Interface

13

"I'm going to be real straight with you," Mel said.

"Somehow I'm not surprised," Mary Catherine said. They were sitting together at a corner table in an old-fashioned family-type Italian restaurant. The restaurant was across the street and down the block from the hospital where Mary Catherine had spent most of the last four years. When families of stricken patients had to eat, they gathered around the big circular tables here and glumly plunged their forks into deep, steaming dishes of lasagna, like surgeons around an operating table.

"You dad is not a happy camper right now," Mel continued. "And it's going to get worse in a week or two, when we have to come out and tell the public that he has suffered a stroke. I don't know how he's going to react."

She slapped her menu down on the table and stopped even pretending to read it. "Enough, enough," she said. "What the hell are you saying?"

"Your dad would rather die than live the way he is now," Mel said.

Mary Catherine kept looking and listening for a few seconds, until she finally realized that this was all there was to it. If Mel had been talking about anyone else, "he would rather die" would have been a figure of speech. But not with Dad. She could just imagine him, sitting down there in Tuscola, making the executive decision that it was time to die, and then formulating his plan. "That's enough," she said. "That's all you have to say." Then she closed her eyes and silently let tears run down her face for a half a minute or so.

She opened her eyes, rubbed her face with her napkin, blinked away the last tears. Mel was sitting with his hands folded together, patiently waiting for her to finish. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a hefty waitress loitering with her pad and pen. The help here knew how to deal with grief. The waitress was trying to figure out -when it was okay to approach the table.

"Okay, I'm ready to order," Mary Catherine said, louder than she had intended.

The waitress approached. Mel hurriedly snatched up his menu and began to scan it; he wasn't ready. Watching him, Mary Catherine suddenly felt a lot of affection for good old Mel, trying to pick out an entree, any entree, because Mary Catherine was ready to order.

"I'll have the fettucine with pesto and a club soda," Mary Catherine said.

"Some kind of baked noodle thing without any meat," Mel said. "Lasagna? Manicotti?" the waitress said. But Mel could not be bothered with details; he didn't hear her. "And a glass of white," he said, "You want a drink, Mary Catherine?"

"No thanks, I'm working," she said. Finally the knot went out of her throat and she felt better. She took a couple of deep breaths. "All clear," she said.

"You're handling it well," Mel said. "You're doing a good job of this."

"I suppose he has a little plan all worked out." "Yeah. The den. Sometime when there's no kids out in front of the house, I would guess."

"He'll probably use the big shotgun from Vietnam, right?" Mel shrugged. "Beats me. I'm. not privy to all his decisions." "You know, James and I always used to get into trouble when Patricia was babysitting us as a kid. And Mom and Dad would come home and be just shocked." Mary Catherine laughed out loud, blowing off tension. "Because Patricia was such a nice girl and why were we being so mean to her?" Mel laughed. "So now I'll have to go home and give Dad a hard time for wanting to shoot himself while Patricia's babysitting him." She heaved a big sigh, trying to throw off the aching feeling in her ribs. "But it's really hard to talk to him when he's in that - that whole situation he's in now."

"See, he's acutely aware of that. And that's why he made this decision."

"So why are you here?" she said. "Is this an official message from Dad?" Mel snorted. "You kidding? He'd kill me if he knew I was telling you this."

"Oh. I thought I was being given one last chance to go down and talk to him before he did it."

"No way. I think I caught him in the act. Lining up his shot," Mel said. "Now he's too embarrassed to actually do it for a while."

"Well ... of course I want him to live. But I have to admit killing himself now would be a lot more true to his nature."

"Absolutely," Mel said. "And it would give him a chance to get in a last dig at Patricia, which is incentive enough." Mary Catherine laughed. "But he's not gonna do it," Mel said.

"Why not?" It was unusual to think of Dad making up his mind to do something, and then holding back.

"There's one possibility we are investigating. A new therapy that might bring him back to where he was."

"I haven't heard of any such thing," Mary Catherine said. Mel set his briefcase up on the table and snapped it open. He pulled out a manila envelope and handed it to Mary Catherine.

Inside was a stack of a dozen or so research papers, mostly reprints from technical journals. On top was an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of a rakishly modern, high-tech structure on a bluff above the ocean. "What is this place?"

"The Radhakrishnan Institute. They do heavy-duty neurological research. Those papers describe some of the work they've been doing."

Mary Catherine set the photograph aside and began to flip through the research papers.

"I thought you might be interested in seeing some of that stuff. It's all gibberish to me," Mel said.

Mary Catherine frowned. "I'm familiar with these papers. I've seen them. All in the last three years."

"So?"

"Well, the stuff described here is all fairly basic research. I mean, in this one here, they're talking about a technique to grow baboon brain cells in vitro and then reimplant them in the baboon's brain."

