Page 61 of A Happy Catastrophe

“No. Yes. I’m a little bit sad.”

I feel her little hand coming over to my shoulder, tentatively at first, and then patting me over and over again. A steady stream of little comforting pats.

That’s when I know I should come out from under the covers—for her sake. Get up, start moving around the house. Life has to go on.

So I get up.

The next morning Patrick’s in the kitchen with Fritzie when I get out of bed. He’s made her breakfast—her latest favorite, a three-minute egg nestled on a piece of toast with a circular hole cut out of it. She examines it for precision; it’s as though everything we do for her is a test of our commitment. This morning the hole is found to be a little lopsided, and to my surprise, he wearily agrees to make another one for her and to cut it more exactly.

He doesn’t look in my direction.

“It’s okay, Patrick,” she says after a moment. “I’ll eat it this way.”

Normally he and I would have exchanged a look of triumph at a moment like this, but I don’t look at him, and I can feel him not looking at me. My mother comes over from Lola’s house, exclaiming about the snow that fell last night, and how it’s slippery on the steps, so be careful.

“Shouldn’t school be closed in these conditions?” she asks.

There’s a silence, and then Patrick and I both start in at the same time, beginning to explain that Brooklyn doesn’t usually have snow days. Embarrassed, we stop talking at the same time. And then worse, start up again at the same instant.

Fritzie laughs. My mother says, “Never mind. I get it.” She gets herself a cup of coffee and goes out to the living room, shaking her head at us.

I do him the favor of disappearing back to my room. I hear him organizing Fritzie into Getting Ready to Leave—and although I’m the one who usually walks her to the bus stop these days, I don’t go out there and offer today. It’s painful to listen to—he doesn’t know how to pack up the backpack, forgets and has to be reminded about the lunch, and then doesn’t understand that her suede boots won’t work in the snow. She needs the big fur-lined rubber ones. I lie on the bed and listen to his hopelessness as he learns these things. Serves him right.

“Patrick,” I hear her say. “You are just a mess!”

And then they are gone.

We’ve almost made it through the first twenty-four hours. I can’t even begin to think how awful my life is about to be. At some point, my mother will go back to Florida, the teenagers will move out and into their lives—and Patrick, whom I now detest, will take my sweet Fritzie away. And the house will be so quiet. So very horribly quiet.

I take a little mental inventory. And here’s what we’re left with. Magic doesn’t work, love may not run the whole universe after all, and those little silken sacks with spell-casting herbs I’ve cultivated and carried around—well, maybe I shouldn’t have wasted my time. Patrick and I were never meant to be together. Blix was wrong. I was wrong, and I am so sad that it takes everything to get up and face every new horrible day.

I fully expect all the couples I’ve insisted belong together to come, one by one, back into my life to point out that things didn’t go so hot after all. Lola will phone and say that William Sullivan was her worst mistake to date. That couple from the restaurant, too. They’ll be in, retracting everything. Dozens of people will all come shaking their fists at me and claiming I’ve misled them.

One morning I look over at the toaster on the counter and start to laugh. The toaster, even! Had I actually gotten myself to believe that Blix was a force who was still around, who flung toast out of the toaster to give me a message? Honest to God, I’ve been a lunatic! Dancing around through life, thinking the little sparkles in the air were evidence of love and that I could meddle in other people’s lives! Who did I think I was?

There isn’t any magic to me, and there never was.

As if to prove that, I get a text from him: A proposal for going forward. In order to disrupt F’s life as little as possible wondering if U wd be OK w/me living in the studio until school is out & she goes back to Tessa. I’ll try to stay out of UR way. P.

I think it’s the abbreviations that hurt the most. He prides himself on typing out every word, on using proper punctuation. It was even a joke between us. Our thing.

“Can you believe this shit?” I say to my mom, who shrugs. “Dude writes me a note!”

“He doesn’t dare talk to you in person because he loves you so much that he knows he’ll break down and start sobbing,” she says. “Already he’s regretting what he’s done.”

“No, he’s not,” I say.

“I’m just saying he’ll be back. You’ll see.”

But he does not come back.

And then one morning my mother and I are walking to Best Buds together and she looks at her phone and says, “Oh my God, your father’s coming.”

