An Idol for Others (62 page)

“You’re looking marvelous, dearest,” Clara said.

“You’re looking superb yourself, Clarry. With better reason, it seems.” This brief exchange told him instantly that whatever had remained of sexuality between them was finally dead. She no longer challenged him. Her manner had softened, but not too much. She wouldn’t smother him with solicitude. She was bright and matter-of-fact and affectionate. He felt himself relaxing into the habits of years of sharing. She had the right to officiate at his death, if she chose to do so.

“We’re going straight to the hospital,” she was saying. “I thought we might have a little welcome-home supper together, but I don’t think we’ll be allowed to. You’ve eaten, I suppose.”

“Something rather inadequately disguised as food was put before me,” he said.

“Poor dearest. Perhaps I’ll be able to sneak you some caviar before you’re taken away. They want to do some exploratory surgery as soon as you get there. Nothing important, apparently. The big show is for tomorrow morning. There’s a surgical team waiting for you. Fortunately, you’re here earlier than I expected.”

“Have you told anybody about this, Clarry?” he asked. “I don’t want anybody to know.”

“I thought you might feel that way. I quite agree. People are so morbid. We don’t want the vultures to start hovering over us. I’ve arranged with the hospital not to put your name on the list of patients. They’re not to give out to anybody that you’re there. You’ll have a phone so you can call out, but no calls are to be put through to you. It can all be changed, of course, if you want.”

“No, that’s perfect, Clarry.”

“I’ve told Alice to tell the staff at home the same thing. You’re in the city, but very busy. You’ll call back when you can. They’re all getting used to your being the Invisible Man.” She uttered abrupt laughter, less harsh than Walter remembered. “I don’t know what we’d have done without Clarence. He’s organized everything. Well, after all, the family practically built the hospital, so he’s in a position to give a few orders. He says that in well over 50% of these cases, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s unpleasant, naturally, but not serious. We’ll have you up and about in no time.”

“It’s good of you to take all this trouble, Clarry. I’ve thought of you quite often.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute. I’m sure you were having a glorious time. I’ve managed. We both needed a vacation from each other. I’m sorry about the money. The lawyers were after me about not leaving everything up in the air indefinitely. It was just a legal ploy.”

“I think you’ve shown admirable restraint.”

Long before Mike had brought the car to a gliding halt in front of the hospital entrance, Walter was convinced that he had made the only possible decision. They wouldn’t cause each other pain. This was something that two people who had lived together for 30 years could take in their stride. No pain. No torment. Bleak and sad, perhaps, but they wouldn’t be presented daily with each other’s agony. If he died, he would have died in her care. She would find some satisfaction in being Walter Makin’s widow, until Walter Makin was forgotten. She would have the boys. She would have money. If he lived–well, if he lived, he would have to learn to live all over again without joy, without passion, without the radiant light of love. He had managed before.

Their arrival was a confused bustle of orderlies and nurses and interns. He was installed in a luxurious suite full of flowers. There was a bath and a room beyond. When he saw that Clara had moved into it, he realized that this was a bit more serious than she was letting on. He saw immediately that she had brought his most prized possession from the house, a small Cézanne still life. He was delighted to see it again. She had hung it so that he could look at it from the bed. Again, he was more touched than he could allow himself to be.

Young men and women in white kept coming and going, asking him questions about every aberration of his body in the past, filling out forms, demanding specimens of this and that, taking his temperature, his blood pressure, his heartbeat. He was told to get into a peculiar-looking hospital robe. He was told to get into bed. Clara moved about serenely, a still center of order in a fever of medical efficiency. Somebody came and shaved the side of his head, which puzzled and annoyed him. Somebody gave him something to drink.

Clara stood beside the bed and looked down at him with calm, dry-eyed commiseration. “I think you’re supposed to go to sleep, dearest. This must’ve been a frightful shock for you. Don’t worry about anything. We’ll manage.”

