Read Medicine Men for Free Online Page B

an ace secretary. She was very fast, and extremely neat (she could not have dared be otherwise); even Henry admired those perfect pages, almost as much as he admired her immaculate kitchen floors. She got a few jobs around Cambridge then, and in Boston, for more money. And, more importantly, she began to think of herself as self-supporting.
    Henry was offered a job in a firm in San Francisco. A large, old, and excellent firm, he was told.
    And Molly, who had never been anywhere west of West Virginia, was deeply excited. She looked at beautiful pictures of that most photogenic city, and romantically, youthfully, hopefully she imagined that such a shift in scenery would profoundly change their lives. Thousands of miles from Henry’s parents, his brothers (all those doctors) and his sister, and from Portland, Henry would be a new strong and free man. And Molly, on another coast, would be a more independent, liberated woman.
    Inspired, perhaps, by sexy visions of San Francisco, their sexual life did indeed improve. Temporarily.
    But then Henry decided that instead of San Francisco he would take a job back in Portland, with a good, big, and very old law firm there.
    “San Francisco is probably ridiculous,” he said, by way of partial explanation. “All those silly cable cars and Victorian houses all painted up like tarts. And all that dumb flower-drug-love stuff in the sixties. Nothing like that ever went on in Maine.”
    “That stuff isn’t happening anymore,” Molly told him firmly, as in secret she hoped that to some extent it was.
    “We wouldn’t feel at home out there,” he told her.
    But I would, I know I would, Molly’s inner voice insisted.
    Curiously (or perhaps not curiously at all), Molly at this point came down with a serious case of flu, chills and fevers and aches and intestinal miseries. Odd, in that she was truly never sick. Her great good health from infancy on had always been a given, a source of pride for her parents, and for Molly a pleasant fact on which she could count, like clear skin and healthy teeth.
    This illness, then, seemed to Molly to impart some message, and at first she thought, It’s simple, I am sick with disappointment, not going to live in San Francisco, which I imagined would solve everything.
    She went to a doctor to whom she imparted this theory; he laughed. “I suppose you’ve been reading some feminist literature on the subject?”
    “But no one in my family is divorced.”
    Under the circumstances, which included in her case a serious fever, Molly could not laugh at this upright statement from Henry. Only later—when she told herself, He actually said that—did she laugh.
    At the time, she only answered with the truth. “No one in mine either, but that doesn’t seem relevant, does it? We’re just not happy together. Neither of us is, I think.”
    “I suppose you think you’ll be happy in San Francisco.”
    “Well, I hope so.”
    Despite the content of what he was saying, Henry’s voice still was compelling to Molly, the flat vowels of New England, and the very slight hoarseness (probably from too much booze). She was powerfully moved by his voice. Henry the eggshell, whom she had truly loved.
    True to form, he was a perfect gentleman about the divorce; he and Molly competed as to who could be most accommodating. About possessions, all those silver and crystal wedding presents, they said: “You take this. Oh no, I couldn’t possibly use it.
You
have it.”
    •  •  •
    And Molly moved to San Francisco, where she found a very small apartment on Sacramento Street, near Fillmore, with a pretty view of gardens, and for quite a while she was happy.
    Her half of the money she and Henry had saved would keep her going for a while; nevertheless, Molly registered at a temporary agency, took the requisite tests, and performed impressively. And despite her intentions to the contrary, she was given an offer she wouldn’t quite refuse, an immediate job in what was