Switched at Birth (2 page)

Adrian brought Mitzi to her apartment
and nursed the animal back to health on a steady diet of homemade
dog food. Half the mutt’s teeth fell out. The rickety hind legs
were so badly bowed that it could only run at half-speed in a
frenetic, geriatric waddle. Once Mitzi was on the mend, Adrian
brought the dog to the nursing home for a visit. She licked the old
woman’s face and cuddled beneath her bony rib cage. In the morning
the old woman was dead.

“
How’s my dad doing?” Adrian
asked.

“
Okay. We sometimes get
together at the holidays,” Jason replied. “He had three more
daughters with his second wife.”

“
So I heard,” Adrian’s lips
turned up ever so slightly in a dry smile. “Are they
nice?”

She’s never even met her
half-sisters!
Jason thought a moment. “The
first two are obnoxious, but the youngest, Dawn, is sort of sweet.
Reminds me of you.”

Adrian scooped the dog up in her arms
and nuzzled its face with her chin. “My father got himself into a
legal mess a while back. Whatever came of that?”

Five years earlier, Jack
Flanagan’s mug was smeared all over the
Providence Journal
when the IRS
indicted him for tax evasion. A private accounting firm sent to
review his business records at the medical supply company
discovered the flamboyant businessman, who favored Cuban cigars,
Lincoln Continentals and off-colored jokes, was ‘cooking the
books’. A slew of hospital beds and motorized wheelchairs that
never left the showroom had been billed to Medicare along with a
hundred eighty-five bogus claims for bottled oxygen. An elderly
woman with rheumatoid arthritis supposedly receiving inhalation
therapy had been deceased a half dozen years.

Rumors circulated that Jack
Flanagan was heading to Connecticut for a little rest and
relaxation, courtesy of the federal government. A minimum security
facility with an outstanding law library, soft ball field and
state-of-the-art exercise gym.
Nolo
contendere
. In the end, he copped a plea,
paid a hefty fine and received a two-year suspended sentence. Case
closed!

Throughout the ordeal, the man never
showed a speck of remorse. The week before his final court date,
Adrian’s old man was yakking it up like a remorseless jackass at a
Fourth of July barbecue. Decked out in Bermuda shorts and a garish
print shirt, Jack Flanagan poked fun at the district attorney.
Everyone cheated on their income tax, right? The unfortunate glitch
with the hospital beds, bottled oxygen and wheel chairs was just
sloppy bookkeeping. Sloppy bookkeeping to the tune of over two
hundred thousand dollars!

The week of Jack Flanagan’s
infamy, a Protestant minister with a congregation on the East Side
of the city published an editorial titled
The Puritan Ethos and Contemporary Morality
. In it he argued that, back in the seventeen hundreds, anyone
caught committing adultery, theft or causing harm to a fellow
citizen ran the risk of being banished from the settlement
altogether. Only a few miles west of the thirteen colonies,
inhospitable forests, unfriendly Indians, snakes and wild animals
awaited a social outcast. The only recourse was to show up at
Sunday church service and literally throw oneself on the mercy of
his fellow parishioners – grovel, beg, admit his utter sinfulness,
acknowledge the crime and promise restitution in full.

Problem was Jason couldn’t imagine Jack
Flanagan apologizing to anyone much less returning the money
embezzled. And why should he? At the Fourth of July barbecue not a
neighbor snubbed the man. Even Jason’s parents, who damned the
thieving bastard to hell in the privacy of their own home, laughed
at his flippant jokes and snide remarks. The Puritan Ethos and
Contemporary Morality- the impassioned Protestant minister was
preaching to the proverbial choir. Jack Flanagan didn’t give a
rat’s ass about his fall from grace. His only regret was getting
caught.

“
He beat the rap,” Jason
confirmed. “Walked away with a shitty fine and slap on the
wrist.”

“
Sounds about right.” The
wistful smile lingered, but now her eyes turned flinty hard. “And
what have you heard about me over the years?”

