Dr. Albright was annoyed when his wife Muriel told him, late in the afternoon of his seventieth birthday, that their son Stuart and family would not be arriving until the evening. He’d looked forward to seeing Stuart and disliked being kept waiting under any circumstances. Still, a late arrival meant that much less time to be endured in the company of Ruth, Stuart’s fat, overbearing wife, before the couple drove into Boston, leaving their little girls for the weekend, in his care.

Now it was too late even to chip at the golf course, so he sat down on the veranda, lit his pipe, and picked up his copy of Contemporary Pediatrics. Although he’d resigned from the staff at Children’s in January – that resignation, despite his thirty-five years of dedicated service, having been requested by the new arrogant Chief of Medicine – it behooved him to stay abreast of the literature. He hoped to continue serving as an expert witness for Golden Gate Insurance; the consultative role was more attractive anyway.

He scanned the table of contents until his eyes alighted on an article of interest: “What Constitutes Sexual Abuse of a Child?” A seven-year-old girl had appeared in her gym class with bruises on her thighs of the exact size and shape of an adult’s teeth. Dr. Albright had just turned to the page in which the girl was taken to the examining physician, when he became aware of Muriel’s shadowy presence behind him. When, after several seconds, she didn’t speak, he turned.

“For you,” she said, from the other side of the screen door. “Phone.”

He placed his pipe on the table and rose. Muriel jumped back as he opened the door and strode past her down through the musty corridor. The portable lay prostrate in the gloom on the hall table’s scratched surface.

“This is Dr. Albright,” he announced, cheered by the still flawless resonance of his pitch.

“Is this…are you…the Dr. Albright who used to practice pediatrics at… Sorry, I don’t remember the address…somewhere along Brighton Avenue in Boston?” The voice belonged to an unfamiliar woman of indeterminate age.

“It is,” he said, heading with the phone to his study.

“Maybe, probably you don’t remember me. I’m Rose Connolly. I was a patient of yours. A long time ago.”

Dr. Albright had always prided himself on his memory. That, in addition to his Harvard affiliation and chiseled features had, at one time, afforded him a prosperous pediatric practice. Despite his somewhat disproportionately large head – his legs were on the short side – he might have been successful in politics if he’d chosen that field.

“Of course I remember you, Rose. What can I do for you?” He calculated her age. It had been at least thirty years since he’d left the premises on Brighton Avenue. That would make little Rose over forty now, surely.

“I’m…I’ll just get right to the point,” she said. “Do you think we could meet sometime? For a coffee or something?”

Possibly she had become as attractive as her mother had been. But Dr. Albright hadn’t been born yesterday, and his suspicions were aroused. What could she want with him now, out of the blue like this?

“I’m pretty much retired,” he said. “I haven’t kept any records.”

“That’s okay. I’d really like only to see you. Just maybe half an hour. You’re not far from Plymouth, right? Do you know Darrow’s, the coffee shop? We could meet there tonight around eight,” she said, then added more slowly, “if you’re free that is.”

“Out of the question, I’m afraid,” said Dr. Albright, “My son and grandchildren are due in from Philadelphia quite soon, you see. It’s my birthday.”

She didn’t wish him well. “How about tomorrow then? Say, one pm?”

He always thought better with his pipe and wished he had brought it with him. His study windows commanded a view of the veranda on which he could still see the damn thing smoldering dangerously next to his abandoned magazine. He visualized young Mrs. Connolly smiling up at him in admiration, her girlish thighs clad in stretch pants and pressed against the examining room chair.

“Look here,” he said. “I’m willing to meet with you tomorrow, but can you give me some idea what this is about?”

He heard a rustling noise at the other end of the line.

“Can you tell me what you want?”

“I really can’t,” she said finally. “Over the phone. But I will. I’ll get it together by when I see you, I’m sure.”

“All right then,” he said, kicking open his office door and making his way carefully through the dim hall. “Darrow’s, at one tomorrow. Looking forward to it,” he lied. He began to replace the phone in its base, reconsidered, and brought it back to his ear. “Just a minute, how will I recognize you?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’ll recognize you.”

 

At dinner with his family that evening, Dr. Albright found himself distracted and edgy. He’d looked forward to talking over Stuart’s candidacy for the position of chair of the Children’s Oncology Group at CHOP, the nation’s premier children’s hospital. (Like Dr. Albright, Stuart was a pediatrician with a pedigree, having attended Harvard undergrad and Tufts Medical School—for medicine, better even than Harvard for those in the know.) But he could not concentrate on it. He wished he had not arranged the next day’s rendezvous with Rose. What on earth had prompted him to agree to it?

