“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 through 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.