Making Toast Page 8

  Carl and Wendy say, “Love you,” as do their boys and Jessie and Sammy. Bubbies says it now. “Love you.” “Love you, too.” Harris also. Lately I say it with certain friends as well as family. Our conversations rise and fall, and I listen for the point where they are winding down to the end. “Love you.” Feeling the need more strongly these days, I tend to get it in first.

  Conversations from outer space: “Daddy!” says Sammy as Harris returns home after an overlong day at work. “I love penguins! I used to hate them, but now I love them!” Harris asks, “Why’s that?” Sammy says, “Because I’ve learned that penguins have enemies!” “That’s why you love them?” asks Harris. “And,” says Sammy, “I used to think they lived in one place, but they live on sandy coasts and on rocky coasts!”

  Jessie to Ginny, while we are riding in the car. “Mimi! Which would you rather do? Have dinner at the White House, or a picnic with your granddaughter?” Ginny says, “Picnic with my granddaughter.” Jessie makes a fist and yanks down her arm. “Yes!”

  “Boppo!” says Sammy, as he is about to introduce me to his classmate who has come over for a play-date. “This is Cameron! He’s Chinese! He eats bugs!” Cameron smiles and nods. “And bees!” says Sammy. “First he kills ’em, then he eats ’em!”

  We receive Bubbies’s first report from the Geneva School: “James Solomon. Date of birth: 9/20/06. Two Day A.M. class—Ms. Franzetti. Fall 2008.” Maria Franzetti also taught Jessie and Sammy. She is beautiful, dark-eyed and slim, with a young girl’s voice that rolls “R”s in a Latin accent. She sings quite well. She writes: “James adjusted quickly to class. He enters the classroom happily and with a smile. He quickly says goodbye to his grandma and puts his belongings away before going to the kitchen to find the [toy] dogs, and to make [toy] toast for us. He is very vocal and eager to participate in activities. He absorbs everything around him. He enjoys imitating his teachers.” A week or so later, Jessie and Sammy bring home their reports, which are through the roof. Mrs. Salcetti and Ms. Merritt, like Ms. Carone, Mr. Bullis, and Ms. Franzetti before them, seem to feel deep tenderness for Jessie and Sammy, not because of what the children have been going through, but because of who they are. Harris, Ginny, and I read the reports aloud. “Mommy would be so proud,” we tell them.

  On December 6, Ginny and I visit the cemetery by ourselves. We go on a Saturday. December 8 fell on a Saturday last year. Monday will mark the anniversary. The leap year accounts for the two-day difference in the dates. Harris and the children will visit the cemetery tomorrow, as will Carl and Wendy. None of us wishes to honor the exact anniversary. We would prefer to commemorate Amy’s birthday, and it is unlikely that Ginny and I will go to the cemetery at this time next year, or in the years to come.

  The temperature is in the low thirties, the cemetery deserted, the pines laden with shadows. When we stand together in the familiar place, neither of us weeps. We stare at the earth. I lick two fingers and wipe bird droppings from a corner of the marker. Ginny has brought a small bunch of flowers for the cone. We say nothing, and remain standing for five minutes, perhaps ten. “Tell me when you are ready to leave,” I say. Ginny turns away and says, “Now.”

  Yet another thing I’d forgotten about children: they relish imitating your least attractive qualities. Sarcasm is especially appealing, as it requires both skill and nerve. Ginny has just offered Jessie more minipancakes for the fourth time. Her persistence is impressive, but it can also be a pain in the ass. She has offered me tea for the forty-six years of our marriage, always receiving the same answer. Lately, I have taken to repeating what the loveable loser says in response to the same offer in Nobody’s Fool—“Not now, not ever.” Ginny says, “More minipancakes, Jess?” Jessie looks at me with mirthful mischief in her eyes. “Mimi,” she says. “How many ways can I tell you no?”

  Ginny’s view of life may not be as unremittingly sunny as it appears, but it prevails in matters such as tea and minipancakes. At her surprise birthday party last year, Wendy’s toast recalled the time when she and Ginny were in Amy’s kitchen at Thanksgiving, and Wendy had overheated a blueberry pie, charring the crust. Ginny told her not to worry. “It will taste just like crème brûlée,” she said.

