coiled around his neck. But he seemed ecstatic when he had a granddaughter, and he’d always preferred Suzy, his “little crêpe Suzette,” to the boys.
Women had played one subordinate role or another all during his professional life. Parksie was his surgical nurse for thirty-eight years, until his retirement, and Miss Snow had come straight from a preppy sort of secretarial school to work in his office, staying until her marriage. There were various female clerks and technicians at the hospital, too, and female patients had dominated his practice. When I was a young girl and our family went to a restaurant or to the theater, it seemed as if some woman or another was always coming up to him, saying, “Dr. Brill? I’m so-and-so, you removed my gallbladder last May.”
They were very excited about seeing him out of his usual context, and a little shy, as if he were an actor sighted offstage and they were about to ask for his autograph. My mother referred merrily to his adoring gang of gallbladders, appendectomies, and hysterectomies as “your father’s harem.” He called them, one and all, “dear.”
Ev patted my father’s shoulder, and my father grasped his hand and said, “Doctor, it’s good to see you.” Years ago, that might have been taken for sarcasm; he’d wanted me to marry a doctor. I was
supposed
to marry a doctor, if I couldn’t become one myself, and I almost did. But instead of continuing a medical dynasty, I’d started an ordinary family, which wasn’t easy for him to forgive, especially because of the covert way I did it. Still, I could tell that his greeting to Ev was only the result of his confusion, and that Ev had not been offended.
I glanced around my father’s room, made clinical by the hospital bed and the bedside commode, despite those carefully handpicked remnants of his old life: the gray cashmere throw; his silver clock; a framed photograph of my mother and me taken forty years before in Chilmark; the certificate honoring him for his service as chief of surgery; a single medical book, illustrated with transparent colored overlays that peeled back to reveal all the invisible systems of the human body; the sparse jade plant that had once flourished on my parents’ sunporch.
What was he doing here? I had a sudden, insane notion that I’d let him down long ago, and now he was letting me down in return.
Something is
wrong.
Of course I understood that what had happened to him was purely mechanical. The neurologist had explained it carefully, as if he were peeling back sections of my father’s deteriorating brain. He used an automotive analogy, I remember, citing a tired engine, a busted carburetor. My father the car.
I was just about to suggest that we all go to the solarium when my father said, “Tell me, how is Helen?” Suzy’s hand went to her mouth, and she turned away. She was a grown woman, a lawyer who cleverly calculated the strategies of contracts and torts. But now she was reduced to uncertain girlhood. Ev didn’t look very happy, either.
“She’s doing all right,” I answered, in the casual tone I’d perfected. “Listen, Daddy, shall we go to the solarium?”
“I worry so about her, you know,” he said, and Suzy left the room. At that moment I was particularly glad she wasn’t an only child. Not, as I had once coyly told her, because it was lonesome, but because someday she would be able to share the burden of failing parents, of Ev and me, with her brothers.
I came up behind my father’s wheelchair and began to propel it through the doorway. Ev followed us out into the corridor, where other families pushed their elders in one direction or the other, or guided them, hand in hand, as they tried to walk. I’d thought the change of setting would distract my father, but he was stuck in that movie of his former life playing inside his head. “Is Helen coming, too?” he asked as we waited for the elevator.
Knock it off!
I wanted to shout, the way I used to
Women had played one subordinate role or another all during his professional life. Parksie was his surgical nurse for thirty-eight years, until his retirement, and Miss Snow had come straight from a preppy sort of secretarial school to work in his office, staying until her marriage. There were various female clerks and technicians at the hospital, too, and female patients had dominated his practice. When I was a young girl and our family went to a restaurant or to the theater, it seemed as if some woman or another was always coming up to him, saying, “Dr. Brill? I’m so-and-so, you removed my gallbladder last May.”
They were very excited about seeing him out of his usual context, and a little shy, as if he were an actor sighted offstage and they were about to ask for his autograph. My mother referred merrily to his adoring gang of gallbladders, appendectomies, and hysterectomies as “your father’s harem.” He called them, one and all, “dear.”
Ev patted my father’s shoulder, and my father grasped his hand and said, “Doctor, it’s good to see you.” Years ago, that might have been taken for sarcasm; he’d wanted me to marry a doctor. I was
supposed
to marry a doctor, if I couldn’t become one myself, and I almost did. But instead of continuing a medical dynasty, I’d started an ordinary family, which wasn’t easy for him to forgive, especially because of the covert way I did it. Still, I could tell that his greeting to Ev was only the result of his confusion, and that Ev had not been offended.
I glanced around my father’s room, made clinical by the hospital bed and the bedside commode, despite those carefully handpicked remnants of his old life: the gray cashmere throw; his silver clock; a framed photograph of my mother and me taken forty years before in Chilmark; the certificate honoring him for his service as chief of surgery; a single medical book, illustrated with transparent colored overlays that peeled back to reveal all the invisible systems of the human body; the sparse jade plant that had once flourished on my parents’ sunporch.
What was he doing here? I had a sudden, insane notion that I’d let him down long ago, and now he was letting me down in return.
Something is
wrong.
Of course I understood that what had happened to him was purely mechanical. The neurologist had explained it carefully, as if he were peeling back sections of my father’s deteriorating brain. He used an automotive analogy, I remember, citing a tired engine, a busted carburetor. My father the car.
I was just about to suggest that we all go to the solarium when my father said, “Tell me, how is Helen?” Suzy’s hand went to her mouth, and she turned away. She was a grown woman, a lawyer who cleverly calculated the strategies of contracts and torts. But now she was reduced to uncertain girlhood. Ev didn’t look very happy, either.
“She’s doing all right,” I answered, in the casual tone I’d perfected. “Listen, Daddy, shall we go to the solarium?”
“I worry so about her, you know,” he said, and Suzy left the room. At that moment I was particularly glad she wasn’t an only child. Not, as I had once coyly told her, because it was lonesome, but because someday she would be able to share the burden of failing parents, of Ev and me, with her brothers.
I came up behind my father’s wheelchair and began to propel it through the doorway. Ev followed us out into the corridor, where other families pushed their elders in one direction or the other, or guided them, hand in hand, as they tried to walk. I’d thought the change of setting would distract my father, but he was stuck in that movie of his former life playing inside his head. “Is Helen coming, too?” he asked as we waited for the elevator.
Knock it off!
I wanted to shout, the way I used to
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