A Friend of the Family

by Lauren Grodstein

  “I was thinking, though, I was thinking” — everyone piling into the SUV—“I was thinking maybe of getting some Nets tickets. LeBron James is in town. Laura, you’d be welcome to come.”

  “Well, and that sounds great, Dad, but there’s a gallery I want to show her, up in Harlem.” At least he looked apologetic. “The one that does those nature paintings I told you about? The one with the owners from Piermont?”

  Nature paintings? Piermont? I dimly remembered having this discussion when we were fighting over whether Alec could or would transfer to the New School with a little help from a patient of mine who sat on the board. Alec had said there was a gallery in Harlem that might be interested in his work and therefore he wasn’t even going to think about school until he found out what was what on the professional front, didn’t we understand that? By this point it was clear that we weren’t going to pay for a sentimental education in Europe and so I steamed that I didn’t want to hear about galleries until we’d figured out his college plans. Inside, I was raging like a lunatic, but outside, I was as calm as a man who’d recently gotten home from an hour’s worth of psychotherapy with his wife could possibly pretend to be.

  “We’ll just take the bus home,” Laura said. “You don’t have to worry.”

  “Sounds great,” Iris said. “C’mon, Pete. They’ll be fine.”

  “But —,” I said. “But—okay.” I suppose I knew when I was defeated. I closed the door but powered down the window so I could continue talking at my son. “Listen, do you need some money?” I asked, which was code for, You’re still just a child, you know, don’t get ahead of yourself. Which was code for, Don’t you forget you still live in my house.

  “No, dad,” Alec said. “I’m cool.”

  “You are? You’re cool?”

  But before he could say another word, Iris had jolted us out of the garage and onto Fifty-fifth Street, east toward the FDR, and because there was no traffic, because it was a balmy January Saturday, because there was nothing to keep us in New York City except my son wandering around with a white-bellied baby killer, within fifteen minutes we were on the Palisades.

  “Pete, you want to go to the Meadowlands tonight?” Joe asked me, turning around to face me in the backseat. In the very rear of the car, Neal was nuzzling the Red Menace.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But don’t you want to see LeBron James? We could get some floor seats, that can’t be too hard.”

  “Not tonight, Joe.”

  “But—”

  “I said I don’t want to see the goddamn game,” I said, and I brooded the whole of the Palisades, down Maycrest Avenue, and all the way to our front door.

  THE BIG YELLOW house on Pearl Street was always, if we dwelled on it, too big. Victorians were built for Victorians, which is to say people born into an age without either reliable birth control or a postwar infertility epidemic; we had four bedrooms. Each was small except for the master bedroom, which the previous owners had made by merging two of the larger bedrooms; they had also added on, at presumably great expense, a four-piece bath. But the rest were no larger than certain walk-in closets I had seen, and when I got home to an empty house, I peered into each of them, looking for who or what, of course, I had no idea. My son’s bedroom had been stripped bare before he set off for college, stripped down to the duct tape he’d used to tape up his huge Escher poster and his Kandinsky prints, and now that he’d moved back home, the floor was cluttered with the Bed Bath and Beyond crap we’d bought him before his initial departure: cardboard dressers, toiletry caddies, a gorgeous Samsonite suitcase. His bed, an extralong double that took up three-quarters of the floor space, was sloppy and unmade, sheets crumpled back to reveal the stained white mattress we’d gotten him as a high school freshman, when he’d cracked six foot two. I surveyed the mess, then called Elaine’s cell phone. She didn’t pick up.

  It was dimmer than it should have been; one of the lights in the overhead fixture had burned out. I took a step stool from the hall closet. I changed the lightbulb. How many internists does it take to change a lightbulb? Just one on this quiet January night. I screwed in the bulb and put back the step stool. We’d moved into this house from the two-bedroom in Morningside Heights that we’d rented for a song. I was a third-year resident, Elaine was working on her dissertation, and no babies, no babies — but we saw this house and it was too big and too expensive and we were well aware of all that. Yet the thought of all these rooms filled with our future family made us feel safe enough, I think, to try it anyway.

