His reply somewhat shattered his Mr Perfect image. It was something like what the hell kind of sonovabitch was I to waste his blankety-blank valuable time when I knew I wouldn’t have the time, etc. I hadn’t heard some of the epithets even in Brooklyn playgrounds.
Anyway, I’ve got to sign off. I’ll mail this on my way to work.
Hope you’re behaving yourself.
Love,
Barney
At Christmas they had so much to catch up on that they talked until 4 A.M. From Barney’s enthusiasm about the intellectual giants he had been exposed to, Laura concluded that the average undergraduate at Columbia was getting a better education than the one at Harvard.
But one thing seemed to be exactly the same at both institutions. The pre-meds were, almost to a man (and they were mostly men), ruthless, competitive grinds – who would think nothing of messing up your Chem lab experiment if you so much as left to heed the call of nature.
‘That’s real dedication,’ Barney commented wryly, ‘but you know those are the characters who’re going to get into Med School for sure.’
‘Yeah,’ Laura agreed, ‘I wish I knew what the hell made them tick. I mean, it can’t just be the money …’
‘No,’ Barney replied, attempting to sound like a professional analyst, ‘I detect a high degree of social insecurity. These guys seem to view the white coat as some kind of security blanket. Or look at it another way – most of these dorks could only get a date if they went to a fruit store. Imagine the power of being able to say to a woman, “Take off your clothes and show me your tits!”’
Laura began to laugh.
‘I’m not joking, Castellano,’ he insisted.
‘I know – if I didn’t laugh I’d cry.’
The next day they had another lengthy nocturnal session. This time on a very sensitive topic for them both – their parents.
Harold Livingston had found a way to cope with his guilt at not being a breadwinner. He hit upon the idea of using the skills he had acquired in the Army to translate some of the classics of oriental literature – beginning with the eleventh-century Tale of Genjii, the first and most famous Japanese novel.
Barney took pride in his father’s courage, reassuring Warren that their dad was not merely performiing a therapeutic exercise. He had checked the college bookstore and pragmatically determined that Harold’s work could fill an important gap on the lit shelves.
‘It could give him a whole new lease on life.’
Laura, on the other hand, was anything but re-assured. From the moment she entered the house she sensed that the fabric of her family was unraveling. Each in turn, her parents tried to win her confidence, as if Laura’s allegiance would validate the opposing paths they had taken.
Inez, who was now so often in church confessing her sins that she could not possibly have time to commit new ones between visits, tried to persuade Laura to come with her.
‘I’m sorry, Mama,’ she replied. ‘I don’t have anything to confess.’
‘We are all born sinners, my child.’
For a moment Laura forgot that Man’s first disobedience was the sin of Adam. Instead she thought of another stigma after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden that hit closer to home: the mark of Cain. Am I my sister’s keeper? She knew that – at least in her mother’s eyes – she was.
Nor did she find solace in her father’s company. Indeed it was quite the contrary. As she returned home late one evening, she heard her father’s drunken voice calling from the study, ‘Venga, Laurita, venga charlar con tu papa’ – come and chat to your father.
She reluctantly obeyed.
Luis was in his shirtsleeves, both elbows leaning on the desk within reach of a half-empty bottle.
‘Have a drink with me, Laurita,’ he offered, his voice blurred and hazy.
‘No, thank you, Papa,’ she answered, trying to keep her composure. ‘And don’t you think you’ve had enough?’
‘No, my daughter,’ he replied. ‘I can still feel the pain.’
‘The what? I don’t understand.’
‘I have to drink until I can no longer feel the pain of existence.’
‘Come on, Papa, don’t camouflage it with philosophy – you’re just a plain old drunk.’
‘I’m not that old, Laurita,’ her father answered, seizing on but one of her adjectives, ‘that’s the pity of it all. Your mother has abjured the world, the devil, and the flesh. She refuses to—’
‘Do I have to hear this?’ Laura interrupted, feeling increasingly uncomfortable.
