Rainy Day Comrades

By Goutham Rao

Two of his friends help him improve his life and outlook. He is first introduced to Maria, a divorced mother and struggling writer to whom he eventually becomes engaged. Sadly, this relationship fails, and Eddie then focuses upon building his own specialized insurance business. Andy, one of his friends, a health IT specialist with a shady past, tries to help Eddie by illegally supplying private health information about potential clients to help him build his business. At first Eddie is reluctant to accept Andy’s help, but eventually, his desire to succeed, his past struggles, and Andy’s constant encouragement and belief that he is only helping Eddie help others turn Eddie into a passive recipient of information he should not have had. And this where the plot thickens.

Beyond the shocking details of how easily hospital employees can access private health information for nefarious purposes, Rainy Day Comrades is an introspective look at one man’s challenging journey through life, and the relationships that have shaped it.

While his business begins to take off, Eddie begins a relationship with Flora, also a health IT specialist who works with Andy. Flora falls deeply in love with Eddie and is horrified when she eventually learns of Andy’s scheme and Eddie’s role in it. She breaks off the relationship and Eddie is left very much where he had been before meeting her. Having failed once again, Eddie decides to give up on life in Chicago, and decides to return to Guam, where he feels more comfortable surrounded by family and without the pressure to succeed. Eddie then feels the heavy loss of Flora, and persists in trying to reconnect with her, eventually succeeding, and finding peace.

Beyond the shocking details of how easily hospital employees can access private health information for nefarious purposes, Rainy Day Comrades is an introspective look at one man’s challenging journey through life, and the relationships that have shaped it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adelaide Books Publishers
• Release date: Dec 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781956635560

Goutham Rao

Goutham Rao grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is a practicing physician, researcher, scientific editor, public health advocate and professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of three non-fiction books: Primary Care Management: Cases and Discussions (Sage, 1999); Child Obesity: A Parent’s Guide to a Fit Trim and Happy Child (Prometheus Books, 2006); and Rational Medical Decision Making: A Case-Based Approach (McGraw-Hill, 2007). Inspired by characters from his own childhood, Rainy Day Comrades is his first work of fiction.

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Rainy Day Comrades

Rainy Day Comrades

A novel

by

Goutham Rao

Rainy Day Comrades

A novel

By Goutham Rao

Copyright © by Goutham Rao

Cover design © 2021 Adelaide Books

Published by Adelaide Books, New York / Lisbon

adelaidebooks.org

Editor-in-Chief

Stevan V. Nikolic

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For any information, please address Adelaide Books

at [e-mail]

or write to:

