Naked Came the Stranger

ALAN HETTERTON

Alan Hetterton is a beautiful name – the words were a small song in Gillian's mind as she stepped from the shower. Oh yes, a beautiful name is Alan Hetterton – she sang the song as she toweled herself dry in the bedroom, sang the song as she stood at the bedroom window, the towel over her shoulders, and stared out at a faraway jet wheeling in the night sky toward La Guardia. Alan Hetterton, in point of fact, was the name mentioned by Maxine of Maxine's Beauty Parlor during a casual conversation on the subject of abortionists she had known. Dr. Alan Hetterton is a beautiful name – tra-la! – and the bedroom phone rang twice before Gillian responded.

"Hello," she said.

"You got a pair of big ones," the voice said. "Who is this?" she asked.

"I said you got a pair of big ones." Whoever he was, he was making no effort to disguise his voice. "Big round ones and never mind who this is."

The first time he had called, Gillian calmly placed the receiver in the cradle, waited a second, then called the police. The police had informed her there was nothing to be done, but should the calls continue she might want to use the new automatic tracking device. It had all seemed so much trouble.

"Are you coming to the point?" she asked.

"I come to a point," he said. "Don't worry about that. I come to a point, same as anyone else."

Gillian remembered the full-page ads – so sober, so shocking – telling women exactly what they must do if they get a harassing phone call. Screw it, she thought. It was the first time in a week she had not been concentrating on the baby beatnik in her abdomen. She didn't hang up, not this time. Perversely, she lighted a cigarette and kept talking.

"Why don't you tell me your name?" she said.

"When are you going to meet me in the hay?" the voice said. "When are you going to step out of your step-ins and hop in the old hay?"

"Please, why won't you tell me your name?" she said. "I may be able to help you."

"You've heard of jack the Ripper," he said. "Well, I'm his cousin, Jack the F*cker."

"Why don't you tell me all about it?" Gillian said.

"That's a very interesting name. If you tell me all about it, maybe I can help you."

"You hoooer!" he screamed. "You wanna trap me. You wanna keep me talking just so you can trap me."

"Maybe I just want to talk to you."

Click. It took Gillian a moment to realize that he had hung up on her. He had taken the action she should have taken. Gillian giggled – she had a feeling that perhaps she had just learned a lesson of importance.

Maybe that was the one sure way to get rid of all the nuts in the world – try to understand them. She rested back on the bed and discovered, almost to her surprise, that the call had had a strange effect: It had excited her. She found herself sensually aroused, strangely warm, and perhaps there was a lesson there as well. Gillian didn't dwell on this.

She reached instead for the Three Towns Directory. Hetley, Hetterich… there, Hetterton, Alan, M.D. – office 131 Thompson Lane – KI 1-1377. This time it was the voice at the other end of the line who asked the questions. An operation? Would she care to specify what kind of an operation? No? Would she care to say who had referred her to him? No? Maxine Schwartz? Oh, yes, would Friday evening be satisfactory?

It had not been an easy road that Alan Hetterton had traveled. The road from Kings County to King's Neck was uphill and bumpy. He had known even in medical school that he was not destined to be much of a doctor. The sight of blood saddened him, sometimes reduced him to tears. To this day he was not certain which was the tibia and which was the fibia. But somehow he had stumbled through medical school, finally acquiring the M.D. after his name – the M.D. that his parents had treated with a reverence he could never understand. Most of Alan's classmates went on to postgraduate work, but Alan was not one to press his luck. (At times, even then, he thought he might still go into his father's brassiere business, learning it, as the old man might say, from the inside out.) He settled, instead, for the life of a general practitioner. One of the few on Long Island that found it economically necessary to make house calls. And perform abortions.

In time Alan met Gerda, the sister of a nurse who had helped pulled him through his period of interning. Gerda, tiny and small-boned with fair skin and a large mouth, was everything Alan was not: extroverted, adventurous, bubbling with idle conversation. It was she who had been the aggressor, she who had provided the rubber contraceptive during their first fumbling encounter one night in June on the fourth tee of the Plandome Country Club. But even there he had failed. Four weeks later Gerda tearfully announced that she was "preggy," to use her imperishable term. Six weeks later they were married. Married for eighteen years, eighteen years of relative poverty (whenever Alan encountered a statistical study of average incomes for doctors in the United States he shook his head sadly, wonderingly), and the fruit of their union was an eighteen-year-old boy, who was seriously considering a life as a Country-and-Western vocalist, and a house a mile from the water in one of the less prestigious sectors of King's Neck.

