The Pursuit of Alice Thrift. Elinor Lipman
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have guessed I was a clerk in a convenience store or a stitcher in a third-world sweatshop. I’m not bragging. I grew up in a three-story house with china and silver, a cleaning lady who came in every Thursday, and parents who sent me to college without financial aid. But four years later, I was sleeping in a bedroom that made me nostalgic for the claustrophobic shoe boxes I occupied in college. When I looked around my room and wondered why I said yes to the first place advertised on the housing board, I reminded myself of the extra twenty-five minutes of sleep I gained because of my proximity to the hospital, that I didn’t need a coat to run the three blocks to work if it was above 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and that Leo Frawley was an exemplary roommate.
Leo would have said the same about me: I barely used any utilities. I didn’t watch television, play CDs, or touch the thermostat; my presence, especially in the refrigerator, the medicine cabinet, and the kitchen cupboards, was negligible. I was never around or underfoot; when present, I slept deeply.
Signing a lease was an act of faith on my part. I knew nothing about Leo except for the superficial impressions I gleaned in our one cafeteria meeting. He was pleasant, well-spoken, and apparently popular. Coworkers greeted him, juggling trays across a single arm to hail him from all corners of the room.
“You have a lot of friends,” I observed.
“You will too when you’ve been here as long as I have.”
I said I would be quiet, considerate, and neat. I wasn’t the liveliest wire he’d find in the city of Boston—quite the contrary, in fact—but I’d never disturb his sleep or monopolize the phone or be late with my rent.
“This could work,” he said.
I asked if he could give me references, and he wrote a half dozen names and phone numbers on a napkin. The only local area code belonged to his mother, who he later told me had been prepped not to sound tightlipped and disapproving if women called about the ad. Mrs. Frawley reported that Leo was the cleanest of her whole brood, and that was saying something because among her thirteen offspring she had one priest, one nun, one actuary, one pharmacist, two librarians, and a lab technician for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And while she didn’t know why a girl would want to share an apartment and a toilet with a man, Leo would be the one of all her boys whom she’d recommend for the job. I thanked her and said she should be very proud of him. We were colleagues at the same hospital and he was clearly held in everyone’s high esteem.
“He’s named for a pope,” she told me.
Not wanting to discuss anything too personal or too statutory with Mrs. Frawley, I asked Leo himself whether he walked around the apartment in states of undress or thought it was important to knock before entering a roommate’s quarters.
“I might duck from the bathroom to my room with a towel wrapped around my middle. Is that what you meant?”
I said that was acceptable, certainly. I had lived in a co-ed dorm for one semester in college until I could be relocated.
“A guy who grew up with eight sisters knows how to knock,” he said. “He also knows that a bathroom isn’t available the minute he wants it.”
I should have dropped it then, but I pressed on. Had any women—specifically former roommates or coworkers—ever complained, formally or informally, about his personal conduct?
Leo said, “Have I done or said anything so far that suggests that?”
I liked the way he answered, with dignity, and I liked the slight offense he’d taken. And in many ways, my initial rudeness has made me a better roommate. I knew as soon as I’d seen the look on his face that I had needlessly challenged a man who, after all, could bathe neonates and give breast-feeding lessons to their postpartum mothers.
Once I had moved in, I asked Leo why he needed to advertise on the community bulletin board, given the hordes of admiring fellow nurses and his geographically desirable apartment.
“I didn’t want to live with another nurse,” he said.
I asked why.
“You know,” he said.
I said I didn’t. I wasn’t great at human-relations nuances. Was it because there would be too much shoptalk? Too much bringing the work home?
“Not so much the work,” he said. “More like the extracurricular stuff. There’s quite the grapevine. Let’s say I had a visitor. And let’s say someone from the NICU observed that guest coming out of my bedroom in the morning. Word would get around.”
I thanked him for what I thought was a tribute to my discretion. I said, “Not only am I uninterested in your social life, but I wouldn’t recognize a grapevine if I were harvesting grapes from it.”
“Excellent,” said Leo.
We followed the ground rules seamlessly: rent and utilities split down the middle; food separate, with both of us having the right to throw away leftovers growing mold spores. A chore wheel was posted on the refrigerator and rotated weekly. Suggested courtesy guidelines: seven minutes for showers; baths up to twenty minutes; no music after ten P.M. No dirty dishes left in the sink. Kitchen trash should be emptied and not allowed to overflow or smell. And after six months, he’d let me know if he thought our arrangement was amenable.
WHEN WE INTERSECTED at the hospital, Leo introduced me cheerfully. It was especially nice if he was with a smart little girl patient—just the three of us on an elevator—and then he’d say, “I’d like you to meet my friend Alice. She’s a doctor. In fact, she’s a surgeon. Isn’t that a great thing to be?”
If only I could have smiled like a good role model and said something inspiring. If only I could have looked approachable enough to prompt one dad in my department to ask me to join him and his sixth-grader for lunch on Take Your Daughter to Work Day.
And did I mention that every female nurse in the hospital knew Leo? He was a friend to all—registered, practical, aide, candy striper—regardless of what floor or service or shift they worked on. If I were dispensing advice to men on how to meet women, how to be popular without having to be a matinee idol or ever leaving your workplace, I’d advise them to follow in Leo’s footsteps: Get a job in a teaching hospital. Allude often to your training in the medical corps of the U.S. Army. Wear scrubs. Smile often and easily. Attach a miniature stuffed koala bear to your stethoscope.
I myself was short of friends when I moved here for my residency. Apparently, if I believed my own reputation, I was not “fun.” Sometimes on Monday mornings in medical school I’d hear references to weekend parties, kegs, harbor cruises, but I didn’t experience them firsthand. When I decided to go into surgery, my lab partners—so-called people persons and future family practitioners—said, “How perfect.”
I graduated second in my class, which I thought was a good prognostic of how I’d perform as a resident, but apparently it was not. I had some trouble bridging the gap between the patient’s surgical site—that disembodied, exposed rectangle of skin awaiting a scalpel—and the patient’s mind, soul, and figurative heart. I thought it was helpful to disassociate the two, to forget I was cutting into a live human being; to pretend it was dead, formaldehyded Violet or Buster, my two cadavers from Gross Anatomy.
How had I gotten so appallingly ineffective with actual people? I thought I had a nice way about me—I was particularly adept at delivering good-news bulletins to relatives in the waiting room, but even that drew criticism. Once in a while, a next of kin complained that the frown on my face as I walked into the lounge scared him or her to death. But wasn’t it mere concentration? It was never enough—my excellent knowledge of anatomy, my openings and my closings, my long hours. What people want, I swear, is a doctor with the disposition of a Montessori teacher.
None of it is easy. Male patients are not thrilled to see you, especially in urology and vascular. Athletes want their bad knees, shoulders, ankles, and elbows fixed by doctors who look like them—Nordic, buff, handsome, confident, certainly not female. Everyone experienced in trauma works around and over you in the ER—faster,