Chapter Thirty-Nine

May

All of a sudden I was homesick. I had been on the phone talking to my brother Tim. He’d been at Aunt Liz’s seventieth birthday party and told me how our cousin Eddie had chugged a beer while standing on his head. He was the hit of the party. We had cousins who were pilots, cops, soldiers, politicians, and lawyers, but no one cared about them. Everyone wanted to see Eddie chug a beer upside down—again, and again, and again.

“About the sixth time,” Tim told me, “Eddie’s standing there, upside down, when Denny pours a glass of ice water down his pant leg. Eddie gasps and sucks half a beer up his nose. The next day he has the worst headache in the history of mankind.”

“Worse than yours the day after Sean Walsh’s bachelor party?”

“I told you never to mention that day again. Anyway, Eddie goes to the doctor and finds out he’s got a sinus infection. Eddie says it’s too bad he wasn’t drinking flaming shots: they might have cleared his sinuses right out. The doctor is some Czechoslovakian or Nicaraguan or something. He isn’t used to the Irish. He says Eddie is an idiot and needs to see a psychiatrist. Eddie tells him he is a psychiatrist and can he have a professional discount? The doctor gives him a prescription for an antibiotic and tells him next time he gets an infection from drinking beer upside down he should find another doctor. Eddie says, ‘Thanks, Einstein.’”

As Tim told the story I could see the party: my brothers standing together, beers in their hands, heads thrown back, laughing; my aunts with their fox stoles wrapped around their necks and glasses of Old Fashioneds or Rob Roys on the table in front of them; two dozen little kids running around the house dodging between the clumps of adults scattered throughout the kitchen and dining room.

I hadn’t seen Aunt Liz in two years, hadn’t seen Eddie in four. When we moved to Rochester, Patti and I had left behind ten brothers, three sisters, nineteen aunts, fourteen uncles, and almost a hundred cousins. It had taken me a while, but I was finally starting to understand that the most important things in my life were back in Chicago. Patti had known this all along and had been waiting patiently for me to reach the same conclusion.

Back in January I had begun writing letters to orthopedic surgeons in Chicago. I called the chairman of orthopedics at Loyola where I went to medical school. I contacted several former Mayo residents who were now practicing in Chicago. Gradually we narrowed our choices down to two: a practice in Oak Park, where we both had been raised, or a practice a little farther west, in Hinsdale.

The Hinsdale practice was preferable in every way but one: the starting salary was terrible. If I accepted their offer I would be the lowest-paid resident to come out of Mayo that year. But what made the practice desirable was the opportunity it offered. For the first year I would still be an indentured servant, but after that I would be an equal partner, free to grow my practice as I saw fit. Ultimately we decided to ignore the lousy pay and accept the Hinsdale offer. We had been poor for so long that one more year of poverty didn’t really matter to us.

 

We had a “new” car, an eight-year-old, wood-paneled Ford station wagon. We had purchased it two weeks earlier from Brian Quinn, a general surgery resident who was moving back to Ireland. The old Battleship, after surviving so many Minnesota winters, had died of spontaneous combustion in our garage one Friday morning. Mr. Jensen came over, looked at the charred mess where the engine used to be, slammed the hood, and “pronounced” it for us.

“It’s over,” he said. “This thing has burnt its last quart of oil. It’s about time you got a new beater anyway. Hell, it’s been almost two years now. You’ve got an image to keep up.”

I thanked him and went in and called the junkyard.

“Jeez, Doc,” Ernie Hausfeld said, “ain’t heard from you in a while. Lemme guess, your new Mercedes’s ashtray is full and you want to trade it in.”

I told him no, I had another car for him.

“You’re the damnedest doctor I’ve ever seen—driving all those junkers. Don’t they pay you guys at Mayo?”

“Yeah, but I spend it all on whiskey and loose women.”

Patti heard this and threw a stick of celery at me. “As if they’d have you,” she said.

“Well,” Ernie said, “it’s the same deal. If you drive it in, you get thirty-five bucks. If we tow it in, you get twenty-five.”

“Come on over,” I said. “The old Battleship has set sail for the last time.”

“It’s called ‘swallowing the anchor,’ Doc.”

“What?”

“Swallowing the anchor. It’s an old Navy term. That’s what we’d say when someone retired: they swallowed the anchor.”

“Yeah, well swallow the anchor, gargle the bilge water, sleep wit’ da fishes, whatever you want to call it, the old girl is dead.”

Four hours later Jimmy pulled into our driveway. He had a big grin on his face.

“How’s it going, Doc? Good t’see ya.”

We shook hands.

“Ernie told me you’re moving to Chicago. That’s too bad. Hell, it won’t be the same around here when you’re gone.” He hitched the winch to the front of the Battleship. “You’re Ernie’s best customer.”

That’s great. That will be my claim to fame: the resident who holds the all-time Mayo record for most cars towed to the junkyard. My parents will be so proud.

When Jimmy had the front of the Battleship off the ground and ready to go he turned to me. “See ya, Doc,” he said. “Too bad we don’t make house calls to Chicago. Guess you’ll have to find a new junkyard.” He waved a hand, hopped in the truck, and pulled out of the driveway, the old, rusted Battleship dangling from the crane.

Eileen watched him drive away. “Why is the man taking our car?” she asked.