Alan had never actually regretted marrying Gerda – but there were moments. Moments when he was lancing an ugly boil or giving an enema, and then he would reflect on his marriage. What had they in common? Other than a slow-witted long-haired son who fancied cowboy boots with silver spurs – a boy who had perhaps been the foremost reason for Alan's first having risked performing an abortion. Well, what had they in common? Gerda's never-ending quest for Louis XV mirrors bored and impoverished him; her genteel habit of eating prune Danish with knife and fork (which at first had seemed so charming) now irritated him. For her part, Gerda stolidly accepted his refusal to trade in their Rambler station wagon for a Jaguar XKE or to grow what she called an "unobtrusive little Vandyke." Gerda would, of course, accept almost anything because Alan had fathered a son she found entirely beautiful.

On Friday Bill announced a weekend trip to Chicago, a conference with a prospective sponsor, and Gillian was appropriately grateful. She decided against hazarding the drive herself and called Station Taxi. The cab driver dropped her at a drugstore at the end of town and she walked back the few short blocks to the corner of Thompson. A small unobtrusive sign beside a lamp post identified the doctor's office. The low brick building was set back from the road and was modestly landscaped – it seemed to serve as a buffer between the business buildings to the south and the split levels and spaced ranch homes to the north. A Rambler station wagon, its chrome running to rust, was parked beside the building. It had M.D. plates.

The foyer was dimly lit. To her right was the waiting room. She sat opposite the door to the doctor's office. She studied with amused interest a grouping of pictures over the deep green leather couch. Marin's Lower Manhattan fought mood, color and style with Renoir's Le Pont Noeuf. Beside the paintings was a Louis XV mirror that Gillian would have sworn was authentic. A copy of a G. H. Davis World War II sketch of German and American fighter planes in aerial battle hung tastelessly with the others. The room furnishings were less expensive than one might expect in a King's Neck office, and the imbalance of color and style was unsettling.

"Hello, I'm Dr. Hetterton. And you are Mrs. Brown, I believe."

"That's right."

Gillian looked into the full face of a man who was medium tall, maybe five feet ten, and of stocky build. He wore his graying hair in a modified crew cut, and Gillian guessed he was on the far side of forty-five. He returned the glance and gave no indication of his thoughts.

"Mrs. Brown, isn't it?" he said.

"Yes, doctor," she said.

"I have a remarkable number of Mrs. Browns on file," he said.

"That is remarkable," Gillian said. "I have no relatives here."

"Just so," he said.

"Aren't you going to ask me in?"

The doctor cleared his throat and stepped inside the small office, then led her into an examination room off to the left. He handed her a surgical gown and gestured toward a curtained-off sector of the chamber. Gillian was thankful that he had dismissed his nurse. She disrobed quickly and poked her head through the curtain.

"Come on out," the doctor said. "I don't bite."

Following his directions, Gillian climbed onto the examining table. The doctor rolled a large machine over to the table. He draped a cloth over Gillian's legs and gently placed her feet in the stirrups at either side of the table. Then, less gently, he plunged the speculum into her. He completed the check in silence, then leaned against the wall and ignited a cigarette.

"Two months," he said. "Two months into a first pregnancy."

"That's right – almost to the day. Didn't I tell you that on the phone?"

"You know" – he seemed not to be listening to her – "the women in France have babies right out in the field and then go on with their day's work."

"Bully for them." If it weren't for that damn gadget tearing at her insides, Gillian would have walked out of the room.

"I just want to be sure," the doctor said. "I don't want you to do anything you're going to regret."

"How long is this going to take?" Gillian said. "Let's just get it over with. Are you going to give me anything?"

Dr. Hetterton pressed down on the foot pedal that opened the sterilizer. Steam billowed up the wall. He reached over to a plastic container in which forceps rested in an alcohol bath. Then he seemed to have second thoughts.

"Stretch your arms straight down and clasp the edge of the table. This will be over in a few seconds."

He switched on the diathermy machine and firmly clasped the cautery gun. The intense heat spread through Gillian and she bit her lip to stifle a cry. She fought the nausea welling up in her throat.

"Easy," he said. "There, that should do it."

"You mean it's all over?"

"All over now." Dr. Hetterton handed her a prescription pad and pencil. "Here, write your name, address and phone number. Your real name. You may need me and I'll have to have the correct facts. It should happen within twenty-four hours. Call me as soon as it does." Gillian did as she was told, precisely as she was told. Not glancing at the paper, the doctor thrust it into his trouser pocket and called the taxi. The two of them sat there in the office waiting, not speaking, and Gillian wished for something appropriate to say.

