Jake saluted comically and went out to the front porch for firewood while Karen hauled out sleeping bags and blankets, moved the butler’s table out of the way, and opened the convertible sofa. When Jake had the fire roaring, they moved the mattress onto the floor in front of the fireplace. Karen downed her martini in record time and handed Jake the empty glass.
“Could you freshen this up?” she requested. Jake returned promptly with a full glass and a shaker.
Karen sat cross-legged on the mattress and drained half of her glass, staring blankly into the fire. Jake sat down next to her, brushed her hair aside gently, and kissed her neck.
“Got my period today,” said Karen.
Jake let her hair fall back in place. The two clinked glasses and bottoms-upped. Jake refilled the stemmed glasses from the shaker. “You know,” he said, “they say you should never drink when you’re under stress.”
“Shtresh?” said Karen, rolling her head and hiccupping. “What shtresh?”
They laughed a little, and Jake put his arm around Karen. “Do you suppose,” said Karen, “anybody in their forties has a life anything like they thought they’d have when they were eighteen?”
“Sure,” said Jake, “people in totalitarian countries.”
Karen and Jake talked for an hour about the ambitions of their youth and the realities of their approaching middle age. Karen had dreamed of a career in government until she became disillusioned with politics. Somewhere along the line she had concluded that there were a lot more bad guys than good guys in public life, a phenomenon that Jake attributed to the fact that bad guys were by nature more attracted to power. Jake said he had hoped someday to work with “really heavy” musicians, making original, nongeneric music. “But if that doesn’t happen by the time you’re forty, it probably ain’t in the cards.”
Karen sighed. “Neither one of us ever set out to make a lot of money.”
“Yeah,” said Jake, “and that part of the plan’s goin’ great. You had anything to eat?”
He heated up a can of tomato soup while Karen tossed a salad. They ate in front of the fire, saying little. When they finished eating, they put the dishes in the sink, took off their clothes, and donned matching white cotton yoga pajamas. They crawled into two sleeping bags that Karen had zipped together into one and piled a mountain of blankets on top. They lay on their left sides, facing the fire, Jake caressing Karen from behind.
“I feel like I’ve failed everybody,” said Karen.
“You haven’t failed anybody, sweetheart. You’re just a little down tonight.”
“Aren’t you going to feel like you missed out if we never have a child?” asked Karen.
“How can I miss something I never had?” replied Jake.
“Don’t you want someone to carry on the family name?”
“I don’t know my family name. My ancestors came from Eastern Europe and somebody changed it somewhere along the line. It probably started out Haysoporitchsky or something like that.”
“But what about perpetuating your genes? Don’t men have a thing about that? My dad does.”
“Well,” said Jake, “I’m not that crazy about my genes. My dad had a stroke before he was fifty, my mom had arthritis and liver disease, and my brother did eight years for aggravated assault. Hardly worth perpetuating.”
“But all that talent…”
“Nothing but a cheap trick,” said Jake, grabbing a log from next to the mattress and shot-putting it into the fireplace.
Karen got up onto her left elbow and felt the heat from the fire with the palm of her right hand. The shadows of her fingers danced on Jake’s face. “They say people need to have children to be truly fulfilled.”
Jake snorted. “Who says that? The editors of Parents magazine?” He reached around to Karen’s left shoulder and rolled her toward him. He held her face in his hands. “Listen to me. If you want to keep trying to get pregnant, that’s fine with me. If you don’t, that’s fine, too. I don’t need anybody but you, Alto. Never have, never will. If I’m sad about anything, it’s the thought that some kid is missing out on having a great mom. But what the hell, that’s the kid’s loss.”
Karen pushed Jake over on his back, nestled her head just below his collarbone, and draped her left leg over his. She pulled his left arm around her like a blanket.
“Hold me like this all night,” she said.
“You still feel bad about Larry, don’t you? You still feel responsible.”
“I missed something,” said Karen. “There’s something I haven’t thought of.”
“You’ll think of it.”
