First, Do No Harm

by Larry Karp

  When I walked into the house I heard Ramona call, “Leo?” from the living room. I went in, found her behind a card table, working a jigsaw puzzle. “Nice hairdo,” I said.

  Dance music from the big Philco waterfall-front radio at her right shoulder, “They’re Either Too Old or Too Young.” Ramona smiled, put down the puzzle piece in her hand, gave the back of her hair a pat upward, the way women do. “You like it, Leo? I’m glad.”

  Even when my mother smiled she looked sad. In her wedding photo she stood with Samuel in that early Twenties pose, she in her white gown, he in a tuxedo, heads close, his hand resting lightly on her arm. Samuel’s eyes were vibrant, lips slightly parted, ready to leap into action the instant the photographer snapped the lens. My mother’s face was calm, but her eyes projected a melancholy resignation, rather than serenity. The entire forty-four years the couple had aged since 1921 seemed to have been done by my mother alone.

  “It suits you, Ramona,” I said.

  Her smile broadened, but the more she smiled, the sadder her expression became. “You’re so serious, Leo. Even when you were still in short pants, you were fifty years old.”

  What you both wanted, what you got, I thought. Count on yourself. Trust yourself. But I just smiled back at her.

  Sinatra burst through the Philco, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.” Ramona crinkled her nose. “That little draft-dodger. I can’t understand why all those girls go crazy over him.” She snapped the dial to silence Frankie, then turned to face me. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Down to Samuel’s office. I wanted to learn more about last night’s case. His books here didn’t have all the information.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Not altogether. I’ll have to do some more work.”

  Ramona shook her head, laughed. “The way you’re going, you may be able to skip medical school. Why don’t you talk to Reuben Goldberg, the orthopedic surgeon. You know him, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “He should be able to tell you whatever you want to know about a dislocated shoulder.”

  “Not that case,” I said. “The other one. Afterward.”

  She looked me a question.

  “At Fleischmann’s. After the dislocated shoulder. After you called.”

  Now she looked thoroughly confused. “I called, dear?”

  I thought back to the phone call at Lou and Lena’s. Lena said, “For you, Doc,” as she gave the phone to Samuel. He said, “They think it looks like a heart attack? Call them back, Ramona, tell them I’ll be right over.” Talking slowly, loud. “Didn’t you call Lou and Lena’s about a quarter after one?” I asked. “To tell Samuel to go to Murray and Lily Fleischmann’s?”

  Before I finished talking she was shaking her head slowly, twisting her gold wedding band. Once, that ring was engraved all around with wavy lines; over the years I’d watched her burnish it smooth. “I didn’t make any phone call, dear. After you and your father left to go see that little boy, I fell back asleep and didn’t wake up ’til almost eight this morning.”

  “I guess I misunderstood,” I said, but knew I hadn’t. I knew my father said, “Call them back, Ramona.” As if she were speaking through a tunnel I heard my mother offer me lunch. I shook my head. “Maybe in a while. I slept really late, had a late breakfast.”

  “All right, dear. I picked up some fresh Jewish rye bread at the Tenth Avenue bakery, and a few slices of corned beef from Harry the butcher. I stopped there at just the right time.”

  I thanked her, then went upstairs, past the bedrooms to the attic. That was my cave, where I went to be alone. Dusty, crammed with old stuff going back at least to the previous owner of the house. Big steamer trunks, boxes of china, barbells, a moth-eaten raccoon coat. I plopped between the wall and a trunk, leaned back, pulled up my knees, thought. Samuel said he’d been treating Jonas Fleischmann for severe coronary artery disease, but his office files said he hadn’t treated Jonas at all. Jonas dead on the living room floor looked like a textbook case of strychnine poisoning, but Samuel diagnosed it as a heart attack. Now, that phone call. Either my mother was lying or my father was. Smart money on Samuel, heavy odds.

  I looked around the attic, idly, I thought, but curiosity’s never idle. Woman’s clothing mannequin, bowling ball, croquet set, child’s bow and arrow, an old music box… I lifted the lid, pulled on the crank lever. But instead of winding the spring, the cylinder went round and round, and notes played very fast. Then I noticed two empty screw holes at the right of the baseplate—something missing in front of the cylinder. Gave me an idea. I closed the lid, grabbed a cloth, threw it around the music box, tucked the package under my arm, ran downstairs. “See you later, Ramona,” I shouted as I charged outside. I squeezed the music box into the wire basket in front of my bike handlebars, then started pedaling down Roosevelt, back in the direction I’d gone with Samuel the night before.

