Doctors Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Couldn’t your father have just told you about how babies were made? Anyway, you’ve known for years.”
    “But there are a lot of other things I don’t know about.”
    “Like what?”
    Barney hesitated. It was one of those rare moments when he was conscious of being separated from Laura by gender.
    They were growing up.

THREE
    T hey were graduated from public school in June 1950, the year in which the Yankees once again won the World Series, North Korea invaded the South, and antihistamines became available “to cure the common cold” (at least everybody said so but the doctors).
    That was also the summer Laura became beautiful.
    Almost overnight, her bony shoulders disappeared—as if some supernatural Rodin had smoothed them while she slept. At the same time her high facial bones became more prominent. And her tomboyish gait acquired a sinuous, graceful sensuality. Yet while filling out perfectly in all the right places, she seemed to remain as slender as ever. Even Harold Livingston, who seldom lifted his face from a book, remarked one evening at dinner, “Laura’s become so—I suppose ‘statuesque’ is the word.”
    “What about me?” Barney responded with slight indignation.
    “I don’t follow, son,” said Harold.
    “Haven’t you noticed that I’m
taller
than Laura now?”
    His father thought for a moment. “Yes, I suppose you are.”
    *    *    *
    Midwood High School had the identical red-brick neo-Georgian style with the same proud tower as the halls of Brooklyn College, whose campus it adjoined.
    On the wall of its impressive marble lobby was the school motto:
    Enter to grow in body, mind and spirit.
    Depart to serve better your God, your country

and your fellow man.
    “Gosh, it really kind of inspires you, doesn’t it, Barn?” Laura said, as they stood there looking in awe at those carved words.
    “Yeah, I’m especially hoping to grow in body before the basketball tryouts.”
    Laura was conspicuous among the freshmen girls for both height and beauty. Very soon, juniors and seniors—some of them hotshot athletes and student leaders—were scampering up the “down” staircase to station themselves in Laura’s path and petition for a date.
    These were intoxicating days. Men had suddenly discovered her—boys, anyway. And their persistent attention helped her try to forget that she was once a disappointment to her sex. (“Not only am I ugly,” she had confided to Barney, “I’m so tall everyone in the world can see it.”)
    Whereas during their first tentative days at Midwood Barney and Laura ate alone at a table in the cafeteria, she now was so surrounded by upper class suitors that he did not even attempt to join her. (“I’m afraid of getting trampled, Castellano.”)
    Barney himself did not make much headway. It seemed the last thing a freshman girl wanted to meet was a freshman
boy.
Like a true Brooklyn Dodger, he would “have to wait till next year.” And be content with daydreaming about the cheerleader captain, Cookie Klein.
    Though the Midwood teams were famously unvictorious, there were always great turnouts for the school’s athletic events. Did incurable optimism—or masochism—come with the fluoridation of the Flatbush water?
    There was a simpler explanation: The Midwood cheerleaderswere extraordinarily beautiful—a spectacle that more than compensated for the debacle.
    So fierce was the competition to become one of them that many girls took extreme measures to be selected. Thus Mandy Sherman spent the fortnight of spring vacation undergoing a rhinoplasty, fervently believing that all she lacked was a perfect nose.
    Imagine then Cookie Klein’s consternation when she approached Laura to recruit
her
—and was turned down flat. In a matter of hours, the news had reverberated around the school.
    “I mean, everybody’s talking about it,” Barney reported.
    Laura shrugged. “I just think it’s stupid, Barn. Who the hell wants to be gawked at in the