Strong Medicine, Page 3

  They were on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Above them was a warm midmorning sun and a few small wispy clouds. A white-sand beach, of which they were the only occupants, appeared to stretch into infinity. An offshore breeze stirred palm fronds and, immediately ahead, cast ripples on a calm, translucent sea.

  “If you’re talking about sex,” Celia said, “we’re not bad together, are we?”

  Andrew raised himself on an elbow. “Not bad? You’re dynamite. Where did you ever learn—?” He stopped. “No, don’t tell me.”

  “I could ask you the same question,” she teased. Her hand stroked his thigh as her tongue lightly traced the outline of his mouth.

  He reached for her and whispered, “Come on! Let’s go back to the bungalow.”

  “Why not right here? Or in those tall grasses over there?”

  “And shock the natives?”

  She laughed as he pulled her up and they ran across the beach. “You’re a prude! A real prude. Who would have guessed?”

  Andrew led her into the picturesque thatched bungalow they had moved into the day before and which was to be theirs for ten days more.

  “I don’t want to share you with the ants and land crabs, and if that makes me a prude, okay.” He slipped off his swim trunks as he spoke.

  But Celia was ahead of him. She had shed her bikini and was already lying naked on the bed, still laughing.

  An hour later, back on the beach, Celia said, “As I was saying about our marriage …”

  “It will be a good one,” Andrew finished for her. “I agree.”

  “And to make it work, we must both be fulfilled people.”

  Andrew was lying back contentedly, hands intertwined behind his head. “Still agree.”

  “So we must have children.”

  “If there’s any way I can help with that, just let me—”

  “Andrew! Please be serious.”

  “Can’t. I’m too happy.”

  “Then I’ll be serious for both of us.”

  “How many children?” he asked. “And when?”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Celia said, “and I believe we should have two—the first child as soon as possible, the second two years later. That way, I’ll have childbearing done before I’m thirty.”

  “That’s nice,” he said. “Tidy, too. As a matter of interest, do you have any plans for your old age—after thirty, I mean?”

  “I’m going to have a career. Didn’t I ever mention that?”

  “Not that I remember. But if you’ll recall, my love, the way we leaped into this marriage caper didn’t allow much time for discussion or philosophy.”

  “Well,” Celia said, “I did mention my plan about children to Sam Hawthorne. He thought it would work out fine.”

  “Bully for Sam!—whoever he is.” Andrew wrinkled his brow. “Wait. Wasn’t he the one at our wedding, from Felding-Roth?”

  “That’s right. Sam Hawthorne’s my boss, the regional sales manager. He was with his wife, Lilian.”

  “Got it. Everything’s coming back.”

  Andrew remembered Sam Hawthorne now—a tall, friendly fellow, perhaps in his mid-thirties but prematurely balding, and with craggy, strong features that reminded Andrew of the carved faces on Mount Rushmore. Hawthorne’s wife, Lilian, was a striking brunette.

  Reliving, mentally, the events of three days earlier, Andrew said, “You’ll have to make allowance for my having been a little dazed at the time.”

  One reason, he remembered, was the vision of Celia as she had appeared, in white, with a short veil, in the reception room of a local hotel where they had elected to be married. The ceremony was to be performed by a friendly judge who was also a member of St. Bede’s Hospital board. Dr. Townsend had escorted Celia in on his arm.

  Noah Townsend was fully up to the occasion, the epitome of a seasoned family physician. Dignified and graying, he looked a lot like the British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, who was so often in the news these days smoothing U.S.-British relations after the preceding year’s discords over the Suez Canal.

  Celia’s mother, a small, self-effacing widow who lived in Philadelphia, was at the wedding. Celia’s father had died in World War II; hence Townsend’s role.

