75
THE PRACTICE AND OTHER STORIES
BY
JACK HENRY MARKOWITZ
© 2005 – All Rights Reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE PRACTICE
BLIND MAN
THE FUNDRAISER
THE VISIT
CONEY ISLAND LIMEY
THE PRACTICE
Before leaving for his office in Brighton Beach, Doctor Aaron Keicher stopped in front of his hall mirror to adjust his scarf.
“If the best is yet to be,” he mused, giving his marshmallow white hair a few nervous pats. “I’ll probably be the oldest man in Brooklyn by the time things start to get better”.
The grandfather clock chimed the hour. With a quick check of his eyes and a brief inspection of his tongue, Keicher grabbed his black bag and left to do battle with his patients.
He always took the same route to work, passing the Canarsie landfill project where clouds of squawking seagulls swirled above the heaps of garbage, calling out joyfully to one other, as if gliding above piles of stinking refuse had to be the greatest joy in a seagull’s life. He passed Floyd Bennett Field where, as a boy, he had made history by winning the Annual Kite Flying Competition with an ingenious yarmulke shaped design which, to everyone’s surprise, out flew and outmaneuvered the heavily favored Chinatown entry – and those people knew from kites!
He passed Coney Island Hospital, his birthplace and the hospital where he completed his residency, with its sulfur colored walls and green lawns, across whose spacious grounds several doctors and nurses in their starched whites could be seen as they busily made their rounds. He passed the autumnal campus of Abraham Lincoln High School where he had taken his first baby steps towards his medical career and where he secretly lusted for the buxomly Helene Schwartz the prettiest girl, or so he thought, in Miss Edelman’s second year French class.
Approaching his office, he drove beneath the el where it stretched over Ocean Parkway like a hump backed caterpillar. Keicher’s patients were waiting for him outside his office. The moment he stepped from his car he was attacked and knocked to the ground.
But, a heart-beat before Melchor Schauer could get his hands on Keicher’s scarf; a trifle before Julia Jacobs could jab the good doctor with her needle-tipped umbrella; a split second before Louis Brombacher could get off a swift kick to the groin – the beleaguered doctor was pulled away from danger by the powerful arms of Marvin Brokvist, a longshoreman who worked the Brooklyn docks and also one of Keicher’s faithful customers.
“Can you find it in your heart to forgive an old lady?” asked Julia Jacobs, extending her bony hands plaintively. “Such a heavy umbrella I have, you shouldn’t know from it. I was only trying to help you up.”
“Forget it, Mrs. Jacobs. An accident. Can happen to anyone,” said Keicher softly.
“That damn scarf,” muttered Schauer, shaking his head disapprovingly. “No matter where I grab, I always come up with that scarf. Next time – next time don’t expect me to catch you if you insist on wearing that lousy schmatte.”
“It’s not your fault,” said Keicher. “Don’t blame yourself.”
Keicher tried to remember when it was that he first noticed his patients acting strangely. He figured it was about a year ago, around the High Holidays that his patients, especially the more elderly among them, began to come to his office, en masse, more or less every week.
Oddly enough, almost everyone who came to him appeared to be in fairly good health and didn’t require any medical intervention at all. Keicher asked them why they were coming every week without appointments when there was nothing seriously wrong with them. Some feigned aches and pains; others said they enjoyed seeing him and just stopped by to chit-chat; a few just shrugged and felt that no answer was necessary – they merely sighed or grunted and let the good doctor conclude what he wished.
Whatever the reasons, Keicher’s patients continued to come in great numbers, with and without appointments, making it impossible for him to see them all, let alone treat them all. Once, in desperation, he announced that he was retiring and that the office would be permanently closed. He even went so far as to stay away from his office for two weeks before venturing back to see if the situation had improved, but as soon as word got out the doctor had returned, his patients again flocked to him like pigeons returning to home base.
“So, Mrs. Jacobs?” said Keicher uneasily. “I thought I told you last week there was no need for you to come in again.”
