The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

Yolanda answered. I told her I was doing my best to get there for rounds but would undoubtedly be late.

“Funeral,” Leo whispered.

I nodded. “I think you probably remember that I was at my grandmother’s funeral all day yesterday.”

Yolanda said without any indulgence in her voice, “So when should I tell them you’ll get here?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes, if I run.”

Leo held up his hands and flicked both sets of fingers three times.

“More likely thirty. I just got in. And my roommate is in the shower so I have to wait my turn.”

Leo flashed a thumbs-up.

“The most I can do is pass on your message,” said Yolanda.

I looked up and mouthed, Not happy. Leo reclaimed the receiver and said, “Yolanda? It’s Leo Frawley, soaking wet. Look, she’s in no shape to make rounds. Can you finesse this? I mean, like a half hour? It’s not like she was out partying last night and couldn’t get out of bed this morning—you know what I’m saying?”

She must have said something like, “Dr. Thrift? Partying? That’s a good one,” because Leo answered, “Yeah, well, there’s a lot to be said for keeping your nose to the grindstone when you’re expected to work eighteen-hour days.”

I stood up, tapped my watch, and pointed across the hall to the bathroom.

He hung up quickly and asked, “How was yesterday? Awful?”

“Very sad. And the minister was a complete stranger, so that didn’t help.”

“I guess I meant, how did Ray work out as an escort?”

“Good and bad.”

He pointed to the chair I’d just vacated and I sat back down. “Good as transportation. Good at taking my side in a family fracas. Bad at being grammatical and appropriate.”

“I could have predicted that,” said Leo. “There’s something slimy about him. And he tries too hard. He’s clearly waging a campaign to win your hand.”

“My hand?” I repeated. “You mean, as in marriage?”

“Of course. He’s not a kid. He’s a widower. Don’t you read magazines? Men who were once married get hooked up again as soon as they can because they know single men die younger than married men. Ask any actuary.”

I said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then you’re blind. He’s looking for his next wife and he thinks her name is Alice.”

I took a long gulp of coffee. “Okay. Maybe he is. But it’s only human nature to look for someone who can return his feelings, and when he realized I couldn’t, he finally gave up.”

Leo said, “I don’t want to make you any later than you already are, but I think I have more to say on the subject of Ray—namely that he kept coming back without any encouragement, so why would he bow out now?”

I said, “Maybe you and I can grab a sandwich in the cafeteria.”

“If my five minutes overlaps with yours, you mean.”

“Or tonight.”

“Can’t tonight,” said Leo.

“Same woman?”

“Dinner with my mother,” he said. Mutha was how he said the word: Dinna with my mutha.

I waited, thinking he might sweep me up into the party, in that way of large families with boardinghouse tables and bottomless stews.

“You didn’t want to come home and have dinner at my house, did you?” asked Leo. “Is that what I’m reading in your face? ‘Leo, invite me to your house because I haven’t had a really stringy piece of meat in months, and I’m dying to be interrogated about my life, my sleeping arrangements, and my grandmother’s last days on earth.’”

I said, “Actually, I’d welcome the opportunity to observe you in a family context.”

Leo said, “Is that Thrift-speak for ‘Excellent! I’ve been dying to meet your mother, Leo’?”

I didn’t see the difference, but I said yes, it was.

8 Leo’s House

WE TOOK THE Riverside Line to Kenmore Square, then switched to a Boston College car, outbound. When stymied by a turnstile, I had to confess that I hardly ever took public transportation.

“Why not?” Leo asked.

“Too busy working to go anywhere.”

“You know what?” said Leo. “I’m sick of hearing that. I work hard, and I know a lot of residents who do, too, but they get out. They wear beepers. Yet you seem proud of the fact that you have no life.”

Was he right? Was I going to be like Dr. Perzigian, chief of thoracic surgery, famous for making rounds at five A.M.; for getting married in scrubs in the hospital chapel; for missing the birth of his son while repairing a knife wound close to the aorta of a philandering city councilman?

“Because,” Leo continued, “it’s getting a little monotonous.”

I said, “Then I’ll have to be monotonous because all I care about is getting invited back next year and eventually becoming chief resident and after that getting into a plastic surgery program.”