“
A lot of hooey.” The
question caught Jason off guard. “Lies and innuendo,” he
stammered.

“
Lies and innuendo.” She
lobbed the words back at him like a tennis player parrying a
well-placed shot. “And how do you know it isn’t all true?” Jason
didn’t know what to say. “Other people surely heard I’m back in
town,” Adrian continued, “but you’re the only one with the common
decency to look me up.” After an awkward silence, Adrian refilled
the dog’s water bowl and watched as Mitzi drank her
fill.

She put the kettle on and when the
water sent up a wheezy hiss, poured tea. “The staff at the nursing
home can’t pigeonhole me. I’m just the new girl who showed up on
the west wing a month and a half ago. They don’t know my father is
a thieving bastard or that my mother’s a compulsive talkaholic who
would sooner slit her wrists than be alone with her own vacuous
thoughts for two seconds strung together.”

Switched at birth. Luck of
the draw—Adrian Flanagan got dealt a pair of duds, jokers from the
bottom of the deck. Toxic Parents. Parents who should have had
their reproductive organs cauterized at birth
. Mitzi scurried up to the table and began pawing at Adrian’s
leg. The dog, which was near death, only a few weeks earlier, was
bursting with vitality.

An hour later, after the sugar cookies
and tea, Adrian walked Jason to the door. Snaking her arms around
his waist, she leaned forward. “I’m not doing anything next
Saturday, if your free. Come by in the morning anytime after
ten.”

He could feel her chest rising and
falling with each breath. A minute passed in total silence.
Adrian’s face was cradled just beneath his collar bone. At some
point Jason realized his own arms had involuntarily snaked up under
the small of her back, wrapping the girl in a fierce bear
hug.

*****

When he reached home, Jason
showered and got ready for bed. He was curled up under the covers
reading an article in
Fortune 500 Small
Business
, when his mother entered the room.
“Something interesting?”

“
A story about Ruth
Handler,” Jason replied, “the businesswoman who invented the Barbie
doll.”

“
Regarding our conversation
earlier…” Mrs. Mangarelli cleared her throat and smiled stiffly.
“What with November just a few weeks away, we wouldn’t want the
holidays turning ugly.” Following an awkward pause, she let the
other shoe drop. “The Flanagans will be joining us for desert on
Thanksgiving, and I have no intention blindsiding them with any
unpleasantness.”

“
Yes, of course,” Jason
mumbled.
The grade-A, select members of
Jack Flanagan’s nuclear family were welcomed at the Mangarelli’s
Thanksgiving table. Pariahs, slatternly sluts and assorted social
riff raff should make other arrangements.

“
You’re going out with Mrs.
Pollack’s daughter Friday night?” She asked, shifting gears. Mrs.
Mangarelli had a friend, a parishioner from Saint Mark’s, whose
daughter was recently divorced and looking to date. A year older
than Jason, Samantha Pollock owned her own consulting firm. That
his mother would conspire with Mrs. Pollack to arrange a blind date
came as no great surprise. All through high school and well into
his college years, Mrs. Mangarelli had been an incorrigible
‘helicopter’ parent, hovering over her son, second guessing his
every move.

“
She’s probably homely as
sin.”

Mrs. Mangarelli shook her head
violently. “I’ve seen the girl in church. She’s a stunning brunette
with boobs out to here.” She held her hands a good foot in front of
her own, smallish chest.

Just like Barbie!
Jason cringed inwardly. “Thank you, mother, for
your graphic description.”

Mrs. Mangarelli went to his closet and
began picking through the various clothes. “What are you
wearing?”

Jason wanted to finish reading the
article about Ruth Handler and the ubiquitous doll named after the
woman’s own daughter. “Haven’t decided.”

“
The navy Dockers are nice,
but then darker colors tend to show lint. No I’d go with the tan
slacks.” She removed the pants from the hanger and headed for the
door. “I’ll press them for you first thing in the
morning.”

