Making Toast (7 page)

“Is it more of a job than a calling?” I said.

“More of a job, but an interesting job,” she said. “If I were viewing it as a calling, I think I’d be disappointed. But the work itself is endlessly fascinating. The driving force for doctors is simply not knowing.”

Moments of “not knowing” could also have painful consequences. I remember my father’s drained and helpless face when a patient he had been treating for a long time died of lung cancer, my father’s specialty. I remember Amy’s face a few years ago after the death of a patient, a one-and-a-half-year-old child. He had been born prematurely with multiple developmental problems related to hydrocephalus. A ventricular-peritoneal shunt had been placed in his brain to release pressure by draining increased fluid to his abdomen. The child had been neglected by his mother, but his foster mother, whom Amy respected, had been diligent about checkups. An infection developed in the shunt. The symptoms were barely detectable, as is usual with developmentally delayed babies. Still, Amy felt she should have noticed some small sign of change. Doctors often depend on an educated sixth sense about trouble, since most of the time they deal with commonplace ailments. A pediatrician mainly sees breaks, sores, bruises, cuts, colds, and strep. Harris told me, “She took it very hard when the child died. She had a great sixth sense, but she thought it had failed her. She blamed herself.”

All Amy wanted out of medicine, as she said in the interview for the
New York
magazine piece, was “to make people feel better.” Her friend Liz Hale, a dermatologist, told me, “In part of a single evening, Amy taught me more about nursing a screaming baby than all the lactation professionals I consulted.” Her pediatric colleague, Gail Warner, said, “Most doctors are smart, but Amy had judgment, too. I used to go to her with
my
problems.” She also appreciated the wonder within the science of her work. When Andrew had just been born, and we all were in the hospital room with Wendy, Amy picked up the new baby, flipped him over, turned him this way and that, and studied him like a photographer holding a negative to the light.

Amy is responsible for getting my toaster in Quogue. It replaced a toaster that no one but me could stand because you had to find the precise setting or it would burn the toast, or undercook it, or toast only one side of the bread. Amy hated that toaster more than anyone because of the toll it took on bagels. I defended it, mainly for its Art Deco look. It was streamlined, chrome, and round at the edges. But Amy favored reality over appearance, and when planning a gift for my birthday, she persuaded Harris, Carl, Wendy, and John that they should pool their resources and get me a new expensive Viking “professional” toaster that worked. It has a “warm” feature on the dial, and a boxier shape than the old toaster, which I keep around as a backup. The old one also serves as an auxiliary toaster, when I have to accommodate all the children at once. But the new one is my best toaster.

After the July Fourth weekend, Ginny, Harris, and the children return to Maryland. Jessie and Sammy are eager to get back to their Wii, a virtual reality video game that Harris got them at the start of the summer. I need to stay on in Quogue for the Southampton Writers Conference, which extends from mid-July to the end of the month. The writers, who also teach workshops, pair up for the evening readings. This summer I am partnered with Frank McCourt. Frank reads from his first work of fiction. I had thought to read from my novel
Beet
, which had come out in February. But while looking for something in a tangle of papers, I came across an essay I’d written for
Time
twenty-one years earlier, called “Speech for a High School Graduate.” It was an attempt at a literary commencement speech, written to honor Amy. I wrote similar
Time
essays for Carl and John upon their high school graduations, using the trope of a father giving his personal commencement speech to his children as he looked to their future.

