Recessional by James A. Michener
When one listener, eager to air her knowledge of matters regal, said: ‘Of course, he’ll go to Buckingham Palace and the Queen will tap him on the shoulder with a sword—’ St. Près quickly interrupted her. He explained that such a ceremony takes place only when a new title is bestowed, and never for the heir of an existing one. ‘Then it becomes purely a family affair,’ he concluded, to the obvious disappointment of his audience.
And then everything fell apart when an official at the British embassy in Washington explained that Harry could not inherit the title unless he gave up his United States citizenship.
When the limitations of his title were explained to Harry, he showed no disappointment whatever. When they asked how he could be complacent about the puncturing of a rather grand balloon, he said quietly: ‘No problem. I’ve always been a British subject.’
‘But you told me yourself,’ St. Près said petulantly, ‘you’d never left the United States. Never been in Britain.’
‘My father was so loyal to the crown that in Canada he remained a “loyal subject of the King,” as he expressed it. I remember him taking me to an office in Ottawa and registering me as a British citizen.’
‘But you told the man from the embassy that you had American citizenship.’
‘That’s right. In World War Two I volunteered for the United States Army, and you have a law which says that any foreigner who serves in an American uniform fighting against the enemy is entitled to full American citizenship. And I accepted it. So I have dual citizenship, British by birth, American because of my heroism in battle. I received medals, you know.’
And so Harry Ingram of the Palms became the legitimate holder of the baronetcy. In due course the Palms returned to a degree of normalcy that had been abandoned during its intense preoccupation with British aristocracy. But residents continued to refer to the nondescript little man as ‘our Sir Harry, Bart.’
When it became obvious that Betsy Cawthorn would soon reach the point when she could try to walk completely alone, with no walker, no cane, no one holding her by the elbow, Dr. Zorn was so pleased by her progress that he called Oliver Cawthorn in Chattanooga: ‘Betsy’s done wonders. We have this system of parallel bars at handgrip height—maybe two and a half feet apart. A patient who wants to test her new legs can walk between the bars and catch herself if she feels she’s about to fall. With that security, Betsy’s been walking, yes, truly walking to the end of the bars, then turning around by herself, and walking back.’
When Cawthorn expressed his delight at this news, Zorn added a dampening note: ‘Remember, technically she is not walking alone. Those parallel bars close at hand, they’re a tremendous help, a mental crutch. The big test comes when she stands completely clear of the bars—with no one to catch her if she falls—and she walks across the room.’
‘When might that happen?’
‘With Betsy, who knows? Soon, since she feels it’s a personal challenge.’
‘Would it muddle things if I flew down to visit with her for the next few days?’
‘I believe she’d love it.’
So Oliver Cawthorn flew down to Tampa, visited with his daughter and took her out to dinner at Berns’, the famous Tampa steak house, where, after the main course, she was handed a menu offering her more than a hundred different desserts to choose from. She selected a New York-style cherry cheesecake and found it delicious. As her father helped her to her room that night, she said: ‘It was a memorable evening, Dad. The last of phase one. Tomorrow I’ll be walking. And I’d really love you to be here.’
On the next day, only a few months after Bedford Yancey took charge of this crippled girl whose willpower had been destroyed, she entered the rehabilitation center on her walker, moved easily to the parallel bars, which she knew she could depend on for support if she needed it, and stood erect for some moments at the far end of the bars. Then, smiling brightly at Yancey, her father, Nora, and, especially Dr. Zorn, she said with a mock-heroic laugh: ‘Stand back while I make my maiden flight!’
With that she stepped forward tentatively, looked as if she might fall, but then recovered her stability and, with a slow smile illuminating her face, confidently moved her left foot forward. Taking a big breath, she paused a moment to smile at her father and Dr. Zorn. Then with her confidence bolstered, she took a series of steps that were miraculously normal. With a cry of triumph and a huge smile she approached the men who were watching with bated breath. They half expected her to end her adventure by precipitately collapsing into someone’s arms. But Nora, who was also watching, thought otherwise: She’s going to follow this through.
Nora had guessed right, for when Betsy finished her walk, she took three more steps sideways to where Dr. Zorn waited. When she stood face-to-face with him she threw her arms wide, grabbed him for support and kissed him fervently.
Nora grinned delightedly, but everyone else who saw her bold audacity was taken aback, no one more so than Andy Zorn, who recoiled instinctively and almost unbalanced the girl who clung to him. He knew she had a deep appreciation for his saving her life and he had worried earlier that she might have fixated on him as a sort of savior. But he also knew that such fixations were common among patients who had suffered trauma and that they usually passed without doing damage to either the patient or the doctor.
There were, however, other instances—like the hideous affair of his friend and colleague Ted Reichert, M.D. Recalling that disaster made him shudder, and later that day as he paced along the banks of the channel trying to collect himself, he reflected on how he himself might stumble into Reichert’s snake pit if he allowed chance experiences with a beautiful young patient to take root and blossom into unforeseen and uncontrollable passions.
