Page 64 of A Happy Catastrophe

“Wait. Did you say he’s stable? You’re sure? Did the paramedics—”

“Yes,” she says. “He’s stable. I’ve got to hang up and call Brian and find someone to watch the kids so I can go to the hospital.”

I see my mother’s head swing around, her eyes wide. The words stable and paramedics have a way of floating across the night air and bringing one’s attention to what matters. She grabs for my phone, but Natalie has hung up. I stand there in the freezing night air, and I get very, very calm as I’m telling her the news. Fritzie manages to balance all the way to the end of the low little wall, and she only slips off when my mom lets out a cry and starts running down the sidewalk.

“Wait, Mom!” I say. “Millie, wait!”

I take Fritzie by the arm and run with her, but my mom is already so far ahead, running and running the blocks of Brooklyn.

She is brave and has always been fabulous whenever there’s a crisis, unless it’s something small like running out of potatoes when she wants some to mash this very minute, and then she panics. But as I run, I scroll back through tragedies I’ve known, and what I mostly can come up with is that when her mother was dying, she was cool and calm and orchestrated everything, only falling apart once the burial had taken place, and even then she discreetly took to her bed for two days and did her weeping in an organized, orderly way that anyone could understand.

She reaches Paco’s and runs past, all the way to our stoop, where she stops and leans against the railing. Fritzie and I arrive there seconds later.

“I have to go to him,” she says, and her voice is cold steel. “And I need you to come, too.”

“Okay,” I say. It’s my father there in that ambulance, going fast to some hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, the sirens probably blaring, and him on a stretcher being tended by paramedics. People are trying to keep him calm. They’ve hooked him up to monitors and machines and fluids. Are his eyes open or closed? Is he in pain? Does he think he’s going to die? I send him some energy. Some white light.

Hang on, I say to the air, and hope my words get to him.

“What about me?” says Fritzie. “You can’t leave me. Marnie, I need you to be with me.” And she starts to cry.

It’s quite a night. My mother is on the phone to my sister four times, and she talks twice to the doctor on call in the emergency room and finally finds out they’re admitting my father. Then she talks to the nurse in the Cardiac Care Unit. She talks to my father’s brother, Joe, who lives in Cincinnati. She talks to Natalie’s husband, Brian, who is home with the kids but who wants to reach out to my mom and see if there’s anything he can do.

And then, at one in the morning, she talks to my dad, whose voice is fuzzy and sedated. He tells her he loves her. She tells him she’s coming soon. He calls her Lumpkin, which is apparently a nickname from their honeymoon, something she never told me about.

I fall asleep thinking something I’ve never thought about before: my teenage mother and father off together on a honeymoon, children romping in the surf at Fort Lauderdale and making up silly nicknames. She was Lumpkin, and when I ask her, she smiles and says he was The Farteur.

For the first time in forever, I laugh. Perhaps I didn’t need to know that.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

MARNIE

“How old is your father?”

“Um, he turns sixty in the spring.”

“Sixty is old, right?” Fritzie is leaning against my arm, so close to me that I can barely type on the laptop. I’m trying to make airline reservations for my mother and me. I don’t want to ask her to move, exactly, because it’s Saturday morning and we are fighting a hefty layer of impending doom. There is packing to do and arrangements to make. My mother has been on the phone nearly all morning with all her relatives and friends and my father’s golf acquaintances. The doctors have said that my father is out of danger for the most part; the heart attack wasn’t very severe, and he’s responding well to medication. But still, we need to go to him.

Fritzie smells like peanut butter and sleep and a skinned knee and last night’s cheese and, also, deep down somewhere, no-more-tangles shampoo.

“Well,” I say, “it’s not old old, but it’s getting up there in years.”

“A person could die at sixty.”

“Well, people die at all ages.”

“But when they’re sixty, nobody would be really surprised. Is that right?” She moves in even closer, if such a thing is possible.

“I think they would be surprised. They would say that person died too young.”