“It’s too late. I’ve blown it.”
Jake closed his eyes. As he drifted off, he could feel Karen’s warm tears puddling on his chest.
PART III
“Nobody can hurt you but your so-called friends.”
—JOHNNY LITTLEJOHN
CHAPTER
26
In her dream, Karen was in a dark, cavernous parking garage, searching for her car. The garage floor was covered with broken glass. She was in a hurry to get somewhere, but she couldn’t remember where. Every time she saw what she thought was her car, it changed into something else. Finally, she found her Volvo, but she couldn’t get the key into the door lock. It got very dark in the garage, and she had the feeling she was being watched. She turned around. A man with one eye was standing behind her, staring. She was terrified. The eye blinked, and she woke up. She had a distinct feeling the dream was trying to tell her something, but any chance she had of interpreting it vanished when she opened her eyes.
Jake sat in front of the fire, in lotus position, still wearing his yoga pajamas. Karen sniffed; no coffee was being made. Good. Jake’s coffee was the worst.
“Hey, Swami, you want your nonworking wife to brew up some Java?”
“Om,” said Jake.
“’At’s where the ’art is,” said Karen in a Cockney accent. She popped up and shuffled into the kitchen. The kitchen felt much colder than the living room. But for some reason, Karen enjoyed the familiarity of the little kitchen more than usual, in spite of the chill. The cupboard contained instant coffee, ground decaf, and a small foil bag of fresh, whole gourmet coffee beans, acquired for special occasions. “I’m in no hurry to go anywhere,” she said out loud, and grabbed the foil bag. As the water heated up, she sat in the window seat and contemplated the sky. It was a bright, clear day, but apparently frigid. The slush from the previous day was frozen solid. Frost crystals embellished the window.
When the water was near boiling, Karen turned on the electric grinder and poured in the coffee beans. The kitchen was filled with a mellow, extravagant fragrance. Karen made the coffee using a French press, mixing the freshly ground beans with the boiling water, letting it brew, and then removing the grounds from the coffee by pushing a straining device attached to a plunger through it. As the coffee brewed, she warmed her hands on the burner of the electric stove and looked around at her kitchen. The floral pattern of the linoleum floor had footpaths worn into it. The countertops were nicked, the wallpaper was passé. Yesterday, she and Jake had been “DINKS”—Double Income, No Kids. Now, they were NINKS. Remodeling would have to wait.
Karen hollered, “When’s the bozo coming to fix the furnace?”
“Om,” said Jake. “Om manni padmeh um.”
Karen poured the steaming coffee into two white ceramic mugs and padded back into the living room. She set a mug directly in front of Jake. His visual focus remained on the embers in the fireplace, but she saw his nostrils flare. Karen sat on the edge of the mattress and slurped the hot coffee.
“Reach Nirvana yet, Gunga Din?” she inquired.
Jake smiled and let out a deep breath. He picked up the mug, held it under his nose, closed his eyes and inhaled. “Ah, that’s Nirvana. What’s on the agenda?”
Karen told him she had promised her mother that she would call her father to discuss his prostate cancer, a prospect she viewed with the same eager an
ticipation she had for major dental work. The house needed big-time cleaning. She needed to buy a few magazines, maybe some Chinese food for dinner. No gig tonight, they could rent a movie.
Jake put his coffee mug down, held his hands in “air guitar” playing position, tossed his head back, and sang, “Born to be wiiild!” Karen laughed and gulped the coffee. Jake often expressed amazement that Karen could gulp down beverages that scalded his tongue if he sipped them.
As they finished their second mug of coffee, the furnace repairman, who turned out to be a woman, arrived. Dealing with repair people, male or female, was Jake’s job. Karen disappeared upstairs. The furnace repairwoman quickly determined that the cause of the problem was a burned-out fuse, something Jake could have, and but for his funk of the previous evening would have, figured out. Fifty bucks for a service call, down the drain. He paid with cash and went upstairs to check on Karen.
