The Headmaster's Wife (34 page)

Personally Gregor thought he was on the side of sanity, but he could see how at least some people might argue that point. He dragged the phone as close to him as he could without putting it on his lap and stared at it. If he called and got the answering machine, he would not be able to leave a message. He knew that already. The sound of Bennis's voice on the answering machine tape would make him mute. If he called and she was still cold to him, he didn't know if he'd be able to talk then either. What he really wanted was for her to show up in Windsor on her own, the way she had in Hollman, Pennsylvania, when he had been involved in the mess that had first introduced him to Liz Toliver, Jimmy Card, and Mark. The chances of her doing that now were slim to nonexistent. If he was honest about it, he knew they were only nonexistent. He knew he was going to have to call.

He took a deep breath. He dialed for a long-distance line. He dialed his own number on Cavanaugh Street. He had Bennis's cell phone number, just as she had his, but for some reason he didn't want to talk to her on her cell phone. He had no idea why that was. Maybe he just wanted to be sure she was sitting down somewhere and able to pay attention to whatever it was he might have to say. He didn't want to try to talk to her while she was driving or with a lot of people or in the lobby of an art movie house getting ready to go in to see one of those films he always begged off because they were so damned bizarre. Here was something about Bennis he didn't understand. She liked movies, preferably in foreign languages, where really odd things happened. There was a Fellini movie with a fashion show of religious garments that included, toward the end, skeletons in veils and lace. There was a German film where people faded in and out of reality for no good reason he could see. First they were standing there, solid, and then they were dissolving like ghosts, but there didn't seem to be any actual ghosts in the film. Fortunately, she would also go to “real” movies with Tibor, but Gregor had to admit he didn't like most of Tibor's movies either. Tibor's movies ran heavily to space aliens, wizards in beards longer than most bridal veils, and desperate races to save the world. Whatever happened to movie movies, where ordinary people had love affairs or tried to save the family business or learned the real meaning of Christmas? On that last one, Tibor had had an entry, and Gregor had gone along for the afternoon. It was called
The Grinch,
and everybody in it was made up to look like—Gregor didn't know what.

Bennis would understand what he meant about politics that wasn't really politics, Gregor thought. At least, she would have understood as of a few weeks ago because she was both very active politically and mostly driven to distraction by what she had to put up with in order to be that way. She would know what he meant by the unreality of places like this, too. Bennis had been in a lot of unreal places in her life, and she'd been to a school like this one. Or had it been like this one? Maybe it had been a conservative enclave instead of a liberal one. His palms were sweating. So was his neck. His stomach was one enormous knot, as hard as a bowling ball and as comfortable as if he had swallowed one. He hadn't been this afraid of Bennis when they'd first started seeing each other.

The phone rang and rang. After a while Gregor was sure she was out, and that he ought to hang up and try again another time. Instead he just sat there, listening to the ring. There were three phones in his apartment. One was in the bedroom, on the night table on the left side of the bed. One was in the living room, on the wicker side table to the right of the couch that faced the big window looking onto Cavanaugh Street. The last was on the wall in the kitchen, next to the refrigerator. There was no place in the apartment, anywhere, where it took more than a few seconds to get to a phone.

He was just about to put the receiver back into the cradle when he heard her pick up on the other end, and then the sound of her voice, not talking to him but to somebody with her in the apartment.

“I got flour. It's in that bag with Tibor's Pizza Rolls in it,” she said.

Suddenly everything Gregor had wanted to say disappeared from his head. There was something about politics, but he couldn't remember what. There was all the news about Mark DeAvecca. He could remember that, but he couldn't think of the words he needed to explain it.

“Hello,” she said, in that flat, unconsciously upper-class voice he'd found so off-putting when they'd first met and hardly ever noticed anymore.

He took a deep breath, trying to give himself time to think, but he couldn't think. He was frozen solid. He had a terrible intuition that his breath was very heavy though, that he sounded like one of those men who call phone numbers at random until they get a female voice they can talk dirty to.

