Page 69 of A Happy Catastrophe

And that’s the way it goes conversationally: Weather Channel, hospital food, tests the hospital has done, the nurses’ demeanor, the needles, the beeping machines. He’s Ted, always the hearty salesman—jovial as he can be under the circumstances, glad to see his family, and making jokes when the nurse comes to adjust his IV and add some medication. Now that his wife is here, he tells them, he expects to be sent right home where the real good care is going to be. Not that he hasn’t been getting excellent care from them, he hastens to add—but now he just needs the love cure.

“Can you imagine me—me—having this happen?” he says to me, his eyes wide with disbelief. “I’m the healthiest guy I know, and yet I’m the one getting the chest pains and the mild heart attack. Luckily the doc says it was just a mild one. Got one of those balloon things installed, and so I’m good to go. I tell everybody it was just that I missed my wife. My poor old heart was just sick of beating as one.”

I look at my mother smiling and patting his arm, being his wife again. She’s slipped right back into being who she always was, adjusting his sheets and his hospital gown, asking him if he wants a foot rub, or more water, or something from the cafeteria. Which nurse is his favorite, she wants to know, and how often has Natalie been in to see him? Any of the fellows from work come to visit? How’s the house?

Only I see the shadow of the real person right there behind her eyes. The person who’s sitting back for now but who has vowed not to disappear.

I leave my parents alone and take a walk through the hospital. The sun has gone down now, and the hospital is lit up like a shopping mall, with fountains and a gigantic atrium downstairs—palm trees and ferns lit up with spotlights. The only thing that differentiates this from your run-of-the-mill shopping plaza is that there are more wheelchairs than you’d perhaps normally see. And there’s no kiosk selling sunglasses. I get a candy bar from a vending machine and think about calling Patrick back now that Fritzie has probably gone to bed.

But then I remember all the little sculptures of Anneliese in that studio, and his voice when he told me he loved her. I’m not the one he wants. Someday, maybe, I could be a stand-up comedian, and do a routine about how my ex-husband tried to break up with me at the altar on our wedding day—and then how the next guy left me to go back to his dead girlfriend. Would people laugh?

I wonder.

My father gets released two days later, and we take him home. We treat him like the invalid he hates being, lavishing him with attention and foot rubs and vegetable smoothies and lap blankets to protect him from “a possible chill” while he tries to bat us away and convince us he’s as strong as ever. I sit outside with him on the patio and adjust the shade umbrella so that he doesn’t get sun on his face. My mother gets to work making him healthy meals and going to the grocery store, lining up appointments, fixing up a sickroom for him. He has a whole sheaf of papers telling him what he can and cannot do, and we all read them and pass them around. He has written instructions on how he must change his life to prevent another heart attack.

“The next one, I might not be so lucky,” he says.

“I know,” I say. “It’s good you’re taking care of yourself.”

He slaps his knee and laughs. “I’m just kidding you! There’s not going to be another. I got my sweet better half back. I just needed me some of Millie’s Marvelous Thursday Night Meat Loaf. This was just a fluke, trust me. Probably wasn’t even a real heart attack. Just a warning.”

“If it was a warning, it was a pretty serious one,” I hear my mother say to him. “They don’t put balloons in people for fake heart attacks, I don’t think. You need to follow instructions and take it easy.”

“But I feel like a million bucks,” he says. He does not look like a million bucks. He looks like no more than one dollar and thirty-five cents. “I want to get out there on the golf course again. That’s what eases my stress. That, and seeing you back at home, my dear. Hate to admit it, but I’m no good on my own.”

When he and I are alone together, he lets down his guard and sinks down into himself, letting his chin rest on his chest, tapping his fingers on the plastic arms of the outdoor patio chairs. He says, “I didn’t ever think she’d stay that long. What was she doing anyway? Who the hell goes to Brooklyn for the winter?”

“She was having a nice time,” I say. “Went to the theater, talked to people in the flower shop. Helped out with Fritzie.”

Went to the top of the Empire State Building. Rode the subway. Smoked pot. Dated some new men.

“I don’t get it,” he says. “Forty years married, and I guess I’ll never figure women out.”

