The Doctor's Wife (3 page)

This causes yelling, tears, and the girls are sent upstairs to tidy their room peacefully.

Chrissy wads up her clothes and shoves them in her dresser drawers. Ann is so perfect that she's perfectly folding all of her clothes into prissy little rectangles. Chrissy doesn't know why she and Ann have to share a bedroom. Her grandparents only come a couple times a year—why do they need a whole bedroom to themselves? If she could have that room instead and not have to share with Ann, then she'd be happy. Chrissy's bed is lumpy, no matter how much she tries to smooth it.

“Here,” Ann says, yanking the coverlet into place, and now they're done. The sun shines brightly outside. It is cruel to be kept cooped up like this. Chrissy calls her mother upstairs.

“Will it pass the white glove test?” the Doctor's Wife asks.

“Oh, yes,” Chrissy says, hoping she won't look inside the drawers.

“Go outside and swim,” the Doctor's Wife says.

Chrissy rips her clothes off and puts on her bathing suit, still slightly damp in the lining from the day before.

The trip to Sun Valley is conceived of as a way to please everybody. There are horses. Her husband can fish. The kids can swim in the pool or go to the swimming hole down the path. There is even bowling in the lodge.

It takes over twelve hours to drive to Idaho, so they leave as the sun is rising, aiming to arrive by dinnertime. They head over the mountains, stopping for lunch in eastern Washington, at an oasis of sorts, a dark grove where they sit at a picnic table. They eat bread and butter sandwiches, pickles, and fried chicken the Doctor's Wife prepared the night before. After lunch, the Doctor's Wife stubs out her cigarette and they climb back in the car, driving through the dry heat of Eastern Washington, Yakima, and into Oregon, through Pendelton, and down through Idaho. It's very hot, and the kids start to complain. The Doctor's Wife would also like to complain. The horizon line shimmers in the distance and the hills are dry with little scrub pines.

“I have heat exhaustion,” Chrissy says.

The Doctor's Wife wonders where she picked that phrase up. “If you really had heat exhaustion you couldn't talk.”

Chrissy opens her mouth and lolls back against the seat.

“Let's play a game of ‘In My Grandmother's Trunk,'” the Doctor's Wife says, beginning, “In my grandmother's trunk there's an argyle sock.”

It's supposed to be a learning exercise. They prompt each other so that even Chrissy is able to reach to the end of the alphabet. When they're done, the Doctor's Wife looks down at her watch. This activity has taken about fifteen minutes. After about a hundred rounds of Twenty Questions, they climb up the pass though the mountains and it starts to get a bit cooler. Sun Valley spreads below.

They have three adjoining rooms in the lodge. After the luggage is carried in by all hands, the kids ask if they can go swimming.

“Of course, that's why we're here,” The Doctor's Wife says, relaxing at the thought of the lifeguard at the pool.

Dinner is cowboy beans, cornbread, barbequed chicken, and salad, with gingerbread and whipped cream for dessert.

“This cooking isn't half as good as yours,” the Doctor says. This is beside the point. The best thing is that the Doctor's Wife neither has to cook nor clean up. It's becoming a bit less comfortable to move around. Tomorrow she'll lounge in a deck chair and read a book. She hasn't done this in a long time.

An hour after the kids have been tucked into bed, there's a knock on the adjoining door.

The Doctor's Wife puts her book down. Ann presents her tear-streaked face. Chrissy is right next to her, dry-eyed.

“What's wrong?”

Ann shakes her head.

“Did you have a bad dream?”

No.

“Did you and your sister argue?”

No.

“Are you sick? Does your stomach hurt?”

“I want to go home,” Ann says in a feeble voice.

Chrissy glares at Ann.

“Why? What's wrong?” the Doctor's Wife asks.

“I'm homesick.”

“We just got here.”

“I'm homesick.”

“There are horses! Mom, tell her! Don't listen to her,” Chrissy wails.

Ann sets her jaw.

The Doctor's Wife looks to her husband for help. “Do what you want,” he says.

“It's too late to drive home tonight. We can wake up with fresh eyes tomorrow,” the Doctor's Wife says, though she's witnessed Ann being stubborn before.

