A Man to Conjure With Page 9

  “Did you see a girl in a greenish coat, with long straight blond hair, go by?” he asked one of the men who, though he had a mustache and was mostly bald, faintly resembled Peter’s father.

  “A girl? What kind of girlie?” the man said in a heavy Yiddish accent.

  Peter described Delilah again. The old man scratched his head with the New York Post. “I can’t say I have,” he said, winking, “but I wouldn’t mind, ha ha.”

  “I seen a little girl,” a man on the next bench said, “a sweet little thing—ten, eleven years old. Blond as an angel.”

  Peter was interested.

  “She was walking with a lady, her mother,” the man added.

  Peter walked back to his cab in time to see a cop, the one who had passed him on the road, hang a ticket like a necklace on his windshield wiper.

  “Hey …”

  “It’s already written out,” the cop explained half apologetically. “You should a caught me before I started writing, huh?” He waited for an argument, but finding none, got into his car and drove off, leaving behind a few parting words of advice: “Be more careful next time, buddy.”

  Assuming that a ticket on the windshield was as good as a parking permit, Peter continued his search. Running, his eyes filmed with sweat, he covered as much of the park as he could, as anyone could in an hour’s time; he looked everywhere. He could have sworn that several times he heard Delilah calling his name, though each time he stopped to listen there was only the wind and the troubled noise of his breathing.

  When he returned to the cab, defeated by exhaustion, Delilah was awaiting him in the back seat as though she had never been gone. Peter drove off without a word, the ticket still on his windshield: it had his number, it clapped in the breeze. Any applause was better than none.

  Delilah yawned, played with her golden hair. “Take me home,” she said in her mother’s voice.

  He did, though it took a while, the traffic being much heavier at four-thirty, at times almost impassable.

  Delilah hummed to herself in back; Peter banged on his horn whenever the traffic bogged down altogether. Occasionally, while humming, Delilah would tap her foot to another music—the dull buzz of impatience. For the duration of the trip it was their only communication (whose fault was it?). Enraged, he worried.

  She left the cab without paying him, without offering to pay. And curiously, he didn’t mind: that was the kind of day it was. After another fare—two middle-aged men celebrating “our fifteenth wedding anniversary,” they told him—he called Dr. Henderson. And got his answering service.

  “Do you want to leave a message for the doctor?” a woman’s musical voice asked. He wasn’t sure whether it was recorded or not. It was that kind of voice.

  “I have no message for the doctor at this time,” he said, his own recording, and hung up, sweating with relief. Afterward he wondered why he had called. Why had he called? It was simple: he had, because … because … No answer admitted itself. After another fare he tried to call Lois and let the phone ring fifteen times before he gave up. At dinnertime he saw Lois in every fashionable restaurant he could look into, and even in some—especially those—he couldn’t. That was why, he told himself, his chest aching. Still, he wanted to believe, it was better knowing the worst than living forever in the chaos of doubt.

  After two more fares, breaking even on the day (including the ticket), Peter turned in his cab and went home for dinner, himself precooked, ready to be eaten in his own sauce. And his in-laws, Mildred and Will, were there for the white meat.

  On Friday; on Peter’s day off, they went together, Lois and Peter (and Herbie), to see Dr. Henderson. Herbie and Peter sat in the waiting room among Esquires, AMA Journals and Saturday Evening Posts while Lois was being examined inside.

  “Take it easy,” Herbie kept saying, swatting his lap intermittently with a rolled-up Esquire, as Peter paced about the waiting room. “It’s only an examination she’s getting, kid.” To cheer his brother up, Herbie wore a huge smile, like a striped college tie. “Take it easy, huh?”

  “I’m taking it easy,” Peter growled. “What the hell are you smiling about?”

  Dr. Henderson came in, a large youngish man with thick horn-rimmed glasses, bearing a striking resemblance, so it seemed to Peter, to Clark Kent, Superman’s alter ego.