“Huh. I wouldn’t say that. I would say it’s too bad, but I would say it was too young only if they were . . . twenty-eight.”

“Okay, noted.”

She scratches at her knee, which still has dried blood on it from last night’s fall. “Did you know your dad your whole life?”

“Did I what?” I want to say that of course I did, but then I remember that for Fritzie, that’s not something to take for granted. “Oh. Yes. I did.”

“Not like me. I’ll always have to tell people that I knew my dad only when I was eight. And if he gives me back to my mom, then I will also have to say that I only knew him for one year.”

I type tomorrow’s date into the computer. My mother wanted to go today, but I don’t see how that’s possible. And Natalie says it’s fine. He’s stable.

That word again: stable. It’s only a word you use when somebody isn’t really, really okay. I’m stable, for instance, but if I answered stable to the question How are you? people would think that I wasn’t doing well at all.

American Airlines has no flights in the afternoon, just at 5:45 a.m., when I would rather not go.

“Are you making a reservation for me, too?” Fritzie asks.

“Honey, I can’t. I’m sorry. Just my mom and I are going this time.”

“I told you I wanted to go. Please take me.”

“I know you did, and I’d like to, but it’s just not going to work out. We’re going to be spending so much time in the hospital, and it’s not a place they let children come. And we’ve got things we’re going to have to decide and all.”

“Like what?”

Why did I say we had to decide things? “I’m not sure.”

“Like whether he’s going to die?”

“No. He’s going to live.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure is not the same as sure. Just like I’m not sure if my mom is still alive in Italy. She probably is, but I didn’t talk to her since Christmas because I don’t like to talk on the phone with her, so I don’t know. She could be dying right this minute, and I wouldn’t know about it. Do you ever think of things like that? I think about that sometimes.”

“Well,” I say. “You’re right. I suppose a lot of things in life are like that, you know. Things are probably good, because they’re mostly always okay, but . . .”

“But we don’t know for sure.”

“I guess we can’t.”

o;Wait. Did you say he’s stable? You’re sure? Did the paramedics—”

“Yes,” she says. “He’s stable. I’ve got to hang up and call Brian and find someone to watch the kids so I can go to the hospital.”

I see my mother’s head swing around, her eyes wide. The words stable and paramedics have a way of floating across the night air and bringing one’s attention to what matters. She grabs for my phone, but Natalie has hung up. I stand there in the freezing night air, and I get very, very calm as I’m telling her the news. Fritzie manages to balance all the way to the end of the low little wall, and she only slips off when my mom lets out a cry and starts running down the sidewalk.

“Wait, Mom!” I say. “Millie, wait!”

I take Fritzie by the arm and run with her, but my mom is already so far ahead, running and running the blocks of Brooklyn.

She is brave and has always been fabulous whenever there’s a crisis, unless it’s something small like running out of potatoes when she wants some to mash this very minute, and then she panics. But as I run, I scroll back through tragedies I’ve known, and what I mostly can come up with is that when her mother was dying, she was cool and calm and orchestrated everything, only falling apart once the burial had taken place, and even then she discreetly took to her bed for two days and did her weeping in an organized, orderly way that anyone could understand.

She reaches Paco’s and runs past, all the way to our stoop, where she stops and leans against the railing. Fritzie and I arrive there seconds later.

“I have to go to him,” she says, and her voice is cold steel. “And I need you to come, too.”

“Okay,” I say. It’s my father there in that ambulance, going fast to some hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, the sirens probably blaring, and him on a stretcher being tended by paramedics. People are trying to keep him calm. They’ve hooked him up to monitors and machines and fluids. Are his eyes open or closed? Is he in pain? Does he think he’s going to die? I send him some energy. Some white light.

Hang on, I say to the air, and hope my words get to him.

“What about me?” says Fritzie. “You can’t leave me. Marnie, I need you to be with me.” And she starts to cry.

