Habit (12 page)

I didn't follow through with ballet for long, but I tried modern dance at college to get out of the sports requirement. This led to a little bit of performing. I don't think I was particularly good, but it seemed to partially satisfy a hunger.

There was a small commotion my sophomore year when a new freshman named Lacey turned up. She was a bona fide Rockette from New York's Radio City Music Hall. Williams College was dominated by nerds and jocks, so Lacey was exotic; an anomaly like the Marine who roomed in my boyfriend's suite and told dramatic stories about his service in Vietnam.

We had a special January break between semesters where you only took one class. Students could teach little mini-courses as well, if they had anything to offer. When I saw that Lacey was giving a beginning tap workshop, I pounced, and for the four short weeks of classes, I felt like a hound dog let off the leash in the woods.

In New York, I dabbled in some wonderful classes: You could put down ten dollars and walk right in with the real Broadway hoofers. I took a one-day workshop in African dance with Eartha Kitt that almost crippled me. She was really tough. There was this bongo drummer accompanying, and Eartha was screaming at us in that trademark raspy Catwoman voice. I felt like an ignorant klutzy white woman, but still I was thoroughly transported. Eartha was a force; I couldn't help doing everything she said even when I wanted to collapse on the floor. I couldn't manage the stairs of my apartment for almost a week.

I also skulked around at Alvin Ailey for a while and eventually managed to flounder in the back of a class taught by the great Judith Jamison. I never really clicked with it the way the pros did, but dancing was in my blood somewhere, it had to be. Who
were
my real parents?

For some reason, I didn't try tap again, although having another go did cross my mind from time to time. In California, it turned out Fred Astaire was a member of our Beverly Hills church. He kept a low profile, but one Sunday morning I had to leave early and when I stepped outside, I froze: There he was, his silhouette unmistakable from the back with those wonderful loose dress pants. Balanced slightly more on one leg than the other, as if poised for a take-off down the church steps. It was like spotting a rare kind of woodland animal. I didn't even want to breathe.

David had to learn ballroom dancing for a TV movie he did during a hiatus from
St. Elsewhere
, and we bought a series of lessons. Tango, cha-cha, swing, mambo. We weren't bad. The best was when we went to the final party at the end of the show's last season—I wore a fire engine red dress with a short skirt that flared out when he spun me around.

We eventually forgot most of our moves, but we can still pull off a few at the odd wedding. David's a good sport about helping me find chances to satisfy these urges I get, but I think it's a little tough on him—he's shy and thinks he's a dork on the dance floor, though he's not. We don't go to clubs because we get self-conscious about people looking to see what
that actor
dances like. We mostly stick to private parties and weddings, and there aren't really enough of those for my needs. If David isn't there, I get lucky sometimes and find a kindred spirit. I struck gold once when I spotted a cousin of the bride who used to dance with the Joffrey. That guy really knew how to jitterbug.

And then there was Uncle Tommy.

David's nephew was getting married in Maine. David was in the middle of a six-episode gig on
House,
so I flew the kids up to represent his branch of the family, and see his sister Diane's son Nathan tie the knot with Tiffany at a picturesque inn on the coast.

Diane was in rapture—this was her first time as the mother of the groom. She'd been broadly hinting about grandchildren since the first time Nathan showed up with Tiffany, who is not only sweet, but drop-dead gorgeous. The whole family was there—David's mother, his three sisters, the husbands, most of their grown kids, and lots of cousins we didn't know.

The kids and I were delighted to see Uncle Tommy. He's not related to David by blood; he's actually Diane's brother-in-law from her second marriage. You can tell right away that our backgrounds don't quite overlap, but the first time we met a year or so before, we clicked. Uncle Tommy is the kind of guy who can click with anyone. He's a cheerful little fellow, kind of runty and he walks funny—he wears a back brace and collects disability, but he's got a great attitude and rather nattily groomed facial hair, like Al Pacino on a good day.

Oh, and there's this thing nobody told me: Before the whole disability business, Uncle Tommy had a brief career as a male stripper.

