The Most Dangerous Thing

together. Larry said he would help her out however he could-and promptly disappeared. So that sealed it. She had the right guy, and who cared who the actual sperm donor was. Rick was solid, reliable. She could have given up working, but she was reluctant for reasons even she didn’t understand. She told Rick she would keep working so they could put more aside to buy a house, yet she never put anything aside, except for the tip money she hid in a little metal box in the kitchen. Rick worked days and she stayed home with the kids, keeping her evening shifts. By afternoon, she looked forward to getting out of the house, although she knew enough to complain now and then about her job. Sometimes, heading out the door, she all but did a little jig.

Then last December, Larry came into Connolly’s. Sat at the bar, eyed her the whole time. Sure enough, he was waiting for her, leaning against a new car. Still thin, still pockmarked. Still sexy.

“Hey, babe,” he said. “Been too long.”

She had worked out what she would say if she ever saw him again. It was good, too. She was going to flash her engagement ring, say that some men knew how to treat a woman. Those plans evaporated. She still wanted him. It was even more exciting than the last time around. Now she was really cheating. But she was cheating with the father of her child. And there was no doubt in her mind that he was the father. Joey was almost five now, and people kept commenting on how he didn’t resemble anyone in the family, except maybe Mickey a little. Only Rita knows that he looks just like his father.

She was up in the air, incapable of making a decision, wanting Larry, scared to leave Rick. It turned out not to be her decision after all. Rick caught wind of what she was doing. How, she’s still not sure, but it didn’t matter. They were over.

She tosses her cigarette in the water, goes back inside. She has gauged her tables well: the young lovers tip fairly, the man tips generously, the doctors-to-be can’t even make 10 percent among the three of them. She tries not to watch the clock, but she’s aware of it over her head, its hand creeping toward nine, sending her home.

He walks in at eight forty-five, making the bartender sigh. Rita sighs, too, only happily. She hasn’t told Larry yet that Rick moved out and she has to start over. Rick is her ace in the hole. She’ll be smart this time, play it right. The magazines she reads at the beauty parlor, the women she knows-you can’t call them friends, but they gab sometimes-all these so-called authorities would argue that it’s not smart to want this man, that he’s already proven he can’t be trusted. But a person can change in a few years. He came back for her. When he sees Joey, everything will fall into place.

They make love parked outside her town house. This has been their pattern since Rick moved out two weeks ago, Larry digging what he thinks is the big risk, getting caught. Larry follows her home, she runs inside, tells Mickey she’s going out for a pack of cigarettes or a carton of milk, please keep the door locked and listen for Joey. Then she gets in Larry’s car, which has these divine seats that go all the way flat. Tonight, the two of them are extra quick, but not in that efficient I-know-you-let’s-get-it-done way. They’re quick because they can’t hold back. After, she smokes a cigarette, helps herself to the bottle under his front seat, laughing about nothing. God, did she and Rick ever laugh about anything? If so, she can’t remember. He was always so superdutiful, and then he started getting superparanoid about her and the kids, accounting for everyone’s whereabouts. Glancing back at the house, she thinks she sees the curtain twitch in the window. But Mickey knows better. Rita will snatch that girl bald- headed if she’s spying on her. She pulls Larry’s head to her breasts, thinks about the dinner she’ll cook in her new apartment the first time she has him over. Something good, but not too fancy. Candles on the table? No candles, she decides. Very casual, maybe even take-out pizza. She has the man she wants, not the one she’s supposed to want. It was trying to be good that made her bad, leading with her brain instead of her heart. If she lets herself have what she really wants, it will be easier to be good this time.

Chapter Nineteen

T he last student on Clem’s schedule this morning is very young, very pretty-and destined for failure. These things are not related, not directly. But her youth and her beauty have protected her for much of her life, and this girl-Clem sneaks a look at his appointment calendar, Amanda something, he can’t read his own handwriting, he’s the ultimate doctor cliche-cannot quite believe that these attributes will not get her through medical school as well. She got in, didn’t she? Besides, based on what Clem has gleaned, she was a legitimate admission, not an affirmative action reach or a legacy. She had good grades and MCATs. She is earnest and hardworking.

But she’s not meant to be a doctor, not unless she chooses a field like pathology, where her ineptness with people won’t matter. Oh, doctors can be cold, brusque, high-handed. Many are. But they at least need to understand people on some level, which this girl does not. Inevitably, she wants to be a pediatrician. She thinks children like her. No one likes her. Clem tries to imagine a child wretched enough to deserve her “care,” and his mind slides across an image of little Go-Go Halloran, which shocks him. He doesn’t harbor any ill feelings toward the boy. He pities him.

“Dr. Robison?”

“Yes, Amanda?”

“What do you think I should do?”

Quit . But his instincts about people, which are excellent, tell him not to be direct with this young woman. There is something a little dangerous about Amanda. He’s not going to flatter himself into thinking she would sleep with him to improve her situation, yet she clearly wants something from him. She almost vibrates with neediness. She is used to people volunteering to help her, figuring out what she requires even when she doesn’t have a clue herself.

“We would have more options if you had come to me before you received a failing grade,” he says.

“But I wasn’t failing until I took the final.”

“You were marginal throughout the year. You had to know you were skating by, that you were rolling the dice.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. Her mannerisms are so childish. Perhaps she has confused her own immaturity with an affinity for the young.

“You could take a semester off,” he says. “Come back at midyear, retake the class. Plead special circumstances.”

“Such as?”

You’re not very intelligent . “That’s not for me to say. Amanda”-she brightens at the very sound of her name, like a dog or a small child-“tell me-why do you want to be a doctor?”

“I’ve always wanted to be a doctor.” She is slipping into a speech, a performance. She has recited this story before, probably to much nodding approval. “When I was four, I opened a hospital for my toys. And I really fixed them-put dolls’ arms back in their sockets, sewed on a teddy bear’s eye.”

Ah, but the toys couldn’t complain.

“It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. I can’t imagine anything more rewarding than taking care of children. Especially babies, who can’t tell you where they hurt or what’s wrong.”

“I’m not sure being a doctor is supposed to be rewarding,” he says.

Amanda’s eyes bug at this bit of sacrilege. She is not, upon second look, as attractive as she clearly thinks she is. Her features are not proportionate. The big eyes are a little goo-goo-googly, the mouth broad, and the heart- shaped face can’t quite contain it all. She looks like a cartoon deer.

Goo-goo-googly makes Clem think of Go-Go again. Again, there is a flash of-it can only be called revulsion. But he’s a little boy. Nothing was his fault. The adults have to take responsibility for what happened.

“I mean-it is, at times, very rewarding. But that’s not the point, the main thing of it. We don’t become doctors because of how it makes us feel. We become doctors because we want to care for others. What we feel and experience is