Dr. Reichert had been the youngest member of the staff at Zorn’s Chicago clinic. He was an excellent internist, but the older members of his team quickly noticed that in one aspect of his profession he was badly flawed: although married to a lovely woman who had given him two children, he had a fatal propensity for taking his more attractive women patients to area motels, where there was a good chance he might be recognized. Even after he’d had a couple of close calls, with one irate husband ready to protest publicly, he persisted in his dangerous behavior.
Andy, as senior member of the team, was given the unpleasant duty of calling Reichert to his office and reprimanding him: ‘Ted, you’re fishing in very dangerous waters.’
‘What do you mean?’ the brash young fellow asked, and his insolence caused Zorn to lose his temper. Slamming both hands on his desk, he snapped: ‘Damn it all, Ted, you’re chasing women patients, dragging them to motels and endangering your career. What’s equally deplorable is that you’re endangering the reputation of this clinic. Clean up your act from this moment on, or’—his voice rose to a shout—‘you’ll get kicked right the hell out of this clinic with no letters of recommendation.’
Regretting that he had allowed himself to be goaded into such an outburst, he softened his tone: ‘Ted, my dear friend. The other doctors and I think of you as one of our best. We want to hold on to you. We want to help you achieve a long and illustrious career, but we cannot do that if you insist on galloping blindly down the path of your self-destruction and ours.’
Reichert had bristled: ‘You mean, you’ve gathered as a committee behind my back to discuss me? Who do you think you are?’ and he stomped out of the office.
Recalling how ineffective he had been that day, Zorn now smiled ruefully, for his reprimand had had no effect on Reichert. There were more women, more motels, more gossip inside the clinic and out, and finally an outraged husband who dragged the whole sorry affair into the courts, with gleeful attention from the Chicago press.
So there had been a second meeting, and this time Andy did not lose his composure. With Reichert sitting before him like a disobedient schoolboy, Zorn had said in icy tones: ‘Ted, you’ve used up your credentials in this clinic. You’re dismissed as of this morning.’
‘You can?
Brutally Zorn had said: ‘I’d think that you, of all people, would want to keep away from courts. Our lawyer assures us we’re on safe ground.’
At every point at which Ted tried to weasel out of the inevitable, or plead with Zorn for a second chance, Andy was resolute: ‘Ted, it’s finished. Your incredible behavior has cost you your job, your marriage, your two kids and your ability to work anywhere in Chicago. So leave this office and this building and find refuge somewhere far from here.’
He was proud of the way he had kept his temper this time, but when he was alone, he had suddenly felt sick to his stomach and suffered a convulsive retching for several minutes, as if he were striving to throw off a poison that had infected him.
In subsequent years Zorn made himself something of an expert in the attempts of America’s professionals to instill some kind of self-discipline among their memberships. He noted with approval the effort in New York to prevent divorce lawyers from having sexual relations with women clients in a divorce case. The same held true in the field of psychiatry.
So when Andy Zorn walked along the channel talking to himself, he was a man fully knowledgeable about medical ethics, which made him perhaps unduly cautious about doctor-patient relationships. There was little likelihood that he would allow himself to become entangled with a pretty visitor to the health services of the Palms.
Andy tried to make light of the matter. ‘Betsy’s just a girl with a schoolgirl crush. This will all blow over if I simply treat her like any other patient. She’ll soon have completed all the rehabilitation we can offer here and be on her way safely back to Tennessee.’ He would not be happy to see her go, for she had been a bright addition to the Palms, but he would feel easier if she went.
In the steamy days of midsummer, when Florida displayed its least attractive weather, an unsavory development at the Palms exhibited one of those ugly forces to which retirement areas are sometimes subjected. The two children of the Chris Mallorys, abetted by the strong voices of four grandchildren, launched judicial proceedings against the elder Mallorys. The suit, brought in the Florida courts, was being tried in Tampa, and charged that the grandparents, through their irresponsible expenditure of family money, were endangering the future welfare of their children and grandchildren. The court was implored to appoint a legal guardian to oversee how Chris Mallory, the grandfather, spent his savings, ‘lest their radical depletion harm the family.’
Andy, who had every reason to believe that Chris Mallory was in full possession of his faculties, for the man had become an exemplary resident of the Palms after the unfortunate affair over his driver’s license, felt it his obligation to do what he could to support the senior Mallorys, and he volunteered to do so. But when he was about to announce this decision, administrator Krenek rushed to Zorn’s office with cautionary advice: ‘Andy, for heaven’s sake don’t tangle with the legal system in Florida. You’ll find yourself enmeshed in a jungle with enemies coming at you from all sides.’
When Zorn asked how that could be, Krenek explained from his background of painful experience in the Florida courts: ‘Florida does everything to protect its lawyers. Easy to understand, since most judges got their jobs by being lawyers to begin with.
‘Andy, you’re already asking questions about our doctors. Don’t take on the lawyers, too.’
‘But if there’s injustice—’
‘No. What I’m warning you about is justice, Florida style. Stand clear.’
‘What do I need to be afraid of in the Mallory case? Looks open-and-shut to me. Avaricious children trying to gain control of the old man’s money. Should be prevented.’
