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  “What’d he want?” She always knew when something was up. Besides that, she didn’t trust Keith.

  “He overslept.” He busied himself with his stack of books. “Wants me to tell Gleason he’ll be a little late.”

  “I bet.” Pursing her lips, she said, “It’s a wonder that kid gets to school at all, with his home life.”

  What did she know about Keith’s home life?

  “I’ve got to split, Ma. See you,” and he grabbed his jacket from its hook on the back of the kitchen door. He almost had it made when his father reappeared and nailed him.

  “I’d like to talk to you tonight, John,” his father said.

  “You find your sock?” He looked pointedly at his father’s neat gray ankles.

  “Yes. Thank you for your concern.” His father didn’t like to admit that he couldn’t find things.

  “Block out your time this evening so you can do your homework and still fit me in.” His father’s voice was excessively polite. “It’s time we talked about your future, your attitude. Where you’re going.”

  “I’m going to school,” he said, smiling to show he wasn’t being a smartass.

  “You know what I mean, John.” His father fiddled with the dial on the TV, looking for his favorite newscaster. With any luck at all there’d be a shot of the president taking off for the weekend, and his father could shoot off his mouth and let off some steam talking to the president, telling him all he ever did was wave to the peasants on his way to his weekend place. There was nothing like the sight of the president, taking off or staying in the capital, to distract his old man. It was magic.

  “Just pull yourself together so we can discuss your plans this evening.”

  Why couldn’t he say “tonight” like other guy’s fathers?

  “I don’t have any plans, Dad. I can fit you in.” Behind his father’s back, he made a face. His mother widened her eyes at him and said, “Get a move on or you’ll miss your bus.” He knew she’d like it if he kissed her good-bye. But he didn’t feel like it. He let the door slam behind him and, as the damp February air filled his lungs, he lifted a finger to the sky to show what his father could do.

  Head down, bucking the wind, he trudged to the bus stop. If he timed it right, he and the bus would round the turn together. He enjoyed racing alongside while the kids inside peered out, cheering him on, shouting so the bus driver, who was his friend, would order them all to pipe down. Sometimes, when he raced like that and listened to the sounds of cheering, he pretended he was in the Olympics, on his way to a gold medal. Or imagined himself Jimmy Connors. Or even Chris Evert Lloyd. When it came to winning, he was totally asexual.

  This morning, no matter how he dragged his feet, scraping them over the frozen ground, no matter how much he slowed down, he couldn’t win. He had to wait even after he reached the bus stop, stamping his feet, watching his breath rise in the cold air.

  “So. You’re an early bird today, eh?” Gus, the driver, swung open the door to let him in.

  “More like the worm.” He lurched down the aisle to the back of the bus, hoping for a seat next to someone he didn’t know. In his bones rested the knowledge of a bad day coming. Keith calling, his father lining him up for yet another session in which he did all the talking: If he didn’t shape up, he’d wind up in a bread line. Or selling apples, à la the Great Depression. If he didn’t pull up his socks and get serious, he could forget college. A good college, anyway. He had heard it all a hundred times.

  If he’d been able to race the bus, maybe he could’ve worked off the sweat. As it was, a heavy weight lay on his chest.

  His mother’s hot cereal?

  Perhaps. More likely, the weight of impending doom.

  3

  “Mr. Hollander, sir? Doctor will see you now.” The nurse was plain, sallow-skinned, her small eyes made smaller by blue eye shadow applied with a heavy hand. As Henry followed her down the ball to the doctor’s office, he could see her shoulder blades through her uniform. She flattened herself against the office door to allow him room to pass and he noticed a birthmark on her neck, dipping down into her white collar. A birthmark the color of eggplant; aubergine, unsightly. He wondered why it hadn’t been removed when she was a child. There was no excuse for leaving something that disfiguring on a girl baby. Or a boy baby, either, for that matter.

  The doctor stood as he entered. He must look as old as he felt. It was only recently he’d begun feeling tired before the day was half over. Only recently, too, he’d taken to examining his face in the mirror and realized he was beginning to show his age.

