Making Toast Read online

  He looks more like his father now, with a face that mixes independence and innocence. Jessie has perfected the ironic smile of a grown woman. When Sammy was going over the invitation list for his birthday party, which consisted of everyone in his class, he was asked if he was sure he wanted to include the class bully. “Yes,” he said. “I wouldn’t want him to cry.” When, in a terrible coincidence, another girl’s mother in Jessie’s class died suddenly, Jessie said, “She can live with us.”

  Jessie sits at the upright piano in the little room, her back to Ginny and me. A print of lavender fields in Provence, frayed at the edges, hangs over the piano. Jessie’s hair is tied with an aqua band. She wears black pants and a white shirt with long black sleeves, the front of which reads, “Color Me Happy”—every letter a different color and design. Magdalina, her young teacher, sits to her right, slightly behind her, making corrections of tempo. Jessie plays “My Robot” and “Money Can’t Buy Ev’rything.” “A little faster,” says Magdalina quietly, with remnants of what sounds like a Russian accent. The room is one of many at the International School of Music, which sits in a small cluster of shops in Bethesda. Children come to learn the violin and clarinet and other instruments, as well as the piano. In the long hallway connecting the practice rooms, it sounds like a ragtag orchestra tuning up.

  Magdalina makes checkmarks in Jessie’s books as she goes along. She never interrupts. If Jessie hits a wrong note, she corrects herself. If a piece needs more practice, Magdalina tells her that. Jessie sits tall and straight. When she finishes with one of her three books, she carefully slides it into a black carrying case, and takes another. Ginny and I look at her back and watch her fingers as she plays “Bravery at Sea” and “The Happy Seal.”

  Just before dinner on May 2, Kevin Stakey calls. He hesitates and apologizes. His voice falters. “I’ve come to think of you as a friend,” he says.

  “What is it, Kevin?”

  “My son died.”

  His eighteen-year-old Stephen, a freshman at Stony Brook, collapsed during a mock regatta on campus. Students float cardboard boats on a pond in one of the undergraduate rites of spring.

  “They don’t know the cause yet,” he says. “Something to do with his heart.”

  The next day, I drive to the North Fork of Long Island to be with Kevin and his family, whom I have not met. His pretty wife, Cathy, is blond, with a wide and open face and the look of someone who gets things done—the adult version of their fourteen-year-old daughter, Laura. Laura greets me politely, so does nine-year-old Andrew. Cathy calls me “Mr. Rosenblatt,” until I ask her not to. We sit in the brightly lit and spotless living room of the gray, two-story house that Kevin built, and they tell me about Stephen—how easily he made friends, how he loved playing the bass drum in the university band. He had been valedictorian of his Mattituck High School class. Every few minutes Cathy offers me something to eat. I recognize this improbable impulse to play host to those who grieve with you. Kevin’s dad comes by. He is a huge man, well over six feet and larger than Kevin. He sits with us, says nothing, and eventually takes Andrew for a walk.

  Before returning to Bethesda, I tell Kevin not to concern himself with whatever remains to be done on the playhouse. Two days later, he is back at work.

  Ginny has a choking fit at breakfast. It lasts only seconds, but Jessie freezes. Sammy runs from the room.

  On the last day of Sammy’s pre-school, the Geneva Day School dedicated a bench to Amy’s memory. Jessie had gone to Geneva two years earlier, and next year would be Bubbies’s turn. The bench was Leslie Adelman’s and Laura Gwyn’s idea, and the teachers and families of the school contributed. Leslie had a landscaper plant bushes and tulips behind the bench, and Jim Bryla, the contractor who had redone Amy’s and Harris’s deck and basement, installed it. When Jim and his crew were working on the house, Amy had stocked a refrigerator with soft drinks and made lunches for them. The bench was made of teak, and three circles were carved into the back, to represent the three children. It also bore a small bronze plaque, donated by a school parent, that read “In loving memory of Amy Solomon, mother of Jessica, Sammy and James.” The bench was placed near a fence at the center of the playground, so that parents could sit and enjoy the sight of their children playing.

