First, Do No Harm

by Larry Karp

  Oscar blew Murray a Bronx cheer. “Like if birds didn’t have wings they wouldn’t fly. Well, I got papers to show it’s my yard. You don’t like the way I run it, go work someplace else.” Oscar glared at me. “I knew your ol’ man when he didn’t have a pot to pee in, went around in patched shirts, sewed-together pants, holes in his shoes. Go on home and ask him where a pisher like him got money to go to medical school. Tell him Ol’ Os Fleischmann said he paid his way.” Oscar thumped his hairy chest like King Kong. “With the dough I put down to buy his business, that he stole and sold the fuckin’ place out from under me.”

  Murray raised a warning finger in Oscar’s direction, then put a hand on my shoulder. “Cover up your work, Dockie.” Oscar snorted at “Dockie.” “Get a tarp outa the office, write your name on a piece a paper, put the paper on top a the work, lay the tarp over it all. Then come on back tomorra. Every one a them pieces is gonna be right where you left them, I guarantee. Now go on.”

  I took off around the corner toward the office. From behind me I heard Oscar say, “You and what army guarantees?” By the time I got back with the tarp and paper, Murray and Oscar were gone. I covered my work, got on my bike, headed home.

  Halfway down the last block I heard the sax, “Somebody Loves Me.” Harmony listened quietly to my story of the day, until I told her what Oscar said about Samuel walking away in a pinch and leaving Murray with a face full of shit. Then she murmured, “Wonder what business they’re in together,” but stopped as someone came clopping down the cellar steps. Lissa Belmont, carrying a plate before her like a mouse-priest with a sacrificial offering. The bouquet preceded her; my stomach growled. She laughed. “Sounds like Leo would like a cookie.” She held the plate toward me. “I thought the two of you might like a nice vanilla-cinnamon cookie, fresh from the oven.”

  Behind her mother’s back, Harmony stuck out her tongue, crossed her eyes and pulled sideways at the corners of her mouth. I quick-bit into the cookie. Mrs. Belmont set the tray on the table next to the saxophone, then looked from Harmony to me, back again. One corner of her mouth twisted upward, derisive little smile. “My, the two of you—you do look like an old married couple.”

  Before Harmony could go off I said, “Thanks, Mrs. Belmont. Good cookies.”

  “I’ll leave the tray.”

  “You already did.” Harmony’s voice was as sour as her face.

  Mrs. Belmont seemed not to notice. “Just don’t eat too many and spoil your appetite for dinner.” Then she vanished up the stairs.

  Harmony’s eyes followed her all the way. “We look like an old married couple, huh? Bet she baked those damn cookies just to have an excuse to come down and see if we were behaving like a young married couple.”

  That reminded me. I told Harmony about delivering Shannon’s baby the night before. She shrugged. “Happens all the time. Girls who get pregnant go out of town to have the baby, then come back home and tell people they were away at school for a year. Leo, you are so un-hep. You’re such an infant about some things.”

  “That’s not the point. Shannon Herlihy, Harmony? Lily Fleischmann’s blonde, blue-eyed niece?”

  “You never heard of ‘Abie’s Irish Rose’?”

  “All right. But the other woman, ‘Aunt Nancy’. She looked as if she were having the baby.”

  Which didn’t faze my little green-eyed owl. “Bet Aunt Nancy was really Shannon’s mother. She was embarrassed, so she made out like she was the aunt.” Harmony danced around the table, plunked into my lap, draped her arms around my neck. “What do you think my mother’d do if I… Leo, if you got me in the family way would you marry me?”

  “Harmony…”

  Already back on her feet, laughing. “Don’t worry, Leo, I wouldn’t let you. If I had a baby to take care of, I couldn’t be an actress—a real actress, like Ethel Barrymore. Or Helen Hayes. Not like Betty Grable, oh, my stupid mother! Leo, Samuel wasn’t fooling, was he? About paying my way through drama school?” Sudden anguish in her voice, terrible. “He wouldn’t even have to give it to me, he could lend it. I’ll pay him back just as soon as I get into paying roles.”

  “I don’t think Samuel would ever tell you that if he didn’t mean it.” Hope struggled to grab a foothold on her face. “I’m sure he meant it,” I added.