  My bike was one of those great big old Schwinns; between it and the music box, I was moving a good sixty pounds. Hot afternoon breezes blew my hair into my face. By the time I got to Wait Street I was drenched in sweat. I pedaled past rows of dingy two-family houses, only an occasional window-star, all silver. An old woman, Polish or Russian, sat stonefaced on a porch next to a radio. I caught a few bars of Bunny Berigan’s trumpet, “I Can’t Get Started. ”

  Coming up on Fifth Avenue, I saw a corrugated iron wall with a dented, chipped porcelain-metal sign, FLEISCHMANN SCRAP. I walked my bike through the open gate and up to a dilapidated little building, leaned the bike against the shack, took the music box, carried it through the open doorway. No one there. Few chairs, couple of file cabinets, a wooden desk holding a battered Smith-Corona typewriter. An old Atwater-Kent metal radio sat precariously on the window sill, tuned to the Giants’ ballgame. Cliff Melton, the Giants’ pitcher, threw a fastball to Stan Musial, who hammered it into right-center field for a double. Marty Marion came around to score, six-nothing, Cardinals.

  Back outside the shabby office, I looked around, still didn’t see anyone; just piles of stuff everywhere, all the way down to the river bank. But the longer I scanned the yard, the more I saw order, like sorted with like. A mound of old automobile tires and inner tubes. Wheels and axles heaped next to gears and pulleys, across from a stretch of auto parts. Kitchen appliances. Clawfoot bathroom tubs, sinks, toilets. Mattresses, old beds. At the farthest reach of the yard, just this side of the river, something was burning, spewing thick black smoke. I took off in that direction, walked past stacked tables and chairs, suitcases and old steamer trunks, a hill of organ pipes next to a stack of wood. I passed a small mountain of battered soda fountain equipment, tripped over the protruding leg of an ice cream parlor chair, nearly went sprawling.

  As I came closer to the source of the smoke I saw it was garbage. Fabric scraps, torn pillows, chunks of wood, a sofa in pieces. Those days, junkmen stripped what might be useful and burned the rest. Fleischmann Scrap did its burning at the far end of the yard, so smoke would drift away, across the Passaic River into Emerson Township. Even so, the stink was intense. I started to cough.

  I turned to go back, found myself looking into the eyes of a gigantic black man. “He’p you, boy?” he asked.

  Big as he was, his voice was gentle. I held out the music box, lifted the lid, pointed. “I came to see if Murray could help,” I said. “Part’s missing, see?”

  The black man looked where I pointed. “Mmmmm. Gov’nor.” He scratched his chin. “Fleischmanns ain’t workin’ today.” He leaned forward; a drop of sweat fell from his brow into the music box. “Murray’s brother, Jonas…” The man’s voice became a hoarse conspiratorial whisper, as if someone else in that wide-open scrapyard might be listening. “…had a heart attack. Passed last night.”

  I felt like a mooncalf. Did I think Murray would be in the yard the day after his brother died? I didn’t think, period.

  The man held out a grimy, greasy hand. “I�
�m George Templeton, I work here. You be?”

  I balanced the music box on my left hip, shook his hand. “Leo Firestone.”

  I thought his eyes might blow right out of his head. “Doctor Samuel Firestone’s boy?”

  “You know my father?”

  George let go of my hand, laughed, then looked at me as if I might be giving his leg a hard pull. “Ain’t nobody in Hobart don’t know your daddy. He come when my li’l girl was sufferin’ wit’ stomachache and fever and di’rrhea. He give her testses, then say, ‘She got stomach worms, could make her sick enough to die—but you give her these-here med’cines just ’xactly like I tell you, she go’n get better.’ We do it. Afterwards, I look in the toilet and there’s these skinny white worms, wigglin’ all around in that mess, one of ’em, I swear, a foot long. My wife scream and run. I ask your daddy, can I pay you so much a week ’cause we ain’t got much money? An’ he look at me with that smile a his, and say, ‘George, my big radio’s on the blink. Fix it for me, we be close enough to even.’ So next day I go on over, fix his radio, and that be that.”