“It’s not too late,” I say. And feeling bold, I add, “You don’t have to figure all women out. All you have to do is love this one woman as hard as you can. Which I think it’s in your power to do.” Then, getting even crazy bold now, I say, “What if you tried listening to her like you really, really want to know what she’s feeling and like you’re on her side completely?”

“I am—” he says, but I hold up my hand to stop him.

“And stop talking to her in that fake way, like you’re reading a bad sitcom script. The ‘better half’ and ‘Millie’s Marvelous Meat Loaf.’ No one wants to hear that stuff. Be real.”

I brace for what he would have said at any other time in my life, any time I tried to give any advice to him, the infallible Ted MacGraw, salesman extraordinaire, pillar of the community, good all-around nice guy. He would have said, “No one knows people like I do! I’m a people person, so don’t go trying to tell me what’s what. I’ll talk to my wife the way I want!”

But now he just sits there in his pitiful white plastic lawn chair, looking out at the palm trees in their pots and the leaves from the ficus tree falling on the patio, and he says, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m going to have to figure out how to listen to her better. Head this off so it doesn’t happen again. I didn’t even know she was unhappy.” He looks up at me and laughs. “Not until that Thanksgiving dinner, that’s for sure. I came back in the house after putting her in that taxi, and I sat there with that turkey leg, and I thought, ‘Ted MacGraw, what the actual hell is this? Buddy, things have gone terribly, terribly wrong here. There’s nobody sitting across the table. No smiling. No joy.’”

“Maybe this will usher in a whole new phase for you,” I say.

He smiles and squeezes my hand. “It could, ducky. It could,” he says. “I guess I gotta face that I’m in repair. Undergoing some renovations, both in my body and my personality. Gotta suck it up.”

We both look up just then because there’s a commotion at the door, and Natalie’s arrived with her two kids. Amelia, who’s four and perfect, runs over and climbs up on my dad, and Natalie swoops down and picks her up. “I told you, honey, you can’t climb on PopPop. He’s had an operation.” She’s got Louise on her hip—Louise chewing on a big plastic teething toy with little hard plastic bumps all over. Like a mace. Yet another thing I’ll probably never need to know: why babies’ gums require a medieval torture device.

hat’s the way it goes conversationally: Weather Channel, hospital food, tests the hospital has done, the nurses’ demeanor, the needles, the beeping machines. He’s Ted, always the hearty salesman—jovial as he can be under the circumstances, glad to see his family, and making jokes when the nurse comes to adjust his IV and add some medication. Now that his wife is here, he tells them, he expects to be sent right home where the real good care is going to be. Not that he hasn’t been getting excellent care from them, he hastens to add—but now he just needs the love cure.

“Can you imagine me—me—having this happen?” he says to me, his eyes wide with disbelief. “I’m the healthiest guy I know, and yet I’m the one getting the chest pains and the mild heart attack. Luckily the doc says it was just a mild one. Got one of those balloon things installed, and so I’m good to go. I tell everybody it was just that I missed my wife. My poor old heart was just sick of beating as one.”

I look at my mother smiling and patting his arm, being his wife again. She’s slipped right back into being who she always was, adjusting his sheets and his hospital gown, asking him if he wants a foot rub, or more water, or something from the cafeteria. Which nurse is his favorite, she wants to know, and how often has Natalie been in to see him? Any of the fellows from work come to visit? How’s the house?

Only I see the shadow of the real person right there behind her eyes. The person who’s sitting back for now but who has vowed not to disappear.

I leave my parents alone and take a walk through the hospital. The sun has gone down now, and the hospital is lit up like a shopping mall, with fountains and a gigantic atrium downstairs—palm trees and ferns lit up with spotlights. The only thing that differentiates this from your run-of-the-mill shopping plaza is that there are more wheelchairs than you’d perhaps normally see. And there’s no kiosk selling sunglasses. I get a candy bar from a vending machine and think about calling Patrick back now that Fritzie has probably gone to bed.

But then I remember all the little sculptures of Anneliese in that studio, and his voice when he told me he loved her. I’m not the one he wants. Someday, maybe, I could be a stand-up comedian, and do a routine about how my ex-husband tried to break up with me at the altar on our wedding day—and then how the next guy left me to go back to his dead girlfriend. Would people laugh?

