milton didn't see what he could do except drop her there, but, a block away, she suddenly turned and asked him not to leave her, please. Because he hadn't expected this, because, he thought, he was still so damned well trained, he said he would like to stay with her but he really had to go to his cardiac clinic at Queens General.

She said, of course. The poor patients, she said. She touched his sleeve. “Take me with you.”

“Take you—”

“Let me go with you.”

“Today?”

She smiled. “Dr. Krop, visiting a hospital clinic couldn't possibly be called festive, if that's what's worrying you.”

So Milton took Miss Folsom with him. He had worked in the clinic since he started practice, and most of the old-timer patients knew him. As he and Miss Folsom walked down the corridor past the rows of patients on benches toward the examining rooms, he was greeted many times. Their clinic visit was a big event in these people's lives, the doctors were VIP's to them; the way they greeted him showed that. Milton took this for granted until he noticed Miss Folsom looking at him with real respect and then he realized that by letting her come here he was showing himself up against the best possible background. (Maybe I'm better at this than I know, he thought, maybe I'm smarter than I know.) There couldn't be a better character reference than the way those patients looked up to him. It was only in the hospital clinic, where you worked for nothing, that there was any approximation of the glory that he and the boys had been promised by their mother in the kitchen in Brookfield when she started the four of them becoming doctors. Here Miss Folsom couldn't see Jenny, or the greasy bills she collected for him, or the Hide-a-Bed on which he slept, or the bathroom where he dressed or the linen closet where he kept his clothes. (And her suicide note. And the bottle of pills.) Just as his mother had promised, Miss Folsom, walking next to him, was looking at him as if he was Somebody! He felt, however, that if he went on and introduced her to the other doctors and she heard their shoptalk, it would be a letdown. God knows there were no knights in shining armor in Queens General! He stopped and waved at the benches and asked Miss Folsom to sit down and wait, he had to start examining. Miss Folsom saw the clinic nurse, Miss O'Connor, hurrying to him—“Oh, Doctor!”—and heard the social worker asking when he could discuss—Good, he thought, swell. He shrugged at Miss Folsom, who was choosing a seat on the patients' benches, and walked into the little cubicle and waited for the patients to be weighed and brought in to him.

Half an hour later, when Milton came out to bring a chart which hadn't been properly filled out, he looked for her and saw that of all the patients there, Miss Folsom had chosen to sit next to old Austen, the Limey, old sourpuss Austen. Old Austen was talking away and that struck him funny. (This was the day, all right!) In the four years that he had seen old Austen once every three weeks, he had never once seen her unbend to anybody. “Yes, Doctor; no, Doctor,” that was all Austen ever said to a soul until now. The other patients didn't exist for her any more than the neighbors existed for Miss Folsom. (“Sloane,” he reminded himself, smiling at her, and she smiled back even if old sourpuss didn't.) He left the chart on the desk with a note on it and returned to the cubicle examining stall.

All the time he was examining patients, taking cardiographs, making notes on charts and writing out medication slips, he was trying to decide what the next move should be. Would it be better to take it for granted that now—after what happened—it would happen again, or act as if it had never happened? Wouldn't that be the gentlemanly thing to do—act like what happened was “a closed book”? Talk about her mother? Never mention her mother? He examined, prescribed and listened mechanically to complaints. Shortness of breath. “If I didn't have them four flights to climb, Doc. How can I lose weight? Eat a lot of meat, she says. I'd like to see her eat meat on what they allow me for food, Doc. My legs are all swole up, Doc. Are you going to give me the needle today, Doc?” Milton was still up in the air when he and Miss Folsom walked out of the hospital together and got into the Studie, still didn't know. (He noticed, because it was so different from Cissie, how Miss Folsom climbed in, how she didn't give a damn what she showed getting in. Miss Folsom just got in and sat, he noticed.) She seemed to be waiting for him to make the next move and still he didn't know what it should be. As they approached the Haunted House and he still didn't know, he began to perspire. He was afraid that with her thinking him so marvelous she would assume that this was all. Remember him in her prayers. He'd done his good deed for the day, and that was that. Of course he could have something to say about that—and if he had to—(He could do anything he had to. Today proved that.) But he'd rather have it smooth. No threats. No blackmail. No strain on his heart.

When he pulled up in front of the gates of the Haunted House Milton became self-conscious about sweating so much and rolled down the window. The air, rushing in, seemed to wake Miss Folsom and she began talking, but about, of all things, old sourpuss Austen. He was sure she had learned more about Austen in that one talk than he or anyone else at the clinic had learned in four years. To flatter her, he said as much and she smiled. She had approached Austen, she said, without in the least knowing why consciously, but apparently she had chosen to sit next to her because without being conscious of it, she had recognized the type. Austen was a servant, a genuine servant. The real vanishing redskins, she said. Austen, she said, should be preserved.

“In vinegar?”

She shook her head. If Austen was vinegary, it was because she so resented living on what she called the dole. Poor old creature, she said, she'd be as out of place in England now as she is here in New York. Mrs. Austen was living in a world she never made. It turned out, Miss Folsom said, that Austen had been cook at the Endicotts'—friends of Mother's—for over twelve years, wasn't that odd?