The Apple Tree

Chapter 1

“Poor Robert.”  She had known him for as long as she could remember. They had been neighbors and he and her older sister, Liz, were school friends.  He always seemed to be present, somewhere in the backdrop of her childhood memories, always smiling, always cheerful.  Good old Robert. Imagining him ‘falling apart’, in pain and suffering while she got on with her own life somewhere else in the world, was difficult.  No stranger to the anguish of death, she might have done something useful for once in her little life if she’d known.  A tear formed in the corner of her eye and spilled onto her cheek, but whether this was for Robert or herself, she made no attempt to analyze. 

Robert, whose remaining speech had gone unheard by Julie, evidently saw the tear and jumped rapidly to his own conclusions.

“Don’t cry, little Julie.  As I said, I’ve made peace with it now.  I’m over it.  Scout’s honor!”  And like a good scout, he drew a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the tear, before handing the square of cloth to Julie.  She looked at it and then at him.

He was so transparent.  Her tears probably touched his simple vanity.  Robert had always believed her to be too soft and vulnerable for the tough world of medicine and had told her as much years ago.  He’d also said it saddened him to see her succumbing to the wishes of her father and sister.  Of course she’d been young and naive enough to believe that just wanting something sufficiently was enough to guarantee success and set the whole world to rights.  

“Come on, now, this is supposed to be a celebration.  Tell me about your life.  Has some lucky, handsome doctor snapped you up, yet?”

Julie dabbed at her face with the soft handkerchief.  What percentage of men still carried handkerchiefs?  Was it the last sign of a true gentleman or merely a sign that Robert was never destined to make the transition into the twenty first century?  She grimaced inwardly at her frivolous thoughts and shook her head; so Robert might be forgiven for reading this gesture as a response in the negative to his question. 

“Of course not...too busy forging a name for yourself in medical history, just like Lizzie, eh?”  He said.

Julie smiled.  How typical of him to assume that she should follow in her sister’s successful footsteps.  Elizabeth had never professed any interest in marriage being, in a sense, married to her busy career.  But Julie was in no mood to discuss the complexities of her failed marriage and aborted career and accepted his easy dismissal of the subject gratefully and without contradiction. 

This was a behavioral trait of Julie’s that was in danger of becoming a habit.  She experienced a sense of helpless insight into her situation.  Psychologists or behaviorists might label it a weakness.  It mimicked an early form of denial, this taking refuge behind the mistaken assumptions of others rather than setting things to right by exposing the truth.  Julie preferred to view it as the easiest way out of a tricky confrontation.  But she felt a nagging guilt nevertheless.  Characteristic or weakness, she had to acknowledge that old friends always deserved the truth.

“I really am very sorry about your wife.  I wish I’d known.  But then Liz never tells me anything.  She’s so cut off from the world by her work and research, and now this new clinic - she might as well be on another planet!”

“That’s understandable.  Liz is a very selfless woman, she always was.” 

Robert was understanding to a degree that he actually sounded pompous!  His curious choice of adjective bemused her.  Selfless?  What did that mean?  The opposite of selfish?  Hardly, not Liz!  Yet it was a curiously apt word to describe her older sister who, at thirty-five and a strikingly attractive woman, had probably never paused longer than three seconds in front of a mirror to look at herself.  Julie always thought that if anyone asked Elizabeth to describe herself physically, she would probably not even know the color of her own eyes intimately.  She was far too preoccupied with her career to gaze at her own reflection.  She was the Mother Theresa of medicine - cardiology, to be more precise.  Mother Elizabeth...Saint Elizabeth...