Childish of her, the magic beans. Sweet though, too. They stayed on the shelf long after our divorce was finalized. Don’t know why. Maybe I was lazy, except I’m not. If Elizabeth noticed them, she never said a word. Not that she’d have cared. The bottle is in the back of a desk drawer somewhere, I’m pretty sure. Never could throw it away. Maybe I got sentimental, even though I’m not.
Now here I am, lost among the details that started it all: shelves and rows of cups and strips for urinalyses, throat cultures, glucose and lipid and pregnancy tests. I prep solution for Nick’s swab, twist his cells into a vial, set a timer, and return to Exam Room Four to tie a rubber ribbon above the kid’s elbow, to prep a needle like I do this all the time. Nick’s veins are healthy and impossible to miss. “Just a little prick,” I say. I haven’t printed labels, because these vials will go in the trash. His serum levels don’t matter to me. I just want to watch him squirm.
Then it’s back to the nurses’ station to dispose of sharps and check the timer. Ten minutes to go. He’ll be antsy by then. Nobody—no matter how risk averse or sure the unlikelihood, no matter what—enjoys the moments leading up to HIV test results. People aren’t thinking about weather or groceries or how nice a nurse was, how pleasant the wait is—including, or perhaps especially, those who pretend to have only been reading Redbook or Sports Illustrated or Vanity Fair, or those who act as though they’d forgotten why they were waiting in the first place. People hold their breath when I enter the room, and when I say “negative,” they release a sip of air. Some confess their anxiety, while others laugh in such a way as to expose their delusions of immunity. Their righteousness was stupidity all along. Stupidity or trauma. The young ones aren’t stuck in the eighties or nineties like their parents—a generation haunted by a plague that came by night; by outdated data and debunked myths, heartbreak and sleight of hand; by cellular betrayal—but the young ones hold their breath anyway. Genetic memory.
I entertain a wicked fantasy: Nick’s face in that instant before negative. Or positive, in which case, he wouldn’t sigh. He might hold his breath, and I’d have to remind him to inhale, and he might say, “How did this happen?” Then, God, the thoughts that would run through his head. He’d look at me, thinking, Did I get it from this nice man’s wife? Then, Did I give it to her? Following that line of reasoning: Have I put this nice man at risk? Dr. Hart, his dear, sweet host who took him in and fed him and let him seduce Mrs. Hart on the sly. If he heard positive, he would tell Elizabeth, and she would tell me, and then, oh boy, the depth of disaster.
Or maybe he would try to sneak her to an anonymous clinic to get tested. By the time they both heard negative, the ordeal would have woken them up, spoiled their fun. Elizabeth would send Nick away, because she would see, at last, the potential consequences of her transgressions and how close they’d brought her to losing me. She’d salvage her devotion, and she’d grovel, and we’d thrive.
Or, bypassing scenarios one and two altogether, Nick might up and leave town without saying why. Somewhere very far from here—in, say, Alaska, at another camp for damaged boys—Nick would seek care, and he’d be so relieved to hear negative that he wouldn’t blame me for a chemical quirk. False positive results do happen, the other doctor or nurse would say. They do happen. It’s true.
The timer dings. Twenty minutes flew right by.
I lift the vial, hold it high, squint to read the strip: Negative.
I hear myself release a tiny breath.
Well then. A relief. I drop the swab in my pocket and skim the contents of Nick’s questionnaire before throwing it away. He offered details on diet but not bowel movements. He gets the hiccups and has hay fever, but no food allergies or acid reflux. He trips and falls sometimes because, as he wrote in the blank, he is clumsy, not injured. Of course not. His joints are well-lubricated and young. Arthritis is years away. I fold the questionnaire and slip it into my lab coat pocket and head back to Exam Room Four, where I take a seat at the corner desk, crossing my legs, propping up my clipboard so Nick can’t see the blank page. I glance at my patient—my violator: hazardous waste—whose vulnerability is almost worth my pity. I see him clearly: the object of my wife’s desire. The sum total of her temptation: six foot, one-hundred-seventy pounds, BMI of twenty-one, no allergies, occasional hiccups, insomnia, regular exercise. Spoiled rotten with the passive riches of youth. The love of my life would betray me for this.
