Michael Palmer - The Society

“Will, I’m on two committees in the hospital and a couple at church. The people on the desk at my gym don’t know who I am, and I’m afraid my boyfriend may be headed there, too.”

“I understand. Just do your best. I may tell your mom’s story anyway.”

“You have my permission.”

“These companies have ripped the heart out of medicine, Susan. They have to be stopped.”

“You just be careful not to rile them up too much. You wouldn’t be the first doctor they’ve squashed.”

“I’d like to see them try,” Will said.

Ashford was a bedroom community located almost midway between Fredrickston and Worcester. Beeper and cell phone at the ready, Will checked out with the ER and surgical residents and headed west through modest late-afternoon traffic. He knew that he was hardly the only divorced dad forced to drive to the house that had once been his to take his children out for dinner, but that knowledge did nothing to assuage the weirdness he invariably felt in the situation-especially when the doorbell was answered, as it was tonight, by Mark Mueller, once a friend and financial adviser to him and Maxine, and now, for more than a year, her live-in.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Mueller said, knowing better than to attempt a handshake.

Mueller, though about Will’s height and build, had a full scalp of curly hair, which invariably made Will reflect on the modest but relentless recession at the corners of his own. Max had explained that she and Mueller were too much in love not to live together but that the cost of marriage, in terms of lost alimony, made nuptials a fiscal impossibility.

Will stepped into his former foyer.

“Kids ready?”

“Danny’s just finishing up his homework. Jess is ready, though.”

Will smiled to himself. Could any pair of twins ever be more different from each other-or more wonderful in those differences? Jess always ready, Danny last minute or beyond; one meticulous, one scattered; one serious and intense, one flaky and wildly imaginative; one (Jess) an athlete, the other already credited with several community-theater productions.

Damn you, Max.

“Hey, Dad, who loves you?”

Jess, in jeans and a bulky sweater, came racing around the corner and dove into his midsection.

“Who loves you , baby. Everything okay?”

“Fine. Tammy got sent home today for throwing spitballs. Cody Block said he likes me. I got an ‘A’ on my Morocco project. Are we going to the Hearth or your place or a restaurant?”

“Hearth.”

“Great!”

“Danny, let’s get-”

The shoulder-first assault from behind, with more force than any ten-year-old should be able to generate, nearly knocked both Will and Jess over.

“Open Hearth night, right?” Danny asked.

“Right on.”

“Um. . Max wants them home by nine,” Mueller said uncomfortably.

Will’s eyes flashed. His thin smile said many things.

“Nine it will be, Mark. She at the gym?”

“Office. She should be back soon.”

“Nine. Come on, guys.”

“I keep telling you, I’m not a guy.”

“All right, come on, girls.”

“Daddy!”

Will, two classmates, and a saintly psychiatrist had started the Open Hearth Kitchen during Will’s sophomore year in med school. The idea was to survive two intense years of basic science studies by involving themselves in a project centering on real live humans. Almost immediately, the other students and faculty joined in, helping to make their efforts a success. A dynamic, visionary young director and a committed board saw to it that the merchants, schools, churches, and residents of Fredrickston and the surrounding towns understood the place and embraced it. Now, after sixteen years, there were times when volunteers had to be turned away, although none of the thousands of diners who had patronized the kitchen ever were. Three hundred and ten was the record for dinners served on one night, but with the economy continuing to nosedive, that record seemed likely to fall before long.

No matter how hard it had been to take time off from work, Will seldom missed the monthly board meetings, and almost never his serving obligation-the first and third Tuesdays of every month.

The rugged, three-story clapboard structure occupied a corner lot in the most run-down part of town. Maxine had tried insisting that the area was too dangerous to keep “dragging” the twins to, but in this debate, unlike most of the rest, Will had prevailed.

“Okay,” he said, easing his four-year-old Wagoneer into the small parking area, “you guys know the drill.”

“I’m doing dessert,” Danny called as the two raced up to the kitchen door.

“You did it last time!”

As he often did, Will paused to survey the building and to reflect on the years since the project’s inception. In the beginning, a nearby Episcopal church had rented the first floor to them for next to nothing. Now, the Open Hearth Kitchen, a tax-exempt corporation, owned the whole thing. Belief, perseverance, fearlessness-over the intervening years, the Open Hearth had come to mean so many things to him. Now his involvement was limited to board of directors’ meetings and those two nights a month as a server. His energy-what there was left of it-had instead been channeled into the Hippocrates Society and its quixotic mission of reclaiming medicine from the HMOs and insurance companies.

Belief. . perseverance. . fearlessness.

By the time Will entered the kitchen, the kids were each involved in animated discussions as they worked. He smiled at the ease with which they had made themselves part of the gang, and the genuineness with which they had been accepted. In all, this night there were sixteen volunteers and five staff. No army had ever functioned with more efficiency and esprit.

“Hey, Will, wassapnin’.”

“Same old, same old, Beano. How about you?”

“Can’t complain. Your kids are really something. Two minutes and they’re already up to their elbows in whatever needs doing.”

Benois Beane, forty-something, had been the Hearth’s director for going on five years, during which he had continued to expand the agency’s programs, instituting a Meals on Wheels service and an employment counselor. He had also taken it on himself, following an offhand remark by Will, to ensure that no one called Will “Doc.” Many knew he was a physician, but there was no reason at all to advertise the fact. The last thing he wanted was to dilute the dual pleasures of serving food to those who needed it and introducing his children to people who were light-years from the tree-lined privilege of Ashford.

“Beano, the place is looking great.”

“Yeah. Thank God for all those churches and synagogues.”

“I suppose that would be appropriate,” Will said.

Beane took a moment to find the humor, then his ebony face crinkled in a broad grin.

“Good one,” he said. “I almost missed it. Forgive me for saying this, Will, but you look as if you’ve been working too much.”

“Hell no. By my standards I’m exceedingly well rested. See me tomorrow morning. By then I’ll be looking as if I’m working too much. What you’re viewing now is totally fresh Grant.”

“Fresh Grant,” Beane echoed. “Sounds like something we should have on the menu.”

By five-thirty when the doors opened, at least fifty were lined up to be served, a number of them with young children in tow. A goodly percentage of the patrons still had a roof over their heads, but for them, food and heat were getting more and more difficult to manage. The twins had settled their conflict in house and were working side by side at the dessert section. Will, an apron tied around his waist, strolled among the tables with a soapy-water spray and a towel, chatting with the diners and cleaning up after they had left. At one table, where a particularly grizzled down-and-outer sat alone, picking at his beef stew and rice, Will stopped.