“What are you doing?” he demanded as he entered the bedroom.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m obsessing.” Karen was sitting cross-legged in the middle of their king-sized bed, with the photocopies of Larry’s files spread out around her. “This reference to the hospital billing conspiracy, it’s driving me nuts. File number 3,” she said, grabbing the file with both hands and shaking it, “it’s nothing but dates and numbers and dollar amounts. It couldn’t just be a mistake. Larry was too careful. It can’t mean nothing. Maybe Larry was playing one last stupid practical joke before, as he used to put it, his number went onto that big balance sheet in the sky. It makes me want to scream. It’s lucky he’s dead or I’d kill him.”
Jake grabbed the folder firmly and yanked it out of her hands. “Go call your dad,” he said. “You’re not obsessing. You’re stalling. Call your dad now, and I’ll get your Volvo back from the shop.”
Karen stuck her lower lip out in a pout. “Sometimes you can be so wack,” she said.
“So wack?” said Jake. “What’s that mean?”
“Such a bummer” She stomped out of the bedroom, down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Gene Decker was dressed in pajamas and a terry-cloth bathrobe at 11:00 in the morning when the telephone rang.
“Oh, hi, Tootsie Roll”
Karen ground her teeth at the sound of the hated pet name. She asked her father how he was doing, how was work, what was the weather going to be like for the Bears’ Sunday game. It seemed impossible to find a comfortable way to segue into a discussion of his prostate cancer.
“You didn’t call me to discuss football, did you?”
“No, Dad. I called to discuss the …” She paused. “The medical situation.”
“You’re pregnant!” he exclaimed.
Karen rolled her eyes. “No, Dad, I’m not pregnant. I meant your medical situation.”
“What do you mean?”
When Karen told him she knew about his prostate cancer, he seemed upset and embarrassed that she had found out about it. Maybe, thought Karen, at some level he did not like the idea of his daughter thinking about her father’s possible incontinence or impotence. She decided to fudge on how she had found out, since the idea of his ex-wife and his daughter chatting about his problems over lunch would probably make him even more uncomfortable.
“One of the doctors who saw you at the Jefferson Clinic told me. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Dad. You know, every man gets it eventually, if he lives long enough. Practically all men in their eighties have it, but very few die of it.”
Mr. Decker allowed that he did not know those things, which made Karen annoyed at the doctors who had seen him. Couldn’t the doctors have educated her father a little about the disease?
“What are they recommending, Dad?”
Mr. Decker had already been to see four physicians. His internist had detected the tumor during a routine physical exam. The internist had referred Mr. Decker to a urologist, who had done a blood test for prostate specific antigen and performed a biopsy of the tumor. The malignancy confirmed, the urologist had recommended an immediate prostatectomy, complete removal of the prostate gland.
Her father cleared his throat nervously. His internist had also referred him to an oncologist, a cancer specialist, at the Jefferson Clinic. The oncologist had recommended hormonal treatments, but had also had him seen by a radiation oncologist, a type of cancer specialist who used radiation to treat tumors, at the clinic. The radiation oncologist had recommended radiation therapy, which Karen knew carried a risk of damaging the bowel and leaving her dad with diarrhea for the rest of his life.
“I didn’t know I had to make a choice. None of the doctors said that their treatment was in lieu of the others. The surgery is scheduled for the week after Christmas. The radiotherapy starts in January and goes for three months. I have an appointment with Dr. Caswell next week to find out when I start the hormonal treatments.”
“Stay away from Caswell,” warned Karen.
“Why? What’s wrong with him?”
Karen struggled with the question for a moment. It presented her with another ethical dilemma. Had she learned about Dr. Caswell’s nefarious activities in the course of her job, so that she was bound to keep the information confidential? Had Larry passed the information to her in her capacity as the hospital’s attorney or merely as a friend? She still did not know whether the files implicated her client, the hospital. Oh, the hell with it, she thought. This is my father.