  The ceremony was held at noon on a bright, hot day at the end of May, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. After the dedication of the bench, there would be a closing-day carnival and a picnic. Some seventy-five people gathered in a circle. Speakers included Sammy’s teacher, Ed Bullis, an upbeat young man who entertains the kids with his singing, and who has kept a careful eye on Sammy since Amy’s death. He calls Sammy “Samalama.” Mrs. Funk, the head of Geneva, who also spoke, handed out watering cans to the family for the flowers around Amy’s bench. Jessie, Sammy, and Bubbies watered the tulips. Mrs. Funk and Mr. Bullis spoke of Amy being a part of the school, and of seeing her on the playground, involved with her own children and others.

  Carl spoke and Harris spoke. Harris told of how much being a mom meant to Amy, that it was her life’s priority. She was very serious about being a doctor, and practiced medicine to be of use, he said, but she had turned down equity and a partnership to be more of a full-time mother. Leslie spoke. She said, “The night before Amy died, I was with her at her home. I noticed that a candle I had given her when James turned one was still sitting next to her phone in the kitchen—months later. She told me that she loved the smell of the candle and kept it there so that she could enjoy it in the midst of life’s craziness. We joked about the fact that she could not find the time to actually light the candle.” She said Amy never regretted that, or anything she did not have or did not do. “To Amy, life was never about more.”

  When the ceremony was finished, no one would go near the bench, as if it were sanctified. Then a father casually went over with his child. They sat and ate sandwiches.

  On July Fourth weekend, the family comes to Quogue, as it does every year, to celebrate Carl’s birthday on the second. This year, not only do Carl and Wendy bring Andrew and Ryan to join their cousins, but we also ask Scott Huber, Wendy’s brother, and Risa, and their two girls, Sydney and Caitlin, whom Jessie and Sammy also call cousins. Somewhere residing in our house are seven children under the age of six, and eight adults, including John. There is one brief meltdown, Jessie’s, which we ought to have anticipated when she grew aware of all the mothers present but her own. “It’s not fair!” she cried. Harris sat with her in what served as a children’s dormitory. She said, “I want the cousins.” Carl came in with the rest of the kids, and suggested that they all jump from bed to bed. Jessie led the pack.

  Jessie disapproves of my association with three-year-old Caitlin Huber. A while back, Caitlin recognized a fellow loner in me, and chose me as her playmate. Her idea of play is to order me around. She gives me coloring books and tells me to stay within the lines. When she was first being potty-trained, she told her mother that I was to empty out the potty chair. Jessie observed our relationship without comment until this weekend, when she saw that I had brought a Kleenex box with a picture of a princess on it. She told Ginny, “Boppo probably got that for Caitlin.”

  Scott and Risa, both doctors, got along very well with Amy and Harris, as they do with Carl and Wendy and John. Until Amy died, I had acknowledged them as extended family, but did not make an effort to know them as individuals. Now I feel the need to do that, and to know Risa’s two sisters, Jayme and Allison, as well, and their husbands, Michael and Ray, and Risa’s parents, Chuck and Ilene, who always went out of their way for Amy. On the weekend, the children ride bikes and play in the pool, for which I got an inflatable crocodile with an arresting leer. Bubbies drives his red Cozy Coupe, and “cooks” hotdogs on his toy stove. We sing “Happy Birthday” to Carl.

  Our bedroom doubles as a gallery for family photographs—Carl and Wendy on their wedding day, Amy and Harris on theirs. There is a picture of me and Andrew at the piano; of all five grandchildren in various
coerced poses; one of John in gown and mortarboard at his college graduation; two of Amy and Ginny, their heads close together, looking like sisters. In one picture, Jessie and I are on the beach in Quogue. In another, Amy and I are on a beach in Cape Cod. She is Jessie’s age, has a towel around her shoulders, and looks cold from the water. A picture of Amy in a blue baseball cap holding Bubbies. A picture of Amy holding Sammy on her hip, she smiling, he looking curious. A full-faced, charismatic picture of Bubbies, a few months old; and of Amy at the age of two, either putting on or removing Ginny’s sunglasses. The photos are distributed on the walls, on Ginny’s desk, on the mantelpiece, the bed tables, the dresser.

