Elinor Lipman - The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

“Thanks, Ma.”

“And named after a pope,” I said.

It was not the right thing to say. Mrs. Morrisey concentrated very hard on sliding her peas off her fork between tight lips.

“Which is a historical fact I found very interesting,” I added.

“All my children are named after saints or popes,” she said.

“I’m named after an aunt who was a WAC in World War Two,” I volunteered.

“Did she make it back alive?” asked Michael.

“Definitely. And lived to ninety and died in a veterans’ hospital.”

Mrs. Morrisey asked, “Was it the VA in Jamaica Plain?”

“No,” I said. “The VA in Loma Linda, California.”

“The children’s father died at the VA in Jamaica Plain, which turned out to be a blessing because Cardinal Law happened to be visiting the day he slipped into a coma, and it was the cardinal who performed his extreme unction.” Mrs. Morrisey held her napkin under the tip of her nose.

“We were there,” said Marie. “We all met him.”

“I heard about your grandmother,” said Mrs. Morrisey. “I’m very sorry for your loss. Was it very sudden?”

“It was and it wasn’t. I mean, all death is sudden from the medical standpoint that one second a person’s alive and the next second he or she is dead.”

“I never thought of it that way,” said Mrs. Morrisey.

“She had a lot of things going on medically, but the official cause of death was pneumonia.”

“Old man’s friend,” said Leo.

We all looked up for an explanation.

“Old man’s friend,” he repeated. “That’s what pneumonia’s called. Because it ends the suffering.”

“I never heard of such a thing,” his mother sniffed. She squeezed her baked potato so its insides erupted. Without being asked, Rosemary passed the margarine.

Nor had I heard of such a thing. I asked Leo if that was a common expression on the wards.

“Probably not,” said Leo. “It’s just one of those things doctors mumble when the shoe fits.”

I put my fork down. “Do you mean because the patient’s old and feeble and on life support, and his family’s trying to decide whether to remove the feeding tube or take him off the respirator? That pneumonia settles the question for them?”

Leo said, “Maybe we can discuss the fine points later.”

“Are you saying nobody would even start IV antibiotics?”

His eyes darted to his mother and back to me. “We do everything that’s humanly possible. Then it’s in God’s hands,” said Leo. “If you catch my drift.”

His mother grumbled, “Don’t think I don’t know what goes on in these big-city hospitals with their Jewish doctors and their Congregational chaplains. Which is why I want to die at Saint Elizabeth’s.”

“I know, Ma,” Leo answered. “We all know that. Can you pass the oleo back this way?”

“You’re giving Alice the idea that you don’t like Jewish people,” said Rosemary.

“What I don’t like is this talk of pulling plugs at my table.”

“Mom’s internist is Jewish and she loves him. Don’t you, Ma?” said Marie. “He’s on the staff at Saint E’s.”

“Dr. Goldberg,” said Mrs. Morrisey.

“Goldstone, actually,” said Leo.

I said, “I shouldn’t have quizzed Leo about the pneumonia protocol at the table. I get anxious when I hear something I think I should have learned in my medical ethics elective—such as, Would you begin a comatose geriatric on a course of antibiotics?—because I want to find my own medical lacunae and fill them in.”

“What Alice is trying to say is that this is her first year, so there’s lots of gaps in her knowledge. And when she hears something she doesn’t know, she loses all sense of time and place and what’s appropriate dinner conversation in order to launch a tutorial,” said Leo.

“I do?”

“I’m teasing you,” said Leo. “Sort of.”

“I think it’s the truth,” I said. “I do panic when I hear something I think I should have retained.”

“Don’t they give you tests?” asked his mother.

“Every day’s a test,” I said.

“Not literally,” said Leo. “She means that she always has to be on her toes.”

“Why would you put yourself through something like that?” asked Marie. “Is it worth it? All these long hours and blood and people dying?”

“Surgeons make a lot of money,” said Michael. “Maybe you work straight out for a couple of years, but then it’s someone else’s turn to burn the midnight oil, which is when you start seeing some real money.”

“Alice isn’t in it for the money,” said Leo.

“What do you see yourself doing when you’re graduated or certified or whatever it’s called?” asked Michael.

“Reconstructive plastic surgery in the Third World.”

“And who foots the bill for that?” he asked.

I explained that one might have to perform cosmetic surgery on the well-to-do for, say, six months of the year, and their money would support the philanthropic endeavors.

“What if you had a family?” asked Marie. “Would you take them with you to the Third World or would you leave them at home with your husband?”

I said, “I can’t think in terms of a conventional nuclear family.”

“Maybe her husband could be a missionary and they could do their work together,” suggested Mrs. Morrisey.

“What a good idea,” said Leo. “Do you know any eligible missionaries you could introduce Alice to?”

“Don’t be fresh with me,” said his mother.

“Actually, Alice has an admirer,” said Leo.

Everyone turned to me. I said, “Leo is exaggerating.”

“Leo thinks he’s a creep,” said Leo.

“What does Alice think?” asked Rosemary.

I sighed. “This man’s wife died a year ago and his pursuit, I think, is largely sexually motivated.”

Mrs. Morrisey huffed and muttered something to herself.

“I didn’t mean that it was reciprocal or that I encouraged him. I was just trying to explain his attentions.”

“All men want the same thing,” said Mrs. Morrisey, “and that particular thing is not dinner-table conversation either.”

“You had thirteen children,” said Michael.

Mrs. Morrisey slapped her fork onto her place mat. “Leave the table!” she barked.

Leo laughed.

“You, too!”

“Ma! He’s twenty-six years old. You can’t ask a grown man to leave the table because he alludes to your having had carnal knowledge.”

“We have company,” murmured Rosemary, “and I’m sure it’s very awkward for her to be in the middle of a family squabble.”

“My family fights every time I go home, and it’s usually provoked by something I say. So don’t worry about me.” I tried to affect the smile of a good guest. For added amenability, I said, “I don’t think this chicken is dry at all.”

“This one was fresh. You lose a lot of the juices when you defrost a frozen bird.”

“My mother doesn’t cook much,” I said. “Especially now that it’s just the two of them at home.”

“How many sisters and brothers do you have?” asked Michael.

“One sister. Who lives in Seattle.”

“Is she married?” asked Mrs. Morrisey.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Can we get back to whatever it was we were talking about before Michael had his mouth washed out with soap?” asked Leo.

Marie—clearly the family mediator and diplomat—turned to me. “I think we were talking about the demands on you at work, and I was asking, Is it worth it? Is all the hard work and sleepless nights and—you said it yourself—the panic worth it for some kind of professional dream that might be unattainable?”

The most unexpected thing happened at that point: I felt like crying. I disguised the quaking of my lips by taking two long swallows of milk from my glass, then by blinking rapidly as if the problem were ophthalmologic.