What if Doris Answers?

To keep up with my hometown, I subscribe online to the St. Louis Post Dispatch and get by mail each week a copy of the St. Louis Jewish Light. In the Jewish Light which came yesterday, I saw that Doris Finger had passed away. Sad, to be sure, but also shocking because I had not thought about the real Doris Finger in decades, and had you asked about her, I would have told you long ago that I assumed she was no longer living. Doris Finger was 98 years old.

Now, you are wondering who Doris Finger was and why I am writing about her now. Doris Finger was married to Don Finger, who was my second cousin. His grandmother and my maternal grandfather were siblings. Do you remember me writing about cousins in Denmark, Sweden, and Australia. Doris was related to them as well. The Margulis side of my family.

I actually think I met Doris only once or twice. But her husband Don I knew quite well. My grandfather was a physician, and Don was a protoge of his, and also became a doctor. Don was my father’s doctor (maybe also my mother’s, but maybe not) and mine once I outgrew my pediatrician. He was one of the nicest people I have ever known. He was also an excellent doctor who became known as a master diagnostician. Other doctors near and far would send their mystery patients to Don to figure out what their problems really were. It was beyond tragic when Don passed away from a rare disease in 1979, when he was in his early 50s.

To give you an example of Don’s skill. When I was away at school in the early 1960s, my parents had a family event at our house, and the Fingers were included. Out of the blue, Don told my father, who apparently felt fine, that he looked pale, and that he wanted to see him in his office the next morning. My father went, and the next day, he was successfully operated on for colon cancer, and lived another 15 years, passing away from something unrelated. To me, that seemed like a miracle.

(I still remember the mid-week phone call from my mother in my dorm room. We never had mid-week phone calls. Sunday only. But there she was and I asked her if everyone was okay. Her response was “I’m okay. Your sister is okay. Both of your grandmothers are okay. And your father is okay NOW.” I was very angry that no one told me anything until after the surgery. And I rarely get angry.)

Doris fits into the picture in another way. Although she and I hardly ever saw each other, she has actually been a recurrent presence in my life. Let me explain.

I have never been a big telephone talker. I was not one of those kids who spent hours on the phone with friends. I was ecstatic, as a lawyer, when email was invented, so I didn’t have to make as many phone calls. Even today, I avoid telephoning when other communication options are available. Telephone calls seem intrusive. Why should anyone want to have their life interrupted by me at this particular time?

But in the 1950s, there were few options. And sometimes, when I had a health question, I would want to ask Don. One night, I wanted to ask him something, and my mother said, ” He’s probably at home. Call him up.”

The thought frightened me, and I responded, “What if Doris answers?”

As I said, I really didn’t know Doris. If she answered the phone, what would I say? There was the simple, brusk “Can I talk to Don?”, or some variant. That would be embarrassing, especially if she said ” Who is this?” Or should I say, “Hi, is this Doris? This is Arthur Hessel. Can I talk to Don?” This was frightening, too. Don was not related to me on the Hessel side, and what if she didn’t recognize the name and responded with “Who?” Orcshould I say, “Hi, Doris, this is your cousin (Don’s cousin?) Arthur Hessel, how are you?” I obviously did not really care how she was and didn’t think she wanted to tell me how she was, and what if her answer was, “Fine, how are you?” Well, if I said “fine”, why was I bothering her husband at night, and if I wasn’t fine, why should I tell her? She wasn’t the doctor, after all.

So, I never called.

From then on, whenever my mother wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do, or whenever I hesitated to do something that I actually wanted to do, my mother would look at me and say “What if Doris answers?” Those four words became ingrained in my psyche.