Always and Forever (24 page)

“I’ve tried to be so careful, David.”
This was a nightmare.

“It’s most likely just some minor infection,” David reiterated.

At the hospital Kathy waited with Alice while David disappeared behind doors with Jesse. Thank God for David, she thought.

“I ought to be with Jesse,” she protested to Alice when they’d sat waiting for almost fifteen minutes. “Why are they keeping me out here?”

“He’s in good hands,” Alice comforted. “He’s going to be all right.” But Kathy knew that Alice, too, was anxious.

David emerged at last, accompanied by a pediatrics resident.

“We’d like to admit Jesse,” the resident explained after he and Kathy had been introduced. “There’s nothing conclusive, but his symptoms bear watching.”

“I want to stay here with him,” Kathy said, her voice warning against refusal.
He was so little. He’d be so frightened in a strange hospital room.

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” the resident said gently. “Right now we need some statistics.”

At last Jesse was settled in a private room, where a bed
would be
brought in for Kathy.

“You’ll be needing some things for the night,” Alice reminded her. “Why don’t you go home, pack a valise, have dinner, and then come back? I’ll be here with Jesse. If they’ll let me, I’ll go along with him when he has the tests.”

“Want Teddy,” Jesse complained. “Mommie, bring me Teddy.”

“All right, darling,” Kathy reached to squeeze his hand. “Alice will stay here with you. I’ll be back soon.”

Again, David settled himself behind the wheel of the car, Kathy grateful for his presence. She would have been terrified if she had to go through this alone.

“Remember, Kathy, these tests are just a precautionary measure.” He took one hand from the wheel and rested it on hers for a moment. “And they won’t be frightening.”

“But the symptoms suggest polio?” she challenged.

“Suggest.” David was matter-of-fact, but she sensed his concern. “And most cases last only a few days. With no permanent damage,” he emphasized. “We hear only about the bad ones.” He hesitated. “Shouldn’t you call Phil?”

“Not until after the fashion show.” Bitterness crept into her voice. “Phil takes the phones off the hook until it’s over.”

“What time will that be?”

“About 7:30 or 8,” she surmised. “Phil will probably go off to dinner with a group afterward. There’s no way I can reach him.”

David left the car in front of the house, and he and Kathy went inside. The housekeeper came down the hall at the sound of their voices.

“It’s well past seven,” she said aggrievedly. “Mrs. Kohn told me to send dinner in at seven sharp.”

“I’m sorry,” Kathy apologized. “We’ve just come back from having Jesse admitted to the hospital.”

“Oh, my!” It seemed to Kathy that the housekeeper inched away from them. When a child was sick this ghastly summer, everyone suspected polio. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“We’re fairly certain it isn’t,” David told her. But Kathy knew he wasn’t certain at all. They wouldn’t know until after the tests.

“I’ll have Madeline serve dinner,” the housekeeper said. “Oh, your husband called about five minutes ago. He said to tell you he’d be staying in the city tonight.”

“Thank you.” Why did the woman look so scared, Kathy asked herself in anger. But then adults, too, came down with polio. “I’ll try to reach Phil at the apartment,” she told David. “Later.”

“Oh, the fashion show was so exciting, Phil!” Carol glowed as the taxi carried them from the usual Village restaurant toward the company apartment. “And afterwards the champagne and the smoked salmon and the other stuff, mmm.”

“The show’s great for the business.” Phil’s smile was complacent. He’d known Carol since August and this was late September. They’d been out seven or eight times and he still hadn’t got in. But tonight was their night. He’d known that the minute she told him—right after the fashion show—that she was going to a backers’ audition next week and wanted to take him. She wanted something from him, and was willing to pay.

“It was sweet of you to get me a ticket,” Carol purred, the skirt of her black chiffon cocktail dress riding perilously high as she leaned against him. “You never know whom you’ll meet at that kind of bash.”

“That’s a great dress.” His eyes clung to her cleavage. “I can’t wait to take it off.”

“Phil, you talk so awful,” she scolded. “I charged it to my mother’s account at Bergdorf’s,” she chattered on. “I want to wear it to the backers’ audition next week. I’ve got this tiny little part to read. If it goes on Broadway, I’ve got a chance at playing it.”

“Is it a comedy?” Phil asked. He understood what Carol was implying. If she brought in an investor—him—then the part would be hers. So tonight there’d be no red lights.

