The Mentor Page 7

  It was a winter-weary day in March, filled with dirty snow and bare trees, and nine-year-old Emma was in no hurry to get home from school. Home to the creaky apartment over the hardware store. She was chilly in her too big parka and slightly soggy boots, but that didn’t keep her from walking slowly, kicking her way down the small-town streets. The first thing she noticed as she climbed the stairs was that it was quiet; there was no music-no Janis, no Billie, no Piaf. Her mother always played music in the afternoon, singing along as she drifted from room to room getting higher and higher, changing her outfits, touching up her makeup, staring at the long-untouched painting on her easel.

  The front door to the apartment was ajar. Emma pushed it open. Her mother was on the living-room floor wearing a hot pink top and her souvenir-of-Hawaii skirt, a panorama of paradise, her eye shadow smeared. She was staring into space-her skinny gaudy glamorous mother, her going-mad mother, sitting there splaylegged on some crazy mixture of Seconol and Vivarin and Valium, some crazy chemical cocktail concocted to dull her dreams. Emma knew immediately that he was gone, her sad-eyed father with his longing for golden California. Strangely enough, she was relieved. At least it was over. The screaming, the hitting, that awful dead feeling that permeated an apartment shared by two people who blamed each other for everything, whose every waking moment was an unspoken shout of “If only I hadn’t met you.”

  Emma said nothing to her mother, but walked slowly into her bedroom and crawled under her bed. She pulled a towel over her and imagined her father making his way west, her pot-smoking, underground-comics-reading, incense-burning, bitterly unhappy father who loved Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and the Grateful Dead, off to seek his long-haired dream far from the dreary dying towns of western Pennsylvania. She imagined him in motels and rented rooms as he made his way across the country, she imagined him forgetting about his mistake, about his wife, his life, about Emma. She understood. And yet secretly, every time the phone rang, every time the mail came, she felt it-that strange sad tingle of hope.

  Emma curls up into the fetal position on her bed. Fuck her father. He better not come around after she’s famous, like one of those movie-star stories you read in the tabloids. His sorry ass won’t get a dime out of her. Emma blows off that loser’s memory and turns her thoughts to Charles Davis and his piney smell. She’s seen men looking at her on the subway; she knows she’s no dog. Her breasts are as pretty as Winona Ryder’s. She lets her hands go up and explore them, running her fingertips in gentle circles. She a goddamn survivor.

  15

  Charles is ravenous and he can feel the beginnings of a headache taunting him from behind his eyes. It isn’t going well, the new book. Through the closed door, he hears Emma enter the outer office. With lunch, he hopes. She’s a strange girl; he can’t quite get a bead on her. Definitely not at home in her own body-today is the first day she’s worn a skirt above her knees. Her figure is decent, small but well proportioned.

  “Charles?” she says softly, tentatively, from behind the door.

  “Come in.”

  Emma pokes her head into the office. “I’ve got your veggie burger and carrot juice.”

  Charles gets up and joins her in the outer office. The crisp autumn air has brought up a touch of color on her pale skin and her eyes look especially bright. She smells faintly of peppermint soap. She hands him a tray loaded down with two hot dogs and a huge serving of french fries slathered with mayonnaise.

  “I hope this is organic mayonnaise,” he says, accepting the tray. “How’s it going out here?”

  “Steadily. How’s it going in there?” Something in the way she asks, her serious curiosity, pleases him. He glances at the small V of flesh her open shirt affords.

  “I’m trying to have faith in the process,” he says. She nods that grave, simpatico nod of hers that he finds so touching somehow. She has such lively brown hair. Why the hell does she keep it pulled back like that, and with a tacky red elastic band? She really is determined to downplay her charms. He wonders suddenly, Is she a virgin?

  “Join me?” he asks.

  “I won’t interrupt your world”

  “I wouldn’t have asked.”

  Emma picks up her salad and follows Charles into his office. He pulls up a chair for her. She bites her lower lip in exaggerated concentration as she squeezes orange dressing out of a small plastic packet. There’s something so submissive about her, so yielding.

  “That looks disgusting,” he says about the Day-Glo dressing.

  Emma looks over at his tray, brimming with grease and fat and hot dogs made of who-knows-what, and smiles slyly. When she smiles like that she becomes someone different-a mischievous little girl who cuts school to sneak into the movies. Maybe she isn’t a virgin after all. Maybe she could teach him a trick or two. Not that he makes a habit of being unfaithful to Anne. In the twelve years of their marriage, there’ve been maybe half a dozen times, all when he was on the road and the opportunity was just too ripe to pass up-Charles flashes on that grad student in San Antonio who knocked on his door at two in the morning with a bottle of wine in one hand and a gram of coke in the other. Christ, she was hot. In awe of him. Like Emma. Like Anne.

  “Did I get any interesting mail today?” he asks.

  “There was one, from a woman in Colorado.”

  “Yes?”

  “She wants to have your baby. She asked if you could send a specimen for in vitro fertilization.”

  “Believe it or not, I’ve had requests like that before. What did I tell her?”

  “You told her you couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  That wily smile plays at the corners of her mouth again, and a flattering blush rises in her cheeks.