“Ha! A lot you know. I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy the way I feel,” said the old woman magnanimously.
“Are you taking your blood pressure medication like I told you? One in the morning and one at night?” asked Keicher suspiciously.
“Ha! Pills! A lot you know! What good are pills when you blood is turning to water?”
What could he say to that? “Your blood is not turning to water, Mrs. Jacobs. You have a mild case of Anemia, but that’s all.”
“A lot you know,” she repeated, clucking her tongue.
“So if you won’t listen to me, why do you keep coming here, week after week after week”….His voice trialed off with frustration and fatigue.
“I want the whole world should know the truth!” spat Mrs. Jacobs defiantly.
Keicher was confused. “The truth about what?”
\ “Listen to Mr. Innocent here,” said Mrs. Jacobs to the assembled multitude in his overflowing waiting room, her head cocked slightly in Keicher’s direction. Concentrating all her scorn on the bewildered doctor she continued. “I want the whole world should know the truth about Julia Jacobs – they shouldn’t be too quick to bury me and forget!”
“Forget what?” insisted Keicher.
“They shouldn’t forget how I suffered needless torment when all I needed to come to myself was a simple blood transfusion as is performed for every nachshlepper with a nosebleed!”
Keicher was speechless. He could only stare in bewilderment and sigh. Then he
had a sudden inspiration? Keicher leaned forward and winked at his critic.
“No more evil eye, Mrs. Jacobs? And last week you were so sure.”
“Ha! A lot you know!” she said again with a dismissive wave of her blue veined
hand. But her pleasure with her own actions got the better of her so she decided to let the
doctor in on her little secret.
“Well, you really can’t be too sure about at thing like that,” she conceded, one professional to another, “but I did take precautions.” With that she leaned a little forward to reveal a bit of shriveled skin cleavage. “See?” she crowed delightedly, “I tied a red ribbon to my brassiere- just to be on the safe side.”
Keicher decided to continue to humor the old lady. “Good. Yes. I see. Well, then, maybe, God willing, that should do the trick! We can only hope!”
“Just between you, me and the lamppost, doctor,” said the woman coquettishly, “if that ribbon should happen to break, I hate to tell you what would all of a sudden happen to my figure!” She laughed and Keicher began to laugh with her until tears rolled down his rosy cheeks.
“You know what I’m thinking, Mrs. Jacobs?” said the doctor blowing his nose.
“No. Should I?” she asked as she started to gather up her things preparing to leave, her mission to the doctor’s office apparently accomplished.
“I’m thinking that you are feeling a bit better? Am I right?”
With a nod of her white haired head, she conceded. “Believe me, doctor Keicher” she said looking back at him as she exited the office, “you do me a world of good.”
“Then don’t come back here anymore!” yelled Keicher, too late to be heard.
* * *
Melchor Schauer elbowed his way from the waiting room to Keicher’s side. Keicher always felt a little uncomfortable in Schauer’s presence and Schauer knew it in the same way a guard dog can sense an intruder’s fear. Secretly, Schauer delighted in Keicher’s discomfiture.
Back in his youth, in Warsaw, Schauer worked as a street cleaner who made a little extra money by collecting horse droppings and selling his daily collections for fuel and fertilizer. No matter how much he washed he never felt clean and he always itched as if he was ready to jump out of his skin.
Keicher tried to put some distance between himself and Schauer, but the office was so crowded that they were practically standing toe to toe, like two wary prize fighters facing each other in the boxing ring.
Schauer spoke first. “You must really be rakin’ in the dough, Doc,” he said with mock approval. ”A fancy schmancy office like this… I should only have it so good!”
“What do you want here?” asked Keicher nervously. His face felt hot and raw under Schauer’s glaring gaze.
“Tsk, tsk. You got a nasty temper, doctor,” said Schauer, poking Keicher as if he were the Pillsbury doughboy.
“Mr. Schauer, I’m a busy man. I have a waiting room full of patients, so if you’ll be so good as to excuse me…”
Schauer cut him off mid-sentence. “So I see. Lots of patients. Nice car. Nice home in Canarsie.” A mean smile curled Schauer’s lips. “No time for a friendly chat?”