It was great to see him again, and we sort of hung out together during lunch. When the music started, I was on the edge of the dance floor with the kids. I wasn't aware of Uncle Tommy at my elbow—he's not very tall. But then he began to shimmy, and I grabbed him.

Of course, I had no clue about Tommy's dance background, but he seemed surprisingly loose for a guy in a back brace and it was clear he had some moves. In ballroom dance, you are trained to assess your partner's style and adapt. Tommy seemed to be having a very good time, so I pretty much went with it.

Actually, my mother did teach me some useful rules of etiquette:
Bring a hostess gift when you come to visit. Send a thank-you note.
There are a few she forgot to mention, like
no dirty dancing at an in-law's carefully planned New England wedding.

Nathan and Tiffany's nuptials were memorable for the whole group of in-laws and friends. Not just for the pleasure of seeing this picture-perfect couple joined in holy matrimony against a magnificent ocean backdrop, but because it was the exact moment that the mid-life crisis David's wife was apparently having finally found its peak.

I don't have much recollection, but I hear Tommy and I pretty much cleared the dance floor. I think we kept most of our clothes on, but they say we were at it for hours. Cell phones came out; videos were messaged instantly to David. His mother seemed politely impressed. Our children were mortified.

When we'd just moved to Philadelphia, I found a Saturday morning tap class for our kids. On the first day, I sat in the waiting room with another mother listening to the music and the beat, and again I felt that hound-dog urgency. I kept tapping my feet on the floor in front of the bench where we sat and saying to this other mother (who had never met me before in her life),
isn't this great? Don't you want to join them?

By the end of the class, my new friend was as jazzed as I was. When the teacher came out with the kids, I told her how we wished we could tap, too, it sounded like so much fun, and the teacher said
why don't you?
And I looked at my new friend and said,
I will if you will, oh, please . . .

So for about three weeks, this lady and I joined a class of kids who came up to our waists. We were going to be in the recital and everything. I tapped all the time, disappearing for hours to practice on the concrete floor of our unfinished basement. The kids refused to participate; I think they were sort of upset. I was so disappointed when they staged a minor rebellion: One day I just couldn't get them to go, and that was the end of my tap career.

It was devastating. I still wonder if that lucky woman actually got to be in the recital without me. . . .

Lately, I've had to be satisfied with Dance Dance Revolution in the arcade when I chaperone the twins and their friends at Dave and Buster's. I'm terrible at it. Ben says I drew a crowd once, but I think they were probably the type of people who like to make fun of early rejects on
American Idol
.

I'll get back to tap some day, but right now Ma needs some tests.

I found one other thing Ma and I have in common: We both think there's something fishy going on at Stone Mills Hospital.

I'm pretty much okay with the whole HMO-referral thing now that I know what we're supposed to do. I get that the insurance companies don't want to pay for unnecessary treatment. Ma inherited Daddy's health insurance: Medicare with a supplemental policy for former employees of the state of Pennsylvania. When the supplemental's premiums began to go way up several years ago, Ma opted for a cheaper HMO. One big difference between traditional Medicare and an HMO is the HMO has a list of approved primary doctors, one of whom she had to sign up with. All medical decisions start with that doctor. This is supposed to keep Ma from running around willy-nilly wasting insurance money having expensive unnecessary things done to her.

Getting the hang of the system was intimidating at first. I was so afraid Ma would go to a specialist she needed without remembering to get approval from her primary doctor, and then we'd have to pay for it in full. But from what I can tell so far, doctors won't let this happen to you. Even if you are sitting in their waiting room, if they don't have the referral from your primary, they will make sure you know it, and tell you what to do to fix this before they'll let you in. I guess they know you'll be reluctant to pay the bill if the HMO balks.

We know what to do now anyway. If Ma wants a cardiologist, say, she calls some friends and gets a few names of doctors they like. Then I call one and ask the office if they subscribe to her HMO. If they do, I make an appointment and ask for their subscriber number. I then call Maxwell, her primary, and give his office the name of the doctor, the subscriber number, and the time of the appointment. Maxwell's office is supposed to know us well enough to decide whether or not she needs this appointment, so there may be a little chatting about her symptoms first. When we get to the specialist, they generally have received Maxwell's referral through the computer. If they haven't, things tend to work themselves out.

