“No,” he said, “just frustration. Heal up, sweetheart. There’s plenty of time.”
She sniffed, reached for a tissue, blew her nose. “So you say. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like there is.”
No, it doesn’t.
Jeremy’s head filled with Jocelyn. Her face, her voice, the way she held him.
“Did I say something wrong?” said Angela.
“Of course not.”
“Your face changed- just for a second. As if something had scared you.”
“Nothing scared me,” he said. “Let me get you more tea before I go.”
He fixed her another pot, heated up a can of tomato soup, kissed her forehead, now blessedly cool, and drove to work.
Feeling… domestic.
With Jocelyn, he’d never felt domestic.
The afternoon’s interoffice mail brought lots of nonsense. And the fourth envelope from Otolaryngology.
And: Via the U.S. Mail, he received a postcard from Arthur.
The article was ten years old, taken from The Journal of the American Medical Association. Physician suicide. Risk factors, statistics, recommendations for prevention.
Sensible stuff, but nothing Jeremy hadn’t heard before. But that didn’t matter, did it? This had nothing to do with education.
What it was about eluded him.
The picture on Arthur’s postcard was that of an eighteenth-century kitchen filled with pottery and iron appliances. The legend on the other side said, Le Musée de l’Outil. The Museum of Tools. Wy-dit-Joli-Village, 95240 Val d’Oise.
Familiar black ink cursive, no surprise to the message:
Dear Dr. C-
Traveling and learning A.C.
Jeremy checked the postmark. Wy-dit-Joli, France three days ago. Arthur could’ve returned to the States since then.
He phoned the old man’s office. No answer.
The Pathology secretary said, “No, he won’t come in.”
He called information and got a number for Arthur’s neighbor, Ramona Purveyance, of the nonstop good cheer and the yellow housecoat. She picked up on the first ring and sounded overjoyed to hear from him.
“How nice!… no, he’s not back yet. I’ve got all his mail. Mostly solicitations but I’d never take it upon myself to throw anything out. If you see him before I do, say hello, Dr. Carrier. I’m so jealous.”
“Of what?”
“France, he went to France. Sent me the loveliest postcard from there!”
“The Museum of Tools?”
“What’s that?”
Jeremy repeated it.
“Oh, no. This is a beautiful picture of Giverny. Monet’s flower gardens? Beautiful weeping willows and water and flowers too gorgeous to be real. He knows I love flowers. He’s such a thoughtful man.”
Flowers for her, tools for me.
Tailoring the message?
What was the message?
It was unclear if Arthur was in town when the first articles had arrived. He’d presided over Tumor Board the day before the clipping about the English girls had shown up. But this one- all indications were the old man was still abroad.
So who’d sent the suicide article?
Did Arthur have a surrogate?
Or had Jeremy been wrong, yet again, and Arthur had nothing to do with the ENT envelopes.
Could he be that wrong?
Then what of the postcards? Coincidental?
Arthur traveling, being thoughtful. Sending pretty postcards to everyone.
Flowers for Mrs. Purveyance, tools for me.
Laser surgery on eyes, laser surgery on women. Murdered women. Doctors killing themselves.
Sculpture in Norway- Norwegian authors of the first article. Russians, Americans…
Tools in France. No French authors.
When you looked at it coldly, there was no rationale tying the medical reprints to the cards.
No reason they couldn’t be connected, either.
Arthur and his damned curiosity. Death and violence and haute cuisine and paternally obsessed insects that burrowed under your skin.
A late-night supper so weird in retrospect that Jeremy was beginning to doubt it had even occurred.
Any way you looked at it, the envelopes were a manipulation. Sending stuff to him but leaving his name off the envelopes. Someone taking the time to stash them in the rubber-bound stack that sat atop the counter in Psychiatry.
Open season on his mail.
He phoned Laura, the young receptionist, and asked her if she’d noticed anyone near his stack.
“Uh, no,” she said. “Was I supposed to be looking or something?”
“Not really. Don’t worry about it.”
“It gets pretty busy around here, Dr. Carrier.”
“Forget I asked.”
She hung up, and Jeremy had visions of her reporting the exchange to family and friends. Working with those shrinks is weird. Crazier than the patients. Like there’s this one guy, obsessed with his mail…
Which is what it had become. An obsession and, like any neurosis, time-wasting and energy-depleting.
Enough. He was a busy guy, patients to see, a book to write.
But someone was definitely playing him. If not Arthur, who?
Arthur setting up expectations, then dashing them, yet again?
The old man had even scrambled Jeremy’s intuition. Before meeting Arthur, Jeremy had had faith in his ability to judge people, to sum up, predict, all those tricks you convinced yourself you knew so that you could go from room to room and comfort the ill and the scared and the dying.
Lately, he had nothing to show for his efforts but a slew of bad guesses. The doting wife, living well, haute cuisine. Turned out the old bastard roomed out in the flatlands, surrounded by fast-food joints.
That first time at the bookstore, assuming Arthur would be reading a book on butterflies, turned out he’d been studying war strategy.
Where’s the war, old man?
At least he’d been right about the house in Queen’s Arms. Decades off the mark, but technically right.
A feeble vindication. He was turning into Wrong Man. He needed his intuition. Without it, where would he be?
Arthur had definitely led him up a path.
Late-night supper, fine wine, haute cuisine, the old eccentrics filling their geriatric guts.
All that good cheer, then a curt dismissal.
Now, this. Postcards.
The old eccentrics…
Had Arthur appointed one of them to send the articles? Handed over a pile of ENT envelopes to one of his pals and left instructions about mailing them, in his absence?
Why not? The articles hadn’t been posted from the outside, simply dropped down the intrahospital tubes. Anyone could gain access to the system. Just waltz through the lobby, find a mail drop, and poof.
How did the tube system actually work? He thumbed through his hospital directory and found the number for Postal Collection. Down on the subbasement, a floor below Pathology.
A deep-voiced man answered his call. “Collection, this is Ernest Washington.”
“Mr. Washington, this is Dr. Carrier. I was just wondering how mail got from the tubes to each department.”
“Dr. who?”
“Carrier.”
“Carrier,” Washington repeated. “Yeah, I recognize the name. First time anyone’s ever asked me that.”
“There’s always a first.”
“Dr. Carrier, from…”
“Psychiatry.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Then: “This a prank?”
“Not at all. If you want to call me back, my extension is-”
“I know what it is, got it right here, hold on… Jeremy Carrier, Ph.D., Extension 2508.”
“That’s it.”
“It’s really you, huh?”
“Last time I checked.”
Washington chuckled. “Okay, okay, sorry. It’s just that no one ever asked me… is this some kind of psychiatry experiment?”
“No, sir, just curiosity. I was walking past a chute and realized I’ve worked here for years, had no idea how my mail gets to me. It must be quite a challenge.”
“For sure. You don’t have no idea,” said Ernest Washington. “We’re down here all day, and no one ever sees us. Like invisible folk.”