The next morning, Ann packs her small bag. She refuses to swim, bowl, read a book, go fishing with her father, or ride horses.

“I want to go home,” she says to every suggestion. What can the Doctor's Wife do in the face of determination like that? She admires it. The next day they leave for home.

Chrissy and the others grab beach towels off the utility porch and then run down the lawn with the dogs, Ace barking and Gretel trying to keep up. Humans and dogs thunder to the end of the dock and then stop, looking down at the water. The lake is fed by cold springs and is a hundred feet deep in the center. No matter how sunny it gets, the lake stays chilly. Chrissy screws up her courage and jumps. As she hits, her heart seizes up for a second and her stomach contracts.

“It's warm today,” Chrissy declares when she pops above the water.

“Hot,” Ann confirms.

They scramble up the slippery steps of the ladder to leap off the dock and into the water, over and over. They are crazy, they are different characters, kicking out and splashing down. Chrissy can feel herself growing colder, especially on the dock. The wind has picked up, pushing the water into waves that catch sunlight, chilling it in the process. But it isn't bad as long as she keeps moving, keeps jumping. The wind can't touch her if she's completely underwater. She opens her eyes underwater, pretending she's a shark, swimming to eat her sister. She clamps on to Ann's ankle with her right hand. Ann kicks away, swimming to the ladder, Chrissy in hot pursuit. They leap in again and this time Ann chases Chrissy.

They swim until they are all three blue and their mother calls them in for lunch. Chrissy ignores the first call. Ann, who always does what she is told, says, “Come on!”

“One more jump,” Chrissy says. And still she lingers, swimming in toward the shallows. This is vastly preferable than walking back along the exposed dock. She swims until she can feel pebbles on her belly. The water barely covers her, and she is at the ladder to the deck in front of the cabana. She stands part way up and then hunches under the dock, lifting a heavy rock. A crawfish shoots backward between her legs. “I need a bucket,” Chrissy yells at Ann. “I found crawdads.”

“They're always there. You need to get out of the water,” Ann replies. Chrissy climbs up the ladder and wraps a towel around herself.

The sun shines fully, beating down on the lawn. The wind is blocked by the trees. Chrissy trains her eyes on the grass, trying to find a bee to trap in her cupped palms. She loves the electrical feel of the buzzing in her hands, but the trick is to catch and release before being stung. She's been stung many times this summer. In a patch of clover Chrissy finds a huge bumblebee, slow moving, easy prey. She catches it, feeling the fur tickle her palms.

“Hurry up, slow poke,” Ann says, her hands on her hips. Chrissy lets the bee go, free to return to his hive. Chrissy wishes she didn't have to go indoors.

“Can we take sleeping bags and sleep down on the beach tonight?” Bob asks when they sit down for lunch.

“Yes, can we?” Chrissy asks.

“We'll see,” the Doctor's Wife says.

“May we spend the night on the beach?” Bob asks again at the dinner table.

“Sure,” the Doctor says.

“Take your elbows off the table,” the Doctor's Wife says.

Chrissy's not worrying about what she's eating, mechanically shoving in the steamed broccoli, a roasted chicken thigh, big gulps of milk, and peach cobbler for dessert. After Chrissy and Ann finish washing and drying the dinner dishes, Chrissy and the others load up the wheelbarrow with wood and steer it down the front lawn. Bob and the Doctor build a fire in the pit on the beach. The Doctor's Wife brings marshmallows down and once those have been eaten, her parents go back up to the house.

Chrissy and the others stretch sleeping bags out on the lawn, close to the fire. Small waves lap the shore. Chrissy looks at the Milky Way, a white smudge across the black sky. Bats flit around above her, lots of them. She's never slept entirely outdoors before. Once in Yellowstone, they were in a tent and the Doctor had to bang pots together to make a bear go away. Now there is no tent, no pots, and no dad. Chrissy hasn't even seen any bears nor has she heard about bears around here but that doesn't mean that there aren't any. Chrissy hears something splashing in the water. It sounds big and like it might be climbing up the sand. Chrissy is terrified, but she doesn't want to be teased. She doesn't say anything as she scoots her sleeping bag as close as she can to Ann's.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm cold.”

“Are you scared?”

“No.”

“Ace will protect us,” Ann says confidently.