Wouldn’t you think a speech like that would provoke a statement of support? Instead, to my shock and to the fascination of the two teenage girls sitting in front of us on the trolley car, Leo said, “I chose that word deliberately because I’m in charge of the social development of Alice Thrift.”

I harrumphed. The high-schoolers turned around in frank fashion to assess me. I stared back schoolmarmishly so they would mind their own business. Leo tapped one of them on the shoulder and asked in his friendliest pediatric bedside fashion, “Don’t you think my friend here should spend a little more time worrying about life outside of work and less about preserving her reputation as Alice the overworked?”

The two girls, both of whose hair was streaked maroon, looked at each other and smirked.

“No, really. Don’t give me attitude,” said Leo. “I grew up with a houseful of sisters, so I’m not deterred by a couple of funny looks.”

The one next to the window asked smartly, “Haven’t you ever heard of, ‘Don’t talk to strangers’?”

“I’m a nurse and she’s a doctor,” said Leo, “so that doesn’t apply, especially in the middle of a trolley car, surrounded by potential Good Samaritans.”

“They’re probably fourteen years old,” I muttered.

“Fifteen,” said the one in the aisle seat.

“A good demographic,” said Leo. “I have a couple of nieces around that age and I can always depend on them for an honest appraisal of my shirt, my tie, my hair, my shoes, my date, my taste in music, you name it.”

One mumbled, “Music?”

Leo named people or groups or albums—I’d heard of none of these entities—which broke whatever final layer of ice needed melting with these two strangers in front of us, their eyebrows pierced and their fingertips stained orange from some triangular chiplike snack they were sharing.

Do you see what Leo represented in our arrangement? Charm of the easy, fluent, unaffected variety—meant to be instructive, but a constant reminder of my own unease.

LEO HAD WARNED me, but still I was shocked by the quantity of Jesus iconography on his mother’s walls and horizontal surfaces. She lived in Brighton, in the same house in which he’d grown up, still containing some of the thirteen children she’d raised there: Marie, the divorced special-ed teacher, a foot shorter than her brother and 50 percent more freckled, had his round, elfin face; Rosemary, the travel agent, from the dark-haired side of the family, wearing a fashionable and no doubt expensive suit with a double strand of pearls; and Michael, the baby, age twenty-six, wearing a T-shirt bearing the name of a gym.

Mrs. Frawley had ginger-colored ends on her gray hair and bobby pins serving as barrettes. She introduced herself as Mrs. Morrisey. When she excused herself to check the oven, Leo explained that her friends and her priest had convinced her that marrying Mr. Morrisey a few years back—also widowed, also lonely, the owner of a red-brick duplex in Oak Square—was a good idea. The new Mrs. Morrisey had decided rather quickly that her friends were wrong; that being a wife to Mr. Morrisey involved duties beyond housekeeping and companionship that she’d been led not to expect.

The less said the better, Rosemary confided once we’d taken our seats in the dining room. “He calls once in a while but Ma won’t come to the phone.”

“And you don’t ask her for an explanation?”

Marie said, “She moved into his house after the wedding, and was back here in less than a month.”

“She implied that he raised his hand to her,” Michael whispered, “but we think it had to do with the bedroom.”

“Wouldn’t she tell you outright?” I asked. “Or file charges if he really did hit her?”

The four Frawley children twisted their mouths in various directions, all telegraphing the same thing: Enough said.

Leo added, “We think part of the deal up front was separate bedrooms, which Ma took to mean no wifely duties and no honeymoon.”

Marie put her finger to her lips and everyone but me nodded in complicitous agreement.

Raising her voice so it would carry to the kitchen, Rosemary said, “Leo tells us that you’re a surgeon.”

I said yes, I was. But just starting out, and it was a long road ahead, much competition, much narrowing down of the field.

“She worries about everything,” said Leo.

Mrs. Morrisey came back through the door with a roasted chicken on a cutting board. “The plastic thing popped up like it was supposed to, but I left the bird in because the baked potatoes weren’t ready. It might be a little dry,” she announced. “And, Rosey, get the vegetables out of the microwave, please. Use the Fiestaware.”

“Need another set of hands?” Leo called after his sister.

“You stay here with our guest,” said his mother. “Marie will get the drinks.”

“The chicken looks delicious,” I said.

