Bad Memories

Former doctor John Miller was a doctor at the Allendale Asylum in Pennsylvania for ten years, now he worked as a technician making pills in NYC. Miller mused to himself while mechanically working the pill machine. Life was easier when I worked at the asylum. I had different things to do, not the same crap day in day out like now. Miller thought back to the asylum and those three people who died. He was certain he didn’t screw up and kill them. He remembered his wife Julie who was an Administrative Nurse there who dated Doctor Younger before she dumped him to marry me. Why do those three screams haunt me?

The name itself blurred in his mind, blurred with the robot movement of the machine once, the Liebermann Labs Inc., had boasted of only two tablet making machines, each of which stamped but a single tablet at a time. But lately it seemed there had been an increase in the demand for tablets especially aspirin now, there were many of the machines, stamping six tablets in an operation. The tablets for a veteran’s hospital in California, for an asylum in New York, for a home for the aged in suburban Milwaukee. There seemed no lack of institutions, everybody was in an institution, and you lived in an institution, or were entertained by an institution. You were buried in an institution by an institution. The machine went around and round and he watched it with tired eyes to see that it made no mistakes briefly, on occasion; his eyes glanced at the yellow-faced, large wall clock. Its hands moved much more slowly than the machines in fact, an inhibition seemed to keep them back as they approached five-thirty, which they were nearing now

.

He knew the answer to that; the clock did not want to be alone with the bottles that lined the walls of the loft. He had often watched the bottles too; he had watched the bottles for a long time before he realized it was the bottles that were watching him. Every day for almost a year he had been coming to the loft, every day for almost a year, he had seen the morning sun streaming through the lofts grimy windows. Everyday he had watched that brittle sunlight. He would watch it, and then look away at the walls of the loft. It made the walls and their bottles seem darker, more sinister. Every day he has seen the sunlight fade, and another day done, a day he could scarcely distinguish from the one before. He had become a different person, he knew the luster was dulled in his brown eyes, his young shoulders were becoming stooped, his chest hollow, his brown hair thinner. He had not played tennis in years now.

He felt too far gone ever to begin again, his hands that had once been delicate instruments of manipulation and still had now become inferior adjuncts to a machine; a man’s hand touched his arm.

“John,” the man’s voice said.

He turned saw the smiling face of his boss J. Liebermann. Liebermann was big, square headed cleft chinned as perfect a replica of Hindenburg as it would have been possible to find. “The telephone please,” he said in his soft, Viennese manner. “Someone asks for Mr. Miller!” John Miller switched off the tablet machine. In the laboratory’s unkempt office, he dug the phone out from under the bills and papers that covered the desk. J. Liebermann hovered benignly in the background. “This is Albert,” said the voice at the other end of the line. Change from the pounding throb of the tablet machine to a voice coming over the wire made hearing temporarily difficult. “Albert,” the voice repeated, “you know me, Albert Smith, Doctor Smith.”

“Oh-h-h,” Said Miller. “This damn noise in here, I couldn’t hear you,” but he knew it was only the grinding clatter of the machines that had delayed his recognition, his slow response of a brain beaten down by monotony. “Are you in town, Albert?”

“No, I’m home in Millersburg.”

Albert would be sitting in his office, wearing his white doctor’s tunic; Albert was six feet six inches tall, with the build of a young giraffe.

“I’ve got to see you John; at once can you come up here?” He sounded in a serious mood, and it made him forceful, direct.

“See me?” That was impossible, Miller thought, Millersburg was thirty miles up the Hudson.

“I’ve got to work tomorrow Albert, we work full days on Saturday, and you know that.”

“How about tonight then?” Albert replied.

“Doubt if I can get away from Julie.”

“Oh, damn your work, and damn your wife!” Albert Smith’s familiar laughter hits its characteristic off key lilt. He was suddenly in his good, kidding nature, as if his first serious mood had been a mistake. “I want you up here for the weekend, John.” Albert said.

“Hell, you haven’t taken a day off in months, it’s a fishing trip I have in mind.” Albert said.

“Fishing?” The word was a tonic, it meant escape into another world, and he needed escape, “where, Albert? Fishing for what?”

