The Doctor's Wife (6 page)

“Pianissimo, girls,” the Doctor's Wife says, poking her head in from the kitchen.

Ann wishes her mother would just leave them alone. John doesn't mind the music. His head turns to follow her around and she thinks that he would smile if he could. These are good songs. The girls listen to musicals:
South Pacific, Camelot, Oklahoma. The Sound of Music
plays now. Ann has memorized all the words, and so has Chrissy. They sing along, but not too loudly. Ann continues to pat as she's been instructed.

Cathy Gunderson runs up the steps just as the bus gets ready to pull away form the Sandy Beach Drive stop. Cathy's coat is unbuttoned and her hair uncombed. Ann and Sue Berg share significant looks and then wait until Cathy has passed before they start talking again.

“It's too bad for her,” Sue whispers.

The best part of school this year is that the fifth graders of Lake Stevens get to go to their very own school house, a little clapboard-covered building. Pioneer times are Ann's favorite part of Washington State history, and she's glad she gets to study pioneers in a real old schoolhouse that probably had pioneers as students. Mrs. Zuckerman has even promised to make hasty pudding for the class. Ann is wearing an itchy wool dress and ugly saddle shoes, but she imagines herself in cool calico and lace-up boots.

Glenwood School has an old bell that each student gets to pull in turn. Sue has already had a chance to pull the bell, but that's because her last name starts with B. Hagen comes after Gunderson. Cathy Gunderson was supposed to ring the bell first, but she got caught chewing gum. Mrs. Zuckerman made her go spit it out in the trash can in front of the whole class, and then Mrs. Zuckerman said that Cathy would have to move to the end of the bell ringing list, which means Ann's up next. It's a bit of a scandal.

“The bell is pretty heavy, so you have to put your weight into it,” Sue whispers with the authority of experience. Ann doesn't need Sue to tell her what it'll be like. She can imagine exactly how it will feel, her hands closing around the thick, rough rope, the way she'll brace her legs against the floorboards and lean her torso back.

The bus twists its way around the lake along the Davies Road. After it crosses the bridge over the creek, it turns up the hill and pulls in front of the school. Glenwood School has only three rooms, two classrooms and a room with a stage in it that's used as a cafeteria and auditorium. When it rains—and it rains a lot—the kids stay inside the room with the stage for lunch and recess. They aren't allowed to run around like they normally do. They have to participate in planned activities, like dancing. Mrs. Zuckerman has taught them the hora and how to square dance. According to Mrs. Zuckerman, everybody needs to know how to dance, but Ann isn't so sure about that.

Today after lunch—rain, but bingo instead of dancing—they return to the classroom to sit and listen to the Standard School Broadcast. A pianist plays a very difficult sounding Rachmaninoff piece. Ann would like to play Rachmaninoff someday. She taps her fingers on her desk like it's a keyboard, pretending that her left hand is making the big chords and her right is carrying the melody. Sometimes she has to be forced to practice the piano by her mother instead of going right to the piano herself every day, but that doesn't mean she doesn't also love playing. A few of the other kids in the class are yawning. Sue Berg is busy drawing a dog and Jimmy Halverson has put his head down on the desk. He'd better not let Mrs. Zuckerman catch him doing that.

The Standard School Broadcast ends and it's time for Washington State history. The class starts a unit about Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. Mrs. Zuckerman tells the class to silently read the chapter. Ann likes the reading-to-herself part of the school day the best. The gist of the history chapter is that the Whitmans traveled west in 1836, settling in Walla Walla so that they could convert the Indians to Christianity. In 1847 the Whitmans and the other missionaries were massacred by the natives they were trying to convert. Ann is fairly positive that the word massacred means that the Whitmans were scalped. Her head pricks at the idea of cold metal slicing skin from skull. This is not how she likes to picture pioneer life, and she shuts the history book with distaste.

She scans the room. Mrs. Zuckerman is writing questions on the board, Sue is reading, frowning, and Jimmy is folding a paper airplane. When she looks to the back of the room, her eyes lock with Cathy Gunderson, who has apparently been glaring at her. Ann feels herself start to blush. She faces the front of the room, still feeling Cathy's look burning into the back of her head. It wasn't Ann's fault that Cathy chewed gum and got in trouble for it. But Ann doesn't like to feel as though she's hurt anybody's feelings.

