Interface (23 page)

"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 s
he had intended.

The waitress approached. Mel hurriedly snatched up his menu an
d 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 re
ady 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 s
aid, "You want a drink, Mary Catherine?"

"No thanks, I'm working," she said. Finally the knot went out o
f 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 t
he 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 h
ome and be just shocked." Mary Catherine laughed out loud, b
lowing 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 surg
ery 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 a
bout this." Mel slapped the picture facedown on the table, broke e
ye 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 w
orks." 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."

14

During the wintry depths of his depression, his seasonal
affective disorder in Elton, New Mexico, Dr. Radhakrishnan
would have settled for any kind of surgery at all. He would sit in his
house, looking out the windows into the dim blue light, which
would sift down from the sky like a gradual snowfall, and watch the
neighbors' dogs sniff and dig into snow-banks, and wonder how one went about getting one's hands on a dog, and whether it was t
echnically illegal to do brain surgery on one, just for practice. Now
that he was back in the saddle, though, he was starting to get picky.
In this phase of the project, they were working on Mr. Easyrider
and Mr. Scatflinger, not their real names. The samples of brain
tissue that had been overnight-expressed to Dr. Radhakrishnan in
Elton had belonged to these two men.

It was not entirely clear what their real names were. Both of the pat
ients were in the category of found objects. Neither one was neurologically equipped to identify himself, and if either of them h
ad been in the habit of carrying identification, it had been
removed by other persons before they had come under the purview of
the authorities. Before Dr. Radhakrishnan arrived to impose so
me sense of decorum on the Barracks, the Americans (naturally) h
ad come up with these names. Like everything else that bubbled up
over the rim of the icky cultural stewpot of America, the names were
pervasive and sticky and could not be scrubbed off once
applied. Actually, for a while they had referred to Mr. Scatflinger as M
r. Shitpitcher, but this was completely unacceptable - the nurses co
uld not even bring themselves to say it - and so Dr. Ra
dhakrishnan had changed it.