“I wish information.”
“For yourself?”
“I am asking the questions.”
“I see that.”
“Take it that I am inquiring in behalf of someone with a need to know.” Peter, as was generally the case with his father, wore his emotions visibly. He puckered up his mouth sourly to indicate he found this delicacy stupid. Stern, as usual, said no more. He meant simply to follow that tack, suggesting that a troubled client needed these answers. Assuming his son was uninvolved, Stern would never mention Clara—for Peter’s sake as well as his own. In prospect, he foresaw this meeting very much like the encounter with a critical witness—one of those daring tightrope walks of courtroom life, exposing the witness’s ugliest misconduct without giving the remotest hint that his client had shared in the behavior.
“Peter, does your practice make you familiar with the full variety of—” What word? “In my day, the phrase was venereal disease, but I believe that is no longer popular terminology.”
“Sexually transmitted diseases,” said Peter.
“Just so,” said Stern.
“Which one?”
“Herpes,” said Stern. Somehow, as this discussion had begun, Peter’s aspect had changed. He had reverted to his role as clinician. He sat up straight in his chair, his brow compressed, his expression somber. Now, with the word, his calculations seemed far more intricate. His hands remained folded with doctorly exactness, but his eyes rolled through changes of color like the sea, so that Stern had the fleeting intuition that his suspicions were well placed, after all. “This is a subject in which you are versed?”
“I’m versed,” said Peter. “What’s the problem?”
“If one is exposed,” said Stern.
“Yes,” said his son.
“How long before the disease appears?”
Peter waited.
“Look, Dad. This is not the kind of thing you screw around with. Do you think you have herpes?”
Stern attempted to remain impassive, but within he felt some failing motion—like the fluttering of wings. With his brooding days, his tortured emotions, he had failed to estimate accurately what would transpire here. With Peter staring him down, that was only too obvious now. They knew each other too well. Peter had recognized, naturally, instantly that his father was the party in interest—and like any doctor, any son, had predictable concerns. If he was shocked, it was only because his mother was barely two months dead and the paterfamilias was here, already asking for a full scouting report on the wages of sin. The atmosphere of charged discomfort slowly increased between them, while Stern gradually realized that if worst came to worst he would have no choice but to further his son’s misimpressions. Meanwhile, he tried once again to steer the conversation onto more neutral ground.
“The facts which concern me, Peter, are basic. A woman is infected. A man is with her. I merely wish to know what the prospects are that he, too, will contract the disease.”
“Look, that’s too vague,” Peter said, and once more considered his father. “Let’s talk about a person, okay? This person. How does he know there’s a problem?”
“Assume the proof is positive. She has been tested.”
“Tested. I see.” Peter stopped for quite some time. “And you’re informed?” Peter shook his head. “He’s informed?”
“Just so.”
“By this woman?” From Peter’s tone, it was clear that he envisaged some wanton courtesan.
“As I say, assume an authoritative report.”
“Right,” said Peter. “And she’s active at the time of contact? The virus is shedding?”
“Meaning?”
“Florid signs of the illness. Lesions. Blisters. Ulcers. A rash.”
Stern, in spite of himself, recoiled somewhat. He had noticed nothing like that. But by now he had realized it was no accident that he could not recall his last encounters with Clara.
“I am afraid that my information is not that exact, Peter.”
“Can you ask?”
“I would think not.”
“You would think not?” Peter peered at his father. This imaginary assignation, Stern recognized, was beginning to sound as if it had taken place in an alley. Peter, disquieted, looked down to his folded hands. “The disease is only communicated by direct skin-to-skin contact with someone who is actively infected, or prodromal—that is, about to begin. Onset of the infection is two to twenty days from contact. Far more frequently, within the first week. If you get it. Some people are effectively immune. If you’re beyond those periods, without symptoms, you’re probably all right. Probably,” his son repeated.
“I see,” said Stern. Peter was watching carefully to see how this news affected him. “And if one is infected, how long does it last?”
“The initial efflorescence is usually three to six weeks at the outside. But this is one of those viral infections that can come back. I’m sure you’ve heard that. It’s usually seven to ten days on recurrence.”
“And how, Peter, does one know if he is infected?”
“Well, the first thing you do is look.”
“For what?” asked Stern.
Peter rested his hand on his chin, with his sour expression. At last, he stood up from behind his desk and closed the door. Then he pointed at his father.
“Take down your trousers.”
“Peter—”
“Fuck this nonsense. Stand up. Let’s go.” He was far too positive to allow any quarreling. Somehow, Stern was struck, either in irony or longing, by the recollection of the way he had foreseen this meeting, with himself in complete control.
“Peter,” he said weakly again.
“Chop-chop.” Peter clapped his hands. He was disinterested and positive. His eyes were already lowered to Stern’s belt line.
As a moment, it passed without incident. Body things, as he was learning, had an intense factitiousness about them, an irreducibility. Peter dropped to one knee and removed a slender flashlight from his pocket. He gave instructions like a dance instructor. Left, right. Pull this, pull that. His bedside manner was entirely antiseptic, his look of scrutiny intense and pure.