Next, it's time for Language Arts. Mrs. Zuckerman makes an announcement that during the month of October there will be a competition to see who can memorize the most poems. “To receive points you need to recite the poem in front of the class exactly as it is printed on the page.”

“What do you get if you win?” asks Sue Berg.

“The person who wins will be the valedictorian.” There is a blank silence. “Does anybody know what a valedictorian is?” Mrs. Zuckerman asks. No, nobody does. Ann thinks it sounds medical.

“A valedictorian is the person who has the highest grade in the class—usually the word refers to the person in high school or college who has the best grades. I was making a joke just now,” Mrs. Zuckerman says.

This is a poor sort of a joke if it is a joke at all, and nobody laughs. Ann has the highest grades in her class now, and in eighth grade, when high school starts and there are periods with different teachers, she'll make sure she gets the highest grades in all of those classes too. It doesn't sound that difficult to her. All it takes is hard work and she is good at that. So it's settled, she will be the valedictorian of both the poem memorizing contest and of her high school.

“How long does the poem have to be?” Sue Berg asks.

“At least fifteen lines.”

Jimmy Halverson groans. This will be easier than Ann thought.

“Do we have to do it?” Jimmy Halverson asks.

“No.”

Right before the end of the school day, Mrs. Zuckerman says, “Ann please remember that you are ringing the bell tomorrow.” Of course Ann remembers.

On the way to the bus, Cathy Gunderson yanks Ann's hair at the back of her head. “Hey you.”

“What?” Ann asks.

“I hope you know you have blackheads on your nose.”

“So,” Ann snaps back. But she is shocked. She blinks quickly and her chin wobbles, but she is not going to show any sort of emotion.

“You don't either have blackheads. She's just jealous,” Sue whispers to her, looking behind at Cathy.

Ann knows she's been insulted, and she'd like to talk to Sue about the blackheads, but she's embarrassed. She doesn't actually know what blackheads are. At home, Ann examines her nose in the mirror of the downstairs bathroom. Cathy is right, there are little specks of black on the tip of her nose. Those must be the blackheads. Is it dirt? Is it a disease? What's going to happen to Ann now? Will they spread? Ann feels the tears come. The only benefit of crying is that it blurs her vision and she can't see her disgusting nose. Ann hates Cathy and wishes she would trip and break her wrist or that a dog would bite her or that her hair would fall out in clumps.

“Ann's crying,” Chrissy sings when Ann opens the bathroom door.

“What's wrong?” the Doctor's Wife asks, stubbing out her cigarette in an ashtray. She immediately rinses the ashtray under the tap, cranking closed the window over the sink.

“Cathy Gunderson said I had blackheads.”

“What's a blackhead?” Chrissy asks.

“A blackhead is a clogged pore,” the Doctor's Wife says. “Let me see.”

She takes Ann's face in her hands. Now Ann feels worse. She doesn't care to be examined this closely. The Doctor's Wife squints and Ann has a sudden quick horror about what she is going to be forced to do. The usual treatment for any sort of ailment—a splinter, a cut, a hangnail, an ingrown hair—is to soak the offending appendage in a bowl of salty water made as hot as you can stand it. Ann imagines dipping her nose in that. No thank you.

“Scrub it with a warm, soapy washcloth,” the Doctor's Wife says, dropping Ann's jaw, turning around to go up the stairs. Ann follows her mother into John's bedroom. Scrubbing isn't so bad. “How are you feeling darling?” the Doctor's Wife asks John, running her hand over his forehead, behind his neck, checking his diaper in one movement.

Doesn't she know John can't answer? “I need to memorize a poem.”

“What poem?”

“It has to be at least fifteen lines.”

“Can it be part of a poem?”

“I guess so,” Ann says. She hadn't thought about that.

“What about Walt Whitman?” the Doctor's Wife asks. She quickly changes John's diaper, his clothes, fluffs his pillow, kisses him on the forehead. She doesn't say anything to Ann while she's doing this.

“Who's Walt Whitman?”

“Look him up.”

“Will you help me practice?”