“Perhaps after office hours…” began Keicher gently, as he slowly moved towards the phone, in case he had to call the cops.
“Ah, you think you’re so much better than me,” said Schauer, moving to block the doctor’s progress. “I could have been a doctor if I wanted to. I had the brains when I was young,” said Schauer, pointing to his head. “Look at these hands. The hands of a street cleaner you think. Good for nothing else. Once they were beautiful, strong hands with long, delicate fingers.”
Schauer suddenly closed his eyes and shook his head as if to rid his ears of a sound only he could hear. Then he shook his fists in Keicher’s face.
“Do you know who broke these hands?” cried Shauer, as Keicher stepped back as if to ward off a blow. “Parasites like you! Bloodsuckers like you who live off the toil and sweat of the Proletariat!”
Keicher had had enough. “You don’t know what you are talking about! I am not your enemy. You are wrong!” Keicher’s voice was stern, like a professor lecturing a student, but not angry. But when he saw the pain in Schauer’s face, the doctor’s discomfiture soon turned to pity.
“You think you are an aristocrat,” continued Schauer, “you forget that you are just another immigrant, no better than the rest of us”.
“If I have forgotten who I am,” said Keicher, “why is it that I say to you, Melchor, that I recognize your grief, that I know you come to me for help, although you won’t admit it. If I have forgotten who I am, how would I know that there is something troubling your Jewish heart?”
Schauer was speechless. His eyes suddenly betraying a terrible confusion.
Keicher tried again. “Melchor, tell me what’s eating you. Trust me, perhaps I can help you…”
Schauer recoiled as if to spring.
“Ha! Don’t make me laugh. I wouldn’t give you the right time of day” said Schauer, backing toward the door. Suddenly, as he had done only minutes before, Schauer began shaking his head in an effort to block out whatever sound or vision it was that haunted him.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” asked Keicher, trying to lay a comforting hand on the frightened man’s shoulder.
“Nothing! It’s just a headache.” Schauer staggered against the wall, knocking one of Keicher’s many framed diplomas askew. “Why won’t you leave me alone?” he yelled at the bewildered doctor.
But before Keicher could answer, Schauer pushed his way out of the office, taking his ghosts with him.
* * *
Louis Brombacher approached Keicher like a disciple approaching a sage. He carried a brown paper bag from which he produced a finely fringed prayer shawl.
“Mister Brombacher…” began Keicher warily.
“Louie, doctor…please, just call me Louie,” said Brombacher, a reverent smile pasted on his lips.
Keicher stared at the calendar on his wall. The calendar depicted all of the Jewish holidays and the times for lighting the Sabbath candles and featured a color picture of a box of Horowitz-Margareten Egg Matzo.
“What are you bothering me with such nonsense for?” said Keicher, returning his gaze back to Brombacher. “You are not ill, right? So, what do you want from me?”
“A blessing for long life,” answered Brombacher immediately, “for prosperity, for nachos fin kinder, for a chance to go to Israel, for revenge on my farshtinker landlord – he should only drop dead! For a new set of uppers for my wife Sadie.”
“What is this – a joke?” asked Keicher.
“So humor me a little. Just a come under the tallith and make with me a blessing.”
“Louie, you must have me confused with Rabbi Herchenroder.”
“Ha. Ha. That’s a good one. Very good. And what a sense of humor!” Brombacher’s voice rose to a high pitched sing-song, as he touched his hand to his cheek and rocked his head.
“Why are you laughing? I’m serious,” insisted Keicher.
“Because he’s here!” said Brombacher emphatically.
“Who’s here?”
“Herchenroder!” And with great care, taking pains to enunciate the rabbi’s name very clearly and very slowly, Brombacher pronounced each syllable.
`“Rab…bi…Her…chen…rod…er.”
