Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides [206]
My parents wanted a second opinion. At Milton’s insistence I had been taken one last time to see Dr. Phil.
In 1974, Dr. Nishan Philobosian was eighty-eight years old. He still wore a bow tie, but his neck no longer filled out the collar of his shirt. He was reduced in all his parts, freeze-dried. Nevertheless, green golf slacks extended from the hem of his white coat and a pair of tinted aviator-style glasses gripped his hairless head.
“Hello, Callie, how are you?”
“Fine, Dr. Phil.”
“Starting school again? What grade are you in now?”
“I’ll be in ninth this year. High school.”
“High school? Already? I must be getting old.”
His courtly manner was no different than it had ever been. The foreign sounds he still made, the evidence of the Old World in his teeth, put me somewhat at ease. All my life dignified foreigners had petted and pampered me. I was a sucker for the soft-handed Levantine affections. As a little girl I had sat on Dr. Philobosian’s knee while his fingers climbed my spinal column, counting off the vertebrae. Now I was taller than he was, gangly, freak-haired, a Tiny Tim of a girl, sitting in gown, bra, and underpants on the edge of an old-fashioned medical table with step-drawers of vulcanized rubber. He listened to my heart and lungs, his bald head dipping on the long neck like that of a brontosaurus, sampling leaves.
“How’s your father, Callie?”
“Fine.”
“How’s the hot dog business?”
“Good.”
“How many hot dog places your dad has now?”
“Like fifty or something.”
“There’s one not too far from where Nurse Rosalee and I go in the winter. Pompano Beach.”
He examined my eyes and ears and then politely asked me to stand and lower my underpants. Fifty years earlier, Dr. Philobosian had made his living treating Ottoman ladies in Smyrna. Propriety was an old habit with him.
My mind was not fuzzy, as it had been up in Petoskey. I was fully aware of what was happening and where the focus of medical scrutiny lay. After I had pulled my panties down to my knees, a hot wave of embarrassment swept through me and by reflex I covered myself with my hand. Dr. Philobosian, not entirely gently, moved this aside. There was something of the impatience of the old in this. He forgot himself momentarily, and behind his aviator lenses his eyes glared. Still, he didn’t look down at me. He gazed gallantly off at the far wall while feeling for information with his hands. We were as close as dancing. Dr. Phil’s breathing was noisy; his hands shook. I glanced down myself only once. My embarrassment had retracted me. From my angle I was a girl again, white belly, dark triangle, foreshortened legs shaved smooth. My brassiere was bandoliered across my chest.
It took only a minute. The old Armenian, crouching, lizard-backed, ran his yellowed fingers over my parts. It was no surprise that Dr. Philobosian had never noticed anything. Even now, alerted to the possibility, he didn’t seem to want to know.
“You can get dressed now,” was all he said. He turned and walked very carefully to the sink. He turned on the water and thrust his hands into the stream. They seemed to be trembling more than ever. Liberally he squirted out the antibacterial soap. “Say hello to your dad,” he said before I left the room.
Dr. Phil referred me to an endocrinologist at Henry Ford Hospital. The endocrinologist tapped a vein in my arm, filling an alarming number of vials with my blood. Why all this blood was needed he didn’t say. I was too frightened to ask. That night, however, I put my ear to my bedroom wall in hopes of finding out what was going on. “So what did the doctor say?” Milton was asking. “He said Dr. Phil should have noticed