Rose had been endearing enough at ten or twelve, but she’d had far too many years to deteriorate since then. She might even resemble daughter-in-law Ruth slouched now across from him at the table, her double chin wobbling whenever she moved her head. Rose could be hideous in any number of ways. Besides, it was by no means clear that she wanted anything pleasant from him.

Alicia, Dr. Albright’s two-year-old granddaughter, still sat at the table strapped into her booster seat eating macaroni and cheese, but Prisca, now turned five, had, within minutes of beginning her meal, climbed down from her chair. Dr. Albright would have put a stop to this early departure, but he anticipated a good view of her. Her still chubby thighs trembled slightly as she scuttled over to the little red wagon her indulgent grandmother had purchased. He watched as she bent down to arrange the dolls and creatures inside it. It made him shudder to think that she could grow up to be a gorilla like her mother – or, for that matter, his own daughter Judith whom he did not like to think of. They – he anyway – had not heard from Judith for over a year now. She had just up and quit her nursing job and asked Dr. Albright to pay for psychotherapy. He had naturally refused.

Muriel crossed the room and sat down on the bare floor next to Prisca, wrapping her arm around Prisca’s shoulder. “Let’s take the dollies for a ride, okay?”

“To where, Nana?” asked Prisca

Muriel leaned over and whispered into the little girl’s ear and Prisca giggled. Muriel stood and lifted the wagon’s black handle.

“Excuse me for a moment,” said Dr. Albright, rising from the table and pushing back his chair with his foot. He exited the dining area via the kitchen where Nilva, their maid, stood at the sink, hands dripping with greasy water. She turned and watched him cross the floor, and he nodded, cautioning himself to take slower steps so as not to appear in any way anxious.

He scrolled down the list of phone numbers on his caller ID and finally came to a call which, squeezed between two numbers he recognized, he assumed must be from Rose. “Unavailable,” it said. He moved the cursor to the preceding call – Tim Lankford’s, from earlier that afternoon – and returned to “unavailable.” Unavailable was unavailable. To consult a phone book was pointless; the name “Connolly,” which might not even belong to Rose any longer, could fill several pages of any directory.

As he made his way back toward his family, he toyed with the idea of simply failing to appear the next day. But Rose had his phone number, obviously, and possibly even knew where he lived. She might prove vindictive if provoked.

As Dr. Albright took his seat again at the dining table, Ruth, surrounded by the vestiges of her meal, was holding forth.

“Let’s put it this way,” she said. “I wouldn’t recommend the place. You pay through the nose, and then they don’t even put cloth towels in the women’s bathroom.” Her eyes glimmered as they fixed on the platter of mashed potatoes next to her plate. She gave the platter a little pat before taking up the large spoon and helping herself to another generous portion. “I say no to Locke-Ober, this time around, Stu,” she said. And placing one hand on her heart, she trilled, “There’s a place for us…somewhere, a place for us.” With her free hand, she reached across the table toward Stuart, who, though stooped over Alicia’s plate to cut her meat – a task foisted upon him by his repulsive wife – smiled in sympathy.

“Happy birthday, Richard!”

Dr. Albright turned.  Muriel and Prisca stood smiling on either side of the wagon, which now bore a large round cake bedecked with an obscene number of candles – trust Muriel to cram in seventy – their wax percolating onto the chocolate frosting below.

“Hey, Mom,” said Stuart, as Muriel transferred slices of cake to the dessert plates on the table. “I forgot to ask about your new job. How’s it going?”

Muriel’s new job amounted to little more than filing records for a Dr. Glass, an oral surgeon. Dr. Albright permitted it because it got her out of the house, and his hair, for a few blessed hours every week.

“Ha!” Ruth broke in before Muriel reply. “Did you really get a job, Muriel? I hope it’s not just so you can send money to the prodigal daughter!”

“Judith’s not a prodigal,” Muriel murmured. “She’s just…she’s having trouble getting back on her feet.” Raising her chin, she added illogically, “She’s a very intelligent girl.”

The audacity of Judith’s request still rankled. No one in Dr. Albright’s family had ever seen a therapist, whereas he’d met dozens of losers who ran around to psychiatrists their whole damn lives.