‘No, of course not. I just thought perhaps you’d understand better why I drink, if you could understand how difficult my life is …’
She did not know how to reply.
In any case, her father rambled on. ‘At least the bottle does not turn its back on me. It warms me when I’m cold. It soothes me when I’m frightened—’
Laura was finding the conversation intolerable.
She stood up. ‘I’m going to sleep. I’ve got some studying to do tomorrow.’
As she turned and headed for the door, Luis called after her, ‘Laurita, I beseech you, I’m your father …’
She did not stop. She did not turn. She merely felt confused and hurt. And lost.
Completely lost.
Estelle could not help noticing that none of the Castellanos touched more than crumbs of the food she had so lovingly prepared for Christmas dinner. Inez sat like a statue. Luis drank wine and Laura kept glancing at her watch, counting not merely the days but the hours and minutes she had yet to endure before she could escape to Boston.
The burden of sustaining conversation had now fallen on the frail shoulders of Harold Livingston.
He turned to Laura, smiling. ‘Barney tells me that you both got A’s in your Organic Chemistry midterms. Keep it up and it’s open sesame to Med School.’
‘For Barney, maybe,’ Laura remarked, ‘but my advisor says the medical establishment doesn’t look kindly on aspiring lady doctors. Even to get an interview, you have to be something like first in your class, with a letter from God – or at least Saint Luke.’
From the corner of her eye, she could see Inez frowning at her irreverence.
‘Surely, Laura, you’re exaggerating,’ Harold Livingston commented.
‘Okay, then,’ Laura responded, ‘I defy anyone to name three famous female doctors in all of history.’
‘Florence Nightingale,’ Warren chimed in immediately.
‘She was a nurse, schmuck,’ Barney snapped.
‘Well,’ Harold began slowly, taking up her challenge, ‘there was Trotula, a professor of medicine at the University of Salerno in the eleventh century. She even wrote a famous textbook on obstetrics.’
‘Wow, that’s a really good one, Mr Livingston.’ Laura smiled. ‘Two to go.’
‘Well, there’s always Madame Curie,’ Harold offered.
‘Sorry, Mr Livingston, she was only a chemist – and had a hard enough time doing that. Does everybody give up?’
‘Yes, Laura,’ Harold conceded, ‘but as a History of Science major, you should be able to answer your own question.’
‘Well, straight from the pages of The New York Times I’ll give you Dorothy Hodgkin, M.D., who’s just discovered vitamin B-12 for treating pernicious anaemia. Then I give you Helen Taussig – a Radcliffe girl, coincidentally, though not allowed to get a Harvard M.D. – who did the first successful blue baby operation. I could probably give you a few more but I doubt if there’d be enough for a touch football game against the AMA.’
At this point, Luis broke his silence and added, ‘You will change all that, Laurita. You will be a great doctor.’
Under ordinary circumstances, Laura would have been gratified by this unexpected display of parental optimism.
But then Luis was dead drunk.
Later that day when the two of them were alone, Laura told Barney matter-of-factly, ‘I won’t be coming home for Easter.’
‘Hey – that??
?s lousy news. Why not?’
‘Frankly, I think I’ve already experienced the Last Supper.’
Summer came and Barney was still working the night shift on Park Avenue. He sweltered in his doorman’s uniform and forced himself to study during every free moment.
Having finished his freshman year with an A-minus average, he did not wish to clip the wings of his ascent to Med School heaven by risking a lousy grade in Physics. He therefore decided to take both halves of this required course during the summer session at Long Island University, where the competition among pre-meds was slightly easier.
This ploy was hardly a top secret in the community of aspiring physicians. Laura, too, had opted to take Physics that summer – though at Harvard. As she explained in a letter to her parents, she could not bear the prospect of yet another airless, punishing summer in the melting asphalt of New York. She had no illusions about their sensing the real reason.