“Hello?” she said again.

He tried to cough. He couldn't do it. He tried to speak. He couldn't do that either. Everything was wrong. He couldn'timagine his life without her. He couldn't imagine what he was supposed to say to make it all right between them. He couldn't imagine what he'd done that had been so damned awful that it had led to this, so that she hadn't called him even once since he'd been out of town and hadn't seen him off when he left Philadelphia.

“Christ,” she said, her voice turned away from the receiver again, “I've got a breather.”

“Wait,” Gregor started to say, remembering at the last moment the whistle he'd given her for just such occasions as she thought this was.

Fortunately or unfortunately, she didn't use it. She just hung up.

Gregor sat staring at the phone in his hand, wondering what the hell was the matter with him. He'd never been this awkward with a girl, not even in high school. He'd never been this scared in his life.

By the time Gregor got to the nurses' station on Two West at ten minutes before two, he was thoroughly disgusted with himself and in no mood to put up with anybody else's nonsense. He came out of the elevator with his mind still on Bennis, and for the first few moments as he walked ahead toward the big curved wooden desk, he didn't realize that he knew at least half the people standing in front of it, arguing. The other half were doctors, a tall, angular young man with too much hair and a nose that could have served as a hood ornament, and a slight, middle-aged woman who exuded tension the way the Cookie Monster ate cookies. She was, Gregor thought, the single most defensively hostile person he had ever seen in his life. Then he realized that she was standing next to Liz Toliver, and that he was about to have to deal with her.

It wasn't the most promising situation he had ever walked into in his life. The small woman might be angry and aggressive, but Liz was in that unnatural calm that Gregor had learned to associate with the prelude to one of her nuke attacks. Both Jimmy Card and the male doctor were standing just a little away from the two women, as if both of them knew that something was about to blow.

“It is my professional opinion that this course of action is very inadvisable,” the small woman was saying. “Very inadvisable. I haven't even had a chance to go over these results. I don't know how accurate they are—”

“I don't see why you should go over these results at all,” Liz said.
Very calm,
Gregor thought. She was very calm. He winced. “You are not Mark's doctor, and you are not Mark's mother. I'm that.”

“I'm the doctor for the school,” the small woman said, “and you signed an agreement when Mark came to Windsor that he would be treated by me—”

“In the event that he got sick up here and the school had to make arrangements for his care,” Liz said. “Yes. But the school doesn't have to make arrangements for his care now. I'm here.”

“You're risking his health and his recovery by delivering information to him that is very disturbing and that, as far as we know, is completely inaccurate. I'm sure Dr. Copeland is very talented, but he's still a resident and he does not have the experience—”

“Excuse me,” the young male doctor said.

“This entire idea is ludicrous,” the small woman said. “I must be concerned first and foremost with Mark's well-being. He's still a child, and he's not able to interpret—”

“Jesus Christ,” Liz said.

“Adults often have to insist that children do what is best for them because they will not always know what is best for them themselves,” the woman plowed on.

Gregor pulled up into the little group and coughed. They all turned to look at him, Jimmy Card with relief so pronounced it was comical. “Hello,” he said. “Hello, Liz. Hello, Jimmy.”

“This is Gregor Demarkian,” Jimmy said.

The young male doctor stuck out his hand. “Mr. Demarkian. I'm Lloyd Copeland. It's good to meet you.”

“It's all
your
fault,” the small woman said, rounding on Gregor. “You're the one who gave them this ridiculous idea. I don't know what you think you're doing, but if you're getting a lot of publicity for yourself by jeopardizing that child's health and sanity—”

“That child,” Liz said, “is six feet tall and built like a tank. I'd be surprised as hell if he was a virgin, considering the fact that he spent half his life backstage at rock concerts last summer. He's got an IQ in the one hundred and sixties, and he hasn't exactly been living in a nursery school for the last sixteen years. I resent your attempts to treat him like a mental defective, and I resent even more your attempts to get me to manipulate him. I have never been anything but honest and honorable with Mark, and I don't intend to start being less than either now.”

