“Is she here?” Clipboard down, a look of unbelief on Dr. Tisaris’s face, as if there is no mother.
“She’s at the Yale Club.”
Dr. Tisaris blinks. There is no Yale Club in Oneonta, I think. “Can you reach her?”
“Yes. I think so,” I say, still staggered.
“We should try to get on with this.” Her smile is indeed a detached, sober, professional one containing many, many strands of important consideration, none specific to me. I tell her I’d be grateful for the chance to see my son first. But what she says is, “Why don’t you make your call, and we’ll put a bandage on his eye so he won’t scare you to death.”
I look down for some reason at her curving, taut thighs beneath her smock and do not speak a word, just stand gripping the floor, tasting my blood, thinking in amazement of my son scaring me to death. She glances down at her two legs, looks up at my face without curiosity, then simply turns and walks away toward the admissions desk, leaving me alone to find a telephone.
At the Yale Club on Vanderbilt Avenue, Mr. or Mrs. O’Dell is not in. It is noon on a bright Sunday before the 4th of July, and no one, of course, should be in. Everyone should be just strolling out of Marble Collegiate, beaming magisterially, or happily queuing for the Met or the Modern, or “shooting across to the Carlyle” for a Mozart brunch or up to some special friend’s special duplex “in the tower,” where there’s a hedged veranda with ficuses and azaleas and hibiscus and a magical view of the river.
An extra check, though, uncovers Mrs. O’Dell has left behind a “just-in-case” number, which I punch in inside my scrubbed, green-and-salmon hospital phone nook — just as stout-fellow Irv wanders in again, scans the area, sees me waving, gives a thumbs-up, then turns, hands in his blue sweatpants’ pockets and surveys the wide world he’s just come from through the glass doors. He is an indispensable man. It’s a shame he’s not married.
“Windbigler residence,” a child’s musical voice says. I hear my own daughter, bursting with giggles, in the background.
“Hi,” I say, unswervingly upbeat. “Is Mrs. O’Dell there?”
“Yes. She is.” A pause for whispering. “Can I say who’s calling, plee-yuzzz?”
“Say it’s Mr. Bascombe.” I am cast low by the insubstantial sound of my name. More concentrated whispers, then a spew of laughter, following which Clarissa comes on the line.
“Hel-lo,” she says in her version of her mother’s lowered serious voice. “This is Ms. Dykstra speaking. Can I be of any use to you, sir?” (She means, of course, Can I be of any service.)
“Yes,” I say, my heart opening a little to let a stalk of light enter. “I’d like to order one of the twelve-year-old girls and maybe a pizza.”
“What color would you like?” Clarissa says gravely, though she’s bored with me already.
“White with a yellow top. Not too big.”
“Well, we only have one left. And she’s getting bigger, so you’d better place your order. What kind of pizza would you like?”
“Lemme speak to your mom — okay, sweetheart? It’s sort of important.”
“Paul’s barking again, I bet.” Clarissa makes a little schnauzer bark of her own, which drives her friend into muffled laughter. (They are, I’m certain, locked away in some wondrous, soundproof kids’ wing, with every amusement, diversion, educational device, aid and software package known to mankind at their fingertips, all of it guaranteed to keep them out of the adults’ hair for years.) Her friend makes a couple of little barks too, just for the hell of it. I should probably try one. I might feel better.
“That’s not very funny,” I say. “Get your mom for me, okay? I need to talk to her.”
The receiver goes blunk onto some hard surface. “That’s what he does,” I hear Clarissa say unkindly about her wounded brother. She barks twice more, then a door opens and steps depart. Across the waiting room, Dr. Tisaris emerges again through the emergency room door. She has her smock buttoned now and baggy green surgical trousers down to her feet, which are sheathed in green booties. She is ready to operate. Though she heads over to the admissions desk to impart something to the nurses that makes them all crack up laughing just like my daughter and her friend. A black nurse sings out, “Giiirl, I’m tellin’ you, I’m tellin’ you now,” then catches herself being noisy, sees me and covers her mouth, turning around the other way to hide more laughter.
“Hello?” Ann says brightly. She has no idea who’s calling. Clarissa has kept it as her surprise secret.
“Hi. It’s me.”
“Are you here already?” Her voice says she’s happy it’s me, has just left a table full of the world’s most interesting people, only to find even better pickings here. Maybe I could cab over and join in. (A conspicuous sea change from yesterday — based almost certainly on the welcome discovery that something has finally ended between us.)
“I’m in Oneonta,” I say bluntly.
“What’s the matter?” she says, as if Oneonta were a city well known for cultivating trouble.
“Paul’s had an accident,” I say as quickly as I can, so as to get on to the other part. “Not a life-threatening accident”—pause—“but something we need to confer about right away.”
“What happened to him?” Alarm fills her voice.
“He got hit in the eye. By a baseball. In a batting cage.”
“Is he blind?” More alarm, mixed with conceivable horror.
“No, he’s not blind. But it’s serious enough. The doctors feel like they need to get him into surgery pretty quick.” (I added the plural on my own.)
“Surgery? Where?”
“Here in Oneonta.”
“Where is it? I thought you were in Cooper’s Park.”
This, for some reason God knows but I don’t, makes me angry. “That’s down the road,” I say. “Oneonta’s a whole other city.”
“What do we have to decide?” Cold, stiffening panic now; and not about the part she can’t control — the unexplained wounding of her surviving son — but about the part she realizes, in this instant, she is accountable for and must decide about and damn well better decide right, because I am not responsible.
“What’s wrong with him?” I hear Clarissa spout out officiously, as if she were accountable for something too. “Did he get his eye blown out with fireworks?”
Her mother says, “Shush. No, he did not.”
“We have to decide if we want to let them do surgery up here,” I say, peevishly. “They think the sooner the better.”
“It’s his eye?” She is voicing this as she’s understanding it. “And they want to operate on it up there?” I know her thick, dark eyebrows are meshed and she’s tugging the back of her hair, picking up one strand at a time, tugging and tugging and tugging until she feels a perfect pin-stick of pain. She has done this only in recent years. Never when I lived with her.
“I’m getting another opinion,” I say. Though of course I haven’t yet. But I will. I gaze at the TV above the waiting-area chairs. Reverend Jackson has vanished. The words “Credit No Good?” are on the screen against a bright blue background. Irv, when I look around, is still inside the sliding doors, Dr. Tisaris gone from the admissions desk. I’ll need to find her pronto.