For once she was wordless. At parties she employed a selection of icebreakers that seldom failed to work – a small smorgasbord of existentialism, Zen and little known facts about obscure students of Bellini. Don't you think Sartre is very much the twentieth-century man? she would ask. Kirkegaard has a marvelously fey quality about him, don't you think? she would say. Wouldn't you say that sex is simply the last resort of two people who can't communicate? she would offer.

But none of them – nothing seemed appropriate. The doctor looked like the kind of man who would forget to zip up his trousers, a man on the edge of going to seed.

"Why do you do this?" she asked.

"I'm a doctor," he said. "I help people."

"Seriously," she said.

"Seriously, I need the money," he said. "Why do you do it?"

"Seriously, I don't need the baby," she said.

"You don't look to be suffering," he said. "You are married, aren't you? is the baby your husband's?"

"No," she said. "And as long as we're being honest, I have no idea who the father is."

"No idea?" he said.

"Some idea," she said. "But I might be wrong on that."

"It doesn't matter now," he said.

They both heard the cab pull up in front of the office. Gillian nodded at the doctor and opened the door.

"By the way," he said, "by the way, Mrs. Brown, you are a very beautiful woman."

It was a strange way to end it, Gillian thought, closing the door behind her. The door closed away the sight of Dr. Alan Hetterton holding both hands straight out in front of him. The tremor was barely noticeable. He stopped then and answered the ringing telephone.

"I told you I had some calls to make," he said. "Yes, yes, I know what time it is. Why am I still at the office? Christ, I was in the neighborhood and had to take a leak. I think, Gerda, I'm capable of coming to these decisions by myself."

He replaced the receiver and sat staring at the phone for ten minutes or more. When he could stand it no longer he went to the locked cabinet, opened it, took down the bottle of morphine. He placed two of the tiny white pills, half-gram pills, in the belly of a tablespoon. He drew a single cc of sterile water into the syringe, squirted it onto the spoon, watched the pills effervesce. Rolling up his left sleeve, he searched out the vein and daubed it gently with alcohol. Soon, soon. Drawing the precious liquid into the hypodermic, he squirted out a drop, then jabbed the needle home. An hour. One hour to get home and shower before the euphoria would grip him.

The cramps began the following morning and by noon the abortion was complete. Gillian flushed the shapeless mass away. Bye bye, baby, she thought. She dragged herself back to bed and the bleeding did not let up. She dozed off and awakened to feel the dampness spreading beneath her legs. She barely had time to call Dr. Hetterton before passing out again. Within an hour, the doctor arrived. He gave Gillian an injection of ergot to stop the bleeding. And some follow-up tablets for the next day.

"Gillian Blake," he said. "You know, I honestly had no idea who you were until I looked at the paper you filled out. I catch your program frequently."

"Do you, doctor?"

"I especially liked the one the other day, the one about the God-is-dead-theory. I mean, calling it the biggest publicity stunt of the decade. Imagine! God as PR man, planting God-is-dead theologians around to start controversy, to bring His name into the limelight – that was a master stroke!"

"I'm so tired, doctor."

"But seriously," he said, "something like that can start people back on the road to doing some serious reevaluating."

"Even you, doctor?"

"Maybe not me," he said. "But some people."

"One last question, doctor – does my husband, does Billy have to know about this?"

"Not if he stays away from you, if you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," Gillian said. "And I don't think that will be a problem."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "You know there's a lot of people who feel you must have the ideal marriage. What is it your announcer says? You know, about the reality of marriage in the crucible of modern living. Well, people listen to you and you seem to have all the answers."

"I'm so very sleepy now," she said.

"Of course, of course," he said. "I'll want to see you when you're up and around."

"Good night, doctor," she said. "Good night and thank you."

"You're a beautiful woman, Mrs. Blake."

A few days passed before Gillian felt her old self again. Still, she didn't go back for the checkup. A few weeks. A month. And then on a Thursday in February, Gillian examined herself in the full-length mirror. The reflection was smooth. She thought of that old joke – the patient died but the operation was a success; she decided the time had come.

Thursday afternoon she went to the doctor's office. This time, with the pale gray end-of-day light streaming through the windows, she was unaware of the colors clashing. And this time there was a third party, a nurse – a tiny sparrow of a woman. Gillian decided, yes, a large-mouthed small-breasted sparrow.

"Do you have an appointment with Dr. Hetterton?"

"Well, not exactly," Gillian said. "But the doctor asked me to stop in for a checkup."

"I'll have to see if the doctor can take you," the nurse said. "The name, please."

"Mrs. Brown," Gillian said.

"I'll see if he can take you," she said.

Gillian had to smile at that. If he can take you – the waiting room was conspicuously empty, and dust had gathered on the magazine rack. That nurse, she was as dreary as everything else connected with the office.

