Chapter 1 : Part 2

Spring and Fall
by Nicholas Delbanco

(Page 2 of 7)

For two days Lawrence wandered the streets. He tried to recapture his old rapt excitement, the fascination of the buildings and the beauty of the hills and the Colosseum and Forum. It did not work. What he focused on instead were pigeons and the dog scat in the paving; by the time he transferred to the M.S. Diana he was ready-more than willing-to escape.

The port of Civitavecchia bustled with tankers at anchor. Lined up by the dock itself were cruise ships in their pastel glory, towering confections like wedding cakes on water, with names emblazoned on their bows and smokestacks: Marco Polo, The Star Princess, Island Queen, The Attica Swan. Last and least of this procession was the M.S. Diana, and this pleased him; its scale was small, its aspect self-effacing, and the driver who delivered him extracted his bags from the trunk of the taxi with something very like pity. "Ecco, signore. Va bene?"

"Va ben," he said. "Mille grazie," and tipped the driver lavishly as if to prove a point.

At the gangplank they were waiting. A man in a white uniform saluted, and a blonde in slacks and sailor's cap said, "Welcome, welcome aboard! I'm your cruise director." She produced a practiced smile; then she consulted a passenger list and checked off Lawrence's name. Inside they collected his passport and gave him a key to his cabin and, carrying his luggage, conducted him downstairs. He had a fleeting sense of brightwork, wood, an elevator in its cage and carpeting and corridors, and then the man who led him to his cabin turned and, half saluting, said in thickly accented English, "Haf a pleazant trip!"

In his room he found a set of thermal clothing and, underneath the portholes, a yellow life preserver. There was a bottle of complimentary red wine on the cabinet between twin beds and a bowl of fruit and sheet of paper asking, "Why is a ship called 'she'?"

There was a drawing of a clipper ship and, beneath it, a barbed anchor; Lawrence read the printed answer:

A ship is called a she because there is always a great deal of bustle about her; there is usually a gang of man about, she has a waist and stays; it takes a lot of paint to keep her good looking; it is not the initial expense that brakes you, it is the upkeep; she can be all decked out, but it takes an experienced man to handle her correctly; and without a man at the helm, she is absolutely uncontrollable.

She shows her topsides, hides her bottom and when coming into port always heads for the buoys.

Love her, take good care of her, and she shall take good care of you.

He unpacked his clothing first. He hung up his jackets and exercise clothes and stowed the empty suitcase underneath the bed. He arranged his medications in the bathroom and laid out his sketch pad and books on the shelf; he liked the cabin's clean enclosure, the wooden containers for stemware and bottles, the way that the cabinets locked. After the nightlong bustle of the Via Veneto this organized silence was welcome, and he lay back in his shirtsleeves and attempted to take stock.

BEFORE THE TROUBLE with his heart he took good health for granted. Lawrence watched what he ate and did not smoke and, although he could have dropped ten pounds and refused a second cocktail, did his best to stay in shape. He looked, he liked to joke, not a day past sixty-three. In truth he did seem youthful, and his students and those colleagues in architecture school who did not know his actual age would have been surprised by it; he had retained a wide-eyed and infectious pleasure in the act, the fact of teaching, and he paced up and down the studio with spring in his long stride. He was more of a professor now than a practitioner-more engaged, he liked to say, in the theory than practice of architecture. But the profession still compelled him, and the New Urbanists still referenced his early work. He had most of his muscle and much of his hair and was known, in Ann Arbor, as a bit of a boulevardier; he had three children and two ex-wives and a series of companions with whom he sometimes slept. For a long time, however, he had lived alone.

When the symptoms of angina came he at first ignored them, believing the bright pain in his chest was only acid reflux or, maybe, a pulled muscle. Lawrence went to spinning class and worked out on the treadmill three mornings a week, and the shortness of his breath seemed somehow a function of hard exercise; he had always sweated easily. Now he woke up drenched in sweat. The strange taste in his mouth increased- as though he sucked on tin, then brass-and stairs became a problem; then the band of pain became a vise, extending from shoulder to shoulder. When he begged off from tennis with Tommy Einhorn, Tommy asked him, "Why, what's wrong?"

This was the start of July. In the emergency room they asked for his symptoms and as soon as he described them wheeled Lawrence down to the cardiac unit, where whitecoated attendants were waiting. They recorded his pulse and blood pressure and temperature and gave him oxygen and heparin and a set of EKGs. It was likely, said the attending cardiologist, he had a blockage in an artery or arteries, and they would perform an angiogram in order to determine where the trouble lay. This was routine procedure, nothing to be concerned about, but he had arrived just in time. An angioplasty or heart bypass might well be indicated, he was told, for he had unstable angina and should be hospitalized.

Copyright © 2006 by Nicholas Delbanco

About the Author

Nicholas Delbanco's writing has earned him widespread recognition and many literary honors, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships. He served as founding director of the Bennington Writing Workshops and, since 1985, has directed the MFA Writing Program at the University of Michigan, where he also administers the prestigious Hopwood Awards. Nicholas Delbanco makes his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife and their two daughters.