The Carlton Club (5 page)

Janet lived at home. She performed in all the University musical productions. She earned A’s—and one A plus—in her music, dance and acting classes and B’s in her other classes. Janet took typing and secretarial skills classes because they seemed practical. Her favorite class was dance. The music courses added little, except exposure, to her natural singing talent, but the dance classes taught her something she didn’t know, something she needed to know to win the roles she wanted. Janet was years behind the students who had started ballet at age five, but she had aptitude and energy.

Mark and Janet made love often, at least three or four times a week. Over eight hundred times before their wedding night, Janet calculated during a lecture on shorthand in the spring of her senior year. They didn’t experiment in their love making. They made love in the same way, the traditional way, quietly, passionately, every time. They never talked about it. There was nothing to discuss. It was completely satisfying for both of them.

Mark and Janet were married two weeks after graduation. Mark’s parents paid for the entire wedding because it had to be held at the Riverwoods Country club, and they had to invite four hundred guests. Janet’s parents didn’t belong to Riverwoods, and they couldn’t have afforded a wedding of any size.

Janet almost balked.

“What will we owe them, your parents, in return for this?” she asked. Mark had already told her he would not, could not, accept his father’s offer to pay for his medical school tuition at any medical school in the country. Mark’s father wanted Mark to attend Harvard Medical School, but Mark only applied to one medical school, the one with the lowest tuition because of his state residency, the University of Nebraska in Omaha. Mark refused his father’s offer to pay for his medical education because what if he, they, decided not to return to Lincoln to practice after all?

“It will put us into debt, Janet, but I can work the first two summers,” he said.

“And I’ll be working. We’ll manage. I don’t want you to take the money from your father, either.”

In response to Janet’s question about the debt for their wedding, Mark said, “We’re doing them the favor. They want this social event, and we’re agreeing to participate. I just hope you don’t mind too much. Or your parents.”

“It’s such a terrible waste of money, but if I stand in the way of it they’ll dislike me even more. If that’s possible. All I want is to marry you and leave Lincoln.”

During the weeks before the wedding, Janet was unusually quiet in the presence of Mark’s mother. She wanted to avoid any scenes or unpleasantness. They had already had a confrontation about the rings. Janet stood firm on few issues because all she really wanted was Mark. The whole process was simply a means to an end.

But Janet stood firm about the rings.

“I want eighteen-carat gold bands. Plain and simple,” she explained to her future mother-in-law.

“Eighteen carat is so soft! It loses its shine.”

“I know, Mrs. Collinsworth. That’s why I like it. It ages, matures, with the marriage.”

Janet’s parents wore eighteen-carat gold bands. Their bands were scuffed and battered, but still golden like their marriage that had weathered the trials and joys of their twenty-five years together. Janet hoped her marriage to Mark would be as durable, as wonderful despite the hardships, as her parents’. Janet wanted bands like theirs. For luck.

Janet won that battle and secured her victory by quickly ordering the rings. They were engraved with their initials, the date and a single word: Always.

Mrs. Collinsworth persisted. An eighteen-carat gold band could be overlooked if the diamond was set properly.

“Have you and Mark chosen a diamond? You should probably get one of at least a carat.”

“Diamonds are so expensive!” So frivolous, Janet thought, at a time when they knew they would be going into debt. Even if money wasn’t an issue, Janet wouldn’t have wanted one.

“We’ll buy it for you. Or lend Mark the money to be repaid on your twentieth anniversary. Or”—Janet watched Mrs. Collinsworth almost choke on the next words—“you could have my mother’s diamond. I’m sure she would have wanted Mark’s wife to have it. It’s almost two carats, emerald cut, flawless.”

“No, thank you. No diamond. Really, I’m just not the type.”

Not the type is right, Mrs. Collinsworth thought. Not Mark’s type. Not our type. And she won’t let us make her better.

“With just the two plain gold bands,” Mark’s mother persevered, “it looks like a shotgun wedding. You know, dear, like you have to get married.”

“We do have to get married, Mrs. Collinsworth,” Janet said as she leveled her eyes, steel gray and serious, at her future mother-in-law’s startled, blinking ones. Janet added, softly, carefully, “We have to get married because we love each other.”

During Mark’s first two years of medical school, Janet worked as a secretary-receptionist in a neurosurgeon’s office all day and had dinner ready for Mark when he got home from his afternoon classes. Mark spent most evenings at the library or in the anatomy lab, and Janet spent her evenings performing in community theater productions. She and Mark arrived home about midnight, made love and fell asleep.

During Mark’s third and fourth years when he was on the wards, doing clerkships, being on call with his team, his schedule was erratic and unpredictable. If Janet was gone in the evenings, she might go for days without really seeing him. Janet decided to stop performing. It was an easy decision. She wanted to be with Mark whenever she could. Still, she missed it.

On March fifteenth of his fourth year, Mark learned that he matched for an internal medicine internship at the University of California in San Francisco. It was his first choice. Two months later, he learned that he would graduate from medical school with highest honors.