What gets Ma and me apoplectic is when we have to deal with outpatient tests at the dreaded Stone Mills Hospital.

Maxwell's practice is a valiant little one-man outfit right in the neighborhood. His HMO patients are therefore
capitated
to Stone Mills Hospital. Capitation is apparently a word invented in 1983 especially for HMOs, and it is just beginning to make sense to me. I understand now that it means certain tests may only be done at the primary doctor's nearest hospital.

For a while I had to play mind games with myself to keep from forgetting the word, and I would say to doctors' offices
she had her CT done at Stone Mills Hospital because she has that thing that sounds like decapitation but it isn't.

The Huntingdon Cancer Center, of course, has all the CT machines you could wish for. If Ma was allowed to do the tests there, then Pete, her surgeon who is
right down the hall
, could have the results in a twinkling. But no, these monthly tests to monitor the cancer must be ordered not by Pete, the guy at Huntingdon who actually wants them, but by Maxwell in Stone Mills, who is not really in the loop enough to know exactly why they need to be done.

And not only that: Instead of having the order, tests,
and
results all in one hospital system from start to finish, the patient (or her daughter) must trudge back and pick up the results at Stone Mills the day after they are given, so she can hand-deliver them to Pete's office
all the way across town
. This is supposed to be in the interest of curing a sick person who needs every chance she has to rest. Does it make sense to anyone at all?

The procedure is this: Pete Johnson at Huntingdon tells Ma to get a CT scan and a chest x-ray before her next checkup when he'll see if the tumor has grown. I call Maxwell's office and tell them to take my word for it: Ma needs these expensive tests. They take my word for this and call the scan and x-ray in to Stone Mills Hospital via their computer network, and I call Stone Mills Hospital to schedule the tests.

And Stone Mills is where the whole thing gets bollixed up.

Ma's been dealing with an unfortunate affliction, which may or may not be a side effect, depending on who you're talking to. On certain random days when I call her, it's:

—I'd better stay home today; I'm having the fiery tail again.

Radiation's been over for a couple of weeks, but the side effects linger. It's still pretty hot down in places we won't mention, and the sensation can be very hard to ignore. We've tried all kinds of remedies from ice packs to a strategically directed portable fan; nothing provides much relief for long. They say this will pass, but for now, outings have to be timed between Ma's unpredictable attacks, and must be kept pretty short. Fiery tail is not at all compatible with Stone Mills Hospital's current system for processing prescribed, pre-approved outpatient tests.

Today, we have no discomfort so far. This is good, but it takes time just to get Ma there, so who knows how things will turn out. We find a parking spot close to the outpatient testing entrance, which I take as a good omen. We plod inside, sign in at the desk, and wait. It doesn't take too long before someone in a cubicle calls us in. She (usually, it's a she—today it is Ayesha) takes the insurance card and looks Ma up in the computer. I tell Ayesha we need a CT and an x-ray, and I have the prescriptions right here.

Usually from there, we totter around the corner and down the hall to the x-ray waiting room, turn over our paperwork, and settle in for another wait. No good, Ayesha tells us today. We're all set for the CT, but we can't have the x-ray because the thingy isn't in the computer, which means the doctor hasn't called it in. The thingy could be pre-approval or pre-certification or pre-authorization, I forget which—they all mean something different believe it or not, and it doesn't really matter because whatever it is, we don't have it and we won't get the test until we do.

I sense a monkey fit coming on. I sprint outside and call Maxwell's office to see what's gone wrong and ask if he can send this thingy over pronto.

Ring. Ring.

—Hello, this is the office of Doctor Andrew Maxwell. We know it is a Friday afternoon, but we have decided to take an unexplained vacation just to inconvenience you. We will be out of the office until Tuesday. If this matter cannot wait until then, Doctor Suchandsuch is on call at . . .