The Most Dangerous Thing

secondary. We are here to serve patients.”

“Your specialty is geriatrics.”

“Yes?”

She is groping toward a point, although lord knows what it is. That he doesn’t understand her desire to care for children? That his patients are closer to natural death and therefore less important, or simply crankier and more demanding? Why does he even bother? She probably will muddle through, end up in a pediatric practice. Chances are, she will be no worse than clumsy, the kind of doctor that children hate and everyone thinks it’s just their child. There will be mistakes, but they won’t be fatal. Serious, perhaps. Vulnerable to lawsuits. But she won’t manage to kill anyone, and her colleagues will cover for her because that’s what doctors do. Clem believes every profession covers for its incompetents. So do families. Any group, no matter how loosely affiliated, will always close ranks against the world at large.

He gives Amanda a generic pep talk, sends her on her way. He needs to review three other student files before he meets with them this afternoon, but he feels logy. If he sits here, he’ll fall asleep. He will go for a walk, maybe buy a hot dog from one of the carts.

The University of Maryland sits in a forlorn, somewhat forgotten corner of southwest downtown, although the neighborhood is beginning to catch a second wind. When the highway project was halted by community opposition-and Clem was one of those who fought it, because of what it would have done to Leakin Park, its flora and fauna-the city was left with blocks of houses it had planned to demolish. These “dollar” houses in nearby Otterbein ultimately were awarded in a lottery to those who promised to renovate them and live in them for at least five years. Some of those houses will come on the market soon, although the neighborhood is far from gentrified, despite talk about Federal Hill becoming the next Georgetown. Baltimore is one of those cities that defines itself by such comparisons. The next this, the next that. Except maybe Johns Hopkins, which considers itself far above the city, apart from it. But Clem has no regrets about choosing the University of Maryland. It’s a good school, too, and it doesn’t have to shoulder the weight of a worldwide reputation. Renown is overrated. Plus, one becomes responsible for all of one’s colleagues at such places. In the public’s mind, Hopkins is Hopkins is Hopkins. He can’t imagine that everyone at Hopkins is pleased with John Money right now, given his recent pro-incest comments in Time magazine. If Clem worked at Hopkins, he’d probably be asked about that constantly, would not be able to persuade people that a geriatric specialist has no overlap with the sex clinic.

It’s a finer day than the morning had promised, and Clem decides to walk north, up Eutaw, to the pleasant chaos of Lexington Market. He won’t go so far as to say that he prefers Baltimore to his hometown of Boston, but he considers it a fair trade, especially since they moved into the house on Wetheredsville Road. Boston was fine. He understood it, and it understood him. But Tally wanted to leave, so they left-and allowed her to make him the scapegoat, telling her family it was Clem who desired a change. He shields Tally often from such unpleasant situations, but it’s a small price to pay for being married to her. He’s a lucky man. Other men, seeing Tally next to him, have told him that over and over. Twenty-five years after the fact, he still flushes at the memory of those early days with Tally. At least she wasn’t his student, although that’s what everyone seems to infer.

Still, it was illicit by his standards, even a little sordid. That was part of its charm. And she had taken the lead. No one would ever believe that, and he would never say as much out loud. It’s not gallant, for one thing. Perhaps the truth is seldom gallant. Eighteen-year-old Tally Duchamp seduced thirty-two-year-old Clement Robison. He had no idea why she wanted to be with him, and he is even more baffled by why she stays with him. She is a headstrong woman, capable of marrying someone merely to antagonize her parents, then staying in that marriage to prove them wrong. Tally has enormous staying power for grudges.

But she is fickle in almost all other aspects of her life. Clem has watched her flail and fail her way through a remarkable number of projects, attacking each enterprise with great energy, then dropping the new activity when the early passion dissipates. He should find it reassuring that painting seems to have taken hold, that she finally is finding a place to channel her formidable energy, especially now that Gwen is only a few years away from leaving the nest. But Tally’s current obsession unnerves him. She seems to be using it to wall herself off, to escape from the family. Did he feel that way before the night of the hurricane? Or is he projecting on her the burden of his secret? If she knew what he knows, she would be within her rights to distance herself.

