Loving Time

twenty-one

At six P.M. on Tuesday, November 2, Jason Frank had two unexpected messages on his answering machine. The first was from Clara Treadwell, the last person he’d have thought would want to consult him. Four years ago in California Jason had been the presenter of a paper, and Clara had been the discussant. She’d attempted to take him apart in front of two hundred colleagues with a stunning verbal assault that was completely unsubstantiated by any scientific or clinical evidence. After Jason provided a strong and compelling rebuttal, she’d asked him to lunch. She was a big deal at the hospital out there and gracious in defeat, so he’d accepted the invitation.

Then, in a dining room filled with a group of colleagues so finely tuned to nuance they wouldn’t miss a skipped heartbeat through a brick wall, she started massaging his knee under the table and suggested they work together. She was unapologetic for her earlier verbal attack on him and completely unconcerned about creating gossip in a public place. She had the supreme confidence of someone who had no fear of rejection or consequences. Jason realized that she was testing her power like a sport fisherman with a swordfish on the line. He’d been thirty-five then, only a year married to Emma, and might have been a bit too vehement about his refusal. After she returned to New York as head of the Centre, Clara Treadwell showed Jason that she was in a position to make things uncomfortable for him: She did not hesitate to do so whenever she had the chance.

So he was surprised to hear the warm voice on his answering machine asking him to be the consultant on a personal case of hers involving the mysterious death of a former patient. Clara said she thought he was particularly suitable in light of his knowledge of police procedure. She ended by giving him her office and home numbers. He wrote them down and let the tape run on to the next message.

The second unexpected message was from his wife, asking if he minded if she came home for a few days. She was auditioning for a play in New York, Emma said, and needed a place to stay. This message cheered Jason so much that for a few minutes he refused to worry about who Clara Treadwell’s dead patient was, what she really wanted him to do, or what helping her out would cost him. He checked his watch. It was seven minutes past the hour. He dialed Emma in California. It was 3:07 there.

Emma picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Hi, it’s me.” Jason’s voice was as warm as he knew how to make it.

“Hi.” Hers was a little hesitant and distrustful. He believed he loved her a lot and was a uniformly nice guy. He didn’t understand where the distrust came from.

“How’s the weather?” he asked.

“If you called me for the temperature in Southern California, you could have gotten it on CNN.”

He sighed. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees in one sentence, and once again he’d blown it, whatever “it” was. “I just said hello. Why be so testy?”

“Darling, men who love their women say: ‘I got your message. I’m dying to see you, and I hope you get the part.’ You say, ‘How’s the weather?’ What am I supposed to think?”

Jason was silent as he struggled with gender differences that sometimes seemed unbridgeable. Was he really so evil if the right words to him were not the right words to her? Wasn’t it the essence of feeling that mattered, the things that weren’t said and couldn’t really be said? Or was he just a caveman, no better than a scruffy, disorganized seventeen-year-old with a Walkman plugged into his ears, who just couldn’t deal, man, with anything else but lust? The silence led him into a contemplation of his working space.

Jason’s office had bookshelves up to the ceiling on two walls. The third wall had two windows facing the side street high above the entrance to the building. These windows were covered with shutters so that no patient attempting to resist treatment could see out and thus be distracted by the weather or the view. There were five clocks in the office. None had chimes. In this room, everything else was old, but time passed without comment.

In spite of the odd array on the shelves and tables of the usually tasteless gifts from patients’ vacations—needlepoint pillows, painted rocks, sculptures made from colored sea-shells, watercolor landscapes, and his burgeoning collection of books and medical journals—Jason’s office had an ascetic, almost hermetical, feeling to it. The two doors that sealed the office off from the waiting room didn’t help. Sometimes even Jason had the feeling of being locked inside. His tour completed, he repressed a sigh.

“You there?” Emma asked after a minute.

“Where else,” he murmured, leaning forward to adjust the minute hand on the nearest clock. “Shall we try again?”

“Good idea.”

“I got your message.”

“Good. What do you think?”

“I think it’s great, Em, really great. You’ve always wanted to work on the stage.”

“It’s a good play.”

“I’m sure it’s a good play, otherwise you wouldn’t want to do it.” He doodled on his appointment book. It was the official one of the APA, with enough lines for every hour of the day. He could see that tomorrow was completely booked, and so was the day after.

“It’s really a comedy. I probably won’t get it,” Emma said.

Jason didn’t counter with his belief that she would get it. For many years Emma had auditioned relentlessly for every part in every play that was remotely appropriate for her, as well as every commercial in New York. She never got anything except voice-overs. She had a great voice and did a lot of voice-overs for people who looked right for such things as Excedrin headaches but didn’t sound right for them. He didn’t dare ask Emma to show him the play script, either. He’d abdicated that particular right when he neglected to read the script of Serpent’s Teeth, the film that brought about her kidnapping and their estrangement six months ago.

“What’s it called?” he asked finally. “The play.”

“Strokes.”

“Ah, another S title. Who’s the author?”

Her triumph traveled east across the country with the speed of sound. “Simon Beak.”

“Wow, no kidding.” Now Jason’s voice registered real excitement. “Jesus, Emma, that’s thrilling. That’s Broadway. That’s—” Big time.

“Look, don’t get too excited. I probably won’t get it.”

“So what. I’m impressed,” he breathed. “I’m really impressed.”

“You didn’t think I was up to it, did you?”

“Yes, I did. You didn’t think you were.”

She didn’t say it took a far-out, trashy vehicle like Serpent’s Teeth for her to get noticed, and he didn’t say it, either. What people had to do to get what they wanted—well, it was more complicated than either had thought. They both knew more about ambition and drive now. Getting ahead in any field was no picnic.

“So, do you have to clear someone out of my bed? Or should I stay in a hotel?” Emma’s voice was light, but she meant it. She could take her lumps. That’s what got her through ordeals that shoved other people into the shredder.

“That’s a joke, right?”

“No. That’s not a joke. It’s no secret that they’re lining up for you, Jason. All those lovely ladies in the caring profession.”

“Ah, now you sound bitter,” Jason said, a little pleased that the wife who wandered away from him was jealous. Many wives of psychiatrists were psychologists or social workers or teachers, sweet, understanding women who didn’t make too many demands lest their busy husbands slap them down.

Whenever Emma met one of these wives, they always asked her if she was in the caring profession. And she always replied, “No, I’m in the uncaring profession.” To which no one ever reacted negatively because that would be aggressive and judgmental. Aggressive and judgmental weren’t politically correct in his field.

“Are we bitter?” Jason asked.

“Just a little. So what’s the story on the bedroom?”

“The story is the sheets are clean. You have nothing to fear on that score. I’ve been saving it all for you.”

“Oh, and what if I didn’t come back? What would happen to it then?”

“Baby, you know what you have to do. Move your things out and tell me it’s over. After that what I do is none of your business. Until then I’m yours.”

“Good, I’ll be home Saturday.”

Jason flipped to Saturday in his appointment book. “Any particular time?”

“I’ll let you know.”

There was nothing written down for Saturday. He scratched at his beard. Emma hadn’t seen it yet. Maybe he should get a haircut and a shave, but maybe he shouldn’t. He pondered: To shave or not to shave, that was the question. “I’ll be here,” he told her.