“The car doesn’t work anymore, honey,” Patti told her.

“Can’t the man fix it?”

“No, sweetie, the car is dead.”

“Dead,” she repeated. “Dead like Gramma?”

“Yes, like Gramma.”

“Oh, goodie! Can we go to Chicago and have another party when they put the car in the ground?”

“No, Eileen, they don’t put cars in the ground like they do people.”

“Do they just put ’em in a box?”

“No, they don’t put them in a box, either. They just leave them in a junkyard.”

“Did they leave Gramma in—”

“No! Now go talk to your father.”

Eileen looked inquiringly at me.

“Eileen,” I said patiently, “you see, the car is not a person.”

She nodded. “No, it’s a sonna bitch.”

“Eileen! That’s a terrible thing to say,” Patti said. “Where did you hear words like that?”

“That’s what Daddy said yesterday when the car was making the smoke and bad noises.”

Patti looked at me like I had just made smoke and bad noises. “Sometimes Daddy says things he shouldn’t.”

“Like when Notre Dame loses?”

God, the kid didn’t forget anything.

“Yes. Sometimes Daddy says bad things then, too.”

“We should wash his mouth out with soap.”

“Well, maybe we should give Daddy another chance.”

“Maybe Daddy should take this little squealer and drop her in a garbage can.” I grabbed her and lifted her over my head. Eileen screamed and laughed as I held her poised over the garbage can. Mary Kate clapped and said Patrick was a stupid idiot and I should drop him in the garbage can, too. Patrick said Mary Kate was dog poop. Patti asked where we were going to get the money to buy another car. Jimmy came back and said I forgot to give him the title to the Battleship. Eileen saw the tow truck and said our dead car was back and maybe the man would bring our dead Gramma back, too. Mary Kate said Patrick put syrup in the toaster again. Jimmy took the title and said no one ever believes him when he tells them the things that go on at our house. Patti took the screwdriver out of Patrick’s hand and pointed it at Jimmy. I told Jimmy he better take the title and leave before Patti’s parole officer got there. Jimmy walked away, looking back over his shoulder every few steps. Patti told me it wasn’t funny and people like Jimmy should mind their own business. Eileen told Mary Kate that Jimmy was a sonna bitch. Patti turned to me and said, “See what you started?”

 

It was a warm evening in late May, just past sunset. We had driven to Chicago for a dinner to meet my new partners. We had taken Maureen, who was only two weeks old, with us, but left her with Patti’s sister for a few hours. We were cruising slowly down a two-lane road in Hinsdale, looking for the address on the invitation, when we saw the sign “3400” with an arrow pointing left. I turned down a dark, narrow road with huge, gnarled trees rising on either side, arching over the road and blotting out what little daylight was left. Ahead and to our right we could see lights.

“There,” she pointed. “That must be it.”

We came around the last curve, and there, on the crest of the hill before us, stood a brilliantly lit, stately, white-pillared home. I stopped the car and the two of us stared in disbelief. The home was splendid, magnificent, overwhelming. Neither of us had ever seen a home like that. It was like something out of the movies. We turned and looked at each other and then at this mansion in front of us.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Patti whispered, obviously afraid that Thurston Howell III was going to come out dressed in his silk smoking jacket and ascot. “Lovey,” he would call over his shoulder, “some peasants are trespassing on our property.” He would take a sip of his martini and, with a deprecating flick of the wrist, order us to remove ourselves, “and that thing you are driving,” immediately.

“Look,” I said, pointing at the small wooden sign next to the mailbox, “Thirty-four hundred. This is it.”

Patti immediately started smoothing out her dress. She tilted the rearview mirror and checked her hair. “God, I look awful.”

“Sure do,” I said, trying not to laugh.

She slapped me on the shoulder and told me to shut up, that it wasn’t funny, that there was no reason she should have to come to this stupid dinner anyway, that she never should have pulled her hair back that way in the first place, and that she could just kill Eileen for getting purple Magic Marker on her dress.

“You can’t even see it,” I said.

“You can too see it.”

“Then perhaps Madame would like to slip into something more comfortable, oui?” I asked, raising my eyebrows and reaching for her.

“You stay away from me.”

I patted her hand. “You look fine, hon. Stop worrying.” I put the car back in gear and headed up the drive. “Now let’s go meet everyone.”

My new partners couldn’t have been nicer. Their wives were equally gracious and welcoming. Within ten minutes Patti was laughing and chatting away with them like they had grown up together. We had a delightful dinner.

Pat took my arm as we were walking back to our car when the evening was over.

“They seem like nice people,” she said.

“Yeah, they do. I guess we’re pretty lucky to be joining a group like this.”

When we reached our car, I turned back and stared at the house, feeling almost frightened by it.

“It’s huge, isn’t it?” I whispered.

“Yes.”

The two of us stood there, uncertain how to confront the implications of what we were seeing.

“I don’t want us to change,” Patti said, laying her head against my shoulder.

I smiled, amazed at how accurately Patti could articulate my own feelings. We drove old, junky cars. We wore old, worn-out clothes. We never took vacations. We worked like dogs. And yet we didn’t want to change. We already had everything we needed. We already had something so rare, so priceless, that we never wanted to lose it.

I slipped my arm around Patti and kissed her on the neck. “I don’t want us to change, either,” I said.