“O. M. G,” I say. “He is? He’s coming to visit you? Or is he coming to take you home with him?”

“Well, he’s certainly not going to take me home with him!” she says emphatically. “Not unless he plans on kidnapping me. I don’t really know what he expects to happen. That man! Honestly. He’s made a reservation for two weeks from now. Why? Why is he coming here? I’m not ready for this.”

I know why. He’s coming because, after forty years of marriage, he at last senses some change in the marital air currents. My dad may be slow to catch on, but he’s no fool. He’s coming to reclaim his wife from the smarmy Randolph Greenleafs of the world. He’s coming because he’s sick of watching golf in Florida without her to ask him to change the channel.

And basically, he’s coming because he’s in love with my mother, and he knows through some unspoken deep connection they have, like a cable running between them from Florida to New York, that she’s in love with him, and they need to be back together. Enough of this separation nonsense. I get it.

I get it, but I think my father is going to be stunned by the new Millie MacGraw. She’s turned bold without him around to silence her with his disapproving sigh. There’s no one to veto her purchases, to set his mouth in a line when she comes home with a new skirt, to say, “But did you need that?” There’s no one to make her feel small or tentative, to question her choices.

Poor man: he thought it was his birthright to be the man of the family, to be the final, deep-voiced authority benevolently ruling over a small domestic kingdom. He did it well, too—with a chuckling demeanor most of the time, kind and loyal. He was accustomed to being obeyed, his fairness never coming into question. That coffee table? That vacation plan? No, no, no. This is how it’s done. He had no reason to think he wouldn’t spend his whole life that way.

But something happened, and his wife is a force now. If you ask me, she’s turning into the Resident Crone and Wise Woman in the Frippery, and as her daughter, I’m alternately proud and horrified listening to the way she asserts her opinions.

For instance, I heard her tell Ariana the other day that she’d be so much more attractive to “a better class of young men” if she sat up straight. (Ariana didn’t even get mad; she laughed and her eyes caught mine and she mouthed, “What the HECK?” and adjusted her posture just in case.)

o;No. Yes. I’m a little bit sad.”

I feel her little hand coming over to my shoulder, tentatively at first, and then patting me over and over again. A steady stream of little comforting pats.

That’s when I know I should come out from under the covers—for her sake. Get up, start moving around the house. Life has to go on.

So I get up.

The next morning Patrick’s in the kitchen with Fritzie when I get out of bed. He’s made her breakfast—her latest favorite, a three-minute egg nestled on a piece of toast with a circular hole cut out of it. She examines it for precision; it’s as though everything we do for her is a test of our commitment. This morning the hole is found to be a little lopsided, and to my surprise, he wearily agrees to make another one for her and to cut it more exactly.

He doesn’t look in my direction.

“It’s okay, Patrick,” she says after a moment. “I’ll eat it this way.”

Normally he and I would have exchanged a look of triumph at a moment like this, but I don’t look at him, and I can feel him not looking at me. My mother comes over from Lola’s house, exclaiming about the snow that fell last night, and how it’s slippery on the steps, so be careful.

“Shouldn’t school be closed in these conditions?” she asks.

There’s a silence, and then Patrick and I both start in at the same time, beginning to explain that Brooklyn doesn’t usually have snow days. Embarrassed, we stop talking at the same time. And then worse, start up again at the same instant.

Fritzie laughs. My mother says, “Never mind. I get it.” She gets herself a cup of coffee and goes out to the living room, shaking her head at us.

I do him the favor of disappearing back to my room. I hear him organizing Fritzie into Getting Ready to Leave—and although I’m the one who usually walks her to the bus stop these days, I don’t go out there and offer today. It’s painful to listen to—he doesn’t know how to pack up the backpack, forgets and has to be reminded about the lunch, and then doesn’t understand that her suede boots won’t work in the snow. She needs the big fur-lined rubber ones. I lie on the bed and listen to his hopelessness as he learns these things. Serves him right.

“Patrick,” I hear her say. “You are just a mess!”

And then they are gone.

