Authors: John Updike
Piet’s left palm tingled with shame. He envied little Nancy her fear of merely pain. As he tried to read a much-creased
Look
, his daughter rubbed against him. The wrong way. Two cats. Electricity is fear. Pedrick had once said you could picture God as electromagnetic waves. He missed the poor devil’s struggling, ought to go again. Nancy whispered, and he could not hear. Exasperated by her numb bumping, he said “What?” loudly.
The child cried “Shh!” and her hand darted to his lips. He embarrassed her. She had come to trust only her mother. Angela would normally have taken her to this appointment but today there was a meeting after nursery school and Piet,
faced with fate’s challenge, reluctantly accepted.
Whose mercy do you suggest instead?
Now indecision and repugnance fluttered in him and only fatigue scaled his dilemma down to something that could be borne. Like waiting outside the principal’s office. Old Orff, a fierce Lutheran. Despised the Dutch. Servile Calvinism. Sir, I’m sorry, just awfully sorry, I didn’t know—
You didn’t know anypody wutt be vatching?
Caught swinging on the banisters in the brick-and-steel stairwell. Nancy whispered more distinctly, “Will he use the busy thing?”
“It’s called the drill. Only if you have any cavities.”
“Can you see some?” She opened her mouth wide—a huge mouth, his mouth.
“Sweetie, I can’t see any, but I’m not a dentist. If you do have any cavities, they will be little ones, because you have such little teeth, because you’re such a little girl.”
He tickled her, but her body was overheated and preoccupied and did not respond. “Tell him not to do it,” she said.
“But he
must
, that’s Dr. Thorne’s job. If we don’t let him fix things now, they will be much worse later.” He put his face close to hers. Like a round white blotter she absorbed his refusal to rescue him; and, refusing in turn to cry, she imprinted him with courage. They went together into Freddy’s inner office.
Once there, in the robin’s-egg-blue reclining chair, with the water chuckling in the bowl beside her ear and Dr. Thorne joking overhead with her father, Nancy somewhat relaxed, and let the dentist pick his way along the reverberating paths of her teeth. “Two,” he pronounced at last, and made the marks on his chart, and judged, “Not so bad.”
“Two cavavies?” Nancy asked. “Will they hurt?”
“I don’t think so,” Freddy answered unctuously. “Let us see
how quiet you can be. The quieter you are outside, the quieter you are inside, and the quieter you are inside, the less you’ll notice the drill.”
Piet remembered the dove-gray handbook on hypnotism by Freddy’s bed, and would have made a jabbing joke about amateur psychology, but his need for mercy restrained him, and he instead asked humbly, “Should she have Novocain?”
Freddy looked down at him. “They’re very little,” he said.
Nancy withstood the first drilling in silence; but when Freddy began the second cavity without a pause a guttural protest arose in her throat. Piet moved to the other side of the chair and took her agitated hand in his. He saw into the child’s mouth, where between two ridged molars the drill, motionless in its speed, stood upright like a potted flower. Her tongue arched against the point of intrusion and Piet had to restrain her hand from lifting to her mouth. Her guttural complaint struggled into a scream. Her eyes, squared in shape by agony, opened and confronted her father’s. Piet burst into sweating; perspiration raced across his chest, armpit to armpit. The coral space of gum between Nancy’s lower lip and lower incisors was a gorge of saliva and drill spray. Her back arched. Her free hand groped upwards; Piet caught it and held it, pleading with Freddy, “Let’s stop.”
Freddy leaned down upon the now convulsive child. His lips thinned, then opened fishily. He said “Ah,” and let the drill lift itself away, done with. “There now,” he told Nancy, “that wasn’t worth all that fuss, was it?”
Her cheeks soaked, she spat into the chuckling bowl and complained, “I wanted only
one
.”
“But now,” her father told her, “they’re both done with and now comes the fun part, when Dr. Thorne puts in the silver!”
“Not fun,” Nancy said.
Freddy said, “She’s not easily got around, is she? Her mother’s daughter.” His smirk appeared pleased.
“You shouldn’t have plunged in so ruthlessly.”
“They were
tiny
. Scratches on the enamel. She frightened herself. Is she apprehensive at home?”
“She has my distrustful nature. The older girl is more stoical, like Angela.”