But, as she quickly discovered, the only similarity between Harvard University and its Summer School was the coincidence of names. For in July and August the Yard became a sort of country club with the cream of East Coast nubility flocking to Cambridge in the fond hope of snagging a real Harvard husband. Laura was amused by their disarming lack of subtlety. They wore the shortest of shorts and the tightest of T-shirts.
‘You’d really go berserk here, Barney,’ she wrote to him. ‘There’s more cheesecake here than at Lindy’s.’
I’ve got labs four afternoons a week and by Friday I’m so full of equations and formulas and incomprehensible concepts like the Doppler Effect (who really gives a damn about the speed of sound anyway?) that all I want to do on weekends is sleep. Maybe you can figure out some way to come up here next summer, Barn. God knows, you’d enjoy it. Meanwhile, please don’t work too hard.
Love, ‘L’
As he walked the LIU campus the next day, Barney looked at some of the passing coeds and suddenly realized that in the matter of sex, he was beginning to be retarded. Indeed Warren had recently claimed to have gone ‘nearly almost all the way’ with a girl from Eastern Parkway. It was unthinkable that his little brother should actually score before he did!
And thus, with horny Machiavellianism, he decided to audit what he regarded as the most promising hunting ground – Modern Drama.
His instinct proved correct – the place was packed with would-be actresses, at a ratio of at least three girls to every boy. Moreover, he quickly discovered that ‘Columbia’ was a magic word to them. Three cheers for the Ivy League.
His first successful seduction could arguably be credited to the rather romantic initiative of Miss Rochelle Persky who, as they were necking passionately in her parents’ living room, whispered tenderly, ‘Well, are you gonna do it or not?’
He was.
They did.
Naturally, he could not conceal his pride. In his next letter to Laura he gave a few heavy hints, though of course omitting all gross detail. Not really out of chivalry, but for the purpose of aggrandizing his own skills in the enterprise. (He just signed it ‘Unvirginally yours.’)
Barney did not see Laura till she came down to make a brief, reluctant appearance on an August weekend at the house in Neponset – on which the Castellanos and Livingstons had quixotically obtained an option to buy.
Warren, about to enter his senior year at Midwood, was absent, still working as a busboy at Greenwood Manor, the famous Catskill Mountains resort. The tips, he wrote his parents in a message to be conveyed to Barney, were largest for those waiters aspiring to be doctors. His own chosen profession – the law – barely edged out accountancy for second place.
After dinner, Laura and Barney took a walk on the beach in the late-setting sun.
‘How are your folks?’ he asked.
‘I’m not staying long enough to find out,’ she replied. ‘I’m taking the train to Boston on Monday morning.’
‘But it’s six weeks till school starts.’
‘Yeah, but a friend’s invited me to his family’s house on the Cape.’
‘Is that serious – or are you just going for the scenery?’ he asked.
She shrugged.
He could not tell whether she was being evasive or was genuinely unsure.
‘Who’s the guy, anyway?’
‘His name’s Palmer Talbot.’
‘He sounds like a sports car,’ Barney remarked. ‘Is he nice?’
‘Come on, Livingston, would I be dating somebody who wasn’t nice?’
He looked at her with a sly smile and answered, ‘Probably. I mean, you’ve already got a track record.’
‘Maybe this guy’s different.’
‘Yeah, he’s got two last names.’
On the way back Laura took a good look at Barney and, for the first time, noticed the fatigue etched in his face.
‘This working nights is gonna send you to an early grave, Barn. Can’t you get a different job?’
‘No, Castellano, I like this one. It gives lots of time to study. And besides, I’m moving up in the ranks. I’ll be a first-string doorman next year.’
‘I still say you’re killing yourself,’ she insisted.
‘Listen, you’re not a doctor yet.’
‘Yeah, but at the rate you’re going, the cadaver I get in Med School may be you.’
1955 would be fondly recalled as the year Americans twice danced for joy in the streets. Once it was for an event unprecedented in the history of Brooklyn – the Dodgers actually beat the New York Yankees and won the World Series!