  They followed the doctor in single file, Peter last, into a large office room with an extraordinary number of modern-looking machines, and beyond it to an even larger office which, though adequately equipped, seemed makeshift by comparison.

  “Well,” the doctor said, rubbing his hands together, turning to Herbie. “You’re the prospective father, I presume?” Lois, who was sitting like a rag doll on the side of the examination table, continued to stare at the floor.

  “No, I am,” Peter said in a loud voice, pushing his way in front of Herbie, startling the doctor, who stepped back as if Peter was about to attack him. Lois looked up, a smile at the corner of her mouth; she loved her husband at his worst.

  Dr. Henderson nodded, readjusting his thick glasses. “Then may I ask who you are?” he said to Herbie, an edge of suspicion in his toneless voice.

  “You ought to know,” Herbie said.

  The doctor squinted behind his glasses. “Why is that?”

  “Because,” Herbie said, smiling at Peter, nodding to Lois, “I was here before. Don’t you remember, Henderson? About ten months ago I brought a girl to see you.” He gave a pitilessly accurate description of Gloria, Peter hating him.

  The doctor showed no sign of recognition. “What was her complaint?” he said, chewing on his lip as though it were edible.

  Peter exchanged a sour glance with Lois, regret gnawing at him. They would have the child, he decided, a sudden lover of children; a brave man in his best dreams, he would bear it himself if necessary.

  Herbie’s smile melted out of shape. “I think we better go,” he said to Lois, meaning Peter too. No one moved.

  “Wait a minute,” the doctor said, his eyes like distant points of light behind the thick lens of his glasses. “It’s possible that I remember you.” Then, turning to Peter: “This girl is a little run-down,” he said in the resonance of his professional voice. “Not much, a little. Otherwise, to the best of my knowledge, everything is normal.”

  “She’s my wife,” Peter said.

  “Yes, that’s my understanding,” Dr. Henderson said in a voice so remote from the face that represented it that it seemed to be coming from a recording mechanism not quite synchronized. He glanced again at Herbie, scowled, then back at Peter. “Your wife’s almost three months along and she seems, aside from a vitamin deficiency, as I said, perfectly all right. You have no reason not to expect a normal baby.”

  “Thank you,” Peter said, prepared to leave, glancing at Lois, who was staring at the floor again. “Lois …” Their relationship had become so fragile, he found it unnerving to talk to her, as if the slightest pressure of tension could cause an explosion between them.

  “But Dr. Henderson,” Lois said in an unnaturally calm voice, which had the effect of startling them all, “we don’t want this normal child. That’s why we’re here.” She glared fiercely at Peter, who, as though he were driving his taxi, swerved out of her way.

  As if to see more clearly, Dr. Henderson took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and put them back on. Sniffed. Then the doorbell rang, and with a ceremonious nod of apology he went out to answer it.

  “It’ll be okay, don’t worry,” Herbie said. “He’s got to be careful, you understand. The jails are filled with guys like him.”

  “Let’s go,” Peter whispered to Lois.

  “No,” she hissed back.

  “Don’t worry,” Herbie said, a reassuring smile for both of them.

  “Keep out of it,” Peter said to Herbie. “Please let’s go,” he said to Lois. “We can talk about it when we get home.”

  Lois shook her head.

  “I said we’re going,” Peter said
through his teeth, in a murderous mood.

  Before Lois could answer, Dr. Henderson returned, glancing again at Herbie as he passed him. “Are you the friend of Ira Whimple?” he said.

  Herbie nodded. “Ira was the one who suggested I come to see you the other time,” he said. “He doesn’t know anything about this.”

  “I see,” the doctor said, permitting himself a small, private smile. Then to Peter, to the wall behind Peter’s head: “If you want to abort the fetus,” he said, “if that’s your intention, the third month is an apt time for it. The longer you wait, you understand, the more dangerous it becomes.” He removed his glasses. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “We understand,” Herbie answered for Peter.

  “I’d like to talk it over with my wife,” Peter said.