"So?"

"So the date on the paper is three months ago. Which means it was probably written sometime last year."

"So?" Mel would continue to asking this question until hell froze over or he understood what she was getting at.

"So, it's like these guys just invented the wheel last year, and now they're claiming that they can make a car."

"You're saying it's a hell of a stretch between putting some new cells into a baboon's head, and fixing your dad."

"Exactly."

"How long would it take to cover that ground?"

"Well, I don't know. It's never been done before. But I would think it would take at least five or ten years, if everything went well."

"Why would they-"

"They're neurosurgeons, Mel. Neurosurgeons are the ultimate macho shitheads of the medical world. Nobody can stand them. Their solution to everything is cold steel. But they can never really do anything."

"What do you mean? Cutting a hole in a guy's brain seems like doing a hell of a lot."

"But there's no cure for most neuro problems. They can chop out a tumor or a hematoma. But they can't really cure the important problems, and, because they are macho shitheads, that drives them crazy. Clearly, that's the motivation behind this research. And the inflated claims."

Mel pondered this one for a while.

Mary Catherine sipped on her club soda and watched Mel ponder it. As usual, it seemed that his affair had a lot of dimensions that he wasn't telling her about. A gray winter light was shining in through the window, bringing all of the wrinkles in Mel's face into high relief, and suddenly the look on his face seemed frighteningly intense to her. "This is a tough one," he finally said, shaking his head. "Too much emotional shit getting in the way. Can't think straight."

"What are you thinking, Mel?"

Mel shook his head. "Five or ten years. See, I haven't really talked to anyone yet. All I get is feelers. These feelers are so subtle I can't even tell if they are really there. Like this here" - he pointed to the photograph and the papers - "came in the guise of a fund-raising mailing. They wanted to now if your dad wanted to contribute to this thing. But it's no coincidence. I know that for damn sure."

"Have they offered to fix Dad's brain, or not?"

"Absolutely not, and you can bet they never will," Mel said. "They will wait for us to ask them. That way, if it goes wrong, it was our idea. But from the way they are acting, you would think that they were ready to put him under the knife tomorrow."

"So here is the sixty-four thousand dollar question," Mary Catherine said. "Does Dad believe that these people can fix him up? Does he believe it enough to keep him from killing himself?"

"For now, definitely. He won't do it today, or tomorrow. But..." Mel stopped in midsentence.

"But if I blab my big mouth and say that this is highly speculative and might be five or ten years down the road, that's different," Mary Catherine said.

"I don't like to put this pressure on you," Mel said, "but yeah, I think you have a point there." He reached across the table, grabbed the photograph, and held it up. "This keeps him alive. It's his hope. It's all he has right now."

"Well, that's good," Mary Catherine said.

Mel gave her a penetrating look. "How is it good?"

She was taken aback by the question. "It keeps him alive, like you said. And even if it does take five or ten years before this surgery can be performed, we can keep his hope alive until then. And then, maybe someday, we'll have him back."

Mel stared at her morosely. "Shit. You've got it too."

"Got what?"

"That same look on your face as Willy had when I told him about this." Mel slapped the picture facedown on the table, broke eye contact, looked out the window, started rubbing his chin.

"What are you thinking about?" she prompted him after a few minutes.

"Same thing as ever. Power." Mel said. "Power and how it works." He heaved a big sigh. "The power that some unheard-of thing called the Radhakrishnan Institute is suddenly wielding over the Cozzanos." He heaved another big sigh. "And over me."

"Your emotions getting in the way?"

"Yeah."

"Get a detached opinion, then."

"That's a good idea. I should talk to Sipes down there at the U."

"Don't. Sipes is a big-time researcher in these fields."

"So he's a good guy to talk to, right?"

"Not necessarily. That means he has theories of his own. Theories that may compete with Radhakrishnan's."

"Good point. Very devious thinking by your standards," Mel said with cautious admiration. "Why don't you go check it out yourself?"

Mary Catherine was startled. She blushed slightly. "I thought the idea was to be objective," she said.

"Objective is nice, it's a cute idea," Mel said, "but there's nothing like family, is there?"

"Well-"

"Suppose we did find some supposedly objective doctor to check this Radhakrishnan thing out for us. Would you really take his word for it?"

"No," she admitted, "I'd want to go and see this thing for myself, before Dad went under the knife."

"Done. I'll hire you, on an hourly basis, as a medical consultant for Cozzano Charities," Mel said. "Your job will be to investigate the medical qualifications of research programs that we are considering donating to. And right now we are considering a donation to the Radhakrishnan Institute."

"Mel, I'm a resident. I can't take time off."

"That," Mel said, "is a political problem between Cozzano Charities and the director of your fine hospital. And I have been known to involve myself in politics from time to time."