Albert laughed. “I thought that would make you change your tune, right here there’s the biggest fish you’ve ever seen waiting to be caught come up tonight. If you grab the 7:10 I’ll meet you I want to meet some other people coming on that train.”

“Sure, thanks I’ll be there, Albert, sure thing.” Miller said.

In his excitement, he concluded the conversation before realizing he couldn’t make the 7:10, Julie would have dinner waiting for him at home, and quickly he put the receiver back to his ear.

“Hello, Albert, hell-o-o.”

But the sharp hum of an open circuit was all he heard, reluctantly he cradled the receiver. The blond girl stretched on her stomach on the couch wearing a silk negligee scarcely looked up as he entered the apartment on West 43rd street. She had her chin propped one palm, her feet in the air and she was listlessly thumbing through a copy of Vogue, a half-eaten box of candy on the coffee table beside her.

“Hello, honey.” He said.

“Hello.” She looked up, then back at her magazine. His wife Julie was a nurse 43 years old who looked a sexy 25 with 36DD’s her athletic half nude body attracted and repelled Miller at the same time.

Miller put down his newspaper and a new box of candy. He looked at the pillows on the sofa. Two of them were crumpled, the third propped under the girl’s chest for her comfort. His eyes traveled about the room, stockings and garter belt were draped on a chair, lint and crumbs were over the worn taupe rug, the rug looked old enough when it was clean. John walked to the kitchenette, dirty dishes filled the sink; waste paper and old milk containers overflowed a receptacle on the floor, his patience grew small.

“Aren’t you cooking dinner, Julie?”

The blond head did not move. “I thought we’d go out tonight.”

Miller felt his tiny irritation suddenly stretch into anger, and he dreaded anger. It was one last trifle that could over tax endurance, after that, a man such as he might lose all control. “I’m afraid we’re not going out to dinner.”

She detected something in his tone, she whirled up instantly. “What?”

“I’m afraid we’re not going out.” He repeated.

“At least, I’m not going out with you, I’m going away.” His spoken words had created his decision.

“You can call Liebermann for me in the morning and tell him I won’t be in; I’ll be gone till Monday.”

Julie thrust the cushion from her and stood up; she was small but strong boned. “You are not going away.” Her voice was deep, deeper and more authoritative than any women’s ever had any right to be.

“I’m packing my things; I’ll be gone till Monday.” Miller said it firmly and walked into the bedroom.

Her footsteps followed him almost immediately, he turned and she stood in the doorway, her beautiful blue eyes flared. “John, don’t be ridiculous, you’re not going to walk out of here and leave me alone over the weekend! What do you expect me to do with myself?”

He went through the motions of ignoring her. “Is it that skinny freak, Doctor Smith again? I could flatten his simpering face!” She did not know when to stop; soon she’d stop right before the rush of his anger. “Or maybe it’s a woman!” Fierce understanding solidified her thoughts, “You’re going off with some women, that’s it. As if you need women! Well, don’t think I can get another man, I can I just have to go to a bar.”

He had knuckled down under her domineering bitchy, shrill moods often enough; it would be an insult to his will if he did it again and her pleadings that had often made him sexually aroused, but now it left him cold. He knew she sensed it, for with a shrug she gestured away her pride and came to him. She put her hands on his shoulders’ turned him to her with practiced tears came into her eyes and her full, sensual lower lip trembled.

“Oh, John darling, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to fly off the handle.” Her arms pressed him to her.

“I’m so mean to you! I don’t blame you for wanting to go away when I’m so mean, but I just can’t stand to see you go darling, I’m lonesome I thought we could spend a nice weekend together, we could maybe take in a show tomorrow night; and Sunday I could fix a roast the way you like it and we can then have the hot sex we had at Allendale.”

He was unyielding, stiff in her embrace, abruptly she shoved him away. “You don’t care; you’re not listening to anything I say!”

He felt sudden pity for her, and bent down to kiss her cheek and wondered why he married her.

“Goodbye, honey.” His smile was awkward, cajoling. “Don’t be mad.” She didn’t answer; he took his rod, reel and suitcase from the closet and packed.