“I hope there’s enough,” said Mrs. Frawley. “Leo didn’t tell me until this morning that he was bringing a guest.”

“The choices seem to be milk or water,” Marie said from the doorway.

“Milk,” I said. “And don’t worry about having enough to go around. I don’t eat much; in fact a baked potato would be fine.”

“You’re not a vegetarian, are you?” Marie asked.

Leo turned to me with a grin. “Are you? I don’t even think I’d know the answer to that.”

I said no, I wasn’t. I liked everything.

“Why wouldn’t you know that?” Michael asked his brother.

“Because she works all the time, and when she’s home, that’s the night I’m out. Which is why we’re perfect roommates.”

“Out working,” asked his mother, “or out carousing?”

He grinned. “Carousing.” He got to his feet and approached the roast chicken on its ancient cutting board, cracked and wooden, the very kind that health officials ask consumers to replace with hygienic plastic.

“Who wants white meat who isn’t a Frawley?”

“Maybe a small slice,” I said.

Leo said, “You’re our guest. You’re going to get several slices because I can scramble myself a couple of eggs or make myself a bologna sandwich if need be.”

Marie said, “I would’ve picked up another chicken on my way home if Ma had called me.”

“Wouldn’t we all,” murmured Leo.

Mrs. Morrisey said, “I have an apple pie and a half-gallon of harlequin ice cream.”

“Pass the plates, please,” said Leo.

We said grace, and thankfully we didn’t have to clasp hands around the table. Mrs. Morrisey looked at me for a long few seconds before picking up her knife and fork.

“Go ahead, Ma, ask,” said Leo. Then to me, “She’s dying to know if you’re Catholic.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not.”

Leo said, “And …? That’s only half an answer. She wants to know what brand of church you belong to.”

“I was raised Unitarian.”

“She’s heard worse,” said Leo.

“How’d you and Leo get together?” asked one of the sisters.

I explained that Leo had posted an ad on a hospital bulletin board and I answered it.

“She called Ma for a reference,” Leo said, and laughed.

“What did you say?” Michael asked his mother.

Mrs. Morrisey, unamused, said, “That I didn’t see why a girl would want to share an apartment with an unrelated man, but if that was her only option, then Leo was polite and clean.”

“Thanks, Ma.”

“And named after a pope,” I said.

It was not the right thing to say. Mrs. Morrisey concentrated very hard on sliding her peas off her fork between tight lips.

“Which is a historical fact I found very interesting,” I added.

“All my children are named after saints or popes,” she said.

“I’m named after an aunt who was a WAC in World War Two,” I volunteered.

“Did she make it back alive?” asked Michael.

“Definitely. And lived to ninety and died in a veterans’ hospital.”

Mrs. Morrisey asked, “Was it the VA in Jamaica Plain?”

“No,” I said. “The VA in Loma Linda, California.”

“The children’s father died at the VA in Jamaica Plain, which turned out to be a blessing because Cardinal Law happened to be visiting the day he slipped into a coma, and it was the cardinal who performed his extreme unction.” Mrs. Morrisey held her napkin under the tip of her nose.

“We were there,” said Marie. “We all met him.”

“I heard about your grandmother,” said Mrs. Morrisey. “I’m very sorry for your loss. Was it very sudden?”

“It was and it wasn’t. I mean, all death is sudden from the medical standpoint that one second a person’s alive and the next second he or she is dead.”

“I never thought of it that way,” said Mrs. Morrisey.

“She had a lot of things going on medically, but the official cause of death was pneumonia.”

“Old man’s friend,” said Leo.

We all looked up for an explanation.

“Old man’s friend,” he repeated. “That’s what pneumonia’s called. Because it ends the suffering.”

“I never heard of such a thing,” his mother sniffed. She squeezed her baked potato so its insides erupted. Without being asked, Rosemary passed the margarine.

Nor had I heard of such a thing. I asked Leo if that was a common expression on the wards.

“Probably not,” said Leo. “It’s just one of those things doctors mumble when the shoe fits.”

I put my fork down. “Do you mean because the patient’s old and feeble and on life support, and his family’s trying to decide whether to remove the feeding tube or take him off the respirator? That pneumonia settles the question for them?”