  One Saturday night, Harris and I go out to dinner at an Indian restaurant in Bethesda. We have a couple of glasses of red wine, and talk about whatever comes to mind—the family, the Georgetown-Memphis basketball game we went to that afternoon, Amy, a little. There is no logic to the relationship of in-laws. The one you love chooses the one he or she loves, and the rest is up to you and that person. Ginny and I feel close to Wendy and Harris, not as parents, but not as friends either—people joined by the presence or absence of a third. Amy’s memory binds Harris and me more tightly than if she were alive.

  Not a single moment of contention regarding the children has ever risen between us, except of the playful sort. Yet we are both adept at sparring with each other on other grounds. He reminds me of my every practical ineptitude. I remind him of his ongoing six-year-old misdiagnosis of my broken right thumb. Anyone can see it’s broken. And it hurts like hell. No matter how often I complain, he continues to dismiss my case as arthritis. It must be very easy to become a hand surgeon these days.

  Last week, he surprised everyone by coming home with a new painting. He strode in and hung it in the TV room over the sectional. The painting is of a sunset on a wintry landscape. The trees are black and bare. A frozen stream between two hills leads toward a barren field. The red sky looks on fire. Another time recently, he brought home a large framed photograph of Muhammad Ali in a boxing crouch, admiring himself in a mirror in a gym, and bearing legends that read, “Champions are made from something deep inside them” and “The will must be stronger than the skill.” He hung that one in the hall. He has also turned the kitchen table around. It used to stand parallel to the counter that separates the kitchen from the TV room. Harris made it perpendicular. I think he is looking to make things different, or less static.

  Yet he seems to want to balance what is changed with what is preserved. When he and Amy went to that medical benefit dinner, a caricaturist drew the two of them the way caricaturists do, with oversize heads and undersize bodies. They are in bathing suits, and Harris is carrying Amy in his arms, in a classic lifeguard pose. He had the picture framed the other day and hung it on the wall near the second-story landing, along with caricatures of the three children, which were done recently. Going up or down the stairs, you can see the family intact.

  In some ways, I wish he and I could talk about emotional matters as effectively as we joke with each other. But his emphasis on the positive, which is useful to him, makes it difficult for him to shift gears, even if he wanted to. And I am no better in this. I think I tend to see the darker symbols more than he does. But I am not inclined to talk about my feelings with anyone but Ginny, and only rarely with her. Something about the momentum of our lives is good for us, keeps us from sinking. Given the choice between confessions of sorrow, however cathartic, and the simplest act of getting on with it, we’ll get on with it. I only hope that Harris is not wearing down from the pain of Amy’s loss. There are no signs of it, but at family events where Amy once shined, he cannot conceal his longing. His face is taut. I will not be his father. He has a perfectly good father of his own. But I worry about him helplessly, like a father.

  After nearly a year, Ginny and I wonder whether we ought to ask Harris if he still wants us to stay. We very much want to, and are fairly sure he’ll say yes. But we shy away from asking because we don’t want him to take the slightest impression that we want out. This is our life. Without Harris and the children to fill it, we would be sitting in Quogue, manufacturing conversations between dark silences. I know we are creating a diversion for the children as well as a differently constructed life for them. Yet we are doing the same thing for ourselves. When Amy died, Ginny and I never had to confer as to where we wanted to be and should be. We had to ask Harris, but not each other. Now, ou
ght we to ask him again? We decide that he will tell us when he wants us to go. And until then, my original answer to Jessie of “forever” stands. If a new woman should enter Harris’s life, as we hope will eventually happen, we know he will choose well. When that occurs, we won’t have to ask then either.

  Mrs. Salcetti invites me to visit Jessie’s second-grade class, and talk about writing. I conclude that she did not consult Ms. Carone regarding my prior experience. I know Luxmi, Arthur, and Jaraad from last year’s first grade. I tell the kids I have memorized all their names, and make up a new name for each of them, calling boys Phyllis, girls Ralph, and so forth. Their cries of protest eat up ten minutes. I look over at Mrs. Salcetti. “Am I through?” I ask. She smiles, and points to the clock. “Only forty minutes to go,” she says.