It’s quite a night. My mother is on the phone to my sister four times, and she talks twice to the doctor on call in the emergency room and finally finds out they’re admitting my father. Then she talks to the nurse in the Cardiac Care Unit. She talks to my father’s brother, Joe, who lives in Cincinnati. She talks to Natalie’s husband, Brian, who is home with the kids but who wants to reach out to my mom and see if there’s anything he can do.

And then, at one in the morning, she talks to my dad, whose voice is fuzzy and sedated. He tells her he loves her. She tells him she’s coming soon. He calls her Lumpkin, which is apparently a nickname from their honeymoon, something she never told me about.

I fall asleep thinking something I’ve never thought about before: my teenage mother and father off together on a honeymoon, children romping in the surf at Fort Lauderdale and making up silly nicknames. She was Lumpkin, and when I ask her, she smiles and says he was The Farteur.

For the first time in forever, I laugh. Perhaps I didn’t need to know that.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

MARNIE

“How old is your father?”

“Um, he turns sixty in the spring.”

“Sixty is old, right?” Fritzie is leaning against my arm, so close to me that I can barely type on the laptop. I’m trying to make airline reservations for my mother and me. I don’t want to ask her to move, exactly, because it’s Saturday morning and we are fighting a hefty layer of impending doom. There is packing to do and arrangements to make. My mother has been on the phone nearly all morning with all her relatives and friends and my father’s golf acquaintances. The doctors have said that my father is out of danger for the most part; the heart attack wasn’t very severe, and he’s responding well to medication. But still, we need to go to him.

Fritzie smells like peanut butter and sleep and a skinned knee and last night’s cheese and, also, deep down somewhere, no-more-tangles shampoo.

“Well,” I say, “it’s not old old, but it’s getting up there in years.”

“A person could die at sixty.”

“Well, people die at all ages.”

“But when they’re sixty, nobody would be really surprised. Is that right?” She moves in even closer, if such a thing is possible.

“I think they would be surprised. They would say that person died too young.”

“Huh. I wouldn’t say that. I would say it’s too bad, but I would say it was too young only if they were . . . twenty-eight.”

“Okay, noted.”

She scratches at her knee, which still has dried blood on it from last night’s fall. “Did you know your dad your whole life?”

“Did I what?” I want to say that of course I did, but then I remember that for Fritzie, that’s not something to take for granted. “Oh. Yes. I did.”

“Not like me. I’ll always have to tell people that I knew my dad only when I was eight. And if he gives me back to my mom, then I will also have to say that I only knew him for one year.”

I type tomorrow’s date into the computer. My mother wanted to go today, but I don’t see how that’s possible. And Natalie says it’s fine. He’s stable.

That word again: stable. It’s only a word you use when somebody isn’t really, really okay. I’m stable, for instance, but if I answered stable to the question How are you? people would think that I wasn’t doing well at all.

American Airlines has no flights in the afternoon, just at 5:45 a.m., when I would rather not go.

“Are you making a reservation for me, too?” Fritzie asks.

“Honey, I can’t. I’m sorry. Just my mom and I are going this time.”

“I told you I wanted to go. Please take me.”

“I know you did, and I’d like to, but it’s just not going to work out. We’re going to be spending so much time in the hospital, and it’s not a place they let children come. And we’ve got things we’re going to have to decide and all.”

“Like what?”

Why did I say we had to decide things? “I’m not sure.”

“Like whether he’s going to die?”

“No. He’s going to live.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure is not the same as sure. Just like I’m not sure if my mom is still alive in Italy. She probably is, but I didn’t talk to her since Christmas because I don’t like to talk on the phone with her, so I don’t know. She could be dying right this minute, and I wouldn’t know about it. Do you ever think of things like that? I think about that sometimes.”

“Well,” I say. “You’re right. I suppose a lot of things in life are like that, you know. Things are probably good, because they’re mostly always okay, but . . .”

“But we don’t know for sure.”

“I guess we can’t.”

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