100 Malicious Little Mysteries

House Call by Elsin Ann Graffam

She dialed the number and waited. Two rings, three— Maybe he wasn’t in on a Saturday, maybe—

“Hello? Dr. Reed? This is Joe’s mother, Mrs. Forte. Yes. Well, please, you’ve got to come over and see my Joe! He looks awful bad and I’m so worried. What? Oh, no, he can’t come to your office. He’s — he don’t look good at all. You can come here, maybe? You will? In a half hour? Oh, thank you, thank you so much. Doctor!”

She hung up the telephone slowly and smoothed back stray strands of gray hair. Her fingers were gnarled, but strong and muscular from forty years of taking care of her boys. Her boys. There had been five of them once, but now all she had left with her was her Joe. A good boy, he was; nothing bad would ever happen to her Joe. That’s why she had to make the doctor come to her home, had to get everything taken care of.

She tiptoed down the hall to Joe’s bedroom and carefully opened the door. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his body rigid and his face as vacant as it had been the last five times she’d looked in on him.

“Joe?” she whispered.

He didn’t look at her.

“Joe, everything will be all right. You wait and see. I’ll take care of you.”

Closing the door as softly as she’d opened it, she looked at the hands of the old clock in the hall. Twenty-five minutes to wait. She’d go crazy just sitting, waiting—

Going into the living room, she picked up her knitting and began to work on the sweater she’d started the week before. A bright shade of blue, it was Joe’s favorite color. He’d be real surprised when he saw it.

“Oh, Ma,” he’d say, “you shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble for me!”

But he’d slip it over his head and grin at her like a little boy. Yes, her Joe would be pleased with the sweater. It was worth the pain from the arthritis in her fingers to make her boy happy. After all, what’s a mother for, if it isn’t to take care of her boys?

She dropped the yarn when the bell rang and went to the door. Peeking around the side of the curtain, she was relieved to see the doctor standing there.

“Dr. Reed, oh, thank you so much for coming over so quick. I’m so grateful—”

He brushed past her and strode into the hall.

“That’s all right, Mrs. Forte. Where is he?”

“What?”

“Joe. Where is he?”

“Oh. Well, if you could — if we could just talk for a bit first, in the kitchen, maybe?”

He sighed. “I really haven’t too much time, Mrs. Forte. It is Saturday afternoon, you know, and my office hours were supposed to be over an hour ago.”

“Please, Doctor?”

She stood there, her eyes pleading, and when she turned and went ahead of him into the kitchen he shrugged and followed her.

“A cup of coffee for you. Doctor?”

“No, I—”

“Ah, coffee for the good doctor. No matter how rich and important he gets, he still comes to our house to take care of us. For the good doctor a nice cup of coffee. Here, let me—”

She poured the steaming liquid into one of her two best china cups and pushed it across the table to him.

Sighing again, he picked it up and sipped. “These old women. These old women!” he thought with exasperation. “ ‘A cup of tea? A cup of coffee?’ And if you decline their hospitality they get so damned offended.”

“Now,” he said aloud, “what about Joe?”

“He’s in his room. Doctor, just sitting on his bed, staring at nothing. Been like that since he got home last night. He wouldn’t talk to me or nothing. Couple of hours ago he sort of came out of it for a few minutes and told me what the matter was, but then he turned his head away. He had tears in his eyes. Tears! My Joe!”

She shook her head with the memory of it.

“You’re not drinking your coffee, Doctor,” she said then.

“I am. I am. Please go on.”

“Well, my Joe, he’s an important man, really. In this group, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.” He drank the last of his coffee and started to rise.

“Doctor!”

The tone of her voice startled him and he sat down.

“The group,” she went on, “they call it ‘Our Thing’.”

Ignoring the intent look on the man’s face, she said, “They — the bosses, they gave Joe a job to do. And he has to do it. When they say do something, you do it or else, right?”

“Uh-huh,” replied the doctor.

“But my Joe, he’s so sensitive! He was always the most delicate of my boys.”

She smiled, remembering. “When he was only, oh, eight or nine, he fell off his bike and you had to sew up his knee. He fainted, remember? That’s how he is, Doctor. A real man, you understand, but so sensitive.”

Dr. Reed grunted.

“Well, it seems like there’s this man around the neighborhood who’s been — how did Joe put it? — ‘horning in on the drug traffic’ or something like that. And, see, they told Joe to get rid of him — to kill him, you know. Because they don’t like no competition, they don’t like that at all.

“But my Joe, he just couldn’t do it. ‘Maybe a stranger. Ma,’ he said, ‘but not—’. And he started to cry. Cry! Think of how I felt, his mother, when I saw them tears running down his face!”

“Ah,” said the doctor.

“This man Joe’s supposed to kill, he’s a real respected man around here. A doctor... Doctor?”

She watched impassively as the doctor slid off the chair and landed on her kitchen floor with a thud.

He hadn’t, she noted with relief, broken her china cup in his fall. She picked it up and carried it over to the sink, scoured it and the coffee pot with extra care; then, stepping over the doctor, she went to her son’s room. “Joe? Joe!”

He turned and looked at her dully. “What, Ma?”

“It’s all taken care of, just like I said. Come into the kitchen and look!”

That’s Ma for you. She always takes care of her boys.