Last Dance, Last Chance

agreed with his parents’ wishes. After much discussion, he convinced her to honor Ralph and Lena’s request that they move the reception to their exclusive country club.
    Still, Debbie had her doubts. The posh club was lovely, but she was afraid that it wasn’t nearly large enough. When the day came for their reception, she saw she was right. It was a very warm night, and their guests were hot and crowded. In a way, it became Ralph’s and Lena’s day rather than the bride’s and groom’s.
    Always anxious to please his father, Anthony made a glowing toast to Dr. Ralph, but his toast to Frank Rago, perhaps meant to be humorous, came off as demeaning and insulting. Debbie was so happy to be Mrs. Anthony Pignataro that she forced herself to keep smiling, but inside she was crushed to see her father trying to mask his hurt. She worried about her dad. Frank Rago’s health was failing, and it was all he could do to walk her down the aisle and dance with her at the boisterous Italian wedding reception. Frank and Caroline Rago wanted Debbie to be happy, and they were happy, too, to see her a bride at last.
    Debbie was 28 years old. She had waited all those years for Anthony, and now she was married to her young doctor. Thanks to his father’s connections, he was scheduled to begin his first year of surgical residency on July 1 at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. St. Agnes was a satellite of the Johns Hopkins system, yet Anthony always referred to his first internship as being at Johns Hopkins, a prestigious name in the world of medicine.
     
    Right after their wedding reception, Debbie and Anthony flew to Los Angeles, where they boarded a cruise ship that would take them to exotic ports of call on what Anthony called the Mexican Riviera: Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas. Their two-week honeymoon should have been idyllic, but there were jarring moments.
    Debbie had long accepted that Anthony had no particular talent with people. She didn’t know why, but he just wasn’t a people person.
    “Sometimes he seemed conceited,” she recalled, “so arrogant.” He had never had many friends, but she didn’t mind that at first; they had so little time to spend together that she had been glad that his free hours belonged to her.
    All through school—high school and college—Anthony had only one close male friend. He had gone to the private and expensive Nichols School, and he rarely mingled with anyone from public schools. Graduates of Lehigh University later remembered him as “very conceited. He always had such a high opinion of himself.”
    Debbie knew Anthony turned people off, but never his loyal buddy from school. She assumed that he would change once he wasn’t so laden down with studies. It was just that he was always in a hurry, she told herself, trying to cram too much into too short a time.
    So she was a little shocked on their luxury cruise when Anthony’s blunt and artless conversation annoyed people and isolated them from the other travelers.
    “He embarrassed himself one night,” Debbie said. “There was a Jewish couple at our table, and he made awful remarks and jokes about Jews. They asked to be moved to another table.”
    Debbie was mortified. She had always tried to be kind to people and think of their feelings. It bothered her that her new husband had been so rude and that he seemed completely oblivious to what he had said. He shrugged his shoulders when she told him why the couple had moved to another table.
    But when Debbie later looked at their wedding and cruise pictures, she saw again how perfect they were together. She had never really felt pretty, but she felt beautiful on their honeymoon. She was very much in love.
    Debbie was a typical Italian-American wife of the seventies. Despite the strides being made in the women’s movement, she sublimated her needs and desires to her husband’s wishes, content to stand in his shadow and know that she was helping him reach his goals.
    They moved to Baltimore, and Anthony was immediately plunged into the life of the fledgling doctor at St. Agnes Hospital. He began a two-year program in general surgery, his intern years, and he was on call every third night. Sleep was elusive, as it was for all young doctors.
    Debbie and Anthony found an apartment they could afford. It was quite pleasant, but it was in a section of the city that had a relatively high crime rate. When Anthony was at the hospital all night, Debbie was