  I pulled up the mattress cover, the dark blue sheets on my son’s bed. I pulled back the curtains; 5 p.m. and dark out already like midnight, but the lamplights on Pearl Street were glowing. I wanted to clean up the rest of his room but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know where his stuff belonged, and I didn’t want to open his closet and uncover whatever secret things he kept there. Instead, I sat down on his floor.

  The Sterns had moved to Round Hill two years after we did, bought themselves a large, fancy house without worrying how they’d pay for it — Iris had just scored a job at Merrill — or how they’d fill it with children. A sprawling split-level, five bedrooms plus the rec room, and I remembered how Elaine and I oohed and aahed our way through it on our first tour, which Joe and Iris led hand in hand. Then we sat at their new kitchen table, glass and brass, and wolfed down pepperoni pizza.

  “Iris isn’t convinced we’ll like it here,” Joe said, perhaps less diplomatic than he should have been considering we were the ones who’d talked them into moving to Round Hill. But Joe was never particularly diplomatic on more than one beer.

  “No, that’s not what I said,” Iris said. “I’m just still wondering if we should have bought in the city. Or just thinking about what it would have been like.”

  “Did you really want to live in the city?” Elaine asked. This was 1984, after all, when Columbus Avenue was still considered a frightening thoroughfare and only the suicidal strayed north of 125th.

  “Well, I always thought it might be nice to have something in the Village. Maybe a little townhouse, I don’t know.”

  “Not enough space,” Joe said.

  “I didn’t want to live in New York City, anyway,” said Laura, who appeared in the kitchen doorway with a book jammed under her arm. Her red hair was long and stringy, falling in front of her eyes. I guess she was eight then. “It’s dirty there.”

  “It’s not dirty, sweetie,” said Iris. “It’s interesting.”

  “There’s garbage on the street.”

  Iris shot me a look, as though I was supposed to defend her. I rose to the occasion. “It might have been a decent investment. And a fun place for you, Laura.”

  “We wouldn’t have had enough bedrooms,” Joe said.

  “It would not have been fun,” Laura said.

  “All right, all right,” Iris said. “We were never going to live in the city, I get it.”

  “How many bedrooms does a family really need?” I asked.

  “Five?” Joe shrugged. “Six?”

  “Six?”

  “It’s hard to know,” he said, passing Laura a slice of pizza, “but we might end up needing six.”

  My wife and I met each other’s eyes, trying not to seem aghast. Six bedrooms. Five children. Here we were on year four of inexplicable infertility, and the idea of even one child seemed like such a miracle. Iris stood, grabbed two beers from the fridge, cracked them both, and handed one to me. Our fingers brushed against each other’s.

  “Well, you guys have a bunch of bedrooms, right?” she asked. “Six may sound like a lot, but, you know … these Round Hill houses are spacious.”

  Elaine and I looked at each other. What overkill, what narcissism, what stupid hopes we’d had. “Our bedrooms are small,” I said. Joe and Iris knew we wanted children, but I don’t think they ever realized just how much. This was not the sort of thing one talked about in t
hose days, not even to one’s closest friends. And I didn’t want to embarrass my wife.

  We were all quiet then as we watched Laura dissect her pizza, handing the pepperoni to Elaine, who quietly tucked it into a napkin. I remember thinking that Elaine would have such fun with a daughter. A long-haired, bookish daughter.

  “You done with your pizza, sweetheart?”

  “I’m not really hungry,” Laura said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not even one piece?” Joe asked.

  Laura poked at her slice a bit sadly. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “You don’t have to apologize,” said Elaine, pushing the girl’s stringy red hair softly out of her eyes.

  “Thanks,” Laura said, sliding out of her chair, giving Elaine a grateful smile. I watched my inexplicably infertile wife watch Laura leave the kitchen. That night I held her close to me and told her that I was so sorry.