  At her insistence, I tell them the plot of my first novel, Lapham Rising, sanitizing it a bit, but staying true to the essentials. Naturally, they are way ahead of me. They analyze the characters I merely describe, noting possible nuances. They explain the theme of my book to me. I become adept at nodding. I have them begin a novel of their own. “Write a first sentence,” I tell them. “And remember, you want the reader to be very interested right away.” Jessie writes, “Once upon a time, there was the best-behaved class in the world.” I ask the children, “From that one sentence, what do you think is going to happen in Jessie’s novel?” Practically all of them shout, “They’re going to be bad!”

  Since, once again, it is clear I cannot teach them anything about writing, I decide to lead them in a rousing chorus of “Boppo the Great.” They sing it so boisterously, it nearly bring tears to my eyes. I have them do it again, louder, hoping that Sammy will overhear us.

  When, on another day at Burning Tree, I visited Sammy’s class, I decided to drop in on Jessie’s class first, to say hello. Her classmate Arthur saw me in the hall, ran ahead, and announced, “Boppo’s here!” Jessie’s and Sammy’s friends all call me Boppo. So do their teachers. One afternoon I was standing by my car, waiting to pick up Jessie after school and take her to a piano lesson. A teacher, whom I do not know, called out, “Boppo! Are you taking Sammy home, too?” I am become Boppo, even in Bubbies’s school, where I was asked by the principal to play Dr. Seuss one morning to honor the doctor’s birthday. I sat in a rocker, wearing the floppy red-and-white-striped stovepipe, and read The Cat in the Hat to two-and three-year-olds. Wouldn’t it be fun to see Amy at these moments, standing off to the side of a classroom, hands on hips, making an amused frown. Her father, Boppo the Loud and Absurd. Boppo being Boppo. After a visit to Burning Tree, I walked out to the asphalt parking lot, which was bright with sunshine and packed with cars. Everything dead quiet. No one there but Boppo the Great.

  Shopping with Carl, I ask how he’s doing. The boys are good, excited by the baby on the way. Wendy is in her sixth month. She’s going to have another boy (Jessie took the news bravely). Wendy’s platelet count is low, as it was when she was pregnant with Andrew and Ryan, but it is being monitored. “No worries, Dad,” he says. They are planning to buy a bigger house. “And how are you doing—about A?” I ask. Like Ginny, he puts himself last. He says he tears up from time to time, especially when driving. The Christmas songs get to him. “But once or twice a month,” he says, “I play that phone message A left Wendy about Christmas presents for the boys, and that helps a lot. Mom has listened to it. Do you think you’d like to hear it now?” I tell him not yet.

  Carl relates a story about Andrew, who is about to turn six. Andrew is exacting and very hard on himself. If he errs with a single letter when writing his name, he erases the name and rewrites “Andrew” from the beginning. Or he’ll take a new sheet of paper and start from scratch. Carl assures him, “Everybody makes mistakes,” but Andrew will not accept that.

  One afternoon, he was drawing pictures and growing frustrated when he signed his name and made the letters poorly. “Everybody makes mistakes,” Carl said. “Not Eric Carle,” said Andrew, referring to the author and illustrator of one of his first books, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? “Eric Carle’s drawings are perfect.”

  “By the time the books appear and we see them, the mistakes have all been corrected,” Carl said. “Everybody makes mistakes.”

  Ryan, who had been playing nearby, chimed in, “Not God. God doesn’t make mistakes.” Andrew said, “God made a mistake with Aunt Amy.”

  Some time has passed since I first called the NYU School of Medicine. Dean Grieco tells me that to date there is over a quarter of a million dollars in Amy’s fund, and that it is expected to yield five percent yearly. Alan and Arlene Alda, old family friends, made a munificent contribution. I know even more money is coming in, because friends have told us that their family Christmas gifts to one another were contributions to the fund. “I wish we had Amy instead,” he says.

  I ask him if our family might know something about the first scholarship recipients. The initial disbursements will occur at the end of January, 2010. He will inquire at the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid, and let me know. He tells me that a reception for scholarship donors will be held at the school in the spring. Would we like to attend? We would.

  “Boppo, here’s a riddle,” says Jess. “A man came over on Friday, stayed two days, and went home on Friday. How is that possible?”