  “Good morning, Mr. Hollander. Nice day. A bit nippy, but nice.” There were the formalities to be gone through. The doctor was alarmingly young. With his chubby cheeks, strawberry-blond hair, and freckled forehead, he looked like a very large child. The doctor’s hands, however, were reassuring. They were strong and capable, square-nailed, clean, the hands of a good doctor. Hands were more important in this case, he reasoned, than faces. He sat in the chair indicated by the nurse.

  Let’s get this over with. If it’s my gallbladder, let’s just get it out. His brother, Ed, had had his gallbladder out last year, and now there was no stopping him. Ed, not quite two years older than he, jogged and skied, played paddle, all to excess. What was he trying to prove?

  So let’s get this over with, get it out so I can start feeling myself again.

  The nurse smiled around at the room as if she were the hostess at a large cocktail party and wasn’t sure if she had enough ice, enough glasses. Presently, she went out on her sponge-rubber soles, gently closing the door behind her.

  His stomach growled. He’d gone without breakfast, except for the piece of toast he’d eaten to satisfy Ceil. His stomach had been upset when he went to bed last night, upset when he woke at three. He’d gone into the guest room to read Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen was the greatest soporific he knew. Better than Nyquil. But last night Jane had failed him, and he’d lain awake listening to the house noises, the icy branches of the apple tree scratching at the window, like a cat wanting to be let in. February was his least favorite month. The sounds of the wind hurling itself against the house like a battering ram made him long for spring. In late April and early May he’d be rising at first light, starting the coffee, then dressing in old clothes to go out and check the garden, see if anything had grown during the night when he hadn’t been looking. Early morning was the best time of day. No good now, in winter, of course, but a joy beginning the end of April, when daylight saving began. He didn’t believe April was the crudest month. His birthday was in April and, probably because of that, spring was his favorite season. He started checking seed catalogs in January, right after they took down the Christmas tree. Last year he’d ordered salsify because it was difficult to grow, therefore a challenge. Plus it tasted like oysters, another good reason, and arugula because Ceil liked it, and basil because it did such nice things for the Big Boy tomatoes they all loved. Then there were the dahlias and peonies and Oriental poppies for the beds bordering the terrace. Planning the garden always gave him a lift. It was as good as a Caribbean vacation, and much cheaper.

  “Now then.” The doctor splayed the fingers of both hands on his thighs and leaned forward. “Anything special bothering you?”

  It was their first meeting. His regular doctor, a friend of long standing, had given up his practice and moved to Dallas, unable to resist an offer to be chief of staff at a new hospital there. Shorter hours, longer pay, warmer climes, Ben had said, shamefaced, as if he weren’t entitled to it. “I feel as if I’m deserting you. But Ann said if I didn’t take it, she’d never forgive me. I don’t know if you’ve ever lived with a woman who never forgives, but I know I don’t want to try.”

  So his old friend was gone, and the new young doctor—whose name was Hall—and he eyed each other across the vast expanse of the doctor’s desk.

  “I haven’t been feeling up to par lately,” he began, already feeling better and silly a
t having come. “Just thought maybe you could give me the once-over and find out what’s responsible. Maybe some vitamins might do the trick.”

  “How long has it been since you had a complete physical?”

  “About a year and a half. Yes, just about that long. Ben Nilson was my doctor and he’s been gone about that long. I haven’t bothered to see anyone else. There was no need, really. But my wife’s been after me,” which wasn’t true. He’d told Ceil only that he was tired. “She thought it time for me to have a checkup. You know women.” He squashed his hands between his knees. “We heard from several people about you, that you were first-rate.” The young doctor inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the compliment. “So I thought I might as well come to you and locate the trouble.”

  The doctor drew a form toward himself and clicked open his pen. “If you’ll just answer a few questions for me,” he said. “Mother and father alive?”

  “My mother’s been dead for almost twenty-five years. She died in her sleep. Hadn’t been sick a day. It was a coronary occlusion.” He stopped, remembering.