Adelaide Books

244 Fifth Ave. Suite D27

New York, NY, 10001

ISBN-13: 978-1-956635-56-0

Contents

PART ONE

One The Neighborhood

Two Angelo

Three Tariq

Four Jon

Five Andy

Six Eddie

Seven Pacific Songs

Eight The Rink

Nine Pacific Wisdom

Ten Separate Ways

Eleven Social Media

Twelve Back Home

Thirteen Reunited

Fourteen Eddie One-on-One

Fifteen Whittling

Sixteen Art Center

Seventeen A New Interest

Eighteen Maria Lockhart

Nineteen Thomas

Twenty Whirlwind

Twenty-One Passionate Maria

Twenty-Two New Guest for Coffee

Twenty-Three Hartley House Again

Twenty-Four The World of Andy Malone

Twenty-Five Maria Returns Home

Twenty-Six Sorrowful Minstrel

Twenty-Seven Nagging Suspicions

Twenty-Eight Reliable

Twenty-Nine A Cuckold Dream

Thirty Snooping

Thirty-One A Candid Conversation

Thirty-Two Polynesian Gloom

Thirty-Three A Revelation

Thirty-Four A Happier Spring

Thirty-Five Settling In

Thirty-Six Summer of Andy

Thirty-Seven Viatical Encounter

Thirty-Eight Classic Car Show

Thirty-Nine Pagoda

Forty Making Ends Meet

Forty-One On the Outside

PART TWO

Forty-Two The Nature of Faith

Forty-Three The Church of Andy

Forty-Four Feeling Disconnected

Forty-Five Truths

Forty-Six Flora

Forty-Seven Reluctant Romance

Forty-Eight Salad Days

Forty-Nine Pacific Scenes

Fifty Smitten

Fifty-One A Lucky Break

Fifty-Two Blurred Lines

Fifty-Three Frenetic Whittling

Fifty-Four Tidy Profits

Fifty-Five Francis Alonso

Fifty-Six Bad News

Fifty-Seven Somber Reflection

Fifty-Eight Resilience

Fifty-Nine Sharing His Artistry

Sixty The Game of Regret

Sixty-One The Dominicans Return

Sixty-Two Family

Sixty-Three Dark Scenes

Sixty-Four The Upturn

Sixty-Five Sallow

Sixty-Six Of Money and Data

Sixty-Seven The Money Flows

Sixty-Eight The Week Apart

Sixty-Nine The Client List

Seventy Quandary

Seventy-One Turmoil

Seventy-Two Whistleblower

Seventy-Three The Album

Seventy-Four Sticking Point

Seventy-Five Heartland

Seventy-Six Mr. Marzotti’s Car

Seventy-Seven The Idea

Seventy-Eight More Confessions

Seventy-Nine Alone Again

Eighty Spontaneous Cure?

Eighty-One Reunited

Eighty-Two Plan is Set

Eighty-Three Final Evening

Eighty-Four It’s Time

Eighty-Five Boston

Eighty-Six Reflections

Eighty-Seven Guam

About the Author

PART ONE

One

The Neighborhood

When you really think about it, childhood is a pretty brief part of one’s life. The most memorable bits may happen over just a few years. Those bits, however, have a lifelong impact. Consider this: You may have gotten to know someone from your last job really quite well, developed a great friendship and shared many meaningful experiences. How soon into your new job do you forget many of the details? Did we meet in 2009 or 2010? Had Rick started working here when you joined? In my line of work as a physician and scientist, people, including patients, come and go often and are hard to keep track of. There is none of that ambiguity with our most important childhood experiences, both good and bad. You can still remember riding your bike for the first time, even what the weather was like, your mother and father standing on one edge of the driveway, their watchful eyes ready to rescue you in case you fell. Now let me turn to my own childhood and gradually introduce a cast of what I believe, is an interesting and often confused set of characters.

By coincidence, or so we thought at the time, most of the ethnics in our neighborhood in Halifax lived on just a couple of streets. Later on in life, I realized this almost certainly had to be by design. There were seven Indian immigrant families among thirty homes, an improbable ratio given the homogeneity of my neighborhood and home town. Moreover, this wasn’t likely to be a case of self-selection. The only thing the Indian families had in common was that we all pretty much looked the same to the white, established, (largely of Scottish origin) families who surrounded us. There were the Sikh Dhaliwals up the street, whose younger son was among by best friends. The Sinhas a few houses down from us who insisted on speaking to my parents in Hindi, a language they couldn’t speak at all. Across the street were the Chackos, devout Kerala Christians whose house was decorated with crosses and images of Christ. There were the Guptas and Patels and the Ramgopals, whom one would think were south Indian. The family was from South Africa and had origins from all over India. Some clever real estate agents must have decided to confine all of us, at a time when such things were common. Of course, there weren’t just Indians. There was an entire community of Lebanese-Christians, all of whom had immigrated to Canada from the same village at the same time. They were a prosperous lot who owned apartment buildings, shops, and other businesses. They were warm and friendly, and their homes smelled wonderful around dinnertime.

Indeed, it seemed that anyone who didn’t quite fit in belonged on our street. One of my favorite people was Mr. Hughes, an outsider, though not technically an ethnic. He had come to Canada as some sort of academic from England in the 1960s. He was not successful in whatever he tried to do, and now worked in a dry cleaning shop. He never married, had no children, and lived alone. He was eccentric, charming, and awfully lonely. He would stop by our house (and several others) in the early evenings especially during the few warm months. My father would offer him a drink and he would launch into a lengthy political discourse about his distaste for the Queen, and how he believed England was doomed. My father said that Mr. Hughes was a communist. I had no idea what that was. I listened politely, but even as a child, I knew these were just the thoughts of an unhappy man. If he stuck around long enough, he would inevitably receive an invitation to dinner and avoid an evening alone in his empty house.

My closest friends were all outsiders of various sorts. We were all Canadian and would feel completely out of place where our parents grew up. But, there was an unmistakable bond among our group of boys with a deeply rooted pride in who we were, while at the same time struggling to fit in. In school I felt at ease within my troupe. Outside of it, whether facing overt bigotry or not, I was tense, quiet, and usually wanted to go home.

I will save my description of the main character of the story, Eddie, to the end as he would resurface in the most impactful way. I’m telling you about the others mainly to give you a flavor of what we were like as kids and what it was like to grow up in our time, our place, and our circumstances.