Ann knows everything and sometimes this is a good thing. What she says is true. They are safe because Ace guards them, sitting like a sphinx.

In the morning, the sleeping bags are damp from the dew and Chrissy is woken up by the rhythmic licking of Ace's tongue on her face.

Nancy Taylor and the Doctor's Wife perch on the sofa in front of the television camera. Frank Anderson from the Community Development Bureau sits in an armchair close by. There's real coffee in the coffee pot and it's Nancy's job to pour cups for everybody three minutes into the show.

“Just talk to each other naturally, as if you were at home,” the producer, a man from Channel 9 says.

“Naturally?” Nancy asks. “We'd better get the kids here too, then.”

“And the dogs,” the Doctor's Wife says.

“I'm sure he doesn't want us to curse.”

The producer laughs nervously. The lights are hot and the Doctor's Wife feels sure she's perspiring. She takes her compact out of her purse and powders her forehead so she's not too shiny. She hopes it's obvious to the viewers that she's pregnant and not just overweight.

The whole things is only fifteen minutes, enough time to talk about bacteria levels, the immediate and long term costs of the bond issue, and how it will be spread out over fifteen years so nobody gets socked with a huge bill all at once. There is to be a special election on October 16, 1958 for the bond measure. The interest on the bonds will be paid from monthly service charges and the charges will be capped at $4.50 a month. The Doctor's Wife is satisfied that she has all of the facts in order in her head.

“Four, three, two,” the cameraman says, counting down with his fingers. The cameras begin rolling. This is a live show.

“Everybody remembers a couple years back when the algae bloomed and it started to smell,” the Doctor's Wife says.

“It was terrible,” Nancy agrees.

The Doctor's Wife gives her speech. This seems to be going spectacularly well. A page of Frank's notes slips from the coffee table. Frank starts to talk. “350 people showed up to the first Community Development meeting—out of a town of 3,500!”

Nancy, smiling brightly at the camera, reaches for the coffee pot, starting to freshen up the cups. Frank moves his leg excitedly as he talks, crumpling the notepaper underneath his foot, but he doesn't notice the noise he makes. An assistant crawls on his hands and knees below the camera shot. Nancy pauses mid-pour as the assistant creeps toward them. The coffee keeps coming, overflowing the cup and streaming down the side of the table. The producer is gesturing frantically at the cameraman. The cameraman pans the camera up so that the spilling coffee won't be filmed.

“Nancy,” hisses the Doctor's Wife.

Nancy jerks the coffee urn upright.

“Well, that went beautifully,” the Doctor's Wife says afterward.

“Think they'll ask us back?”

“Not likely,” the Doctor's wife says, but the children are excited. Chrissy wants to know if this means the family is moving to Hollywood.

Ace howls, scratching frantically at the front door. Chrissy opens the door to see quills protruding from his muzzle. “Grandma!” she screams for Petie, visiting from Lawrence, Kansas. Petie grabs Chrissy by the shoulders and moves her. The screen door slams shut and Ace continues to howl.

“Bring me pliers from the workbench downstairs,” Petie orders.

Chrissy flies down the basement. When she comes back upstairs, she helps her grandma turn the kitchen floor into an operating room, the lights blazing, the rheostat at the highest level. Ace's eyes look very sad but he is stoic as Petie grabs a quill with the pliers, pulling the quill all the way through Ace's lip, into his mouth and then out. “We have to do it this way because the quills are barbed,” Petie explains, showing Chrissy the barb with the tip of the pliers.

“Is Ace going to die?” Chrissy asks.

“No,” her grandmother says. “Petrea” is Chrissy's real first name. Chrissy's whole name is Petrea Christina Hagen. Chrissy likes to think that she's like her grandmother, and not just because of her name.

When the operation is done, Ace is allowed to sleep in a nest of blankets on the utility porch in front of the washing machine, and Petie makes cinnamon toast for everybody.

“Tell us about Uncle Jack and the skunk,” Chrissy asks.

“One day when your Uncle Jack was a boy he found an orphaned baby skunk and decided he'd bring it home. He thought that since the skunk was young its glands wouldn't be developed.”

“Did he get sprayed?”

“He came back covered with the smell of skunk.”