At Grand Central Station, Miller was surprised to find that he could make the 7:10 after all, with nearly half an hour to spare. He checked the track number of his train, and after snatching a quick sandwich at a soda counter, resolved to make a final effort to reach Albert Smith by telephone and confirm the time of his arrival at Millersburg, but the operator reported that the party didn’t answer. It was as he stepped from the telephone booth that he bumped directly into the girl or rather the girl bumped directly into him. “I’m sorry.” She gasped. “I’m terribly sorry.”

Without thinking he, in turn begged her pardon, he was vaguely aware of a small, dimpled face and gem-like green eyes, as she muttered further apology that overlapped his own. Then all he could see was a retreating figure in a fitted black coat, a black hat made of woven felt strips spraying out in vivid contrast over an abundance of combed-out brassy hair, hair almost like Elaine’s, but softer and more lustrous. He watched the retreating figure across the concourse, strangeness in the girl’s manner held him. Her movements were as erratic as an insect evading a bird.

Her blonde head hunched forward, her arms and hands were help close to her body as with furtive jerks she looked from side to side searchingly. Perhaps it was because of this that Miller had the sudden feeling that she was being watched by eyes other than his own. He turned to face a tall broad shouldered man in his early forties who was standing some distance away. The man was dark, shallow but handsome, with well-tailored cloths and a rakish homburg, his manner was alert, but the face was bagged by dissipation. When Miller turned back the girl was already lost to view somewhere near the information counter. The man in the homburg moved briskly away, his eyes Miller was certain had been directed toward the girl; still it could not positively have been said that he was looking for her. Miller shrugged his shoulders and stopped to pick up the suitcase, rod and reel box which he had placed beside the door to the telephone booth. As he did so his eyes fell on a bedraggled woman’s handkerchief, he hesitated then reached for it.

He was not sure that the girl had dropped it, but the fact that it had been twisted into a limp rag seemed to indicate it was hers. It was of sheer, black linen, hand rolled with pink roses in its corner, without bringing it close to his face, he caught its fragrance. Then with a curiously wistful smile, he slipped it into the slash pocket of his top coat, picked up his bag and fishing tackle and started across the concourse.

To Miller there was something comforting and reassuring in the thought of that dainty piece of limp linen in his pocket. Its delicacy symbolized the feminine, and while what the handkerchief represented must be erroneous he still wanted it. The naïve was something John Miller would never reject. He was perhaps sixty feet from the gateway to his track when he saw the girl in the dark coat again; she was standing near the gate talking with a mustached, one-legged man who supported himself on crutches. His left pants leg was pinned up at the knees he had tired looking bulbous eyes and the hair that showed beneath his shipboard cap was stark white against the illness of his skin.

Miller watched the girl, shamefully undressing her with a doctor’s eye, she was within his vision, he told himself and it was his right to watch her. Her dark coat buttoned from collar to hem her look was bespeaking youth and charm and human warmth; and he felt his own tenseness eased by the mere activity of watching her. In spite of the nervousness with which her hands clasped as envelope style bag to her, as a child might hold a doll. He felt a sudden impulse to go to her to give her back her handkerchief then just as suddenly he knew that he did not want to go over to her and offer its return. He did not want to speak to her; he wanted to keep the handkerchief and his lustful illusion.

Then quite unexpectedly the girl came to Miller, her green eyes tilted up at him, as large as those of children’s drawing on the street. “Is this the train to Millersburg? Do you know?”

The surprise of her speaking to him crowded everything else from his mind, even the yellow gold pomade out that escaped her hat, the piquant little pug nose, and the deep dimples that formed in her cheeks as she spoke.” Yes.” He pointed vaguely at a sign on the wall near the gate. “It says Millersburg.”

“Oh!” She looked blankly in the direction Miller indicated. “Thank you.” A brief smile moved her full young lips. She returned to the side of her emaciated one-legged companion and spoke to him earnestly; he smoothed his twirl ended mustache and nodded his head. She must be nearsighted, Miller thought or she would have probably accounted for the appealing quality in the big green eyes. But what explained her marked agitation? Miller looked around for the broad, dissipated man in the homburg, but he was nowhere to be seen, once again he decided he had been hasty in concluding that the darkly handsome man belonged in the picture.