Leo said, “Maybe we can discuss the fine points later.”

“Are you saying nobody would even start IV antibiotics?”

His eyes darted to his mother and back to me. “We do everything that’s humanly possible. Then it’s in God’s hands,” said Leo. “If you catch my drift.”

His mother grumbled, “Don’t think I don’t know what goes on in these big-city hospitals with their Jewish doctors and their Congregational chaplains. Which is why I want to die at Saint Elizabeth’s.”

“I know, Ma,” Leo answered. “We all know that. Can you pass the oleo back this way?”

“You’re giving Alice the idea that you don’t like Jewish people,” said Rosemary.

“What I don’t like is this talk of pulling plugs at my table.”

“Mom’s internist is Jewish and she loves him. Don’t you, Ma?” said Marie. “He’s on the staff at Saint E’s.”

“Dr. Goldberg,” said Mrs. Morrisey.

“Goldstone, actually,” said Leo.

I said, “I shouldn’t have quizzed Leo about the pneumonia protocol at the table. I get anxious when I hear something I think I should have learned in my medical ethics elective—such as, Would you begin a comatose geriatric on a course of antibiotics?—because I want to find my own medical lacunae and fill them in.”

“What Alice is trying to say is that this is her first year, so there’s lots of gaps in her knowledge. And when she hears something she doesn’t know, she loses all sense of time and place and what’s appropriate dinner conversation in order to launch a tutorial,” said Leo.

“I do?”

“I’m teasing you,” said Leo. “Sort of.”

“I think it’s the truth,” I said. “I do panic when I hear something I think I should have retained.”

“Don’t they give you tests?” asked his mother.

“Every day’s a test,” I said.

“Not literally,” said Leo. “She means that she always has to be on her toes.”

“Why would you put yourself through something like that?” asked Marie. “Is it worth it? All these long hours and blood and people dying?”

“Surgeons make a lot of money,” said Michael. “Maybe you work straight out for a couple of years, but then it’s someone else’s turn to burn the midnight oil, which is when you start seeing some real money.”

“Alice isn’t in it for the money,” said Leo.

“What do you see yourself doing when you’re graduated or certified or whatever it’s called?” asked Michael.

“Reconstructive plastic surgery in the Third World.”

“And who foots the bill for that?” he asked.

I explained that one might have to perform cosmetic surgery on the well-to-do for, say, six months of the year, and their money would support the philanthropic endeavors.

“What if you had a family?” asked Marie. “Would you take them with you to the Third World or would you leave them at home with your husband?”

I said, “I can’t think in terms of a conventional nuclear family.”

“Maybe her husband could be a missionary and they could do their work together,” suggested Mrs. Morrisey.

“What a good idea,” said Leo. “Do you know any eligible missionaries you could introduce Alice to?”

“Don’t be fresh with me,” said his mother.

“Actually, Alice has an admirer,” said Leo.

Everyone turned to me. I said, “Leo is exaggerating.”

“Leo thinks he’s a creep,” said Leo.

“What does Alice think?” asked Rosemary.

I sighed. “This man’s wife died a year ago and his pursuit, I think, is largely sexually motivated.”

Mrs. Morrisey huffed and muttered something to herself.

“I didn’t mean that it was reciprocal or that I encouraged him. I was just trying to explain his attentions.”

“All men want the same thing,” said Mrs. Morrisey, “and that particular thing is not dinner-table conversation either.”

“You had thirteen children,” said Michael.

Mrs. Morrisey slapped her fork onto her place mat. “Leave the table!” she barked.

Leo laughed.

“You, too!”

“Ma! He’s twenty-six years old. You can’t ask a grown man to leave the table because he alludes to your having had carnal knowledge.”

“We have company,” murmured Rosemary, “and I’m sure it’s very awkward for her to be in the middle of a family squabble.”

“My family fights every time I go home, and it’s usually provoked by something I say. So don’t worry about me.” I tried to affect the smile of a good guest. For added amenability, I said, “I don’t think this chicken is dry at all.”

“This one was fresh. You lose a lot of the juices when you defrost a frozen bird.”

“My mother doesn’t cook much,” I said. “Especially now that it’s just the two of them at home.”

“How many sisters and brothers do you have?” asked Michael.