  IT’S ALMOST MIDNIGHT now and I watch the lights in the house snap off one by one. Kitchen, television, living room, hall. My son’s room, the former master bedroom, where Elaine can no longer bear to sleep — those are the lights that go off last. I sit by the window and inspect the house for a while. It’s time to repaint the siding, really, or even replace it, and even though it’s ugly, we should probably go vinyl, for upkeep’s sake. If Elaine really intends to kick me out, I’ll make arrangements to do this before I leave. It’s not the sort of thing she likes to deal with, hiring contractors, comparing estimates. There’s a guy across the street from my office in Bergentown, he has a siding and trim business, and he’d probably do a decent job for not too much money. I’ll call him Wednesday morning, after I know what’s what. I wonder if they’ll be able to side it this shade of green.

  I’m interrupted in my musings by a knock on the door, and my heart flips for a minute. The Craig boy? Has he followed me here? No, even more unexpected: my wife, holding two travel mugs. “Tea,” she says. She’s wearing sweatpants, a denim jacket. In the months I’ve been living in the studio, the months of our marriage’s strange illness, she’s never visited me this late at night before.

  “That’s nice. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Like everyone in Round Hill, Elaine’s having a hard time putting aside the accusations against me. I think this hurts her even more than it hurts me.

  “I put some honey in it,” she says.

  “That’s great,” I say. “Thank you.”

  My travel mug is a party favor from Janene Rothman’s kid’s bat mitzvah. Elaine watches me while I drink; she’s still standing there on the rickety wood landing outside my door. “Do you want to come in?”

  “Iris says Joe’s trying to reach you.”

  “I know.”

  “She says you’re not picking up your phone.”

  “I’m not.”

  “She wants to know why.” Elaine and Iris, former sorority sisters and best of friends, have, of course, suffered a weakened bond in the aftermath of everything that happened, which I find sad. Iris is no longer prone to just stopping by our house during a jog around the neighborhood, as far as I can tell, nor do they go on joint shopping expeditions, nor do they meet at the Garland Chophouse for the occasional postwork drink. But it seems at least they still chat sometimes.

  “I don’t feel like talking to him, I guess.”

  “Do you know why he’s calling?” She holds the travel mug to her chest, to the space between her breasts.

  I haven’t told anyone, not even her. But back when I was taking care of Roseanne Craig, I said to Joe, I have a patient who seems a little depressed, and ignoring medical ethics entirely, I even told him her name. Joe was my best friend, and sometimes we talked like that. We used to talk about everything. Joe said, You should check for several things besides depression. You shouldn’t take it for granted that she’s depressed. I ignored him. I had other things on my mind. And now there’s the malpractice case, and all Joe has to say to her family’s lawyer is, I told him so. I told him what to check for. If he’d listened to me, the outcome would have been fine. And then the judge would find me guilty, and I would have to pay up, big-time. I would have to pay for all these wrongs I’ve done to the Craigs, but also, and maybe more importantly, to Joe.

  “What is it?” Elaine asks. “Maybe he’s reaching out in friendship?” It amazes me still, her tendency toward optimism.

  “I doubt that.”

  “Well, Iris wanted me to let you know,” she says. “Maybe you should change your mind and pick up the phone.” Her tone is gentle, but she has an unsure look on her face. She’s going to see the lawyer in two days. What will Alec think when I’m homeless, wifeless, jobless? Will he feel sorry for me then?

  “Do you want to come in?” I ask again.

  She shakes her head no, pushes a stray piece of blondish hair behind her ear, and retreats back down the steps. I watch her to make sure she gets back in safely, and then I sit down on the steps to consider re-siding the house and drink my tea.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MY FATHER DIED on a cloudy, windless Monday, Valentine’s Day, 2005. His passing was more unexpected than Joe’s father’s, and less melodramatic — exactly how I’d like to go out sometime in the blurry future. He’d taken my mother for a romantic two-for-one lobster lunch at Geno’s on the Hudson (damn the kashrut on a holiday named for a saint), come home, sat down in his old cracked chair in the foyer. When my mother came to bring him his ritual glass of ginger ale before the Dr. Phil show, she found him cold and pale, nose tipped up as if he was sleeping. If he hadn’t been so cold, she said, she might not have known at first. Myocardial infarction.

