Page 32 of A Happy Catastrophe

And then, as every morning, he was there at the front door, to see them off. Perfunctory possibly, but he does it. Each day he watches as the two of them toddle off together, heading toward the subway carrying their bags, adjusting their sweaters and their hats. Today he saw Marnie reach over and straighten Fritzie’s hat, then lick her finger and clean her chin. The universal gesture of moms.

He turned away and closed the door. The piercing pain in his heart wasn’t from witnessing this touching moment between two people to whom he’s connected. No. It was the realization of his own emptiness. Down at the very heart of him, there is nothing. No sensation.

He knows he is not going to let himself love this child. He can’t. That would be setting himself up for a heart-stopping disappointment when she is reclaimed by her mother. Anyway, it’s better this way, maintaining his distance. He is far too screwed up for her to count on him. That’s what nobody but him seems to see. It’s like he’s howling in the wilderness to the universe: I am not to be trusted. I have a bad track record with other humans. Do you not remember that I was present at the death of one of your very best ones? I could not be relied upon to save her, and I can’t help any of the others either.

Patrick goes to the other room, where he’s placed the paintings he’s worked on and then put aside. He doesn’t know what he was expecting them to say to him, but what he sees levels him. Here it all is, laid out before him, caught on the canvases: the smell of the hospital room, the rampaging fire, the lost self figuring out how to go on and failing at that and then failing again—all of this is right here in the work.

He sits back on his heels, staggered.

Will anyone want to see all this pain? Is there even any particle of beauty or hope in these? He examines them closely.

Goddamn. Everything he’s done is despair. Everything. There are the two big uncompleted ones and five individual paintings that are finished, or nearly so. They are crap. How could he not have seen? How did this sneak up on him? This whole show he’s doing is turning into a retrospective of his doomed relationship with Anneliese. There is no mercy in these paintings. They show only his crabbed view of the world, his well of desolation.

Anneliese, he sees, is his ghost and muse. And he doesn’t know how to get free of her. She is always going to be there in his mind, jumping in when he’s making love to someone else, screaming when he’s sleeping, throwing herself at him when he is doing something as simple as picking up a paintbrush.

No wonder he is wrung out by the end of each day. Because every day she lives and dies again. Every day there is the fire that answered the question of who they were to each other. If he is completely honest with himself, he knows that they were an ambivalent couple. She was a difficult woman. He was a clueless man. They were locked in strife sometimes, and sometimes, even sculpting next to each other in the same room, breathing the same air, they were as far apart as any two people could be.

This is what he paints: the distances, the silences, the fire, the death. He is in that world all day long.

Hey, she says. Would you like to paint the moment right after you woke up from your coma, when you knew you were always going to be the one who didn’t die?

Sometimes, when he breaks for lunch, he stands in the quiet kitchen, hearing the house noises and the traffic sounds from outside. The refrigerator motor comes on, the radiators scream out their protest, water gurgles in the old pipes. This old house has creaks and complaints as it settles even further into the earth. It’s been settling for over a century, and yet it still sinks farther. He waits for Blix to tell him what to do. Marnie claims that Blix can sometimes be reached over by the toaster, the temperamental toaster that should probably be thrown away except that Marnie has this silly idea that Blix might be the one causing the toast to fly out of it at odd times. You can talk to her, Patrick. Ask her a question. She’s with us. I know she is with us.

But he doesn’t believe in that. Instead, he gets his lunch—a piece of chicken breast left over from dinner, an orange, a piece of Manchego cheese, and a refill of coffee—and he goes back to his studio, not even letting himself glance toward the toaster. He wonders sometimes if the spirit of Blix might rush after him as soon as he closes the door. If she might come in, with her expansive love, her laughter, and change the dynamic for him, the way she did before.

But there is only Anneliese. Perhaps Anneliese keeps Blix away.

Hours later, consumed with his work, he hears noises in the other part of the house, and he looks up. Darkness is pressing against the windows, and his neck and back are stiff. His time in the studio is up. He listlessly packs up his paintbrushes and attempts to reclaim all the pieces of himself so he can reenter what everybody else thinks of as his real life, but which he knows is really his fake life. He has to hurry because if he doesn’t, then Fritzie will bound in to fetch him, her face bright with excitement. He knows Marnie tries to keep her from interrupting him, but at some point, if he doesn’t appear, she spring-loads her way in, and cannonballs herself into his arms. She looks at the paintings, and he sees her face change from happy to confused and sad.