  “Of course,” the doctor said; then, turning to Herbie, he whispered confidentially, in a voice just loud enough for Peter and Lois to overhear, “You know better than to bring someone here who hasn’t made his mind up yet.”

  “Don’t panic,” Herbie said.

  Facing Lois, Peter could only shake his head, as though he were mute, the words nailed to the cross of his spirit. The doctor was sitting now at a small metal desk in a corner of the room, browsing through a medical journal. “The fee,” he said, his large fish mouth the only part of his face that moved, “which is a special one for you, will be four hundred dollars, payable in cash before the operation.” He wrote some figures on a prescription pad, reminding Peter of a used-car salesman who had sold him an Austin that ran nervously for a week and then died irrevocably. “As a matter of fact,” he added, “I usually charge more.”

  Herbie looked like a proud father; he had predicted beforehand, almost to the word, what Henderson would say. “Is it possible,” Lois said, confronting Henderson at his desk, “to make the fetus abort without an operation—you know, by exercising a great deal—or are there some kind of injections …?”

  The doctor considered the matter, pressing his hands together, the tips of his fingers resting under his nose. “Possible,” he said, “but not advisable. Too dangerous.”

  Lois looked as though she were about to disappear through the floor. “What about injections?” she repeated hopefully, in a dying voice. “I heard …”

  “Any practitioner of medicine,” the doctor said, adjusting his glasses in a finicky, oddly feminine way, “who tells you he can abort a three-month-old fetus with injections is a quack, pure and simple.”

  “Doc, what about earlier?” Herbie was curious.

  “There are always accidents,” the doctor said, coming slowly to his feet. “Whatever you decide,” he said to Peter, “I hope you understand that our conversation is not to go beyond these walls.”

  Peter grunted.

  “Don’t worry,” Herbie said, his solace including them all.

  Suffocating, Peter steered Lois to the door. “We’ll let you know if we decide to …” he said.

  “What about setting up an appointment now?” Herbie said, an entrepreneur, representing the best interests of all.

  As soon as they got outside, Peter promised himself, he would knock Herbie down.

  “Let’s see.” The doctor took off his glasses. “Monday or Wednesday would be out of the question.”

  “We’ll call,” Peter said, frantically turning the handle of the door, unable to open it.

  “What about next Friday?” Lois said. “Is that possible?”

  “As a matter of fact, I can take you at five o’clock on Friday,” the doctor said blandly, slightly bored, as if their decision made no difference to him. “Do you want me to set up an appointment?” The question was addressed to Peter.

  “Answer the doc,” Herbie instructed him. “Is Friday a good time? You’ll have to come with her, you know.”

  “All right,” Peter said reluctantly, and the door, which had resisted him, came open as if released by his acquiescence.

  “Well, that’s it,” Herbie said when they were outside again, clapping an arm around Peter’s shoulders. “That wasn’t so bad, now was it?” Lois walked on ahead.

  “Ahh, cut it out, Herbie” was all Peter could say. “Cut it out, for God’s sake.” There were knives in his throat. He was crying.

  “I know what you’re going through, kid,” Herbie said. “I’ve been there myself once or twice.”

  “Ahhhh!” Peter said.

  When they got to Herbie’s car—a black 1936 Cadillac, formerly a hearse—Lois was already inside, passionately alone in a corner of the front seat, as if she had been discarded there. And looking out the window, her face against the glass. And: smiling. At what?

  Like children (like lovers), Peter and Lois held hands below the level of the seat—a secret even from themselves—while Herbie jabbered. “Henderson knows his business,” Herbie was saying. “The one thing about him that I respect is that whatever else you say about him, he’s a professional. In his own way, he’s a man of principle.”

  And then they were home, all the lights on inside as though someone were there. From outside, the walls seemed to pulse with light, almost as if the old building they lived in were on fire. “We have to be more careful about lights,” Peter said. Lois nodded, afraid of the dark.

  | 6 |

  “Let’s not do it,” Lois said the next morning. They were still in bed, though the alarm had gone off.

