“Oh dear,” says my mother. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I’m getting a vibe.”
“You think?” I say.
“It’s all my fault,” she says. “Here I do the one and only spontaneous thing I’ve ever done in my whole life—come to Brooklyn without telling you first, and oh my gosh! What was I thinking? How was this ever going to work? How is it that you and Patrick aren’t going to hate me for this? It just seemed so lovely and . . . spontaneously out of character for me! I should go to a hotel tonight, and Patrick can come back to his room. Let me call an Uber right now.”
“No, no, that’s ridiculous,” I say. “To tell you the truth, I think he’s been wanting to sleep in there anyway. It’s quieter, and he can think and paint and mutter to himself. He’s actually been coming to bed later and later. So he’s fine, I’m sure.”
“He’s a moody man, I guess,” she says. “Just like your father.”
“Ha! Moody doesn’t even begin to describe him lately. He’s a wreck.”
“Your father is a couch potato wreck. What the hell is it with men lately? Everywhere you look, they are not panning out. Disappointing everyone around them.”
So then we stay up until three in the morning, talking. She’s lively and funny and self-deprecating—unlike the mom I mostly remember her to be, who might have been the tiniest bit exacting when it came to rules and decorum and deportment. “Look! Just look at these bags under my eyes!” she says. “Now I don’t mean to be shallow, and I know that how awful my skin looks is not the point of life, but I look at these every day in the mirror and I think I look just like your nana.”
She said my father doesn’t laugh at her jokes anymore, and he wants everything to stay put, exactly as it is. Could we just not rock the boat—that’s his favorite expression for everything. When she told him she might want to go back to school, he said absolutely not, waste of money and time at her age, there was no need for any of that—and so even though nothing is really wrong, she says, and yes, she knows, other people have it so much worse, she just wants to live again. Look forward to something big! Gigantic!
“You know what I really want? I want to fall in love,” she says wistfully, around about two in the morning. Her voice is soft and fragile, like a young girl’s. “One more time for falling in love. Maybe that’s why I’m here.”
“Hmm,” I say. I would so much prefer that she not fall in love with someone else besides my father.
“Is that so wrong?” she says, and we both laugh because it reminds us of an old comedy routine that neither of us can quite remember. “I’ve become the worst kind of cliché. Go ahead. I know you’re thinking that. I buy every single moisturizer I see on the shopping network—wait until you see what’s in my suitcase—and all I want is for somebody to look at me with a sly grin, and somebody who wants to listen to me, and not sit there disinterested in everything, telling me I’m too old for this and too old for that, and where’s the meat loaf, and why can’t we put a television set in the bedroom. If we put a television in the bedroom, Marnie, I swear that man would never get out of the room! Next it would be bedpans!”
“Well,” I say. “If he wants to put a television set in the bedroom, he clearly needs some rehabilitation.”
I’m being funny, but she looks at me and smiles. “Exactly! You see? Now you’ve never had a man suggest a television set, have you? I don’t notice one in here.” Then she wrinkles up her nose and says, “Of course there’s no man in here either. So tell me. What’s going on with Patrick, do you think? He seemed fine when I talked to him a few weeks ago.”
And that’s all it takes, I’m ashamed to say. I tell her about the art show and how sad he is, and how I want a baby and he isn’t sure he can handle it, and how much it has stressed him out having Fritzie around. My eyes fill up with tears, and then her eyes fill up with tears, too, and maybe that’s just because it’s the middle of the night, the hour when people could weep over the last sad, neglected egg in the egg carton, but maybe we’ve hit upon the rock-bottom hardness of living a long life—which is that things go wrong, and you constantly have to be recasting your experiences so you can see your way forward out of despair. I try to remember what Blix would say about all this. Certainly her life didn’t always go the way she planned.
She would say that Patrick is mine for life, and that I am meant to believe in him, and he believes in me—and that all these trappings of unhappiness right now are temporary distractions from the real rock-solidity of our love for each other.
“He’s just going through a bit of a rough patch,” I say to my mother. “He’s committing himself to doing art for the first time since the fire, and I think the memories are swamping him.”
Then I tell her, just in case she doesn’t remember this about Patrick, that he rushed into the fire to save his girlfriend, and that when Blix was dying, he took care of her completely, all on his own, and then he rescued Bedford when he got hit by a car. In every case, he’s stepped up and been the person who could be counted on.
It’s me who is the problem, I tell her. “Here he is, holding me up time and time again, and he makes me laugh and he’s so sweet and passionate and he tells me how much I’ve changed his life, but now I want more. I’m not contented with what we have. I want everything! More life around me, more people, and he says he needs to crawl away and be by himself. He’s closing up. He said he’s come as far as he can come, and he can’t do any more.”
“I know,” she says. She reaches over and squeezes my hand and then she winks at me. “He’s a great guy, but maybe he’s not the only great guy for you. You know? Things change.”
I pull back. “No. I love him. I’m not giving up on this.”