“Any irritation?”
“No.”
“Burning at any time?”
“None.”
“Any functional problems of any kind? Urination? Emission?”
Stern decided to forgo remarks about the problems of age. He answered no.
“Any kind of discharge?”
“None.”
“Swelling.”
I wish. “No.”
Peter touched him once, precisely and momentarily, in the groin, probing his lymph glands.
The examination ended after Stern stood with his organ extended like a fish by the tail, dorsal side facing, and Peter ran his light the length of the limp column and over the scrotum.
“You look clean,” he stated and motioned for Stern to recover himself. Then he added, “Hold on a sec.” He slipped out the door discreetly, then returned with a small plastic beaker. “I’d like a specimen,” he said.
Stern objected. Was this necessary?
“It’s a good idea, Pa. There are occasions, rare ones, where patients, particularly males, can contract HSV-2 without the usual symptoms. You could go walking around with an infection in the prostate or urinary tract, and end up spreading it.” Peter looked at him pointedly, then added that he also wanted to draw blood for something called a serum viral titer test, in which his father’s present antibody levels could be compared with those in five or six weeks, to ensure there had been no infection.
“Is all this necessary?” Stern asked again.
Peter simply pointed to the small John down the hall. Stern went, as directed. He stood in the tiny room, petting his organ for stimulation, experiencing the usual difficulty of performing on command. Immediately outside the door, two nurses gabbed about a patient.
Was Peter gay? The question, a familiar one, struck like lightning, timed to arr
ive, as usual, so that it would inspire maximum discomfort. Nevertheless, there was no putting off the thought. The young man was thirty years old, and his sisters and mother had always seemed to be the only women in his life. He had never had a live-in girlfriend; indeed, when his parents saw him he rarely, if ever, had a female companion. That did not mean much. Who willingly exposed an outsider to the neurotic fun house of his family? Nonetheless, Stern, at moments, saw what in an amateurish and bigoted fashion he took for signs: Peter’s close attachment to his mother. A certain prissiness. Well, even this speculation was vicious. And, if for no one else, inappropriate from a parent. The fact was—and here at last was the truth with its contained explosive effect, like a charge set off in a strongbox—that the thought always managed to please Stern vaguely. It would be a permanent advantage. It would serve Peter right. Stern, with little consciousness, shook his head while this river of resentment poured forth. Today in this smelly closed space the clarity of his ill feelings was bleakly, unremittingly sad.
Back in Peter’s consultation room, his son waited with an elastic strap and a syringe. After the beaker was relegated to a nurse, Peter knelt beside his father and inserted the needle. In the meantime, Stern gathered himself for another question he knew was required.
“I take it this is the kind of matter which ought to be shared with partners?”
When Stern looked back, his son’s mouth was parted and his eyes were widened. Unable to master his own pretense, Stern had not thought about the impression this question would make. There was woman number one who had the problem. Now he was speaking of other partners—using the plural. It had been quite a couple of months.
“It would probably be advisable,” Peter said at last. “Overall. If the blood work would be quicker, I’d say that you could save yourself the embarrassment. But five, six weeks.” Peter shook his head. “You’d better say something, just in case. Ninety-nine out of a hundred, you’re fine. But if something were to show up, you’d want them to know what it is.”
“I see.” Well, the Lord only knew what Margy had heard in her time, but the thought of informing her still made Stern shudder. He would never explain the true circumstances to her any more than to anyone else. It would appear to her to be another example of the bad faith men were always capable of. “And I take it, for the present you recommend abstinence?” he asked almost hopefully. He had resolved over the weekend to revert to retirement.
Peter smiled in a quickly fading trace, amused by the thought of his father with a sex life, or, more likely, by the fact that he had the right to govern it.
“Well, you’re not active. And we’ll know soon whether or not you’re prodromal. If it’s subclinical, a sheath is adequate to protect your partner. All in all, I’d think that’s enough. Assuming you’re consistent.”
“Yes, of course.” Stern fluttered a hand to show that this conversation was purely speculative. Truly, he no longer cared.
Peter withdrew the lavender-topped vial from the syringe. He shook the blood, eyed it, and went back to his desk to make various notes. While he busied himself, Stern pondered his final inquiry.
“This disease cannot be contracted by accident, can it, Peter?” He could not keep himself from asking, but the question sounded, even to him, lame and pathetic.
“Is that how you’re afraid you got it, Pa?” Peter’s amusement, when he glanced up, was clearly no longer guarded. Not that this remark seemed particularly rancorous. Peter was always waspish, sarcastic. But Stern realized that there was little chance that his daughters would not hear of some of this. Peter’s professional confidence could be expected to reach only so far. This tidbit was far too delicious. Details would be sparing, but something telling would be said. Kate, for example, needed some comfort. ‘You know how concerned you were because Pa was coming in late in the morning?’ The tittering, at least, would be fondly inspired—and far from the real problem.
“I was not thinking of myself.”
“Your ladyfriend?”
Stern made a noise of assent. His ladyfriend. Peter took a second, intent on labeling the tube.
