Page 36 - WTP VOl. VIII #6

Doctor's Daughter (continued from preceding page)
C’mon, sit up. Shoulders back, chin up.
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Without warning, Dad would place his hands on the top of our shoulders and squeeze them back until our scapulas found their rightful planar position across the upper torso. This could happen at a desk, on a walk, or standing in line at the movie theatre. It didn’t matter. If we were slumping, as he liked to call it, we would be manually corrected, gently adjusted with just the precise amount of pressure, physically and intellectually. Sometimes, he held the bones in place for more than a few seconds, firing the neu- rons in our lazy trapeziuses like water guns at a penny arcade.
If we and our slacking vertebra were out of range, say, across an auditorium or on a stage, Dad employed the Bending Finger Signal, a subtle yet undeniable scratch of the nose that got us straightened up in no time. It also got us laughing, seeing Dad flick the side of his nose when we knew it didn’t itch.
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The man touched the side of my arm and said it was time to walk down the aisle. I didn’t look at the peo- ple. I remember staring ahead, or down, really, not wanting to see the scene. Years earlier, Dad traveled to China as part of a medical trade delegation. He brought me beaded slippers and a cloisonne broach, a round pin with four amber stones embedded in sil- ver filagree. Enameled flowers in blues, greens and pinks surrounded the jewels. I secured the broach on the waistband of my skirt, right of center, above my hip bone.
I sat in the front row. The rabbi began to speak. He said that Dad fought mightily against his illness.
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Whenever I stayed home from school with a cold, Dad gave me assignments from the World Book Encyclo- pedia. I remember one in particular, on cells. I think
I was in sixth grade. The top third of the page had
a photograph of an actual series of cells, rectangu-
lar compartments that looked like floor tiling. The picture was royal blue, mostly, with violet and red demarcations. “The Cell” was superimposed on top, in white lettering.
Before Dad left for the hospital, he presented me with 29
the “C-Ch” book, opened to the page. He told me to read the section about cell organelles, and provided a mnemonic device for remembering the main five. CLEGM: for centrioles, lysosomes, endoplasmic reticulum, golgi bodies and mitochondria. When he returned in the evening, he quizzed me. I have never forgotten the names. I taught the trick to my kids when they were in middle school.
The next day, still sniffly, I was rewarded. My assign- ment: dolls of the world.
By high school, I had dissected a calf’s brain and kept it in a jar of formaldehyde on my bookcase, next to miniature Washington monuments and Amish Coun- try wagons, blown glass boats from Cape Cod. If we passed a hospital in our travels, Dad handed off his camera and posed in front of the sign. Every hospital was his hospital.
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It was a haze, in the pew. I wanted to listen to each spoken word, but then, I didn’t, really. We weren’t religious, and didn’t belong to a temple. The rabbi didn’t know us, just about us. He got most every- thing right. Dad’s cousin began with promise, but disintegrated. The emotion was appropriate, yes, and it expressed the raw grief that we all felt, losing my dad so young. But he shouldn’t have been up at the podium, weeping, with rows of people want-
ing to hear a story, wanting to feel for my dad, and not for his sad cousin. I had urges to stand up and usher him off, and to take his place. I shook in the seat, adrenaline racing. It wasn’t far, just a few steps. I pressed my palms on the bench, preparing. Now, yes, now. My quadriceps flexed. My heels backed
up. Here I go. But, my cousin stopped talking and walked away, hand to his face. The rabbi returned. Seconds left. Now. Or not.
~
I could have done it. I should have, even without having prepared a eulogy. I was prepared. I had prepared for thirty-three years. I was weak, obedi- ent. It is the worst mistake I have ever made. It is an irretrievable mistake.
Twice, I thought that I saw him. The first time was on 63rd Street, in Manhattan. I hadn’t been in the city for a while, staying in Westchester before, and after. Immersing myself in work, writing from the spare bedroom, walking the dogs at regular inter- vals. Defining the time, something, while the cir-