The Doctor and the Diva (20 page)

“You were so good through the entire ordeal,” she said. Once again her body washed up against him, her wrists joined at his nape, urging him closer to her. It was only kind and human, she told herself, for a doctor to hold a patient in her grief.

He hesitated, and then something exploded from inside him—an exhalation as he moved forward, absorbing her against his dark blue vest and suit coat. He murmured into the earrings tangled in her hair, “You will have another child—trust me.” She was amazed that he, who usually carried himself with a certain formality, had come unleashed. He had never flirted with her before. Now it was as if they had lost a baby together.

He backed her up, a little waltz. As he held her and held her, her hips slid flush against him so that his genitals could be felt right through her dress. She had never flown against any man other than her husband with so much passion before, but it was not just she—it was the doctor, too. With his hands at her waist, hers around his neck, they fell together naturally, as though they’d been married for years.

Her consciousness then came awake. There was something untoward in how long the man was embracing her. In the dining room directly below, she heard two maids polishing silverware. A drawer slammed shut, the utensils jostled with the ring of coins. Overhead, a chambermaid rolled the carpet sweeper across the bedroom floor. It was hardly proper for any doctor to be this physical with a patient. Certainly he was an emotional man, but . . . Always before he had guarded himself.

How often did he indulge like this? she wondered. How often did he give a calculated pivot at the door and ask his postpartum ladies, “Is there anything you want to say—” and then wait for them to throw themselves against his chest? This was a safe moment, after all, with no husband present. Once he stepped through the door, he’d be neatly, sweetly rid of her.

Were his accusers justified in banishing him from Boston?

Between him and her was the rare thing, though: a dead baby. His body sighed against hers, and in holding each other there was sadness, forgiveness, desire, a sensual relief.

In the soft, warm fusion of embraces that went on too long, she and the doctor made their peace. If it continued much after this, things could slide in only one direction, and they both knew it.

“And your husband,” the doctor said at last, as if to remind himself, gulping, pulling back, “is he helping you?”

“Yes.” She let her head drop in a reluctant nod.

At the guilty mention of her husband, they broke apart. The doctor took a large and deliberate step backward, and the sudden desertion made her breath catch. Her fingers slid down the length of his navy woolen sleeve until she found his hand, and she held on to it.

Until now she had always been cautious not to be seductive with men other than her husband—but now, oddly, she lowered her eyelids and gave a coquettish stir of her hips. He had seen the ugliest things happen to her, but this man had brushed his lips against her hair.

The notion that the doctor and she had lost their senses like that struck her as faintly comical, and she could not hide a smile. She faced the window. “Look—more snow is falling.” The flakes obscured the view.

“Well.” His tone switched then, and became more loud and brusque, taking on a ring of practicality. “I should have worn my galoshes.”

How could she possibly say good-bye to him? She threw a stray arm around his neck again.

His body went rigid and he glanced over his shoulder at the door. She winced, knowing no married lady ought to be doing this. Her hip gave one last nudge against his.

“All right,” he murmured, a signal that he intended to open the door. “All right.” His voice grazed her hair, assuring her that he did not deny what had happened, but now it had to end.

He fled down the carpeted staircase, not looking back. In the foyer, just before opening the front door—just before leaving her house, a place that he would never visit again—he fished something from his pocket and called in a high, bright tone to one of the maids: “Would you give this to Mrs. von Kessler?”

The door opened and shut, taking him away, bringing a gust of winter into the house that chilled Erika’s legs even under her long gown. She stood, stunned, at the top of the stairs. The maid trotted up the steps and slipped the envelope into Erika’s hands—the same one that had prompted Doctor Ravell to call in the first place. Erika carried it into the library and slit the envelope with an ivory-handled letter opener. She waited for the flush of dizzying impressions to settle before extracting the slip of paper from the envelope.

In flowing blue ink Ravell had written his friend Hartley’s address in Trinidad. Peter had also asked Ravell to recommend other fertility experts, but Ravell had left no names. Erika placed the page on Peter’s desk blotter. She went to the window and peered into the swirl of darkness and snow, wondering if she could still catch sight of Ravell, but he was gone.

It was odd, of course, that he had not offered any referrals. Peter would make excuses for him, pointing out that in the haste of leaving Boston, particularly under the threat of professional expulsion, Ravell’s mind must have been scattered.

But Erika saw it differently. Perhaps it saddened Ravell to imagine her being cared for by another physician. He wanted to do it himself, and have the next birth turn out more happily. He was hoping they would come to Trinidad.

T
hat night, for the first time since the delivery, intercourse gave her no discomfort. “Does this cause you pain or tenderness?” the doctor had asked while examining her.
No, no.
She relaxed, remembering his expert hands.

While her husband brought his body against hers, it was the doctor who made love to her.

With her whole belly drawn up into his hands, his palms gripped the child, his face over hers, his eyes peering into hers. His eyes were huge and dark, rimmed in charcoal shadows.

On the bamboo marriage bed, she opened her legs to him.

While her husband made love to her, she heard the doctor exhale in relief as his chest fell against hers. She was one of thousands of women he had touched. A favorite concubine.

In the doctor, too, there was that yearning to scavenge something lovely from the wreck. The doctor pushed his heart against hers. He wanted to hover over her another nine months with his instruments and erase the failure absolutely. The doctor wanted to draw a fresh glistening baby from the recesses of her.

Her husband’s body was trim and vigorous—more virile, in truth, than the doctor’s slight-framed body. After the doctor had blended into every touch of her husband’s hands, after pleasure had rinsed through her . . .

The glare of electric bulbs went on, and she was back at the delivery, just as it was ending. The truth, the final judgment, then: the child was dead.

Cradling the moist, lifeless child in her arms, she lay on the bed and turned to the doctor. He did not look back as he opened the door and went away.

If she had surrendered herself to the doctor earlier, if she’d not been so reluctant to have the baby, perhaps her womb would never have become a grave.

In the darkness her shoulders shook.

“Did it hurt?” her husband whispered, alarmed.

“No,” she answered. The doctor, in making love to her, had reached into her most sorrowful space. In the darkness she took the hem of the sheet and wiped her wet cheeks so that her husband would not detect what he suspected—that she was weeping.

 

 

P
eter wrote:

But by November Peter could not bear to wait any longer, and he was not the sort of man to be daunted by weather or any sort of obstacle. Peter ignored Ravell’s entreaties to postpone their journey by a couple of months. Just days before he and Erika embarked on the SS
La Plata,
he sent word to Ravell that they would soon arrive.

The first night after they sailed from New York and headed for the big island of Trinidad, ice crusted the rigging and snow whitened the decks. All the next morning the crew took up shovels and crowbars and labored to loosen frozen debris, and while the men worked, Peter settled into the stateroom he and Erika shared. He spread his maps across pillows and blankets, and opened a small notebook against the table that fitted neatly alongside the bed. He held the end of his pen between his teeth, the nib pointing upward at a jaunty angle as he formulated plans.

He placed the tip of his finger on a map and showed Erika how tantalizingly close Trinidad lay to the great continent of South America. If Ravell could be persuaded to abandon his work for just ten or twelve days, Peter figured that he and Ravell might venture into the interior together. They simply had to cross the channel known as “Serpent’s Mouth,” and follow the Orinoco River into the wilds of Venezuela.

“And where do you plan to leave your wife,” Erika asked, “if you and Ravell head off on an expedition?”

Peter shrugged. “In a lovely hotel in the capital.” This did not seem to trouble him.