He wants her out of there as soon as possible, so they go together to the kitchen, where the warmth is, where there is music and the crazy comfort of the turquoise refrigerator, and where he grounds himself by touching objects: the vases with flowers, and stoneware pottery and the big old black gas stove with the orange teakettle on it and the worn wooden floor and Blix’s old toaster. Slowly he lets himself be absorbed back into this different kind of life. He greets Marnie with a kiss, gets out plates and glasses for dinner, stirs the spaghetti sauce, pops in the pan of biscuits, pours the milk, wipes the table, smiles, asks questions, half listens to the stories of the day.

Laughs with them, even though to his own ears, his laughter sounds hollow.

How is it they don’t know who they’re dealing with? How do they not see his fear? It’s as though every day it’s a little bit harder to bring himself fully back to them. A little more of him has remained behind.

He sees Marnie looking at him sometimes before his regular personality has fully come back, sees her quizzical glance as she tries to figure out where he is. In some moods he thinks he’d like to tell her. But then he comes to his senses. No, he wouldn’t. He doesn’t want her to know. That would be the worst thing.

How would he even say it? I still think about my old girlfriend. My relationship with her hasn’t ended. In fact, it may be starting up again, breaking out in a new place. Also—you should be aware—I really did love her, and it was my fault that she died. You need to know that I might kill things I love. I don’t think I can be what you want me to be.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MARNIE

“I have a big, big, honking stomachache and I can’t go to school today,” Fritzie says one morning. “It’s the worst stomachache I’ve ever had in my whole life.”

“A honking stomachache?” I say, smiling. “Not even just a beeping one?”

She doubles over. “It’s HONKING and HONKING.”

The truth is I’ve been expecting this—the fake stomachache. I know it’s fake because until this exact moment, she has been sitting at the kitchen table drawing a picture of a clown on a bicycle with a monkey on its shoulders, and three times she’s needed me to stop making her lunch and go over and praise her for such an inventive drawing, and she’s given me a huge, grateful smile each time. She’s also had a glass of orange juice, some oatmeal with raisins, and half of a blueberry muffin. And she’s told me in great detail exactly what to pack in her lunch box, detail that a person with a true stomachache wouldn’t be able to bear thinking about.

hen, as every morning, he was there at the front door, to see them off. Perfunctory possibly, but he does it. Each day he watches as the two of them toddle off together, heading toward the subway carrying their bags, adjusting their sweaters and their hats. Today he saw Marnie reach over and straighten Fritzie’s hat, then lick her finger and clean her chin. The universal gesture of moms.

He turned away and closed the door. The piercing pain in his heart wasn’t from witnessing this touching moment between two people to whom he’s connected. No. It was the realization of his own emptiness. Down at the very heart of him, there is nothing. No sensation.

He knows he is not going to let himself love this child. He can’t. That would be setting himself up for a heart-stopping disappointment when she is reclaimed by her mother. Anyway, it’s better this way, maintaining his distance. He is far too screwed up for her to count on him. That’s what nobody but him seems to see. It’s like he’s howling in the wilderness to the universe: I am not to be trusted. I have a bad track record with other humans. Do you not remember that I was present at the death of one of your very best ones? I could not be relied upon to save her, and I can’t help any of the others either.

Patrick goes to the other room, where he’s placed the paintings he’s worked on and then put aside. He doesn’t know what he was expecting them to say to him, but what he sees levels him. Here it all is, laid out before him, caught on the canvases: the smell of the hospital room, the rampaging fire, the lost self figuring out how to go on and failing at that and then failing again—all of this is right here in the work.

He sits back on his heels, staggered.

Will anyone want to see all this pain? Is there even any particle of beauty or hope in these? He examines them closely.

Goddamn. Everything he’s done is despair. Everything. There are the two big uncompleted ones and five individual paintings that are finished, or nearly so. They are crap. How could he not have seen? How did this sneak up on him? This whole show he’s doing is turning into a retrospective of his doomed relationship with Anneliese. There is no mercy in these paintings. They show only his crabbed view of the world, his well of desolation.

Anneliese, he sees, is his ghost and muse. And he doesn’t know how to get free of her. She is always going to be there in his mind, jumping in when he’s making love to someone else, screaming when he’s sleeping, throwing herself at him when he is doing something as simple as picking up a paintbrush.