  Under the Bahamas sun, Andrew closed his eyes, partly as relief against the brightness, but mostly to re-create that moment when Townsend brought Celia in …

  In the month since Celia, on that memorable morning in the hospital cafeteria, had announced her intention to marry him, Andrew had fallen increasingly under what he thought of as no less than her magic spell. He supposed love was the word, yet it seemed more and different—the abandonment of a singleness which Andrew had always pursued, and the total intertwining of two lives and personalities in ways that at once bewildered and delighted him. There was no one quite like Celia. No moment with her was ever dull. She remained full of surprises, knowledge, intellect, ideas, plans, all bubbling from that wellspring of her forceful, colorful, independent nature. Almost from the beginning he had a sense of extreme good fortune as if he, through some machinery of chance, had won a jackpot, a prize coveted by others. And he sensed that others coveted Celia as he introduced her to his colleagues.

  Andrew had had other women in his life, but none for any length of time, and there had been no one he seriously considered marrying. Which made it all the more remarkable that from the moment when Celia—to put it conventionally—“proposed,” he had never had the slightest doubt, hesitation, or inclination to turn back.

  And yet … it was not until that incredible moment when he saw Celia in her white wedding dress—radiant, lovely, young, desirable, all that any man could ask of a woman and more, far more—it was not until then that, with a flash which seemed an exploding ball of fire within him, Andrew truly fell in love and knew, with the positive certainty that happens few times in any life, that he was incredibly fortunate, that what was happening was for always, and that, despite the cynicism of the times, for himself and Celia there would never be separation or divorce.

  It was that word “divorce,” Andrew told himself when thinking about it afterward, that had kept him unattached at a time when many of his contemporaries were marrying in their early twenties. Of course, his own parents had provided that rationale, and his mother, who represented (as Andrew saw it) the divorcée non grata, was at the wedding. She had flown in from Los Angeles like an aging butterfly, announcing to anyone who would listen that she had interrupted the shedding of her fourth husband to be present at her son’s “first marriage.” Andrew’s father had been her second husband, and when Andrew had inquired about him he was told, “Oh, my dear boy, I hardly remember what he looked like. I haven’t seen him in twenty years, and the last I heard, he was an old roué living with a seventeen-year-old whore in Paris.”

  Over the years Andrew had tried to understand his mother and rationalize her behavior. Sadly, though, he always came to the same conclusion: she was an empty-headed, shallow, selfish beauty who attracted a similar kind of man.

  He had invited his mother to the wedding—though he later wished he hadn’t—out of a sense of duty and a conviction that everyone should have some feeling for a natural parent. He had also sent a letter about the wedding to the last known address of his father, but there had been no reply, and Andrew doubted if there ever would be. Every three years or so he and his father managed to exchange Christmas cards, and that was all.

  Andrew had been the only child of his briefly married parents, and the one other family member he would have liked Celia to meet had died two years earlier. She was a maiden aunt with whom Andrew had lived through most of his boyhood and who, though not well off, had somehow scraped together—without help from either of his parents—the money to sustain Andrew through college and medical school. It was only after her death, when the pathetic remnants of her estate, worth a few hundred dollars, lay exposed in a lawyer’s office, that he realized how great the sacrifice had been.

  As it wa
s, at the wedding Celia had taken Andrew’s mother in stride. Assessing the situation without anything’s having to be explained, Celia had been cordial, even warm, though not phonily effusive. Afterward, when Andrew expressed regret about his mother’s bizarre behavior, Celia responded, “We married each other, darling, not our families.” Then she added, “I’m your family now, and you’ll get more love from me than you’ve ever had in your life before.”

  Today on the beach Andrew was already realizing this was true.

  “What I’d like to do, if you agree,” Celia said, continuing their conversation, “is go on working through most of my first pregnancy, then take off a year to be a full-time mother. After that I’ll go back to work until the second pregnancy, and so on.”

  “Sure, I agree,” he told her. “And in between being loved and getting you pregnant, I plan to practice a little medicine.”

  “You’ll practice lots of medicine, and go on being a fine, caring doctor.”

  “I hope so.” Andrew sighed happily, and a few minutes later fell asleep.

  They spent the next few days learning things about each other which they had not had time for previously.

