A father's heart

Literary Review, Spring, 1995 by Ellen Cooney

Nothing about the Anick would ever change its unhomeyness. It's one step away from institutions. The living room has too many mismatched chairs; the pictures on the walls could have hung at a Howard Johnson's. In the kitchen, where the clutter of ordinary life would have gathered, names on index cards are taped to the backs of the chairs around the table: Roger, Didi, Gary, Mary Jean, John.

Patty's mom is in the living room at the desk. She peers at Patty over the tops of her bifocals. "I know he went to the hospital, and I know how much he scared you, and I also know that he's all right," she says. "Marjorie called me." Marjorie Gresky is the assistant manager of the lumber yard. Patty feels sure that Marjorie must have spelled out to her mom many intricate, exaggerated details of what had happened. The people at the lumber yard want Patty's parents to be married again as much as she does. They probably have the same reason: living apart from each other, Bill and Ann Murcher's moods on a daily basis are even worse than all the years they'd been together. A "trial separation" is what everyone is calling this, but it seems to Patty that the trial part must be over.

"Brian's with him," Patty says. "It was a minor one, a little shock, but no one is saying it won't happen again."

Patty's mom is doing paperwork. She's copying, from a notebook to an official-looking form, phrases that had been uttered that week by one of her people, Didi, who's fifty years old. Patty looks over her mother's shoulder. "Oh my little cupcake, Oh I love this cupcake so much," her mom writes. "Charlie says, `I love my Good and Plenty.'" When Patty was a child, and had come here sometimes on school vacations, her mom had seemed to her as amazing as an Annie Sullivan. Patty wonders if it used to amuse her mother that she'd tied a bandanna on her eyes, and had talked with her voice low and guttural, playing Helen Keller. Perhaps this had been something her mom had worried about.

"Brian is the person who moved into my house, in case you've forgotten what's going on with me," Patty says.

"Patty, I know about your boyfriend."

"He's not just my boyfriend. He's my--" but Patty's voice just stops. She doesn't know how to convey to her mother how extraordinary it feels to her that this man has walked into her life.

Patty's mom says, "Remember I told you last week that I didn't think Roger would make it in the sheltered workshop? I was wrong. He had rough start, but he's going there every day now."

"I know you're worried. Mom, go and see him. He only has one heart, Mom. You don't have to talk to him, just sit there."

"I sat there for thirty-eight years," says Ann Murcher. She doesn't say this with any bitterness; it's just a fact.

"I think he's trying to learn how to say things."

"Is he still screaming at you?"

"No," says Patty. "He stopped."

"Do me a favor. Go stand in the doorway so Gary can see you."

Gary is a big, white-haired man, with a body like a polar bear's. Patty's mom had got him released from the state hospital a couple of years ago, and now he's working at the auto body shop across the street. He's a painter of cars, a sort of miracle. At half-hour intervals through the day he has to look out the window and see Ann. He's just like a ship out there, needing sight of a lighthouse.