No wonder he is wrung out by the end of each day. Because every day she lives and dies again. Every day there is the fire that answered the question of who they were to each other. If he is completely honest with himself, he knows that they were an ambivalent couple. She was a difficult woman. He was a clueless man. They were locked in strife sometimes, and sometimes, even sculpting next to each other in the same room, breathing the same air, they were as far apart as any two people could be.

This is what he paints: the distances, the silences, the fire, the death. He is in that world all day long.

Hey, she says. Would you like to paint the moment right after you woke up from your coma, when you knew you were always going to be the one who didn’t die?

Sometimes, when he breaks for lunch, he stands in the quiet kitchen, hearing the house noises and the traffic sounds from outside. The refrigerator motor comes on, the radiators scream out their protest, water gurgles in the old pipes. This old house has creaks and complaints as it settles even further into the earth. It’s been settling for over a century, and yet it still sinks farther. He waits for Blix to tell him what to do. Marnie claims that Blix can sometimes be reached over by the toaster, the temperamental toaster that should probably be thrown away except that Marnie has this silly idea that Blix might be the one causing the toast to fly out of it at odd times. You can talk to her, Patrick. Ask her a question. She’s with us. I know she is with us.

But he doesn’t believe in that. Instead, he gets his lunch—a piece of chicken breast left over from dinner, an orange, a piece of Manchego cheese, and a refill of coffee—and he goes back to his studio, not even letting himself glance toward the toaster. He wonders sometimes if the spirit of Blix might rush after him as soon as he closes the door. If she might come in, with her expansive love, her laughter, and change the dynamic for him, the way she did before.

But there is only Anneliese. Perhaps Anneliese keeps Blix away.

Hours later, consumed with his work, he hears noises in the other part of the house, and he looks up. Darkness is pressing against the windows, and his neck and back are stiff. His time in the studio is up. He listlessly packs up his paintbrushes and attempts to reclaim all the pieces of himself so he can reenter what everybody else thinks of as his real life, but which he knows is really his fake life. He has to hurry because if he doesn’t, then Fritzie will bound in to fetch him, her face bright with excitement. He knows Marnie tries to keep her from interrupting him, but at some point, if he doesn’t appear, she spring-loads her way in, and cannonballs herself into his arms. She looks at the paintings, and he sees her face change from happy to confused and sad.

He wants her out of there as soon as possible, so they go together to the kitchen, where the warmth is, where there is music and the crazy comfort of the turquoise refrigerator, and where he grounds himself by touching objects: the vases with flowers, and stoneware pottery and the big old black gas stove with the orange teakettle on it and the worn wooden floor and Blix’s old toaster. Slowly he lets himself be absorbed back into this different kind of life. He greets Marnie with a kiss, gets out plates and glasses for dinner, stirs the spaghetti sauce, pops in the pan of biscuits, pours the milk, wipes the table, smiles, asks questions, half listens to the stories of the day.

Laughs with them, even though to his own ears, his laughter sounds hollow.

How is it they don’t know who they’re dealing with? How do they not see his fear? It’s as though every day it’s a little bit harder to bring himself fully back to them. A little more of him has remained behind.

He sees Marnie looking at him sometimes before his regular personality has fully come back, sees her quizzical glance as she tries to figure out where he is. In some moods he thinks he’d like to tell her. But then he comes to his senses. No, he wouldn’t. He doesn’t want her to know. That would be the worst thing.

How would he even say it? I still think about my old girlfriend. My relationship with her hasn’t ended. In fact, it may be starting up again, breaking out in a new place. Also—you should be aware—I really did love her, and it was my fault that she died. You need to know that I might kill things I love. I don’t think I can be what you want me to be.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MARNIE

“I have a big, big, honking stomachache and I can’t go to school today,” Fritzie says one morning. “It’s the worst stomachache I’ve ever had in my whole life.”

“A honking stomachache?” I say, smiling. “Not even just a beeping one?”

She doubles over. “It’s HONKING and HONKING.”

The truth is I’ve been expecting this—the fake stomachache. I know it’s fake because until this exact moment, she has been sitting at the kitchen table drawing a picture of a clown on a bicycle with a monkey on its shoulders, and three times she’s needed me to stop making her lunch and go over and praise her for such an inventive drawing, and she’s given me a huge, grateful smile each time. She’s also had a glass of orange juice, some oatmeal with raisins, and half of a blueberry muffin. And she’s told me in great detail exactly what to pack in her lunch box, detail that a person with a true stomachache wouldn’t be able to bear thinking about.

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