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Doctor's Daughter (continued from preceding page)
If he talked about the illness, it was with the sense that it was someone else’s, not his. I took his lead, understanding that he had made the choice to be silent. For him, for me, as coping, or instruction, or both. I don’t know. I wanted to ask him those ques- tions, those meaning-of-life questions that would clarify everything, make the horror make some kind of sense. I wanted to ask him if he was scared, or if he wanted to tell me something, anything, that I didn’t yet know, that I would need to know. I wanted him
us at school. If a utensil fell to the floor, we were to leave it there, until after dinner. O-R rules. Dad’s own fork and knife became surgical tools in his hands; elbows out, focus sharp, slices clean.
Each night, even through high school, he’d come to my room to see that I was tucked in. I’d see the beam from the flashlight coming down the hall, and then he’d appear, at my door. He’d kiss my head, or some- times, just shine the light on it from the threshold. Go to sleep, baby girl.
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That first night, I slept in my parents’ bed. Mom slid over to Dad’s side; I slept in hers. We moved to the house when I was in the sixth grade, past the age when I would have sought refuge during a storm or bad dream. I hadn’t spent many nights in that room, in that bed. The perspective from my mother’s pillow was peculiar; the room seemed vast, the curtains bil- lowed into darkened figures. Dad’s clothes were on the chair, in the closet. Shoe trees lined up. Cardigans stacked. On his desk, precise piles of envelopes sat next to an onyx pen holder, shiny and at the ready. Pencils filled the middle drawer, yellow Number Twos, either sharpened like needles or brand new. Nothing in between. In the top drawer, stationery stretched out in partitions. A cube-shaped stamp dispenser rubbed up against a bottle of mucilage.
My father was the only man in North America to use mucilage, squeezing it evenly through the slit in the angled rubber top.
“I’m an orphan now,” my mother said, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t have anybody.”
I hugged my dogs and made myself close my eyes.
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He ran to the street corner before anyone else saw what had happened. Our neighbor Janey was hit by
a car during a Little League game. She was buying
ice cream from the Good Humor truck, and a car swiped her, throwing her into the gutter. Janey was eight. Her brother and mine were on the field. Her parents were on vacation. Mom and I ran behind Dad. He was crouched on the curb next to Janey when
we got there, and yelled to us to go home for ice and a splint. Mom grabbed my hand and we tore to the car. In minutes, we were in the kitchen, cracking ice trays, filling up a mixing bowl. Downstairs in the
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to tell me that I was the best, so I could tell him the same. I wanted to tell him the same, but I couldn’t. I wanted to tell him good-bye.
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He said hello to me for the first time after maneuver- ing his way around hospital regulations. In the 1960s, fathers were not permitted in the delivery rooms, or in recovery, or even in the rooms on the floor for a period of time. They were corralled elsewhere, all to- gether. My father, who was a resident at the hospital, did not want to wait with the other dads. He put on his white coat, walked down the hall to my mother’s empty room and waited, instead, in the closet. Mom and I returned, and after the nurses dispersed, he snuck out to greet me.
My father was born in Boston in 1929, to Russian im- migrants. They lived in a three-family house on Floyd Street, with cousins upstairs. Dad was accepted to the Boston Latin School and knew at an early age that he would be a doctor. He played baseball for the Red Sox’s farm team, shortstop and second base. He used to hit fungoes in the yard to my brother and me. We could hardly catch because the word sounded
so funny. When we dropped the ball, Dad called out, “Butter!” Short for butterfingers.
By the time I was a few months old, we went to the hospital each night to have dinner with him in the doctor’s dining room, since then, during his train- ing, he could never get home in time, if he even came home. By school age, though, he hurried, and we waited. Sometimes, an emergency kept him at the hospital, but for the most part, we all ate to- gether. Often, he’d be called away afterwards to
tend to some burst organ or gunshot wound, which he told us about the next day, elucidating the critical lesson. Get to a hospital for sharp pain in the lower right quadrant. Stay out of bad neighborhoods. For
a time, there was a rash of stabbings. Choose friends wisely. Dad learned to eat efficiently, and we made good use of his presence. He quizzed us on our homework, made sure everyone was being nice to
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