  One morning over breakfast, which each day was delivered to their bungalow by a cheerful, motherly black woman named Remona, Celia said, “I love this place. The island, its people, and the quietness. I’m glad you chose it, Andrew, and I’ll never forget it.”

  “I’m glad too,” he said.

  Andrew’s first suggestion for their honeymoon had been Hawaii. But he had sensed a reluctance on Celia’s part and switched to what was originally a second choice.

  Now Celia said, “I didn’t tell you this, but going to Hawaii would have made me sad.”

  When he asked her why, one more piece of geometry from the past slipped into place.

  On December 7, 1941, when Celia was ten years old and with her mother in Philadelphia, her father, a U.S. Navy noncommissioned officer—Chief Petty Officer Willis de Grey—was in Hawaii, aboard the battleship USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. During the Japanese attack that day, the Arizona was sunk and 1,102 sailors on the ship were lost. Most died belowdecks; their bodies were never recovered. One was Willis de Grey.

  “Oh yes, I remember him,” Celia said, answering Andrew’s question. “Of course, he was away a lot of the time, at sea. But when he was home on leave the house was always noisy, full of fun. When he was expected it was exciting. Even my little sister Janet felt it, though she doesn’t remember him the way I do.”

  Andrew asked, “What was he like?”

  Celia thought before answering. “Big, and with a booming voice, and he made people laugh, and he loved children. Also he was strong—not just physically, though he was that as well, but mentally. My mother isn’t; you probably saw that. She relied on my father totally. Even when he wasn’t there he’d tell her what to do in letters.”

  “And now she relies on you?”

  “It seemed to work out that way. In fact, almost at once after my father died.” Celia smiled. “Of course, I was horribly precocious. I probably still am.”

  “A little,” Andrew said. “But I’ve decided I can live with it.”

  Later he said gently, “I can understand about the honeymoon, why you wouldn’t choose Hawaii. But have you ever been there—to Pearl Harbor?”

  Celia shook her head. “My mother never wanted to go and—though I’m not sure why—I’m not ready yet.” She paused before continuing. “I’m told you can get close to where the Arizona sank, and look down and see the ship, though they were never able to raise it. You’ll think this strange, Andrew, but one day I’d like to go to where my father died, though not alone. I’d like to take my children.”

  There was a silence, then Andrew said, “No, I don’t think it’s strange at all. And I’ll make you a promise. One day, when we have our children and they can understand, then I’ll arrange it.”

  On another day, in a leaky, weatherbeaten dinghy, while Andrew struggled inexpertly with the oars, they talked about Celia’s work.

  “I always thought,” he commented, “that drug company detail men were always, well, men.”

  “Don’t go too far from shore. I’ve a feeling this wreck is about to sink,” Celia said. “Yes, you’re right—mostly men, though there are a few women; some were military nurses. But I’m the first, and still the only, detail woman at Felding-Roth.”

  “That’s an achievement. How did you manage it?”

  “Deviously.”

  In 1952, Celia reminisced, she graduated from Penn State College with a B.S. in chemistry. She had financed her way through college in part with a scholarship and partly from working nights and weekends in a drugstore.

  “The drugstore time—passing out prescription drugs with one hand and hair rollers or deodorant with the other—taught me a lot that proved useful later. Oh yes, and sometimes I sold from under the counter too.”

  She explained.

  Men, mostly young, would come into the store and loiter uneasily, trying to get the attention of the male druggist. Celia always recognized the signs. She would ask, “Can I help you?” to which the reply was usually, “When will he be free?”

  “If you want condoms,” Celia would say sweetly, “we have a good selection.” She would then bring various brands from under the counter, piling the boxes on top. The men, red-faced, would make their purchases and hurriedly leave.

  Occasionally someone brash would ask if Celia would help him try the product out. To which she had a stock answer. “All right. Whenever you say. I think I’m over my syphilis by now.” While some may have realized it was a joke, clearly no one wanted to take a chance because in each instance she never saw the questioner again.

  Andrew laughed, gave up rowing, and let the boat drift.

