T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

“So it gets better, is that what you’re saying?”

“Not much,” he said. “There’s always a couple of them out there, the real hard-core nuts. But the whole crew of the walking dead like you saw today, that’s maybe only once a week. Unless they go on one of their campaigns, and I can’t figure out what provokes them — the weather, the tides in the lake, the phases of the moon — but then they go all out, theater in the street, schoolchildren, the works. They throw themselves under the wheels, handcuff themselves to the front door — it’s a real zoo.”

“But what about the cops? Can’t you get a restraining order or something?”

He shrugged, fiddled with the tape player — opera, he was listening to opera, a thin screech of it in the night — and turned to me again, his gloved hands rigid on the wheel. “The cops are a bunch of pro-lifers, and they have no objection to those people out there harassing my patients and abridging their civil rights, and even the women just coming in for an exam have to walk the gauntlet. It’s hell on business, believe me. And it’s dangerous too. They scare me, the real crazies, the ones that shoot people. You’ve heard of John Britton? David Gunn? George Tiller?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. You’ve got to realize I’ve been out of touch for a while.”

“Shot down by people like the ones you saw out there today. Two of them died.”

I didn’t like hearing that. The thought of one of those nutballs attacking my brother, attacking me, was like throwing gasoline on a bed of hot coals. I’d never been one to turn the other cheek, and I didn’t feature martyrdom, not at all. I looked out on a blur of brake lights and the crust of ice that seemed to narrow the road into a funnel ahead of us. “Why don’t you shoot them first?” I said.

My brother’s voice was hard. “Sometimes I wish I could.”

We stopped to pick up a few things at the market, and then we were home, dinner stabbing at my salivary glands, the whole house warm and sugary with it, and Philip sat down to watch the news and have a scotch with me. Denise was right there at the door when we came in — and now we embraced, no problem, sister- and brother-in-law, one big happy family. She wanted to know how my day was, and before I could open my mouth, she was answering for me: “Not much of a challenge, huh? Pretty dull, right? Except for the crazies — they never fail to liven things up, do they? What Philip goes through, huh, Philip? Philip?”

I was beat, but the scotch smoked through my veins, the kids came and sat beside me on the couch with their comics and coloring books, and I felt good, felt like part of the family and no complaints. Denise served a beef brisket with oven-roasted potatoes, carrots and onions, a fresh green salad, and coconut creme pie for dessert. I was planning on turning in early, but I drifted into the boys’ room and took over the Winnie-the-Pooh chores from my brother because it was something I wanted to do. Later, it must have been about ten, I was stretched out on my own bed — and again I had to hand it to Denise, because the room was homey and private, done up with little knickknacks and embroidery work and whatnot — when my brother poked his head in the door. “So,” he said, mellow with the scotch and whatever else, “you feeling okay about everything?”

That touched me. It did. Here I’d come into the airport with a chip on my shoulder — I’d always been jealous of Philip, the great shining success my father measured me against — thinking my big brother was going to be an asshole and that assholery would rule the day, but it wasn’t like that at all. He was reaching out. He was a doctor. He knew about human foibles and addictions and he knew about his little brother, and he cared, he actually cared. “Yeah,” was all I could manage, but I hoped the quality of my voice conveyed a whole lot more than that.

“Good,” he said, framed in the light from the hallway, his sunken orbits and rucked face and flat, shining eyes giving him a look of wisdom and calm that reminded me of our father on his good days.

“That girl,” I said, inspired by the intimacy of the moment, “the last one that came in today?”

His expression changed. Now it was quizzical, distant, as if he were looking at me through the wrong end of a telescope. “What girl? What are you talking about?”

“The young-looking one in the white parka and furry boots? The last one. The last one in. I was just wondering if, uh, I mean, what her problem was — if she was, you know, coming in for a procedure or whatever….”

“Listen, Rick,” he said then, and his voice was back in the deep freeze, “I’m willing to give you a chance here, not only for Dad’s sake but for your own sake too. But there’s one thing I ask — stay away from the patients. And I’m not really asking.”

—

It was raining the next morning, a cold rain that congealed on the hood of the car and made a cold pudding of the sidewalk out front of the house. I wondered if the weather would discourage the Jesus-thumpers, but they were there, all right, in yellow rain slickers and green gum boots, sunk into their suffering with gratitude. Nobody rushed the car when we turned into the lot. They just stood there, eight of them, five men and three women, and looked hate at us. As we got out of the car, the frozen rain pelting us, I locked eyes across the lot with the bearded jerk who’d gone after the girl in the white parka. I waited till I was good and certain I had his attention, waited till he was about to shout out some hoarse Jesus-thumping accusation, and then I gave him the finger.

We were the first ones at the clinic, what with the icy roads, and as soon as my brother disappeared into the sanctum of his office I went straight to the receptionist’s desk and flipped back the page of the appointment book. The last entry, under four-thirty the previous day, was staring me in the face, neat block letters in blue metalpoint: “Sally Strunt,” it read, and there was a phone number jotted beneath the name. It took me exactly ten seconds, and then I was in the back room, innocently slipping into my lab coat. Sally Strunt, I whispered to myself, Sally Strunt, over and over. I’d never known anyone named Sally — it was an old-fashioned name, a hokey name, Dick and Jane and Sally, and because it was old-fashioned and because it was hokey it seemed perfect for a teenager in trouble in the grim sleety washed-out navel of the Midwest. This was no downtown Amber, no Crystal or Shanna — this was Detroit Sally, and that really appealed to me. I’d seen the face attached to the name, and the mother of that face. Sally, Sally, Sally. Her name sang through my head as I schmoozed with Fred and the nurses and went through the motions of the job that already felt as circumscribed and deadening as a prison sentence.

That night, after dinner, I excused myself and strolled six cold wintry blocks to the convenience store. I bought M&M’s for the boys, some white chocolate for Denise, and a liter of Black Cat malt liquor for myself. Then I dialed Sally’s number from the phone booth out front of the store.

A man answered, impatient, harassed. “Yeah?”

“Sally there?” I said.

“Who’s this?”

I took a stab at it: “Chris Ryan. From school?”

Static. Televised dialogue. The roar of Sally’s name and the sound of approaching feet and Sally’s approaching voice: “Who is it?” And then, into the receiver: “Hello?”

“Sally?” I said.

“Yes?” There was hope in that voice, eagerness. She wanted to hear from me — or from whoever. This wasn’t the voice of a girl concealing things. It was open, frank, friendly. I felt expansive suddenly, connected, felt as if everything was going to be all right, not only for me but for Sally too.