Free Anna In-Between by Elizabeth Nunez Page B

about the books she was editing. He never comments on her figure or her face, but he notices the clothes she wears and is fond of asking her about the latest styles in New York.
    Anna is certain Neil Lee Pak is gay. He demurs when he is asked about marriage or when the subject of children comes up. He has never had a steady girlfriend, though he is often seen with beautiful women, rarely with any one of them twice. The island has little tolerance for homosexuality and Anna thinks this is the reason why Neil Lee Pak pretends to have romantic interests in women.
    Now Anna strains to hear what her father is saying to him, but his utterances are brief, most of them not actual words. He says “Ah huh” at least five times, each time nodding his head, his voice growing sadder and softer. He says, “Okay.” He says, “Right.” At last he says a whole sentence: “We’ll be there first thing in the morning, Neil.”
    Anna does not know what her father said before his utterances were reduced to grunts, groans, and single words. She does not know how he explained her mother’s condition to Neil, but her earlier anger flares up again. Neil is a friend; he is not the family doctor. In fact, her parents do not have a family doctor. They are never sick, and since they are never sick, they do not go to a doctor. Her mother has always laughed when Anna tells her that she has many doctors, that she goes to an internist once a year, that the internist refers her to an OB-GYN specialist once a year, that once a year she has a Pap smear, once a year she has a mammogram which her breast surgeon scrutinizes, and once every five years, a colonoscopy on the recommendation of her gastroenter-ologist.
    “You’re courting illness,” her mother once said with a smirk, “going to so many doctors.”
    And there were many occasions when Anna has indeed wondered if her mother was right. If she could have been spared the many hours of anxiety she experienced each time she waited for the results of a test to which she had voluntarily submitted herself. “Preventive medicine,” she explained to her mother.
    “That’s why we have Neil,” her mother said.
    Though her parents claim Neil Lee Pak is not their doctor, he is their medical consultant. Over chess games her father and Neil play religiously every Wednesday night, he is consulted about aches and pains. Without ever examining her mother or her father, he writes prescriptions. Sometimes her mother allows Dr. Lee Pak to press his thumb against the vein in her wrist or to check her pulse at her neck, but he is never allowed to examine her under her clothes, or, God forbid, without her clothes.
    “Your mother is a modest woman,” John Sinclair says with pride.
    This practice her parents have of limiting themselves to a superficial medical examination has worked for them so far. Until now, until the tumor on her mother’s breast ulcerated, broke through her skin, and bled on her husband’s vest, John and Beatrice have had no need of doctors.
    “You’re not taking Mummy to see Neil?” Anna asks her father accusingly after he hangs up the phone. But when he turns to face her, she regrets she has spoken to him so harshly. His eyes are glazed, his shoulders are folded inward, his lips have virtually disappeared. Just a straight line appears where he has clamped his mouth shut.
    “Neil recommends we see an oncologist,” he says.
    No more pretense that all is well, that her mother is merely tired, that it is merely the strain put on aged bones and flesh that has worn her down. The time has come. Her mother has decreed it so. The time has come to face the truth about the uneven swelling on his wife’s left breast.
    She wants to comfort him. “Neil is right,” she says. “It’s good that you called him. Did he give you the name of an oncologist?”
    “He will make the appointment for us.”
    “Neil is a good friend.” Anna squeezes her father’s shoulder.
    “Yes.” He does not press