  Armed with her B.S. degree, Celia explained, she applied for a job with Felding-Roth Pharmaceuticals as a junior chemist. She was accepted and worked in the labs for two years.

  “I learned some things there—mostly that unless you’re a dedicated scientist, lab work is dull and repetitious. Sales and marketing were what interested me. They still do.” She added, “It’s also where some big decisions are made.”

  But making a change from lab work to selling proved difficult. Celia tried the conventional route of applying and was turned down. “I was told it was company policy that the only women employed in sales were secretaries.”

  Refusing to accept the decision, she planned a campaign.

  “I found out that the person who would have to recommend a change in policy, if it happened at all, was Sam Hawthorne. You met him at our wedding.”

  “Your boss, the regional sales maestro,” Andrew said. “The one who’s stamped approval on our having two kids.”

  “Yes—so I can keep on working. Anyway, I decided the only way to influence Hawthorne was through his wife. It was risky. It almost didn’t work.”

  Mrs. Lilian Hawthorne, Celia discovered, was active in several women’s groups and thus, it seemed, might be sympathetic to another woman’s career ambitions. Therefore, in the daytime when Sam Hawthorne was at Felding-Roth, Celia went to see his wife at home.

  “I’d never met her,” Celia told Andrew. “I had no appointment. I just rang the bell and barged in.”

  The reception was hostile. Mrs. Hawthorne, in her early thirties and seven years older than Celia, was a strong, no-nonsense person with long, raven-black hair which she pushed back impatiently as Celia explained her objective. At the end Lilian Hawthorne said, “This is ridiculous. I have nothing to do with my husband’s work. What’s more, he’ll be furious when he learns you came here.”

  “I know,” Celia said. “It will probably cost me my job.”

  “You should have thought of that beforehand.”

  “Oh, I did, Mrs. Hawthorne. But I took a chance on your being up-to-date in your thinking, and believing in equal treatment for women, also that they shouldn’t be penalized unfairly on account of their sex.”


  For a moment it looked as if Lilian Hawthorne would explode. She snapped at Celia, “You have a nerve!”

  “Exactly,” Celia said. “It’s why I’ll make a great saleswoman.”

  The other woman stared at her, then suddenly burst out laughing. “My God!” she said. “I do believe you deserve it.”

  And a moment later: “I was about to make coffee, Miss de Grey. Come in the kitchen and we’ll talk.”

  It was the beginning of a friendship which would last across the years.

  “Even then,” Celia told Andrew, “Sam took some persuading. But he interviewed me, and I guess he liked what he saw, and Lilian kept working on him. Then he had to get the approval of his bosses. In the end, though, it all worked out.” She looked down at the water in the dinghy; it was now above their ankles. “Andrew, I was right! This thing is sinking!”

  Laughing, they jumped overboard and swam ashore, pulling the boat behind them.

  “When I began work in sales, as a detail woman,” Celia told Andrew over dinner that night, “I realized I didn’t have to be as good as a man in my job. I had to be better.”

  “I remember a recent experience,” her husband said, “when you were not only better than a man, you were better than this doctor.”

  She flashed a brilliant smile, removed her glasses, and touched his hand across the table. “I got lucky there, and not just with Lotromycin.”

  “You take your glasses off a lot,” Andrew commented. “Why?”

  “I’m shortsighted, so I need them. But I know I look better without glasses. That’s why.”

  “You look good either way,” he said. “But if the glasses bother you, you should consider contact lenses. A lot of people are beginning to have them.”

  “I’ll find out about them when we get back,” Celia said. “Anything else while I’m at it? Any other changes?”

  “I like everything the way it is.”

  To get where they were, they had walked a mile from their bungalow, hand in hand down a winding, crudely paved road where traffic was a rarity. The night air was warm, the only sounds the chirrup of insects and a cascading of waves on an offshore reef. Now, in a tiny, roughly furnished café called Travellers Rest, they were eating the local standard fare—fried grouper, peas and rice.