I decide to read the essay instead of the passage from my novel. I would not have done so for an audience of strangers, but Bob Reeves, the conference director, has fostered a familial atmosphere over the years, and the participants have grown close. When Amy died, Billy Collins wrote us, “Sometimes there
are
no words.” Frank, Matt Klam, Lou Ann Walker, Meg Wolitzer, and others stayed in constant touch. Melissa Bank sent a little package containing a floral handkerchief for Ginny, audiotapes of short stories for my drives, and a chestnut she had found in the driveway of a restaurant in Tuscany some years ago, which had given her comfort. I do not think the essay to Amy will feel inappropriate. So after Frank finishes, I read what I had written when Amy was seventeen. It interests me how many of my wishes for her had come true—her love of travel, of animals, of music, her appreciation of history, her enthusiasm for sports, her respect for traditions. I wished her fierceness in battle, but urged her not to hang onto corrosive enmities. I wished her a love of work, predicting that it would have “something to do with helping others.” I wished her productive solitudes, and worthy friends, though in her case that wish was superfluous. I wished her the pleasure of an exchange of wit with a stranger, and moments of helpless hilarity. I wished her life in a place where she might see a stretch of sky. The essay ends with a promise never to let go.

Ginny comes back for the opening of the conference. Soon she will have to return to Bethesda, where Jessie and Sammy have begun camp for the rest of the month, but for an unusual couple of days we have each other’s company. At dusk we take a walk. We feel older and smaller than we do with the grandchildren. The sky is orange and pink, the streets vacant except for the sounds of children in their houses. We speak of the presidential campaign and of things in the news.

On evenings in previous summers we would walk to the ocean, half a mile from our house. Or we would go only as far as the bridge over the Shinnecock Canal, and turn back. Tonight we stay on the streets that run like tributaries to the water. We are familiar with these old and confident houses, though not with all their occupants. We know some houses intimately, since we traipsed through them when they were up for sale. Our house was out of reach when it was first on the market, but the owners had three homes elsewhere, and eventually accepted our offer, which terrified us. We walk over to Penniman’s Creek, where the water rummages with the pebbles.

“I’m thinking of getting a kayak,” I tell her.

“Do you know how to use a kayak?” she says.

“I’ve done it two or three times.”

“Is it dangerous?” she says.

“No. I’ll get one for you, too.”

“I think I’d be scared,” she says.

I tell her, “If I can do it, anybody can do it.”

It is nearly dark, and the streets have gone from gray to black. We hear the pop-pop of tennis balls. We hold hands, the way we did when we first dated in high school. I make a mental note to call a place in Wainscott that sells kayaks.

On Quogue Street, we pass the home of our friend and next-door neighbor, Ambrose Carr, whose wife, Nancy, a kind and beautiful woman, died the November before last. She had been ill for a long while. Amby, a little older than we, has a patrician voice and the face of a 1930s leading man. One morning we chatted in the post office. In the early afternoon, he walked over from his yard to ours to tell me Nancy had just died in her sleep. When Amy died, he left a phone message for Ginny and me: “I love you.” These days he travels a bit, visits his children and grandchildren, tends his garden, and listens to jazz.

In Bethesda, Ginny writes a poem called “Arch of Shade”—

Ginny began writing poems three years ago, and has published a couple of them. They are very much like her. Nearly all begin with the description of a pleasant scene, often bucolic, then pivot toward the expression of a more serious idea or feeling. It is as if she were welcoming you into the poem, and when you walk in and feel at ease, she closes the door behind you, to reveal her real purpose, which, in “Arch of Shade” is to “highlight the darkness.” You must go back up the lines to detect earlier hints of that purpose, such as the women waiting in the heat and the disassembled crib. You might say, “I didn’t see that coming,” but the signs were there. So it is with Ginny. Her graciousness distracts people from noticing that she is alert to life’s dark places. She prefers it that way. Her poems hit their mark but gently. They crack the egg without breaking it.

All five grandchildren come to Quogue for most of the month of August—Jessie, Sammy, Bubbies, Andrew, and Ryan. Ligaya comes too, guaranteeing our survival. In two shifts, the children arrive late at night, and they run from the cars to the playhouse. They have already declared it “awesome.”

Kevin has built us a small stage, and one of the children’s early productions is a reenactment of
American Idol.
I play Paula. Another is a play based on Sammy’s imagined utopia of Moseybane. We call it “The King of Moseybane.” Harris had ordered costumes online for Sammy (the King); Ryan (the Prince); Jessie (the Wizard); and Andrew (the Knight). Boppo (the Dragon) and Bubbies (the Narrator) require no costumes.

