Chapter 1 : Part 3

Spring and Fall
by Nicholas Delbanco

(Page 3 of 7)

Because they did not wish to operate short-staffed on Independence Day, Lawrence waited the long holiday weekend, lying aggrieved in the hospital bed and dealing with visits from residents and interns and Dr. Einhorn's colleagues. They said that he was lucky, very lucky, and if one of his organs was slated for trouble, well, let it be the heart; we can do much less, these days, about the liver or lungs or the brain. It's a plumbing problem, mostly, and time to fix the pipes. They said he should be grateful to be alive in the twenty-first century and living in Ann Arbor, where the medical facilities were fine.

"You know the first three symptoms of heart trouble?" Tommy Einhorn asked.

"No, what?" "Denial, denial, denial." "Very funny."

"Very almost not funny at all, my friend. This is the riot act I'm reading you."

"All right. Okay." "We're prepared to handle it," said Dr. Einhorn, "if you have an infarction. But now you're stable and you're being monitored; only folks in crisis get to go to the theater this weekend."

"All right." "You have to be patient. A patient patient," Einhorn said. "Hey, not bad. I should remember that."

THREE BELLS SOUNDED IN HIS CABIN, and a man's voice boomed from a speaker by the porthole. The purser introduced himself. "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard," he said. "On behalf of the captain and crew of the M.S. Diana we wish everyone a most delightful trip." Then over the intercom system all passengers were informed that there would be a mandatory life preserver drill before they could depart. They were instructed to report to level 4 in fifteen minutes, please. Departure was scheduled for seven o'clock, and in the morning, from Sorrento, we will travel to Capri.

Lawrence roused himself. Not sorry to have been interrupted in his meditation on disease-the long wait in the hospital, the procedure itself, its aftermath-he laced on his sneakers and slipped on a jacket and found his way up to the deck. The wind was high. Passengers were milling about and awaiting instructions and laughing together and huddling in corners to hide from the wind. The man beside him on the deck was wearing bracelets on his wrist and an antinausea patch.

"Cold enough for you?" he asked. The cruise director, smiling, nodding, said, "Everybody, your attention, please!"

Lawrence was provided with a life preserver and shown how to fasten it, then told that in the unlikely event of an emergency he should report to lifeboat station 6. He watched a demonstration of the whistle and inflatable flotation device; he was instructed what to carry with him from the cabin and what to leave behind. His concentration flagged, however, the way it drifted in an airplane when flight attendants enact their preflight pantomime; heart trouble happens to others, he could remember thinking, and most of the time he'd felt fine.

Emergencies happen to others, he could remember thinking, and his own was in the past. The document they sent him home with began with the assertion: "Successful PCI of culprit LAD/D1 Lesion . . ."

"You've had," the cardiologist declared, "your last drink of buttermilk and your final piece of steak."

"You were lucky," Dr. Einhorn chimed in. "The left anterior descending was ninety percent occluded. But it's just like real estate-what counts is location, location. And yours was in the spot they call the widow-maker."

"I'm not married," Lawrence said. "You were lucky," his neighbor repeated. "No joke. We caught it just in time."

HIS SONS LIVED IN PHOENIX AND VAIL. Ten years before, their mother had remarried-a professor in the Political Science Department-but Janet stayed, it seemed to him, unbending, unforgiving. Lawrence tried to let bygones be bygones, to suggest that their marriage was far in the past and they should-for the sake of the children-be friends. The wound of his old infidelities stayed fresh with her nevertheless; if they met at a concert or the farmers' market Janet turned away and gave him, pointedly, her back. When John or Andrew brought their wives and children to town they apportioned the length of their visits and, to keep from playing favorites or offending either parent, stayed in the Campus Inn.

His daughter by his first wife was living in Chicago. As though there had been some contagion, some gene that spawned failed marriages, his daughter too had been divorced and now lived alone. In part as a result of this, Catherine was very helpful during his time in the hospital and, afterward, at home. His sons had flown to see him, and remained in touch by e-mail or the telephone, but she bore the brunt of it-the grocery shopping, the first week of driving, the details of Lawrence's medical leave. It was as though they shared again the rhythms of domestic life, and he enjoyed the way they did the crossword puzzle together, the way she matched her stride to his during their afternoon walks.

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.