When she was gone, Jason finished the
article, killed the light and lay back on the bed staring at the
ceiling. There was a darker side to Adrian Flanagan. In her mid
twenties, she could easily pass for thirty-five. Not that Adrian
had lost her good looks. If anything, she was considerably more
attractive as a young woman than a gawky adolescent. The
unflattering changes were less definitive and emerged in a certain
harshness that lingered about walnut eyes and rigid set to the chin
when she asked Jason how much or little he believed of the
outrageous lies and innuendo.

If Adrian was damaged goods, the harm
was manageable. The woman carried herself with a grace that
affirmed her indomitable resilience. At one point shortly before he
left the apartment, Jason watched as his old friend rinsed cups at
the sink. Having worked all day at the nursing home, her features
were haggard and drawn. Finished, she turned and smiled with the
same irrepressible impishness. Whatever had happened, her spirit
miraculously remained intact.

*****

When Jason arrived at Adrian’s
apartment the following Saturday, she was already laying vegetables
out on the kitchen counter for another batch of homemade dog food.
“Here, put this in the microwave,” she handed him a lumpy sweet
potato and set the timer for six minutes.” Covering the bottom of a
skillet with a tablespoon of canola oil, she began browning a pound
of ground turkey.”

“
Had a blind date the other
night.” He told her about Samantha Pollack.

“
Planning to see her
again?”

Jason’s eyebrows dipped. The divorced
business consultant proved as much fun as a latex allergy. “Sooner
join the marines and serve in Iraq.”

“
I’ll take that for a no.”
When the turkey was almost done she drained the grease and added an
apple which she cubed in small, bite-size chunks.

“
What’s that
for?”

“
Roughage and flavor,”
Adrian replied and seated a cover over the skillet so that the
various juices would comingle and meld together. She set a pot of
water on the stove. “Measure out a cup of the bowtie macaroni,” she
instructed, “and when the water comes to full boil, cook the pasta,
al dente, for twelve minutes.”

“
Interesting choice.” Jason
indicated an herb Adrian had retrieved from the vegetable
bin.

“
The secret
ingredient.”

“
Which is?”

“
If I told you, it wouldn’t
be a secret, would it?” She tossed the meat and caramelized apples
into a large bowl then mixed the steamy food with a can of sweet
peas and corn.

“
Joseph’s biblical coat of
many colors,” Jason chuckled when all the ingredients were finally
heaped together.

Adrian leaned back on her heels with
her shoulders resting against his chest. She wore a pair of jeans
and a cotton blouse, but no lipstick or makeup. “Dogs taste with
their noses not their tongues. The hodgepodge of irresistible odors
drive them wild.” She leaned even further back and smiled with
satisfaction.

“
I’m going to rent my own
place after the beginning of the year,” Jason announced, when the
dog food was cooked and parceled out in Tupperware containers. “A
one bedroom preferably in the Back Bay closer to where I
work.”

Adrian nodded and her lips compressed
in a thin sliver of a smile. “When you relocate, I hope you won’t
abandon your long lost friend.”

Jason felt a wretched tightening in his
throat and had to collect himself before replying. “Actually, I was
hoping we might pick up where we left off.”

“
That’s wishful thinking,”
Adrian replied cryptically. “I’m taking Mitzi for a walk, if you’d
like to join us.” The air had turned fitfully colder, a dry, chilly
breeze, more wintry than falllish. “A very short walk.” As Adrian
explained it, the cartilage in Mitzi’s left hind knee cap had
recently separated from the bone causing the leg to unexpectedly
give way and curl under. At such times the bowlegged dog would flop
down and refuse to budge until the floating kneecap drifted back
into proper alignment. The vet prescribed glucosamine, which Adrian
ground up each morning with a mortar and pestle.

Jason shook his head up and down, an
utterly infantile gesture. He would have preferred to say something
clever but his tongue simply couldn’t negotiate the language. “Ruth
Handler, a middle-aged businesswoman from Montana, invented the
Barbie doll,” he blurted, a total non-sequitur.

Adrian, who was settling the walking
harness around Mitzi’s chest, looked up. “Is there any particular
reason you’re telling me this?”