The Doctor's Wife (4 page)

“Did you give him a tomato bath?”

“We tried. The smell never really went away until his hair grew out.”

“He really took a bath in tomato juice?”

“We used huge cans.”

“Did he ever keep snakes in the basement?”

“One time I was having a luncheon and I noticed snakes on the valence in the dining room.”

“What did you do?”

“I moved on to coffee and dessert as quickly as I could without being rude.” Her grandmother fixes her with a stare. “You know all these stories.”

“He's a professor of zoology?” Chrissy asks. She loves the word zoo.

“Your uncle loves animals, just like you.”

“Just like me,” Chrissy says.

“Hey dear, Petie and I bought a house today!” the Doctor had said to her. She'd propped herself up in the hospital bed, newborn Chrissy at her breast.

“You did what?”

“It's on the lake,” he'd said, sounding pleased with himself. At the time, she'd wondered if she was hearing properly. She'd wondered if giving birth had addled her brain and she was having a small hallucination.

“It was built by a Norwegian doctor,” Petie added. Petie thinks the Doctor is the best man who ever lived. The Doctor's Wife thinks this too, naturally, and at the time, she hadn't really cared what the house looked like. All of a sudden she'd had three kids to take care of and so it didn't matter that she'd loved Cherry Acres, the place they'd rented from the Manning family. Cherry Acres sat at the top of the hill, five acres of orchards overlooking the lake. The Doctor's Wife is not a person who needs to live on the water. She prefers a long view.

The second time Nancy and the Doctor's Wife go on TV, they've prepared a formal speech. The Doctor's Wife wears a tweed suit. The children are once again thrilled, and it seems like the vote will pass with no trouble.

“I think we did it,” the Doctor's Wife says to Nancy.

“You need to know how to yell and stomp your feet to get things done. We're good at that,” Nancy says.

The day before the vote, a local businessman distributes flyers that distort how much people will have to pay, and the bond issue fails by sixty votes.

It is Thanksgiving of 1958. Petie and J.W., Ann's grandfather, are staying with them to help out. Petie cooks everything, the turkey, the stuffing, two kinds of pies. But Ann is too excited to eat.

“You have a little brother,” the Doctor says when he comes home from the hospital.

“What's his name?”

“John.”

Ann is the first kid to hold him. His eyes are closed like a little puppy's. Chrissy hovers nearby, but Ann doesn't want to give him up.

The first time the Doctor takes Bob fishing he makes a big breakfast of oatmeal, bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast. It's four-thirty in the morning and they need to get to the Skykomish as dawn breaks. If they're not there at the right time the fishing will be ruined. It can't be too dark, not too bright, not too cold, not too windy, but this seems like a perfect sort of morning, gray skies, calm.

The Doctor usually fishes alone. He has a few fishing buddies, but he wouldn't tell his best friend about a good steelhead run. The thing he likes about fishing is the solitude. He likes going into a sort of concentrated trance in which problems get worked out by being placed to the side.

Bob stays silent in the car as they drive past the tall firs that line the country road. The Doctor pulls off the side of the road in front of a gate on which a “No Trespassing” sign is posted. He helps Bob climb the gate. They walk down a dirt road alongside a pasture where cows stand still in the early morning mist, and then through a copse of poplars to where the cold river runs. The dark skies make the water look black as it flows around a giant granite boulder in the middle of the river.

Bob is wearing rubber rain boots since the Doctor doesn't own waders small enough for him. They've practiced in the front yard, casting out onto the lawn. Today Bob is not going to cast, he is to be quiet and he is to watch.

“Don't go in too deep. No noise.”

Bob nods in assent.

The Doctor wades out. He casts as the world wakes, falling into a rhythm as the edges of the sky brighten. He hears a splash and he turns around to see Bob has fallen in the water.

“Swim, goddamn it!” the Doctor yells.

It wasn't Chrissy's fault last week when she knocked the dish of beets to the floor. And the week before she wouldn't have chewed with her mouth open, except she'd needed to say something when she'd just taken a bite. The week before that, it was true, in an attempt to make Ann sick, she'd mixed everything on her plate together, taking big bites of the mush. But this week Chrissy has been perfect.