  I wondered why Samuel didn’t put George’s bill on the tab the way he did with Lou and Lena. Then it hit me. The dignity of that black man, his bearing, his speech. He’d’ve never accepted charity, would’ve been offended. So Samuel let him pay in trade, not unusual in those days.

  “But I’ll bet Samuel filed an IOU on Lou and Lena,” I said. “Bet he was holding papers on half the population of Hobart, and knew exactly which one to pull and when.”

  For an instant Dad was the school principal, and I was the kid who snuck up behind and gave him a hotfoot. Then his gaze softened, and he came dangerously close to smiling. “You and he…” Dad grabbed his glass with both hands, knocked down a mouthful of Manhattan, sighed.

  George’s story about his daughter and her roundworms turned on a light in my head. “My father treated Jonas, too,” I said. “For his heart condition.”

  “Noooo! Jonas never said no word.” George’s mouth flew open; his eyes filled with anger. “It’s a shame,” he blurted. “How the good’re always dyin’ young. Jonas, the onliest one wouldn’t do no business with Mr. Black. Mr. Red-Dexter Black. When Red come by, Jonas wouldn’t talk to him. Wouldn’t even look at him.”

  I thought I knew what George was talking about, but wanted to be sure. “Mr. Red-Dexter Black?”

  “Mmmm.” George looked all around, then leaned forward to whisper again. “Scrap metal—we suppose’ to sell every bit to the gov’mint. But Red Dexter pay more, whole lot more. Murray and Oscar take his money. But never Jonas. And never me.”

  So Murray and his father were selling scrap metal on the black market, and Jonas wouldn’t go along. Bad situation. Yes, Samuel held IOUs all over the city, but people who hold IOUs also give them, and now I felt pretty sure of why my father signed Jonas out as a heart attack. George saved me from saying something very stupid by pointing at the music box. “Let’s go see if we cain’t find a right gov’nor.”

  Back to the office shed, around to the far side of the building, where dead entertainment machines, music boxes, phonographs, radios, were stacked under the rough eaves. We tore into the music-box pile, but no luck. Every governor was either too large or too small. George looked apologetic. “Tell you what—come back day after tomorra. Murray be here then, Oscar too. Jonas’ funeral’s tomorra, won’t nobody be here. I tol’ Murray if I ain’t a pallbearer, him and me go’n fight.”

  I pictured Joe Louis in one corner, Jack Dempsey in the other.

  “You want, you can leave your music box.” George held out a massive hand. “Be safe here. I’ll make sure.”

  Joe Louis watching my music box? Any time. I thanked George, handed him my project, then bicycled out through the gate and home.

  Chapter 4

  Dad looked at his empty Manhattan glass. His food was gone as well, sandwich long since gobbled down in four or five monster bites. He signaled the waiter, who came right over, took the glass. “Another,” Dad said, then turned back to me, settled himself in his seat, cleared his throat.

  As I pulled into the driveway, I heard Harmony’s saxophone, “Body and Soul.” I was barely through the cellar door when she jumped from her chair, dropped the sax on the table. I glanced past her, toward my easel at the far side of the room, below the little window. My hideout-studio, safe from critics. “Leo, you can’t go painting now,” she shouted. “I’ve got to talk to you. I’ve been thinking about this business with your father—”

  I held out a hand, stop. “You want to talk about that, sit down. There’s more.” I told her what I’d heard from George, then said, “I’m going to have a talk with Samuel tonight.”

  “No, don’t—don’t do that.” When she laughed or got angry she had beautiful dimples, which she hated. “Leo, don’t be a dumbo. Do you just want to fight with Samuel, or do you want to find out what really happened?”

  “How else am I going to find—”

  “I said I was thinking. Why don’t you? Bet we can dope it, you and me, but if you go blab to Samuel now, all you’ll do is blow our cover.”

  Spitting words out of the corner of her mouth like Bogart, writing a real-life play with a co-starring role for herself. I worked hard not to smile.

  “Well?” Quick one-two from those green eyes. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Okay,” I said quietly. “I won’t spill the beans.”

