Last Dance, Last Chance

Anthony’s office in West Seneca, and I asked his secretary if she knew anything about some woman named Moira,” Debbie said. “She knew, all right. She knew all about her.”
    Panicked when he heard that Debbie knew about Moira, Anthony tried to get Debbie on the phone all day. When he finally succeeded, he begged her to fly down to Puerto Rico. “Please come down, Deb,” he pleaded, “so we can try to save our marriage.”
    Debbie booked a flight to Puerto Rico. Once again, Anthony was chastened and frightened by her anger. He rushed out and bought her an expensive pair of diamond earrings, thinking that he could smooth over his infidelity with money.
    But this time, Frank Rago was gone and so was Dr. RalPh. Debbie had taken her father’s advice the first time, and she had forgiven Anthony once, but that was all her father made her promise to do. This time, it wouldn’t be easy to forgive—or forget.
    Debbie didn’t leave Anthony. She would honestly admit that she still loved him, even though she would never again really trust him. They’d been together for almost twenty years, and she had two children who deserved a good life with two parents.
    But now she thought she knew whom she was dealing with. She wouldn’t forget this time, and when Anthony was away she never again trusted that he was where he said he would be.

8
    I n the year after his father’s death, Anthony seemed to be back in control. As far as Debbie knew, he was no longer seeing Moira, whom she now knew was an exotic dancer. That had baffled her. If he’d gone off with a snobbish society woman, she might have expected that. But a woman who danced in a sleazy club? That didn’t seem like Anthony, who always insisted on the very best of everything.
    Debbie took some satisfaction in remembering the way she had frightened Moira with her threats. She never knew she had that much guts or that such strong language would come out of her mouth. Now she knew she was tougher than she had thought. Their marriage was different from how it had been before. Anthony didn’t pick on her quite so much. He wasn’t as nice to her as he had been after his first affair came to light, but he was better than usual. Once in a while, he even cooked supper.
    “Steak and lobster,” Debbie said. “Nothing but the best.”
     
    Anthony was pleased with his basement surgery suite. It was convenient, and it was economically advantageous. He was frugal about spending extra money on staff that he felt were unnecessary. He employed a secretary and a licensed practical nurse from a local trade school, and he used Debbie when he needed a trained medical assistant. Although she had worked for many years in a pharmacy, and had also been employed in doctors’ offices while helping to put Anthony through his five years of residencies, Debbie wasn’t a trained nurse or even an L.P.N. Anthony told her that didn’t matter—that his skill, and his ability to train her for the specific kind of surgery he practiced, were far more important than any nursing school curriculum.
    Whatever trust Debbie might have lost in Anthony as a person, she still believed he was a good doctor, even if he wasn’t a good husband. But Debbie was aware of only a fraction of the disasters that had happened in Anthony’s surgeries. He hadn’t told her about most of them.
    The worst thing Debbie remembered was the time he left her alone to do a chemical peel on a patient without enough instruction. The woman suffered burns and sued both her and Anthony.
    But now, Anthony seemed to know everything there was to know about plastic surgery. And he had refined his practice so that breast and hair surgeries made up 70 percent of his scheduled operations. All he needed Debbie for was to monitor body functions.
    Anthony certainly didn’t believe he needed to have an anesthesiologist present during operations in his office. Their fees were outrageous, he thought, and there wasn’t anything they did that he and Debbie couldn’t do. He had worked out his own combination of pills to relax his patients before surgery. Later he combined the pills with intravenous drugs to lull the patients into forgetful sleep while he practiced what he considered his art.
    Anthony felt it was important for students at Nichols School who wanted to go to medical school to have some practical experience. He often hired teenaged boys at minimum wage to do various chores in his clinic.
    He was still traveling to continuing