Making Toast Read Free Page A

the corner of our street. One by one, down the hill come the mothers of the neighborhood, their kids running beside them. An impromptu soccer game develops. Jessie joins in. The scene passes for pleasant and ordinary, unless one notes the odd presence of the lone grandfather.
    With luck, Ginny and I will live to see all three children grow into adults, and Jessie will become a teenager and throw fits about boyfriends and stamp her feet and yell that we don’t understand a thing, not a thing. But today I help her with her oversize pink backpack, and her little umbrella with pink butterflies before she boards the school bus. And I stand looking as the bus drives off, and tell the mothers to have a good day.
     
    The house Amy and Harris bought in 2004 was a sand-yellow Colonial, built in the 1960s, and it had substance—a family home for a lifetime. The walls were thick, the hardwood floors level, the oak, black walnut, and poplar trees in the backyard, old. Though reared in cities, Amy had always wanted a house in the suburbs. Harris grew up in Bethesda, and went to Burning Tree and to Walt Whitman High School, which is less than a quarter of a mile from the house. His affection for his hometown suited Amy well. Whenever Ginny and I drove down, we phoned her from the car when we were a few minutes away. She would stand framed by the dark-red doorway, holding a child or two. Everyone smiled.
    She practiced medicine only two days a week, to be with the children. Her household was like her—full of play, but careful. In the storage area downstairs, there was always a surplus of bandages, paper napkins, cups, coffee filters, paper towels, and Kleenex, as well as batteries of every size. To this day, we have not run out of Advil.
    She had a gift for custom and ceremony—the qualities Yeats wished for in “A Prayer for My Daughter.” She chronicled the children’s first years by taking pictures of them in each of their first twelve months, and framing them for the walls of their rooms. The details of birthdays and holidays were important to her—a Dora the Explorer party for Jessie, for which Amy made a treasure map; a Bob the Builder party for Sammy, for which she got hard hats. On the Thanksgiving before she died, seventeen family members arrived, including Harris’s parents, Dee and Howard, and his older sister Beth, and Wendy’s parents, Rose and Bob Huber. There were many cooks, not too many, all toiling under Amy’s supervision. Harris, Howard, Bob, Carl, John, and I watched as much football as we were permitted. The hand surgeon carved the turkey, his skill with a knife impressive and creepy. We took our seats at the table. We clasped our glasses. During the previous year, Howard had had a heart valve repaired, and I was treated successfully for prostate cancer and melanoma. Harris raised a toast to the family’s renewed health.
     
    Harris’s stoicism is undemonstrative. A strong man, built wide and powerful, he easily carries all three children at once in his arms up the stairs. The sight of his back makes me sad. He performs surgery two days a week and heads orthopedics at Holy Cross Hospital. At home, his few remaining hours are devoted to working out the children’s schedules with Ginny and Ligaya, and playing games and watching Sponge Bob with the kids. He bathes them and tucks them in.
    On the day Amy died, he had sat beside her body in the hospital—an hour, maybe more. Now, he rarely speaks about his feelings. He and I talk about sports and politics, agreeing over half the time on both. We talk a lot about the children. Ginny tells me that when I am away, and she and Harris sit down to their late dinner in the kitchen, her heart breaks for him. “This should be his wife sitting across the table,” she says.
    He says he doubts that he’ll remarry. Self-sufficient, he tends to be a world within himself. He fixes things like lamps and toilets. He sews. He solves problems with electrical wires and fuses.