  She wasn’t sure whether or not I was teasing. I wish you could’ve seen her face. “No, really,” I said. “I promise.”

  “All right, then. Come back after dinner, sleep over. Maybe we can figure it out between us.”

  We did that often, sat talking in the Belmonts’ living room, or outside on a warm summer night. We’d talk about anything and everything, sometimes ’til one or two in the morning. Ramona didn’t like it, said she stayed awake listening for me, couldn’t fall asleep until she knew I was home. Finally, one evening, I told her if I wasn’t home by eleven I’d just stay in the Belmonts’ guest bedroom. She didn’t like that any better, but Samuel told her to back off, I was being considerate and reasonable.

  The waiter set Manhattan IV at Dad’s elbow. He grabbed the glass by the stem, swigged a mouthful, then picked up his story through a gargle.

  That evening, Harmony and I sat outdoors, swung back and forth, thought, talked, argued. Dr. and Mrs. Belmont came out around ten-thirty to say they were turning in. What a goddamn pair. Dr. Fielding J. Belmont, a snowman with legs, black mustache, gold-rimmed spectacles, and a Durante-nose hanging above overdeveloped incisor teeth. Mrs. Doctor Belmont, a skinny little woman with big eyes, pointy nose, and hands that couldn’t seem to stop massaging each other. “Look how they sit, Fielding,” Mrs. Belmont said, and I swear I heard Harmony’s teeth grind. “On opposite ends of the swing. Like an old married couple.”

  Dr. Belmont harrumphed. “What do you expect, Lissa? She dresses like a boy, talks like a boy, behaves like a boy, and I don’t guess Leo likes boys. At least not that way.”

  “I don’t think Betty Grable’s got a lot to worry about,” Mrs. Belmont chirped.

  “She sure doesn’t from my sister,” said Harmony. “Laura’s got a darker mustache than Dad.”

  Dr. Belmont shook a finger at her. “Young lady, watch your tongue. Let’s see whether you can get into Wellesley and be on the Dean’s List. And get your M-A-N.” Quick glance in my direction. “And a teaching certificate, a girl can always count on getting a job teaching school. Your sister—”

  “Has a Dean’s List Certificate for her entire first year.” Harmony mimicked her father’s speech. “And a very nice boy friend at Harvard, not fighting in the war because of a physical disability. No guts.”

  After Dr. and Mrs. Belmont finally went inside, Harmony looked at her shoes and muttered, “Jerks! Leo, do you know how lucky you are to have Samuel for a father? I’d give anything…” I edged over, put my arms around her, let her
snuffle on my shoulder for a while. Couple of times I made a move toward her shirt buttons, but didn’t have the nerve. 1943.

  We swung and talked ’til after midnight, but couldn’t come up with anything besides what I was already doing, snooping around the junkyard. When I told her my excuse for being there she surprised me—bounced on the seat, clapped her hands. “An old music box? I heard one years ago, in a museum exhibit in New York, so pretty. After you fix it, would you give it to me? Please?”

  I felt as if I might disappear into those green eyes, just a couple of inches from mine. “Sure. If you want it.”

  “I do, I do.” Harmony planted a tiny kiss on the end of my nose, then quickly backed away. Her eyes went sad. “Boys’re so damn lucky. You go out on calls with Samuel, go to the junkyard to do detective work, you’re even learning how to fix a music box. All I ever get to do is wrap bandages with a bunch of old fossils.”

  Next day I went with Samuel on hospital rounds, then house calls, then to the office. Whichever sickroom we walked into, I saw the same expression on patients’ faces. It’s going to be all right. Even old Yetta Aronowitz, riddled with cancer, propped up in bed and down to eighty pounds, brightened the instant she saw Samuel. He peered at her jaundiced eyes, listened to her lungs, tapped her swollen abdomen, then gave her a wicked look. “Another month, you’re on your way to Atlantic City.” Pause, just long enough for the old woman to shoot him a sharp side-squint. “Miss America Contest,” Samuel said. “With you in it, they’ll never cancel, war or no war.” Mrs. Aronowitz tried to laugh, coughed. Her round little husband smiled. Samuel played people like Heifetz played fiddles.