She didn’t get such a kick out of cards anymore, and nothing, not the cruises (though she was scheduled to go on one next month and had already paid her nonrefundable deposit), not food, not the Saturday night entertainments in the game room, not movies, not television, was of much interest anymore.
The truth of it — she should bite her tongue — was that even her family, although it would kill them to hear it, no longer interested her so much. As, at bottom, though it didn’t bother her, didn’t cause her to turn a hair, or lose a moment’s sleep over it, she was sure she no longer was of much interest to them either.
Maybe this was why the whole family — her, Frank, Maxine, even the kids, Barry, James, Donald, Judy — were practically burning up the long distance these days, keeping in touch, wig-wagging their desperate messages of furious reassurance, that all was well, the weather fine — that they loved one another and couldn’t wait till the next time they would be together.
She was too old to feel guilty, and supposed herself too near death to count the pennies.
Once or twice she genuinely contemplated suicide. What stayed her hand was the fact that she wasn’t much interested in death either.
And another time, because she was practically going batty from boredom, she went to an unfamiliar restaurant and ate a pork chop. She rather liked the flavor but didn’t think, as it had taken her seventy-four years (give or take) to eat the first, that she would ever order another.
On still another occasion she forced herself to ride the bus not only into downtown Miami (which she hadn’t seen since the night Alcibiades Chitral bought Ted’s car), but on through the Cuban and even black neighborhoods. She didn’t get off, not even when it came to the end of the line. She paid the driver for her return fare and transferred at the big new mall downtown, where she’d never been and did not explore now, and waited for the bus that would take her back to the Towers.
It was a week after her marathon bus ride (she hadn’t peed the whole time she’d been on her expedition, and had had to hold it in all day, not such a big deal because even on long car trips, no matter how Ted might laugh and tease her, she couldn’t bring herself to go, or do anything more than make a show of going into the Ladies, not even at the cleanest rest stops or the biggest, most modem, up-to-date Shell stations; what could she do, she couldn’t help it, she couldn’t force herself to squat over a strange toilet) when Mrs. Ted Bliss found herself by the little telephone table in a corner of her living/dining room area dialing her daughter in Cincinnati. You can imagine her surprise when a woman not Maxine picked up at the other end and said she’d reached the offices of the Greater Miami Recreational Therapeusis Research and Consultants. She hadn’t called the number in years. How, she wondered, had she still remembered it?
“Greater Miami Recreational Therapeusis Research and Consultants,” the woman said. “How may I help you?”
“Maxine?” Mrs. Bliss said.
“I think you have the wrong number,” the woman said.
“Oh, I know,” said Mrs. Bliss. “I can’t understand it.”
“You probably just made a mistake dialing.”
“No,” said Mrs. Bliss. “ I was his patient a few years ago. He didn’t have such a big operation back then.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Toibb. He didn’t have such a big operation. Consultants, secretaries to answer the phones, maybe nurses on call. You’re still on Lincoln Road?”
“Yes.”
What a piece of work is the mind, thought Mrs. Bliss. How many years had it been? Four, five? This was the trouble living in a climate where there weren’t any seasons. You were without landmarks to mark the time — record snowfalls, ice storms, heat waves. Her landmarks were all written down in her little black date book, so she never missed anyone she sent a birthday or anniversary card. (She sent out, she supposed, more than a hundred a year. Nieces and nephews she sent, grandnieces, grandnephews, cousins of all degrees she sent, mishpocheh. And though she made a check by the names of those who didn’t send her back, she wasn’t small-minded, the next year she sent a card, anyway. In Mrs. Bliss’s mind, who couldn’t read Hebrew, or, now she was a widow, go often to services, it was a way of keeping up her Judaism, the collective mazel and yontif, all the high holiday greetings of celebratory Jewish life.) But to hold some since-several-years used number in her head without any black book, this was something extraordinary. It wasn’t, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss, accidental. It was bashert, maybe even psychiatric. And hadn’t she, it couldn’t be more than a couple of months ago, been thinking of Toibb?
“So how’s Dr. Toibb these days?” asked Mrs. Bliss.
“Didn’t you know?” said the secretary. “Toibb’s dead.”
“Dead? He died, Holmer Toibb?”
“Over a year ago.”
“Over a year?”
“He was murdered.”
“What? He never! Murdered?”
“Oh, yes.”
“He was a physician. They killed a physician?”
“Well, you know, technically he wasn’t a physician.”
“He was a great healer,” Mrs. Bliss said. “A great healer.”
“The consultants miss him. We all do,” the woman said. “I was working here only a few months when it happened. I miss him.”
“Well, of course,” Mrs. Bliss said. “Besides being a good man, healers like him don’t come along every day. I feel sorry for his patients. What do they do now?”
“There’s others to fill his shoes,” the secretary said. “Toibb had foresight. He was no spring chicken, you know. He studied with Greener Hertsheim. He was with him practically from the start of the movement. So he knew. He did. He knew. He had the insight and foresight to bring other practitioners into the practice and give them the benefit of his knowledge. Oh, I’m not saying he expected to be murdered. People always think that’s something that happens to the next guy. And more power to them, I say! Because what’s the use of living if all you do with your life is go around all day with a long face like a scaredy-pants? That’s no way. A person has to have more of an interest than thaat.
“You said you were who?”
“Mrs. Ted Bliss,” Mrs. Bliss said.
“And you were Holmer’s patient?”
“It’s been a few years.”
“We’d still have your records. He kept very good records. That was his interest.”
“My records?” Mrs. Bliss said.
“Well, the notes poor Toibb made on you.”
“Did they catch them?” said Mrs. Bliss. “Do they know who did it?”
“They haven’t closed the case yet. The detectives still come in from time to time. Do you know what I think? I think you should ask to see one of the consultants.”
“Why?”
“Well, you did ring this number. And as you say, ‘It’s been a few years.’ And you were his patient. And you thought so well of him.”
“I’m sorry to hear what happened.”
“He was very highly respected.”
“I don’t understand how he could have been murdered and I never heard about it. Was it in the papers? Was it on the news?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” this odd but quite friendly woman said, “they’re keeping it quiet. It’s how they’ve chosen to operate on this one. They’re waiting for someone to slip up. They always slip up.”