On opening night (which coincides with closing night), Ryan appears onstage with his mother, Wendy. Andrew would not appear at all at first, but, when coaxed, delivers his lines from memory. Jessie’s over-the-top Wizard is indistinguishable from her
American Idol
audition. The King looks stunned with his own power. Bubbies decides that his one line, “Dookies”—his word for his favorite cookie—will be more effective if delivered from the driveway, fifty feet from the stage, with Harris beside him. The Dragon has to compromise his ferocity by reading all the parts, except Jessie’s and Andrew’s. In spite of these creative differences, the audience—my brother Peter, Bob and Beth Reeves, and the remaining family grown-ups—is appreciative. The bewildered cast receives a standing ovation.

Before the summer, I got Obama baseball caps for Ginny, Harris, Carl, Wendy, John, the five grandchildren, and myself. I had the caps made to order in a specialty store in the Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, shopping mall. White caps with “Obama” in navy blue lettering—very handsome caps. In a brief if overblown ceremony, I presented everyone with a one-of-a-kind Obama cap. Harris said it would make him look silly to his medical partners. John simply said it would make him look silly. Carl said no one in the company he works for knew who Obama was. Wendy looked mildly pleased. Each of the children tried the cap on for approximately half a second, then tossed it aside, never to pick it up again. I wore mine often. Ginny, who had been running a one-woman campaign for Obama for the past two years, wore hers everywhere. Distracted by the children, she left it on the beach one day. The following afternoon—though the cap did not have her name in it—the lifeguard returned it to her. Amy would have looked great in that cap, her pony tail bouncing out of the opening in the back.

Wendy announces to the family that she is pregnant. Jessie hopes it’s a girl.

With two additional customers, I become a short-order cook, on the receiving end of commands fired at me all at once: cereal, no cereal; cereal with milk and without; orders for skim milk added to Silk and “cow milk” minipancakes and miniwaffles, with and without sugar, with and without butter, with and without syrup. Bubbies remains consistent in his preference for toast.

To deliberately irk Sammy, I teach Andrew and Ryan the “Boppo National Anthem.” At once Ryan adopts it as his favorite song (I do not know how many other songs he knows), and he sings it at the top of his quite considerable voice. Andrew seems to tolerate the anthem, but is skeptical of the lyrics. He wants to know if I am truly great. I look at Sammy who smiles with derision. By now, Bubbies is old enough to pick up the song. Jessie, always a good sport, goes along, so the morning glee club consists of the boisterous baritone of Ryan, the hesitant tenor of Andrew, the forceful soprano of Jessie, the raspy alto of Bubbies, and Sammy, belting, “I hope he’s not stinky.” It occurs to me that the other adults may not approve of this exercise in self-aggrandizement, but that is the price one pays when one is truly great.

My anger, being futile, flares in the wrong places and at the wrong times. One evening I blew up at three-year-old Ryan. Ryan not only has size and a deep voice, he also has a gangster’s way of speaking, which amuses everyone, Carl and Wendy especially. When he wants water, he growls, “Waw-duh!” He had just run headlong into Bubbies, flattening him in the hall upstairs. I yelled and Ryan cowered. He grabbed his binky. I took it away from him. I overreacted. I apologized. He apologized. He said, “I wish I had super powers so I could fly over Bubbies and not hit him.”

Wendy was sore at me for coming down on Ryan as hard as I did. She was silently sore, doubling my guilt. Wendy is dear to me, and she is careful and loving with Jessie, Sammy, and Bubs. She understands that women like herself, and Liz Hale, Leslie Adelman, and a few others of Amy’s age, represent a connection to Amy. The children may look at these women, remember how their mother was with them, and see them as surrogates. I know they do that with Aunt Wendy. I promised myself I’d make things right with her, but I didn’t have to. Soon after my blunder with Ryan, we were good again without my having to try.