  My father was eighty-one years old, healthy as far as eighty-one-year-olds went, a cautious man, a gentleman. He was the person who taught me right from wrong, who took the jigsaw puzzle of the world and made it into a simple picture: work hard, stay safe, do better than your own dad. When the cold war ended and the Soviet Union finally fell, my father celebrated his vindication with a small glass of vodka, the only irony I’d ever known him to perform. My mother called me on my cell phone and said, “I think something’s wrong with your father,” not because she didn’t know exactly what was wrong, but because she didn’t want to upset me. I drove to Yonkers more slowly than I should have. Phil was already there when I arrived.

  “He died forty minutes ago,” my brother said at the door, his face maybe a bit more pale than usual, but calm. He was dressed in the callously expensive way of a partner at a Manhattan law firm: wide-wale corduroys, French-cuffed shirt, pale blue cashmere sweater. There was a trickle of something whitish, sputum, near his neat ivory collar. Phil had tried to give my father mouth-to-mouth. “Mom’s with him at Montefiore.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A heart attack,” Phil said. “The EMTs took him to Montefiore.”

  “And you think he’s dead?” I said, because it was just like that for my brother to announce that our father was dead, and just like that for me to fight with him about what should have been indisputable fact. Because I was one year older, and I was the doctor, and I was the one who would have known whether my father was dead. Not Phil.

  “As soon as he got to the hospital,” my brother said. “They tried to revive him—they had defibrillators, but I guess it was too late. I was waiting for you to get here.” He eyed me. “What took you so long, anyway? Was there traffic?”

  “What do you mean, he’s dead?” I was the doctor, but this made as much sense to me as it would have to a child. My father wasn’t dead. In the past five years we’d gotten his LDL down to 130, his HDL elevated, his triglycerides stable. He had done a CT scan less than a year ago, showed a promising lack of calcium in the arteries, and had no C-reactive protein. He was on Sectral, a beta-blocker, and a low dosage of Lasix, a diuretic, so we’d managed to get his blood pressure down to 140/90, which wasn’t too terrible, all things considered. And I was on him about his diet. I’d gotten him to cut out the occasional cigar. And therefore he
was still alive.

  “Right there,” my brother said, pointing to the worn leather armchair, the television, muted but still turned on. Phil drew himself up to his full six foot three. “Let’s get to the hospital.”

  “I don’t—”

  “He’s dead, Pete,” Phil said. “The EMTs couldn’t resuscitate him. So let’s get out of here, okay? I don’t want to leave Mom by herself.” He looked down at his sweater, caught sight of the sputum, wiped at it disgustedly with his sleeve.

  My phone rang and it was Elaine. I told her what had happened, and she let out a yelp of surprise or anguish and burst into tears. She said she’d meet us at Montefiore, but for some reason I could not imagine making it to Montefiore. I sat down in my father’s chair.

  “So you’re not gonna go?”

  “Just give me a second, Phil, okay?”

  He shook his head, paced around the small living room, breathing out his nose forcefully, like an animal. I pretended not to notice. I felt the smooth leather of the chair under my arms, imagined I could still feel the warmth of my father’s body pressing down on the chair’s coils and springs.

  “You were stuck in traffic, Pete?”

  “Phil, you’re not blaming me for this.”

  “Let’s just not make it any worse than it already is,” he said. He wouldn’t stop pacing around the room. He was leaving a trail in the deep burgundy pile. “Let’s get to Mom.”

  He was blaming me for this. I guess I understood; I was blaming myself. I closed my eyes. I could not imagine making it to the hospital. I could not imagine leaving this chair, this carpet, this apartment where I’d grown up. It smelled like a million meals, pot roast, Sabbath candles, my childhood, defibrillators, EMTs.

  “We’ve got to go, Pete,” Phil said. “Or I’ll just go without you, if you can’t handle it.”

  At the hospital I held my mother and looked at my father’s body, stroked his hand, saw the gray in his skin and his eyes, but it was only after I talked to the doctors in the ER—plaque rupture, arrhythmia, nothing anyone could prevent, just like half a million deaths a year in the United States — it was only after I’d absolved myself that I truly believed my dad was gone.