Chapter 2: "Tuesday Morning"
"NO!" Julia Hoffman wakes up screaming. "No! No! No!"
For months, Julia woke up simply screaming and shivering. Now, on Tuesday morning, she wakes up shivering and screaming, "No!"
Julia gets out of bed, and nearly falls to the floor doing it. She goes down on her knees, clasps her hands and prays, for the first time in months. "God, please don't take this away from me. Not this too! Please don't take this away from me!" She prays over and over again.
After she finally says "Amen," she goes to the bureau. There is a bottle of Scotch and a glass on top of it. She pours and drinks. Then she runs to the bathroom and vomits it back up. Even for a master drinker like Julia, alcohol on an empty stomach at 3AM is too much.
She puts on her dressing gown and goes down to the kitchen. She drinks a big glass of orange juice. Then she takes a sip of Scotch. It stays down.
She puts bread in the toaster and a pot of water on the stove. When the toast pops up, she alternates between nibbles of toast and sips of Scotch, while waiting for the water to boil. When it finally does, she drops in the eggs. It is too early for breakfast, but it is also too early to be awake, and to know she will not get back to sleep, and to be so full of pain she is about to burst.
If eating is the price of drinking, then she will pay it. Especially when hours must pass before she can do anything about her pain, and what she can do about it might not work. If it does not work, then she will no longer have the patience to drink herself to death. She will do it the faster way.
She can not call Mrs. Stoddard until a decent hour. Will 8:00 be late enough? Or should she wait until 8:30? Or even 9:00? How can she wait so long when every second is agony?
Julia paces the house between crying jags, sometimes crying so hard she collapses to the floor and curls up, crying so hard it hurts. When the crying eases enough, she gets up on her knees to pray the same prayer again ... and again ...
At 9:00 AM, she slowly goes back upstairs to her bedroom, where Mrs. Stoddard's letter is. Julia had it memorized, including the telephone number, on Friday night. But she wants to read the number from the letter anyway.
Julia sits down on her bed. She stares at the red telephone on her night table for a long time before she picks up the receiver. She dials: 1-207-MOnarch6-0099. She waits. And waits. The phone at the other end of the wire is finally picked up in the middle of the sixth ring.
"Collinwood." It is the same male and Maine voice that answered on Saturday evening.
"Mrs. Stoddard, please. This is Dr. Julia Hoffman."
"Ayuh. Just a minute."
"Hang up, Julia," she tells herself. "Spare yourself the pain of hearing it, and take the other way out, the sure way out of your pain."
But it is less than the promised minute when she hears Mrs. Stoddard's voice. "Good morning, Dr. Hoffman. What can I do for you?"
"Mrs. Stoddard, I thought of something this morning."
To herself, Julia says, "My dreaming mind thought of it, and made me wake up screaming. Made me realize what a fool I was to think there was any cure but death for my pain. And as soon as Mrs. Stoddard confirms it, death it shall be."
To Mrs. Stoddard, she continues, "If it's a problem, in any way, please just say so and we'll forget the whole thing."
"All right, Dr. Hoffman. What is it?"
Julia says nothing.
"Dr. Hoffman?"
Julia opens her mouth and nothing comes out. She is too terrified of Mrs. Stoddard's reply to speak. She is not terrified of dying, she is terrified of the pain that will come before death, the pain of hearing Mrs. Stoddard's answer.
"Hang up, Julia," she tells herself. "You don't have to actually hear it. Just hang up."
"Dr. Hoffman, are you there?"
"I'm a Jew," Julia suddenly blurts out. "If that's a problem in any way, just say so. We'll forget the whole thing. No hard feelings."
There is a long silence from the other end of the wire. Julia thinks, "She's trying to think of a polite way to say it. Hang up. Spare Mrs. Stoddard the trouble of saying it. Spare yourself the pain of hearing it."
Julia's hand has just started moving the receiver away from her ear when she hears, "Do you keep kosher, Dr. Hoffman? If so, you must give me detailed instructions to bring my kitchen into compliance. And there's no synagogue in Collinsport. There might be one in Portland. I'll find out."
Julia falls over on her side on the bed. She curls up into a fetal position on her right side. Her left hand is still holding the receiver to her ear, but she just barely has the strength to do it. Tears start out of her eyes.
"Dr. Hoffman?"
Julia takes a deep breath. "Keep the crying out of your voice," she tells herself.
Out loud she says, "I haven't been to synagogue in years, Mrs. Stoddard. And I don't keep kosher. Except I don't eat pork. And I already told you I don't eat ... don't eat ... "
"You don't eat seafood. Understood, Dr. Hoffman. What about freshwater fish?"
"Not them either." Freshwater fish are not sea food, but Julia still wants to barf at the thought of them.
"Understood."
"Thank you, Mrs. Stoddard."
"You're welcome. I'm just sorry you thought it might be a problem."
"So am I. Goodbye, Mrs. Stoddard."
"Goodbye, Dr. Hoffman." Mrs. Stoddard hangs up.
Julia does not hang up. She just lets go of the receiver and lies there on her bed, crying with joy. Eventually, when the crying no longer takes up all her strength, she prays silently. "Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you," she prays over and over.
In the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard stares at the telephone that she has just hung up. She is more perceptive than Julia gives her credit for. Even over a telephone line, she could hear the tears, past and present, in Julia's voice.
Elizabeth says to herself, "How Dr. Hoffman must have suffered for her faith, to fear my rejection so terribly."
Elizabeth is half right: Julia was terrified that Elizabeth would reject her for being a Jew. But Julia has been very fortunate in some ways, including having suffered very little for being a Jew in what too many American Christians consider their country, theirs and theirs alone.
But Julia has suffered for another reason. In Collinwood and Elizabeth Collins Stoddard she sees relief from that suffering, and the fear of losing it ...