“No, it’s serious theater,” Carol said with pride. “The producer’s hoping to persuade Lee Strasberg to come in to direct. He wants it to be a true Method acting production. He’d love to get Marlon Brando for the lead, but Brando’s all tied up with films.”

Phil had heard, in boring detail, about Carol’s acting classes with a Method teacher. He was cynical about how “being a tomato”—Carol’s last class assignment—would make her another Garbo, but he listened to all her outpourings about motivation and “real-life” experiences because Method had become so “in” these days. He liked appearing knowledgeable about the theater scene.

“Phil, you
are
coming to the audition with me?” she prodded when he’d paid the driver and they were headed for the entrance to the apartment house.

“You bet,” he said breezily, reaching into his pocket for the keys. No stop signs tonight, he reminded himself. He was never comfortable making love—doing everything “but”—in her apartment, even though her roommate made a point of being out. He wanted nobody around to say, “Sure, I saw them in bed together.” He opened the door and drew her into the lobby with him.

“Great building,” Carol approved while they waited for the elevator.

“I’ve got something else great for you,” he promised, nuzzling suggestively against her pelvis.

As Phil slid the key into the lock of the apartment door, the phone began to ring. It continued to ring. He pushed the door open, switched on the foyer lamp, and ushered Carol inside.

“Aren’t you going to answer the phone?” she asked curiously.

“It’s probably a wrong number.” He shrugged and locked the door behind them.

“It would drive me crazy not to answer.” She giggled as he slid a hand down the neckline of her dress.

“You drive me crazy,” he reproached. “All through the show I kept thinking about you. About us—”

He pulled her close, confident that the backers’ audition was the key to the room he’d never entered.

“Oh Phil, you are
so
passionate,” she drawled while he shoved her dress away from her shoulders, down the undulating length of her body to the floor.

It was going to be one hell of a night, he promised himself while he stripped away the rest of her clothes and ran his hands over her delectable twenty-two-year-old nudity.

“Okay, Carol,” he ordered, his voice husky with anticipation, “let’s get this show on the road!”

Half an hour later—while he lay tired but exultant above her, triumphant in the knowledge that in a few moments he’d be ready for the second round—the phone rang again.

“Phil?” Carol lifted an eyebrow questioningly.

“Let it ring. I’ve got other things on my mind.”

B
EFORE 7 A.M. KATHY
was fully awake, after a night of broken sleep. While she sipped at a steaming cup of coffee—brought to her by a compassionate nurse—she received the first phone call of the morning.

“Any word yet?” Bella asked anxiously. Bella and Julius had come to the hospital last night, with David, at close to midnight. Bella was anxious about Jesse and Julius, Kathy suspected, nervous about the contagion aspect of polio. “Are the test reports in?”

“I have to wait until they’re all in,” Kathy explained. “We should have the results sometime this morning.”

“Have you talked to Phil yet?”

“I couldn’t reach him.” Despite her determination to be casual about this, Kathy heard the angry edge in her voice. “I kept trying until past one this morning. I’ll try him at the office around nine. He should be in by then.” Julius was taking the day off, but Phil was scheduled to go in to the office.

She had not called home to tell her parents. What was the point in upsetting them when they weren’t sure what the diagnosis was? They would have insisted on coming right out.

At 7:30 Alice walked into Jesse’s hospital room.

“I’ll stay here with him,” Alice said firmly and handed Bella’s car keys to Kathy. “Mrs. Kohn says you’re to drive home to shower and have breakfast.”

“But the reports may come in,” Kathy stalled.

“I’ll tell them to call you at the house. You’ll feel better after you’ve showered and had a decent breakfast.”

Reluctantly Kathy went to her in-laws’ house. David was at the breakfast table when she came downstairs after her shower. He’d already talked to the hospital office.

“They’ll have word on the tests within an hour,” he said soothingly.

Kathy was en route to the car when the hospital called. She rushed back into the house, breathless with anxiety.

“Jesse tested positive,” the pediatrician at the hospital told her gently. “But all indications are that it’ll be a mild case.”

“Thank you, doctor.” But her heart was pounding. He thought it was a mild case.
Suppose it wasn’t?

“What did he say?” She put down the phone to find David at her elbow.

“Positive. He thinks it’ll be a mild case.”

