Flashback (1988) Read Free Page A

father. Between them sat his older brother, Frank; Franks wife, Lisette; their four-year-old twins, Lucy and Marthe; and Annie Doucette, the Iverson’s’ housekeeper, now a widow in her late seventies and part of the family since shortly after Frank was born.
    In sharp contrast to Cinnie Iverson’s bustlings, the atmosphere at the table was, as usual, restrained, with periods of silence punctuating measured exchanges. Zack smiled to himself, picturing the noisy, animated chaos in the Boston Municipal Hospital cafeteria where, for the past seven years, he had eaten most of his meals. He had been raised in this house, this town, and in that respect, he belonged; but in most others, after almost seventeen years, it was as if he had packed up his belongings in Boston and moved to another planet.
    Of those at the table, Zack observed, Lisette had changed the most over the years. Once a vibrant, if flight); beauty, she had cut her hair short, eschewed any but the lightest makeup, and appeared to have settled in quite comfortably as a mother and wife. She was still trim, and certainly attractive, but the spark of adventure in her eyes, once a focus of fantasy for him, was missing. She sat between the twins, across from Frank and Annie, and reserved most of her conversation for the girls, carefully managing their etiquette, and smiling approvingly when one or the other of them entered the conversation without interrupting.
    Lisette was a year younger than Zack, and for nearly two years—from the middle of his junior year at Sterling High until her one trip to visit him at Yale—she had been his first true love. The pain and confusion of that homecoming weekend in New Haven, the realization of how far apart justsix weeks bad taken them, marked a turning point in both their lives.
    For a while after Lisette’s return to Sterling, there were scattered calls from one to the other, and even a few letters. Finally, though, there was nothing.
    Eventually, she moved away to Montreal and made brief stabs first at college, then marriage—to a podiatrist or optometrist, Zack thought. Following the breakup of her marriage, she had returned to Sterling, and within a year was engaged to Frank. Zack had been best man at their wedding and was godfather to the twins.
    Like Lisette, Annie kept pretty much to herself, picking at, more than eating, her food, and speaking up only to bemoan, from time to time, the arthritis, or dizzy spells, or swollen ankles which kept her from being more of a help to “Madame Cinnie.” It was difficult, and somewhat painful, for Zack to remember the wise, stocky woman of his boyhood, hunkered over a football then hiking it between her legs to Frank as he practiced passing to his little brother in the field behind their house.
    One of the curses of being a physician was to see people, all too often, as diagnoses, and each time Zack returned home and saw Annie Doucette, he subconsciously added one or two to her list. Today Annie looked more drawn and haggard than he had ever seen her.
    Frank, of all those in the room, had changed the least over the years. Now thirty-eight, he was in his fourth year as the administrator of Ultramed-Davis Hospital. He was also, if anything, slimmer, handsomer, and more confident than ever.
    “What are the possibilities,” Zack had once asked a genetics professor, “of two brothers sharing none of the same genes?”
    The old man had smiled and patiently explained that with millions of maternal and paternal genes segregating randomly into egg and sperm, all siblings, brother or sister, were, in essence, fifty percent the same and fifty percent different.
    “You should meet my brother sometime,” Zack had said.
    “If that’s the case,” the professor had countered with a wink, “then perhaps I should meet the family milkman, instead.”
    In the end, science had prevailed, although the notion that he and Frank were fifty percent alike was only slightly less difficult for Zack