“I haven't asked you not to be honest,” the small woman said. “I've merely pointed out that children need to be given information in doses they can handle, not dumped into a cold bath of bad and frightening news as if they were miniature adults.”

“Mark isn't a miniature anything,” Liz said. She turned to Gregor and said, “This woman is Brenda Elliot. She's the doctor attached to the school. She's also an idiot. I'm going to go talk to Mark.”

She walked off down the hall in the direction of Mark's room, and Gregor looked at Jimmy Card.

“Don't ask,” Jimmy said. “It's been a very long day.”

Brenda Elliot straightened the jacket of her good wool suit. “I suppose I'll have to come along. Somebody has to look after that child's interests. He's already been fed food he shouldn't have been and thrown it all up. It took the hospital staff half an hour to get that room back into shape.”

“He was throwing up again?” Gregor asked.

Dr. Copeland smiled. “Understandably. It seems he woke up this afternoon and he was hungry, and he prevailed upon Mr. Card here to make a run out to McDonald's—”

“Three crispy chicken extra value meals supersized with vanilla milkshakes,” Jimmy said. “And he ate it all, too, but then—”

“Irresponsible,” Brenda Elliot sniffed.

She was, Gregor thought, exactly the sort of woman who would sniff. He turned away from her and gestured down the hall in the direction of Mark's room.

“Right,” Jimmy said. “This ought to be interesting.”

Gregor led the way. It wasn't a long walk. When they got to the room, Liz was standing by herself at the windows, and Mark was sitting up in bed talking away on a cell phone. He did not look as if he had recently been sick. He did look a million times better than he had the day before.

Mark nodded to Gregor as he came in, said, “I've got to go” into the phone, and switched it off. “I was talking to Geoff,” he said. Then, looking around and not too sure of who knew what, “He's my little brother. He's got Grandma wrapped, by the way. She's letting him play video games and eat TV dinners nonstop.”

“I told her she could,” Liz said.

“Cool,” Mark said.

Dr. Copeland waved the folder he was carrying in the air. “Well,” he said, “we ought to get started. Mark, I want to warn you, right now, that what you're about to hear is probably going to be very disturbing. Dr. Elliot is of the opinion that you should not be told about it at all.”

“I shouldn't be told about my medical condition?” Mark said. Now he
did
look sick. “What's wrong with me? Is it terminal?”

“I told you this was irresponsible,” Brenda Elliot said.

Gregor knew what it was Mark was worried about. “Relax,” he said, “you've got no serious medical condition, terminal or otherwise, except maybe an allergy to caffeine; and then it's just a question of staying off. It's not that kind of news.”

“So what kind of news is it?” Mark asked.

Dr. Copeland plunged in again. “We did a number of standard tests,” he said, “and they all came out negative, exceptfor the caffeine toxicity, which was abnormally high. High enough to have killed you on its own, by the way. Now, some of the symptoms you've been reporting—high levels of anxiety, for instance, and abnormal sweating—can be traced to the caffeine allergy coupled with the fact that you seem to have been ingesting a lot of the stuff you're allergic to.”

“Do you know what's been going on here?” Liz asked, addressing herself to Brenda Elliot. “Teachers saw him in class with body tremors and sweat pouring down his body and nobody even sent him to the infirmary. He went to the infirmary on his own power with a strep throat bad enough to take over Taiwan, and they didn't even do a throat culture.”

“Excuse me,” Dr. Copeland said, “some of the symptoms are unlikely to be the result of caffeine poisoning alone. Oh, they could be if the caffeine poisoning were as acute as it was last night, or close to, but if it had been, he'd have been hospitalized long ago. I'm thinking of the memory losses, and the body tremors, and the blackouts. We did test for Parkinson's disease.”

“Jesus,” Mark said.

“And the tests came back negative,” Dr. Copeland went on. “You really don't have anything medically wrong with you. I'd be interested in knowing, though, when those symptoms started: the tremors, the blackouts, those.”