The anvil slams into my chest: the ache I’ve been avoiding, delayed by mantras and plans and an army of hypotheticals. Here he is, a terrorist in a cotton gown, holding his breath awaiting negative, secretly imagining positive, quietly burning. He is at my mercy. I could kill him or I could cry.
“Dr. Hart?”
The nerve. My God. The recklessness. My power simmers and shines, daring me to fight for this precious life I’ve built. For Christ’s sake, Bobby, take a stand.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
In the space between inhale and exhale, the blood below Nick’s skin races to his brain, muscles, and heart, and he fades to pale, a side effect of a primitive reaction wasted on warriors who don’t fight with swords, spears, or claws. Instead, we sit in sterile rooms carving bullets out of silence, playing chicken with subtext. Taking matters into our own hands.
We shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be in this room with this kid (with his unspoiled body and Wintermint breath) who is tempting me to toy with malpractice, tempting me to slay my own giant with one word: positive.
“Couldn’t get a read,” I say, fingering the blood vial in my pocket. “We’ll send it to the main lab first thing tomorrow.” I hear myself say, “Try not to worry, everything is probably fine,” but the voice isn’t mine.
Leaving Nick to change into his clothes, I escape, once again, to the other side of this door, where my hopes for relief are swiftly pummeled by the buzz of an electric motor grinding to life: my Keurig. Someone is making coffee in my staff kitchen. I follow the grind, walking the length of this hall like I’m walking the damn plank: defiant, unapologetic, ready to plunge. But it’s just Simone hovering over the Keurig, holding the handle of a thermos, watching it fill. She doesn’t hear me when I hang my lab coat on a hook. The machine quiets. She turns and sees me now but is not startled. She simply smiles and asks, “Coffee?”
I shake my head. “Already fueled. What are you doing here on a Saturday?”
“Digging out of a paperwork avalanche. What are you doing?”
Down the hall, the door to Exam Room Four opens and closes with a bang. It’s too late to hide him, so I say, “Family favor,” just as Nick steps through the doorway.
Simone adjusts her posture from familiar to professional, the effect instantaneous and subtle, and greets Nick, who approaches to shake her hand.
“Nick Carpenter,” he says. “Jonah’s friend from school.”
“Simone Bristol.”
I shake my keys, tolling the end of our rendezvous, and tell Simone to hurry up and finish digging so she can enjoy the rest of her weekend.
She smiles and nods. “Nice meeting you, Nick.”
He says, “You as well,” and follows me to the parking lot. The clouds are gray, the asphalt littered with dark spots where raindrops have already fallen. Close at heel, Nick asks, “She your nurse?”
“Office manager.”
“She seems nice.”
“Sure,” I say, thinking, Really? Her, too?
The sky opens before we reach the car. We’re half-drenched when we buckle our seat belts. I say a prayer for my leather interior and pull onto the road, my windshield wipers squeaking like twin metronomes ordering me home, ordering me to drive faster, faster. A yellow light changes to red, igniting my rain-streaked windows with fits of fire as we pass through it. No thunder, no lightning, no drama—just rainwater evacuating our beaches, sending city snobs back to their overpriced timeshares, where they’ll mix mojitos and play board games and track muddy sand onto other people’s floors. To think, there
was a time I wanted to grow up and be one of those barefoot visitors. The teenage Me would drive to East Hampton in the summer just to sit on benches or blankets to watch the city kids, to study the differences between Them and Us, observing urbanites as though they were alien specimens in a living lab—like in that Twilight Zone when a marooned astronaut winds up caged in a zoo on a distant planet, his natural habitat re-created by extraterrestrials ogling the creature kept behind four walls, a pretty yard, a picket fence. Joke’s on him. The punch line: people are alike everywhere.