He wonders if Tim and Rick have broken their pledge. There is a prevailing theory that there are no secrets in marriages, not good ones. If they have confided in their mates-well, he envies them. He would love the release of telling someone, to hear someone say: What could you have done? Or: I don’t see that you had any choice. The problem is, he doesn’t trust Tally to say those things. Her best quality is also her worst. She’s relentlessly, reluctantly honest when asked her opinion. Oh, she won’t volunteer it, won’t go out of her way to make someone feel bad. She tries to be tactful. But if you insist on knowing what she really thinks, you’d better be prepared to take it. Sometimes Clem isn’t.

He enters the market. Noisy and chaotic on this Thursday before Memorial Day, it comes at him in a wave of aromas. Fried food, deli meats, fish, flowers. The sweet, buttery smells of Konstant Candies’ peanut brittle trumps everything else. He will buy some for Gwen only-she doesn’t eat candy anymore. His mood flags, thinking of his daughter, the obsession with her weight. Worse, her intense interest in boys. She used to have a lively, curious mind and now all she cares about are clothes and how many boys call her each week. It wasn’t that long ago that she walked with him through the woods on weekend days, raptly absorbing his knowledge of plants and wildlife. Only two years ago, they read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn together, which provided a lot of opportunities for valuable discussion. Poverty, the lives of immigrants, even sex crimes. When he speaks to her now, she is very patient and kind, as if he were mildly retarded.

He decides to have a crab cake at Faidley’s. And a beer. It’s practically the holiday weekend.

Someone has left a copy of yesterday’s Star, the afternoon paper, on the counter. Clem flips through it reflexively, pushing it away when he chances on an item from Chicago, something about a possible appeal in John Wayne Gacy’s case. Every year, there seems to be a new unthinkable horror. Jim Jones in 1978, John Wayne Gacy last year. What will 1980 bring before it’s over? And will his first name begin with a J ?

His food arrives and he focuses on enjoying the platter, a cholesterol horror show-French fries and macaroni and cheese, the fried crab cake. He would chide a patient for eating such a lunch. But his own cholesterol is excellent, as is his blood pressure. He knows his good health is a lottery ticket, but he’s proud to show patients what is possible as one ages. Yet no matter what he does, statistics show his wife is destined to be a widow at a relatively young age. That’s a bum thing to do to the person you love most in the world.

Tally was adamant that she understood the actuarial odds. That she would rather have a foreshortened time with him than a longer marriage to anyone else. Still, he wonders if she will decide that it was a poor bargain, giving away her youth, only to find herself alone with much of her own life ahead of her. Say she’s sixty-three when he dies, which would make him seventy-seven. That’s too late for a true second chance. She’ll almost definitely be a grandmother. She might be on her way to being a great-grandmother, if either Miller or Fee decides to start a family early. His money’s on Miller, a bit of a throwback, short-haired and stalwart and dutiful. Miller, born in 1956, almost seemed disappointed that he had to sign up for the draft but not actually serve. Miller lives to serve. He always wants to do the right thing. In other words, he’s just like his father. He has made a good marriage to a terrific girl. And that girl, like her mother-in-law before her, has persuaded Miller to abandon his hometown, only in her case she wants to be close to her family. He calls every Sunday, recounting his week. In some ways, Clem feels he knows more about Miller’s life than he does about Gwen’s.

Now Fee is quiet, withdrawn. She has a secret, even if she doesn’t know it. Tally believes it’s her sexuality, which makes Clem sad, only because he believes Fee’s life will be harder for it, that she will not be comfortable in her own skin. She’s in San Francisco, but she might as well be in… Dubuque, based on what Clem has gleaned of her life. She goes to school-she’s working toward a master’s in psychology-and spends her weekends biking obsessively, almost as if she’s trying to get away from herself. Clem hopes she eventually finds a way to be still.

As for Gwen-sweet, pretty, eager-to-please Gwen. Whatever she does, she’ll do well. So much younger than her siblings, Gwen had the best of both worlds: she was essentially raised as an only child, but by parents with