We’ve almost made it through the first twenty-four hours. I can’t even begin to think how awful my life is about to be. At some point, my mother will go back to Florida, the teenagers will move out and into their lives—and Patrick, whom I now detest, will take my sweet Fritzie away. And the house will be so quiet. So very horribly quiet.

I take a little mental inventory. And here’s what we’re left with. Magic doesn’t work, love may not run the whole universe after all, and those little silken sacks with spell-casting herbs I’ve cultivated and carried around—well, maybe I shouldn’t have wasted my time. Patrick and I were never meant to be together. Blix was wrong. I was wrong, and I am so sad that it takes everything to get up and face every new horrible day.

I fully expect all the couples I’ve insisted belong together to come, one by one, back into my life to point out that things didn’t go so hot after all. Lola will phone and say that William Sullivan was her worst mistake to date. That couple from the restaurant, too. They’ll be in, retracting everything. Dozens of people will all come shaking their fists at me and claiming I’ve misled them.

One morning I look over at the toaster on the counter and start to laugh. The toaster, even! Had I actually gotten myself to believe that Blix was a force who was still around, who flung toast out of the toaster to give me a message? Honest to God, I’ve been a lunatic! Dancing around through life, thinking the little sparkles in the air were evidence of love and that I could meddle in other people’s lives! Who did I think I was?

There isn’t any magic to me, and there never was.

As if to prove that, I get a text from him: A proposal for going forward. In order to disrupt F’s life as little as possible wondering if U wd be OK w/me living in the studio until school is out & she goes back to Tessa. I’ll try to stay out of UR way. P.

I think it’s the abbreviations that hurt the most. He prides himself on typing out every word, on using proper punctuation. It was even a joke between us. Our thing.

“Can you believe this shit?” I say to my mom, who shrugs. “Dude writes me a note!”

“He doesn’t dare talk to you in person because he loves you so much that he knows he’ll break down and start sobbing,” she says. “Already he’s regretting what he’s done.”

“No, he’s not,” I say.

“I’m just saying he’ll be back. You’ll see.”

But he does not come back.

And then one morning my mother and I are walking to Best Buds together and she looks at her phone and says, “Oh my God, your father’s coming.”

“O. M. G,” I say. “He is? He’s coming to visit you? Or is he coming to take you home with him?”

“Well, he’s certainly not going to take me home with him!” she says emphatically. “Not unless he plans on kidnapping me. I don’t really know what he expects to happen. That man! Honestly. He’s made a reservation for two weeks from now. Why? Why is he coming here? I’m not ready for this.”

I know why. He’s coming because, after forty years of marriage, he at last senses some change in the marital air currents. My dad may be slow to catch on, but he’s no fool. He’s coming to reclaim his wife from the smarmy Randolph Greenleafs of the world. He’s coming because he’s sick of watching golf in Florida without her to ask him to change the channel.

And basically, he’s coming because he’s in love with my mother, and he knows through some unspoken deep connection they have, like a cable running between them from Florida to New York, that she’s in love with him, and they need to be back together. Enough of this separation nonsense. I get it.

I get it, but I think my father is going to be stunned by the new Millie MacGraw. She’s turned bold without him around to silence her with his disapproving sigh. There’s no one to veto her purchases, to set his mouth in a line when she comes home with a new skirt, to say, “But did you need that?” There’s no one to make her feel small or tentative, to question her choices.

Poor man: he thought it was his birthright to be the man of the family, to be the final, deep-voiced authority benevolently ruling over a small domestic kingdom. He did it well, too—with a chuckling demeanor most of the time, kind and loyal. He was accustomed to being obeyed, his fairness never coming into question. That coffee table? That vacation plan? No, no, no. This is how it’s done. He had no reason to think he wouldn’t spend his whole life that way.

But something happened, and his wife is a force now. If you ask me, she’s turning into the Resident Crone and Wise Woman in the Frippery, and as her daughter, I’m alternately proud and horrified listening to the way she asserts her opinions.

For instance, I heard her tell Ariana the other day that she’d be so much more attractive to “a better class of young men” if she sat up straight. (Ariana didn’t even get mad; she laughed and her eyes caught mine and she mouthed, “What the HECK?” and adjusted her posture just in case.)

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