Read Online Constance by Patrick McGrath - Free Book Online Page B

the doctor before she did. Two figures emerged from the rear of the train and paused for a few seconds on the platform, engaged in what looked like a quarrel. The girl was about twenty, the man much older. It could only be them. Then they were advancing upon us, and when the girl saw Constance–she was Iris, of course–she dropped her suitcase and ran toward us with her arms spread wide, shouting. Constance, laughing and blushing, was crushed to the body of her sister, and it was for me to step forward and greet the father.
    —Doctor Schuyler. Sidney Klein, I said.
    He was a tall man, as tall as I, and he looked me up and down as we gravely shook hands. I was impressed with his gravitas. A man of the old school, I thought, salt of the American earth. It takes a couple of centuries to make one of these. What did he make of me? I had money, yes, and I had tenure, but I was an Englishman and he wouldn’t know if I was to be trusted. High above us pigeons fluttered in the iron trelliswork and the locomotive released a prolonged hiss. On the platform the last of the passengers streamed around us, leaving the sisters clinging together, and myself with the father. Stranded between us was the suitcase Iris had abandoned in the middle of the platform.
    —You’d better call me Morgan, he said.
    —Sidney, I said.
    That night we dined together in a steakhouse on Lexington Avenue. It was a noisy, steamy place, all bustle and meaty smells: I thought the doctor would like it. I was aware of the momentous nature of the occasion and I think he was too. He was a reserved man in his late sixties, spare, deliberate, and quietly amusing, particularly in response to the more extravagant claims of Iris, who was excited to be in New York and in particular in this large room full of loud talk and quick-witted waiters with whom she bantered happily. She was a college senior, majoring in biology at a school upstate, but unmistakably the same grinning, gap-toothed girl I’d seen in Constance’s photograph. I kept an eye on the sisters but I reserved my close attention for the father. Constance wanted me to believe that his antagonism toward her had made her the unhappy woman she was, but having now met the man I didn’t buy it. He was gruff, but he was a man of the old school. They’re supposed to be gruff. Buthe was also tender, and he was watchful. When Iris let out a shriek that had other diners turning in our direction, he laid a finger briefly on her wrist and she grew quiet at once. When the waiter approached to refill her glass, not for the first time, Dr. Schuyler caught the man’s eye and silently voiced the word
no.
I saw this, and he saw me seeing it, and we exchanged not so much a smile as a mutual glance of amused understanding.
    —Daddy, will you please tell Constance that a virus is a germ?
    —Constance, your sister believes that a virus is a germ.
    —Yes, but what sort of a germ? She doesn’t know!
    —Of course I know!
    Then, in a low voice, pleading: Daddy, I’d like another glass of wine.
    —I know you would, but you won’t get it.
    I watched Constance at times react to Iris like a mother, with impatient shakes of the head and a lifting of her eyes to the ceiling. At other times she was drawn into the girl’s restless stream of talk. When Iris amused her she’d lean forward with her jaw falling in disbelief.
    —Iris,
you can’t say that!
    —I just did.
    Daddy might or might not adjudicate the matter. Halfway through the meal I realized I was no closer to answering the question that concerned me: how Constance got to be so helpless and at times so very
numb.
I no longer believed her father was a cruel man, or that he’d done her irreparable harm. I’d seen nothing to support that idea. It occurred to me that Iris might in her carelessness have done her a more subtle injuryalthough I couldn’t imagine what it might be. Constance told me once that her sister wanted her to die, but every younger sibling feels