  Once in a while, Ginny is brought down by the sight of them, or of any artifact connected to a memory. I am more often felled by mundane problems or momentary concerns, such as choosing a shirt to wear or remembering to take a pill—since nothing will ever be normal again. On the beige carpet at the foot of the dresser there is a small rust-colored stain. It had happened on the afternoon of December 8, shortly after Ginny and I received Carl’s call about Amy. We were packing hurriedly to leave for Bethesda, and in trying to screw the cap on a bottle of baby aspirin, I spilled the pills. I picked them up weeks later, and they left a stain.

  We have always liked Quogue for the tone it sets and preserves—private people going about quiet lives. Several friends from the village made the trip to Amy’s funeral, including Susie and Denny Lewis. Their son Denny was killed in Argentina, between college and medical school. He was riding in a car driven by a reckless, speeding driver. There were letters from dozens more, many of whom had never met Amy and who barely knew us. Charlie and Anne Mott called often. Their son-in-law, Marc Reisner, died of appendiceal cancer in 2000. Anne and Charlie have helped their daughter, Lawrie, with their two granddaughters. Andrew Botsford wrote a moving obituary of Amy in the Southampton Press, where he is associate editor. Christine Clifton and her staff at the Quogue Library sent a plant. Aurora Jones of Flowers by Rori knew Amy from the time she provided roses for her wedding. She greeted us in tears on our return, as did Lulie Morrisey, another friend who embraced us in the post office. Amy used to fast-walk to the Quogue Country Market for her morning coffee, pushing first Jessie, then Sammy, then Bubbies in the stroller ahead of her. She chatted with the owners, Bob and Gary, and with the people behind the counter—Sue, Gerard, Lisa, and the woman we referred to as our “other Ginny.” They were steeped in grief. Ginny, who has worked at the market many years, wrote a tender note, and little Sue came out from behind the counter to hug us, her head bowed, without saying a word.

  It was Amy who brought us to Quogue in the first place. We had spent parts of two summers renting in East Hampton and in Bridgehampton, where the relentless social life was getting to us. Amy, a college sophomore, was working as a short-order cook in a tennis club in Quogue, serving burgers and sandwiches. She knew that Ginny and I were tired of the Hamptons and were talking of spending future summers elsewhere, perhaps in New England. “Before you decide,” she said, “you ought to take a look at Quogue. It’s like you”—meaning boring.

  “I can still see her at the table in the kitchen,” Ginny said to me over the weekend. “All those physics and chemistry books.”

  Amy was catching up with the preparatory courses for medical school. She had taken not a single science course in college, and had only decided on medicine after two years of waitressing and bartending and thinking she might become an actor. We asked an actor friend if he would speak to her about the requirements and pitfalls of the profession. Amy emerged from the two-hour conversation intent on becoming a doctor. We told our friend that if he gave his mini-lecture to every young person aspiring to be an actor, parents would pay him a fortune.

  I wish my dad had lived long enough to see her start out in her practice. We gave Amy his medical bag as a gift for her medical school graduation. On one side of the bag, just below the handles, were my father’s initials in gold letters. We had Amy’s initials put on the other side. When we presented her with the bag, she held it close and sighed, “Oh.”

  In 1996, I wrote an essay on the character of physicians for New York magazine’s issue on the city’s “Best Doctors.” Amy was in her second year of medical school, and I interviewed her for the piece. I asked her how medicine had changed from my dad’s era to hers. She said that formerly physicians had stature and mystery. Her grandfather “was a Doctor,” she said. “I’ll just be a doctor.”

  “Why hasn’t the stature of doctors risen, given all that medicine has accomplished in the past few years?” I asked her.

  “It’s odd,” she said. “Doctors used to be the be-and end-all when they knew very little. Now that they know so much more, it works to their disadvantage. When something goes wrong, people think: ‘Well, they should have known,’ and the fact that the ordinary person knows so much about medicine demystifies the profession. The idea of a second opinion is sound practice now. Yet it seems to imply that the first opinion is likely to be wrong. And then, too, death may have been more generally accepted years ago. People don’t believe in death these days. But doctors do.”

  “Is it more of a job than a calling?” I said.

  “More of a job, but an interesting job,” she said. “If I were viewing it as a calling, I think I’d be disappointed. But the work itself is endlessly fascinating. The driving force for doctors is simply not knowing.”