And there was the nationwide explosion triggered by the announcement on April 12 giving the results of a large-scale trial of Jonas Salk’s vaccine on the schoolchildren of Pittsburgh. Simply stated, it had worked. Science had conquered polio!
The entire country went wild and, as one observer recalled, ‘rang bells, honked horns, blew factory whistles, fired salutes, kept their traffic lights red in brief periods of tribute, took the rest of the day off, closed their schools or convoked fervid assemblies therein, drank toasts, hugged children, attended Church, smiled at strangers, forgave enemies.’
Now there would be no more tragedies like Isobel Castellano anywhere. God bless Dr Salk.
If only he had found it sooner.
7
It was the Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend. Warren was devouring a jelly doughnut and the Sports section of the Times. His father was leafing aimlessly through the Book Review. He seemed paler and more jittery than usual and was already on his third cigarette of the day.
‘More coffee, darling?’ Estelle asked solicitously.
‘No, thanks. I feel a bit stuffy. I think I’ll go to the garden and get a bit of fresh air.’
‘Fine. I’ll come with you,’ she replied.
Harold grasped his cane and struggled to his feet – he was always stubborn about refusing help.
Warren had progressed to the ‘News of the Week’ when he heard his mother’s voice crying in panic from the garden, ‘Help, help – somebody help!’
In an instant he was at the back door and saw his father lying prostrate on the ground. Warren dashed over.
‘What happened, Ma?’
‘We were standing here talking,’ Estelle sobbed, ‘and all of a sudden he just fell. I think he’s unconscious – I don’t know, I don’t know.’
Warren knelt and looked at his father, whose eyes were closed and whose face was ashen. He grabbed Harold by the shoulder and shouted – as if to wake him – ‘Dad, Dad.’ There was no response. He held his hand under his father’s nostrils but was unable to tell whether he was breathing. He thought so. He could not be sure. But then he put his ear to Harold’s chest.
‘It’s okay, Ma – it’s okay. I can hear his heart. But it’s beating pretty fast. I’d better get Dr Castellano.’
She nodded, mute with fear. As Warren sprinted off, Estelle knelt and cradled her husband’s head in her lap.
Luis’s car was not in front of the house. Warren raced up the steps and r
ang the bell and pounded on the front door. It was opened by Inez.
‘Dad’s sick – he’s fainted or something. Where’s Dr Castellano?’
‘Oh, María Santísima, he just left to see some patients. I don’t know when he’ll be back. Listen, there’s a Dr Freeman very close by on Park Place,’ she said, pointing to her left.
‘Great, great. What number?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know – but it is the only apartment house on the block. His name is outside on a brass letrero near the front door. You get the doctor. I will go to Estelle and see if I can help.’
Less than two minutes later, Warren stood breathless outside 135 Park Place, pressing the button next to OSCAR FREEMAN, M.D. In a few moments, a man’s voice came over the intercom. ‘This is Dr Freeman. Can I help you?’
‘My father’s fainted, Doctor. I mean, he’s just lying on the ground. Can you please come quickly?’
‘Is he unconscious?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Warren replied, now almost shouting with anxiety. ‘Can you hurry – please?’
There was a brief silence.
Then the physician’s disembodied voice said unemotionally, ‘I’m sorry, son, I think you’d better call an ambulance. I can’t get involved in this sort of thing – professional reasons.’
There was a click. Warren stood motionless for an instant, lost and confused. He had never imagined that the doctor wouldn’t come. Oh, God, he thought, what should I do now?
He ran back home, propelled by fear.
The scene in the garden was practically as he had left it, except that Inez had brought a blanket to cover Harold, who was shivering.
‘Where’s the doctor?’ Estelle demanded.
‘He wouldn’t come,’ Warren retorted angrily. ‘Has anybody phoned the hospital?’
‘Yes,’ Inez replied, ‘they said they would come as soon as possible.’
The ambulance arrived twenty-seven minutes later.
It brought Harold Livingston to King’s County Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Barney was working at The Versailles when Warren called. He raced into the street, flagged a taxi, and leaped in.