‘It’s been my experience in these cases that what seems obvious to you and me is not at all clear to our judges and juries. Any family member may bring a suit like this, and many do; or contest a perfectly sound will, and God knows many do that—and succeed.’
‘I thought a will was a will, rock-solid and secure.’
‘Think again! A will is what the probate court says it is, and the damnedest evidence can be brought in to upset what’s been written in the clearest possible words and clauses.’ To demonstrate his point he cited a famous case that had involved a large grant to the university he had attended as an undergraduate. ‘Late in life this wealthy businessman had become enamored of astronomy and had willed his old school quite a substantial sum for building a first-class observatory. Such “misuse of family funds” so enraged the old man’s heirs that they brought suit to have the will overthrown. Protesters crawled out of the woodwork, distant relatives the old man had never known, but they engineered a formidable challenge. The evidence that seemed to have the most effect on the jury was the substantiated claims that the old fellow had developed the habit of going out alone at midnight to study the stars. That proved he was nuts and not capable of writing a sensible will.’
‘Surely such evidence wasn’t taken seriously,’ Andy protested, but Krenek cited an even more serious charge against the old man: ‘The relatives brought in a medical doctor who testified that in his opinion the grandfather’s death had been caused by pneumonia he had contracted during one of his midnight vigils. The judge asked: “Was that the behavior of a man in his right mind?” and when the doctor said “No,” the jury agreed and the will was overthrown. The university never got its observatory, and the relatives split the boodle among themselves.’
‘Did they get much?’
‘So many of them, from so many parts, they got little. Lawyers ate it up before there could be a distribution.’
‘You think the Mallory gang might be cooking up some attack like that?’
‘I’ve followed three or four such cases, and no sane man could possibly guess what charges will be made against our boy, but they’ll be attacks the jury will take seriously, no matter how crazy.’
‘So he could be in real trouble?’
‘Yes.’
‘So then, I’ve got to try and help.’
Krenek lowered his voice, looked about to be sure no one else was listening, and warned: ‘Andy, keep out of this. If you try to testify, the Mallory kids’ lawyers will make mincemeat of you. They’ll claim you’re only trying to protect your own financial interests. Suppose the custodian appointed by the court says that in order to live more frugally, the older Mallorys have to move out. You lose the rent on that big apartment.’
‘Would they stoop so low? To dictate where the old people must live in order to save money for their offspring? What in hell is the world coming to?’
‘That’s exactly what it comes down to,’ Krenek said, and he summarized half a dozen court cases involving disputed wills, a subject in which he took great interest: ‘Most fascinating one I remember was the attempt of the family of the great opera singer Luisa Tetrazzini who claimed the old lady was going nuts in New York and wasting the money that ought to be conserved for their use later on. They marshaled a lot of wild testimony proving the singer was so certifiably loony that she must be placed under the care of a guardian—and, of course, they offered to serve in that capacity.’
‘How did the case go?’
‘Strongly against the old woman. She had behaved, shall we say, curiously, but when everything seemed lost she asked permission to stand in the witness box and without either a page of the libretto or any musical accompaniment, she sang solo the entire mad scene from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor. At the conclusion, so the story goes, the judge said from the bench: “Madam, you are far from incompetent,” and the relatives lost their case.’
It was a chastened Dr. Zorn who attended the opening days of Mallory vs. Mallory, for it soon became clear that a voice of reason like his was not going to be welcomed in that court. He was appalled by such evidence as was allowed, for the young Mallorys produced witnesses who testified that the old folks, ‘in their nineties, were known to frequent dance halls in which unsavory elements of society consorted,’ and other witnesses too said that wher
Especially damaging was the testimony of a waitress from a local restaurant who said that ‘the couple often had dinner in her restaurant, and paid good money for it, even though they were entitled to a free meal at the Palms.’
‘How do you know they were so entitled?’ the judge asked, and the waitress said: ‘Because they told me so. One night they said: “This meal is costing us real money, because at the Palms we’ve already paid for our dinner.” ’
‘Why would they have told you that?’
‘Because they wanted to talk. They told me lots of stuff. Very free with their talk, but very tight when it came to tipping.’
‘You didn’t like the Mallorys?’
‘I live off tips, not idle conversation.’
The lawyer hired by the children asked: ‘But they admitted they were wasting money by dining in your restaurant?’
‘You could take it that way.’
‘But you just testified that they told you that, and I quote your words, “This meal is costing us real money.” Is that what they said?’
‘Yes.’
There was other testimony that the older Mallorys were careless spendthrifts, A garage attendant said: ‘They had this good car, a Cadillac. Kept it outside their door. But to go to the restaurants they always called a taxi.’
‘Could it be,’ the lawyer for the old people asked, ‘that like many older people they did not want to risk driving at night?’
‘Not at all. On lots of nights they drove to the mall for some late shopping. You know why, in my opinion, they used the taxi when they went to a restaurant? Because they had two or three drinks and didn’t want to risk a “driving under the influence” arrest.’
This led to evidence from other witnesses that yes, the Mallorys did like their nip now and then, and yes, they did keep a goodly supply of bottles in their apartment, where they entertained his bridge devotees and her friends who helped in the Health building.