Two

Angelo

Angelo didn’t live in a house. He lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his mother Tina. He was a brash kid, never hesitant to speak up whether it be in class or on the playground. He was a good soccer player. When picking teams at recess, he was always a captain and everyone wanted to be on Angelo’s team. He was also into all things Italian. He wore a Paolo Rossi jersey whenever he could. He would report proudly about what he had for dinner, over-pronouncing with exaggerated hand gestures, "I had t-a-g-l-ia-telli with meatballs. His favorite make of cars was Ferrari, Porsches are for losers, he would insist. Tina was an attractive, dark-haired young woman who indulged him at every opportunity. He had the latest toys. He even brought a knock-off Sony Walkman to school one day, at a time when few children would be allowed to handle such an expensive piece of electronics. Tina wasn’t well off. She worked at the department store Zellers, though Angelo insisted she was a manager who basically owned the place." He also said his mother would be taking him to Italy someday, where her family owned several houses and a winery. He repeated this story all the way to high school.

Angelo’s cockiness inevitably got him in trouble. He was bright enough, but his grades were poor. I remember once in grade 3, our teacher, Mr. Wells asked him why he hadn’t completed his homework. Without an ounce of shame, Angelo responded, Well, Mr. Wells, I’ve been awfully busy these past few days. Trouble often found him on the playground too. I never minded his cockiness. We were friends after all. Sometimes, however, unprovoked, he would fire an insult, and I would fire back in a way I knew would sting. After an especially poor performance on the soccer field on my part one day, Angelo insisted that for the next game, You’d be better off on the sidelines just watching. Seething, I asked, So where’s your dad Angelo? He punched me hard on the shoulder immediately. He was much bigger and it hurt like hell but I tried not to cry. This had happened many times before. Within a few minutes, he felt awful, apologized, often tearfully, and told me I was his best friend.

Sometimes the fighting really did get out of hand. On one day, when he seemed especially proud of his Italian roots, an older boy, Matthew, challenged him directly. Well, I hate to break the news to you dickhead, you’re black. Your father’s black. You ain’t no Italian. You just a useless f—in, n—gr. This was too much. There would be no punch followed by an apology, and Matthew was no friend. Angelo went at him hard, throwing blows right to the boy’s head. Angelo was much smaller, but the boy, nearly thirteen, was soft and the fury of Angelo’s fists came as a surprise. How dare a ten-year-old strike him? Within seconds Matthew was on the ground with Angelo atop him, yelling, You say you’re sorry, asshole, say it now. Angelo was crying, as if each blow made him feel more guilty. Matthew’s nose was bloody. He had a cut on his scalp that started to gush. Beneath his head was a small pool of blood.

A group of my classmates was cheering Angelo on. Certainly not the right thing to do. Matthew was a well-known bully. Looking back, I am proud that I knew there had to be a limit. Angelo kept hitting, and four of us pulled him back. He was still crying, out of breath, and for a few moments, I thought he was going to hit me. Blood from Matthew’s nose had spattered on Angelo’s face. You can’t do this Angelo. You’ll get kicked out of school. Stop, please stop! I told him. Several teachers arrived on the scene as Matthew lay bloody on the ground. His face was swollen. He was conscious and looked humiliated. Mr. McNeil, a burly grade 5 teacher who was an ex-NHL hockey player began interrogating as many kids as he could. We told him the story, including Matthew’s provocation. Mr. McNeil only said, We’ve got to sort this out. Matthew was taken to hospital and released the same day. He came to school the next day looking sullen. Like several in our troupe, I felt a bit empowered by the beating Angelo had inflicted upon Matthew. Hi Matthew, I said to him loudly, as he hung his head making no eye contact. He got the nicknames jelly bean and punching bag which stuck with him for years. My understanding is that he grew up to be a complete loser, failing some mechanics’ course and winding up hooked on oxycontin.

My friend Angelo had a hard time after that. He was expelled for two weeks. I never understood the point of that – what lesson he was supposed to have learned during his expulsion? Tina had to work, and in those days, there was no place for Angelo to pass his time while the rest of us were in school. This was a recipe for trouble, and indeed, Angelo returned to school telling the rest of us proudly that he had started smoking. It wasn’t his first expulsion. The anger which came and went so quickly persisted as he got older, accompanied by fighting, expulsions, and other self-destructive behaviors. My parents loved Angelo when he was a little boy. He was bright and lively, and so sweet. He would ring our doorbell from time to time, clutching a covered plate of pastries. My mom baked these for you, he would tell my mother. I hope you enjoy them. Tina never had other children and had been estranged from her own immigrant parents, probably for getting involved with a black man. She doted on Angelo constantly, even when he was a teenager. He is my whole world, she told my mother once. She died of cancer when she was just forty-four. Angelo’s downward spiral accelerated for a short time, but boy did he turn things around.

