CHAPTER THIRTY
I WASN’T BRAVE, BUT I WAS SMART—IF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT is any indicator, which Pop and Uncle Tom repeatedly told me it wasn’t. Fortunately, courage wasn’t a prerequisite for medical school. For inspiration, I kept the image of the French doctor active in my mind through all my years of study.
It was spring 1991, and I was in the final year of my fellowship. Pediatric oncology was my specialty; it was the one that least appealed to Collie the boy—he lusted after gynecology—but it would be a feather in the cap of my glowing, fine young manhood.
I was doing okay. I decided to study medicine at Harvard, despite Uncle Tom’s everlasting disdain. All my life I’d been made daily aware of my privilege by others—You’ve been given the whole world, Collie, being everyone’s favorite refrain. By everyone, I mean everyone except Pop and Uncle Tom, who never could be bothered with received wisdom, and the Falcon, who considered the world to be his and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.
But as far as the rest, it seemed all anyone ever really wanted from me was the appearance of gratitude and seriousness, and a simple set of scrubs took care of all that—the world was happier with me than before. The limp didn’t hurt; the ubiquitous presence of an old cane cemented my image as penitent. And although he was not entirely reconciled to my becoming a doctor—I might as well have declared my intention to become a bedbug—the Falcon wasn’t oblivious to my rising-star status at Harvard.
Boston magazine named me the city’s most eligible bachelor; actually, they said I was one of the best catches in the world, which is quite a declaration when you think about it. An anonymous source supplied them with a shot of me at some hospital party, my hair so black and curly that it looked as if I were wearing a French poodle. I found myself holding up the page, looking at it upside down and sideways and seeing something different every time—I was becoming my own Rorschach test.
“Can you see the monkey?” I asked my grandfather, playfully extending the photo across the table for him to view.
“Every time you open your mouth,” he said, barely looking up.
Bam! Talking with the Falcon was still a labyrinth of shut doors. I made a point of seeing him a couple of times a month. He was in his eighties but seemed ageless, was still working with no intention of stopping. But for my visits and the odd dinner party, he ate his meals alone at the dining room table, except for Cromwell, who sat at his elbow, awaiting dessert.
“Aren’t you cute and proud?” the old man flattered away, commandeering me in the hospital corridor during morning rounds.
“Yeah, yeah . . . what do you want, Pop?”
“If it isn’t Dr. Collie Flanagan, the flower of them all. . . .”
Impatiently—I had stuff waiting, important stuff—I reached into my back pocket, pulled out my wallet, and handed over the contents, peeling off bills like so much scorn. I felt a dull thump delivered to the back of my head.
“Keep your dirty Lowell lucre,” Pop said, stinking of whiskey.
“Jesus, Pop.” I felt an anti-WASP diatribe swarming like so many angry bees.
“You think it’s money I’m after, at the expense of being treated like shite beneath your feet? You bloody Baptist, you damned Methodist circuit rider, you Presbyterian bastard . . .”
I gave him all the cash I had, I gave him my credit cards in a vain attempt to stop him before he uttered the final familiar insult—
“Dirty-legged Protestant prince . . .”
I was sagging even as the stinging swarm was receding; Pop was beginning to glory in his swag.
“May I keep bus fare?” I asked. “My car’s in the shop.”
“Jesus, take a cab, for Christ’s sake,” he said with some tenderness, returning a twenty. Immediately, he thought better of things, took back the twenty, and gave me a ten-dollar bill.
I watched him weave down the hall, shouting out happy greetings to all the good-looking nurses—homely women continued to dismay him; he viewed them as a personal affront.
Sometimes it’s a blessing to be blind, he’d say. “Did you see the sourpuss on that one? Why God in His infinite wisdom created the female gargoyle is a matter between Him and Satan. I’m persuaded they struck a deal about time served here on earth, and ugly women are a big part of the penance.”
He disappeared to the sound of feminine laughter, through the exit and down the stairwell, and I prepared to walk into the room of a nine-year-old girl in the last stages of dying, and it was a curious form of relief.
So, you can imagine the situation for yourself: twenty-eight years old, unexpectedly groomed to glistening by medicine, the Man Plan visibly progressing, here and there a rough patch, but it was mostly still water. I had made the calm choice, though I didn’t know it at the time. I thought I was okay, maybe not fully alive but not dead, either, no ocean to drown me, no wave to tip my boat.
I had this growing thought that catastrophe strikes but once and then you’re off the hook for life. The monstrous event and its sticky aftermath were behind me. I had every intention of letting convention take hold, tightening its pleasant grip around my neck until I no longer felt the need to breathe, until I became implacably mild.
Dr. Collie Flanagan, my decency a belt to hold my pants in place, incandescently ordinary but for all that money, a glimmer of bland pride, shining and uneventful as a weedless lawn.