Other passengers were now crowding in front of the track entrance, and still in a half-dream Miller found himself hurrying to take up a position just behind the girl and the crippled man. The gate opened. Miller found himself lagging behind in the long walk down the ramp and along the platform; to compensate for the necessarily slow pace of the man on crutches. The man and girl entered the train after the first swarm of passengers and took seats near the front of the coach. There was no other vacant seat near them, and Miller took a place half a dozen rows behind. He was not long in discovering his bad luck; the height of the coaches’ seats prevented his seeing anything but the top of the blonde girl’s head.

Miller stowed the bag and creel box on the rack above his seat, kept his rod with him. He was just setting himself when a passenger took the empty place beside him. The stranger was the dissipated looking man in the homburg.

“What did Sally Daniels tell you?” The man asked, the faintly nauseating sweetness of liquor emanating from him. “I saw her speak to you.”

“Who?”

“You know, the girl with the fellow on crutches. Did she tell you to keep an eye on me, to protect her in case I bothered her?” The man said. There was an elusive lilt to the man’s voice; his was a cosmopolitan rather than a foreign accent, the intonation of a man who called many countries home. Now at close range Miller saw that though the man’s clothes were expensive they were well used. Introspectively, the man’s grey blue eyes were prowling the car, his face pouched with tiredness and worry.

“Sally’s a good kid.” He cleared his throat. “I like her, but she’s made it plain she doesn’t like me.” His lined face tightened. “I didn’t mean to upset her; all I wanted to do was talk with her.”

“But she’s a shy one, and she must be worn pretty fine about her dad. Joseph does look quite bad with one of his legs gone.” He said.

The train started to more and the man lapsed into silence, Miller fell back into a nervous habit of chewing his nails, those nails were chewed to nubs. Not until the train was sliding along the Hudson did he look up. The man sitting beside Miller turned his head, Miller diagnosed his sallow color. It was not liver jaundice, handling T.N.T. sometimes turned hands that color. But this was more like a tan that had worn off; odd he thought how medical thinking remained with him, and a part of his mental processes.

The man’s eyes met Miller suddenly. “I notice you studying me.” He seemed proud of his shrewdness, the calculating observations of his quick, pouched eyes. Miller felt vague fears where this chance acquaintanceship might lead. He didn’t know who this man was, even as the man didn’t know who he was, what he had been.

Miller really didn’t want to talk, “you’ve spent a lot of time in the tropics,” he said.

“You tell that in my skin, eh?” the man laughed.

“Yes, once you get thoroughly burned by that tropic sun it does something to your skin that bad color is like a tattoo.” He narrowed his eyes. “Skin isn’t a superficial thing,” Miller said. He was thinking of the implications of his simple statement, wondering if the man caught them.

“But I think it does something else to you too, something that the vision and senses can’t detect, you come near a cage of monkeys, they won’t show any reaction, but the awful yowl they’ll rise for someone who’s spent time in the rain forest country.” He broke off, and then slowly reminisced, alcohol plainly prompting his garrulity.

“It’s odd, but the skipper of the tub in which I made one of my most interesting trips to South America is that follow sitting up there in front of us now, Daniels, Captain Joseph Daniels.”

He looked ahead to the girl and the one-legged man, the tops of their heads above the seats, his voice took on a sharp tone. “We’re on our way to a house party up in Millersburg at Paul Allen’s. That’s the reason for this exchange of cordiality you see after not having crossed one another’s path for twenty years.” Miller knew Paul Allen; he lived in what was Millersburg’s largest mansion a grim pile overlooking the river. He studied his companion closely, wondering at the nature of the conflict of which the secret was buried in this man, could these be the people Albert Smith was planning to meet, he wondered.

It was already getting dark when the train reached Millersburg, the homburg stranger, having no baggage, left his seat before the train stopped rolling and headed toward the front of the coach. Miller left by the other exit, and started up the platform toward the station. The right of way consisted of fore electrified tracks, two northbound and two southbound, an overhead footbridge connected the north and southbound platforms.

Miller watched the homburg stranger alright from the train, having stepped to the platform he turned back to help the crippled sailor. This did not necessarily mean the bitterness between them was resolved. With the stranger on one side and the girl on the other, the one-legged man swung down. The three started up the platform together as the train slid onto motion. Miller strode to the end of the platform and circled the station to the parking lot. But Albert Smith was not there just a lone cab was at the taxi stand.