  The doctor looked up, waiting.

  “My father’s hale and hearty,” he continued hastily, reassuring the doctor. “He’s seventy-three and his mother lived to be almost a hundred. She died a month before her hundredth birthday.” Surely that gave him points. “She was a tough old girl,” he added irreverently.

  “You are … how old, Mr. Hollander?” The doctor’s voice was stern. He gave his age, noticed a shaving nick on the doctor’s chin. Aha. Unsteady hands, eh. That’s not good. Watch your step, my lad.

  “Do you smoke or drink to excess?” the doctor pursued, frowning, perhaps reading his thoughts.

  “A couple of drinks before dinner. Sometimes a couple more at a party. I gave up smoking once or twice. Can’t seem to stick to it.” His hand dove into his pocket, patting the emptiness there nervously. PLEASE DON’T SMOKE, he’d been told in no uncertain terms by the sign in the doctor’s outer office.

  “Drink a lot of coffee?”

  “Two, three cups a day. None at night, unless we go out to dinner.” It seemed to him he was acquitting himself nobly, giving all the right answers. Perhaps he’d get an A when the doctor dismissed him. He listed recent illnesses (a bout with bronchitis in the fall, hepatitis four years ago), and the doctor directed him into the examining room, told him to slip on one of those backward hospital gowns designed to humiliate, and he’d be in to take a blood sample, blood pressure, and so forth. Those gowns freaked him out, as John would say. Decorated by a string of faded numerals, they reminded him of Dachau or Buchenwald. Emaciated arms bearing serial numbers. Gas chambers. He shook his head, feeling slightly fuzzy. He undressed quickly, concerned that the nurse with the birthmark might come in and find him standing naked and afraid. While he waited he studied the doctor’s medical credentials hanging on the wall to make sure everything was on the up-and-up. It would be just his luck to get one of those guys who masquerade as doctors with a mail-order diploma.

  Presently the doctor returned, whistling under his breath. He wrapped the blood pressure bandage around Henry’s arm, pumping vigorously as the cloth tightened. “Not bad, not bad at all,” the doctor said approvingly. He felt quite proud that his blood pressure at least hadn’t let him down. The doctor then inserted a needle into his vein and they both watched as his blood was sucked out of him and into the tube. Suppose his vein had come up dry. What then?

  When this was over, the doctor told him to please lie back on the table. After some prodding and poking (This hurt? How about this?) he was told he could get dressed. “We’ll need a urine sample,” the doctor said, on his way out to his next patient. “There doesn’t seem to be any irregularity. I’ll let you know,” and he was gone.

  It’s my life, he thought, dressing. You don’t have to be so damned casual about it. In the reception room, a jolly, middle-aged nurse said, “Mr. Hollander” in a loud voice, causing several patients to look at him, to his immense dismay. “The lavatory is just to your left. If you wouldn’t mind,” and she handed him a jar with his name on it. Blushing, he almost ran into the lavatory and closed the door. At his age. Ridiculous. When he’d half filled the bottle, he left it on the shelf, as instructed. The bottle felt warm to his hand. Fresh pee is always hot, he heard his brother tell him over the years. They used to have contests to see which of them would be first to write his name in new-fallen snow with pee. His brother always won. His name was shorter. It was easier to pee ED than it was to pee henry. He tried peeing HANK but his brother still won. No one ever called him Hank, either, although when he was fifteen or sixteen, he’d told people that was his name. He was a Henry and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

  “Doctor will call,” the nurse with the birthmark said in measured tones, writing on a record card. He was glad she hadn’t been the one to hand him the empty jar inscribed with his name. She didn’t look up at him.

  “Can you give me some idea when?”

  She raised her head. Her face, her eyes were very still. As if there were no one inside her. He smiled at her tentatively, wanting her to like him.

  “He’s very busy,” she said severely.

