There's Something I Want You to Do

The doctor rose to his feet and approached the plate of cookies, taking three for himself. Rarely in his life had he felt so hungry or so sleepy. He was starving in every possible way. He needed a nap, right now, and his hunger felt like an embrace of emptiness hugging him pitilessly, stifling him. His hunger, he suddenly thought, was empirical. In his mind arose an image of a man drinking a six-pack of air, one empty bottle after another. In rapid succession he ate the cookies and took three more, while Mrs. Lundgren lectured him on the holiness of all human existence and how existence was not a choice but a gift. Well, at least he knew where this was going. The lowest and highest hold the same rank in God’s eyes, she was saying, tapping her finger on her knee. Of all the democrats, God was the greatest democrat. Status meant nothing to Him. He cared nothing for trinkets or the glittering machines of success. Before Him, we are all the same. The doctor felt himself growing impatient at all this moralizing and its transparent intentions. Everything she said sounded like a practiced speech, prepared and canned, like tomatoes in the basement. What did he, the doctor, think would save him?

“Excuse me?”

“Well, we were wondering, what will you do to be saved?” She leaned back and smiled. “We were wondering about that.” She reached over for a Ritz cracker and popped it into her mouth. The doctor watched her chew. She ate like a peasant.

“Isn’t that a very private matter?”

“Yes, it is,” Mrs. Lundgren said, keeping her gaze on him, and suddenly he knew whom she resembled in both appearance and manner: Margaret Thatcher. “But you are the father of the young man who caused our daughter to become pregnant, aren’t you? We wondered what values you had instilled in him. It may be a private matter, but it’s ours now. Our matter.”

“It’s a father’s job to instill values,” Mr. Lundgren said, from his corner. “That’s what a man does, so.”

“I have tried to teach him to love the world,” Elijah said. “And to treat everyone with respect. And to fight for what is right.”

“Well, that’s not enough,” Mrs. Lundgren said, and the doctor intuited that she was a skilled tactician in argumentation and probably coached the high school debate squad. “If the world were enough, being worldly would be a virtue, wouldn’t it? But it isn’t. Does the world include our grandchild, yours and ours, the one who died?”

“You should take this up with your daughter,” the doctor said.

“But we have,” she told him. “And she seems to have been converted by your son. Converted to oblivion.”

“Don’t lecture me.” The doctor spoke, but it was Gerald who had spoken up. Elijah seemed to be turning into his wife’s fictional creation. Okay, fine.

“I’m not lecturing you. We’re just asking questions and offering an opinion. We want to know what sort of man you are. As if we were all family here. Which we sort of are. Whatever did you teach Raphael? If I may ask?”

“Well,” the doctor said, “first of all, we’re not a family. What I taught Raphael, that’s my business. And as for what I am, I’m a pediatrician.”

“Yes, we know that. That’s what you do. You care for children, which is quite admirable. But I asked you what you are.”

“By what right do you ask me such a question?”

A rather long air pocket of dead silence followed, accompanied by the music. The doctor had never heard such a silence, with music in it.

Finally Mrs. Lundgren said, “The right of one parent to another. We have blood on our hands. All of us. And our children have blood on their hands. They have snuffed out a life, those two. They have caused suffering.”

“Oh, for shit’s sake,” Gerald blurted out. “A woman has a right to choose. We all know that.” Neither Lundgren flinched, as he had hoped they would. “I have to leave now.”

“I don’t think so,” Mr. Lundgren said, and the doctor felt a chill.

“Do you think the happy choices of our children should depend on the suffering of fetuses? Is that the ticket? Is that the ticket to the universe? To its meaning? You should read your Dostoyevsky,” Mrs. Lundgren said, a mild frenzy in her voice. “Don’t you think a father should protect his infants and not kill them?”

“That’s enough,” the doctor said, standing up, although all he did was to reach for more cookies. Dostoyevsky in Delano! Of all things.

“You opened a jar,” Mrs. Lundgren said. “The jar was full of pain. It was your jar.”

He felt the room constricting and growing hot, warmed up from its already overheated condition. He felt Gerald overtaking him. It was Gerald who blurted out, “With all due respect, fuck you, ma’am, and you, sir, and good night.”