The Christmas Kid

The Radio Doctor

EVERY NIGHT FOR TWO months, Tommy Mungo tried to get through to Dr. Verity Ambler. On the radio each night, she gave strength and advice to all the other callers: tearful young wives, husbands who thought they were gay, lonely widows, men whose women had run off, pregnant teenagers, parents who hated their children and children who hated their parents. He would listen to her alone in his bedroom, wearing a headset so his mother wouldn’t waken, listening to her cool, perfect voice, her strong words, her certainties. He was sure that somehow she could help him. She would give him some words and those words would change his life. So each night he dialed the station, and each night there was a busy signal, and this deepened Tommy Mungo’s sense of failure and despair.

Then, amazingly, suddenly, without explanation, one night he got through. A man picked up the phone and asked Tommy his name and his problem, and Tommy Mungo told him, and the man said he would put him on hold, and when Dr. Ambler picked up, he should be certain that his radio was turned off. Tommy Mungo lay there with his heart pounding for another twenty minutes. And then suddenly he heard her voice.

“Yes, Tommy, this is Dr. Verity Ambler. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I uh, you see, I’m twenty-eight years old,” Tommy said. “And I feel like I failed at everything.”

“Yes, Tommy…”

“For example, I can’t seem to finish anything. I never finished high school. And then I went to night school, to get a GED, you know? But I couldn’t finish that, either. I got a job in a sheet-metal shop. Like an apprentice, you know? You’re an apprentice for two years, then you move up the ladder, and eventually you become a journeyman and make good money. But I couldn’t stick with it, I couldn’t finish. My mother says—”

“Do you live at home, Tommy?”

“Yes, yes, I do.”

“And you’re twenty-eight years old?”

Tommy’s stomach knotted. He could feel Dr. Ambler staring at him with cold eyes, across the miles from her studio in Manhattan to his apartment in Brooklyn.

“Yes,” he admitted. “Yes, I live at home.”

“How does your mother feel about that, Tommy?”

“Well, she doesn’t say much.”

“And your father?”

“My father…passed away.”

Her voice was suddenly accusatory. “You sounded hesitant, Tommy. What was that about?”

“Well…the truth is, he didn’t pass away, actually. That’s just something I tell people since I was fifteen. Actually, he just left. He took off somewhere; I don’t know where.”

“I see,” Dr. Ambler said. “And how did your mother feel about that?”

“She felt bad, of course,” Tommy said quietly. “But she always says to me, ‘Thank God you’re still here.’ And—”

“Ah,” Dr. Ambler said, drawing the word out. “Don’t you see, Tommy? That’s the real problem, okay? And you can’t finish anything. What does it suggest to you, Tommy?”

“I don’t know.”

Her voice was reasonable, soft. “Well, what do you think is the first thing you must finish?”

“I’m not sure. That’s why I—”

“You must finish your adolescence, Tommy!” She was scolding now. “You have to move out of that house and go out on your own and become a mature adult, okay? Don’t worry about your mother. She’ll be fine. In fact, I think your mother’s being terribly unfair to you, Tommy, by refusing to let you grow up, okay? You’re not a surrogate for your father. You’re not a safeguard against your mother’s loneliness. You have to be your own person. You have to be your own best friend. You have to become a mature, ‘together’ person. Finish your adolescence and you’ll be able to finish other things in your life, okay? Thank you, Tommy.…”

There was a click and she was gone, and Tommy felt suddenly abandoned, the unspoken words choking in his throat. He switched on the radio, and Dr. Verity Ambler was saying she would be back after “these messages” and the news. Tommy Mungo punched the pillow and said out loud: “You didn’t let me finish.…”

I wanted to tell you about the crash on the Belt Parkway, he thought. And how my mother was crippled, her spine smashed, while nothing at all happened to my father. I wanted to tell you how he stayed with her for three years after that, until one night I saw him alone on the stoop, crying his eyes out. All of that was before he left. And then when she was alone, I promised her I wouldn’t let them stick her in some home or some hospital, wouldn’t leave her to charity. You didn’t let me tell you that, Dr. Ambler.

The radio doctor was talking now to a woman whose fifteen-year-old daughter was still wetting her bed, and Tommy Mungo dialed the station again, got a busy signal, tried again, got another busy signal. I could write her a letter, he thought, and put in all the things she never gave me time to say. But no: she must get thousands of letters; she could never read them all, or answer them. No. He glanced at the clock beside his bed. Ten minutes to two. She’d be on air until three. He got up and started to dress. He had to speak to her; it could be months before he got through to her again. He’d have to go to the radio station and see her.

All the way to Manhattan, driving the beat-up Pontiac across the Brooklyn Bridge and through the empty streets, he listened to Dr. Verity Ambler. He wasn’t angry at her; he was certain it must be his own fault, something in his voice, something in his manner. She was so logical with the others. She told a man whose wife was playing around that he must become “creatively selfish,” give his wife an ultimatum — tell her to stop fooling around — or leave. A man whose wife was an alcoholic was told to forget about her being cured; alcoholism can be treated, she told him, but not cured. “And you are obviously a terrific person,” she said, “so I think you should get into yourself more, okay?”

Now he was in midtown Manhattan, a block from the station. She would be finished in twenty minutes. He parked across the street, listening to the radio show, and smoked a cigarette. At five minutes to three, he locked the car door and walked to the station entrance. Beyond the locked double door, there was a long empty corridor leading to a bank of elevators. A security guard sat in a chair beside the elevators, reading a newspaper. Tommy Mungo waited. A taxi pulled up and double-parked, the off-duty sign burning.

Then a large man and a smallish woman stepped out of the elevator. The security man smiled and stood up, had them sign a book, and started walking with them along the corridor to the entrance. It was her. Dr. Verity Ambler. He had seen her picture once in a newspaper and another time on The Regis Philbin Show. But she seemed smaller than he imagined she would be, walking along in a fur coat and slacks, with the large man in front of her and the guard behind her. As the guard unlocked the doors, they all looked at Tommy Mungo.

“Okay, back up,” the large man said.

“But I’ve got to talk to Dr. Ambler,” Tommy said. “I was on the show tonight, talking to her, and I never finished explaining—”

“Back it up!”

The woman’s eyes seemed wide and alarmed, as the large man stepped between her and Tommy Mungo.

“I never got to tell you!” Tommy shouted. “I can’t leave my mother! She’s not like you think. But I need help, I need advice, you have to help me!”

He tried to get around the large man, but the man placed a huge hand on Tommy’s chest and pushed him backward.

“Jack!” Dr. Ambler said. “Don’t do that, Jack! He might sue me or something!”

“Please,” Tommy Mungo said. “Let me explain. I got through tonight! After months! After being on hold for hours and hours and hours, I got through! And then I never got to explain to you. I—”

“Come on,” the woman said, taking the large man by the arm and leading him to the waiting taxi. She slammed the door behind them, and the taxi pulled away. Tommy Mungo stood there for a long time, wishing that somewhere in the city there was a person he could call.