Alicia began shrieking and heaving herself up and down in her chair. “Now, Daddy. Take me down!”

“Judith has issues,” said Stuart, shaking his head as he unstrapped Alicia and let her slide down to the floor, “but she’s a good person.”

“Aside from being such a mess, you mean,” said Ruth, with a snort of laughter. She aimed her fork at Muriel. “You haven’t actually been sending money, have you?”

“Judith just needs someone,” said Muriel and peered at her husband through runny blue eyes.

Ruth nodded rapidly, giving little jumps from her chair and causing her fork – and chins – to tremble. “It’s called enabling, Muriel. Anyhoo, I thought Dad put his foot down on more handouts for Judith,” said Ruth. Throwing Dr. Albright a conspiratorial wink, she asked, “Hey, Dad, can’t you divorce Muriel for disobedience?”

Hearing Ruth call him Dad never failed to make his blood run cold. “Ruth,” he said, folding his hands in front of him on the table and giving her one of his most gracious smiles, “it’s been years, dear, since we’ve needed grounds for divorce in Massachusetts.” He flashed Muriel a playful grin. “It would be fun, though, come to think of it, to see how you’d survive on your salary.”

Muriel stood, hands by her waist clenched into little fists, trying to blink back tears. She looked so lost that Dr. Albright felt a stab of tenderness toward her, much as one would for a wounded child. In fact, he felt as if tonight would be a good one for sexual relations. It might even take his mind off the prospect of tomorrow’s meeting.

 

“I bet I’ll know you all right,” Rose had said. Or had she snickered?

 

Dr. Albright arrived punctually at Darrow’s, got a cup of coffee from the bar, and looked around him through the sea of tables for a familiar face. After a few moments a woman – Rose – stood up halfway and waved him over from a table in the back corner of the shop.

She was in her early forties with dirty-blond hair and blue eyes in a pleasant-enough face that was showing the first signs of slackening flesh. As he sat down opposite her, he reflected on the sad fact that females degenerated in this way, becoming altogether different packets of flesh in adulthood.

“This place hasn’t changed much since I was here last,” he said, surveying the many hanging sepia photographs of Plymouth through the ages. “Rather cozy in its way, isn’t it?”

Rose glanced around her without interest. “Ummm,” she said and, raising an index finger to her teeth, began to gnaw at it. Biting one’s nails was a filthy habit, of course, but now it cheered Dr. Albright as it provided testimony to the unnerving effect he could still have on a younger woman. An overhead fixture showered him with amber light, and he was glad he’d worn his emerald cardigan; it brought out the green of his eyes.

“I remember your mum well,” he said, smiling graciously. “How is she?”

Rose plucked her finger from her mouth. “She’s dead,” she said. “She died a year ago in March.”

“Please accept my condolences.” From now on Rose could supply her own conversational gambits.

She peered down into her cup. “I don’t really know how to begin,” she said, finally looking up. “So I’ll tell you a little bit about myself if that’s okay.”

“Wonderful,” he said, bored already, and took a sip of his beverage.

She swiped at some stray hairs grazing her forehead. “Okay, here goes.”  He surveyed her politely, but for several seconds, she didn’t go anywhere conversationally. Instead, she looked all around the room. Finally, she spoke again. “I’m going to talk about myself first because I want you to know that I’m after an answer here—not a lawsuit.”

The word made him sit up straight.

“All my life – or, I guess since I was four or so – I’ve had sexual fantasies about you. It started because of – or anyway, started with – the physical exams you gave me when I was little.” She directed her words into her cup so that he had to strain to hear her. “At night sometimes I would think about the exams – at first I was too little even to understand what was happening and I was worried… I hated the actual physical exams and dreaded them every year, even though they prompted the… um…the fantasies. I thought I was defective. Bad somehow.” She paused, took a sip of coffee, then folded her hands together in front of the cup. She laughed nervously. “This is probably going to be the weirdest encounter of your life.”

“I practiced medicine for thirty-five years,” he said, his face warm. “And I’ve seen and heard a great deal. Once, a mother brought in a little boy who’d clearly been penetrated from behind, and with something wider than a finger. An uncle, said Mum, was trying to reach a testicle that had not yet descended.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively. “You can be the judge of that.”