“Sometimes you have to give up in order to save yourself,” she says. “In fact, you shouldn’t even think of it as ‘giving up.’ Call it relinquishing. Maybe your father is the man I was meant for in my twenties and during all the decades of raising you kids. And we had a wonderful time of it, he and I, but that doesn’t mean he has to be the one for my old age, does it? Maybe after forty years we can fold this marriage up and put it in a drawer somewhere with the old silver service, and both of us can do more of what we want. I can fall in love and go to plays and join the space program if I want to, and he can sit on the couch and watch the golf channel. We’ll get together with the kids and grandkids on holidays.”
“With your new partners? That sounds horrifying.”
“Yes,” she says, laughing. “I’ll bring all the men I’m currently dating at the time. Your father can give them a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. I’ll take his views under consideration.”
I bury my head in the pillow. “No, no, no.”
“I’m shocked I have to explain this to you,” she says. “I pretty much thought this would be your advice to me.”
But here’s what she doesn’t get: he’s my dad, and I know he loves her more than anything. And some things—and I count Patrick among these things—just might be worth fighting for.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
PATRICK
Patrick wakes up to find Fritzie sitting cross-legged on the side of the futon in his studio, staring at him. It’s still mostly dark, with only a tiny knife-edge of gray light sticking under the shades. It was her breathing that woke him up.
“Why are you in here?” she says when he opens one eye.
“More importantly, why are you in here?” he says.
“I’m here because I was looking for you, and you weren’t in your room with Marnie. Her mom is in there.”
“Well, that’s why I’m here. There’s not room for three in a bed, is there?”
“Nope. Not unless you’re going to squinch up.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s six thirty.”
“Six thirty! Holy mother of mercy! What are you doing up?”
“I had to find you.”
“Why?”
She has the look on her face of someone who didn’t prepare an
answer to that question. She doesn’t know why she had to find him, he suspects. She likes to know what’s going on, is all. She gets up off the futon and wanders around the studio.
“Fritzie.”
“What?”
“Please. Don’t start touching things in here. There’s a lot of wet paint.”
“I know.”
She keeps walking around, so he lies back down and closes his eyes again. This futon is not horrible. He’s pleased with himself for thinking of coming in here to sleep as a solution to the houseguest situation.
“You know why I came in here, Patrick? For reals?”
“Why?”
“Because you know how Ariana is going to go across country and ask people questions and film them?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Well, I decided that I’m going to ask people questions, too, and I am starting with you.”
“And this couldn’t have waited until it was daytime?”
“Patrick! It is daytime. The sun just didn’t wake up yet.”
“Okay. I like it best when the sun wakes up.”
“It will soon. So are you ready for my questions? I have a bunch.”
“Okay. Can I close my eyes while I answer them?”
“Sure. Hey, would you ever like to go with me to the planetarium?”
“Maybe.”
“Haha, Patrick! That wasn’t the real question for the test. I was just wanting to know. Okay, now we’re starting. That question had an asterisk by it. You know what an asterisk is?”
“Yes.”
“It means it’s not really real.”
“Go easy on me, okay?”
“Do you love Marnie?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love me?”
“Of course.”
“Do you love potato chips?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Patrick, none of those were the real questions either. I just wanted to know how much love you’ve got in ya. But you are doing very, very well. Okay, now we start. What was your favorite subject in school?”
“Art and math.”
“Did you play sports?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Uncoordinated.”
“What does that mean?”
“It meant I was too busy drawing pictures.”
“Who is your favorite person in the world?”
“Um. Stephen Colbert.”
“Who is that?”
“A comedian.”
“No. It has to be someone you know.”
“Um, Paco.”
“Someone in our house!”
“Oh, then you.”
“Is that really true?”
“One thousand percent true.”
“I don’t believe you. I think it’s Marnie.”
“Yeah, maybe we should say Marnie so she doesn’t get upset.”
“Okayyyy. When you met my mom, did you love her?”
“Fritzie? This is kind of . . .”
“Just answer.”
“No.”
“No, you didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t know her.”
“Okay. No, that’s okay. I get it. Okay, now, next question is: When you and Marnie have a baby together sometime, do you want it to be a girl or a boy?”
He gets up on one elbow. “Nope, nope, nope. Question time is over.”
“Okay, okay! Um . . . what time on the clock is your favorite time?”
“I have no favorite time on a clock.”
“Mine is 12:34. Get it? One, two, three, four.”
“Let’s go get some breakfast. Are other people up?”
“Wait. Do you like to read the end of a book first?”
“I would never. Come on, let’s go see if anybody else is up.”
“What are you scared of?”
He’s quiet.
She looks at him. “I’m just going to read you the rest. What do you think you will say to me on the day my mum comes and gets me? Do you think you will be my dad when I’m a grown-up? Do you want more children, or just me? If you could somehow have the fire not happen, would you still want to love Marnie even if the other lady lived? Would you still want to have me at your house? What do you want for Christmas? Did you know you would be this sad? Do you think you are always going to be so sad? Do you think I am smart? And the last question: Do you really love me? Do you love me more than Roy? More than potato chips? More than painting?”
He sits on the side of the bed and looks at her. He can’t answer any more questions. His throat is tight.