“Angela’s not stoical, that’s
your
theory. My theory is, she suffers.” Freddy’s smile implied he enjoyed access to mines of wisdom, to the secret stream running beneath reality. What a sad jerk, really. His skunk-striped assistant came in to spin the silver.
Nancy’s ordeal was over. As Freddy inserted and smoothed her fillings, Piet brought himself to ask, “Could we talk afterwards for a moment, in private?”
Freddy looked up. His eyes were monstrously enlarged by the magnifying lenses that supplemented his ordinary glasses. “I’m running behind on my appointments today.”
“OK, forget it.” Piet was relieved. “It didn’t matter. Maybe some other time.”
“Now, Handyman. Don’t be persnickety. I can fit a minute in.”
“It might take two,” Piet said, his escape denied.
Freddy said, “Allee allee done free, Nancy. You go with Jeannette and maybe she can find you a lollypop.” He ushered Piet into the small side room where his old yellow porcelain chair and equipment were kept for emergency use and cleanings. The window here looked upward over back yards toward the tip of the Congregational Church, a dab of sunstruck gold. Freddy in his sacerdotal white seemed much taller than Piet. Piet blushed. Freddy wiped his glasses and waited; years of malice had enriched that sly congested expression.
“We both know a lady—” Piet began.
“We both know several ladies.”
“A tall lady, with long blondish hair and a maiden name that’s an animal.”
“A lovely lady,” Freddy said. “I hear she’s wonderful in bed.”
“I haven’t heard that,” Piet said. “However, she and I were talking—”
“Not in bed?”
“I think not. Over the phone, perhaps.”
“I find phones, myself, so unsatisfying.”
“Have you tried masturbation?”
“Piet my pet, I don’t have much time. Spill it. I know what it is, but I want to hear you spill it.”
“This lady has told me, or maybe she told somebody else who told me, that you know gentlemen who can perform operations of a nondental nature.”
“I might. Or I might not.”
“My guess is you might not.” Piet made to shoulder past him to the closed door.
Freddy stayed him with a quiet touch, a calibrated technician’s touch. “But if I might?”
“But do you? I must trust you. Answer yes or no.”
“Try yes.”
“Then, sweet Freddy, this lady needs your friendship.”
“But old Piet, pious Piet,
friend
Piet, you speak of
her
. What about you and me? Don’t
you
need my friendship too?”
“It’s possible.”
“Probable.”
“OK. Probable.”
Freddy grinned; one seldom saw Freddy’s teeth. They were small and spaced and tartarish.
Piet said, “I hate this game, I’m going. You’re bluffing, you bluffed her into getting me to betray us. You stink.”
The bigger man stayed him again, holding his arm with injured warmth, as if their years of sarcasm and contempt had given him the rights affection claims. “I’m not bluffing. I can deliver. It’s not easy, there’s some risk to me, but it would be clean. The man’s an idealist, a crackpot. He believes in it. In Boston. I know people who have used him. What month is she in?”
“Second. Just.”
“Good.”
“It really is possible?” The good news was narcotically spreading through Piet’s veins; he felt womanish, submissive, grateful as a dog.
“I said
I
can deliver. Can
you
deliver?”
“You mean money? How much does he ask?”
“Three hundred. Four hundred. Depends.”
“No problem.”
“For the man, no. What about me?”
“You want money too?” Piet was happy to be again confirmed in his contempt for Freddy. “Help yourself. We’ll raise it.”
There was a fumbling at the door; Freddy called out, “
Uno momento
, Jeanette.”
But it was Nancy’s scared voice that answered: “When do we
go
, Daddy?”
Piet said, “One more minute, sweetie-pie. Go into the waiting room and look at a magazine. Dr. Thorne is giving me an X-ray.”
Freddy smiled at this. “You’ve become a very inventive liar.”
“It goes with the construction business. We were discussing money.”
“No we weren’t. Money isn’t discussed between old friends like you and me. Surely, old friend, we’ve gone beyond money as a means of exchange.”
“What else can I give you? Love? Tears? Eternal gratitude? How about a new skin-diving suit?”
“Boy, you do make jokes. You play with life and death, and keep making jokes. It must be why women love you. Piet, I’ll give it to you cold turkey. There’s an unbalanced matter between us: you’ve had Georgene—right?”
“If she says so. I forget how it was.”