Keicher went to look, and, sure enough, sitting in the far corner, in a black hat and beard, there was Rabbi Herchenroder, poring over a large book. Catching Keicher’s eyes, the rabbi looked up and smiled gently, nodding his head in greeting. Keicher nodded back and quickly ducked back into his ante-room.
“What’s he doing here?” asked Keicher, very much surprised.
“He wants you should make with him a blessing,” replied Brombacher without skipping a beat.
“This is madness,” said Keicher, sinking into a chair and burying his head in his arms. “These people don’t want medicine,” he said to his shoes, “they want magic!”
Then, as if on cue, Hershenroder stuck his head into the doctor’s room.
“Just a little blessing,” he smiled, “what could be so bad?”
Resigned to his fate, Keicher remained seated as the rabbi entered and covered all three of them with his large, delicately embroidered prayer shawl.
“Boruch ata Adonai…”
* * *
“Why do you try to make me out like I was some kind of a dope fiend, Doc?” asked Marvin Brokvist, looking anxiously at Keicher’s ample supply of prescription drugs behind the locked glass display case in his office.
“Why? Why?” repeated Keicher. “You know perfectly well why. This is not the first time we have had this conversation”.
“It’s not as if I want it on acconda I got a craving for the stuff, or nuthin’ dumb like that.”
“No? Then what then?” said Keicher more than slightly peeved.
“I gotta have it,” said Brokvist, banging his fist on the doctor’s desk and upsetting the pile of charts, “because my back in killing me!”
“Do I have to tell you again why you have that pain?” Keicher waved some papers in Brokvist’s face. “How many times did I sit down with you and show you the X-rays?”
“Doc, be reasonable,” said Brokvist, pacing back and forth and gesturing wildly with his hands. “The pain is so bad, I can’t drive the cab.” He thrust his chin under Keicher’s nose. “You’re taking the food out of my mouth. How am I supposed to live?”
Keicher pointed to the window.
“Better I should turn you loose on New York while you’re higher than a kite – so maybe you can kill yourself and other poor jerk you don’t even know?”
Brokvist leaned against the wall and let out a deep sigh.
“Doc, I ain’t asking for the moon. All I want is something to kill the pain?”
“I wrote a prescription for the pain last week. Why don’t you use it?”
“I did use it,” said Brokvist, slapping his thigh with his fist, “but after I take the damn stuff, it still hurts!”
“Of course it hurts,” said Keicher carrying a pile of charts to a less cluttered corner of the room. “It’s always going to hurt. I explained it to you a million times already. Nothing, not even surgery, will take away the pain entirely. How many specialists have told you the same thing? But do you listen? Aach! What’s the use of talking? I’ve talked until I was blue in the face.”
Then, whirling around, Keicher tried to make his final stand.
“No more drugs, Brokvist! Do you hear me? No more drugs!”
Brokvist moved to block the doctor’s path.
“What about Morphine, Doc? I don’t mean the watered down stuff! I mean the real thing! By injection!”
Keicher shook his head. “The pain will still be there when the drug wears off, just like always! It’s the nerves in the spinal cord that were damaged in the accident. You should be grateful that you can still walk and work! You don’t know how lucky you are!
What’s a little pain compared to that? The sooner you understand that, the better off you’ll be!”
Brokvist walked to the window. For several minutes he stared blankly at nothing in particular. Across the street a woman hung her wash out to dry on a clothes line that stretched across the alley way from her building to the next, the white sheets snapping in the wind like the billowing sails of some long forgotten Clipper ship. When Brokvist turned back to the doctor he had tears in his eyes.
“Doc,” he said, “be reasonable!”
***
Keicher sat alone in his darkened office. From his black bag he produced a brochure that vaunted the joys of retirement living in Florida. On he cover, a retired white haired couple attired in matching pastel shirts and starched white trousers beamed their pleasure at the good doctor as they sipped their umbrella topped fruit drinks while sitting on lawn chairs in the cool shade of coconut laden palm trees. Keicher could almost feel the breeze and smell the perfumed Florida air.