Hard to believe I ever aspired to work like mad in Manhattan just so I could escape to a beach house on the weekend. Now I know better. I live better, having bypassed the need for escape by shooting straight to the good life. I’m my own boss, playing Trivial Pursuit in my own fancy house, making my own mark. Upgrading everything. I was naive and tenacious enough to start a private practice before the system went berserk. Young doctors today aren’t so lucky, but those are the breaks. The American Dream has always been a changeling.
I press my foot on the gas, rocketing toward a new mental picture: young people flocking to my world in pursuit of role models and model lives. They draft dreams around us, then they grow up to push us out. Don’t be Nick’s interactive education, I tell myself, and something flashes. For a moment, it seems like my brain is the thing flickering—lit up by a thought, sparks thrown from the thought—but the flashes are blue and white lights in my rearview mirror, activated half a second before the siren begins. “Goddamn it,” I say, tapping the brake, flipping my turn signal. I hang a right and find a discreet place to park behind the bank. “Jesus, I pulled over already. You think he could turn those lights off?”
Nick doesn’t answer. He just says, “Man.”
For the very first time in my life, I find myself wondering if the rumors are true about the free-pass power of that classic line: Do you know who I am?
SAG STYLE ON DISPLAY AT CITIZENS’ BALL
by Diane Klein
On Saturday night, Dr. Robert Silvano Hart was named Citizen of the Year at the 36th Annual Sag Harbor Citizens’ Ball. The event was held under a twinkle-lit tent near the water’s edge at Marine Park.
The black-tie gala, billed as “A Celebration of Style,” was open to area residents and their guests. Proceeds from ticket sales and the silent auction support The Citizens’ Fund, which distributes donations to a selection of local charities. This year’s beneficiaries include Memorial Children’s Hospital, the Seashore Restoration Project, and the Laura Day Fund supporting independent arts education.
Dr. Hart—pictured here with son Jonah, wife Elizabeth, and family friend Nick Carpenter—said that being acknowledged for civic engagement is “a humbling reminder of [his] responsibility to continue serving our exceptional zip code.”
In his speech, Dr. Hart said, “While I’m proud to assume the mantle of Citizen of the Year for the next twelve months, my commitment to this community is not a fixed term. Sag neighbors and friends, your health and the health of this great township are the reasons I love what I do.” He drew laughter by adding, “And just ask my wife: I don’t do anything I don’t love to do.”
Dr. Hart, who practices internal medicine, pioneered the local popularity of innovative, noninvasive treatments for whole-body wellness ever since opening his private practice in Sag Harbor nearly twenty years ago. Specialties include platelet-rich plasma injection, hormone replacement therapy, customized supplement regimens, and personalized weight management programs.
Previous Citizens of the Year include Vance Barrington, Milos Lee, and J.R. Voss. Last year’s title went to Malcolm Potter, who, along with wife Margaret Kearny Potter, manages the esteemed Kearny Foundation. Donations from last year’s event raised a whopping four million dollars to support Kearny Award grants. Mr. Potter says he is happy to see Dr. Hart accept the award, calling our new Citizen of the Year “salt of the earth.”
Guests at Saturday’s party danced to live music performed by Seaside Symphony and posed for pictures in a customized photo booth. Attendee Marsha Villenueva praised event planners for thoughtful touches. “The props are a hoot,” she said, referencing the assortment of dress-up items available for guests enjoying the photo booth. Wigs, oversized glasses, costume jewelry, and light-up signs were among items on loan—but not, as Ms. Villenueva lamented, for keeps.
Gloria Pryce and Vonda Webber co-chaired this year’s event. Luna Parks spearheaded decorations. Master of Ceremonies was Theo Carter, 2012 Citizen of the Year.