  “Do you mean it?” he said.

  “I don’t know.” She pressed her face against his shoulder. “If we love each other, Peter, maybe we ought to have the child. It won’t be so bad.”

  “You know where I stand,” he said, a bit pompously, not quite awake.

  “Tell me again. I want to be convinced.”

  “Whatever you want,” he said.

  ‘What do you want?”

  He didn’t know any more. “You,” he said.

  His reward: she nibbled his ear. “I’m afraid,” she whispered as though it were also a secret from herself. “That doctor of Herbie’s can’t see a foot in front of him, Peter. And he said there would be no anesthetic, none at all. I’m afraid of pain.”

  It had all been said—why say it again?—why not? They rehearsed their roles by improvising.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, aware as he said it that he was unconsciously parodying Herbie.

  She looked amused, uncannily aware, it seemed, of what he was thinking, but in a moment she was disconsolate again.

  “If I got a job,” she said matter-of-factly, studying his face, “would you go back to school?”

  “All right,” he said.

  “What bothers me,” she said, “is that you don’t do anything and that you don’t want to do anything.”

  Her intensity frightened him into laughter. “I want to do everything,” he said.

  She shook her head. “You ought to have some kind of career, Peter,” she said. “Something. I don’t care what it is, though I have an idea that you’d make a good lawyer.” Smiling. “You do a lot of things well, but nothing well enough. The trouble is you have no ambition to do anything.”

  “Did your mother say that?”

  “Take gas.”

  “Okay.”

  “Even so, it’s true. My mother’s been wrong about things for so long, she was overdue. Peter, promise me that you’ll go back to school. If you promise …” She didn’t finish.

  “What?”

  “You want to do everything,” she said, kicking him, “and so what you do, you do nothing.”

  He kissed the top of her head.

  “And you can’t keep anything to yourself,” she said, her grievances spilling over. “You blurt everything out. And Peter, you never take offense when you should, only when you shouldn’t.”

  “I’m an awful shit,” he said.

  “And you’re uncouth,” she said. “You have no manners. You make terrible noises when you eat. Even Mildred noticed …”

  “And you have no breasts,” he said, kissing them throu
gh her nightgown.

  “Peter! What are you doing? You never know when to be serious.” She giggled. “You’re always serious at the wrong times.” Giggling, she couldn’t stop. Her amusement transfigured her—her mouth torn in a grimace of anguish; her tearful face, as she laughed with pain, unbearably beautiful.

  “You don’t want me to be perfect, do you?” he said. It was an old joke between them, but better than some, better than none.

  Then, pursing her lips, she was serious again. “What are we going to do?” she said.

  He tried to kiss her, but she turned her head away.

  ‘That’s no answer,” she whispered. (It was the only one he had.)

  “I’ll become a lawyer if you like, even two lawyers.”

  “That’s not very funny,” she said, a remnant of a laugh escaping despite herself. “Be serious, Peter. For God’s sake, don’t kid about everything.”

  “You’ll be late for school …”

  She was crying, the tears falling like leaves. “What’s going to become of us?”

  “We’ll both become lawyers,” he said, “we’ll form a corporation.”

  It wasn’t funny. She cried.

  He got out of bed, turned on the radiator, came back, freezing. Tiny explosions went off in the radiator, a clash of pots and pans. It got colder.

  “Let me have a piece of the covers, honey.”

  She was on her side, facing the wall, sobbing, blankets wrapped about her like a cocoon.

  “Why weren’t you more careful?”

  “What?”

  “I’m only a child myself,” she sobbed. “That’s all: a little girl.” She laughed, still crying.

  “Lois, let me have some of the covers.”

  “No. You’re a bastard,” she said. “If you weren’t only concerned with your own pleasure, we wouldn’t be in this fix, damn you. Damn you.”

  “I’m cold,” he said.

  “I hope you freeze your things off.” She laughed, more like a shriek than a laugh.

  He pulled the blankets away from her and wrapped himself in them.