The picture on the brochure was somewhat faded, but Keicher still found it appealing each time he pulled it out for a wistful look-see. Sure, he could always retire to Florida, he thought. He could abandon his practice and his exasperating patients – if he were that sort of a man.
But then he would think, what would become of his patients while he was away from them sipping exotic umbrella-topped drinks. He could just picture them shlepping to the new clinics where no one knew them and where their complaints would soon label them as fodder for the psychiatrist’s couch.
Poor Mrs. Jacobs – imagine how she would be treated if she told some young specialist that her blood was turning to water. And what would become of Schauer? Who could he go to with whatever terrible thing it is that haunts him and drives him to berate whoever extends a helping hand? And Brokvist – what would they think of his endless requests for more and more medication? Would they know how he exaggerates his pain – though his pain is great indeed? Would they know how –with all his complaining, Brokvist can still lift and aging doctor off the ground as though he weighed no more than a feather? Or would they give him what he wanted and let a good man ruin himself with drugs?
And what of the special kind of reassurance that Louis Brombacher seeks when he comes to the office with his tallith? Would they consider that none of their business too?
The new clinics, with their psychiatrists and their “team” approach to everything, could not handle these people without destroying something vital within them.
No, he would not go. Here was where he belonged no matter how much he was taken for granted or abused. And it was not only because he considered it to be his duty. He also did it out of love.
Keicher locked up the office and stepped out into the cool November air.
As always, Brighton Beach Avenue was alive with scurrying shoppers, searching for bargains, trying to stretch their meager budgets. The stores, their display windows lit up like television screens, flooded the streets with light.
Yes, Keicher was in an impossible situation, tied to a practice that was an endless source of aggravation and heartache, but – thought Keicher, climbing into his car and tossing his black bag into the back seat, things could be a lot worse, believe you me.
* * *
BLIND MAN
Daniel Rankin, age seven, closed his eyes tightly and clasped his mother’s hand as they walked along the Grand Concourse on their way to visit his aunt Lily.
“Open your eyes, tateleh,” said his mother, shaking him playfully by the arm. “Someone shouldn’t think you’re god forbid making fun.”
“It’s only a game, mom,” said the little boy, his eyes still closed.
“Jewish boys don’t play such games. It isn’t nice,” she said, a slight smile on her lips as she thought to herself how history was repeating itself. Blind man was a game that she herself had often played, tagging along behind her mother as a little girl growing up in Bucharest, still able to recall after so many years how the hard brick cobble stones felt beneath the thin soles of her shoes.
*
Across the hall from Daniel’s aunt lived a black haired Puerto Rican girl named Star who was in the fifth grade and who had learned a trick which she promised to show Daniel the next time he came to visit. Star had learned the trick from Jorge, the super’s pimple faced teenaged son, who some months ago had taken time off from cleaning out the coal burning furnace to invite the fun loving girl to make a tree grow between his legs.
“Star! Vente! Get off the fire escape,” cried Senora Apolito. “What if Father Perez should see you?”
“Mama, how come you always got to worry so much for?” replied Star. “All you do is worry, worry, worry.”
*
Daniel’s aunt hugged him affectionately, her bosom encasing his head like elephant ears.
“Well, vonce, I’m waiting,” sang Aunt Lily to her struggling prisoner.
“Say hello, Daniel” urged Mrs. Rankin. “Tell your tanteh how much you love her.”
“Hello, Aunt Lily. I love you, Aunt Lily,” said the boy, trying to conceal his embarrassment while struggling unsuccessfully to free himself from her suffocating and heavily perfumed embrace.
“Aunt Lily?” said the rotund woman with fake astonishment. “Can’t you do better than that?”
“Tanteh Lily!” came the muffled reply. “I meant Tanteh Lily!”
“Of course he meant Tanteh Lily,” cooed Daniel’s mother. “What else would he call his beloved tanteh?”
“Tanteh big tits!” thought Daniel mischievously, laughing to himself.