  He wanted to say, “And so am I.” Instead he said, “Of course. I understand,” trying to placate her. “Perhaps it would be better if I call him.” He felt like a child being chastened for something he hadn’t done. If it’d been the jolly nurse, the one in charge of handing out pee bottles, he would’ve said, “I haven’t told my wife I was coming here today. I thought I’d wait until I got a clean bill so I could ease her mind,” and the jolly nurse would have smiled at him and said, “I know.”

  He waited while the nurse with the birthmark scrabbled around, looking for one of the doctor’s cards. She took rather longer than seemed necessary. The set of her thin shoulders signaled anger, hostility. He thanked her when at last she handed him the card with the doctor’s number. The urge to say, “Why don’t you have that thing taken off your neck?” was very strong. If you did, you might be happier, he thought. He hurried out without looking back, glad it was over. For the time being.

  He caught the 10:43 into town, reveling in the almost empty car, the gentle swaying motion as the train rounded a curve, the unaccustomed stillness that should have been calming and wasn’t. With his handkerchief he wiped clean a spot on the filthy window so he could see out. Just before the train went into the tunnel at Ninety-sixth Street, he spotted a tattered banner suspended from a window of a tenement, shouting HAPPY 50TH! for the world to see. Did that mean fiftieth birthday or fiftieth anniversary? What a party they’d have within those spotted walls. The cockroaches would never be the same. In two years he would be fifty. He told himself he didn’t mind. Fifty was nothing these days. A broth of a boy. When he hit fifty, his father would be seventy-five. His son would be eighteen. It seemed only yesterday when he himself had been eighteen. Tonight, when he got home, he’d call his father, see how he was faring. It had been some time since they’d spoken to each other. They’d never been close. He didn’t think his father liked him very much. He knew his father preferred Ed, who was more aggressive, surer of himself. These were qualities his father admired. In people. In sons.

  A stern, somewhat rigid man, though possessing a sense of humor, his father had married again six years ago. The new wife, a giddy blonde with a soft, oval body slightly gone to flesh, liked to “go” as she put it. “Going” meant motoring endlessly up and down the West Coast, visiting her many sisters, each one blonder, giddier than she. He’d met the lot when he’d gone there on a business trip two years ago. As it happened, Ceil hadn’t gone with him and, in the end, he was glad. He’d been the hit of the evening, a rare occurrence. They’d passed him from one scented, voluminous embrace to the next, like a giant baby at its christening. They were a pride of perfumed octopi, he’d thought, amused at their abandonment as they almost smothered him in their enthusiasm. While held firmly in the ladylike but nonet
heless iron grip of one of the younger sisters whose husband had bolted some time before, he’d caught his father gazing quizzically at him. As their eyes met, they’d unaccountably smiled at each other. His father had lifted his glass in a small salute. To what? To endurance? To reunion? To the absurdities of life? He didn’t know what his father had in mind, couldn’t even guess. Nonetheless, it had been a shared moment. But one of very few.

  That night, standing between the cars of the crowded commuter train on his way home, he thought of that occasion, smiling in recollection. He’d had to work late to clear up some plans he was working on for an apartment building, a condo, really, as they all were these days, on Staten Island, plans he’d put off in order to keep his doctor’s appointment. The wind crept down his coat collar, up his trouser legs, and he shivered, wondering if he should try to find a seat. On the other hand, the cold air felt good. Under his coat his hands pressed on his abdomen, much as the doctor’s had, probing, exploring. There was nothing there, he felt quite sure. Nothing. He’d call Ed tonight, too, when he got home. Ask how he was feeling. Ask, while he was at it, the symptoms of a gallbladder attack. That would please Ed, who liked nothing better than to discuss the state of his innards.

  I am like a character in a John Cheever story, he thought wryly. Cheever’s characters were forever traveling back and forth on commuter trains, filled with desire and immortal longings. What would Cheever have made of any of this, of me, of my state of mind? Would it be possible for him to concoct an interesting piece out of such mundane material? Cheever was, always had been, a very clever writer, but even he might find the going tough here. Very slim pickings. He’d read recently that Cheever had died after a long bout with cancer. Three times he’d read the obituary, and felt as if he’d lost a friend.