“What?”

“Practice my poem.”

“Hurry downstairs. Look on the bookshelf in the living room. Go scrub your face and find your poem.”

“Then will you help me?”

“Get your sister to help.” Chrissy is going to be worse than useless at this. As Ann takes the stairs one at a time, she hears her mother reading a book to John. In the living room, Ann finds Walt Whitman. The whole book is a poem! What if she memorized the whole thing? Is that even possible? She looks at the cover, the name Whitman sinking in. What an odd coincidence. She wonders if Walt is related to Narcissa and Marcus. What if he was a cousin? Her cousins are in Florida and during one visit Ann got to eat Key lime pie made with real Key limes. The pie was tart and delicious and she wouldn't mind having a piece right now. She'd mention to her mom that she'd like to make some Key Lime pie, except that her mother has made it clear that she doesn't have time for anything extraneous.

The first part of the book is called “Song of Myself.” She'll memorize the first twenty lines to make sure that she's done what she is supposed to. Surely she couldn't be expected to memorize the whole book, even if she could? Even if she wanted to? Twenty lines should be fine.

The only way to memorize anything is to practice it over and over. She lies down on the long couch in the living room and mouths the words to herself for hours before dinner. If you want to win the table manners prize you can't read during dinner. Ann skips dessert to run through the poem with her mother, both of them sitting blissfully alone in the living room. When she's in bed, she tries to fix the poem in her head before she sleeps.

“What I assume you shall assume,” Ann whispers to herself again.

“Shut up,” Chrissy says, holding a pillow over hear head. “I'm trying to sleep. Why do you have to whisper so loud?”

Ann has been kept awake her whole life by the hall light. Chrissy can shove it. Ann stops whispering and says the words in a normal voice. Chrissy leaps out of bed carrying her pillow with her and whacks Ann's book out of her hand, sending it flying across the room. Ann calmly gets out of bed and picks up the book from the floor, settling back into bed.

“Goodnight, girls,” their mother says, poking her head in, which prevents Chrissy from retaliating immediately.

The next morning, Ann runs over the lines before breakfast. She'd like to double-check the lines on the bus, but it makes her carsick, and there isn't any time to really practice before school because she has to ring the bell. She doesn't even really enjoy ringing the bell because as she pulls the rope she thinks about the lines of the poem, repeating them to herself.

“Does anybody have a poem to recite today?” Mrs. Zuckerman asks after the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ann's shy, so she'd rather not get up in front of the class, but at the same time she has to win. She raises her hand.

“Ann? Anybody else?”

No, there's nobody else, and Mrs. Zuckerman calls Ann to the front of the classroom.

Ann takes a deep breath and focuses on the map of Washington State at the back of the room. The words—as they've been trained to do—march from her brain to her mouth, spoken as they were learned. When she's done, she stops.

“Perfect,” Mrs. Zuckerman says. That's what Ann likes to hear.

The Doctor's Wife can't get any protein down John. The solution she and her husband come across is to soft-boil eggs, barely cooked really, so that they can slip nourishment down his throat. He's wasting away because he doesn't have enough to eat. Anybody would go into decline if he couldn't eat.

When the Doctor's study club comes over, the Doctor's Wife and the kids are supposed to be scarce while its members analyze cigars, Canadian Club, and poker around the kitchen table. John is up with the Doctor's Wife in the sewing room. The kids are in the basement, roller skating around the furnace. The phone rings and the Doctor's Wife goes into her bedroom to answer. “Dorothy O'Hara for you. It's about Ace.”

“Killed one of your chickens?” he asks after he picks up the extension in the kitchen. “Why don't I give you a free house call?”

“Two chickens?”

“Two house calls?”

This has happened before, and more than once. Ace has even taught Gretel to kill chickens. Ace lopes into the yard holding the chicken by the neck. “Bad dog,” the Doctor mutters. The Doctor's Wife, the study club, and the kids file outdoors behind him. The Doctor takes the chicken from Ace's mouth. He takes a stout rope and ties it around the chicken's neck and then ties it to Ace's collar, who tries to bite the chicken but can't reach it. A week later, the chicken rots off Ace's neck. Ace is cured of his taste for live chicken.