*
Situated near the crest of the hill, the old apartment house offered a fine view of the crowded street. Daniel and Star sat on the fire escape, their legs dangling between the bars. Star’s long black hair draped over her slender shoulders. Daniel thought her breath smelled like milk.
“Want to go roller skating later, Star?” asked Daniel hopefully, eager to join the other neighborhood children who were playing loudly in the street below.
“When you get to be in the fifth grade you don’t go roller skating anymore,” said Star emphatically, running her fingers through her long black tresses, “that’s for kids.”
Suddenly Star was afraid. What if Daniel did not want to learn the trick that she had learned from Jorge? But his next question reassured her.
“What do you do in the fifth grade, Star?” Daniel opened his eyes wide with genuine curiosity.
“I’ll show you what we do,” said Star, taking his hand, “but first we have to go where no one will see us.”
*
The cold basement was illuminated by a small street level window and a dull, frosted light bulb whose light waxed and waned whenever the rust-caked boiler shook and shivered on its moorings.
Star led Daniel behind the boiler, away from the staircase and the lone window where, to his utter astonishment, Star slipper her cold hand beneath his clothes and laced her fingers around his genitals.
*
Senora Apolito was not sure if it was a sin to take her troubles to the two Jewish ladies who were chatting so amiably in the apartment across the hall, but she had made up her mind.
“Shalom, Mrs. Apolito,” said Daniel’s aunt Lily, her rotund frame quivering like Jell-O as she turned to greet her neighbor.
“Good day, senoras,” replied the graceful woman.
“And how are you, Mrs. Apolito?” asked Mrs. Rankin.
“Good. Very good,” said Star’s mother, obeying Aunt Lily’s gestures to sit down.
“Such gorgeous hair!” said the gushing Mrs. Rankin, clapping her pudgy hands together in delight. “Gottenyu! All my loved ones should have such hair!”
“And such a wonderful little girl you have,” said Aunt Lily. Then realizing her error, the superstitious woman quickly reversed herself, suddenly spitting twice in Mrs. Apolito’s general direction. This was done as a precautionary measure to chase away any loitering evil spirits and to prevent the accidental, unintentional giving of the Evil Eye. “Ptew! Ptew! I shouldn’t give her a conahora!”
“Ladies, forgive me for intruding on your privacy,” said the dark haired woman mysteriously, “but there is something I must tell you before I lose my precious baby!”
“Oh, my God!” gasped Aunt Lily, wide-eyed.
“Gevalt!” spat Mrs. Rankin, instinctively moving closer to her sister for comfort and protection.
“It’s my Star!” said Mrs. Apolito, her eyes red-rimmed and tearing. It was clear the poor distraught woman had not been getting much sleep. “I am afraid she may be in the clutches of the Devil!”
Both women gave each other a knowing nod. Somehow they actually seemed to understand what their neighbor might be so upset about.
“She is like a stranger to me,” continued Mrs. Apolito, wiping her eyes with a delicately embroidered handkerchief. “I look at her and do not recognize my baby. Always she is so distant – like a lost traveler. I ask her what is wrong and she tells me not to worry. Can you imagine? Ten years old and she is telling me not to worry!
“Tell me, dear ladies,” implored the distraught woman, “do you think I should go to Father Perez?”
“Maybe a good enema…” suggested Aunt Lily her voice trailing off in deep thought.
“Vos zogts du? Antenna?” asked Daniel’s mother, somewhat perplexed by all that she was hearing.
“Ha gezucht enema! Nicht antenna!” explained Aunt Lily with mock annoyance.
“Senoras, excuse me, but I do not understand. What did you say?”
The two sisters looked at each other and laughed.
“We only meant that perhaps the child isn’t feeling well and that perhaps a good laxative…” explained Mrs. Rankin. “Here, let me show you,” said Aunt Lily, disappearing into the bathroom, only to emerge a few moments later carrying an off-red bladder-like contraption attached to a long rubber hose at the end of which dangled a plastic nozzle.
“Dios Mio!” cried Mrs. Apolito upon being presented with the sour smelling contraption.