“I would love to help you harbor illusions, but the odds are pretty slim. If your friend has been tested, that means a viral culture, and if it’s HSV type 2 that’s been identified, then sexual contact is almost certainly the source. You know, the old toilet-seat thing—” Peter didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he simply made a face.
In spite of himself, Stern sighed. He had been prepared for that verdict. Clara Stern, as he had known her, was a woman of attractive bearing and, as she herself was inclined to acknowledge, looks that had improved with age. As adipose and crow’s-feet, all the usual corporeal failings had overcome others, Clara maintained her pleasant eternal look, dignified and composed. Stern had always admired her because at any age she was a far handsomer person than he. But certain women, married women, mothers prototypically, became too involved with the dense network of their activities—the nurturing, organizing, doing, and attending—to broadcast any ostensible sexual interest. In thirty-odd years, he could not recall an instant of conscious jealousy, a man whose attentions, for whatever reason, had seemed to excite her. She was a person who defined by her daily conduct what was not wayward. She was on a higher plane than that.
Thus, even days later, Radczyk’s news remained unfathomable. It went, somehow, beyond right and wrong. The idea of a fifty-eight-year-old woman—this fifty-eight-year-old woman, on the eve of grandmaternity—with a sexually transmitted disease was as horrifying as some freak-show grotesque. Would the antecedent practices erupt only in late middle age? Perhaps he had spent a married lifetime playing the fool. He refused to believe it. It was like the concept of a fourth or fifth dimension. Beyond the capacities of an ordinary mind—or at least of his. Call it machismo or personal limitation, he could not envision his wife, as she clearly had been, with another man.
And it was for this reason that she had done what she had. In his ravaged state of the last few days—amid the torment, the anger, the reviling and utter disbelief—that fact had not been lost. Her intent had been to spare him. This was not sentimentality or self-delusion. After all the calculations, the conclusion remained the same. There was a lapse here, a monumental breach of faith which in life, perhaps, she might never have lived to see him forgive. She had saved herself great pain as well. But in the end her kindness, her fundamental kindness, remained her lodestar, her guiding light.
Oh, Clara! On the chair, with his sleeve rolled and his bled arm still vaguely atingle, Stern teetered for an instant on the verge of tears. With that, his life, what was left of it, the many small illusions, would disappear. Peter would have to be told, or might even guess. He saw that and, in the sluices of powerful remorse, for a moment did not care. Then his pride, with the grinding precision of a huge laboring machine, engaged once more and brought him fully about. He rolled down his sleeve over the gauze Peter had taped inside his elbow.
“And if this illness were to appear,” Stern asked, “there is no treatment?”
“There’s a drug called acyclovir. Ointment or pills. It’s very successful in reducing the active period, and in many people it even prevents recurrence. Generally, the disease retreats into the nerve ganglia and waits to rear its ugly little head. Sometimes it never does. Sometimes it returns every few months, in ever-weakening episodes. That’s the usual course. But there are all kinds of extraordinary clinical histories. Acute cases. Florid recurrences years apart. The most difficult part of it is prodromal—you’re in a contagious phase for a day or two before the visual signs appear, and short of a culture, you can never be completely certain that you won’t infect someone else. It can mess up your life pretty well. In addition to being extremely uncomfortable.”
“Yes,” said Stern. His mind remained on Clara. All told, the weight of events seemed again to have settled on him with all their dead-star density. The facts, the facts. He had always placed his faith in particulars. Well, now h
e had them, lots of them. Many facts and, he supposed, certain inevitable conclusions.
He stood up and, without allowing time for reaction, touched his son’s smooth face.
“You are a good doctor, Peter. I appreciate your concern.”
Wise and sad, Peter nodded. His eyes did not leave his father. His son seemed to have a gift, a sense for the human nuance, the pathos that trailed along with each disease, mortality’s dismal gossamer. Stern was pleased to find him so worldly. In their relationship, there was rarely anything subtle.
“Look, I’m sure you’re okay,” Peter said. “We’ll just watch it. All right?”
“Very good,” said Stern. He tossed on his suit coat. “I am grateful. And sorry, Peter, to have involved you in such a disagreeable business.”
“Oh, hell,” said Peter. “You know what they say.”
“What is that?” asked Stern. He was at the door.
“Life is full of surprises.” His son was smiling. No doubt, he was thinking already about telling his sisters.
15
DIXON, PREDICTABLY, enjoyed competition and for years had utilized every excuse to lure Stern into joining him in various sports. As Stern was apt to say, a business meeting with Dixon generally meant he would sweat. When Stern was younger, and considerably thinner, they had played handball at Dixon’s downtown club. Stern was more nimble than his appearance might suggest, but he was no match for his brother-in-law. Larger, stronger, and far more athletic, Dixon never seemed to tire of winning. In season, he would bring Stern out on Lake Fowler to fish. Stern would foul his line and cast into the bushes and lily pads; back on shore, Dixon would describe Stern’s ineptness to everyone they met. ‘The only man who ever went fishing and nearly took a bird. I kid you not. Cardinal up in a tree? Stern missed hooking him by inches.’ Stern often told Clara that he was the trophy Dixon wanted stuffed and mounted.