Rose just stared at him, her face expressionless, so he continued. “And another of my patients – a little girl – had been, shall we say, explored by brothers and Father as well. Also, several of the mums confided in me that they were having sex regularly with other men, sometimes relatives of their husbands, sometimes other doctors… though not with me,” he said and chuckled. “One woman is, quite frankly, more than enough for me.”

“How on earth did you know that the little girl…” Rose said, then coughed. She rattled her head. “Can we go back to your method – to the exams?”

“If you’d like.”

“Why did you make me lie naked with my head in my mother’s lap, with my legs on yours?”

“To check for physical abnormalities.”

“Like what?”

“Well, vaginal webbing for one. Or non-menstrual vaginal bleeding, or vulvovaginitis. There are other problems, too,” he said, waving his arm.

“So, from the time I was a toddler…?” she asked.

“Yes, of course.”

She sagged down in her chair. “Well, why didn’t you use an examining table?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, “why didn’t you have me lie down on the table when you examined me–instead of across your lap?”

“The lap is less cold – less intimidating – than the examining table.”

“I didn’t think so,” she said. “I thought it was much worse.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. This was her problem. Why was she bothering him with it?

Rose’s hands shook as she tipped her cup to her lips.

Her presence reminded him of the practice he missed. His routine with a little girl was to remove her underwear after her tiny clad bottom had come to rest on his thighs. Sometimes he would snap playfully at the waistband and the little eyes would widen adorably.

“Once I had a three-year-old,” he continued, smiling, “with a diamond earring on her labia—ahead of her time! And another little girl whose groin was scratched up, presumably from friction with some object. My colleague at Harvard said…”

But she didn’t wait to learn what his colleague had said. “Did you have sexual fantasies about your patients?” she asked, chin jutting forward aggressively.

Given his trouble at Children’s, Dr. Albright could hardly say what most believed: There existed no hard evidence that the gentle touching, in a safe setting, of a little girl’s private parts did any harm at all.

“I would never do that!” he said. “I could lose my license.”

“Wait,” she said, again shaking her head quickly. “I didn’t ask you about your actions. I asked what you thought about.”

“Just what are you after?” he said peering at her through narrowed eyes. He tapped his foot on the floor.

“I can’t make any sense out of what you did,” she said. “I’ve always wondered if my reaction – the fantasies – was just some kind of perversion in me… And why my mother cooperated with…” She blew her nose into her napkin. “Maybe it was because she was intimidated by your authority – or because she thought you were handsome? Or some combination.”

He pictured Mrs. Connolly smiling up at him in admiration, a dimple splicing her right cheek. He leaned back in his chair.

“I used to be handsome,” he said, smiling.

She stood up suddenly, nearly knocking over her chair in the process. “I really appreciate your taking the time to come out here,” she said, glaring at him all the while. She grabbed her coat from the back of her chair. “It’s helped me.” She looked around her, as if determining where to run, then turned, and without saying goodbye, brushed past him and out the door.

 

Over dinner that night, Muriel asked him about the meeting with his former patient.

He raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know you were aware of it, my dear.”

She met his gaze with frightened eyes. This, at least, was not unusual.

“It was fine.”

“Why did… What did she want to see you about?” she asked, blinking rapidly.

Dr. Albright adjusted his glasses on his nose. “She has a problem child and wanted my advice.”

That, happily, ended that. After supper, though, he sat restless on the sofa in the living room. Was it possible the woman had been wired? He went over his memory of their conversation. He’d not said anything that could be misinterpreted. But again and again he lingered over each remembered exchange, struggling to resurrect those bits that escaped him.

A few feet away, Prisca and Alicia played at marbles, Prisca’s curls dancing around her head.

“No, don’t do it like that… It goes this way,” said Prisca, lining up the marbles side by side on the floor. Alicia swiped up a blue and a red marble from the lineup. Prisca shoved her right hand away, so Alicia moved in with her left, filching several more.

“Don’t take any more marbles, okay?” said Prisca, not looking up, but guarding and re-arranging the remainder.

Dr. Albright rose from the couch and strode over to the children with a suddenness that surprised even him. The self-help books were right: only activity could provide an antidote to senseless brooding. He rolled up his sleeves, and with one fluid movement, leaned down, scooped Prisca up into his arms, and flung her over his shoulder, pressing her thighs to his chest.

“Time for your bath!” he said.

“No!” she shrieked, her impotent little fists striking his back as they flew up the stairs.