"Mrs. Brown," the doctor was saying, "yes, of course. Won't you please come right in? Is there anything wrong, anything…."

"I have this terrible aching feeling," Gillian was saying as the door closed behind them, shutting the sterile little nurse out in the sterile little antechamber.

"Where?" the doctor said.

"That's nonsense," Gillian said. "I feel fit as a fiddle. But you did say to stop by for a checkup."

"So I did, so I did," he said. "And I must say I'm glad you came. Any trouble at home? Any… complications?"

"Not a one," Gillian said. "Of course, I haven't… done anything that might be considered risky. I didn't dare."

"I'll write out a prescription for feosol," he said. "That will keep your pep up. I don't suppose there's anything else I can do?"

"Don't you even want to examine me?" Gillian said.

"After all, you're the doctor."

"I suppose I may as well," he said, "just to be on the safe side. Why don't you go into the room while I get the nurse…?"

"That won't be necessary," Gillian said. "I think I can trust you now."

When Dr. Hetterton joined Gillian in the small chamber she was standing in front of the disrobing screen. She had placed the white robe over her clothes on the small chair. Her long hair tumbled freely over her pale shoulders. Her breasts, unfettered now, seemed to defy the laws of gravity and probability. She swiveled calmly to face him; it was then she noticed the trembling in his hands.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, "in a minute…."

"Don't go," she said. "I think every artist should enjoy his handiwork…. I haven't thanked you properly, doctor. The only reason I haven't thanked you properly is that I haven't been able to thank you properly. Am I able to now?"

"Mrs. Blake, you're able to do anything now. Anything at all. You don't need me any more."

"That's where you're mistaken – can I call you Alan? That's where you're mistaken, Alan. If I can do anything at all, then I need you right now."

"But the nurse…."

"The nurse is out there," Gillian said. "She is out there two doors away and we're here."

"That nurse is my wife; she's Gerda."

"Come here, Alan."

He didn't move, and Gillian walked the three short steps to him. His arms moved slowly to hold her and she reached her hands to his neck and stroked his hair gently. Then she urged him with her hands to follow her backward to the examination table. She fell back onto the table, her feet still touching the floor, and he bent over her. Gillian nibbled at his ear lobes, and her lips ran feverishly over his throat. His mouth groped for her mouth before he moved down toward her breasts.

As he continued to kiss her breasts and then advanced upon her stomach, Gillian remained calm. So strange. She felt no physical attraction to this strange round-faced man who was coming at her with increasing urgency. She did not particularly like his looks. She felt nothing but embarrassment for his fumbling ways. And yet even he – even this flawed and damaged specimen of a man – could arouse her, could lick at her center of passion, perhaps could even satisfy her.

She pushed the doctor back then and reached for his belt. She efficiently undid the belt, then the zipper, smiled as the trousers fell down around his ankles. He mounted her, entered her, probed with his rigid flesh where he had once poked with a speculum. Gillian realized idly that she had never before made love in this position. His frenzy controlled her then, and the climax of the one sparked the climax of the other, his ejection riding the waves of her spasmodic contractions.

"Alan!"

It was a scream and the two of them looked at the door, at the small woman in the starched uniform. Her mouth seemed suddenly smaller, perhaps because of the size of her eyes. Gerda had entered at the wrong moment; there was no way for her husband to stop, to apply brakes, to turn back, to explain. He drove home his final thrusting motions under the gaze of his outraged wife. Even later he made no effort to undo the damage. Trousers around his ankles hobbled him, and Gillian's legs encircled him. He looked at his wife – hopelessly, helplessly – and the three of them seemed frozen in positions that were individually ludicrous. Then Alan felt the warmth returning, felt the motions of the woman beginning anew. He made no effort to stop himself and he responded slowly to Gillian's encouraging undulations.

"Alan, get off her right now!"

"Go away, little bird," Gillian said. "Go away unless you want to see your husband in a new light."

"Go away, Gerda," the doctor said. "This really doesn't concern you at all."

"It's better the second time" – Gillian raised her voice so that Gerda could hear each syllable – "it's always better the second time, lover."

"Alan," Gerda said, "I'm not going to ask you again." Looking back at Gerda one last time, Alan turned then and settled his mouth into Gillian's throat. Neither of them took any visible notice as the door slammed behind Gerda. Gillian, at that moment, felt a surprising sense of disappointment. The disappearance of the audience, particularly a disapproving audience, took some of the edge off it. Live and learn, live and learn. Still, she did not convey her disappointment to the good doctor – she relaxed, rising and falling with his ebb and flow. Then methodically she drained him a second time, emptied him, calmed him and gentled him.