  Harmony nodded. “I think about it every minute I’m down at the Red Cross, rolling those damn bandages with those silly old women.” She paused just long enough to set her jaw. “I swear, Leo, if it turns out he was only kidding, I’ll kill him.”

  Dinner that night was horse steak, nonrationed, inexpensive, nutritious horse. Ramona smiled, all pride, as she served it up. “It’s Heavy Belgian. Harry the butcher says that’s the tastiest breed, nice and tender. He knows the man who raises them for food.” Samuel smiled. I heard his thought: “If I did the shopping we’d be eating prime beefsteak.” But Ramona played strictly according to Hoyle, she did our shopping, we ate horse. “Where were you all afternoon, Leo?” Ramona asked.

  “Fleischmann Scrap. The junkyard.”

  Samuel’s first forkful of Heavy Belgian stopped halfway to his mouth. “What were you doing there all afternoon?”

  I told the music box story, including my stop at Hogue’s Clocks and Anti-cues, but left out the part about Oscar. Samuel looked at me curiously. “You spent all afternoon fixing an old music box?”

  “It’s interesting,” I said. “I thought I only needed to get a missing piece and put it on, but Murray showed me there’s more to it than that. We took the box all apart, now I’m cleaning and polishing it. Then Murray’ll help me get it back together and playing.”

  “I think that’s lovely.” Ramona smiled. “I’d like to hear it.”

  “Harmony said the same…thing.” The look on Ramona’s face was a friction brake on my tongue. According to Ramona, Harmony was too smart for a girl, knew it, and always made sure everyone else knew it.

  Samuel grinned, picked up his fork. “You’re learning, Leo. Do one job, please two women. Can’t argue with that.” He put the neglected chunk of horsemeat into his mouth.

  “I saw Oscar Fleischmann at the junkyard,” I said, and now the look on Samuel’s face stopped me. Fork back down, he waited for me to drop the other shoe. “Oscar told me to ask you where you got money to go to medical school. He said he paid your way, with money he put down to buy your business.” I choked on the part about stealing.

  Samuel launched a derisive hoot. “You believe him?”

  Ramona stopped eating. We sat there, three people on alert that a bomb was scheduled to go off. A no from me would’ve been untrue, a yes out of the question. “I think something happened,” I said. “But not exactly the way Oscar put it.”

  “And you’d like to hear my side?”

  It was ninety degrees in that room when we started dinner, at least ten degrees hotter now. Samuel could heat a room as easily as he could light it. “If you want to tell me,” I said quietly.

  Samuel wiped his mouth with his napkin, glanced at Ramona. She looked like a wax statue. “Fair enough. You know how I…your mother and I came to own an appliance store in downtown Hobart?”

  I knew it all right, chapter and verse. Over the years Samuel had worked his chronicle into a secular parable, always concluding with the watchword of his faith. “Count on yourself. Trust yourself.” Shmuel Feuerstein was twelve the year an epidemic tore through his little town in northern Germany. Typhus, cholera, influenza? No idea, doesn’t matter. Shmuel watched his mother, father, two sisters and a brother go below ground. “We may sorrow,” the rabbi told him. “But we must bend before the inscrutable will of the Lord.” Shmuel’s relatives stole what money his family had, and all the property, then apprenticed the boy to a shoemaker. “Enough school,” his uncle said. “This isn’t America.” One night, Shmuel slipped out of the shoemaker’s house, ran away, somehow made his way across half of Europe, starving, stealing, but never begging. Never. He crossed the Channel to
England, learned the language, became Samuel Firestone. Finally, he scraped together enough money for third-class passage to America. After he landed in New York, he went on a tip to Hobart, two dimes and a nickel in his pocket, talked himself into a job at Walter Shadburn’s appliance store, five bucks a week, room and board. For seven years he lived with Mr. and Mrs. Shadburn and their daughter Ramona; then he and Ramona were married. Not long after, Mrs. Shadburn got sick, abdominal cancer. Doctors shrugged, said nothing to do but wait. Samuel looked after his mother-in-law, seethed over her endless vomiting, raged at her relentless pain. He went sleepless for days at a time, seemed to draw strength from his accumulating fury. “Nothing to do”? When Mrs. Shadburn finally died, he knew what he needed to do. And would do.

  I nodded to Samuel. “Yes.”