  “Friday is a horse,” I tell her.

  “Right,” she says. “Here’s another riddle. Three men fell off a boat into the water. Only two of them got their hair wet. How is that possible?”

  “Friday is a horse,” I tell her.

  “Right,” she says.

  James awakens at about 10 p.m. and calls for “Daddy.” He is not pleased at the sight of me as I enter his room and pick him up to carry him downstairs. “Daddy!” he says. I tell him Daddy is having dinner with friends, and he will be home very soon. He utters a faint “Daddy,” but does not despair. Last winter, if Harris was out at night for any reason, and James awakened and did not see him, he would cry ceaselessly until he exhausted himself. Tonight he merely mutters his displeasure, though he remains anxious. “We hear the garage?” he says, meaning that Harris enters the house from the garage after he parks the car. We look for Harris through the front window for a while, then he rests his head on my shoulder. We listen for sounds from the garage.

  Being without the children is harder on Ginny than it is on me, because I am more used to the effects of solitude. I may have too much time alone, but Ginny, and Harris, have too little. She and I are together in New York briefly, to go to dinner at the apartment of old friends. It has been many months since we last did anything like that. The morning of the day of the dinner, Ginny sits at the end of a couch, her face turned toward the window. I ask her what she is thinking about, not who. She says she is remembering an afternoon when Amy was in high school and the two of them had finished a shopping splurge at Saks. A horse-drawn carriage was standing in front of the store. “We decided to get in and have it take us home,” Ginny says. “It was just so whimsical.”

  She worries that Jessie, growing up without a mother, will be deprived of such experiences. When Amy turned twenty-one, Ginny elicited letters from thirty of her women friends, advising Amy about the nature of womanhood. She, too, wrote a letter, and she collected them all in an elegant book the size of a large photograph album, with pockets on the pages so that one might extract the letters individually. “Jessie won’t do those mother-daughter things,” says Ginny. I tell her, “She has you. You took Jess around New York and to the Nutcracker, the way you took Amy.” Ginny looks away. “It’s not the same thing,” she says.

  She is silent for a minute or two. “You know what Harris said to me when we first hugged the day Amy died? He said, ‘It’s impossible.’ It is. It can’t be. It’s impossible.”

  In her letter on Amy’s twenty-first birthday, Ginny wrote that she had always admired Amy’s sense of timing. On April 19, 1969, Amy arrived one hour before Ginny was scheduled to be induced. She noted tha
t Amy also had arrived at Boston Lying-In Hospital in style; Ginny and I were driven there in a Harvard police car. And she had arrived with flair. The students in Dunster House lit up the tower that night—one of the few apolitical celebratory events of the spring of the Harvard riots.

  “Daddy and I couldn’t believe we’d given birth to a girl,” the letter went on. Ginny had three brothers, I one, and the two of us had produced Carl. We thought that’s what we could do. “Daddy’s first reaction was, ‘We don’t have girls,’” Ginny wrote. “But did we ever make a girl!” When I first saw Amy, curled up in the little white hospital blanket, I recalled what John Kelleher, a professor of Irish Studies at Harvard, and the father of four girls, had told me about fathers and daughters: “Every girl child peers up from her crib, sees her old man, and thinks, ‘Sucker.’”

  Ginny’s letter detailed all that was loveable and quirky about Amy, so it was a long letter. It was written in a hand surer than Ginny’s is these days. Since Amy died, her handwriting has deteriorated—one of the very few outward signs of her suffering. The letter closed: “I wish you work that matters. I wish you the joy of great love in marriage. I wish you the beauty and fulfillment that comes from being a mother.”

  From the outset, Ginny has told me she feels Amy’s spirit around us. From time to time I have repeated that thought to the children, but I have felt Amy’s spirit only fleetingly. My anger at God remains unabated, and it may be that I do not wish to concede Him anything as good or as kind as providing the superintending presence of my daughter. I know what comfort it gives people to think of the dead as nearby. It would be nice as well to think that the dead are happier to be close to us. But, I am more likely simply to accept Lewis Thomas’s idea of an afterlife based on the principle that nothing in nature disappears, and to go no further. The only spiritual thought that has come to me is a kind of prayer to Amy that we are doing what she would have us do.