"I hear you were kind of hard on Rita Cardenal," I said.
He flushed slightly. "Do you know her? She's expecting twins. She needs to take better care of herself."
"I know. She was one of my students till day before yesterday. She's a good kid."
"I'm sure she is," he said. "But she is rather hard to talk to. I wrote down a prescribed diet for her, which she wadded up and threw in the wastepaper basket before she left my office. She said she would eat what she pleased, since her life was already a totally creeped scenario. That is a quote."
I smiled. "Kids here have their own minds, I'm finding out. I hadn't really expected that."
"They do."
"My students talk like a cross between Huck Finn and a television set."
He seemed slightly amused. I knew I was avoiding the issue. I took a deep breath. "I think I've let things go too long. I should have talked to you a long time before now. I don't think you're doing too well, and I feel like I should be taking care of you, but I don't know how. We're the blind leading the blind here. All I know is it's up to me to do it."
"There is no problem, Codi. I'm taking an acridine derivative. Tacrine. It keeps the decline of mental functions in check."
"Tacrine slows the decline of mental functions, if you're lucky. And it's experimental. I'm not stupid, I did a lot of reading in the medical library after you told me about this."
"No, you are not stupid. And I am fine."
"You always say you're fine."
"Because I always am."
"Look, I'm only here till next summer. We need to get things squared away. What are you going to do when you can't keep up your practice anymore? Do you think you're being fair?"
He cut up his cauliflower, running the knife between the tines of his fork. He dissected it into neat, identical-sized cubes, and did not answer me until he was completely finished. "I'll do what I've always planned to do, I'll retire."
"You're sixty-six," I said. "When do you plan to retire?"
"When I can no longer work carefully and capably."
"And who's going to be the judge of that?"
"I am."
I stared at him. "Well, I think there's some evidence that you're slipping in the careful and capable department." My heart was beating hard-I'd never come even close to saying something like that to him. I didn't wait for an answer. I got up and walked into the living room. It was the same, piles of junk everywhere. I was startled by something new: a dozen women's shoes from somewhere, arranged in a neat circle, toes pointed in. Superficial order imposed on chaos. It's exactly how I would have expected Doc Homer to lose his marbles. I felt dizzy and unsupported by my legs or Doc Homer's floor, and I sat down. I couldn't even tell Hallie this. She would come home.
The old red-and-black wool afghan, Hallie's and my comfort blanket in old times, was still folded tidily on the sofa. In the months I'd been here it hadn't been unfolded once, I was sure. I took the thick bundle of it into my arms and walked back into the kitchen and sat down, this time in Hallie's chair, the afghan pressed against my chest like a shield.
"I'm taking this, if you don't mind. I'll need it when it gets cooler."
"That's fine," he said.
I stared at him for another minute. "Do you know what people in Grace are saying?"
"That the moon is made of green cheese, I imagine." He got up and began to wash the dishes from his small meal. A large and a small skillet, a vegetable steamer, a saucepan, plate and glass, spoons and knives of various sizes, and the Piper forceps. Including the pot lids, around twenty separate utensils to cook and consume maybe eight ounces of food. I felt obsessive myself for counting it all up, but it seemed to be a symbol of something. The way he'd lived his life, doing everything in the manner he thought proper, whether it made sense or not.
"They're saying I'm a doctor," I said to his back. "That I've come here to save Grace." Hallie and I had already used up all the possible jokes on our town and Doc Homer: Saving Grace, Amazing Grace. Every one left a bitter taste in the mouth.
"And how do they propose that you're going to do that?"
"I don't know. However doctors usually perform their miracles."
"You know very well what doctors do. You finished four years of medical school and you nearly finished your internship. You were only two or three months away from being licensed to practice."