“Let’s go make your grandmother some coffee,” he says.
“Patrick!” she says, and she’s laughing. “Millie is not my real grandmother!”
“Well, what is she?” he says. And she shrugs. She doesn’t have an answer for that one.
The sun is just starting to fight its way through the dusty kitchen windows in a way that makes him feel a keen sadness about the basic grime and clutter of life.
He is so tired that it takes tremendous difficulty to undertake the necessary nine steps that are required to get cups of coffee going, which involves first finding the filters and the coffee beans, then the grinder and the coffee press, as well as the cups, the spoons, the cream. The cups are in the dishwasher. His favorite one is missing. Also, in unrelated but also disappointing developments: the pumpkin pies were left out all night, and he forgot to do anything with the turkey roasting pan, so it’s sitting on the counter with turkey grease and parts congealing in a rather non-savory way.
Fritzie is dancing around with Bedford, who’s on his hind legs. Roy has come along to check out what’s for breakfast.
“Do you want some cereal?” Patrick asks Fritzie, and then he hears Millie say, “Well, g’morning.”
“Hi,” he says.
“I declare that I was up so late last night that I thought I’d sleep for days, but I can’t seem to stay asleep. I’m too excited to be here. Does that happen to you, Fritzie? Are you ever too excited to sleep?”
“Well,” says Fritzie. “There was one time when we were . . .” and off she goes into a long, rambling story that Patrick can’t pay attention to. It is all he can do to manage at last to pour Millie a cup of coffee and hand it to her, and smile back when she smiles. She is wearing a long blue quilted bathrobe, one that moms everywhere might be putting on all over America. She is very, very suburban mommish, he thinks, with her short petals of blonde-gray hair, all tucked under and organized, as though they had attended hair training school. She is youthful-looking, but he thinks that you would never see anybody under fifty doing that precise thing—whatever it is—with her hair.
Yes, she says, in answer to a question he forgot he had asked: a piece of toast would be wonderful.
He’s alarmingly distracted. He actually found himself awake at 5:14 a.m., an hour before Fritzie showed up and interrupted his catnap. He lay there with his pillow covering his face for some time, examining the new reality of sleeping on a futon in his studio while houseguests (he counts Ariana as well as Millie and Fritzie in this—the surprise women, as they were identified last night) plunder what is left of his solitude. He brought out all the facts of the matter and turned them over and over in his head, walking around them, asking himself some hard questions about how he should see this. On the one hand, he likes Millie just fine; it’s not that he doesn’t. He texts with her, after all. Recipes and such. She admires his baking abilities, says plenty of wonderful things about his sour cream coffee cake with the cinnamon crunch sprinkles on the top, for instance. Shares it on Facebook. And she has been known to make his Atlantic beach pie (made with a cracker and butter crust) for special occasions.
But damn it, he is busy! He’s not baking anymore lately and has no need of recipes. And besides being a natural introvert, he is now a frantic introvert, in fact. And he gathers that she is having some difficulty with her husband just now (a man whom Patrick also likes, even though he doe
sn’t know him as well as he knows Millie), which means that there will be lots of talking. Talking and planning and ruminating and problem-solving. Also there’s the rather unorthodox surprise she pulled: just showing up like that without warning. He holds that against a person. And then, as if those things aren’t bad enough, then there was the alarming bombshell she dropped last night, that she is moving here.
Moving to freaking Brooklyn.
Without so much as a what-do-you-think-about-this-plan to the people who might be affected by it.
Well.
Oh, he is a mess today. Cold, tired, sleepy, and his sad paintings are waiting for him in the studio, and he just knows that the multiple teenagers sleeping downstairs are going to come trooping up at some point, and Marnie will probably invite everybody for waffles or something, and Fritzie is off from school for who knows how long, and Millie MacGraw is standing here chatting about everything from the wonder of Ubers to the puzzle of whether pumpkin pie can stay out all night and still be considered nonlethal.
He realizes that he hasn’t been paying one bit of attention. He drops back into the conversation, which is now something about real estate in Brooklyn and where it makes sense to look. She doesn’t want to be any trouble to anyone, of course, but she had to make a move. Turning sixty, you know. Can’t go on through her remaining one-third of her life span without experiencing some real life. (One-third! he thinks with a start. Somehow that sounds wildly optimistic to him, being sure you were going to live until ninety.) She’s saying that a friend of theirs died last month, a person who, tragically, never even got to travel across the country. Then she shifts nimbly over to the subject of Fritzie—how adorable, how surprising, how interesting life is, just full of these kinds of unplanned events.
“That’s what I’m after, some unplanned events,” she says. And then she adds, “And, Fritzie, just so you know, I’m going to consider you my grandchild. You probably already have one grandmother, but you’re in need of another. Everybody should have two, and I think the more the merrier in most cases.”
Patrick gives Fritzie a wink. “You see?” he says.
“But that can’t be right because Patrick and Marnie aren’t married, and so you can’t be my grandmother,” says Fritzie the literalist. “Not until they get married.”
A Happy Catastrophe Page 19