  “Because… because you had a vasectomy five years ago.”

  “I beg your pardon?!”

  “You told me to use my discretion. I figured she couldn’t argue with… that.”

  He chuckles. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  Emma takes too big a bite of her salad. She sits with her back straight and her legs pressed together-a strange hybrid of re-pressed librarian and runaway street kid. Would she make love like a librarian-or like a street kid?

  “Who are you? Tell me a secret,” Charles says.

  Emma reaches for a piece of bread, opens a tiny tub of butter, and methodically butters the bread. “I don’t have any. I’m not exactly the stuff of great fiction,” she says without looking up from her task.

  “Let me see… Grew up in a suburb of Chicago. Father a geology professor, mother a second grade teacher… only child… testing yourself in Manhattan before you go back for your degree in psychiatric social work.”

  Emma laughs. It sounds forced. She’s so easy for him to rattle. He must remember that and be gentle with her. He imagines opening her blouse, lifting it off her shoulders.

  “Well, I am an only child,” she says.

  “And the rest?”

  “I had an uneventful childhood.”

  “There’s no such thing as an uneventful childhood.”

  “I grew up in western Pennsylvania. Nothing but cows and coal mines. I suppose you could say I’m here in New York to test myself. I’ve always been fascinated by the city. And here I am.”

  “Mom and Dad?”

  “Just Mom and Dad.”

  She pushes at her salad with her fork. Her shy evasions only increase his interest. They could knock off early one afternoon, have a few glasses of wine. He’d go slowly, never putting his pleasure before hers. Afterward she’d nestle her small body against his and they’d talk, share a sweet and tenuous intimacy. It could well develop into an affair. Just for a month or so, a month of sex and longing and solace.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, Mom never served mayonnaise with our french fries,” Emma says.

  “She didn’t know what she was missing.” He holds out the tray and she nibbles at a single fry.

  “I still prefer tartar sauce,” she says dryly. />
  Charles smiles at her and she returns his smile. There’s a moment of silence, their eyes remain locked, and then she looks away.

  Suddenly Charles wonders about her stability. She seems almost to be trying on different aspects of her personality as if they’re hats and she isn’t sure which ones fit. And something in the tightness that sometimes creeps into her voice hints at a well-concealed rage. This girl could be trouble, might do something inappropriate. He could see her, strung out and pathetic, accosting Anne in front of the building. Bad news. Emma is terrific as a secretary, but potentially disastrous as a lover. It’s not worth the risk, not now. Just another distraction.

  Emma reaches up and slowly traces her fingers down her neck. Is it an unconscious gesture? There’s something undeniably erotic about it, and in spite of his admonition to himself, Charles feels his cock grow hard.

  16

  Anne is sitting at her office desk leafing through the physicians listings in the Queens Yellow Pages. She comes across a women’s health center-Dr. Milton Halpern, gynecologist-obstetrician, director.

  There’s a tap on the door. Anne quickly shuts the phone book and pushes it aside. “Yes.”

  Trent pokes his head in. “I’m off to lunch. Can I get you anything?”

  “I’m fine, thank you, Trent.”

  When he’s gone she calls the state medical board to see if Dr. Halpern has had any complaints lodged against him. None. She dials his office and requests an appointment.

  “Have you seen the doctor before?”

  “No.”

  “How is next Tuesday at ten-thirty?”

  “Could he possibly fit me in this afternoon?”

  “The doctor is fully booked.”

  “It’s something of an emergency.”

  “All right, I’ll book you in at the end of the day. Five-thirty.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Your name?”

  “Kathleen Brody.”

  “Your phone number?”

  Christ! Anne forgot they’d be asking for a phone number. Her mind races. She considers hanging up, then looks down at her phone. She reads the number aloud, transposing the last two digits.

  “All right, we’ll see you this afternoon. Do you know how to get here?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  Anne leaves the office at four, telling Trent she’s getting a facial. She stops at an ATM and withdraws five hundred dollars and then walks briskly down Sixth Avenue to Thirty-fourth Street. Wedged between an electronics store and a McDonald’s is a tiny wig shop. The interior is poorly lit and crowded with wigs on Styrofoam stands. The owner is an East Indian with a bored, leering manner. Anne points to a short brown wig cut in a pixie-ish Shirley MacLaine bob.

  “Very nice wig,” he says.

  “May I try it on?”

  “No. New York State law.”

  “Well, do you think it will fit me?”

  “Okay, try it on.”

  Anne hastily pins up her hair and pulls on the tight cap and looks in the mirror. For a moment she doesn’t recognize herself

  “Beautiful,” the man says.

  Anne pays for the wig and leaves the store with it on. She hails a cab and gives the driver the Queens address. As the car makes its way across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, Anne takes out her compact and with deft strokes applies foundation to her face. Then she darkens her eyebrows and puts on deep red lipstick.

  The clinic is in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood Anne has never visited before. She’s surprised at how charming it is-tidy tree-lined streets, graceful brick apartment houses. As they drive, Anne picks out a suitable building and notes its number. The clinic is in a low-slung building just off a slightly seedy shopping street.