  Moments of “not knowing” could also have painful consequences. I remember my father’s drained and helpless face when a patient he had been treating for a long time died of lung cancer, my father’s specialty. I remember Amy’s face a few years ago after the death of a patient, a one-and-a-half-year-old child. He had been born prematurely with multiple developmental problems related to hydrocephalus. A ventricular-peritoneal shunt had been placed in his brain to release pressure by draining increased fluid to his abdomen. The child had been neglected by his mother, but his foster mother, whom Amy respected, had been diligent about checkups. An infection developed in the shunt. The symptoms were barely detectable, as is usual with developmentally delayed babies. Still, Amy felt she should have noticed some small sign of change. Doctors often depend on an educated sixth sense about trouble, since most of the time they deal with commonplace ailments. A pediatrician mainly sees breaks, sores, bruises, cuts, colds, and strep. Harris told me, “She took it very hard when the child died. She had a great sixth sense, but she thought it had failed her. She blamed herself.”

  All Amy wanted out of medicine, as she said in the interview for the New York magazine piece, was “to make people feel better.” Her friend Liz Hale, a dermatologist, told me, “In part of a single evening, Amy taught me more about nursing a screaming baby than all the lactation professionals I consulted.” Her pediatric colleague, Gail Warner, said, “Most doctors are smart, but Amy had judgment, too. I used to go to her with my problems.” She also appreciated the wonder within the science of her work. When Andrew had just been born, and we all were in the hospital room with Wendy, Amy picked up the new baby, flipped him over, turned him this way and that, and studied him like a photographer holding a negative to the light.

  Amy is responsible for getting my toaster in Quogue. It replaced a toaster that no one but me could stand because you had to find the precise setting or it would burn the toast, or undercook it, or toast only one side of the bread. Amy hated that toaster more than anyone because of the toll it took on bagels. I defended it, mainly for its Art Deco look. It was streamlined, chrome, and round at the edges. But Amy favored reality over appearance, and when planning a gift for my birthday, she persuaded Harris, Carl, Wendy, and John that they should pool their resources and get me a new expensive Viking “professional” toaster that worked. It has a “warm” feature on the dial, and a boxier shape than the old toaster, which I keep around as a backup. The old one also serves as an auxiliary toaster, when I have to accommodate all the children at once. But the new one is my best toaster.


  After the July Fourth weekend, Ginny, Harris, and the children return to Maryland. Jessie and Sammy are eager to get back to their Wii, a virtual reality video game that Harris got them at the start of the summer. I need to stay on in Quogue for the Southampton Writers Conference, which extends from mid-July to the end of the month. The writers, who also teach workshops, pair up for the evening readings. This summer I am partnered with Frank McCourt. Frank reads from his first work of fiction. I had thought to read from my novel Beet, which had come out in February. But while looking for something in a tangle of papers, I came across an essay I’d written for Time twenty-one years earlier, called “Speech for a High School Graduate.” It was an attempt at a literary commencement speech, written to honor Amy. I wrote similar Time essays for Carl and John upon their high school graduations, using the trope of a father giving his personal commencement speech to his children as he looked to their future.

  I decide to read the essay instead of the passage from my novel. I would not have done so for an audience of strangers, but Bob Reeves, the conference director, has fostered a familial atmosphere over the years, and the participants have grown close. When Amy died, Billy Collins wrote us, “Sometimes there are no words.” Frank, Matt Klam, Lou Ann Walker, Meg Wolitzer, and others stayed in constant touch. Melissa Bank sent a little package containing a floral handkerchief for Ginny, audiotapes of short stories for my drives, and a chestnut she had found in the driveway of a restaurant in Tuscany some years ago, which had given her comfort. I do not think the essay to Amy will feel inappropriate. So after Frank finishes, I read what I had written when Amy was seventeen. It interests me how many of my wishes for her had come true—her love of travel, of animals, of music, her appreciation of history, her enthusiasm for sports, her respect for traditions. I wished her fierceness in battle, but urged her not to hang onto corrosive enmities. I wished her a love of work, predicting that it would have “something to do with helping others.” I wished her productive solitudes, and worthy friends, though in her case that wish was superfluous. I wished her the pleasure of an exchange of wit with a stranger, and moments of helpless hilarity. I wished her life in a place where she might see a stretch of sky. The essay ends with a promise never to let go.