Robert Tanenbaum: Irresistible Impulse

In the early hours of the 5,742nd year since the creation of the universe, Dr. Mark Davidoff, M.D., stood in the crowded, marvelous, immense nave of Temple Emmanu-El on Fifth Avenue, and belted out “ Ain Kelohanu ” in a lusty voice, and thought that so far the universe was working out fairly well. He was young (young-ish), healthy, and rich, an internist like his father and grandfather before him, possessing all his hair, a Jaguar Van den Plas, a ten-room condo on Central Park West, a wife and two blossoming Davidoff-ettes. Around him standing and singing were his people, in whom he was well pleased, the upper crust of Jewish New York, a group as prosperous and secure as any Jews had been since collapse of the caliphate of Cordova.

The song and the service ended. Davidoff crowded out with the rest, for the temple was packed for Rosh Hashonah, the beginning of the High Holy Days, when it was appropriate for Jews of Davidoff’s degree of religiosity to seek solidarity and, it might also have been, exculpation for countless Sundays of Chinese food, countless Sabbaths at the office or on the links.

He knew many of the people milling around the cloakroom, and there was considerable hand shaking, and “good-Yonteff”-ing, before Davidoff, enclosed in camel-hair coat and cashmere muffler, was able to leave the synagogue and emerge out into the bright, crisp day. He was about to walk down the avenue, to where he would stand a better chance of finding a cab home, when he heard his name called and saw the very last person of his acquaintance he would have expected to see standing in front of Temple Emmanu-El on Rosh Hashonah.

Vincent Fiske Robinson stood out in that particular throng like a Hasid in Killarney. He was tall and slim with a face both sculptured and sensual, set with sky blue eyes and decked with fine blond hair worn swept back from a widow’s peak. Mark Davidoff had blue eyes and blond hair too, but not, of course, that kind of blue eyes and blond hair. Davidoff moved through the crowd and held out his hand. Robinson’s hand in his felt hot and damp.

“Vince. Long time no see,” said Davidoff with an uncertain smile. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you, man. I called your apartment, and your wife told me I’d find you here.”

“Yeah, I didn’t figure you were thinking about conversion …” Davidoff began in a bantering tone, and then stopped, automatically checking out the other man with a diagnostician’s eye. Robinson seemed flushed and overheated despite the chilly air. He looked as if he had dressed in the dark-he was wearing grubby jeans, a worn blue button-down shirt, and sneakers, over which he had thrown a lined Burberry. “You okay, Vince?” Davidoff asked.

“Yeah. No, actually, I’m in a bit of a mess. Actually, a gigantic mess. The thing is, could you do a consult for me? It would really help me out.”

“A consult? Vince, it’s Rosh Hashonah. Can’t it wait?”

“Actually, no, it can’t,” said Robinson. “It’s personal. My nurse, one of my nurses, actually, she’s my girlfriend … she’s in my apartment, very sick, very, very, sick … I was … could you, you know, take a look at her?”

“Vince, what is this? You have an emergency, call 911, get her into a hospital …”

“No, actually, I don’t think that would be appropriate in this case. That’s why I came here.”

Davidoff was about to refuse when he registered the desperation in Robinson’s eyes.

“Please, Mark. I really need your help.”

This was new and, Davidoff could not help feeling with a little thrill of self-satisfaction, not a mien that Vincent Fiske Robinson had ever adopted with Mark Davidoff when the two of them had been at Harvard Medical School together. For a brief period the two students had shared a group house in Cambridge, during which Robinson had given Davidoff numerous unspoken lessons about the difference between New York Jewish aristocracy and Aristocracy . There was no actual anti-Semitism, of course, not that you could put your finger on, only a humorous, casual condescension. That Davidoff studied hard and got top grades, while Robinson did not seem to study at all, but eventually received the same degree, and got a good internship, too, was also the subject of considerable comment on Robinson’s part, charming comment, for Robinson was certainly the most charming man in Davidoff’s experience. Even when he had pissed you off, and made you feel like, for example, a grubby Jewish grind, it was hard to remain angry with him. Unaccountably, on this cold New York street corner, an image from a dozen years past flashed across Dr. Davidoff’s mind: spring in Cambridge, a Friday, the Friday before the dreaded human physio exam, himself surrounded by books and notes, glancing up from his desk as Robinson pranced by, swinging a lacrosse racket, a white sweater draped around his neck, and a pale laughing girl with a blond pageboy haircut draped on his arm. Somehow, the current situation, Robinson begging Davidoff to help him out of a mess, balanced out that long-ago scene on some cosmic and inarticulable scorecard.

So Davidoff smiled and said, “Sure, Vince, I’ll have a look at her. Let’s go.”

Robinson lived on the East Side, of course, a duplex in an old brownstone in the Sixties off Madison. They walked there in silence.

“Shit, Vince!” he cried when he saw the woman in Robinson’s bed, and felt sick himself. She was a lovely woman, or had been. Pale hair framed a fine-boned face, with a wide, inviting mouth. Davidoff found himself thinking once again, just for an instant, of the laughing girl in the Cambridge hallway. He cleared his throat to gain control of his voice, and said, “When?”

“This morning. She was, um, like that, nine, nine-thirty.”

“ ‘Like that’? You mean dead , Vince. That’s the term we docs use for a person in this condition. How long was she sick?”

“A day, a day and a half. She was fine Friday. We went out for dinner, came back here, went to bed, and mooched around Saturday morning. We were going to go out biking in the afternoon, and she said she wasn’t up for it; she said she felt feverish, headachey. I thought, flu. Saturday night she started spiking a fever. One-oh-three, one-oh-four. I couldn’t bring it down. I gave her a shot of penicillin Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon she was sick but coherent. We joked, you know, we’re playing doctor. Jesus, Mark, she’s twenty-eight! Never been sick a day. I figured, viral pneumonia, liquids, bed rest, antibiotics to keep the secondaries down. Sunday night I went to bed in the guest room, and I came in to see how she was, seven, eight this morning, and she was in coma. I panicked, and …” He made a helpless gesture.

“Okay, so let me understand this: you wake up, find your girlfriend dead, and your first thought was to come get me for a consultation , I think you said? Right. We’ve consulted. She’s dead. I agree. So, what’s going on here, Vince?”

“It’s … I need a certificate, Mark,” said Robinson. He was looking off into the distance, his eyes shying from both the dead woman and the other man. “I want you to declare her.”

“You want me to declare …?” Davidoff felt the first stirrings of anger. “Ah, Vince, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Harvard give you one of those nice posters with the Latin? I got mine framed. Why the hell don’t you write out the goddamn certificate?”

Robinson gave him a brief look, in which Davidoff read both despair and shame, and then turned his face away again. “I’m involved with her, Mark, you know? And, well, I’ve been giving her things.”