“And I, on the other hand, though I’ve always sincerely admired your bride, have never—”
“Never. She’d never consent. She hates you.”
“She doesn’t hate me. She’s rather attracted to me.”
“She thinks you’re a jerk.”
“Watch it, Handlebar. This is my show and I’ve had enough of your lip. I want one night. That’s very modest. One night with Angela. Work it out, fella. Tell her what you have to. Tell her everything. Confession is good for the soul.”
Piet said, “You’re asking the impossible. And I’ll tell you why you are: you have nothing to deliver. You are a slimy worthless creep.”
With crooked forefingers Freddy made gay quick horns at his scalp. “You put ’em there, buddy. You’re the expert. I’m just a gullible middle-class grubber who as far as we know hasn’t made a career of screwing other men’s wives.” Freddy’s hairless face became very ugly, the underside of some soft eyeless sea creature whose mouth doubles as an anus. “You dug this grave by yourself, Dutch boy.”
Again Piet moved toward the door, and this time he was not prevented. He hauled it open, and hopped back, startled; Nancy, having disobeyed, was standing there listening. Her
lips were pursed around the stem of a lollypop and her eyes, though she had no words, knew everything.
When over the phone Piet told Foxy of Freddy’s proposition, she said, “How funny. I had assumed he and Angela did sleep together, or at least
had
.”
“On what basis had you assumed this?”
“Oh, how they act together at parties. Very relaxed. Chummy.”
“As far as I know, she’s never been unfaithful.”
“Are you bragging or complaining?”
“You’re in a jolly mood. What do you suggest our next step should be?”
“Me. I don’t have a next step. It’s up to Angela, isn’t it?”
“You’re kidding. I can’t put this to her.”
“Why not?” Impatience surmounted fatigue in her voice. “It’s not such an enormous deal. Who knows, she might enjoy getting away from you for a night.”
He’ll hurt her, Piet wanted to explain. Freddy Thorne will hurt Angela. He said, “But it means telling her all about us.”
“I don’t see why. If she loves you, she’ll do it simply because you ask. If you do it right. She’s your wife, let her earn it. The rest of us have been keeping you entertained, let her do something for the cause.”
“You’re tough, aren’t you?”
“I’m getting there.”
“Please, Fox. Don’t make me ask her.”
“I’m not
making
you do anything. How can I? It’s between you and her. If you’re too chicken, or she’s too holy, we’ll have to work at Freddy some other way, or do without him. I could try throwing myself on the mercy of my Cambridge doctor.
He’s not a Catholic. I could say I was going to have a nervous breakdown. It might not be a lie.”
“You honestly think it’s possible for me to ask her? Would you do it, to save Ken?”
“I’d do it to save
me
. In fact, I already offered.”
“You offered what? To sleep with Freddy?”
“Don’t let your voice get shrill like that. It’s unbecoming. Of course I did, more or less. I didn’t pull up my skirt; but what else do I have for him? What else do men and women ever talk about? He turned me down. Rather sweetly, I thought. He said I reminded him too much of his mother, and he was afraid of her. But it may have given him the idea of having Angela. I think what he really wants is to get at
you
.”
“Because of Georgene?”
“Because you’ve always scorned him.”
“You don’t think he just honestly wants
her
?”
“Please don’t try to squeeze compliments for your wife out of me. We all know she’s magnificent. I have no idea what Freddy honestly wants. All I know is what
I
honestly want. I want this damn thing to stop growing inside of me.”
“Don’t cry.”
“Nature is
so
stupid. It has all my maternal glands working, do you know what that means, Piet? You know what the great thing about being pregnant I found out was? It’s something I just couldn’t have imagined. You’re never alone. When you have a baby inside you you are not
alone
. It’s a
person
.”
He had already told her not to cry. “You really think … she might?”
“Oh for God’s sake, she’s human like everybody else, I don’t know what the hell she’ll do or won’t do. You still seem to think there’s a fate worse than death. She’s your divine wife, settle it between yourselves. Just let me know how it comes
out, so I can work on something else. I thought I’d done pretty well to get Freddy Thorne for us.”
“You did. You’re being very brave and resourceful.”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
Piet told her, “I’ll try. You’re right. I don’t expect it to go. She may ask for a divorce instead, but if it does, Foxy, love—”