"I'm sorry about your wife," she said finally. "I didn't intend to ruin your marriage – seriously I didn't come here to do that."

"It was ruined a long time ago," the doctor said. "Just one thing – did you take any precautions this time?"

"Yes," she said. "But it was nice of you to ask, Alan."

"l was just curious," he said.

Before facing Gerda, Hetterton went again to his locked cabinet. This time he dropped four of the tiny pills onto the spoon. And then he sat down in his empty office and waited for the drug to take effect. When the shaking in his hands was under control, he walked over to the house and faced a strangely composed Gerda. To his surprise, she said she did not want a divorce. She said that she still loved him and would remain with him on two conditions. Alan agreed that never again would he see Mrs. Brown. He also agreed to the purchase of a $545 electronically amplified guitar for his son.

Gillian never saw Alan Hetterton again – and she was not surprised or disappointed by this. However, from time to time, she heard rumors. Rumors linking Alan Hetterton and Maxine, Alan Hetterton and a fifteen-year-old candy striper at Huntington Hospital, Alan Hetterton and a sixty-four-year-old spinster school teacher. And then in June she read the final chapter in a newspaper gossip column -

"North Shore set is still talking about the messy situation involving a local general practitioner who sidelined on the abortion circuit. Seems his frau caught him in the arms of a female impersonator and decided to do a little cranial surgery on the two of them – with a double-bitted axe. Police intervened just in time. Whole thing was hushed up by the local constabulary but both Md. and his Mrs. have left town, last seen heading in the general direction of the divorce courts."



EXCERPT FROM "THE BILLY & GILLY SHOW," FEBRUARY 7TH

Billy: You seem especially bright and chipper today, dear.

Gilly: Why not? It's a nice day, we're having lovely weather for this time of year, and I had a splendid time at the doctor's yesterday.

Billy: Oh … you didn't tell me.

Gilly: It wasn't anything important, sweetheart. Just a yearly checkup.

Billy: Well, what'd it show?

Gilly: That's just it. According to the doctor, I'm in splendid shape. Marvelously healthy.

Billy: I don't know what he gave you, but you look radiant.

Gilly: It's probably psychological, but I do feel at the top of my form.

Billy: If you'll allow me to say so, dear, your form has always been tops.

Gilly: Why, thank you, kind sir. You are a sweetie, today.

Billy: It's just my natural charm, hon. But seriously, I've always admired your ability to keep in shape.

Gilly: Well, I think it's very important for people to stay in condition. I mean, I can't see physical conditioning as an end in itself, but certainly the body does house the brain, and it pays to be healthy.

Billy: Of course, there are some people who have natural physiques.

Gilly: Yes, some athletes are like that.

Billy: That's true. But there are others who go to pot the minute they stop training. For instance, there's nothing sadder than an ex-prizefighter who lets himself get flat. Some of them turn into balloons.

Gilly: That's a shame when it happens, because I think some fighters have the best builds of all. You know, the ones with the broad shoulders and the muscular arms who taper down into narrow waists.

Billy: I remember when I had a narrow waist.

Gilly: Well, it's still quite slim, dear, thanks to all that squash and tennis you play.

Billy: Now, it's my turn to thank you.

Gilly: Also, there's something so reassuring about a strongly built man.

Billy: Really?

Gilly: Yes, I think there's a wonderfully masculine quality in thick biceps.

Billy: But seriously, don't you think women are more interested in a man's mind than in his muscles? Don't you think they're more concerned about his… uhm, personality, his intelligence?

Gilly: Certainly, over the long haul. But it doesn't hurt if he looks good, too. There's nothing worse than spindly shoulders and a potbelly. I'm half-kidding, of course, but muscle men are quite stimulating. After all, it's the same the other way around. What about pin-ups? And you can't tell me that a man who meets a girl with a figure like Sophia Loren's for the first time is thinking about her brain.

Billy: I'll have to admit you have a point, there.

Gilly: So it's the same with a woman. I mean you might not want to spend your life with Hercules, but you wouldn't mind watching him lift weights. Or something. Billy: Let's watch that something.

Gilly: Oh Billy, you're awful.

Billy: Actually, I'll settle for watching Sophia Loren model bikinis.

Gilly: Right. The body beautiful in action. I think every woman enjoys watching a Pancho Gonzales playing tennis. Or a Cassius Clay boxing. I think prize fighters are especially exciting. All that concentrated violence. They're so direct. So beautifully brutal.

Billy: I know what you mean. It's like watching Billy Blake play squash.

Gilly: That's pure poetry, dear.

Billy: You do know the way to a man's ego, hon. Gilly: And don't forget his biceps.