Two weeks before graduation, Mark’s moodiness, the moodiness that would ultimately drive them apart, first surfaced.

Janet had seen glimpses of it in high school, when the pressure got too great, and his father talked about Mark hanging out his shingle below his, and when Mark told her how much he enjoyed his English classes.

But in high school and in college and until the final weeks of medical school, Mark’s moodiness had been infrequent and curable. Janet could cure it. Mark would come to her, kiss her, hold her and make love to her. He would feel better.

The moodiness that began six weeks before his internship was different. It didn’t go away so easily. It seemed more resistant to her love. For the sixteen months between the end of medical school and the day that Janet told him she had to get away from him, the moodiness increased until it became a dark constant presence. And it was aggravated by fatigue and pressure and his compulsion to be the best.

Mark immersed himself in medicine.

Even though he hates it, Janet decided, finally, after endless months of watching his torment.

She was convinced that Mark hated medicine, even though he did it well, even though he was the best. When she suggested to him, gently, carefully, that he didn’t like what he was doing, Mark became incensed. He loved medicine, he answered swiftly. Didn’t she know that?

No. She knew just the opposite.

So Janet hated medicine for him. She hated every part of it: the relentless call schedule, the arrogant, competitive residents—his friends—the compulsive personalities. Janet hated it for both of them. And, little by little, because Mark was on the other side, because he was one of them, because he defended them and it, Janet began to hate him, too.

It tore them apart because they both hated it, but Mark wouldn’t admit it.

And because she couldn’t comfort him, love him, out of his moods anymore.

Mark arrived home at four o’clock that Sunday afternoon, October fifth, fifteen months after his internship had started. He hadn’t been on call. He had just been in the hospital since early morning making rounds with his team. He had slept eight hours the night before. Janet knew. She had watched him sleep as she lay awake, tormented, trying to decide what to do.

Talk, she decided. Talk to him when he was rested. She watched him sleep. He would be rested.

Janet paced, herself exhausted, until she heard him return.

“Hi,” Mark said absently as he walked in the door and past her. Preoccupied, as usual.

“Mark?”

“What?” he snapped, startled.

Usually she just left him alone.

“We have to talk.”

“About what?” he asked suspiciously.

He, they, had declared a moratorium on discussions about whether he really liked medicine. That had been six months ago. They hadn’t discussed it since.

“Our marriage.”

“Our marriage?”

That was a new topic. They had never discussed their marriage. What was there to discuss?

“OK,” he said tentatively.

“It’s in trouble, Mark,” Janet said carefully. It’s over, she thought. But, maybe, she was wrong. Maybe he could make her change the way she felt. If he really cared. If he really loved her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we don’t have anything to do with each other anymore.”

“Come on, Janet. We’re together every second that I’m not at the hospital.”

“We’re in the same house. We’re not together.”

“This is ridiculous. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m too tired to try to figure it out.” Mark started to leave the room.

“Damn you!” Janet shouted.

Mark spun around and stared at her.

“Listen to me, Mark, please. I
hate
this. I hate our life. I hate that you never touch me anymore. I hate your friends and medicine. And I know that you do, too.” Janet held up her hand to stop him from interrupting. “You just won’t admit it. I cannot live like this.”

“Like what?”

“Hating the man I married. Not knowing you. Not being able to touch you. Having you pull away when I try. Not being able to talk to you. Not being able to comfort you.”

“Comfort me?”

“Oh, Mark,” Janet said softly as tears filled her eyes. “You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No,” he said honestly, his voice tired, “I don’t. I can’t believe that you hate me, Janet.”

“I do, Mark. I’m really afraid that I do,” Janet said as the hot tears spilled onto her cheeks. “I love the man I married so much. But this other man, this man I don’t know.”

“I love you, Janet,” he said weakly, almost mechanically.

“Do you, Mark? When was the last time you touched me? I’m sure you don’t know. It was four months ago. You used to want to make love with me all the time. Now all you care about,
pretend
to care about, is medicine. You don’t even want to make love anymore. Maybe you
can’t
.”

“Janet!” Mark’s shock was quickly replaced by anger. “You knew this wouldn’t be easy. You knew that these years would be hard, the hardest. That I would be tired. That I wouldn’t feel like making love every night.”

“Four months, Mark.”

“But nothing else has changed.”

“
Everything
else has changed. I could live with you forever, never make love with you again, if I believed that I made a difference to you. That I was part of your life.”

“You are. You do.”

“No. I used to be. But not anymore. You’ve shut me out. You are moody and angry and unhappy, and you won’t share it with me.”

“I am not.”

“You don’t even know,” Janet said sadly, defeated.

“I am tired. This is hard work. That is all.”

“No.”

“Yes,” Mark sighed. “This is so classic. This is why doctors’ marriages fall apart. This

is what happens. Don’t let it happen to us.”

“I’m not complaining about your call schedule or that you fall asleep during dinner or that you work on Christmas. That isn’t what this is all about.”

“But you do complain about those things.”

“I note those things. They are annoying, but they don’t end marriages. At least they wouldn’t end mine.”

