Call Me a Cab

42

A Holiday Inn restaurant with unshrouded windows! We sat by one, looking out at the tumbling tiny Virgin River while the Muzak doggedly chewed and swallowed Scatterbrain: “STILL it’s CHAR ming CHAT ter SCAT ter BRAIN.”

During the meal Katharine talked about Barry: “We were at dinner once, in Los Angeles, and a girl came over to the table, one of his patients that he hadn’t seen for a couple of years. She was very tall and slender, with those great heaps of blonde hair that I envy so much, and she had an absolutely perfect, absolutely blank face. It was just a collection of perfect face parts all put together exactly right, with no lines and no personality and no sense that there was anybody at all inside there.”

“A store window dummy,” I suggested.

“Worse. Store window dummies are hard, the flesh isn’t real. This was like a marvelous recreation in lifelike rubberized plastic. And you know what she said?”

“It spoke?”

“It spoke. It said, ‘Doctor, you brought out the real me.’ ”

I laughed, and Katharine pointed at me. “That’s right. The only reaction is to laugh. Sitting there at that table, right in front of her when she said it, I still had to smile, and cover my mouth with my hand. But Barry didn’t laugh.”

“Well, no, he couldn’t.”

“But he didn’t afterward either. He thanked her very solemnly, and told her she was one of his most beautiful creations, and when she left I made some smart-aleck remark—”

“You?”

She grinned. “You might not believe it, Tom, but I can be actually caustic at times. Anyway, I said something or other, and Barry said, ‘But she’s telling the truth, I did bring out the real her. She used to be a very pretty girl,’ he said, ‘but what she wanted to be was anonymous. She’s a frightened empty girl with nothing in her head, but she used to look as though she might be interesting in some way. It made her miserable. Now everybody knows she’s an empty beautiful creature, and there are people who value her for that, and she’s much happier.’ He said he counted her among his finest accomplishments.”

“Ah hah.”

“The point is, he has so much understanding. I can be difficult at times, I know I can, and Barry surely knows it, but he never never misunderstands me. He always knows what I mean, even when I’m completely wrongheaded.”

“Katharine,” I said, “you keep arguing the man’s good points, as though that was an issue, but of course it isn’t. What’s right with Barry was established a long time ago. The question that’s left is, what’s wrong with you.”

She looked very troubled. “Yes, that is it, I know it is. But I keep running away from the tough question and answering the easy question all over again. So what is wrong with me? Am I afraid of perfection?”

“You’ve never been afraid of me.”

“Then that can’t be it,” she acknowledged. “Come on, Tom, you’ve see me in inaction for the last five days. What’s my problem?”

“Your problem is,” I said, “you don’t want to marry Mister Right.”

“Well, that’s succinct.” She thought about it, then said, “And it’s correct, too. Barry is Mister Right, and that’s why I can’t bring myself to let him go. But at the same time, I can’t bring myself to marry him.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. But I have to know by sometime tomorrow. And, Tom,” she said, very firmly, “I’ll tell you one decision I’ve come to, and I’ll stick by it, and that’s a promise. And you know me and promises.”

“Yes, I do. What’s the decision?”

“When I see Barry tomorrow, if I still don’t have any sensible reason for saying no, I’m going to say yes.”

“Ah hah.”

“I want to say yes anyway, and part of me does understand that all of this is just foolishness, so if this idiot brain inside my head doesn’t come up with something pretty compelling by the time we reach Los Angeles, I’m going to make the leap.”

“Well,” I said, “I have always wanted to be a bridesmaid. How would you and Barry like to take a honeymoon cab ride to New York?”

“That’s not funny,” she said. And she meant it.