  The waiting room-worn gray carpeting, plastic chairs, posters of Monet’s water lilies-is a long way from Dr. Arnold’s, with its burnished wood and framed lithographs. Anne is glad there’s no one else waiting. The receptionist is a preoccupied Hispanic woman. Anne quickly fills out the medical history form, listing the address she noted on Elm Street. A dazed young Asian mother, carrying one child and leading two others, comes out of the doctor’s office and stops at the receptionist’s desk. Anne begins to sweat. Hillary Clinton is on the cover of People, but Anne barely has time to pick up the magazine before a heavyset nurse with a brusque maternal air leads her into an examining room. Anne sits in a chair.

  “What can we do for you today?”

  “I’d rather discuss it with the doctor.”

  The nurse raises an eyebrow. “Are you pregnant?”

  “I really would rather talk to the doctor.”

  “In that case, why don’t you take off your clothes and put on this gown?”

  The nurse leaves. Anne has no intention of taking off her clothes. The walls of the examining room are covered with bilingual posters extolling proper pre- and postnatal care. There are photographs of happy families enjoying their newborns. Anne wonders if she’s doing everything she should be in terms of nutrition and exercise. Oh, Christ, women have been having children for thousands of years. She looks in the wall mirror, pats her dark hair. There’s a soft knock on the door and then it opens.

  Dr. Halpern looks to be in his early sixties, with curly gray hair and exhausted eyes. His shoes are scuffed.

  “Milton Halpern.”

  “Kathleen Brody.”

  The doctor crosses his arms and leans against a counter. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Brody?”

  Anne hears a baby crying in another room. She thought she was the last patient of the day. “I’m pregnant.”

  “Yes?”

  Anne looks down, runs her fingers along the edge of the chair seat, exhales sharply. “I’m a married woman, and…”

  Dr. Halpern takes a pen out of his breast pocket and starts to fidget with it. She looks at him. He holds her eyes and leans forward slightly.

  “More than one man could be the father.” Anne looks down at her hands. The polish on her left index finger is chipped.

  The doctor takes a paper cup from a holder and fills it with water. He hands the cup to Anne. “These things happen,” he says.

  The clinic is overheated. No wonder she’s sweating. She takes a drink of water. It’s been ages since she’s tasted tap water.

  “I’m considering an abortion.”

  The doctor gives a small nod. “Do you have a regular gynecologist?”

  “I do, but it’s complicated…” Anne finishes the water in a gulp. “Oh, Christ, how could I have done this to myself?”

  “Are you taking anything for your anxiety?”

  “Just something I picked up at the health food store.”

  “Does it help?”

  “You should have seen me before.”

  The doctor chuckles.

  Anne stands up. There isn’t much room to move in the office. She sits back down. “I’d like DNA testing of the fetus. I want to know who the father is before I make any decisions.”

  “It’s an expensive process. Does it really matter that much?”

  “Yes. Will you help me?”

  The doctor looks at Anne, studies her face. For a moment she’s afraid he recognizes her.

  “You’re in your first trimester?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, chorionic villus sampling is not without risks. I won’t recommend it without performing an examination and getting a full medical history.”

  “Fine. How soon could we schedule it?”

  “Next week. As I’m sure you know, the lab will need a blood sample for DNA matching.”

  Anne nods. After her exam, she dresses and leaves, giving the receptionist the five hundred dollars as a deposit.

  Anne walks into the apartment at 6:45 and heads for the master bedroom. In her closet, she pulls down an old hatbox, opens it, tucks the wig under the straw hat inside, and replaces the box. Her heart is thwacking in her chest. In the bathroom she picks up a glass and drops it. It shatters with a hollow sound that echoes
off the room’s tiles. She carefully picks up the shards of broken glass, leaving several on the floor, sharp and menacing. Deep in the bottom of the bathroom closet, on a shelf filled with half-used tubes of sunblock and hair conditioner, she stashes the vials Dr. Halpern’s nurse gave her.

  She heads for the kitchen. The door to Charles’s domain is open, and she walks down the hallway. His outer office is deserted; the door to his inner office is closed. She listens: silence. She knocks lightly. “Charles?” No reply. Just as she’s about to open the door, it opens from within and Emma emerges.

  “He’s gone out for a walk,” the young woman says.

  What was she doing in there? And with the door closed? Anne looks discreetly over Emma’s shoulder. Everything looks in order. No Charles.

  “Just my luck. The one day I get home at a decent hour. How’s everything going here?”

  “Just fine, for me. I hope I’m making things easier for Mr. Davis.”

  “I’m sure you are.” Anne eyes Emma. She’s wearing a hint of makeup; she never did that when she was temping at Home. And those startling green eyes are so round and luminous.

  “I saw the article about you in In Style,” Emma says.

  “Oh, God, they made me sound like a cross between Martha Stewart and Donatella Versace.”

  “Half the women I meet think you’re the Messiah.”

  “That’s my cue to say something terribly cynical and witty. But I won’t.” Anne has an ironclad rule never to condescend to her customers.

  “How’s everything at the office?” Emma asks.

  “Chaotic.”

  “I hope that problem worked itself out.”