“One sister. Who lives in Seattle.”

“Is she married?” asked Mrs. Morrisey.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Can we get back to whatever it was we were talking about before Michael had his mouth washed out with soap?” asked Leo.

Marie—clearly the family mediator and diplomat—turned to me. “I think we were talking about the demands on you at work, and I was asking, Is it worth it? Is all the hard work and sleepless nights and—you said it yourself—the panic worth it for some kind of professional dream that might be unattainable?”

The most unexpected thing happened at that point: I felt like crying. I disguised the quaking of my lips by taking two long swallows of milk from my glass, then by blinking rapidly as if the problem were ophthalmologic.

“Are you okay?” Leo asked.

“I didn’t mean—” began Marie.

“I must have been thinking about my grandmother,” I said.

“Of course you were,” said their mother. “But she’s in Jesus’ house now and free of pain, God rest her soul.”

Still, I was hoping to prove myself the kind of pleasant conversationalist who gets invited back. “Where does purgatory come in?” I asked. “I mean, under your afterlife guidelines, wouldn’t she still be there?”

All the Frawleys were taking sips from their respective milk glasses or searching inside their potato skins for neglected morsels.

“Alice needs a weekend off,” said Leo.

9 Née Mary Ciccarelli

I KNOW THAT some people are equipped to analyze their failings and to pose leading questions such as “Did I do something wrong?” or “Are you upset?” to the silent person in the seat next to them, but I had neither the vocabulary nor the inclination. As the trolley car negotiated the twists and turns of Commonwealth Avenue, Leo kept his eyes shut until I heard him say, “Just to play devil’s advocate for a minute …”

“About?”

“About your job. Whether you really have no aptitude for surgery, or whether it’s your former A-pluses talking.”

I asked what that meant, and how did he know what my grades were?

“I’m guessing you’re one of those people who moaned and groaned about how badly they did on their organic chemistry exam until it came back with a big red hundred and five on the top of the page because you got everything right including the extra-credit question.”

Calmly I said, “I’m the worst resident they’ve had since the legendary one in the eighties who was asked to leave even though he was engaged to the niece of the head of the hospital.”

Leo said, “You don’t have to be asked to leave. You could decide for yourself.”

I said I didn’t understand.

Leo coughed into his mittened hand. “Have you ever thought of dropping out of the program?”

Only ten times an hour and with every withering look and every truthful evaluation, I thought. “Not really,” I said. “I can’t imagine giving up my goals for something as trivial as professional humiliation. When I start thinking about my shortcomings, I say, ‘You graduated second in your class in medical school. How can you be so bad? If you study harder you’ll get better.’”

“What about the fact that you feel like a failure every minute of the day?”

“I can improve,” I said. “It’s still early in the year. It could all click into place tomorrow.”

“Doctors switch fields,” he said. “Surgeons go into anesthesiology. Internists become allergists. You earned your degree. No one would take that away from you.”

“No,” I said. “I’m no quitter.”

“I’m only being hypothetical,” Leo said. “I’m only thinking of you and what could make you a happier person.”

“In the short run,” I snapped.

“No,” said Leo. “In the long run.”

“I’m no quitter,” I repeated.

RAY WAS WAITING on the stoop when we returned, smoking a cigarette that he snuffed out as soon as I appeared. He was wearing a shiny black quilted parka and a black watch cap that did nothing but suggest burglar and call attention to his nose. He stood up and said, “I paged you, but you didn’t answer.”

“I wasn’t at the hospital.”

“You remember me, I’m sure,” said Leo.

“The nurse,” said Ray. “Of course. How ya doin’?”

I pointed to the streak of ash on the granite step behind him and asked if he’d been smoking.

“First time in a decade,” he said, “which I blame on some very disturbing news I received one hour ago.” He stared at Leo for several long seconds before adding, “It’s kind of personal. I was hoping to talk to Alice in private.”

I said, “Leo’s very easy to talk to. Much better than I am.”

“I hope no one died,” said Leo.

“Nothing like that,” said Ray. “It’s closer to an emotional crisis—some facts that have come to light. And I didn’t have any supper, so I was hoping Alice might keep me company while I grab some nachos grande and a beer.”

Leo checked with me. I nodded once reassuringly, and he trudged inside.