“End?”

“Yes, e
nd
. You are not listening. I don’t believe that you love me anymore.”

“I do.”

Janet sighed. Mark hated medicine and said he loved it. What did it mean when he said he loved her? He probably didn’t even know.

“I don’t feel loved.”

“That’s your problem,” he said coldly.

“Maybe it is. When you don’t feel loved, when I don’t feel loved, I begin to hate myself. Look at me, Mark. I’m fat. I’ve gained twenty pounds in the past six months.”

Janet had always been slender, fit. When she danced, she had no fat on her sleek, trim body. Twenty pounds didn’t make Janet less beautiful, but it made her feel terrible. She was enveloped in a heavy thickness which, more than anything, was an ever present symbol of how unhappy she was.

“You look fine.” Mark’s tone reflected annoyance. He was tired of this conversation. He had other things to worry about. What was Janet’s problem?

“Mark,” she said finally, standing in front of him, trembling with rage and frustration. “Listen to me, damn you. I am leaving you. I cannot stand being with you anymore. I cannot stand hating myself and hating you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe me.”

Janet went into the bedroom and returned almost immediately with two heavy, obviously packed, suitcases.

“Janet.” Mark stood up.

“I have to leave,” she said. “I am suffocating.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have reservations at a motel tonight. It’s near. I can take a taxi. Tomorrow I’ll find an apartment near the office or on a bus line. You need the car.”

Their rented house on Twin Peaks was on a bus line. It was an easy commute for Janet to the real estate office where she worked as a receptionist.

“Janet, don’t leave. Can’t we talk about it?”

“We’ve just been talking about it, and it’s obvious that we can’t talk. We can’t communicate. We can’t even agree on what has happened to us.”

“Nothing has happened to us,” Mark said firmly.

“You see!” Janet yelled in frustration. “Nothing has happened except that I hate you and myself and I’m leaving.”

They stared at each other, glowering, for a moment.

“I’ll leave,” Mark said finally, angrily.

“No, why?”

“Because this is your home. You fixed it up. I couldn’t stand being here without you. And I couldn’t stand being blamed for hurting you even more by displacing you from your home,” he said acidly.

“Our home.”

“Not anymore apparently. Will it ever be again?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I hope so.”

He tossed the car keys at her, too hard, too fast. They hit her hand then the floor.

“Get out of here for an hour, will you, so I can pack in peace? Then bring the car back and I’ll leave.”

Janet called Leslie later that night.

“He’s gone, Les,” Janet said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Gone?”

“I was going to leave but he insisted.”

“Oh, Janet, I am so sorry.”

“It’s what I thought, what I was afraid, would happen.”

“I know. But still . . ” Leslie hesitated. “Do you want me to come over, now?”

“Yes. If you’re not too tired.”

Leslie had first met Janet at the Department of Medicine party held in mid July at the Yacht Club. By then, three weeks into her internship, Leslie had worked daily, twenty-four hours a day, with Mark. She had worked with him, talked to him, laughed with him, and already, she had fallen in love with him.

Leslie was curious to see the woman whom Mark had chosen to be his wife, the woman Mark loved. Leslie hadn’t expected to like her, not really. But as she and Janet talked that night, and as they spent time together over the summer when Mark was on call, they became friends. Good friends, caring friends, friends in spite of the fact that Janet was Mark’s wife and that, despite her friendship with Janet, Leslie’s feelings for Mark did not change. They just remained hidden, deep in a part of her that no one would ever know, where they belonged.

“I love your house!” Leslie said the first time she visited Mark’s and Janet’s rental on Twin Peaks one evening while Mark was working.

From the outside the small house looked like every other little box on the block—square, bland, off-white stucco—but inside it was cheery and cozy and unique. Janet had made it that way, decorating it with quaint pretty pictures of country scenes and with colorful, intricate needlepoint pillows and hooked rugs that she had made.

“It’s so homey,” Leslie said, genuinely impressed. Mark must look forward to coming home, she thought. Leslie paused in each of the five rooms. She spent the most time in Mark’s study, the second of two bedrooms. In it hung his diplomas, his Alpha Omega Alpha certificate, a huge red and white Nebraska Cornhuskers banner, their wedding picture and dozens of other photos of their life together arranged in a beautiful, colorful collage.

“Mark David Collinsworth, M.D.,” Leslie observed, studying Mark’s medical school diploma. “M.D.C., M.D. Kind of catchy. Mark never uses his middle initial.”

“He probably doesn’t want to be reminded,” Janet said with surprising coldness. “I’m sure that Mark’s father, Dr. Collinsworth, had M.D. on his mind the moment Mark was born and pronounced male.”

“Oh!”

“He’s not a nice man, Mark’s father,” Janet said distantly, wondering what role Mark’s father was playing in Mark’s moods and in the destruction of her marriage.

“Oh.”

Leslie spent time, when she was off and Mark was on, exploring San Francisco with Janet. And she spent the time when she was on working, being, with Mark. Admiring him.