The Citizens’ Fund invites all Sag Harbor residents to submit nominees for next year’s award by visiting SagCitizens.org. From the finalists, new honorees are elected by a voting body comprised of previous Citizens of the Year. You may sign up for event planning committees online. See calendar page for details. Tax-deductible donations welcome all year. Visit SagCitizens.org/donate to make your gift.
13.
Rain falls in heavy sheets during my entire mind-numbing visit with Officer Diaz, who needs a hobby. She requests license and registration, asks banal questions, stoops to look through my open window, peeks at my center console, studies Nick, and finally leaves to prepare my ticket—all while managing, but barely, not to scratch my Audi with the metal tips of her government-issued umbrella.
“I could have gotten off with a warning,” I tell Nick, “but figured, oh well, she’s just doing her job.”
He nods.
We wait. Me and Nick. Windshield wiper pendulums swing left to right, tick to tock. Rubber against safety glass. Minutes pass.
I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. “You think she’d have something better to do.”
Nick shakes his head.
“Poor girl must hate her life.”
Nick stares out of his window and says flatly, “Maybe she likes living someplace where a cop doesn’t have anything better to do.”
I dig my fingernails into my steering wheel’s Nappa leather.
“On account of there being so little crime here, I mean.”
“Yes, Nick. I understood what you meant.”
After twenty dreary minutes, Officer Diaz gives me my ticket and I give her my business card, inviting her to call me any time she needs a tune-up. The rain hasn’t let up when I merge back into traffic. Diaz follows too closely, distracting my eyes from the road, so I turn onto the first residential street, while she stays on the main drag in pursuit of her next offender. As she disappears from my rearview mirror, I mumble, “Twelve miles over the limit. Give me a break.”
Nick watches the blurry picture of my world, not his, and says, “You aren’t concerned about my health for any reason, are you? You’d tell me if I needed to be worried, right?”
Like music in a dream, a voice bubbles up inside of me. It says: Well, well.
“You never suggested supplements, so I was just wondering—”
Different versions of positive bubble, too. They surface, but then, Bobby, think of your wife and child. And so, Not now. Later. Soon. I tell Nick, “I’m sure everything will be just fine.”
• • •
Day into night without a word from my wife and son about Nick’s health or my pro bono gig. Nick either told them, or he didn’t. Jonah and Elizabeth care, or they don’t. Only one time do I worry about having to explain myself, and that’s at the very end of the day, when I head up to find Elizabeth already in bed, wearing a white silk nightgown, leaning against a pillow propped against the wall, reading. She lowers her book, makes a show of hesitating, so I say, “What?”
“You got a call from that luxury dealership in Roslyn. Perry was checking in about the Aston Martin. He wants to know what you’re thinking.” To my relief, Nick’s glands have nothing to do with it.
I undress. “Oh yeah?” Hang my belt on a hook. “What’d you say?”
“Not much, considering you never mentioned the test-drive.”
“No? Yeah, well, I took it out a couple of weeks ago for fun.”
Her pause is
an invitation I decline, so she says, “Okay. For fun. So then, you’re not considering buying a car.”
“Not tomorrow or anything.”
“Right. Or the next day.”
“Sure,” I say, “not Monday.”
“Very funny.”
“How about: no time soon.”
“That’s great.”
“Why are you asking like that? Do we have financial concerns I should know about?”
“No.” She laughs. “We’re fine. We just—we can’t get crazy. We can’t start living like the McAlisters, you know?” She reaches for me, grasping at the air as an invitation to take her hand. “Even though they are very sexy cars.”
I don’t hold her hand yet, but I do see an opportunity to try out one of those conversations that makes couples stronger: an opportunity to strengthen our marriage’s immune system. She makes room for me when I sit on the bed to tickle her wrist and say, “If you want to know when that test-drive happened and why, I’m happy to talk about it.”
She closes her book and places it on the nightstand. “Please.”
Man of the Year Page 12