“Jesse is going to be all right.” David’s voice was forceful. “There’s not likely to be any permanent damage.”

“But we don’t know for sure.” Kathy was trembling, remembering the children in iron lungs at the hospital.

“The odds are on Jesse’s side,” David said. He hesitated. “I have to fly out to San Francisco this afternoon, but I’ll keep in touch. I’ll return as soon as my share of the conference is over. Jesse is going to be all right.”

“I’m so scared,” she whispered.

“I know,” David said compassionately, and pulled her into his arms in comfort. “Just keep remembering that eighty percent of polio cases are mild. Jesse is going to be all right.”

Before she returned to the hospital, Kathy phoned her family in Borough Park.

“Jesse’s going to be fine,” her mother insisted in that calm voice that always covered extreme anxiety. In less serious moments, Kathy thought, Mom was vocally emotional. “Dad’ll call Mannie to come to the store. I’ll check with Grand Central about schedules. We’ll take a taxi from the Greenwich station to the hospital.”

“Mom, you don’t have to come out,” Kathy protested.

“Our grandson’s in the hospital. Of course, we want to be there.” She paused for a moment, and Kathy heard Aunt Sophie’s voice in the background. “Aunt Sophie’s coming with us.”

Kathy returned to the hospital. She waited until shortly after 9
A.M.
to phone Phil at the office, phoning from Jesse’s room while he slept. She told Phil that Jesse was in the hospital for tests.

“The tests have come back, Phil,” she said. “Jesse has polio. But—”

“What do you mean, he has polio?” Phil’s voice crackled with shock.

“He has a case of polio,” Kathy reiterated, striving to sound calm, “but it appears to be very mild. Thank God, David was suspicious and got him into the hospital quickly. Of course, we can’t be sure for a few days, but the doctors are hopeful that there’ll be no permanent damage.” She hesitated. “I tried to reach you last night. I called our apartment and the company apartment—”

“I went out to dinner with people,” Phil said. His voice sounded strained. “I had a few drinks. I came home and was out cold in ten minutes. A bomb couldn’t have awakened me. If there’s any change, call me right away. Otherwise, I’ll be home by seven. No,” he corrected himself. “I’ll tell Wally to take me directly to the hospital.”

The next few days were agonizing for Kathy. She slept in Jesse’s room, hurrying back each time she went to the house. Phil stopped by the hospital each morning before driving into the city, and again on his return to Greenwich. He was upset, but not so upset that he’d stay away from the office, Kathy thought in silent rage. Her family had come all the way up from the city as soon as she told them about Jesse. Mom was staying here at the house, spending most of the day with her at Jesse’s bedside.

Bella came to the hospital twice a day, called regularly to comfort her, but Jesse’s father was too involved in business to stay at his son’s bedside in these critical days. The business would survive if he was away for a few days. God knows, he was on the road often enough. Phil wasn’t just a rotten husband. He was a rotten father, too.

David phoned twice a day from San Francisco, always after speaking with the doctors.

“Jesse is going to be all right,” he reiterated each time.

“I’m scared,” Kathy confessed. “David, I’m so scared!”

Seventy-two hours after he’d flown out to San Francisco, David called to say he was en route to New York.

“He’ll be here tonight,” Bella told Kathy while they sat together in Jesse’s room. “He’ll stay until we’re sure that Jesse’s all right. And he will be,” she emphasized gently.

“It just seems to be dragging on so long.” Kathy closed her eyes for a moment. “This is one long nightmare.”

“Kathy, you’re exhausted,” Bella said. “I want you to go home and sleep for a few hours. I’ll stay here with Jesse. If there’s any word about his condition, I’ll call you immediately.”

“Bella, I can’t leave—”

“You can,” Bella insisted. “You’re just drained. What good will you be to Jesse if you collapse? Go home, sleep for a while, shower, have dinner, and come back.”

“I shouldn’t,” Kathy wavered, her eyes on Jesse, sound asleep on his hospital bed.

“Go, Kathy. I won’t leave his side,” Bella promised.

Leaving the car in the garage, Kathy realized the house was empty except for the housekeeper. The other servants were off today. Wally was in town with Julius, who was staying at the apartment tonight because he and Phil were entertaining out-of-town store executives. Probably Phil, too, would remain in the city, she thought with contempt. He would call and ask about Jesse, then dash off to that business life that was of more concern to him than his family.