  “All right, then. I’d taken night classes for years, finished high school, had a few college credits, top grades. But to get to med school I’d need to go to college full time. I was looking into scholarships and part-time jobs, trying to figure how Ramona and I could live, when one morning Walter didn’t wake up. Now Ramona and I owned the business and the little building it was in. My chance, Leo. I took a day, drove down to New Brunswick, made my case to a dean, got admitted to Rutgers. Our state university, low tuition, great chance of a merit-and-need scholarship. I put the business up for sale, and inside a week I had a buyer, a thousand down, rest to come in a month. I figured with what I’d earn working nights and weekends, the thousand alone’d keep us going all year and then some. School opened the next week. That afternoon while Ramona and I were packing, guess who showed up, ready to buy the store. On the spot.”

  “Not Oscar Fleischmann,” I said. Hard to imagine him as anything other than a junkman.

  “The same.” The memory set Samuel’s face glowing. “For years he’d been telling me I was too big for my britches, a greeny-sheeny punk who thought he was going to be a doctor, ha! But now he wanted to buy my store. “It’s sold,” I told him. He laughed. “Yeah, sure, I heard. Guy’s gonna pay you in a month…maybe. I want your place, gonna put it together with my yard, get traffic goin’ both ways. You don’t need to wait no month to maybe get your dough.” Arm around my shoulder. “Show you.” He pulled a fist full of bills out of his pocket. “See? Cash green. Come down by my lawyer’s this afternoon, walk out with this in your pocket. Then go off with the little bride there, learn how to be a doctor.” I told him sorry, the store was sold. That’s when he started yelling. “Ain’t nothin’ sold ’til the final agreement—looky here.” He counted out bills, slapped them into my hand, closed my fist over them. “Now it’s sold. There’s your downpayment, in cash. This afternoon you get the rest. My lawyer’s Milton Goldfarb, up in the Mainmark Building, third floor. Meet you there, four o’clock.” He pointed at the cash in my hand. “See? I’m trustin’ you.”

  I laughed out loud. Samuel chuckled. “By two o’clock Ramona and I were on the road to New Brunswick. My deal closed with the first buyer right on schedule, and a couple of weeks after that I got a letter from Mr. Goldfarb. They were going to sue me for breach of contract and I’d better return Mr. Fleischmann’s eighteen hundred dollars, fast. I called Goldfarb, asked him what contract? What eighteen hundred dollars?”

  “Your father and Oscar left me in the bedroom, packing, and went outside to talk,” Ramona said in a colorless voice. “I didn’t know the first thing about this until Mr. Goldfarb’s letter came.”

  “So, no witnesses,” Samuel said. “And nothing in writing. The son of a bitch thought he could push some greenhorn kid around. I gave him another think.”

  “It still wasn’t an honest thing to do,” Ramona said quietly.

  “No. It wasn’t. But I played Oscar’s game by his own rules, and beat him. That’s the story, Leo. Would you’ve done differently?”

  “I think I’d’ve told him to take his money and shove it,” I said. “Why give him the satisfaction?”

  Samuel shrugged. “I’d say I walked away a hell of a lot more satisfied than Oscar. If he came here today with his deal I just might do it your way, but remember, I was twenty-two then. Old for a college student in those days, old for medical school. A little longer, I’d’ve had to just forget about going. Those hundred-dollar bills in my hand looked like the ticket to my future.” Samuel leaned closer; little points of gold gleamed on his cheeks and chin. “You never know what you’re going to do ’til you’re there, Leo…and sometimes you surprise yourself.”

  I thought of the circus juggler, seven balls up, go for eight. “If Oscar came to you with the deal today, you’d still try to nail him,” I said.

  Ramona gasped, but Samuel laughed. “Maybe you’re right—okay, enough. Do you think you can fit rounds into your busy schedule tomorrow morning? We’ll get done in plenty of time for you to work with Murray in the afternoon. Promise.”

  “Sure.” I smiled. He made it impossible not to.

  After supper I cleared dishes from the table, started washing them in the sink. The phone rang in the living room. I heard Samuel talking but couldn’t make out words. Then Ramona flew in, reached for her apron on its hook near the door. “I’ll finish, Leo, go on. Samuel wants to take you to a consultation.”

  She looked tired. As she tied on the apron, her hands shook. “I’ll do the dishes,” I said. “I don’t mind missing—”

  She moved to the sink, pushed me aside. Eyes wide, breathing like a dray-ox under full load. One word. “Leo!”