“Sure, Clarry.” He reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. She bent and kissed his forehead. He felt the inevitability of their being together for this. He looked up at the vulnerable place under her chin that he had always found so touching. It was looking a bit stringy and haggard, but he smiled as he remembered fondly, vividly, all the times she had stood before him, defying him, challenging him, spurring him on with her fierce loyalty. “I can’t let anybody see me with my hair like this. You’ll have to find me a turban. Or one of the
Lawrence of Arabia
things. I’d look cute in one of those. The Shuberts probably have some lying around from an old
Desert Song
company.”

“He always was a vain man.” They laughed, looking at each other with understanding appreciation. He closed his eyes, feeling sleepy all of a sudden. He felt her still standing beside the bed when he took a deep plunge into unconsciousness.

He was aware of a long struggle that ended with the realization that he was waking up. The sensation that seemed divorced from him and yet made him want to cry out in protest became recognizable pain. His neck hurt like hell.

“Christ, it hurts,” he muttered, opening his eyes. Clara was sitting under a single light reading, wearing a dressing gown and the glasses that had been increasingly in evidence in the last few years. She looked up, immediately removed them, rose, and came to him. Her carriage was as superb as always and showed no sign of fatigue. “What’s going on?” he asked, barely moving his lips. He had found that it hurt to talk. The bandage on his neck felt considerably bigger, but otherwise he seemed intact.

“It’s the middle of the night,” she said to him quietly. “They’ve been looking at that place. When you wake up next, the whole thing will be finished.”

“When will that be?”

“About noon tomorrow, I think. Well, today to be precise. You’re full of sedatives. I’ll see if the nurse should give you another shot.” She went through the bathroom into the other room. Walter was almost asleep when he heard whispers and felt a needle prick in his arm.

Something was very wrong with Tommy. He was trapped somehow, caught in something. Walter gave a heave to whatever was in the way and awoke with a cry.

“Everything’s all right, dearest.” Clara’s face swam above him. He was aware of a white form at the end of the bed. The whole side of his body was torn with pain. He couldn’t move. His left shoulder seemed to be crowded up against the side of his face as if he were wearing football padding.

“What have they done now?” he whispered. He remembered that it hurt to talk.

“You’re all taken care of, dearest. It’s finished. You’re going to sleep a lot, and the pain will go away. They say you can be out of here in about a week.”

“The pain … Can’t they …”

Clara turned away, and the white form moved around from the end of the bed. He felt a needle prick his arm again.

Clara watched over his feverish sleep. He looked very beautiful with the chestnut waves falling damply across his brow. She and the nurses had been combing his hair over to one side so that it almost hid what had been done to it. The modeling of his face looked purified, and his flush made him look younger than ever. Her adored and adorable, eternally youthful, eternally foolish boy. She was glad they had been apart for a while. She didn’t think she could have borne this if it had fallen on them out of the blue in the midst of the peaceful but lively routine of their life. His incoherent, drugged ramblings about Tommy suggested that their time together had been stormy. She supposed that it had been on the verge of ending when he discovered the disease. He wouldn’t have been so eager to return to her if he had still imagined himself to be “very much in love.” He wasn’t suited to his homosexual caprices, which arose from a twist of his nature that she supposed was bound to burst out from time to time. He was too romantic about them for them to last. He was too masculine to submit to masculine demands, no matter how effeminate his boys had been. She didn’t care about them anymore so long as they didn’t damage his career. She had been ready to start divorce proceedings to bring him to his senses, but the Makins had been a celebrated couple for too long for an actual divorce to be conceivable. They had more important things to think about now.

She had a conference with her cousin Clarence and the other doctors working on the case.

“I’m afraid we’re far from satisfied, Clara,” her cousin told her. “The malignancy was very widespread. The biopsies we’re coming up with show that we didn’t get at all of it. There’s a limit beyond which you can’t go on sawing away at a man unless you know it’s absolutely necessary. We’ve got a lot to go over before we settle on a treatment. The best thing we can do now is to get him on his feet and get him out of here so he can lead a normal life. The next few months should tell the story.”