The Doctor stands up. He clears his throat and Chrissy sits on the edge of her chair, looking up at him. The Doctor's manner is mock-formal, a pretend version of when he's in his office and you aren't allowed to joke around with him: “Welcome once again to the awards ceremony for this week's table manners prize. As you all know, the prize is awarded to the Hagen child who best behaves himself for the week. You may be disqualified for spilling milk, causing a fuss with one of your siblings, or leaving the table without being excused. A child receives extra points for not gobbling, for saying please, for passing food to the right, and for helping his mother clear the dishes.”

Chrissy wishes that he would get to the prize-giving right away. The prize is always a pharmaceutical representative freebee: a little flashlight, a pen shaped like a syringe, an address book. This week it's a golden ruler. It's shiny and though it probably isn't real gold, it would be very easy to pretend that it is. Bob let out a very large burp earlier in the week right after they sat down for dinner and instead of saying excuse me, he followed it up with an even louder one. The sides of her mother's mouth had twitched, but her dad was not amused, and by the time Bob tried to say “excuse me,” it was far too late.

Ann had to be told to take her elbows off the table two nights in a row, and she hasn't been a member of the clean plate club even once this week. John is three months old and he doesn't care about prizes, which is fortunate for him. He has atrocious manners.

Chrissy, in contrast to her slovenly, ill-bred siblings, has been a model citizen.

“This week I am pleased to announce the winner is—”

“Me, I won!” Chrissy blurts out. She is warm all over, blushing with pride in herself, and gleeful. Ann will be so disappointed.

“Chrissy.”

Chrissy stands up and executes a passable curtsey as her dad bestows the golden ruler on her.

The neighbor girls, Gail and Sue Berg, live across the street from the lake, so they don't have a dock and they don't much like swimming. Ann and Chrissy swim for the whole morning and early afternoon, but in the late afternoon, they meet the Bergs under the apple trees in the back yard for the daily meeting of the Sunshine Club. The Bergs and the Hagens are the founding members. Membership is closed.

Ann carries the Monopoly game and Chrissy holds the golden ruler. It's late August, and summer is almost over. The willow next to the road sways, and sunlight splashes down through the apple tree canopy. Ann reaches up to pick a not quite ripe apple. The Bergs think the apples are disgusting, that the little Gravensteins are too sour. This is another way in which the Hagens and the Bergs differ. Clubs are for people who are alike in some way and one way they are alike is that they love Monopoly.

Chrissy uses her ruler to draw a line beneath the final score of the last game. On Saturday, the Doctor's Wife made them cut their game short so they could come inside to listen to the broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera. Ann wanted to refuse, but unlike the Hagen children, the Bergs wouldn't dream of disobeying the Doctor's Wife. The Bergs also got cookies from the cookie jar when they were done listening, as many as they wanted.

The Bergs have an older half-sister named Peralee who was named after her father Perry. Peralee has all of Elvis Presley's records and she knows every single word of the lyrics. Once she came and taught the girls how to hula dance underneath the apple trees. Usually she is too old and important to come. None of the Bergs came yesterday, Sunday. The Bergs are religious in a way that the Hagens aren't. They have to go to church twice, in the morning and in the evening, which leaves no time for the Sunshine Club.

Ann passes out the money at the beginning of the game, two $500 bills, two $100 bills, and so on. You have to watch Chrissy with the money. She has been known to tuck an extra hundred or two in her shorts pocket. Chrissy sits on the golden ruler so nobody else can touch it.

Ann is the little dog. She rolls the dice, settling in to the game. It's hard to imagine doing anything else other than the routine of swim, lunch, swim, Sunshine Club, dinner, bed. It's hard to imagine school ever starting again.

John is a smart baby. One day when the family is driving down to Seattle, Ann and Chrissy teach John to say “pee yu” and plug his nose. John giggles, as do the girls; Bob, the Doctor and the Doctor's Wife all laugh too. It is not every eleven-month-old baby who could learn how to do that.