“Taxi, mister?”

He shook his head, John might have been delayed, or perhaps the people he was to meet had changed their plans about coming, still gangling, conscientious Albert, Miller knew would have met him anyway.

Miller waited till Captain Daniels, the girl and the homburg man finally emerged from the station. They showed no signs of expecting anyone to meet them. They got in the cab at the taxi stand and with a whirl of flying gravel, the taxi turned and sped off. Miller felt suddenly lonely. He started on his way turning a corner into the village. He was empty inside, his heart beating in a void. Julie would be feeling alone now; too would she go out to a bar as she had said? Had she done that before?

The sycamores were getting bald with autumn. The spice of wood smoke and burning leaves sharpened the air. Residential Millersburg was the sort of haven where young married couples withdrew to have babies, raise flowers on tiny garden plots and enjoy the animal comfort of slippered evenings in seclusion. Miller had been in Millersburg before; he knew that a radius of a half mile would inscribe most of the village.

He passed an undeveloped lot and came abreast of a weathered looking Norman house with gabled peaks and stucco walls with dark stained beams. A sign headed the walk curving to the house’s wisteria bowered entrance.

Albert Smith M.D.

Hours 1-2 8-9

Miller looked at his wrist watch which told ten minutes of eight. The houses front door was three quarters open, he puzzled for a moment and walked in. He put down his suite case, rod, and creel box in the reception room. When Miller had been here before, a young nurse Margret Reed had sat behind the desk. But now there was nothing but chairs with an assortment of waiting room magazines.

He looked at the desks empty chair an aura of too intense silence was about the place. The tick of the clock on the desk was too loud. How much quieter it was away from the city. Miller stood still, listening as he had back in the hallway of his apartment, just after he’d left Julie. He strained for sounds no normal sense could perceive, sounds he had too often heard, too clearly. A door led into the consultation and examining room, it too like the front door, was ajar. Miller took a hesitating step toward it.

“Albert?”

He glanced reservedly in through the door trying to see around it without opening it wider. He thought of Albert Smith’s expansive, welcoming nature of laughter starting far below the Adams apple, he was being unnecessarily timid.

But where was Albert? He didn’t like these confining walls, being alone here.

He didn’t like it.

He walked quickly to the desk at the far side of the dusk dark room, behind the desk, opening into two other rooms, were doorways framed by bunched curtains. One room was an examination chamber equipped with the customary table, sink and wall cabinets containing instruments. The other room small and dark, was an x-ray studio.

“Albert?”

He shrugged and started back toward the reception room. Then he jerked short abruptly, his hands flying wide, like someone discovering himself on the brink of an abyss.

“ALBERT!”

He dropped to his knee, Albert Smith’s long thin bony face was translucently waxen, and his mouth hung partly open framing a glint of teeth. His eyes were unnaturally half-silted, no longer the eyes of a human being. Automatically Miller reached for a pulse and instantly, his hand came away with sticky blood, jelled blood.

A dead man was no longer a person; the person was gone. Miller heard the scream now, clear in his conscience, faint and distant, but clear the association of this death by violence was bringing back the memory of a death by violence in the past, as murders, supposedly, are troubled by past sins. He saw Alexander Peters dying in pain, heard Jennifer Davis’s death screams hurling down its corridors, wafting across its pavilions.

New orderly buildings, an architect’s plan with the power house, the pine bordered athletic field. The staff residences, the bars patients behind latticed bars, lost faces, staring out of bars, “don’t let your mind go, John.” He heard Albert’s voice saying that. “Don’t be one of them.”

Miller rose, he moved with despairing earnestness, pushed through the turbid nightmare. He found the wall switch. He waited till sanity leveled somewhat in his head, then he looked back at the figure on the floor, Albert Smith’s freakishly lean six foot six broken, his white doctor’s gown rumpled. A bloodied razor lay near Smith’s finger, red lines gashed his wrists, streams of blood had made ugly crisscross of rivulets in his cupped palms.

Then with the calm and practiced hands of an experienced physician, Miller began the bruise on the forehead, the severed radial arteries, and the advancement of rigor, twice he almost fainted.