Making Toast Read Free Page B

He makes the hands of others work again. And he has done everything one can do in his situation—encouraging the children to talk about Amy whenever they feel like it, and not to hold back tears. Whenever necessary, he and the children visit a psychotherapist who specializes in grief counseling. He keeps in close contact with Jessie’s and Sammy’s teachers. But he also deserves a life.
    He embraces the demands put upon him with a gusto that dispenses cheer, and in the lulls we try to keep one another afloat. One night in February, Jessie and Sammy had a meltdown as they were going to bed. Ginny and I sat in the living room, listening to Harris’s steady voice in the intermissions of the children’s wailing. Eventually, they were quieted. He came downstairs and sat staring vacantly at his laptop. “Look,” I said, going over to him. “We’re never going to get over this. That’s a given. But the children will be all right. I promise you. I’ve seen it elsewhere.”
    “I’m a scientist,” he said. “It’s hard for me to deal with things that aren’t facts.”
     
    Amy used to say, “Harris makes do,” twisting his ability to adjust to uncomfortable or difficult circumstances into a failing. He retaliated by ribbing her about her perfectionism. Once, when Carl asked him how Amy liked their new cable TV and Internet system, Harris said, “Amy hates everything.” He told me she had set the North American record for excessively particular coffee orders at Starbucks. The orders varied according to the seasons. Her winter order was triple grande, skim gingerbread latte. Her summer order was iced venti Americano with room, and four pumps of sugar-free vanilla.
    It figured. When Amy was no more than three years old, and we would stop at McDonald’s on a trip, she would order her hamburger plain. Since orders for a plain hamburger were not anticipated in the billion hamburgers prepared by McDonald’s daily all over America, it took as long as twenty-five minutes for the fast food restaurant to dish one up.
    “You know, Amy, when I was a little girl…”
    “Oh, Daddy!”—tired of the joke.
    On one occasion, we were driving to New York from Cambridge, where I was teaching at Harvard. It was the day before Thanksgiving so the trip took hours longer than usual. After our interminable wait for Amy’s hamburger, she decided she would also like a piece of McDonald’s apple pie. She was taking her sweet time with that, too. I told her, “Hurry up, A.” (We called her A.) She tossed her pie in the trash. When we arrived at my parents’ apartment, my younger brother Peter asked Amy how she’d enjoyed the trip. She said, “Daddy didn’t let me finish my pie.”
    Amy and Harris could kid each other without risk because their marriage was like a solid tennis doubles team. Neither one had to look to see where the other was standing on the court. A few years ago, on a Saturday night, Ginny and I baby-sat while they went to a medical benefit dinner. They almost never had the time or energy to go out, or dress up, though, like most young parents, they seemed indefatigable. Before leaving, they stood together in the hallway. They looked stunning. Another time, we drove down from Quogue to take care of the three children. Bubbies was eleven months old. Amy and Harris went off to Bermuda with Liz and James Hale, longtime friends from medical school. When they returned after four days, Ginny and I were flopped on the sectional, barely sentient. We greeted them with a popular song of that year, altering the lyrics: “They tried to make us go to rehab. We said yes, yes, yes!”
     
    Ginny taught kindergarten and first grade in Cambridge and in Washington, D.C., during the early years of our marriage. Now she volunteers in the children’s schools, as Amy did. She helps Jessie with her homework. I watch them at the kitchen table, bent over a book, and overhear their soft talking. Ginny asks, “How does the chrysalis