Three

Tariq

Tariq Hassan grew up to be the most troubled of my childhood friends. His family was Egyptian, not Lebanese. They lived on another nearby street in a large home with an elegantly manicured lawn. Everything about the Hassans was elegant. Tariq’s father, Dr. Hassan was an impeccably dressed scientist who drove a Mercedes sedan Tariq and his brother were charged with polishing on a weekly basis. Mrs. Hassan was equally elegant, always dressed in expensive clothes. By her manner and dress she made it clear to anyone that the family was not only highly secular, but had completely embraced western values. She smoked very long, dainty cigarettes which smelled a bit like mint. Tariq’s father smoked a pipe, and with his short moustache and confident demeanor he resembled a young Ernest Hemingway.

Tariq spent his summers in Egypt, where, unlike Angelo, his family had some believable real estate assets. To school he would bring in a carefully assembled photo album, making sure the untidy fingers of his classmates didn’t come in contact with the precious pictures. There were pictures of Tariq and his brother on a camel, with pyramids behind them. There were lots of pictures of the family homestead, a Mediterranean-style villa complete with gardens and waterfalls. In all this Tariq took some pride, but not in the same blunt way as Angelo.

I never knew what sort of scientist Dr. Hassan was, nor how he had apparently accumulated wealth well beyond what one would expect for a scientist. My father told me the Hassans were artistocrats in Egypt. Throughout our time together as children, Tariq seemed disconnected from our school and our neighborhood. He spoke Arabic fluently, and one day he announced that he would be leaving to go to school in Egypt from now on. That was rough on me. Tariq explained that his parents preferred that he get a classical education whatever that was, and that sending him away was a way to keep him out of trouble. He had never been in trouble, and I recall standing in the Hassan’s entryway one day trying to reason with Mrs. Hassan with my ten-year-old wisdom. Mrs. Hassan, Tariq’s a very good boy. He’s doing well, and all his friends are here. I’ll make sure he stays out of trouble. She chuckled and said nothing. Interestingly Tariq seemed like he wanted to go. He made some vague promises about writing letters and coming back to visit (His family would remain in Halifax) and was on his way.

I never saw or heard from him until high school, when he showed up at our door on a rainy spring evening. Do I look familiar to you at all?

Tariq, of course you do! He looked pretty much the same, except six-feet tall, and with long hair and the start of a beard. He came in and my mother offered him a snack. We talked about all sorts of things. Mostly, he wanted to talk about our time as young children, the predictable, What ever happened to what’s his name or her name? questions dominated our conversation at first. Finally, we got around to talking about what he was doing back in Canada. Apparently, his parents decided that it would be fine for him to attend high school in Halifax after all. There had been some trouble in Egypt, and after the assassination of Anwar Sadat a few years earlier, the Hassan family had fallen out of favor with some authorities. About all this Tariq was vague. I knew it would be awkward for him to adjust. He had arrived near the end of grade 10, and how to slide back into life in Canada both socially and academically was unclear. He spent the last couple of months of that school year in several of my classes, in a curriculum designed to address specific deficits. His parents insisted that he had attended a British-style private school in Egypt, but Tariq was clearly behind in his reading and writing skills. He didn’t go to Egypt that summer. Instead he was enrolled in a summer catch-up program.

Tariq had assumed that he and I would be great friends again. That simply didn’t happen and he was very disappointed. He was a peculiar teenager, overly emotional much of the time. I found him hard to relate to. He seemed like he was obsessed with suffering, often his own perceived suffering, but sometimes about something unrelated to him. I recall watching a short film in biology class about a forest fire which depicted animals scurrying to safety. As the film ended Tariq began weeping uncontrollably in class, drawing blank stares from his classmates, including me. Our teacher offered him a tissue, and as he continued balling, he declared, That was so sad. There were many other incidents of that type, where Tariq seemed flaky, immature, overly sensitive, and ultimately, not someone other teens wanted to hang around with. I knew there was something seriously wrong with him. He spent a great deal of time with a school counselor. She was a thoughtful woman, whom he found helpful for coping with school and with life in general. She wasn’t a psychiatrist or psychologist and in those days seeking additional help wasn’t an option for the Hassans, mostly due to stigma.