“You mean, he might have only a few more months to live?” She looked from one to the other of them, challenging them.

“Not at all. There’re various operations we can attempt, depending on how it develops. If we don’t get it right the first time, we might try the second. I’d say if we get him through the next year, we’ll have every right to hope for five more, and after that, maybe indefinitely.”

She looked around at them. They nodded. Her cousin detained her as the others were leaving. He handed her a small pillbox. “I want you to have these with you always, Clara. In a case like this, pain can suddenly strike when we least expect it. I’m talking about the kind of pain that nobody can bear. We’ll be standing by, but things can’t always be arranged at a moment’s notice. I don’t hand these out indiscriminately, but I can trust you. You’re a Washburn. Don’t leave them lying around. They’re killers. Never give him more than one at a time, and space them out as far as possible.”

She dropped them into her bag. “Thanks. You know me. I’m tough. Is there anything you can tell me that you didn’t want to say in front of the others? I’d like to be prepared.”

“We gave it to you pretty straight. There’s only one thing I didn’t want to say in front of my colleagues. We may have to turn into butchers. I’m worried about his eyes. He may lose the left one.”

“Only one? Do what you have to do, Clarence. I want him to live.”

On the morning of the second day, Walter woke up feeling better. The pain was still bad, but lessening. He was aware of feeling drugged instead of just accepting it as a normal condition of existence, which he supposed was a sign of improvement. His thoughts were dull and disordered, but he found he could speak more easily and was ready to talk after the long blanked-out period of almost no communication.

“What’s the verdict?” he asked when Clara had finished reading him bits from the morning papers. “The man in San Francisco said I should have a pretty good idea of what to expect after the operation.”

“It’s not quite as simple as that, dearest. There’s apparently a very fine line between success and failure in these cases. They think the operation was reasonably successful, but they don’t rule out the possibility of another.”

“Come on, Clarry,” he said. “Tell me all. This is a perfect time to. I’m still pretty woozy. I don’t much care whether I live or die. Which is it going to be?”

“Live, of course. If the operation wasn’t a complete success, there’ll be a recurrence in a few months and another operation. That should really do the trick. Five years is apparently the magic number. If there’s no recurrence for five years after that, all the statistics are in your favor.”

“What about my eyes? Did they say anything about my eyes?”

“Nothing in particular. In cases like yours, it seems the eyes can be affected. You might lose one. So what? You’d look very dashing with a patch. You could get a job modeling shirts.”

“Oh, Clarry. Is this what we really want? Have me reduced to a few functioning organs so that I can be rolled out for state occasions for the next five years? I’m pretty hideously disfigured already, aren’t I?”

“Nonsense. Your neck will be scarred, but you can wear scarves for that. Your shoulder will be a bit peculiar, sort of caved in and bumpy, but your tailor can fix that with some padding. It’s all so unimportant.”

“I’m going to be such a frightful sham. How will anybody love me for myself if most of me is hanging in the closet?” He could never have had this conversation with Tom. They would be sobbing in each other’s arms by now. She offered him the catharsis of indifference.

She made the impatient sound in her throat. “I don’t quite see what alternative you can suggest.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler if I slit my wrists? It’s going to be such a bore for us, especially you.”

“I’m not bored,” she asserted indignantly. She drew herself up, her eyes alight with conviction. “I’m with you. I’ve never been bored for an instant since I first saw you. We’ll make life even more exciting, knowing that we want to make the most of every minute. After you’re 55, we can relax and lead a nice boring old age.”

She could touch him. He wished he could make such an impassioned affirmation regarding their life together. It had been good, in the beginning. Something had gone wrong, probably in himself. His mind wandered, trying to follow the thread of a thought that had already eluded him. So much talk was making him sleepy. “Have the boys started college?”

“Last week. Think what the next five years are going to mean for them. We’ll be watching them get started in life.”

“Yeah. Does my mother know about this?”

“No. I told you, dearest, nobody knows.”

“I suppose I ought to see her when I get out of here. When did I see her last?”