I wonder.

My father gets released two days later, and we take him home. We treat him like the invalid he hates being, lavishing him with attention and foot rubs and vegetable smoothies and lap blankets to protect him from “a possible chill” while he tries to bat us away and convince us he’s as strong as ever. I sit outside with him on the patio and adjust the shade umbrella so that he doesn’t get sun on his face. My mother gets to work making him healthy meals and going to the grocery store, lining up appointments, fixing up a sickroom for him. He has a whole sheaf of papers telling him what he can and cannot do, and we all read them and pass them around. He has written instructions on how he must change his life to prevent another heart attack.

“The next one, I might not be so lucky,” he says.

“I know,” I say. “It’s good you’re taking care of yourself.”

He slaps his knee and laughs. “I’m just kidding you! There’s not going to be another. I got my sweet better half back. I just needed me some of Millie’s Marvelous Thursday Night Meat Loaf. This was just a fluke, trust me. Probably wasn’t even a real heart attack. Just a warning.”

“If it was a warning, it was a pretty serious one,” I hear my mother say to him. “They don’t put balloons in people for fake heart attacks, I don’t think. You need to follow instructions and take it easy.”

“But I feel like a million bucks,” he says. He does not look like a million bucks. He looks like no more than one dollar and thirty-five cents. “I want to get out there on the golf course again. That’s what eases my stress. That, and seeing you back at home, my dear. Hate to admit it, but I’m no good on my own.”

When he and I are alone together, he lets down his guard and sinks down into himself, letting his chin rest on his chest, tapping his fingers on the plastic arms of the outdoor patio chairs. He says, “I didn’t ever think she’d stay that long. What was she doing anyway? Who the hell goes to Brooklyn for the winter?”

“She was having a nice time,” I say. “Went to the theater, talked to people in the flower shop. Helped out with Fritzie.”

Went to the top of the Empire State Building. Rode the subway. Smoked pot. Dated some new men.

“I don’t get it,” he says. “Forty years married, and I guess I’ll never figure women out.”

“It’s not too late,” I say. And feeling bold, I add, “You don’t have to figure all women out. All you have to do is love this one woman as hard as you can. Which I think it’s in your power to do.” Then, getting even crazy bold now, I say, “What if you tried listening to her like you really, really want to know what she’s feeling and like you’re on her side completely?”

“I am—” he says, but I hold up my hand to stop him.

“And stop talking to her in that fake way, like you’re reading a bad sitcom script. The ‘better half’ and ‘Millie’s Marvelous Meat Loaf.’ No one wants to hear that stuff. Be real.”

I brace for what he would have said at any other time in my life, any time I tried to give any advice to him, the infallible Ted MacGraw, salesman extraordinaire, pillar of the community, good all-around nice guy. He would have said, “No one knows people like I do! I’m a people person, so don’t go trying to tell me what’s what. I’ll talk to my wife the way I want!”

But now he just sits there in his pitiful white plastic lawn chair, looking out at the palm trees in their pots and the leaves from the ficus tree falling on the patio, and he says, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m going to have to figure out how to listen to her better. Head this off so it doesn’t happen again. I didn’t even know she was unhappy.” He looks up at me and laughs. “Not until that Thanksgiving dinner, that’s for sure. I came back in the house after putting her in that taxi, and I sat there with that turkey leg, and I thought, ‘Ted MacGraw, what the actual hell is this? Buddy, things have gone terribly, terribly wrong here. There’s nobody sitting across the table. No smiling. No joy.’”

“Maybe this will usher in a whole new phase for you,” I say.

He smiles and squeezes my hand. “It could, ducky. It could,” he says. “I guess I gotta face that I’m in repair. Undergoing some renovations, both in my body and my personality. Gotta suck it up.”

We both look up just then because there’s a commotion at the door, and Natalie’s arrived with her two kids. Amelia, who’s four and perfect, runs over and climbs up on my dad, and Natalie swoops down and picks her up. “I told you, honey, you can’t climb on PopPop. He’s had an operation.” She’s got Louise on her hip—Louise chewing on a big plastic teething toy with little hard plastic bumps all over. Like a mace. Yet another thing I’ll probably never need to know: why babies’ gums require a medieval torture device.

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