At age seventeen, Tariq dropped out of high school, something he had the right to do. By that point, we were not close friends. He sat with me in the cafeteria sometimes, and told me how wonderful things were going for him. He was going to move to Toronto sometime soon to study acting. In the meantime, he was returning to Egypt to learn the family business. Hard to imagine how a whiny, emotional teenager could become either a businessman or an actor. I would listen politely to his plans, never challenging him, as I knew he would get upset and storm off.

Tariq left Halifax that summer and I never saw him for thirty years. In our thirties Tariq found my email address and began sending group emails to me and perhaps more than one-hundred people. These were lengthy and convoluted. There were so many, I deleted most of them without reading them. I was able however, to gather enough details to summarize his life since high school: He had studied acting in Toronto and had performed in a number of community theaters. He was also a paramedic. I was impressed with these achievements, given the way I remembered him. He was married for a short time to an Egyptian-Canadian woman and had two daughters. At some point, things went terribly wrong, and Tariq was accused of domestic violence. He got divorced and began stalking and intimidating his ex-wife. Legal trouble followed, from which he recovered. In all his emails, he never accepted any responsibility for this: His ex-wife had made up stories, and because she was petite and demure, the police were more likely to believe her than a big, angry paramedic. In one email, he asked, If you’re still my friend, let me know. I didn’t reply.

Four

Jon

Jon was awkward at a young age and naturally clung to our troupe, oblivious as to whether he was wanted or not. He would stand around by himself at recess, staring at other children playing games. He was never without his Yo-yo, with which he was quite skilled – able to complete any of the tricks we saw on television at the time. Only gradually did he become one of us. There was ambivalence on both his part and on the part of our troupe. By grade 2 I think we realized that he was very much alone, constantly felt like an outsider, and consciously or not, he became a close friend. Jon’s parents were not immigrants. In fact, I believe all four of his grandparents were born in Canada. But he was Jewish, and mostly for that reason that made him different, and a natural member of our group of boys. Noticeably short, with curly black hair and a very shy demeanor, he stood out from the ruddy, beefy children who surrounded him. Quite admirably, he wasn’t too concerned about fitting in. He did his own thing: An expert in Yo-yo; a stamp collector. In junior high he became a fantasy game enthusiast, spending endless hours playing Dungeons and Dragons with likeminded boys. I had neither the patience nor interest for that sort of thing, and we gradually drifted apart as teens.

Jon’s greatest asset was his father, Dr. Rubinstein – a real life astronomer. He looked the part with an eccentric demeanor and a thick grey beard. Unlike Jon, Jon’s dad was warm and friendly, not awkward in the least. I had been to his home many times and if he was home, Dr. Rubinstein would be welcoming, asking me about school and my family. Jon’s mother, by contrast, would rarely make an appearance. I might catch a glimpse of her as she scurried past, barely acknowledging me. According to Jon she worried about everything and everyone. Everyone was a threat, especially those who spoke to her directly. Most impressively, Dr. Rubinstein hosted our whole grade 4 class at a local observatory where he served as Director. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my childhood. On a clear, cold winter night, we saw planets through the large telescope that looked very much like the pictures in books. To this day, I’m grateful to the kind astronomer, who died in 2012.

Jon had always been told that he had some special talent or ability, at least by teachers in elementary school. What precisely that was, neither he nor his friends could ever figure out. Once in art class he produced a beautiful drawing of a dung beetle. Our teacher, Ms. Powell was so impressed she called his parents immediately, had the drawing framed and hung it on the wall. I remember asking him, How did you come with that? Jon shrugged his shoulders and retreated into his own head and his Yo-yo. He never drew anything quite like that again.

Jon and I became closer friends beginning in grade six, when we were both placed in a program for talented youth. The program was dominated by ethnic children. It was as if the small slice of the neighborhood in which I lived had been brought together in an elite echelon. Or, perhaps the program was another type of deliberate confinement, a way to keep the ethnic kids safe and content. I never felt especially gifted. Jon certainly didn’t. He did not thrive. Always at least a bit awkward, he seemed oblivious to people’s expectations. He rarely studied, preparing to carry on with his fantasy games no matter what else was going on. Despite his peculiarities, I liked Jon a lot. He was a reliable friend with a good heart. Though incredibly quiet, when he did speak, he really did say the right thing. Our grade 8 math teacher was called out of class abruptly one day, to learn that her mother had been killed in a car accident. She returned to class a few days later. None of us knew what to say, but one day when she began sobbing, Jon, the awkward 13-year-old approached her,