“Dr. Caswell will sell you whatever makes him the most money. He doesn’t care about anything else.” She proceeded to tell her father the history of Dr. Caswell’s lucrative practice, how Dr. Caswell made treatment decisions solely on the basis of maximizing his own reimbursement. She also told the story of learning about Caswell from Larry Conkel’s secret files.
“That’s quite a shocking story, Tootsie Roll,” said Gene. Karen winced. Her father said, “Dr. Caswell seems like a decent fellow.”
Karen considered for a moment what she could say to persuade her father. “Dad,” she said, “you seemed to be quite uncomfortable with the risks of surgery. Are you worried about impotence?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did Dr. Caswell tell you impotence was an automatic consequence of the hormonal therapy?”
He paused. “No.”
“Did your urologist tell you whether the tumor has developed beyond the capsule of the prostate gland itself?”
“No.”
“Do you know if it has metastasized?”
“No, I don’t know.”
Karen had heard enough. “Dad, I’m going to send you some things in the mail. Pamphlets and copies of articles about prostate cancer. Did you know that the vast majority of men who get it die of something else?”
“Yes, I knew that,” said Gene. Karen suspected he was lying, so as not to appear completely uninformed.
“I’ll also send you the name and phone number of a urologist in Evanston I know personally. He has a superb reputation, and he doesn’t do any surgery himself. He’ll give you an objective opinion. You can trust him.”
“What do I do about my appointment with Dr. Caswell?”
“Stay away from Caswell!” commanded Karen.
“Okay, Tootsie Roll And thanks, I really appreciate this. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Karen did not hesitate. “Yes, as a matter of fact there is, Dad. Please stop calling me Tootsie Roll. I’ve hated that name ever since I was thirteen.”
“What am I supposed to call you?”
“Try ‘Karen’.”
“Okay … Karen. That sounds funny.”
Karen swallowed hard. This conversation was going much better than expected. She decided to gamble a little, try for some actual intimacy.
“Dad, I also wanted to tell you I’m sorry I was such a bitch on Thanksgiving.”
Mr. Decker chuckled. “You were, weren’t you? Well, that’s okay, I’m sorry too, Toots … Karen. I know Mom didn’t leave me because of anything you said to her. That was
an asinine thing for me to say.”
Karen responded that it was unfair for her to have said he ignored the family, and that they would probably never know exactly why her mother left.
“Not true,” said her father. “I know.” It appeared that he had known his wife was involved with another man months before she moved out. He even knew who the man was, and named him: Leonard Herwitz. Karen did not disclose her own prior knowledge.
“You never told Mom you knew?” she asked.
“No, and she’ll not hear it from you!”
Karen swore to secrecy. Her father asked her how her job was going. Ordinarily she would have said fine and let it go at that, but on this occasion she opened up. She told her father about her forced leave of absence and about her failure to either resolve her suspicions about Larry’s case or do anything about the clinic’s abuses.
“So Larry’s file says the hospital was in a conspiracy with the Jefferson Clinic?”
“Well, not exactly,” said Karen. “What it says is, ‘Clinic fraud billed pats, hosp billing consp—see file 3.’ Then file 3 just has a lot of numbers and dates.”
“And you think ‘consp’ means conspiracy?” he asked.
“Sure. What else could it mean?”
“Conspectus,” said Gene Decker. “Probably, file 3 contains a billing conspectus.”
Karen felt her stomach bounce like a plane that had just hit an air pocket. “What the hell is a conspectus?”
“It’s a digest—a summary,” her father explained, obviously pleased with the opportunity to instruct his daughter. “I would say that file 3 is most likely a digest of the main information from the hospital billing records on the patients who were billed fraudulently by the clinic.”
Karen closed her eyes as a light went on—a light that, to her chagrin, illuminated her own misstep. A wave of intense discomfiture passed through her. Of course. There it was.
“Dad, I, uh, gotta go.”
“Oh? Okay. And for what it’s worth, tell Jake I’m sorry about Thanksgiving. I know I’m out of sorts a lot. Sometimes I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
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