Reaching up, he rotated his earring.
“The strain on her’s been incredible.”
“Must be rough on you, too,” I said.
“It hasn’t been fun, that’s for sure. But the worst of it falls on
Cindy. To be honest, we’ve got your basic, traditional, sex
rolestereotyped marriage-I work; she takes care of things at home. Its
by mutual choice-what Cindy really wanted. I’m involved at home to
some extent-probably not as much as I should be-but child rearing’s
really Cindy’s domain. God knows she’s a hell of a lot better at it
than I am. So when something goes wrong in that sphere, she takes all
the responsibility on her shoulders.”
He stroked his beard and shook his head. “Now, that was an impressive
bit of defensive pedantry, wasn’t it? Yes, sure, it’s been ~ned rough
on me. Seeing someone you love . . . I assume you know about Chad-our
first baby?”
I nodded.
“We hit bottom with that, Dr. Delaware. There’s just no way to. .
.”
Closing his eyes, he shook his head again. Hard, as if trying to
dislodge mental burrs.
“Let’s just say it wasn’t anything I’d wish on my worst enemy.”
He jabbed the elevator button, glanced at his watch. “Looks like we
caught the local, Doctor. Anyway, we were just coming out of it Cindy
and I. Pulling ourselves together and starting to enjoy Cassie when
this mess hit the fan. . Unbelievable.”
The elevator arrived. Two candy-stripers and a doctor exited, and we
steed in. Chip pushed the ground-floor button and settled with his
back against the compartment’s rear wall.
“You just never know what life’s going to throw you,” he said.
“I’ve always been stubborn. Probably to a fault-an obnoxious
individualist. Probably because a lot of conformity was shoved down my
throat at an early age. But I’ve come to realize I’m pretty
conservative. Buying into the basic values: Live your life according
to the rules and things will eventually work out. Hopelessly naIve, of
course. But you get into a certain mode of thinking and it feels
right, so you keep doing it. That’s as good a definition of faith as
any, I guess. But I’m fast losing mine.
The elevator stopped at four. A Hispanic woman in her fifties and a
boy of around ten got on. The boy was short, stocky, bespectacled.
His blunt face bore the unmistakable cast of Down’s syndrome. Chip
smiled at them. The boy didn’t appear to notice him.
The woman looked very tired. No one talked. The two of them got off
at three.
When the door closed, Chip kept staring at it. As we resumed our
descent he said, “Take that poor woman. She didn’t expect thatchild of
her old age and now she has to take care of him forever.
Something like that’ll shake up your entire worldview. That’s what’s
happened to me-the whole child-rearing thing. No more assumptions
about happy endings.”
He turned to me. The slate eyes were fierce. “I really hope you can
help Cassandra. As long as she has to go through this shit, let her be
spared some of the pain.”
The elevator landed. The moment the door opened, he was out and
gone.
When I got back to the General Peds clinic, Stephanie was in one of the
exam rooms. I waited outside until she came out a few minutes later,
followed by a huge black woman and a girl of around five. The girl
wore a red polka-dot dress and had coal-black skin, cornrows, and
beautiful African features. One of her hands gripped Stephanie’s; the
other held a lollipop. A tear stream striped her cheek, lacquer on
ebony. A round pink Band-Aid dotted the crook of one arm.
Stephanie was saying, “You did great, Tonya.” She saw me and mouthed,
“My office,” before returning her attention to the girl.
I went to her consult room. The Byron book was back on the shelf, its
gilded spine conspicuous among the texts.
I thumbed through a recent copy of Pediatrics. Not long after,
Stephanie came in, closed the door, and sank into her desk chair.
“So,” she said, “how’d it go?”
“Fine, outside of Ms. Bottomley’s continuing antagonism.