“Well, Morty, that may be true, but what alternative do I have? If dear Barbara were still alive, I could at least get a hug.”
Breezy had been his wife’s best friend. She had received endless sympathy from Barbara—especially concerning her father’s move into her house. Breezy was one of the reasons that Barbara had wanted to spend what turned out to be the last winter of her life in Maine.
After they hung up, Breezy did not appear for so long that he suspected she might not be coming at all. The dog lay curled next to him in the living room, as Cahill read a book called
“Morty, I hope I didn’t cause you pain by mentioning Barbara,” she blurted, instead of saying hello. The dog rose and shook himself, ambling toward her. She bent and stroked his side. “You ran away again,” she said. “Did Napoleon run away again?”
“Exile to Elba next time,” Cahill said.
“I’ve been to the hardware store. Ed was off tonight, but I left a note saying I came in and that it was an emergency. We are going to solve this problem, aren’t we?” she said in baby talk to the dog. Then she turned to Cahill. “Morty, I feel sometimes that when I say something you aren’t . . . I don’t know . . . that you don’t approve of what I’m saying. I don’t want a gold star for going to the hardware store, but I did go there as you suggested.”
“I’m afraid the dog is going to be hit by a car, Breezy,” he said, with the firm sympathy of a doctor giving a bad diagnosis. He heard his voice pitched a bit too low, and softened. “Just a long day,” he said, standing. Breezy—she’d got her nickname because she loved to talk—was clearly hoping to be asked to stay for a cup of tea. But it had been a bad day—the officious letter, the wasp—and he realized that he’d had nothing to eat since breakfast. He patted Breezy’s shoulder as if she were a patient he was steering gently out the door. At the front stoop, she turned to face him and said, “I know you miss her very much, Morty. I do, too, every day of my life,” and then she was gone, down the steps, curving with the path into the night, Napoleon—so named because the dog did not like to chew on bones, though he liked to tear the bones apart (the sole original thing he’d ever known Breezy’s father to come up with)—trotting along on his leash without a backward glance.
Cahill went into the kitchen and took a potpie from the freezer, placed it on a cookie sheet, and set the oven for four-fifty. Though the oven had not reached the correct temperature, he put his dinner in anyway. Then came another knock at the front door: most certainly Breezy, back for some reason.
Cahill went to the door and opened it. A young woman was standing there.
“Dr. Cahill?” she said. “Excuse me for knocking so late. I’m Audrey Comstock. I live in Portsmouth.”
“Yes?” he said.
“May I come in? I’m a friend of Matt’s.”
“Enter,” he said, gesturing toward the living room. She walked in and looked around. She did not sit, nor did he motion toward a chair. Patients were that way: some would remain standing forever if you did not formally offer them a seat. “What can I do for you?” he said.
“Get him to marry me,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“He doesn’t think he can leave here. You,” she amended. “Leave you.”
“I know nothing about this,” he said.
“We’ve been seeing each other for more than a year. We met at a painting group in Portsmouth. At Christmas, he all but proposed.”
“Oh?” he said. At Christmas, Matt had prepared a goose and cooked parsnips from the root cellar. They had eaten the meal with some Stonewall Kitchen condiment—a sort of jelly with garlic. Was he to believe that all that time Matt had been in love but had never mentioned the person’s name? Of course, anything was possible. A patient having a physical would say that nothing was bothering him, and only when he’d taken off his shirt would Cahill see that he was broken out in shingles, or had cut himself badly and wasn’t properly healing.
“I’m not sure why you’re here,” he said. She was an unpleasant-looking woman—in her early twenties, he thought. Her beak of a nose, crammed too tightly between her small eyes, made it difficult to look at her with a neutral expression.
She said, “I wanted to tell you that you wouldn’t be losing a son; you’d be gaining a daughter.”
“My child is grown and gone,” he said. “I am looking for neither.”
She looked at him blankly for a moment. “He doesn’t feel like he can leave,” she said again.
“I assure you he can,” Cahill said.
“We have our art work in common,” she said, as if he’d asked for further explanation.
He looked at her.
“Matt and me,” she said finally.
“This matter is entirely between you and Matt,” he said. “You don’t have to persuade me of anything.”
“He respects you. You’re like a father figure to him. It’s just that he doesn’t think he can leave you.”
“You’ve said that many times,” Cahill said. “I’ve explained that he can leave.”