  I swiped my hands over the dishtowel, took off into the living room. Samuel was on his feet, working his collar button shut. “Go put on a white shirt, Leo, good pair of pants. And a tie. Move!”

  His eyes glowed phosphorescent, unnatural. I ran up the stairs, flung my T-shirt and chino pants onto the bed, redressed myself as ordered, was back down inside a minute. Samuel nodded approval, then moved toward the front door. Ramona rushed into the room, held out a trembling hand. “Samuel,” she called. “As long as you’re going in, could you…”

  He ran back, threw an arm around her, kissed her cheek. “Sure, don’t worry.”

  I suddenly realized what Ramona was asking, knew why Samuel cut her off. Almost a year before, I came home from school one afternoon and found my mother on her bed, out cold, needle still in her arm, syringe in her free hand. I checked her pulse, pure reflex, slow but strong. Then I stood over her for I don’t know how long, staring at the little trickle of blood from the puncture site down her arm, onto the sheet. Bathrobe open in front. I started to cover her, but then figured better not. She’d know I’d been there, that I’d seen—Noah’s son, Catch-22. So I left her as I found her, picked up my books, went to Harmony’s, blurted the story. We decided Ramona probably got hooked when she hemorrhaged and needed a hysterectomy after she gave birth to me. Four months in bed afterward, lot of pain. What Harmony and I couldn’t figure was where Ramona got her supply, but now I could stop wondering. I can still see my mother on her bed, unconscious, undraped, as clear right this minute as the day I found her. I’ve never let any doctor give me a dose of narcotic, not even when I broke my arm, or had my appendix out. Some pain, you just bear. The relief’s overpriced.

  Chapter 6

  I scrambled down the front steps after Samuel, across the lawn, into the Plymouth. “You’ll learn a lot from this one,” he shouted, but the way we blasted down the driveway and into the street I wasn’t sure I’d live long enough to learn anything. “Buskin Brown’s daughter, Rhoda. Know her?”

  Rhoda Brown was fifteen, a year behind me in high school. Snotty little thing, always with her nose in the air. When it rained, boys pointed out the windows and yelled, “Hey, Rhoda, watch out you don’t drown.” Her father made a fortune in silk, then moved his money into a shoe chain when silk went bust. L. Buskin Brown, he called himself. People joked that he stuck on the L to make his name sound like a Supreme Court justice’s. “I only know Rhoda a little,” I told Samuel. “Which is more than enough.”

&n
bsp; Samuel laughed. “Most of that family rides pretty high horses.” Then humor faded from his face. “But the girl’s quite sick. Didn’t feel well for a few days, then all of a sudden started running a high fever, got confused, became less and less responsive. Now it sounds as if her heart and kidneys may be failing. I’ve treated that family for years, but Buskin wanted a specialist. He called Art Cornwell, told him Samuel Firestone’s just a G.P., all right for colds and delivering babies. Art went in, couldn’t make a diagnosis, wanted to call me, but Buskin said no, if Art wasn’t good enough—that’s exactly what he said—then a G.P. would only be a waste of time and money. He wanted an expert from New York. So they called the Chairman of Medicine at Columbia, Franz Beckwith. Beckwith told them, “You’ve got Samuel Firestone right there in Hobart, a better diagnostician than anyone in New York or anywhere else. My advice is to call him, fast.”

  Samuel scraped rubber on the curb as he parked in front of the hospital. “How do you know all that?” I asked.

  His eyes blazed; he threw open the car door. “Art told me, when he finally called.”

  The scene in that hospital room was right out of a Victorian novel. Rhoda lay on her back, white face on a white pillowcase, motionless except for rapid, shallow respiration. Her mother sat in a chair next to the bed, sobbing and wringing her hands. I knew Dr. Cornwell, a neatly groomed man with a dark mustache and a professionally distinguished manner. He nodded politely at me. Buskin Brown, more than filling a nicely tailored suit colormatched to his name, looked at Samuel with a peculiar mix of resentment and hope, then noticed me. “What’s this?” he boomed.

  “This is my son Leo,” Samuel said, taking care, I thought, not to echo Brown’s derogatory emphasis on the first word. “Leo is my extern this summer.”