John is a year-and-a-half and he's not walking, so the Doctor's Wife takes him to the pediatrician.

“Your son is retarded,” the pediatrician says.

“No,” the Doctor's Wife says, “No, I don't think that's it.” She picks up John, walking out of the office, past the receptionist who she knows but does not acknowledge on the way out, even though when they were waiting, the receptionist came out from behind her desk to bring John a lollipop. This is rude, but she's mad. She'll get a second opinion. Or a third.

Driving in a light drizzle, the Doctor's Wife takes John to the grocery store. They make their way to the butcher counter.

“I want hot dog,” John says.

If he were retarded, he couldn't talk, at least not like this. John is more verbal than her other kids at the same age and those kids aren't half dumb. Hot dogs. The Doctor's Wife doesn't care for them, but if the kids have them, she and the Doctor can eat liver and onions, which the kids refuse to touch and make gagging noises over. Pat Dussler is working. “Give me a pound of liver and ten hot dogs.”

“Does somebody want his own hot dog for the road?” John grins at Pat as he reaches for the hot dog.

Later that evening, the Doctor's Wife soaks the liver in milk. She's made coleslaw to go with the hot dogs. The girls play in the living room, taking care of John. She pokes her head in. “How's John doing?”

“He's not sick,” Ann says.

“What do you mean?” The Doctor's Wife is curious and irritated.

“I felt his forehead and he's not hot at all. Why did he have to go to the doctor?”

“I listened to his heartbeat,” Chrissy says, brandishing the Doctor's old stethoscope, the broken one mended with surgical tape.

Now the kids, including John, stare at her. They want her gone. The door swings shut behind her. She slices onions. This is a very simple dinner, but she still likes to get everything done in advance. At the last minute she'll fry the onions, flour the liver and fry it in the same pan. The salad can be made ahead of time. The Doctor should be home soon and then they can talk. There is a sharp sound of glass breaking.

“What's going on?” the Doctor's Wife asks, pushing the swinging door into the living room.

“I didn't do anything. It just fell over on the bone table,” Chrissy says. The bone table is the name the kids have given a big, round, low, coffee table made of porous marble. It does look like bone, ossified, and on the table there is a broken glass vase. Tulips are strewn across the surface.

“Nobody move,” the Doctor's Wife says.

“She's the one who broke it,” Ann says.

The Doctor's Wife doesn't care who broke the vase. She just wants it cleaned up. The rest of the living room is a disaster. The girls have dragged out their dolls, undressing them. John gives her a wide-eyed look up from his Taylor Tot, a blue scooty thing with four little wheels that he can push himself around on.

The Doctor's Wife slouches down to pick up a doll on the way out of the living room. She'll have to clean up the glass herself if she doesn't want anybody to get cut. If one of the kids is hurt, she'll have to load everybody in the car and drive them to the Doctor's office where they'll have to wait and everybody will get hungry and cranky.

“Stay right where you are,” the Doctor's Wife says again, going into the broom closet for the vacuum cleaner and a rag. The pieces of glass are quickly sucked up. “You finish,” she says sharply to Chrissy. Chrissy takes the hose with a dramatic sigh and pushes the vacuum cleaner across the floor.

“Ann, you can tidy and dust.”

“It's going to smell when you cook the liver, isn't it?” Ann asks.

“That's why you are having hot dogs.”

“Yuck!” both girls say.

“I don't know who is going to win the table manners prize this week with that kind of behavior.”

At dinner, the Doctor's Wife thinks: John can sit up. Sitting up isn't a problem. Chrissy has cut up her hot dog and is stirring it in to her coleslaw to make a vile mess. The Doctor's Wife doesn't have the energy to scold.

“Best liver I ever had,” the Doctor says. They'll talk when they go to bed, he says with his eyes. But what will they say? How will talking make whatever is wrong better? She touches John's hand, but he doesn't want to be fussed over. He thinks he's fine too. Maybe he is. The Doctor's Wife has made an apple pie for dessert. The house is clean and the kids are fed.